OVP: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Film: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Stars: Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Billy Campbell, Sadie Frost, Tom Waits

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Oscar History: 4 nominations/3 wins (Best Art Direction, Costume*, Sound Editing*, Makeup*) 

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

More than any other film monster, the vampire seems to be always a part of the horror & romance genres on the big-screen.  From Nosferatu to Edward Cullen, vampires have taken up the cinematic imagination for over a century.  But no fictional bloodsucker has gotten quite the press of Count Dracula, Bram Stoker's singular creation based on Vlad the Impaler.  Francis Ford Coppola, as a followup to his Best Picture-nominated (but critically-mixed) The Godfather, Part III decided to go in a totally different direction by taking up a romanticized version of Stoker's novel.  In the process, he gave one of the most Oscar-winning horror films of all-time (three statues in his corner, the same amount that would be won by Coppola's magnum opus The Godfather), and a film that is still parodied on television today, especially for the makeup it uses on Gary Oldman.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film starts with us seeing Vlad the Impaler (Oldman) lose his beloved Elisabeta (Ryder) to suicide after she's informed he is dead.  He blasphemes himself in front of a Priest (Hopkins), and turns himself into a vampire by drinking blood pouring from an alter (he's had a day).  Centuries later, Vlad is now known as Dracula, and is meeting Jonathan Harker (Reeves), a young solicitor who is going to help finish a business transaction started by his former colleague Renfield (Waits), who is now insane.  He meets Dracula, and Dracula summons his wives to trap (and presumably kill) Jonathan, so that Vlad can go to London to seduce Mina (also Ryder), whom he believes to be the reincarnated soul of his lost Elisabeta.  While in London, he also seduces Lucy (Frost), whom he turns into a vampire.  Before Lucy is lost & beheaded, her fiancé (Elwes) calls up Professor Van Helsing (also Hopkins) to cure her, and while he doesn't cure Lucy (she dies and is beheaded), he does save Mina.  Mina is turned into Dracula's bride while they are having sex, but she is eventually saved when Jonathan, Lucy's fiancé, and Van Helsing go to kill Dracula.  Mina finishes the job, and reunites Vlad & Elisabeta in heaven, with her vampirism gone now that she has destroyed the man who turned her.

I think the first thing that you should know about Bram Stoker's Dracula is that there's not a lot of humor in this...and it probably needed some.  Oldman is going for 11 here, and that's not the worst approach for an iconic villain, but it does get hammy, as does the dialogue itself.  The movie also miscasts Reeves, who cannot do a proper English accent (something I suspect he'd own up to), and quite frankly neither can Ryder.  The year before she would win her first of two Oscar nominations for another maligned English-accent role...her Bay Area accent is, well, pretty prominent.  I don't mind a lot of overstuffed plotting & acting, as that's kind of the calling card for horror movies (and lord knows the near constant sex was welcome...you gotta love a movie with a bunch of people constantly on the verge of an orgasm), but Ryder & Reeves are bad enough that I just...I struggled.

That said, I admired the look of the movie.  I get why this was doused in Academy Awards.  The sound work is strong (I love how you heard the spilling of blood...the film is into its bodily fluids), and the sets are fantastic.  The scrumptious gardens, Lucy's elaborate (and ridiculous) white coffin, the horny drawing rooms-the movie is a portrait in every way, and that extends to the oil painting cinematography.  The costumes as well, particularly Sadie Frost's post-vampire look, are on-point.  Best of the bunch is the makeup.  I'm not entirely sure what Gary Oldman's gorgon-mutant look is accomplishing by having him look like a freak during the nighttime as Dracula, but, well, it stands out, and looks realistic-within-the-movie.  I think it works-horror movies are about making moments, and this does.

Past Horror Month Reviews

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Candyman, Scream

OVP: Actor (2020)

OVP: Best Actor (2020)

The Nominees Were...

Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal

Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Anthony Hopkins, The Father

Gary Oldman, Mank

Steven Yeun, Minari

My Thoughts: I really enjoy the online film community, particularly the ones that focus on awards races.  I know there can be toxic elements to it (you're taking your life into your hands a bit when it comes to certain fandoms, but honestly that's true of every corner of the internet).  But as a result of this, there are times when I have to admit to liking or disliking a performance that universally was dismissed.  That is what we're going to start with, and I'm just going to rip off the bandaid right now: I liked Gary Oldman in Mank.  Quite a bit.

I feel like Oldman, once revered as something of an acting god akin to Christian Bale & Johnny Depp before they became Oscar mainstays (and lost a lot of their actorly mojo), has really lost all of his steam with audiences since he won his Oscar for the underrated Darkest Hour (primarily since he's not as good as Timothee Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name).  But Oldman works really well within Mank, finding a boozy charm that fits him.  Mank as written is a character that clearly has talent, but also has something to prove to himself.  You can see in the way Oldman plays him with a ticking behind the metaphorical walls...he knows what he's doing is good, probably the best thing he'll ever write, but doesn't have the confidence or the fortitude to quite say it out loud until he's certain he's made a masterpiece.  I loved that combination of bravado, clarity, and ugliness that make this central character so compelling.

Two actors similar in some ways to Oldman prior to his 2011 Oscar nomination that won their first Oscar nominations in 2020 were Steven Yeun and Riz Ahmed.  Of the two, I think I preferred Yeun more.  It's difficult to standout in a great ensemble (which is ultimately what Minari is), but he brings so much ambition to his soft-spoken, hard-working farmer.  There's something so unsaid about his character, particularly as we see much of this world through the eyes of young Alan Kim-this father that was almost mythical in his eyes (as almost all fathers are to young sons) and the way that he is casually fleshed out as the film progresses is really a testament to Yeun's restrained work in the lead.

Ahmed has been building to this nomination for a while (he'd win the following year for Live Action Short) after his breakout role in Nightcrawler (his best work to date, imho).  Here he is able to give a lot of physicality to his role as Ruben, but I don't think he gives us enough depth.  We get a sense of the tragedy of this situation (a musician losing his ability to hear the thing that brings him the most joy), but there's not enough beyond that, either in the screenplay or in the way that Ahmed plays him.  Paul Raci is better at this, giving us a world-weary approach that gives Ahmed a counter (and some of his best scenes), but I don't feel like I left hearing Ruben's story so much as a story, and that's because Ahmed doesn't define him enough.

That's certainly not the case for Chadwick Boseman.  Despite the title, this is decidedly the story of Levee, not Ma Rainey.  Boseman owns the screen, giving us a young black man of great promise...promise that will only be exploited & never rewarded.  We learn as the film goes that Ma is the exception, the only exception in this story, but Levee doesn't understand until it's too late that there isn't room for two at the top.  The film's final moments are such a huge payoff for him as an actor-he's been building this quiet anger, a righteous reaction to the world dismissing him from his first breaths, and it pays off with his desperation as he throws away what future he might've had, even if it was never a fair one.  Easily the best performance of Boseman's career, and in almost any other year he would've been a surefire, sentimental winner at the Oscars...

...except Anthony Hopkins came along.  Hopkins, of course, already had one Oscar, but it was long enough ago that a second trophy didn't feel like a stretch.  To beat Boseman he needed something beyond, and that's what you get in The Father.  Hopkins owns the screen, quickly enveloping not just a character that cannot know where he (or the audience) are standing at any given moment, but one who has to find his footing every moment.  Hopkins' Anthony proves the cruelty of good days & bad days...that even the good days are fleeting, and when your mind is your own prison, you won't get to remember them.  The Father sometimes plays as a horror movie, but there's no hints of Hannibal Lecter or Robert Ford...this isn't the heightened genre work that made Hopkins a matinee idol.  Instead, it's a fully-encapsulated star turn from one of the great actors of our time.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes of course break out their nominees between Drama and Comedy/Musical, so we have ten names from their ceremony.  Drama picked Boseman against Hopkins, Oldman, Ahmed, & Tahar Rahim (The Mauritanian) while Musical/Comedy favored Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat 2) atop Andy Samberg (Palm Springs), Dev Patel (The Personal History of David Copperfield), James Corden (The Prom) and (somehow) Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton), despite that feeling VERY much like a TV special.  SAG went with a carbon copy of Oscar's lineup except Boseman won, while BAFTA went with Hopkins as their victor atop Boseman, Ahmed, Rahim, Mads Mikkelsen (Another Round), and Adarsh Gourav (The White Tiger).  In sixth place, I am going to guess Oldman (who was losing steam fast right before the ceremony) bested Mikkelsen, whose Another Round succeeded in the Best Director race unexpectedly and probably meant he was breathing down Oldman's neck.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I don't entirely know if Franz Rogowski was eligible for his singular work in Undine, but at some point the Academy needs to recognize that he might be the most promising new actor of the past five years.  His work here is yet another fantastic achievement.

Oscar’s Choice: In one of the biggest recent shocks at the Oscars, Joaquin Phoenix quietly read "Anthony Hopkins" name when all of America (and especially Steven Soderbergh) was expecting a win for Chadwick Boseman.

My Choice: It's Hopkins, and it's not close.  The only way Hopkins wins here is if he's giving a performance SO good that it's simply impossible to argue with, and this is not only the best performance of 2020, it's the best performance in at least the last four years.  Behind him I'll go Oldman, Boseman, Yeun, & Ahmed, in order.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Does everyone think that this was Hopkins, regardless of his past win (and this being a way to cap Boseman's legacy?), or do you think someone else deserved it?  Why do you think that Oscar is so particular about which posthumous awards are handed out (it's very rare)?  And how close was Mads Mikkelsen from getting his first citation (you know a nod is coming at some point)?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2020: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2020

Past Best Actor Contests: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019

OVP: Supporting Actor (2019)

OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2019)

The Nominees Were...

Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes

Al Pacino, The Irishman

Joe Pesci, The Irishman

Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

My Thoughts: Conversations about category fraud are rampant if you follow blogs, podcasts, or social media about the Oscars (and I suspect if you're reading this article you probably do).  In general, I tend to side with those that take a firm stance against it, even if I'm aware that this is a losing battle (principles are hard to hold intact when you feel they're caving, but I like to stand my ground as long as I can).  As a result, I knock down a point from an overall performance for the OVP if I feel it is a lead work masquerading as a supporting (I don't do the same if it's supporting in lead as I think they are already at a disadvantage, and also because that's less common).  That determination is subjective, though, as we'll see here-four of these performances are bordering on leads, and I could see the argument for them being actual leads, but I don't consider all of them actual lead performances (even if they take up much of their movies).

The one indisputably supporting performance in the bunch is Joe Pesci, so we'll start there.  Pesci came out of retirement to play this part, and doesn't get the showiness of his nominated costar Al Pacino.  However, Pesci, an actor made famous for his vitriolic or even outlandish work in films like GoodFellas and Home Alone here adapts to an introverted character.  There's a sense of calm upon his Russell, someone who is always in control even when others around him think he's not in the loop.  This is a hard role to play & standout, but Pesci shows that retirement has not made him rust-a truly calculating turn, and one that compliments the film nicely.  I left the film curious, not frustrated, by his conflicting motives.

His costar Al Pacino, for me, is also a supporting player (by my measure, despite this being a big part, he is not the lead-that's completely the titular Robert de Niro).  Pacino gets a showier part than Pesci, which is usually followed by a "but," when critics say this, however that's not the case here.  Pacino is terrific in The Irishman, full stop.  His Jimmy Hoffa is meant to be both true-to-life (Hoffa bent & broke the law throughout his time in the sun), while also staying the moral compass of the film, the one character who seems to have his arrow pointed as close to north as you can find in Scorsese's epic.  Pacino could've overplayed him (he's done that often in the past few decades), but here his calibration is fully-locked.  A brilliant casting move for Scorsese to finally bring Pacino into his fold.

The other character I can't really fault as being a "category fraud" situation is Tom Hanks in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, another case of a supporting player portraying a big & important part, but a supporting one nonetheless.  Hanks is an ideal choice to play Mr. Rogers, and honestly I wondered if this might be boring as Hanks has mined this well frequently in his career.  But he plays Rogers compellingly, and more surprisingly, with layers.  Hanks doesn't canonize Rogers, but he also doesn't shy away from the fact that he was simply a good man, driven by his religious principles & a want for equality.  That's hard to do in a movie, and to make your character worth watching for two hours when you don't have an obvious flaw to connect the audience to, but Hanks does it with a late career role I think is his most challenging part since Saving Mr. Banks.

Anthony Hopkins, one could argue, is not entirely the lead in The Two Popes, as it is more Pope Francis's story than Benedict's, but I don't really buy that.  Skirting the line, but it's over the threshold for me personally.  That said, while I know others didn't love this movie, I thought Hopkins was quite good in it (similar to Hanks, he's an actor who has been churning out under-appreciated work for much of the past decade after dominating the awards circuit throughout the 1990's).  He gives us a rage & an anger that we need from Benedict, who is haunted by not only his remote connection to God, but also the burden of his earthly legacy, clearly in shambles as Francis becomes the beloved figure Benedict never could aspire toward.

Brad Pitt is the one case of category fraud I'm not buying any arguments for.  Just because Leo's character is the headliner doesn't mean that we have to buy that Pitt is suddenly supporting here, and I don't.  Docking him for that, Pitt's great here (Pitt is always great, in fact-while not a list of my favorite performances ever assembled in this category, this might be one of the best lists of talents the Academy has ever come up with in Supporting Actor).  He is a man who has spent his life in second fiddle, knowing that any dreams of stardom went out long ago & he is best left enjoying what's left in his time alongside bigger names.  Pitt might be playing a version of himself as a handsome, sun-bleached California dude, but the best actors know how to bring themselves into each character to make the part completely theirs.

Other Precursor Contenders: Oscar & the Globes were in lockstep this year, both in terms of their winner (Pitt) and their nominees (every single performer carried over from this star-studded lineup).  SAG got a little bit different, but not much-they kept Pitt as their winner, while putting in Jamie Foxx (Just Mercy) in place of Tom Hanks.  BAFTA also awarded the trophy to Pitt, and was exactly the same as Oscar's lineup.  In terms of sixth place, we knew at the time that Hanks might miss (he'd been on a long Oscar draught), but it was hard to tell who was in sixth.  Foxx isn't a bad guess (it does feel like he's in that spot in his career where a third nomination will probably come about), but I kind of wonder in retrospect if love for Parasite would've put Sang Kang Ho into contention.

Performances I Would Have Nominated: There are no bad performances in this lineup, and it is (for my money) the best cumulative acting lineup that Oscar assembled in 2019.  That said, I would have included both Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit) and Tommy Lee Jones (Ad Astra), both of whom added nice compliments to their film's stories and are undoubtedly true supporting parts.

Oscar’s Choice: It was decided pretty early on that this was Brad Pitt's year, and it was made clearer when he was competing against four men who already have an Oscar (this argument didn't work for Amy Adams in 2013, but it was a sound one for Pitt).

My Choice: I'm going to go with Pesci in a very slight nod over Pacino (I have said differently on other days), as I think it lingers better.  For third, it would be Pitt without the category fraud, but with the category fraud points docked, the bronze will go to Tom Hanks, with Pitt & Hopkins coming behind.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are you with me siding with Joe Pesci or are you standing behind Brad Pitt finally getting his Oscar?  How much should category fraud matter when deciding whom to vote for in these contests?  And seriously-who was the sixth place finisher?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2019: Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Animated Short, Live Action Short, Previously in 2019

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

OVP: The Father (2020)

Film: The Father (2020)

Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Rufus Sewell, Imogen Poots, Mark Gatiss, Olivia Williams

Director: Florian Zeller

Oscar History: 6 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Actor-Anthony Hopkins*, Supporting Actress-Olivia Colman, Film Editing, Production Design, Adapted Screenplay*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Movies are not reality.  This is true in obvious ways (you don't encounter dragons & aliens just randomly in real life), but it also is true in the sense that our approach to reality shifts when we're trying to decipher a movie compared to real-life.  I realized this shortly into Florian Zeller's debut film The Father, which is based on the Tony-winning play.  Despite the trailers being pretty clear about what I was getting into, in a movie about shifting narrative & direction, I kept expecting twists, confusion & more of a traditional thriller.  What I got, of course, was what was promised-a devastating look at aging, told in an almost fantastical way, and a jaw-dropping lead performance from Anthony Hopkins.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Father is not a movie that fits a traditional narrative-style, but essentially it's the story of Anthony (Hopkins), a well-to-do man who lives in an elegant London flat, and frequently gets visits from his daughter Anne (Colman), who is worried that he is getting too old to stay in his flat by herself.  She intends to go to Paris with her fiancé, and it seems wants to move him into a more manageable place since he's started having memory issues & she's worried about him being on his own. Initially we're meant to wonder just a little bit if Anne is telling the truth, as Anthony, though curmudgeonly, seems pretty lucid & together, if slightly forgetful, and he does have a beautiful apartment (and presumably wealth to go with it).

As the film unfolds, though, we find this isn't a thriller, and it isn't even clear what is reality.  Throughout the movie, we stay entirely in Anthony's purview, and as a result we don't know what's happening.  Anne, in some scenes, is moving to Paris whereas in other scenes she's not, and has been married for years to her previous husband-the actress who plays Anne shifts in select scenes to Olivia Williams, and time becomes a moving construct.  As we continue, we begin to lose our sense of self & position, we can no longer understand what is real in Anthony's world & what isn't...in much the same way that Anthony can't.  The film smartly decides not to tell us truly what happens until the very last scene, and even then, we wonder if the movie is landing on the truth, or if we will continue to spin past the credits.  

It's harrowing stuff, thinking about how this is what aging can do to you, and it's made better through Hopkins' work in the lead.  There's no hints of Hannibal Lecter, of Richard Nixon, of Robert Ford.  Hopkins creates his own man here, and pulls off a tricky part-this would be easy to milk for quick sympathy or trying to make his Anthony too cruel, but Hopkins gives him round edges & shows the unfairness for those around him of "good days and bad days" (as the cliche goes).  He's coupled with a terrific scene partner in Colman, who plays her Anne as the neglected child, the sister that lived (it's not always clear how, but her sister died years earlier & was obviously Anthony's favorite while Anne was favored by her mother).  You don't oftentimes see the effects of the relationship between "the non-favorite child & the non-favorite parent" onscreen without the comparison of the "favorite" being there, but both actors bring such a rich history to these parts that you can see it in the way that Colman's Anne, likely on the verge of a better happiness & with more of her life left to live, decides between duty & a (tested) love for her father, who never saw her as the daughter he cherished the most.

In general in 2020, I've been turned off by most stage-to-screen adaptations-they haven't adapted properly to the medium, and oftentimes feel too small or like they can't push their story to the big screen without growing pains, but The Father does it masterfully, to the point where you don't see the stage roots at all.  This is helped by excellent production design & in particular A+ editing, as we see little touches on the set move or bend so that we are always in the same, familiar apartment but things aren't quite right.  The effect is one where, like the early stages of dementia, things feel familiar but also off, and that prickly feeling stays with us as we rarely leave this apartment, giving us a true idea of the claustrophobia of Anthony's world.

OVP: The Two Popes (2019)

Film: The Two Popes (2019)
Stars: Jonathan Pryce, Anthony Hopkins
Director: Fernando Meirelles
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Actor-Jonathan Pryce, Supporting Actor-Anthony Hopkins, Adapted Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We have miraculously reviewed all but one of the films nominated for the Big 8 this year for the Academy Awards (huzzah!), but I am a perfectionist and needed to get this one out ASAP (a bit of housekeeping-we'll get to Star Wars for sure over the next couple of days, and then I'll be catching & sharing my thoughts on (from the sounds of it) six of the remaining OVP films that are nominated for the 2019 Oscars, with just Corpus Christi and Maleficent 2 having to wait until post the ceremony).  That leaves us with our final one, a movie that did surprisingly well with Oscar, The Two Popes.  Nominated for three (and did anyone else think this might be a surprise inclusion for Best Picture considering its strength while watching the announcement?), the movie has gained a bit of controversy as pretty much anything surrounding the Catholic Church does.  As a Catholic who deeply disagrees with the church's stances on a few key tenets, I was curious to see what the movie would stir in me.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie works in three acts.  The first is a look at what happened in the days after the death of John Paul II, when it appeared that Joseph Ratzinger (aka Pope Benedict XVI aka Anthony Hopkins) would win the papacy over his closest rival for the title Jorge Bergoglio (aka Pope Francis aka Jonathan Pryce).  The movie shows that Benedict was seen as a vote for conservatism, while Francis was a vote for change.  Benedict of course won, but years later we see him calling Francis to the Vatican, Francis intending to resign but Benedict refuses to let him.  The two converse, sometimes on trivial matters, sometimes on graver ones, and it is revealed that Benedict intends to resign, the first person to do so in over 600 years.  Though he doesn't endorse, it seems clear to Benedict that he is talking to the man who will be his successor, and who will change the papacy in a number of ways that he disagrees with, but perhaps must be done.  The film ends with Francis becoming the new pope, and Benedict looking on approvingly (before they cut to the mandatory video of the real-life versions of the two men greeting each other).

The film is lighter than you'd assume given the gravity of the two men's positions in the world.  They are not god, of course, but in the Catholic Church they are the holders of the "keys of the kingdom," and hold a deeply spiritual place in the hearts of every Catholic (you pray for them at virtually every mass).  So it's unusual and humanizing to see them discussing art, soccer, and the Beatles as the movie progresses.  I think Pryce & Hopkins take to this levity-it'd be a dreary tale if it was solely focused on the public perceptions of these men, some of which deify them and others of which view them as innately evil.

The movie struggles, though, to take these cute old men and put the real-life consequences of their actions in front of us.  Instead of focusing on recent scandals, specifically the sexual abuse allegations levied at a number of priests, including some within Benedict's inner-circle, they spend more time looking at the early life of Pope Francis, and his controversial role during the Argentine dictatorship.  The criticism against the film is valid in that it ignores these moments, giving Benedict literal and figurative absolution for his involvements in these crimes.  It helps that they cast Hopkins, someone who is so good at fire-and-brimstone, to speak lines other actors might be crushed by, proclaiming "I can no longer hear God!" but the film never feels important or telling enough of these men-it simply shows them, and hopes that you'll not think too clearly about the (living) doppelgangers portrayed in the movie.

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Film: Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Stars: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, Karl Urban, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Hopkins
Director: Taika Waititi
Oscar History: Marvel's not their favorite, so I'm guessing no even if VFX is theoretically a possibility.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Movies are supposed to be fun.  Like, genuinely a good time at the cinema, and I think that comic book movies have by-and-large forgotten that.  Think of the nauseating seriousness of some of the more recent Batman entries, with Christopher Nolan getting too bloated and with his inventiveness gone, the DC universe going largely to shit.  The Marvel movies have also struggled on this front, creating lighter heroes but ones still burdened by the world around them.  This occasionally can make for fine movies (Captain America: Winter Soldier still being the high-point of the Marvel universe), but it's also why people have responded so ferociously to Guardians of the Galaxy, a comic book franchise that doesn't take itself too seriously.  That was clearly what Taika Waititi had in mind with the latest installment in the Thor franchise, though I'm not entirely sold on the end result.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Thor franchise is arguably the least artistically interesting one of Marvel's universe.  One could argue that had Thor not been one of the original hits that eventually led to the Avengers movie taking over the globe, he probably wouldn't still be getting these stand-alone movies, but since he was and since Marvel essentially can print money with the Avengers franchise at this point, it's not hard to see why he's still getting his due.  Still, though, Thor as a solo character doesn't really work unless you can juxtapose him against other characters to show how preposterous he is, and Waititi certainly does that in this picture.

The film starts off with Thor (Hemsworth) returning to his home of Asgard after unsuccessfully searching for the Infinity Stones that have constantly peppered this franchise for the better part of a decade now.  We see that he no longer is with Jane, and that shockingly his brother Loki (Hiddleston) is still alive (albeit his father Odin (Hopkins) isn't long for this world).  He soon learns of Hela (Blanchett), his Goddess of Death sister, who destroys his hammer with her bare hands early in the film and slowly we watch as Thor is stripped off all of his iconography, with the hair and one eye soon to follow.   He inevitably ends up in a showdown with Hela, and proving that he has learned some humility, finally realizes that he cannot destroy her, only another demon can do so, and flees rather than stand to fight her.

The movie, though, will focus less on the fight for Asgard and more on the silly side distractions of Thor on Sakaar, a garbage dump of a planet (literally), where the Grandmaster (Goldblum) puts on massive battles that pit his Grand Champion, later revealed to be the Hulk (Ruffalo) against fighters such as Thor.  The movie stays extremely light and frothy in these parts, but I honestly wasn't feeling it.  Whereas Guardians was meant to be light, Thor has some very serious issues going on, and the Hulk in particular is played mostly for laughs but this is a deeply tragic figure.  Plus, Goldblum has used this schtick for so many years it's hard not to assume he's just playing himself onscreen.  Blanchett is better at delivering the camp as a woman who sports antlers for ears and can throw off a deadly bon mot better than pretty much anyone, but she's not central to the story-Goldblum is.  The entire movie is predicated on you just enjoying all of the silliness of Thor's compatriots, but it feels excessive.  Combined with unnecessary cameos (of course we see Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange, because that reminds people he's still around) and shocking, but then eye-rolling cameos (Matt Damon as Loki in a play...at some point we need to address that Damon has largely graduated from movie star to celebrity thanks to his string of middling movies & over-reliance on Jimmy Kimmel), the movie is reliant on societal pressure for you to love the Marvel brand so much that you're willing to dismiss the fact that the plotting here is bordering on garbage.  Chris Hemsworth has graduated into a movie star through these pictures, something we should be thankful for, and is arguably giving the best performance (give-or-take Blanchett), but movie star charisma and the face/body of an alien creature (seriously-how is it that one human being can be that attractive?) can't save this movie from being just, well, dull and pointless.  Marvel can have fun, but they need a plot and a point too.

Those are my (admittedly unpopular) thoughts on Thor: Ragnarok.  How about yours?  Anyone else find the movie to be over dull and forcing the fun, rather than seeming at ease?  Or am I just the spoil sport?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

The Triple Crown of Cinematic Life Achievement

Yesterday the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced that movie star and frequent Sexiest Man Alive George Clooney was chosen to be their recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille Award.  Clooney, a fixture at the Globes, will surely give a great, funny speech, probably with more than one joke about how, at only 53 and as one of the biggest stars on the planet, he's hardly ready to be getting a lifetime achievement award.

And quite frankly, I'm kind of with hypothetical Clooney on this one.  I know that trying to figure out what is going on in the heads of the HFPA is a fool's errand, but seriously?  George Clooney?  He's not even Jodie Foster where he's been acting in major films since he was a teenager and so there's decades of work to rely on, covering up the fact that she also was far too young.  You just know that Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise, and Brad Pitt are coming in the next couple of years at this rate, and even they have all had more important cinematic careers than Clooney's!  There are so many other names that should have been listed, and so in honor of these missing names, I figured it was high time that we check in on the Triple Crown of Cinematic Life Achievement.

The Triple Crown of Life Achievement, for those of you too lazy to go to the above link (just kidding-love you!), is my name for those rare entertainers that have won the Kennedy Center Honor, AFI Life Achievement Award and the Cecil B. DeMille Award (I skip the SAG Life Achievement Award because it is pretty evenly split with television actors and because it is more for services to the industry than straight-up life achievement, though it's also a big deal-congratulations age-appropriate Debbie Reynolds on winning this year!).  In the past year (since we last checked in on this topic), we've seen an odd amount of movement on the list.  In the great news column, we had our 21st performer (and fourth woman) hit the triple crown, the one-and-only Shirley MacLaine, who got the Kennedy Center Honor this past year.  We also saw Tom Hanks complete his second leg of the tour, getting the Kennedy Center Honor (just the DeMille, oddly enough, is left, despite him being relatively young and that being the first leg for most performers).  And most exciting of all, we saw Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Woody Allen, and yes, George Clooney, begin their journey toward the title.

On the other side, though, proving that there's a ticking clock for even the most accomplished of stars on completing the trio, we had four people pass away without completing the list: Lauren Bacall (missing AFI), Robin Williams (missing AFI/Kennedy), Shirley Temple Black (missing AFI/DeMille), and Ruby Dee (missing AFI/DeMille).  You have to assume that Williams in particular would have been able to complete at least one more award in the collection, maybe completing the circle.  Sadly, they all left us before we could finish honoring them.

Looking ahead, though, I want to take a peak at where we're at for the remaining contenders, starting with the eight people that are just one award away from completing the set.  Here we go!

Missing Only the DeMille: We'll start here since I'm royally peeved that George Clooney (who should have won in like fifteen years-I'm not a complete grump and wanting to deny him wholly) got what could have gone to a number of other, more age appropriate stars.  There are still four people that have somehow never won the DeMille (I'll put everyone's ages in parantheses): Tom Hanks (58), Meryl Streep (65), Mel Brooks (88), and Mike Nichols (82).  Of the four, I am certain that Meryl will win it at some point, even though Meryl has almost enough Golden Globe statues to make her own chess set with them (the DeMille could be the King!).  I am also confident that Hanks will win as soon as HFPA remembers they haven't given him a statue (I genuinely believe that they think they've already given him one-that's the only explanation for him winning after Clooney).  I am far more doubtful of both Brooks and Nichols, though Brooks especially is a huge miss for the Globes, considering he's been nominated four times and never won, and this would be a brilliant way to honor a comedic legend.

Missing Only the Kennedy Center: With Shirley MacLaine off of this list, we're now down to three men: Michael Douglas (69), Al Pacino (74), and Harrison Ford (72).  Last year I said MacLaine was the least likely to win of the four, and she was the first to do it, so this proves I know little, and so I'm going to second guess my thoughts from last year with Al Pacino are wrong, as he is slowly becoming less and less relevant and hasn't done what his peers like Robert Redford or Robert de Niro have done: staged an awards comeback.  However, Ford/Douglas/Pacino are incredibly famous movie stars and the Kennedy Center Honors has five recipients each year, including two typically for film, so this isn't particularly hard for them, but I think that Pacino is least likely to win this, with Douglas actually the most likely; he consistently makes movies and is extremely well-regarded in the industry (and for what it's worth, he's the youngest).  Ford doesn't have any Oscar-loving, which probably hurts him.  If he ever made a genuine play for another nomination, I think the accolades would come pouring in and he'd pull this off in the same way that Meryl did with The Iron Lady.

Missing Only the AFI Award: With the death of Lauren Bacall, we now only have one person who has won the DeMille and the Kennedy Center Honor but lost the AFI: Robert Redford (78).  Honestly, what's the hold-up here?  Redford's been a movie star for decades, is great behind-the-camera as well, continues to make important pictures like All is Lost and reinvented the independent cinema scene with Sundance.  Plus, he seems to be relatively well-liked.  I honestly don't get this-they need to jump on honoring him immediately (they haven't announced the 2015 winner-let's make it Redford).

Only has the Kennedy Center Honor: Here we run into a conundrum: the Kennedy Center Honors (and to a lesser extent, the DeMille Awards), honor not only for cinema but also television, theater, and the world of comedy.  As a result, we have people who are most noted for Broadway (James Earl Jones (83), Angela Lansbury (88)), stand-up (Lily Tomlin (75), Steve Martin (69)), and television (Oprah Winfrey (60)) who also have made significant contributions to cinema, though that may not be their primary claim to fame.  Because of this split in mediums, many of these people may stay in this first position indefinitely (though Martin could probably advance to at least the DeMille).  There's also Joanne Woodward (84), who won this award in conjunction with her husband Paul Newman (not to impugn Ms. Woodward, but that probably helped), as well as John Williams (82) who probably isn't famous enough with the mass public to win one of the other two awards.  Your best bet other than Martin to advance would surely be Julie Andrews (78), who would give a perfectly divine speech with the Globes if they let her, and is famous enough with the mass public to get them the ratings they're hoping to win.

Only has the DeMille: Considering that they generally go young with this award you have people like George Clooney (53) and Jodie Foster (51) who are infants in terms of these honors and have hopefully a couple of decades to inevitably win the next two trophies.  Time isn't necessarily the friend for reclusive stars like Doris Day (either 90 or 92, and don't you love that someone as famous as she can still hide her real age?), Gene Hackman (84), and Woody Allen (78), none of which would probably show up even if the Kennedy Center or AFI came a-knocking.  Anthony Hopkins (76) is getting up there in years and surprisingly hasn't parlayed his English sophistication into a Kennedy Center Honor, but considering he works constantly (we saw him earlier this year in Noah) he may just get there.  Finally, there's legendary Sophia Loren (79), whose lack of a Kennedy Center Honor is probably the strangest thing in this article after Tom Hanks missing the DeMille-surely the Kennedy Center Honors, which love to give trophies to artists from around the world, would like to honor the most famous Italian actress of all-time?

Only has the AFI Award: Tom Hanks moved on up from this classification, but in a bold move, we had a new name to this list (the AFI is the least likely of the three to go first): Jane Fonda (76) finally got some love for her many decades of filmmaking this past year with her win.  She's joined by George Lucas (70) as someone who has only won the AFI trophy, and while I suspect that Fonda will never get this entire circle (she's too controversial to get a government-issued award like the Kennedy Center Honor), she could still grab the DeMille and Lucas will surely get the Kennedy Center Honor before his career is over.

Hasn't Started Yet: I could list the likes of Roberts, Cruise, Bullock, Washington, and Pitt, but I'm going to stick with only people over the age of sixty (though Denzel actually hits that number in December so maybe it's about time to add him to the roster?).  Some names off the top of my head (there are surely more-share them in the comments): Diane Keaton (68), Samuel L. Jackson (65), Julie Christie (73/74-another mystery!), Glenn Close (67), Robert Duvall (83), Cher (68), Jeff Bridges (64), Maggie Smith (79), Faye Dunaway (73), Michael Caine (81), Judi Dench (79), Ellen Burstyn (81), Christopher Plummer (84), Bette Midler (68), Jessica Lange (65), Helen Mirren (69), Francis Ford Coppola (75), Catherine Deneuve (70), Sissy Spacek (64), Kathy Bates (66), Vanessa Redgrave (77), Arnold Schwarzenegger (67), Goldie Hawn (68), Norman Jewison (88), Rita Morena (82), Milos Forman (82), and Liza Minnelli (68).  And there are surely others...which again is why it is so sad that George Clooney, young, spritely, decades-left-of-his-career George Clooney was chosen this year.

But seriously, congratulations.

Noah (2014)

Film: Noah (2014)

Stars: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Darren Aronofsky was always in a bit of a pickle tackling the Bible, as is any artist trying to take a stab at the best-selling book of all-time.  That’s because you toe the line when you try to tackle a religious subject-do you make carbon copies of the biblical stories, creating saints and pious men, or do you try and humanize the characters with flaws and sins?  It’s a tough conundrum, as the former lends to boring stories (and competing with the epic grandeur of Cecil B. DeMille and William Wyler) and the latter to religious backlash.

Unfortunately, for a man who has tried to make this film for as long as I can remember (I love when great director’s spend an eternity on their pet projects), he seems to have tried to do both of these things, neither with much success.  It’s one of the most famous stories of all-time, so spoilers shouldn’t be necessary, but here’s the alert anyway.  Noah is a story of a man who builds an ark based on blind faith, but the film never quite has the gall to question his motives or to find any insanity in the story.  It instead wants its cake and attempts to eat it too, but what we get is bloated and rotten.

The biggest problems with the film are the treatment of the central character.  Noah’s story has always been one of the more far-fetched in the Bible, just behind Jonah.  How could a senior citizen build a giant boat that saw the entire world covered in water, and then survive with just two of every animal?  I mean, it’s a tough one to grasp, and so to literally tell the story would be too easy.  Aronofsky tries to make Noah an extremely pious man, sometimes too anchored in his own beliefs to be able to see the grey in life, but he cannot quite get to the point where he is a “bad man.”  He keeps Noah very much on the verge of going into the darkness, of being the villain in this parable, without actually taking the plunge.

The better question would have been if he had subtracted some of the heavenly confirmations in the film.  How much more spectacular would the film have been (and less mixed message) if we saw no literal signs from God that the world was coming to an end?  If there were no stone angels (initially a neat effect, but quite ancillary and probably not worth the trouble) and no specific lights from God, we would have to completely base these decisions on Noah’s faith alone, which makes the film at once more complicated and far more interesting.  Faith is a hard thing to see when you don’t have literal confirmation of it-how different does the Noah story become if we don’t know for sure that his turning his back on the innocent is God’s purpose?

I mean, Aronofsky goes there with a couple of other scenes-considering the big budget, I'm surprised that, say, incest manages to make it into the plot of the film (it's pretty well-implied that Noah's two younger sons will eventually bed their nieces), though they do leave out the most famous incestuous moment (the interpretation that, Ham, here played by Logan Lerman, rapes his father after his father is found drunk).  The movie is not shy on biblical allusions or about showing a man-of-faith in the film, something that actually does ring of a bit of a game-changer (I hate to side with the right-wingers here, but you do rarely see outspoken people of faith in large budget cinema...then again, you rarely see women over fifty, people of color, or gay people in large budget cinema, so my sympathies only extend so far).

I guess my big problem, though, is that for a director who has had this vision for so long, why is there not more artistic license with the story?  The telling of the film becomes very literal, and with the major exception of Ray Winstone's story, follows the Bible in a pretty consistent way.  We get only one good person who we know dies as a result of the flood-the rest of the world is left in a sea of violence, rape, and murder.  It's a whole lot easier to let Noah's conscience off the hook if he's killing a hoard of pillagers and half-humans.  From a director as daring as Aronofsky, I'm surprised that he spent so much of his budget on rocky angels and less on a more cohesive, daring plot.  And the special effects are so damn spotty (was the scene of the family walking supposed to look like a de Mille special effect, because it did and if you're going to go there do it more than once so you don't just look cheap), it all falls apart behind-the-scenes and in the writer's room.  About the only thing that does ring true is the environmental and vegetarian message (both brought about quite well in contrast with the horrifying Ray Winstone character), but that's not a lot to lend itself to a film.

While the acting is for-the-most part the saving grace of the movie, it also doesn't have a great level of consistency.  Crowe, a movie star that has basically disappeared, still has the gravitas he had in films like Gladiator to lend himself to the screen, but Connelly as his wife only gets one truly great moment (an Oscar-y speech...if this film had any chance at the Oscars) but otherwise is just window dressing.  Emma Watson, who is on a roll creatively right now, makes the most of an underwritten character (the same cannot be said for Anthony Hopkins, who has been on autopilot for fifteen years or so).  And I actually genuinely liked the wide-eyed naivete of Logan Lerman, though some others I've found disagreed.  Worst of the bunch is Ray Winstone's unrealistically evil Tubal-Cain, who chews scenery like a random snake that he finds while stowing away on the ark.  Winstone is so bad but so omnipresent my thoughts keep coming back to him instead of the sturdy Crowe, Watson, and Lerman, which is never a good sign for a director like Aronofsky, who specializes in making you remember his best performances.

All-in-all, with only a few performances to lend itself, Noah can most generously be described as an ambitious failure-the signs of a director who learned his limitations.  Aronofsky has enough skills to pick himself up and find a new story to tell, but hopefully he'll leave the Good Book alone.

OVP: Makeup (2012)

OVP: Best Makeup and Hairstyling (2012)

The Nominees Were...

Howard Berger, Peter Montagna, and Martin Samuel, Hitchcock

Peter Swords King, Rick Findlater, and Tami Lane, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Lisa Westcott and Julie Dartnell, Les Miserables

My Thoughts: And so we're back!  Yes, just a few weeks after finishing our last round of OVP write-ups, we're in for another twenty, and I couldn't be more excited about investing some time into the many films that thrilled and inspired us in the blockbuster year of 2012.

To start out, we will once again begin in the category of those who create the faces and hairstyles that leave us in awe onscreen.  Makeup, unlike most of the categories with the Oscars, only has three nominees, not five, and so it's a bit easier to suss through the contenders.

However, I do want to throw in a bit of a caveat.  This is the first year where most of the films that I am discussing I've also reviewed in the past, and I want to point out something about why I call it a "Snap Judgment" for the reviews.  With most of the reviews, I wrote them immediately after viewing the film, which is smart if you want to remember every detail of the film, but stupid if you're still cultivating your opinions.  In the weeks and months since I've seen these films, some of them have gained a sharper view, and I feel I've gotten enough distance from them to properly decide the best of the year.  That's my fancy way of saying that on occasion, I might increase or decrease my love of a picture that last year I ranked slightly differently.  We shall see...

The first nominee I want to get to is the one that will be considered the "oh yeah, I forgot about that" movie in years to come, Hitchcock.  The movie is probably almost erased from your memory even now, and it's easy to know why-as far as biopics go, it's pretty boilerplate, and doesn't have a lot going for it except the occasional wink at the audience (the Anthony Perkins jokes, for example).  That goes for the makeup as well.  The centerpiece of the film's makeup is of course Anthony Hopkins transformation into Alfred Hitchcock.  The artists come close to getting this right, but the work is always obviously a prosthetic.  This is a bit unfair for those of us who are trying to compare him to Hitchcock, but the Makeup artists would have done better with a slightly less well-known actor than Hopkins.  The hair department does a better job-I loved the elegant freeness of Johansson's Janet Leigh, and while her costumes were more fun, her movie star effortlessness shines through the hairstyling.  But making Scarlett look like a movie star is something even I could do, and so this is decidedly the weakest link of the three.

The Hobbit is teaming with Makeup work, but it's worth noting that this is a case of quality AND quantity, and not just an either or situation, as is oftentimes the case in this category's nominees.  One of the biggest tasks amongst the Makeup artists on this film was finding a way to distinguish all of the dwarves, not an easy task since all thirteen are introduced to us in rapid succession.  While the script doesn't always do that, this isn't a fault of the Makeup artists, who give us thirteen distinct creations.  Additionally, you can tell that amidst the CGI of Gollum and the Goblin King, we're also treated to a series of Orks and hobbits dotted with interesting touches, distinguishing characteristics that add layers to the film.  Some have made the argument that this is territory already trodden by the makeup branch, giving two Oscars in previous years for the work in these films, but I say that there's enough newness and originality on display here to warrant high praise.

The final nominee is our lone Best Picture contender, and therefore a film that we are going to be encountering on many occasions to come, so I'll try to keep the window focused solely on the Makeup. Les Miserables is not afraid of making its movie stars ugly, throwing the gorgeous mugs of Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, and Helena Bonham Carter through the deglam-machine (though in the case of Carter, it seems more out-of-the-ordinary for her to be appearing in her Burton-hair than it is in her porcelain fineness).  The film succeeds when it comes to Jackman and his prison teeth and beard early on in the film, as we see him truly transformed into a man who has spent years in jail.  The movie's weird prostitute scene, however, seemed a bit cartoonish for me.  For a movie that focused so much on realism early on with Jackman, we are treated with the sort of clown-style faces that seems to be too much pancake makeup and not enough nuance in the characters.  This we've seen a thousand times before and I believe in a much better way.

Other Precursor Contenders: In a weird situation we haven't run-across yet, we don't have all of the precursors done yet, as the Saturn Awards, a favorite of mine for precursors here, have not announced their winner yet, though they do have Hitchcock and The Hobbit amongst their nominees, as well as Cloud Atlas, The Impossible, Skyfall, and Breaking Dawn, Part 2 (my money's on The Hobbit taking the trophy).  For the BAFTA Awards, which are finished, Les Miserables took top honors, with Anna Karenina and Lincoln joining our other Oscar nominees as fellow contenders.  Finally, since this is one of the few categories to have a finalist list, it's worth noting that Lincoln, Looper, Men in Black 3, and Snow White and the Huntsman were amongst those that almost made the cut.  Conventional wisdom would suggest that Lincoln was in fourth place, though part of me wonders if the constant love for Rick Baker made Men in Black 3 the unluckiest runner-up.

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, I am only human and can't help but poke a bit, especially since at least one of the nominee's I think has no business being here.  There is no part of me that enjoyed the convoluted mess that Looper was, but the hyper-realistic work done on Joseph Gordon-Levitt in that film makes me think they should have found room for it.

Oscar's Choice: I honestly think this was a relatively close race between Les Miz and The Hobbit (the Makeup branch being relatively impervious to critical reviews of the movies), but that Best Picture nomination had some sway, and Westcott and Dartnell took the trophy.

My Choice: We're going to start with me being relatively contrarian, and going with The Hobbit, a film that I feel tackles more subject matter for this category and in a higher way than my second place Les Miz.

And now, of course, I welcome you to discuss in the comments-of the three films, what movie deserved the trophy?  Are you excited that Lisa Westcott finally got her Oscar, or were you hoping for the equally as snubbed Martin Samuel?  And of all of the movies of 2012, who had the Best Makeup?

Also in 2012: Animated Short, Live Action Short, Previously in 2012

Past Best Makeup Contests: 2010, 2011