Author: David

Rachel Morrison goes from being the first female cinematographer nominated in the American Society of Cinematographers, to the first female nominated for Best Cinematography Oscar in Mudbound.

Dee Rees is the second African American woman nominated for Best Screenplay for her directorial achievement Mudbound – first since Suzanne De Passe for 1972’s Lady Sings the Blues. 

Jordan Peele has a bunch of stats – only the fifth African American nominated for Best Director (John Singleton, Lee Daniels, Steve McQueen, Barry Jenkins) – and also, only the 3rd to be nominated for Writing, Directing and Producing in his debut (after James L. Brooks, Terms of Endearment, and Warren Beatty, Heaven Can Wait).

Greta Gerwig is the fifth woman ever nominated for Best Director, following Lina Wertmuller (1976 – Seven Beauties), Jane Campion (1991 – The Piano), Sofia Coppola (2003 – Lost in Translation), and Kathryn Bigelow (2009 – The Hurt Locker).

With the score from Star Wars: The Last Jedi, John Williams now has fifty-one (51) nominations in Best Score and Best Song combined. To put that in context (which is impossible), if you take every nominated actor/actress this year and add up all their lifetime nominations (and subtract Streep for being Streep) – you’d only have 49 nominations across 19 people.

Speaking of The Last Jedi, with the four (4) nominations this year (Score, Sound Mixing/Editing, Visual Effects), every Star Wars film ever released has been nominated for at least one Oscar – Episode I-3, II-1, III-1, IV-10, V-3, VI-4, VII-5, RO-2, VIII-4. Total of 33 Oscar nominations – I would wager this is more than the Star Trek franchise has.

Phantom Thread only had one precursor guild nomination prior to getting to Best Picture: The Costume Designers Guild (CDG), which nominates fifteen (15) films per year. Compare to The Shape of Water and Dunkirk which had nine (9) guild nominations before Best Picture.

There are two nominees this year who are already Triple Crown of Acting winners (acting Tony, Emmy, Oscar) – Christopher Plummer (Tonys for Cyrano and Barrymore, Emmys for The Moneychangers and Madeline, Oscar for Beginners) and Frances McDormand (Tony for Good People, Emmy for Olive Kitteridge, Oscar for Fargo).

Christopher Plummer – already the oldest acting winner for 2011’s Beginners – is now the oldest acting nominees in an acting category at 88 years old and second oldest ever nominee in any category for Best Supporting Actor in All the Money in the World…

… Second only to documentation Agnes Varda, who, at 89, is getting a Lifetime Achievement Award Oscar and is nominated for Best Documentary (Faces Places).

Timothee Chalamet, for Call Me By Your Name, is now the youngest Best Actor nominee since Mickey Rooney in 1939 (Babes in Arms). They invented acting in 1938, so that’s something.

With Rockwell and Harrelson both nominated for Supporting Actor for Three Billboards, this is the first time since 1991 (Bugsy – Keitel and Kingsley) since two actors were nominated for the same film in Supporting Actor. This has happened 10 times in Supporting Actress since then.

Blige in Mudbound (image: NYT)

Mary J. Blige is not only nominated in her acting debut (Mudbound), but is also the only Supporting Actress nominee in history to be also nominated for Best Song in the same year (“Mighty River”).

With this year’s nom, Octavia Spencer now ties Viola Davis as the most nominated African American woman in Academy history. It seems crazy that it only took three (3) nominations to do so.

Get Out is the first February release to be nominated for best picture since Silence of the Lambs in 1991.

Logan becomes the first comic book movie since 1931’s Skippy (a comic strip adaptation) to be nominated for its screenplay. Other comic films nominated by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) but not the Academy include Deadpool (2016), Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), and The Dark Knight (2008)

Best Documentary nominee Strong Island‘s director Yance Ford is openly transgender – only the third transgender person ever to be nominated, and the first ever transgender director in any medium – other two nominees were in best song score (Angela Morley, The Slipper and the Rose and The Little Prince) and best song (ANOHNI, from Racing Extinction).

In Foreign Language, The Insult becomes the first Lebanese movie nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.

The Three Amigos of Mexican Cinema are now all nominated for best director – Guillermo Del Toro (The Shape of Water) joins his brothers-in-arms Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity) and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman and The Revenant), and is also a favorite to win.

Four of the five Best Actress nominees also represent Best Picture films (Three Billboards, The Post, The Shape of Water, Lady Bird) – compared to last year, with only one nomination representing a Best Picture (La La Land).

Dear Basketball… it’s Kobe again. (image: IMDb)

Kobe Bryant, with the Dear Basketball animated short, is the first professional basketball player to be nominated for an Oscar. LeBron James hears this, and adds a goal to his goal-adding-app.

Great milestones in all, but… Number of minority actors nominated decreases from seven (7) in 2017 to four (4) in 2018. Bummer.