'Wonder Woman' stumbles, 'Get Out' surprises at Oscar nominations
PHOTO: FILE
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.
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.”
“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.
“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.
“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.
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