Oscar nominations: La La Land scores big, Australian film Lion earns Academy nods

Updated January 25, 2017 10:01:58

Photo: Stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling both scored Oscar nominations for their performances in La La Land. (Supplied: Lionsgate)

The candy-coloured love letter to musicals La La Land has landed a record-tying 14 Academy Awards nominations, matching it with Titanic and All About Eve for the most nominations ever.

Several Australians are among the nominees, including Nicole Kidman and Mel Gibson, while Tanna, a Romeo and Juliet-style film set in Vanuatu, scored Australia's first ever nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

Australian drama film Lion, which tells the incredible true story of a Tasmanian man's journey to India to find his biological mother, scooped up six nominations.

But La La Land dominated, earning nods for Best Picture, its stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, its songs, and its writer-director Damien Chazelle.

Gosling said the film was a "true collaboration".

"I'm very grateful to the Academy for recognising my work in La La Land ... to see everyone else's wonderful work on the film acknowledged so generously makes it even more special," he said.

The other nominees for Best Picture are Moonlight, Arrival, Manchester by the Sea, Hell or High Water, Lion, Fences, Hidden Figures and Hacksaw Ridge.

Following two years of #OscarsSoWhite furore, the Academy of Motion Pictures fielded a notably more diverse field of nominees, led by Barry Jenkins' luminous coming-of-age portrait Moonlight, Denzel Washington's Fences and Theodore Melfi's Hidden Figures.

Photo: Hidden Figures, based on the true story of African-American women working at NASA, picked up three nominations. (Supplied: IMDB/Twentieth Century Fox)

Mahershala Ali, nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Moonlight, said: "The most one can ask for in this work is to have a presence in projects that entertain and yet still hold a space to educate, inform and uplift."

Moonlight tied with Denis Villeneuve's cerebral science fiction thriller Arrival for second-most nominees, with eight each.

Lion, the feature debut of BAFTA and Emmy-nominated director Garth Davis, earned nominations for Nicole Kidman and Dev Patel for Best Supporting Actress and Actor.

Lion also scored nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography and Best Original Score, in addition to the coveted Best Picture nomination.

Luke Davies, nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, said Lion was "an anthem to the persistence of love".

"I didn't consciously set out to write a film that would spark wider conversations about the ethics of adoption or the worldwide scourge of child sex trafficking," he said.

"But I am so very grateful it seems to be doing that, too."

Kidman acknowledged the Brierley family — the Tasmanian family whose lives are the subject of Lion — for "putting themselves in such a vulnerable place and sharing their story with the world".

Vanuatu's 'jungle Romeo and Juliet'

Up until two years ago, the Yakel people — one of the South Pacific's last traditional tribes — had never seen a movie. Now, they're the cast and most of the crew for feature film Tanna.

One of the biggest surprises was the strong boost of support for honorary Aussie Mel Gibson, who had long been shunned in Hollywood. Not only did his World War II drama Hacksaw Ridge land a Best Picture nod, but Gibson scored an unexpected Best Director nomination.

"What could be more exciting than listening to the nominations being announced while holding my newborn son!" Gibson, who welcomed his ninth child over the weekend, said in a statement.

Fellow Australians Bentley Dean and Martin Butler also received a nod from the Academy, with their film Tanna, based on a true story and performed by the people of Yakel in Vanuatu, securing a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

Photo: Tanna is based on a true story and performed by the people of Yakel in Vanuatu. (IMDb: Philippe Penel)

The Polynesian folklore-based Moana picked up two nominations — Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song.

Video: Bentley Dean co-directed and co-produced Tanna (ABC News)

Whether fairly or not, the nominations were seen as a test for the revamped film academy.

It will be the first Oscars voted on since Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs ushered in new membership rules and added 683 new members as a way to diversify a predominantly white, male and elderly group, which now numbers 6,687.

The Oscars also rejigged its nominations format. Instead of announcing nominees live in Los Angeles, pre-produced videos of previous winners introduced each category on Tuesday morning (local time).

Photo: Hacksaw Ridge, starring Andrew Garfield, scored six Oscars nominations. (IMDb: Mark Rogers)

Martin Scorsese and Amy Adams among snubs

Among the most notable absences was Oscar-winning filmmaker Martin Scorsese's new passion project Silence, which stars Andrew Garfield — the story of two missionaries in 17th-century Japan missed out on all the major categories and only landed a nod for Cinematography.

How Oscar nominations work

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Garfield instead was nominated for Best Actor for his role in Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge.

In the acting categories, awards favourite Amy Adams missed out on a Best Actress nod for her role as a linguist in sci-fi alien film Arrival, which has earned her critical praise.

Ryan Reynolds' raunchy R-rated superhero movie Deadpool was considered a dark horse in the Academy Awards race after landing Golden Globe and Directors Guild nominations, but it received no Oscar nods.

The absence of Deadpool — which grossed $US363.1 million ($479 million) — made this year's Best Picture nominees one of the lowest-grossing bunches ever.

Though La La Land and other Best Picture nominees such as Arrival and (less certainly) Hidden Figures are knocking on the door of $US100 million ($131 million) at the North American box office, none of the Best Picture nominees have yet grossed more than $US100 million.

AP

Topics: academy-awards-oscars, film-movies, arts-and-entertainment, united-states

First posted January 25, 2017 01:02:46