The Furniture: A Canadian Air Show in Captains of the Clouds

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber...

The United States may have entered World War II late, but American studios didn’t wait nearly as long to start making propaganda. Hollywood produced a number of pro-Allied films before the American entry into the war, from A Yankee in the RAF to the comparatively subtle Sergeant York. Though this ruffled some feathers in Washington, the debate became moot in December of 1941.

Captains of the Clouds falls right on the cusp, shot before Pearl Harbor but released in February of 1942. The film, directed by Michael Curtiz, was intended to drum up support for the Canadian war effort. The first major Hollywood production to be shot north of the border, it’s a technicolor extravaganza starring James Cagney and the Royal Canadian Air Force.

It also received two Oscar nominations. Sol Polito was recognized in the Best Cinematography category for the film’s breathtaking aerial sequences, a no-brainer. 

The nominated work of art director Ted Smith and set decorator Casey Roberts, however, is less flashy...

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The Furniture: Lost in Space and Time with "Passengers" and "Arrival"

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. This is the second of two columns discussing this year's Oscar nominees. Here's Daniel Walber...

On the surface, Arrival and Passengers appear to be the most similar of this year’s Best Production Design nominees. They’re both science fiction films set in the near future. Yet the similarities end there. Passengers is set entirely on an extravagant, colorful spaceship. Arrival splits its scenes between the interior of a minimalist UFO and densely packed military tents.

There is also one more essential difference...

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The Furniture: Magical Unreality in "La La Land" and "Fantastic Beasts"

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. This is the first of two columns discussing this year's Oscar nominees. Here's Daniel Walber...

At a pool party in La La Land, Mia (Emma Stone) is granted the unique misfortune of being introduced to a generic Hollywood screenwriter. “I have a knack for world-building,” he says, instantly conjuring spectres of a Game of Thrones economy. Mia quickly extricates herself, destined for a different man in love with his own talent.

The moment is fleeting, but it peels back the curtain on Damien Chazelle’s own view of world-building and filmmaking. His version of Los Angeles isn’t at all overstated, with the exception of its ever-present automobiles. The characters don’t quite inhabit an identifiable city. Rather, they exist against a backdrop of imagined Hollywood, built from relentlessly colorful skies and busy studio lots...

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Two silly questions about dressing up and playing house with the Oscar contenders

Okay, one final round of question for Team Experience about the Oscar nominations. We've talked about people who didn't make the list and the nominations that delighted us. Now, two burning questions inspired by the Production Design and Costume nominations.

Which production design nominated picture would you most want to live inside?

GLENN: Hail, Caesar!, but only if Tilda Swinton and I find ourselves running around movie studio backlots set to a zippy orchestral soundtrack. I might just sneakily pop into Passengers' robot bar for a drink when we're done.

DAVID: The moment I saw the ridiculously giant Ingrid Bergman wall in La La Land is the moment I knew that film was definitely on my wavelength...

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The Furniture: Celebrating the Tackiness of "The Oscar"

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber...

Tomorrow is twice blessed. You’re probably already excited for the first reason, the Oscar nominations announcement. It’s also the centennial of Ernest Borgnine, an actor I have never particularly liked. But this coincidence makes today a perfect opportunity to talk about one of the worst movies ever produced by a Hollywood studio: 1966’s The Oscar.

The film begins and ends at the Academy Awards, where fictional Frankie Fane (Stephen Boyd) is as Best Actor nominee for Breakthrough, perhaps the most on-the-nose fictional title of all time. His newly estranged best friend Hymie Kelly (Tony Bennett, in his film debut), glares at him from the next row. Bennett would retire from acting immediately after The Oscar, for reasons that are obvious from the moment he starts talking...

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