2017 Awards Season: Oscars Nominations

January 23, 2018

The Shape of Water

The Oscar nominations were announced starting at just after 5 am Pacific time. They do this every year and no one has been able to adequately explain why to me. At least there were some interesting results this year. The Shape of Water led the way with 13 nominations, which is one below the current record and nearly as many as the next two films combined. Overall, there were seventeen films that earned two or more nominations.

The categories and nominations are...

BEST PICTURE

DIRECTING

BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

BEST WRITING - ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

BEST WRITING - ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

BEST DOCUMENTARY - FEATURE LENGTH

BEST DOCUMENTARY - SHORT FILM

  • Edith+Eddie
  • Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405
  • Heroin(e)
  • Knife Skills
  • Traffic Stop
SHORT FILM - LIVE ACTION

  • DeKalb Elementary
  • The Eleven O'Clock
  • My Nephew Emmett
  • The Silent Child
  • Watu Wote/All of Us
SHORT FILM - ANIMATED

  • Dear Basketball
  • Garden Party
  • Lou
  • Negative Space
  • Revolving Rhymes
BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATOGRAPHY

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN PRODUCTION DESIGN

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN COSTUME DESIGN

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN MAKEUP

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN VISUAL EFFECTS

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN EDITING

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND EDITING

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND MIXING

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC - ORIGINAL SCORE

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC - ORIGINAL SONG

Notes and Reactions...

Going category by category, my initial reactions were.

    Best Picture:

  • The Academy voters need to be forced to write out on a blackboard 100 times. “Best Picture means the ‘best picture’ and not ‘best Oscar-bait picture’”. They expanded the number of Best Picture nominees in order to get more diversity, but all that happened was more samey Oscar-bait films are picked each year. Get Out is the closest we have to an outside-the-box nominee.
  • Since The Big Sick wasn’t nominated, I hope The Shape of Water wins. In fact, I hope The Shape of Water wins most of the awards it is nominated for; however, I know that’s a long shot.

    • Directing:

  • Greta Gerwig earned a nomination for Lady Bird. Thank god. I don’t think she will win, but not getting at least a nomination would have been a scandal.

    • Best Actress in a Lead Role:

  • Frances McDormand has won pretty much every award for which she’s been nominated for her performance in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and I see no reason to doubt her now.

    • Best Actor in a Lead Role:

  • Likewise, Gary Oldman has won for his performance in Darkest Hour over and over again and I think he will win the Oscar as well.

    • Best Actor in a Supporting Role:

  • Vote-splitting between Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri co-stars Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell might cost both actors a shot at the Oscar, but I think Sam Rockwell is still the favorite.

    • Best Actress in a Supporting Role:

  • Allison Janney will very likely win for I, Tonya, as she’s won multiple times in the past.

    • Original Screenplay:

  • I really want Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani to win for The Big Sick. They won’t win.

    • Adapted Screenplay:

  • Logan became the first comic book movie to earn an Oscar nomination for its script. It won’t win.

    • Feature-Length Animated Film:

  • Coco is the heavy favorite to win, but I’m glad The Breadwinner and Loving Vincent also got nominations.
  • On the other hand, The Boss Baby? Really?

    • Foreign Language Film:

  • The Square seems to be the favorite here, but this category is harder to predict.

    • Documentary: Feature Length:

  • Jane didn’t even get an Oscar nomination. What the ... ?! I had assumed this film would win the Oscar. Now I have no idea which film is going to win.

    • Documentary: Short Film
    Short Film: Live Action
    Short Film: Animated

  • These three categories are notoriously difficult to predict. It will take a bit of research to come up with even an educated guess.

    • Cinematography:

  • The Shape of Water is nominated in nearly all of the technical categories and it could win most of them in a wave. That’s unlikely, but Best Cinematography is one of these categories that the film is most likely to win in my opinion.
  • Dunkirk is the film’s main rival in most categories and it might come out on top, as it is a more traditional Oscar film.

    • Production Design:

  • Beauty and the Beast was only nominated for two Oscars and I think it could win both of them.

    • Costume Design:

  • This is the second Oscar that Beauty and the Beast was nominated for.

    • Makeup:

  • How was The Shape of Water not nominated here? I have no idea who is going to win here, because of this omission.

    • Visual Effects:

  • It was a good year for good movies with great special effects and I would be happy if any of these won. Maybe I’m cheering for Blade Runner 2049 a little more than the others, but it is a close call.

    • Editing:

  • Again, it’s The Shape of Water vs. Dunkirk and I think Dunkirk has the edge here.

    • Sound Editing:

  • Every single year, I have to research the difference between the two sound categories. It's like I have a hole in my brain where that information is supposed to be stored. If I'm correct, Sound Editing is for sound effects, while Sound Mixing is for placing those effects in the audio track to maximize the effect.
  • ... Yes, I cut and paste that part every year. It saves time.

    • Sound Mixing:

  • This year this cut and paste is even more relevant, as the two lists of nominees are identical. I think Dunkirk will win both times.

    • Original Score:

  • Phantom Thread didn’t get as much attention during Awards Season as I thought it would, but it should still pick up an Oscar here.

    • Original Song:

  • “Remember Me” from Coco seems to be the favorite here.

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Filed under: Awards Season, Baby Driver, The Greatest Showman, Coco, Ferdinand, War for the Planet of the Apes, Logan, The Boss Baby, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, Kong: Skull Island, Wonder, Star Wars Ep. VIII: The Last Jedi, Blade Runner 2049, Beauty and the Beast, Loving Vincent, The Breadwinner, Dunkirk, Get Out, The Disaster Artist, Marshall, Molly’s Game, Darkest Hour, Victoria and Abdul, I, Tonya, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, Call Me by Your Name, The Big Sick, Mudbound, Una mujer fantástica, The Post, Last Men in Aleppo, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Shape of Water, Phantom Thread, Nelyubov, Teströl és lélekröl, The Florida Project, The Square, Roman J. Israel, Esq., All the Money in the World, Lady Bird, Visages villages, Jane, L’insulte, Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Denzel Washington, Paul Thomas Anderson, Mary J. Blige, Willem Dafoe, Daniel Day-Lewis, Guillermo del Toro, Greta Gerwig, Woody Harrelson, Sally Hawkins, James Ivory, Allison Janney, Richard Jenkins, James Mangold, Lesley Manville, Frances McDormand, Laurie Metcalf, Christopher Nolan, Christopher Plummer, Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, Aaron Sorkin, Michael Green, Dee Rees, Octavia Spencer, Scott Frank, Daniel Kaluuya, Jordan Peele, Vanessa Taylor, Martin McDonagh, Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber, Kumail Nanjiani, Margot Robbie, Timothée Chalamet, Emily V. Gordon, Virgil Williams