Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

jack wrote:I can still see Nolan winning the Oscar, though.

I don't. DGA and HFPA have each nominated Nolan several times in the past, while this is his first directing nomination for the Oscars. Also, Nolan is exactly the type of star filmmaker whom the Globes love to award. If neither one of them actually awarded Nolan I have a hard time seeing how AMPAS would.

I think it’s the kind of movie that you either get swept up in or not. For me: not. I thought it was a very well-crafted movie in the service of not very sophisticated storytelling.

dws1982 wrote:I don't understand why I seem to be one of the few people who feels this way about. But plenty of very intelligent people--including several on this board--seem quite taken by it, so maybe del Toro's dreams aren't really my thing.

You’re not, dws. I thought it was a perfectly harmless way to spend a couple hours, but I think it’s far from deserving of these kind of top accolades.

OscarGuy wrote
The Shape of Water is an ode to Old Hollywood. Perhaps not the silent era, but certainly the monster movie era.

There was a time when ‘The Shape of Water’ would be dismissed as unserious, nerdy cinephilia. Today, I’ve seen fewer comparisons to monster movies of yesteryear than proclamations that it’s the work of a visionary. There’s something sad about an industry that has so dedicated itself to shared universe blockbusters and exuming dead franchises that ‘The Shape of Water’ seems fresh. Sure, it’s playing to the year of its release, but it’s still such a nerdy film.

To be clear, I said ages ago that this film should be taken very serious come Oscar time, that it stood to be the nomination leader and tap into a pop culture zeitgeist. I just...expected it would be better. I am baffled at the path it is headed down because while it has heart, its story is so muddled and yet nobody seems to care.

I understand the themes that del Toro is dealing with here. How could I not? They're so bluntly (and, in my opinion, inelegantly) incorporated into the text of the film. I didn't think the narrative flowed very comfortably, I thought the characters were one-dimensional blanks and that the actors (for the most part) didn't bring much to the table, I felt like the world in the lab was crudely and haphazardly thrown together, and I felt like the editing was pretty poor (it feels over-edited on a scene-by-scene basis but poorly paced as a whole--I swear Molly's Game, which I saw right after, felt an hour shorter). I don't understand why I seem to be one of the few people who feels this way about. But plenty of very intelligent people--including several on this board--seem quite taken by it, so maybe del Toro's dreams aren't really my thing.

Why did everyone understand the appeal of The Artist and not the appeal of The Shape of Water? The Shape of Water is an ode to Old Hollywood. Perhaps not the silent era, but certainly the monster movie era. This is an homage to films like The Creature from the Black Lagoon and others of its ilk. It's a classic Hollywood creature feature wrapped into a stirring story of a mute woman identifying with the outsider. It's a film about living out loud even if society treats you as unequals. You have the mute woman, the gay man, and the black woman living in a backdrop where wealthy, middle class white men combat the threat of communism, trying to root it out where it's taken hold while ignoring the progress that's being made around them. It's about a Russian scientist unconcerned with the political realities that swirl around him wanting to focus on the science and not the politics. It's about others being ignored, mistreated, reviled, or otherwise diminished simply because it's against God, country, and society.

This is a movie about outsiders standing up and doing what's right and being the saviors of their own story rather than pawns to the white establishment. This is a microcosm of the modern world, a rebuke of Trumpian philosophy. It's the perfect fit for our time and I refuse to believe that Guillermo del Toro, who spoke passionately about inclusion at the DGA awards (according to the people covering it at Deadline where I read the results live), didn't write this film fully understanding the political environment into which he was releasing the film. They are universal themes, but they have added weight and depth in the current age.

jack wrote:I can still see Nolan winning the Oscar, though.

Really? I think he really needed the DGA to have a chance.

But what dws said

I'll try to go into detail in the movies of 2017 section, but the del Toro/Shape of Water thing is going to turn into an all-time I-don't-get-it Best Director (and maybe Best Picture) selection for me. In other cases (e.g., Innaritu/Birdman) where I didn't like the movie, I understood the appeal and why it was getting so much recognition, but I'm completely dumbfounded on this one.

I can still see Nolan winning the Oscar, though.

And as expected, del Toro wins (with Peele -- obviously -- snagging the First Feature prize).

Mister Tee wrote
You didn't need to delete it (and I'm glad I had a chance to read it before you did).

Well, I don’t like posting things i don’t agree with anymore...

Working in Gerwig’s favor isn’t just that she is a woman. I mistrust hive mind theories. But there is a demand for more women to get awards this year. She could be the immediate beneficiary of Jordan Peele getting First Feature and voters opting to award somebody else. But really helping is the fact that everybody likes this film so much.

Another reason Nolan should worry: how many nominations did Scorsese have when he was up for ‘Gangs of New York?’ Or ‘The Aviator?’

I know everyone loves statistics, so how about these:

PGA/DGA/SAG are the big three. SAG is the newest, having started giving out cast awards for 1995. Looking solely at the 22-year history of these three awards, there have been 9 years where all three agreed. 8 of those matched Best Picture at the Oscars (Apollo 13 being the outlier and then, it was Bravheart, a non-nominee, that took Best Picture).

Of the remaining 13 years, 8 saw SAG differ from the PGA/DGA unified choice. 1 saw PGA/SAG agreement with DGA differing. The remaining 4 saw three different films win the three different awards. There has never been a DGA/SAG pairing with PGA differing, so if 3B wins DGA, it will be whole new territory.

In the PGA/DGA years, half mirrored Best Picture. Of the other half, 3 of the 4 went to the SAG winner with 12 Years a Slave the weird exception.

If Shape of Water doesn't win DGA, we look at the three-way split years. In those 4 cases, 2 went to the DGA choice, 1 to PGA and 1 to SAG.

1995 is the only year to date that had the Oscar winner for Best Picture not win one of the three awards. Though, the First Feature award has only existed at DGA for three years now, so we have no idea if Peele winning that will mean anything regarding the Oscar race for Best Picture, but I'm guessing no.

Essentially, whoever wins DGA, unless it's del Toro or McDonagh, enters 3-way race for Best Picture. If it's either of those two, the race will be two-way.

Sabin wrote: I had a lengthy write up explaining why I thought Greta Gerwig had a chance, but then I read this “barely-meaningful stat” and hit delete.

You didn't need to delete it (and I'm glad I had a chance to read it before you did).

I actually think there's a non-zero chance that the female-ness of this moment could have an effect on this Oscar race, but it's not necessarily likely to show up at the Guild level. There was that well-publicized effort to diversify the Academy rolls, gender-and-racially, but I wasn't aware of any comparable move to do the same to the Guilds, so I assume they remain dominantly white male. Not that such a group would find it impossible to endorse a female narrative, but I wouldn't look for them to lead the way.

At the Academy, though...the idea of all these new invitees (and the purging of some inactive old folk) is to change the gestalt of the final results. We really don't know how deep the effect will be. A lot of people like to credit the Moonlight victory to the newbies, but I'm not fully persuaded: the same voters went pretty traditional in the other major categories, echoing Guild choices (if they'd, say, voted for Isabelle Huppert, I'd have been more impressed with their new level of hip-ness). It may just have been that Moonlight was more beloved than La La Land, not that voters were making a statement.

But I'm open to the idea these new voters will ultimately make such a statement, and we're now a year further into the membership expansion, plus living in a moment that feels ripe for some feminist expression. In short: it's not impossible Gerwig will be the beneficiary of these factors going forward...but I'd guess that'd happen on March 4th, not likely before.

Well, that's dispiriting. I thought The Shape of Water was fine but hardly exceptional; its front-runner status baffles me. I'd prefer any of the four other director nominees, but this 'race' seems anything but.

Mister Tee wrote
The kids at Awards Watch frequently drown themselves in barely-meaningful stats, but they've managed to come up with an interesting one that I thought I'd share before this weekend's presentation:

I had a lengthy write up explaining why I thought Greta Gerwig had a chance, but then I read this “barely-meaningful stat” and hit delete.

That is a remarkable pattern. Really, the only outlier (Altman for ‘Gosford Park’) needn’t be considered simply by virtue of Del Toro being nominated.