Academy Award Nominations Inclusive!

The Academy Award nominations are out, and unless your thing is having a fifteen-dollar beer at an indie theater surrounded by twenty-year-olds decked in ironic aviator glasses and head-to-toe ironic Carhartt, the list of noms might look like a random collection of words that when deciphered spell out “The worst thing ever.” I don’t know what Ebbing, Missouri is, and I don’t want to.

While #OscarsSoWhite is yesteryear’s moral conundrum in the industry and this year it all about #OscarsSoRapey, the Academy members aren’t about to have a plain yogurt repeat of 2015 and 2016, when all the major nominees were white. Most notably this year the popcorn flick Get Out is nominated under four categories – Best Actor for Daniel Kaluuya, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Jordan Peele, and Best Picture. By the laws of logic any movie with Allison Williams shouldn’t be nominated for anything ever or seen by anybody ever or even get made in the first place. so that alone means that something’s fishy.

I saw Get Out in the theater and, as a Chicagoan who has friends with horrible ideas as to what constitutes as fun, actually attended the recording of NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me during which Jordan Peele called in and talked about Get Out. I took a bunch of drugs beforehand so don’t cry for me too much. But do a little. Because it was horrible.

My point is that I’m in deep enough to say that while Get Out was a fun watch, it was more a mid-tier Black Mirror concept (white people fetishizing black people to the extreme of inhabiting their bodies through surgery) then a movie intended to live on in Oscars infamy, and I can’t help but think even Peele himself feels this way deep down. Get Out was released in February – one of the classic dump months for flicks – and again, he cast Williams. Allison Williams. I mean, come the hell on. It’d be more compelling if someone just dragged Brunette Barbie around set Robot Chicken-style.

Academy members are wiping the sweat from their brows knowing that they were able to eke in a movie about black issues, instead of creating an actual Oscar contender. Get Out’s headline-grabbing surprise nominations assuage #OscarsSoWhite guilt, but at the end of the day it’s a red herring, allowing people to celebrate walking ultra white paint chip Greta Gerwig while feeling that they hit inclusivity out of the damn park. If it wasn’t for the release of Get Out, the Oscars would have worked their way all the way down to The Carmichael Show if they had to.

I wish I worked in Hollywood. Preaching about environmentalism while chartering private jets? Condemning an alleged sexual assailant post reaping the benefits of working with one? Celebrating racial inclusivity on a technicality rather than fostering the creation of actual Oscar-worthy inclusive movies? The morality Fast Pass reserved for the rich and famous.

Here are the nominated movies that I hope you didn’t have to suffer through:

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 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 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 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 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 Director

Guillermo Del Toro, The Shape of Water

Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird

Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk

Jordan Peele, Get Out

Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread

Best Original Screenplay

The Big Sick, Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani

Get Out, Jordan Peele

Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig

The Shape of Water, Guillermo Del Toro and Vanessa Taylor

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Martin McDonagh

Best Adapted Screenplay

Call Me By Your Name, James Ivory

The Disaster Artist, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber

Logan, Scott Frank, James Mangold, Michael Green

Molly’s Game, Aaron Sorkin

Mudbound, Vigil Williams and Dee Rees

Best Animated Feature

Boss Baby

The Breadwinner

Coco

Ferdinand

Loving Vincent

Best Foreign Language Film

A Fantastic Woman (Chile)

The Insult (Lebanon)

Loveless (Russia)

On Body and Soul (Hungary)

The Square (Sweden)

Best Documentary Feature

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail

Faces Places

Icarus

Last Men in Aleppo

Strong Island

Best Production Design

Beauty and the Beast

Blade Runner 2049

Darkest Hour

Dunkirk

The Shape of Water

Best Costume Design

Beauty and the Beast

Darkest Hour

Phantom Thread

The Shape of Water

Victoria & Abdul

Best Cinematography

Blade Runner 2049

Darkest Hour

Dunkirk

Mudbound

The Shape of Water

Best Film Editing

Baby Driver

Dunkirk

I, Tonya

The Shape of Water

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Darkest Hour

Victoria & Abdul

Wonder

Best Score

Dunkirk

Phantom Thread

The Shape of Water

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Song

“Mighty River,” Mudbound

“The Mystery of Love,” Call Me By Your Name

“Remember Me,” Coco

“Stand Up for Something,” Marshall

“This Is Me,” The Greatest Showman

Best Sound Editing

Baby Driver

Blade Runner 2049

Dunkirk

The Shape of Water

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Best Sound Mixing

Baby Driver

Blade Runner 2049

Dunkirk

The Shape of Water

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Best Visual Effects

Blade Runner 2049

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Kong: Skull Island

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

War for the Planet of the Apes

Best Animated Short

Dear Basketball

Garden Party

Lou

Negative Space

Revolting Rhymes

Best Documentary Short

Edith+Eddie

Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405

Heroin(e)

Knife Skills

Traffic Stop

Best Live Action Short

DeKalb Elementary

The Eleven O’Clock

My Nephew Emmett

The Silent Child

Watu Wote/All of Us

Photo Credit: Pacific Coast News