Academy Award Nominees Announced

All the nominees have been announced and naturally there is much talk of snubbing, most notably in the Best Picture category, which failed to include such critically reviewed films as Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and Creed. Quentin Tarantino is mysteriously absent from the Best Director category, as well. Another unsettling concern (for people that pay attention to these things) is that no African Americans were nominated in the Best Actor category for the second year in a row, despite the abundance of worthy performances.

What do you guys think? Is there snubbing going on that reaches to the highest levels of snubbery, resulting in a snubocracy, if you will? Has a disturbing trend of minority actors being left out in the cold on Oscar night come to pass, or is it just coincidence? What are your picks this year? Does The Revenant deserve 12 nominations? Will jdiggle ever create a topic worthy of OT? Inquiring minds want to know!

Personally, I would love to see Eddie Redmayne take Best Actor, but that seems a very tall order considering the others in that category.

Best Picture

"The Big Short"

"Bridge of Spies"

"Brooklyn"

"Mad Max: Fury Road"

"The Martian"

"The Revenant"

"Room"

"Spotlight"

Best Director

Lenny Abrahamson, "Room"

Adam McKay, "The Big Short"

George Miller, "Mad Max: Fury Road"

Alejandro González Iñárritu, "The Revenant"

Tom McCarthy, "Spotlight"

Best Actress

Cate Blanchett, "Carol"

Brie Larson, "Room"

Jennifer Lawrence, "Joy"

Charlotte Rampling, "45 Years"

Saoirse Ronan, "Brooklyn"

Best Actor

Bryan Cranston, "Trumbo"

Matt Damon, "The Martian"

Leonardo DiCaprio, "The Revenant"

Michael Fassbender, "Steve Jobs"

Eddie Redmayne, "The Danish Girl"

Best Supporting Actress

Jennifer Jason Leigh, "The Hateful Eight"

Rooney Mara, "Carol"

Rachel McAdams, "Spotlight

Alicia Vikander, "The Danish Girl"

Kate Winslet, "Steve Jobs"

Best Supporting Actor

Christian Bale, "The Big Short"

Tom Hardy, "The Revenant"

Mark Ruffalo, "Spotlight"

Mark Rylance, "Bridge of Spies"

Sylvester Stallone, "Creed"

Best Adapted Screenplay

Adam McKay and Charles Randolph, "The Big Short"

Nick Hornby, "Brooklyn"

Phyllis Nagy, "Carol"

Drew Goddard, "The Martian"

Emma Donoghue, "Room"

Best Original Screenplay

Matt Charman, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, "Bridge of Spies"

Alex Garland, "Ex Machina"

Josh Cooley, Pete Docter and Meg LeFauve, "Inside Out"

Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, "Spotlight"

Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff, "Straight Outta Compton"

Best Foreign Language Film

"Embrace of the Serpant"

"Mustang"

"Son of Saul"

"Theeb"

"A War"

Best Documentary Feature

"Amy"

"Cartel Land"

"The Look of Silence"

"What Happened, Miss Simone?"

"Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom"

Best Animated Feature

"Anomalisa"

"Boy and the World"

"Inside Out"

"Shaun the Sheep Movie"

"When Marnie Was There"

Best Film Editing

"The Big Short"

"Mad Max: Fury Road"

"The Revenant"

"Spotlight"

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens"

Best Original Song

"Earned It" from "Fifty Shades of Grey"

"Manta Ray" from "Racing Extinction"

"Simple Song #3" from "Youth"

"Til It Happens To You" from "The Hunting Ground"

"Writing's on the Wall" from "Spectre"

Best Original Score

Thomas Newman, "Bridge of Spies"

Carter Burwell, "Carol"

Ennio Morricone, "The Hateful Eight"

Jóhann Jóhannson, "Sicario"

John Williams, "Star Wars: The Force Awakens"

Best Cinematography

"Carol"

"The Hateful Eight"

"Mad Max: Fury Road"

"The Revenant"

"Sicario"

Best Costume Design

"Carol"

"Cinderella"

"The Danish Girl"

"Mad Max: Fury Road"

"The Revenant"

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

"Mad Max: Fury Road"

"The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared"

"The Revenant"

Best Production Design

"Bridge of Spies"

"The Danish Girl"

"Mad Max: Fury Road"

"The Martian"

"The Revenant"

Best Sound Editing

"Mad Max: Fury Road"

"The Martian"

"The Revenant"

"Sicario"

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens"

Best Sound Mixing

"Bridge of Spies"

"Mad Max: Fury Road"

"The Martian"

"The Revenant"

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens"

Best Visual Effects

"Ex Machina"

"Mad Max: Fury Road"

"The Martian"

"The Revenant"

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens"

Best Short Film, Live Action

“Ave Maria”

“Shok”

“Day One”

“Stutterer”

“Everything Will Be Okay”

Best Short Film, Animated

"Bear Story"

"Prologue"

"Sanjay's Super Team"

"We Can't Live Without Cosmos"

"World of Tomorrow"

Best Documentary, Short Subject

“Body Team 12”

“A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness”

“Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah”

“Chau, Beyond the Lines”

“Last Day of Freedom”

Creed and Carol got hella robbed in terms of Best Picture noms.

As long as DiCaprio gets an Oscar I'll be happy. He's such an amazing actor and really deserves it.

A few thousand people vote for the best person for a particular category. Can you please tell me why it is unsettling considering there were all types of people who were not nominated? Certainly the possibility exists that those who cast ballots didn't think any performances of black people were worthy of a nomination or comparable to those who were nominated? Are we that off track that people need to be nominated for awards based not on what they do but due to some sort of characteristic that separates them from another?

Hell yeah....second most nominations for Mad Max.

Immediately became my favorite action movie ever.

I only saw two of these year's Hollywood movies, The Martian and Star Wars. And it's disgraceful that Martian is nominated for best film but not SW. It was trash in comparison.

The stars have aligned for Leo this time.. He's finally gonna get his oscar

Can't really talk about The Martian, but it's not exactly surprising that Star Wars didn't get nominated. It's no secret that those kinds of movies aren't exactly big with the Academy, and that one of the reasons that they threw all those awards at Return of the King back in the day is so they could give a token win to the genre and then go right back to ignoring those kinds of movies. Also, I personally didn't think that Star Wars was all that good, but that's kind of beside the point. Even if I thought it was amazing, a best picture nomination is still kind of a long shot. Hell, I'm a little bit surprised to see Mad Max get nominated.

You haven't seen a lot of movies, there are a lot of movies better than Star Wars. Mad Max is still the best film of 2015, and I recommend you watch that film.

The oscar voters are the worst group of moviegoers in the Western Hemisphere. I honestly cannot remember a time I've rewatched one the last 30 best pictures. Every one of them votes for the safe pick, never ground breaking. The movies they pick always have pc undertones, an antagonist rarely exists or barely exist, and strong females leads always beat out African Americans. So the voters are racists, but not sexist.

Hopefully Leo wins this time, the man has starred in too many amazing films and has walked away empty-handed.

How anyone thinks Will Smith is deserving of an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, is beyond me.

Creed was absolutely robbed. I even think Michael B. Jordan could have received a nod for Best Actor - he would've lost but his performance was fantastic.

Thanks @Allicrombie for posting the list.

@joehult: According to an article on the Readers Digest website, 94% of the committee is white and 77 percent is male, most of them is over 50. A fair amount of them don't even watch the movies they vote for.

http://www.rd.com/culture/what-hollywood-insiders-wont-tell-you-about-the-academy-awards/

@Solaryellow: I suppose this list of black actors' and their vehicles, Idris Elba ("Beasts of No Nation"), Will Smith ("Concussion"), Michael B. Jordan ("Creed"), Samuel L. Jackson ("The Hateful Eight"), Tessa Thompson ("Creed"), Jason Mitchell ("Straight Outta Compton") and Mya Taylor ("Tangerine"), is being circulated among many websites as proof of some kind of inequality campaign against the Academy Award voters and "unsettling" was the word they associated with such a potential trend that no black actors had a performance that was deemed worthy enough to qualify for the Best Actor nod.

lol lack of star wars and creed. shit list.

The Revenant should win best movie, actor and director. Hell maybe even best supporting actor. Give the bear a nomination too.

Well, it isn't simply a matter of being worthy in a vacuum, in reality one of those performances would have to by worthier than one of the other 5 that were actually nominated. I don't know if they were, but I do know I wouldn't argue either way until I saw all the performances of those that were indeed nominated plus at least one of the performances deemed good enough by some but that weren't nominated.

I see they've adapted to the internet age quite well.

@joehult: Whether that's true or not, what are your specific issues with this year's nominees? What 10 movies did you think deserved to get nominated, and which do you think should win best picture?

I wouldn't know, I haven't seen enough movies this year to know. But even if that's the case, I'd still be REALLY surprised if Mad Max pulls off best picture. I mean, I loved the hell out of it and it's a really great movie. But let's be real here...it's a nonstop chase full of explosions and crashes, filled in a post-apocalyptic world that's perfectly suited for video games, and full of characters who look like they're attending a comic-con convention. While there are exceptions, those kinds of movies generally don't get taken very seriously at the Oscars. Also, it was an April release, which means that by now a hell of a lot of buzz about it has died down, and a lot of people stopped caring about it. No slam against something like The Revenant, because that's my most anticipated movie that I want to see. But that has the benefit of being released shortly before the Oscars, which means it's still more new and there isn't the passage of time to dull people's perceptions of it.

But anyway, my point is that it's really a long shot for Mad Max to win, I think. Out of all the best picture nominees, only one fits into that whole "fantasy/sci-fi/geek" category, and that's Mad Max. I suspect that they had to give a token nod to ONE of those kinds of movies, just to feel like they were being fair. So they took the easiest candidate (Mad Max), threw all of the nominations at it (including a best picture nomination). Now they're covered. Even if it doesn't have a chance in hell of winning best picture, it still got a bunch of nominations, it still got a best picture nomination, and it's guaranteed to win at least a couple of less prestigious awards like best editing or best costume design. So no one can complain about it getting snubbed, it already got a bunch of nominations and it's gonna win at least a couple of awards. It just doesn't have a chance at best picture. That's fair: the movie lost, but no one can accuse the Academy of not giving it a chance.

Or maybe I'm wrong.

In any case, like, I recall George Lucas giving a recent interview and people railing against the dude for stating that movies like Star Wars don't win Oscars. And like, I guess those people apparently forgot how a mere ten or so years ago there was this big narrative about the LOTR films getting snubbed because those kinds of movies don't win Oscars. No, those kinds of movies generally do not win Oscars (at least as far as the big nominations like "best picture" and "best director" are concerned). I'm not gonna say that it's entirely political, but there really does seem to be a bias against these kinds of movies. Whether that's because most of these kinds of movies just aren't very good, or because the Academy is a bunch of snooty old farts who sees explosions and sci-fi/fantasy stuff as just frivolous shit for kids, I don't know. But these kinds of movies generally DON'T win best picture. So even if not giving it the Best Picture award is unfairly snubbing it, the Academy just made it EASIER to snub it by throwing this many nominations its way.

The major issue is how a particular group of people vote based on their own rightful criteria and since another group does not approve of their opinions, something is clearly wrong. That kind of thinking is wrong. Trying to bully others into changing their opinion is poppycock.

Not once will I say Movie A is more deserving than Movie B or Actor A over Actor B because I've only seen three movies in 2015 (which is a lot for me) and none are up for any type of contention. With that said, I'd prefer leaving it up to the voters and deferring to their judgement.

What I will say is Smith is a poor actor. Nothing he has ever done has compelled me enough to watch his material. The last picture I viewed with him as the star was I Legend and it could not shine the shoes of The Omega Man.

Star Wars doesn't deserve a nomination for best picture. It got justly nominated in the categories it deserved. Can't say anything about Creed though.

Agree to disagree.

It is pretty funny that a film created, directed, starring, and written by black dudes and dudettes only nomination was for an old white dude. Stallone absolutely deserves it, it's just a tad ridiculous.

I'm talking about Creed in case anyone doesn't know

I hope he doesn't, so the joke still goes on.

That said... I saw Fury Road and I don't get the nomination.

What does Star Wars deserve?

All I got from the movie was film score and *maybe* special effects. It's definitely not deserving of a best picture nomination. It isn't even the best Star Wars film.

I never manage to get out and see most of these Best Picture nominated films. The only one I managed to see this year was The Martian, which I did enjoy. I also think it's interesting that Carol and The Danish Girl weren't given Best Picture nods, (which as you may expect, has several LGBT affirmative groups quite peeved). Several of the categories have interesting dynamics this year, such as in the Best Original Score category, where Morricone's Golden Globe victory has people speculating that he may be a shoo in for the Oscar, despite the fact that he's competing against the legendary John Williams. Inside Out taking Best Animated Film is pretty much a lock.

@foxhound_fox: A lot of people are saying that Star Wars didn't even deserve a Best Original Score nomination. It's kind of funny if you think about how much the movie earned versus the fact that it has no nominations for Best Picture, Best Actors, or Best Director.

The biggest earners tend not to be those nominated for Academy Awards.

Everything.

If there is justice in the world, Anomalisa should win. But it won't. With that said Inside Out is great just Anomalisa is fantastic.

I have not watched a lot of movies this year, but I did thoroughly enjoy Mad Max. I saw The Martian too but I don't it's deserving of a Best Picture nod.

I'm just glad it's nominated so I'll have a chance to watch it. The fact that some of these movies get nominated is the only reason I'll get access to some of them, and I've heard very good things about this one.

Guess so :P

@mattbbpl: Yeah, that's a great attitude to have. Too many people bitch and moan about the Oscars but they do a good job at giving exposure to films some may not have heard of before.

I think Ex Machina was the best movie of the year, certainly better than The Martian, but it's a niche film.

People here are clamoring for Creed and Star Wars, both are good movies, but overrated in this forum. Spotlight was really good as well.

Mad Max deserves to be up for Best Picture, and it's not as niche as Ex Machina (which is too thought-provoking for the academy), so that gets my vote from the list. It is the definition of a great action movie and deserves kudos for being among the best of its kind ever.

Oh, I just noticed Bridge of Spies on the list, another very worthy contender. Great movie!

More so than Martian for sure

So blase' =P I thought inside Out was so good, easily one of Pixar's better films.

Cool to see a fair bit of Aussie representation there...

@Allicrombie:

Inside Out is going to win animated, I think that's a sure bet.

Still have to see "The Revenant"

In OT Creed isn't nearly overrated as Force Awakens is.

@AFBrat77: Don't feel bad, I still have to see most of those.

Hopefully Stallone thanks all African Americans this time.

Sly and Leo winning on the same night would be memorable.

I am okay with the absence of Star Wars, because quite frankly I don't think it's Best Picture material.

I am, however, very pleasantly surprised to see Mad Max among the Best Picture posse, and rightfully so for it was the best action/blockbuster film last year, and among the best in years. Star Wars may be the most successful, mostly catered to nostalgia, but I don't think that in any way makes it the best. Mad Max rose itself from the cult grave and become a mainstream phenomenon, and I find that way more impressive of a success than simply making a movie we already knew people were waiting to see.

The animation label is absolutely fierce this year. I will tell you we have had one of the best years in animation in quite a while. Each and every film in the animation category is actually fantastic and very much worth your time.
Guys, I know all of you are hyping Inside Out as the locked animation contender, but let's not ignore that the others are fantastic as well and Inside Out actually has good competition.