I’d like to think I monitor my Type 1 diabetes rather carefully; I try not to eat too much chocolate and will occasionally eat salads. But at 12:38AM, on Monday, 4 March 2018, I’d already necked a Red Bull*, with a second cooling on stand-by, perched with three bowls of Haribo on my lap.
*It was a sugar-free Red Bull, at least. That counts as something, right? Surely?!
The reason I was risking self-imploding my pancreas at the start of the week was because I was intending on staying awake for the full four-hour-long broadcast of the 90th Academy Awards, which aired at 1AM in the United Kingdom.
I probably should have had a nap prior to the broadcast, rather than popping down the nearby Wetherspoons for more pints than I can handle.
Hosted by Jimmy Kimmel for a second time, the 2018 Oscars saw The Shape of Water winning big, with four statues. Yup, the film about a mute woman banging a fish monster was the highest winner. But there were several monumental moments in the history of cinema. If only I had them written down here.
OH WAIT. I do…
Remember that one time Mary J. Blige interviewed Hillary Clinton and just sung at her? It was the most awkward moment in televised history. Who knew that she’d be the first person to be nominated for performance and songwriting in the same year, after her nominations for Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Song? (Seriously, her chat with Hillary deserved about eight Oscars though.)
Making a huge step for the LGBT community, Yance Ford’s Strong Island was nominated for Best Documentary, marking him as the first openly transgender director be nominated for an Academy Award.
Picture the first time you had sex. You was dreadful, wasn’t you? I’ve had sex many times before (please believe me), and I’m still dreadful. So when you realise that Greta Gerwig was nominated for an Oscar for her writing and directorial debut, for Lady Bird, you have to be impressed. And humiliated by your sexual prowess. She is now the fifth woman filmmaker to be nominated for Best Director.
Shout-out to my father, who thinks a Sudoku is a starter at our local Chinese. And yet a man much older than he, James Ivory, who is now 89-years-old, has become the oldest man to be nominated for a competitive Academy Award, for his Best Adapted Screenplay for Call Me by Your Name. He is also the oldest man to win a competitive Oscar.
Rachel Morrison, after 90 years of ceremonies, became the first woman to be nominated for the Best Cinematography Academy Award, for Mudbound.
Let this sink in – the bloke who played Wendall Sanders, Jordan Peele, is now the proud owner of an Academy Award. Seriously. This isn’t a joke. He is only the fifth black filmmaker to be nominated for Best Director, but he is also the very first black filmmaker to be nominated for producing, directing and writing in the same year. At least that’s that. Oh. And he’s also the first black screenwriter to win the Best Original Screenplay award. Do you wanna trump anyone else, Jordan, or…?
Another person broke an almighty record – Kevin Spacey smashed the… Oh. Wait. What? Scrap that. After being crowned the oldest winner for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Beginners, in 2012, Christopher Plummer became the oldest actor to be nominated for a competitive Academy Award, after being picked for Best Supporting Actor for All the Money in the World.
Having been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for Mudbound, Dee Rees became the first black woman to be nominated for the category. She is also the second black woman to be nominated for writing.
You know you’re doing alright when you’re tying with Viola Davis, aka, the most exceptional woman on the planet. Octavia Spencer now ties with the Fences actress as the most-nominated black actress, after getting her third nomination for Best Supporting Actress for The Shape of Water.
Urgh. Meryl Streep. I totally agree with Donald Trump. What even is she? She’s so overrated. That probably explains why the not-very-good-at-acting thespian broke her own record for the most nominated actor/actress of all time, following her twenty-first nomination, with this year’s being for Best Actress nomination in The Post. She is rubbish, isn’t she, Trumpy?
Similar to Plummer, Agnès Varda became the oldest person to be nominated for a competitive Academy Award, with her nomination for Best Documentary Feature for Faces Places, at the age of 89.
Anyone that can get an Oscar nomination for having a crappy afro and dodgy, thick glasses is a don in my eyes. That’s not the record being broken here. Following his acting nomination for Roman J. Israel, Esq., Denzel Washington has become the most honoured black actor in Academy history.
And I’ve saved literally the best ’til last. John Williams broke his own record for the most-nominated living individual, after getting his twenty-fifth nomination for Best Original Score for Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Meanwhile, I haven’t changed my t-shirt in four days. Sigh…