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.

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.

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).

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"

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.