Horror Costuming: Hellraiser (1987)

by Cláudio Alves

Last October, I had a lot of fun exploring the art of costume design in horror movies. This Halloween season, the miniseries is back with new misadventures through the annals of horror history and some of its boldest sartorial visions. To get some semblance of order, the write-ups will start with an iconic nightmare of 1980s cinema and move, decade by decade, until a grand finale in the form of an Oscar FYC for the current awards season. So let's start things off by looking towards the meeting point of pleasure and pain, seeking where they become indivisible, and contemplating how such ideas can be materialized in costumes. Clive Barker's Hellraiser has such sights to show us…

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23 Days Until Oscar - Your Vote For Costume Design?

This year's costume design lineup is a mix of three two time nominees (Johnston, previously nominated for Lincoln, Boyle, previously nominated for The Queen, and Zophres, previously nominated for True Grit), one of Oscar's all time favorites (three time winner Atwood), and the new-to-Oscar  Madeline Fontaine from France who designed the costumes of Jackie and was previously best known for costuming French pictures like Amelie and Yves Saint Laurent.

Who would you vote for and who do you think might win?
This category doesn't feel entirely easy to predict this year. La La Land will surely win at least a handful of Oscars but will Costume Design be one of them?  Zophres does simplicity beautifully but Oscar voters tend to prefer Most to Best. Johnston probably wins the "most beautiful costumes" prize for the very Old Hollywood stylish Allied but she's the only nominee whose film has no support from other branches so she seems unlikely.

Three Fittings: High Glamour and Low Spies in "Allied"

[New Series! Three Fittings will celebrate costume design in the movies. The number is necessary self-restraint for we love the art of costuming too much. We kicked off last week with La La Land icymi.]

Allied begins strongly with a weirdly lulling quiet parachute descent into the Moroccan dessert. Moments later the man from the sky is all wrapped up a stone blue headscarf, his face obscured, presumably to protect it from the sun and sand. This obscures the movie star within which is never a good thing so the scarf loses its functionality almost immediately. It's suddenly an accessory rather than a tool, just another texture and a complimentary color to the fetching earth tone ensemble on a ridiculously handsome man walking toward a car far off in the distance.

Who knew that an empty road in the desert could double as a runway?

Costume designer Joanna Johnston clues you in immediately that you're looking at a movie that's aiming for the glamorous illusion of Old Hollywood...

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Beauty Break: Costume Design (Personal Ballot & Oscar Shortlist)

We're about to wrap up the "traditional" portion of the Film Bitch Awards which are essentially Nathaniel's Oscar ballot were he to have one in every category. (There will be more awards each day until we're finished -- before the Oscars, mind you! -- but they're the fun "extras")

Oscar's costume branch and I were fairly sympatico on our shortlists this year differing by only two pictures. Yet citing only 7 pictures (all featured after the jump) feels stingy. Costume heavy period pictures like Macbeth, Crimson Peak, The Assassin and Brooklyn definitely had their moments. Two contemporary pictures worth noting for their clever work were Youth and Chi-Raq. And then there are the pictures that have one costume so special it's what you always think of later on when you're picturing the movie: that lime green slit-to-there dress in M:I - Rogue Nation, the perfect action hero simplicity of Chris Pratt's functional but very tight outfits in Jurassic World, the barely visible sight of Jennifer Jason Leigh under huge furry everything in The Hateful Eight, that stylish pilot jacket in Star Wars: The Force Awakens that traded hands and so on...

In short, if you don't love costumes -- get outta here! Let's celebrate the five Oscar nominees plus two Nathaniel nominated in his own awards after the jump. Crazy gorgeous photos ahead...

OSCAR'S COSTUME DESIGN NOMINEES

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The Woman from U.N.C.L.E.

Murtada here to praise the images released so far from next weekend's wide release The Man from U.N.C.L.E. 

Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer are lookers and judging from the trailer seem to be having fun. It’s Alicia Vikander’s big year and of course she’ll be entertaining. However the most exciting proposition the marketing has offered so far is Elizabeth Debicki as the villain. And her gorgeous costumes.

Debicki is the big baddie of the movie. Her name is Victoria Vinciguerra, the mastermind behind the criminal organization that our spies must stop before she throws the world into calamity. [More...]

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