January is for Oscar Movies

Gonna be tough to keep up with the storm of guild announcements, televised awards shows, personal year-in-review posts and late-breaking Oscar players over the next two months. I'll just have to figure out a way.

For those last minute stragglers, I won't have the luxury of exercising my full review muscles (consider my La La Land piece a holiday indulgence), but I'll deposit my abbreviated thoughts here throughout the month.

My first screening of the new year was Denzel Washington's realization of the long dormant Fences adaptation, scripted by its original playwright August Wilson some time before his 2005 death. The screenplay itself doesn't take much advantage of the opportunity for other forms of exposition besides dialogue, but Washington's direction is sturdy, unobtrusive, and has a more cinematic eye.

My Award Nominations: Production Design

This weekend I'm tackling the design categories and cinematography, and as always there's an excellent variety of work that spoils us for choice. Behold my picks for the Best Production Design of the year.

Review - Cinderella

Traditionalists can be forgiven for continually scoffing at Walt Disney Pictures for their current habit of repurposing their most beloved animated classics into money-sponging live-action productions. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Alice in Wonderland have already fallen victim to the artistically dubious Mirror Mirror, Maleficent and Tim Burton's unspeakable 2010 eyesore, with plans afoot for everything from Beauty and the Beast to Dumbo to Winnie the Pooh.
This year's episode of 'remake musical chairs' is none other than Cinderella.

Purists' initial reaction may be to cringe and look away, but with the right tone in the right directorial hands (in this case, the aptly theatrical Kenneth Branagh), who's to say that these relics can't be improved, even if only mildly?

While Walt's 1950 hit about the woebegone dreamer with the glass slippers may be remembered as a classic, it's sometimes misremembered as 'good' classic.
Truth is, it simply does not hold up to modern scrutiny, proving to be more Tom & Jerry cartoon than cinematic achievement, and only peripherally about its titular maiden. If any of Disney's dusty animated properties was due for a refurbishing,
it was this one.

Early Oscar Predictions: Design Categories

With the script finished and the project green-lighted, the next stage is setting the stage, as all the elements that will comprise the onscreen world of the movie need to be designed and built in pre-production. The Academy's production design, costume design, and makeup/hairstyling branches have traditionally favoured achievements in these fields that evoke period settings or more imaginative fantasy worlds. Movies that manage to straddle both of those design realms must always be considered formidable.

One Category at a Time: Art Direction

There are a number of categories this year where I have reasonable doubts about my predicted winner - too many categories. This is not one of them. There is a single obvious choice on which any sane Oscar-watcher should bet the bank, but it's only fair to give the other nominees their congrats:

My Awards nominations: Production Design

Production design is on the mind today on account of the ADG nominations, so I'll follow suit and chalk up my own picks for the best Production Design, Set Decoration, and Art Direction of the year:

Captain America
(Rick Heinrichs, John Bush, John Dexter, Chris Lowe, Andy Nicholson):

This period-fantasy concoction is richly evoked; from the cozy, sepia-tinted confines of the good Captain's base of operations to the steely, serpentine corridors of Hydra's sinister research facilities.

Hugo (Dante Feretti, Francesca Lo Schiavo):

It cannot be understated that Hugo is a thing of beauty. The stunning recreations of 1930s Paris, the concealed corridors and compartments of the train station, and George Melies' old studio are wondrous to behold.

Kung Fu Panda 2 (Raymond Zibach, Tang Kheng Heng):

The beautifully rendered 2D prologue sets us up for the visual splendour of Dreamworks' gorgeous imagining of ancient China. Bold colours and stylized scenery, both urban and natural, fit the film's tone to a tee.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Maria Djurkovic, Tom Brown):

The details don't draw much attention to themselves in this nuanced period piece, but they form a completely convincing representation of time and place. The beauty is in the minutia, and the chilly Cold War atmosphere it imbues.

X-Men: First Class
(Chris Seagers, Larry Bellantoni, Erin Boyd, Sanja Klaus, John King, Dawn Swiderski):

Similarly to Captain America, the art department here melds period authenticity with fantastical influences to yield a polished alternative Marvel universe that we can believe took place in the 1960s.

Just missed: Anonymous, The Artist, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,
Harry Potter 8, War Horse

Review - Hugo

A lonely orphan who winds the clocks from within the walls of a Parisian train station attempts to decipher the mystery of a mechanical man in Hugo, Martin Scorsese's courageous foray into 3D family entertainment.

Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), for that is his name, used to love fixing things with his clockmaker father before his untimely death. A rusty old automaton designed to write on paper is all he has to member his dad, and repairing the robot has become a project on which the boy has become dependent. He often pilfers parts from a sad old toymaker, Papa George (Ben Kingsley), who seems somehow connected to the machine, but reluctant to divulge. Hugo finds an ally in the toymaker's goddaughter (Chloe Moretz), an avid reader who yearns for adventure beyond her leather-bound tomes. Together, they attempt to discover the secret concealed within the automaton's intricate clockwork and seek a window into Papa George's past.

One Category at a Time: Best Art Direction

There are lots of past Oscar winners and nominees in the mix this year. Among them are Martin Scorsese's frequent production designer Dante Ferreti and set dresser Franscesca Lo Shiavo (winners for The Aviator and Sweeney Todd). With Scorsese's Hugo Cabret, they'll recreate 1930's Paris. With Rob Richardson behind the camera, you know the sets are gonna get the best possible presentation.

Will this finally be the year the Academy awards Stuart Craig for the Harry Potter series? Having been nominated for three of the seven films thus far, including last year's installment, many are suggesting that AMPAS may want to tip their hat to the franchise with a win, and this upcoming year is their last chance to do it, and no category would be more appropriate than Art Direction.

Jack Fisk and Jim Erickson (nominated for There Will Be Blood) are heading the production design and set decoration of Water for Elephants, based on the bestseller set on a Depression era traveling circus. The period detail of 1930s America and the sparkly glitz of the Greatest Show on Earth might prove a winning combination with the art directors branch.

Finally, Mark Ricker and Rena DeAngelo will produce the look and feel of 1960s small-town Mississippi in The Help. DeAngelo's Emmy-winning work on Mad Men proves she has the detail of the period down pat, and if it ends up a popular film, design nominations could fall into place.

War films don't intuitively come to mind when one thinks about art direction, but it requires just as much work and creativity. Rick Carter (who won two years ago for Avatar) is designing the sets for Steven Spielberg's War Horse. If the movie turns out to be a big hit with the Academy, a nomination here would not surprise me.

Predicted five:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
The Help
Hugo Cabret
War Horse
Water for Elephants

Also consider: Albert Nobbs, Captain America, The Conspirator, A Dangerous Method, Jane Eyre, Pirates 4, Sherlock Holmes 2, The Tree of Life.

My Award nominations: Production Design and Set Decoration

With the Art Directors' Guild announcing their nominees tomorrow, today seems like a good one for me to offer up my own selections for the Best Production Design, Set Decoration, and Art Direction of 2010:

The Illusionist (Jacques Arhex, Bjarne Hansen):

True, no sets are built for this gorgeous animated gem, but the art direction still makes a lasting impression. Beautiful watercolour effect.

Inception (Guy Dyas, Larry Dias, Douglas Mowat, Brad Ricker):

Multiple dream levels designed to reflect our protagonist's id, and constructed to accommodate the many special effects. The stuff that dreams are made of.

The King's Speech (Eve Stewart, Judy Farr, David Hindle):

Visually evokes distinctions between class and character with subtlety and richness, from Lionel's cozy wallpaper to Bertie's austere matte painted walls.

Shutter Island (Dante Ferretti, Francesca Lo Shiavo, Robert Guerra):

The decaying edifice of the titular island's asylum for the criminally insane help put us in an uneasy state of mind. Spooky, spooky, spooky.

The Wolfman (Rick Heinrichs, John Bush, Vincent Jenkins, Andy Nicholson):

Absolutely nailed the creepy atmosphere, and serves as a nice throwback to vintage Universal monster movie lore. Gotta love that Gothic period detail!

Just missed: The Ghost Writer, Prince of Persia, Tangled