Best Visual Effects: The most exciting race in years!

by Cláudio Alves

Every year, while most awards obsessives wring their hands over the starrier categories, I focus on those below-the-line categories I've grown to love even more than Best Picture. Costume Design and International Feature are usually the focus of my attention, though every "craft" award tends to entice curiosity and honest emotional investment. All that said, the last category I expected to be excited about on nomination morning is Best Visual Effects. And yet, here we are. It seems this oddball awards season insists on surprising until the very end…

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Final Oscar Nom Predix Pt 2: Acting, International, Docs, Shorts, etc...

Previously: Best Picture and Visuals

We really wish we'd started these final predictions earlier but there is no end to the overthinking one can do -- is there? -- when races are tight.  So perhaps it's for the best that we just have to do this and commit. For instance, we've already changed one prediction in both Cinematography (out: Chicago 7, in: Judas) & Sound (out: Tenet, in: Nomadland) to riskier options since last night -- which is probably foolish  but we're living recklessly! Okay, on to complete the final predictions (index of all of them here) with discussions of the acting categories, short categories, documentary, animated, and international features after the jump...

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Showbiz History: Cinderella, Paris is Burning, and George MacKay

7 random things that happened on this day, March 13th, in history...

Olivia's first Oscar

1947 The 19th Academy Awards are held honoring the best films of 1946. The Best Years of Our Lives triumphs and remains one of the greatest decisions the Academy ever made in Best Picture. Meanwhile Fredric March picks up his second Best Actor Oscar (for the same film) and Olivia de Havilland picks up the first of her two Best Actress Oscars (for To Each His Own). "On the Atcheson Topeka and the Santa Fe" from the Judy Garland musical The Harvey Girls wins Best Song... 

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Final Oscar Nom Predix Pt 1: Picture, Director, Screenplay, Visuals, Sound

As many have remarked, the 2020... excuse us 2020 plus the first two months of 2021 film year has been unpredictable and chaotic in film awards. The pandemic affected the race in virtually every way (a different eligibility period, a different set of films with many delaying their arrival a full year, all virtual campaigning and no red carpets, etcetera). We could have done without the pandemic of course but we love a messy Oscar race. It makes punditry very difficult but also way more fun. And it's also more generous to artists because messiness spreads the wealth around and the wealth should always be spread. There is so little point in 35+ awards bodies if they're all in lockstep agreement. 

Just about the only thing that's been "consensus" from the first few moments of the season to the very last (to date) via the BAFTA nominations is that (generally speaking) everyone is moved by Minari, laughs along with Maria Bakalova in Borat, and is deeply impressed with Nomadland  but especially its trailblazing writer/director/editor/producer Chloe Zhao. New consensuses (concensi?) began to emerge late in precursor season around one additional thing: Daniel Kaluuya for Best Supporting Actor in Judas and the Black Messiah in which he has the leading role of the titular Black Messiah...

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The Furniture: "The Andromeda Strain" and Designing Around an Invisible Terror

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is a series on Production Design. 

The Andromeda Strain is quite a potent movie these days. True, both Robert Wise’s film and the original Michael Crichton novel were primarily tapping into the anxiety of nuclear proliferation. But today, exactly 50 years since the film’s debut, it has become terrifyingly relevant for entirely different reasons.

The story begins with a satellite crash landing in New Mexico, bearing a mysterious extraterrestrial something that wipes out an entire town. A team of scientists is then brought to a top-secret underground facility in Nevada, codenamed “Wildfire,” to figure out what on earth is going on. It’s all about the fear of what we cannot see.

Which, of course, is a fascinating challenge for a design team...

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