{"id":90346,"date":"2018-03-04T23:00:25","date_gmt":"2018-03-05T07:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/?p=90346"},"modified":"2018-03-16T08:15:40","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T15:15:40","slug":"2018-oscar-winners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/2018-oscar-winners\/","title":{"rendered":"2018 Oscar Winners"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following a year where Hollywood nearly self-destructed from countless scandal after scandal and huge cultural shifts, I suppose the fact that this year’s Oscars were largely boring and uneventful is something of a relief.
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The ultimate Best Picture winner, ‘The Shape of Water’, was perhaps a mild upset (‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ appeared to be the front-runner in recent weeks), but not really much of a shock. The film did lead the nominations this year overall and was always in the conversation as being the main rival for the top prize. In many ways, the movie was a very safe pick for the Academy voters. Its subject matter was not terribly controversial (unless you happen to have a peculiar bias against imaginary fish-men). It also scores some diversity points for having a Mexican director (who also won), even though most of the on-screen cast was white. It’s a well-crafted film that most viewers seemed to like. I doubt many will be upset about it winning Best Picture the way, for example, past winners such as ‘Crash’ or ‘Birdman’ are widely considered mistakes today. <\/p>\n

On the other hand, some of the other nominees this year had more complex and challenging material that might, at least arguably, be regarded as more worthy. Recent buzz in the past few days that ‘The Shape of Water’ and ‘Three Billboards’ would split the vote between them, allowing ‘Get Out’ to slip in as an underdog victor, seems pretty na\u00efve now. Despite the infusion of some younger and more diverse members over the past couple of years, the majority of the Academy voting body remains overwhelmingly older and white, and was likely averse to anything too edgy this year.<\/p>\n

Outside of Best Picture, the other top categories went exactly as they had been expected to, with zero surprises among the acting, directing, or writing awards. Jordan Peele landed Best Original Screenplay for ‘Get Out’, which is very often given as a token award to movies the Academy feels obligated to acknowledge but has no intention of letting win Best Picture.<\/p>\n

‘Call Me by Your Name’ won for Best Adapted Screenplay. This could be perceived as another token victory for a film that had no chance of winning Best Picture, while also serving as a career achievement prize for the 90-year-old James Ivory, who was three times previously nominated as Best Director (‘A Room with a View’, ‘Howards End’, and ‘The Remains of the Day’) but had never won an Oscar before.<\/p>\n

Most of the surprises of the evening came in the technical categories. Under cinematography, 13-time nominee Roger Deakins finally won an Oscar, for the visually dazzling ‘Blade Runner 2049’. The movie’s box office failure seemed to rule it out of contention of winning anything, but the film also picked up Best Visual Effects over flashier competition such as ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ and ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’. <\/p>\n

Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dunkirk’ beat out ‘Baby Driver’ for Best Sound Editing, which is a fucking travesty as far as I’m concerned. I can only imagine that not enough of the voters bothered to watch ‘Baby Driver’ or they would have no excuse for voting for anything else. Laughably, ‘Dunkirk’ also won Best Sound Mixing, even though Christopher Nolan’s mandate for all sound mixing is: “Turn everything up to 11, except dialogue, which should not be audible at all.”<\/p>\n

I am notoriously terrible at predicting Oscars, especially in the lesser categories. In all, I got 14 out of 24 right, which is respectable but not great. My wife, meanwhile, had her best year of Oscar predictions ever, correctly guessing 22 \u2013 only missing Live Action Short Film and Best Picture. (She fell for the ‘Get Out’ buzz.)<\/p>\n

Random Thoughts and Observations<\/h2>\n

Despite starting a half hour early at 8:00 PM ET this year (rather than 8:30), and despite host Jimmy Kimmel promising to reward the shortest acceptance speech with a jet-ski, the show still ran excessively long. When the scheduled end-time of 11:00 PM rolled around, we still had six categories and the In Memoriam reel left to go.<\/p>\n

The tradition of having live performances of all the Best Original Song nominees really needs to end. Nobody gives a shit. Nobody wants to sit through these turgid things. Just stop it.<\/p>\n

Likewise, the pointless montage reels felt even more painful than usual this year. I couldn’t even tell what the first one was supposed to be about. It was just a montage of random movie clips that had no discernible connection or theme. <\/p>\n

Hosting for the second time, Jimmy Kimmel did as good a job as he was able, considering that he’s a white man asked to host the Oscars during a time when practically all white men in Hollywood have been vilified as enemies of the human race. He made the requisite jokes acknowledging the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the MeToo and TimesUp movements without dwelling on them for too long. He also tried to be mindful of how slowly the show was moving even as he had little power to change that. He kept the opening comedy skit and his monologue very brief in order to get right to the first award, which was appreciated. <\/p>\n

In a subtle but noticeable change to the ceremony, the order of the Best Actor and Best Actress categories was switched, which has the effect of suggesting that the latter is more important. Last year’s Best Actor winner, Casey Affleck, who has suffered his own sexual misconduct scandal, wisely declined to attend the ceremony this year or present the Best Actress trophy, as is normally tradition. Instead, former Best Actress winners presented both the male and female categories. (I’m not sure whether last year’s Best Actress winner, Emma Stone, was omitted intentionally or not.)<\/p>\n

At the same time, all the voters sensitive to the MeToo movement appear to have forgotten that basketball legend Kobe Bryant (now an Oscar winner for Best Animated Short Film) has been accused of sexual assault. Figure that one out. <\/p>\n

Poking fun at last year’s presentation screw-up, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway returned to announce the Best Picture winner again this year, and (presumably) got through it without error. Again, is putting a famed lothario like Warren Beatty on stage really a great idea during the time of MeToo? What kind of mixed message is that?<\/p>\n

The gaudy jewel-encrusted stage was a real eyesore. Presenter Jane Fonda was completely on-point when she made a crack about it looking like one of the sets from ‘Barbarella’ (which, of course, she starred in).<\/p>\n

Was Maya Rudolph’s dress made out of a slanket? I don’t usually pay any attention to Oscar fashions, but what the hell was that?<\/p>\n

I’m not sure whether Gael Garcia Bernal actually sings in ‘Coco’, but based on his performance during the nominated song “Remember Me,” he should really not try to sing anything else ever again. <\/p>\n

In Best Animated Feature, a lesbian and a gay man won for a movie about Mexicans. I don’t follow Twitter. How much of a meltdown has Donald Trump had about that?<\/p>\n

Tiffany Haddish made the best joke of the evening in asking, “Are the Oscars too black now?”<\/p>\n

I get that Frances McDormand is very impassioned about many things, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of her manic, incoherent acceptance speech. Her speech at the Golden Globes was much the same.<\/p>\n

Best Picture<\/h2>\n