Culture

'The Shape of Water' Oscar Bump Leads Fandango Recent Surge

January 28, 2018 10:56·
Rebecca Rubin

Rebecca Rubin

Greta Gerwig ended an eight-year streak of the Academy nominating all men for best director, and is the fifth woman to be recognized in the category. Transgender filmmakers also made history, with Yance Ford becoming the first transgender director ever nominated for an Oscar with her short film Strong Island. This is a packed race, though, so we shall see.

"A Fantastic Woman" follows Marina, a waitress and nightclub singer who must put her life back together after her older boyfriend dies suddenly. Del Toro had been previously nominated in the Best Original Screenplay category for Pan's Labyrinth (which was also nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, which is often credited as a second nomination for del Toro, though technically the nominee there was the country of Mexico due to the odd rules of the category). In a city like Fresno, where mainstream Hollywood blockbusters (the Star Wars franchise or "Jumanji", for example) take up most of the available screens, it can be tough to get through the Best Picture nominations, much less the more obscure categories. But Daniel Day-Lewis is nominated as well for his supposedly last film Phantom Thread.

"Why is it just now that trans individuals are starting to run next to people who have always had those opportunities to play the main roles?", she asked. I found it to be really well done, smartly written and visually stunning. Three films stand out as frontrunners this year.

By the time the film was released, it had become a stirring dramatisation of a woman overcoming sexism and invisibility to find her voice as a journalist and corporate leader - a narrative that fit perfectly with a period during which issues of sexual harassment and assault, as well as female representation in front of and behind the camera, that is still engulfing Hollywood.

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After facing so many controversies and death threats, Sanjay Leela Bhansali's film finally found a released on January 25, 2018. Meanwhile, Padmaavat is still facing the ire of Rajput organisations who are constantly protesting against the film.

RAAF fighter plane catches fire at United States base
Australia's contribution also includes an AP-3C Orion and a E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft. It is believed the plane caught fire soon after taking off and the pilot was forced to eject from the aircraft.

Grammys 2018: how to watch and what to expect
This year's telecast will honor the famous artists we lost this past year, as well as the victims of concert violence. People tune into the Grammy Awards every year to see the best artists of the music industry receive awards.

Very interesting to see all the love Christopher Plummer is getting for All the Money in The World, given all of the last minute reshoots after the Kevin Spacey allegations arose.

Predictors see "The Shape of Water" as a contender for Best Picture, though there is no clear frontrunner just yet. However, Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson were remarkable in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and I would be perfectly happy if either of them got the award. Like I said, I haven't seen The Shape of Water, but Octavia Spencer is simply wonderful and I'd give her all of the awards if I could. Also, though her chances might be slim, Margot Robbie's performance in "I, Tonya" should not be overlooked. Featuring emotional interviews with Ford's mother and sister, it's an intimate meditation of how a family's personal tragedy is situated in an institutionalized fear of blackness and how a loved one's unexplainable death has impact decades later. "I failed at that". He did such great work writing and directing Get Out, plus it was his directorial debut as well.

If this year's Oscars tell a story, it's one of ferment and inexorable forward movement, despite a pace that can be glacial one moment and warp-speed the next. This is due not only to how many nominations it gained, though 13 is only one behind the all time record of 14 (held jointly by All about Eve, Titanic and La La Land), but due to what it was nominated for.

The Oscars will be handed out on March 4, 2018 on ABC.

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