The Oscars 2016

The Oscar 2016 nominations are out. With the award ceremony planned on 28th Feb, the buzz around the movies, the best actors and actresses, and other categories is expected to rise. And the controversies too.

Let us have a quick lowdown about the Oscars.

The Best Actor nominees go as below.

Best Actor Nominee	Movie
Bryan Cranston	Trumbo
Matt Damon	The Martian
Michael Fassbender	Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne	The Danish Girl
Leonardo DiCaprio	The Revenant

Best Actor Nominees Oscars 2016

The Best Actress Nominees includes some known names and some relative unknowns.

Best Actress Nominee	Movie
Brie Larson	Room
Saoirse Ronan	Brooklyn
Charlotte Rampling	45 Years
Jennifer Lawrence	Joy
Cate Blanchett	Carol

Best Actress Nominees Oscars 2016

Finally, the movies battling it out for the honors are as below.

Best Movie Nominee

Bridge of Spies

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Revenant

Spotlight

The Martian

As usual, Yous Truly hasn't seen any of the movies.

The Oscars is not without its share of controversies. 

Immediately after the nominations were released, there was a huge controversy around the fact that all the nominees were white. The twitter world trended #OscarsSoWhite. This was the second successive year when this has happened.

It is unfortunate that even in modern day America, the question of diversity is a major problem.

Charlotte Rampling, one of the nominees, said the uproar over the lack of diversity in this year's nominees is "racist to white people." "We can never know whether it's truly the case, but maybe the black actors didn't deserve to make it to the final list," Rampling said.

Michael Caine, the exclaimed actor, also commented "There's loads of black actors. You can't vote for an actor because he's black. You got to give a good performance, and I’m sure there were very good.”

Will Smith, his wife Jada Pinkett Smith and the Oscar-winning director Spike Lee have all said they will not be attending the Oscars in protest. Will Smith said "Everybody is beautiful and deserving and fantastic, but it feels like it's going the wrong direction. There's a regressive slide towards separatism, towards racial and religious disharmony and that's not the Hollywood I want to leave behind."

Courtesy the controversy, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has taken note of the hue and cry. 

In an unanimous vote  on 21 Jan 2015, the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences approved a sweeping series of substantive changes designed to make the Academy’s membership, its governing bodies, and its voting members significantly more diverse.  The Board’s goal is to commit to doubling the number of women and diverse members of the Academy by 2020.

Nevertheless, I am sure millions of people will start watching these movies and get into the Oscar mood.

Happy movie watching !!