In Contention

Tag: Best Makeup

  • TECH SUPPORT: ‘Inception’ dominates below the line

    So, the morning after a terrible prediction record at this year’s Oscars, I’ll try to make some sense of what the Academy told us, and what it means for the crafts artists we got to know along the circuit this year.

    As the evening went on, many people began to wonder if “The Social Network” would triumph in Best Picture. While Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall managed to take Best Film Editing (on their second nomination), the very deserved win for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross in Best Original Score was somewhat surprising. The work trumped Alexandre Desplat for “The King’s Speech,” despite the latter film’s wins in the major categories. Desplat, with four nominations under his belt, could now be considered due, I think.  (Alas, Tom Hooper’s later win for Best Director removed doubts about the Best Picture winner.)

    The Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Visual Effects categories unsurprisingly went to “Inception,” making Oscar winners of Nolan’s usual crew of Lora Hirschberg, Gary Rizzo, Ed Novick, Richard Kind, Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, and company. I congratulate them and wish them the best for “The Dark Knight Rises.”

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final analysis, part one

    So this is it. Over the last seven-plus months here at Tech Support, we have tried to illuminate and analyze the craft races as they unfolded. On Sunday, the winners will be revealed, ushering some new faces into Oscar’s club.  And indeed, I expect the vast majority of the winners to make their first trip to the podium.

    I’ll be breaking down each field in a two-parter.  Check back tomorrow for the final five categories, but for now…

    Best Art Direction

    As is the case in many categories, “The King’s Speech” is, to me, the safe bet for the win here. A royal period piece and likely Best Picture winner would be difficult to beat in any year. But in all fairness, this is in many ways not a typical “royal” winner in a category where style triumphs over substance.

    Production Designer Eve Stewart (11 years after her first nomination for “Topsy-Turvy”), along with set decorator Judy Farr, immaculately filled many of the film’s sets (despite late-breaking news of one location) with intimate details that feel very much in tune with the characters. A guild win also shows industry support.

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The makeup of ‘Barney’s Version,’ ‘The Way Back’ and ‘The Wolfman’

    As we have noted a number of times, the makeup branch is one of the Academy’s most independently minded. While many people have criticized them in the past for bestowing the moniker “Oscar nominee” on many mediocre (or worse) films, the makeup artists clearly seem to take the work into account regardless of perceived film “quality.”

    This year, they proved their originality once again by nominating three films which did not manage nominations in any other category. The graceful and realistic aging in “Barney’s Version,” the ultra-realistic results of a battle with nature in “The Way Back” and the transformation of Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins (not to mention a plethora of blood) in “The Wolfman” made up the slate.

    I recently spoke with makeup department heads from all three of the nominated films – “Barney’s Version”’s Adrien Morot, “The Way Back”’s Edouard Henriques (nominated with Greg Funk and Yolanda Touessing), and “The Wolfman”’s Rick Baker (nominated with Dave Elsey).

    For Baker, a 12-time nominee and six-time winner, the journey on “The Wolfman” began very early. “I did something I don’t normally do,” he says. “When I heard Universal was going to do a remake of ‘The Wolfman,’ I kind of begged. I said, ‘I really have to do this movie.’ It didn’t make for the best negotiating position but I was one of the first hired on the film.”  The chance to update his own take on the genre 30 years earlier in “An American Werewolf in London” was clearly too difficult to pass up.

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Makeup

    The makeup branch of the Academy has often been criticized for making “Oscar nominees” of artistically dubious films. But I submit that it’s one of the bravest and noblest branches, sticking properly by the point of their task: to single out the greatest achievement in their field, no matter the other factors.

    This year’s line-up is a clear indication of as much. Each nominee is unique to this category, having not been recognized in any other field. The variety of work is also compelling, including realism and fantasy in equal measure. But the branch once again turned its back on a number of more gruesome makeup depictions this year, which seems to be a hurdle yet to be cleared.

    The nominees are:

    “Barney’s Version” (Adrien Morot)
    “The Way Back” (Edouard F. Henriques, Gregory Funk and Yolanda Toussieng)
    “The Wolfman” (Rick Baker and Dave Elsey)

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Analyzing the nominees

    So the 83rd Annual Academy Award nominations were finally announced this week, and I did fairly well in handicapping the nominees. Outside of Best Sound Mixing, I never missed more than one nominee in a category. Unfortunately, there were no categories where I scored 100% (apart from Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay). Oh well.

    The massive overall tally for “The King’s Speech” resulted from a plethora of nominations in the crafts fields. “True Grit” and “Inception” got all but one plausible tech nomination (with one very notable exception for each, discussed below). “TRON Legacy”’s tally, on the other hand, has got to be considered a disappointment as must, to a lesser extent, those of “Black Swan” and “127 Hours.” The complete shut-out for “Shutter Island” was also somewhat of a surprise, but other branches saw fit to make Oscar nominees of some unlikely titles.

    Regardless, it was nice to see many deserving crafts artists get their due. With the throat-clearing out of the way, I’ll now give short reactions to – and previews of – each below-the-line field.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Guilds galore and season fatigue

    • The Directors’ Guild of America presented few surprises in their award nominations, though some raised eyebrows at “True Grit”‘s omission. (Their documentary nods didn’t move the needle either.)

    • The American Cinema Editors’ nods matched those of the directors; the American Society of Cinematographers didn’t deviate much from the formula either.

    • This week’s Off the Carpet column addressed the growing consensus around a “Social Network” win, days before Kris formally made the prediction himself.

    • The Long Shot, meanwhile, wondered how the field of contenders this season ever got quite so narrow.

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  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 48 — Armond White vs. Darren Aronofsky, guilds speaking up, ‘True Grit’ box office, awards show/party weekend on the way, supporting actress wide open

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk.

    In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

    Today is the final day of phase one this season. Ballots are due by 5pm PT, so everyone needs to pick a chair before the music stops. And we have plenty to discuss as a result, so let’s see what’s on the docket today…

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  • AMPAS narrows makeup category to seven

    I’ve been noting for a while now that “Barney’s Version” could be a sleeper in the Best Makeup category due to some impressive aging.  The film joins six others today as a bake-off finalist.  The only film missing that I’m currently predicting is “Shutter Island,” so replace that with “The Way Back” (which I was predicting once upon a time), and that’s my bet.

    The finalists:

    “Alice in Wonderland”
    “Barney’s Version”
    “The Fighter”
    “Jonah Hex”
    “True Grit”
    “The Way Back”
    “The Wolfman”

    Another potential sleeper is “The Fighter,” buy the way.  The work on Melissa Leo is pretty impressive.  Keep up with the race at its dedicated page here.

    [Photo: Sony Pictures Classics]

  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The design of ‘Alice in Wonderland’

    Tim Burton and Johnny Depp may well be poised to go down in film history as one of the famous actor-director duets.  Seven collaborations to date have delighted audiences for the past 20 years. They have also earned 11 Oscar nominations and four wins.  Their latest, “Alice in Wonderland,” exemplifies how far along they’ve come in the eyes of the public with its worldwide gross of more than $1 billion.

    At the same time, the film was immensely reliant — as all Burton films are — on its design elements.  Many of the artists who created those designs are now in the thick of this season’s Oscar race, and I recently had the opportunity to speak to three of them: production designer Robert Stromberg, visual Effects supervisor Ken Ralston and makeup artist Valli O’Reilly.

    Each certainly commented on being aware of the immense importance that his or her work would have to the project. That having been said, Ralston notes, “I had done it for so long that I wasn’t panicking. I thought it could be a blast. It is daunting when you read the script, because you realize the whole thing, in one way or another, is going to be visual effects. It’s a huge deal but with so many talented folks on board, you just have to trust them.”

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘127 Hours’ dissent, BIFA nods, interviews

    • Guy didn’t much care for “127 Hours.” That got you talking.

    • Happily, Kris did, and got talking to director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy.

    • The British Independent Film Award nominations threw some surprises into the mix, handing scads of noms to “The King’s Speech”… and “Kick-Ass.”

    • Chad’s Life Without Oscar column eased into the late 1980s, showcasing one films on either side of the Hollywood border.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Makeup — Volume II

    As I said last week (and have said several times before), no category is year-in and-year-out more perplexing than Best Makeup. Each year, this branch finds ways to turn otherwise dubious awards contenders into bona fide Oscar nominees — dubious because often nominees might be abysmal or relatively obscure.  The branch seems to have its favorites – like Greg Cannom and Rick Baker – but nevertheless manages to snub them sometimes when they seem sure bets.

    The category remains the sole remnant of the bake-off system, where the field is narrowed to seven and the nominees chosen from that collective.  Year after year, shocking omissions occur in both rounds.

    As I stated last time, despite the general weirdness of this category, we can put some traits as more likely to be embraced than others – aging, prosthetics and illness likely top the list. Also, while the category technically rewards both hairstyling and makeup, it rarely seems to concentrate on the former (“The Young Victoria” last year is a notable exception).  So all that having been established, what do I expect to see in contention this year?

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Makeup — Volume I

    Makeup and hairstyling builds characters by transforming actors with realism or imagination that would otherwise be lacking on the screen. With the announcement that the Best Visual Effects is expanding to include five nominees this year, Best Makeup now remains the sole category to have three nominees, chosen from a “bake-off” of seven finalists which are revealed in advance of the January nominations announcement.

    This award tends to cite so many different aspects that it is difficult to pin down exactly what the branch looks for. However, aging and illness are certainly well regarded, as are the creation of blood and injuries, disfigurement and turning actors into monsters and other fantastical beings.

    It should be remembered that this category awards both makeup and hairstyling. However, last year’s nomination for “The Young Victoria” is a rare example of where the hairstyling portion of the category apparently played a significant role. Traditionally, facial and body makeup is far more important.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Diving right back in

    Here we go again.  We just said goodbye to the 2009 film awards season four months ago, yet here we are, halfway through 2010 and ready to kick the tires on Tech Support, a unique feature here at In Contention.

    Tech Support, for those unaware, seeks to highlight below-the-line talent on films.  We offer space to recognize the film music and sound design that help set atmospheres, the costume and production design that helps manifest a new world on screen, the film editing that makes the machinery flow, the makeup that can build a character from the surface out, the visual effects that continue to wow us and the cinematography that truly captures a “motion picture.”

    Films would be impoverished without the contributions of those tasked with the above duties, to say the least. While many of them like being out of the spotlight, it nevertheless seems tremendously important to acknowledge their work, and so we’re happy to gallop into our fifth year of Tech Support.

    Over the next seven months, we will be taking a look at all of these categories, which are often forgotten in the mainstream press. We will take two in-depth looks at nine fields: Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup, Best Music (Original Score), Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Visual Effects.  Best Original Song, largely due to difficulties in amassing a list of contenders early on, will only be reviewed once, later in the season. After this, we hope to again feature many of the contenders with interview pieces, allowing you to read about the personal stories involved in creating films from below the line.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final stretch, final predictions

    Zoe SaldanaWell, here we are. On Sunday, the statuettes for the Oscars will handed out. It seems difficult to remember that it was eight months ago when we started looking at the categories for the first time. Today, let’s take one last look at the crafts categories to see where we stand.

    Best Art Direction (Oscar Guide)
    One of the easiest predictions for the evening, for me, is Best Art Direction. James Cameron’s “Avatar” has won the Critics’c Choice, BAFTA and guild awards and this category and the sets, while not being typical of winners in this category, were brilliant. “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” strikes me as too small, “Nine,” too hated and “The Young Victoria,” more of a costumers film. I’d put guild winner “Sherlock Holmes” in second…but a very distant second.

    Will win: “Avatar”
    Could win: “Sherlock Holmes”
    Should win: “Avatar”

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Makeup

    Toni Servillo in Il DivoThe Academy’s makeup category is one of two fields that calls for a whittling down of the contenders via a “bake-off.” Reels of the work from the seven finalists are screened, so an impressive assemblage is all you need. The work on the whole isn’t really being considered, so this can yield surprises in the field.

    This year there were a couple of surprises to say the least. A little known foreign film pushed through while a costume drama that isn’t entirely memorable for its makeup (though perhaps is well-respected for hairstyling) also popped up. Meanwhile, the presumed frontrunner for the win — “District 9” — was snubbed outright, the general feeling being that CGI enhancement was its downfall.

    The nominees are:

    “Il Divo” (Aldo Signoretti and Vittorio Sodano)
    “Star Trek” (Barney Burman, Mindy Hall and Joel Harlow)
    “The Young Victoria” (Jon Henry Gordon and Jenny Shircore)

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Post mortem

    Michael Gambon in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood PrinceSo here we are. For the most part, the crafts category nominations weren’t surprising, and there is not a single film that fared drastically better – or worse – than I expected.

    As for comments on individual categories? In Best Cinematography, Bruno Delbonnel’s nomination for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” has got to be one of the biggest surprises of the year. The other nominees were completely expected. Dion Beebe apparently couldn’t overcome “Nine”’s collapse.

    On the other hand, John Myrhe managed to make it in for Rob Marshall’s musical in Best Art Direction after missing with both BAFTA and the guild. Nominations for “Avatar” and, in my opinion, “Sherlock Holmes” were to be expected. But the other nominees were slightly surprising.

    “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” was richly deserving but still surprising. And “The Young Victoria” evidently had more support than I first thought. The real snub here, however, is David Wasco. If he can’t get in for “Inglourious Basterds,” I’m not sure what it’ll take.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final predictions, part two

    Sharlto Copley in District 9Continuing from where we left off yesterday, today we look at the fields of makeup, music, sound and visual effects.

    BEST MAKEUP

    The shortlist of seven makes predicting this category slightly easier. “District 9”’s realistic wounds, not to mention the practical elements of the central character’s transformation, likely make it the frontrunner. “Star Trek,” meanwhile, boasted an array of alien species and turned young actors into iconic characters.

    So what will get the last spot? “The Young Victoria” has done better than I would have expected it to do this season and the costumes are assured a nomination. But its shortlisting here seems really for hairstyling, which historically doesn’t lead to nominations.  Then again, a BAFTA nomination shouldn’t be taken lightly.

    I find it difficult to believe that “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” will be nominated when its predecessor failed to even be shortlisted. Admittedly, it worked for “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” but the characters there were much more iconic. Still, one never knows.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: BFCA awards, Guilds triple, Rohmer passes

    A still from Claire's Knee by Eric Rohmer• As you’ve just heard, “The Hurt Locker” emerged triumphant at the BFCA Critics’ Choice Awards.

    • Earlier this week, Éric Rohmer, sly giant of New Wave intellectualism, passed away at the age of 89.

    • That same day, “Avatar,” “The Hangover” and “Star Trek” were among the films nominated by the WGA.

    • The ASC slate continued the love for “Avatar,” but a semi-surprise nod for “The White Ribbon” got pundits’ attention.

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