By Thurnis Haley
Courier Staff Writer
The 2015 Academy Award nominations have been announced, and the crowds are buzzing. The 87th Oscars will be hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, a comedian and actor best known for his role as Barney Stinson on the sitcom How I Met Your Mother. Harris told the Academy, “It is truly an honor and a thrill to be asked to host this year’s Academy Awards. I grew up watching the Oscars and was always in such awe of some of the greats who hosted the show.” As usual, there have been both positive and negative responses to the Academy’s nominations, and predictions have commenced about who, or what, will win an Oscar this year.
Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel have tied for the most nominations with nine each, and both are in the running for Best Picture. For the first time in three years, the nine nominees for Best Picture were reduced to eight. American Sniper, starring Bradley Cooper as U.S.navy seal Chris Kyle, another nominee for Best Picture, has the highest box-office tally in the category. Critics have dubbed it an army recruitment film, a role which it may have played successfully. Although many are rooting for it to win, others, including Entertainment Weekly, have declared Boyhood, a family drama filmed with the same cast over a course of twelve years, the frontrunner for Best Picture. Others still are rooting for Selma, a biopic about Martin Luther King Jr.’s march from Selma to Montgomery. However, the film only earned $11.3 million during opening weekend, and sales dropped the following weekend to $8.3 million, despite it receiving the Oscar nomination and being shown in more theaters. American Sniper, on the other hand, earned a whopping $90.3 million this past weekend. Whiplash, The Theory of Everything, and The Imitation Game seem to have received considerably less attention in the Best Picture category.
Oscars season holds hope and excitement for our favorites to win in their respective categories, but this year’s awards are not unaccompanied by controversy. The biggest criticism of the actor nominations as a whole is that not a single person of color made it into any of the actor categories. Many are, not only disappointed, but surprised, considering David Oyelowo’s widely praised role as Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma. A study was released by Hannah Ehrlich, director of marketing for publisher Lee and Low, illustrating the racial disparities within the Academy. Of those who vote in the Academy for Oscar nominations, 94% are white. “What’s disheartening is that it seemed like things were improving after ’12 Years a Slave’ won last year but now it seems like the Academy is saying, ‘Because we did that, we’re good for a while,” Ehrlich told The Washington Post.
The other disappointment regarding the nominations was that not a single person of color nor female director was nominated. Although Selma was nominated for best picture, it’s director, Ava Duvernay, did not make it to the director’s category. The aforementioned study released by Ehrlich also found that only 23% of Academy voters are women. Had she been nominated, Duvernay would have made history as the first black, female director to be nominated for an Oscar.
While this years list of nominees may be disheartening, audiences are hoping for a more diverse Academy Awards in 2016. The 2015 Oscars Ceremony will be held on Sunday, February 22nd at 4pm pacific time on ABC.
The full list of nominees can be found on http://oscar.go.com/nominees.
Sources:
http://oscar.go.com/blogs/oscar-news/10152014-neil-patrick-harris-to-host-the-2015-oscars
http://oscar.go.com/about-the-show
