The nominees for the Academy Awards for 2017 have just been announced, and there aren't a lot of surprises, the films that are up are mostly ones that have done well at The Golden Globes and won other awards. Still, I personally did not expect that the leader in the number of nominations would be Guilllermo De Toro's THE SHAPE OF WATER, with thirteen nominations. Could this oddball romance become the first science fiction movie to win Best Picture? We'll see. I certainly am amused by the fact that a modern Oscar nominated film could be so heavily influenced by the 1954 B-movie THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON!
The controversial 3 BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING MISSOURI is also up for an impressive seven awards, and while I imagine that the wonderful Frances McDormand will almost definitely win for Best Actress, I doubt the Academy will want to give a Best Picture award to a film that has inspired some pretty angry backlash about its racial politics. Personally, I think one of the two World War 2 set prestige movies (they would be DARKEST HOUR and DUNKIRK) have the best chances of winning, because one should never bet against any movie that bashes Nazis. At the same time, Stephen Spielberg's THE POST is a film about the power of the press, and with the nation lead by a president who has referred to the non conservative news media as "enemies of the people", it might be a good way for the mostly progressive Academy to stick a finger in his eye. Still, the fact that the film has only one other nomination (Meryl Streep is up for Best Actress, as usual) shows that there probably isn't much support for the film overall. The rest of the Best Picture nominees probably have little chance: PT Anderson's PHANTOM THREAD is probably to strange for the Academy, despite another great performance by Best Actor nominee Daniel Day Lewis. CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, the gay romance, is probably too arty for the Academy, while horror satire GET OUT is too dark. And Greta Gerwig's LADYBIRD is a low budget, realistic look at a complicated relationship between a teenage girl and her mother, hardly the kind of movie that wins Best Picture, although I'm glad to see that Gerwig is up for Best Director.
As for the films left out, I personally loved Craig Gillespie's I,TONYA, and I think it should have been nominated for Best Picture, but at least it got acting nominees for it's two female leads, (Margot Robbie and Allison Janey) so there's that. I also would have liked to see Micheal Showalter's highly entertaining romantic comedy THE BIG SICK get a Best Picture nominee, but its great screenplay is up, so again, that's something. Overall, this a good, interesting mix of films that spreads love to both big budget films and low budget indies. So what will win? Well, despite it's 13 nominations, I think THE SHAPE OF WATER will mostly win technical awards, and with 3 BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING MISSOURI being too hot right now, I'm thinking that DARKEST HOUR (which has 5 other nominations besides Best Picture) has a good chance, seeing as how it's in similar territory as 2010's winner THE KING'S SPEECH. But of course, I thought LA LA LAND was going to win last year, so what do I know?
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