23 Days Until Oscar - Your Vote For Costume Design?

This year's costume design lineup is a mix of three two time nominees (Johnston, previously nominated for Lincoln, Boyle, previously nominated for The Queen, and Zophres, previously nominated for True Grit), one of Oscar's all time favorites (three time winner Atwood), and the new-to-Oscar  Madeline Fontaine from France who designed the costumes of Jackie and was previously best known for costuming French pictures like Amelie and Yves Saint Laurent.

Who would you vote for and who do you think might win?
This category doesn't feel entirely easy to predict this year. La La Land will surely win at least a handful of Oscars but will Costume Design be one of them?  Zophres does simplicity beautifully but Oscar voters tend to prefer Most to Best. Johnston probably wins the "most beautiful costumes" prize for the very Old Hollywood stylish Allied but she's the only nominee whose film has no support from other branches so she seems unlikely.

Three Fittings: High Glamour and Low Spies in "Allied"

[New Series! Three Fittings will celebrate costume design in the movies. The number is necessary self-restraint for we love the art of costuming too much. We kicked off last week with La La Land icymi.]

Allied begins strongly with a weirdly lulling quiet parachute descent into the Moroccan dessert. Moments later the man from the sky is all wrapped up a stone blue headscarf, his face obscured, presumably to protect it from the sun and sand. This obscures the movie star within which is never a good thing so the scarf loses its functionality almost immediately. It's suddenly an accessory rather than a tool, just another texture and a complimentary color to the fetching earth tone ensemble on a ridiculously handsome man walking toward a car far off in the distance.

Who knew that an empty road in the desert could double as a runway?

Costume designer Joanna Johnston clues you in immediately that you're looking at a movie that's aiming for the glamorous illusion of Old Hollywood...

Click to read more ...

24 Days Until Oscar - Your Vote For Best Cinematography?

What if the sexiest category this year is actually Best Cinematography? The lineup is so very strong. This year's DPs hail from all over the Globe including the US, Mexico, Australia, and Sweden. And their movies are all astonishingly beautiful albeit in completely different ways

Which of these talented gents are you rooting for to win the Oscar?

P.S. If you haven't yet seen this great montage of every Best Cinematography Winner ever, you should take 7 minutes and do so...

Oscar's reigning quartet to present, as is the tradition.

I've somehow never seen this photo of Mark Rylance trying not to step on Brie Larson's train. Adorable.

AMPAS has announced that last year's acting winners will each be presenting on Oscar night. One assumes they will present their corresponding opposite-sex category as is the tradition, but who knows. Perhaps Oscar will mix it up. I'm all for tradition at the Oscars, don'cha know, but I don't mind a curveball now and then. You?

Alicia Vikander is back on screens February 24th (Oscar weekend!) with long delayed costume drama Tulip Fever  in which she dumps Christoph Waltz for Dane DeHaan because who wouldn't.

Brie Larson is back on screens April 21st in the ensemble crime comedy Free Fire, from Ben Wheatley (High-Rise).

Mark Rylance is back on screens July 21st in Chris Nolan's WW II epic Dunkirk.

...and Leonardo DiCaprio is back on screens in... 2018? 2019? 2020? He appears to have taken a whole victory year off after winning the Oscar and still has no immediate plans to be in front of the camera. It was just announced that he'll headline The Black Hand because what the world really needs more of is mafia movies (sigh) but in truth that one is a long way off since there's no screenplay yet. There's also the possibility of the Olympic bombing movie The Ballad of Richard Jewell which Leo was once set to star in but might only be producing now. Whatever happened to The Devil in the White City with Martin Scorsese? That project was announced just over a year ago and not a peep since. If they've dropped it, I hope it becomes a miniseries instead because that book is dense with information, history, cause and effect through lines, and reams of characters. 

Link Link Land

The Daily Beast Michael Musto talks to an anonymous Oscar voter about who they're voting for. They're very unhappy with Meryl Streep's 20th and La La Land's 14
/Film Barry Jenkins chooses movies from the Criterion Collection -wonderful. (And people forget how obsessed people were with La Haine when it came out)
Variety ABC picked up a pilot starring Toni Collette. Please let it be good. Miss her so much. Totally the best actress that directors aren't using which I will NEVER understand
Cinematic Corner Sati falls for The Handmaiden

Film School Rejects on Stranger Things SAG acceptance speech and season two
MNPP Jason lets Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) take him on a train of thought and it is a joy as is that movie or at least Gable and Franchot Tone in it
Village Voice Bilge Ebiri's 10 favorites from Sundance include Where is Kyra? and Mudbound
World of Reel Ben Affleck will no longer be directing The Batman movie 
Pajiba has news of an incredibly problematic sounding new Mel Gibson movie about police brutality.
Four Two Nine good piece on LGBT characters still being stuck in the "best friend" / "helper" mode despite many more gay characters in film and television  
Tracking Board HBO developing a movie about the behind-the-scenes on The Godfather (1972). I mean who gets to play Marlon Brando and Diane Keaton. Those seem like tall orders (lots of people can do a decent Al Pacino)

Off Cinema
Playbill Hamilton is doubling the amount of seats in its lottery starting... yesterday. Good luck!
Village Voice fascinating piece on the billionaire subgenre within romance novels
Los Angeles Times on how the travel ban is worrying Hollywood the business aspects of Hollywood and the talent pool
The Guardian Johnny Depp is suing and being countersued... and he's spending money as wildly and foolishly as Nicolas Cage once did (if you're wondering why they both make so many bad movies) 

Dune Again
As was previously rumored but is now true, Denis Villeneuve has signed on to direct Dune. He mentioned this as a possibility in our interview recently and sounded very excited about it, having been a fan of the novel his whole life. But still, TWO reboots of two beloved sci-fi properties back-to-back with Blade Runner 2049 up next? And right after your Oscar nomination after such deserved momentum from doing your own thing (Enemy-Prisoners-Sicario-Arrival)?! I guess this is cashing in while also fulfilling a dream but it worries this fan of Villeneuve doing his own thing.  

Though the David Lynch film from 1984 had its issues it also had some deeply memorable imagery so at the very least it will be interesting to see how his version measures up.