Leonardo Dicaprio cuts a dapper figure alongside The Revenant’s director at

Movie fans have expressed concerns over the fact that not one single nominee across the Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor or Best Supporting Actress is black. Aside from the Inside Out, the Oscar nominee slots are taken by Shaun the Sheep, Anomalisa, Boy and the World and When Marnie Was There. Surely, they watched the brilliant performances of Will Smith in Concussion and Idris Elba in Beasts Of No Nation, right? And yet Sylvester Stallone, the only white actor with a major role in Creed, and the white screenwriters of Straight Outta Compton both got nods.

At the film’s London premiere, DiCaprio said the nod from the Academy felt great.

According to Robertson, the DNA of AAFCA’s critic’s awards can be traced back to the so-called “Black Oscars”, an underground awards show held by performers of color starting in the 1970s (a decade where no African-American won an Oscar) to honor actors who were routinely being overlooked by the Academy Awards.

Gangsta rap is also a hard sell to an Academy that in years past failed to give a best picture nomination to the Eminem drama “8 Mile” (2002) or the widely praised “Boyz N the Hood” (1991), which nonetheless earned nominations for John Singleton, its writer and director.

It is now under fire again for a lack of diversity for the 88th Academy Awards, with all white nominees in the acting categories and male nominees for best director.

20th Century Fox (FOXA.O) led the studios with a total of 30 nominations, including for “The Revenant”, “The Martian” and “Joy”, as well as its Fox Searchlight independent film arm’s “Brooklyn” and “Youth”. “That’s especially true for a best-picture front-runner like Spotlight”.

But he was excited to see the film in line for an awards season sweep, with three wins at the Golden Globes on Sunday and a field-leading 12 nominations at the Oscars.

April Reign, the creator of #OscarsSoWhite, said she was “disappointed, but not surprised”. “Champagne and Mezcal will run tonight!”

But as Ms Cheryl Boone Isaacs, president of the body that runs the Awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said when she visited Singapore past year, the Oscars are not a popularity contest.

In other news, the announcement of nominations were blasted with criticism as films starring African American actors seem to have been snubbed.

Wood Jr. countered, “We can make any movie we want, we just have to trick white people into thinking the movie is about slavery”.