“The Revenant” led all films with 12 nominations for the 88th Academy Awards, announced Thursday morning.
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The Oscars will be awarded Sunday, Feb. 28 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
Chris Rock, African-American actor, will be hosting the event for a second time after hosting the 77th edition in 2005, E!News reported. The dramatic flick likewise garnered multiple nominations, including Best Picture.
Hardy’s “Mad Max: Fury Road” also exercised some gasoline-fueled muscle. (Leonardo DiCaprio gave one of the greatest comic performances in recent years in “The Wolf of Wall Street”; he’ll likely win an Oscar for his relentlessly grim grind through “The Revenant.”) Comedy that the Academy feels comfortable taking seriously, comedy that comes trademarked as topical-that’s what the members watch on TV or streaming.
Actor in a Leading Role is made up of Bryan Cranston (“Trumbo”), Eddie Redmayne (“The Danish Girl“), DiCaprio, Matt Damon (“The Martian”), and Michael Fassbender (“Steve Jobs”).
Best supporting actor is led by a comeback story for Sylvester Stallone, reprising his role as Rocky Balboa in “Creed”.
But Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett both were picked for Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress respectively.
Adam McKay (The Big Short) and Lenny Abrahamson (Room) join George Miller (Mad Max), Tom McCarthy, (Spotlight), and Alejandro González Iñárritu (The Revenant) in the Best Director Category. This year, it went with eight: “The Revenant”, “Mad Max“, “Spotlight”, “The Martian”, “Brooklyn”, “Room”, “The Big Short” and “Bridge of Spies”.
And while we’re talking a year that saw an explosion of terrific movies about women, notably absent from either the Directing or the Picture races is Todd Haynes’ lesbian romance “Carol”, considered by all major critics polls the most exquisitely made film of 2015. He won previous year for “The Theory of Everything”. “Creed” should have been a shoo-in for a Best Picture nomination, and its star, Michael B. Jordan, who carries the movie on his well-muscled shoulders, should have been a contender for Best Actor. Mark Rylance’s nomination for Best Supporting Actor, for his turn as Rudolf Abel, in “Bridge of Spies”, is due, I think, to a similar synergy of actor and material: his delivery of a single recurring line-“Would it help?”-is the hook that catches voters”.
They will compete against Brie Larson for psychological thriller Room, Charlotte Rampling for British drama 45 Years and Saoirse Ronan for immigrant tale Brooklyn.
It was an artistically exploratory year for animated features, and the Oscar nominees – “Anomalisa”, “Boy and the World”, “Inside Out”, “Shaun the Sheep Movie” and “When Marnie Was There” – were all as highly accomplished as they were experimental.
The nominees for best original screenplay are “Spotlight”, “Ex Machina“, “Inside Out”, “Bridge of Spies” and “Straight Outta Compton”.
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The nominations for the 2016 Oscars are out. The Academy’s all white nominees for best actor and actress and supporting roles could be a source of consternation after the organization received a deluge of criticism for last year’s snub of performers and the director of “Selma”.
