JK News Today
The 90th Academy Awards, or the Oscars as they’re fondly known, kicked off at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on Monday. Guillermo del Toro’s romance fantasy The Shape of Water led nominations with 13 nods, followed by eight nominations for Christopher Nolan’s epic World War II film, Dunkirk, and seven for the next favourite, Martin McDonagh’s piercing black comedy, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
9:45 am IST: 2017 Best Actress winner Emma Stone presented the Oscar for Best Director. Guillermo del Toro won his first Oscar for The Shape of Water. “I am an immigrant,” he began his speech, “and the greatest thing that art does is erase boundaries.”
9:35 am IST: Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder took to the stage the perform for the In Memoriam segment. Significantly for Indian fans, the late Sridevi, who died this month and Shashi Kapoor, who died in December, 2017, were honoured.
9:30 am IST: Oscar winner Christopher Walken walked onto the stage to present the award for Best Original Score. Alexandre Desplat won the second award of the evening for the Shape of Water and second Oscar of his career for his lush music for the old-fashioned romantic film. Meanwhile, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez won Best Original Song for Coco, the film’s second Oscar of the evening.
9:20 am IST: Oscar winner Sandra Bullock was welcomed to stage to present the Oscar for Best Cinematography. After 14 nominations, the legendary Roger Deakins won his first Oscar for his work on Blade Runner. He got a standing ovation. “I love my job, I’ve been doing it for a long time, as you can see,” he said. Deakins has shot classics such as The Shawshank Redemption, Skyfall and No Country for Old Men.
9:05 am IST: To present The Best Original Screenplay award, Nicole Kidman took to the stage. In a surprise upset, Get Out’s Jordan Peele won. Peele got the first standing ovation of the evening. “This means so much to me,” he said. “I thought no one would ever make this movie, so I want to dedicate this to everyone who raised my voice and let me make this movie.”
“To the cast and crew, I love you,” he said, “and to my mother, who taught me to love, in the face of hate.”
9 am IST: Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman and I, Tonya’s Margot Robbie presented the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar to the 89-year-old James Ivory, who made a career with his co-producer Ismail Merchant during the Merchant-Ivory years. “My first rule for a screenwriter adapting a novel is to thank the author,” said Ivory, who proceeded to do just that. He also thanked Merchant, with whom he worked for over 50 years.
8:50 am IST: Comedian Dave Chappelle arrived to introduce Common and Diane Warren, who performed Stand Up for Something, from the drama, Marshall, about the US’ first African American Supreme Court judge, Thurgood Marshall. He was played by Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman in the film. Common previously won an Oscar for his original song in 2015’s Selma.
8:40 am IST: Tiffany Haddish, who also announced the nominees with Andy Serkis in January, and Maya Rudolph took to the stage to announce the winners for Documentary Short Subject and Live Action Short Film. Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405 won the Documentary Oscar and The Silent Child won the Live Action Short award.
8:22 am IST: Gina Rodriguez and Tom Holland presented the Oscar for Best Visual Effects to Blade Runner 2047, the ambitious sequel to Ridley Scott’s legendary science-fiction film which attracted acclaim of its own. John Nelson, Gerd Nefzer, Paul Lambert and Richard R. Hoover accepted the award and thanked director Denis Villeneuve, ‘whose guts are seen in every frame of this film.’
Matthew McConaughey took to the stage to announce the winner for Best Editing. Christopher Nolan’s frequent collaborator, Lee Smith, won for Dunkirk.
8:15 am IST: Daniela Vega introduced the third Best Original Song nominee, Sufjan Stevens, who performed Mystery of Love, from Call Me By Your Name.
8:10 am IST: Star Wars: The Last Jedi stars Oscar Isaac, Mark Hamill, Kelly Marie Tran and the lovable droid, BB-8 ‘rolled’ onto the stage to announce winners in the Best Animated Short, and in what will surely become one of the strangest wins in the history of the awards, basketball star Kobe Bryant’s Dear Basketball won.
Pixar’s Coco continued the studio’s remarkable run at the Oscars, picking up the Best Animated Feature award. Director Lee Unkrich previously won for Toy Story 3. Producer Darla K Anderson noted the importance of representation in her acceptance speech. “The biggest thank you of all to the people of Mexico,” Unkrich said, “Coco would not exist without you. Marginalised people deserve to feel like they belong.”
8 am IST: 2017 Best Supporting Actor winner Mahershala Ali arrived to announce the winner for Best Supporting Actress. Allison Janney, the overwhelming frontrunner for her tough as nails performance in I, Tonya, won. It was her first nomination in a storied career. Janney thanked her ‘fellow nominees’ and writer Steven Rogers. “To my mother and father and my family and my family of friends,” she gushed.
7:55 am IST: Rita Moreno, Oscar winner for 1962’s West Side Story, got a spectacular introduction as she took to the stage to announce the winner of the Best Foreign Language Film. Sebastián Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman won Chile’s first ever Oscar. The Indian contender, Newton, was not nominated.
7:45 am IST: Mexican star Eugenio Derbez introduced the next Best Original Song nominee, Remember Me, from Pixar’s Coco. Gael García Bernal, Miguel and Natalia Lafourcade performed to huge cheers from the audience.
7:40 am IST: Black Panther star Lupita Nyong’o and Best Original Screenplay nominee Kumail Nanjiani – who identified themselves as dreamers and immigrants – took to the stage to announce the winner of the Best Production Design. The Shape of Water, the year’s biggest nominee, picked up its first Oscar.
7:30 am IST: Baby Driver star Ansel Elgort and Eiza Gonzalez were called to the stage to announce the winners of Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing. Richard King and Alex Gibson won the first award of the night for Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan’s World War II epic. It’s King’s fourth Oscar of his career, having previously won for Nolan’s Inception. Dunkirk immediately picked up its second Oscar, with Mark Weingarten, Gregg Landaker and Gary A. Rizzo winning for Best Sound Mixing.
7:15 am IST: Taraji P Henson introduced ‘the first person ever to be nominated for Best Original Song and Best Actress in the same year,’ Mary J Blige, who performed her nominated song, Mighty River, from Mudbound.
7:10 am IST: Best Director nominee Greta Gerwig and Star Wars: The Last Jedi star, Laura Dern, were called next to announce the Best Documentary winner. “We live in a time now, more than ever, to understand what is real and what is fact,” Gerwig said. Icarus, about the doping epidemic prevalent in cycling, won the award. The film is available on Netflix.
7 am IST: The legendary Eva Marie Saint, Oscar winner for the 1955 classic, On the Waterfront, took to the stage to announce the winner of the Best Costume Design award. “I just realised I’m older than the Academy,” she said, “but let’s move on.”
Mark Bridges won for Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson’s drama about an eccentric dressmaker, which famously marked Best Actor nominee Daniel Day-Lewis’ final acting role. The star already has three Oscars under his belt.
6:55 am IST: Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot and Call Me By Your Name’s Armie Hammer came onto the stage to announce the winner of the Best Hair & Makeup Oscar. As expected, Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski and Lucy Sibbick won for their incredible work in Darkest Hour, in which Best Actor hopeful Gary Oldman is almost unrecognisable as Winston Churchill. It was Tsuji’s first win in three nominations.
6:45 am IST: Viola Davis took to the stage to announce the first award of the night – Best Supporting Actor. Sam Rockwell, for Three Billborards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the overwhelming favourite took home the award. “I’d like to thank the Academy, I never thought I’d say those words,” Rockwell said in his speech.
6:30 am IST: Jimmy Kimmel takes to the stage a year after hosting the 2017 Oscars, which infamously ended in huge confusion after La La Land was mistakenly announced as the winner of the Best Picture award instead of Moonlight. The short film played at the beginning of the ceremony poked fun at the mishap. “Greetings from Hollywood to our viewers all over the world,” Kimmel said, as he took to the stage.
He then addressed the elephant in the room – the sexual assault scandal that shook Hollywood in 2017 – and pointed everyone’s attention to the Oscars statue, which he said keeps its hands to itself and doesn’t even have a penis.
“Over the course of this evening, I hope you will hear more of movements such as Me Too and Time’s Up and Never Again,” he said.
Kimmel also spoke about the positive wave of change the industry has witnessed since last year. He noted the success of Black Panther and Wonder Woman, superhero movies led by what have historically considered minorities. He singled out Best Director nominees Jordan Peele and Greta Gerwig, and history making cinematographer, Rachel Morrison.
Kimmel ended his monologue by encouraging winners to make passionate speeches about issues they believe him, reminding them of the platform and opportunity they’ve been given.
6 am IST: We’re less than half an hour away from the Oscars! Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman and Wonder Woman Gal Gadot are in the house.
5:30 am IST: Host Jimmy Kimmel celebrated Oscar day by sharing a picture of his 3-and-a-half year old daughter eating pancakes.
5:15 am IST: The red carpet event kicks off, with the who’s who of the industry arriving in their best, most colourful outfits. The recent Golden Globes saw a blackout of sorts in support of the Me Too and Time’s Up movements. Catch the action from the red carpet here.
Jimmy Kimmel returned to host for the second year in the row, following the confusion at the end of the 2017 ceremony, in which the wrong winner was announced on his watch. All eyes were on the comedian after a particularly tumultuous year for the entertainment industry, which saw several prominent personalities being accused of sexual misconduct in the sweeping Me Too and Time’s Up movements fuelled by the initial accusations against producer Harvey Weinstein.
Courtesy: Hindustan Times
