The Furniture: Into the Marshes with Ida Lupino and Elsa Lanchester

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

This week marks 100 years since the birth of pioneering director and actress Ida Lupino. Twitter has been full of tributes to her work, including the eight feature films she directed. We've discussed a few of her films here before as well. For my part, I highly recommend her two episodes of The Twilight Zone.

However, I’m going to look at a movie from before she made the leap to directing, the only one in her filmography to receive a Best Art Direction nomination. 1941’s Ladies in Retirement is both a thriller and a play adaptation, a genre we don’t see too often anymore. But in that era it was fairly common, from comedies like Arsenic and Old Lace to the more explicitly malevolent Night Must Fall and Gaslight.

The setting of Ladies in Retirement, according to Reginald Denham and Edward Percy’s original play, is the “Living Room of an Old House on the Marshes of the Thames Estuary Some Ten Miles to the East of Gravesend, 1885.”

Of course, this being 1941, a location shoot in Kent would have been impossible even if the studio had wanted it. Instead, the marshes were built into a sound stage. The team was so proud of their ersatz swamp that they even set the opening credits in the muddy water!

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The Furniture: Rejecting a Neon Green Future in The Shape of Water

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

“That’s the future,” the ad man says, “Green.” It’s a ridiculous observation, but it’s also a cruel way to tell Giles (Richard Jenkins) he should find somewhere else to pitch his illustrations. The future, the ad man means, is the replacement of Norman Rockwell with cartoon children selling neon, gelatinous green pie.

The Shape of Water isn’t really about pie. But this comment on 1950s advertising is a helpful key to understanding the rest of this aqueous fantasy...

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Lukewarm Off the Presses: More Precursor Prizes!

by Nathaniel R

Time to catch up with developments in movie awards land! Much has been happening these past few days.

London Film Critics Award
The event was held over the weekend with Three Billboards continuing its triumphant awards run by taking Picture, Actress, and Screenplay. Isn't it peculiar how if you believe the internet it's the most hated movie that ever existed but IRL it keeps winning prizes that actual humans vote on. In news that will strike others as much happier Timothée Chalamet and Lesley Manville took Best Actor and Supporting Actress respectively. And Hugh Grant emerged victorious in Supporting Actor (for the Oscar ineligible Paddington 2), quipping:

Brexit, Trump, and now me getting prizes. Truly, we are in the end of days.

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The Furniture: The Chicanery and Posterity of 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus'

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus will always be known, perhaps primarily, as the movie interrupted by the tragic and sudden death of Heath Ledger (10 years ago today). This part of its reputation precedes it, particularly given its relatively muted critical reception. The story of its making, and the enlisting of Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell to fill the void, is essential to its reputation. It’s become a marker in time, an unplanned moment in the history of celebrity culture.

It is also, interestingly, a fairly specific moment in the development of visual effects. It lost the Best Production Design Oscar to Avatar, after all. These films stand for two dramatically different ways of using design and CGI to create cinematic worlds, even if they are both fantasies on the surface. And, perhaps, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus comes out ahead...

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Final Oscar Predictions in Every Single Category!

by Nathaniel R

If only we had been able to devote more time to each category leading up to the nominations. Next year, my friends. Life, a cruel mistress this winter, had other plans this year. But we'll do better about diving into the nominees. As with most pundits I'm expecting The Shape of Water to be the nomination leader, but I don't think it will be setting any records as some are suggesting. The support for it seems less feverish and more pleasant. At least from my perspective. It can expect a big haul but not every single category. On the opposite side of the Best Picture spectrum is The Big Sick, the only potential nominee that could also be entirely shut out since it's hovering on the edges of its most nominatable categories: Picture, Screenplay, Supporting Actress 

So let's break it down by category shall we? We're just listing the basics here but each link will take you to that category's full chart with much more information and the pretty pictures. As always we'll be frantically updating every single chart on nomination morning (January 23rd). So be here frequently this week, pretty please...

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