OVP: Best Makeup (2010)
The Nominees Were...
Adrien Morot, Barney's Version
Edouard F. Henriques, Gregory Funk, and Yoland Toussieng, The Way Back
Rick Baker and Dave Elsey, The Wolf Man
My Thoughts: The Makeup contenders of 2010 all seem to have borrowed a different aspect of what the Academy really and truly enjoys in the category. The Academy generally seems to favor prosthetics, old age makeup, and slowly making beautiful movie stars deteriorate and watch their iconic faces shattered into ugliness. These three films all tend to favor one of those draws, so let's begin with the one on the left, The Way Back.
I've already had the pleasure of reviewing all three of these films (none of which I particularly cared for, so maybe pleasure is the wrong word, but I've already moved on so the word stays), so I'm not going to dissect the plots too much of these films (feel free to click any of the reviews above to get a better sense of the movies and whether you should be adding them to your Netflix list). Instead, we'll just focus on the category at hand. What's impressive about The Way Back, and where it succeeds where the other two, in my opinion, fail, is in the continued subtlety of the work onscreen. The film, taking place in the harsh wilderness of Siberia and the deserts of Mongolia and China, shows the physical deterioration of the characters onscreen, and has a realism that's clearly lacking in The Wolf Man (there's no such thing as werewolves) and a technical panache that's just not there for Barney's Version. I keep hearkening back to the weathered face of Ed Harris and the way that they slowly add crags, blood, and sores to each of the characters as they move onto death's door. It's not the flashiest of work, but it's also grounded in fact, so I have to tip my hat to it. The film is also the best movie of the three, which doesn't matter for the purposes of my vote (it's only about the technical aspects of the category), but it's at least worth calling out to potential viewers.
Barney's Version, on the other hand, doesn't have that "wow" factor, at least not in the same way. There's always a level of success when an actor manages to age backwards and forwards onscreen without looking totally out-of-place, but I feel like almost every film does that, and does it well at this point. Dick Smith's School of Makeup has been doing this for decades, and it doesn't pop in an iconic way like his Amadeus or The Godfather did. Here, the focus is on Giamatti, and quite frankly, the younger Giamatti never appears young-they probably should have gone with a fresher-faced actor for the role if they wanted the Makeup to succeed on a better level. The film also transforms Dustin Hoffman and Rosamund Pike, but I left the film feeling very "eh" about the effects that were used, and thinking this was the biggest dud of the three Makeup nominations.
The final film on the list has by far the flashiest of the Makeup effects, and it comes courtesy of one of Oscar's favorites, Rick Baker. As part of this project, one of the things I'm really tracking is how often, or if at all, I honor Oscar's favorites like Sandy Powell, Colleen Atwood, John Williams, and of course Baker, who has an astounding seven Academy Awards amongst his eleven nominations (that's a win rate of over 63%!!!!). Since Baker failed to be nominated in 2011, this is our first of his eleven write-ups (though I suspect he'll be nominated again in the future, most likely as soon as 2014 when Maleficent hits theaters), and I have to say that I was impressed by his work in the film.
This isn't to say that I was impressed by the film itself, which is dreadful and puts two Oscar winners into a ham-fisted feud of bad acting, but Baker and Elsey succeed where this category counts. To quote Cate Blanchett when she saw the clips at the Oscars, it is "gross," but it's also damned impressive the way the prosthetics grow, move, and seem like-life. The movie borrows heavily from Baker's previous work in An American Werewolf in London, but that doesn't stop him from using advances, making a more lifelike appearance, in particular with del Toro's monster. I keep marveling at the hands of the creature-it's the first thing you think of when you think of the movie, which is odd considering with a werewolf it's always the face that's the focus, but the fingernails, the lines in the palms, they work brilliantly in instilling a sense of fear in the audience without going first for the face. It's an impressive feat, though perhaps not surprising when you realize the pro behind the work.
I've already had the pleasure of reviewing all three of these films (none of which I particularly cared for, so maybe pleasure is the wrong word, but I've already moved on so the word stays), so I'm not going to dissect the plots too much of these films (feel free to click any of the reviews above to get a better sense of the movies and whether you should be adding them to your Netflix list). Instead, we'll just focus on the category at hand. What's impressive about The Way Back, and where it succeeds where the other two, in my opinion, fail, is in the continued subtlety of the work onscreen. The film, taking place in the harsh wilderness of Siberia and the deserts of Mongolia and China, shows the physical deterioration of the characters onscreen, and has a realism that's clearly lacking in The Wolf Man (there's no such thing as werewolves) and a technical panache that's just not there for Barney's Version. I keep hearkening back to the weathered face of Ed Harris and the way that they slowly add crags, blood, and sores to each of the characters as they move onto death's door. It's not the flashiest of work, but it's also grounded in fact, so I have to tip my hat to it. The film is also the best movie of the three, which doesn't matter for the purposes of my vote (it's only about the technical aspects of the category), but it's at least worth calling out to potential viewers.
Barney's Version, on the other hand, doesn't have that "wow" factor, at least not in the same way. There's always a level of success when an actor manages to age backwards and forwards onscreen without looking totally out-of-place, but I feel like almost every film does that, and does it well at this point. Dick Smith's School of Makeup has been doing this for decades, and it doesn't pop in an iconic way like his Amadeus or The Godfather did. Here, the focus is on Giamatti, and quite frankly, the younger Giamatti never appears young-they probably should have gone with a fresher-faced actor for the role if they wanted the Makeup to succeed on a better level. The film also transforms Dustin Hoffman and Rosamund Pike, but I left the film feeling very "eh" about the effects that were used, and thinking this was the biggest dud of the three Makeup nominations.
The final film on the list has by far the flashiest of the Makeup effects, and it comes courtesy of one of Oscar's favorites, Rick Baker. As part of this project, one of the things I'm really tracking is how often, or if at all, I honor Oscar's favorites like Sandy Powell, Colleen Atwood, John Williams, and of course Baker, who has an astounding seven Academy Awards amongst his eleven nominations (that's a win rate of over 63%!!!!). Since Baker failed to be nominated in 2011, this is our first of his eleven write-ups (though I suspect he'll be nominated again in the future, most likely as soon as 2014 when Maleficent hits theaters), and I have to say that I was impressed by his work in the film.
This isn't to say that I was impressed by the film itself, which is dreadful and puts two Oscar winners into a ham-fisted feud of bad acting, but Baker and Elsey succeed where this category counts. To quote Cate Blanchett when she saw the clips at the Oscars, it is "gross," but it's also damned impressive the way the prosthetics grow, move, and seem like-life. The movie borrows heavily from Baker's previous work in An American Werewolf in London, but that doesn't stop him from using advances, making a more lifelike appearance, in particular with del Toro's monster. I keep marveling at the hands of the creature-it's the first thing you think of when you think of the movie, which is odd considering with a werewolf it's always the face that's the focus, but the fingernails, the lines in the palms, they work brilliantly in instilling a sense of fear in the audience without going first for the face. It's an impressive feat, though perhaps not surprising when you realize the pro behind the work.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Saturn Awards, which honor Sci-Fi, Action, and Horror (though they get very bendy on what constitutes all three), chose The Wolf Man as their winner, with Splice, Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, Let Me In, and Repo Men (I saw this movie on a date, and it had to have been one of the worst choices ever...the movie not the date...though in hindsight neither were my finest hour) losing out with only a nomination to show. The BAFTA Awards, the most prestigious movie Makeup award after the Oscars, gave the trophy to Alice in Wonderland (considering its relative strength in other categories, it is truly surprising that this film didn't score over Barney's Version amongst the nominees for the Oscar), with Harry Potter, The King's Speech, Made in Dagenham, and Black Swan getting runner-up status (BAFTA and Oscar didn't matchup at all on their respective nominees). And when I can I'll track down the bakeoff finalists from the Oscars (those that were selected as finalists for an Academy Award nomination, a tradition that's used only in some categories and is made public for some reason), and in this case I found them, so the other four that got within Oscar's reach were: Jonah Hex (I don't remember it either), True Grit, Alice in Wonderland, and The Wrestler.
Films I Would Have Nominated: As I've said before, the focus of this project isn't about the films I would have nominated. For starters, while I can watch (or at least attempt to watch, film preservation-willing) all of the nominees of a given year, seeing all of the films of a year is an impossible feat, as I regret I have only one lifetime to give for my cinema, and therefore I can never give a perfect picture of what I would have done. Secondly, the ultimate goal of this project is to see if I make the same sorts of mistakes as the Oscars (snubbing major stars, over-rewarding certain people, etc) so I have to work within the confines of the nominations. However, it would be foolish to not at least poke this bear a bit, and so I'll mention that it was a damn shame that Oscar oftentimes overlooks the eye-popping for the "most" with the nominations here. In particular, I felt that the multiple transformations of Natalie Portman in Black Swan (the wings and the white face both spring instantly to mind) was very much deserving of merit. I've never understood why the Oscars doesn't recognize that part of what makes Makeup great is the occasional less-is-more variety; if someone can create something truly iconic, and it's iconic even within the span of a few months, it's worth giving a nomination and even a statue as recognition.
Oscar's Choice: Oscar chose to give Rick Baker his seventh trophy, probably by a rather large margin, though I suspect Barney's Version triumphed over The Way Back thanks to the strong push of its director.
My Choice: For me, I've also got to go with The Wolf Man. I get that there's a time and place for subtle, and I may on some days wish that The Way Back would get the trophy, but when all is said and done, I hearken back to the makeup work, and the way that it heightens every element of a terrible movie in The Wolf Man more than I do the other two, and since I'm going backwards, I give Rick Baker my first trophy.
And now, of course, I welcome you to discuss in the comments-of the three films, what movie deserved the trophy? What films should have been nominated?
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