OVP: Art Direction (2004)

OVP: Best Art Direction (2004)

The Nominees Were...

Dante Ferretti & Francesca Lo Schiavo, The Aviator

Gemma Jackson & Trisha Edwards, Finding Neverland

Rick Heinrichs & Cheryl Carasik, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

Anthony Pratt & Celia Bobak, The Phantom of the Opera

Aline Bonetto, A Very Long Engagement

My Thoughts: Today we will finish off the "visual" tech categories with a look at the sets that adorned our cinematic dreams in 2004.  I want to start out, right away, by mentioning that I am genuinely excited to look at these movies.  While the films themselves vary in quality, this is possibly the best lineup of category-specific nominees that Oscar assembled in 2004, and as a result we have (while not my exact lineup) a list of movies that all deserve a conversation about their work here, though we're going to start out with the film that finally turned Dante Ferretti from bridesmaid to bride.

It's hard to imagine now, considering he's a three-time winner, but there was once a time that Dante Ferretti numbered alongside people like Thomas Newman or Kevin O'Connell as a perennial tech nominee who had never won.  The Aviator was his 7th nomination (and fourth for a film with Martin Scorsese), and it was the movie that finally put him over-the-top.  It's easy to see why.  This is one of those rare cases of "most" and "best" art direction intersecting, as Ferretti & Lo Schiavo's designs recreate a meticulous Hollywood glamour while giving in to the era's opulence.  The true passion, though, might be the way that they bring all of Hughes' planes to life, all having their own idiosyncrasies, and bringing alive the pioneering flying contraptions.

Similar to Best Costume Design, the work in Lemony Snicket is challenging to recreate mostly because it doesn't apply to a specific era.  The books don't give much guidance on where or when we are (other than "steampunk Britain"), but Heinrichs & Carasik run with the look, creating Count Olaf's & Aunt Josephine's houses as both reflections of their characters, as well as messy, improbable creations that could only exist in Daniel Handler's cheeky imagination.  The movie's other sets feel shortchanged, if only because the three guardians' houses are supposed to take up the bulk of our collective purview, but that's nitpicking-this is fun design work.

Finding Neverland might have benefited a bit more from that level of imagination. While not an adaptation of the JM Barrie novel, it could use more winks to the source material the biopic is supposedly inspiring.  The bed-jumping room is cute, but it just doesn't feel like quite enough amidst a series of plain, alabaster drawing rooms.  Still, the theaters are lovely, and this isn't bad work-it's just in the company of some films that are shooting for the moon, and feels a bit vacant by comparison.

I know that this might be a minority opinion (I've read some say that Phantom of the Opera's art direction is "too much" or "gaudy"), but I had more fun with it than others, and certainly more than I did with the collective movie.  The auction house is properly gloomy, the graveyard in the end is over-the-top in a "this will inspire Twilight in a few years" sort of way, and the giant opera house germinated a lot of inspired motifs, particularly the catacombs below the building.  All-in-all, this is my favorite of Phantom's Oscar nominations, and the one that feels the most worthy of the OVP.

A Very Long Engagement is in a similar boat where this is its most worthy nomination, and a better character than the film itself is really providing.  I love how every house feels like it's actually lived in, with it clean but overstuffed, like people reluctant to throw away anything, but who don't have enough storage for all of their knick-knacks.  The library, as well, is daunting & the kind of place you want to explore, and lends itself to one of the movie's better moments.  The prisons are the only real disappointment, with them feeling too empty & without character, but this is a small complaint-overall the film rarely feels like a staged set & more transportive than we would assume based on the rest of the film's attitude to World War II.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Art Directors Guild in 2004 broke up its nominees into Contemporary and Period/Fantasy.  Only one of these really sticks with Oscar, so while Period/Fantasy had time for almost all of Oscar's pets (they gave the trophy to Lemony Snicket, but otherwise just subbed The Incredibles in place of A Very Long Engagement), Contemporary honored a diverse group of Collateral, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Million Dollar Baby, The Life Aquatic, and the victorious The Terminal.  BAFTA went almost completely on its own with Production Design (BAFTA in 2004 was making a statement, it seems), with The Aviator winning over Finding Neverland, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, House of Flying Daggers, and Vera Drake.  In terms of who was sixth place, I have to assume it was some tossup between House of Flying Daggers (which feels like it was close in a few Oscar categories) and Troy (which made it for Costume Design, and therefore was definitely in the conversation here).

Films I Would Have Nominated: I'm honestly so impressed with Oscar, that I don't really want to complain much.  I will say, though, that House of Flying Daggers not making it was a mistake-that movie has unbelievable set design (both indoor & out), and perfectly frames the film.  I'd have also liked some mention of the claustrophobic bunkers of Downfall, but considering that film made virtually no impression anywhere else, that would have been a tougher sell with AMPAS.

Oscar’s Choice: A closer race than one would have expected against Lemony Snicket, but Dante Ferretti gets his trophy.

My Choice: I'll also give this to Ferretti, getting his second OVP statue from me, over Lemony Snicket.  Following them would be Very Long Engagement, Phantom, and Neverland in a (respectable) fifth.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Do we all love the Old Hollywood worlds of Aviator best, or does someone want to make the case for a different field?  Why do you think it took AMPAS so long to give Dante Ferretti a trophy?  And who do you think was in sixth place here?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2004: Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2004

Past Best Art Direction Contests: 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019

OVP: The Blue Veil (1951)

Film: The Blue Veil (1951)

Stars: Jane Wyman, Charles Laughton, Joan Blondell, Richard Karlson, Agnes Moorehead, Audrey Totter, Natalie Wood, Vivian Vance, Dan O'Herlihy

Director: Curtis Bernhardt

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actress-Jane Wyman, Supporting Actress-Joan Blondell)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

The Oscar Viewing Project, which drives maybe 70-80% of the reviews we do each week, is a project doomed-to-fail.  I've talked about this many times, but there are a number of lost films that were nominated for Oscars, and a few more that are next-to-impossible to see anywhere even if they aren't technically "lost."  But then there are other films that are just next-to-impossible to catch despite clearly having cache, and while I'm still brimming with films that I need to see that are readily available on streaming platforms (or even on my counter from DVD Netflix) to watch, I'm aware of these movies & make a point of seeing them as soon as they are made available to me.  By chance, a connection on Twitter turned me on to The Blue Veil recently, one of the most elusive films nominated for a major Academy Award out there.  Never released on commercial home video & never put on TCM for some reason, The Blue Veil has remained an enigma to me.  It was nominated for two major acting Oscars, and the cast list-just look at it!  Jane Wyman, Charles Laughton, Natalie Wood-these are big name stars, the kinds that usually (and especially in conjunction with Oscar) demand at least a DVD release of the movie, if not regular screening on TCM.  Thankfully, I caught the movie now, and while it wasn't good (we'll get into it), it's finally off of my "how am I ever going to see this?!?" list.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on LouLou (Wyman), a young war widow whose baby dies in infancy while she's still in the hospital after birth, and as a result she must take a job as a nursemaid to a widowed industrialist (played by Laughton).  She grows to love the job, but not Laughton's Frederick, so after he proposes to another woman (played by Vance-and how weird is it seeing Vivian Vance without Lucille Ball?) she's heartbroken to give up the child, but moves on to another job.  The film continues to explore these relationships that she has, at one point nearly getting married, but ultimately never finding love again or having her own children.  Toward the end of the film, she falls particularly hard for a young boy named Tony, whose parents abandon him & she raises him as her own for a number of years.  When they return, she attempts to kidnap the boy (seeing him as hers now), but ultimately must give back the child to the couple.  The final scenes hearken to a Mr. Holland's Opus type of situation, where LouLou, now broke & unable to have children to look after anymore, sees all of her former wards grown up, starts a relationship again with an adult Tony, and is asked to be the nanny to the children of one of her former kids, thus finally feeling like she has a real family.

The movie is saccharine to the point of being insufferable.  It's not clear at any point why LouLou, at the beginning young & attractive, doesn't seem capable of finding a man, or really a declarative sentence.  Wyman is not an actress I've ever truly enjoyed in a film (seriously-I don't think Oscar has ever crushed so hard on a performer with so little charisma), and here she's particularly bad as LouLou, never understanding what is driving this mousy, boring, saintlike woman's dreams or desires.  Wyman is downright bad in some scenes, and while you might cry in her big speech trying to win back Tony (surely where she won her nomination), it's just because it's being manipulative, not because it's any good.  Thankfully Wyman lost the Oscar, but she won the Golden Globe so it's not inconceivable she might have taken the Best Actress trophy.  And she won that Golden Globe for this one-dimensional piece-of-work over Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire, potentially the greatest performance in film history.  Let that sink for a second.

The film won two nominations, so I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Joan Blondell here.  Blondell is cited over a slew of brief parts (Moorehead & Laughton have similarly-sized roles) as a working single mother (she's an actress) who doesn't have time to raise her daughter (played by Wood).  Blondell is not actively bad like Wyman is-she has spark in her performance, and it's easy to see in a sea of vanilla why she stood out.  That said, there's nothing to this role other than sheer charisma...we don't see a lot of what's driving Blondell's character, or if she actually wants to be an important part of her daughter's life.  There's room for interesting commentary here-her Annie's views of what a mother should be are different than LouLou's, and in a different era this would've been worth asking whether our sympathies & support should reside with her rather than Saint Wyman.  Alas, The Blue Veil is not a complicated enough movie to consider such questions.  Considering its historical nature in the careers of some of its high-profile stars, though, it should definitely be more available for home screening than it currently is.

OVP: Lady of Burlesque (1943)

Film: Lady of Burlesque (1943)

Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Michael O'Shea, J. Edward Bromberg, Iris Adrian, Victoria Faust, Stephanie Bachelor, Frank Conroy

Director: William A. Wellman

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Trying to understand the concept of celebrity of eras you didn't live through is occasionally difficult to achieve.  Obviously for the past 150 years or so actors have been a mainstay of celebrity gossip (and before that, royalty & the nobility took that position), with the advent of magazines & a widely-read newspaper industry (and later, tabloid journalism, television, & the internet) it wasn't just status or ability that made people famous-sometimes they just happened to be famous-for-being-famous.  This didn't start with Kim Kardashian & Paris Hilton.  Brenda Frazier, Doris Duke, & the Gabor Sisters all became national obsessions for a time through their tragic glamour (and extensive love lives).  But one figure I can't quite get a handle on is Gypsy Rose Lee.  Obviously most well-known today for the Stephen Sondheim-penned musical Gypsy, Lee led a provocative, and frequently public, life as a well-known exotic dancer, and at one point a mystery novelist.  The first of her books was The G-String Murders, about a group of strippers being offed by a mysterious serial killer.  Though shocking for the time, the novel was optioned by United Artists, renamed Lady of Burlesque, and is our film today.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Dixie Daisy (Stanwyck), a headliner at a burlesque theater, though most of the film focuses less on the on-stage performances & more about what's happening offstage, namely catfights between the women & suddenly a series of shocking & grizzly murders of the dancers, one of whom is found with her g-string tied around her neck.  Everyone is a suspect, including Dixie, who is being courted throughout the film by mid-level comic Biff (O'Shea).  As the film goes on, we find out that one of the stagehands (Conroy), driven mad by being demeaned by the dancers (and angry that the opera house he once worked out is now a house of ill-repute) was the killer & nearly offs Dixie before Biff & her friends save her.  At the end, Dixie, despite claiming she'd never marry a comic, runs off to elope with Biff, the day saved.

The movie is oddly-paced, and is probably only interesting if you're a big Stanwyck fan or are interested in curiosities.  Made in the post-Code era, the film gets around the bulk of the more scandalous aspects of the picture (one of the women does, in fact, get strangled with her g-string), by largely implying things while Stanwyck's Dixie remains pretty upright.  Clearly she's not meant to be an innocent lamb, but she's still sturdy Barbara Stanwyck, as American as the red-white-and-blue.  This causes confusion though as the movie is less interested in seeing these women as more than caricatures, and the two murdered women are the ones that the script most heavily implies "have it coming."  Combined with a left field twist on the murder (where we find out after-the-fact that the murderer was the grandfather of one of the victims, whom he was ashamed was involved in burlesque), and it just feels too dated for my tastes.

The film's Oscar nomination is uninspired.  The film has musical connections (Stanwyck even "sings" on screen several times), but the score isn't particularly noteworthy or impressive, and I dare you to hum even one line of it five minutes after seeing the picture.  In the 1940's, the Best Score category was a smorgasbord, with virtually every studio getting multiple nominations (this was something we only saw in the music categories), sometimes 20 films in one lineup, which is why something like Lady of Burlesque, an otherwise forgettable picture, gets its due.

OVP: Cinematography (2004)

 OVP: Best Cinematography (2004)

The Nominees Were...

Robert Richardson, The Aviator

Zhao Xiaoding, House of Flying Daggers

Caleb Deschanel, The Passion of the Christ

John Mathieson, The Phantom of the Opera

Bruno Delbonnel, A Very Long Engagement

My Thoughts: We move into my favorite tech category (possibly some days my favorite Oscars category, period), Best Cinematography.  As you might be starting to realize, the 2004 Oscars was a relatively staid affair.  The films cited weren't necessarily bad, and in fact like you'll see here, most of them were pretty good choices all things considered, but overall the year wasn't as strong as it normally was.  This is sometimes verboten on social media to say (people tend to get really passionate about their favorites in a given year, even if some forest-for-the-trees clarity is needed), but sometimes movie years aren't as inspired as others, and for me that's 2004.  Still, this branch's work in 2004 is proof that you can still make a solid lineup out of a less inspired year, as we have five films that (while not all my picks) would get a thumbs up on their camerawork.

We'll start with House of Flying Daggers, the one film in this bunch getting its sole Oscar nomination.  House of Flying Daggers was, in 2004, one of my favorite movies, and a film that quickly became a staple in my household.  The cinematography is a big part of that.  Zhao Xiaoding is in love with the film's shifting color palette, oftentimes using the film's overwhelming coloring (specifically shades of green) to inform the lighting decisions, making the film feel like it's more mythical than it already is (we're talking about a cascade of perfectly choreographed flying bamboo, so it's definitely a heightened reality).  The result is a gorgeous picture, one that feels frame-worthy in virtually every shot.

The Passion of the Christ, as we've already discussed, is a movie of deep controversy & one that thankfully didn't show up in some of the top-line categories (considering its box office & that Mel Gibson was controversial but not a public pariah quite yet, it was totally plausible that this might happen).  You might think that nominating Deschanel (a favorite of this branch) was just a gut-check thing, but I honestly think this is some of his best work.  The movie, especially early scenes (like in the Garden of Gethsemane) are brilliantly shot, looking like rich, indulgent Renaissance paintings.  Deschanel adds some cinematic reaches to Gibson's gory picture, making the film both deeply real but also adding an artistic care to the proceedings that Gibson's later films would lack.

The Aviator's Robert Richardson, like Deschanel, is an AMPAS favorite, so it was inevitable he'd get cited for a Best Picture frontrunner.  However, again, this is a figure who is adding something special to the way he frames this movie, particularly DiCaprio's Howard Hughes.  Hughes is always slightly askew in the film, just out of frame or shot from an angle in a number of different moments of the film, as if the audience isn't catching exactly what's happening to this mad genius.  Richardson's choices in color reflect this to some degree, relying on blue and especially teal to underscore the hands-off approach of Howard Hughes, making sure we understand (like the women in his life) that he cannot be fully touched, fully loved, without taking you down with him.

Color is at the center of A Very Long Engagement, specifically a shade of golden yellow that dominates the entire picture.  The movie isn't ugly, and there are moments this works, but of all of the films here that rely too steadily on a color to inform the mood, this is the least successful, partially because it's an omnipresent lens throughout the picture.  The sun-dappled French hills might be a good place for such a hue, but then we have it infiltrating interior shots & Paris's busy streets, and suddenly the effect of the lighting starts to evaporate-it's just a filter, not something that feels like it's trying to guide the audience (or bring dimension to the story).

The Phantom of the Opera is a movie that does its homework, I'll give it that.  The effect of going from a grey-stained present back to a brightly-colored past is a neat trick, and the way that it borrows from the Lon Chaney sequence with similar camera angles from that 1925 film when the characters are on the roof doesn't go unnoticed (Phantom didn't begin its cinematic tellings with Andrew Lloyd Webber, after all), but the rest of the movie lacks that sort of creativity, and the camerawork is not inventive or anything other than "serviceable" to a too-long picture.  Mathieson isn't really a "favorite" of the Academy (this is only his second nomination to date), but it reads like the kind of nomination that happens for an AMPAS beloved since it's so middle-of-the-road.

Other Precursor Contenders: The American Society of Cinematographers goes with just five nominations, so it's frequently similar to Oscar, but weirdly not in 2004.  The ASC went with A Very Long Engagement as its winner, and only kept Aviator & Passion of these nominations, adding Collateral & Ray as the final two contenders.  BAFTA also did its own thing in 2004, giving Collateral the trophy over Aviator, Finding Neverland, House of Flying Daggers, and The Motorcycle Diaries.  Sixth place seems like it was surely Collateral given the precursors, and considering the cameraman on it was Dion Beebe (a beloved AMPAS figure) I'm stunned he didn't get into the actual lineup.

Films I Would Have Nominated: Like I said, this isn't a bad lineup-there's not a true stinker in the bunch here.  That said, I would have definitely have found room for at least a couple other films.  Probably at the top of that list would be Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education, a movie that pays homage to 1940's film noir but with Pedro's indulgent camera to guide it.  I also would've included the daring leaps that Alfonso Cuaron's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban would take with the franchise, giving us a gorgeous lighting that would soon become the hallmark of the series (say what you will about the picture's, but they always looked good after this picture).
Oscar's Choice: With Beebe not an option, the Academy went with the Aviator technical sweep & gave this trophy to Richardson.

My Choice: There's not really another option for me-Flying Daggers was not just the best film in this lineup, but it was one of my earliest introductions to what great cinematography could be.  Apologies to Deschanel, in second place, who is probably out any chance at an OVP statue if he can't win for his best work.  Aviator, Very Long Engagement, and Phantom follow behind.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Is everyone sticking to my corner with Flying Daggers, or did I just piss off an army of Robert Richardson fans?  Are we all kind of glad that the overuse of filters from the mid-aughts (I blame Clint Eastwood) is finally over?  And why was it that Dion Beebe couldn't get into the lineup here?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2004: Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2004

Past Best Cinematography Contests: 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019

Why Gerrymandering & DC Statehood Should Be the Democrats' Focus

President Joe Biden (D-DE)

I have been an active Democrat since before I could vote, and with that comes a certain set of expectations & frustrations.  I actively support most of the policies of the party, and like a lot of Millennial/Gen Z Democrats, I'm to the left of what the party is generally doing.  I'm someone who has their pet issues (I am particularly left-leaning on equal rights issues & climate change in particular), and issues I'm more ambivalent toward (to save my mentions, I'll skip name-checking here), but I'm also deeply pragmatic because I spend so much of my time with elections analysis, so I know how difficult it is to get the stars to align & actually make meaningful change.  

Being a pragmatic Democrat sometimes comes with pitfalls, and usually means you're fighting a losing battle when you have online conversations.  I know, for example, that the people who want to "primary Joe Manchin" are also the people who have no concept of how tenuous a Senate majority like the one we have right now is, and how difficult it would be to forge a majority in the next 2-6 years without someone like Joe Manchin as a key component in it.  I know that wins are made on the margins, and oftentimes in unsexy races.  For all of the talk about the Beto's or Jaime Harrison's, it's really the Jacky Rosen's or John Hickenlooper's, the boring backbenchers, who end up getting you to an actual Senate majority.

But most of all I know that Democrats oftentimes screw up when they have power by expecting the moon-and-stars from their politicians when in reality most legislation is a game of increments.  I've been seeing that in recent weeks when it comes to conversations about the Covid relief bill, HR-1, and the filibuster reform, and so I wanted to share what I think Democrats get wrong in these conversations, so that we can have tangible focus on what actually is the most important, rather than just focusing on trying to get everything & in the process forgetting what the most important things were.

This is the approach, after all, that Republicans take.  Mitch McConnell knew that he couldn't accomplish everything in the two years that the GOP had full control of the government from 2017-19, and so he prioritized.  McConnell's goals were simple-tax cuts, deregulation, & conservative justices.  You'll notice that while the Republicans (specifically then-candidate Donald Trump) ran on immigration, abortion, & healthcare reform, that's not really what they did in office.  All three of those things were messes, and McConnell knew that they would be-it's why while he probably wanted to get those reforms done, he knew the biggest longterm bang for his buck was judicial nominations (as those conservatives can practice law for decades in the higher courts), and tax cuts/deregulation, which are difficult to undo.  Once the GOP lost in 2018, he wasn't able to get to the rest, but he came out of those two years with his three top priorities-a success for the politician.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)

I'm not going to sit here and tell Democrats what the most important issues will be (that will vary by person to person), but what I will tell them is that expecting everything at once is impossible or everything at all, on any given issue, is impossible with the current Congress.  If you wanted more liberal legislation, we should've worked harder to elect Sara Gideon & Theresa Greenfield last year.  Compromise will be key, and knowing what the most important elements of a bill are, to solve the problem at hand, is important so you don't give it up chasing after something else.

This was clear with the Covid relief bill.  The reality is with Covid specifically, the biggest problems facing the nation over the pandemic were around how to rollout the vaccine, ensure it's affordable & available to all (as quickly as possible), and how to help those who were unemployed & underemployed by extending unemployment insurance.  The bill did that-it made unemployment benefits go through September, made parts of it non-taxable, provided billions for testing & vaccines, and provided loads of additional benefits to those most impacted to help with small business debts, rental assistance, & energy assistance (for unpaid utilities).  In addition, it included a $1400-per-person stimulus payment and helps to end child poverty by expanding the parameters of the child tax laws.  That's a big deal, and it's a good bill.  

You would've thought that Democrats would be shouting from the rooftops would be ecstatic, but they all collectively on social media seemed to be disappointed with the bill, both because it didn't include a minimum wage increase and because the stimulus payments weren't large enough.  These issues, though, were going to be a tougher sell than we could get in an emergency pandemic bill with a clear ticking clock (the longer the vaccines weren't sent out, the more economic damage we'd need to correct).  Minimum wage and universal basic income (which is essentially what people are driving at with making the stimulus payments larger) deserve their day, but if you make perfect the enemy of the good, you might end up with nothing, or you might not end up with what you were hoping most for, which is what we got (relief for those most financially impacted by the pandemic, and aid to ensure the pandemic finishes through testing/vaccines).

This seems to be a problem with Democrats on HR-1.  I am going to just break it to you now-we are not going to get a proper end to the filibuster in the next two years-Joe Manchin & Kyrsten Sinema won't allow it.  So what you need to do is draw a line in the sand & find the most important thing that we need to focus on Manchin/Sinema on, the thing that can be the "this has to survive no matter what happens" thing that in your negotiations with these two (who have, to date, seemed open to good faith negotiations in a way Susan Collins or Jeff Flake never were) is the thing that you ensure is in the bill when it ends.  The things that will ensure that we have a fighting chance after the 2022 midterms (when, if the Democrats truly want these things, they'll show up & marginalize Manchin/Sinema by padding their majorities).  And if you're thinking like Mitch McConnell (about long-term power, not just what is currently in the headlines), those two things are gerrymandering reforms first, and DC Statehood second.

There are a lot of great things in the HR-1 bill, and for me personally, I would bust up the filibuster to pass most of them as I think the filibuster is arcane & undemocratic.  But while voting reforms are important, and expanding voting access is important, if you look simply at the two things that will have the most lasting, tangible impact to the legislative process, gerrymandering reform & DC statehood are at the top of the heap.

In the bill, all states would have independent, nonpartisan commissions that would draw the federal legislative lines.  It's hard to grasp how different this would be compared to our current system, but I'll try to underline the significance.  First, it would basically make the midterms an even playing field.  Right now it's possible that with redistricting power in Kansas, Texas, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Georgia, Tennessee, & Florida Republicans will have the ability to draw lines that would make it virtually impossible for the Democrats to win not just in 2022, but (barring shifts in partisan patterns) for much of the next ten years.  Conversations about voting reforms oftentimes involve a lot of hyperbole (much of it indulgent exaggeration), but this is just a fact & if you take nothing away from this article, it should be this-it is perfectly legal, under current law, to do that in these states, and make it so incumbents like Sharice Davids, Carolyn Bourdeaux, or Emmanuel Cleaver are basically drawn out of their current districts despite representing growing populations, and make it impossible for the Democrats to gain the majority in the House.

Conversely, getting rid of gerrymandering would open up some states that we don't currently consider competitive in addition to taking away the GOP's rigging power in the above states.  An independent commission, for example, would likely draw an additional Democratic/Tossup district in Kentucky, Arkansas, Utah, & Louisiana.  They would end partisan gerrymanders that protect Republicans in Ohio & Texas, potentially giving the Democrats anywhere from 5-7 more tossup districts in these states alone.  It would, of course, have the opposite effect for the left in places like Maryland & Illinois, which are deeply gerrymandered to favor the Democrats, but it would be doing what's right and it would make the playing field significantly easier for the Democrats, as congressional districts would reflect the population growth in deep blue urban areas & increasingly blue suburban areas.  If done fairly, it would in fact counter the inherent advantages the Republicans have in the Senate & White House-it would suddenly become considerably more difficult for the Republicans to win the House (it's probable, for example, that the Democrats would have won the House majority in 2012 under this law, giving the Democrats full control of Congress for another two years during Obama's second term).

All of the talk about voting reforms, early voting access...none of that ultimately matters if gerrymandering isn't fixed.  And the Democrats have the tools to do it-it's why Mitch McConnell is trying to can this bill.  It's also likely part of the reason why Republicans are focusing on voting access nationally...because they are hoping that gerrymandering becomes an afterthought in HR-1.  But don't confuse that-it is the most important part of the bill.  It will dramatically change federal elections for the better, and make it considerably easier for at least one branch of the government (without the confines of state lines or the electoral college) to always represent the will of the people.  For a party that has lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, that's scary for them & why the Republicans fear it more than any other part of HR-1.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC)

The other issue that needs to be a priority (though I will state right now it is second to gerrymandering reform if you only had to pick one) is making the District of Columbia a state.  This will not, it's worth noting, have the same kind of impact on Democrats' chances as gerrymandering reform will.  Gerrymandering reform might expand as many as 15-20 more seats to be Tossups/Lean Dems than we currently have...DC will just give you two safe Democratic Senate seats & one safe House seat.  For all of the talk about DC "making it so Republicans can never win the Senate again" that's just hogwash-only once in the past 40 years would the shift of power have happened, and that only would've been for six months in 2001.  The main reason to let DC become a state, first-and-foremost, is because it's the right thing to do.  The people have asked for it, they meet the constitutional qualifications, and it's wrong that the people of the state have to be stuck without representation.  They don't want to be part of Maryland, they don't want to be part of Virginia...they just want their own state.

There are three reasons the Republicans are fighting this so hard.  The first, and I'm going to lead with it because it's the one that honestly is the actual reason, is racism.  Republicans know that DC will consistently ensure that two liberal African-American Democrats are in the Senate (both the At-Large delegate and the mayor have been African-American Democrats since the early 1970's).  While it'd arguably be the bluest state in the country regardless of demographics, I think racism is honestly at the root of their objections more than sheer partisanship.

The second objection is because of the math in the Senate. As I said above, historically DC wouldn't matter in the majority of the Senate-only in 2001 would adding two more Democratic senators have made a difference.  But the math after 2020 indicates that it might matter in the near future again.  Obviously adding two senators would make the current Senate 52-50, meaning that Democrats could afford Joe Manchin's defections on a couple of bills & still pass in a tiebreaker.  But it's also worth noting that this would add a new state to Joe Biden's "states carried" list.  That's a big deal because right now it's Biden-25, Trump-25, with Mitch McConnell having Susan Collins in his back pocket for at least six more years.  Right now, Democrats must win a Trump state Senate seat in 2022 or 2024 or else they will lose their majority in 2024, even if they win the White House & hold/pickup all 25 of the Biden seat states in those cycles.  Without that, McConnell will need to either win the White House or pickup an additional seat in one of the marginal states (like Arizona or Wisconsin) in the next few years to be able to have a shot at the majority come 2024.  It's not much of an advantage (particularly if a state like Pennsylvania or Wisconsin starts to drift further right without another state like North Carolina or Texas becoming more attainable for the Democrats), but it does give the Democrats a leg toward equity in a body they are currently greatly disadvantaged.  Puerto Rican statehood doesn't do quite the same (Puerto Rico would probably be blue at a presidential level similar to Colorado or New Hampshire, a true tossup similar to Wisconsin or Florida on a Senate level), so I'll save that discussion for a different day but suffice it to say if Puerto Rican statehood takes off it should be prioritized as well for ethical reasons (the territory wants statehood) & because it'd expand the number of states that Democrats can logically play in, but it doesn't seem to have the momentum right now that DC statehood does.

The last reason that they object is because there's no going back on this, which is why the Democrats need to strike now because this opportunity may not present itself for another decade.  Gerrymandering reform will mean those congressional districts stay the law for a decade-a full decade of the House being fair & giving the Democrats a considerably stronger advantage than they do compared to the current tight gerrymandering across a dozen or so states.  Once DC becomes a state, it's not going back-people might put up with not having rights or benefits, but once you give them those benefits, they won't allow them to be taken away (look at how hard it's been to overturn the ACA).  While other aspects of the current legislative reforms could be chipped away, these two things would dramatically alter (potentially forever) the way we look at federal elections law. And that's why while we may spar & barter in the next few weeks over this bill, these are the two things that we need to use as a barometer over whether or not this was a successful bill or not, not a shifting window where we're never actually happy.

OVP: Love and Monsters (2020)

Film: Love and Monsters (2020)

Stars: Dylan O'Brien, Jessica Henwick, Michael Rooker, Dan Ewing, Ariana Greenblatt

Director: Michael Matthews

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

With creating the "My Ballots" articles, one of the things in particular that I've noticed has been the Visual Effects contest becomes tougher the further back that you go.  The category expanded to five-wide in 2010, which means that as I'm crafting "My Ballots" for years prior to that, I'm coming up with a list larger than the Oscars did, meaning I need to do my research.  In some ways, that's the case for the Best Visual Effects category in 2020 for AMPAS, because unlike any other year for the past decade, this year's contenders were from a much smaller list of films.  You saw that with the shortlist, and you saw that with the nominated pictures.  While movies like Tenet or The Midnight Sky would've been shortlisted, if not nominated, in a normal year, other movies like Bloodshot or The One and Only Ivan would've been afterthoughts, not movies you'd even consider for the prize.  Perhaps no film encapsulates that ethos more than Love and Monsters, a movie with a $30 million budget (a tenth of something like Tenet or Mulan, its nominated rivals), that now sits as a film nominated for the Best Visual Effects trophy in a few weeks.  As it was the only one of the films that I hadn't seen yet, OVP logic demanded I go, but honestly, I would've seen this regardless, as the curiosity of what a "2020 VFX nominee" entails was enough for me to get to this picture.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place in a dystopian future, where Earth is ravaged by monsters that were created after a botched mission to stop an asteroid hitting the planet (plus side: the asteroid didn't destroy the planet).  Joel (O'Brien) is in a hatch with a group of survivors who have largely coupled up (the end of the world comes with a lot of sex, it seems), but his girlfriend Aimee (Henwick) is in a different bunker & Joel freezes up around the monsters, so he can't get to her.  Inspired by a conversation he has with her, though, he goes off trying to find her, and of course along the way he finds a number of monsters, but also some scrappy new friends, including a dog named "Boy" and a talking robot who shows him pictures of his dead parents.  When he gets to Aimee, he helps to thwart an evil plan that some wandering pirates have perpetrated on them, and together he rejoins his old crew, with both Aimee's new group & his group moving into the mountains, which are safer from the monsters.

The movie is not a thinker-this is not an action film that you're going to remember forever, or stand out in the genre.  But it's way better than you'd expect.  O'Brien's comic timing is solid-I didn't watch Teen Wolf and am unfamiliar with his work in the Maze Runner pictures, but I liked him here.  He has a winning affability of a former teen idol who could have a sustained presence in movies if he lands the right role, and while this film's lack of box office deprived him of that, I hope at least Hollywood took notice as he totally elevates a generic monster picture.

That said, the visual effects are pedestrian compared to what we're used to in this category.  25 years ago these would've been cutting edge, but now the creatures don't have the artistry in design we'd expect here, nor the realism.  The giant toad doesn't look much different than what you'd expect in the visual effects of a Mucinex commercial, and even the film's biggest effect (a giant crab for the final showdown between Joel & the pirates) lacks the finesse we'd notice in this category.  I get why this was nominated (it's definitely the rare 2020 film with a lot of CGI effects, which is what this category's bread-and-butter has been for the past two decades), but it's also not as impressive as what you'd see in Mank and certainly not on-par with the genre-leading work in a picture like Tenet.  It is, however, a fun movie.

The Farmer's Wife (1928)

Film: The Farmer's Wife (1928)

Stars: Jameson Thomas, Lillian Hall-Davis, Gordon Harker, Gibb McLaughlin, Maud Gill, Louie Pounds, Olga Slade

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

(Throughout the year, in connection with our 'Saturdays with the Stars' series, I am watching every gap I have in Alfred Hitchcock's filmography in what we're calling 'Sunday Leftovers.'  Every two weeks, I'll be watching a Hitchcock film that I've never seen before as I spend 2021 completing his filmography)

We are continuing on our look at the films of Alfred Hitchcock's early career with The Farmer's Wife, yet another silent film (we'll finish up his Silent Era by the end of April), and this one outside what we typically associate with Hitchcock.  While the director has a lot of humorous imagery & was a practical joker offset (sometimes crossing the line into harassment), Hitchcock is not a director we normally associate with screen comedy.  His early works ran the gamut across genres, but generally he is most known for suspense, horror, or straight drama.  That wasn't always the case, though, as we find out with The Farmer's Wife, which isn't just humorous-the film is meant to be a straight up humorous film, and some ninety years later actually succeeds in that regard.

(Spoilers Ahead) Samuel Sweetland (Thomas) has just lost his wife, and his grown daughter (recently wed) is intent on finding him a new wife to help run the farm & take care of him.  Sweetland makes a list of local widows & spinsters, but finds that as he starts to court them that they aren't as interested in his romantic advances as he is in them.  One by one, the four women he initially listed as a match for himself declines the offer, saying he is too controlling, too old, just a bad match.  This hurts his pride, and makes those around him, including his farmhand, ashamed of him having no self-respect & basically just giving himself away to no one who wants him.  However, Minta (Hall-Davis), his housekeeper, doesn't see a pitiable figure, but a man she's desperately in love with, and as the film ends (with one of the women who rejected him coming back to state that he changed his mind), Samuel marries Minta, and they live happily ever after.

The film's plot is kind of funny, and not just wry like Hitchcock usually goes, but actually intended to be properly funny.  So atypical is it that Hitch doesn't even make one of his trademark cameos.  This makes it feel like a bit of a cheat compared to some of the other work we've profiled, as for a director that made everything part of his "signature" this gives off the vibes of a "job for hire" which at this point in his career Hitchcock didn't really need to be taking (after the success of The Lodger).

That said, it's a good movie.  The scenes where Samuel is brought down a peg by these women are kind of a riot.  All (admittedly handsome) machismo, he deserves some of the comeuppance he gets, and while it is unkind in retrospect, Olga Slade steals the movie as a stout, high-on-herself postmistress who refuses Samuel for being too old, though clearly she, like him, has perhaps too high of expectations for herself.  Overall, this is a strange movie, and the picture that feels the least like the Hitchcock we all love, but it's a film that stands up on its own.

Cast a Dark Shadow (1955)

Film: Cast a Dark Shadow (1955)

Stars: Dirk Bogarde, Margaret Lockwood, Kay Walsh, Kathleen Harrison, Mona Washbourne

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Margaret Lockwood-click here to learn more about Ms. Lockwood (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we talked about The Wicked Lady, which was the biggest success of Margaret Lockwood's career.  The actress, though, would continue to make films regularly for the next decade, albeit with less success.  By the early 1950's, while she was still famous & had had numerous stage successes in recent years, she was essentially considered box office poison when Cast a Dark Shadow came out, to the point where she had to give up top billing to her costar Dirk Bogarde.  This movie was intended to be a comeback vehicle of sorts, but that's not how it would pan out.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film, a pretty dark noir, is about Teddy Bare (Bogarde), a man with a much older, dowdier wife Monica (Washbourne), whom he kills & frames as an accident for her fortune.  Teddy doesn't know that Monica was about to change her will to give him everything, but she hadn't yet, so all of the money has gone to her sister instead.  This leaves Teddy with just the house, but he uses it to lure in a well-off widow named Freda (Lockwood), who is brassy, uncouth, and aware that Teddy is a fortune-hunter, but has no intention of her money going to him, and Teddy can't murder her for it because it would be too suspicious.  When a wealthy woman named Charlotte (Walsh) comes knocking, initially Teddy starts to woo her, making Freda jealous, but it turns out that Charlotte is in fact Monica's sister in disguise, come to figure out how her sister died.  The climax has Teddy nearly getting away with murdering Charlotte, thus inheriting Monica's fortune back, but he doesn't as she is on to his trick, and when he escapes, he uses the car with the cut brake lines (the ones he cut) to escape, sealing his doom.

The noir, clocking in at under 90 minutes, is fast-paced & quite enjoyable.  Some at the time complained about it not having enough actual intrigue, and there are moments where the exposition does more heavy-lifting than it should (some of the last acts seem a bit too out-of-nowhere for me), but I thought it was great.  The performances were good, including Dirk Bogarde (delightful as a too-handsome, possibly gay, definitely unbalanced would-be serial killer), and the script is fun, filled with great speeches & wry chemistry between the two leads.

And as for Margaret Lockwood?  She's once again a home run, totally owning this character.  Gone here are the glamorous, bodice-pushing outfits of her youth.  Nearly forty at this point, she looks older in the movie, eschewing her natural beauty with overdone makeup & a brash accent.  Had she been a bigger star in the United States, this is exactly the sort of role that might have made the Academy take notice.  The film was a success, and Lockwood was even nominated for a BAFTA for the work (a deserved one-she owns the screen), but it wasn't enough to save her career.  While she'd do some television after this movie, her next film wouldn't come out for twenty more years, and she'd enjoy no more chances at a proper comeback.  Margaret Lockwood died in 1990, at the age of 73, of cirrhosis.  Next month, we'll move away from Lockwood, but not too far from her home country, with another actress from the British Isles, but one who would find true fame in Hollywood, as we encounter our first proper cinematic legend of this year's Saturday with the Stars.

My 2016 Oscar Ballot

We are continuing our backtracking of all of the past OVP Ballots this week with 2016.  For those of you just tuning in, every Monday/Wednesday I profile a different Oscar contest of the past in my quest to see all of the Oscar-nominated (narrative, feature-length) films.  As an addendum to those, I'm also creating an "if I had a ballot" list of past contests that include who I would've nominated given complete control of the Oscar races.  We'll normally do these at the end of each year we profile (right now, we're doing 2004 over on Monday's & Wednesday's so go check out the latest here), but as we've done a number of different past contests already, I'm playing catchup each Thursday until we're on track.  This week, we'll be hitting 2016-below are all 19 of our Oscar Viewing Project categories (I don't see enough to properly do Foreign Language Film), as well as links at the bottom of the page to for each Oscar race.  Let's get started!

Picture

Arrival

L'Attesa

Everybody Wants Some!!!

From Afar

Jackie

Moana

A Monster Calls

Moonlight

The Red Turtle

Silence

Gold: Moonlight doesn't give you time to breathe, it's a story that pushes forward & catches you, just like our lives.  Chiron's journey is one of struggle, but it's also one with consequence, and a cast working its heart out to craft this poignant tale.

Silver: No director working today is better about showing us simply a "slice of life" look at the world than Richard Linklater.  His Everybody Wants Some!!! is deceptively simple-the kind of college movie you expect to be doused in toxic masculinity.  Instead, it's a film about the fleeting nature of youth, and what it's like to hold your future in your hand.

Bronze: Jackie releases all of the shackles of a traditional biopic, and creates a brilliant art film.  With a towering lead performance, it gives us one woman, seemingly uncomplicated (but looks can be deceiving), who is put in glaring spotlights, both the glowing & the tragic.

Director

Barry Jenkins (Moonlight)

Pablo Larrain (Jackie)

Richard Linklater (Everybody Wants Some!!!)

Martin Scorsese (Silence)

Denis Villeneuve (Arrival)

Gold: Jenkins' genius isn't just in the triptych way he gives us Moonlight, but in the way that it tries to capture the eventuality that we become different versions of ourselves, like familiar strangers as we age & learn that certain things always matter, and others can just float away.

Silver: Linklater's stylistic flourishes aren't as indulgent as other directors, but in many ways he captures the essence of an auteur not with repetitive flare, but instead through simply putting a camera on actors and watching a naturalism emerge as they explore their characters.

Bronze: Perhaps Scorsese's most personal film in decades, Silence is a giant epic, one that could be swallowed whole if it weren't for Marty's keen sense of purpose, always keeping his Sebastiao focused on the same, determined end.

Actor

Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea)

Adam Driver (Paterson)

Andrew Garfield (Silence)

Logan Lerman (Indignation)

Trevante Rhodes (Moonlight)

Gold: Affleck's brilliance is not just in his perfectly-molded Boston schlub (he's made a career out of this particular prototype), but in the way he plays a man hollowed out by life.  Look at how he can't forgive himself, the way he refuses to let himself move on from unspeakable tragedy.

Silver: Rhodes has a tricky job here.  He has to inhabit the world of two different actors while also striking his own path, his own lived experiences, still in love but capable of being a different person.  He does that beautifully-you know this is the same scared Chiron, even if he has a new bravado.

Bronze: It is bonkers to me that Andrew Garfield can give a performance of this nature, one where he confronts his own faith, endures grueling physicality & must endure the weight of a 3-hour movie with little but his own perseverance...and somehow his first Oscar nomination is for Hacksaw Ridge.

Actress

Amy Adams (Arrival)

Juliette Binoche (L'Attesa)

Isabelle Huppert (Elle)

Natalie Portman (Jackie)

Tilda Swinton (A Bigger Splash)

Gold: Portman's work is initially impressive because she brings life to a figure who became basically a Barbie doll to the American public, by showing when the public persona was real, and when it was an illusion...the willingness to remain placid even when it meant true personal sacrifice.

Silver: I'll never get why it was this movie that the Academy decided to get snooty about Amy Adams, arguably her best work since Junebug.  Her performance here as a woman inspired by communication, but unable to share the pain she carries around is worn & felt.

Bronze: Juliette Binoche is also a woman carrying around the cruelty of life with her, but unlike our other two grieving mothers, she's aware of her own feelings, and while she's almost sorted through them, the film shows that loss is something we can never entirely let go of, and will always cling to memories of loved ones.

Supporting Actor

Mahershala Ali (Moonlight)

Ralph Fiennes (A Bigger Splash)

Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea)

Tyler Hoechlin (Everybody Wants Some!!!)

Glen Powell (Everybody Wants Some!!!)

Gold: For such a small role, Mahershala Ali is given a gargantuan task.  He has to quickly establish himself not just as a major figure in young Chiron's life, but as someone he would want to emulate as he aged, even if he can't always explain why.  Ali does that with studied care, fleshing out a man given an opportunity to change another man's destiny.

Silver: I would honestly be fine just collectively giving the entire cast of Everybody Wants Some!!! a trophy.  If I have to pick a player to highlight, it'd be Powell, whose comedic relief is sharp & he has BDE dripping out of every corner of this performance-the bravado that can only come from being a young, straight dude in his twenties.

Bronze: Close behind him would be Tyler Hoechlin, inhabiting a different kind of swagger.  He's confident, but has the knowing glance of someone who doesn't understand that these will be his glory days, something he'll never be able to recapture.

Supporting Actress

Naomie Harris (Moonlight)

Dakota Johnson (A Bigger Splash)

Janelle Monae (Hidden Figures)

Octavia Spencer (Hidden Figures)

Michelle Williams (Manchester by the Sea)

Gold: The only actor who appears in all three parts of Moonlight, Naomie Harris gets the difficult task of forging an evolving (but constant) bond with three different actors, showing her own struggles in her relationship with her son.  Harris does this through keen accent work, and the way she shows what parts of her are hidden from view...until her addictions force everything to emerge.

Silver: Michelle Williams isn't given much screen time, but an actress who is famous for minimalism works well here.  Look at the way she plays Randi-a woman who needed to cut her husband out of her life not because she stopped loving him, but because he reminded her of the pain, and removing him was the only way she could get through the day.

Bronze: Monae is a performer of great style, and someone who can steal every scene she is in.  That is needed in her Mary Jackson, a woman who is determined to defy convention, even if the world around her can't see her true potential.

Adapted Screenplay

Arrival

L'Attesa

Embrace of the Serpent

Moonlight

Silence

Gold: Moonlight is so good it feels like you're studying a screenwriting class while you're watching it.  The triptych unfolds so that no part of the film is easy, and the connections aren't giving you obvious answers, but with biting, profound dialogue we start to see the message of Chiron's life.

Silver: "Big" is the only thing that can properly encapsulate a movie like Silence, but don't get totally caught off-guard by the movie's size-there are quieter moments throughout that give you rich speeches & treatises on faith (and what it demands of our spirits).

Bronze: Arrival is a study of grief, a look at how we allow ourselves to feel our emotions (joy, pain, sorrow), and the way that wonder & the experience of new possibilities can open up all that we're feeling.

Original Screenplay

Everybody Wants Some!!!

From Afar

Jackie

The Lobster

Manchester by the Sea

Gold: Richard Linklater, when he's on his game, writes a better script more than any other person working right now.  Everybody Wants Some!!! flows so well because Linklater knows how to adapt his script to his actors (he's famously collaborative), making the film have a spontaneous, in-time nature.

Silver: Pablo Larrain takes everything you hate about biopics (narration, familiar character pitfalls), and turns it on its head in Jackie, giving us a a sharp character study of a woman who doesn't want you to know what she's thinking.

Bronze: From Afar may be the most obscure film I cite in this article, but that's your fault, not its.  A sly look at the dynamics of sex, money, & control, the film is a bleak noir, one that will keep you guessing right up until the final seconds.

Original Score

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Jackie

A Monster Calls

Moonlight

Nocturnal Animals

Gold: The score of Moonlight is sparing, a litany of chopped violins that hang in the air even when they are no longer playing, giving us versions of the same theme (just like the three actors playing the evolving Chiron).

Silver: Never uplifting, Mica Levi's work in Jackie is more focused on making sure that we see the real woman behind the plastic princess, giving us a distinctive (but never over-powering) score to accompany her.

Bronze: A Monster Calls is a movie that demands your heart come along for the ride, and as a result we get soaring ballads, ones that are filled with adventure but also acknowledgement that this is a battle that we aren't necessarily going to emerge victorious from (just appreciative).

Original Song

"City of Stars," La La Land

"Drive It Like You Stole It," Sing Street

"How Far I'll Go," Moana

"I Am Moana," Moana

"Try Everything," Zootopia

Gold: It has become something of a hobby in the past year to bag on Lin-Manuel Miranda, but I can't join in not only because I like his positivity, but also because of his genuine talent.  You see that in the way he provides his own sense of uplift in helping Moana (and "How Far I'll Go," our gold medalist) capture not just the magic of her journey, but perhaps more important, recapture Disney in the 1990's.

Silver: We've chronicled many times my complicated relationship with the movie La La Land (a film I wish I loved more than I do), but the closest the film comes for me to truly engaging with what it hopes to be is in the beautiful, fleeting "City of Stars."

Bronze: Few end credit songs are worth your time in this category-it's too hard to sum up a movie without it being catering.  That's not the case with the effervescent, supporting "Try Everything" (perhaps the dancing gay tigers help?).

Animated Feature Film

Moana

The Red Turtle

Zootopia

Gold: The only category we go three-wide on (though 2016 is the rare year where a five-wide race wouldn't look like stretching), I have to pick The Red Turtle as the best-in-class of the bunch.  More fable than plot, the movie is gorgeous (the use of red and black-tres magnifique!), it honestly feels more like The Bicycle Thief than a movie for children-elegant & foundational.

Silver: Moana is also obsessed with color (here finding gorgeous blues & greens), but is obviously geared toward a family audience.  The best Disney musical since Pocahontas, it elicits joy from every orifice, and also that pig is just adorable.

Bronze: Zootopia cannot be denied its own blurb.  Disney does something almost unheard of here-creating a complete universe onto itself from scratch, and doing so while providing homage to everything from 80's cop movies to The Godfather (all while giving a needed & never preachy ode to tolerance for audiences young & old).

Sound Mixing

Arrival

Jackie

Moonlight

Silence

The VVitch

Gold: I'm more into subtle than the Academy is with this category, which is why I feel pretty confident in proclaiming Jackie the best sound mixing of 2016.  The movie's score intrudes like a ghost, and we get that motif throughout the film (reserving only the loudest scenes for the most horrific moments of Kennedy's life).  The moments after, as she walks the White House, feel as if we're hearing a museum come to life.

Silver: Speaking of movies that play with volume, Silence lives up to its name giving us a wide cacophony of sound design, cleverly playing with a array of expansive quiet to give us a sense of the solitude these young monks endure.

Bronze: Arrival is the most traditional nominee here, but it's a testament to the film in how it rarely feels generic.  Arrival's aural crafting comes from the main character's voices against a constant hum-a perfect duet of editing & mixing, necessary for an effects film of this nature.

Sound Editing

Arrival

Hacksaw Ridge

Kubo and the Two Strings

Moana

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Gold: Instantly distinctive, Arrival gives us a specificity to its aliens & ships-the sounds they create aren't duplicated or from the long litany of aliens we know by heart, giving us a new entry into the world of cinematic space.

Silver: Obviously the battle sequences, particularly the climactic ocean-front battle to stop the Empire, are at the top of anyone's list.  But I also loved the earliest scenes of Rogue One, where we hear the winds of a distant planet that becomes the background of young Jin's life.

Bronze: I'm not above acknowledging when a movie I didn't like has a great craft element.  That's the case with Hacksaw Ridge, which uses well-constructed action sequences and perfectly choreographed cascades of bullets to give us a sense of the omnipresence of battle for even a pacifist soldier.

Production Design

Jackie

La La Land

Passengers

Silence

Zootopia

Gold: I am still at a loss as to how Jackie missed with Oscar in this category.  The film obviously gives us hints of the character with the way that Mrs. Kennedy's Massachusetts home is tailored (even the messes) within an inch of their lives.  But the true "wow" here is the way that the art directors flawlessly reinvent the White House to be both historically accurate & feel like it's being lived in in real time.

Silver: Similar to Hacksaw Ridge, I can acknowledge a bad movie's best qualities, and pretty much anyone watching Passengers can understand that its production design is totally inventive.  A combination of cruise ship & holodeck, it gets at the excessive indulgence & decay of hopping halfway across the galaxy to find adventure that was possible in your own world.

Bronze: Animated films aren't given enough credit here (they are, after all, creating worlds in the same way), and few animated films feel more at-home with production design as Zootopia, which gives us not just one world but all of those motifs into other creative districts of the world.

Cinematography

Jackie

Knight of Cups

La La Land

Moonlight

Silence

Gold: Few films play more with actual color & mood than Moonlight.  Look at the way that the blacks, blues, & yellow lighting cues pop across the screen from the background, telling a visual story to Chiron's life, or the way that James Laxton is able to inform so much of his main character's tale through water, the eternally morphing element.

Silver: I mean, we all know about my crush on Terrence Malick at this point, so this shouldn't come as a surprise, but Knight of Cups continues his love affair with Emmanuel Lubezki, giving us urban & suburban landscapes that come to life behind his camera.

Bronze: Silence feels plucked out of its centuries-old time frame, looking crisp but also as if we're genuinely pulled into a different era, never staged or like we're getting a simple recreation...you feel as if you've been transported to a different era.

Costume Design

The Dressmaker

Everybody Wants Some!!!

Hail, Caesar!

Jackie

Silence

Gold: Never resting on its pillbox laurels (and it could have), Jackie makes the costumes in its films look stiff, boxy, real...more authentically specific to their time frame, so we feel like we're getting historical photos truly coming to life.

Silver: Sure it's not "historically accurate" in the same sense, but sometimes you just want to look at something truly gorgeous for two hours.  That's what happens with the impeccable, classy designs Kate Winslet's character brings to The Dressmaker.

Bronze: Yes, I would assume that outfitting the tight-fitting clothes on the men of Everybody Wants Some!!! was its own reward, but that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate the "if you've got it, flaunt it" care that they bring to these athletes' wardrobe.

Film Editing

Arrival

Embrace of the Serpent

Everybody Wants Some!!!

Moonlight

The VVitch

Gold: I don't know how the editors were able to cobble together Arrival, a seemingly impossible job.  Given a film focused on academic research (admittedly with aliens) for one half and a deep twist you aren't meant to figure out in the other, the editors craft a seamless movie from two divergent moments in a woman's life.

Silver: Moonlight is a movie that is played across three different chapters, but the editors don't rely on this too heavily, avoiding making connections between each "Chiron" wink-y or repetitive, instead giving us the gradual crescendo to the man he'd become with judicious looks into each actor's work.

Bronze: A third film that is all about balance, Embrace of the Serpent is meant to give us a world we don't know twice, never pointing out the clear frames-of-reference we have from earlier, a world always evolving into itself.

Makeup & Hairstyling

Florence Foster Jenkins

Hail, Caesar!

Jackie

Silence

Sing Street

Gold: One last gold medal for the technical wizardry of Jackie.  So often Oscar gets distracted by monsters or latex in this category, but when it comes right down to it, it's about making sure that we are seeing the characters for who they are...Jackie does that with painstaking period work, particularly with the hairstyles.

Silver: On the opposite end is Silence, not in the world of latex, but instead making the beautiful less desirable.  The use of blood-and-dirt in the film is detailed & increasingly more dramatic (hygiene standards have clearly evolved in the last 400 years as we see in Andrew Garfield's main character).

Bronze: Old Hollywood glamour, sometimes played for laughs, comes throughout the story of Hail, Caesar!, paying homage to figures like Esther Williams & Hedda Hopper without ever outing themselves as "stealing" their looks.

Visual Effects

Arrival

Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them

Kubo and the Two Strings

A Monster Calls

Passengers

Gold: Our other constant victor in the tech categories takes our last gold, as Arrival uses its effect to great aplomb, never feeling too gimmicky or indulgent, but striking the right, dramatic tone for the tender story at its core.

Silver: This category isn't just about looking spectacular-it's also about creating a sense of wonder & majesty that matches your story.  A Monster Calls does that with inventive, glowing effects work that might not have the budget of a Transformers, but gets more out of what it's trying to achieve in making a strong movie.

Bronze: Obviously there is CGI throughout, but in terms of a single achievement, no VFX moment in a 2016 movie is quite as jaw-dropping as the "floating water" drowning sequence that comes in the halfway point of Passengers.

Also in 2016: Picture, Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2016