Oscar Predictions & Curiousities : Visuals & Score

I haven't forgotten about the Oscar charts. This first installment is the most time-consuming is all, as it sets the templates up for an entire years worth of handwringing and hiearchy juggling. With this latest update we only have the "big eight" categories left to do (minus actor & supporting actress which we've already surveyed). But here are a few thoughts on new charts that are up...

WarDaddy's (Brad Pitt) team in "Fury". The film is scored by Oscar-winner Steven Price

SCORE
I perhaps overstate the music branch's love for their favorite sons each year. It's not that that love isn't evident each year (stop to consider how many composers, for example, have 8 or more nominations and how rare that is in many other fields) it's that Hollywood's favorite composers are quite prolific so, John Williams & Alexandre Desplat aside (who never miss for a nomination)  aside, there's no guarantee that any of them will win traction since all of their rivals are also in the mix each year.

A few things to be curious about in 2014:

• Steven Price (Gravity) just won the Oscar on his first nomination so can he become a favorite? If so he's scoring Fury, the WW II tank drama with Brad Pitt in the lead this year. 
• Which Desplat score will they go for since they always have (at least) a few choices: Grand Budapest Hotel, Unbroken, or Godzilla? Or all three. Heh.
• It's been awhile since James Newton Howard (Maleficent) or Danny Elfman (Big Eyes) were in the mix. This year?
• Will Thomas Newman (Get On Up, The Judge) ever win the statue? He's the most nominated working composer who has never won with 12 failed attempts

CINEMATOGRAPHY
I would've given them their whole post but I can't even talk about this today. *sniffle* Gordon B Willis (RIP) 

Maleficent wonders which fairy tale Oscar wants to hear

COSTUME
The internet did a good job of spreading the fun factoid I once shared that Colleen Atwood (Into the Woods) and Sandy Powell (Carol) don't win the costuming Oscar unless the other one is nominated. So we'll have to look elsewhere for fun trivia this year. A few things I'm curious about this year:

• Milena Canonero is back! The three time Oscar winner  did wonderful work on Grand Budapest Hotel. Oscar tends to shun creative stylized work like that (what a shame that they passed up her instantly iconic work on The Royal Tenenbaums) when they can opt for period realism instead so that's kind of a longshot but wouldn't it be sweet?
• Will Oscar help Anna B Sheppard stretch? If they like her Maleficent costumes maybe she'll get offered movies outside the World War II genre, the box that Hollywood likes to keep her in (She also costumed Fury this year.
• Which of the rising crop of costume design stars is going to make it to an Oscar nomination first: Jane Petrie (Suffragette - I have it for 2015 but maybe it'll  be released this year), Kurt & Bart (Hunger Games: Mockingjay), or Steven Noble (Two Faces of January, Theory of Everything) ?

FILM EDITING 
It's too early to talk about this category really since, more than any other category, it depends entirely on what people like for Best Picture. 

Will AMPAS finally embrace the creative achievements in Wes Anderson's filmography

PRODUCTION DESIGN
My prediction for Grand Budapest Hotel is, I'll admit instantly, wishful thinking. (But it's early, so I'm allowed a few of those). It's perplexing that the art direction branch, like the costumers, often shun cool stylization such as the kind you often see in Wes Anderson features. But I'm hoping that the production designers can't help but recognize Adam Stockhausen's extraordinary range, hopping from pre Civil War realism (12 Years a Slave won him his first nomination) to Wes Anderson's fanciful dioramas with not only ease but confidence and panache. 

A few other things to be curious about:

• Is Oscar done with the Middle Earth films (last year they had their first miss in this category) or will they want to send the Hobbit trilogy away with a 6th nomination for Dan Hennah?
• Can Maria Durjovic (The Imitation Game) finally snag a nomination? She's done great work before and been egregiously snubbed (think Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) and somehow the Oscar heat from Billy Elliott and The Hours didn't rub off on her either time
• Is Dennis Gassner a contender for his second win? He won the category for the very handsome Warren Beatty picture Bugsy (1991) but he's designed several completely gorgeous, classy and showy movies since then like, oh,  The Truman Show (1998), O Brother Where Art Thou (2000), and Big Fish (2003). Will Into the Woods be received well enough to make him a frontrunner?

Which Oscar fates are you most curious about for this season?

Drag Race: "What a Way To Go!"

There's so much to say which is perhaps why I never say it.  And why I'll let you say it instead since I gave up trying to write up my thoughts each week (too many thoughts!) COMMENT PARTY! You're invited. Bring your own comments.

Ben's farewell at the Glitter BallAnd the predicted winner is... Adore (love that bitch) though my true heart belongs to Bianca

Ben de la Creme at least understood filling the entire workroom mirror with lipstick brain vomit when he departed last week leaving only four... and then three Monday night (Adore, Bianca, and Courtney) to compete for the crown tiara of America's Next Drag Superstar.  

But what a way to go... and Ben even referenced What a Way To Go! (1964) at one point (though I regret to inform that I couldn't find it to prove it in screencap form) before sashaying away. Which made her exit all the more painful since a queen who can reference old movies and has a grasp of cultural history to draw from beyond current reality tv and Beyoncé (the only two things the lesser queens seem to "get" each season) is always a better queen for it. I still cringe thinking of that old episode where even drag queens didn't know what Grey Gardens (1975) was -- and this was even after the Emmy & Globe winning Jessica Lange and Drew Barry more version in 2009 -- and chastised Jinkx for choosing an "obscure" celebrity to riff on. RuPaul didn't dress them down for it but justice in the end because guess who won the whole season. 

My point is two-fold and as yet unexpressed. See how I can't focus with this show?

1) The last couple of episodes have been curiously muted and I hope the show finds a way to put a little pep back into its step when it goes away again at the finale and

2) there are surely few better films to draw inspiration from if you're a man in a dress than What a Way To Go!. Consider Miss Shirley Maclaine in the Oscar nominated costumes by Moss Mabry and Edith Head in gif form after the jump... if you dare...

Click to read more ...

Yes, No, Maybe So: Jupiter Ascending

For April Fools Day a Yes No Maybe So on a trailer promoting a movie that could well be a folly.

Though I am on record at having loathed Cloud Atlas I appreciate movies that operate from the outer edges of sanity. I'm always curious when the Wachowski Siblings make a movie despite a despairing qualitative free fall: their first was their best (Bound), their second their second best (The Matrix) but it's been a precipitous drop each and every time so at this rate they'll make the worst movie of all time soon. Will it be Jupiter Ascending? 

I realized this trailer arrived a week ago but it's been busy chez moi. I made a wee bit of time today because... well, you'll have to see why in the Yes column after the jump. 

Click to read more ...

The Linkettes

Wonkette crazed religious rightwing preacher says that Frozen will make you gay. And a witch!
Pajiba saves me the trouble of doing a Yes No Maybe So on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) traiser
24 Frames Per Second Mynt Marsellus follows up on that "screenplays you must read" article we were discussing the other day with 5 screenplays by women or people of color to add diversity to it. Fine choices
People Emma Watson looks great in menswear

In Contention on the final James Gandolfini film The Drop from the director of Bullhead
The Exploding Kinetoscope demands that you take Summer Stock (1950) more seriously. There's more to that Judy Garland film than "Get Happy"
Los Angeles Magazine James Franco on his poetry and being on that "leaked" list of Lindsay's lovers...
TFE ...icymi we discussed that list here
Gilt City if you have $175-$235 to spare you can see Cate Blanchett, Isabelle Huppert and Elizabeth Debicki in The Maids on stage here in NY. Good goddess, what a trio. That's above my pay grade but if you see it, do tell me how magical it was. (Cheaper worse tickets go on sale and will surely sell out instantly) on Monday. 
MNPP [nsfw] JA's off to Italy but first a bath and a Mr Ripley reminder
AV Club... whoa. OCD VHS recordings are being put to good use in San Francisco 
Film School Rejects "are you hating movies properly?"

Today's Must See
Oooh, I don't know how I missed this yesterday but Just Jared posted set pics from Suffragette the new Carey Mulligan/Meryl Streep political period piece. FWIW, because no site ever gives credit on these things when they post set pics, the costumes are by Jane Petrie, a relatively new Costume Designer whose previous credits include genre pictures like An American Haunting, Moon and 28 Days Later. But she's moving straight into prestige films. She's got Suffragette as well as the Stephen Frears Lance Armstrong biopic if that one stays on track. 

Meryl in "Suffragette"

Today's Must Read
Ester Bloom, who wrote a couple of pieces here at TFE a few years ago, has a terrific essay up on Flavorwire about the sexuality (or lack thereof) in Wes Anderson's films and how Grand Budapest Hotel is and isn't a significant departure in this regard. Consider this bit.

Anderson is famous for fawning over his symmetrical landscapes the way other directors dote on their female stars; if he is turned on by anything, it seems to be dioramas. The people who fall in love in Anderson’s universes are either actual children, like the awkward tweens of Moonrise Kingdom, or metaphorical ones, like the emotionally stunted Herman Blume of Rushmore and Richie Tenenbaum of The Royal Tenenbaums. And all hearts break in the end.

It's a really good read so click on over. 

Under the Link

Playbill a Broadway musical of Pretty Woman? They're determined to make every 90s movie hit into a musical
The Gayest of All Time The Many Tears of Leonardo DiCaprio
Vanity Fair tries to get Matthew Weiner to talk the final season of Mad Men but wisely settles for more fertile ground since you know he won't do that! 

World of Wonder I subscribe to everything they're saying about the new Flash costume on Arrow. I have tried to watch that show so many times but i just think it's terrible and so personality free 
Screen Crush another look at the costume and in action. It does not look aerodynamic to me -- way looser fit than most superhero costume and shouldn't it be more like a swimmer's outfit to enhance speed? So who knows what Colleen Atwood was thinking
Pajiba on Lena Dunham's keynote address at SXSW
In Contention Guy Lodge reports on how Brad Pitt almost starred in Under the Skin but I can't read this because I'm keeping myself as virginal on the film as possible. I want to be surprised
MNPP continues to spread the joy of Jake Gyllenhaal's return in Enemy
Empire a new motion poster for Noah which trippily takes you through caves and the ark and fields and foes and loops back like the world is round and infinite or something
Vulture interviews True Detective's Glenn Fleshler on how he approached his very very sick character 

Today's Must Read
Jezebel's funny thinkpiece "A Grown Woman's Guide to Responsible Celebrity Worship" which examines the problem of the "It" girl narrative, the recent Oscar media Jennifer vs. Lupita situation, celebrity backlashes (almost always towards women... the men actually have to EARN backlash), and self-identification. It's pretty great. The piece also references this amazing article "Lupita Nyong'o Doesn't Need Your Permission to Be Beautiful" which is also a very good read.