'Guardians' & 'Budapest' Each Win Pair of MHG Awards in Tight Race for Oscar

Of the five feature film categories that the Makeup & Hairstylists Guild uses to distinguish the year's best achievements in their field, two apiece were won by Oscar nominees Guardians of the Galaxy and The Grand Budapest Hotel.

I suppose this does little to clear up that super tight category, except perhaps to confirm that the transformative work in Foxcatcher, though effective, is a bit too subtle to trump those showier accomplishments.

Birdman, meanwhile, got a nifty tip of the hat for contemporary hairstyling. Lots of wigs and stage dos in that movie. Nice call, MHG.

One Category at a Time: Makeup and Hairstyling

Usually, Best Makeup and Hairstyling can be a frustrating and unpredictable category at the nomination stage. Despite having the field of possible nominees pared down to a paltry seven in advance, many pundits fail to anticipate the final three nominees since this branch has a bit of a history of snubbing excellent makeup in excellent films in favour of commendable makeup in horrible films -- much to the vexation of Oscar completists everywhere, who hate having to sit through the likes of Click, Norbit, or The Lone Ranger.

Picking the winners, however, has usually been relatively easy. How can it not be, with only three options to consider (time to expand it to five, AMPAS!). I myself have guessed the winners correctly for eight consecutive years, a longer streak than I can boast in any other category, and I'm far from the only one with such a record. This is all very usual for Oscar prognosticators.

But this year, things are a bit unusual. In fact, they're downright topsy turvy. Not only are all three movies worthy contenders for their remarkable transformations, but all three movies are actually... good movies! And more unusual yet is that all three of them feel like potential winners, making this one of the true toss-up categories of the year.

Let's dive into the cases you could make for each nominee:

'Budapest', 'Birdman', & 'Guardians' Take Top ADG Honours

Production designer Adam Stockhausen continued his unstoppable march towards the Oscar by picking up the Art Directors Guils Award in period design for his scrumptious work on The Grand Budapest Hotel. Honestly, enough said on this category already. Nothing's gonna beat this one. No one's gonna argue with that.

In the other categories, Birdman continued its recent guild surge by winning the award for contemporary design, thanks to Kevin Thompson's enormous Broadway recreations. And Guardians of the Galaxy's Charles Wood pulled off a mini-coup by snatching away the fantasy award from Oscar nominees Interstellar and Into the Woods.

One Category at a Time: Visual Effects

I am pleased to report that for the first time in six -- count 'em, six -- years, the Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects and Best Cinematography will NOT be going to the same film. Huzzah!

A lot of that has to do with this being the first time since the Best Visual Effects category expanded to five, that a Best Picture nominee has not been represented. This means we can't fall back on the reliable 'Best-Pic-nominees-never-lose' rule that has held in this category since the 70s.

But then what yard stick do we use to assess the chances of the five films recognized this year for their sensational illusions?

That 'Best-Pic-nominees-never-lose' rule got me thinking about the directors who have helmed the most recent winners in this category, going back as far as the 2008/09 season:

-David Fincher
-James Cameron
-Christopher Nolan
-Martin Scorsese
-Ang Lee
-Alfonso Cuaron

Guys, that's an impressive list... in fact, that list is more than impressive.
That list is amazing.
That list is better than the list of the six most recent winners for Best Director!

In a Best Visual Effects race in which no Best Picture nominee is present, could it be that the name of the director behind the film holds enough clout to make the difference? If so, then it certainly bodes well for one nominee, whose director is already on that more-than-impressive list...

My Award Nominations: Best Makeup and Hair

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:

'Birdman' and 'Apes' Lead MPSE Nods

On the eve of Oscar morning, the Motion Picture Sound Editors announced their nominees for the year's best achievements in sound design and editing. Birdman and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes lead all contenders with three nods apiece, and both are fine honourees for their excellent sound jobs (although I may be more impressed with Birdman's overall mix than with the editorial).

The most Oscar-indicative category is Best Sound Effects/Foley, which also features Oscar hopefuls Unbroken, Interstellar, Fury, and American Sniper, joined by a pair of Marvel blockbusters in Captain America and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Best Sound Effects/Foley
American Sniper
Birdman
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Fury
Guardians of the Galaxy
Interstellar
Unbroken
I expect the Oscar five will be a permutation of these eight, but which three drop out? Despite its impressive showing here, I'm just not sure the Apes franchise is embraced as warmly by the Academy as it aught to be. I also don't expect either of the Marvel efforts, but I could certainly be wrong. Fury deserves to be the winner, but Best Picture clout may aid American Sniper in this race.

CAS Nominees include... Interstellar?

The Cinema Audio Society has named their choices for the best sound mixes of the year, and the biggest jaw-dropper is that apparently they heard something in Interstellar that the rest of us couldn't hear (literally, couldn't hear). How can this happen? And from a group of sound mixing professionals, no less!?!

I wonder if, assuming it gets the nominations, it might take both sound categories at the Oscars just because it seems on paper to be that 'type' of movie. Do the right thing, Academy: Actually listen to the films and decide what you think has the best sound.

For instance, a film like, say, Birdman (also nominated by the CAS) is a great example of a movie wherein the clarity of the sound recording and post-production mix does an excellent job of pulling you into the scene.

Two of the other nominees are ones I'm currently predicting for Oscar nods; American Sniper and Unbroken, although I have to think long and hard about the latter's real chances. Rounding out the five is Guardians of the Galaxy, which I wouldn't expect to score anywhere beyond effects and makeup with AMPAS.

The five CAS nominees, again, are:

American Sniper
Birdman
Guardians of the Galaxy
Interstellar
Unbroken

The animated contenders after the cut.

Makeup and Hair Guild Nominations

The Academy's nomination balloting closes today, but the Makeup and Hairstylists Guild has chimed in before that final bell (there are four other guilds announcing next week, so their nominees will have no influence on Oscar).

This guild hadn't regularly given out awards for some time, until they decided to revive the tradition last year, honouring several films among which was the eventual Oscar winner Dallas Buyers Club.

Leading the field this year are Guardians of the Galaxy and Into the Woods, each receiving three nominations across five categories. Guardians is looking good for an Oscar nod (and possibly the win), but Into the Woods failed to even make the short list.

Besides Guardians, other Oscar finalists which find representation here include The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Theory of Everything each with a pair, and Foxcatcher and Maleficent each with a single citation for their transformative prosthetics. Noah and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 were shut out entirely.

One final side note before we dig into the nominees: This guild needs to do a better job with their categorizations. How do they determine what counts as contemporary as opposed to period makeup/hair, and how do they account for fantasy offerings? Hunger Games gets called period, while Guardians of the Galaxy gets called contemporary? I haven't exactly seen a lot of modern day folks walking around looking like this:

This was a problem last year too, which saw The Butler classified as contemporary and Dallas Buyers Club as period, but enough of that. On to this year's slate:

WGA Announces Nominees

The final guild of the day is also the most inconsequential, by which I refer to the Writers Guild of America. I say "inconsequential" not as a slight on their organization, but merely as an observation that their finalists for Best Adapted and Original Screenplay have little to no bearing on the Oscar race due to their long list of ineligible titles.

This year, heavyweight writing contenders that were DQed by this guild include Birdman, Selma, Mr. Turner, and The Theory of Everything. So no, don't expect Guardians of the Galaxy to earn a surprise nomination for its script.

Read some additional thoughts on all the nominees below:

Seven finalists advance to Best Makeup and Hairstyling bakeoff

The makeup branch of the Academy has announced its seven finalists that will advance to the bake-off stage, from which three Oscar nominees will be chosen:

The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Foxcatcher
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Guardians of the Galaxy
Maleficent
Noah
The Theory of Everything

The only semi-surprising snub is Into the Woods (sight-unseen, I'm not in a position to judge whether this is a travesty of justice or justice being served), but most of the surviving contenders are hardly unexpected. Although I guess not many people would've seen Spider-Man 2 coming.

Review - Guardians of the Galaxy

I know I'm super late to the space launch on this one, but it's not as though the Guardians of the Galaxy are going anywhere anytime soon. Having rocketed to the top of the domestic box office (and still climbing) in just one month of release, there's no arguing that Marvel Studios has yet another bona fide hit on their hands, but does the product really befit the hype?

Even if not, one can only congratulate Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige and director James Gunn (Slither) on their success. Unlike the reliably profitable Avengers universe that oils their movie-making machinery, Guardians of the Galaxy was a more commercially risky project, mining the farthest reaches of space for characters that would have anyone but comic book buffs scratching their heads.