The modernity of Little Women's costumes

by Cláudio Alves

Last Sunday, the great Jacqueline Durran became a two-time Academy Award winner thanks to Little Women. As the umpteenth costume designer to tackle Louisa May Alcott's classic tale, Durran had the challenge of dressing these well-known characters in a bold reinterpretation. Eschewing the strict historical accuracy with which Collen Atwood tackled the subject in 1994, Jacqueline Durran evoked the fashions of the 1860s by infusing them with character-specific idiosyncrasies and a general sense of 21st-century modernity.

Her designs are not as bound to their filmmaker's contemporary styles as the Little Women of 1933 or 1949. However, there's no denying that the current iteration of the March sisters is filtered through the sensibilities of artists living in the 2010s… 

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Directing Actors to Oscar Nominations ~ Updated Stats!

by Ben Miller

Power couple Noah and Greta moving up the "Directed Actors to Oscar Nominations" charts

The Oscars are so stat heavy, it’s difficult to keep up with the information. Especially since each season there's yet more of it. One of the stats that gets perpetually lost in the noise is the complex area  of 'acting nominations by director'. If you’ve read my previous piece last year, I am somewhat of an expert in this field, and this year’s set of nominees and winners provides some interesting stats.

First Timers

With nominations for Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Laura Dern, Noah Baumbach does what Guillermo Del Toro did with Shape of Water and Martin McDonagh did with Three Billboards, going from zero to three acting nominations from his filmography in one year.  A few directors have gone from zero to four, including but not limited to...

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Ranking this year's Oscar speeches

by Cláudio Alves

As we finish our Oscar celebrations and mourn the end of another Awards Season, let's explore this year's Academy Award speeches. Unlike past ceremonies, this one was poor in truly disastrous acceptance speeches. Perhaps people saw the mess of last year's Best Makeup winners and decided they would be prepared to step on stage and receive their little golden men with dignity and generosity towards the teams that got them to that dazzling podium. Whatever the reason, this was a good year for Oscar speeches and we honor them, from the most unmemorable to the god-tier achievements in public speaking.

We begin with the least impressive efforts of the night…

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Podcast: For our season finale, Oscar night, naturally!

with Nathaniel R, Murtada Elfadl, and Nick Davis

On this week's podcast, we three Oscarphiles unite to talk about the big night: Parasite's win, Brad's speech, Bong Joon Ho mania, Fonda's magnificence, the musical performances, our hopeful takeaways from the big night... and who we are rooting for among the nominees for a next great Oscar winning act. 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

92nd Oscars in Review - Season Finale

Actors Playing Actors at the Oscars

by Cláudio Alves

To watch an actor play another performer is a pleasure. There's wonderment to be found in these Matryoshkas of acting within acting, be it the porn inexpressiveness of Julianne Moore in Boogie Nights or the desperate showboating of Judy Garland in A Star Is Born. Not surprisingly, if we peruse the history of the Academy Awards, we'll find numerous instances of thespians nominated for giving life to fictional actors or real-life stars of the past. Perhaps no other profession is so generously dramatized in the annals of acting awards.

This season, Renée Zellweger won the Best Actress trophy for resurrecting the ghost of Garland for one final performance. There were two other actors-as-actors performances nominated. While we don't see much of Scarlett Johansson's Nicole onstage, her profession as an actress is a central part of the characterization in Marriage Story. On the other hand we see Leonardo DiCaprio's Rick Dalton at work, and layers of performance unraveling in glorious Panavision. 

After the jump a quick trip through Oscar history of actors who won gold playing other actors…

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