Film

Here Are All The Historic Moments From The 2018 Oscar Nominations

Including the first woman ever nominated for the Best Cinematography category.

by Patrick Lenton  24 January 2018
Oscars 2018

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The Oscars nominations for 2018 are in baby, and a lot of films and actors and screen professionals are up for those shiny gold statues, which is very exciting for them. What’s also cool is that we’ve got plenty of historic nominations that tick some long awaited diversity points.

Leading the charge, Rachel Morrison has received the first nomination for a female cinematographer for her work in Mudbound. This is the first time a woman has been nominated in the award show’s 90-year span in the best cinematography category.

In an interview with IndieWire, Morrison talked about the relative scarcity of female cinematographers in Hollywood.

“While I hope for a world where we’re just looked at as cinematographers and not female cinematographers, if the attention helps to open that door, then maybe it’s not a bad thing.”

We can also extremely look forward to more of Rachel Morrison’s work in the upcoming Black Panther. Mudbound‘s director Dee Rees, missed out on a best director nod but has still become the first black woman to direct an Oscar-nominated performance, along with Mary J Blige landing a nomination for best supporting actress in the film.

Lady Bird director Greta Gerwig is the first woman to be nominated for the Best Director category in eight years, and only the fifth overall, which is an interesting and upsetting stat. The Lady Bird team are also up for four other Oscars, including Best Actress (Saoirse Ronan), Best Supporting Actress (Laurie Metcalfe), Best Original Screenplay (Gerwig) and Best Picture.

Jordan Peele and his film Get Out are also up for a metric slew of nominations. Peele is only the fifth black director to ever be nominated in the Best Director category. Along with this, the film is nominated for Best Actor (Daniel Kaluuya), Best Original Screenplay (Peele) and Best Picture. This makes Peele the first person of colour to receive nominations in the directing, writing and best picture categories, and only the third person ever.

Some other cool nominations include Octavia Spencer becoming the first black actress to receive two consecutive Oscar nominations after winning one, which follows from her role in The Help in 2012. Also, queen of us all Meryl Streep has broken her own record for the most Academy Award nominations of any actor ever, gathering 21 nominations since 1979. Her most recent is for her role in The Post.

However, as with almost every Academy Awards ever, there’s always something troubling, and this year we’ve got absolutely no Asian or Latino nominees in any of the acting categories. Actresses such as Gina Rodriguez and Constance Wu have called out the Academy on its lack of representation.

The Oscars will air on March 4 featuring Jimmy Kimmel as the host for some reason.