My Award Nominations: Best Makeup and Hair

For as long as I've been compiling my own personal Oscar ballots (feels like I've been at it since infancy), I've stubbornly limited myself to three nominees for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. I suppose it grew out of mimicking the Academy at first, but now it doesn't seem to make sense that it's the only category with such a restrictive number of contestants. If you ever read Nate Rogers at The Film Experience -- which of course you do, because what Oscar-loving film buff doesn't? -- you know what I'm talking about. For years he's made very a logical argument for why the makeup branch should finally get with the times and expand its field to five nominees.

So I'm taking a page out of that book and expanding my own field to reflect the rest of my awards -- five per category. Maybe if I'm bored one day, I'll even go back in time and retroactively add a couple of deserving hair+makeup efforts to my nominees from years past (though the boredom would have to be tremendous). But for now, peruse the best of what 2014 had to offer:

Review - Cloud Atlas

Combining arthouse ambition with studio production value, Cloud Atlas is an existentialist Rubik's cube with commercial sensibilities; a beguiling tale of reborn souls meeting over again across time and space, spun into a sprawling tapestry about what connects us as human beings... or, you know, something like that.

In 1849 a young aristocrat returns home from an expedition to the slave colonies in the Pacific rim. In 1936 a young music writer keeps correspondence with his gay lover as he helps an aging composer put his melodies to sheet. In 1973 an investigative journalist uncovers a nefarious conspiracy between big oil and nuclear power. In 2012 a book editor seeks refuge from Irish thugs only to be committed to a rest home. In 2044 a genetically engineered servant in the dystopic Neo Seoul becomes the key face of an underground revolution. In the distant post-apocalyptic future, warring tribes fight for survival as a more technologically advanced visitor comes with a mysterious mission.