by Nathaniel R
img srcIt's part two of our Team Experience Oscar Nomination response... and then we can move on to both Oscar chart fun and back to cinema proper. The latter some of you will surely be itching for if you're not all-the-way obsessed with Oscar minutiae.
This morning we shed final tears for the snubs and now, the nominations that brought us the most joy in the acting categories and elsewhere.
WHICH (NON-ACTING) NOMINATION GAVE YOU THE MOST JOY?
CHRIS FEIL: Agnès Varda is finally a competitive Oscar nominee, which is doubly rewarding considering Faces Places will likely be her final film. (We love you too, JR.) With Jane out of the way she may even be the frontrunner, giving her Honorary Oscar a friend on its shelf - a lovely thought considering Faces Places is partly an ode to partnership.
GLENN DUNKS: Rachel Morrison becoming the first nominated woman in Achievement in Cinematography is pretty great and a major win for Netflix considering most people would have seen it on their smaller screens...
Likewise I am thrilled for Gerwig and Peele who had directing efforts that not too long ago would have been inconceivable. Yet, I think I am most happiest for Yance Ford. Not only is Strong Island an extraordinary film that somehow took its potentially polarizing format all the way to a nomination for Best Documentary, but in doing so becomes the first openly transgender filmmaker to be nominated.
ERIC BLUME: Without question Rachel Morrison's nomination for Cinematography for Mudbound. She's the first woman DP ever nominated, and her work made that film soar with so much texture and atmosphere.
KATEY RICH: Yance Ford really laid his heart on the table for Strong Island, and is now the first trans director of an Oscar-nominated film ever.
TEO BUGBEE: James Ivory for Best Adapted Screenplay. Call Me By Your Name would have been a better film if James Ivory had directed it, and I'll die on that hill, but his screenplay adaptation highlights yet again that he is one of the sharpest readers among filmmakers.
MATTHEW ENG: How is it possible that Abacus: Small Enough to Jail marks the first occasion in which the incredible Steve James has ever received a Best Documentary nomination? Abacus may not be the incisive and all-absorbing masterwork that Hoop Dreams and The Interrupters were, but it’s a warm, edifying, and rightfully furious achievement all the same, spotlighting and immersing itself within an ethnic community (New York’s first-and-second-generation Chinese working-class) that is rarely afforded such loving attention on the big screen. I’ll be savoring the film — and its long-overdue recognition for this sublime documentarian — for months to come.
DEBORAH LIPP: Never has a movie deserved an editing nomination more than Baby Driver. Never have I understood editing as a category better than for Baby Driver.
TIMOTHY BRAYTON: Jonny Greenwood for Best Score. After his failure to make any dent here previously, I figured they just hated him for no good reason, and the fact that the year's lushest, most swooning music now has a good shot at winning an award is the most optimistic I've felt since this season began.
JOHN GUERIN: I screamed when Jonny Greenwood's exquisite score for Phantom Thread earned its rightful nomination. Rapturous, lush, circumspect, clearly riffing on Bernstein and Herrmann, but undoubtedly its own mix of tension and release, in perfect service to its film.
NATHANIEL R: Strangely I was not particularly thrilled by any well deserved craft nomination this year (mostly because the only ones I was rooting for were locked up or snubbed) so I have to give a shout out to On Body and Soul, Hungary's Foreign Film nominee. It's eccentric and endearing but harsher than whimsical which that combo of adjectives would usually imply. I was mesmerized. It's also nice to have Greta Gerwig not be alone among female directors honored. Ildikó Enyedi first hit the world cinema stage by winning the Camera D'Or at Cannes in 1989 for My Twentieth Century but though Hungary submitted her breakout picture, Oscar didn't bite. So this has been a long time coming... 28 years to be exact.
JASON ADAMS: I've been in love with Sufjan Stevens and his music since I stood dreamily staring up at him playing his keyboard literally a foot away from me within a small crowd at the Bowery Ballroom way way wayyyy back in the day, so it's going to be quite a thing to see him perform on the mf'ing Oscars.
ILICH MEJIA: Sufjan Steven’s “Mystery of Love” underscores the dreamlike quality of Call Me By Your Name without making the dream seem any less likely to have actually happened. It’s hopeful reminiscing that summons too many emotions to contain, too deserving thanks to Steven’s words and composition. Also he is notable look provider so watching him on the red carpet will be a hoot.
SEÁN MCGOVERN: Aside from the absence of BPM (Beats Per Minute), it's a very strong Foreign Language category and I'm overjoyed for Loveless. When all we hear about Russia in the media is interference and espionage, it's important to remember that it's not without its own dissenting artistic voices. Loveless distills the entire pain and anxieties of this complex nation all in one family's tragedy.
NICK DAVIS: Last Men in Aleppo for Documentary, because it's such a searing document and so resourcefully made, amid such inhospitable conditions. That field often rewards easier work than this, so I'm delighted to see it appear here.
SALIM GARAMI: Virgil Williams & Dee Rees for Best Adapted Screenplay. I was always holding my breath that Mudbound would break the Netflix glass ceiling.
LYNN LEE: Greta Gerwig for director, because Lady Bird slayed me and because it's about time the Academy recognized that "girls' stories" are stories for everyone. It's harder than it looks to put together a series of snapshots from a year in the life of a teenage girl and make each one sparkle.
and file this under "I didn't know we had so many Big Sick fans in the house!
BEN MILLER: I was so worried The Big Sick would walk away empty handed, but a screenplay nomination came for the two people who mean the most to the story. Their adorable post-nomination Twitter banter just adds to the joy.
MURTADA ELFADL: Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V Gordon for writing The Big Sick. In a time when even allies and friends are repeating the word “shithole” at us - no matter the context - and of course the racist regime we all live under which originated that vile word, it was heartwarming to see another immigrant of color get recognized for telling a very specific love story that also speaks to all of us in the diaspora.
SPENCER COILE: With so many contenders in the category, I am relieved to see The Big Sick appear in Original Screenplay. Not only was it a refreshing take on the rom-com genre, but Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon are an absolute delight on the awards circuit.
WHICH ACTING NOD GAVE YOU THE MOST JOY?
LYNN LEE: Meryl Streep for The Post. No, she didn't deserve the nod just because she's Meryl. She deserved it for the least "actorly," most understated performance we've seen from her in years. The evolution of a woman who's too polite to talk over men in the boardroom to the decisionmaker who tells them to cut the mansplaining is the beating heart of the movie, which Streep captures with all the intelligence and nuance that the character demands.
SALIM GARAMI: First Christopher Plummer will steal your role, then he'll steal your Oscar nomination. And he'll earn every ounce of it at the last second.
MURTADA ELFADL: Saoirse Ronan for best actress. Lady Bird is her Annie Hall. It’s the one she’ll be remembered for and used as shorthand to describe her for many years to come. Come on now don’t miss the chance to give her the Oscar!
GLENN DUNKS: The thing that I love about Saoirse Ronan's three Oscar nominations is how wildly different they all are and how they go against so much of what we all cynically joke about (but kinda think is true) the Academy for - she played a very unlikable girl in Atonement, then was nominated for an old-fashioned romantic drama in Brooklyn, and now a teen coming-of-age comedy. Her career is a delight and I'm so glad that she's clearly on her way to eventually winning an Academy Award.
SEÁN MCGOVERN: Saoirse Ronan. There's nothing inauthentic about her. No other young actress is capable of such range while still being entirely without artifice. Every interview with her is pure joy, and she's a champion for all of us who call our mothers "Mam".
CHRIS FEIL: Lesley Manville went right through me and it was me that ended up on the floor.
TEO BUGBEE: Lesley Manville. Because if she hadn't been there it would have hurt my ears.
TIMOTHY BRAYTON: Lesley Manville, because any time the Academy goes for "most subtle" rather than "most", it broadens what "counts" as greatness. Also, because it means two Mike Leigh veterans are nominated in the same year.
DANCIN DAN: Lesley Manville gives a DELICIOUS performance in Phantom Thread - I ate up every bitchy bon mot and withering eyebrow raise - and since she missed every precursor but BAFTA, I had accepted that she wasn't going to be nominated. So I gasped and jumped up and down when her name was read - a move Cyril surely would have rolled her eyes at, but I didn't care one bit.
NICK DAVIS: There are performances I like even better, but I'm thrilled about Denzel Washington landing a nom for a genuinely interesting movie that people were weirdly resistant to seeing. Even his Globe and SAG nods got treated a bit like "Oh, they'll nominate him for anything" or "Yeah, but he won't make it all the way to AMPAS." Roman J Israel, Esq is an uneven film but the best bits have really lingered with me, and I hope (and assume) more folks will now check it out.
JASON ADAMS: I suppose it's unsurprising all of my answers are about Call Me By Your Name to anyone who's had to listen to me for the past six months but come on, Timothée Chalamet gave the performance of the year, maybe even the decade. There was not a single second he was on screen where I didn't know exactly what Elio was feeling, and not just know it, but wince with the truth of it.
ERIC BLUME: Timothée Chalamet. It's a performance for the ages but usually Oscar gets skittish about young actors.
MATTHEW ENG: It isn’t hard to imagine Get Out still bowling us over and keeping us firmly embedded in Chris’ perspective with a less engaged or emotionally pliable performer in the lead. But Daniel Kaluuya never coasts or detaches. The reservoir of palpably heartsore poignancy that the Actor amasses in Jordan Peele’s debut would have been all too easy for Oscar voters to overlook or underrate in a different era of the Academy. What a relief that Get Out has arrived at this specific moment and that Kaluuya’s selfless, soul-stirring work (in a politically-attuned horror film, no less) has reached audiences and received its just acclaim.
BEN MILLER: Laurie Metcalf, just because I pessimistic until her name was called. She isn't super-famous, she doesn't do a bunch of movies and it is a prickly character. Now if she can sneak past the overrated hype-machine that is Janney's performance, then I will really be happy.
KATEY RICH: I, Tonya isn't for everyone, but by all accounts Margot Robbie really muscled that film into existence, and it's great to see a star use her power on a small, difficult film and to see that work rewarded. And she's great in it!
ILICH MEJIA: Sally Hawkins is always such a kind presence onscreen, impossible to root against. It is possible I am still mad about her Happy-Go-Lucky snub, so I've been shrieking every time she’s given her due since then.
SPENCER COILE: Without a doubt, Tiffany Hadd— Oh wait. For me, it has to be Willem Dafoe. He is truly the heart of The Florida Project and represents the film as a whole. With most of the characters in this category being douchebags, Dafoe is the beacon of light we desperately need.
KIERAN SCARLETT: Mary J. Blige for Mudbound. This is such a cool nomination that no one a year ago could have predicted and I'm glad it ultimately came to pass.
Your turn. Which nominations gave you a blissful moment these past 24 hours?