Personal Ballots Cont'd: Best Cinematography & Production Design

We're almost done with the Oscar Correlative categories in the Film Bitch Awards. Then it's on to the silly & fun but still seriously chosen "extra" categories. Here are my choices for the best men behind the camera (always men. sigh) and the men and women designing and decorating those sets and the film's overall visual palette for your eye-candy pleasure. 

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
The big Oscar question this year is "Can Emmanuel Lubezki" win a third consecutive Oscar for The Revenant. He's dominated the category the past two years with Gravity (2013) and Birdman (2014). It won't be the longest consecutive winning streak ever -- that belongs to Walt Disney who won consistently in short film categories for seemingly ever in the early days of Oscar -- but it will be the single longest streak in modern history if he pulls it off. But the category already has something for the record books: With his 13th nomination Roger Deakins Sicario moves into a tie for 5th place for All Time Most Celebrated Cinematographer. He's now sharing the honor with George J. Folsey (Meet Me in St. Louis) who also never won an Oscar. Everyone higher on the list won the Oscar once or multiple times, all four of them; It's rarified air they're breathing. 

Deakins makes my own personal ballot this year but Lubezki just barely misses (I was more impressed with his work on The New World which also went all natural light on the frontier) because I had to make room for the emotionally expressive and flexible light of Phoenix (courtesy of Hans Fromm) and the jaw-dropping 'how'd they do that?' camerawork on Germany's Victoria. On the latter film the director was so impressed he gave DP Sturla Brandth Grølven billing above his own! 

Oscar Charts (now with trivia & predictions) & Nathaniel's Ballot  

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
We've already discussed the stupendous achievements in this category by Ethan Tobman on Room and Judy Becker on Carol so no need to rehash other than 'what is with Oscar sometimes. How could they ignore them?' Oscar voters have an anything goes choice in this category, though. If they don't just check off Mad Max Fury Road in most of the craft categories it's easy to imagine any of the films as winners, don'cha think?

Finally I wanted to give a shout out briefly to Thomas E Sanders work on Crimson Peak which the Academy also passed on. The movie has a lot of problems -- Guillermo del Toro can't seem to stay out of his own way with so much gilding of every gothic lily -- but Allerdale Hall is wonderfully decayed and oppressively decorative and all around drafty and decadent. And those vats in the basement! 

Oscar Charts (now with trivia & predictions) & Nathaniel's Ballot  

Retro Sundance: 2001's Hedwig and the Angry Inch

2001 was the comeback year for the musical. As the massively-scaled Moulin Rouge was reinventing the genre for the post MTV era, John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig and the Angry Inch was an unassuming small scale success that didn't disappoint its cult following from its Off Broadway run and the cult grew rapidly after its Sundance debut. Still a genre anomaly for Sundance, this musical was awarded the Audience Award (Dramatic) and Mitchell won Best Director for his first time behind the camera.

The dramatic Audience Award winners are typically optimistic, but rarely this uniting - Hedwig is a musical that reflects our deepest human needs. Nothing brings together a crowd of strangers like music (or film) we can all connect to and Hedwig's score is packed with emotional insight. Composer Stephen Trask fills the songs with rage, wit, and a hard-won optimism that burns through whatever baggage we as an audience bring to the table. [More...]

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Hmm

Retro Sundance: 2001's Memento

When Memento arrived in 2001, it was a total buzzfest: Everyone was talking about it. It had a Wachowski level of cool (even co-starring Wachowski favorites Joe Pantoliano and Carrie-Anne Moss), it had a gritty noir sensibility, and an innovative time-bending structure deftly designed to get you inside the brain-damaged mind of Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce). It left Sundance that January with the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, hit movie theaters in March, and when awards season came it was nominated for an Oscar for the Screenplay (Chris Nolan's first Oscar nomination) as well as the Editing prize. The movie has lost none of its cachet in the intervening years, retaining a 92% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and clocking in at #46 on the IMDb Top 250.

But I have a personal reason for loving this movie, as well as a story (I always have a story) if you'll indulge me after the jump...

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Agent Linker

W Magazine Rooney Mara loves the sex scene from Rust & Bone. Who knew?
Decider Joe Reid reminds you to catch up with the Golden Globe and Critics Choice winning Crazy Ex-Girlfriend 
Guardian wonders who historically accurate The Big Short is... this is such a predictable part of awards season, yes?
Guardian after a bit of rights shuffling the Little House on the Prairie movie is back on 
Coming Soon Spider-Man (2017) set for IMAX so you can see Tom Holland real big like when he swings and flips and supers around

EW Matt Smith and Zosia Mamet are going to star in a Robert Mapplethorpe biopic. This is not, as far as we can tell, an adaptation of Patti Smith's Just Kids book, that was supposedly going to be adapted. So perhaps there are competing projects? 
Awards Daily on why she thinks The Big Short is going to win Best Picture - short answer: PGA hasn't been wrong yet in this short "preferential ballot" era
MNPP have you heard about the bizarre sounding post 9/11 Michael Jackson/Elizabeth Taylor/Marlon Brando movie to star Joseph Fiennes, Stockard Channing, and Brian Cox respectively. It sounds too strange to be true but it is in fact true. Meanwhile...
Pajiba ... has been on a tear about the casting and shares a funny quote from Orlando Jones pitching Angela Bassett as Liz Taylor. YES PLEASE.
Pajiba on the joys (thus far) of Agent Carter Season 2 

Finally...
Ear Candy! The Motion Picture Sound Editing "Golden Reel" Nominations were announced today. No film really led the nominations since Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant and Star Wars: The Force Awakens all received the same amount of nominations (3). They are all up for both Sound categories at the Oscars, too. Bridge of Spies which was Oscar nominated for Sound Mixing received 1 nomination  and Sicario which was nominated for Sound Editing received 2. On the television side, Game of Thrones is the nomination champ. Here's one category I thought was fun to know about:

Feature Film — Music in a Musical
“Love & Mercy” (Nicholas Renbeck)
“Pitch Perfect 2” (Amanda Goodpaster)
“Straight Outta Compton” (Jason Ruder)

And in case you missed the Film Bitch Awards in the sound categories, announced a while back, they are located here.