The nominees for the 87th Academy awards were announced last month in Beverly Hills, California. Wes Anderson’s comedy The Grand Budapest Hotel and the genre-defying Birdman turned out to be the academy favorites, gathering nine nominations each.
Each year there are a few expected snubs and surprises but this time the Academy witnessed universal criticism for a whole lot of reasons which include complete exclusion of non-white artists from the 4 acting categories, biased judgment in technical awards and alleged Eurocentric preferences for the Best Foreign Language Movie category.
The most obvious snubs included Christopher Nolan’s science fiction Interstellar which missed important technical awards including Best Direction for Nolan. Ava DuVernay’s Selma, a movie based on the 1960s American civil rights movement, despite being nominated for Best Film, failed to feature in any acting categories – which ironically are entirely filled with white Caucasian actors. In the best animated film category, The LEGO Movie failed to get nominated despite the critical and commercial success it received. Singers Lorde and Lana Del Rey were also robbed off a deserving nomination in the Best Original Score category according to their fans.
The most celebrated nominations included 6 for Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, an extraordinary movie shot over the span of 12 years and expected to take home the maximum number of awards. One of the biggest commercial and critical Hollywood successes of the year, Gone Girl failed to get nominated for any awards except Best Actress for Rosamand Pike. James Marsh’s romantic biographical drama The Theory of Everything based on the life of renowned physicist Stephen Hawkings gathered a total of 5 nominations including Best Picture. Liar’s Dice – India’s entry for the foreign language category was already out of the race after failing to make the cut back in December.
The 87th Academy Awards are scheduled to take place on February 22nd 2015. Actor Neil Patrick Harris will be hosting the awards for the first time.
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