Special Event: Academy Awards 2018
March 4, 2018 5:23 PM - Subscribe

It's the Academy Awards on ABC! Who wins, who loses, who gives a funny speech! Vox: winners -- Vulture: Red Carpet -- Deadline: Liveblog.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (114 comments total)
 
Decent monologue, Sam Rockwell gave a good acceptance speech!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:49 PM on March 4, 2018


I am here, but are we alone? I was worried at first that they were dealing with #metoo by being ironic, but he pulled it back to a decent finish in the intro. Rockwell was great but tbh almost anyone could have done his roll there, it was pretty blunt. I think that Woody had a much lighter touch and did great stuff with his short roll.
posted by Iteki at 5:52 PM on March 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'm sure there will be plenty to say about the stars and performances and awards, but right now I'm going to marvel about the stage. Holy crow, the stage and sets are magnificent. Mary J's song was amazing: the projections, the lighting, the set...*kisses fingertips*...I want to live in them.
posted by Elly Vortex at 5:53 PM on March 4, 2018 [3 favorites]


I'm not watching, but I don't think the award should have gone to Rockwell. (I liked 3 Billboards but not very much.) I think Dafoe should have won best supporting actor for Florida Project, hands down.
posted by Catblack at 5:53 PM on March 4, 2018 [5 favorites]


Yea the stage is astooooounding, big damned geode :)
I tell you they could save a little time by making these supercut montages quite a bit shorter, this covered about 5 themes and a couple hundred films. Oh, OK it's a 90-years thing, but still.
posted by Iteki at 5:56 PM on March 4, 2018


Man, they're baggin' on Christopher Plummer!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:57 PM on March 4, 2018


I like how Vox puts the winner in bold plus ***WINNER. They must get some shitty helpmail.
posted by rhizome at 5:59 PM on March 4, 2018


I like how the one sound guy laughed at the other thanking his partner. It was like they were both eleven year old nerds and he was like "hee, you fancy a girl!". They were like the Stranger Things kids 40 years on.
posted by Iteki at 6:04 PM on March 4, 2018


Lupita's glasses! ❤️❤️❤️
posted by duffell at 6:09 PM on March 4, 2018 [5 favorites]


Is the "we are immigrants" and "we stand with the dreamers" a shout out to the Dreamers kids?
posted by Iteki at 6:10 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


I can’t imagine it wasn’t.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 6:12 PM on March 4, 2018


I do appreciate the reduction in schtick.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:20 PM on March 4, 2018


Rita Moreno is wearing the same dress she wore the year she won her Oscar!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:22 PM on March 4, 2018 [7 favorites]


Kimmel had a goldfish cracker stuck in his hair.
posted by brujita at 6:33 PM on March 4, 2018


Set design is lovely this year.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 6:34 PM on March 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


KOBE BRYANT WON AN OSCAR? Clearly I didn't pay enough attention to animated short!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:38 PM on March 4, 2018


I enjoyed watching the mic telescope uuuuuup to Kobe
posted by duffell at 6:41 PM on March 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


I didn't pay attention what is this song from and who is this lovely boy?
posted by Iteki at 6:45 PM on March 4, 2018


I'm thinking Kobe will win the shortest speech
posted by St. Peepsburg at 6:46 PM on March 4, 2018


Slate has livefeeds of the best tweets.
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:46 PM on March 4, 2018


I googled, it's cool. I got confused and thought it was supposed to be Cat Stevens.
posted by Iteki at 6:47 PM on March 4, 2018


Iteki - was it "Mystery of Love"? If so that was Sufjan Stevens singing, and the reaction at the end was Timothee Chalamet.

The bar i'm in just had a few new people come in who are talking and taking selfies and it is interrupting the ceremony and i may have yelled at them i am old
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:50 PM on March 4, 2018


Ah, bar, it's ten to four in the morning here and I have to go to work soon.
posted by Iteki at 6:51 PM on March 4, 2018


Wow, people got onboard with that very fast, I would have been like "whaaa? who that? go away, what are you doing?"
posted by Iteki at 7:08 PM on March 4, 2018


I love Tiffany Haddish so much.
posted by duffell at 7:13 PM on March 4, 2018


Good to see Kobe win in the year of #MeToo.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 7:14 PM on March 4, 2018 [6 favorites]


White people so white they got manbuns!
posted by Iteki at 7:17 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


Hot dog cannon? NOOOOO!
posted by brujita at 7:25 PM on March 4, 2018


We had some weird sound crossover with someone shouting "shut up" and "you did not just allow a member of the public to call you (me?) a fuckhead". WHAT?!
posted by Iteki at 7:26 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


I'm very confused, I don't know who that is, I thought it was Tina Fey.
posted by Iteki at 7:27 PM on March 4, 2018


Ivory's shirt, tell me about it.
posted by mwhybark at 7:34 PM on March 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


Seriously, did noone else get that audio thing? It was deffo from the US cos I'm watching a Swedish feed.
posted by Iteki at 7:35 PM on March 4, 2018


Actually, I'm wondering if it was from Three Billboards now. Doh. Hahaha.
posted by Iteki at 7:37 PM on March 4, 2018


Rockwell was great but tbh almost anyone could have done his roll there, it was pretty blunt.

I get that some people are critical regarding Three Billboards, but this is really unfair to Rockwell. He's a great actor and did a great job. I personally thought Dafoe should have won, but the idea that Rockwell was completely replaceable is just silly.
posted by Sangermaine at 7:40 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


YAY JORDAN PEELE!
posted by rewil at 7:43 PM on March 4, 2018 [3 favorites]


Nicole Kidman's dress is hideous.
posted by brujita at 7:52 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


also: we took a crack at an Artw-style complete run at the headliner award noms and got 'em all in, more or less, except for Get Out, due to resistance to the genre, as perfect as the genre is for the film.

The movies that stuck with me were Dunkirk and Shape of Water. Dunkirk, to my surprise, got better the more I thought about it, and Shape of Water did not reveal anything new to me, formally, as I turned it over in my mind. I fucking LOVED it in the theater! Inversions and reversals and an incredible mise-en-scene! But, maybe like much of Gaiman's work, pondering it did not make it much deeper. The one thing that occurred to me that deepened the experience was that Michael Shannon's character, obviously the film's real monster, is deliberately intended to evoke Frankenstein's monster, with his sewn and corrupting body parts. Which is still great! I still love the film!

But Dunkirk just stuck in my head, sticks in my head. I think I maybe actually have actual beef with it, like, I disagree with what I can discern of its political viewpoint, but I can't say for sure. Which is to say I can't summarize and dismiss the film, and I can't stop thinking about it. For me, as an individual, this is because the film is largely independent of dialog. It is nearly a silent film. Silent film, for me, is the pinnacle of cinematic formalist acheivement. Seeing Nolan cross and reinvent the form with huge contemporary spectacle was stunning. The fact that he chose to do so in the lionization and memorialization of a terrible defeat that required an empire to engage civilians, at the cost of civilian lives and capital, well, I literally cannot parse his political viewpoint, and that makes the film deeper and more complex.
posted by mwhybark at 7:52 PM on March 4, 2018 [3 favorites]


I love the color of Kidman's dress but that is definitely where things stop

I do want to know, though; are the weird hip things giant pockets? If so, that makes things a little better
posted by Hermione Granger at 7:54 PM on March 4, 2018


Iteki, yes, that was indeed a line from "Three Billboards," now that you mention it.
posted by mwhybark at 7:55 PM on March 4, 2018


Hold up Kobe won an Oscar?

Bruh no thank you
posted by Hermione Granger at 7:56 PM on March 4, 2018 [3 favorites]


I liked her dress.
Also.... Get Out was amazing but not Oscar winner imo... It subverted and drew from sci fi but not original. Why not Greta.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 7:57 PM on March 4, 2018


Those Crystal Oscars are gorgeous
posted by St. Peepsburg at 7:59 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


YESSSS COCO!!!!!!! Best original song!!!!!! I have been sobbing over Coco all weekend
posted by Hermione Granger at 8:03 PM on March 4, 2018


Get Out was amazing but not Oscar winner imo...
If they'd kept the original ending and nixed the "funny" friend it would have been a better movie. But really depressing.

The supporting categories are always the strongest imho. So hard to choose a favorite.
posted by fshgrl at 8:05 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


Sufjan was robbed!
posted by queen_mob at 8:06 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


Eddie vedder sang a Tom petty song 😢
posted by St. Peepsburg at 8:12 PM on March 4, 2018


There is a growing rumble that LADY BIRD is basically a whitewashed REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES. GET OUT was the proper choice.

Sufjan had the better song, but was kind of a long shot.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:12 PM on March 4, 2018 [3 favorites]


"These four men and Greta Gerwig" A++++++
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:14 PM on March 4, 2018 [9 favorites]


Eddie did appear to have good audio in his earholes and stayed in tune, let us note
posted by mwhybark at 8:14 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


I am LIVING for the direct call outs of "here's the name of the only woman nominated in this particular category".
posted by Hermione Granger at 8:14 PM on March 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


Now, Greta Gerwig for.DIRECTOR is a different story.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:15 PM on March 4, 2018


So has anyone seen Lady Bird in this thread? I've been avoiding because I am just over teen coming of age movies. Is it worth it or is it just Serious Juno?
posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:17 PM on March 4, 2018


I wanna marry Helen Mirren and Jane Fonda
posted by Hermione Granger at 8:21 PM on March 4, 2018


Awkward transition by Fonda
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:22 PM on March 4, 2018


Helen Mirren is my errything.
posted by Iteki at 8:22 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


C'mon Daniel
posted by St. Peepsburg at 8:24 PM on March 4, 2018


Noooooo Gary Oldman! Well it's overdue I guess
posted by St. Peepsburg at 8:25 PM on March 4, 2018


Bah, Gary did better work in Sid and Nancy and Fifth Element. As a dear friend noted on a Nicole Kidman win years ago, "putty nose wins!"
posted by mwhybark at 8:27 PM on March 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


Lady Bird was a wonderful movie, but I may be biased because I have basically the sea teenage daughter living in my house. Definitely worth seeing.
posted by GuyZero at 8:36 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


I love the switch between "whee, I'm so excited" and "sit down, school's in". What, pray tell, is an inclusion rider?
posted by Iteki at 8:38 PM on March 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


Or is it "writer"?
posted by delight at 8:40 PM on March 4, 2018


JFC Warren Beatty how on Earth

Why this
posted by Hermione Granger at 8:41 PM on March 4, 2018


I understood it that it was a contract rider? But what it might mean is perhaps yet to be revealed....? Also is Beatty not famously metooish?
posted by Iteki at 8:44 PM on March 4, 2018


"What, pray tell, is an inclusion rider?"

It's a stipulation in your contract that X% of the crew has to be women, or minorities, or locally hired, or whatever is appropriate for the movie you're making. Like if you were making a Hollywood movie set in Kenya, you might have an inclusion rider demanding that 50% of the crew be Kenyan and 80% of the speaking parts outside the marquee cast be Kenyan, or something like that. Headline-name stars have the power to demand inclusion riders when they sign on to projects.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:44 PM on March 4, 2018 [15 favorites]


A rider is a contract addendum where you specify working conditions or requirements. So it's basically a contractual requirement for diversity in some way.
posted by GuyZero at 8:45 PM on March 4, 2018


I have misjudged Oscar this year. I did not think it was possible that a film which includes a Communist spy as an inspirational hero who sacrifices himself for love and science could ever win this award. I am moved.
posted by mwhybark at 8:48 PM on March 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


Well I'll see you all back here for the Emmys, when the 90th Oscars are up for the Special Event award for set design. I'm glad I noticed it early on, and enjoyed it the whole time!

I'm also glad there was an actual jet ski (although in my house we call them "boatercycles")
posted by Elly Vortex at 8:52 PM on March 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


Every year I say I am not staying up for it, but every year FOMO get's me. This was terribly dull and I shouldn't have staged up till 6am. The Swedish commentators were especially dreadful. You however were all delightful company, so thanks for that and see youse next year probably! Off to work with me.
posted by Iteki at 8:58 PM on March 4, 2018


Ah. Oh well. I wasn't that keen on the del Toro film, especially as it put me off fish and chips for a while afterwards. Wanted it to go to one of Get Out (which was superb and near-perfect), Three Billboards (for dark plausibilities, and the non-twee and downbeatingly realistic ending) or Dunkirk (which, apart from the last 20 minutes collapsing into pseudo-Brexit-nationalistic twaddle was Nolan's best since Inception). Still, those three won other awards on the night, and Frances did a Frances speech, so there was that.
posted by Wordshore at 9:03 PM on March 4, 2018


And the Best Picture Oscar goes to...a movie no one is going to remember in a year or so.

I mean, "Shape of Water" isn't bad. It's good. It's interesting. It's just also not new or really very memorable in any way. It's a more sci-fi take on "Amelie," but "Amelie" is still fresher and more delightful. I really don't get how it got all this award love.

Meanwhile, gay men of ages ranging from teen to seniors will be talking about and loving "Call Me By Your Name" for years and years. Because it works equally as an opening for younger folks to the feelings they're coming to experience, and to older guys as wistful nostalgia either for what was or what might have been. However I look at it, this feels like a truly important film.

I knew "Call Me By Your Name" wouldn't win, but I was hoping at the least it would lose to "Dunkirk," the only movie among the Best Picture nominees to truly stretch the boundaries of how cinema works. It's one of the most "experiential" things I've ever seen, and quite possibly the best "war movie" I've seen. It's designed to put you IN the action, to make you FEEL it rather than think about it, or contemplate a story or a plot about it. It grabs you in the guts and doesn't let go.
posted by dnash at 9:10 PM on March 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


I was hoping DUNKIRK would get Best Score, personally. The droney parts were subtly creeping me out all through most of the film, and then those glorious major chords when Kenneth Branagh saw all the civilian boats were almost tactile in their relief.

Am going to reconsider going to the "movie-lovers bar" in Williamsburg again next year. Another set of very drunk people were acting up during the last three awards; including one woman who got Very Opinionated about things. When Frances McDormand won, she was elated, but paused in the middle of her celebrating to suddenly turn on a guy two stools down the bar from me and holler at him, "YOU'VE NEVER BEEN RAPED IN YOUR LIFE!" Neither he, his girlfriend, three other bystanders, nor I knew what had prompted that outburst and we spent most of the commercial break after asking each other "....the fuck was that about?" Then all during Guillermo del Toro's speech for Best Picture, she kept loudly complaining that the plot to SHAPE OF WATER was just a rip-off of SPLASH.

(P.S. to dnash: it won't just be gay men who carry a torch for "Call Me By Your Name". I'm neither and I was moved by it, in ways I'm still continuing to discover.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:29 PM on March 4, 2018


Sorry to say this, but Brexit-y nationalistic twaddle is exactly why Dunkirk shouldn't have won, and I am glad it didn't.

Personally, I'm kind of glad Shape of Water won because it includes a female masturbation scene not designed for the male gaze, which is a weirdly radical thing to put on the big screen in 2018. The character's muteness and the actress' perfectly lovely but not Hollywood stunning good looks is even more radical. So this award makes sense in the year of #metoo, for me.

(If the Oscars were about the quality of the actual films, I'd probably have a different opinion, but I view the entire ceremony as more of a cultural signifier than a literal vote for the absolute best work in each category. Sometimes the politics matches up with the art, but I don't always expect it to.)
posted by xyzzy at 9:46 PM on March 4, 2018 [9 favorites]


Not pockets, a huge bow.
posted by brujita at 10:41 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


EmpressCallipygos, FWIW, my Cubana wife who grew up in coastal Orange County California has been ranting about how Shape of Water was a direct retread of Splash since we saw it. She has a near-perfect plot-outcome prediction record from a five-minute first-act eyeballing; my pet name for her is the "Script Doctor." I, for one, shan't argue the point.
posted by mwhybark at 10:53 PM on March 4, 2018


If we are mentioning dresses can I note that both Leslie Mann and Zendaya looked dreamy.
posted by fshgrl at 10:57 PM on March 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


I kept waiting for something "fantastic" to happen during The Shape of Water, but it was annoyingly predictable. Magic jazz hands are boring. I enjoy a good love story, but this wasn't one. Jazz Hands Merman had zero agency. The neighbor should have won best supporting.
posted by Brocktoon at 4:22 AM on March 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


So happy Shape of Water won, totally didn't expect that, figured it would be Dunkirk. Nolan is something of Hollywood institution, no? While Del Toro is the oddball misfit, who belongs there just the same.

It was a beautiful film, the sort of dreamy, awkward adult fairy tale that Del Toro does so well.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:04 AM on March 5, 2018


I'm OK that Shape won even though it's probably not the best of the nominated films. Del Toro is one of my favorite directors and it's great to see him finally get some awards.

I'm glad that there was so few films that seemed obviously engineered as generic Oscar-bait this year. Darkest Hour seemed to be the only one that fit that mold. The rest were all very personal works by singular directors.
posted by octothorpe at 5:16 AM on March 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'm glad that there was so few films that seemed obviously engineered as generic Oscar-bait this year. Darkest Hour seemed to be the only one that fit that mold.

What about The Post? That felt like Standard Steven Spielberg Oscar-Bait Model #103.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:29 AM on March 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


FWIW, my Cubana wife who grew up in coastal Orange County California has been ranting about how Shape of Water was a direct retread of Splash since we saw it.

I'm presuming that at least she isn't drunkenly shouting these rants to strangers in a bar....(I can kinda see it, yeah, but I'd say this is kind of like a "My Sweet Lord"/"He's So Fine" type of accidental echo, where the idea is in your head but you don't realize that it had been planted there.)

I'm very happy with both screenwriting awards. Call Me by Your Name was lovely, and Get Out blew me away. The entire bar erupted in cheers when it won - biggest cheer of the night.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:34 AM on March 5, 2018


What about The Post? That felt like Standard Steven Spielberg Oscar-Bait Model #103.


Oh yeah, you're totally right. I'd forgotten totally about that film. I haven't seen it but from the trailers it seems like Spielberg running on autopilot.
posted by octothorpe at 6:53 AM on March 5, 2018


Now I kind of want to live somewhere where bars are showing the Oscars.
posted by octothorpe at 6:55 AM on March 5, 2018


Now I kind of want to live somewhere where bars are showing the Oscars.

The tradeoff is that the rest of the neighborhood is all artisinal-coffee-twee-faux-vintage-boutiques. This place is more like an all-movies-all-the-time combination bar and mini theater, though, and I keep meaning to check them out the rest of the year.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:08 AM on March 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


So has anyone seen Lady Bird in this thread? I've been avoiding because I am just over teen coming of age movies. Is it worth it or is it just Serious Juno?

Lady Bird as marketed was "Rushmore for girls!" or yeah, maybe "Juno without the baby!" But the actual film was considerably better than that. It has a very literary kind of structure and pace where it's less interested in giving you a series of one progresses neatly into the next scenes and more interested in letting you live with a character for a bit to give you a picture of who she is at a particular moment. It can be a little twee, but that's not because it's a hipster-y stunt, it's because it approaches a character on her own level who can be a bit twee.

I should probably go talk more about that in its actual thread, even if it was asked of the room...
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:15 AM on March 5, 2018 [5 favorites]


I was a little underwhelmed that Gary Oldman got the standard previously-nominated big name actor does an impersonation in a biopic win, but most of the big awards went just fine.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:18 AM on March 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


EmpressCallipygos: "The tradeoff is that the rest of the neighborhood is all artisinal-coffee-twee-faux-vintage-boutiques. This place is more like an all-movies-all-the-time combination bar and mini theater, though, and I keep meaning to check them out the rest of the year."

I don't mean in my neighborhood necessarily, just anywhere in the greater metro area. It's a common in /r/Pittsburgh for newcomers to ask for bars showing GoT or Walking Dead and it's just not a thing here. Unless it's Football or Hockey, you're going to have to watch it at home.
posted by octothorpe at 7:20 AM on March 5, 2018


I wish Warren Beatty would have trolled everyone and announced the winner as La La Land.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:41 AM on March 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


A lot of great moments. I would have paid Warren Beatty serious money to take the card out of the envelope and award Best Picture to La La Land again.

High point probably McDormand's speech. The way her expression shifted from "I'm hyperventilating a little bit. If I fall over, pick me up," to "because I've got some things to say." Just a fantastic little moment before the main event.

But the low point for me had to be the Last Jedi cast presenting. My god, did that fall flat! I adore those guys and they were just dying up there. That hurt.

And what the hell was that in Kimmel's hair? I tuned in right at that moment and was very confused.
posted by Naberius at 7:42 AM on March 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


HA JINX!
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:42 AM on March 5, 2018


Damn it, DirtyOldTown!
posted by Naberius at 7:44 AM on March 5, 2018


(Kimmel had large-scale confetti in his hair that fell from the ceiling after the song from Coco)

Random notes on the things nominated and the show itself:

Kobe winning for Best Animated Short was a travesty. Kobe is all ego, and this poem by Kobe about how awesome Kobe is...just no. It was like The Player's Tribune in cartoon form. Also remember he's not that best dude to have up on that stage this year.

If you have the time and inclination, seek out the best two in this category, "Revolting Rhymes" from the UK and "Garden Party" from France. They were both immensely entertaining, and light years above Kobe's crap. Nobody cares about this category or else it would have caused the internet to catch on fire.

The Shape of Water was not better than Lady Bird, was not better than Three Billboards. I didn't see them, but I'd have to guess it was also not better than Dunkirk or Call Me By Your Name. It wasn't a bad movie, it just wasn't the Best movie.

It was, however, better than The Post, a really interesting story destroyed by the heavy-handed nostalgia porn fetishism of Spielberg. There's a scene in that movie where there's all of these journalists making sense of unorganized pages of the Pentagon Papers, the most explosive scoop ever, and they are all chain smoking. I know people smoked more, but c'mon Spielberg. There's no way it happened that way. Nobody hovers over hard copies of the most important documents of their careers with lit cigarettes. The whole movie is like that. Also, the big story to make is the whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, and that part was both too superficial to the movie and wrongly portrayed. Damnit Spielberg, you are given way too much of a free pass on this stuff.

Gerwig should have won for direction, because she was the best director.
posted by mcstayinskool at 7:53 AM on March 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


Then all during Guillermo del Toro's speech for Best Picture, she kept loudly complaining that the plot to SHAPE OF WATER was just a rip-off of SPLASH.

Umm, The Shape of Water is a tale as old as time.

Del Toro doesn't hide it either. His whole work draws heavily on fairy tales and monster movies.
posted by FJT at 8:56 AM on March 5, 2018 [5 favorites]


Was Rebecca miller wearing the dress ddl made for her?
posted by brujita at 9:04 AM on March 5, 2018


Oh, and it's not a bad thing that Del Toro does it. I liked The Shape of Water. I admit some of it went over my head, but reading/thinking about it more made me like it more over time.

And I think it was always a top contender, because it IS a movie about movies, which is something the Academy has always liked. I mean, the protagonist lives ABOVE a movie theater for crying out loud!
posted by FJT at 9:09 AM on March 5, 2018


I liked that the AV Club pointed out that The Shape of Water seems like a safe choice but who would have expected the Best Picture award would have gone to a movie where there is an interspecies sex scene?
posted by Kitteh at 9:31 AM on March 5, 2018


> Then all during Guillermo del Toro's speech for Best Picture, she kept loudly complaining that the plot to SHAPE OF WATER was just a rip-off of SPLASH.

Umm, The Shape of Water is a tale as old as time.


Yeah, I think there was a fair bit of "I am rather zealous about a particular social issue and wanted to see a movie win that more closely represented my politics" with some "I am drunk as fuck" going on in her case.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:12 AM on March 5, 2018


I liked that the AV Club pointed out that The Shape of Water seems like a safe choice but who would have expected the Best Picture award would have gone to a movie where there is an interspecies sex scene?

I am very curious what this years Halloween costumes will look like.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:16 AM on March 5, 2018


I liked that the AV Club pointed out that The Shape of Water seems like a safe choice but who would have expected the Best Picture award would have gone to a movie where there is an interspecies sex scene?

Entertainment Weekly's observation was "even if you think that Shape of Water is just narcissistic Hollywood backscratching business-as-usual, at least admit that the clichés have gotten much more interesting."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:21 AM on March 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


Screenwriters across Southern California are now asking themselves “What’s the weirdest possible concept I can make into a movie about movies?”
posted by Huffy Puffy at 10:41 AM on March 5, 2018


It's probably more that studios will take a second look at the warehouses full of scripts they've already optioned for peanuts.
posted by rhizome at 11:10 AM on March 5, 2018


Are we just gonna pretend The Shape of Water isn't a Hellboy prequel? 'Cause it was a Hellboy prequel.
posted by Justinian at 11:25 AM on March 5, 2018 [7 favorites]


I guess we do have to pretend for legal reasons that it of course had nothing to do with Hellboy *wink wink wink*.
posted by Justinian at 11:37 AM on March 5, 2018


I can never tell whether the Academy is voting for the award recipient or the thing the award is actually for - like is Shape of Water really the best picture or does everyone just feel like Del Toro deserves something? The mechanics of the voting process make the electors college look simple & straighforward.
posted by GuyZero at 11:43 AM on March 5, 2018 [3 favorites]


So now can Del Toro make At the Mountains of Madness?
posted by Guy Smiley at 11:47 AM on March 5, 2018 [3 favorites]


It's a Pacific Rim prequel. Magic Jazz Hand Prehensile Penis Aquaman is a member of The Science Patrol from the Q Dimension.
posted by Brocktoon at 11:48 AM on March 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


I can't help but think that being a LA Laker helped Kobe win just a bit. I can't see the Academy giving a Celtics player an award of any sort.
posted by fshgrl at 11:49 AM on March 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


Guy Smiley: "So now can Del Toro make At the Mountains of Madness?"

Or one of the twenty other projects that he's been reported to be making over the years.
posted by octothorpe at 12:24 PM on March 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


I wanted Lady Bird to win, but I'm perfectly happy with Shape of Water. It's a lovely fairy tale, and well-told. Honestly almost anything is better than Three Billboards, with it's casual racism and small-town-yokel-ism.
posted by graventy at 1:15 PM on March 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


I am fine with The Shape of Water winning but I wanted it to be weirder (which, you know, it's a movie featuring a mute woman who falls in love with a fishman, and I still didn't find it weird enough, but that may something about my tastes). It was lovely but I didn't love it. I loved Lady Bird and I adore Greta Gerwig, but it was a very different movie and I think it was too "small" in a lot of ways to win. I would've loved to have seen Get Out win, but I'm satisfied with it winning the screenwriting award. (And you know, Moonlight absolutely 100% deserved to win last year, but just making terrible assumptions about Academy voters, there was no way they were doing that two years in a row.)

(I don't really agree The Shape of Water was the "safe" choice, but it was probably a safer choice out of the odder movies nominated).

I have not watched The Last Men in Aleppo (I ran out of time) & life has thwarted my attempts to watch Faces, Places but I think Strong Island should have won over Icarus. Strong Island was an amazing, emotional journey and a good example of making a very personal story feel important. While the "story" of Icarus was interesting, I don't think the overall filmmaking was very good and I have a lot of questions about how it was framed and presented (and I think Abacus: Small Enough to Jail being nominated was kind of baffling because it wasn't very good).

But I get way too invested in the documentary category.
posted by darksong at 2:30 PM on March 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


I napped to the soundtrack of Shape of Water today and it was a splendid nap album. I am not being sarcastic. Really gets those nap-dream juices flowing!
posted by sylvanshine at 5:53 PM on March 5, 2018


The Daughter and her friends were outraged (outraged I say!) that "This Is Me" did not win Best Original Song. I was surprised too, as it seemed to punch all the buttons of the current zeitgeist. But Keala Settle definitely gave the top performance of the night, so that'll do.
posted by e-man at 7:52 PM on March 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


Coco songwriter Robert Lopez is the first-ever double EGOT winner. Two Emmys (Wonder Pets), three Grammys (Book of Mormon, Frozen, "Let It Go"), two Oscars (Frozen, Coco), and three Tonys (Book of Mormon x2, Avenue Q).
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:26 PM on March 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


I've heard the "Splash" comparison to "Shape of Water" among other friends and find it so superficial to be pretty offensive, really. Splash was a cute but ultimately pretty sexist romantic comedy where the mermaid's non-humanness is a secret. She has the form of an ideally-beautiful human woman. She needs help and protection by her human love interest because she wants to explore a city but is too naive to fit in, despite looking the part.

The Shape of Water's creature is a sort of intelligent wild-animal demi-god who is most definitely not perceived as human by anyone. He needs help and protection by his human love interest because he is powerful and dangerous.
posted by desuetude at 10:00 AM on March 8, 2018 [1 favorite]


I'm browsing down memory lane and saw a question that never got answered:

Ivory's shirt, tell me about it.

He had a portrait of Timothee Chalamet screen-printed onto his dress shirt. YeahIdunno.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:03 PM on April 8, 2019


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