Leonardo DiCaprio enters the best actor race as the odds-on favorite for “The Revenant”. The part won the 40-year-old actress a Golden Globe last weekend. “Champagne and mezcal will run tonight!”
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In addition to “The Revenant”, the nominees for best picture are “Spotlight”, “The Big Short”, “Mad Max: Fury Road”, “The Martian”, “Brooklyn”, “Bridge of Spies” and “Room”. And Oscar voters loved its acting (nominations for Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara) and its adapted screenplay (ditto for Phyllis Nagy), among other elements. He’s up against The Revenant’s Emmanuel Lubezki, who could well win his third Oscar in a row after Birdman and Gravity. On Thursday, Gray wrote about the issue of diversity at the Oscars and said he doesn’t believe the Academy is racist, but said change comes very slowly. Here are my best guesses as to if and when they’ll get here.
Other contenders for Best Actor are Michael Fassbender, 38, for his portrayal of Apple founder Steve Jobs, Breaking Bad actor Bryan Cranston, 59, for the film Trumbo and Hollywood heavyweight Matt Damon, 45, nominated for the thriller The Martian. And Johnny Depp’s starring role as the true-life gangster Whitey Bulger in “Black Mass” was not recommended for an award.
Sylvester Stallone is also nominated for “Creed” in which he returns as the boxer, now trainer, character Rocky Balboa. I feel incredibly honored to be recognized among the other fantastic women in this category. I can’t even believe it. I am just sitting here in complete and utter shock over all of this.
Also competing in the best original screenplay category are Bridge Of Spies, Inside Out, Spotlight and Straight Outta Compton. “Hopefully that will start to pay off over time”.
The #OscarsSoWhite hashtag was created past year by April Reign, managing editor of BroadwayBlack.com, after the all-white nominees list was dropped on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. “From here to the Oscars, we party”, he said.
Micheal Keaton and Rachel McAdams in “Spotlight”.
Audience favorite “Inside Out” is nominated for best animated feature along with “Anomalisa” (opening in Pittsburgh Jan. 22), “Boy and the World”, “Shaun the Sheep Movie” and “When Marnie Was There”.
“To work with such a brilliant young director (Quentin Tarantino) at my age gives me great pleasure”.
Although, Indian film “Court” couldn’t make it to the Best Foreign Language Film category, the movies which are contending in the top five include “Son of Saul”, “Mustang”, “A War”, “Embrace of the Serpent” and “Theeb”. Jordan and Columbia celebrated their first nominations.
The runaway hit of the season, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, was nominated for five Academy Awards, for its original score and in technical categories. It secured nods for film editing, original score, sound editing, sound mixing and visual effects. Instead, Lenny Abrahamson for “Room” was the unexpected addition along with Adam McKay, known best for his broader Will Ferrell comedies, for “The Big Short”. Attractive but brutal wilderness epic The Revenant is the frontrunner with 12 nominations.
Netflix, which has previously scored nominations for documentaries, fell short in its first bid for fiction film nods.
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Although Time Warner and Disney fell short of 21 Century Fox for nominations, both companies out-grossed Fox in 2015.
