Oscar Reflections

The Oscars are said and done for another year, and overall I am very pleased with the results. I can agree with the winners, I applaud many of the speeches and the show was a delight to watch.

Most importantly, how did I do? I made predictions in 19 of the 24 categories, and as the show started I did very well, racking up correct prediction after correct prediction. This was pleasing if a little predictable, but as things continued surprises started to appear, such as Get Out winning Original Screenplay and Dunkirk picking up Editing. Overall, I correctly predicted the winners in 15 out of my 19 picks, which at 78% is pretty good going. I’m no gambler, but every year I am tempted.

Picture	Correctly Predicted?	Directing	Correctly Predicted?
The Shape of Water	No	Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water	Yes
Call Me by Your Name		Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk
Darkest Hour		Jordan Peele, Get Out
Dunkirk		Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
Get Out		Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread
Lady Bird
Phantom Thread		Makeup and Hairstyling
The Post		Darkest Hour	Yes
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri		Victoria & Abdul
		Wonder
Actor		Actress
Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour	Yes	Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri	Yes
Timothée Chalamet, Call Me by Your Name		Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water
Daniel Day,Lewis, Phantom Thread		Margot Robbie, I, Tonya
Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out		Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird
Denzel Washington, Roman J. Israel, Esq.		Meryl Streep, The Post
Supporting Actor		Supporting Actress
Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri	Yes	Allison Janney, I, Tonya	Yes
Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project		Mary J. Blige, Mudbound
Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri		Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread
Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water		Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird
Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the World		Octavia Spencer, The Shape of Water
Adapted Screenplay		Original Screenplay
Call Me by Your Name	Yes	Get Out	No
The Disaster Artist		The Big Sick
Logan		Lady Bird
Molly’s Game		The Shape of Water
Mudbound		Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Original Score		Original Song
The Shape of Water	Yes	‘Remember Me’ from Coco	No
Dunkirk		“Mighty River” from Mudbound
Phantom Thread		“Mystery of Love” from Call Me by Your Name
Star Wars: The Last Jedi		“Stand Up for Something” from Marshall
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri		“This Is Me” from The Greatest Showman
Sound Editing		Sound Mixing
Dunkirk	Yes	Dunkirk	Yes
Baby Driver		Baby Driver
Blade Runner 2049		Blade Runner 2049
The Shape of Water		The Shape of Water
Star Wars: The Last Jedi		Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Production Design		Visual Effects
The Shape of Water	Yes	Blade Runner 2049	Yes
Beauty and the Beast		Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Blade Runner 2049		Kong: Skull Island
Darkest Hour		Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Dunkirk		War for the Planet of the Apes
Costume Design		Cinematography
Phantom Thread	Yes	Blade Runner 2049	Yes
Beauty and the Beast		Darkest Hour
Darkest Hour		Dunkirk
The Shape of Water		Mudbound
Victoria & Abdul		The Shape of Water
Film Editing		Animated Feature
Dunkirk	No	Coco	Yes
Baby Driver		The Boss Baby
I, Tonya		The Breadwinner
The Shape of Water		Ferdinand
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri		Loving Vincent

The biggest delights for me personally were one predicted winner and one unexpected though desired victory. When Roger Deakins was announced as the winner of Best Cinematography, I applauded from my sofa. After 14 nominations and such fantastic work in The Shawshank Redemption, The Man Who Wasn’t There, No Country For Old Men, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Skyfall, Sicario and many more, it was an absolute delight to see Deakins finally honoured for the extraordinary visuals of Blade Runner 2049. Well shot sir, well shot.

I wanted The Shape of Water to win Best Picture but expected that award to go to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Over the course of the show, deviations from my expectations made that less likely, beginning with Get Out winning Original Screenplay. In recent years, Best Picture has also won Screenplay, Editing or Directing (making The Departed a quintessential winner for 2006). Since Martin McDonagh was not nominated for Directing, a likely win for him and the film was Original Screenplay. Without that, and with Editing going to Dunkirk, Picture became more open. And once Guillermo Del Toro won Directing, The Shape of Water seemed ever more likely. But in my scepticism, I did not see the members of AMPAS voting for a fantasy film. When Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty announced the winner, I applauded again. For a fantasy/monster/sci fi movie to win Best Picture shows that the Academy members are not as conservative as they used to be, embracing more radical and surprising choices.

The show as a whole was very well done. Jimmy Kimmell hosted with great humour, wryness and affection. I especially like Kimmell’s gag of bringing in audiences, a move he and his team pioneered last year by arranging a tour group to come into the Kodak Theater, and built on this year by taking several movie stars into a nearby screening of A Wrinkle in Time. Had I been in that cinema, my mind would have been blown by epic proportions with the sudden arrival of Guillermo Del Toro, Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer, Margot Robbie, Ansel Elgort, Mark Hamill and the rest. Plus a hotdog cannon!Perhaps the strongest legacy of this year’s Oscars, however, will be the politics. After a few years of controversy over all white acting nominees, the recent scandals over harassment and the subsequent #MeToo and #TimesUp campaigns prompted debate and resistance. Kimmel named and shamed Harvey Weinstein as only the second person to be expelled from AMPAS; actresses received greater prominence as various winners of the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role presented major awards. Last year’s Best Actress Emma Stone presented Directing to Guillermo Del Toro, and two pairs of Oscar winners presented this year’s Best Actor and Best Actress awards: Jane Fonda and Helen Mirren to Gary Oldman for Darkest Hour and Jodie Foster and Jennifer Lawrence to Frances McDormand for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, respectively. McDormand made perhaps the most impassioned speech of the night when she encouraged all the female nominees to stand up, be counted and be counted.

Some might complain about this political element, either arguing that the Oscars are about art which is not political, or that the Oscars are entertainment and too frivolous or commercial to engage in politics. I reject both these positions because art is and always has been political, and with its extraordinary reach it would be a terrible waste if cinema were not political. The Academy recognised this through a retrospective on war cinema, dedicated to the men and women of the armed forces and introduced touchingly by actor and Vietnam veteran Wes Studi. Secondly, entertainment expresses social and political concerns purely by its production within particular contexts – the dominance of men in the film industry and cinematic output is a political reality and one that is long overdue a challenge. As recent films have demonstrated, you can have hugely successful films with female directors and leads, and the studios apparently taking such risks demonstrates that the only risk is to conservative ideology. For certain, time is up, and my heartiest applause to every presenter and winner at the 90th Annual Academy Awards who used that grandest stage and widest audience to highlight the state of their industry and to call for change.

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