'The Shape of Water' wins Best Picture Oscar

The 90th Oscars ceremony kicked off with aplomb at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. With the Harvey Weinstein controversy unfolding over Hollywood, the #MeToo campaign has gained a lot of steam and has seen resonance with actors.

 

Here are the live updates:

That's a wrap of this year's Oscars! With a good mix of women empowerment (take a bow, Frances McDormand) and not many surprises, the Academy ticked off the usual boxes this time around. However to point out a few snubs, The Post and Lady Bird did not take home any Oscars this year. The Shape of Water leads the pack with four wins (Best Picture, Director, Production Design and Original Score); while Dunkirk has 3 wins and 2 Oscars have been awarded for Darkest Hour. 

Did you think we were done? Nope! The Jet Ski, bigger than the Oscar (according to Jimmy Kimmel) goes to Costume Design Oscar winner Mark Bridges for Phantom Thread.

 

Fingers crossed, everyone! Let's hope what happened last year doesn't repeat this time around! And... Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway are back. Just like last year.

And... The Best Picture Oscar goes to The Shape of Water. "If you find yourself there, remember you are part of a legacy and be proud of it, Steven Spielberg told me. I was growing up in Mexico, I never knew I could make it in the movies. Thank you very much," says del Toro.

 

Jennifer Lawrence and Jodie Foster walk in to announce the next biggie. And Jodie is on crutches! and why? She says,"Streep!" Let's take a moment there!  The two actresses have replaced Casey Affleck who was supposed to present the award this year. Is it due to the sexual harassment allegations that have been levelled against the actor last year?  Casey Affleck was the Best Actor winner in 2017 for his role in Manchester by the Sea.

Another neck-to-neck race in the Best Actress category has been going on ever since the nominations were announced. And the Oscar goes to Frances McDormand for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. This is her second Oscar. "So I am hyper-ventilating a little. I wanna thank the Cohen brothers. and everyone in the building. If I maybe so honoured to have all the female nominees stand with me tonight..." she calls out all the women in the building. "We all have stories to tell. We have have projects to finance. I have two words ... Inclusions Rider..." and she signs off. After she picks up her Oscar that she left on the floor.

 

That's Frances McDormand signing off with her second Oscar, with one of the loudest calls for 'inclusion' in the mvoies.

 

Jane Fonda and Helen Mirren take the stage for presenting the Best Actor award. Gary Oldman bags the Oscar for Darkest Hour. This is his first Oscar and second nomination. In Darkest Hour, Oldman plays the coveted role of Winston Churchill and his transformation was appreciated by critics worldwide.  This is Darkest Hour's second Oscar.  In the race towards Best Actor Oscar, the tie was between Gary Oldman and newcomer Timothee Chalamet for Call Me By Your Name.

Emma Stone announces the nominees for Best Director. She introduced the directors by saying, "These four men and Greta Gerwig created their own masterpieces this year," making sure to single out Gerwig by her name, thereby pointing to the lack of diversity in the category. Gerwig  is only the fifth woman in history to be nominated in the category and Stone was more than willing to point that out! 

Winner Alert!

The Oscar goes to Guillermo del Toro for The Shape of Water.  "I am an immigrant," starts del Toro and tells us the story of how his outlandish film took off. This is Guillermo's first win!

 

 

Alexandre Desplat gets the Oscar for Best Original Score for his work in The Shape of Water. He says that incidentally his mother too turns 90 along with the Oscars. 

Emily Blunt takes the stage to present the Oscar for Best Original Song to Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez for Coco.

With the in-memoriam montage playing sung by Eddie Vedder and written by Tom Petty, we have quite a few Indian connections this year. Actress Sridevi, who passed away this year gets a mention. And so does yesteryear actor Sashi Kapoor.

Yet another much-awaited category, Cinematography, comes up now. Rachel Morrison (for Mudbound) is the first woman to be nominated in the category.

Roger A. Deakins bags the Oscar for Blade Runner 2049. "I dont see myself on a jet ski somehow. I love my job. I have been doing it for a long time. This is for everyone I have worked it. This is for the team." Deakins has secured 13 other nominations and Blade Runner 2049 is his first win.

Nicole Kidman presents the Best Original Screenplay Oscar to Jordan Peele for Get Out. "I started writing this movie about 20 times. But I kept coming back to it. I want to dedicate it to all who helped me make this movie. My mother who taught me to love even in the face of heat. Thank you for all those who bought a ticket and asking others to go watch the movie."  Jordan Peel has three nominations for Get Out in 2018 Oscars. Categorically denying that his film cannot be pigeon-holed into any genre, he went on to state that Get Out is actually a documentary when it was nominated in the comedy category for the Golden Globes.

 

Black Panther Chadwick Boseman presents the Adapted Screenplay Oscar. James Ivory gets the Oscar for Call Me By Your Name. With this win, Ivory becomes the oldest ever Oscar winner. He is 89.

"I want to thank my sensitive and sensible director.  I want to thank the wonderful and emotion-filled actors. "

Tiffany Haddish and Maya Rudolph present the Best Documentary Short Oscar to Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405.

The Silent Child wins the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film.

Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey presents the nominees for achievements in Film Editing. And again, yet another sure-shot win for Dunkirk. Lee Smith collects the award. "Chris is an editor himself. Dunkirk was truly an amazing film. Am truly happy to have worked in that.... can't talk any quicker.. am an editor.. I should be able to do this," gushes Smith who has worked on almost all of Christopher Nolan's films. 

Visual Effects Oscar goes to John Nelson, Gerd Nefzer, Paul Lambert and Richard R. Hoover for Blade Runner 2049. This is John Nelson's second Oscar.

We have the Star Wars cast with us to present the next Oscar. Even BB-8. Yes, you heard that right! Luke Skywalker aka Mark Hamill  presents the Short Film (Animated) Oscar to Glen Keane and Kobe Bryant for Dear Basketball.

And the Oscar for Animated feature goes to the famous Coco. "Coco would not exisit without the people of Mexico and their endless cultures and traditions. Marginalised people deserve to feel like they belong. Representation matters," say Lee Unkrich and Darla k. Anderson in a passionate and outright politically-tinged speech.

Mahershala Ali, last year's winner of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, is here to present the Best Supporting Actress award which has a rich array of performers this year around.

I,Tonya wins its first statue for the day! Allison Janney wins her first Oscar. "I did it all by myself," says Allison Janney. Though, this was quite a shoo-in for Janney, she has a wide range of characters to her credit, and her claim to fame was the TV show West Wing.

 

 

Now for another big category. Best Foreign Language Film Oscar goes to A Fantastic Woman (Chile).  The Oscar is presented by the West Side Story star Rita Moreno. Directed by Sebastian Lelio, the film is the story of a transgender who is in a relationship with a much older man.

Lupita Nyong'o and Kumail Nanjiani present the Production Design Oscar.

"Dreams are the foundation of Hollywood. Dreams are the foundation of America. To all the dreamers, we stand with you." 

The Oscar goes to Paul Denham Austerberry (Production Design); Shane Vieau and Jeffrey A. Melvin (Set Decoration) for Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water .

A montage on the 90 years of the Academy Awards plays out, with the final credits thanking the audience. Now, we have Sound Editing Oscar which goes to Richard King and Alex Gibson for Chirstopher Nolan's Dunkirk .  This is Richard King's fourth Oscar (two of which were for Nolan's films) and Gibson's first Oscar.

The Oscar for Sound Mixing also goes to Gregg Landaker, Gary A. Rizzo and Mark Weingarten again for Dunkirk. War drama Dunkirk's tally is now two.

Now we move on to Best Documentary Feature. To present the award we have Greta Gerwig and Laura Dern. "Documentary filmmakers are revolutionaries. They helps us shape our understanding of the real world we live in," announces Dern.

...And the Oscar goes to Icarus by Bryan Fogel and Dan Cogen. The documentary is on the Russian Olympians and the doping controversy. 

Now for the next category, Best Costume Designing presented by Eva Marie Saint. "I just realised something! I am older than the Academy," says the star of On the Waterfront. The statue goes to Mark Bridges for Phantom Thread. This is his second Oscar and third nomination for Bridges.  Phantom Thread, another Best Picture nominee, wins its first Oscar for the day. The story follows the lives of a couturier (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) and his muse (enacted by Leslie Manville) set in 1950s London.

 

Gal Gadot and Armie Hammer present the Makeup & Hairstyling Oscar. The Oscar goes to Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski and Lucy Sibbick for Darkest Hour.  Maybe these winners will win the jet ski! That was a short speech!

Now for the first category of the day! Best Supporting Actor. The nominees are Willem Dafoe for The Florida Project; Woody Harrelson for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; Richard Jenkins for The Shape of Water; Christopher Plummer for All the Money in the World ; Sam Rockwell for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Viola Davis who won in the Best Supporting Actress category last year presents the award. Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell have been nominated forThree Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Christopher Plummer is the oldest nominee this year.

 

And the first Oscar for the day goes to Sam Rockwell for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. This is his first win!  Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri  follows the story of a grieving mother who seeks justice for her raped and murdered daughter. Sam Rockwell plays the role of a hotheaded cop in the film who attempts to find his peace with the passing away of a mentor and in the process helps the mother, Mildred (Frances McDormand). 

The film has been nominated in seven categories.

We are very close to the big event. And host Jimmy Kimmel launches into famous monologue. This is the Kimmel's second time of hosting the big evening. 

"This year when you hear your name called. Don't get up right away. (Hint: Last year's La La Land/Moonlight fiasco).  Oscar is 90 years old. This is history happening right here.  Oscar is still number 1. Oscar is still a well-respected man in Hollywood (points to the giant statue). Harvey Weinstein was kicked out of the Academy. We cant let bad behaviour slide anymore. In the course of the evening, I hope you will give your voice to movements like #MeToo, #TimesUp. Ceilings have been shattered. We have a first ever female nominee for cinematograohy (Rachael Morrison for Mudbound). Greta Gerwig is the first woman to be nominated for a debut film (Ladybird). Congratulations to Jordan Peel for winning nominations for Direction, Writing, and Best Picture for his debut film, Get Out. Christopher Plummer is 80 years old and nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category. The most nominated tonight is The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro. You don';t have to change the world. Do whatever you want. This is a long show. So whoever wins the shortest speech will go home with... a jet ski (posed by Helen Mirren)."  

Now to get to the serious stuff! We want to give you a little peak into the 'how exactly the nominations happens'. Did you know that directors may only vote on the Best Director nominees, cinematographers only for those in the cinematography category and so on? The Academy has more than 6,000 voting members, all of whom belong to the film industry. And no prizes for guessing that the membership is not easy to receive. Here is how the nomination process works!

 

While the Academy Awards have always held surprises, this year’s nominations seem to be careful political grandstanding and interesting entries. Here are the surprises and snubs of this year. Martin McDonagh is 2018’s Ben Affleck as his film has received a Best picture nod, but he has been forgotten in the Best Director category.

 

 

 

Just in case you need reminding, here are the nominations for this year!

The nominations were announced by Priyanka Chopra, Rosario Dawson, Rebel Willson, Michelle Yeoh and Michelle Rodriguez.