CDG last guild to announce winners

The Costume Designers Guild have crowned the best designed costumes of the year in three categories.

In the Period Film category, Jacqueline Durran further embosses herself as the Oscar favourite for her lavish Russian couture in Anna Karenina. Affection for the late Eiko Ishioka brought her a final guild honour in the Fantasy Film category for her off-the-wall designs in Mirror Mirror (might she be a spoiler possibility at the Oscars?). Jany Temime concluded Skyfall's impressive guild run with a win in the Contemporary category for her stylish spy-thriller threads.

One Category at a Time: Costume Design

As it is in Best Production Design, having the most noticeable design elements is an essential factor to winning Best Costume Design, which is why  suspect the likely winner of Best Production Design is also primed to win here too. These two categories do often go hand in hand. Splits between two films nominated in both categories (like the one we saw last year) don't happen as often as one film winning both.

Costume Designer Guild nominees

The CDG as nominated all five of the films up for the Oscar, along with 10 others across their three feature film categories.

Excellence in Period Film

Anna Karenina – Jacqueline Durran

Argo – Jacqueline West

Les Misérables – Paco Delgado

Lincoln – Joanna Johnston

Moonrise Kingdom – Kasia Walicka-Maimone

Thrilled to see Moonrise Kingdom and Argo turn up here. I knew their subtle threads wouldn't catch the Academy's eye, but if they were going to get recognized anywhere, it would be with the guild. Good on you, CDG! But I wonder which of the three Oscar nominees in this bunch will win here? Probably Anna Karenina, but could be Les Mis or Lincoln just as easily.

Review - A Snow White double feature

A pair of Costume Design nominees which bowed earlier in the year forced me to go back and play a bit of catch-up.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, which is the most superfluous Snow White recreation of them all? Trick question. Turns out it's both of them. With fairy tale revisionism dominating studio slates recently – either because audiences are really clamouring for it or because it's cheaper than paying licensing fees for anything written in the last hundred years – 2012 ended up yielding not one, but two new takes on the girl with skin as white as snow and hair as black as night. Occupying opposite ends of the tonal spectrum, Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman make a peculiar, if not a high quality, double feature.

Mirror Mirror is the incarnation that tries to preserve the lightheartedness we often associate with fairy tales. Lily Collins plays the raven-haired beauty who joins up with a septet of pint-sized bandits after her vampish diva of a step mother (Julia Roberts) had ordered her be taken to the woods and slain. From thence on, they both compete for the love of a dashing but comically inept prince (Armie Hammer).