Vanity Fair magazine has unveiled its highly anticipated Hollywood cover, its annual compilation of Hollywood’s most promising bright things photographed by Annie Leibovitz draped in a beautiful and languid fashion over one another.
Everybody looks beautiful and Channing Tatum looks particularly excellent and also very strong hoisting up both Amy Adams and Reese Witherspoon (all that hip gyrating in Magic Mike has clearly paid off).
It’s an intimate look at some of Hollywood’s best in show right now. As photographer of the stars Annie Leibovitz says of the shoot on Vanity Fair:
“Usually you shoot from fairly far away, but we wanted to get really close to the actors. We made an effort to create a feeling of intimacy. I pushed into them, shooting to the left and then the right, coming in as tight as I could.”
One problem though. There’s just two people of colour sharing the cover – David Oyelowo, star of best-picture nominee Selma and Oscar Isaac, who is Hispanic, star A Most Violent Year.
Which, when you consider the criticisms of this year’s most ‘white washed since the 90s’ Oscar nominations, is more than a little disappointing.
And also weird.
Especially when you consider how diverse the magazine’s Hollywood cover was last year, featuring six black actors Lupita Nyong’o, Michael B. Jordan, Idris Elba, Naomi Harris, Chadwick Boseman and Chiwetel Ejiofor
Both David Oyelowo and Selma director Aya DuVernay were snubbed in the Best Actor and Best Director categories for performances in a film that were described by the New York Times as thus:
“To say that an extraordinary group of actors supports Mr. Oyelowo’s performance — Oprah Winfrey, Wendell Pierce, Tessa Thompson, Henry G. Sanders and many more — is to state the obvious and also, somehow, to get it backward. Dr. King worked in the service of the movement, not the other way around, and Mr. Oyelowo’s quiet, attentive, reflective presence upholds this democratic principle by illuminating the contributions of those around him. I have rarely seen a historical film that felt so populous and full of life, so alert to the tendrils of narrative that spread beyond the frame.”
Sounds like Oscar bait from here?
In addition to this year’s overwhelmingly white Oscar nominations (which are decided by a bunch of mostly old, white men, mind) had precisely zero female directors, screenwriters, or cinematographers nominated.
There’s still such a long way to go when it comes to true diversity – on and off the cover of magazines, the big screen and the inner cloisters of the Academy awards, and it appears that Hollywood is really holding things up.
The Vanity Fair cover features the following:
Channing Tatum
Felicity Jones
Reese Witherspoon
Eddie Redmayne
Amy Adams
David Oyelowo
Benedict Cumberbatch
Sienna Miller
Oscar Isaac
Miles Teller
