Oscar Horrors: "What's This?!?" an Animated Visual FX Nominee

Here lies… The Pumpkin King of The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the visual effects that made him dance.

The work of Pete Kozachik, Eric Leighton, Ariel Valesco-Shaw and Gordon Baker holds a unique place in the history of the Academy’s visual effects category. As the first – and as of 2012, the last – soley animated film to receive a nomination in this category, it earned the visual effects branch’s respect like none before or since. Oh sure, Mary Poppins and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? won the category in their respective years, but those trophies came predominantly for the way they integrated animation with live action. The Nightmare Before Christmas, however, earned its nomination for the way Henry Selick’s stop-motion universe came to life thanks to innovative camera techniques.

While many may think this film’s idea of “visual effects” lays exclusively at the floating ghosts and shape-shifting shadows that pepper Henry Selick’s visual palate, the Oscar nomination was more a reward for the way the cameras were developed with computer technology to help navigate the heavily-designed “claymation” world.

More on this 1993 Oscar Race after the jump...

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DVD Review: "What To Expect..."

What to Extract When You're Watching What to Expect When You're Expecting?

Eyes. Definitely eyes.

Hurricane Sandy Open Thread

To all our Eastern Seaboard US readers, stay safe! "Sandy" is raging toward us. Should I lose power there are are a few posts ready to be published. The storm begs a movie question... What movie scenes or entire movie sequences come to mind when you think about stormy weather? 

I mean besides Dorothy & the twister and her sudden transport to Oz... which has never and will never be bested in human movie history... especially once you include her technicolor recap of the events. Which is like the best in-movie "previously on..." moment ever.

♫  It really was no miracle.
What happened was just this. 
The wind began to switch,
the house to pitch
And suddenly the hinges started to unhitch.
Just then the Witch,
to satisfy an itch
Went flying on her broomstick,
thumbing for a hitch. ♩♪

My god, I just love that movie so much, don't you? Judy. Judy. Judy.  Any chance to think of her is welcome. Even if it means violent house threatening weather.

But oddly the first thing I thought of out in the rain today was the climax of Four Weddings and a Funeral when Andie MacDowell was all...

My brain is so weird.

Before I embarrass myself further, I'll turn it over to you. Favorite stormy movies?
 

Joss Whedon "Endorsing" Mitt Romney

One week from tomorrow we choose America's future. Every time I see a statistical tie or tight race type of poll I hear Giles' weary dismay on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The earth is doomed."

Hee!

Oscar Horrors: Drew's Great Aunt Ethel

Here Lies... "Mrs. Warren" the bedridden matriarch of a Victorian mansion that's haunted by a serial killer.

Hasn't Team Experience been doing a great job with the Oscar Horrors series? I figured, after passing out all these assignments, that it was time I chimed in, so I filled in one of my own Supporting Actress viewing gaps with Ethel Barrymore's Oscar nominated work in The Spiral Staircase (1945). This black and white horror flick, an early member of the neverending serial killer subgenre, is set almost entirely in an old mansion where our mute protagonist Helen (Dorothy McGuire of Gentleman's Agreement fame) works. It's not at all clear what her job is since she's neither nurse nor maid nor cook, those duties being performed with "hey, I'm in this movie, too!" gusto by How Green Was My Valley mama Sara Allgood and the Bride of Frankenstein herself, Elsa Lanchester.

We first meet "Mrs. Warren" twenty minutes into the picture. Nurse Barker (Allgood) warns Helen that their boss is in a mood...

She's sly, too. Even with her eyes closed she seems to be watching you like an evil spirit."

...but the nurse's warning doubles as an impossibly truthful, succinct and funny description of Ethel Barrymore's entire performance. I half imagined Nurse Barker tweeting it with the hashtag #ItsBarrymoreBitch 

"Do you like scary movies?"

Ethel Barrymore died 17 years before her great niece Drew Barrymore was born but I kept thinking of Drew during the movie. Perhaps it was the through line of Barrymore Girls & Acclaimed Performances in Horror Flicks? Drew Barrymore was, infamously, the first kill in Scream (1996). Tough demanding Mrs. Warren might have rescued poor Casey by insisting she hang up that phone immediately and hide under her bed.

In horror parlance Ethel's "Mrs Warren" is no Victim or Final Girl but something like a cross between Psychic "Tangina" and overbearing monster mom... "Mrs. Norma Bates" ? Barrymore makes excellent use of her eyes and modulation of her voice but it's a very limited role consisting of essentially the same three point scene on repeat: 

1. Sassy Rudeness #ItsBarrymoreBitch
2. Fade into Ill Health/Sleepiness
3. Sudden Snap Back to Life for either:
   a) Ominous Pronouncement: "There's been another murder hasn't there? No one told me. I always know everything."
   or...
   b)  Direct Warning: "You're not safe here my dear. Leave this house at once."

The Spiral Staircase is something of a predictable dud now since horror movies have been so endlessly dissected, parodied, and Screamed in the last few decades and this is an old school blueprint -- the women here are always doing stupid things like walking into dark basements when they hear noises / feel a draft! --  but it's worth a watch for its quartet of Supporting Actress: domineering Ethel, put-upon fussbudget Sara, drunk funny Elsa and emotional hussy Rhonda Fleming. They all run circles around McGuire, a Damsel in Distress with only her muteness as a defining characteristic, but someone's got to keep your pulse up when you're watching a horror movie. Actresses to the rescue!... in the case of Ethel Barrymore, quite literally.

previously on Oscar horrors