Gravity and 12 Years a Slave take final guild honours

The last two guilds to hand out hardware this season (the Cinema Audio Society and the Costume Designers Guild) did so last night, making winners out of leading Best Picture contenders Gravity and 12 Years a Slave.

One Category at a Time: Production Design

The Academy has thrown me for a loop in this category more often than any other craft category in recent years. When I predicted the weathered frontier recreations of There Will Be Blood they went with the stylized gothic environs of Sweeney Todd. When I predicted the refined set decoration of The King's Speech they went with the gaudy excess of Alice in Wonderland. So last year, I thought I'd get wise by predicting the lavish stylings of Anna Karenina to rule the day, and what do they do? They give it to the immaculate minutia of Lincoln! Suffice it to say I don't know how that win ever happened (not that it was in any way unworthy), but I'm willing to assume that it's more the exception than the rule. Typically, excess is what wins out in this category, even if it's against Best Picture nominated films.

One Category at a Time: Costume Design

The costume designers in the Academy got to veer off into their own branch this year, having previously been lumped in with the production designers until now. However, there doesn't appear to be a noticeable discrepancy in their voting patterns, as a certain degree of overlap clearly still exists between the two categories (three common films between them, which is not unusual).

My Award nominations: Costume Design

Some of the Costume Design work this year reached levels of iconography that's hard for even one film to achieve in any year, and not even all of those films made my top five! The threads were just so perfect in so many films. Alas, only five can be nominated, and you can read the ones I chose below.

ADG winners

The Art Directors Guild (who should maybe following the Academy's suit and change their name to the Production Designers Guild?) handed out their seasonal hardware last night, and all three of the feature film winners are in the running for the Oscar. But will it mean all that much at the end of the day, or does this group's less-than-stellar predictive history suggest that a completely different film could win the big one?

For Best Period Production Design the ADG went for Catherine Martin's opulent Jazz Age decadence in The Great Gatsby, besting Best Picture heavyweights 12 Years a Slave and American Hustle. She would be an unsurprising Oscar winner, both in this category and Best Costume Design, but last year's shocking victory for the refined minutia of Lincoln suggests that maybe those aforementioned Best Picture contenders still have more than a reasonable shot.

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:

Costume Designers Guild weighs in

The busy day of precursor announcements soldiers on with the Costume Designers Guild. In years past, the costume designers and production designers within the Academy were all lumped into one branch that determined nominees for both categories. This year, however, they have finally split into two distinct branches, so its possible that the respective guild opinions are more predictive of the eventual Oscar nominees. Or perhaps not. we'll just have to wait and see.

Nominees in all three feature film categories (and my corresponding thoughts) after the cut.

Best Costume Design, Period
12 Years a Slave, Patricia Norris
American Hustle, Michael Wilkinson
Dallas Buyers Club, Kurt & Bart
The Great Gatsby, Catherine Martin
Saving Mr. Banks, Daniel Orlandi

I've been holding off on predicting Saving Mr. Banks in this category. The costumes just seemed so... bland to me. But after scoring with BAFTA this morning and now with the guild, it seems to be in the thick of it. Obviously, Catherine Martin remains the one to beat, both here and for the Oscar, and I can hardly argue with that. I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, we might see Mary Zophres score here for Inside Llewyn Davis. It was the last chance for the excellently dressed film to get some recognition in that respect, but I guess I'm banging the drum alone this year.

Best Costume Design, Contemporary
Blue Jasmine, Suzy Benzinger
Her, Casey Storm
Nebraska, Wendy Chuck
Philomena, Consolata Boyle
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Sarah Edwards

It's a delight to see Blue Jasmine and Her score here (although for the latter, you could even make a case for a Fantasy categorization, although this feels more appropriate), but I can't quite wrap my head around the Inclusion of Nebraska or Philomena. I might have preferred Sandy Powell's work from the Wolf of Wall Street to find a home here.

Best Costume Design, Fantasy
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Ann Maskrey, Richard Taylor, Bob Buck
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Trish Summerville
Oz the Great and Powerful, Gary Jones & Michael Kutsche

I've expressed my bewilderment in the past as to why the CDG doesn't honour five nominees in this category? There were more than three fantasy films in 2013, and some had better costumes than these three. What about Man of Steel or Pacific Rim?

Review - The Great Gatsby

When Baz Luhrmann announced that he was adapting the American literary classic The Great Gatsby, anticipation and skepticism abounded in equal measure. Would the Aussie auteur's in-your-face-stylistics be the right fit for the F. Scott Fitzgerald's subtext and symbolism? An unexpected schedule change that shifted its release date from the thick of last year's awards season to a less crowded May 2013 slot only heightened the nervous curiosity. The production became enshrouded in as many rumours and unsure whisperings as the mysterious titular antihero of the novel itself.

At first it appears as though Luhrmann might be adopting a style more conducive to his source material. In a opening that recalls Citizen Kane, we push on a flashing green light – just one of the story's many recurring symbolic motifs – before meeting our narrator; Nick Colloway (Tobey Maguire), a baby-faced but disillusioned Wall Street pencil pusher now confined to a sanitarium where he recounts his experiences with a wealthy and elusive tycoon named Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio).