Rachel Morrison makes history!

January 23, 2018 7:36 AM

"After 90 long years, another glass ceiling has finally been broken at the Motion Picture Academy. “Mudbound” cinematographer Rachel Morrison made history Tuesday by becoming the first female director of photography to receive an Oscar nomination." Her previous credits include Fruitvale Station, Cake, Dope and Sound of My Voice. She also lensed Marvel’s Black Panther, which opens next month.
posted by everybody had matching towels (18 comments total)

Congratulations to Rachel Morrison. And now I'm even more excited to see Black Panther.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:40 AM on January 23, 2018

...wait first Nominee? Damn, that's embarrassing. Good for her: (good for everybody) it's about time.
posted by From Bklyn at 7:54 AM on January 23, 2018 [5 favorites]

Also exciting: With #GetOut scoring nominations for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay, and @JordanPeele nominated for Best Director — Peele is third person in history to earn #OscarNoms in all three categories in a directorial debut. #Oscars2018
posted by everybody had matching towels at 7:59 AM on January 23, 2018 [15 favorites]

Variety: Full List of 2018 Oscar nominees.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:07 AM on January 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

That's an interesting stat on Peele. I wonder who the other 2 are.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:16 AM on January 23, 2018

I just wish that Mudbound had been given a real theater release so that we could have really seen the cinematography. It looked great on my TV but I would have loved to have seen it on a real screen.
posted by octothorpe at 8:37 AM on January 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

This is long overdue and so exciting!!
posted by nicebookrack at 8:38 AM on January 23, 2018

That's an interesting stat on Peele. I wonder who the other 2 are.

I got curious too, and it sounds like the other two guys were fairly recent: Warren Beatty in 1978 for Heaven Can Wait (shared the writing and directing noms with Buck Henry) and James L. Brooks in 1983 with Terms of Endearment. Beatty lost in his categories while Brooks swept all three.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:41 AM on January 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Interesting interview with Morrison from last year about how she approached the cinematography of Mudbound. She was heavily influenced by Robert Frank and also the FSA photographers from the Depression.
posted by octothorpe at 8:44 AM on January 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

For the "third person in history" stat, my first thought was Orson Welles for Citizen Kane, but apparently he's not included on a technicality. He was nominated for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and -- despite the on-screen credit clearly listing him as credited with "Direction-Production" -- his production company (Mercury Productions) was nominated for Best Picture, rather than him personally.
posted by orthicon halo at 8:57 AM on January 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

There was also Citizen Kane where Wells was nominated for best director and shared the best orig screenplay with Herman Mankiewicz. The film was also nominated for best Outstanding Motion Picture but back then only the production company was listed then - 'Mercury'

Tony Gilroy was close - he got director and screenwriter noms for Michael Clayton but he wasn't a producer (though the film got a best film nom and subsequently won)

(on edit, what orthicon halo said)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:02 AM on January 23, 2018

This has got me torn coz obv it would be great if Rachel Morrison gets it... but I'd also, finally, like to see Deakins win.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:03 AM on January 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

And, if we're going to get pedantic about technicalities, both Beatty and Brooks were nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay which is a separate category from Best Original Screenplay (which Kane was nominated for).
posted by mhum at 10:26 AM on January 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Ah, the first possible one of the other 2 that came to my mind was Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild, but I just looked and nope, he wasn't a producer on that so he was just nominated for adapted screenplay and director.

(And BotSW remains his only feature, 6 years later...Weird.)
posted by doctornecessiter at 10:30 AM on January 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

GOOD! I hope she wins. For some reason I thought Ellen Kuras had been nominated for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but no.

This is really big news. In the last five years, women accounted for just 3% of the cinematographers among the 250 top-grossing films. No female DP has ever been nominated for an Academy Award before today.
posted by zarq at 11:44 AM on January 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

Another "fun" stat, via Mark Harris on twitter:

Tug at this Oscar stat and you will find a fascinating history of gender-opportunity inequity: The Post is the first time Meryl Streep has been nominated for being in a Best Picture nominee since 1985.

As @AwardsDaily notes, a movie showcasing a woman is rarely considered "important" enough for a Best Pic nomination. This year 4 Best Actress nominees are in Best Pic nominees. The total has been that high only twice since 1977. For men it's routine: 4 times in the last 5 years.

A thing I hear is "Actors pick movies; actresses pick roles." As if this is about narcissism. From 2003-08, 30 Best Pic nominees yielded just four Best Actress nominations. There WERE no roles for them in Hollywood's big endeavors. Hard to miss that message when it's annual.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 6:05 AM on January 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

I am so so happy that Get Out received four nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor. It was the best movie I've seen in years.
posted by daybeforetheday at 7:31 PM on January 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

A Superhero Movie Got A Screenplay Nomination: Glitch Or Game-Changer?

I'm actually cool with this nomination because I liked Logan, but I'd been thinking that it was just really good for an X-Men movie (neither the highest nor the lowest bar in the world, there are some good ones in there for what they are, but they're all very popcorn-blockbustery)...Was the Logan screenplay really that good, in general? I guess I'll have to watch it again.
posted by doctornecessiter at 10:21 AM on January 25, 2018