January 24, 2018 The Skanner Page 7
Arts & Entertainment
2018 OSCAR NOMINATIONS:
‘The Shape of Water’ Leads Race
with Lucky 13 Nominations
Weinstein, Spacey and Franco conspicuously absent
By Kam Williams
T
he Shape of Wa-
ter, Guillermo del
Toro’s
surreal,
cross-species love
story landed the most
Academy Award nomi-
nations (13), including
for Best Director, Picture
and Original screenplay,
as well as trio of acting
categories.
“Dunkirk”
(8) was next, followed by
“Three Billboards” (7),
“Darkest Hour” (6) and
“Phantom Thread” (6).
Up for Oscars are some
familiar faces, like Den-
zel Washington (“Roman
J. Israel, Jr.”) and perenni-
al-nominee Meryl Streep
(“The Post”). Meanwhile,
conspicuously
absent
from the roster are a
number of disgraced Hol-
lywood icons whose ca-
reers went up in flames
in the wake of rape alle-
gations.
There’s Harvey Wein-
stein who, for years, had
been a fixture on the
aisle on Oscar night. But
this go-round, The Wein-
stein Company’s entire
slate was snubbed, most
notably the critically-ac-
claimed and strategical-
ly-released “Wind River.”
Just a couple weeks ago,
James Franco was the
toast of Tinseltown after
winning a Golden Globe
for “The Disaster Art-
ist.” Since then, several
women stepped forward
to accuse him of sexual
misconduct. Now, it’s his
career that’s a disaster,
suffering such a precipi-
tous fall from grace that
he didn’t even earn an
Academy Award nomi-
nation.
The voters showed lit-
tle love to “Baby Driver,”
this critic’s pick for #1
film of the year, giving it
only a handful of nomi-
nations in technical cat-
egories. In this case, you
can blame #MeToo ca-
sualty Kevin Spacey for
torpedoing the summer
sleeper’s Oscar chances
right along with his own.
At least that picture got
released. The same can’t
be said for Louis C.K.’s “I
Love You, Daddy,” whose
premiere was postponed
indefinitely after he ad-
mitted to some pretty
bizarre, unwanted be-
havior in front of five dif-
ferent women.
For those still in the
running, the 90th Acad-
emy Awards will air on
ABC on Sunday, March
4th. The show will be
staged at the Dolby The-
ater in Hollywood and
hosted by Jimmy Kim-
mel. But don’t surprised
if one or two nominees
get knocked out of con-
Interview cont’d from pg 6
script. Although I was obviously very
aware of 9/11, I was fascinated by this
story which I had never heard about. I
thought that these first responders and
the way in which they prevailed was
not only unique but pretty important.
So, I felt that it was awesome to have
an opportunity to be a part of turning
this little-known story into a movie.
Of course, I also jumped at the chance
to work with [producer] Jerry Bruck-
heimer and the terrific cast attached to
the project.
KW: Yeah, I had no idea we had guys
fighting on horseback over in Afghan-
istan. And they were outnumbered and
outgunned by the Taliban equipped
with tanks, RPGs and heavy artillery.
TR: It was amazing! Those soldiers
are heroes, Kam.
KW: Editor/Legist Patricia Turnier
asks: How did you prepare to play Ser-
geant First Class Ben Milo?
TR: My preparation included speak-
ing to quite a few veterans. They were
very open and honest about both their
downtime and battle experiences. They
shared the good, the bad, and every-
thing in between. We also had Army
Ranger training for three or for weeks
which was not only educational but
very valuable in terms of our bonding
as a unit.
tention for sexual peca-
dilloes that come to the
surface between now
and Oscar night.
Complete List of 2018
Academy Award
Nominees
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
ACTOR IN A LEADING
ROLE
Timothée Chalamet, Call
Me by Your Name
Daniel Day-Lewis, Phan-
tom Thread
Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out
Gary Oldman, Darkest
Hour
Denzel Washington,
Roman J. Israel, Esq.
ACTOR IN A
SUPPORTING ROLE
Willem Dafoe, The Flori-
da Project
Woody Harrelson, Three
Billboards Outside
Ebbing, Missouri
Richard Jenkins, The
Shape of Water
Octavia Spencer and Sally Hawkins in ‘The Shape of Water’
Christopher Plummer,
All the Money in the
World
Sam Rockwell, Three
Billboards Outside
Ebbing, Missouri
ACTRESS IN A
LEADING ROLE
Sally Hawkins, The
Shape of Water
Frances McDormand,
Three Billboards Out-
side 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,
Lesley Manville, Phan-
tom Thread
Laurie Metcalf, Lady
Bird
Octavia Spencer, The
Shape of Water
BEST DIRECTOR
Dunkirk, Christopher
Nolan
Get Out, Jordan Peele
Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig
Phantom Thread, Paul
Thomas Anderson
The Shape of Water,
Guillermo del Toro
ANIMATED FEATURE
FILM
The Boss Baby
Breadwinner
Coco
Ferdinand
Loving Vincent
DOCUMENTARY
FEATURE
Abacus: Small Enough
to Jail
Faces, Places
Icarus
Last Men In Aleppo
Strong Island
DOCUMENTARY
SHORT
Edith+Eddie
Heaven is a Traffic Jam
See OSCARS on page 8
Information is powerful.
The power is
in your hands.
KW: I assume you didn’t work with
live ammo.
TR: Definitely not. We had a couple
guys who didn’t know what they were
doing, so that would’ve been scary.
KW: Have you had an opportunity to
meet the soldier your character’s based
on?
TR: Yeah, just last night at the pre-
miere. He’s amazing!
KW: Patricia would like to know what
you want the audience to learn from
the movie.
TR: I’d like them to come away with an
accurate perspective of what it was like
in Afghanistan after 9/11. For instance,
I was 11 years old at the time, and I be-
lieved all the people over there were
bad. But that’s obviously not the case,
since the only reason why this mission
succeeded was because of a lot of help
from some locals. Another message is
how valuable connectivity, love, hones-
ty and being there for one another are.
KW: She was also wondering wheth-
er there’s a genre out of your comfort
zone that you would like to try?
TR: To be quite honest, nothing I’ve
encountered thus far is outside of my
comfort zone. I hope that every film I
do is very different from the previous
one. What I’m always looking for as an
actor is to be challenged in a new way.
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