“The Revenant” actually led the number of nominations with 12, including one for director Alejandro González Iñárritu, who won a year ago for best director.
Advertisement
Oscar voters, who usually favor artistic fare over blockbuster films for the coveted best picture prize, this year put three big budget films in the race: “The Revenant” and “The Martian”, which earned seven nods, and “Mad Max: Fury Road”.
DiCaprio, who has yet to win an Oscar, will compete with Bryan Cranston in Hollywood blacklist tale “Trumbo”, Matt Damon in space adventure “The Martian”, Michael Fassbender as technology visionary “Steve Jobs” and Eddie Redmayne as transgender artist Lili Elbe in “The Danish Girl”. Eight films were nominated for best picture, with some strongly fancied films missing out, including Carol, which scored six nominations, but nothing for director Todd Haynes, still without a best director nod.
However, the actor does not consider himself a good judge of his own performance. If you finish one in a year, it’s considered a leap of faith.
The best actress category is the most fearsome this year, with Larson, who many feel is a front-runner, going head to head with Saoirse Ronan in “Brooklyn”, Cate Blanchett in “Carol”, Charlotte Rampling in “45 Years”, and 2013’s best actress victor Jennifer Lawrence in “Joy”.
Will Smith (“Concussion”), Idris Elba (“Beasts of No Nation”), and Michael B. Jordan (“Creed”) were among those thought to be in the running for a nomination but left out.
The nominees for the 88th Academy Awards were announced on 14 January at 5:30 am PST at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, by directors Guillermo del Toro and Ang Lee, Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs, and actor John Krasinski.
For 363 days a year, nobody gives a fuck about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Stallone in the movie reprises his iconic role of boxer Rocky Balboa, for which he was nominated but failed to win an Oscar when the original “Rocky” came out in 1976.
“Straight Outta Compton” letdown: An audience favorite that could have provided the Best Picture and Best Director race with some much-needed diversity, but instead it only got nominated for white contributions through its screenplay.
“If you don’t expand the diversity of that membership – and by extension producers and directors who more fairly reflect society – you get this grotesque imbalance”, he told AFP. Anyone old enough to buy a ticket to any of this year’s Best Picture nominees is old enough to know this, and to expect it, and to treat this grotesque annual self-congratulation party held by reprehensible morons like exactly the small, irrelevant, provincial curio it always has been.
“It was thrilling”, said McKay, who made a pre-dawn party to watch the nominations.
Advertisement
“It was No. 1 at the box office, over $200 million worldwide”. However, if anything, these two films will make Oscars’ final cut for Best Picture. No filmmaker has ever directed back-to-back best picture winners.
