The Shape of Water - Guillermo del Toro

In under a year's span in movie theaters, I saw her play a painful shy, maladjusted artist in Maudie (actually my favorite performance by her this year), a wholesome, strong mother in Paddington 2, and a mute woman falling in love in The Shape of Water. Wow!

I remember when she was merely a well-kept secret among us Mike Leigh fans after All or Nothing...

Shalom, y'all!

L. Bangs

 

And she was great with Kate Blanchette (who won for best actress) in Woody Allen's San Francisco film Blue Jasmine.

 

What a great actress. Howard Stern is often quick to point out that his 1997 film Private Parts was one of the first films to feature Allison Janney in a major role. She's been on his radio show several times since to promote various projects, and she's as gracious, funny, and quick-witted as you would hope for.

 

Yes, she was. I liked her all along but this is absolute gold. Happy for her continued success.

 

I kinda wish we had somebody like that in the real White House...

 

She’s fabulous. I got to meet Allison Janney at a wedding I played at and she was really cool. And looked fantastic.

 

Then you should know that her West Wing character was C.J. Gregg, not Craig. Bonus points for knowing what C.J. stands for.

(Expecting to be banned from the Forum in 5...4...3...2...1)

 

Bonus points for correcting someone but correcting them incorrectly. Cregg, not Gregg.

C.J. Cregg

 

And Guillermo Del Toro just won the DGA Award for Best Direction, which is generally (but not always) a precursor for an Oscar win.

DGA Awards: Guillermo Del Toro Wins For ‘The Shape Of Water’, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Tops TV — Complete Winners List

 

The Shape of Water is my favorite film from the nominees. I hope it wins best director and best picture.

For me, personally, I have issues with most of the other nominees.

For Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, for instance—well, where to start. There is no Ebbing. The movie wasn't filmed in Missouri. The accents are wrong. Where to start with the racist and violent cop who is a Mamma's boy and mentally deficient....? Sam Rockwell is a wonderful actor, but there are cliches piled on cliches here it seems. And to me the movie is infused with fakery from start to finish. Other issues too. But most here like it, I realize.

Lady Bird is a good mother-daughter drama for me. I like the movie. But one of the central plot points bothered me a bit. Anyway, just doesn't quite rise to Best Picture for me, even though S. Ronan and everyone else is good in it.

There are two central things in Darkest Hour that didn't happen—the visit to the subway to get the mood of the people (and in any case, Churchill was a leader of people, not a follower), and the central point of the movie that for a brief while C was seemingly considering a separate peace with Hitler. Since those two key things are wrong and false, this movie doesn't really work for me very well. There's dramatizing of history for movie history, and then there's falsifying it. This one goes there imho.

I like The Post a lot, but emotionally and dramatically it didn't move me like The Shape of Water.

Didn't like the central point/main story of Get Out.

Phantom Thread takes a really weird turn that is fascinating, but also off-putting for me. Love the performances, costumes, set design, etc., but since I didn't buy that central thing....

Call Me By Your Name was a good drama and love story that just didn't quite rise to best picture for me.

Dunkirk was a visceral and good movie, but it left me emotionally flat much of the time.

 

Rex's never ending vitriol always makes me laugh. He's so far up his own rear end I actually look forward to reading his reviews .

Always the first on the cutting edge , I saw the movie this weekend.

I really liked it . It looked amazing and was wonderfully acted by all.
Octavia Spencer is becoming one of my favorite actresses.

Any movie like this one that takes me to a place totally different from the standard cookie cutter mall cinema offerings is OK with me.

 

Kudos to noted Hollywood writer (and sometimes critic) Ken Levine, who posts a very informed, well-written review of The Shape of Water. In part, Ken says:

I was very pleasantly surprised by THE SHAPE OF WATER. It had a good story, was well-acted, very original, ambitious… oh, and it was visually stunning. ...In a very weak year for movies – when a derivative coming-of-age teen movie is up for picture of the year – my vote for 2018 would be THE SHAPE OF WATER. It’s a lovely homage to old Hollywood films with romance, tension, social commentary… and visually, wow, it’s just STUNNING.

From where I sit, Ken gets it exactly right and saw the same film I did.

By Ken Levine: THE SHAPE OF WATER -- my review

 

BTW, here's an outtake from Creature from the Black Lagoon that kind of foreshadows Shape of Water...

 

Cinema was more then half empty yesterday evening. Not a big draw it seems for the good folk of South Yorkshire. Despite the simplicity(?) of its premise ('Mute cleaning lady gets the hots for cat-eating amphibian'), I concur with the above review and found it pleasurably layered. The texture of the story-line and the way it was filmed reminded in parts of both Dennis Potter's 'Singing Detective' on the BBC and 'Brother Where Art Thou?'. Quite tense at times too.

I'll definitely be buying the dvd on release (but I'll have to pre-warn the beloved about the cat or there'll be hell to pay...).

 

Anyone interested in Sally Hawkings should check out 2010's 'Made In Dagenham'. She shines in that.

 

Saw it a few days ago and loved it. Sally Hawkings was really fantastic.

 

I will wait til the DVD/Blu Ray comes out.

 

I would love to see The Shape of Water win best picture and I certainly think Del Toro deserves best director. Has the academy every honored an original creature/fantasy movie with best picture?

 

"Brilliant"
"Imaginative"

Plagiarized

I guess old Guillermo had a brain fart and didn't remember the 1969 he watched when he was five or 25, or his partner screwed him; "novelist Daniel Kraus, an associate producer who has been credited with creating the “original idea” for The Shape of Water alongside Del Toro." I thought this was a passion project of Del Toro's that he's been working on "for years?" Apparently not? Just studio hype?


Playwright's family sues The Shape of Water film-makers over works' similarities

"
The family of a Pulitzer-winning playwright has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Guillermo del Toro and Fox Searchlight alleging that the Oscar-nominated film The Shape of Water is a “derivative” work that has “glaring similarities” to a 1969 play.

David Zindel, son of American playwright Paul Zindel, filed the complaint Wednesday alleging that Del Toro’s critically acclaimed film, which has more Oscar nominations than any other this year, has “exploited” the play Let Me Hear You Whisper and should have credited and licensed his father’s work.

The allegations, which Del Toro and the studio have denied, were first reported in the Guardian in January. The copyright complaint filed in California this week marks the first legal action the Zindel family has taken against The Shape of Water, which is nominated for 13 Oscars, including best picture, best director, best original screenplay and three acting awards.

The suit, filed less than two weeks before the Academy Awards on 4 March, outlines similarities in concept, characters, themes and plot points. The Shape of Water, co-written by Del Toro and Vanessa Taylor, tells the story of a 1960s Baltimore laboratory cleaner who falls in love with a sea creature whom she tries to rescue. Let Me Hear You Whisper, which aired as a TV production nearly 50 years ago, is also about a female janitor in a laboratory who bonds with a sea creature whom she attempts to save.

“The [film] tells a story that is substantially similar, and in many ways identical, to that of the play,” Zindel’s lawyers wrote in the complaint, alleging “overwhelming similarities” that are “too egregious to ignore”.

The complaint – which seeks damages and references the film’s earnings of more than $70m at the box office – notes that both works take place during the 1960s during the cold war in a secret laboratory that conducts experiments for military purposes. Both protagonists are unmarried and introverted cleaning women who work graveyard shifts at the labs, the suit continues, adding that there are parallel characters, including a co-worker friend, their supervisor, a scientist and the aquatic creature.

In both stories, scientists are studying the creature’s advanced abilities for military applications and use electrodes to incite reactions. Both works use a motif of a “romantic vintage song playing on a record player inside the laboratory”, the suit says. Both women also share their lunches with the creature, dance with a mop to flirt with the animal and try to rescue it when the lab makes plans to “vivisect” the creature. The cleaners both use a laundry cart in their rescue plans and aim to release the creature to the sea.

The suit further alleged that both works adopt a similar “dreamy” and “surreal” mood and rely on “fantasy sequences” of the main character.

The works do have substantially different endings, and The Shape of Water has an important male character who does not resemble anyone in the play.

David Zindel said in a statement to the Guardian on Wednesday that the “troubling matter was brought up with Fox five weeks ago but was met with inertia”, adding: “The glaring similarities between the film and our father’s play are too extensive for us to ignore and so we had to act.”

The complaint was also filed against the novelist Daniel Kraus, an associate producer who has been credited with creating the “original idea” for The Shape of Water alongside Del Toro.

Kraus, who did not respond to a request for comment, said in a recent interviewthat he came up with the idea when he was 15 years old, which was around the time of a 1990 television production of Zindel’s play, the suit noted. The complaint also alleged that Kraus was “well aware of Zindel and admired his work”, pointing to a recent article by Kraus listing Zindel’s 1968 book The Pigman as among the best young adult books of all time.

Fox Searchlight said in a statement to the Guardian: “These claims from Mr Zindel’s estate are baseless, wholly without merit and we will be filing a motion to dismiss. Furthermore, the estate’s complaint seems timed to coincide with the Academy Award voting cycle in order to pressure our studio to quickly settle. Instead, we will vigorously defend ourselves and, by extension, this groundbreaking and original film.”

Paul Zindel, who died in 2003, won the 1971 drama Pulitzer for the play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds.

In its original statement last month in response to David Zindel’s claims, the studio said Del Toro had “never read nor seen Mr Zindel’s play in any form”, adding that the film-maker “has had a 25-year career during which he has made 10 feature films and has always been very open about acknowledging his influences”.

 

I believe Del Toro, and anyway its a pretty universal theme (beauty and the beast). Think they are just trying it on due to the success of the film.

 

Hellboy.
What about the fishy one in that?