Soundtracking: Chicago

by Chris Feil

With Renée Zellweger likely taking home another Oscar for her performance of Judy Garland this Sunday, it feels like a full circle moment for the actress’s career and Oscar’s relationship with musicals in the modern era. Rob Marshall’s take on the Kander and Ebb masterpiece Chicago was a platonic ideal between Academy voters (and the public) who sneered at the genre and its fans that were reinvigorated by the audacity of Moulin Rouge! just a year prior. Chicago injected new life into a previously dead genre, reigniting Oscar’s love as well, from all-out musicals to especially musical biopics like Zellweger’s Judy.

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Interview: Joker's Costume Designer Mark Bridges

by Nathaniel R

Mark Bridges with Joker costumes

Mark Bridges film career began, as so many have, rather inauspicously. His debut was a now forgotten horror film called Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992) but there's no keeping talent like his down... though it never hurts to attach yourself straight away to a future god-level auteur like Paul Thomas Anderson. Bridges was on board for Anderson's feature debut Hard Eight (1996) and the celebrated auteur wisely never let go of him thereafter. Inbetween Anderson films (and on them in point of fact) Bridges established himself as a world class costume designer of tremendous versatility, with a gift for not just memorable clothing but character-building.

His latest film, Joker, became his most widely viewed work and then an Academy favourite. We had a chance to talk to the two-time Oscar winner (Phantom Thread, The Artist) this past week about his design process, his favourites from his own filmography, and why he loves his job so much...

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Oscar Dressed as Each 2019 Best Picture Nominee

Chris here. One of my very favorite annual Oscar traditions comes from artist Olly Gibbs. Every year he drapes the Oscar statuette with a memorable look from each of the year's Best Picture nominees, adding in small touches to fawn over. Some of my favorite details in this year's offering: the Parasite peach and Foofoo guest appearance, Marriage Story's award pedestal being split in two, Jojo Rabbit's secret cabinet, and the perfect color story match to Joker's curtain. You can get a closer look at each of Olly Gibbs' statues here!

1999 with Nick: Best Cinematography Falls on "Cedars"

This week, in advance of the Oscars, Nick Davis is looking back at the Academy races of 20 years ago, spotlighting movies he’d never seen and what they teach us about those categories, then and now...

Spotlight Movie: Snow Falling on Cedars

Today's case study from the 72nd Academy Awards is a less auspicious instance than yesterday's of a movie sneaking onto Oscar's ballot with just one nomination. I'd also call it an example of good filmmaking that, in context, arguably constitutes bad filmmaking, or at least disappointing and misguided filmmaking. Cinematographer Robert Richardson is not the exclusive or even the primary defendant in the case I’m going to make. He was probably executing to the best of his ability the mandates of a director and a producing team intent on the picturesque. Still, I’m not sure we needed to reward him for following such dubious orders. And now, as so often in this movie, we flash back...

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5 Days till Oscar

For a bit of 'number of the day' silliness, let's talk about the #5 in relation to Oscar. Obviously the best correlation is that the traditional Oscar category is 5 nominees wide and has been for most of Oscar's history once they settled into their routines with various exceptions of categories which resisted being that large for reasons both understandable and nonsensical. Best Makeup FINALLY became a five wide category this very season (long overdue). Of this year's five-wide categories only one is made up entirely of first time nominees: Best Animated Short!  Other five related nonsense after the jump...

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