Oscar 2017 - Production Design

Early flight next morning => quick entry now. Production Design aka Art Direction including Set Decoration, brings this year the following...

"Arrival" where we have as focus the inside of the alien ship. Apparently effectively built. Not that it doesn't fit with the movie... but the movie is sort of dry and so it's also this part => let's move to next one...

"Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" was released last year as a sort of sequel to the Harry Potter universe, which unfortunately for me always had the status of an unpolished salad, where the author built each new episode not knowing exactly what's next (but something should've to keep the cash flow alive). And that's obvious also in this one. Well... I've watched this to have a complete view for this entry, so let's stick to production design, where things are very simple to summarize: I didn't see anything noticeable on top of what I've seen already in the previous HP episode. Next...

"Hail, Caesar!" is the latest movie of the Coens, maybe not as good as others, but for what we're discussing now deserves some attention. 1) It's a low budget movie. 2) We have such a variation in the set decoration part that it doesn't let you notice the 1) part. The action is set in the '50s in Hollywood prin anii '50 and walks us through an entire series of movie sets which include stuff ranging from Roman Empire decorations up to siren lakes and some extra bonuses = a Russian submarine. This was nice...

"La La Land" has a context for production design somehow similar with the one above, but which doesn't offer such a various range on what you'll see. It still keept the same colored tone, which is also quite in line with the general look of the movie, stuff that apparently was quite appreciated. For me it's a bit overrated. After all it's the most .."common" entry here, but well...

I liked "Passengers" both for the looks and as a movie. We have two passengers on a gigantic ship set on autopilot for 120 years, who are woken up before time. A surprise came from a couple nuances, which were more mature than I was expecting after checking some bashing reviews. On the topic, what we have here is obviously the ship, or more precisely the interiors, which are by far among the most eye-catchy I've seen in a SciFi context. On top of this it also creates somehow a sort of feeling that's similar with the "Dawn of the Dead" mall, where the ship = the apparently safe space providing everything & zombies = ever-growing malfunctions. I'm afraid though that this will suffer of the eternal problem: how much brings the decoration vs. the effects? ...

Verdict: "La La Land" will probably win, but my vote goes to "Hail, Caesar!".