(January 23, 2018 – Toronto, ON) Guillermo del Toro’s Golden Globe win as Best Director was a sure sign he would be on the list for the 90th anniversary Oscars® and he and his film, the marvellously crafted fantasy The Shape of Water rule the race with a total of 13 Academy Award nominations announced earlier this morning in Hollywood.
In essence, The Shape of Water tells the story of a mute janitor who falls in love with an imprisoned sea creature. Its 13 nominations, including Best Picture, are just one away from the record for the most in Academy Awards history. The 1950 film All About Eve was the first to be nominated for 14 Oscars®, followed by James Cameron’s Titanic and last year’s La La Land, which costarred Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. Nominations are one thing, actually winning is something else. Only three films have won 11 of the coveted Academy trophies including Ben Hur in 1959, Titanic in 1997 and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003. All About Eve and La La Land landed 6 awards.
In addition to del Toro for Best Director and the film for Best Picture, as Canadian media was quick to point out, the “shot in Toronto” The Shape of Water nominations include Richard Jenkins for Actor in a Supporting Role; Sally Hawkins, who starred in the Canadian hit Maudie, was nominated as Actress in a Leading Role; Octavia Spencer in the category Actress in a Supporting Role; Dan Laustsen for Cinematography; Luis Sequeira for Costume Design; Sidney Wolinsky for Film Editing; Alexandre Desplat for Original Score; Paul Denham Austerberry for Production Design; Nathan Robitaille and Nelson Ferreira for Sound Editing; Christian Cooke, Brad Zoern and Glen Gauthier for Sound Mixing and Guillermo del Toro and Vanessa Taylor for Original Screenplay.
Blade Runner 2049 created a lot of buzz for Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, but he was not nominated for his work on the film. It did pick up nominations for Cinematography (Roger A. Deakins), Production Design (Sarah Greenwood), Sound Editing (Mark Mangini and Theo Green), Sound Mixing (Ron Bartlett, Doug Hemphill and Mac Ruth) and finally Visual Effects (John Nelson, Gerd Nefzer, Paul Lambert and Richard R. Hoover)
Christopher Plummer picked up a nomination for Best Supporting Actor for All the Money in the World. It must have been a sweet moment for both Plummer and director Sir Ridley Scott. Scott wanted Plummer in the first place but the studio pushed for Kevin Spacey, who Plummer then replaced when all of Spacey’s scenes needed to be reshot after Spacey’s career quickly evaporated.
The Canadian co-production The Breadwinner is one of five films up for an Oscar® in the category Animated Feature.
The 90th anniversary Oscars will be handed out on March 4, 2018 and will be hosted for a second time by Jimmy Kimmel.
