‘Revenant’ leads Oscar noms with 12, only white actors again

A year after “Birdman” snagged nine Academy Award nominations, Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu’s 2015 film “The Revenant” grabbed 12 Oscar nods on Thursday, including best picture, best director and best actor.

Fury Road now has a nomination for Best Picture, Best Director for George Miller, a Film Editing nod and nominations for Production Design, Visual Effects, Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing.

Six others join them as best picture nominees: “Bridge of Spies“, “Spotlight”, “The Big Short”, “The Martian“, “Brooklyn” and “Room“.

Contenders: Redmayne will most likely get his second consecutive nomination, enough people saw Michael Fassbender in Steve Jobs to get him in there, and Bryan Cranston (Trumbo) starred in a movie about the movies.

There were also nods for Welsh actor Christian Bale for The Big Short and Wolf Hall star Mark Rylance for Bridge Of Spies.

Best supporting actress: Jennifer Jason Leigh, “The Hateful Eight”; Rooney Mara, “Carol”; Rachel McAdams, “Spotlight”; Alicia Vikander, “The Danish Girl”; and Kate Winslet, “Steve Jobs”.

Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, director Guillermo del Toro, actor John Krasinski and director Ang Lee will present the full list of Oscar nominees, including Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Actor and Best Director. Chris Rock will host.

Watch the live feed below from 1:30pm on Thursday 14th January as the 88th Academy Award nominations are announced.

Following the #OscarSoWhite discussion past year, the Academy again failed to nominate any minority actor or actress for the lead and supporting categories.

That field-leading showing, combined with the film’s wins for best actor and best drama at Sunday’s Golden Globes, catapults Inarritu’s film into Oscar frontrunner status in what has so far been a hard race to pin-down. Ridley Scott is a respected veteran, a current Directors Guild nominee, who has been nominated three times before (for “Black Hawk Down”, “Gladiator” and “Thelma & Louise”) but has never won.

But only five of those films’ directors received Academy recognition, and their films have the edge in the best picture race.

The nomination for Stallone comes just a few days after he won a Golden Globe for the same performance.

The British star bagged the Best Actor award at last year’s ceremony for his role in The Theory of Everything.

Earning nods for best animated feature: Disney/Pixar’s brainy Inside Out made the cut, as did Charlie Kaufman’s acclaimed stop-motion Anomalisa.

Though it should win attention in technical categories, Oscar prognosticators do not expect J.J. Abrams’ box-office juggernaut “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” to land a best picture nomination. With so many well-regarded box office hits, Straight Outta Compton, Mad Max: Fury Road and/or Creed may sneak in as well.

This awards season has been unusually unpredictable, but it seems clear that the Oscars will not offer much improvement in diversity.