Home Entertainment Midweek Movie Mouth-Off: your thoughts on this year’s Academy Award nominations

Midweek Movie Mouth-Off: your thoughts on this year’s Academy Award nominations

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The announcement of the Academy Awards nominations is never without some surprises. Movies and actors that you thought were shoe-ins might have been snubbed, while other nominations might have come out of left field.

This year, I’m kind of surprised that Jennifer Lawrence was nominated for Joy. Yes, I know she got the Golden Globe for it, but Joy hasn’t been well received by critics at all, and it’s definitely not as universally loved as her other outings with David O. Russell. I’m also surprised at Tom Hardy’s nomination for The Revenant, but unlike with Lawrence, I’m not saying that Hardy’s nomination isn’t deserved. Even though The Revenant is getting a ton of love, Hardy’s performance wasn’t in the running at the other major awards shows, so his inclusion is somewhat unexpected.

As for the snubs, I thought Will Smith’s performance for Concussion was a sure-fire bet, but apparently the Academy thought otherwise. Granted, the movie itself didn’t perform as well as expected, but Smith’s performance was still very highly praised.

Other notable absences from the nominee lists include Idris Elba’s Golden Globe nominated performance in Beasts of No Nation, Michael B. Jordan’s role (and impressive physical transformation) in Creed, and Ridley Scott, who was a favourite to take Best Director for The Martian, wasn’t nominated at all. Also, nothing in the technical categories for Jurassic World, which I thought was right up there in terms of special effects, but I think I might be the only one that cares about that.

I guess the most notable absence from this year’s nominations was, once again, diversity. Kervyn touched on this in his article on Thursday, and social media has definitely gotten fired up about it subsequently, but I would be remiss if I didn’t remark on just how freakishly similar this is to last year. For the second year in a row, the four major categories of Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress have all white nominees. And, yet again, the nominees in the Best Director category are all white as well, with the exception of Alejandro González Iñárritu – who was also the only exception last year (for Birdman). Seriously, it boggles my mind that we’re essentially reliving the 2015 Oscars in terms of diversity. And that’s just sad.

But, those are just my ramblings on the 88th Academy Award nominations. What are your thoughts?

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Critical Hit as an organisation.

Last Updated: January 20, 2016

23 Comments

  1. Alien Emperor Trevor

    January 20, 2016 at 10:56

    I think the annual circle-jerk and back patting of the just regular folk who work in fantasy worlds and insulated from real life by money is the least interesting thing I can think about.

    Reply

    • RinceThis

      January 20, 2016 at 13:00

      I can think of someone less interesting…

      Reply

      • Alien Emperor Trevor

        January 20, 2016 at 13:14

        Dr Who?

        Reply

        • Tracy Benson

          January 20, 2016 at 13:18

          Doctor. It’s Doctor Who. “Dr.” can only be used when someone has a medical degree

          Reply

          • Alien Emperor Trevor

            January 20, 2016 at 13:30

            So Dr Who it is then. ;P

    • Tracy Benson

      January 20, 2016 at 13:21

      Agreed. I’m over the Oscars in general, but it is something that must be suffered through

      Reply

      • Alien Emperor Trevor

        January 20, 2016 at 13:26

        I feel bad for the people behind the technical awards. They deserve far more recognition than simply being afterthoughts to “OMG X won best actor and look how pretty Y was on the red carpet!” I despise celebrity culture.

        Reply

        • Sandelk

          January 20, 2016 at 17:16

          I agree. Everyone call the acting awards the so-called big awards whereas often the people responsible for the technical aspects of films make a more significant difference to the film. Unfortunately too many people only focus on what they can “see”

          Reply

  2. Sandelk

    January 20, 2016 at 10:57

    Jennifer Lawrence acted well in Joy, but she in no way pulled off a 40 year old divorcee in the movie, so she is a little lucky. Will Smith, Idris Elba I felt deserved nominations as did Ridley Scott for best director. Personally, I think the Best Sony nominees list is poor.

    Reply

    • Tracy Benson

      January 20, 2016 at 13:20

      But, now we get to say “Academy Award nominated… Lady Gaga!” which is mind-blowing in itself

      Reply

  3. The Sten

    January 20, 2016 at 11:14

    – All the best actress nominations are from movies that i will never watch…
    – 4 out of 5 best actor nominations are where they play real life people. Is bringing a fictional character to life not a thing anymore?

    However i do think that this years movies are a lot more exiting than last years onslaught of true life personal struggle biopic BS.

    Reply

    • RinceThis

      January 20, 2016 at 13:00

      These days it would seem you HAVE to be in a biopic to be counted for best actor/actress.

      Reply

    • Alien Emperor Trevor

      January 20, 2016 at 13:32

      It’s more “real” then. It’s probably the same basis literary snobs use for dismissing genre work as lesser.

      Reply

  4. RinceThis

    January 20, 2016 at 12:59

    They can all GITFS

    Reply

  5. Skyblue

    January 20, 2016 at 18:52

    Will Smith’s accent has been called out in some quarters but I don’t get Idris Elba’s snub but then again I do have too much man love for him in everything except those stupid Thor movies. I do take exception at your bewilderment over Tom Hardy’s performance in The Revenant. I very recently got to watch it and thought he was brilliant in his role and the perfect antagonist for Leo’s character.

    Reply

    • Tracy Benson

      January 20, 2016 at 19:05

      Oh no, no offense meant. Like I said, Tom Hardy definitely deserves the nomination. It was only unexpected because he was skipped over by the Golden Globes, the BATFAs and the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Being ignored by every other major awards show usually means you’ll be ignored by the Academy Awards as well, so him being included was unusual, but definitely not undeserved.

      Reply

      • Skyblue

        January 20, 2016 at 19:09

        No offence taken, I just thought he was amazing.

        Reply

  6. Lardus-For the Emperor!

    January 21, 2016 at 07:12

    I will admit I did not see all the nominated or “snubbed” movies. I am all for diversity, but I am against making “token” nominations just to keep the PC crowd happy (like Rudy Paige for the WC, who I think deserved a spot as a player, but was clearly only a token). Is that what these people want? To be relegated to being “the token black man” on the list? Imagine it – “Here are your nominations, 4 directors with a shot, and one token black man to keep Spike Lee off our backs”. I think the Creed director was brilliant (look what he got out of Stallone), but was he really better than those nominated? Was Jordan’s performance THAT good to compete with the performances of those nominated? Honestly, I think these people deserve BETTER than to be relegated to tokens!!

    Those complaining about it – I have just seen them call out the “black snubs”, nothing said about other “snubs”, just the “black snubs”. Did they watch ALL the movies? Do any of them say who they think do NOT deserve a spot and should have been replaced by their choice? I do not see those opinions reported on, only the “not black enough” side is reported on, so perhaps it is out there somewhere. If not, they are hypocrites – they are all up in arms about diversity, but do not want to antagonise anybody specific in case they have to work with them later. So lets complain, but lets not complain too specifically to protect our own future $$.

    At least on Screen Junkies Movie Fights, they not only say WHO they think were snubbed, but who they would replace with that person. If those up in arms come with such a list and reasoning, THEN I will take them seriously. If such a list exists, please point me to it.

    Reply

    • Lardus-For the Emperor!

      January 22, 2016 at 07:41

    • Kervyn Cloete

      January 22, 2016 at 09:01

      Actually it hasn’t all been “black snubs”. Plenty of publications – like us – have mentioned “diversity snubs”, including the likes of Cary Fukugawa, the Asian director of Beasts of No Nation. It’s more of a focus on the whiteness of the Oscars than specifically the lack of blackness, really.

      Unfortunately, folks like Spike Lee are just mainly focusing on the black snubs though and making the most noise while doing so, which is tainting the issue slightly.

      But really, these snubs are just a symptom of a wider issue of exclusion in the movie industry. Everybody points to the actors and directors as being a white-man’s club, but just look at the more technical side of things, where a person’s skin colour or gender REALLY should have zero bearing because the audience never even sees them. For example: there’s only a single female and zero persons of colour among all the teams of visual effects artists nominated this year. Last year there was zero altogether!

      Out of 186 possible recipients for the technical sides (so excluding acting and directing) only 15 are persons of colour. There are 40 females in total (which is slightly less worse), but there are only 2 non-white females there.

      The argument has always been that these awards should be on merit not tokenism, as you’ve said, and with this I agree 100%. The problem is that the industry demographic numbers are so massively skewed towards “white male” that very few persons of colour/females ever rise high enough to actually get noticed.

      And if you think that it’s just because there is less interest from this disenfranchised minority, then go read http://shitpeoplesaytowomendirectors.tumblr.com/ and see exactly how Hollywood treats women and you’ll understand why Katheryn Bigelow is the first and only woman who has ever won a Best Director Oscar.

      Reply

      • Lardus-For the Emperor!

        January 22, 2016 at 09:35

        “Unfortunately, folks like Spike Lee” – this is the problem. The ones skewing the issue, are the most vocal and are in a position to be heard. Diversity is an issue, agreed, but it cannot be solved with a top-down approach. The problem should NOT be the awards and nominations – it is the diversity “lower down” that needs to be addresses.

        “The problem is that the industry demographic numbers are so massively skewed” – the root of the issue. Make it more representative from the bottom up. If there are 50 good “white” performances to choose from, and only 3 “non-white” performances, chances are that there will be 5 “whites” that were actually better than the “non-whites”. I wish someone would make an objective list of the top 20 in the categories of 2015, and list the “worthy” candidates for them. Then we might see that there wasn’t much diversity to choose from for nominations (which means the problem is at the “bottom”). Or we might see the opposite, and can then objectively rate them to see if the “non-whites” were truly contenders or not (which will point to either an issue at the top not recognising them or some of them just whining). Without knowing the actually demographics of the top movies, it is difficult for people not glued to the “Hollywood” related sites to know what the fuss is all about.

        – Most of the times I see a black actor in a bigger role, they play cop, corrupt cop, gangsta, funny-man, henchman. Rarely do they get properly juicy roles that really make for Oscar worthy performances. This can be fixed from the bottom up by giving more opportunities for the lekker roles. The issue comes now, when they have a juicy role, some elements of society automatically thinks it means they are Oscar worthy. How many Oscar worthy performances has someone like Leo had where he lost because in that same year someone else was regarded to be better?

        – Diversity in the Academy will help as most are apparently white male. And older white males might not like/appreciate the art and effort which go in to “black” movies and roles. See below.

        – I think a big issue is that a lot of “black” movies tend to focus on “gangsta”, “rap” and “hip-hop” culture (or are comedies, which struggle to make for worthy Oscar nomination in my opinion). I like some of these movies myself, but it does not resonate with the current academy, and perhaps also not really with the population at large. It seems it is very much targeted at a specific demographic, which might hamstring it in competition with “more general” kind of movies.
        Bottom line, there is a diversity issue. But I don’t believe whinging at/about the Oscars is the way to solve it. Just like whinging at/about the RWC is not the way to solve the diversity issues in Rugby.

        Reply

        • Kervyn Cloete

          January 22, 2016 at 10:12

          Why such a big deal is being made out the black snubs this year, is that comes on the heels of last year’s snubs for Selma, where both the lead actor and director really truly deserved to be nominated and possibly even winning, but were nowhere to be found.

          I agree that this year, the “white” folks who were nominated really are the best people and deserved to be there, but that hasn’t always been the case at all. It’s just that it’s all finally boiling over now.

          Reply

          • Lardus-For the Emperor!

            January 22, 2016 at 10:48

            I heard about the Selma issue from last year, but didn’t see the movie at all. A shame really that it happened, truly. But one should fight the right battles at the right time, because at the wrong time a righteous cause sound like whining. I do hope they sort this out though.

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