One Category at a Time: Visual Effects

One thing that last year's race for Best Visual Effects made clear was that you just can't beat a Best Picture nominee in this category, even if its effects are far inferior to another contender. But this year, the category's only Best Picture nominee just so happens to legitimately have the best effects of the year, making this one of the night's surest locks.

My Award nominations: Supporting Actor

No clear frontrunner for me in this category this year. I'm not yet sure which of these five Supporting Actors I'll choose as the year's best:

My Awards nominations: Production Design

Had to omit some stellar work from my lineup this year. These hardworking production designers, set decorators, and art directors delivered settings and environments with so much personality, as did many others who just missed the cut. My top five films of 2012 for Production Design, Set Decoration, and Art Direction are:

Visual Effects Society noms

The VES has revealed their nominations for the 2012 year in film, and leading the way with seven nods is The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, followed closely by Life of Pi and The Avengers with six. All are presumed Oscar nominees, but guessing those final two slots gets a bit tricky.

The Dark Knight Rises has been an assumed nominee all year, but only scooped one mention from the guild; for its great miniatures. Another superhero film to reap a sole nomination is The Amazing Spider-Man, which few are anticipating will earn Academy love anyway. I'm beginning to come around to the thought of Prometheus -- which garnered three nods -- taking that fifth slot. Its effects work was pretty terrific, and three of the Alien films earned Oscar nominations for visual effects.

The four other films shortlisted by the Academy were snubbed altogether. Skyfall's shutout here might be attributed to its abundance of practical effects, but could ride a wave of momentum through the craft categories to a surprise effects nomination on Thursday. Cloud Atlas' Oscar chances are all but dead in the water after being largely written off as a confusing flop. Ditto John Carter. Snow White and the Huntsman might be a dark horse to watch.

On the animated side of things, I'm delighted to see ParaNorman do so well with five nominations. For those of you who've been asking about my own awards, I may as well mention right now that its effects are among the most impressive of the year in my opinion.

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-Driven Feature Motion Picture
"The Avengers"
"Battleship"
"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey"
"Life of Pi" The current frontrunner, and likely Oscar winner
"Prometheus"

Art Directors Guild nominees

The ADG has listed their nominees for outstanding production design.

Period Production Design:

Argo
Anna Karenina
Django Unchained
Les Miserables
Lincoln

I'm thinking Anna Karenina (the possible winner here and with Oscar), Lincoln, and Les Mis are in the Academy's top five. No Master? Boo-urns.

Review - Prometheus

Off to probe the farthest corner of the galaxy for the origins of humanity flies the spacecraft Prometheus in Ridley Scott's ambitious prequel to the Alien franchise he himself spawned 33 years ago. That original classic is revered for being both a grade-A creature feature and a legit science fiction with strong thematic undertones, but while Prometheus reaches for the same proverbial stars (much like the ancient pictograms that lead our inquisitive scientists on their voyage), its philosophical quandaries and narrative ambiguities are as vexing as they are thought-provoking.

Noomi Rapace (sans dragon tattoo) headlines as Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, who theorizes that the aforementioned pictograms – discovered in the art of different civilizations the world over – are evidence that humans were created by something beyond our world. “Engineers” is the term she and her husband (Logan Marshall-Green) coin for our hypothetical creators, and their thesis is enough to convince optimistically superstitious trillionaire Peter Weyland to finance an interplanetary mission to literally meet our maker. Anyone who's seen even one of the previous Alien films knows that going into space in search of answers is seldom a good idea, and indeed, this entry proceeds to follow many of the same beats as its predecessors. We are introduced to a mostly expendable crew of characters, including one synthetic personality, the robotic David, played with calibrated nuance by Michael Fassbender, the clear standout of the cast. Naturally, there's enough mistrust and hidden agendas to pique our suspicion until the bad stuff starts happening to these curious cats.