Denzel Washington and Ruth Negga nominated for Oscars for best actor with four other Blacks, Viola Davis, Octavia Spenser, Naomi Harris and Mahershala Ali, nominated for best supporting actress or actor, and Barry Jenkins nominated for best director
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Wednesday, 25 January 2017 12:27
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Cleveland Urban News.Com, via editor Kathy Wray Coleman, interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio - The nominations for the 89th Academy Awards are out with "Fences," directed by Denzel Washington, a best actor nominee, getting the nomination, among others for best picture, as did "Hidden Figures."
Ruth Negga is the lone Black woman nominated for best actress for her role in the film "Loving,", a real-life drama which "tells the story of Richard Loving (Joel Eggerton) and his wife Mildred (Megga) , an interracial couple in Virginia who went all the way to the Supreme Court to fight their right to be married in the 60s."
Washington, however, was snubbed for a best director nominee for "Fences," an adaptation from the 1983 Pulitzer Prize -winning play by playwright August Wilson about an African-American married- father trying to raise his son in the 1950s.
In short, Blacks garnered six Oscar nominations in the acting categories.
Viola Davis was nominated for best supporting actress for "Fences," Naomi Harris for 'Moonlight, and Octavia Spenser for the critically acclaimed "Hidden Figures," which also stars Kevin Costner, another Oscar snub.
Hidden Figures tells the story of Katherine Johnson (played by Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Spenser) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), three black women who played crucial roles when NASA launched an American into orbit for the first time.
Harris, who is also Black, got the Oscar nomination nod for best supporting actress in "Moonlight," a drama-film written and directed by Barry Jenkins, which chronicles the life of a Chiron (played by Alex Hibbert,12), from childhood to adulthood in the ghettos of Miami while dealing with a drug-addicted mother (Harris).
Mahershala Ali, another Black actor, is nominated for best supporting actor for his role in "Moonlight" as a crack dealer named Juan who takes Chiron under his wing.
Moonlight, with Brad Pitt as its executive producer, brought best director and best screenplay nominations for Jenkins, who is Black, has been deemed by critics as "a masterful exploration of African-American masculinity." It has received eight nominations in totality, including best director, best picture and best screenplay.
This year's nominees are a departure from last year, and the year prior, when the Academy Awards shut out Black actors and actresses altogether, causing actor Will Smith and his actress wife Jada Pinket- Smith, among others, to boycott the event as well as an analysis by the academy on racial disparities relative to its nominations.
The Academy Awards, which covers movies released in 2016, will air live on Feb, 26 on ABC.
"La La Land" earned 14 nominations with its stars, Ryan Gosling and Emma Thompson, both nominated for best actor and best actress respectively. It ties the record for the most nominations by a single film.
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Last Updated on Monday, 27 February 2017 12:16
