A little fun color-coding:
Seen Prior to Nominations
Seen After Nominations
Was Not Able to See
Best Picture
Call Me By Your Name
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
Get Out
Lady Bird
Phantom Thread
The Post
The Shape Of Water
Hm. Even having seen most of them, I honestly can't guess which one will probably win--they're all different flavors of what we'd consider Oscar-worthy...except for Get Out. And honestly, I think I'd award it to Get Out--along with Call Me By Your Name, it's the one that stuck with me the most.
Best Actress
Sally Hawkins, The Shape Of Water
Margot Robbie, I, Tonya
Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird
Meryl Streep, The Post
I'd love for this to go to Sally Hawkins. I think she did the most--particularly because so much of her acting relied on non-linguistic gestures and posture.
Best Actor
Timothée Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name
Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread
Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out
Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour
Denzel Washington, Roman J. Israel, Esq.
Chalamet is the performer that most impressed me, but Kaluuya was the most natural. Both Denzel and DDL were very Look At Me Acting, which is a turn-off for me. Oldman was excellent, because he always disappears into his characters.
Best Supporting Actress
Mary J. Blige, Mudbound
Allison Janney, I, Tonya
Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread
Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird
Octavia Spencer, The Shape Of Water
I'm with Laurie Metcalf on this one, 100%. She and Janney did similar types of characters, but Metcalf had the tougher role.
Best Supporting Actor
Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project
Richard Jenkins, The Shape Of Water
Christopher Plummer, All The Money In The World
Willem Dafoe! Though he has the advantage, given the only other movie I saw in this category was The Shape of Water. Jenkins was awesome, but his role wasn't quite as solid as Dafoe's.
Best Director
Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk
Jordan Peele, Get Out
Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread
Guillermo del Toro, The Shape Of Water
I'd love for Peele to get this, but del Toro had the flashier job of the pair.
Best Adapted Screenplay
James Ivory, Call Me By Your Name
Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, The Disaster Artist
Scott Frank, James Mangold, and Michael Green, Logan
Aaron Sorkin, Molly’s Game
Virgil Williams and Dee Rees, Mudbound
I would pay cash money for Logan to win this--it's just a fantastic story.
Best Original Screenplay
Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani, The Big Sick
Jordan Peele, Get Out
Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
Guillermo Del Toro and Vanessa Taylor, The Shape Of Water
Get Out. Please, please, please.
Best Foreign Language Film
A Fantastic Woman (Chile)
The Insult (Lebanon)
Loveless (Russia)
On Body And Soul (Hungary)
The Square (Sweden)
Someday I'mma once again live in a city where foreign films are screened. I don't see this changing in the near future, though.
Best Production Design
Beauty And The Beast
Blade Runner 2049
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
The Shape Of Water
Oooh, this one's a tough one. I think I'd go with The Shape of Water, though--del Toro's movie is striking in the way it uses space to convey all sorts of things.
Best Visual Effects
Blade Runner 2049
Guardians Of The Galaxy, Vol. 2
Kong: Skull Island
Star Wars: Episode VIII—The Last Jedi
War For The Planet Of the Apes
I'd give this one to Planet of the Apes. I mean, I just can't argue with motion-capture via Andy Serkis, particularly because his Caesar was more human that any of the characters in any of the non-Star Wars movies in this category.
Best Editing
Baby Driver
Dunkirk
I, Tonya
The Shape Of Water
Hmmmmm. I'd throw this one to Baby Driver, even though I wasn't a big fan of the movie overall.
Best Cinematography
Roger Deakins, Blade Runner 2049
Bruno Delbonnel, Darkest Hour
Hoyte van Hoytema, Dunkirk
Rachel Morrison, Mudbound
Dan Laustsen, The Shape Of Water
This category is SO HARD, because every single one of these movies was striking. Absolutely gorgeous. I'd give this one to Deakins, though--I didn't necessarily like Blade Runner 2049 all that much, but I want to wallpaper my apartment with some of those shots.
Best Animated Feature
The Boss Baby
The Breadwinner
Coco
Ferdinand
Loving Vincent
Coco, all the way. (I liked Boss Baby waaaay more than I anticipated, but why is it here?) I wouldn't be mad if The Breadwinner won, though. It's very lovely in a different, achey way.
Best Documentary Feature
Abacus: Small Enough To Jail
Faces Places
Icarus
Last Man In Aleppo
Strong Island
I'd roll with Strong Island for this one--the close-ups in some of the interviews were gut-punchers, as was the final sequence.
Best Costume Design
Beauty And The Beast
Darkest Hour
Phantom Thread
The Shape Of Water
Victoria & Abdul
...Phantom Thread, I think. The costumes did so much of the work for the movie.
Best Makeup And Hairstyling
Darkest Hour
Victoria & Abdul
Wonder
I'd hand this one to Wonder, largely because that kid was able to effectively emote through all that make-up. It's impressive work.
Best Original Score
Hans Zimmer, Dunkirk
Jonny Greenwood, Phantom Thread
Alexandre Desplat, The Shape Of Water
John Williams, Star Wars: Episode VIII—The Last Jedi
Hans Zimmer's score felt sooooo overdone, but it also was the thing that actually made the movie work.
Best Original Song
“Mighty River,” Mudbound
“Mystery Of Love,” Call Me By Your Name
“Remember Me,” Coco
“Stand Up For Something,” Marshall
“This Is Me,” The Greatest Showman
I'm not saying it's the best song in the group, but "This is Me" is the one that got stuck in my head for days and days, and for a category like this, that ain't nothing.
Best Sound Editing
Baby Driver
Blade Runner 2049
Dunkirk
The Shape Of Water
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Best Sound Mixing
Baby Driver
Blade Runner 2049
Dunkirk
The Shape Of Water
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
I've long held the opinion that these two categories just get automatically handed to whichever film was the most popular. So, Star Wars it is!
Best Film Editing
Baby Driver
Dunkirk
I, Tonya
The Shape Of Water
I'd give this one to I, Tonya, I think. The shifts from memory to faux-memory to the interviews were actually quite clever, I felt. And occasionally, extremely disturbing.
Best Animated Short Film
Dear Basketball
Garden Party
Lou
Negative Space!
Revolting Rhymes
These are so weird, because the shortest is, like, four minutes, while the longest is a full half-hour. I thought the longest, Revolting Rhymes, was the most interesting, largely because it had the most stuff going on. Garden Party was the most impressive, animation-wise, but the corpse at the end was so much overkill that I can't really commend them whole-heartedly.
Best Documentary Short Subject
Edith And Eddie
Heaven Is A Traffic Jam On The 405
Heroin(e)
Knife Skills
Traffic Stop
Oof. Traffic Stop was the most visceral. Edith and Eddie was the most heart-breaking. Heroin(e) was the best documentary. (The other two were fine, but lightweight in comparison.)
Best Live Action Short Film
Dekalb Elementary
The 11 O’Clock
My Nephew Emmett
The Silent Child
Watu Wote
These were all fantastic. I'd watch every single one of them in a longer form. My Nephew Emmett is the one that haunts me, though.
And that's it for my Oscar-watching for the 2018 ceremony. I think I did extremely well this year, but I also feel like we have way more "mainstream" kinds of movies on the slate, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment