Chain of Thoughts on the Oscar Nominations This Year

The nominees of the 90^th Academy Awards have been announced this week.  Here are some thoughts:

• Wow.  Kobe Bryant’s Dear Basketball, the animated short he produced based on the poignant poem he wrote to announce his retirement after the 2015-2016 NBA season, is nominated for Best Animated Short Film.  Sure, he had some heavy hitters collaborating with him – Glen Keane (who worked on The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Tarzan, and Tangled) animated it, and John Williams (who composed the notable scores of Star Wars, Jaws, Indiana Jones, Superman: The Movie, and Jurassic Park) did its score.  But it’s amazing nonetheless to think that Kobe Bryant, in his post-basketball career, is already creating Oscar-worthy projects and making a name for himself.  Among all categories, this is where I will be rooting the hardest.
• The second thing I’ll be rooting for the hardest is Dunkirk, my most favorite film of 2017.  May it win most of the categories it’s been nominated for, especially Best Picture and Best Director.
• Blade Runner: Blackout 2022 should have been nominated for Best Animated Short.  Maybe it wasn’t nominated because it wasn’t shown in theaters or film festivals?  I think being screened at either or both is a requirement for an Oscar nomination.
• Aw, no love for The Florida Project?  It only got one nomination – Willem Dafoe for Best Supporting Actor.  Seriously?  It was one of the most beautiful, most moving, most thoughtful, most worthwhile films of the year.  I believe that, other than Best Supporting Actor, it also deserves to have nominations in the Best Picture and Best Director categories.
• For the record, I’m rooting for Willem Dafoe.  Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, and Richard Jenkins had great performances (I haven’t seen All the Money in the World yet, but I heard Christopher Plummer was great in it as well), but Dafoe’s performance is objectively superior.
• Early in the awards season, James Franco was receiving tons of Oscar buzz for his work on The Disaster Artist.  He was being nominated left and right by other award-giving bodies, winning a couple of them, including a Golden Globe.  However, after sexual misconduct allegations were thrown at him, it quickly obliterated his Oscar chances.  Thus, it was no surprise that he wasn’t nominated for Best Actor.
• It would have been awesome to see Tommy Wiseau during the Academy Awards.  I assume that he only comes if Franco comes.  Still, it’s very much possible that the Academy gets cute and decides to make him a presenter.  That would be hilarious.
• Ugh.  Meryl Streep gets a nomination again.  I haven’t seen The Post yet, so I can’t say if she’s worthy of the nomination.  However, at this point, after being nominated year in and year out just because she’s Meryl Streep and not because she earned it, it’s hard not to be cynical even whenever a nomination is much-deserved.

• Why is The Shape of Water not nominated for Best Makeup?  Thus, I’m rooting for it to win Best Costume Design instead.
• Also, when will guys like Doug Jones and Andy Serkis – actors who have made a career acting behind heavy makeup or mo-cap – be celebrated by the Academy?
• Like almost every year, I have no bets for the foreign language and documentary categories because I haven’t seen any of the nominees.  The only documentary films I saw in 2017 are Batman & Bill, Kedi, and Born in China.  I enjoyed all three, and will probably enjoy them more than any of the Oscar nominees.
• With The Boss Baby getting a laughable nomination for Best Animated Feature Film, the category’s credibility is compromised.  At least, it wasn’t The Emoji Movie.  That would have utterly destroyed the category’s credibility.
• Coco or Loving Vincent is winning Best Animated Feature Film, by the way.  The Academy will make sure of it.  Giving the win to another would be like nominating The Emoji Movie for them at this point.
• Of course, Coco’s “Remember Me” should win Best Original Song.
• Blade Runner 2049 gets rightfully nominated for Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Production Design, Best Cinematography, and Best Visual Effects.  However, I believe it also deserves to be nominated for Best Original Score, Best Director, and Best Picture.
• I’m thrilled that rookie director Jordan Peele is nominated for Best Director and his first opus Get Out is nominated for Best Picture.  It’s also nominated for Best Original Screenplay, but that’s not something necessarily shocking.  But being nominated for Best Director and Best Picture is a huge, huge deal.  It’s a surprising, feel-good development for genre fans.
• An equally surprising, feel-good development is Daniel Kaluuya getting a Best Actor nomination.
• Still, no matter how much I enjoyed Get Out, it wasn’t even in my top 20 films of 2017.  This is not to take anything from Jordan Peele and Daniel Kaluuya – they definitely earned those nominations, and I’m genuinely excited for Peele’s future films – but I wonder: Did the Academy really think Get Out deserved those nominations, or are they primarily motivated by political correctness?  Did they make those nominations just to avoid being bashed for “lack of diversity” or they really thing Get Out is awesome?

• Same thing with Lady Bird director Greta Gerwig.  Was she nominated because the Academy really think she’s more deserving than Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049) and Sean Baker (The Florida Project) or because she’s a woman and they want to avoid being criticized for not nominating at least one woman for Best Director?
• I haven’t seen Call Me by Your Name, Darkest Hour, Phantom Thread, and The Post yet.  But among the nominees for Best Picture that I’ve seen, if I can take two of them out in order to insert Blade Runner 2049 and The Florida Project, it would be The Shape of Water and Lady Bird.  I liked The Shape of Water and Lady Bird, but I think Blade Runner 2049 and The Florida Project are simply superior.
• It’s nice that Logan is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.  Another win for genre fans.  But it would have been much preferable if it was recognized for more than that. 
• I don’t understand why Call Me by Your Name is being celebrated.  Doesn’t it center on a sexual relationship between an adult man and a 17-year-old boy?  When did this become okay?  I’m not even talking of the homosexuality and the fornication, as those are common themes and not immoral for Hollywood.  I’m referring to what is technically pedophilia and statutory rape.  Regardless of whether Call Me by Your Name is a romantic, well-crafted film, that aspect should have been met by general, loud disapproval.  Again, when did that become okay?  Because it involved a gay couple?  If that is the rationale, then that’s the same twisted logic that Kevin Spacey applied when he decided to “come out as gay” as response to the accusations of sexually assaulting teenage boys, as if pedophilia is justified when you’re gay.  It’s sick.
• It really baffles me that, instead of contempt, Call Me by Your Name received Oscar nominations instead.  Well, in the end, this is still Hollywood after all.  The same place where child rapist Roman Polanski is given standing ovations and where scums like Harvey Weisntein have been protected for a long time.