US & CANADA-LOS ANGELES: E!-MOVIES – ‘The Shape of Water’ scores big with 13 Oscar nominations
(Photo: Kerry Hayes)
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‘The Shape of Water’ and ‘Get Out’ are among nine films nominated for the Academy Award for best picture. USA TODAY
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The Academy Awards dove all in for The Shape of Water.
The 1960s-set supernatural fairy-tale romance received 13 Oscar nominations on Tuesday morning, including best picture, lead actress (Sally Hawkins), supporting actor (Richard Jenkins), director (Guillermo del Toro) and a slew of technical honors. Behind it is Christopher Nolan’s World War II epic Dunkirk with eight nominations and the darkly comic drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, up for seven at the March 4 ceremony hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and airing live on ABC (8 p.m. ET/5 PT).
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Three Billboards, Dunkirk and Shape of Water will tussle for the night’s biggest prize in a wide-ranging best-picture slate that includes coming-of-age comedy Lady Bird, social thriller Get Out, dark horse Darkest Hour, Pentagon Papers drama The Post, fashion-world romance Phantom Thread and gay love story Call Me By Your Name.
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See who made the Academy’s short list for actress and actor in a leading role. USA TODAY
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Gary Oldman, transformed into Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, followed up Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award wins with an expected Oscar nomination for best actor. The British thespian will compete against newcomers Timothée Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name) and Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), retiring three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis (Phantom Thread) and Denzel Washington (Roman J. Israel, Esq.), earning his sixth nomination in the category.
Three Billboards‘ Frances McDormand also continued her successful awards streak with a nomination for best actress alongside Hawkins — it’s McDormand’s first in the category since winning in 1997 for Fargo. Rounding out this year’s list are previous nominee Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird), Oscar rookie Margot Robbie (I, Tonya) and all-time contender Meryl Streep (The Post), grabbing her 21st nomination, the most of any actor.
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Allison Janney (I, Tonya) and Laurie Metcalf (Lady Bird) each snagged their first Oscar nominations for supporting actress. Joining them will be Mary J. Blige (Mudbound), previous winner Octavia Spencer (The Shape of Water) and surprise contender Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread).
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Three Billboards scored two spots in the supporting-actor race, with Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson both earning nominations. They’ll compete against Willem Dafoe (The Florida Project), Richard Jenkins (The Shape of Water) and Christopher Plummer, who stepped in to replace Kevin Spacey in All the Money in the World at the last minute. (Plummer is now also the oldest Oscar nominee at age 88.)
Greta Gerwig and Jordan Peele are among the five nominees for the Academy Award in directing.USA TODAY
Dunkirk picked up nods in a variety of technical categories (among them, cinematography and production design), plus best director.
Nolan, del Toro, Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird) and Jordan Peele (Get Out) all received their first director nominations, while Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread) picked up his second. Peele became the third person to receive best-picture, directing and writing nominations for his first feature film.
Peele’s Get Out script received an original screenplay nod along with The Big Sick, Lady Bird, Shape of Water and Three Billboards. Adapted screenplay honors went to Call Me By Your Name, The Disaster Artist, Logan, Molly’s Game and Mudbound.
LOS ANGELES: Fantasy romance “The Shape of Water” topped the Oscars nominations list on Tuesday with 13 nods, one shy of the record, as the Academy also gave a rare nomination to a woman in the directing category.
In second place was tense World War II epic “Dunkirk,” with eight nods, while crime drama “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” generally thought to be the favorite in the best picture category, picked up seven nominations.
But “The Shape of Water,” Guillermo del Toro’s Cold War-set story of love between a mute cleaning woman and a mystery merman-like creature, dominated the competition.
It scored nods for best picture, best director and best actress for its star Sally Hawkins.
Richard Jenkins and Octavia Spencer each scored nominations in the supporting acting categories, and the film was also nominated for best original screenplay, with the rest of its nods coming in technical categories.
The haul fell one short of the record for most nominations ever, held jointly by “La La Land,” “Titanic” and “All About Eve.”
“This nomination is for every one of us who brought our hearts to this film,” Hawkins said in a statement retweeted by the movie’s official Twitter account.
“I’m here because of the greatness of others. I stand on the shoulders of giants.”
The 90th Academy Awards – the climax of Hollywood’s awards season, to be hosted by late night funnyman Jimmy Kimmel – will be held on March 4.
Organizers will be looking to rebound after last year’s flubbed announcement of the best picture winner – the trophy was initially given to “La La Land,” when the actual winner was “Moonlight.”
In a departure from previous years, there are very few clear frontrunners, making the major categories a genuine sprint to the finish line rather than the perfunctory coronation sometimes inflicted on viewers.
The announcements were seen as an opportunity for the industry to support female filmmaking, with the #MeToo and Time’s Up campaigns against sexual misconduct and gender inequality a mainstay of the 2018 awards circuit.
Female filmmakers were snubbed at the Golden Globes, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will be seen as having righted that wrong to some degree, with its nod for Greta Gerwig, the director of “Lady Bird.”
Before Tuesday, just four women had been nominated for best director since 1927.
In the best director category, Gerwig and Del Toro take on Christopher Nolan (“Dunkirk”), Jordan Peele (“Get Out”) and Paul Thomas Anderson (“Phantom Thread”).
On Tuesday, there was also the first nod for a female cinematographer, Rachel Morrison, who shot Dee Rees’s racial drama “Mudbound.”
“Between Patty Jenkins and Sofia Coppola and Maggie Betts and Kathryn Bigelow and Angelina Jolie, the number of women who are making really interesting films and the desire to shine a spotlight on them… that’s the thing I’m heartened by,” Gerwig said on a recent episode of Variety’s “Playback” podcast.
“The Shape of Water” will vie for best picture honors with eight other films, including “Dunkirk,” “Three Billboards,” coming-of-age movies “Call Me By Your Name” and “Lady Bird,” and Winston Churchill saga “Darkest Hour.”
Others in the coveted top category are dark satire “Get Out,” Daniel Day-Lewis’s apparent final film “Phantom Thread” – he has announced his retirement – and Pentagon Papers thriller “The Post.”
“Three Billboards” – buoyed by strong showings at the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild Awards – goes into the final weeks of Oscars campaigning in pole position, according to the Gold Derby awards prediction website.
For best actor, Day-Lewis will battle for a golden statuette with Timothee Chalamet (“Call Me by Your Name”), Daniel Kaluuya (“Get Out”), Gary Oldman (“Darkest Hour”) and Denzel Washington (“Roman J. Israel, Esq.”).
In the best actress category, Hawkins has competition from Frances McDormand (“Three Billboards”), Margot Robbie (“I, Tonya”), Saoirse Ronan (“Lady Bird”) and Meryl Streep (“The Post”).
Best supporting actor pits Jenkins against Christopher Plummer, a last-minute stand-in for Kevin Spacey, who was dropped from “All the Money in the World” after being accused of numerous cases of sexual misconduct.
The other nominees were Willem Dafoe (“The Florida Project”), Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell (both “Three Billboards”).
The Oscars cap a difficult few months for the film industry, which has faced widespread allegations of sexual harassment and assault, sparking a period of soul-searching that has cast a shadow over the normally joyous awards season.
A flood of allegations since October have led to the downfall of numerous powerful figures including Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Tambor and Brett Ratner.
James Franco (“The Disaster Artist”), a popular contender for best actor, joined Spacey in seeing his Oscar hopes shot down in flames after becoming tainted by scandal.
The foreign films nominated are “A Fantastic Woman” (Chile), “The Insult” (Lebanon), “Loveless” (Russia), “On Body and Soul” (Hungary) and “The Square” (Sweden).
“I wanted to make a provocative film that will not only wildly entertain people but also make them reflect – thank you for helping me to share this film with more audiences throughout the world,” Ruben Ostlund, the writer and director of “The Square,” said in a statement. –AFP
COURTESY:
THE NEW STRAITS TIMES
– January 24, 2018 @ 1:22am
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