Review: Jessica Chastain and those "Eyes of Tammy Faye"

By Nathaniel R

A makeup artist fumbles, discovering she can't undo what Tammy Faye hath wrought. It's not a matter of removing the makeup and starting fresh as some of it is tattooed right on. The former televangelist's lips are permanently lined and the raccoon eyes are there to say; mascara as monument. Was this scene at the beginning or the end of the new biopic The Eyes of Tammy Faye? One can never remember with framing devices that flashback to tell you the whole story that got us there but it hardly matters. The point that comes across is not so much how we got there -- though perhaps the filmmakers think go given the framing device-- but that Tammy Faye's clown makeup bioqueen persona is an absolute. She didn't will into it existence so much as uncover and reveal its eternal nature. 

Is this laying it on too thick? The prose, I mean, not the mascara. Of course! But "too much" is just right for anything Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker related...

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Interview: Nadia Stacey, Cruella's Hair and Makeup Designer

by Nathaniel R

Nadia Stacey talks "Cruella"

When I sat down with Cruella's Hair and Makeup designer Nadia Stacey over Zoom we just had a few minutes to talk. To break the ice quickly, a true story. When I first saw the image of Emma Stone as Cruella, my mind immediately lept to Olivia Colman as Queen Anne in The Favourite and her disgruntled "I look like a badger" quip. I had no idea why. Only when prepping for our Cruella interview did I realize the films had the same makeup designer. Stacey laughs, fondly remembering her BAFTA-winning film. "I feel like there’s a theme going on with me doing mask-kind of faces!"

And with The Favourite (a beloved favourite) duly cited, we jump right in to our conversation about her impressive filmography and her biggest assignment yet, designing Disney's live-action Cruella. [This interview is edited/condensed for clarity]

NATHANIEL: You've done a few movies with Olivia Colman and two with Emma Stone. Are you just going to keep The Favourite-ing from now on?  

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93rd Academy Awards: on the "Makeup and Hair" Nominees

by Nathaniel R

Throughout our "gulp" twenty years of covering the Oscars, no branch has proven more confounding than the Hair and Makeup designers. Like all branches they have weird and glaring blindspots (for some reason despite adoring makeup effects prosthetics they loathe the genre that most commonly deploys them: horror) but many of their rulings have been bizarre (remember how a little CG touchup on Nicole Kidman's prosthetic nose in The Hours disqualified the film in this category but throughout the rest of the Aughts huge CG spectacles were regularly honored?!). They love old age and prosthetic effects makeup regardless of quality, except when they suddenly get fussy about it and don't.  Sometimes they love wigs and other times only the makeup matters, hair be damned. They're tough to get a bead on but it's easier to suss out what might win once they've made their often perplexingly random finalist and nominee calls (Like how was Possessor and its innovative makeup effects not even on the finalist list? Oh, right, Horror film.) 

The nominees are listed in ascending order of how likely we think they are to win the Oscar...

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FYC: "Pinocchio" for Best Makeup & Hairstyling

by Cláudio Alves

Carlo Collodi's 1883 novel The Adventures of Pinocchio has been adapted countless times to the big screen, from the time of the silent shorts to today's world of streaming services and opulent CGI. However, it should be noted that, throughout the majority of film history, the most famous adaptations of this literary nightmare have been rather unfaithful to its source material, its sharper edges indiscriminately sanded off. A tale of cruel moralism full of ghoulish characters, Pinocchio's story is often mellowed until its hellish visions are more enchanting than terrifying. 

When it was time for Matteo Garrone to shoot his version of the narrative, the Italian director went back to Collodi's original tone…

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The Academy Shortlists Have Arrived

As most of you reading probably know, there are nine Oscar categories that go through rounds of voting rather than just one ballot for the nominations. So each year the Academy narrows the field in these nine categories a few weeks to a month before the final nominations. Anything not listed below is no longer possible as a nominee in that specific category, since the ballots will only include these choices. (Curiously they don't do this winnowing process with one of the specialized categories, Best Animated Feature, so all 27 eligible films in that category are still possible as nominees.) The Academy will vote on the actual nominations between March 5th and March 10th and the Oscar nominatitons will be announced on March 15th, 2021. Then we'll have an unusually long wait for Oscar night on April 25th, 2021.

Here are the shortlists... 

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