2018 Oscars: Raising the Bar for Diversity

Tune in to watch Jimmy Kimmel host the Oscars again, on March 4th. Let’s hope he doesn’t announce the wrong winner for Best Picture. (Source: Angela George, Wikimedia). 

In 2014, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was 94% white, 76% male, and held an average age of 63. This discovery sparked the online protest movement #oscarssowhite, and has forced the Academy Awards to put more effort into diversifying their lineup.

This year, that diversity is evident, the most significant of which is Jordan Peele becoming the first-ever black filmmaker to be nominated for directing, writing, and producing in the same year for his satirical horror ‘Get Out.’ Rachel Morrison is the first female cinematographer to ever be nominated for an Oscar, for her film ‘Mudbound.’ Octavia Spencer is now tied with Viola Davis for most nominated black actress of all time, and is also the first black actress to be re-nominated for an Oscar , after winning Best Actress back in 2012 for ‘The Help.’

There are also a few clear chart-toppers in this year’s nominations. ‘The Shape of Water’ has an impressive thirteen nods, ‘Dunkirk’ has eight, and the controversial ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ has seven.

Here are the 2018 Academy Award nominees:

Best Picture
Call Me by Your Name
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
Get Out
Lady Bird
Phantom Thread
The Post
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Actor
Timothée Chalamet, Call Me by Your Name
Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread
Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out
Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour
Denzel Washington, Roman J. Israel, Esq.

Best Actress
Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water
Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Margot Robbie, I, Tonya
Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird
Meryl Streep, The Post

Best Supporting Actor
Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project
Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water
Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the World
Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Supporting Actress
Mary J. Blige, Mudbound
Allison Janney, I, Tonya
Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread
Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird
Octavia Spencer, The Shape of Water

Best Director
Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk
Jordan Peele, Get Out
Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread
Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water

Best Adapted Screenplay
James Ivory, Call Me by Your Name
Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, The Disaster Artist
Scott Frank and James Mangold and Michael Green, Logan
Aaron Sorkin, Molly’s Game
Virgil Williams and Dee Rees, Mudbound

Best Original Screenplay
Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani, The Big Sick
Jordan Peele, Get Out
Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
Guillermo del Toro, Vanessa Taylor, The Shape of Water
Martin McDonagh, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Animated Feature
The Boss Baby
The Breadwinner
Coco
Ferdinand
Loving Vincent

Best Animated Short
Dear Basketball, Glen Keane, Kobe Bryant
Garden Party, Victor Caire, Gabriel Grapperon
Lou, Dave Mullins, Dana Murray
Negative Space, Max Porter, Ru Kuwahata
Revolting Rhymes, Jakob Schuh, Jan Lachauer

Best Cinematography
Roger Deakins, Blade Runner 2049
Bruno Delbonnel, Darkest Hour
Hoyte van Hoytema, Dunkirk
Rachel Morrison, Mudbound
Dan Laustsen, The Shape of Water

Best Documentary Feature
Abacus Small Enough to Jail
Faces Places
Icarus
Last Men in Aleppo
Strong Island

Best Documentary Short Subject
Edith + Eddie
Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405
Heroin(e)
Knife Skills
Traffic Stop

Best Live Action Short Film
Reed Van Dyk, DeKalb Elementary
Derin Seale, Josh Lawson, The Eleven O’Clock
Kevin Wilson, Jr., My Nephew Emmett
Chris Overton, Rachel Shenton, The Silent Child
Katja Benrath, Tobias Rosen, Watu Wote/All of Us

Best Foreign Language Film
A Fantastic Woman (Chile)
The Insult (Lebanon)
Loveless (Russia)
On Body and Soul (Hungary)
The Square (Sweden)

Best Film Editing
Jonathan Amos, Paul Machliss, Baby Driver
Lee Smith, Dunkirk
Tatiana S. Riegel, I, Tonya
Sidney Wolinsky, The Shape of Water
Jon Gregory, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Sound Editing
Julian Slater, Baby Driver
Mark Mangini, Theo Green, Blade Runner 2049
Alex Gibson, Richard King, Dunkirk
Nathan Robitaille, The Shape of Water
Ren Klyce, Matthew Wood, Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Best Sound Mixing
Mary H. Ellis, Julian Slater, Tim Cavagin, Baby Driver
Mac Ruth, Ron Bartlett, Doug Hephill, Blade Runner 2049
Mark Weingarten, Gregg Landaker, Gary A. Rizzo, Dunkirk
Glen Gauthier, Christian Cooke, Brad Zoern, The Shape of Water
Stuart Wilson, Ren Klyce, David Parker, Michael Semanick, Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Best Production Design
Beauty and the Beast
Blade Runner 2049
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water

Best Original Score
Hans Zimmer, Dunkirk
Jonny Greenwood, Phantom Thread
Alexandre Desplat, The Shape of Water
John Williams, Star Wars The Last Jedi
Carter Burwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Original Song
“Mighty River” from Mudbound, Mary J. Blige
“Mystery of Love” from Call Me by Your Name, Sufjan Stevens
“Remember Me” from Coco, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Robert Lopez
“Stand Up for Something” from Marshall, Diane Warren, Common
“This Is Me” from The Greatest Showman, Benj Pasek, Justin Paul

Makeup and Hair
Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski, Lucy Sibbick, Darkest Hour
Daniel Phillips and Lou Sheppard, Victoria and Abdul
Arjen Tuiten, Wonder

Costume Design
Beauty and the Beast
Darkest Hour
Phantom Thread
The Shape of Water
Victoria and Abdul

Visual Effects
John Nelson, Paul Lambert, Richard R. Hoover, Gerd Nefzer, Blade Runner 2049
Christopher Townsend, Guy Williams, Jonathan Fawkner, Dan Sudick, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Stephen Rosenbaum, Jeff White, Scott Benza, Mike Meinardus, Kong: Skull Island
Ben Morris, Mike Mulholland, Chris Corbould, Neal Scanlon, Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, Daniel Barrett, Joel Whist, War for the Planet of the Apes

Tune in to watch Jimmy Kimmel host the Oscars again, on March 4th. Let’s hope he doesn’t announce the wrong winner for Best Picture.