An Oscar onslaught for 'Mad Max' blindsides Miller

NEW YORK (AP) — Of the many roads to the Academy Awards, none is as unlikely as the one taken (at ferocious speed, with engines roaring) by George Miller's Mad Max:

Despite "Fury Road" being about as far away from the usual Oscar-friendly costumed drama, Miller's fireball of a film heads into the Feb. 28th Academy Awards with 10 nods (second only to "The Revenant"), including best picture and best director for Miller.

The multitude of Oscar nominations for "Fury Road" speaks to the widespread admiration for the movie's old-school craft.

Though it includes extensive visual effects, "Fury Road" was shot with real vehicles on a real location.

Tom Hardy, who inherited the role of Max from Mel Gibson, described Miller's movie as "if Obi-Wan Kenobi could make an action movie."

The mammoth task of assembling so much footage from scenes sometimes shot with a dozen cameras fell to Miller's wife, editor Margaret Sixel.

[...] for many, it's the film's story of female empowerment, led by Charlize Theron's one-armed warrior Furiosa, that's makes "Fury Road" exceptional.

The American Film Institute named it one of the 10 best films of the year, hailing it as "a journey of fire and blood through which the action genre is razed to the ground and reborn."