Editor’s note: Welcome to the fifteenth of a 33-part series dissecting the 83rd Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every day leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category of the Oscars. To read any other posts regarding this event, please click the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

by Rachel of Rachel’s Reel Reviews
  
Makeup is such an essential part of filmmaking that it’s a shock it took the Academy 54 years before it began to annually recognize achievements of artists in the field. This year’s three nominees display different techniques of makeup design, making it difficult to say one is truly better than the others, but only one can take the gold man home.

The Way Back

Barney’s Version

The Wolfman

Editor’s note: Welcome to the twentieth of a 33-part series dissecting the 82st Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every day leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category of the Oscars. To read any other posts regarding this event, please click the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Jess of Insight Into Entertainment.

I was privileged to be assigned to this category last year, so I’ve done my research and you can see the background here at last year’s post. It’s a fairly recent award and it looks like my rule of thumb for who gets nominated has nearly held up this year as well. Last year I said “Usually only 3 movies are nominated, often one of the best Picture nominees, a major movie, and then something random.” I was only off by saying a best Picture nominee rather than a period piece, which Benjamin Button was both last year. This year the nominees are: The Young Victoria (period piece), Star Trek (a very big movie, with other nominations for visual effects and sound), and Il Divo (the random choice if ever there was one). Here are my individual comments on each movie from a perspective of makeup.

The Young Victoria tells the story of Britain’s Queen Victoria from just before her ascension through the beginning of her reign and marriage. She reigned from 1837 to 1901, the longest of any female monarch in global history. This means, the make-up must be appropriate for the 19th century. In addition, it seems that the Academy has lumped hair design into the category for makeup. The two nominees for Young Victoria, Jenny Shircore and John Henry Gordon, are both listed (on IMDB) as hair stylists/designers, and Ms. Shircore is listed as the makeup designer. She also won the Oscar for Elizabeth. Lumping them together makes sense to me if you think of it as all of the things done to a character that are not costumes be one award. The makeup throughout the movie made Emily Blunt look young, fresh, and regal, and the hair styles of all the characters put them into a recognizable time period. Victoria has to battle between the influences of British politicians and German/Belgian relatives and politicians. The hair styles, while perhaps not perfectly accurate, did make it easy to visually distinguish between the two without being too strange. Given that Benjamin Button won last year, and this is a good movie overall, I expect this to win the Oscar. You can read my full review of the movie here.

Star Trek could give Victoria a run for the money if the Academy loves sci-fi as much as I do. The nominees are Barney Burman (prosthetic makeup designer), Mindy Hall (makeup), and Joel Harlow (prosthetic makeup supervisor). All are first time nominees, but have tons of movies to their credit. I would give them the award for the sole reason that I had no idea Eric Bana was even in the movie thanks to the insane amount of prosthetic make up that made him into a very Trek-appropriate bad guy. Also, their challenge of making beloved characters come to life in different actors at a younger age while still trying to make them seem like they belong in 2009 rather than 1970. There were lots of other “species” of characters throughout the movie that fit in seamlessly, which is a huge credit to the make-up department. So while I do think Victoria will take the award given the Academy’s recent history of period pieces, they have a split history of giving the award to incredible prosthetic work so don’t count Star Trek out.

Finally, the random selection, Il Divo. This movie was release in Italy in 2008, and made the various film festival circuits winning some awards, mostly for acting. It did win the Italian version of the Oscars in this category however. In fact, the two nominees for this movie are the most nominated of the bunch. Vittorio Sodano (prosthetic make up designer) and Aldo Signoretti (key hair stylist) were nominated together for Apocalypto, and Signoretti was nominated for Moulin Rouge as well. Since I doubt many people saw this (it had a limited release last April in addition to the film festivals), I’ll summarize it. It’s a story about the former Prime Minister in Italy, Guilio Andreotti, who was accused of ties to the mafia and negative ties with the Vatican, and basically follows him and his family through various accusations from his political opponents of murdering people who got in his way. The movie won the Jury Prize at Cannes, but having seen the movie I have no idea why it was nominated in this category. All the people look fairly normal, though given the titles of the nominees, I presume several are wearing prosthetic pieces. Nothing particularly interesting struck me, so I highly doubt this movie has any chance of winning.

If I had to give the odds of winning, I’d say Victoria has about a 70% chance of winning, with Star Trek at 29%, and simply by virtue of being nominated, Il Divo has 1% chance. I hope this helps you fill out your Oscar Ballot!

Editor’s note: Welcome to the fourth of a 24-part series dissecting the 81st Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every day leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category of the Oscars. To read any other posts regarding this event, please click the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Jessica of Insight Into Entertainment.

The Oscar award for Best Achievement in Make-up is fairly recent, only given regularly since the 1985 ceremony. Usually only 3 movies are nominated, often one of the best Picture nominees, a major movie, and then something random. This year is no different, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (best Picture nominee), The Dark Knight (major movie) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (random!).

I looked at the trends of the past 24 awards. Awards for real people transformed by make-up: 13, awards for creation of creatures: 11, giving a slight edge to transforming people, with one in particular winning for aging (Driving Miss Daisy). However, with a previous winning entry by Guillermo del Toro, and a trend toward creatures for the past 10 years, that might not help in predicting this year’s winner. Here’s the list so you don’t have to look it up.

2008 La Vie En Rose
2007 Pan’s Labyrinth
2006 Chronicles of Narnia
2005 Lemony Snicket
2004 LOTR – Return of the King
2003 Frida
2002 LOTR- Fellowship of the Ring
2001 How the Grinch Stole Christmas
2000 Topsy-Turvy
1999 Elizabeth
1998 Men in Black
1997 The Nutty Professor
1996 Braveheart
1995 Ed Wood
1994 Mrs. Doubtfire
1993 Dracula
1992 Terminator 2: Judgment Day
1991 Dick Tracy
1990 Driving Miss Daisy
1989 Beetlejuice
1988 Harry and the Hendersons
1987 The Fly
1986 Mask
1985 Amadeus

So to examine what I thought of each of this year’s nominees from a makeup perspective here are this year’s nominees:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, nominee: Greg Cannom won Oscars for Dracula and Mrs. Doubtfire and a technical Oscar for creating a new product for prosthetics. Mr. Cannom had a Herculean job ahead of him, as the movie hinges on the viewer’s understanding of how Benjamin Button starts old and becomes young.

While much of that was done with CGI to put Brad Pitt’s face on several other bodies, the other part of the movie that isn’t often discussed is that all the other characters much age in the proper order to provide contrast to Benjamin. Cate Blanchett goes from around age 20 to around 90. As far as I know, none of that was done with CGI, just plain old fashioned make-up and prosthetics. An impressive job considering the real Cate is somewhere in the middle. The other factor taken into consideration with the make-up throughout is the period and place appropriateness of everything – Cate’s 1950’s make up when she’s in her 30’s or when Tilda Swinton is in Russia. Overall, a fantastic job of making Brad Pitt look younger, and Cate Blanchett look older.

The Dark Knight, nominees: John Caglione Jr. won an Oscar for Dick Tracy; and Conor O’Sullivan who was nominated for an Oscar for Saving Private Ryan. While a worthy nominee, there’s not a lot to the make-up in my opinion.

The obvious one is Heath Ledger’s Joker, whose make-up deteriorates appropriately throughout the movie, but gets refreshed when Joker is free. Later in the movie, Harvey Dent becomes “Two-face” and there’s some spectacular effects going on, but I have trouble believing that was make-up and not CGI, which falls under the category of visual effects I think. Both are extremely important to the story, and probably to the actors creating the characters, but beyond that I didn’t find much in The Dark Knight making it worthy of this particular Oscar.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army, nominees: Mike Elizalde, who also worked on the first Hellboy, and Thomas Floutz, first nominations for both of them, but they’ve been part of all kinds of critter flicks. Written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro, creator of Pan’s Labyrinth, he obviously can imagine very creative creatures and this movie isn’t any different. He and the amazing make-up artists create a whole digital/mechanical army, but the really creative beings are done with make up and costumes. The prince and princess are given elfin qualities without looking anything like the Lord of the Rings imagining of elves. In addition to the main characters, Hellboy in his completely red suit, with filed horns, and our meticulous Abe Sapien in his blue suit with eyes and all, the new prince and princess are well done. There’s even a moment in the Market where we see a supposed family of demons. When Hellboy pats the baby on the head, he replies, “I’m not a baby, I’m a tumor”, and you see how it’s actually growing out of the female. This movie, from a make-up perspective is inventive and definitely worthy of the Oscar.

So, in my opinion, Hellboy II: The Golden Army should win the Oscar, but I think given the overall quality of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and its number of nominations, the Oscar will go to Benjamin.

Editor’s note: Welcome to the seventh of a multi-part series dissecting the 2008 Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every weekday leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category (or more) of the Oscars (there are 24 in all). To read any other posts regarding this event, please just click on the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Marilyn of Ferdy on Films, etc.

M…A…K…E…U…P! Bang! The giant powder puff slaps some poor sap in the kisser. Perhaps this vaudeville gag was in the minds of the Academy during the three uninterrupted decades it ignored the talents of movie makeup artists. It certainly had nothing to do with achievements in makeup, from Castle monsters to Bette Davis’ various grotesques in both her younger and later years.

The first Academy Award for Makeup—an honorary one at that—went to William Tuttle in 1964 for the many looks he created for Tony Randall in 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. One more honorary award followed in 1968, to John Chambers for Planet of the Apes, and then the award went back into the deep freeze.

Finally, in 1981, the Academy established the first competitive race for the Makeup Oscar, with Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London) beating Stan Winston (Heartbeeps). The award became a yearly ritual in 1984.

Oscar favors the imagination when it comes to makeup. Monkeys (especially monkeys!), insects, ghosts, vampires, aliens, and cartoon characters have all captured the Academy’s fancy. Period makeup also impresses, but the Academy seems to have grown tired of powdered wigs and beauty spots, casting its historical gaze toward the more flamboyant Costume Design category. Lately, Lord of the Rings-style legends have been all the rage, but you can always get a few non-PC votes for cross-dressers and fatties. In one case, a prosthetic nose, though not specifically nominated itself, may have helped Nicole Kidman garner her Best Actress statuette for being willing to look ordinary on the big screen.

This year, legendary figures, various Eddie Murphys (including a fatty), and another beauty with a prosthetic nose represent the work of the three duos vying for the top honor.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End—Ve Neill and Martin Samuel

There were 68, count ’em, 68 makeup artists, including contact lens specialists, in the makeup department for the third Pirates movie. In an interesting twist, nominee Martin Samuel wasn’t among them. The Academy, I suppose, had to account for the designs created by Samuel for the first two Pirates movies. Indeed, since the first Pirates film was nominated, it seems like this year’s nod is a tad redundant. (And why was the second one ignored? What does it matter? Pan’s Labyrinth was a slam-dunk last year.)

Norbit—Rick Baker and Kazuhiro Tsuji

Perhaps reflecting the much lower expectations of a return on investment than the Pirates franchise delivers, the suits who produced Norbit kept the makeup team to 20 by bringing in ringer Rick Baker and an Oscar nominee from last year for Click (?), Kazuhiro Tsuji. Indulging Eddie Murphy’s fetish for creating body suits and prosthetics to augment—actually overwhelm—his modest acting abilities, the Norbit team created a surprisingly toned fat woman (good for her!) and several other looks that screamed, “I’m not just doing this for a money.” Well, everyone but Baker and Tsuji. It’s good work in service of a very bad movie.

La Vie en Rose—Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald

It’s nice to see the Academy voters look past the disgusting snot-crust makeup adorning the nose of the very young child who would grow up to be Édith Piaf, because La Vie en Rose’s makeup team does an awful lot right. It only took eight people to apply a nose prosthetic to Best Actress nominee Marion Cotillard, and if Nicole’s experience is any indicator, this much better nose should propel her in a landslide to an Oscar. But it’s not just the nose. It’s the eyebrows, the hair, and most interesting of all, the stringy neck and chest of the aged Piaf that help Cotillard’s characterization seem more like a resurrection than a performance. Too bad the film’s in French. You know how hard it is for Academy voters to read subtitles through their surgically induced eye slits. Where are those A Clockwork Orange eyelid spreaders when you need them?!

Personally, I’d like to see the less flamboyant, but more film-serving makeup of Lavergne and Archibald win the day. However, in a move reminiscent of Peter Jackson’s Oscar for Lord of the Rings, I think that Neill and Samuel will win the day for their multi-film achievement. After all, legends are in this decade.