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.

One Category at a Time: Best Original Score

Oscar watchers rejoiced this year when we saw a Best Original Score lineup populated almost entirely with first-time nominees. Usually the music branch has proved the most insular one in the Academy, only reserving one or two slots for fresh talent every year. Perhaps recent diversification initiatives are starting to take effect, though the branch clearly still has its favourites.

Moonlight Wins USC Scripter, plus ADG Winners

Moonlight's Barry Jenkins and Tarrell Alvin McCraney won the USC Scripter Award last night, which honours the best page-to-screen adaptations of the year by giving prizes to both the screenwriter and the author of the original source material.

Oddly, the Academy still included McCraney in the Oscar nomination as well, but if you're willing to give McCraney story credit on this project (for writing a play that never got produced), doesn't that mean you're treating it like an original screenplay? I don't think too many people are going to complain about McCraney standing alongside Jenkins with an Oscar in hand two weeks from now, but I'm curious to hear where others stand on this question.

Oscar Noms 2016-17

Today has been too busy for me to provide any kind of in-depth response to the announcement of 2016's Oscar nominees, but here's an oversimplified rundown of The Good and The Bad (we'll hold off on The Ugly since most of these nominees are beauts). I'll have time to analyze each of the 24 races when "One Category at a Time" returns in a few weeks.

Until then, some off-the-top reactions:

THE GOOD

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.

Art Directors Guild nominations

The ADG has joined the chorus. While it's not unheard of for production design efforts that miss with the guild to find Oscar love, it doesn't happen often (only three films have pulled that trick in the last five years), so that doesn't bode well for Silence, Rules Don't Apply or Live by Night.

Let's take a look at the three feature film categories after the jump...

Thoughts on 'Lion' and Others [Updating...]

Within minutes of this posting the Critics' Choice Awards will start, the first televised awards show of the season. But since it's happening a month earlier than it normally does, it will hardly count as the most significant awards news of the upcoming week. Tomorrow will see the unveiling of the Golden Globe nominations, followed by SAG nominations on Wednesday.

As all this happens, more contenders begin creeping out of their limited release hidey holes. I caught up with one such contender this afternoon, The Weinstein Co.'s big hopeful Lion, which hasn't been that healthily represented in first half-dozen-or-so critics awards, but the Academy will rectify that.
The movie is pretty great.