Oscars 2019: The Favourite and Roma lead nominations
22 January 2019
Olivia Colman's royal romp The Favourite and Netflix's black-and-white epic Roma lead this year's Oscar race, with 10 nominations each. The other contenders include A Star Is Born and Vice with eight each, followed by Black Panther with seven. The Marvel blockbuster is the first superhero movie ever to be nominated for best picture. Colman is among the British acting nominees, alongside her co-star Rachel Weisz and Christian Bale for Vice. - 10 - The Favourite, Roma - 8 - A Star Is Born, Vice - 7 - Black Panther - 6 - BlacKkKlansman - 5 - Bohemian Rhapsody, Green Book - 4 - First Man, Mary Poppins Returns Oscars 2019: The nominees in full Colman's strongest competition in the best actress category is likely to come from Glenn Close, who is odds-on favourite to win her first Academy Award for The Wife after six previous nominations, according to bookmakers. Yalitza Aparicio is nominated for her first screen role, as the Mexican maid in Roma. The film has also given Netflix its first ever best picture nomination. The best actress category also includes Melissa McCarthy for Can You Ever Forgive Me? and Lady Gaga for A Star Is Born. Gaga's co-star Bradley Cooper is nominated in the best actor category, but he missed out on a nod for best director. The frontrunners for the best actor statuette are two men who earned acclaim for portraying real-life public figures. Rami Malek won rave reviews for playing Queen singer Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, while Bale transformed into former US Vice-President Dick Cheney with the help of prosthetics in Vice. Richard E Grant has received his first ever Oscar nomination, for best supporting actor for his role in the film Can You Ever Forgive Me? The Withnail & I star told BBC News the nomination was "beyond anything I could have ever hoped or dreamt or imagined". Weisz is up for best supporting actress, 13 years after she won the same award for The Constant Gardener. She will face competition this time from Emma Stone, who played her rival in The Favourite, as well as Roma's Marina de Tavira, If Beale Street Could Talk's Regina King and Amy Adams for Vice. Adams has lost out on an Oscar five times before. After a 35-year career spanning She's Gotta Have It, Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, Spike Lee has received his first best director nomination for BlacKkKlansman, which has six nominations in all. Lee reacted to the news by writing on Instagram: "Six nominations, six boomshackalackas. Brooklyn in da Oscars. Ya dig? Sho-nuff." However, Roma's Alfonso Cuaron is hot favourite to become the fifth Mexican winner of the best director trophy in the past six years. Cuaron, who loosely based the story on that of his own upbringing and his family's maid, has a total of four nominations this year - best original screenplay and cinematography as well as best director and best picture. But there were no female nominees in the best director category, meaning there have still been only five female best director nominees in the 90-year history of the Academy Awards. Black Panther was the biggest film of 2018 at the US box office and made history in the best picture category, although most of its nominations came in the technical categories. They included a nod for Hannah Bleacher, who has become the first black nominee in the production design category. And after a 45-year career during which he has written Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and American Gigolo, Paul Schrader has his first nomination for writing First Reformed. Elsewhere, Detainment, a controversial Irish short film that recreated the police interviews with the young killers of three-year-old James Bulger in Merseyside in 1993, is nominated for best live action short film. The Oscars ceremony will take place on 24 February, but is still without a host after Kevin Hart pulled out. Analysis by BBC Reality Check It's been a pretty good year for diversity in Oscar nominations by the standards of the last decade. In the four acting categories, there were five nominees from ethnic minorities (out of 20 possible nominations) - second only to the seven nominees in 2017. There are also two best director nominees from ethnic minorities in Spike Lee and Alfonso Cuaron, the first time that has happened since 2014. But still no sign of gender balance in the directing category - all five nominees this year are men. There have only been two female nominees for best director in the last decade: Greta Gerwig, for Lady Bird last year, and Kathryn Bigelow, who won the Oscar for the Hurt Locker in 2010. Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.
Analysis by BBC Reality Check It's been a pretty good year for diversity in Oscar nominations by the standards of the last decade. In the four acting categories, there were five nominees from ethnic minorities (out of 20 possible nominations) - second only to the seven nominees in 2017. There are also two best director nominees from ethnic minorities in Spike Lee and Alfonso Cuaron, the first time that has happened since 2014. But still no sign of gender balance in the directing category - all five nominees this year are men. There have only been two female nominees for best director in the last decade: Greta Gerwig, for Lady Bird last year, and Kathryn Bigelow, who won the Oscar for the Hurt Locker in 2010.
7456_0
#OscarsStillSoWhite?