by John | Mar 5, 2018 | Industry News
Another glamorous Academy Awards ceremony, and while there weren’t huge surprises, there was a brilliant unifying message that ran through the entire night… Here’s our 2018 Oscars reaction… by Jamie White.
Looking at the winners, everything seemed to fit into place. THE SHAPE OF WATER took home Best Director and Best Picture (which we predicted, by the way) as well as two further awards. Gary Oldman won for his excellent, but kinda Oscar-baity, performance as Winston Churchill, and the Pixar film COCO won the “Pixar Award”, also known as “Best Animated Feature”… There weren’t that many shocks at all, if any, but this year was an enjoyable, albeit lengthy, watch.
Special congratulations to our pal Habib Zargarpour who got a mention in the winning speech from the BLADE RUNNER: 2049 crew after they won “Best Visual Effects”. A brilliant visual achievement from everyone involved in that film, and we’re so happy for Habib!
The night as a whole can be summed up wonderfully by the “Best Actress” win for Frances McDormand. Again, not a particularly surprising result, but a stunningly rousing speech. McDormand asked for her fellow female creatives – actors, directors, producers, costume designers, sound mixers, editors, everyone – to stand up and take some much-deserved applause. This summed up the brilliant message of unity, diversity and celebrating “minority” creatives – a message that was a motif of the night and was reflected by the winners themselves.
Sure, Pixar got it usual and expected win, but COCO was a great view on Mexican culture. Guillermo del Toro’s Best Director win was another celebration for Mexico on the night. And, of course, there was a momentous win for GET OUT and Jordan Peele for “Best Original Screenplay”.
Perhaps the most relevant speech for writers came from Peele himself. Peele stated that he stopped writing, and kept going back to, GET OUT about 20 times! He never gave up on his passion project. He always believed that if and when this project got made it would make a difference – that it would mean something. And boy was he right! Take this as some inspiration for your own work, your own passion project. Don’t ever give up on that one story, that one script that you truly love…
So, all in all, a great night with diverse winners, and a nice sharing of awards between the nominees – no film took home more than four awards (THE SHAPE OF WATER won there, too.) And once again, Jimmy Kimmel was a surprisingly good host…
Congrats to all the winners – bring on this year’s films!
© WriteMovies 2017. Exclusive to WriteMovies – To syndicate this content for your own publication, contact ian (at) writemovies dot-com.
by John | Feb 26, 2018 | Industry News
We hear there’s some big awards ceremony at the weekend? Well, here’s our 2018 Oscars Best Picture prediction and Best Director prediction for this year… By Jamie White.
Best Picture and Director
We’re doing something a little different here… It’s very rare that the Best Picture winner is not accompanied by Best Director, especially since the turn of the century. A Best Picture-Director split has only happened 7 times since the year 2000. And, hell, we’re confident enough that there won’t be a split this year.
So, we’re looking at the 5 Best Director nominees and picking our winner for BOTH Best Picture and Director – we’re that confident!
The nominees are…
“Dunkirk,” Christopher Nolan
“Get Out,” Jordan Peele
“Lady Bird,” Greta Gerwig
“Phantom Thread,” Paul Thomas Anderson
“The Shape of Water,” Guillermo del Toro
Now, I think we can rule out DUNKIRK almost immediately. It has some recognition in categories like Cinematography and Editing, but we don’t think that’s enough for a win for Chris Nolan’s WWII epic.
The remaining four choices makes for a difficult decision – any four of these films and directors could win either category, but we just can’t see one of these directors winning and their corresponding film lucking out. So, we have to make a decision.
And we’re going with THE SHAPE OF WATER and Del Toro. For us, PHANTOM THREAD is a great film, but we don’t think Anderson has the same impact on his film as Del Toro. The same can really be said for LADY BIRD, in our opinion.
GET OUT is the main contender to Del Toro and SHAPE OF WATER, but we have to pick one winner (well, two…), and the magic of THE SHAPE OF WATER that Del Toro has transpired from other films of his such as PAN’S LABYRINTH makes it our favorite for the Oscar race.
Agree with our predictions or not? Let us now on Twitter and Facebook!
If you’re hungry for more winners, check out our Semi-Finalists announcement this Friday, then the TV and Book Awards winners the Friday after that!
© WriteMovies 2017. Exclusive to WriteMovies – To syndicate this content for your own publication, contact ian (at) writemovies dot-com.
by John | Jan 29, 2018 | Industry News
WriteMovies Oscars Nominees Reaction: Original Screenplay – The Original Screenplay category is where we have a couple of big hitters come into play… GET OUT and THE SHAPE OF WATER will be the big favorites for this category – and rightly so. Both are outstanding pieces that deserve some recognition in this category.
But let’s not forget the other three. THE BIG SICK, LADY BIRD, and THREE BILLBOARDS are all strong in their own right, and LADY BIRD in particular could challenge the big two in this category.
What is particularly interesting in this category is that THE BIG SICK is the only film that does not have its writer(s) also directing, while Jordan Peele, Guillermo del Toro, and Greta Gerwig have all received directorial nominations, respectively. This category is so difficult to call – and that’s just great! John and Jamie will try and call it anyway, though…
Predictions
John: Well, well, well… what a toughie! I don’t think there will be a surprise here, though. I’m going for GET OUT here.
Jamie: As much as I love del Toro, I think GET OUT or LADY BIRD will take this. And because I think del Toro will take Directing, Peele will get this as a “consolation”.
© WriteMovies 2017. Exclusive to WriteMovies – To syndicate this content for your own publication, contact ian (at) writemovies dot-com.
Looking at the winners, everything seemed to fit into place. THE SHAPE OF WATER took home Best Director and Best Picture (which we predicted, by the way) as well as two further awards. Gary Oldman won for his excellent, but kinda Oscar-baity, performance as Winston Churchill, and the Pixar film COCO won the “Pixar Award”, also known as “Best Animated Feature”… There weren’t that many shocks at all, if any, but this year was an enjoyable, albeit lengthy, watch.
Perhaps the most relevant speech for writers came from Peele himself. Peele stated that he stopped writing, and kept going back to, GET OUT about 20 times! He never gave up on his passion project. He always believed that if and when this project got made it would make a difference – that it would mean something. And boy was he right! Take this as some inspiration for your own work, your own passion project. Don’t ever give up on that one story, that one script that you truly love…