Oscars: Could Philly guys dominate this year?

#OscarsSoPhilly, anyone?

The controversy over the lack of diversity in the Academy Awards nominations - and in the movie biz in general - continues to dominate Oscar discussions.

But there's something folks in Philadelphia can gab about, and embrace with pride, as the golden figurines are handed out Sunday night on Hollywood's Dolby Theatre stage: Sylvester Stallone, the guy who planted that underdog pugilist Rocky Balboa deep in the Philly psyche, is just about a sure thing to win the supporting actor Oscar for his performance in the otherwise criminally ignored Creed, playing an aging South Philadelphia restaurateur who returns to the boxing world to train the son of Rock's onetime rival.

And two local boys - Josh Singer from Ambler and Adam McKay from Malvern - are the odds-on favorites to take home trophies in the screenplay categories. Singer, who segued from law school to TV writing and onward to film, cowrote (with director Tom McCarthy) the best picture contender Spotlight - a tale of enterprising journalists hunting down pedophile clergy in the Catholic Church.

McKay, who once toiled as an usher at the Ritz Theaters and who has until now been known for the knuckleheaded Anchorman comedies, for Talladega Nights and Step Brothers, adapted Michael Lewis' financial-crisis best-seller The Big Short. McKay also directed the rightly acclaimed cautionary tale (message: It can happen again!), which is likewise one of the eight titles vying for best picture.

But speaking of best picture, of the #OscarsSoWhite debate, and of the criminally ignored, in this critic's estimation - and in the opinion of many of my colleagues and throngs of nonprofessional moviegoers, too - Ryan Coogler's Creed deserved to be on that best pic list, too.

More than a savvy handoff of a successful franchise, the film about a struggling young fighter who comes to Philadelphia to find himself, and prove himself, evokes the black experience in specific, personal, essential ways. Coogler, who is African American, reteamed with his Fruitvale Station star Michael B. Jordan to deliver a rousing drama full of deft camerawork, evocative songs, and top-tier performances.

Part of the blame for Creed's solitary Academy Award nomination has to go to Warner Bros., the distributor that was late to realize it had a contender on its hands, failing to launch any kind of serious "For Your Consideration" campaign - happy just to count the box office receipts ($109 million) and move on.

Unlike last year's Oscar race, which wasn't a race so much as a surefire predictive event, the 88th Academy Awards boasts more than a few categories where it's not all that clear who's going to win. Between the awards season's round of conflicting kudos - the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards, the Producers' Guild, the Writers' Guild, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and so forth - front-runners came and went, momentum shifted, the buzz dissipated. For a minute there, it looked like Mad Max: Fury Road had everything going for it. For a minute.

The best picture race now seems to be down to three: The Big Short, Spotlight, and The Revenant. The first two touch on real-life issues that affected millions of people in the here and now, the latter is a 19th-century tale of revenge in an unforgiving wilderness. If Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who helmed The Revenant and who took the best director Oscar last year for Birdman, wins again, he will join an ultraexclusive club of filmmakers with back-to-back directing Oscars: They are John Ford, who won in 1939 and 1940 (The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who won in 1949 and 1950 (A Letter to Three Wives, All About Eve). A win for Iñárritu would be the first time the feat has been repeated in more than 60 years.

srea@phillynews.com

215-854-5629@Steven_Rea