4TH ANNUAL FISHER AWARD NOMINEES (2020)

​Hello, all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! If you have been following me for any significant length of time, you know I absolutely love the Oscars. Any time someone asks what my favorite season is, the answer is always “Oscar season,” and every time the question is more specific to what the best day of the year is, I always answer “Oscar night.” As happens with subjectivity in art, however, the Academy Awards sometimes don’t bring out what many people (even within the film industry) consider the best in movies with every ceremony, and so we’re left with delightful surprises (Klaus in Animated Feature!) and egregious snubs (no Apollo 11 for Documentary???) each year that they take place. Given this, and in the spirit of awards season, I like to have my own “Oscars”-like ceremony each year where I posit the question “what would I nominate if I had my own awards show based on the best movies of the year?” And, after four years of searching for a proper name for such a ceremony, I finally have come up with the perfect, permanent title: The Fishers (named for the iconic and wonderful Carrie Fisher). 

​To explain a bit about how The Fishers work: each category reflects the same categories as the Oscars, with some combined (such as Sound Design as a mix of Sound Editing and Sound Mixing) due to a lack of knowledge about different forms of said category and how they work, and some left off entirely (such as the short film categories), as I do not have the requisite knowledge to nominate what might actually be the best. The nominees are chosen based on what I believe were the best five (or in Best Picture’s case, ten) examples in their respective categories, and the winners are announced later in their own post with added sections explaining why said film or nominee was crowned the winner of that category.

​Now, without further ado, here are your 4th Annual Fisher Award nominees in all 14 categories!

Best Picture:

• 1917
  
• The Farewell
• Ford v Ferrari​
• The Irishman
• Knives Out
• The Lighthouse
• Little Women
• Marriage Story
• Parasite
• Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Best Director:

• Greta Gerwig, Little Women
• Bong Joon Ho, Parasite
• Sam Mendes, 1917
• Céline Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire
• Martin Scorsese, The Irishman

Best Actor:

• Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
• Adam Driver, Marriage Story
• Taron Egerton, Rocketman
• Robert De Niro, The Irishman
• Joaquin Phoenix, Joker

Best Actress:

• Awkwafina, The Farewell
• Adèle Haenel, Portrait of a Lady on Fire
• Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story
• Noémie Merlant, Portrait of a Lady on Fire
• Lupita N’yongo, Us

Best Supporting Actor:

• Willem Dafoe, The Lighthouse
• Song Kang Ho, Parasite
• Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes
• Joe Pesci, The Irishman
• Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood

Best Supporting Actress:

• Laura Dern, Marriage Story
• Cho Yeo Jeong, Parasite
• Jennifer Lopez, Hustlers
• Florence Pugh, Little Women
• Zhao Shuzhen, The Farewell

Best Production Design:

• Dennis Gassner, 1917
• Mark Friedberg, Joker
• Barbara Ling, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
• Antxón Gómez, Pain and Glory
• Lee Ha Jun, Parasite

Best Character Design (Costumes + Makeup & Hairstyling):

• Bombshell
• Dolemite Is My Name
• Joker
• Little Women
• Rocketman

Best Film Editing:

• Andrew Buckland & Michael McCusker, Ford v Ferrari
• Thelma Schoonmaker, The Irishman
• Fred Raskin, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
• Yang Jinmo, Parasite
• Julien Lacheray, Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Best Cinematography:

• Roger Deakins, 1917
• Phedon Papamichael, Ford v Ferrari
• Lawrence Sher, Joker
• Jarin Blaschke, The Lighthouse
• Claire Mathon, Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Best Original Score:

• Thomas Newman, 1917
• Alan Silvestri, Avengers: Endgame
• Hildur Guðnadóttir, Joker
• Alexandre Desplat, Little Women
• Michael Abels, Us

Best Screenplay:

• Lulu Wang, The Farewell
• Greta Gerwig, Little Women
• Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story
• Bong Joon Ho & Han Jin Won, Parasite
• Céline Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Best Visual Effects:

• Avengers: Endgame
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters
• The Irishman
• The Lion King
• Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Best Sound Design:

• 1917
• Ford v Ferrari
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters
• Rocketman
• Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

​The winners of the 4th Annual Fisher Awards will be announced one week from today (the day before the Oscars) on Saturday, February 8th! Stay tuned!

- The Friendly Film Fan