For as long as I've been compiling my own personal Oscar ballots (feels like I've been at it since infancy), I've stubbornly limited myself to three nominees for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. I suppose it grew out of mimicking the Academy at first, but now it doesn't seem to make sense that it's the only category with such a restrictive number of contestants. If you ever read Nate Rogers at The Film Experience -- which of course you do, because what Oscar-loving film buff doesn't? -- you know what I'm talking about. For years he's made very a logical argument for why the makeup branch should finally get with the times and expand its field to five nominees.
So I'm taking a page out of that book and expanding my own field to reflect the rest of my awards -- five per category. Maybe if I'm bored one day, I'll even go back in time and retroactively add a couple of deserving hair+makeup efforts to my nominees from years past (though the boredom would have to be tremendous). But for now, peruse the best of what 2014 had to offer:
The Grand Budapest Hotel
(Frances Hannon, Mark Coulier)
Guardians
of the Galaxy
(David White, Elizabeth Yianni-Georgiou)
So I'm taking a page out of that book and expanding my own field to reflect the rest of my awards -- five per category. Maybe if I'm bored one day, I'll even go back in time and retroactively add a couple of deserving hair+makeup efforts to my nominees from years past (though the boredom would have to be tremendous). But for now, peruse the best of what 2014 had to offer:
(Frances Hannon, Mark Coulier)
For whatever reason, I totally slept on the brilliance of all the makeup and hair in this film the first time I saw it (perhaps I was too busy enjoying the sets and costumes), but it totally deserves a retroactive nomination.
Guardians
of the Galaxy(David White, Elizabeth Yianni-Georgiou)
The
makeup team clearly had a heyday creating all those bizarre
extra-terrestrial faces. Those bevelled tattoo's on Drax the
Destroyer are particularly impressive.
The grisly wound/injury work and general dishevelment are all expertly realized, but the main draw is Tilda Swinton's bizarre transformation into the haughty magistrate Mason.
Sewell's
ultrafine prosthetics invisibly age Redmayne across decades with
great restraint and subtlety, so as not to hinder or overshadow his
performance.
(Toni G, Arjen Tuiten, Rick Findlater)
Jack O'Connell's face takes a bruising in just about every scene following the plane crash, weathered by weeks lost at sea and then battered in a POW camp and then blackened in a coal mine.
The
film is constantly flashing back to earlier stages of Cheryl's life,
for each of which she needs a distinctive look so the audience
doesn't get lost in the jumpy chronology.
Just missed:
Foxcatcher (Bill Corso, Kathrine Gordon)
Inherent Vice (Miia Kovero, Gigi Williams)Maleficent (Paul Gooch, Rick Baker)
Mr. Turner (Christine Blundell)
Inherent Vice (Miia Kovero, Gigi Williams)Maleficent (Paul Gooch, Rick Baker)
Mr. Turner (Christine Blundell)
Wild
(Robin Mathews, Miia Kortum)
