Oscar Volley: Will it be Period Perfection or Fantastical Visions as the winner of "Best Costume Design"?

Team Experience is discussing the various Oscar categories. Here's Chris James and Juan Carlos Ojano discussing Costume Design.

CARLOS: Hi, Chris! I would like to confess that I am terrified to talk about this category. For the last few years, I have just made my picks without actually articulating specific reasons. Maybe I don't have the necessary vocabulary or real-life knowledge in costuming or maybe because I'm still working on veering away from my preconceived notion of "Best" as "Most" or "Prettiest". But that fear also makes this exciting, and to do this with you - huzzah!

All right. Let's get down to business. What do we have here? Two Best Picture nominees, two Best Picture-adjacent films, and a lone nominee from a favourite designer in this category. In the expanded ballot era, a time where a lot of the categories have gone (or in some cases, defaulted) to Best Picture nominees alone, this category has demonstrated a level of independence. Out of the past thirteen winners, seven were non-Best Picture nominees (that's 54%, more than half!). So if you're predicting the winner, stats aren't necessarily helpful...

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Oscar Volleys: Best Film Editing might be a nailbiter this year

Team Experience is discussing each Oscar category in the lead up to the ceremony.  Here's Ben Miller and Eurocheese to talk Best Editing

Ben Miller: Well Eurocheese, we're back again.  Pre-nominations, Nick Taylor and I talked about Best Editing being more of an alternative Best Picture lineup.  Low-and-behold, all five Editing nominees are also up for Best Picture. Before we get to talking about the actual nominees, let's pour one out for films that should have gotten a notice in this category.   Personally, I thought the editing in All Quiet on the Western Front was pretty spectacular.  When it comes to coherent action sequences, my main gripe is a sense of place and atmosphere.  For a while, any action or war film was edited with insanity and incoherence.  God bless George Miller because Mad Max: Fury Road showed a first-class way to convey clear, heart-pumping action without throwing you out of sorts.  All Quiet isn't renowned for its action sequences, but when it shows up, it is crystal clear about direction, orientation, and presence.  

What film did you personally want in the lineup, no matter how unrealistic?

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BAFTA goes its own way and shakes up the race

by Cláudio Alves

After it earned 14 out of 15 possible nominations, we should have known that All Quiet on the Western Front was a major threat as far as the BAFTAs were concerned. And yet, this seemed like The Banshees of Inisherin's time to shine. Well, the British Academy has announced their victors, and though they loved Martin McDonagh's latest, it couldn't defeat Edward Berger's Netflix juggernaut. The German Oscar submission won seven awards, including Best Film and Director. Banshees had to settle for four prizes, the same number of wins Elvis amassed. Beyond those three, no other title managed to take home more than one statuette, not even the the Oscar frontrunner Everything Everywhere All At Once.

But what does it all mean? Let's assess after the jump…

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Year in Review: Best Music and Soundscapes

by Nathaniel R

Are all cinephiles "visual" people or are some more sonically attuned? I ask this because in order to draw up my own lists of "bests" in the aural categories, I have to really focus to note the soundscapes. In some cases, as with the sinuous alien creepiness of Nope and the haunted bold swings of TAR, the genius is hard to miss even for those of us who are more visually oriented. If any of you have theories as to how Oscar's sound branch didn't include either in even their finalist lists, I'm all ears... no pun intended.

For the most part it's the images I remember which may explain why I am so allergic to end credit songs over a dark screen being hailed the "Best" of any given season in Original Song. Marry the images and sound and it's far more memorable and valuable to the overall film experience...

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Is "Elvis" going to win the Makeup and Hair Oscar?

by Nathaniel R

Austin & Elvis. Image via YouTube comparison

The Makeup and Hair Stylist Guild (MUAHS) gives out prizes in multiple categories and this weekend at their ceremony three Oscar-nominated films in the Makeup category emerged as winners: Black Panther Wakanda Forever, The Whale, and Elvis.

 Only one of them can win at the Oscars. So which might it be? The last five Oscar winners  Darkest Hour, Vice, Bombshell, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and The Eyes of Tammy Faye only have have one thing in common: they all featured at least one famous actor, sometimes multiple famous actors, remade to look like another famous person via prosthetics. This bodes well for Elvis but it's not over till it's over and it has at least one formidable competitor, probably two. The MUAHS awards ceremony and complete list of winners is after the jump...

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