All Hands on Link

IndieWire ABC may forge a miniseries out of Oscar nominated AIDS doc How to Survive a Plague
Hollywood who said it: The Pope or "Fifty Shades of Grey"?
MNPP ways not to die celebrates King Kong for his 80th anniversary 
The Advocate interesting take on Seth MacFarlane's Oscar night hosting gig, in which the author believes his entire performance was satire of sexism. I think that's an optimistic forgiving stretch but more power to you for enjoying the show so much! 

Clothes on Film the shoes in Stoker
Empire Emma Watson may play Cinderella
French Films about Trains points to 14 directors whose films are worth obsessing about in advance  
/Film Whoa. They're STILL trying to get Pride & Prejudice & Zombies made? You'd think Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter's fate and the free zombies on TV would have finally decapitated that project.
The Talks with Brian de Palma on violence in cinema and the staying power of Scarface
Unreality a pitch to Netflix. If you're going to revive beloved series, why not Firefly?
The Credits talked to Gavin Bocquet production designer for Jack the Giant Slayer about his work and the new visual fx demands of Production Design:

...if we were around during the Gone With The Wind time, you know the production designers job was more or less the same, you still had to create what you wanted to be the image, and then you broke it down into how you produced it. So the process is the same for the production designer, but the tools and the palette are a lot more variable in terms of what you can do, and also at times much more expensive. 

Weekend Must Watch
Brava to Chelsea Davison for this incredible mimicry job & spoof: here's "Lena Dunham" auditioning for Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty. So funny.

So... you know this silence is literally torturing me. And yes I do realize now that in this situation that choice of words might have been a little inappropriate. But, you know, it makes *me* feel like an asshole that I have to threaten to torture you every day. So... if you could just tell me I'd really appreciate it and we wouldn't have to keep doing this"

8 Days 'til Oscar: The Visual Wonders

I'm saving my beloved category Costume Design for its own post. For now let's talk Cinematography, Production Design, Editing and Visual Effects. At the Oscars Life of Pi is up for all of these categories. It can pick up all of those statues if it can fend off viable threats from Skyfall, Anna Karenina, Argo and The Avengers respectively. Is it likely to? I'd say no but it's a safe bet that it won't go home empty-handed come Oscar night. If Anne Hathaway can use her Golden Globe as "a weapon against self-doubt" than orphaned Pi can surely use an Oscar as blunt heavy object to fend off that tiger. (Life of Pi isn't up for all four of those prizes at The Film Experience's own awards but then no film is.) 

CINEMATOGRAPHY
We're definitely living in some kind of golden age of cinematography. There are so many great DPs working right now in the 21st century that it feels downright ungrateful each January when only five are held up as the gold standard. So I'm happy to honor an at least partially different list in my own awards. Don't talk to me about Greig Frasier, one of the single brightest stars who this year alone lit Snow White and the Huntsman, Killing Me Softly and Zero Dark Thirty, still being nomination-free --- I CAN'T! Other relative newbies I'm personally excited about are Radium Cheng (Starlet), Bradford Young (Middle of Nowhere), and Mihai Malaimare Jr. (The Master) And that's just scratching the surface of cinematographers who Oscar didn't notice this year. There are so many longtime giants still walking the earth in this field that Oscar couldn't even find room for a talent as big as Darius Wolski (Prometheus) or any of the exciting newbies.

Kaminski has lensed 13 of Spielberg's movies. He's nominated for the 6th time for Lincoln

Oscar Nominated: Seamus McGarvey (Anna Karenina), Robert Richardson (Django Unchained), Claudio Miranda (Life of Pi), Roger Deakins (Skyfall) and Janusz Kaminski (Lincoln)
Should Win: McGarvey
Will Win: Miranda -- Pi looks gorgeous through and through and cinematography has lately become the province of vfx epics... though it's hard to tell where computers take over for DPs these days in post
Spoiler Possibility: Skyfall is stunning eye candy which might help Roger Deakins. He's more likely to win for sentimental reasons than for the best-looking Bond. It's ridiculous that he's still waiting for an Oscar at 63 after 10 nominations and such an amazing influential career.

PRODUCTION DESIGN
(formerly titled Art Direction at the Oscars)
My guess is that Anna Karenina is headed for the eye candy double (Costumes + Production Design) that I've come to think of as "The Moulin Rouge! Awards" But it's possible that they'll throw this bone to a Best Picture nominee instead.

Oscar Nominated: Anna Karenina (Sarah Greenwood), The Hobbit (Dan Hennah), Life of Pi (David Gropman), Lincoln (Rick Carter), Les Misérables (Eve Stewart)
Should Win: Anna Karenina
Will Win: Anna Karenina
Spoiler Possibility:  Life of Pi

What if Bruce Banner had to share a boat with Richard Parker?

VISUAL EFFECTS
We can all agree that this Oscar category will land safely in the hands of Life of Pi, can't we? Damn but that tiger alone, right. Even Hulk can't smash its Oscar dreams.

EDITING
In a piece about Argo's Oscar chances I already detailed my feelings about this race. I think Argo will take it but if you ask me William Goldenberg (double-nominated) did much stronger work on Zero Dark Thirty so he'll win for the wrong film --  which won't be any kind of Oscar first ;). Goldenberg's work Zero is the only Oscar nominee that crossed over into my ballot.

OSCAR INDEX & OSCAR RACE ARTICLES
OSCAR VISUALS
FILM BITCH AWARDS - VISUAL CATEGORIES 

Links, Inc.

i09 Monster University has a recruiting ad
i09 and character designs - Helen Mirren being dragon-like as the Dean in this Pixar sequel
Interiors picks a great topic this month: the apartment in Amour. All mapped out. 
NPR Tony Kushner's research and characterizatin of Lincoln
Pakoto illustrated tribute to Jurassic Park
Movie|Line talks to the Ryan Gosling of the porn set who keeps getting cast in XXX versions of Gosling hits

Details interviews James Franco on this moment in his career including Oz the Great and Powerful and...
MNPP brilliantly dissects those page 3 answers about deep throating a pistol for his next picture Spring Breakers
Stale Popcorn Naomi Watts on stardom and breakthroughs
Vanity Fair Quentin Tarantino Kill Chart in infographic form. Wow his movies are gruesome 
Grantland has a snarky Oscar bracket for worst travesties ever while...
A Blog Next Door has some snark for Grantland's fratboy leanings

/Film Jason Reitman's next live reading of a famous picture is Glengarry Glen Ross. This time it's gender-flipped. Normally I am quite happy to be a New Yorker but these events in LA sound so enticing every time. Alec Baldwin's famous role has yet to be cast but Robin Wright will be doing her best Pacino and Catherine O'Hara gets the plum Jack Lemmon role. 

Finally... I wasn't aware of this but Encore Entertainment is hosting a blog-a-thon of some sort called Motifs in Cinema so far I've seen two articles. They are: Motifs: Aging featuring Skyfall, The Dark Knight Rises, Hope Springs, and Amour; Motifs Fantasy & Reality featuring Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Hobbit, and Savages; 

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

Click to read more ...

A Handful of Link

Pop Elegantarium Alexa's Rosemary's Baby costume she was hinting at the other day in her Curio column. Well done!
/Film new images from Django Unchained
In Contention interviews the production designer of Moonrise Kingdom Adam Stockhausen
Big Thoughts From a Small Mind has a mea culpa about Sidney Lumet in 12 Angry Men. Confession: I myself have never seen this movie but I have seen productions of the play so I am unschooled in the furious dozen

 

Unreality reminds us that with that Star Wars purchase, Disney now also owns a certain fedora wearing archaelogist adventurer 
Monkey See predicts several headlines that will appear when the new Star Wars film is released in 2015. Hee
Awards Daily wonders if the lack of the DGA before Oscar nominations, might throw off the usual correlations
Vimeo if you're already missing Halloween -- it was kind of unsatisfying here on the East Coast without the usual festivities -- here's a creepy impressive 30 second short called "Rot" 

And we end with a very well cut fan vid 'James Bond Death Match,' all six Bonds fighting it out for supremacy.

I demand another rematch.