Oscar Project 2018 Begins!

Oscar nominations are out! (That's the official site, and it includes a handy printable checklist.) As usual, I'll be trying to see as many nominated movies as I can, and between now and Oscar night I'll write you a post about each movie, with a few general thoughts as well as my assessment of it in each category in which it's nominated. Then at the end I'll tell you my pick for each category as well as my predictions for what will actually win. As I've mentioned, this year I'm doing an exclusive Oscar Project Diary for my Patreon patrons as well - just $1 a month to get those posts.

So where are we starting? Let's look at the numbers. A total of 59 movies were nominated this year, for a total of 122 individual nominations. I've done slightly better than usual, before the nominations - I've already seen 13 movies that comprise 48 nominations, or almost 40%. And a lot of the ones I haven't seen are pretty easily accessible, so FINGERS CROSSED. As always, it will probably come down to documentaries, foreign language, and animated that I have trouble finishing.

My very quick takes on the nominations: there weren't many cases where I was mad at specific things getting nominated, but I was mad about a lot of things that were missed. This will come up more but off the top of my head:

• Wind River was completely snubbed and I thought it was definitely in the top ten movies of the year; I'd give it at least Original Screenplay and Cinematography nominations.
• Call Me By Your Name got four nominations but I thought it deserved at least six more.
• I really thought The Florida Project would be nominated much more. I'm less surprised about All the Money in the World but it deserved more.
• Very happy to see both a woman and a person of color on the Directing list.

Come back for my first movie post tomorrow!