CDG last guild to announce winners

The Costume Designers Guild have crowned the best designed costumes of the year in three categories.

In the Period Film category, Jacqueline Durran further embosses herself as the Oscar favourite for her lavish Russian couture in Anna Karenina. Affection for the late Eiko Ishioka brought her a final guild honour in the Fantasy Film category for her off-the-wall designs in Mirror Mirror (might she be a spoiler possibility at the Oscars?). Jany Temime concluded Skyfall's impressive guild run with a win in the Contemporary category for her stylish spy-thriller threads.

One Category at a Time: Original Score

Best Original Score feels kinda wide open this year. Sure, you could essentially eliminate the two nominees that aren't also up for Best Picture, but of the other three, any of them could win.

One Category at a Time: Costume Design

As it is in Best Production Design, having the most noticeable design elements is an essential factor to winning Best Costume Design, which is why  suspect the likely winner of Best Production Design is also primed to win here too. These two categories do often go hand in hand. Splits between two films nominated in both categories (like the one we saw last year) don't happen as often as one film winning both.

My Award nominations: Original Score

Only one of my own Best Original Score nominees went on to be nominated for the Oscar, but that doesn't undercut what a diverse year it's been for film music. The other four that found room on the Academy's slate are quite terrific, even if they didn't find room on mine:

One Category at a Time: Production Design

Production design is one of those fields in which the Academy almost always votes for “most” over “best”, even if it's at the expense of a film they clearly like more. The sets need to draw attention to themselves in order to take the gold here, and for my money, there's only one nominee in this group that looks like a winner, although it's far from a slam dunk:

Busy night for industry kudos with DGA, ADG, and Annie Awards

Oh what a night. Lots of precursor announcements to parse through, the biggest of which was the Director Guild of America, awarding their top prize to Ben Affleck for his Oscar hopeful Argo. At this point it can hardly be called a surprise to see Affleck picking up more hardware, especially after last weekend's PGA and SAG victories. Indeed, it could be that his Best Director "snub" by the Academy turns out to be one of the biggest deceptions in recent Oscar history, because it's looking like Argo may have been the unbeatable frontrunner all along. Time will tell.

In the documentary category, Malik Bendjelloul continued his awards season sweep for Searching for Sugar Man, likely on way to the Oscar. I liked the movie, but is it too much to ask the film industry to spread the wealth a little bit. There were other good documentaries this year, y'know.

One Category at a Time: Cinematography

With only 24 days until the Oscars, it's time to run down the categories and make some official predictions. I'll start off with some of the categories I consider fairly settled, and among them is Best Cinematography.

My Awards nominations: Costume Design

My nominees for Costume Design after the cut:

Costume Designer Guild nominees

The CDG as nominated all five of the films up for the Oscar, along with 10 others across their three feature film categories.

Excellence in Period Film

Anna Karenina – Jacqueline Durran

Argo – Jacqueline West

Les Misérables – Paco Delgado

Lincoln – Joanna Johnston

Moonrise Kingdom – Kasia Walicka-Maimone

Thrilled to see Moonrise Kingdom and Argo turn up here. I knew their subtle threads wouldn't catch the Academy's eye, but if they were going to get recognized anywhere, it would be with the guild. Good on you, CDG! But I wonder which of the three Oscar nominees in this bunch will win here? Probably Anna Karenina, but could be Les Mis or Lincoln just as easily.

My Awards nominations: Production Design

Had to omit some stellar work from my lineup this year. These hardworking production designers, set decorators, and art directors delivered settings and environments with so much personality, as did many others who just missed the cut. My top five films of 2012 for Production Design, Set Decoration, and Art Direction are:

American Society of Cinematographers nominate

The ASC's five nominees for outstanding cinematography are:

Anna Karenina
Les Miserables
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Skyfall

So more bad news for The Master, which continues to miss with the guilds. I had a suspicion Anna Karenina's chances in this category were still very much alive, and its BAFTA nod this morning gives me further cause to predict it (as though its gorgeousness isn't cause enough). Life of Pi, Skyfall, and Lincoln all feel safe. If any of these ASC nominees is on the bubble I might think it Les Mis, whose frequent closeups are quite divisive.

Art Directors Guild nominees

The ADG has listed their nominees for outstanding production design.

Period Production Design:

Argo
Anna Karenina
Django Unchained
Les Miserables
Lincoln

I'm thinking Anna Karenina (the possible winner here and with Oscar), Lincoln, and Les Mis are in the Academy's top five. No Master? Boo-urns.

Review - Anna Karenina

With numerous adaptations of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina already dotting the cinematic timeline, director Joe Wright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard can at least be considered justified in wanting to stir the pot with this newest rendition of the titular adulteress' tragic fall from grace. Yet in attempting to strip the romance down to its emotional essence, their bold experiment misses the mark; a dazzling yet seemingly arbitrary exercise in stylization.

In 1870s tzarist Russia, Anna (Keira Knightley) is afforded all the luxuries and status that her marriage to Alexei Karenin (Jude Law) allows. That means lavish balls, dinners, theatre outings, the works. But when her eye catches the dashing regiment officer Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), her hidden desires prove too tempting to ignore. We watch as she destroys herself for forbidden love, spiraling from envied socialite to reviled pariah.

One Category at a Time: Best Picture (part 1)

With the 2012 Oscar season now a happily distant memory, it's time to look ahead to what films might find themselves in Oscar's company eleven months from now. While it's always next to impossible to pinpoint the unassuming charmers (like The Artist) that can be molded into awards juggernauts from this far out, deciding which high-profile studio projects might tickle the Academy's fancy is easy enough, if not necessarily accurate. Here are the first five of ten such Oscar lures which I'm sure many pundits will be watching with close interest throughout the year:

The last time Joe Wright made a lavish period epic (2007's Atonement), it wound up with seven nominations including Best Picture despite a chilly critical reception. Anna Karenina ticks many of the Academy's boxes on paper, and presents an opportunity for broad support from the guilds. Sight unseen, it's as safe a bet as any.