Costuming Helena, Finding Sherlock, Winning Oscar

INTERVIEW
As one half of the first costuming team I ever noticed as a young movie fanatic, interviewing JENNY BEAVAN was a special treat. She's currently enjoying her ninth Oscar nomination for her work on The King's Speech. This is her third solo nomination. She and her former partner John Bright costumed the Ishmael Merchant & James Ivory period dramas that I grew up obsessing over: A Room With A View, Howard's End, Maurice and the like. When Jenny and I spoke to discuss her current Oscar run for The King's Speech, however, it was less period drama and more modern comedy. "I'm guessing as to what you're saying" she told me while technical difficulties had us both comically shouting into our phones / computers until the situation was resolved.

We began at the beginning.

Merchant/Ivory is after all, a very good place to start, both for a young film buff in the 80s and a costume designer embarking on a huge career in the movies.  "That was my start in the whole thing," Beavan recalled, noting that the films were great fun to do.

The Merchant & Ivory Days
John Bright's name was peppered throughout her conversation. In fact, she had just seen him earlier that day. I had long wondered why they stopped working together. "We were known as Jenny Bright and John Beavan," she says about their close partnership. "I mean, he is just one of my absolutely best friends and also my most important collaborator. Believe me we're still collaborating. Just not so officially."

As it turns out Bright owns and runs Cosprop, a hugely important costume house which specializes in period wear,  an enormous job in and of itself though he still does the odd film. I mention how much I love his work on the ravishing The White Countess (2005) with elicits a barrage of superlatives from Beavan. "Absolutely brilliant!" 

Howards End (1992), a masterpiece.

We discuss a particular moment in Howards End that I'm very fond of. The Schlegel sisters (Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham-Carter) walking home one evening run into Mr Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins). One can't get enough of the beauty of that movie. The clothes are so modest but there's such sensuality to them and something so resonant and bohemian about the sisters. Beavan credits the screenplay with the specificity that makes character costuming easier and the actresses with the film's modernity.

Beavan, having logged a lot of time in costume dramas, thinks there's real power with staying utterly within period. If you step away from the period, she explains "it looks wrong and then you get a sort of worry in the audience."  Producers, particularly the America ones, she shares, don't like to see hats in the movies. And sometimes you just have to use hats. "Everybody wore hats up until the 1950s in England!" she says with feigned exasperation.

My grandmother would never go out without a hat on. She wouldn't have felt dressed.

After the golden period of the Merchant/Ivory films, Beavan's official partnership with John Bright ended and  the designer got a chance to "fly a bit more my own." That's what one might call an understatement.

READ THE REST for thoughts on Helena Bonham Carter's style, "finding" Sherlock Holmes and more.

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Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man

With the official fully costumed first release from Sony we know that they're calling the Spider-Man reboot The Amazing Spider-Man (2012).

I love how Spider-Man is always so scrunched up or compressed in photos and drawings when he isn't all stretched out swinging on webs. He only has two physical modes and one of them is the one wherein he seems to be giving himself claustrophobia.

That's a neat photo but I've been totally giggling at the paparazzi shots of the filming. Fight scenes always look so ridiculous in still photos before special efffects and sound effects and score are added. Plus Spider-Man looks less amazing and more, uh, "Friendly" in these photos if you know what I mean.

[set photos from Socialite Life.]

Are you beginning to change your tune on this one with the neat texture and worn details of the costume and the terrific cast or do you think there's still no point?

Amy Westcott on Her "Black Swan" Costume Snub

Wescott's Nina sketchesGiven my fascination with Costume Design, you'll recall I already named my nominees (which included Amy Westcott and Rodarte for Black Swan) and said a few words about Westcott's own work on Black Swan, I drank up this interview in Clothes on Film with the designer post-Oscar snubbing. And I'm alarmed that I missed it two days ago.

A week or so ago film sites were discussing whether or not it was fair that Rodarte could not be nominated alongside her (everyone assuming that Black Swan would be nominated). Perhaps I was just naive but I didn't realize that ill feelings were brewing behind the scenes. Is life imitating art given the rivalry in the Black Swan plot.

Here's what the talented designer tells Clothes on Film about Rodarte's lack of credit and the interviews and press that followed once the film caught fire.

Clothes on Film, Chris: Are you aware of the controversy surrounding yourself and fashion house Rodarte (the Mulleavy sisters) in the press; that they should be credited alongside you as costume designers?

Amy Westcott: Controversy is too complimentary a word for two people using their considerable self-publicising resources to loudly complain about their credit once they realised how good the film is.

CoF: Do you feel as though you are being vilified for something out of your hands?

Westcott: I was happy for Rodarte’s persistent publicity efforts at first; I’m so proud of the film and anything that brings it to an even wider audience is genuinely welcome. I tried to put aside my ego while being airbrushed from history in all of their interviews, as I’m just not that kind of person anyway. But when articles were planted that attacked me personally as if I had conspired against them I felt nothing but despair and betrayal. I don’t have a publicist working for me, needless to say, and I was asked to stay quiet –“not to engage”, to avoid any bad press towards the film. Unfortunately this seems to have proven detrimental to the perception of my work on Black Swan. I didn’t make the rules that the Guild and the Academy set and I am proud of my professionalism and commitment to my work, so to have my name dragged into such ill-informed gossip is galling and hurtful to say the least.

Sad that things went in that direction. Westcott also talks about how she feels about the snub, working with Aronofksy, whether she'll work with fashion design labels again on a film, and what was hardest to achieve on the visually stunning film. Well worth a read.

I Linked a Man With My Bare Hands

Acidemic recommends some girly gloomy Twilight ancestors. Fascinating.
The Carpetbagger the financial value of the Oscar bump. Interesting but I always find these figures suspect because so many films that get nominated are just starting their runs around Oscar time so it's tough to say WHY people are seeing them exactly and what they would have done financially had they been snubbed.
Shortlist Funny profanity-laced Paul Rudd interview. Is there any other kind?

Q: So, what’s the nastiest, baddest thing you’ve ever done?
A: I killed a man. With my bare hands. And my mind. I hurt him, I really punished him with my bare hands, but I wound up killing him with my mind.

The Beast the 50 Most Loathsome Americans
In Contention Ruffalo finally gets the Oscar nod. An appreciation
The Best Picture Project have you seen this blog? Alyson is watching every Best Picture nominee and writing about them.

One more as you pirouette outta here...

Lipstick Eater interesting piece about Black Swan's text of femininity but more specifically about Natalie Portman's feet. I love this bit.

After she retches, Nina flushes the toilet by stomping on the handle with one foot. This is one of my favorite moments in the movie. Kick-flushing the toilet is such a punk rock gesture, so there is a weird thrill in seeing the stomping foot covered in dirty pink satin rather than black Doc Martens: the pink doesn’t at all dampen the violence of the gesture.

Then there's three paragraphs on her knitted Ugg boots. I kid you not. Bless.

How I Did Prediction-Wise. How 'Bout You?

I'm not much for stats but for what it's worth, here's how I did on my Oscar predictions.

74% (89/120) if you include all categories, including those very few others predict like the short features.
77% (81/105) if you drop the three shorts categories which very few people bother with, thus upping their predictive ratio ;). If you'd like to know how I stack up with other pundits, I'm hearing Kris Tapley edged me out with 84/105 but am I in second place this year? Does anyone know? 81 is a good score. Yay me!
88% (40/45) in "the big eight" director, picture, acting and screenplays

Best Categories: I went 100% in Animated Feature, both Actress categories and Lead Actor -- if I'd only seen Hawkes over Garfield, I would have had an historic 100% in all acting categories --  correctly assuming those Big Hollywood Players raving about Javier Bardem (Ben Affleck & Julia Roberts among them) would do the trick for him. Another category I'm really proud of is Animated Short, which is often difficult to guess and I went 4/5 after viewing clips from all the finalists.

Worst Categories: I totally biffed Makeup (1/3) which is, in my defense, year after year the most baffling category (though I think The Way Back is very deserving and I also nominated it in my own awards). But I'm much much more surprised to have done so poorly on the Sound Categories (3/5 in each). In my defense there this is a very unusual year: for once the Sound Mixing and Sound Editing nominations are not virtual mirror images of each other. In fact, I can't recall a year ever with less overlap. Only two films Inception and True Grit show up in both categories. Usually these categories are 4/5 overlaps. Frustrated that I didn't predict the Angelina actioner Salt since I nominated in my own awards and it was my "alternate" that I nearly went with but in the end I chickend out and just used the Sound guilds nominees, which turned out to be not at all what Oscar's sound branch was thinking ;)

Just Curious: Did anyone predict I AM LOVE for costumes? I'm so thrilled that happened for Antonella Cannarozzi.

Very deserving if I do say so myself.

What are you most proud of from your predictions? Where did you fail most spectacularly?

all Oscar race posts
complete list of nominations