Oscar Ceremony: How to Present Costume Design

by Murtada Elfadl

The presentation of the Costume Design category at the Oscars has always perplexed whoever is chosen to produce the show. It feels like there’s something inherently visual about the costumes that calls for doing more with that presentation than other categories. Yet they rarely get it right! Last year’s was actually one of the times it worked because of the brilliant comic timing of Melissa McCarthy and Brian Tyree Henry. Plus they wore ALL the costumes and that was such a funny visual gag...

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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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Podcast: a conversation about list-making and polarizing Best Pictures

with Nathaniel R & Nick Davis

On this week's podcast, we check in with Nick Davis as he completes his "top 100 of the decade" list and also discuss the Oscar race, the shortened season, and the more polarizing nominees for Best Picture. 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Making Lists and Best Pictures

Tarantino's Best Costumes

by Cláudio Alves

Despite some misgivings regarding this year’s highly unimaginative Best Costume Design line-up, there's much to rejoice about that Oscar category. One of the biggest reasons to celebrate is Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood's deserved nod for Arianne Phillips’ designs. As it happens, this is the first time any Quentin Tarantino film has been nominated for this particular award. Considering the director's ability to create memorable images and influential bits of cinematic iconography, this is somewhat preposterous. Better late than never.

Still, to shed light on the many costume delights of Tarantino's colorful oeuvre, here's a list of the ten best costumes in this director's films…

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Alternative Best Costume Design Ballots

by Cláudio Alves

The Best Costume Design category at the Oscars tends to be a place where one can find idiosyncratic choices. While it's true the Academy has a taste for the extravagant and period-looking, the Costume Branch is usually unafraid of celebrating films otherwise ignored. That's how we get such wonderful nods like those for Bright Star's Regency fashions, I Am Love's early aughts glamour, Jane Eyre 's Victorian severity, and Mirror Mirror's fairytale lunacy.

This year, for the first time in the category's history, all five nominees are Best Picture contenders. The arguable quality of the designs aside, this is a sad state of affairs that makes the usually cool Best Costume Design category look tediously similar to all the others. In an attempt to right the Academy's wrongs and offer a more varied look at 2019's achievements in film Costume Design, here's an alternative set of nominees, none of which were shortlisted by the Academy...

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