Hi Guys, as you probably know the 90th Oscars were held last night and a tonne of awards were given to the filmmakers of the very best of cinema in 2017. Now, as I mentioned in my introductory post I am student which means I don't have a lot of money and I also don't have much time on my hands to go out and watch movies as much as I would like to which I haven't been able to watch all of the nominees this year. However, I did want to voice my opinion on the awards from what I did see and even my thoughts on how the night turned out as well.
Now of course, the Oscars are a prestigious event in Hollywood that celebrate the best of cinema in the previous film year. This year there were a lot of great movies that went up for nominations and a few of these films ended up winning awards in several big categories. I don't think I'm going to be the only person to say that there were not a lot of big surprises at this year's Oscars and that may well be because of the various award shows that were held before the Oscars but that's not to say that winners were not well deserved. Now, I have not seen all of the nominees but just by watching the circulation of hype for each of the nominees over the past couple of months you can get a sense of why certain films have been nominated and of course, the past works of each of the nominees being an example of their talent.
The Nine Best Picture Nominees were obviously the main priority of the night but first I want to talk about some of the smaller categories such as the technical awards and animated and musical categories. Unfortunately I cannot talk about the nominees for Best Documentary Feature, Best Documentary - Short Subject, Best Live Action Short Film or Best Animated Short Film categories and all I can say about the Best Foreign Language Film is that I really like Loveless. I thought it was a really great film about grief and loss, and but I will also say that it's a very depressing film so just keep that in mind if you want to give it a watch. That's all I can really say about Best Foreign Language Film, I wish I could watch more but it's just a little hard given my current situation and I only got a chance to watch the film because of my university. Otherwise, I would have a lot less to say about Loveless so I'm grateful I got the chance to watch it.
Onto the categories that I can properly talk about now and give my full thoughts on. Right so I want to start with the category that gave Suicide Squad an Oscar win, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, because while I once again haven't seen any of the nominees, I can actually visually see the work of these artists onscreen from what I've seen in the promotional campaign. I think out of three nominees Darkest Hour is probably the most deserving of the award simply just because of the work that went into Gary Oldman's Churchill makeup which only enhanced since performance, he looks like Churchill, and that's not to take anything away from the other nominees but I can see why it won. Although, I will say this...how on Earth did The Shape of Water not get nominated for this award? The creature in that film looked amazing! I was shocked when it wasn't nominated but I digress. A similar award is Best Costume Design and while I think a lot of credit should go to the costumes in Beauty and the Beast I think that if a movie about clothes maker does not win something is just wrong.
For Editing I would have loved to have seen Baby Driver get the win, it was one of my favourite films of last year, and I thought the editing in the film was amazing but I can see why Dunkirk won. The film was also very precise in its editing but it also relied on it's editing just as much with the way that Nolan orchestrated the film with the different perspectives of the battle. I also thought that Baby Driver should have won for Best Sound Mixing for how precise it was and how in tune it was with the music and the actions of the film but once again, Dunkirk pipped Baby Driver to the post. Maybe it's just a prestigious thing, I loved Dunkirk but I think Baby Driver should have at least one that award but I'm not too annoyed by it because Dunkirk was very well edited.
However, if I do have one quibble with the Oscars this year was the Best Visual Effects Award. Blade Runner 2049 was one of my favourite movies of the year and I think that it looked incredible which is in large part due to the great Roger Deakins who finally won his well deserved win for Best Cinematography but I thought War for the Planet of the Apes should have won this award. The entire trilogy of Apes films has had spectacular visual effects and they have lost their award every time. I thought that the Apes looked their best in War so I'm quite honestly lost for words how they did not win Best Visual Effects, because the apes do not look in any way artificial, whereas Blade Runner 2049 looked amazing but it also had special effects that were meant to look artificial. The Apes in War were as believable as any human being in the movie for the entire runtime of the film. I loved the effects in Blade Runner but Apes was just superior feat in my opinion. As I said, Roger Deakins won Best Cinematography which is long overdue but I also thought that both Dunkirk and The Shape of Water looked fantastic. For Best Production Design I thought Blade Runner 2049 had a great shot at winning this award but The Shape of Water's win is very well deserved, it looked very Guillermo, his fingerprints were all over that movie and that's even within the production design.
For Best Original Score, I thought Dunkirk had a great shot at winning, Hans Zimmer's score in that film really puts you in the middle of the conflict and it is so intense but Alexandre Desplat's score for The Shape of Water is just wonderful, I could never argue against it. Unfortunately John Williams wasn't going to win this year as much as I love his score for The Last Jedi. While the music of The Greatest Showman is in infectious, I think Coco's win for Remember Me was also very well justified. It's such a beautiful song and while I think This Is Me is great, I just think there is more meaning behind Remember Me and it truly brings a tear to the eye. After what I just said about Coco you won't be surprised to hear me say that the right film won. However, I will also say that the nominees for Best Animated Feature was off this year. I mean, The Boss Baby instead of The Lego Batman Movie? That's another snub of just the nominees.
Going into the Oscars I had a few hopes and one of them was that Get Out would win Best Original Screenplay and I am so happy that it did. Jordan Peele is so deserving of that award, for everything that it said, for everything that it did and the fact that it came from the mind of a first time filmmaker is just amazing. It certainly had my vote to say the least, but I also think that it would have been great had The Big Sick won the award too. Many people will say that Logan was robbed of Best Adapted Screenplay and while I haven't seen any of the other nominees I still don't think that it probably deserved to win and Logan was one of my favourite movies of last year. I have not seen Call Me by Your Name but from the groundswell of support for the film I can't argue with the results. The fact that Logan was even nominated for an award is an achievement in and of itself, and it is a big step forward for Superhero films. Although...I would have been pretty happy had Logan would the award.
The acting categories are tough for me to talk about as out of all the nominees I have only seen two of the films and although I would have been delighted to have seen Daniel Kaluuya or Sally Hawkins or Richard Jenkins walk away with their respective awards I did not think any of them would have won the awards that they were nominated for. What I said at the beginning of this post was that I was not really too shocked about the results this year and where that really came to play with the acting categories as there had been so much conversation about all of the winning performances that it was pretty clear who was going to win. I am so happy Gary Oldman won his Oscar, even if it was more of a life time achievement award as he is one of my favourite actors and his performance looks incredible in Darkest Hour. And the same can be said for Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri and Allison Janney in I, Tonya but the real story here is Frances McDormand's acceptance speech...that was incredible. What a great moment. We may not have got a La La Land/Moonlight moment like last year but that speech made the night.
Now, Guillermo...so deserving. I have admittedly not been a big fan of all of Guillermo's films. I tend to like them from the ones that I have seen. I'm afraid to say that I haven't seen either The Devil's Backbone or Pan's Labyrinth but they're on my watch list. However, I fell in love with The Shape of Water and the fact that it won Best Director and Best Picture makes me so happy because it was truly one of my favourite films of last year. Guillermo achieved a lot with this movie and you can see it in his direction as a lot of the films relies upon you believing the relationship of Eliza and the Creature, two characters that have no dialogue and you believe in their relationship wholeheartedly and that's on top of the rest of the film that was wonderful too. It was a two way race between The Shape of Water and Three Billboards and while I have not seen Three Billboards I think that the exclusion of Martin McDonough from the Best Director category showed the Academy's hand at who would win Best Picture ultimately. I also would have loved it had Get Out shocked the world and won but I was rooting for The Shape of Water to win the entire night.
Overall, I think the Oscars this year was great. I didn't agree with all of the wins or even necessarily all of the nominations but I think that a lot of winners were well deserved and a lot of the films that did win that did not necessarily gain a lot of attention may now get the attention that they deserved. I know that I'm very excited to catch up and watch all of the films that earned nominations this year to see the greatness that was onscreen last year. Three Billboards is on the top of my watch list this year. Hope you all had a lot of fun with the Oscars this year and that you may have won your Oscar pools. Hopefully next year will be just as great of a year for cinema if not even better. Here's to the year in cinema ahead of us and enjoy a picture of Guillermo with his very deserved awards.
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