In our third pass of the Oscar nominees from 1997 through 2016, we take a look at the nominees for Best Production Design. Each week, we’ll present a list of contenders from which you can select five to make up the Best Production Design slate. There will be an “Other” option, but you can only use this once and you’ll have to specify your other in the comments. Now on to the game: Best Production Design.
Loading ...
(November 10, 2019) Original
December 13, 2019
From IMDb: “A desperate young man possessing special powers clashes with a militarized police force after committing a petty crime. Based on the short film.”
SEE ALL POSTERS BELOW
Review: This design doesn’t give much information as to the kind of film it is going to be, which makes it difficult to use as a sales tool. That said, it’s well structured and balanced.
SEE ALL TRAILERS BELOW
Review: (#1) Starting things off with a confusing trailer and expecting audiences to pick up on the clues you’re laying down doesn’t work terribly well as the trailer’s clues are unappealing and slow to resolve.
(#2) The second trailer gives a much better idea of the setting of the film, which was sorely lacking in the first design, but that setting doesn’t have as much going for it as the producers would like, making for a rather confusing, genre-blending film.
None.
(November 10, 2019) Original
January 24, 2020
From IMDb: “A very British drug lord tries to sell off his highly profitable empire to a dynasty of Oklahoma billionaires.”
SEE ALL POSTERS BELOW
Review: Trying to tie the poster design into the concept of gentlemen with whiskey and guns, this poster does a poor job accentuating any strengths the film might have, including its own cast.
SEE ALL TRAILERS BELOW
Review: An interesting cast in a film that doesn’t make a lot of sense thanks to the clunky editing of the trailer. The plot is lost pretty quickly and the over-reliance on Guy Ritchie as a sales tool won’t likely work with audiences.
None.
Welcome to 5 Favorites. Each week, I will put together a list of my 5 favorites (films, performances, whatever strikes my fancy) along with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.
This weekend, the latest cinematic adaptation of a small screen venture makes its way into cineplexes. Charlie’s Angels is the second cinematic incarnation of the popular 70s action adventure series. In honor of Elizabeth Banks’ second feature film as director and her first adaptation of a popular television mainstay, I want to look at my five favorite television adaptations.
While these may not be the all-time best TV adaptations or everyone’s agreement on the topic, these five films are among my favorites. Here they are in order of release.
Born April 10, 1988 in Los Angeles, California, Haley Joel Osment is the son of teacher Theresa and actor Eugene Osment. He was signed with a talent agent at the age of four. At an audition, he was asked to describe the biggest thing he had ever seen; his description of an IMAX theater screen led to his winning a part in a Pizza Hut TV commercial from which his career took off.
Osment’s first on-screen appearance was in the 1994 TV movie, Lies of the Heart: The Story of Laurie Kellogg followed by his big screen portrayal of Tom Hanks’ son in Forrest Gump for which he received world-wide notice. After several minor roles, he had regular roles in the TV series Thunder Alley (1994-1995), The Jeff Foxworthy Show (1995-1997) and Murphy Brown (1997-1998). His performance as the boy who could see dead people in the 1998 megahit The Sixth Sense co-starring Bruce Willis and Toni Collette made him one of the most popular child actors of his day earning him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
Cast in numerous films following his Oscar nomination, he was seen in major roles in numerous other films including 2000’s Pay It Forward with Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt for which he won a Blockbuster award, 2001’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence with Jude Law and Frances O’Connor for which he won a Saturn award, 2001’s Edges of the Lord with Willem Dafoe and Liam Hess and 2003’s Secondhand Lions with Michael Caine and Robert Duvall for which he won a Critics’ Choice award.
Osment provided voiceovers for numerous videos including Chip in 1997’s Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas, Zephyr in 2002’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame II for which he was nominated for a Young Artists award and Mowgli in 2003’s The Jungle Book 2 for which he was again nominated for a Young Artists award.
(November 10, 2019) Original
December 18, 2019
From IMDb: “Follows one memorable night in the life of LAPD officer Ray Mandel while hunting two cop killers on the loose.”
SEE ALL POSTERS BELOW
Review: Too much vacant visual real estate on this design. While it establishes location, it doesn’t do much to establish story.
SEE ALL TRAILERS BELOW
Review: (#1 & #2) The two trailers aren’t terribly similar as one digs more into plot than the other, but both of them tend to blend together so well that it almost feels like you’ve seen the entire film and perhaps you have.
None.
New Trailer (#2) / New Posters (#1-#17)
Preview Link: CLICK HERE for all of the new content as well as the original.
The two best contenders for a #1 finish this weekend couldn’t be more different. Charlie’s Angels is a reboot of the popular TV show and its successful first adaptation. This one doesn’t have the bigger names like its predecessor film did, but it still has a lot going for it. On the other side of the coin is Ford v Ferrari, a racing drama about the attempts at Ford to stop Ferrari for eternally dominating racing. The two films are targeting vastly different audiences and while I suspect Ford v Ferrari will give the Angels a run for their money, I think, in the end, that Charlie’s Angels will eke out a narrow victory.
Our Highest Rated Films: The Report, Ford v Ferrari, The Good Liar, Waves
Our Best Awards Ratings: Ford v Ferrari, Waves, The Report, The Good Liar, White Snake
All Rise
Atlantics
Autonomy
Enai Noki Paayum Thota
Everbody’s Everything
Hollywould
The Hottest August
I Lost My Body
Jhalle
Mickey and the Bear
Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project
Scandalous
Sequestrada
The Shed
Somewhere Winter
The Turkey Bowl
(November 10, 2019) Original
January 20, 2020
From IMDb: “Two female friends with very different ideals decide to start a beauty company together. One is more practical, while the other wants to earn her fortune and live a lavish lifestyle.”
SEE ALL POSTERS BELOW
Review: Far too little going on in the background, though a bonus for making a perfume bottle look like a grenades.
SEE ALL TRAILERS BELOW
Review: A strong comedic cast could help elevate what looks to be a fairly rote business comedy. The trailer does put forth some modestly funny bits of humor, but that might not be enough at this juncture.
None.
(November 10, 2019) Original
December 6, 2019
From IMDb: “Story of one of the first African-American bankers in the United States.”
SEE ALL POSTERS BELOW
Review: The choice of black-and-white might be the worst decision made even if symbolic to the film’s themes. The lack of background details make for dull viewing.
SEE ALL TRAILERS BELOW
Review: It’s a straightforward trailer that explains what’s going on and tries very hard to elevate the film’s importance. While the cast is solid, the premise is laid out lazily and it ultimately feels like something we don’t really need to see.
With no buzz heading into Oscar season, this film seems to have come out of nowhere and that’s seldom a good sign for Oscar contention in spite of its stellar cast.
The Academy has announced the 159 documentary features that were submitted for Oscar consideration. It’s a lot to parse and knowing just which films will make the final list is almost impossible at this point. We’ll look to the shortlists to be announced in the next month to define the race.
LOS ANGELES, CA – One hundred fifty-nine features have been submitted for consideration in the Documentary Feature category for the 92nd Academy Awards®.
Several of the films have not yet had their required Los Angeles and New York qualifying releases. Submitted features must fulfill the theatrical release requirements and comply with all of the category’s other qualifying rules in order to advance in the voting process.
The submitted features, listed in alphabetical order, are:
Click here to continue reading this article
Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what movies I’ve seen over the past week. Below, you will find short reviews of those movies along with a star rating. Full length reviews may come at a later date.
So, here is what I watched this past week:
Jordan Peele’s sophomore outing proves that Get Out was no fluke. Us is a thrilling, gripping horror film that understands its predecessors and uses them to good effect.
Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o stars as a woman with a fear of the beach. After an incident that happened to her at a young age, she took years to emerge from her silence and now has a loving husband and two wonderful children. The film opens at a carnival where 8-year-old Adelaide gets lost in a fun house mirror maze where she comes face-to-face with her doppelganger. When her doppleganger and those of her family show up at the family’s vacation house, it becomes a fight for her life and for the lives her family as the mysteries surrounding the dopplegangers slowly reveal themselves to the audience.
Peele’s freshman effort, Get Out, was a superb achievement, but Us demonstrates his ability to evoke complex emotions from the audience, weave a fascinating narrative, and call back to horror history in an effort to inform and terrify modern audiences. Nyong’o delivers a stellar performance as Adelaide and her doppleganger Red while the rest of the cast acquits itself nicely for the material.