We’re getting into the heavy hitters now. Next up are the awards for Art Direction, Cinematography, and Editing.
And the nominees are . . .
Best Art Direction
Changeling
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
The Duchess
Revolutionary Road
Best Cinematography
Chanegling
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
Best Film Editing
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Frost/Nixon
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
The Lowdown:
As Dennis DeYoung sings, "I like big things. The size of them impresses me." Here are awards that favor the big movies, sweeping sagas with huge sets and epic scope. Remember the gigantic Gotham City sets built for 1989’s Batman? They won Anton Furst an Art Direction Oscar. And don’t you find it just a tad ironic that The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won a Best Editing Oscar, given a running time of over three hours?
The Art Directors’ Guild gave its top award to Benjamin Button this year–that sweeping scope thing. This is the one Oscar it’s most likely to win.
The American Society of Cinematographers joined the Slumdog lovefest–and the camera work in that film is impressive. The Taj Mahal, you know, is pretty damned big. It does seem to me, however, that Wally Pfister’s groundbreaking IMAX work in Dark Knight is getting unfairly overlooked. Will AMPAS take note? Or will the Slumdog juggernaut roll over this category, too?
The American Cinema Editors also embraced Slumdog, giving it the Eddie for Best Edited Feature Film (Dramatic). Not exactly an epic, Slumdog, but the Eddie is a reliable predictor. And history teaches us that the Editing Oscar often goes to the eventual Best Picture winner. So the signs point to another win for that film set in India.
The Oscarology will continue!
