Christmas today and Christmas back then...(at the movies)

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE.

This picture has nothing to do with the post but it's Nicole Kidman three Christmases ago. Cheers!

Years ago it was decided that we couldn't be celebrating movie anniversaries with utter randomness at the Film Experience so we committed to 10th, 25th, 50th, and 75th, and 100th parties. We stray often, especially if we're busy on "projects" like a Smackdown or what not, so this decision was useless and we'll probably drop it next year. Broader movie culture wouldn't play along anyway, celebrating all sorts of odd anniveraries (17th! 36th!) in order to just keep celebrating the same things over and over again. This is all a long way of getting around to the conceit of this post (GET ON WITH IT) which is

On this Christmas day in showbiz history, what was going on...

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The Oscars and World War I

by Cláudio Alves

Tomorrow we might witness Oscar history being made with the crowning of the very first non-English Best Picture winner. Of course, it is just as likely that we'll see history repeating itself. If Parasite falters and 1917 claims the top prize, that's another muscular war film joining the ranks of the Best Picture pantheon. More specifically, a World War I epic of great technical ingenuity and daring, a project not too unlike the original Best Picture winner, Wings. From 1927 to 2019, movies with similar historical settings have found great success with the Academy, though World War I stories were more regularly found on the big screen when that conflict was still an actual memory for the living. 

For the Oscars' first decade, many war pictures won plaudits. For a time Hollywood let go of the heroic romantics of Wings and adopted a more melancholy view of recent History, with antiwar sentiment as well as complicated class studies that saw a broken society through the prism of war. All that would change with the arrival of World War II. The newer global nightmare readily took the place of the old war in the Academy's eyes, first as propaganda and then as more ponderous retrospective. To this day, people still joke that a sure way to win an Oscar is to do a World War II drama.

But back to the first World War. Here are the 12 Best Picture nominees that have told stories from that global conflict...

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Take Three: Toby Kebbell

Craig here with this week's Take Three. Today: Toby Kebbell

Take One: War Horse (2011)
There’s a plethora of male British thespian talent in Steven Spielberg’s equine weepy War Horse: Benedict Cumberbatch, Peter Mullen, Tom Hiddleston, Eddie Marsan, Liam Cunningham and David Thewlis all add their tuppence-worth to the tale of Joey the one-stallion battalion and his toilsome travels through WWI. But Kebbell’s scenes, late in the film, were among the most subtly affecting. [SPOILER] Kebbel's 'Geordie Soldier' does more than keep watch from the trenches. He risks his life to free Joey from the barbed wire he’s trapped in, thus saving his life and eventually reuniting him with his real owner Albert (Jeremy Irvine). Waving the white flag, Kebbell’s brave soldier crosses the battle lines into No Man’s Land. A German soldier with a handy pair of wire-cutters joins him to further Joey’s wartime journey. (The scene, featuring stunning photography, was apparently achieved in only three takes.)

Kebbell’s even gets the honor of verbalising the film’s title:

You’re a war horse... what a strange beast you are”

Like all the character actors in War Horse Kebbell's screen time is brief...

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Curio: Oscar Unsheets, a Final Roundup

Alexa here.  Even though my excitement over the Oscar nominees this year is a bit thin, the films are enlivened for me when I see them through the eyes of other artists. (Another reason the Academy should follow the lead of the BAFTAs and hire some illustrators already). In last week's Curio I posted some of the more interesting unsheets (a creative term for fan poster art) popping up on the web for Best Picture nominees The Help, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Moneyball, and The Descendants.  Without further ado, here are the best unsheets I've spied for the remaining nominees Hugo, War Horse, The Tree of Life, Midnight in Paris, and The Artist. Happy Oscar all!

The Artist by Gideon Slife.

The Artist by Hunter Langston.

The Artist by Ramin Kohanteb.

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Great Art Direction... According to Art Directors

Just as soon as we reached the end of the Critical Pile-Up, we hit Guild Mania. Awards season is a chain leading us to Oscar. Like SAG, the various guilds don't have as much overlap with Oscar as people think. Generally speaking the size of the Academy (just under 6,000 last I heard) wouldn't even fill one of the guilds and that includes all types and not just one profession. But it's still quite interesting to see what various artists think of their peers -- it's especially interesting when they look beyond Oscar buzz, which they sadly do less of than they should.

So what did the production designers get excited about this year... at least enough to scribble it's name on a ballot? Let's see...

I'm sorry but how PERFECT is that painting for Celia Foote's home?

PERIOD FILM
THE ARTIST Laurence Bennett
HUGO Dante Ferretti
THE HELP Mark Ricker
ANONYMOUS Sebastian Krawinkel
TINKER TAYLOR SOLDIER SPY Maria Djurkovic

This is the category people tend to get most excited about given that it's the one that most closely corresponds to Oscar's way of thinking. Some are already griping that War Horse missed the list but doesn't the cozy pretty storybook look scream "fantasy" rather than "period" -- perhaps they couldn't choose where to put it? Even the barb wire battleground looks less flesh-tearing tangible than gothically spooky movie fantastical. I understand what the film is going for but the choice sometimes feel odd -- especially all the coy looking away at the horrors of war, though that's a directorial thing and has nothing to do with the sets.

On the other hand it's not like Hugo and Anonymous prefer realism to fantasy and they're present so let's move on. 

Nice to see Djurkovic score here as her consistent but rangey interiors work is the absolute best think about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy -- all those sad beige boxed-in prisons stuffed with information, from cubicles to shafts to bedrooms to libraries to board rooms.

Great Looking Period Films They Didn't Nominate: 
A Dangerous Method, Jane Eyre, The Tree of Life, and W.E. 

Good luck finding what you're looking for in the haystacks of information in "Tinker Tailor"

Fantasy and Contemporary Films after the jump...

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