'The Shape of Water' is the big winner on Oscar night
Well! The PGA/DGA stat held up this year! I got it wrong, but I'm very happy that it wasn't Three Billboards at least. The Shape of Water won four awards (Picture, Director, Score and Production Design) and is a lovely movie (and I DID give it the highest % odds to win, remember), so I guess 19/24 for me this year isn't too bad. It was a fairly subdued ceremony compared to last year, with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway given a chance for a do-over to present Best Picture (correctly), and pulling it off this time. Jordan Peele made history in winning Best Original Screenplay for Get Out, and Frances McDormand gave the speech of the night when she called for all the female Oscar nominees to stand up and endorsed an "inclusion rider" for future projects, which is awesome. There were a lot of tributes to the #metoo movement, but some of that stuff rings a false note when you award people like Kobe Bryant with Oscars (really, Academy??). Jimmy Kimmel did his thing, and I still think he's one of the most comfortable Oscar hosts I've ever seen on that stage. Funny, topical, not too mean or nice. As an insider with pretty much everybody in Hollywood, he really could be the go to Oscar host for as long as they want him, kind of like Bob Hope was in the 50's and 60's.
2018 ACADEMY AWARD WINNERS:
- BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING: Darkest Hour
- BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Phantom Thread
- BEST DOCUMENTARY: Icarus
- BEST SOUND EDITING: Dunkirk
- BEST SOUND MIXING: Dunkirk
- BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: The Shape of Water
- BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: A Fantastic Woman
- BEST ANIMATED SHORT: Dear Basketball
- BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Coco
- BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Blade Runner 2049
- BEST FILM EDITING: Dunkirk
- BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT: Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405
- BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT: The Silent Child
- BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Call Me By Your Name
- BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Get Out
- BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Blade Runner 2049
- BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: The Shape of Water
- BEST ORIGINAL SONG: “Remember Me” Coco
- BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
- BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Allison Janney, I, Tonya
- BEST ACTOR: Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour
- BEST ACTRESS: Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
- BEST DIRECTOR: Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water
- BEST PICTURE: The Shape of Water
Other moments I liked: seeing Roger Deakins finally win an Oscar for cinematography after 13 nominations, and 89-year-old James Ivory win Adapted Screenplay after never winning an Oscar for his much loved Merchant-Ivory films like A Room With a View, Howards End and The Remains of the Day. There were ultimately very few surprised this year overall, which explains how I didn't do all that badly in my predictions (if I had only gone with my instinct for Blade Runner in Visual Effects and Dear Basketball in the short category- could have been 21/24).
Two time winner Frances McDormand gave the night's most raucous acceptance speech
