Chart Updates: Film Editing, Production Design, Cinematography!
Thursday, December 30, 2021 at 3:38PM by Nathaniel R
All of the Visual categories in the Oscar charts have now been updated save Costume Design which we tend to give its own articles -- playing favourites, sorry! But looking over the charts and the possibilities, it does beg the question: are Dune and West Side Story just going to be nominated in every category? And will any other films core as many nominations? The year isn't short on films that are visually remarkable of course. There's Power of the Dog, Nightmare Alley, Tragedy of Macbeth, The French Dispatch, The Green Knight, Passing, and more.
But the question is always what are voters actually watching and what are they liking? Being remarkable only gets you so far...
EDITING
Don't Look Up, which is not remarkable but is being treated in some quarters like it is, is stirring all sorts of strange creative tantrums on twitter. Let's just say that David Sirota and Adam McKay do not take criticism in stride, despite or perhaps because of their success! One craft element that it will surely be nominated for is Best Film Editing under the Most Editing Theory given all the asides and rapid showy cuts. It has problems with messy storytelling and pacing but, very oddly, this has never been a great concern of the Film Editing branch who generally love long movies. We're currently predicting that ONLY movies over two hours make it in (sorry Belfast, we admire your brevity but Oscar might not) even though most of them could use a trim. The Power of the Dog excluded, which makes good use of every single one of its 126 minutes.
PRODUCTION DESIGN
I finally caught up with The French Dispatch and Adam Stockhausen continues to be one of the greatest and most versatile Production Designer. He always gives you something to look at but always does it within the context and service and style of the movie rather than to just show off. Not that Wes Anderson movies don't ask craftsmen to show off. They do! That said we think Stockhausen's nomination this year will come from West Side Story 1957 recreations instead -- that's more in Oscar's wheelhouse, Grand Budapest Hotel love aside. The real question here is what gets in besides Dune, Nightmare Alley, and West Side Story (which feel like gimmes). There are plentiful movies that could. But what should?
CINEMATOGRAPHY
This race is (as always) very exciting. We MIGHT have a three-way contest between three sterling DPs who've never won: Greig Fraser (Dune), Bruno Delbonnel (Tragedy of Macbeth), and Ari Wegner (Power of the Dog).
CHECK OUT THE CHARTS AND REPORT BACK -- do you agree with the predictions?
Revised Oscar Charts
Reader Comments (12)
It's a shame The French Dispatch won't be nominated in Cinematography. Marvelous even for Anderson's movies standard. It's like they had to create the look and color palette for 5 movies.
(And Canonero! But that's another post)
I wish The Hand of God could overcome the International film bias for recognition in cinematography.
Call Me By Your Name embraced its Italian setting as a significant factor in creating a world for young Elio. His love for his father’s older research assistant Oliver feels like a natural outgrowth from the loveliness of the countryside under a warm summer sun.
Paolo Sorrentino does the same in The Hand of God. The physical beauty of Naples is lovingly captured here. The images are reverential. As the story turns darker, so do the pictures of this extraordinary coastal respite. Cinematographer Daria D’Antonio notes, “Paolo and I talked about the first part of the film being colorful and then, as Fabietto’s happiness fades, the colors fade as well, only to come back to vivid life at the end.”
LICORICE PIZZA deserves a nomination for Production Design, I think. I also don't see why Stockhausen can't be nominated twice!
The French Dispatch is not a good movie but its production design is terrific and in full service of the film and its vision, even in that Timothee Chalamet romance tangent it goes off into.
I loved MOONRISE KINGDOM and GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL but was ultimately pretty bored with THE FRENCH DISPATCH. The one impressive exception was, as cal roth might agree, was the AMAZING cinematography in several different unique and beautiful styles. It's sad that Anderson couldn't give the voice over narration, story by story, representing four (or is it five?) different writers, their own unique styles. They all just sounded exactly like Wes Anderson.
I found Don't Look Up to be terribly underwhelming and full of wrong choices. The film needed the corpses of the scientists piling up, once their exposition usefullness was fulfilled. The audience didn't need an avatar of themselves on screen, and while I can dig di Caprio's character arch, there's a point - its "redemption" - in which the character just needed to go. The only thing I kind of enjoyed, was Rylance's blend of Bezos/Gates/Musk/Zuckerberg/Jobs which just concentrated why all these five men are so dangerous to humankind (and their like). The only big laugh I had through the film was the fulfillment of Rylance's character prophecy on Streep's one - which was delivered perfectly.
It's not a bad film, by any means, but it is a mediocre satire that needed the bite of Armando Iannucci or the team Frank Oz/Paul Ruddnick, to be memorable
Agree on DLU it's not as clever and many jokes we're missed oppurtunities plus it looks ugly,so garish.
This is probably foolish of me, but I’m starting to wonder about Dune. Not that I think it’ll miss out on a Best Picture nomination or significantly underperform—with ten nominees, there’s no way it’ll miss—but when it was released, I seem to remember the response being good but not quite enthusiastic. Am I misremembering that? Or have people really come around to it over the past few months?
In any case, I keep having this gut feeling that it’s not going to be the dominant Oscar powerhouse a lot of people are predicting it will be, which is to only to say I could see it missing out in at least one or two categories it’s assumed to be safe in. And where I’m starting to lean, because it’ll be so easy for the voters to give it every tech nomination there is, is Denis Villeneuve being a surprise Best Director snub. It wouldn’t be the first time that a strongly positioned sci-fi contender was rejected by the director’s branch (Inception, The Martian), and with the director’s branch being the most prone to more esoteric picks, I could totally see them leaving out Villeneuve in favor of, say, Ryusuke Hamaguchi.
So yeah, that’s my early no guts no glory pick: Dune will indeed get in for Picture and pretty much every tech category, but Villeneuve gets left out of Best Director.
A Don't Look Up nomination in editing would be terrible. A well-edited film should not feel like its several times its length!
I finally saw West Side Story last night, and though I don't always love Janusz Kaminiski's work, I loved the cinematography here.
Although it may not be a nominee, I would like to add a note of appreciation for Best Editing in “C’mon C’mon”.
It’s a movie of perfect moments and illuminating interactions of everyday. How does it look so seamless and understandable with all the different parts it’s putting together?
There is excellent work in script, directing, and acting, but the editing is also just as outstanding. It’s just the right length, we see what we need to see, and hear what we need to hear.
I can't imagine someone not loving Janusz Kaminski..with respect.
The crafts on BELFAST are truly some of the worst I've seen all year. The editing is so bad with scenes starting and stopping at random moments, important scenes being reduced to cut-aways, characters that appear at random... so odd and the rhythms it creates are genuinely baffling. The cinematography, too, completely mis-uses black and white, shamelessly riffing on ROMA. A burning car or two really doesn't do enough for production design either. What a strange movie.
I'm wondering whether NO TIME TO DIE is going to be the film that some think SPIDER-MAN will be, meaning some of those tech spaces could be its.