"Road to Perdition" (Plus: Posthumous Oscars)

75th Annual Oscars ~ 10th Anniversary Special
On this very day 10 years ago, one of only two posthumous Oscars for the past decade in film was handed out. It went to Conrad Hall for his lensing of Road to Perdition (the other was Heath Ledger's). So here's one from the vaults since we did a Hit Me With Your Best Shot on it just last year. If you click on these shots, deemed best by our 'hit me' club and arranged here in narrative order, you can read more about them and why they were chosen.

It's a strange symmetry that a film as funereal as Road to Perdition would be a member of the Posthumous Oscar wins club. Here's a list of all 13 of them:

• Sidney Howard, Adapted Screenplay - Gone With the Wind (1939)
• William A Horning, Art Direction - Gigi (1958)
• William A Horning, Art Direction - Ben Hurt (1959)
• Sam Zimbalist, Best Picture - Ben Hur (1959)
• Eric Orborn, Art Direction - Spartacus (1960)
• Walt Disney, Animated Short - Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968)
• Raymond Rasch & Larry Russell, Best Score - Limelight (1972)
• Peter Finch, Actor - Network (1976)
• Geoffrey Unsworth, Cinematography - Tess (1980)
• Howard Ashman, Best Song - "Beauty & the Beast" from Beauty & The Beast (1991)
• Thomas Goodwin, Documentary Short - Educating Peter (1992)
• Conrad Hall, Cinematography - Road to Perdition (2002)
• Heath Ledger, Supporting Actor - The Dark Knight (2008)

Art director William A Horning is the only double posthumous winner though acting legend James Dean and Disney's brilliant comeback-making composer Howard Ashman both received more than one posthumous nomination.

Show Me The Linky

The Broadway Blog reviews Smash's "Bombshell" CD and Megan Hilty's solo album "It Happens All The Time"
Blouin Art Info Christopher Doyle, one our our favorite DPs who ought to have plentiful Oscar noms by now but has none is disgusted with the Academy for continually choosing visual fx heavy movies in the cinematography category (we heartily agree that it's a huge "how is that cinematography?" problem) 
Bryan Singer behold the cast of X-Men: Days of Future Past. I'm happy that Fan Bingbing is in it but who on earth will she be playing?
The Guardian will Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby spark a 20s deco & flapper revival?

 

Empire The cast of Divergent, a female led dystopian sci-fi drama (yes, they are a dime a dozen these days thanks to Hunger Games - Divergent's jacket cover even purposefully tries to look like a Hunger Games sequel) is coming together with Theo James & Aaron Eckhart joining to support Shailene Woodley in the lead
Empire (again) Willow's Warwick Davis gets his own podcast to celebrate the anniversary of that fantasy landmark
/Film apparently Ennio Morriconne is not as big of a fan of Quentin Tarantino as the director is of him
Salon on Justin Timberlake's week-long media blitz 
WSJ on the return of the beard with male celebrities -- no, not that kind! -- and with civilians, too.
i09 argues that historical anachronisms are better at recreating history than historical reenactments in movies. Via A Knight's Tale  

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "The Wizard of Oz"

A brief preface for new readers: "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" is a series in which we invite all movie lovers to share their choice of 'best shot' from a single pre-selected film on their own web space (twitpic, blogger, tumblr, whatever) each Wednesday night. The joy of the series is seeing the same film through multiple eyes. "Best", not just Beauty, being in the eye of the beholder.

I love the sepia opening scenes more than I can say...

So, what is the takeaway image of The Wizard of Oz (1939) for you? How do you define best and does that definition change with each movie? My choice and several others are somewhere over the rainbow after the jump

Click to read more ...

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 

Dear AMPAS... Love, Team Experience

With the final Oscar voting commencing today -- can we still say "ballots going out" when this season has been so dramatically electronic? -- I asked Team Experience to write very brief notes to Oscar voters.

I'll start us off...

❝Dear AMPAS, Two Words: Emmanuelle Riva. Respect your elders and wish her a happy 86th birthday on February 24th (your 85th!). In your 85 years you've had plenty of impossible dreamgirls like Lawrence, rapidly ascending versatile stars like Jessica, and resilient fierce mamas like Naomi. But you've never given the prize to anyone like Emmanuelle. Do your own Best Actress legacy proud by switching it up and proving you're still free thinkers in your 80s! 
Yours always, for better & worse, Nathaniel❞

pleas for The Master, Zero Dark Thirty, Moonrise Kingdom and more after the jump...

Click to read more ...