This year’s Academy Award ceremony to be refreshing

New Oscar lineup of nominations has a strong sense of diversity

The highly awaited Oscar nominations for the 90th Academy Awards were released to the public Tuesday morning.

The nominations were announced by actress Tiffany Haddish, who starred in 2017’s biggest comedy “Girls Night”, and acclaimed actor Andy Serkis who played Caesar in last year’s “War of the Planet of the Apes”. The announcement ceremony was held at the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills, Calif.

There are nine movie nominees for arguably the biggest award of the night, best picture. These films consist of; “Call Me by Your Name”, “Darkest Hour”, Dunkirk”, “Get Out”, “Lady Bird”, “Phantom Thread”, “The Post”, “The Shape of Water”, and “Three Billboards outside of Ebbing, Missouri”.

This year’s academy awards seems to be more exciting than usual considering that there are a younger and more diverse group of Academy voters than usual.

The best picture nominees were not a huge surprise considering a majority of the films were nominated in the same category at similar award shows such as the Golden Globes and the Critic Choice Awards.

The internet believes the strongest contenders overall this year are; “Three Billboards” nominated in seven categories as well as the winner of Golden Globes best film, “Dunkirk” with 8 nominations and “The Shape of Water” with a whopping 13 nominations.

Although the best picture nominees may not be a huge surprise, the nominees in the other categories are.

There were many milestones and firsts this year for the Academy Awards in many different categories, especially that of best director.

Greta Gerwig, writer and director of “Lady Bird” was one of the five nominees in the category of best director as well as being nominated for best screenplay.

Gerwig is only the fifth woman to ever be nominated for best director in the 90 years the Academy Awards has existed.

Out of the four previous women to be nominated in this category only one has actually won it, that being Kathryn Bigelow for “The Hurt Locker” in 2009. “Lady Bird” was Gerwig’s directorial debut which is also very rare for the academy awards to nominate.

Another surprise nomination is for Jordan Peele’s horror film “Get Out” in which he wrote and directed. Not only is it shocking that Jordan Peele is nominated for his directorial debut, but also because of the large amounted awards it was nominated for considering its genre.

“Get Out” has been nominated for four awards including; best picture, best director, best original screenplay, and best performance in a leading role (Daniel Kauuya).

Horror films are almost always under looked within the Academy Awards. However; Peele’s complex film that mixes horror elements with social commentary must have stood out to the academy as it did to many critics and audiences alike.

The most surprising nomination is under the category of best cinematography.
Rachel Morrison, cinematographer for the Netflix original film “Mudbound”, is the first woman to ever be nominated under this category.

This nomination is also important because it marks the first time a film originally released under a streaming platform has been nominated for anything.

This year’s Academy Awards ceremony seems to have added some much-needed changes to the 90-year-old award show.

The 2018 Academy Awards will be hosted once again by Jimmy Kimmel and will air on ABC March 4.