RELATED: 2015 Oscar Nominations Full List: 'Boyhood, ' 'Birdman, ' and More
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Oscar winning filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron and J.J. “The Force Awakens” Abrams gave the first batch of nominations, while Star Trek actor Chris Pine and Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the first African-American president of AMPAS, handled the final ones.
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This makes no sense. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s wildly inventive animated adventure comedy, featuring the vocal stylings of breakout star Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, and more, was THE best animated film of the year and the highest grossing domestically with $257 million, yet somehow get snubbed for the Best Animated Feature Oscar. If children and stoners actually got riled up about the Oscars, well, they’d be pretty fired up about this glaring omission.
SURPRISE: Marion Cotillard, Two Days, One Night
It’s a good surprise, people. The truth is, the French stunner Cotillard, who famously took home an Oscar for her riveting turn as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose (despite barely speaking a lick of English at the start of that year’s awards season) is one of the most gifted actresses around, and really deserved to be nominated for two performances this year: as the tortured-yet-indefatigable Polish prostitute of The Immigrant and for this, a desperate young wife and mother in a Belgian industrial town who, learning she’s about to be made redundant at her factory, begs each of her co-workers to turn down a valuable raise so she can keep her job and support her family. It’s yet another affecting, naturalistic film from the Dardenne brothers anchored by Cotillard, who remains one of the most expressive, quietly stirring actresses of her generation.



