by Nathaniel R
The Dietzes are back in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" and so is costume design goddess Collen Atwood. Photo © Parisa Taghizadeh for Warner Bros
Our April Foolish tradition continues with the visual and sound categories. For this installment we're just picking highlights from our crystal ball. Read on...
COSTUME DESIGN
With Sandy Powell mysteriously absent from big screens for the past two film years, will her chief frequent Oscar rival Colleen Atwood return for a 13th nomination? Atwood hasn't caught Oscar's fancy since her fourth surprise win (Fantastic Beasts) but Oscar voters are obsessed with Atwood's dramatic shoulders, fun stripes, and goth girl sensibility and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice should give her a fun canvas to play with both. Her collaborations with Tim Burton have resulted in two nominations (Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd) so maybe this'll be number three? Another pop culture draw for this category might be Paul Tazewell's adaptation of the green and pink clashes of Wicked.
Will voters finally notice the craftmanship of Robert Eggers films with "Nosferatu"?
CINEMATOGRAPHY
Even though I'm less certain than other pundits that Oscar voters will rally for Dune Part Two that bravura monochrome introduction for Feyd Rautha will surely thrill the cinematography branch. Fraser probably won't win again for the same franchise but a nomination feels likely. We're also weirdly hopeful that Jarin Blaschke will score another nomination for Nosferatu even though Oscar often ignores horror and isn't that partial to remakes. Right now though we're especially curious if ace cinematographers who have never been nominated like Yorick Le Saux (Blitz), and Mihai Malamaire Jr (Megalopolis), Kasper Tuxen (Furiosa, The Apprentice) and Mikhail Krichman (The End) might join the club.
PRODUCTION DESIGN
Adam Stockhausen is our favourite working Production Designer so we're curious what he'll do with the World War II drama Blitz. But he'll have stiff competition from much showier assignments since this category could well include musicals (The End, Wicked, Joker: Folie A Deux), period epics (Gladiator 2), apocalyptic dramas (Megalopolis, The End again), sci-fi surrealism (Dune Part Two, Furiosa), or horrific visions whether dramatic or comic (Nosferatu, The Shrouds, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice)
Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba in "Wicked". © Universal Pictures
MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
Will Nightbitch really turn Amy Adams into a dog? Will this be makeup effects or just psychological/actorly effects? Is this where Wicked proves comeptitive?
VISUAL EFFECTS
Given that Godzilla Minus One just won this Oscar, will that put the latest American Godzilla picture at a disadvantage? Last year was an interesting contest in this category and we hope this one is as unpredictable.
ORIGINAL SCORE
Sometimes composers are the last to be hired or are replaced in post-production so we don't have a great year-in-advance take on this category yet. So we're going with a recent winner Volker Bertelmann (Conclave), a yet-to-win legend Danny Elfman (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice) for a comeback story, and the too-seldom nominated winner Howard Shore (The Shrouds) because why not? It's early. We can imagine anything.
ORIGINAL SONG
We don't yet know which films will have original songs so this is wild guesswork. But we're skipping Wicked since the rumor has it that the new songs will be in the second movie (and they'll need to be since the most popular songs are in the first half)
SOUND
Not much to say here but a confession: We're missing the second sound category since it was fun trying to predict how the two categories would (slightly) differ and a tradition to complain that they didn't differ enough!
ALL THE OSCAR CHARTS
up next: the four acting categories
all charts will be revised after Cannes and the International Feature charts will also begin post-Cannes