1998: What if there already was a Best Animated Feature Oscar?

by Cláudio Alves

Mariah Carey and Whitney Huston perform a song from THE PRINCE OF EGYPT at the Oscars.

Before implementing the Best Animated Feature category, the Academy gave out three special awards over six decades honoring individual achievements in the art of feature-length animation – Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and Toy Story were the honorees. It was only in the new millennium that AMPAS finally buckled to rising pressures and created the official prize. In 2001, this Oscar was finally established. As we ready ourselves for the Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1998, it's easy to wonder what would have happened if the category had been around a few years earlier…

Click to read more ...

93rd Academy Awards: Best Costume Design

by Cláudio Alves

Costume illustrations by Gloria Young Kim (left) and Matthew JLeFebvre (righ)

After last year's dispiriting domination of Best Picture contenders in craft categories, this year's Best Costume Design lineup feels like a breath of fresh air. While the branch is resistant to contemporary narratives, their reluctance to honor new names has alleviated a bit. For the first time since 2006, we have three first-time nominees among the costume designers competing for gold. Better yet, the five achievements honored by AMPAS offer a dizzying variety of film styles, aesthetic strategies, genre, and tone. From Disney remakes to Italian literary adaptations, from biopics to biting period comedies, this batch of nominees has it all.

Still, in the end, one must win. With that in mind, here's how I'd rank the five Best Costume Design nominees at the 93rd Academy Awards…

Click to read more ...

Best Visual Effects: The most exciting race in years!

by Cláudio Alves

Every year, while most awards obsessives wring their hands over the starrier categories, I focus on those below-the-line categories I've grown to love even more than Best Picture. Costume Design and International Feature are usually the focus of my attention, though every "craft" award tends to entice curiosity and honest emotional investment. All that said, the last category I expected to be excited about on nomination morning is Best Visual Effects. And yet, here we are. It seems this oddball awards season insists on surprising until the very end…

Click to read more ...

Art Director's Guild Nods: Mank, Mulan, Palm Springs, and more...

by Nathaniel R

Mank (in color on the actual set)

The Art Director's Guild have announced their nominations for the 2020 film year and 2021 ceremony which will be virtual on April 10th this year. As per usual the guild awards usually do a better job of showing us what the industry is actually watching and what's leading for Best Picture rather than what's happening in their own fields. Like Chicago 7 as one of the five very best Production designed Period films? Er okay Hollywood, but have you seen... Emma? Personal History of David Copperfield? First Cow? Shirley? Ammonite? This is not a knock on the talented designer but there just isn't as much to work with when you're doing courtrooms and offices.

But enough griping. Here are the nominees in their four categories after the jump and if Daniel has written a piece on this particular achievement in his column "The Furniture" it's linked...

Click to read more ...

Makeup and Hairstylists nominations - Quite different than Oscar finalists!

by Nathaniel R

Borat Subsequent MovieFilm

Apologies that we missed this announcement but the Makeup and Hairstylist Guild announced their nominees this past week. It's an interesting peek at what the makeup professionals in the industry think since it's not super reflective of what the Academy's smaller makeup branch thinks given that FOUR of Oscar's ten finalists (The Glorias, One Night in Miami, Emma, and The Little Things) are nowhere to be found. Other films that makeup and hair artists clearly did like such as Mulan, Bill & Ted Face the Music, The Prom, Promising Young Woman, and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm somehow all missed Oscar's finals.

The categories with six nominees in the list after the jump are due to ties in voting...

Click to read more ...