Los Angeles (dpa) – Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s snowbound survival epic The Revenant topped the list of nominees for the 88th Academy Awards Thursday, with 12 nods including best picture, best directing, best acting and supporting actor.
Mad Max: Fury Road followed closely behind with 10 nominations, including best picture and best director for George Miller.
Also nominated for best picture were the space rescue story The Martian, the journalism procedural Spotlight, the financial caper The Big Short, the spy thriller Bridge of Spies, the kidnap-escape drama Room, and Brooklyn, a romance set in US immigrant communities in the 1950s.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominations in a pre-dawn ceremony broadcast live from the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills.
Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, directors Ang Lee and Guillermo del Toro and actor John Krasinski read out the names of the nominees.
The Revenant’s Leonardo DiCaprio, Trumbo star Bryan Cranston, The Martian’s Matt Damon, and Michael Fassbender, who played Apple founder Steve Jobs in the biopic of the same name, were nominated as best actor, along with last year’s best actor winner Eddie Redmayne, who was nominated for his performance in The Danish Girl.
The best supporting actor nominees were The Revenant’s Tom Hardy, as well as Spotlight’s Mark Ruffalo, The Big Short’s Christian Bale, Bridge of Spies’ Mark Rylance and Sylvester Stallone, who revisited his iconic boxer character Rocky Balboa in Creed.
In the best actress category, Room’s Brie Larson and Brooklyn’s Saoirse Ronan were nominated, along with Cate Blanchett for Carol, Charlotte Rampling for 45 Years and Jennifer Lawrence for Joy.
In a statement, Lawrence called herself “beyond grateful and humbled” by the nomination, her fourth in five years. She won the best actress Oscar for 2013’s Silver Linings Playbook.
Carol’s Rooney Mara was nominated as best supporting actress, as were Kate Winslet for Steve Jobs, Rachel McAdams for Spotlight, Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl and Jennifer Jason Leigh for The Hateful Eight.
Although the Academy is on a public campaign to increase diversity in its membership, it was the second year in a row that its voters came up with an all-white roster of acting, directing and producing nominees.
The snub to actors including Will Smith (Concussion) and Idris Elba (Beasts of No Nation) and directors F Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton) and Ryan Coogler (Creed) did not go unnoticed.
On social media, the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite used by critics of 2015’s all-white honours was remade into #OscarsStillSoWhite for what many joked was Hollywood’s “sequel.”
“OscarsSoWhite that Rocky got nominated in a movie about Apollo Creed’s son,” comedian Hari Kondabulu wrote on Twitter, referring to Sylvester Stallone’s nomination for Creed.
Among the few exceptions were nominations for best original song by Ethiopian-Canadian singer The Weeknd, for best screenplay for rap biopic Straight Outta Compton, and for best documentary feature for What Happened, Miss Simone, a documentary about African-American jazz musician Nina Simone.
Also nominated in the documentary feature category were Amy, The Look of Silence, Cartel Land and Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom.
In the best foreign film category, France’s Mustang, Jordan’s Theeb, Colombia’s Embrace of the Serpent and Denmark’s A War will compete with Hungary’s Son of Saul, which won a Golden Globe for best foreign film Sunday.
Movie composer John Williams received his 50th nomination for an Academy Award, for his score for Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens.
Williams, 83, has won five Oscars for film scores including Jaws, ET and the original 1977 Star Wars film.
Oscar nominations are decided by the professional voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The 88th Academy Awards will be presented in a ceremony in Los Angeles February 28.
