Oscar Volley: "Avatar" versus what in Best Visual Effects?

Team Experience is discussing each Oscar category in the lead up to the ceremony. Here's Abe Fried-Tanzer and Nick Taylor to discuss Visual Effects.

Black Panther Wakanda Forever

ABE FRIED-TANZER: Hey Nick! Here we are discussing the category with the most stages of finalists, giving us a window into what could have been. I appreciated the inclusion of interesting choices like Bardo, Good Night Oppy, and RRR on the initial twenty-wide list, and was pulling for Nope and Thirteen Lives to move on from the next stage of ten. But none of that happened, and we’re left instead with five very different choices, none of which are based on original material.

There are some intriguing stats to share about these nominees, like that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever placed, but its predecessor (which scored a Best Picture mention) didn't in the same race...

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"Elvis" and "The Batman" lead the MUAHS nominations

by Cláudio Alves

"Elvis" | © Warner Bros.

The Make-Up Artists & Hair Stylists Guild have announced their nominees in this, their awards' tenth year. Some surprises abound, mainly regarding what films were shut out, but plenty of the Oscar finalists show up throughout their categories. The Batman and Elvis lead with three nominations each, while, in the land of TV, American Horror Stories and Pam & Tommy rule over with triple nods. Though, if one wants to point towards the MUAHS favorite production, we must venture into their Live programming portion, where Legendary dominates with a total of five nominations. HBO recently canceled the show, so it's good to see it go out with a bang among the guilds.

After the jump, discover the full list of nominees and some stray observations…

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Oscar Volley: Best Cinematography Predictions

Team Experience will be discussing each Oscar category as we head into the precursors. Here's Christopher James and Eric Blume...

BABYLON

CHRIS:  The Cinematography category has recently skewed heavily towards Best Picture nominees. Years like 2012 - 2015 would often have 2-3 nominees from outside the Best Picture race. However, the past three years have only had one non-Best Picture nominee crack the lineup (The Tragedy of Macbeth, News of the World, and The Lighthouse respectively). Sensing this trend, I'm starting my predictions by looking at the most likely overlaps between Picture and Cinematography this year. Janusz Kaminski is in good position for lensing The Fabelmans. Not only is it the presumed Best Picture frontrunner, but Kaminski is a two-time winner who has recently scored nominations for Spielberg projects like West Side Story, Lincoln and War Horse.

Bigger is often better, so I'm considering the other epics in the Best Picture race. Even with mixed reactions, Babylon is a large beast and Linus Sandgren has an Oscar for another film with director Damien Chazelle, La La Land...

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Oscar Volley: Best Makeup... or is it "Best Prosthetics"?

Team Experience will be discussing each Oscar category as we head into the precursors. Here's Nathaniel and Elisa to discuss Makeup... 

Colin Farrell and... Colin Farrell?

NATHANIEL: Elisa, let's start with a question: Do you think this category should be split into two: Best Makeup Effects AND Best Makeup and Hairstyling? As it stands now, the latter never gets a fair shake. If you do incredible things with glamour and character design but don't offer anything in the prosthetic department, chances are slim to none that you'll be nominated!

For example I think it's pretty clear that Elvis, The Batman, and The Whale will be competitive primarily because they each bury one key character in prosthetics until they're almost unrecognizable. But why? It always feels a bit like showing off. Why hire a famous actor to play a role if you don't actually want their famous face? This bugs me most in the case of The Batman but it might be because I relish looking at Colin Farrell's face... and if you're going to deny me that, don't promise me Colin 'Feckin' Farrell...

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"The Batman" leads the 2022 Saturn Award Nominations

by Nathaniel R

Nominations have been announced for the 50th annual Saturn Awards, which honor genre films and television. This year's nomination leader is The Batman (2022) though Nightmare Alley (2021) also showed up in a lot of places. While the Saturns have often made questionable choices in the past their expanded nominee lists these days -- divvying things up into even more subdivisions and then giving each category six or seven nomines prevent us from really having much to say about them since they nominate everything now, case in point the first category after the jump... 

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