April Foolish Predictions: Visual Categories

Hello Dear Reader! Your host Nathaniel checking in from a screening and chart-making frenzy. I'm heading off to my jury meeting at the Nashville International Film Festival (New Directors competition) to bestow prizes. But I wanted to point you to chart updates (the remainder will premiere this week to complete our April Foolish tradition). So let's talk costume design and cinematography and such. (lots more after the jump)

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Eddie Redmayne and the Fantastic Beasts

Manuel here sharing the first look at Best Actor incumbent Eddie Redmayne in his first* blockbuster outing.

Yes, that's everyone's favorite ginger as Newt Scamander in the Harry Potter spinoff series, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them which takes its title from one of the many textbooks Harry & co. used during their tenure at Hogwarts which J.K. Rowling actually released as a real book back in 2001, and if you've gotten this far and understood what all of those things mean, chances are you are the teensiest bit excited about plunging back into the world of wands and wizards. (And/or irritated at WB's shameless attempt at keeping the franchise alive).

And if you're wondering who's responsible for Redmayne's oh-so-dapper look  it's none other than the great Colleen Atwood. And if this is any indication, the film will at least be pretty to look at. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to shop around for a sapphire blue coat and brown wool suit.

*He'll surely want us to forget Jupiter Ascending.

Let's Talk Costume Design

Manuel here to talk costume design, one of my favorite Oscar categories. Today’s detour into this category comes courtesy of this very cool “Oscar by the numbers” infographic MTV came up with which makes the bold statement that “Zero” is “the number of oscar nominations for women behind the scenes.” I’m sure they were hoping to point out the absence of women like Gillian Flynn (in Adapted Screenplay) and Ava Duvernay (in Directing) but isn’t it horribly misleading? You don’t have to go far to see Oprah Winfrey & Dede Gardner (Selma), Cathleen Sutherland (Boyhood) and Helen Estabrook (Whiplash) nominated in the Best Picture category, but you’re mostly also ignoring the women nominated in Production Design, Make up and Hairstyling and, of course, Costume Design. Aren’t these women working “behind the scenes”? This last category is to my mathematically challenged mind (and I’d have to double check the shorts categories to be sure), the only one outside of the actress nominations where we see an overabundance of female nominees.

And so, I wanted to highlight the work of the five costume designers nominated this year. If there’s one thing to be said about the increasingly PR-driven world of Oscar campaigning is the careful attention to the crafts categories as showcases for those working “below the line” as one would say. And so here are sketches (with accompanying links of where to read more about these designers and their work) from the five nominated films...

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Under the Link

Playbill a Broadway musical of Pretty Woman? They're determined to make every 90s movie hit into a musical
The Gayest of All Time The Many Tears of Leonardo DiCaprio
Vanity Fair tries to get Matthew Weiner to talk the final season of Mad Men but wisely settles for more fertile ground since you know he won't do that! 

World of Wonder I subscribe to everything they're saying about the new Flash costume on Arrow. I have tried to watch that show so many times but i just think it's terrible and so personality free 
Screen Crush another look at the costume and in action. It does not look aerodynamic to me -- way looser fit than most superhero costume and shouldn't it be more like a swimmer's outfit to enhance speed? So who knows what Colleen Atwood was thinking
Pajiba on Lena Dunham's keynote address at SXSW
In Contention Guy Lodge reports on how Brad Pitt almost starred in Under the Skin but I can't read this because I'm keeping myself as virginal on the film as possible. I want to be surprised
MNPP continues to spread the joy of Jake Gyllenhaal's return in Enemy
Empire a new motion poster for Noah which trippily takes you through caves and the ark and fields and foes and loops back like the world is round and infinite or something
Vulture interviews True Detective's Glenn Fleshler on how he approached his very very sick character 

Today's Must Read
Jezebel's funny thinkpiece "A Grown Woman's Guide to Responsible Celebrity Worship" which examines the problem of the "It" girl narrative, the recent Oscar media Jennifer vs. Lupita situation, celebrity backlashes (almost always towards women... the men actually have to EARN backlash), and self-identification. It's pretty great. The piece also references this amazing article "Lupita Nyong'o Doesn't Need Your Permission to Be Beautiful" which is also a very good read.

7 Days 'til Oscar: Costume Design

Each year at the Oscar ceremony I hope against hope that they'll ditch one of the numerous superfluous montages celebrating something or other throughout history and just do a runway show of the year's best costumes. On rare occasions we've seen a living tableau before the winner was announced and at least once, a Whoopi ceremony, the host actually incorporated costume design into the gig.

Imagine Seth MacFarlane coming out as Fantine in a shredded Les Miz gown or Queen Ravenna's raven collar dress. Sorry, no! I apologize deeply for putting those images in your head. Let's just say that I feel reasonably certain there will at least be a stovepipe hat during the ceremony in honor of Lincoln.

OSCAR NOMINEES
• Jacqueline Durran, Anna Karenina
• Joanna Johnston, Lincoln
• Eiko Ishioka, Mirror Mirror
• Paco Delgado, Les Misérables
• Colleen Atwood, Snow White and the Hunstman

will win: Anna Karenina, it's not quite traditional "royalty porn", their favorite thing in this category, but the Russian aristocracy is close enough.
should win: Anna Karenina, Durran continues to just amaze in film after film.
weird trivia: The Oscars love Colleen Atwood but she only ever wins when she's pitted against their other all-time favorite Sandy Powell
possible spoiler: if Oscar voters are feeling daring and/or sentimental you could see a posthumous win for the great Ishioka whose costumes always function as their own setpieces they're such scene stealers

OSCAR VISUAL CHARTS
My Own Ballot & Semi-Finalists with shout-outs to all the Oscar nominees (great lineup. well done AMPAS) as well as Sharen Davis, Kasia Walicka-Maimone, Caroline Eselin, Julie Weiss, Mark Bridges, and Manon Rasmussen

I think this begs a reader poll...

poll by twiigs.com

I Did Surprisingly Well on My Predictions. And You?

Though I feared a complete and utter breakdown of my predictive skills this year, as it turns out I did about the same as usual which is quite wonderful given how difficult those fifth spots were this year and how much you had to chuck statistical expectations to get it right (Riva and Haneke and Amour had so little precursor support but I had a feeling from way back that they'd find their way in, that they'd be "sticky" enough as it were in the memory)

The Big Eight in the high profile categories Picture, Director, Acting and Screenplays I had an 81% degree of accuracy with 36/44 nominees guessed correctly. 
All Categories Absent the Shorts 77% (83/107)
All Categories Including The Shorts 74%  (91/122)

Last Minute Mistakes - I had a perfect predicted set in Production Design until I swapped out Life of Pi at the last second, thinking that Django Unchained might win a farewell honor for J Michael Riva who died during production. And last last night I stated on Twitter my regret that I didn't predict Waltz over Redmayne in Supporting Actor (a no guts no glory call that gave me no glory...). I would've been 100% there too though I remain confused that Waltz won more attention than DiCaprio or Jackson whose work in tandem is the best the highly uneven Django has to offer.

Categories I'm Most Proud Of - It was a cinch to predict Adapted Screenplay this year -- interview coming up with one of the nominees -- so my 100% guesswork there is no biggie and nothing to shout about. But I'm pleasantly surprised that I went 9 for 9 in Best Picture for two reasons. The first is that since I had placed them in if 7... if 8... if 9... order and all 9 lined up that I was spot on and the second and even better reason is that apart from about ½ of Silver Linings Playbook and about ¼ of Django Unchained I think they're all really good movies and six of them are on my own top ten list (which has been delayed due to all this Oscar madness)

I knew Colleen Atwood's death-fetish royalty porn wouldn't fail in the Costume category

I'm also pleased that I went 4 for 5 in so many categories (13 in all!) but particularly the difficult cases of Actress and Costume Design (missing only Mirror Mirror - I had predicted A Royal Affair instead since they often like royalty porn and one foreign film in that shortlist), and Foreign Film (I missed only "No" but I'm THRILLED about the nomination since it's such a great movie) arguably my 3 top interests as categories go. I am not nearly as well versed in Documentaries and Sound Editing so I was stunned to call 4 of those 5 correctly too.

Silver LInings Playbook is the first film since 1981 to receive nominations in ALL acting categoriesMy Worst Categories This Year - Like everyone else the shocking Best Director lineup threw me (3/5) but at least I got the Hooper snub / Haneke in mix right but where I made the biggest judgement call errors was Supporting Actress where I let my Nicole Kidman mania persuade me that they'd preserve her wild genius abandon (the Globe & SAG nods are wondrous though) and I confess that I didn't consider Jacki Weaver to be in the running at all. I am a huge Jacki Weaver fan -- she offered to adopt me during the Animal Kingdom campaign, maybe my fondest memory of that awards year -- but I didn't think that Silver Linings Playbook gave her enough to do to win #1 placements. 

But my absolute worst prediction field this year was Animated Short. Many people don't predict this category but I predict all categories and the shorts can be really tough. I only corrected guessed 2 of the 5 and am saddened that the eye-popping fascinating Eagleman Stag and the hilariously rauncy Tram didn't make the cut. 

Where were you most mistaken and which categories do you feel proudly totes psychic about?