My Award nominations: Makeup and Hair

This is the only category this year in which none of my own nominees are up for the Oscar. Shame, shame, Makeup branch. Don't you understand that these three movies have the Best Makeup and Hair of the year?

Seven Makeup finalists revealed

As usual, the Academy's makeup branch is one that defies prediction, snubbing high-profile work every year when it comes to their contestant-whittling bakeoff, and often including at least one fringe contender in their final three. The big shaftee this year in the bakeoff stage is Cloud Atlas, whose plethora of genre-spanning, gender-crossing, and race-warping transformations just wasn't enough to overcome the hit-and-miss nature of the actual makeup. And perhaps with good reason. Quantity shouldn't substitute for quality, and while the film's makeup team deserves a hearty pat on the back for being the hardest working members of the crew, a lot of the makeup was just plain bad.

Another snubbed movie which I thought might have a shot at being this year's fringe contender was Leos Carax's Holy Motors, whose shape-shifting star Denis Lavant dons many guises which are not only well executed, but spotlighted in the film itself as Lavant applies and removes the makeup himself. I guess it was too fringe for the makeup branch to even see it, which is probably why it didn't get a mention.

2012 Capsule Reviews

As the season revs up I tend to spend less time on full reviews, but often deposit a paragraph or two for new films (or old ones I've just caught up with) in one post throughout the winter.