2018 Oscars: ‘Shape of Water’ wins Best Pic; Jordan Peele makes history
After one of the wildest awards seasons in years; a strange combination of rubber-stamped acting winners and a completely up in the air Best Picture race, Guillermo del Toro’s adult fairy tale The Shape of Water came out triumphant, winning Best Picture, Director, Score and Production Design.
The Shape of Water came into the Oscars with wins from the Producers Guild and Directors Guild and gives a lot of weight to how the preferential ballot can really derail a film with more wins from plurality-based ballots. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was a strong frontrunner on paper having beaten The Shape of Water at the Golden Globes and BAFTA.
With this win, we saw a handful of statistics and streaks fall. It broke the long-standing ‘rule’ that a film that doesn’t receive a Screen Actors Guild Cast nomination can’t win Best Picture. That has last for nearly a quarter of a century as the only film to overcome this was the very first one in the inaugural year of that category – Braveheart. It also killed two streaks with one stone; first Best Picture winner that was a December release and with a female lead. The last to do that was 2004’s Million Dollar Baby. The film also keeps the Telluride streak going; the last eight films that have won Best Picture premiered or showed at the festival. Amazingly, it managed all of this without an acting or a screenplay win, something that hasn’t been achieved since 1997’s Titanic.
del Toro became the third of the ‘Three Amigos’ to win Best Director. Along with Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity) and Alejandro G. Iñarrítu (Birdman, The Revenant), they make up four of the last five wins in that category.
It’s hard to say if the backlash that was generated against Three Billboards took root enough for it to lose but The Shape of Water had no less than three accusations of everything from ‘inspiration’ to outright plagiarism and it still won. Overall, the film was clearly less divisive than Three Billboards and, with a band of outsiders (a mute woman, a black woman, a gay man, a fish man) rising up against an evil white guy (and the Russians!) it might have spoken to Academy members in a socially and politically progressive way.
The four acting winners were mainstays of the awards season, winning every single televised precursor (Critics’ Choice, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, BAFTA) leading up to their Oscar wins – first in history. Plus, they all managed to do so without any of them winning a top-tier critics’ win (NBR, LA, NY, NSFC). Allison Janney, Supporting Actress winner for I, Tonya, joins Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Emma Stone, Sissy Spacek and Mary Steenburgen to became the sixth actress from The Help to win an Oscar. Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) joins Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Glenda Jackson, Jodie Foster, Vivien Leigh, Luise Rainer, Meryl Streep, Hilary Swank and Elizabeth Taylor as the newest member of the double Best Actress winners club. McDormand gave a rousing speech, encouraging every female nominee of the night to stand up be seen. “Look around,” she said. “We all have stories to tell and projects we need financing.” She went on to mention the ‘inclusion rider‘ contract clause in which an actor demands that diversity be included both in front of and behind the camera.
Both winners in the screenplay categories made history. Jordan Peele became the first black winner in Original Screenplay and at 89 James Ivory became the oldest Oscar winner ever, winning Adapted Screenplay for Call Me By Your Name. It was also the first time since 2011 that the screenplay winners were the only awards for their respective films.
The #MeToo movement was front and center, both as a part of host Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue as well as with the speeches from three of ousted sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein’s most high-profile accusers – Ashely Judd, Annabella Sciorra, and Salma Hayek Pinault. They introduced a superb segment highlighting the importance of diversity and intersectionality in film.
Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway returned after last year’s epic Best Picture envelope mixup (in which Dunaway announced La La Land as the winner when it was actually Moonlight) to announce Best Picture again. This time they got it right.
Robert Lopez (“Remember Me,” from Coco) became a double EGOT winner. He now has two Oscars, two Emmys, three Grammys and three Tony awards.
Roger Deakins, after 14 nominations and no wins, finally broke that losing streak to earn an Oscar for Cinematography for Blade Runner 2049. A similar (and even longer) drought was quenched last year when 21-time nominee Kevin O’Connell won Sound Mixing for Hacksaw Ridge.
Musical performances from all of the Oscar-nominated original songs, including Gael García Bernal, Mary J. Blige, Andra Day, Natalia LaFourcade, Miguel, Keala Settle, Sufjan Stevens (with St. Vincent, Chris Thile and Moses Sumney) and Common, all brought the house down or a tear to the eye.
In all, seven of the Best Picture nominees earned at least one award. Only The Post and Lady Bird went home empty-handed.
Here are the 2018 Oscar winners for the 90th Academy Awards.
Best Picture
THE SHAPE OF WATER
Guillermo del Toro and J. Miles Dale, Producers
Directing
THE SHAPE OF WATER
Guillermo del Toro
Actor in a Leading Role
GARY OLDMAN
Darkest Hour
Actress in a Leading Role
FRANCES MCDORMAND
Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri
Actor in a Supporting Role
SAM ROCKWELL
Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri
Actress in a Supporting Role
ALLISON JANNEY
I, Tonya
Writing (Original Screenplay)
GET OUT
Written by Jordan Peele
Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
Screenplay by James Ivory
Animated Feature Film
COCO
Lee Unkrich and Darla K. Anderson
Foreign Language Film
A FANTASTIC WOMAN
Chile
Documentary Feature
ICARUS
Bryan Fogel and Dan Cogan
Documentary (Short Subject)
HEAVEN IS A TRAFFIC JAM ON THE 405
Frank Stiefel
Music (Original Score)
THE SHAPE OF WATER
Alexandre Desplat
Music (Original Song)
REMEMBER ME
from Coco; Music and Lyric by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez
Film Editing
DUNKIRK
Lee Smith
Cinematography
BLADE RUNNER 2049
Production Design
THE SHAPE OF WATER
Production Design: Paul Denham Austerberry; Set Decoration: Shane Vieau and Jeff Melvin
Costume Design
PHANTOM THREAD
Mark Bridges
Makeup and Hairstyling
DARKEST HOUR
Sound Mixing
DUNKIRK
Mark Weingarten, Gregg Landaker and Gary A. Rizzo
Sound Editing
DUNKIRK
Richard King and Alex Gibson
Visual Effects
BLADE RUNNER 2049
John Nelson, Gerd Nefzer, Paul Lambert and Richard R. Hoover
Short Film (Animated)
DEAR BASKETBALL
Glen Keane and Kobe Bryant
Short Film (Live Action)
THE SILENT CHILD
Chris Overton and Rachel Shenton
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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