Alternative Best Costume Design Ballots

by Cláudio Alves

The Best Costume Design category at the Oscars tends to be a place where one can find idiosyncratic choices. While it's true the Academy has a taste for the extravagant and period-looking, the Costume Branch is usually unafraid of celebrating films otherwise ignored. That's how we get such wonderful nods like those for Bright Star's Regency fashions, I Am Love's early aughts glamour, Jane Eyre 's Victorian severity, and Mirror Mirror's fairytale lunacy.

This year, for the first time in the category's history, all five nominees are Best Picture contenders. The arguable quality of the designs aside, this is a sad state of affairs that makes the usually cool Best Costume Design category look tediously similar to all the others. In an attempt to right the Academy's wrongs and offer a more varied look at 2019's achievements in film Costume Design, here's an alternative set of nominees, none of which were shortlisted by the Academy...

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Watch at home: Strange things to tell the bees during the Peterloo massacre

Nathaniel R giving you the heads up on what's newly available to screen at home.

DVD/Blu-Ray/Rental
• High Life - In which Dr Juliette Binoche gets nasty with her patients and Robert Pattinson mopes around in outer space while caring for an infant.
• Tell It to the Bees - In which Dr Anna Paquin seduces her new friend Holliday Grainger (fine performance!) in a small homophobic British town in the 1950s. But it's actually a sentimental family movie of sorts. Watch out for the unintentionally hilarious killer bees! 

Also newish on blu-ray and/or DVD: Pet Sematary, The Best of Enemies, Little, After, Mojin: The Worm Valley, and Gotham (the complete series). 

iTunes 99¢ Deals
Titles you can rent on the cheap this week include the orgiastic French film Climax, 2016's Best Picture winner Moonlight, 2017's very best film Lady Bird, the new horror classic The VVitch, Bong Joon-ho's popular South Korean monster movie The Host, and the charming Eighth Grade.  They're also offering up Don Jon & Under the Skin in a stealth attempt to remind you of what a genre-hopping ridiculously talented and versatile actress Scarlett Johansson is. Be happy that she shakes off the Marvel shackles very soon (Black Widow is currently filming). Who knows what pleasures await when she can step out of that one genre and into all genres again!

Streaming this week

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Podcast: BlacKkKlansman plus (sigh) a New Oscar Category

This week Nathaniel R, Murtada Elfadl, and Chris Feil talk Oscar changes and Spike Lee's new joint.

Index (1 Hour and 2 minutes)
00:01 Spike Lee's new joint BlacKkKlansman. He's still got it. Also we talk about how he uses Gone With the Wind, and Birth of a Nation.
15:30 Oscar's recent announcement about the "popular achievement category" and all the problems we imagine it will cause. We are not pleased but we do offer our own fixes to issues of audience's being more into the Oscars.
40:00 Film Festival excitement TIFF and NYFF plus The Favourite, and Peterloo rumors.
47:00 We return to Spike Lee and list our three favorite scenes in BlacKkKlansman.
54:00 Fall film chatter: On the Basis of Sex, Mary Queen of Scots, and The Miseducation of Cameron Post versus Boy Erased
60:00 Goodbyes!

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

BlacKkKlansman and Oscar's Rule Changes

Post-ApocaLinktip

Time is a real bitch. Between interviews and standard blogging and technical difficulties and Globes and Film Bitch Awards and a cold, your host has had a difficult couple of weeks that he definitely didn't plan well enough for. But this rought start to 2016 shall not deter him. Please stick with us and cheerlead in the comments and we'll make 2016 the best year yet at The Film Experience even though these past 10 days or so have not gone half as planned. (Note to self for 2016: You can't cover everything... the link list is your friend. Also please win the lottery so you can hire a full time staff of 5? 10?) 

Here's some reading elsewhere while we continue to update Oscar charts, try to collect ourselves (still trying to decide how to approach the #OscarsSoWhite issue which is getting such shoddy or agenda-filled or misleading coverage elsewhere). And maybe eating lunch or sleeping would be nice at some point! 

Good LOL
The Toast "Signs You're About to be in a Sinister Homoerotic Subplot in a Midcentury Drama" 

Extra Extra Read All About It
Boy Culture 50 stars turning 50 this year. Which should we celebrate here at TFE?
Film School Rejects talks Ryan Coogler's strong beginnings and bright future and the matter of his Black Panther gig
Gizmodo Inside Out might get a sequel? Blargh.
Variety Dan Hagerty (best known as "Grizzly Adams" from TV died this morning at 74
New Now Next Nico Tortorella gives you tips on how to maximize your Instagram account (of course if you look like Nico Tortorella you probably won't need any tips to get popular on Instagram
Playbill the David Bowie scored musical Lazarus set to close this next week off broadway might get a second life
The Guardian Mike Lee talks about what he's up to, his past film, his politics and his next project Peterloo (date TBA) about a Manchester massacre in 1819.
Vanity Fair Jacob Tremblay, Charlize Theron, Cate Blanchett, Bryan Cranston and more doing their best Scarlett & Rhett Gone With the Wind finale impressions
Just Jared The great Emma Thompson remembers her co-star the late Alan Rickman (RIP)
Slate looks at the treatment of the romantic rival in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and wonders why it isn't as subversive/progressive as other parts of the show. Are any of you watching this? There are true fans among TFE's team (including me)
MNPP whenever you need a Michael Fassbender fix, Jason will provide. 
The Guardian wonders if the Star Wars universe will replace the Marvelverse with the public within the next few years 

Year in Review Stuff
Reverse Shot gets grumpy with "offenses" to take down awards biggies like Son of Saul and Sicario. Though I'll admit reading the take on The Overnight makes me glad I skipped it.
Coco Hits New York who recently joined the team here at TFE has shared his list of the best of 2015. It's a good long read with interesting choices so enjoy. I love what he writes about Alicia Vikander's work in Ex Machina

For playing man as she plays machine, and for not disappointing a movie that builds its mysteries around her.