In Contention

Tag: Kristi Zea

  • On the art of ‘Wall Street’

    Last week, Kris and I came to a disagreement over the merits of Oliver Stone’s splashy, silly and consistently surface-level sequel “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” Neither of us is disputing that the film is a mess, but where Kris thought it clumsy, ill-judged junk, I was more forgiving in my Cannes review: for me, the film partially succeeds on the level of campy self-satire.

    One thing we can both agree on, however, is that subtlety is not in the film’s vocabulary — least of all when it comes to its gaudy collection of visual cues and symbols. Four months after watching the film, the one that sticks most insistently in my mind is a certain highly recognizable painting in the office of Josh Brolin’s character Bretton James.

    Not content with underlining James’s Mephistophelean deviousness by clothing Brolin in a maroon-colored suit, Stone and ace production designer Kristi Zea (“GoodFellas,” “Revolutionary Road”) have Francisco Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son” (pictured) as his office backdrop to drive home the capital-E Evil of the character.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final predictions

    Tech Support at In ContentionAfter six months of Tech Support previews and interviews, the films have arrived, the nominations have been announced and the guilds, the critics and BAFTA have all announced their preferences.  Today we take a final look at the races before the envelopes are opened on Sunday.

    BEST ART DIRECTION
    After guild and BAFTA wins, I would say “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” has cemented its frontrunner status in this category. Spanning decades of the 20th Century, Donald Graham Burt’s production design was impossible not to notice and gave us gorgeous backdrops for its character’s predicaments.

    The other nominees all have the odds stacked against them, whether similar work has been seen before (Michael Carlin’s “The Duchess” and Kristi Zea’s “Revolutionary Road”), is just not showy enough (Nathan Crowley’s “The Dark Knight”) or the nominee is otherwise along for the ride (James Murakami’s “Changeling”).

    Will win: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
    Could win: “The Duchess”
    Should win: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

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  • Interviews with this year’s Oscar nominees at In Contention

    Mickey Rourke (Best Actor, “The Wrestler”)
    Michael Shannon     (Best Supporting Actor, “Revolutionary Road”)
    Amy Adams     (Best Supporting Actress, “Doubt”)
    Marisa Tomei (Best Supporting Actress, “The Wrestler”)
    Danny Boyle (Best Director, “Slumdog Millionaire”) (also here)
    James Marsh (director, “Man on Wire”)
    Kristi Zea, Albert Wolsky (Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, “Revolutionary Road”)
    Chris Menges (Best Cinematography, “The Reader”)

  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The Crafts of ‘Revolutionary Road’

    Tech Support at In ContentionIn less than a decade, filmmaker Sam Mendes has established himself as one of the most intriguing directors of his generation. “Revolutionary Road,” his fourth film to date, hit theaters over last weekend. Regardless of its Oscar fate in the writing, directing and acting categories, the film seems poised to be a major player in the craft arenas, our central focus here at Tech Support.

    I recently spoke to cinematographer Roger Deakins, production designer Kristi Zea, costume designer Albert Wolsky and film editor Tariq Anwar about their work on the film, a 1950s period piece featuring the on-screen reunion of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. All four artists are veterans, having had long (Deakins is the youngest at age 59) and successful (each has been nominated for an Oscar at least once, with Wolsky earning two statues to date) careers.

    Each of the respective department heads commented on Mendes’s tendency to balance a well-defined vision with the necessity of cooperative discovery on the set. Deakins previously worked with Mendes on “Jarhead,” stepping into the shoes of late legend Conrad L. Hall, who lensed Mendes’s first two efforts. “He’s not happy until he gets what he wants,” he says of the director, “but he has an enormous respect for the collaborative process.”

    Zea, meanwhile, says Mendes has a great “willingness and affection for collaboration, but has a precise vision and, because of that, the movie, in its entirety, is very controlled.”

    Anwar received an Oscar nomination in 1999 for his work on Mendes’s “American Beauty.” This year marks their own reunion. He agrees with Zea’s reflection of the director’s balance of his own preparation and the input of his collaborators.

    “In spite of being so sure-footed in his approach to film production, there is never a feeling of being excluded from the creative process,” he says, “or a sense that his material is too precious not to be rearranged or even deleted.”

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