Oscars 2018 | Fresh voices lead the way in nominations

Director Greta Gerwig (right) and Saoirse Ronan on the set of “Lady Bird”

The Academy Awards showered outsiders, on screen and off, with milestone-setting nominations that celebrated Guillermo del Toro’s full-hearted ode to outcasts “The Shape of Water,” embraced first-time filmmakers like Greta Gerwig and Jordan Peele, and made “Mudbound” director of photography Rachel Morrison the first woman ever nominated for best cinematography.

In nominations that spanned young and old, studio blockbusters and passion-fueled indies, the 90th annual Academy Awards on Tuesday gave many who have long been shunned by the movie business — women directors, transgender filmmakers, minority actors, even Netflix — something to cheer about.

Leading all nominees with 13 nods, including best picture, was “The Shape of Water,” by veteran Mexican filmmaker del Toro, whose Cold War-era fantasy is about a mute office cleaner (Sally Hawkins) who falls in love with an amphibious creature. But the nominations also carried forward some of the ongoing reckoning of the Me Too movement that has been felt especially acutely in Hollywood, where male filmmakers outnumber women by a ratio of approximately 12-to-1.

Gerwig, the writer-director of the nuanced coming-of-age tale “Lady Bird,” became just the fifth woman nominated for best director, following Lina Wertmuller, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola and Kathryn Bigelow, the sole woman to win, for “The Hurt Locker.” Speaking by phone Tuesday from Los Angeles, Gerwig said the distinction was extremely meaningful.

“When I think about Kathryn Bigelow winning and me sitting there watching it and feeling suddenly like, ‘It’s possible,’” said Gerwig. “To be nominated as the fifth woman, I hope that what it does is that women of all ages look at it and they also find the spark within themselves that says: ‘Now I have to go make my movie.’ That’s what I want. And I want it selfishly because I want to see their stories.”

Morrison posted Twitter of her nomination: “I hope it tells all the dreamers out there (especially the young girls with cameras in their hands) that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.”

In what’s been a wide-open awards season, Oscar voters chose nine best-picture nominees, including four with female protagonists: “The Shape of Water,” ‘’Lady Bird,” Martin McDonaugh’s rage-fueled comic drama “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” Jordan Peele’s horror sensation “Get Out,” Joe Wright’s Winston Churchill drama “Darkest Hour,” Steven Spielberg’s timely newspaper drama “The Post,” Christopher Nolan’s World War II epic “Dunkirk,” Luca Guadagnino’s tender love story “Call Me By Your Name” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s twisted romance “Phantom Thread.”

One of Gerwig’s first calls of congratulations was to another first-time filmmaker, Peele. The two have been brought together by Hollywood’s months-long Oscar campaigning and their mutual rookie status. (Gerwig previously co-directed a small feature.)

Peele becomes the fifth black filmmaker nominated for best director, and the third to helm a best-picture nominee, following Barry Jenkins last year for “Moonlight.” He’s also the third person to receive best picture, director and writing nods for his first feature film after Warren Beatty (“Heaven Can Wait”) and James L. Brooks (“Terms of Endearment”).

“I’m going to write. I’m now going to get hard at work on the next one,” Peele said by phone. “One of the greatest things that I get from this whole process is this faith in my voice. It’s like jet fuel. It makes me want to make as many movies that I can in my life.

“The Shape of Water” landed just shy of tying the record of 14 nominations, scoring a wide array for nominations for its cast (Sally Hawkins, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer), del Toro’s directing, its sumptuous score (by Alexandre Desplat) and its technical craft. Del Toro said in an interview Tuesday that he would celebrate with an extra chicken sausage for breakfast: “That will be my indulgence for the day.”

“You realize that we are all, in some way or another, a bit of an outsider in different ways,” said del Toro of his film’s resonance. “Not fearing the other but embracing the other is the only way to go as a race. The urgency of that message of hope and emotion is what sustained the faith for roughly half a decade that the movie needed to be made.”

All of the acting front-runners — Frances McDormand (“Three Billboards”), Gary Oldman (“Darkest Hour”), Allison Janney (“I, Tonya”), Sam Rockwell (“Three Billboards”) — landed their expected nominations. But there were plenty of surprises and more than a few landmarks in the nominations announced from Los Angeles ahead of the March 4 ceremony, to be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel.

Meryl Streep scored her 21st nomination, for “The Post,” and John Williams (“Star Wars: The Last Jedi”) his 51st. Two 89-year- old legends became the oldest nominees: Agnes Varda (“Faces Places,” best documentary) and James Ivory (“Call Me By Your Name,” for adapted screenplay). There were eight first-time acting nominees, including 22-year-old “Call Me By Your Name” breakthrough Timothee Chalamet and Daniel Kaluuya, 28, of “Get Out.” Saoirse Ronan, that grizzled 23-year-old, landed her third Oscar nom, for “Lady Bird.”

Denzel Washington (“Roman J. Israel, Esq.”) was nominated for best actor, likely eclipsing James Franco (“Disaster Artist”). Franco was accused of sexual misconduct, which he denied, just days before Oscar voting closed.

Christopher Plummer, who replaced Kevin Spacey in Ridley Scott’s “All the Money in the World,” also sneaked into the best supporting actor category. Added to the film in reshoots little more than a month before the film’s release, 88-year-old Plummer is the oldest acting nominee ever. “Everything has happened so quickly of late that I am still a trifled stunned but excited by it all,” said Plummer.

Perhaps most unexpected was the broad success of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread,” which scored not only nods for Daniel Day-Lewis for best actor and Lesley Manville, for best supporting actress, but also nominations for best picture, Anderson’s direction, costume design and Johnny Greenwood’s score.

Still, “Three Billboards” scored seven nominations, behind only “The Shape of Water” and Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk.” The World War II epic, thus far little- honored in Hollywood’s awards season, emerged especially strong with Oscar voters, taking eight nominations, many of them in technical categories. It’s Nolan’s first nomination for best director.

Though the favorites are largely independent films, a number of blockbusters fared well, including five nods for “Blade Runner 2049,” four for “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” three for “Baby Driver,” two for “Beauty and the Beast” and two for Pixar’s “Coco,” which is up for best animated feature. The Wolverine film “Logan” even notched a screenplay nod, a first for a superhero movie.

The documentary category — also including “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail,” ‘’Last Men in Aleppo” and two Netflix entries: “Icarus” and “Strong Island” — likewise contained history. Jake Coyle, New York, AP

No smartphones for pwc accountants

The show ran especially long last year, at three hours and 49 minutes, but it finished with a bang: the infamous envelope mix-up that led to “La La Land” being incorrectly announced as the best picture before “Moonlight” was crowned. This year, the academy has prohibited the PwC accountants who handle the envelopes from using cellphones or social media during the show. The accounting firm also unveiled several reforms including the addition of a third balloting partner in the show’s control room. But the movie business has larger accounting problems. Attendance hit a 24-year low in 2017.

Oscars making history, quietly, with transgender nominees

Daniela Vega in a scene from  “A Fantastic Woman”

Oscar nods for women and minorities drew many of the headlines in the nominations, but this year’s Academy Awards also mark a breakthrough for transgender filmmakers.

Yance Ford, the director of the documentary “Strong Island” and a trans man, became the first transgender filmmaker nominated for an Oscar. His film, a Netflix release about Ford’s investigation into his brother’s 1992 murder, was nominated for best documentary.

Sebastian Lelio’s “A Fantastic Woman,” Chile’s Oscar entry, was also nominated for best foreign language film. It stars Daniela Vega, a trans actress, as a transgender singer mistreated in the aftermath of her boyfriend’s death.

Alluding to those nominations, as well as those for films featuring prominent gay characters such as “The Shape of Water,” ‘’Call Me By Your Name” and “Lady Bird,” GLAAD applauded the Oscar field.

“It’s a big day for LGBTQ-inclusive films at the Academy Awards. Films like ‘The Shape of Water,’ ‘A Fantastic Woman,’ ‘Lady Bird,’ and ‘Call Me By Your Name’ not only have complex, detailed, and moving portrayals, but prove that audiences and critics alike are hungry for stories which embrace diversity,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD president and CEO. “These important stories move the needle forward on LGBTQ acceptance at a time when media images are often the front lines for marginalized communities.”

Some had hoped Vega would become the first transgender actor nominated. Hollywood has come under increasing criticism for celebrating trans stories played by non-trans stars, while failing to cast transgender actors.

Hilary Swank (“Boys Don’t Cry”), Jared Leto (“Dallas Buyers Club”), Eddie Redmayne (“The Danish Girl”) and Felicity Huffman (“Transamerica”) have all garnered Oscar nominations for trans roles, with Swank and Leto winning.

Transgender people have been nominated in other Oscar categories. The composer Angela Morley received two nods, for 1974’s “The Little Prince” and 1976’s “The Slipper and the Rose.”