‘Revenant’ poised for big Oscar night, amid minority controversy

I mean, the obvious choice would be Leo, but we have the same problem as the Best Picture category – Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio won Golden Globes for Best Actor in their respective categories.

Apart from these three films, others contending for the Best Picture award are “Spotlight”, “The Big Short”, “Brooklyn”, “Room” and “Bridge of Spies” – a Steven Spielberg and Reliance Entertainment Film production.

London just became a much better place, as last night Leo DiCaprio graced our shores for the premiere of The Revenant on the day he became an Oscar nominee. For the second straight time, there are no people of color in any of the acting categories, and many found it puzzling that the Academy filled only eight of ten slots for Best Picture.

Then we have the Best Actor category.

“Hollywood’s accepting the fact that Leo is a grown-up now and that his wayward randy bachelor days have calmed down”, said Tom O’Neil, founder of awards website goldderby.com. “I realised how special that is and I didn’t expect that to happen to me”, he said. Sylvester Stallone, meanwhile, is the sixth person to be nominated for playing the same role in two films. Idris Elba (“Beasts of No Nation”) and Benicio Del Toro (“Sicario”) will hope to crack the best supporting actor category. I love when you enter those gray areas of humanity. A year after coming under withering criticism over a lack of diversity, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences again fielded an all-white group of 20 acting nominees, restoring the trending hashtag “OscarsSoWhite” to prominence.

Director Inarritu will face off with George Miller for “Mad Max”; Adam McKay for “The Big Short”, about the 2007 USA financial collapse; Lenny Abrahamson for “Room”; and Tom McCarthy for “Spotlight”, about the Boston Globe’s probe into child abuse by Catholic priests. No filmmaker has ever directed back-to-back best picture winners.

Based on the true story of a frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), who was left for dead in a harsh winter in the 1800s, the film had a long and hard shoot in snowbound Canada and Argentina.

Does he think he’s going to get an Oscar this year? In the female race, Alicia Vikander and Rooney Mara could have been competing in Best Actress, their roles were that significant; Jennifer Jason Leigh is a sentimental favorite and Rachel McAdams is an outsider who slipped in.