For a disheartening second year in a row, the all-white nominees in the six major categories – actor, actress, supporting actor, supporting actress, director and best picture – threaten to render the Oscars irrelevant to the audience it so desperately needs to stay alive. Straight Outta Compton got one nomination, for Best Original Screenplay.
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Despite a wealth of films to choose from, including “Beasts of No Nation”, “Creed”, “Straight Outta Compton” and Spike Lee’s “Chi-raq”, not a single minority actor was nominated in any of the acting categories.
Every year after the Oscar nominees are announced (see 2016’s full list here), we here on Glamour.com’s entertainment team spend the entire morning debating who should win, who got snubbed, and what surprised us the most about the news.
A Los Angeles Times study in 2012 shows that the Academy is 94 percent white and 77 percent male.
The #OscarsSoWhite hashtag was created a year ago by April Reign, managing editor of BroadwayBlack.com, after the all-white nominees list was dropped on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
“Wow, the acting categories are VERY white this year”.
Jacob Tremblay: The nine-year-old Room star was poised to be the next Anna Paquin, the next Haley Joel Osment, or, more recently, the next Quvenzhane Wallis.
“The Revenant”, meanwhile, included a surprise: Tom Hardy’s nomination for best supporting actor. Best Documentary and Best Original Screenplay.
Todd Haynes and Carol: Apparently the New York Film Critics Circle doesn’t matter, because their choice for Best Director and Best Picture were completely shut out of the two biggest prizes of the night. “He didn’t know that we had guns and stuff on tour – back when we were young and dumb”, said the “Ride Along 2” star. The polarizing filmmaker is a regular in that race, but apparently the Oscar voters failed to see his genius this time. It certainly has a head of steam – terrific box office numbers, lots of free press generated by star Leonardo DiCaprio’s physical endurance on the set, and enough critical consensus to push it over the edge.
Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu says he gave a stellar performance in the film.
She should have been nominated for Ex Machina – a far more interesting film -and then she could have won.
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In 2013, Beasts of the Southern Wild and Django Unchained were nominated for Best Picture while Denzel Washington and Quvenzhane Wallis were recognized in acting categories.
