Idris Elba, ‘Carol,’ Ridley Scott lead list of Oscar snubs

I cant be mad, you know. It’s not strictly to win an Oscar because every movie that is made to win – like “This is an Oscar Movie” – it never wins.

“Certainly, the lack of variety in Hollywood is not the biggest problem in the world today”, writes A.B. Wilkenson (Huff Post), “… yet it is a serious issue and one that we can do something about.

Before you roll your eyes and say I’m making too much of a reach, let me take you back to 1993 when homophobia and stigma around HIV was still at an all-time high. The people loved the movie. 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. As for best picture, films featuring predominantly Black casts like Creed or Straight Outta Compton were kept out of the running as well. That still doesn’t seem to be enough for fans of the film, and some Oscar prognosticators agree. “It is a weird and very awkward place to be in”, GIl Robertson, the president of the African-American Film Critics Association, told MSNBC on Friday. The outcry wasnt positive however due to the fact that for the second year in a row the Oscars have failed to include any actors/actresses of colour.

Ice Cube’s comments on The Wendy Williams Show comes on the heels of #OscarsSoWhite, which was started by those criticizing the Academy Awards choices for Best Actress and Best Actors and other important categories that saw no African American talent getting nominated. “That’s just for one year, not two years”.

A year after host Neil Patrick Harris quipped that the Oscars were honoring Hollywood’s “best and whitest” the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled a slate of nominees that once again included no black actors or directors prompting a dismayed revival of the “OscarsSoWhite” hashtag.

“The Academy has no power over Hollywood”. It didn’t deserve it, but when they’re allowed to nominate 10 movies and they only pick 8 – that can sting a little if you’re Ice Cube. “You don’t have to force anyone to do anything they want to do”. (The Golden Globes are not considered Oscar predictors because foreign journalists hand out those awards.) So what happened with the Academy? The Academy continues to be plagued by accusations of internal politics running the nominations process. These films/performances and the scripts that drive them often go into development YEARS before they are released and thus in Oscar contention. So where does the disconnect take place?

“What began as a series of jokes on Twitter using #OscarsSoWhite will soon become a call for boycotts”, Anthony said.

Is Sharpton right? We know from a Los Angeles Times poll that Oscar voters are 94 percent white.