Spike Lee has other plans on Oscars night: the Knick game

Amid calls for an Oscars boycott over its all-white acting nominees and Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith both announcing they would sit out this year’s ceremony, the academy’s president promised major changes. “All I said was my attractive wife, we’re not coming”.

George Clooney also weighed in, saying the Oscars are “moving in the wrong direction” and noting that the problems extend beyond the lack of nominees.

Pinkett Smith has now praised Isaacs for responding to the controversy so quickly, writing in a post on Facebook.com, “I would like to express my gratitude to the Academy, specifically Cheryl Boone Isaacs, for such a quick response in regard to the issue at hand”.

“I mean, we can’t say hocus-pocus, presto chango”, he said. The Academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership.

Hopefully now that the conversation is being had, the powers that be will finally make these long overdue changes!

“Feb. 28, we’ll be at the world’s most famous arena, Madison Square Garden, to see my belowed orange and blue hopefully beat the Miami Heat”, Lee said on “Good Morning America”.

David Oyelowo and George Clooney have added their voices to the growing outcry over the lack of diversity in Hollywood after only white actors and actresses received nominations for performance Oscars this year. Concussion could have gotten Will Smith a nomination; Idris Elba could have been nominated for Beasts of No Nation and Straight Outta Compton could have been nominated. And certainly previous year, with Selma director Ava DuVernay – I think that it’s just ridiculous not to nominate her. She won’t even be watching this year, and adds, “Maybe it is time that we pull back our resources and we put them back into our communities….”

Gibson states that he knows “more white people than most white people”, saying he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body.

“We can’t act?!” Lee, who won an Oscar past year for his lifetime achievements as a filmmaker and actor, blamed the executives who run Hollywood studios for the absence of minorities in Oscar-contending roles. She will be joined by Spike Lee while their views have been echoed by Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais.