Revenant rules Oscars with 12 nods
Spotlight rebounds from Globes with six nominations
A year after Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman swept top honours at last year’s Academy Awards, Iñárritu will again play a leading role at the Academy Awards with his 1820s revenge thriller The Revenant, which landed a leading 12 nominations Thursday.
The strong showing Thursday for The Revenant, including a best actor nod for Leonardo DiCaprio and best supporting actor for Tom Hardy, follows its win at the Golden Globes. It sets up Iñárritu for a possible back-to-back win following his sweep of best picture, director and screenplay for Birdman last year.
“We gave it our all on this film and this appreciation from the Academy means a lot to me and my colleagues who made it possible,” said Iñárritu in a statement. “Champagne and mezcal will run tonight!”
George Miller’s postapocalyptic sequel Mad Max: Fury Road followed with 10 nominations, including best picture and best director for Miller. Ridley Scott’s sci-fi epic The Martian landed seven nominations, including best picture and best actor for Matt Damon, but, surprisingly, no best-director nod for Scott.
Eight out of a possible ten films were nominated for best picture. The other five were: Tom McCarthy’s investigative journalistic procedural Spotlight, Steven Spielberg’s Cold War thriller Bridge of Spies, Adam McKay’s Michael Lewis adaptation The Big Short, the motherson captive drama Room and the ’50s Irish immigrant tale Brooklyn.
Left on the outside were Todd Haynes’ lesbian romance Carol (which fared better in acting nominations for Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara) and the N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton (which still landed a nod for original screenplay). The miss for Carol meant one usual Oscar heavyweight — Harvey Weinstein — won’t have a horse in the bestpicture race for the first time since 2008.
Alongside DiCaprio and Damon, the best actor nominees are: Michael Fassbender ( Steve Jobs), Eddie Redmayne ( The Danish Girl) and Bryan Cranston ( Trumbo). Two big names were left out: Johnny Depp for Black Mass and Will Smith for Concussion.
In a statement, DiCaprio, who’s expected to land his first Oscar in his fifth nomination, called making The Revenant one of the most rewarding and collaborative experiences of my life.“
The best actress field is led by favourite Brie Larson for Room, along with Jennifer Lawrence (for Joy, making her, at 25, the youngest four-time nominee), Cate Blanchett (her seventh nod, for Carol), Saoirse Ronan ( Brooklyn) and Charlotte Rampling ( 45 Years).
After seemingly slipping in an unpredictable awards season, Spotlight rebounded Thursday, landing six nominations including best director for McCarthy, best screenplay for McCarthy and Josh Singer, best supporting actress for Rachel McAdams and best supporting actor for Mark Ruffalo.
Sylvester Stallone, reprising his role as Rocky Balboa in Creed, looms large in the supporting actor category. His stiffest competition is seen as Mark Rylance, best known for his stage work, for Bridge of Spies. Also nominated were Tom Hardy The Revenant) and Christian Bale ( The Big Short).
“I am incredibly humbled by this honour,” Stallone, first nominated for the role in 1976 for Rocky, wrote in an email. “I was not expecting it … especially at this time in my life. I am certainly grateful to the artists and collaborators who helped make it possible.”
Stallone was the only nominee for Ryan Coogler’s Creed, which drew raves for its director and star, Michael B. Jordan.
Along with Mara and McAdams, the best support- ing actress nominees were Alicia Vikander ( The Danish Girl), Jennifer Jason Leigh ( The Hateful Eight) and Kate Winslet ( Steve Jobs), her seventh nod.
As expected, Pixar’s
Inside Out landed a best animated feature nod, as did the Charlie Kaufmanpenned stop-motion animation Anomalisa, Shaun the Sheep Movie, Boy and the World and When Marnie
Was There.
The nomination for Pixar (which also landed a best screenplay nod for Inside Out) restores its nearly unblemished record of Oscar nominations,
broken only by 2011’s Cars 2 and 2013’s Monsters University.
The foreign language category drew films from Hungary ( Son Of Saul), France ( Mustang), Jordan ( Theeb), Denmark ( A War) and Colombia ( Embrace the Serpent). Jordan and Columbia celebrated their first nominations.
Though some fans had hoped for a better showing, the box-office behemoth Star Wars: The Force Awakens failed to land a best picture nomination. It instead scored five technical nods for editing, score, visual effects, sound mixing and sound editing.
Since the best picture field was expanded from five nominees to up to 10, in 2010, every year has delivered nine nominations until this year’s eight. The original reasoning was partly to make room for bigger, more populist films like Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight alongside acclaimed independent releases.
But the chances for The Force Awakens were hurt because the category already has one sci-fi blockbuster ( The Martian), as well as a number of major studio releases. 20th Century Fox had an especially good day, led by The Revenant and The Martian.
Netflix, which has previously scored nominations for documentaries, fell short in its first bid for fiction film nods. Its first original feature, Cary Fukunaga’s West African child war film Beasts of No Nation, was shut out.
Netflix did, however, again break into the documentary category with What Happened, Miss Simone? and Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom. The other nominees were Amy, Cartel Land and The Look of Silence. Surprisingly left out was Alex Gibney’s incendiary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.