Take a Trip Inside "Room"

Available to tour this weekend - if you're in Los Angeles, that is, and attending the 2:10 showing at The Landmark - is a complete recreation of the set from Room.

Perhaps a bit eerie for some, the tour provides an inventive way to experience the attention to detail given to a set as crucial to its film's narrative as the characters that inhabited it. Production designer Ethan Tobman crafted the space for maximum visual accessability with removable wall and floor tiles to nestle the camera while keeping the seclusion and intimacy uncompromised for the actors. Also inside will be the smaller pieces created to lend texture to Ma and Jack's tiny world: artwork, toys, props, and set detail work.

Contemporary production design goes far too ignored with the Academy and the tendancy is to favor oppulent period or imaginative fantasy genres. If the goal is to believably create the world and environment of a film, we don't have to stretch to find awards-worthy work - Skyfall, Synecdoche, New York, the entire David Fincher filmography. The tour is a shrewd way to hopefully stir some conversation for Tobman and shake up the kind of work honored by the branch. What other modern examples are worth considering?

The animated short films Oscar shortlist

Tim here. Today, the Academy announced that it has whittled the initial list of 60 titles eligible for the Best Animated Short Film Oscar down to ten finalists that will go on to compete for the five nominations in January. Like all of you, I imagine, I haven't seen most of these ten, but let's run through them quickly to see what we've got:

Bear Story (Historia de un oso) - Gabriel Osorio, director; Pato Escala, producer (Punkrobot Animation Studio)
This Chilean effort - Cartoon Brew notes that it would be the first Chilean film ever nominated if it makes it - looks to be a toy-esque animal fable done in charmingly plasticky CGI. Trailer

Carface (Autos Portraits) - Claude Cloutier, director (National Film Board of Canada)
A car with, get this, a face, sings "Que Sera, Sera", accompanied by images in thick lines and full color of cars and machines. It never does to count out the NFB, which has one of the most reliable histories of producing terrific animated shorts anywhere in the world. Trailer

The other eight nominees below the jump

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Will Mockingjay Part 2 Change The Hunger Games' Disappointing Oscar History

If next January comes around and brings no Oscar nominations for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 then it will have the unenviable tally of zero nominations from four films. Only The Twilight Saga, Mission: Impossible and Fast and the Furious franchises can claim such a strike rate. There was a time when every film that made over $200 at the American box-office could claim at least one nomination - even Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me! But since Mission: Impossible II in 2000, that has no longer been the case. Still, for Lionsgate’s hugely successful Hunger Games to bow out with nary a single nomination to its name is genuinely surprising.

What’s more, these films are hardly wanting for acclaim and nomination-worthy elements. Salute (or click) for more!

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Thoughts We Had... THR's Annual Actress Roundtable Cover

We'll have to wait a little while for the full video, which is more fun than the cover but it's always exciting to see THR's roundtable covers nonetheless. Like Vanity Fair's "Hollywood Issue" -- less thrilling than it once was for a myriad of reasons -- it's a tradition that is both great fun for its glamour and personality and highly aggravating for its exclusions and repetitions and limited world view... just like, HEYYYY, the Oscars themselves!

By now you know the drill. First an image. Then the thoughts that come to mind without self-censorhip after the jump...

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Yes, No, Maybe So : The Huntsman Winters War

Here's Murtada deconstructing the trailer for the ridiculously titled The Huntsman Winters War.

YES

- The actresses of course. Emily Blunt, Jessica Chastain, Charlize Theron = a formidable trio.
- Chastain as a the Warrior. Yes!
- Blunt and Theron as dueling evil sisters. Yes again! May campiness rule the day.
- The oversize gestures of Blunt and Theron as they wreak havoc. Give me more!
- So it’s obviously all about the actresses. Oh and the possibility of a shirtless Chris Hemsworth.

NO

- From the producer of Maleficent and Alice in Wonderland….. NOOOOOOO.
- Hemsworth gets top billing?? I guess he's The Hunstman.
- The CGI doesn't look very convincing.
- “Men have forgotten what it means to be afraid. We will bring fear”. Hmmm cheesy line. It could be fun if the tone is over the top campy. The trailer is playing it straight so we are dubious.

MAYBE SO

- Does Blunt’s ice crown look odd above her face? It certainly is not as fierce as Theron’s crown. Is Colleen Atwood showing favorites?
- No enough Shirtless Chris. Will it be just the one scene like in Thor?
- Chastain is almost mute in the trailer. Only one line. More Warrior Jessica!
- Will we get enough of the British supporting cast of Nick Frost, Rob Brydon and Alexandra Roach as supposedly the dwarfs. They are hardly in the trailer.

It's a maybe so despite the fabulous trio of actresses. What’s your verdict?