Categories One-by-One: Costume Design

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nightwingnova
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Costume Design

Post by nightwingnova »

I took a guess that Florence's more "stylish" get-ups would snag the win.

But y'all are right. No obvious contenders.

Alied is good...but more worthy than Masterpiece Theater? Or Masterpiece Mystery, even? There's only one scene with formal attire - and the clothes therein are just classy. Nothing unique and interesting. Most of the costumes are mundane WWII Brit fare, with some traditional Moroccan clothing in the early scenes.

La La seems off the rack.

Fantastic Beasts seem in the mix...but while the work is fine/good for such a movie, it's not great and it's hard to see voters choosing the work for its pedigree and quality.

Jackie seems to be favored...except it has been noted (as a negative) that the costumes are recreations. I wonder how many Oscar voters think this and would hold it against the designer for the award.

I should go with Jackie (as the favorite)...but I'll take another leap and give the Academy the benefit of the doubt for judiciousness.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Costume Design

Post by Sabin »

For the life of me, I don't know what's going to win this one. Tee, you echo my confusion about Jackie. What costumes were there to design? They were already designed, weren't they? It's just replicating some of the most famous costumes ever. Best Costume Fitting?

This award does not always go to most costume design though. Wouldn't Cinderella have prevailed last year? No movie has won Best Costume Design without a corresponding production design nomination since Elizabeth: The Golden Age. What is the most opulent nominee? Wouldn't it have to be Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them?
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The Original BJ
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Costume Design

Post by The Original BJ »

To make this race even more perplexing, Jackie and Florence Foster Jenkins both lost the Period CDG Award to Hidden Figures (not an Oscar nominee) and Fantastic Beasts lost the Fantasy CDG to Doctor Strange (also not an Oscar nominee).

Good news for Contemporary CDG winner La La Land? Or just more evidence of a muddled race?
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Costume Design

Post by Mister Tee »

I think this category is among the most difficult to nail down, and the central conundrum has been pinpointed already: it's not a logical place for any contemporary film to win, and, even though La La Land pushes the primary colors at you during the opening number and the Going to the Hollywood Party segment, for most of the rest of the movie it's just (as the Honest Trailers site puts it) "people wearing clothes". Yet, you look at the other nominees, and you wonder how any of them can win, either.

Fantastic Beasts has a far stronger claim with production design (for the land inside Redmayne's suitcase) than it does with costumes -- they're fine/in period, but not eye-catching. The Florence Foster Jenkins threads fall into roughly that same category. And Jackie continues to baffle me: it's won both the Broadcasters and BAFTA, and is being predicted by most bloggers (those two things probably go together), but I simply have no recollection of anything beyond the legendary pink suit.

I hoped against hope that Allied would turn up on pay-per-view (the damn thing hits Netflix on the 28th, of all useless dates); I'm forced to judge without seeing it. The thing is, I've heard multiple people say exactly what BJ has: that it's the closest to a standard choice, but the film's failure (both critically and commercially) makes it seem a long shot. I'm kind of reminded how people said the same about Marie Antoinette, which went on to win (over a musical that was mostly contemporary but had some flashy costumes...hmm...) -- and Marie Antoinette's box-office makes Allied look like a smash. (I know: different standards for big-star movies.)

I'm inclined to think either Allied will pull off this unlikely win, or there'll be default to La La Land. Or, I suppose, the bloggers could be right about Jackie, and we'll have an Oscar win I'll never understand.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Costume Design

Post by The Original BJ »

This is one of the below-the-line categories where La La Land's frontrunner position seems most tenuous. Because it isn't really a logical fit to win this category -- it's contemporary, and though the film's primary color scheme allows the costumes to pop in a memorable way, the designs aren't the particularly ornate fare that typically wins here.

But the question FilmFan asked -- what else could conceivably win? -- is a tricky one to answer.

Honestly, the nominee that seems to have the most traditionally Oscar-bait costumes is actually Allied, with lots of old-school Hollywood-style 1940s glamour on Cotillard, Pitt, and and a lot of extras. But the movie was a flop both critically and commercially, and with the one nomination, it's easy to see many voters skipping it entirely.

Then you've got the two nominees up for Best Actress, which you can probably assume voters will have seen. Jackie certainly does an impressive job recreating some iconic Jackie Kennedy outfits, but I wonder if some will view that as less of an achievement than movies that invented their designs from scratch. Florence Foster Jenkins does a very solid job with its 1920s outfits, and perhaps some of the title character's more amusing performance get-ups might push it over the top? Still, it doesn't really have a garment that feels knockout memorable in the way winners here often do.

As for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, it was certainly a big hit, and I'll grant that the visual world it created was quite different from the earlier Harry Potter films. But I still wonder if there won't be a been-there-done-that attitude toward this franchise, especially given that the clothing here, while certainly beautifully coiffed period work, isn't quite as fantastical as its title might indicate.

So...sort of like the way Mad Max triumphed in its tech sweep over more gaudy competition, it seems like sheer enthusiasm for the movie will make this category La La Land's to lose. But I also think there's a decent chance it does lose, though to what, I'm just not sure.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Costume Design

Post by Big Magilla »

It's a puzzlement, but it seems to me to be between those who are nostalgic for the Jackie Kennedy influenced styles of the early 1960s vs. those who are nostalgic for the fashions of the 1940s, of whom there aren't too many left in the Academy. If I'm right, Jackie wins.
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Re: Categories One-by-One: Costume Design

Post by FilmFan720 »

This category is a perfect example of what is making the tech categories so hard to get a good grasp on. By all accounts La La Land, with its record-tying nominations and wealth of precursors, should be heading for a strong sweep. But in so many ways it is unlike the type of film that goes on that sort of streak: it is contemporary, it isn't flashy, and it is picking up a lot of precursors against lesser competition than it has at the Oscars (in contemporary and comedy/musical categories).

You have to go back to 1994 (Priscilla) to find a contemporary-set film that won this award, although that had a much flashier design than La La Land. Before that, you have All That Jazz in 1979 -- although that also had the production costumes and the dancing circulatory systems -- and then films like Virginia Woolf, West Side Story, and Darling, which won in the days when this category was split.

In this category, La La Land lost the BAFTA (and the two haven't disagreed on this category since 2007) and isn't nominated against any of these films at the CDG awards next week.

But the question remains, if no La La Land, then what? The costume Oscar doesn't necessarily go hand to hand with a film's popularity, which means that both Jackie and Florence Foster Jenkins could put up a fight for their bigger and flashier looks, but neither of those scream out their costumes in a way like a Marie Antoinette or Elizabeth: The Golden Age did. At this point, I think this is one place La La Land doesn't win, but I'll wait until the CDG Awards to see what I think will beat it out.
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Categories One-by-One: Costume Design

Post by anonymous1980 »

The nominees:

Allied
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Florence Foster Jenkins
Jackie
La La Land

At first glance, the only viable option would be the only Best Picture nominee in this group AND the potential big sweeper La La Land. But hold on for a second. Sometimes the Academy can vote for the "most costuming" in this case and that would probably be Florence Foster Jenkins with the title character's glittery, gaudy costumes. BAFTA went for Jackie which, in some people's predictions, seem to be a viable option for its recreation of Jackie Kennedy's famous outfits. But some people may say, "So what exactly did the costume designer design if she just recreated the clothes?" Hmmm. For now, I'm going with La La Land.
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