Crazy Rich Asians passed over by Oscar; Asian American filmmakersr get nominations

WARNER BROTHERS

'A Star Is Born' Director Bradley Cooper discusses a shot with Oscar nominee Matthew Libatique.

UPDATED: 11:30 a.m., Jan 23 to include trailers.

TO THE DISAPPOINTMENT of the millions of fans of Crazy Rich Asians, the groundbreaking movie failed to garner a single nomination for the Academy Awards.

Despite its cultural significance and box office success, the movie featuring an all-Asian cast, was passed over in the Oscar announcement Tuesday (Jan. 22).

The overlook of one of the year's most successful and popular movies is not surprising. The Oscars typically don't look at romantic comedies as Oscar contenders because they don't usually have the hair-tearing, screaming or knock emotional gut-wrenching scenes or awe-inspiring special effects associated with Oscar nominees. Rom-coms are just for laughs seems to be the general attitude of Academy members. Apparently, the human comedy is just not Oscar level material.

But that apparent bias didn't affect members of the Screen Actors Guild which nominated CRA's actors in its Best Cast category, SAG's equivalent to the best picture Oscar; or the Foreign Press awards known as the Golden Globes which nominated Constance Wu for Best Actress in A Comedy, or the Producers' Guild Awards which put CRA in the Best Picture category.

Perhaps the most disappointing oversight was failing to recognize Michelle Yeoh's performance in CRA as the protective mother of Henry Golding's character. Many critics thought that Yeoh would get a nod in the Best Supporting Actress category for her nuanced (not resorting to stereotypes) performance as Eleanor Young. Like I said, she didn't tear her hair out, overly emote or or speak in a British accent (Singaporean accents don't count.) that seems to a favorite among this year's nominations.

Oh, well.

Perhaps this year's nominations speaks more about the still dominant influence of the Academy's traditional (older, white) membership. I used to think that every actor was a voting member of the Academy but since the #OscarsSoWhite debacle, diversifying Academy membership has been a primary goal. Despite an influx of new members, it is still surprising that a great number of younger and actors of color have not been invited to join the Academy.

Other nominations of interest for AAPI film fans:

• Filipino American director of photography, Matthew Libatique, was nominated for his work for A Star is Born.
• Bao, a Pixar product directed by Domine Shi, was nominated for Best Short Film. 
• Minding the Gap  by Bing Liu and Diane Quon was nominated for Best Documentary.
• Free Solo directed by Jimmy  Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi was also nominated for Best Documentary.
• Mirai, from Japan and directed by Mamoru Hosoda was nominated for Best Animated Feature.

Check out the trailers:

CORRECTION: Earlier versions of this post erroneously said the Crazy Rich Asians cast won the SAG award for best Ensemble Cast. The SAG awards will take place on Jan. 27.

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