by Nathaniel R
Warren Beatty presenting to Guillermo del Toro
How'd you do on your Oscar predictions. Your host got 18/24 correct which isn't terrible but isn't great. The Shape of Water emerged as the big winner of the night with 4 Oscars including Picture and Director (no split this year) with Dunkirk on its tail with 3 Oscars. Seven of the nine Best Picture nominees won at least one Oscar with only Lady Bird and The Post suffering the "zip!" fate. We'll have time to discuss the ceremony over the next two days but for now the winners list and trivia made tonight after the jump...
PICTURE The Shape of Water
DIRECTOR Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water
ACTRESS Frances McDormand, Three Billboards
ACTOR Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour
SUPPORTING ACTRESS Allison Janney, I Tonya
SUPPORTING ACTOR Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Jordan Peele, Get Out
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY James Ivory, Call Me By Your Name
CINEMATOGRAPHY Blade Runner 2049
PRODUCTION DESIGN The Shape of Water
COSTUME DESIGN Phantom Thread
FILM EDITING Dunkirk
VISUAL EFFECTS Blade Runner 2049
MAKEUP AND HAIR Darkest Hour
ORIGINAL SCORE The Shape of Water
ORIGINAL SONG "Remember Me" from Coco
SOUND MIXING Dunkirk
SOUND EDITING Dunkirk
ANIMATED FEATURE Coco
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE Icarus
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM Chile's A Fantastic Woman
ANIMATED SHORT Dear Basketball
LIVE ACTION SHORT Silent Child
DOCUMENTARY SHORT Heaven is a Traffic Jam
TRIVIA
Potential Nitpickers: before getting your panties in a bunch please remember that The Film Experience refers to Oscar ceremonies by their film years not the date of the event as that was what was done for decades until IMDb and then internet SEO madness f***ed up people's understanding of what the Oscars were celebrating. It's not like winning a beauty contest. You don't reign for a year. You win for your work the year prior.
• The Shape of Water is the first monster movie ever to win Best Picture
• The Shape of Water is also the first Venice Golden Lion winner to win Best Picture at the Oscars (Brokeback Mountain was the time that record was almost made. Sigh)
• James Ivory became the oldest Oscar winner of all time. He is 89 years old.
• Jordan Peele becomes the first African American winner for Original Screenplay. Only three have been nominated before him: Suzanne de Passe (Lady Sings the Blues), Spike Lee (Do the Right Things) and John Singleton (Boyz n the Hood)
• Get Out becomes the first horror film to win Original Screenplay. Unless you count Crash.
• A Fantastic Woman marks the first time that the country of Chile has won the Oscar, on its second try in the category. It's worth noting that Pablo Larrain who directed Chile's only other Oscar nominee (No) was one of the producers on A Fantastic Woman.
• A Fantastic Woman marks the first time an LGBT character has been the protagonist of a Best Foreign Film winner. The first and only other LGBTQ film to win Best Foreign Film was Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother but the lead character was a straight woman.
• Frances McDormand, who is 60, became the 9th oldest woman ever to win in the leading category knocking Julianne Moore's Still Alice (then 54) out of the "oldest women to win Best Actress" top ten list. (Hepburn hogs 33% of that particular top ten also winning at 60, and then again at 61 and 74.)
• Frances McDormand becomes the 14th woman to win multiple lead Oscars. The others are: Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Jodie Foster, Glenda Jackson, Vivien Leigh, Luise Rainer, Meryl Streep, Hilary Swank, and Elizabeth Taylor.
• Frances McDormand won her Oscars (Fargo/Three Billboards) 21 years apart. This is not the record. The longest gap between first and second leading Oscars is held by Katharine Hepburn with 34 years between Morning Glory and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and then Meryl Streep with 29 years between Sophie's Choice and The Iron Lady. But this is still quite a feat since most double winners win their second not long after their first. [Sidebar: The longest record between Oscar wins for acting (if you include supporting awards) is Helen Hayes with a stretch of 38 years between her lead win in The Sins of Madelon Claudet and her supporting win for disaster flick Airport.]
• With the win for Coco, Pixar has now won the animated category more than 50% of the time. They've taken 9 of 17 Oscars in the category.
• Guillermo del Toro becomes the third Latino to win Best Director after Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity) and Alejandro González Iñárritu (twice: Birdman and The Revenant). All three are from Mexico so this is quite a thing -- Mexico has really been dominating this category of late with 4 of the past 5 wins !!!
• Guillermo del Toro becomes the fifth director to win Best Director after having a film he directed be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. It's also happened to Iñárritu, Roman Polanski, Miloš Forman, and Ang Lee, though Ang Lee remains the only Best Director winner to have previously won in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
• Roger Deakins previously held the title of "most nominations without a win in Cinematography" but with this win on his 14th nomination, George J Folsey now regains that title. Folsey, who shot classics like Meet Me in St Louis and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, now holds the most frustrating record: 13/0.
• Kobe Bryant is the first professional athlete to win an Oscar.
• Composer Robert Lopez with his win for Original Song is now the first person in history to double EGOT. He previously won the Oscar for "Let it Go" from Frozen and he already has multiple Tonys, Emmys, and Grammys. He's only 43 years old.
• Not specifically Oscar trivia but this is the first time in history that the same exact four actors won SAG, Globes, BAFTA, Critics Choice, and Oscar in an awards season. (sigh.. thank God for the non-televised critics awards of various types which were more erratic and thus more representative of the film year)
• Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway (2016 and 2017: Moonlight and Shape of Water) became the 4th presenters to get the Best Picture naming honor in two consecutive years. Previously that was done twice during the non-televised years with Eric Johnston who was head of the MPAA at the time (1945/1946: The Lost Weekend and Best Years of Our Lives) and movie star James Cagney (1949/50: All the King's Men and All About Eve). It has also happened twice in the televised years, though both times the honor went to Jack Nicholson (1976/1977: Rocky and Annie Hall; 2005/2006: Crash and The Departed). Nicholson has of course presented Best Picture more often than any person, dead or alive. He has opened the envelope 8 times, most recently with Argo (2012).
Can you think of any others?
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