Curio: Clay Creations

Alexa here. With Frozen being the only thing on my young daughter's mind these days, I've been searching for some non-Disney-manufactured goodies to please her. (Yes, I'm stubborn that way. If we saw the film why not just buy the related merchandise, you ask? Because I'm a curmudgeon.) In my search for the perfect handmade Olaf I fell down an etsy rabbit hole of clay creations.

Some selections from my excursions...

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ADG Nominees: Period, Fantasy, and (Our Favorite) Contemporary

The Guilds Have Spoken! Or rather, they're beginning to speak. We've just heard from the producers and now the art directors. This time AMPAS will cut the guilds off mid-sentence since Oscar nominations are but a week away. But here are the nominations from the Art Directors Guild which includes production designers, art directors and set decorators. Production Designers are the bosses of this field and when it comes to Oscar only the production designers and set decorators and not the art directors share the Oscar nominations which is why it's a bit odd that it's always called "Art Direction" but AMPAS has finally changed the name of the category so it'll now be 'Production Design'

Anna Karenina may be dressed for grief but her bedroom sure is lusty.

Expect that the five nominated films for Oscar will be (mostly) culled from these three groups. And obviously, given that Oscar is Oscar and "Best" =  "Most" the bulk of the eventual Oscar shortlist will come from Period & Fantasy. TFE's favorite thing about the guild awards is that you can see what the craftsmen and women like best in contemporary work... which sadly rarely goes on to Oscar glory despite being difficult and creatively challenging in its own right.

Some notes on their nominees... and their nominee's past filmography glories after the jump

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Oscar Horrors: Bringing the Aliens to Life

Here lies... the alien queen, expelled into space using strings, pulleys and dummies. 

Amir here to look at the Oscar-winning Visual Effects of James Cameron’s Aliens (1986). Cameron’s films have an extraordinary record with the Academy when it comes to this category. His first two features were unrecognized – and let’s be honest, anyone who’s seen Piranha II: The Spawning will surely side with the voters – but he’s enjoyed five nominations and four wins from his next five attempts. The public has come to accept him as a revolutionary director too, a man whose every work will “change the language of cinema.” Cameron’s built his career on these visual spectacles and his upped the ante with every new film, but it all started back in 1986 when Aliens was released.

Long before he became a powerhouse Hollywood director, Cameron began learning his craft on the sets of the legendary Roger Corman. For the production of Aliens, Cameron brought in the Skotak brothers, visual effects supervisors and collaborators from his Corman era, to create a whole new world surrounding Ridley Scott’s Alien mythology; a world that was wilder, gorier and more expansive than Scott’s...

More after the jump...

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The Link Squad

The Film Stage Gangster Squad, with its machine gun in the movie theater moment -- already revealed in the trailer --  may be delayed or reedited now in the wake of Aurora Colorado tragedy. (I figured this was coming)
i09 Lt Ellen Ripley and Child, painted. Other sci-fi women also iconized. 
Telegraph RIP Actor Simon Ward of The Tudors, Three Musketeers, Supergirl, and Young Winston fame. He was 70 years old.
Rope of Silicon is wondering about the Oscar chances of Beasts of the Southern Wild now that it's expanded well.

My New Plaid Pants Quote of the Day via The House of Kermit
Pajiba Dustin recounts his single most humiliating experience as a critic. Curse you, Taylor Lautner!
The Broadway Blog celebrates musical theater's belters: Sutton, Babs, Lupone and more
Hollywood Elsewhere has lunch with the Criterion Blurays of Rosemary's Baby and Sunday Bloody Sunday
Vanity Fair says goodbye to The Dark Knight Trilogy with a behind the scenes slideshow 
Vulture looks at the dissolution of the TomKat marriage
NPR this is sweet, actor Donald Faison (Clueless, Scrubs) on the movie he has seen a million times: The Empire Strikes Back
The Film Doctor discusses The Dark Knight Rises with a film major at Waffle House. Cheese, eggs, raisin toast, and spoilers.

P.S. Yes, yes. I did start a review myself and I hope to have it up today but I'm moving in slo-mo this week.

Basic Link-stinct

Never Mind Pop Film lists "rules of the cinematic universe" and they're really so true
Tom and Lorenzo Sharon Stone is still a star
The Oregonian theories as to why festival hits do such middling box office 
Empire The Hobbit Parts 1 & 2 have finished filming. 
/ Film How ridiculous is this? A new Aliens related video game won't include any playable female characters? Fans are up in arms. This is after all the franchise that starred Lt. Ellen Ripley and now Dr. Elizabeth Shaw. 

The Film Doctor on Wes Anderson's miniaturized world in Moonrise Kingdom
Handmade this is so cool Moonrise Kingdom Cross Stitch. This movie is aging well in my brain... and heart.
Interiors Film Journal maps out the great elevator scene in Drive
Burbanked on the trailer to Here Comes the Boom. I would only add: why is no one complaining that the plot is like a grotesque parody of Warrior (2011)? 
In Contention Tapley asks a smart question "Could Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes's divorce make The Master this year's zeitgeist movie?" 
Hollywood.com ohmygod. with headlines like this "Could Dark Knight Rises win Best Picture?" all I can say is 'Here we go again. Gird your loins!'

Off Cinema 4 Fun
Abtruse Goose "arithmetic for beginners" 
Twaggies this website illustrates funny tweets. This one has a movie connection sort of 

Today's Must Read
Listen, I know I link to Tom Shone way too much. I have a massive mancritic crush, I freely admit. I just love his writing. His new column for the Guardian "Magic Mike turned me gay!" is great... Like Mr. Shone, I am bisexual at the movie theater so I appreciate the confession. The article even veers towards the difference and sameness of the "male and female gaze," a topic we just happened to be on while discussing Kim Novak in Picnic (1955).