Beauty Break: Here's to Cinematic Eye Candy!

The visual categories for the 2018 Film Bitch Awards are now fully announced. Click on over to peruse the nominations for Costume Design, Cinematography, and Production Design aka the best cinematic eye candy of the year. Cinematic eye candy is more than just delicious for the eyes. These crafts also strengthen characterization, theme, mood, storytelling, and emotional impact when the artisans are really inspired. After the jump, because five little poster doesn't feel like enough images from the 12 most beautifully shot movies this year that we called out in Cinematography (though only five can be nominees).

A BAKER'S DOZEN OF THE MOST BEAUTIFULLY SHOT MOVIES OF 2018. 
Presented in alpha order after the jump...

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Final Predictions: All Visual Categories

We're almost to the nominations, can you believe it? So we're furiously trying to wrap up our predictions. Let's do Costume Design and the rest of the eye candy categories.

COSTUME DESIGN
My favourite tech category should give three-time winner Sandy Powell a historic THIRD double-nomination in a single category with both Mary Poppins Returns and The Favourite feeling secure for nominations. It also feels like there's little chance that Black Panther could miss, and we expect voters will want to take this opportunity to finally hand Ruth E Carter her Oscar (this will be her third Oscar nomination, tying her with Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer for most Oscar nominations for a black woman). Those are the locks...

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FYC: "A Simple Favor" for Best Costume Design

Please welcome new contributor Mark Brinkerhoff

A simple favor to ask members of the Academy (its costume branch, in particular): don’t miss your opportunity to nominate A Simple Favor, simply one of the finest showcases of contemporary costuming in years. How so? Let’s examine.

First off, it’s only natural to zero in on Blake Lively’s character’s frankly stunning series of sharply-tailored suits with vertiginous stilettos. But while my own love of ladies in menswear knows no limits there is much more happening front and center (Anna Kendrick) and around the margins (Linda Cardellini, Jean Smart, Lively’s other character) to pique the interest of sartorially-minded viewers...

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Costume Design Guild Nominations

by Nathaniel R

Paddington 2's great costumes were snubbed by BAFTA last year and the CDG this year. But Lindy Hemming won the Oscar for Topsy Turvy (1999) without either of those nominations so there's still hope.The Costume Design Guild was founded in 1953 with an initial group of 30 members. Today they have an international membership of 700+. They've been giving out awards since 1999 but the categories weren't fully as they are know (period/costume/fantasy) until 2005.

Though their tastes do align with Oscar it's difficult to wholly prognosticate from their awards since the Oscar nominees are generally a mix of their Period and Fantasy nominees with an extra title thrown in (plus every once in a while the costume branch within the Academy will surprise with a contemporary nominee). Much more frequently Oscar will just add one film that wasn't honored at all by the CDG! They do it nearly all the time actually (10 out of the last 12 years). The point is a film is not out of the running if it wasn't honored at CDG, especially if it has a previously Oscar nominated costume designer behind it. That's potentially good news for five well regarded costumers who missed the CDG today: Linda Hemming (Paddington 2), Mary Zophres (First Man), Milena Canonero (The Sisters Brothers), Joanna Johnston (Welcome to Marwen), and Colleen Atwood (Fantastic Beasts: Grindelwald). That's not so good news for Caroline Eselin (If Beale Street Could Talk) who missed a CDG nomination today, since Oscar has yet to notice her.

We'll share the stats after the nominations at the bottom of this post so you'll have a clearer picture.  Ready? Let's talk costumes...

 Excellence in Contemporary Film

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Blueprints: Five Expertly Written Scenes of 2018

by Jorge Molina

A screenplay has to accomplish many things to be successful: establish the characters, create and maintain tension, introduce the plotlines and carry them smoothly and compellingly, grasp the audience’s attention and hold it for two plus hours. A good script does it all. A great script makes it all look easy and seamless.

We previously sang the praises of 5 original screenplays and 5 adaptations. This week, we're getting more specific with 5 scenes. While each of the following stories were successfully told overall as one cohesive movie, their writing stood out for making a particular element of screenwriting shine; each unique to the story they were trying to tell.

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