La La Land ties record with 14 Oscar nominations; 6 of African ancestry up for top awards

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      An old-fashioned romantic musical involving a Los Angeles jazz singer leads this year's list of Academy Award contenders.

      La La Land has been nominated for Best Picture and 13 other Oscars, tying it with Titanic and All About Eve for the record.

      La La Land stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are up for Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively, and Damien Chazelle is nominated for Best Director.

      They all won Golden Globes earlier this year as the film took home seven statues from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. (La La Land opened the Whistler Film Festival in November before its general release.)

      Also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture are Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, Arrival, Lion, Fences, Hacksaw Ridge, Hell or High Water, and Hidden Figures.

      The four other Best Actor nominees are Viggo Mortensen (Captain Fantastic), Andrew Garfield (Hacksaw Ridge), Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea), and Denzel Washington (Fences).

      The four other Best Actress nominees are Ruth Negga (Loving), Isabelle Huppert (Elle), Natalie Portman (Jackie), and Meryl Streep (Florence Foster Jenkins).

      In addition to Chazelle, the Oscar nominees for Best Director are Mel Gibson (Hacksaw Ridge), Denis Villeneuve (Arrival), Barry Jenkins (Moonlight), and Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea).

      The nominees for Best Supporting Actor are Jeff Bridges (Hell or High Water), Mahershala Ali (Moonlight), Dev Patel (Lion), Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea), and Michael Shannon (Nocturnal Animals).

      For Best Supporting Actress, the finalists for the Oscar are Naomie Harris (Moonlight), Viola Davis (Fences), Nicole Kidman (Lion), Michelle Williams (Manchester by the Sea), and Octavia Spencer (Hidden Figures).

      Denzel Washington and Viola Davis have both been nominated for Oscars for their performances in Fences.

      The Academy Awards will be presented on February 26.

      Last year, African Americans were shut out of Oscar nominations in these major categories, prompting a boycott of the ceremonies by director Spike Lee, actors Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, and others.

      This year, it's a different story six people of African descent have been nominated. A seventh nonwhite person, Patel, was born in London to immigrant parents from the western Indian state of Gujarat.

      Gosling and Villeneuve are the only two Canadians in the list of names above.

      Meanwhile, Montreal-based animator Theodore Ushev's Blind Vaysha has been nominated for Best Animated Short Film.

      It's the 74th Oscar nomination for the National Film Board, which produced the film with ARTE France.

      Watch the trailer for Blind Vaysha.

      According to an NFB news release, Canada's national film agency has more Oscar nominations than any other movie-making organization outside of Hollywood.

      “It’s really fantastic to get this nomination," the Bulgarian-born Ushev said. "I’m over the moon! But this honour is not just for me: I want to thank my collaborators, especially my producer, Marc Bertrand, and the author, Georgi Gospodinov. So the entire NFB will be over the moon, at a big party on the moon with Vaysha!” 

      View the complete list of 2017 Oscar nominees here.

      Arrival impressed members of the Academy, earning Canadian director Denis Villeneuve an Oscar nomination.

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