Oscar 2016 - VFX & Makeup

Yup, I know. I'm late with the entry promised for last week. Compensating with a 2-in-1. Sort of. Meaning that I thought there's room for both VFX and makeup today, since anyway we mostly have overlapping titles.

"Ex Machina" starts the nominations series for visual effects. I find it a bit as a "category fill" item here. Maybe I'm subjective, since I found the movie way more pretentious than what it actually delivers. Of course, Ava - who's 99% the subject of the nomination, looks good, but I don't find it groundbreaking in any way. And we have groundbreaking material below ...
"Mad Max: Fury Road" is my prediction for both VFX and Makeup. I won't write again all what I already did in the movie's entry last year. What we have here is a resurrection of "for real" VFX = non-CGI (although we have CGI too, as you can observe below). It's the only movie I've noticed using real staged visual effects at this scale in a long long time. About the makeup, I'm no expert, bt it's clearly the most "visible" among all nominees.
"The 100-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared" is a pleasant surprise in this year's nominees list. It scored in makeup, and I can say it's a lesson given to some Hollywood titles, such as "J. Edgar" for instance, in respect to "aging" a character. The year passing on a guy's face looks much more natural in this Swedish comedy that's a sort of a northern Forrest Gump, much much colder, and way less serious.
"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" is seen by many as a VFX winner. I disagree. It looks too ... common for me. It's simply in the same line of recently released movies. Besides the swords, what we see here is not far from what we also saw in "Transformers", "Avengers", etc...
"The Martian" offers planet Mars as a VFX subject. Again, it looks like an entry that stays in the average range of what we typically have here. More I would say, it's even "eclipsed" by last year's "Interstellar" :) ...
"The Revenant" scored nominations on both VFX and Makeup. Unfortunately the clip below is centered on the second, but it's the only I found which displays a couple frames from a scene that I say it makes it the main contender against "Mad Max" for VFX ( and also my wishful winner :) ). It's of course the bear scene, which I think we can consider the next level in CGI, at least from what I've seen by now (maybe "Planet of the Apes" gets slightly close). Well, we'll see where the votes are going ...

Oscar 2016 - Nominations

This year started with deadlines and way too limited time. I said I'll try to cover again the Oscar season, but I think I'll be a bit more restrictive than last times. So I'll start in a total "unprofessional" manner by sending directly to the official site: http://oscar.go.com/nominees , instead enumerating myself the nominations. It's faster, and you also have trailers there ;). What I won't change is the typical order I start with ... = I should be back with VFX next week.

La Isla Minima (2014)

I thought that before starting the Oscar 2016 season (yup, I'll do that again ...) might be a good idea to blog about something I don't want to miss. I had the inspiration to add "La Isla Minima" on my "to watch" list for the holidays. It's a Spanish thriller that got the public prize at the latest edition of the European Film Awards. Location: a swampy rural area of '80s Spain. Context: two missing girls and two police detectives sent to deal with the case. Spoiler (more or less - we have already the trailer and the IMDb synopsis): the responsible proves to be a serial killer, and more: one who did operate in the area undisturbed for quite a while.

I can't say that the movie amazed me with its "crime story". I've noticed online some comparisons with "Prisoners". It's not the case, it still has a long way to get to the story development we have there. Even so, it's still a decent thriller. What's also maybe a bit downgrading on the script side are the loose ends. Maybe they're intended, but still it's a bit too .. unsolved. However, "La Isla Minima" compensates through some other aspects. We probably have one of the best character development I've seen lately. Without spoilers, the two detectives come with different backgrounds, different experience, and let's say that the case makes them "grow" differently. Besides that we also have the place and the time. I have no idea personally how was the rural Spain in the '80s, but a more intense influence of the location in the action development I probably didn't see besides Alexander Payne's movies ("Sideways" - Californa Wine Valleys, "Descendants" - Hawaii, etc.), with the note that there you could feel the opposite, relaxed side, of the time and place.

Probably there is more to be said, but I'll close up with the technical side. I regret that I didn't have the opportunity to see this movie in cinema. Besides the soundtrack, the visuals are amazing. If last time I was saying that "Youth" is very good with this, then let's just add one extra class on top of it ... It's a lesson about how to do the visual part of a movie. There's a clear contribution of that in everything that the viewer will feel: suspense moments, uncomfortable silences, etc. .. maybe a bit centered on tensed vibes, but in the end.. it's a thriller :)

Rating: 4 out of 5