Advertisement

Hollywood Sure Loves Sequels: For The Second Year In A Row, Zero Actors Of Color Get Oscar Nominations

CREDIT: GRAPHIC BY DYLAN PETROHILOS
CREDIT: GRAPHIC BY DYLAN PETROHILOS

Another year, another #OscarsSoWhite: Despite 2015 being the year that brought us the stunning Beasts of No Nation, the sleeper-smash Straight Outta Compton, Spike Lee’s satire Chi-raq, and Creed, confirmation for anyone still doubting whether or not Michael B. Jordan is a movie star, exactly zero actors of color were nominated for an Academy Award on Thursday morning. Just like last year.

This is frustrating, though not totally surprising: Industry insiders had been fretting about a repeat of an all-white acting slate for a while now. But it’s a bad look for an awards show already clinging to relevance like Leonardo DiCaprio clinging to hope that someday he’ll actually win an Oscar.

The Golden Globes might be a celebrities-get-sloshed-fest that occasionally recognizes television shows the vast majority of TV-watching humans haven’t ever seen, but at least they keep things interesting and — perhaps because they get to include the more-progressive television world in their proceedings — diverse.

Also, no women were nominated for Best Director — though fair to say the Oscars are just the tip of that massive, depressing iceberg.

Advertisement

The Best Actor nominees are Bryan Cranston for Trumbo, DiCaprio for The Revenant, Michael Fassbender for Steve Jobs, Eddie Redmayne for The Danish Girl, and Matt Damon for the hilarious comedy The Martian. Best Actress contenders are Cate Blanchett for Carol, Brie Larson for Room, Jennifer Lawrence for Joy, Charlotte Rampling for 45 Years, and Saoirse Ronan for Brooklyn. DiCaprio, Damon, Larson, and Lawrence all won Golden Globes for these performances on Sunday.

Your Supporting Actor hopefuls are: Christian Bale for The Big Short, Tom Hardy for The Revenant, Mark Rylance for Bridge of Spies, Sylvester Stallone for Creed, and Mark Ruffalo for Spotlight. The female nominees are Rooney Mara for Carol, Rachel McAdams for Spotlight, Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl, Kate Winslet for Steve Jobs, Jennifer Jason Leigh for The Hateful Eight. Winslet and Stallone scooped up Golden Globes for these performances, too.

Other highs/lows: Spotlight, on top of the aforementioned nods, is nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Tom McCarthy), and Best Film Editing (Tom McArdle), a much-deserved bounty for one of the most thoughtful, gripping films of the year. In the documentary category, beautifully-executed movies about two gone-too-soon female talents are getting their due: Amy and Whatever Happened to Miss Simone?. And the Academy is honoring two stories about the LGBT experience: The Danish Girl, which gracefully tells the story of one of the first transgender women to undergo sex-reassignment surgery, picked up four nominations, and Carol, about the clandestine romantic relationship between two women, scored six.

The most exciting category? We’ll go with Best Original Screenplay, where Spotlight (Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer) dukes it out against the vibrant-but-controversial Straight Outta Compton (Andrea Berloff, Jonathan Herman, S. Leigh Savidge, Alan Wenkus), the literal-emotional-roller-coaster of Inside Out (Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley, Ronnie del Carmin) and the innovative sci-fi thriller Ex Machina. (Not really excited about Bridge of Spies, but there’s always one.)