Picking up where we left off after the headliner categories. But click not away. The below the line crafts and specialty categories are just as important and trivia-interesting. I promise.
FOR THE EYES
Production Design: Colin Gibson, Mad Max: Fury Road
Makeup and Hairstyling: Mad Max: Fury Road
Costume Design: Jenny Beavan, Mad Max: Fury Road
Jenny Beavan previously won the costume category for another perfect film A Room With a View. Not since arguably Dianne Wiest has a two time winner won for such polar opposite achievements. Yes both of Wiest's Oscars are from Woody Allen pictures but those star turns couldn't be more different stylistically / emotionally / pscyhologically. Mad Max Fury Road is also the first sci-fi winner EVER in this category... unless you count Star Wars (1977) though some people prefer lumping Star Wars into the fantasy genre rather than sci-fi... and there have been multiple fantasy winners.
I can't think of any interesting stats to go with the Makeup and Production Design Oscars but they were richly earned, don't you think?
More after the jump including further Star Wars coincidences...
Margaret Sixel (Mad Max) on Sunday night. Marcia Lucas (Star Wars) and other winners with Farrah Fawcett at the 1977 Oscars
Film Editing: Margaret Sixel, Mad Max: Fury Road
Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki, The Revenant
Visual FX: Ex Machina
Margaret Sixel is the second woman to win this category for editing her husband's films. The first was Marcia Lucas who won Editing for George Lucas's Star Wars (1977) after a nomination for her work on his American Graffiti. (They were married before they were famous when they were both in their twenties. They divorced in 1983 after Return of the Jedi.) Please to note: This comparison is in no way meant to cast shade on Sixel & Miller's relationship as they have been working together for 30 years and married for 20)
Meanwhile Lubezki became the first and only cinematographer to win three consecutive Oscars. John Toll previously won back-to-backs for Legends of the Fall and Braveheart in the 1990s. (Mexican filmmakers have been having a GREAT Oscar run of late in the past ten years with Cuaron, Del Toro, & Iñárritu all winning Oscar love between 2006-2015)
Manuel already covered how unusual Ex Machina's win actually was.
THE SPECIALTIES
Documentary: Amy
Animated Feature Film: Inside Out
Foreign Language Film Son of Saul (Hungary)
You guys. What are we going to do about the Documentary Oscar? This is the 3rd time in just 4 years that the Best Documentary Feature has gone to a film about the music industry. This is getting ridiculous! It's like when we had all those years in a row when Cinematography suddenly became Visual FX Part Two. I suppose one could argue that this run of music films winning is coincidence but I think not. It reads like voters voting without having seen all the nominees -- which is likely. Oscar has been relaxing the rules in its specialty categories so you're no longer required to prove that you've seen them all before voting which is kind of a shame (as that should be the rule for every category). Music docs are the most accessible and mainstream and relatable especially if you haven't seen the pictures. Who doesn't have feelings about Amy Winehouse, you know?
The Animated Feature category has been around since 2001, the inaugural year featured Pixar losing which in no way became indicative of the general tenor of that category. In the now 15 years of winners in this category Pixar has won 53% of the time. Or, perhaps a more telling statistic: In years in which Pixar had an eligible release they have won 66% of the time (in only two years were they eligible and not nominated... 2011's Cars 2 and 2013's Monster's University)
As for Foreign Film, France ended their longest drought of nomination-free years with Mustang but they're still suffering from their longest drought ever in terms of win. Their last winning film was the Catherine Deneuve vehicle Indochine (1992). Meanwhile Hungary, once a frequently nominated country, ended their own longest nomination drought (nearly 30 years!) and won their second Oscar in the category. Their first was for the theater drama WW II film Mephisto (1981). I haven't done the research but it would probably be fascinating / scary to tabulate how often World War II centric films have won this category. It's still a very frequent topic of submissions each year from all over.
FOR THE EARS
Ennio Morricone with his Honorary Oscar a decade back. Now he's won a competitive Oscar, too.
Original Score: Ennio Morricone, The Hateful Eight
Original Song: "Writing’s on the Wall," Sam Smith, Jimmy Napes for Spectre
Sound Mixing: Mad Max: Fury Road
Sound Editing: Mad Max: Fury Road
With his win for The Hateful Eight, Morricone becomes (we believe) the oldest competitive Oscar winner of all time. He is 87 years old. (We haven't been able to find confirmation on this as Oscar's official stats for age only deal with actors and directors but many experts believe it to be true so it probably is.) The oldest winner in any acting category is Christopher Plummer who was 82 when he won for Beginners and the oldest winning director is Clint Eastwood who was 74 when he took his second directing statue for Million Dollar Baby.
Deborah is cooking something up about Oscar & Bond but for now let's note that "Writing's on the Wall" is only the second Bond song to ever win the Oscar. Which is such the headscratcher. Why did they previous ignore Bond songs, so many of which are stellar, and why on earth did they love this one, which nobody else seems to love?
As for Sound Mixing and Sound Editing. It's still unclear to TFE how the Sound branch in the Academy convinced Oscar to allow them two categories. Yes, the disciplines are different but so are, say, Production Design and Set Decoration as well as Makeup and Hairstyling and several disciplines are combined under Visual Effects tent. But those artists all have to share categories. The Sound branch themselves hasn't done much to convince the world at large that they're different disciplines either (though they are) since their nominations lists in the two categories are usually very similar.
SMALL SAMPLE SIZE
Both categories have changed titles and shape over the years but statistically, ignoring title changes, Sound Mixing has been around since the 3rd annual Oscars. Sound Editing stretches back only to 1963 but it didn't really become a proper category with annual winners and nominees until 1988. (in the years between 1963 and 1987 there were several years where there was only a winner and no nominees or they skipped the category entirely. Things stabilized in 1988 and the statues often went to separate films. This was partially because the makeup of their competition was different since Mixing had 5 nominees and Editing only 3. The totally equal categories (always 5 nominees for both every ingle year) dates back ONLY to 2006 so we have exactly 10 years of truly balanced history. In that short sample size, the same film has won both categories 60% of the time. The only time a film wins Sound Mixing without a parallel Editing nomination is when its a music film (Whiplash, Les Misérables, Dreamgirls) and the only time a film wins Sound Editing without a Mixing nomination it when it's a military film (Letters From Iwo Jima, Zero Dark Thirty)... no exceptions!
FOR THE SHORT ATTENTION SPANS
The Bear Story men winning gold
Animated Short Film: Bear Story
Live Action Film: Stutterer
Documentary Short: Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness
I correctly predicted all three of these categories this year totally shocking myself since none of my predictions were the overall agreed upon frontrunner if you look at punditry charts on sites that collect them! (The most frequently predicted were: Sanjay's Super Team, Shok, and Body Team 12)
Bear Story marks only the second Oscar win for Chileans. The first was Claudio Miranda for the cinematography of Life of Pi (2012). Gabriel Osorio and Pato Escala Pierart, the handsome young men behind Bear Story, have their own producition company called Punk Robot so keep an eye out for that studio. An Oscar win could go a long way... especially with animation that impressive.
During her acceptance speech for Girl in the River, Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy noted that this was her second Oscar which prompted some curiousity: How often do people win that Doc Short category twice? Not too bloody often! In fact it's only happened four times and she's the first woman to pull off a double. The double winners:
Walt Disney - Alaskan Eskimo (1953) and Men Against the Artic (1955)
Charles E Guggenheim - The Johnstown Flood (1989) and A Time for Justice (1994)
Robin Lehman - Don't (1974) and End of the Game (1975)
Sharmeen Obald Chinoy - Saving Face (2011) and A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness (2015)
Obaid-Chinoy is also the only Pakistani Oscar winner.
It is my firm wish that someday Americans -- particularly Americans with big media platforms -- will learn to embrace intersectionality and stop their binary black vs white thinking. And stop saying "the all white Oscars" It's such a disservice to filmmakers of all colors and ethnicities who are not famous but have been honored for their achievements. This year alone we had Middle Eastern, Indian, and Latin American winners. Don't negate their achievements just because they aren't famous actors, please.