Facing criticism about its overwhelmingly older, male, and white membership and increasingly vocal concerns about the film industry’s ongoing diversity problem, the Academy Of Motion Pictures Arts And Science, the honorary organization responsible for awarding the Oscars, has responded by… well, trying to add seemingly goddamn everyone it had, for one reason or another, forgotten to invite into its membership. As part of a major overhaul, the Academy sent out an unprecedented 683 membership invitations today to film industry professionals, almost half of them women, and 41% of them people of color. 
 
 The invitation list is a who’s who of Hollywood mainstays who were inexplicably not Academy members, international heavyweights, and big-deal up-and-comers. A large part of the push seems to have come on the director front, a seemingly endless scroll of invited directors that includes Catherine Breillat, Park Chan-wook, Lucrecia Martel, Julia Loktev, Abbas Kiarostami, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Karyn Kusama, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Mary Harron, Mia Hansen-Løve, Lynne Ramsay, the Wachowskis, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, James Wan, Maren Ade, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Souleymane Cissé, Patty Jenkins, So Yong Kim, Ryan Coogler, Ramin Bahrani, and a whole lot of other people who aren’t older white dudes. (Ken Loach was also invited.) 
 
 The list of acting invitees includes Luis Guzmán, Adam Beach, Kate Beckinsale, Morris Chestnut, Idris Elba, Bruce Greenwood, Oscar Isaac, James Hong, Tessa Thompson, Greta Gerwig, Alicia Vikander, Michelle Rodriguez, Tom Hiddleston, Michael B. Jordan, Regina King, Eva Mendes, Vivica A. Fox, and Ice Cube. The whole mind-bogglingly long list can be read here, and includes three Wayans brothers. 
 
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 Samuel L. Jackson is a former Union soldier turned bounty hunter in 'The Hateful Eight.' (Photo: Weinstein Company) 
 
 What this year's Academy Awards nominations boast in well-reviewed blockbusters and A-list stars, they lack in diversity across most major categories. 
 
 For the second year in a row, all 20 slots in the lead and supporting acting categories went to white actors. Last year's "whiteout" (the first since 1998) sparked social media outrage and inspired the Twitter hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, which was revived Thursday in response to this year's picks. 
 
 "I thought I was watching a sequel," says Gil Robertson, president of the African American Film Critics Association. "It’s almost the exact same scenario, but more offensive. ... There needs to be changes across the board. It's like beating an old horse every year." 
 
 "The Academy Awards need to do a better job at acknowledging the diversity in Hollywood right now," Fandango managing editor Erik Davis says. "There are some great performances and films out there that are just being underlooked." 
 
 Among them: Idris Elba's menacing turn as an African warlord in Beasts of No Nation. The British actor earned Golden Globe, BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for the role, and 21 out of 24 experts at awards prognisticator GoldDerby.com expected him to receive a supporting actor nomination. 
 
 Samuel L. Jackson (The Hateful Eight), Benicio del Toro (Sicario) and Jason Mitchell (Straight Outta Compton) also missed out, though their films earned nominations in other categories (including a supporting actress nomination for Hateful's Jennifer Jason Leigh). 
 
 Earlier this awards season, Will Smith picked up a Golden Globe acting nomination for football drama Concussion, and Creed breakout Michael B. Jordan won a National Society of Film Critics Award for best actor. Still, both actors were snubbed by Oscar. 
 
 No women of color were represented in the acting fields, either. Although considered a long-shot contender, Tessa Thompson earned some critics' prizes this season for her understated work in Creed. Tangerine's transgender black stars Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor also received Independent Spirit Awards nominations for their performances, boosted by a history-making awards campaign from producers Mark and Jay Duplass. 
 
 Reaction to the lack of diversity came fast and furious on social media. 
 
 No love for Tangerine stars? Where's Will Smith? Why is the breakout star of 'Creed' a white dude? #Oscars still feel pretty....#Oscars2016 — Janet Mock (@janetmock) January 14, 2016 
 
 Why did the Oscars announce all the white nominees first? — Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) January 14, 2016 
 
 All white Oscar nominations are another example of the lack of diversity in Hollywood. Like the Rocky Mts. The higher u climb the whiter. — Reverend Al Sharpton (@TheRevAl) January 14, 2016 
 
 When are the black oscars? — adam pally (@adampally) January 14, 2016 
 
 The oversights may not seem surprising, considering the membership of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: 94% white and 77% male, according to a 2012 Los Angeles Times study. Since becoming the Academy's first African-American president in 2013, Cheryl Boone Isaacs has made strides in shifting those demographics; more than 300 new members were invited to join the group last summer, many of whom are of different races, ages and ethnic backgrounds. 
 
 Speaking with USA TODAY, Isaacs expressed her frustration with this year's picks, calling them a "missed opportunity." 
 
 “I was disappointed," Isaacs says. "A lot of great work was done this year. However, we are not stopping. We are not deterred. We are moving forward, and will continue to move forward with a conversation and action. That needs to happen not just within the Academy, but the entire motion picture industry: to nurture, grow (and) promote talent, in front of or behind the camera." 
 
 This year, black filmmakers Ryan Coogler (Creed) and F. Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton) were both considered on-the-bubble contenders, but were left out of the best director race. The only minority among the five male nominees is Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, who won last year for Birdman. 
 
 The sole nominations Creed and Compton did receive were given to white men and women: Globe winner Sylvester Stallone, a best supporting actor hopeful for Creed, and Compton writers Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff, for best original screenplay. 
 
 "These were worthy movies," says Deadline awards columnist and film critic Pete Hammond. "Straight Outta Compton was very popular with Academy voters, I don’t know what happened there. People are going to talk about this, there’s no question." 
 
 Herman found the lack of diversity disheartening. "There should have been more people of color represented in the nominees," he said. "There would be no script without N.W.A — without Ice Cube and Eazy-E and Dr. Dre. We were just bringing to life a story that was already happening. Hopefully, we can continue that conversation and change things." 
 
 The shutout of minorities in major categories is reminiscent of last year's Oscar race, when Martin Luther King Jr. drama Selma was nominated for best picture, but director Ava DuVernay and actor David Oyelowo were passed over. 
 
 It's a step back from the 2014 Oscar nominations, when Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) and Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity) earned nods for best director. Cuaron went on to win the prize, while McQueen shared in the best picture award for Slave. Chiwetel Ejiofor (Slave) and Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips) earned nods for actor and supporting actor, respectively, while Lupita Nyong'o won supporting actress for her breakout Slave performance. 
 
 The contenders were similarly more diverse in 2013, with acting nominations for Denzel Washington (Flight) and Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild), and a director win for Ang Lee (Life of Pi). 
 
 Contributing: Bryan Alexander, Andrea Mandell andBrian Truitt 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1Okg5tj ||||| For the second year in a row, the Academy did not nominate any black actors to any of the 20 slots in the four acting categories. 
 
 If last year’s minority-free acting nominations led to the protest hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, this year’s all-white lineup is sure to trigger a fresh expression of outrage, #OscarsStillSoWhite. 
 
 Once again, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did not nominate any black actors to any of the 20 slots in the four acting categories. 
 
 Further compounding the lack of diversity among the top categories, Straight Outta Compton, the drama about the rise of the rap group N.W.A, although it got an original screenwriting nomination, failed to earn a best picture nomination, even though the critically acclaimed movie has been recognized by other groups like SAG-AFTRA, which nominated its cast for a best ensemble award. 
 
 "It almost seems like a sequel to last year," commented Gil Robertson, president of the African American Film Critics Association. "Certainly, the people who were nominated gave performances that were deserving of noms. But one would have hoped that given the nominations a film like Straight Outta Compton has received from other guilds, it would have received a best picture nomination. That just leaves you scratching your head, because there is overlap between the Academy and the other groups. So where does the disconnect take place?" 
 
 The Academy has made a concerted effort to diversify its own membership, which traditionally has been heavily older, white and male, inviting 322 new members this past July that included Selma star David Oyelowo, British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who appears in Concussion, and Compton director F. Gary Gray. And Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs has also announced a new initiative called A2020 to further diversify the Academy itself and also encourage the industry to open up more opportunities for women and minorities. It's also selected Chris Rock to make his second appearance as emcee of the Oscar broadcast, which this years airs Feb. 28. 
 
 When it comes to voting for its annual awards, the Academy is at the mercy of the industry itself and whatever films are produced and released in a given year. 
 
 This year, only a handful of awards-caliber films focused on black stories, like Compton or the Africa-set Beasts of No Nation, or featured black actors in prominent roles like Will Smith in Concussion, Michael B. Jordan in Creed, Idris Elba in Beasts and Samuel L. Jackson in The Hateful Eight. 
 
 Other minority performers — like the Puerto Rico-born Benicio Del Toro, who was touted as a possible best supporting actor nominee for his performance as a CIA operative with a private agenda in Sicario. Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor, the transgender actresses were were nominated for Spirit Awards for Tangerine — were also overlooked. 
 
 Elba was nominated by BAFTA, SAG-AFTRA and the Golden Globes for his performance as an African warlord in Beasts, and Del Toro, a past Oscar winner for Traffic, was nominated by BAFTA for Sicario. 
 
 But though the Academy itself had opportunities to recognize performers of color, it didn’t take them. 
 
 "The Academy really must redouble its efforts to be more diverse in terms of its membership," Robertson said, "because its members are seeing things through a totally different lens that every other group around town."
– Apparently still smarting from some of Chris Rock's Oscars barbs, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invited 683 people—many of them women and minorities—to join in an unprecedented move Wednesday, Reuters reports. The voting group behind the Oscars is largely old, white, and male and was lambasted this year with the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite after two years in a row of all-white acting nominees. In response, the academy is attempting to—as the AV Club puts it—" add seemingly goddamn everyone it had, for one reason or another, forgotten to invite into its membership.” The actors, directors, and others invited Wednesday include Idris Elba, Eva Mendes, Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, Ice Cube, Greta Gerqig, Michael B. Jordan, Vivica A. Fox, the Wachowskis, James Wan, Luis Guzmán, Kate Beckinsale, Park Chan-wook, James Hong, Michelle Rodriguez, and not one, not two, but three Wayans brothers. Of the new invitees, 46% are women and 41% are people of color. If all 683 accept their invite, women would account for 27% of the more than 7,000 academy members (up from 25%) and minorities would total 11% (up from 8%). “I'm especially happy to be part of such a diverse group. I actually want to hang out and watch movies with most of the people on this list," Arab-German director Lexi Alexander tells the Los Angeles Times. “To be honest, I cried a few tears when I started to get congratulation tweets in Arabic.” Other invitees took to Twitter to share similar sentiments. “Excited to use my vote to nominate talent that reflects the real world we live in—DIVERSITY," tweets Brie Larson, who won best actress at this year's Oscars.