This year’s Oscars are unfolding at a time of tumult for the movie business. Who got snubbed? Who got nominated unexpectedly?
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Peele became the fifth black man to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director. “I am certainly grateful both for the opportunity to be the first on the platform and really, hopefully, it inspires young women to follow their dreams and to get in the camera department and become cinematographers”. It was nominated for “Best Visuals”, “Best Sound Editing”, “Best Sound Mixing” and “Best Original Score”.
There were plenty of talking points from this year’s Oscar nominations. Thanks to Guillermo Del Toro’s nomination for The Shape of Water (itself a pretty outré front-runner – it has 13 nominations in total), white male filmmakers are actually in the minority for the first time.
Live Action Short Film: “DeKalb Elementary”, “The Eleven O’Clock”, “My Nephew Emmett”, “The Silent Child”, “Watu Wote/All of Us”.
But it seems the rumours surrounding Franco’s alleged inappropriate behaviour may have impacted his chance at an Academy Award nomination.
Best Supporting Actor will be a toss-up between Sam Rockwell and Willem Dafoe for “The Florida Project”, and it might go to the latter. Each of these actors here gave an unbelievable performance, and I’m not sure if I could cut anyone out.
Plummer stepped in for Kevin Spacey in “All the Money in the World” after Spacey faced accusations of sexual misconduct.
“The Big Sick”, a well-liked independent darling with a 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes, was almost shut out, with the exception of a screenplay nomination, which likely surprised many. “In Roman J. Israel, Denzel Washington plays Questlove playing a lawyer”, he joked, marveling at “the layers of that performance”. Just a few weeks ago, Franco was a frontrunner in this category. While not exactly horror, the film features brilliant creature designs and is a touching, genre bending, homage to classic Universal Monster movies. However that category was instead dominated by other actresses starring in dramas. I could reasonably imagine any of these actresses taking the award.
One sign of progress: Where 10 years ago only three women were nominated as producers of Best Picture nominees, this year eight were. Both films are returning to the big screen this week to take advantage of their renewed interest. Not only is Peele making a mark in the best director category, but he is also only the fourth black individual to be up for best original screenplay, which again, is pretty wild. Most scenes from “Get Out” were filmed at a home on Hermitage Lane in Fairhope.
Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Armie Hammer and Michael Stuhlbarg were surprise omissions from the Best Actor in a Supporting Role list. To me, that is the most exciting thing to come out of these nominations. The Disaster Artist Actor has been omitted from the Best Actor Nominee. His nomination was expected to say the least. Other films that saw an increase were “Call Me by Your Name” (56%), “Darkest Hour” (46%) and “The Post” (46%). Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread) and Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk) were also nominated.
■ Best song: “Mighty River” from “Mudbound; “Mystery of Love” from “Call Me By Your Name”; “Remember Me” from “Coco”; “Stand Up for Something” from “Marshall; and “This is Me” from “The Greatest Showman”. And in one of the most shocking moments, the Faith Akin directorial was completely left out of the race. I’ll have to see the film to decide for myself.
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The longer you look, the more there is to like about this list of nominees. “And I think a lot of the audience is exhausted of political speeches from actors”.
