Showing posts with label #CriticsChoice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #CriticsChoice. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

How did AAPI actors fare in the Critics Choice & Golden Globes?


Dev Patel in 'Lion' was nominated as a supporting actor.

HAILEE STEINFELD and Dev Patel got shut out in the Critics Choice Awards but they still have a chance for a Golden Globe Awards

It's award-show season and Asian/American actors are getting recognized, even if they don't bring home the statuettes.

Hailee Steinfeld
If the two awards shows are predictors for Oscar nominations, the Academy Awards should be more diverse than it has been the last two years when no actors of color were nominated in any of the acting category spawning the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite.

Nevertheless, AAPI actors are considered long shots for any of the categories they were nominated in but that's better than not being recognized at all.

Filipina/American actress Steinfeld, who convincingly played a white teenager in Edge of Seventeen, lost out to Lucas Hedges in Manchester by the Sea in the Critics Choice category of Best Young Actor/Actress and to Meryl Streep in Florence Foster Jenkins in the Critics category of Best Actress in a Comedy.

Moonlight's Mahershala Ali got the nod over Dev Patel in Lion for the Best Supporting Actor category of the Critics Choice.

The Critics also favored Kate McKinnon of Saturday Night Live over Constance Wu in Fresh Off the Boat in the Best TV Actress in a Comedy Series.

Steinfeld was also nominated for a Golden Globes Award in the category for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy where she faces some stiff competition.

Patel also received a nomination in the Globe's awards in the category Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture.

In the category of Best Animated Feature, there were two AAPI-related nominees: Moana and Kubo and the Two Strings.

Moana also got a nomination for Best Original Song for "How Far I'll Go."

The HBO movie The Night Of, the story of Muslim/American young man caught in a web of sex and murder and gave us an inside look at the American criminal justice system received three nominations, in the category of Motion Picture Made for Television and actors Riz Ahmed and John Turturro will compete against each other for Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series.

Riz Ahmed was praised for his performance in 'The Night of.
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Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Critics Choice: "Thank you straight white guys ... you've dominated movies for so hard and so long ...".


YOU WANT DIVERSITY? 

Thank goodness for the Critics Choice Awards, which awarded best new comedy to Master of None starring Aziz Ansari and co-produced with Alan Yang.

"Thank you straight white guys," said Yang upon receiving the award on Monday (Jan. 19). "You've dominated movies for so hard and so long that anything else seems ... refreshing." Yang was obviously taking a jab at the Oscars which for the second straight year, failed to nominate an actor of color for any of the 20 acting awards.

The 10-episode first season of the critically acclaimed comedy about a Asian/American melllenial's life in New York City trying to succeed as an actor. It's kind of like Friends if that show reflected the New York City that you see in the streets.
RELATED: The Oscar for Best Caucasian goes to ... 
#OscarsSoWhite - the Sequel
Even with the show's critical success, its future remains uncertain but Ansari all but confirmed to Deadline that another season is in the works but dodged the matter of timing. “I think we’re figuring that out,” he said. “I definitely need some time to refill my head. The first season was so personal, I just wanna make sure whatever we do for season 2 lives up to what we did in the first season.”

Aired on Netflix instead of the major networks, the series was able to take chances where other networks would whitewash the show to make it more "palatable" to the Euro/American audiences. In reality though, the audience is becoming more and more diverse, something that television has realized with this last season showing more Asian/Americans in all sorts of roles, including the main protagonists in series such as in Master of None. Dr. Ken, Quantico, Into the Badlands and Fresh Off The Boat. A second season hasn't been confirmed by Netflix.

Other diversity notes:

The Best Animated Feature, Inside Out, was co-directed by Pixar's Ronnie del Carmen, a Filipino/American, along with Pete Doctor. Filipinos working at the Bay Area's Pixar Studios  are so numerous they've nicknamed themselves the PixNoys (Pixar + Pinoy).


Pixar's Inside Out won Best Animated Feature. The co-director was a Filipino/American.
The CW's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's lead actress Rachel Bloom was also named Best Actress in A Comedy Series by the Critics Choice Awards. The musical comedy's male lead is played by Filipino/American actor Vincent Rodriguez. This is the second award picked up by Bloom, who won the same award for the Golden Globes. She created the show with Aline Brosh McKenna and they deliberately chose to have an Asian/American romantic lead, the object of love by the title character. The show was the first American TV show to depict a Filipino/American family during its Thanksgiving show, written by Alan Gube, a Filipino/American on the show's writing staff.

Egyptian/American Rami Malek, star of Mr. Robot, won Best Actor in a Drama Series and Idris Elba won Best Actor in a Movie Made for Television for his role in BBC's Luther.

Despite these winners demonstrating the universal appeal of actors of color, it should be mentioned that the vast majority of the nominees were Euro/Americans, including all the major acting awards. Only Elba, Ansari, Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin), Tracee Ellis Ross (Blackish) and Fresh off the Boat's Constance Wu and Randall Park broke through the white ranks of nominated actors.
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