Shape of Water wins Oscar for Best Picture

The Shape of Water is the Best Picture of 2018

Welcome to Plain English, the podcast that goes at the right speed for English learners. I’m Jeff and on today’s episode, we’ll review the big winners from Sunday’s Oscars program. In the second half of the program, I’ll show you how to use the English phrase “cut a deal.”

Just a quick reminder that a transcript of today’s program is available on the website at PlainEnglish.com/27. If you speak Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese or French, you’re in luck because the transcripts have instant translations from English to your language. That way, when you get to a complicated word, you can just hover over it and see the translation without having to stop and look for the definition. Check it out.

The Shape of Water cleans up at the Oscars

The Shape of Water was the big winner this year, taking home wins for Best Director for Guillermo del Toro, and, to top it all off at the end of the night, Best Picture. The Shape of Water is a romantic fantasy about a custodian at a government laboratory who falls in love with a human-like amphibian creature. The film received a leading 13 Oscar nominations and won four total awards. Guillermo del Toro is one of the most famous Mexican film directors and producers.

The biggest threat to The Shape of Water was the film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which tells the story of a mom’s crusade to find justice for her daughter, who had been raped and killed in a small town in rural America. The mom rents three billboards and uses them to pressure the police into solving the murder—but, as is the case so often in film and in life—the main character is a flawed hero. I saw this one and this would have had my vote for Best Picture, although I’ll confess that The Shape of Water didn’t interest me, so I didn’t see that one. Frances McDormand played the fiery main character in Three Billboards and she came home with Best Actress award and gave a memorable acceptance speech.

In the contest for Best Actress, she beat Meryl Streep, who starred as the newspaper publisher Katharine Graham in The Post, a movie about the release of secret government documents during the Vietnam War era. Meryl Streep has 21 Oscar nominations and three wins and is considered one of the best actresses of her generation, but she did not take home the Best Actress trophy this year. She did get some good camera time, sitting in the center of the front row, though.

Gary Oldman was the Best Actor, according to the Academy, for his role as Winston Churchill in the movie Darkest Hour. The British war drama is about British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his early days in office, as Nazi Germany threatened Europe and eventually the United Kingdom in World War II. During the worst part of the war for Britain, or during its darkest hour, there was pressure on the government to cut a deal with the Nazis. Churchill resisted and, in his famous phrase, urged his countrymen to “never surrender.” At one time, Gary Oldman was described as “the best actor never Oscar-nominated” until his nomination in 2012; then he was called the best actor not to win an Oscar. Bu that won’t be his label any longer now that he was nominated for, and won, an Oscar for his role in Darkest Hour.

Lady Bird received a lot of accolades from around the moviemaking industry and was nominated in five categories but, didn’t win an award. Lady Bird is about a girl growing up in Sacramento, California, and her struggles with love, friendship, and money that are so common in adolescence. I saw Lady Bird a few months ago and the one thing that stood out to me was how authentically it captured the real experience of adolescence in the United States. If you’re curious about what it’s like to be a high-school kid in the US, then I recommend you see Lady Bird.

The Pixar movie Coco came home with Best Animated Feature, extending Pixar’s dynasty in this category. The category has only been in existence for 17 years and Pixar has won more awards than any other studio—this year’s contest wasn’t even close. Coco also took the Oscar for Best Original Song for the song called “Remember Me.” If you want to hear more about Coco, you can go back and listen to Episode 7 of Plain English by going to PlainEnglish.com/07.

Here are a couple other winners for you. The Best Adapted Screenplay, which goes to a movie that was originally based on a book, went to Call Me By Your Name, a coming-of-age movie set in Italy. The Best Foreign Language Film went to the Chilean film A Fantastic Woman.

Icarus won Best Documentary Feature. A timely choice, Icarus tells the story of the Russian Olympic doping scandal.

One thing that didn’t happen at this year’s Oscars: any mistakes. You might remember last year that the presenters were handed the wrong card when it came time to announce Best Picture at the very end of the show, causing an embarrassing confusion to unfold on stage. Nothing of the sort happened this year—The Shape of Water won cleanly.

All this talk about movies has me wanting to go see one in the theaters, so I have plans to see Red Sparrow tonight.

One of your fellow listeners is especially excited about the Oscars this year—and his name is Oscar. He’s from Monterrey, Mexico, and listens with his wife Verónica at the gym in the morning. They were excited about the success of Mexican director Guillermo del Toro and the movie Coco during this year’s ceremony. Thanks Oscar and Verónica for listening.

Before we get to today’s English expression, I wanted to say thank you to all the new listeners of Plain English across so many different technologies—Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the web site, PlainEnglish.com, and apps like PocketCasts. There are even some people listening on smart speakers like Amazon Alexa and Sonos. However you listen, I wanted to say thank you for being part of the audience. I love hearing from people, and hearing your stories about learning English and, for some of you, traveling to the United States. If you’d like to send me a note, I can be reached at jeff [at] plainenglish.com or on Facebook and Twitter under the user name PlainEnglishPod.