'Wonder Woman' stumbles, 'Get Out' surprises at Oscar nominations

Nominations for Hollywood’s highest honours were announced yesterday


AFP And Reuters January 24, 2018
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Wonder Woman failed to conquer Oscar voters on Tuesday despite riding to one of the biggest box office hits of 2017 on a wave of female empowerment, making it one of the biggest snubs for Hollywood’s highest honours.

The Warner Bros movie, featuring Gal Gadot as the sword-wielding Wonder Woman, was the first stand-alone female superhero film since 2005 and earned some $825 million globally, making its film-maker Patty Jenkins, 46, the highest-grossing female director in Hollywood.

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But at Tuesday’s Oscar nominations, Jenkins was left off the director’s race and the film was snubbed in the best picture category, despite nods for other movies about women and made by women.

Instead, it was Guillermo del Toro’s surreal fantasy romance The Shape of Water that led the Oscar nominations with 13 nods.

Speaking to Reuters, del Toro said that despite the omission of Wonder Woman at the Oscars, the impact of the film was “undeniable.”

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“Not only did (Wonder Woman) break this archaic notion that this grand superhero-sized myth was done for ‘the boys,’ but it delivered it at a level of excellency that is a high watermark,” the film-maker said.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has traditionally disdained big action and superhero movies in favor of smaller art-house fare, like last year’s Oscar champion Moonlight and this year’s dark comedy Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which landed seven nods.

Since 1990, only the 2003 fantasy epic Lord of the Rings; The Return of the King snapped that trend to win the top Oscar honor. Sci-fi movie Avatar, still the biggest box office movie of all time, received a best picture nomination in 2010 but lost out to The Hurt Locker.

SUCCESS FOR GET OUT

This year’s surprises include four nominations - including best picture, and best actor for Daniel Kaluuya - for Jordan Peele’s Get Out, in which an African-American man finds himself trapped at his white girlfriend’s house with her strange family.

The $5 million horror movie from Universal Pictures became a box office success with more than $250 million globally and became a talking point around modern day race relations in America.

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“I think that there’s a piece of the black experience that is communicated in the film and through Daniel’s performance that people of color recognise and haven’t seen and that people not of color needed to see as well,” Peele told Reuters.

Veteran actor Christopher Plummer, 88, was also a surprise contender in the supporting actor race for Sony Pictures’ Getty kidnapping film All the Money in the World. Plummer boarded the movie a month before its release, replacing actor Kevin Spacey because of sexual misconduct allegations.

Plummer stepped in after Spacey was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple men. Spacey issued an apology for the first reported incident, involving actor Anthony Rapp.

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“Everything has happened so quickly of late that I am still a trifled stunned but excited by it all,” Plummer said in a written statement of his nomination.

James Franco was excluded from the best actor race for The Disaster Artist after facing accusations of sexual misconduct earlier this month following his Golden Globe win.

Franco said the accusations were “not accurate.” He lost out on Sunday at the Screen Actors Guild awards to Gary Oldman for Darkest Hour.

Other snubs included Steven Spielberg in the directing race for press freedom movie The Post, and its star Tom Hanks. Mudbound was left out of best picture and its film-maker, Dee Rees, was also excluded from the directing race, but she landed a nod for adapted screenplay.

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Here are all the nominations:

Best Picture

Call Me by Your Name


Darkest Hour


Dunkirk


Get Out


Lady Bird


Phantom Thread


The Post


The Shape of Water


Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri


Directing


Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk


Jordan Peele, Get Out


Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird


Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread


Guillermo del Toro, Shape of Water


Actor in a Leading Role


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.


Actress in a Leading Role


Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water


Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri


Margot Robbie, I, Tonya


Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird


Meryl Streep, The Post


Actress in a Supporting Role


Mary J Blige, Mudbound


Allison Janney, I, Tonya


Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird


Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread


Octavia Spencer, The Shape of Water


Actor in a Supporting Role


Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project


Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri


Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water


Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the World


Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri


Adapted Screenplay


Call Me by Your Name


The Disaster Artist


Logan


Molly’s Game


Mudbound


Original Screenplay


The Big Sick


Get Out


Lady Bird


The Shape of Water


Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri


Animated Feature Film


The Boss Baby


The Breadwinner


Coco


Ferdinand


Loving Vincent


Foreign Language Film


A Fantastic Woman (Chile)


The Insult (Lebanon)


Loveless (Russia)


Body and Soul (Hungary)


The Square (Sweden)


Documentary Feature


Abacus: Small Enough to Jail


Faces/Places


Icarus


Last Men in Aleppo


Strong Island


Cinematography


Blade Runner: 2049


Darkest Hour


Dunkirk


Mudbound


The Shape of Water


Film Editing


Baby Driver


Dunkirk


I, Tonya


The Shape of Water


Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri


Production Design


Beauty and the Beast


Blade Runner: 2049


Darkest Hour


Dunkirk


The Shape of Water


Costume Design


Beauty and the Beast


Darkest Hour


Phantom Thread


The Shape of Water


Victoria & Abdul


Makeup and Hairstyling


Darkest Hour


Victoria & Abdul


Wonder


Original Score


Dunkirk


Phantom Thread


The Shape of Water


Star Wars: The Last Jedi


Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri


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


Sound Editing


Baby Driver


Blade Runner 2049


Dunkirk


The Shape of Water


Star Wars: The Last Jedi


Sound Mixing


Baby Driver


Blade Runner 2049


Dunkirk


The Shape of Water


Star Wars: The Last Jedi


Visual Effects


Blade Runner 2049


Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2


Kong: Skull Island


Star Wars: The Last Jedi


War for the Planet of the Apes


Animated Short Film


Dear Basketball


Garden Party


Lou


Negative Space


Revolting Rhymes


Live Action Short Film


DeKalb Elementary


The Eleven O’Clock


My Nephew Emmett


The Silent Child


Watu Wote: All of Us


Documentary Short Subject


Edith and Eddie


Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405


Heroin(e)


Knife Skills


Traffic Stop



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