Oscar Nominations: Who Was Chosen?

ERIN GANNON ’19
MANAGING EDITOR
On Monday, Jan. 24, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the complete list of nominations for the 89th Academy Awards. Prior to this year, the nominations were announced via a press conference. However, this year they were announced via an online live-streamed video on the Oscars website.
In the video, the nominations were broken up by clips of Oscar nominees and winners from years past sharing stories about how they found out they had been nominated, and offering advice and insight to this year’s nominees. The live stream video concluded with Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs and actor Demián Bichir announcing the nominees in the Best Picture category. The nine films nominated for Best Picture are “Arrival,” “Fences,” “Hacksaw Ridge,” “Hell or High Water,” “Hidden Figures,” “La La Land,” “Lion,” “Manchester by the Sea,” and “Moonlight.”
Leading the pack in total nominations is director Damien Chazelle’s “La La Land”, which received 14 nominations, tying James Cameron’s “Titanic” and the 1950 classic “All About Eve” for the most nominations ever received by a single film. Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival” and Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight” each received eight nominations.
Last year’s Oscars sparked a controversy for the Academy when no actors or actresses of color were nominated for any of the acting awards. This year the Academy gave six nominations to actors of minority ethnicities: Viola Davis, Dev Patel, Octavia Spencer, Denzel Washington, Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris, and Ruth Negga. This is the most nominations given to actors of minorities in Academy history, with the closest being five in both 2005 and 2007. Additionally, three of the nine nominees for Best Picture, “Hidden Figures,” “Fences,”, and “Moonlight,” are led by a primarily non-white cast, and four of the five nominees for Best Documentary Feature were made by black filmmakers, including “13th” and “I Am Not Your Negro”.
Despite the apparent turnaround from last year’s scandal, no Academy Awards show comes without a list of “snubs.” Topping the list of snubs are five-time nominee Amy Adams for Best Actress in “Arrival” and four-time nominee Annette Benning for “20th Century Women.” Additionally, Clint Eastwood’s “Sully” received only a nod for Best Achievement in Sound Editing, and its star, Academy Award veteran Tom Hanks walked away without a nomination. Accomplished director Martin Scorsese received only one nomination in Best Cinematography for “Silence,” and Ryan Reynolds performance in “Deadpool” went unnoticed.
 
The 2017 Oscars, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, will be broadcast on Sunday, Feb. 26 on ABC at 7pm EST.