Mad Max, The Martian, Star Wars all score multiple Oscar nominations

The Revenant, the 20th Century Fox frontier revenge tale featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, was nominated for a dozen Academy Awards, including for best picture, leading the pack in the annual race for Hollywood’s highest honours. The Revenant also has two acting nominations: DiCaprio, and Tom Hardy for best supporting actor.

Bryan Cranston for Trumbo, Matt Damon for The Martian, Michael Fassbender for Steve Jobs and Eddie Redmayne for The Danish Girl are also among the nominated for the actor in a leading role award.

If you haven’t caught any of the Best Picture nominees yet, “The Big Short”, “Spotlight” and “The Revenant” are in theaters now, while “Room” is coming back to theaters this Friday.

While the latest “Star Wars” film did scoop up a number of the technical award nominations, including visual effects, and one for best original score for John Williams, it was snubbed for Best Picture, and director J.J. Abrams was left off the list.

And Jennifer Lawrence, despite mixed reviews for her work in “Joy”, earned a nomination for best actress.

“The moment I saw Saoirse Ronan’s incredible performance in ‘Brooklyn, ‘ I knew that she would get nominated for an Oscar and that she might drag one or two of us along with her”.

Oscar likes epics this year, but it also likes films of quiet power.

Fury Road led the way with 10 nominations, second only to the dozen scooped up by the period adventure The Revenant. However, Indian films failed to make it to the list yet again.

Warner Bros. came away with 11, thanks to a strong showing from director George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road”, while Paramount snatched six – five of which were due to the Wall Street dramedy “The Big Short”.

The Danish Girl received nods for best actor ( Eddie Redmayne ), best supporting actress ( Alicia Vikander ), best costume design ( Paco Delgado ) and best production design. Deakins, who has not won an Oscar, is nominated for the 13th time for the crime drama Sicario.

“If a group of white men picked all white nominees last year & that group didn’t change, why would this year be any different #OscarsSoWhite”, tweeted Tomi Adeyemi.

Irish director Lenny Abrahamson secured a nomination for best director for Room, about a young woman and her son living in confinement. N.W.A. biopic “Straight Outta Compton” was overlooked in the big categories (it was nominated for best screenplay), even though many felt it was worthy.

This year’s best picture nominations are particularly weighted in favor of the major studios.

He’s joined by Mark Ruffalo (Spotlight), Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies), Tom Hardy (The Revenant), and Christian Bale (The Big Short).

The 88th Academy Awards, hosted by Chris Rock will be held at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre on 28 February.

As expected, Pixar’s “Inside Out” landed a best animated feature nod, as did the Charlie Kaufman-penned stop-motion animation “Anomalisa”, “Shaun the Sheep Movie”, “Boy and the World” and “When Marnie Was There”.

Beasts of No Nation might’ve been ignored by the Academy since it premiered on Netflix, but Idris Elba’s performance is hard to ignore.