Finally, it’s Oscar weekend — time for the industry to come together and heap its official plaudits on the finest films of 2018, wrapping up The Year in Cinema and putting a neat bow on it for the sake of history. Some of the films honored by the Academy on Sunday night are bound to be enduring classics, revisited and rediscovered by happy film fans over the years and decades to come. Others are bound to be forgotten over time, fading into the dark mist of history despite exciting contemporary viewers and bearing the imprimatur of the Academy. Either way, an Oscar is still an Oscar — arguably the most sought-after statuette in the arts.
Below-the-line workers won a key victory this year when cinematographers, editors, and make-up artists and hairstylists successfully pushed back against a planned change that would have had awards in those categories, plus live-action shorts, handed out during commercial breaks and telecast after a delay and in an edited version. While the implication of disrespect remains galling, the Academy made the right decision in the face of widespread outrage and reversed course, promising that all award categories will be presented live.
The show’s producers wanted to make the change in order to shave precious minutes and seconds off the show’s running time — surely, they argued, nobody will mind if we cut out the moments where Oscar-winners are simply making their way from their seats to the stage. Presumably they’re under pressure from their broadcast partners at ABC to keep the show under three hours. (Those rules don’t apply, apparently, to the Grammys, which ran over three and a half hours in its broadcast earlier this month.)
Yalitza Aparicio in Roma
Netflix
Who’s going to win the big prize? Who knows? The race is unusually unsettled this year. It’s possible to imagine different scenarios that allow most of the eight films with Best Picture nominations to eke out an Oscar victory. The front-runner has to be the beautifully imagined Roma, which is widely admired thanks in part to director Alfonso Cuarón’s sterling work as his own cinematographer, but also for its deeply felt reminiscences of a childhood in Mexico City. But there may be enough resentment of Netflix among old-school Academy members to hurt its chances. And a foreign-language film has never won Best Picture.
Green Book is another leading contender, though its director, Peter Farrelly, failed to earn a Best Director nomination. The film has gotten a lot of criticism from some viewers who find its racial politics too simplistic. (It didn’t help that Mortensen dropped a racial slur during a Q&A promoting the film, sparking a firestorm of controversy.) Might an anti-Green Book backlash somehow leave an opening for either the fiery BlacKkKlansman or the dazzling Black Panther, two films actually made by black filmmakers, to take the prize? It’s just possible.
By the way, don’t count The Favourite out. It earned a solid 10 nominations overall, including three for acting — and actors are the largest single contingent of voters within the Academy. Bohemian Rhapsody, with its crowd-pleasing and critically praised lead performance by Rami Malek as Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, could be a leading contender if only its director, Bryan Singer, weren’t fighting off renewed allegations of sexual assault. A Star Is Born and Vice seem like long shots in the top category.
Need to refresh your memory before the big show? Here’s a compendium of all of StudioDaily’s coverage of this year’s Oscar-nominated films.
Thanos on screen and (inset) Josh Brolin in performance capture
Marvel Studios/Disney
Avengers: Infinity War
Nominated for: Best Visual Effects
Our coverage: Oscar-Nominated VFX Supervisor Dan DeLeeuw on Avengers: Infinity War
John David Washington and Laura Harrier in <BlacKkKlansman
Focus Features
BlacKkKlansman
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Original Score
Our coverage: Film Editor Barry Alexander Brown on Decades of Working with Spike Lee and BlacKkKlansman
Black Panther/T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman)
Film Frame..©Marvel Studios 2018
Black Panther
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Original Score, Best Original Song
Our coverage: Black Panther Editor, VFX Supe and Sound Designer Talk Creative Collaboration at NAB
Winnie the Pooh in Christopher Robin
Christopher Robin
Nominated for: Best Visual Effects
Our coverage: Oscar-Nominated VFX Supervisor Christopher Lawrence on Christopher Robin
Cold War
Cold War
Nominated for: Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Foreign-Language Film
Our coverage: Oscar-Nominated, ASC Award-Winning DP Lukasz Zal on the Many Stylistic Contrasts in Cold War
Emma Stone and Olivia Colman in The Favourite
© 2018 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved
The Favourite
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress (two), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design
Our coverage: Editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis on Cutting a Darkly Comic Battle Royale in The Favourite
A Few of His Favourite Things: Oscar-Nominated DP Robbie Ryan, BSC, ISC
Alex Honnold climbs through the enduro corner on El Capitan’s Freerider.
National Geographic/Jimmy Chin
Free Solo
Nominated for: Best Documentary Feature
Our coverage: Free Solo Co-Director and DP Jimmy Chin on the Risks and Rewards of Action Cinematography
First Man
Nominated for: Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects, Best Production Design
Our coverage: Podcast – Cinematographer Linus Sandgren, FSF, Shoots the Moon for First Man
Recreating the Authentic Sounds of Early Spaceflight in First Man
Oscar-Nominated VFX Supervisor Paul Lambert on First Man
Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen in Green Book
Green Book
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing
Our coverage: Podcast – Editor Patrick Don Vito on Putting Green Book Together
Willie on a Horse from Hale County This Morning, This Evening
IDIOM Film/Courtesy RaMell Ross & Cinema Guild
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Nominated for: Best Documentary Feature
Our coverage: Director RaMell Ross on Alabama-Set Documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening
(From L-R): Edward Norton as “Rex,” Jeff Goldblum as “Duke,” Bill Murray as “Boss,” Bob Balaban as “King” and Bryan Cranston as “Chief” in Isle of Dogs.
Fox Searchlight Pictures/© 2018 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved
Isle of Dogs
Nominated for: Best Animated Feature, Best Original Score
Our coverage: Podcast – Production Designer Paul Harrod Gets into the Details of Isle of Dogs
DP Tristan Oliver on Pushing the Limits in Isle of Dogs
Mary Poppins Returns
Nominated for: Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Original Score, Best Original Song
Our coverage: Supervising Sound Editor and Sound Designer Renée Tondelli on the Magic-Realist Soundscape of Mary Poppins Returns
Mary Poppins Returns DP Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS, on Digitally Recapturing a Classic
Mary Queen of Scots
Nominated for: Best Costume Design, Best Make-up/Hairstyling
Our coverage: DP John Mathieson on Mary Queen of Scots
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
A Quiet Place
Nominated for: Best Sound Editing
Our coverage: Sound Editors Ethan Van der Ryn and Erik Aadahl on A Quiet Place’s Seriously Scary—and Silent—Sonic Experience
Podcast – Co-Supervising Sound Editors Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn enter A Quiet Place
RBG
Nominated for: Best Documentary Feature, Best Original Song
Our coverage: RBG DP Claudia Raschke Gives Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Her Closeup
Ready Player One
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Ready Player One
Nominated for: Best Visual Effects
Our coverage: How Steven Spielberg Got Inside the OASIS for Ready Player One
Oscar-Nominated VFX Supervisor Roger Guyett on Ready Player One
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Nominated for: Best Visual Effects
Our coverage: Oscar-Nominated VFX Supervisor Rob Bredow on Solo: A Star Wars Story
Sections: Creativity
Topics: Awards Column/Opinion oscars 2019
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