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!".

Oscar 2015 - Production Design

Production Design + Set Decoration to capture everything that gets nominated here, is this year a very easy category to predict. That's why I won't spend too much time with this entry, and I'll start with the winner: "The Grand Budapest Hotel" (well, if it won't be that one ...). The production design has a major impact in this movie's "economy". Basically, almost everything you see on screen was specifically designed to fit the movie tone, and also the locations were picked to comply with that too. The clip below is not complete enough from that perspective, the focus being only on the main location = the hotel, but even so I think it's quite eloquent ... Probably one of the best movies nominated here since "Sweeney Todd".
In "The Imitation Game" we have a re-creation of the Bletchley Park environment during WW2. Looks good, but as a I was saying, all nominees present here seem to be in a different league compared to the above one, so let's cut this short ...
"Interstellar" is a bit atypical for this section considering the percentage of SciFi nominations compared to time pieces. Well, in this case I assume the diversity of the locations did matter enough ...
"Into the Woods" is probably the only other nomination that gets a bit closer to "Grand Budapest". Unfortunately ... it sort of left me with a monotony feeling for the production design part. Maybe because most of the action takes place ... well .. into the woods ...
The reason why "Mr. Turner" shows up here is (as said before) mainly because is a time piece. And also maybe as a more peculiar aspect that it "features" lots of Turner's reproductions in the set decoration. But, that's pretty much everything about it ...

Oscar 2014 - Production Design & Set Decoration

It's hard to find conclusive clips for this area, so I've tried to go for B-Rolls. Which are not actually intended for showing what gets into production design/set decoration, but in any case they give a sufficiently varied perspective taken while shooting the movie. More important, they do it without the post-processing = VFX, editing, etc, so you can relatively clearly see what was "on the set". Unfortunately, B-Rolls are not available for every nomination, but let's see what we got ...

"American Hustle" takes us to a early '80s New Jersey. Stopping in restaurants, hotels, an airport landing track and others. Nice, and surprisingly varied for the movie topic, but still a bit average among the nominees.

"Gravity" might be good on the technical side, but the nomination for production design & set decoration is a bit for free. Ok, let's accept it for production design, but set decoration ... really ? At some point I remember I've seen a clip showing how Sandra Bullock's helmet floating inside the space pod, was added over a scene. I don't know how much is CGI, and how much is real stuff in the next clip, but I couldn't find another one to show more of an interior.

"The Great Gatsby" is a re-adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel. I ignored this movie for a while, since I remember that the older version starring Redford bored me a lot when I've seen it = long, long ago. What's ok in Baz Luhrmann's movie, is that it manages to keep your attention on a romance story which after all is quite simplistic. And much of "the catchy factor" is represented by the visuals, mostly the impact of the environment = a very colored and flamboyant New York of the 20's. I think this is quite predictable as Oscar winner, despite the fact that's the only of the nominees here that's not present in many other sections.

"Her" is a romance between a guy and ... his operating system. A movie that I wanted to skip. As somebody working in IT research for who the idea itself, objectively, is somewhere between "freaking weird" - "highly dangerous", I already can set a reason. Subjectively, I guess I would have some others too ... I did see the movie after all because it simply has too many nominations this year to totally ignore it. I'll keep my focus on the topic. For other stuff, there is time ... The movie is set somewhere in a near future when the technology will presumably permit stories like this one. The film is probably the nicest surprize I've ever had for production design/set decoration from a production that doesn't have many opportunities to offer you much = relatively contemporary as story time, and without exotic locations. The environment in the movie adds a lot to a feeling of .. I don't know how to name it .. existential claustrophobia in "open spaces". Because, if you take separately the space in which the action develops, it's apparently a very relaxing environment. Not for the main character though, but that's in the story = not now ...

"12 Years a Slave" ends the nominees list. If "Gravity" wouldn't have been here, I could put this one at the bottom. Even so it's not far from there. We have indeed a time piece, in which everything has to be in place (and it is) as it was in the XIXth century. However, nothing out of common or that wasn't seen before.