The costumes of “Judy”: Fantasy vs Reality

by Cláudio Alves

When dressing a real-life story, there’s always a complicated relationship going on between a designer and History. The balance of fact and fiction, raw reality and cinematic fantasy, must be achieved and thought through. Depending on the project, the scales might tip towards one or the other, but both are always dancing hand-in-hand. Such sartorial dynamics might reflect the production’s relationship with fact or even contradict that preoccupation, either supporting an idea of History or silently challenging it.

For Judy, costume designer Jany Temime helped transform Renée Zellweger into Judy Garland, a process that was much more complex than simply looking at archival material and reproducing past fashions…

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The Look of "Joker"

by Cláudio Alves

In 1989, Tim Burton envisioned Gotham City as an Expressionistic nightmare, something necessarily unreal. Three years later, Batman Returns showed a different sort of urban reverie, one tainted by quasi fascistic imagery, an appropriate dark meaning for a darker film than its predecessor. Joel Schumacher's sequels would see Gotham go through another transfiguration, from a gloomy nightmare into a candy-colored hallucination. This process of growing artificiality would end when Christopher Nolan revitalized Batman for a 21st-century audience.

Nolan's trilogy shows us a Gotham that's a foreigner's idea of an American metropolis and one can almost chart, throughout the films, how the city goes from being a dream of Chicago to New York City 2.0. Todd Phillips' Joker perpetuates this configuration of Gotham as DC Comics' version of Manhattan, but he isn't looking to the real contemporary city for inspiration. The film is set in a New York of yore, a fantasy built from nostalgia and the cinematic legacy of New Hollywood's urban dramas. Gotham is never just a city, rather the idea of one…

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Over & Overs: Marie Antoinette (2006)

In this new-ish series members of Team Experience share movies they've watched way too often and why...

By Cláudio Alves 

I don’t think I was a very ‘normal’ 12-year-old. Whatever that word might mean, I doubt it encompasses nerdy pre-teens obsessed with The French Revolution. Looking back, I’m not even sure why I was so enthralled. Maybe it was the tragedy of it all, how its horrors were as undeniable as the social changes they brought upon were necessary. Maybe it was the moral ambivalence, the complexity of its historical narrative. Maybe it was just the prettiness of the fashions. 

One thing’s for sure, I was very excited by the prospect of watching Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette...

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Downton Abbey: Style Ranking

By Cláudio Alves

Since its first season, Downton Abbey has been the delight of every costume drama fan. Starting in 1912 and ending in 1926, the show featured an astounding portrayal of changing styles. We all watched the characters go from Edwardian finery to the glamour of the 20s.

Every actor in the Downton Abbey movie is perfectly dressed by costume designer Anna Robbins. Sometimes the perfection is even a bit too emphatic  --no one ever looks even slightly rumpled! At the end of the day, though, this isn't a realistic view of the past but a romantic dream of a bygone era. For such nostalgic reveries, a bit of fairytale immaculateness isn't out of place. To celebrate such beauty, let's rank the Downton Abbey ladies, from worst to best dressed. For the sake of brevity and fairness, we're only looking at the upstairs crowd. It would be cruel to compare Mrs. Patmore's humble clothes to the literal crown jewels...

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FYC: "Hustlers" for Best Costume Design

By Cláudio Alves

The Academy rarely recognizes the greatness of contemporary costume design. They're caught in an endless love affair with period pieces and fantasy extravaganzas. I Am Love is the last true contemporary-set film (give or take La La Land’s dreamy vision of Los Angeles) to receive such an honor without any fantastical element and that was almost a decade ago. 

This year would be a great time to break with tradition. In fact, no snub in the upcoming Best Costume Design category will hurt as much as Hustlers'. Lorene Scafaria’s electrifying drama is a luxurious feast of late aughts fashion and purposeful ostentatiousness... 

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