My Award nominations: Production Design

Here's a category that's absolutely stuffed this year. It killed me to decide on that fifth spot, as it forced me to leave out the outstanding work done in films like Her and Inside Llewyn Davis. But you can see the Production Design jobs that did survive the cut below:

Art Directors Guild nominees

The parade of guild announcements marches on with Art Directors Guild. Will we find all of the Oscar nominees in the fifteen films honoured by the ADG? Not necessarily. Five of the last 25 Oscar nominees in this category were ones passed over by the guild, so it's not lights out yet for Oz the Great and Powerful or The Invisible Woman, although there's certainly enough good work this year to keep them off the final ballot.

The nominees and my commentaries after the cut:

Review - Elysium

Neil Blomkamp follows up his auspicious debut District 9 with Elysium, a science-fiction that's just as violent and icky as his first feature but without the deftness of story or subtext to justify it.

150 years in the future, Earth has deteriorated into a cesspool of disease and poverty. The wealthy 1% jumped ship long ago by inhabiting a glorious space station – Elysium – with all the pristine comforts money can buy; including magic medicare machines that can instantly cure any ailment. Just like that! Desperate immigrants from Earth are eager to jump aboard illegal shuttle flights to the orbiting utopia, much to the chagrin of its steely defense secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster), who would sooner eschew the rulebook and blast everything within 100 miles of her precious paradise than allow one disease-riddled earthling to set foot on it.