One Category at a Time: Best Production Design

This feels like one of those tight categories in which literally any of the five nominees could win. The usual period dressings are conspicuously absent, precursors have been split every which way, and said precursors have not been all that informative in recent years anyway; Three Best Production Design winners of that last ten didn't have any of the ADG, BAFTA or Critics Choice Awards in hand before taking the Oscar.

My Award Nominations: Production Design

It'll be hard for the Academy's designers branch to come up with a bad nominee for Best Production Design this year, even if it doesn't match very closely with my own ballot (outlined after the cut). There's just so much good work out there.

My Award Nominations: Best Production Design

I tell ya, it broke my heart to omit just about every title that you'll see in the 'just missed' section of this post, but that's the type of year it's been for production design. Outstanding work in too many films. I ultimately had to choose those whose sets and environments were engrained into the narrative identities of the stories they were telling, but it doesn't make it any easier to snub some other worthy effort.

Anyway, enough mourning the snubbees. Onto the five that did survive this brutally competitive melee for only five slots in Best Production Design.

ADG nominees

The announcement everyone will have their eyes on today is the Producers Guild nominations, but in the meantime the Art Directors Guild has sounded off on the year's best production design. Will our Academy's Best Production Design ballot be a sampling of these fifteen films, or will one or two titles passed over by the guild make their way to an Oscar nod? I notice that Mr. Turner was ignored in the Period category (um... what?), but there's always one guild snubbee that gets a second wind.

Check out the nominees with some commentaries/wild guesses after the cut.

Review - Foxcatcher

If you're a fan of the sport of wrestling, you may be familiar with the story of the Schultz brothers, a pair of Olympic champs who caught the eye of a millionaire philanthropist following the '84 L.A. Olympics.

But you needn't be a wrestling buff to appreciate this stranger-than-fiction true story, brilliantly dramatized by Cannes prize winner Bennett Miller in Foxcatcher. Just like his swell previous feature Moneyball, what Miller has achieved here is a sports movie that's not actually about the sport, but about something far bigger and more elusive. Incidentally, like Moneyball was in 2011, Foxcatcher is also one of the finest films of the year.

Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) is obsessed with being the best, but doomed to never feel like the best. Even his Olympic gold medal seems outshone by that of his older brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo), whose personal life is far more fulfilled.

Dave is more famous, a better wrestler/coach, a happy family man, and still quietly exudes his protective instincts towards his baby bro. A beautifully staged sparring sequence early in the film between the two brothers tells us everything we need to know about their relationship with hardly a single word of dialogue.

One Category at a Time: Art Direction

As far as I see it, the category (and by association, Costume Design) come down to two films: The King's Speech and Alice in Wonderland.

One the one hand, Oscar voters often go for the most noticeable production design, as was certainly the case last with Avatar, in which case you might give an edge to Alice in Wonderland. On the other, the Academy really likes The King's Speech, and a prestige period drama is hard for voters to turn down. Still, Alice just seems like a real threat in this category where voters sometimes mistake ''most'' for ''best''. I think I'll stick with the Best Picture winner on this one, for the production design really is quite lovely and thematically appropriate, but I'll hang myself it ends up being Tim Burton's movie. Not because I'll have guessed wrong, but because that movie is seriously hideous.

Sad to say, Guy Dyas' healthy run with various critics groups including the BFCA will not avail him with AMPAS. I think his work on Inception is the most deserving, but contemporary films never win this category, and the design really is more of a contemporary entry than a fantasy outing.

Also, I wonder if next year the Academy might give this award to Deathly Hallows Part 2. This is one category where the Harry Potter series has been more than adequately recognized, and if the franchise is going to win something, it might be here. Stay tuned 'til 2012.

Congrats also to Jess Gonchar for his first nomination with True Grit. He hasn't a hope in hell of winning, due to all those exteriors. But that won't cheapen the nomination, which is richly deserved.

Will win: The King's Speech
Runner-up: Alice in Wonderland

Should win: Inception
Should have been nominated: The Illusionist

Review - True Grit

If it weren't for the end credits, one would never have guessed that True Grit had been made by the Coen brothers, for it has less of their cinematic idiosyncrasies than any film they've ever done. And maybe that was the best way to go about it.

Young Mattie Ross (wonderfully played by Hailee Steinfeld) has a blood vendetta against one Tom Chaney for gunning down her father. As determined as she is foolhardy, Mattie hires an acerbic U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to help her track down the felon and bring him to justice, with the aid of a Texas ranger named LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) who also wants to see Chaney hanged, but with more fiscal motivations in mind.

While I do bemoan the film's overall lack of personality (surprising for the famously quirky Coens), I'd be lying if I denied that I had a great time watching it. This is an old-fashioned Western from top to bottom, and depending on how much you enjoy the genre, that may suit you just fine. The tradition of a group of lovable characters (if somewhat rough around the edges) on a rollicking adventure always brought a smile to my face in the films of Budd Boedecker and John Ford, and the Coens' adaptation of the Charles Portis novel is similarly delightful, even if artistically unremarkable.

It is a lovingly made picture, with detailed period sets and costumes from Jess Gonchar and Mary Zophres, a fine score from Carter Burwell, and elegant photography from the one-and-only Roger Deakins.

Nominations are probably coming for some of the craftspeople mentioned above, and also one for Haille Steinfeld, but I don't buy that Supporting Actress bullshit the studio is plugging. The role is a leading role, plain and simple. If she does indeed earn a Supporting Actress nomination (as some of us have been predicting since spring), it'll be a simultaneous triumph and embarrassment. I'm also hesitant on the Best Picture nomination so many see coming. Maybe I'm wrong, but somehow I don't quite see the Academy going for this.

*** out of ****