More Guild Honors: Make-Up, Sound, and Adapted Scripts

Three sets of awards were handed out yesterday so let's talk MUAHS (Makeup and Hair Stylists), CAS (Cinema Audio Society) and USC Scripters.

USC Scripter
This Adapted Screenplay prize (not a guild prize) is from the University of Southern California but it's built itself up as quite a tradition in awards season. This is its 28th year! The prize goes to both the original source material author and the Screenwriter adapting it. Their winner usually wins the Oscar and they chose (no surprise) The Big Short originally a non-fiction book by Michael Lewis (all three the movies based on his books have been nominated for Best Picture) and adapted by Charles Randolph & Adam McKay. 

ICYMI: Manuel's fun ranking of the most quotable Screenplay nominees

Cinema Audio Society
The Revenant took this prize beating Mad Max, Bridge of Spies, Star Wars, and The Hateful Eight. It's up against the first three again on Oscar night plus The Martian. 

Makeup Artists and Hair Stylists Guild
Period Makeup: Mad Max Fury Road
Period Hair: Cinderella 
Special Makeup Effects: Mad Max Fury Road
Contemporary Makeup: Furious 7
Contemporary Hairstyling: Pitch Perfect 2

Carol keeps losing prizes (sigh). Anyway, solid choices though one can quibble. I never took in Furious 7 so that one is a bit of a headscratcher sight unseen... especially with Sicario in the running. It's also a bit perplexing to think of Pitch Perfect 2's hair work topping Spy's funny and elaborate quick changes (which I favoried in my own awardage) or Ex Machina's sleek style. You can see the complete MUAHS awards here (American Horror Story: Hotel, Game of Thrones and Dancing with the Stars were big in their TV categories).

Do you think Fury Road, The Revenant, and The Big Short will repeat these wins at the Oscars?

3 Times Lucky: Mark Ruffalo

Murtada here. Love for the Meryl and C/Kates of the world can skewer perceptions. It's rare for actors to receive multiple Oscar nods. Most first nominations are also last nominations. Less than 180 actors in Oscars 88 years have managed 3 or more. And this year Mark Ruffalo in Spotlight joined that list. (The rest is after the jump due to extreme gif'ing).

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8 Days til Oscar...

If you haven't fully investigated the Best Picture Chart you should do that today. There are several unusual ways to rank the 8 nominees for Best Picture: machismo factor, number of deaths, MPAA ratings, running time, and more.

Sample to your right. Check it out 

Ranking, my friends, is mandatory since Best Picture is determined on a preferential ballot. There's mine to the far right (this was crafted the day of nominations so no "backlash" was in play). Theoretically the preferential voting puts polarizing pictures at a disadvantage but what isn't polarizing these days?

How would you rank them? Are you still undecided as to which film will win? Three good indicators (SAG Ensemble, PGA, and DGA) famously went to three separate pictures (Spotlight, The Big Short, and The Revenant) confusing the matter more than is usual. If you missed the latest podcast Nick and I talked about the most difficult categories to predict which we're guessing are: Picture, Director, Costume Design, Production Design, and Sound

Podcast: Favorite Past Films & Performances by this Year's Nominees

It's just Nathaniel and Nick for this week's podcast. We're talking at length about the toughest categories to predict as well as a reader suggestion (thanks Ryan!) to choose our favorite work by the current nominees before this season. 

43 minutes 
00:01 Introductions, Blind Spots, Foggy Memories
03:45 Iñárritu and The Revenant
09:00 George Miller plus Babe and Mad Max sequels
14:00 Tough Categories to Predict and Why
27:45 Best Actress - who is best?
30:00 Saoirse Ronan
31:17 Charlotte Rampling
34:15 Cate Blanchett
36:22 Brie Larson
38:00 Jennifer Lawrence

We discuss a lot of different titles obviously since we're choosing their best work before the current nomination. We'd love to hear your choices for this same question in the comments. You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. 

Previous Best Work - Actress/Directors

Interview: David Lang on "Simple Song No. 3" and Storytelling through Music

Lady Gaga may have understandably hogged the media's coverage of this year's Best Original Song category but she's not the only Grammy winning composer in the mix. Diane Warren (the main writer of "Til It Happens to You") and The Weeknd "Earned It" are also Grammy winners. So is David Lang, an eclectic composer best known for his classical work. He's nominated for "Simple Song No. 3" from Youth, the lynchpin song of the whole movie. Like Jane Fonda's movie star in the same film, his song is hyped consistently by the story and characters before we fatefully cross paths with it.

Lang hasn't worked in movies too often, though he did contribute to the incredibly memorable music in Requiem for a Dream (2000). After his elevating and Oscar nominated work on Youth, we're hoping he spends more time composing for our screens.

When David Lang sat down to talk to The Film Experience I warned him that I know next to nothing about music. The good humored composer joked, absurdly, that he barely knows anything either. Lang is one of very few Oscar nominees in the Academy's history to have won a Pulitzer Prize before their Oscar honors. (Here's our talk edited slightly for length and clarity.)

NATHANIEL:  Famously you wrote "Simple Song No. 3" before Sorrentino's screenplay was complete. How quickly did you write it? Did Sorrentino ask for several iterations?

DAVID LANG: I work pretty fast. The way this worked was I made a version of the song and I would get a singer to sing it and send the demo to Paolo. I basically sent him three versions of the song. I probably spent much more time having these philosophical conversations with him and reading the script and having dark neurotic nightmares about it than actually doing the work!

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