Oscar Nominations: Snubs and Surprises
The nominations for the 89th annual Academy Awards were announced Tuesday morning, and as expected, La La Land danced away with the most nods. The musical received 14 nominations — including Best Picture, Best Director for Damien Chazelle, Best Actor for Ryan Gosling, and Best Actress for Emma Stone — tying the record previously set by All About Eve in 1951 and Titanic in 1998.
But the producers of La La Land aren’t the only ones cheering. This year’s pool of nominees is significantly more diverse than last year’s, when the #OscarsSoWhite controversy caused some big-name Academy members to boycott the ceremony. This year, Hidden Figures, Fences, and Moonlight all received Best Picture nominations, Moonlight‘s Barry Jenkins was nominated for Best Director, and the performers who received nods include Denzel Washington, Ruth Negga, Dev Patel, Mahershala Ali, Viola Davis, Naomie Harris, and Octavia Spencer. Of course, some worthy performers were inevitably left out of the running (wherefore Annette Bening and Taraji P. Henson?), and other nominees left us slack-jawed (who would have predicted a Mel Gibson comeback?) Click through for some of the biggest surprises and snubs from this morning’s announcements.