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: Oscar Nominated "La La Land"

by Nathaniel R

Welcome to "Three Fittings" in which we will celebrate costume design in the movies weekly. The number is necessary self-restraint for we love the art of costuming too much. We'll choose three costumes from a chosen film to discuss. Otherwise each episode would be six thousands words and twenty-five images long. As with Daniel's series "The Furniture," which focuses on Production Design, I'll alternate between contemporary and older films.

Let's begin with one of this year's Best Costume Design Oscar nominees La La Land. Contemporary films rarely receive this honor. Out of the 85 films nominated this century thus far for costumes, only 4 have been contemporary films: The Devil Wears Prada, The Queen, I Am Love, and now La La Land. But let's state this clearly up front: La La Land deserved the nomination. 

While the guiding principle of La La Land's costume design by Mary Zophres is simplicity, this should not be confused for subtlety...

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Still Blissing Out Over "La La Land"

Over the weekend I wrote up an Oscar preview for Towleroad - which you can consider a companion to our current Best Picture Chart and updated Oscar predictions. Here's what I wrote about La La Land, which I realize I didn't capsule review for you at TIFF: 

This musical from the young writer/director Damien Chazelle (Whiplash) won the coveted "Audience Award" at Toronto. That prize nearly always aligns with a Best Picture nomination in January. But the nomination will be the least of it - it has "winner" written all over it. La La Land is a total bliss-out, a colorful two hour romance with song and dance numbers about an aspiring actress and her jazz musician boyfriend. This is the third movie to co-star Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling and their onscreen chemistry is even better this go around and it was tremendous to begin with in Crazy Stupid Love five years back.

Here's a shocking statistic for trivia buffs: If La La Land is nominated for Best Picture it will be the first original live-action musical to do so since All That Jazz (1979). The musical nominees inbetween them were either animated  (Beauty & The Beast), adaptations of pre-existing shows (Chicago) or used pre-existing music for their songs (Moulin Rouge!). If La La Land wins it will be the first original movie musical to win the Oscar since Gigi (1958).

In addition to these general notes here are a few slighter more specific ones...

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Beauty Break in La La Land

Here's Murtada with pictures of some lovely people at work.

You'd let this guy take you to the movies, no? Go on. He's waiting by the box office.

I already know my most anticipated movie of 2016: La La Land . Who can resist the combo of Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling? In a musical! 

These pictures were taken this week as the stars prepared to shoot scenes in LA. We don't usually pay much attention to paparazzi shots -- outside of the red carpet because haute couture --  but let's make an exception for Emma and the Gos after the jump...

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