The “OscarsSoWhite” backlash is one sequel Hollywood doesn’t want to see when nominations are announced Thursday morning for the 88th annual Academy Awards.
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After years of being snubbed at the Oscar alter, Leonardo DiCaprio looks to be at the cusp of yet another possible Oscar win.
And “The Martian” has seven nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor for its star Matt Damon.
The films will vie with The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, The Martian, Room and Spotlight for best picture, the top Oscar award.
Pioneer-era drama “The Revenant” led the Oscar nominations with 12 nods.
The Oscars will be presented February 28 the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, hosted by Chris Rock and broadcast live on ABC. The star’s turn in Beasts of No Nation has been widely hailed as exceptional, but the feature failed to garner a single nomination. “I was not expecting it… especially at this time in my life”. However, looking at the field thats in competition for the Best Actor honors at this years Oscars, its not going to be an easy victory for everyones favorite upset. “Mandela. It was like Hollywood, the Academy, didn’t know what to do with so many noteworthy, critically lauded films directed by black directors with such fine award-worthy best actor and supporting actress performances”, she said.
Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who is black and who has pushed for more diversity in the Academy’s ranks since her election in 2013, acknowledged that more action was needed on that front. “Spotlight”, “The Big Short”, “Room” and “Bridge of Spies” were also nominated in multiple categories. Lead “Creed” actor Michael B. Jordan was left out.
In fact, while “The Force Awakens” has already brought in more than $1.7 billion worldwide, the combined box office of all eight films nominated for best picture is $1.3 billion. Oscar darling Helen Mirren was also snubbed in her bid for a Best Supporting Actress nod for her part in Trumbo, as was Kristen Stewart for her Cesar Award (the French equivalent of Oscar)-winning role in Clouds of Sils Maria.
Straight Outta Compton, the only film made up of a majority black cast, was nominated for Best Original Screenplay.
The Academy didn’t default to including every major studio’s animated release (like “The Peanuts Movie“, “Minions” and “The Good Dinosaur“), allowing two foreign films to be nominated in the category Studio Ghibli’s “When Marnie Was There” and the Brazilian film “Boy & the World”.
They will compete against Drew Goddard for his adaptation of Alex Weir’s novel The Martian, Phyllis Nagy for Carol, which is based on the Patricia Highsmith novel The Price Of Salt, and Charles Randolph and Adam McKay for The Big Short, which is based on Michael Lewis’s book of the same name. Two indie upstarts, Open Road (“Spotlight”) and A24 (“Room”), notched their first best picture nominations. Netflix’s documentaries “What Happened, Miss Simone” and “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight For Freedom” were nominated.
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Seale won in 1997 for The English Patient and picked up other nominations for Rain Man, Witness and Cold Mountain.
