Crimson Peak: An Ecstasy of Gothic Style

by Cláudio Alves

Some films age like fine wine, others like milk. Guillermo del Toro's predecessor to one of the weirdest Best Picture winners ever is closer to grape juice than dairy. If you don't believe it, check out Crimson Peak, which is newly available on HBO Now. The film wasn't particularly well-received upon its 2015 release, but the years have been kind to it, highlighting its best elements while dulling the impact of its less impressive aspects. Its intoxicating visuals are of particular magnificence, resurrecting the iconography of classic Hammer-style horror philtered through the showmanship of Guillermo del Toro's imagination. Some may say this is a case of style over substance, though nothing couldn't be farther from the truth. After all, Crimson Peak is a production where style is substance…

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Wouldst Thou Link Deliciously?

• Medium wonders why diehard horror fans reject artful genre works like The Witch and It Follows
• The Film Doctor reviews Owen Glieberman's book "Movie Freak: My Life Watching Movies"
• Flick Chicks loving on pets in the movies. Awww
• Boy Culture interviews Molly Bernard from TVLand's great sitcom Younger (the one starring Sutton Foster that I'm always hoping you'll start watching. Sutton 4evah!)
• The Film Stage an interview with director Robert Eggers of The Witch
• Vanity Fair Kate Winslet's son wants her to EGOT. Perhaps Broadway is next?

• Towleroad congratulations to producer Greg Berlanti (The Flash, Brothers & Sisters, Arrow, The Broken Hearts Club, etc...) who welcomes a newborn son via surrogate to the world
• Black Phillip from The Witch has his own Twitter account. He boasts a lot and has real species pride
• Vanity Fair Amy Adams going to television. She'll star in a series version of Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects (which is extremely actress-friendly as we've previously noted)
• Awards Daily How the year of the woman became the year of the man... again
• Decider Joe Reid ranks EVERY Oscar nominee 

Best of Best of
• CineMunch the second Annual CineMunchies with prizes to Mad Max and Room and best food & drink moments in movies - I am totally here for that spaghetti scene in Brooklyn
• Antagony & Ecstacy Tim finally reveals his top ten list with surprising choices beyond Mad Max and shocking exclusions - no Inside Out? WTF 
• Cinematic Corner chooses 15 best shots of the year: Crimson Peak, Youth, and more...
• Entertainment Junkie's 10 best: Tangerine, Inside Out, and more 
• Variety Carol named best film of the year by International Cinephile Society 

News That Requires Not Linkage
Batman v Superman is going to be 151 minutes long. Uff. 

Potentially Awesome TV News
We've long hoped that a TV Variety show could air which would really work - it's such a fun abandoned form but too many recent attempts have been shoddy (that Rosie O'Donnell attempt) or so manic they're unwatchable (Neil Patrick Harris's). The Tracking Board says that we could get another attempt as early as this year starring Maya Rudolph (Great choice: She's funny, can act, also rocks) and Martin Short. 

Today's Watch
How they brought Colossus to life in Deadpool... five different actors and a whole team of visual fx artist

Newish to Watch at Home: Crimson Peak, Trumbo, Grandma, Etc.

Newish on DVD/BluRay

• The 33 Antonio Banderas / Chilean miner rescue story
• 99 Homes the other acclaimed housing crisis movie
• Black Mass the gangster movie with Johnny Depp, buried under alien makeup, plays a gangster. Watch out for great performances on the periphery from Peter Sarsgaard and Julianne Nicholson
• Crimson Peak from Guillermo Del Toro. Critics were divided or had many reservations but those who loved it really loved it. Here's a rabidly pro piece nicely titled "Ghosts are Movies".

LUNCHTIME POLL:
Would you rather...

- Be seduced by Tom Hiddleston?
- Gain access to all of Mia Wasikowska's money?
- Marry into Jessica Chastain's family?

• Girls S4 -I've definitely lost track of this show. Weirdly I quit with an episode I couldn't have loved more (S3E7 "Beach House")
• Grandma - Lily Tomlin gets her own well deserved star vehicle and drives it superbly
• Love the Coopers - Diane Keaton earns a paycheck
• Spectre  -the first Bond I haven't seen in theaters in some time. It just kind of happened, the skipping of it
• Steve Jobs -the intense three act drama starring Michael Fassbender & Kate Winslet
• Togetherness S1 the highly undervalued HBO dramedy. Melanie Lynskey and the rest of the cast are just super
• Trumbo in case you'd like to discover why it did so well in the precursors

NEW TO STREAMING
Netflix added Dope, The Face of Love (a romantic drama misfire from The Bening), Open Season, and the 2007 Best Picture nominee Atonement (tomorrow) and by the end of the month they'll add Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny which looks terrible *sniffle* despite being something we've looked forward to for so long. Amazon Prime added Solomon Kane a fantasy action film starring James Purefoy, Max von Sydow and Rachel Hurd-Wood that Radius TWC buried in 2009 (never opened in the States but played elsewhere). By the end of the month they'll add Digging For Fire from Joe Swanberg.

Which of these will you be catching up with?

Personal Ballots Cont'd: Best Cinematography & Production Design

We're almost done with the Oscar Correlative categories in the Film Bitch Awards. Then it's on to the silly & fun but still seriously chosen "extra" categories. Here are my choices for the best men behind the camera (always men. sigh) and the men and women designing and decorating those sets and the film's overall visual palette for your eye-candy pleasure. 

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
The big Oscar question this year is "Can Emmanuel Lubezki" win a third consecutive Oscar for The Revenant. He's dominated the category the past two years with Gravity (2013) and Birdman (2014). It won't be the longest consecutive winning streak ever -- that belongs to Walt Disney who won consistently in short film categories for seemingly ever in the early days of Oscar -- but it will be the single longest streak in modern history if he pulls it off. But the category already has something for the record books: With his 13th nomination Roger Deakins Sicario moves into a tie for 5th place for All Time Most Celebrated Cinematographer. He's now sharing the honor with George J. Folsey (Meet Me in St. Louis) who also never won an Oscar. Everyone higher on the list won the Oscar once or multiple times, all four of them; It's rarified air they're breathing. 

Deakins makes my own personal ballot this year but Lubezki just barely misses (I was more impressed with his work on The New World which also went all natural light on the frontier) because I had to make room for the emotionally expressive and flexible light of Phoenix (courtesy of Hans Fromm) and the jaw-dropping 'how'd they do that?' camerawork on Germany's Victoria. On the latter film the director was so impressed he gave DP Sturla Brandth Grølven billing above his own! 

Oscar Charts (now with trivia & predictions) & Nathaniel's Ballot  

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
We've already discussed the stupendous achievements in this category by Ethan Tobman on Room and Judy Becker on Carol so no need to rehash other than 'what is with Oscar sometimes. How could they ignore them?' Oscar voters have an anything goes choice in this category, though. If they don't just check off Mad Max Fury Road in most of the craft categories it's easy to imagine any of the films as winners, don'cha think?

Finally I wanted to give a shout out briefly to Thomas E Sanders work on Crimson Peak which the Academy also passed on. The movie has a lot of problems -- Guillermo del Toro can't seem to stay out of his own way with so much gilding of every gothic lily -- but Allerdale Hall is wonderfully decayed and oppressively decorative and all around drafty and decadent. And those vats in the basement! 

Oscar Charts (now with trivia & predictions) & Nathaniel's Ballot  

The Confusing Art Directors Guild Nominations. Is "Crimson Peak" Period? Where is "Carol"?

Coco here, ready to talk about the Art Directors Guild and their wacky nominations. 

Usually we reserve the term category fraud for when lead performances are nominated in less competitive supporting categories, but the Art Directors Guild suggests we expand the definition. The Guild divides its film categories into period, fantasy, and contemporary, which makes senses. But this year's nominations suggest the division between the three categories are rather arbitrary. (The Film Experience is on the record saying that categories only matter if you follow the rules, so maybe the ADG should read this piece by our beloved Nathaniel.)

Anyway, here are the nominations:

Production Design (Period Film)
Bridge of Spies - Adam Stockhausen
Crimson Peak - Thomas Sanders
The Danish Girl - Eve Stewart
The Revenant - Jack Fisk
Trumbo - Mark Rickner 

Thomas Sanders's gothic sets are gorgeous, but Crimson Peak is a movie about ghosts. The production design is not historically accurate either unless gigantic bleeding houses used to actually exist in the real world. How is this not in "fantasy"?

The question one everyone's mind has to be "Where is Carol?" Judy Becker's designs are not only richly detailed, but they're integral in a film that's all about its precise visuals. It's worth remembering, though painful: Todd Haynes previous 50s masterpiece, Far From Heaven, did not get an Art Direction nomination from this guild or from the Oscars (!!!). 

Meanwhile, Trumbo continues its inexplicable love affair with awards voters.

More surprises and category confusions after the jump.

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