• “The Shape of Water” won the best picture, and Guillermo del Toro won best director for the film.
The 90th Academy Awards ceremony popularly called Oscars skittered between the serious and the silly on Sunday night(the United States West Coast Time), taking time both to acknowledge #MeToo, but the show ultimately emerged as a powerful call for inclusion and diversity in Hollywood. Ushering a movement in the entertainment industry spreading all over the world, and Nigeria is not going to be left out.
The Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars, are a set of 24 awards for artistic and technical merit in the American film industry, given annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), to recognize excellence in cinematic achievements as assessed by the Academy’s voting membership.
List of 2018 Winners
- Best Picture: “The Shape of Water”
- Director: Guillermo del Toro, “The Shape of Water”
- Actor: Gary Oldman, “Darkest Hour”
- Actress: Frances McDormand, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
- Supporting Actor: Sam Rockwell, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
- Supporting Actress: Allison Janney, “I, Tonya”
- Original Screenplay: “Get Out”
- Adapted Screenplay: “Call Me by Your Name”
- Foreign Language Film: “A Fantastic Woman”
- Animated Feature: “Coco”
- Visual Effects: “Blade Runner 2049”
- Film Editing: “Dunkirk”
- Animated Short: “Dear Basketball”
- Live Action Short: “The Silent Child”
- Documentary Short: “Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405”
- Score: “The Shape of Water”
- Song: “Remember Me” from “Coco”
- Production Design: “The Shape of Water”
- Cinematography: “Blade Runner 2049”
- Costume Design: “Phantom Thread”
- Makeup and Hairstyling: “Darkest Hour”
- Documentary Feature: “Icarus”
- Sound Editing: “Dunkirk”
- Sound Mixing: “Dunkirk”
Event’s Highlights –
Guillermo del Toro’s outcast parable, “The Shape of Water,” was honoured as best picture, and Mr. del Toro won the best director Oscar. Jordan Peele collected the best original screenplay award for “Get Out,” a movie centred on racism in the liberal white suburbs. And Frances McDormand, winning best actress for her portrayal of a mother seeking justice for her murdered daughter in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” made a dramatic stand for gender equality in Hollywood.
• Frances McDormand won best actress for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” Gary Oldman won the best actor for “Darkest Hour.” Allison Janney won best supporting actress. Sam Rockwell won best supporting actor.
Ms McDormand’s win was expected, as was Gary Oldman’s (“Darkest Hour”) for best actor.
“If I fall over, pick me up, because I’ve got some things to say,” Ms McDormand said.
Ms McDormand finished with, “I have two words to say: inclusion rider,” a reference to a practice by which stars add a clause to film contracts that insist on diversity on both sides of the camera.
Jodie Foster, appearing on crutches and joking that the reason was a run-in with Meryl Streep, presented the best actress with Jennifer Lawrence, in lieu of last year’s best-actor winner, Casey Affleck. Mr Affleck bypassed the ceremony amid continued criticism for settling sexual harassment suits in the past.
In a halting acceptance speech, Mr Oldman thanked the film’s director and producers; Winston Churchill; his wife, Gisele Schmid; and his 99-year-old mother, who he said was home watching on the sofa. “Put the kettle on,” he said. “I’m bringing Oscar home.”
It was a democratic Oscars overall.
Legendary Winners
Only two of the nine best picture nominees went home empty-handed: “Lady Bird” and “The Post.” The other seven collected at least one award each, preventing anyone film from sweeping the ceremony.
Winners included legends who had never before won, among them James Ivory (“Call Me by Your Name”) and Roger A. Deakins (“Blade Runner 2049”), and first-time nominees like Jordan Peele, who landed best original screenplay for “Get Out,” and Allison Janney, a television stalwart who won over the film academy with her supporting work in the darkly comedic Tonya Harding biopic “I, Tonya.”
“I’ve been at this a long time,” said Mr Deakins, a 14-time nominee. “Thank you. Thank you very much.” He started his career in the 1970s and was first nominated in 1995, for “The Shawshank Redemption.”
‘I am an immigrant.’
Mr. del Toro’s best director honour was widely expected — he took the top prize at several preceding awards shows — and he was an omnipresent darling of the awards circuit, at one point bringing a case of tequila to an awards function. The win meant that Mr. del Toro had finally won the acceptance of Hollywood, after being looked down on as a horror director for much of his career.
“I am an immigrant,” an emotional Mr. del Toro started his acceptance speech by saying, continuing to note that art has the power to “erase the lines in the sand” between people of different ethnicities. “We should continue doing that when the world tells us to make them deeper.”
The best picture award was presented by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, who because of a mix-up backstage by PwC, mistakenly announced last year’s best picture winner as “La La Land” instead of “Moonlight.”
“I want to dedicate to every young filmmaker — the youth who are showing us how things are done,” said Mr. del Toro when he accepted the award for best picture. “The Shape of Water” also won for Alexandre Desplat’s score and Paul Denham Austerberry’s production design.
– ‘Get Out’ and ‘Call Me by Your Name’ win screenplay awards.
Mr Peele, who wrote and directed “Get Out,” received a raucous standing ovation for winning best original screenplay, signalling the Hollywood establishment’s respect for his movie and also his arrival as a certified member of that elite group. He thanked his mother, who, he said, “Taught me to love even in the face of hate.”
Mr Ivory, 89, a four-time nominee, won for best-adapted screenplay for the gay romance “Call Me by Your Name.” All people, “whether straight or gay or somewhere in between,” can understand the emotions of a first love, Mr Ivory said, reading from notes. (Mr Ivory was previously nominated for directing “A Room With a View,” “Howards End” and “The Remains of the Day.”)
And A #MeToo moment.
Activism and social politics were highlighted in a segment introduced by Ashley Judd, Salma Hayek and Annabella Sciorra, all of whom all had gone public with allegations about enduring sexual harassment or worse at the hands of Harvey Weinstein.
The women recognized the seismic shift in Hollywood’s culture in recent months with the rise of #MeToo, and Ms Judd spoke of the voices “joining in a mighty chorus that is finally saying Time’s Up.”
They were followed by an emotional video featuring Mira Sorvino, Sarah Silverman, Greta Gerwig, Geena Davis and Kumail Nanjiani, who injected a note of levity by noting that the box-office lucre enjoyed by recent diverse movies should be an incentive for Hollywood. “Don’t do it for society and representation,” he said, “Do it because you get rich, right?”
During their performance of the Oscar-nominated song “Stand Up for Something,” from “Marshall,” Common and the singer Andra Day were joined on stage by 10 prominent activists, including Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood; the labor leader and civil rights advocate Dolores Huerta; Bana Alabed, the 8-year-old Syrian refugee who documented the siege of Aleppo on Twitter; and Janet Mock, a transgender activist and television writer and host.
Disney wins another Oscar for animated feature.
Kobe Bryant is now an Oscar winner: “Dear Basketball,” which Mr Bryant made with the former Disney animator Glen Keane, overcame questions about Mr Bryant’s past to win the trophy for best animated short — as some members of the audience exchanged incredulous looks. #MeToo activists had said that a 2003 sexual-assault case against Mr Bryant was a reason not to reward the movie. (The case was dismissed.)
“As basketball players, we’re supposed to shut up and dribble,” Mr Bryant said in an apparent reference to the Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s recent criticism of LeBron James for speaking out against President Trump. Mr Bryant went on to thank his wife and daughters.
Disney continued its Oscars dominance, as Pixar’s “Coco” was named the best-animated feature, Disney’s sixth straight victory in the category. “Representation matters!” shouted its co-director, Lee Unkrich, a reference to the characters and storyline of the film, which is centred on Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebration.
Early awards are spread around.
The first hour and a half of the Oscars ceremony honoured a wide variety of films.
“Phantom Thread,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s period romance about an obsessive dressmaker, won for costume design. Best hairstyling and makeup went to the World War II drama “Darkest Hour.” The Oscar for production design was given to “The Shape of Water.”
“Dunkirk,” Christopher Nolan’s layered war epic, collected Oscars for sound mixing, sound editing and film editing. “Blade Runner 2049” proved victorious in the visual effects category.
As expected, Ms Janney completed her awards-season winning streak.
“I did it all by myself,” Ms Janney said, arriving at the microphone, to prolonged applause. She then added, “Nothing is further from the truth,” and ran through a list of names at light speed.
“A Fantastic Woman,” from Chile, was named the best foreign film. Rita Moreno, who won a supporting actress Oscar in 1962 for “West Side Story,” presented the prize. In keeping with the telecast’s theme of looking back at celebrated performances, a clip highlighted Ms Moreno’s performance in “West Side Story.”
Netflix film wins the best documentary.
In a surprise, the Oscar for best documentary went to “Icarus,” a Netflix film about systematic Russian doping at the Olympics. (Russia was banned from the recent Pyeongchang Games, though some of its athletes were still allowed to compete.) It was Netflix’s first Oscar for a feature film, having won last year’s prize for best documentary short, for “White Helmets.”
The expected winner had been “Faces Places,” a lighter, more nuanced film about Agnès Varda — known as the grandmother of the French new wave — and the environmental photographer JR. Netflix mounted a lavish campaign for “Icarus,” raising eyebrows in the rather staid documentary filmmaking community.
Parts from NYTimes.com
