Makeup bake-off replete, as always, with baffling omissions

I don't know why I even bother predicting Best Makeup nominees before the list of finalists is unveiled. Every year there's at least one (or two, or in this case three of my presumed nominees) that fail to advance past the bake-off stage.

The unforgivable omissions this year are Rush and The Hobbit. The former not only applied squeamishly effective burn prosthetics to star Daniel Bruhl, but also featured tons of striking period hairstyles. In the case of the latter, I suppose it's possible that the makeup branch didn't deem there to be enough new makeup after last year's nominated effort already introduced us to all those dwarfs, but this one did boast many new characters designs from orcs to elves to skin-changers and involved a shitload of grime/dirt/weathering effects.

Confusing. Just... so confusing.

Also missing is the excellent aging work employed across the decades in Lee Daniel's The Butler, in favour of aging efforts in The Lone Ranger and Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (seriously, makeup branch, are you actually gonna make me watch one or both of those movies?).

The only two on this list I've seen so far are Dallas Buyers Club and The Great Gatsby, either of which would not make totally undeserving nominees. The many flapper hairdos of Gatsby were certainly fetching, and I was indeed struck by how authentically the makeup of Dallas Buyers conveyed its characters' illnesses.

The seven films now in the running are:

American Hustle
Dallas Buyers Club
The Great Gatsby
Hansel & Gretel Witch Hunters
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
The Lone Ranger