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| Andy Serkis & Tiffany Haddish |
1. I was genuinely thinking CMBYN would miss in Best Picture, so it's a relief to see it nominated.
2. What was the deal with The Post? It's so obviously up Oscar's alley, it got decent reviews, and it has perhaps the most resonant message of this year, and yet only managed two nominations? Someone point me in the direction of a think piece, as Phantom Thread managed to rebound on the "released too late" front, so why couldn't this?
3. The Shape of Water feels like this is its best sucker punch to Three Billboards so far this season (with McDonagh missing), but it's still a movie about a woman having sex with a fish, so I am not counting it our Best Picture winner just yet...also I continue to have a feeling Get Out could surprise.
4. If you think about Daniel Kaluuya's nomination objectively for two seconds (he's young, hot, an unknown, and in the "straight leading role against more distinctive supporting characters"), it seems odd that he ever gained this traction. Kaluuyahah, indeed (and everyone who is bagging on Tiffany Haddish this morning needs to get a life-I thought she was funny, particularly her Dunkirk aside, and she had to watch her Oscar chances slip away so give her a break on the pronunciations).
5. Then again, this Best Actor lineup is going to end up being a 1975/1994-style lineup, isn't it? Weak year, relatively uninspired list of nominees (Denzel gets in again for a movie that people have already forgotten existed...even though he's actually very interesting in the part). I'm still surprised they didn't throw us for a complete loop like Gyllenhaal or Bale or something here since there was room for it.
6. Meryl gets fifth place, but adds on #21 since we don't see the vote totals. That Best Actress lineup is going to look as set as 2006 in hindsight, but really the precursors got creative where Oscar chose not to do so.
7. First doubly-nominated film in Supporting Actor since Bugsy, though I'm stunned people didn't go for at least one CMBYN actor.
8. Octavia Spencer is going to get nominated again before Viola Davis does.
9. Well done to Lesley Manville, our only No Globes/No SAG nominee this year. She used to be married to Gary Oldman, you know.
10. I will try not to get on my soap box too hard about unearned nominees, but it is hard to imagine how someone saw Mary J. Blige in Mudbound and thought "that was one of the year's five best performances." Was it just the music star factor, or does someone actually think what she was doing was "fine acting"...because if so I worry for the acting branch?
11. Kumail Nanjiani is super funny, and his Twitter reactions to his nomination were my favorite of the morning.
12. I guess the writer's branch didn't get the memo on Phantom Thread.
13. Ugh-I had so wanted to avoid seeing Logan, but I guess I have to do so now. Also, superhero movies inch ever closer to their first Best Picture citation (again, weird that if they liked it here they couldn't get momentum for Patrick Stewart).
14. The Oscars sure avoided a landmine on James Franco, didn't they? It was probably the stories that broke on him at the last minute that cost him here, but I think it might more have been that actors don't like someone being honored who makes a mockery of acting.
15. Congratulations to Lebanon on their first nomination! I always love when countries break through that barrier! I have four movies left to see here, as I don't live in NY/LA, but according to my local theaters/Netflix account, I should have three seen by mid-March. Get on it, The Insult.
16. Jane may have been the biggest snub of the morning, made all the more disappointing by the fact that it's fantastic, but I haven't seen any of these nominees so I can't totally bag on the snub (though I doubt very seriously that it gets upstaged by all five).
17. Kobe Bryant has more Oscar nominations than Myrna Loy, Donald Sutherland, Sergio Leone, and Jean-Luc Godard, because sure.
18. My biggest disappointment of the morning is that In a Heartbeat wasn't nominated. It would have been such a great breakthrough for the filmmakers to be cited and it's SO GOOD (check it out, it's short)...I truly hope it's one of the "additional" films they highlight in the ShortsHD roundup.
19. Jonny Greenwood finally breaks through for the Best Score branch.
20. It is so, so hilarious to me that the music branch even got the memo on The Post...but still found room for John Williams because they can't help themselves. This is his fifth citation for the Star Wars series, and he'll certainly lose-is Williams a good sport like Meryl, or does he just stay home? The composers never get as good of seats as the actors, so I don't actually know the answer here.
21. All of those song nominees feel like the performances should be good on Oscar night, even if I don't agree with all of them. I didn't notice until this morning that Diane Warren is cited...can she get a Kevin O'Connell-style movement going, or does she lose to Pasek & Paul?
22. The 5/5 matchup in Sound means I have an even harder task of explaining the difference between Sound Mixing & Sound Editing to lay fans of the Oscars this year.
23. Hoyte von Hoytema FINALLY gets his nomination. Is it he or Laustsen who is Deakins' biggest competition this year? And also, does anyone else feel like this is Deakins year? I've got that vibe.
24. I wish I was more excited about Rachel Morrison breaking that glass ceiling, but Mudbound is by far the least inspired of an otherwise stellar lineup, and I can think of a dozen movies that had better cinematography without batting an eye. Still cool that a woman finally was cited, but man do I wish they'd actually deserved it.
25. Beauty and the Beast's sets were about as inspired as a Disneyland ride, because that's essentially what they were.
26. I genuinely love Jacqueline Durran, but neither of those nominations were earned, particularly against something like Wonderstruck or The Lost City of Z.
27. In what universe does I, Tonya deserve an editing nomination (the skate sequences alone should have disqualified it), or Three Billboards, for that matter, which has literally no editing panache
28. Still, well-done to Baby Driver as those are all deserved Oscar citations.
29. War for the Planet of the Apes won't win, but at some point we're giving Andy Serkis an honorary Oscar, right?
30. With Kong: Skull Island breaking through, I officially have seven OVP films that I need to see still...otherwise we could have write-ups shortly (and yes, when I return from vacation we'll get back into 2015). Also, I will start knocking out the nominated films' reviews as soon as I'm done with vacation, as I know I have a few (including at least three Best Picture nominees) that I haven't brought up here on the blog yet.
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