New Year's Babies. Start Fresh!

I was an illustration major at university and one era we studied repeatedly was "The Golden Age". For illustrators that was roughly the 1900s through the 1940s. One of the the most sentimental traditions of this time was JC Leyendecker's 'New Years Babies' covers. The babies were always white and cutesy but weren't always "happy" and sometimes politics entered the picture. Here is the 1917 painting to your left a full one hundred years ago wherein there's a scary hole where Europe should be. This diapered cherub is not at all sure he wants to arrive into this  (World War I was raging and would not end for another 23 months.)

The New Year's Baby tradition reminds us that whatever may be ending or happening, there are always opportunities for fresh starts. 2016 was a shit show but maybe a whole lot of really cool human beings that will one day be giants of the arts, world peace, human rights, or whatnot were born? Who knows what New Years Babies joining the world today future generations will worship the way society currently obsesses over, say, Meryl Streep or Ryan Gosling or [Insert Name Here].

HEREWITH A RANDOM COLLECTION OF MOVIE/TV RELATED NEW YEARS BABIES BY YEAR...

1879 - EM Forster, gay literary giant whose books made for delicious cinema (Howard's End, Maurice, A Room With a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread, A Passage to India)
1891 Charles Bickford, 3 time supporting actor Oscar nominee...

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The 87th Academy Awards. Live Blog

08:29 3...2...1...

08:36 We began with a big musical number "Moving Pictures" with Neil Patrick Harris, Anna Kendrick, and Jack Black. Some of the audience likes it more than others.Keira Knightley and her date look at each other and laugh. Some of the opening monologue is funny... but why do jokes about Oprah always come across so awkward. David Letterman 'you got your Oprah in our Uma Thurman!' and now NPH equates Oprah with American Sniper. "cuz you're rich" 

08:46 BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR GOES TO J.K. SIMMONS 
He never mentions the movie or anything. Puzzling. Just talks about his wife and "above average kids" - people still laugh at that line despite the sweeping of the precursors and that he's used it each time. Tells us to call our parents. My mom would not believe it if I called during the Oscars. She'd think someone died.

Neil Patrick Harris tries to make us believe he's an Oscar nerd with an elaborate bit which IS NOT A BIT about his predictions locked up on stage. He puts Octavia Spencer in charge of watching them. 

08:48 Clips from Grand Budapest Hotel and American Sniper the double feature you never knew you wanted introduced by the star you never knew would introduce them Liam Neeson

08:50 Dakota Johnson introduces Adam Levine singing "Lost Stars" 

ALL THE REST AFTER THE JUMP

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Let's Talk Costume Design

Manuel here to talk costume design, one of my favorite Oscar categories. Today’s detour into this category comes courtesy of this very cool “Oscar by the numbers” infographic MTV came up with which makes the bold statement that “Zero” is “the number of oscar nominations for women behind the scenes.” I’m sure they were hoping to point out the absence of women like Gillian Flynn (in Adapted Screenplay) and Ava Duvernay (in Directing) but isn’t it horribly misleading? You don’t have to go far to see Oprah Winfrey & Dede Gardner (Selma), Cathleen Sutherland (Boyhood) and Helen Estabrook (Whiplash) nominated in the Best Picture category, but you’re mostly also ignoring the women nominated in Production Design, Make up and Hairstyling and, of course, Costume Design. Aren’t these women working “behind the scenes”? This last category is to my mathematically challenged mind (and I’d have to double check the shorts categories to be sure), the only one outside of the actress nominations where we see an overabundance of female nominees.

And so, I wanted to highlight the work of the five costume designers nominated this year. If there’s one thing to be said about the increasingly PR-driven world of Oscar campaigning is the careful attention to the crafts categories as showcases for those working “below the line” as one would say. And so here are sketches (with accompanying links of where to read more about these designers and their work) from the five nominated films...

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CDG Nominations: The Theory of Wild Budapest Hotels of the Galaxy

The Costume Guild Nominees have been announced. It's worth noting, always, with guilds that their memberships are much broader than their correlative branch within the Academy. Neverthless they often stick closely to whichever movies are being talked up for Best Picture, regardless of their guild-specific merits. Note some of the nominations below.

Excellence in Contemporary Film
Birdman - Albert Wolsky
Boyhood - Kari Perkins
Gone Girl - Trish Summerville
Interstellar - Mary Zophres
Wild – Melissa Bruning

Albert Wolsky is a legend and Trish Summerville has been killing it lately so no complaints there. But the contemporary categories, as with all guilds, are where you can see how distracted people get with their feelings for the movie at hand and not with the [insert field]. My point is this: These are five strong movies but did they even consider, say, Mommy, Only Lovers Left Alive, Neighbors, Begin Again, 22 Jump Street, or Lucy? And if they didn't, shouldn't they have? (At least they didn't nominate Sniper's fatigues or Gyllenhaal's baggy shirts in keeping with the other guilds lockstep devotion to those pictures.)

PERIOD / FANTASY / AND TV NOMINEES AFTER THE JUMP...

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Top Ten: 2014 Movie Characters For Halloween Costumes

Halloween hits on Friday. Are you prepared to see Elsa & Annas & Olafs everywhere you look for our first post-Frozen dress-up holiday? That billion dollar 2013 smash will surely dominate. As for 2014 movies it goes without saying that you'll see a lot of Guardians of the Galaxy  and sometimes full teams. Team costumes on Halloween are the best but the key to their worth will be in how they handle adorable memorable Groot. Groot costumes will range everywhere from the godawful to the 'how'd they do it' spectacular, depending on creativity and budget.

Here are the characters / movies that would be the neatest tricks to pull off that would make the biggest treats for The Film Experience if fully sewn or creatively cobbled together by overachievers.

(Say no to store bought costumes!)

TEN 2014 COSTUMES WE HOPE TO SEE ON HALLOWEEN

10 "Full Metal Bitch" 
The great takeaway of Edge of Tomorrow or Live. Die. Repeat. or All You Need is Kill or whatever they're calling it today is that Emily Blunt is a badass. Rita, the feared warrior within, practically begs for a life outside of that movie since she is so iconized within it. Good luck pulling off all the metal armor and weaponized accessorizies. And how to look exactly like Emily Blunt while doing it and not "Random Robot Girl"... that's your challenge.
How to win Halloween in this costume: Get a male sidekick in a similar outfit who is shorter than you. Or drag along weird alien carcasses behind you.

"The Shailene Woodley and eight more costumed curveballs after the jump

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