Films that landed on two out of three of the shortlists included “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Poor Things,” “Oppenheimer,” “Maestro,” “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” “Society of the Snow,” and “Ferrari.”

The Makeup and Hairstyling category includes biopic like “Maestro,” “Golda,” “Ferrari” and “Napoleon,” as per usual with the lineup. But the list also made room for pure genre enterprises such as the bloody Dracula saga “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” and Ari Aster’s ambitious, polarizing “Beau Is Afraid” (which, like “Napoleon,” starred Joaquin Phoenix).

Best Sound’s shortlist, now in its third year of early release, is dominated by action films such as “The Creator,” “Ferrari” and “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” in addition to quieter entries such as David Fincher’s moody “The Killer” and Jonathan Glazer’s dread-filled “The Zone of Interest.”

For the category of Best Visual Effects, blockbusters appear in the lineup, including the current hit “Godzilla Minus One” (and current art house hit “Poor Things”), plus summer sequels “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” in addition to more realistic historical recreations “Napoleon” and “Society of the Snow.” Notably absent was “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which staged much of the 1920s-era Osage Nation via VFX.

“Oppenheimer,” another large-scale film and one which used largely practical effects, was not eligible to make the VFX shortlist because it had been surprisingly left off the longer list of 20 films from which the shortlist was chosen.

The nominations voting period will run from Jan. 11-16, 2024, with the official nominations announcement on Jan. 23.

Check out the complete shortlists in these three Oscars categories below.

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING:

“Beau Is Afraid”
“Ferrari”
“Golda”
“Killers of the Flower Moon”
“The Last Voyage of the Demeter”
“Maestro”
“Napoleon”
“Oppenheimer”
“Poor Things”
“Society of the Snow”

SOUND:

“Barbie”
“The Creator”
“Ferrari”
“The Killer”
“Killers of the Flower Moon”
“Maestro”
“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One”
“Napoleon”
“Oppenheimer”
“The Zone of Interest”

VISUAL EFFECTS:

“The Creator”
“Godzilla Minus One”
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”
“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One”
“Napoleon”
“Poor Things”
“Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire”
“Society of the Snow”
“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

The final Oscar nominations will be announced on Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024, with the 96th Academy Awards airing on ABC on March 10, 2023.

See the other shortlists here:

Best Documentary Feature, Best Documentary Short

Best International Feature Film

Best Original Score, Best Original Song

Best Animated Short, Best Live Action Short

The post ‘Napoleon’ Lands on Oscars Shortlists for Makeup, Visual Effects and Sound appeared first on TheWrap.

Two other films landed a pair of songs on the shortlist, with “Flora and Son” making the list with “High Life” and “Meet in the Middle” (the latter song co-written by actors Eve Hewson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and “The Color Purple” making it with “Keep It Movin'” and “Superpower (I).”

Honorary Oscar-winner Diane Warren remains in the running for her 15th nomination as a songwriter, making the shortlist with “The Fire Inside,” her contribution to the film “Flamin’ Hot.” She was also eligible for her song “Gonna Be You” from “80 for Brady,” but it was not shortlisted.

John Williams received a nomination for scoring “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” which if nominated, would give the veteran composer his 54th Oscar nod. He is already the most-nominated living person.

Netflix’s “American Symphony” is the only documentary to end up in both score and song shortlist categories, in a rare showing for a nonfiction film (though several have earned Best Original Song nods and even wins, notably Melissa Etheridge’s “I Need to Wake Up” from “An Inconvenient Truth”.)

The films that ended up slotted in both music categories include “Barbie,” “The Color Purple,” “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” and most surprisingly, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which not only recognized the late Robbie Robertson but also the original song “Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)”, the moving, hopeful rallying cry heard in the conclusion of the picture.

Some notable omissions in the duo categories included Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” and “Wish” (recognized in neither category), and “Peaches,” from the “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.” Oscar-winner Bruce Springsteen was eligible for a new song from “She Came to Me,” but that film received little attention and the song didn’t make the shortlist.

Below are the final score/song shortlists under consideration:

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)
Fifteen scores will advance in the Original Score category for the 96th Academy Awards.  One hundred forty-eight scores were eligible in the category.  Members of the Music Branch vote to determine the shortlist and the nominees.

The scores, listed in alphabetical order by film title, are:

“American Fiction”
“American Symphony”
“Barbie”
“The Boy and the Heron”
“The Color Purple”
“Elemental”
“The Holdovers”
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”
“Killers of the Flower Moon”
“Oppenheimer”
“Poor Things”
“Saltburn”
“Society of the Snow”
“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”
“The Zone of Interest”

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)
Fifteen songs will advance in the Original Song category for the 96th Academy Awards.  Ninety-four songs were eligible in the category.  Members of the Music Branch vote to determine the shortlist and the nominees.

The original songs, along with the motion picture in which each song is featured, are listed below in alphabetical order by film title:

“It Never Went Away” from “American Symphony”
“Dear Alien (Who Art In Heaven)” from “Asteroid City”
“Dance The Night” from “Barbie”
“I’m Just Ken” from “Barbie”
“What Was I Made For?” from “Barbie”
“Keep It Movin’” from “The Color Purple”
“Superpower (I)” from “The Color Purple”
“The Fire Inside” from “Flamin’ Hot”
“High Life” from “Flora and Son”
“Meet in The Middle” from “Flora and Son”
“Can’t Catch Me Now” from “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes”
“Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)” from “Killers of the Flower Moon”
“Quiet Eyes” from “Past Lives”
“Road To Freedom” from “Rustin”
“Am I Dreaming” from “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

Steve Pond contributed to this report.

See the other shortlists here:

Best Documentary Feature, Best Documentary Short

Best International Feature Film

Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound

Best Animated Short, Best Live Action Short

The post ‘Barbie’, ‘The Color Purple,’ and ‘Flora and Son’ Lead Shortlists for Best Original Song and Score Oscars appeared first on TheWrap.

“20 Days in Mariupol,” from Ukraine, is one of two docs that also made the International Feature List. The other was Kaouther Ben Hania’s “Four Daughters,” from Tunisia.

The shortlist includes most of the most acclaimed nonfiction films of 2023, though it does contain some notable omissions. “Kokomo City,” a nominee for the Cinema Eye Honors and Critics Choice Documentary Awards, did not make the shortlist, and neither did “The Mother of All Lies” (which did make the international shortlist), “The Deepest Breath,” “The Mission,” “Silver Dollar Road” or two marathon-length films from renowned filmmakers, Steve McQueen’s “Occupied City” and Frederick Wiseman’s “Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros.”

In the documentary-short category, the 15-film shortlist included films from Ben Proudfoot, whose “The Last Repair Shop” focuses on a Los Angeles-based shop that repairs and restores musical instruments for children. Proudfoot won the Oscar in this category last year for “The Queen of Basketball” and was nominated in 2021 for “A Concerto Is a Conversation.” His co-director on “The Last Repair Shop” is Kris Bowers, who was also shortlisted writing the original score to “The Color Purple.”

Also shortlisted was “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó,” one of the shorts in TheWrap’s ShortList Film Festival this year.

The complete shortlists for documentaries are below.

FEATURES

“American Symphony”
“Apolonia, Apolonia”
“Beyond Utopia“
“Bobi Wine: The People’s President”
“Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy”
“The Eternal Memory”
“Four Daughters”
“Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project”
“In the Rearview”
“Stamped from the Beginning”
“Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie“
“A Still Small Voice”
“32 Sounds”
“To Kill a Tiger”
“20 Days in Mariupol”

SHORTS

“The ABCs of Book Banning”
“The Barber of Little Rock”
“Bear”
“Between Earth & Sky”
“Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games”
“Camp Courage”
“Deciding Vote”
“How We Get Free”
“If Dreams Were Lightning: Rural Healthcare Crisis”
“Island in Between”“Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó”“Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó”
“The Last Repair Shop”
“Last Song from Kabul”
“Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó”
“Oasis”
“Wings of Dust”

Steve Pond contributed to this report.

The post ‘American Symphony,’ ’20 Days in Mariupol’ Make Oscars Documentary Shortlist appeared first on TheWrap.

15 films advance in the Best Live Action Short Film category, including Pedro Almodovar’s “Strange Way of Life” starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal and Wes Anderson’s Roald Dahl adaptation for Netflix “The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar.” David Oyelowo’s “The After,” the Ben Whishaw-fronted “Good Boy” and the John Travolta-starring “The Shepherd” also made the cut.

For the first time, Academy members from all branches were invited to participate in the preliminary round of voting and must have met a minimum viewing requirement to be eligible to vote in the category.

Members from all branches are once again invited to participate in the nominations round, but must watch all 15 films to vote.

“The After”
“The Anne Frank Gift Shop”
“An Avocado Pit”
“Bienvenidos a Los Angeles”
“Dead Cat”
“Good Boy”
“Invincible”
“Invisible Border”
“Knight of Fortune”
“The One Note Man”
“Red, White and Blue”
“The Shepherd”
“Strange Way of Life”
“The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”
“Yellow”

And 15 films advance in the Animated Short Film category for the 96th Academy Awards, including Disney’s 100th anniversary film “Once Upon a Studio.” Members of the Short Films and Feature Animation Branch vote to determine the shortlist and the nominees.

“Boom”
“Eeva”
“Humo (Smoke)”
“I’m Hip”
“A Kind of Testament”
“Koerkorter (Dog Apartment)”
“Letter to a Pig”
“Ninety-Five Senses”
“Once upon a Studio”
“Our Uniform”
“Pachyderme”
“Pete”
“27”
“War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko”
“Wild Summon”

See the other shortlists here:

Best Documentary Feature, Best Documentary Short

Best International Feature Film

Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound

Best Original Score, Best Original Song

The post Pedro Almodóvar, Wes Anderson and Disney Films Make the Live Action and Animated Short Oscars Shortlists appeared first on TheWrap.

Other films on a very European-centric list include Finland’s “Fallen Leaves,” Denmark’s “The Promised Land,” Italy’s “Io Caitano,” Japan’s “Perfect Days” and three documentaries, Ukraine’s “20 Days in Mariupol,” and Tunisia’s “Four Daughters” and Morocco’s “The Mother of All Lies.”

Overall, nine of the 15 films on the list are European. Three are from Asia, two from Africa and one from the Americas.

For the most part, the highest-profile films advanced in the race, with few surprises on the shortlist. Armenia’s “Amerikatsi” is the closest thing to a dark-horse candidate, with Bhutan’s “The Monk and the Gun” following in the footsteps of director Pawo Choyning Dorji’s last film, “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” which was a surprise nominee two years ago.

Eighty-eight films qualified in the category this year. To come up with the shortlist, volunteers from all branches of the Academy were separated into seven separate groups, and each group was assigned 12 or 13 films as required viewing. Members were free to watch as many films as they wanted from outside their group, but they had to watch everything in their group in order for their votes to count.

Voters then listed as many as 15 films in order of preference, with the ranked-choice system used to compile the shortlist. A second round of voting, which is open to all Academy members who watch all 15 shortlisted films, will produce the five nominees.

The voting system, which has been changed repeatedly over the past two decades, now favors the highest-profile films, which clearly draw the most voters and have the best chances to end up on a lot of ballots.

Here is the list of films that are advancing in the race.

Armenia, “Amerikatsi”
Bhutan, “The Monk and the Gun”
Denmark, “The Promised Land”
Finland, “Fallen Leaves”
France, “The Taste of Things”
Germany, “The Teachers’ Lounge”
Iceland, “Godland”
Italy, “Io Capitano”
Japan, “Perfect Days”
Mexico, “Totem”
Morocco, “The Mother of All Lies”
Spain, “Society of the Snow”
Tunisia, “Four Daughters”
Ukraine, “20 Days in Mariupol”
United Kingdom, “The Zone of Interest”

See all of the shortlists here:

Best Documentary Feature, Best Documentary Short

Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound

Best Original Score, Best Original Song

Best Animated Short, Best Live Action Short

The post ‘The Taste of Things,’ ‘The Zone of Interest’ Make Heavily European Shortlist in Oscars International Category appeared first on TheWrap.

The ceremony, which will air Sunday, Jan. 7 at 8 p.m. ET on CBS and stream on Paramount+, marks Koy’s Golden Globes hosting debut, as well as marks the first awards show the comedian as ever hosted.

Recently wrapping up his “Funny Is Funny World Tour,” the stand-up comedian has released five specials across Comedy Central and Netflix, including his recent Netflix special, “Live from the Los Angeles Forum.” Koy starred in Universal Picture’s “Easter Sunday,” which was based on his own experiences and stand-up, and was featured in Disney’s “Haunted Mansion” and the voice cast Netflix’s animated film “Monkey King.”

“We are thrilled to have Jo host the 81^st Annual Golden Globe Awards and bring his infectious energy and relatable humor to kick off Hollywood’s award season. We can’t wait to see what he has in store for the stars in the room and a global audience,” Golden Globes president Helen Hoehne said in a statement. “We know Jo is bringing his A-game.”

“Jo’s genuine brand of comedy is sure to entertain our honorees in the room at the Beverly Hilton and viewers at home,” EPs and showrunners Glenn Weiss, who also directs the ceremony, and Ricky Kirshner said. “We are excited to work with him to make this year’s show laugh-out-loud from beginning to end.”

After hosting the Globes, Koy will be featured in the voice cast of animated film “Tiger’s Apprentice,” which is set to premiere Feb. 2 on Paramount+.

“I’ve stepped onto a lot of stages around the world in my career, but this one is going to be extra special. I’m so excited to be hosting the Golden Globes this year,” Koy said. “This is that moment where I get to make my Filipino family proud. Mahal Kita (Google it)!”

This year’s awards show will add two new categories as it includes Best Stand-Up Comedian on Television and Cinematic and Box Office Achievement to its awards lineup.

The 2024 ceremony also marks the Golden Globes’ CBS debut, after NBC, its previous home, declined to renew its deal with the awards show following controversy surrounding the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the embattled organization previously behind the Golden Globes. CBS now serves as the broadcast home to both the Globes and Grammy awards. 

The post Jo Koy to Host Golden Globes in January appeared first on TheWrap.

Dressing up monarchs and superheroes is a craft that receives and deserves praise. But we would also like to spotlight the crafty artisans this year who clothed characters from today – with results that are imaginative, seductive and sewn with many threads of this modern world.

May December
Costume design by April Napier

Everyone has their own story,” costume designer April Napier said, “and characters have to be imbued with a sense of individuality.” She leaned forward in her chair and added with emphasis: “Especially in a contemporary film.”

Napier should know. Her filmography includes such sharp and idiosyncratic modern-set projects as “Booksmart,” “Your Friends and Neighbors,” “Certain Women,” “Gentleman Broncos,” the Tilda Swinton drama “Julia,” Apple TV’s “High Desert” and Greta Gerwig’s contemporary-ish “Lady Bird,” which took place about 15 years earlier than its 2017 release.

Todd Haynes’s devilish melodrama “May December” is also set one click before present day, in 2015. “It’s contemporary, but just prior to the polarization of today’s society,” said Napier, a first-time collaborator with the famed director of “Safe,” “Far From Heaven” and “Carol.”

The film focuses on controversial married couple Gracie and Joe (Julianne Moore and Charles Melton), decades apart in age, whose lives are upended by an actress named Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) doing research to play Gracie in a movie. As the story continues, the two women’s identities subtly overlap.

“Gracie is such a princess character and her femininity is what she’s hanging onto, to maintain that control,” Napier said. “She has more flouncy, softer, feminine clothes. So we did a costume fitting for (Moore) on a Friday and then used all her wardrobe choices as a map to dress Natalie. Natalie’s character comes into the film in an urban uniform, shirt and cool jeans, so we intentionally started her wardrobe dark and then moved her into softer pastels.”

For the production, Napier and Haynes were bursting with cultural references, which subliminally influenced the film’s look: Robert Altman’s “Three Women,” Chantal Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman,” actress Jane Birkin, photographers Deborah Turbeville, Nicholas Nixon and Tina Barney. “And Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Persona,’ of course, obviously,” Napier said, referring to the great-grandmommy of blurred-identity films.

Another major touchstone was the 1964 marital drama “The Pumpkin Eater,” starring Anne Bancroft and Peter Finch. “At one point in that film, a young Maggie Smith comes and lives with them and there’s a scene where Bancroft and Maggie Smith are cooking and their outfits are mimicking each other,” Napier said.

She continued, “One’s in a checked outfit and one’s in a striped outfit with a towel over her shoulder and I was like, ‘That’s Julianne and Natalie.’ That’s the scene in our film where Elizabeth comes over to bake and that’s when she starts her transition into Gracie. I went up to Todd and showed him a photo from ‘The Pumpkin Eater’ and was like, ‘We’re doing it.’”

“May December” is set in Savannah, Georgia, a perfect locale, according to Napier, for the cultural expression of attire as uniform. “But Savannah can be very limited for prepping,” she said with a laugh. “Even the thrift stores, for menswear, were limited to blue Oxford, blue Oxford and blue Oxford. Every middle-aged man has a uniform: blue button-down shirt, khaki shorts and Top-Siders. The women also wear very similar types of floral dresses.”

But the costume designer pointed out that there is a special, magic-key feeling to discovering the perfect outfits for a contemporary movie, such as non-identical twin white frocks that the two women wear for a climactic stand-off on a football field near the story’s end. “There is something about finding your Fabergé egg,” she said. “So that we can support the actors, stay out of the way, be quiet – but really help to evoke a mood and imbue a feeling in the film.”

Past Lives
Costume design by Katina Danabassis

“Past Lives,” the exquisite first feature by Celine Song, opens with an image of three people filmed from a distance while sitting at a bar. The shot immediately highlights the nuanced, thoughtful work of the film’s costume designer, Katina Danabassis. The three people are Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), childhood friends in Korea who have reunited in New York City, and Nora’s patient husband Arthur (John Magaro).

“You can see that Arthur is wearing more of a neutral, earthy color and his shirt is looser,” said Danabassis, whose credits include “C’mon, C’mon” and TV’s “The Curse.” “With Hae Sung, he’s more buttoned up and business-like and thinks that he’s more stylish. His color palette is more cool and cosmopolitan. His shirt is maybe just a little too snug, which also shows that he’s a bit pent-up.”

She added, “With Nora, she looks amazing but she’s also a writer, so we had to find the balance between great outfits, like late ’90s Prada, minimalist and restrained, while also showing that she’s not putting that much effort in there.”

The opening image is repeated later in the film, following a dreamy walkabout sequence between Nora and Hae Sung on a gorgeous day in New York. At that point in the story, we have also learned much more about these three people and what connects them.

“It was hot the first day we were shooting that scene,” Danabassis said of the stroll-around-New-York sequence. “Nora’s pants were summer wool, which worked very well. She’s wearing a cream-colored button-down top and there’s a specific lack of care in her shirt, which was important. The cuffs being unbuttoned – that says, ‘I’m not sure how I want to project myself to this person but I’m not going to try too hard.’ We communicated a lot on how to convey that sort of vibe.”

The subtle contrast of warm and cool clothing resonates across the arc of the film’s lovelorn emotional narrative. Danabassis found inspiration in another directorial debut, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year.

“(Terrence Malick’s) ‘Badlands’ is a film that I rewatched while on a plane,” she said. “And I noticed the little contrasts of white and dark and navy blue in the costumes, and I thought that was just so beautiful. So that was what I tried to do, specifically for when Nora and Arthur are together. There are a lot of contrasts of blue and white between them.”

And though the movie’s pulse is synched to the here-and-now, the title the title deliberately suggests reincarnation. Song encouraged Danabassis to lean into the notion of genre blending during the costume process.

“One of the things we talked about was that ‘Past Lives’ is, in some ways, a movie about time travel,” Danabassis said. “It’s not literally a science fiction film, but that idea encouraged us to use stars in Nora’s wardrobe. Blink and you’ll miss it, but Nora has a star ring while she’s in college. She wears a star necklace. The shirt that Nora’s mother is wearing has speckles on it, which we echoed with Nora in the first scene and then the last scenes. So there was this thread of family and storytelling and, well, yeah, the cosmos.”

Passages
Costume design by Khadija Zeggaï

Set among the bourgeoisie in modern day Paris, “Passages” is another crackling romantic drama from the great, uncompromising Ira Sachs (“Keep the Lights On,” “Love is Strange”). The film stars Franz Rogowski as a German director named Tomas who is married to artist Martin (Ben Whishaw) but falls in love with schoolteacher Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos).

“We realized that we weren’t really making a realistic film,” Sachs said during a recent BAFTA interview. “We were making an unreal film, in which the costumes elevate everything to a point of the dramatic and the impactful and the emotional. So we took risks with the costumes.”

The head of that risk-taking department was Khadija Zeggaï, a collaborator with Sachs on his previous feature, “Frankie,” starring Isabelle Huppert. “The idea of finding a unique piece stimulates me,” Zeggaï said. “And Ira’s attention to costume is the most obvious. Without imposing anything, he guided me to find the right silhouette for each character: Go for what you love, be fair and make sure it’s sexy.”

And sexy it most certainly is. The outfits in “Passages” create a whole visual language, especially for Tomas. A skin-tight dragon-print crop top and leopard pants – the most memorable of many memorable looks in the film – serve as a trigger for seduction in one scene and a weapon for provocation in another.

Zeggaï wanted to suggest a beastly quality within Tomas, while also empha- sizing the frame of Rogowski, a trained dancer. “Ira’s freedom and Franz’s personality really helped me to make the right choices,” she said. “Tomas is wearing clothes cut for the female body. I didn’t alter the clothing. Everything (fit) his dancing body.”

Zeggaï also found a snakeskin jacket in a vintage shop, which she felt accentuated Tomas’s animal nature. “The idea that Tomas could be a wild beast helped me to find this python jacket, as well as his bearskin jacket and much of his clothes,” she said.

The character also favors mesh tops, including a heavy green sweater with net holes large enough to show his body underneath. “I worked a lot with Ira and Franz on the type of German director who likes to dress up,” Zeggaï said. “And the mesh quality of the sweater is a signature of Tomas’s look.”

Tomas’s relentless personality and his desire to be loved forms the narrative thrust of the film. But the clothes of the other two characters, Martin and Agathe, also serve as a mood-ring contrast. In the movie’s later scenes, we see Martin wearing a loose and light-colored jumper, a departure from the blues and grays in his wardrobe, and Agathe in a scarlet turtleneck sweater.

“Ben, Ira and I talked a lot and did a few fittings,” Zeggaï said. “Ira wanted Ben to
be dressed in white at the end of the film. And (for Agathe) at this point in the film, she has decided she is free. Red evokes strength.”

Showing Up
Costume design by April Napier

Filmmaker Kelly Reichardt would just as likely direct the next Marvel movie as she would dress her characters in the sparkliest, fresh- off-the-runway clothes from luxury brands. Glamour is a legitimate and desirable aesthetic – surely Reichardt observed some of it when she premiered her newest, “Showing Up,” in Cannes – but the Oregon- based auteur greatly favors the warm, comfy, thrift-store garb of hanging out. In her films, people even wear the same thing two days in a row. (Just like the rest of us do.)

Perhaps the movies where Reichardt has dripped into the 1800s (“Meek’s Cutoff” and “First Cow”) have informed her attitude towards clothes as well- worn, hand-me-down uniforms in her contemporary projects. In “Showing Up,” set around the modest art scene of Portland, a soft-spoken sculptor (played by Michelle Williams) and an installation artist (Hong Chau) appear for about a third of the film in a soft-touch grayish sweatshirt (Williams) and navy blue overalls (Chau), as seen in the photo above.

The story of those blue overalls goes right to the heart of Reichardt’s creative process. “Kelly sent me a text,” costume designer April Napier said. “She said that a camera operator from her previous films had shown her a picture of his wife, who was wearing blue overalls. And Kelly said, ‘It looks so great. Do you think we can get that for Hong to wear?’”

Reichardt didn’t mean a replica, according to Napier. “I called the guy’s wife, her name is Molly,” the designer said. “And I said, ‘Hey Molly, can we borrow your blue overalls?’ She said sure. So we got it for Hong to wear in all those scenes. And then when we wrapped, we cleaned the overalls and returned them to Molly. This is how it goes on a Kelly Reichardt film. Everything, even the clothes, are family- and friends-oriented.”

Read more from the issue here.

The post ‘May December’, ‘Past Lives’ and Other Costume Designers Explain How They Weave a ‘Sense of Individuality’ Into Modern Clothes appeared first on TheWrap.

Giamatti will receive the award for his performance in Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers,” in which he plays a cranky teacher at a New England boarding school who must spend his Christmas break with students whose families aren’t able to take them for the holidays. His costar Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who plays the school cook, has previously been announced as the recipient of Palm Springs’ Breakthrough Performance Award.

Past winners of the Icon Award include Willem Dafoe, Glenn Close, Lady Gaga and Michael Douglas.

In a statement, Palm Springs International Film Festival Chairman Nachhattar Singh Chandi said, “In ‘The Holdovers,’ Paul Giamatti inhabits a complex character who is both challenging and rewarding, and ultimately reminds us of what it means to be connected as human beings.”

Giamatti’s other performances include Payne’s “Sideways,” as well as the films “Cinderella Man,” “12 Years a Slave,” “American Splendour,” “The Truman Show” and “Barney’s Version” and the television series “Billions,” “John Adams” and “Too Big to Fail.” He has won four Screen Actors Guild Awards, one Primetime Emmy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, two Critics Choice Awards and one Independent Spirit Award.   

Other honorees this year include Randolph, Danielle Brooks, Colman Domingo, Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, Greta Gerwig, Carey Mulligan, Cillian Murphy, Emma Stone, Jeffrey Wright and “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

The awards ceremony will be held at the Palm Springs Convention Center and will take place on the first day of the 2024 Palm Springs International Film Festival, which will run through Jan. 15.  

The post Paul Giamatti to Receive Icon Award at Palm Springs International Film Awards appeared first on TheWrap.

The Searchlight film is a metaphysical tale of longing and nostalgia adapted loosely from Taichi Yamada’s novel “Strangers,” centering on a single gay man (Andrew Scott) in a London high-rise who is grappling with memories of his deceased parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), while fending off the advances of a handsome, mysterious neighbor (Paul Mescal). It all takes place on a lush, saturated widescreen palette that enhances the story’s deeper revelations.

“The aspect ratio of a film for me is as important as the choice of lenses or your color palette,” Ramsay said of the bold choice for an achingly intimate movie whose end credits list a mere six actors. “I wanted to lean into the concept of a wide frame with a single person—being able to isolate a character and use the empty space in a wide format to really exacerbate that feeling of loneliness.”

“Strangers” marks Haigh’s most intensely emotional film to date, placing the lead character’s melancholy against carefully composed vistas and reflective surfaces that created challenges for the man with the camera. “The main apartment that was built on a stage, so we could remove glass things, but it’s always a trick, getting yourself out of reflections and such,” Ramsay said. “I’m sure if you pause a frame and zoom in, you’ll see me somewhere in that mix. But Andrew would always say, ‘Get the shot that you want first, and then we’ll figure out how to fix reflections and stuff’.”

The film continues Haigh’s bold, realistic depictions of sexual unions—seen here in supple scenes between Scott and Mescal—that make audiences sit up and take notice in a non-salacious, affirming way. “What I realized when I watched it (at festivals) is it transcends expectations for it to truly just be a love story,” said Ramsay, whose film arrived in a film year rife with liberating depictions of sexual scenarios in everything from “Passages“ to “Poor Things“ to “Saltburn.”

The movie’s furtive narrative twists (What is Mescal’s character’s deal? Why is their building so spookily sparse?) and the tender but haunted parental narrative is all borne out in a careful assemblage. “The intent was to create this ambiguous feeling of current, future and past all blended into one as seamlessly as possible,” Ramsay said.

Even though the film has yet to receive its wide release, fan theories abound, some of them taking the ghostly implications of the narrative—particularly as it applies to Scott’s character—even further than the filmmakers may have planned.

“Maybe Andrew’s got that deep in the back of his pocket, but we never intended that,” Ramsay said. “But that’s what’s beautiful about it—everybody brings their own interpretation to it.”

This story first appeared in the Below-the-Line issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post ‘All of Us Strangers’ Cinematographer Unpacks the Film’s Sensual Intimacies and Mysteries appeared first on TheWrap.

Lovers of the original film will get a feeling of déjà vu from some scenes and locations, including the recreation of a masked kidnapper entering through a glass patio door, and even the car dealership in which William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard worked in the 1996 film, right down to the placement of his desk. (Also, listen close for a mention of the TruCoat treatment his character brags about in the film.)

The chief difference this time is the focus on the wife—played by a daffy, deliriously funny Juno Temple as Dorothy “Dot” Lyon—rather than the crummy husband. Dot is a force to be reckoned with even before a botched kidnapping attempt. (In the film, the Lundegaard wife is successfully kidnapped and has far less agency.) The moneyed, no-nonsense Harve Presnell character is now the wife’s lacerating mother-in-law, Lorraine (Jennifer Jason Leigh, with a “Hudsucker Proxy”-like Mid-Atlantic drawl). Lorraine keenly draws the conclusion that there is more to her daughter-in-law than meets the eye.

“It was a really enjoyable fusion and loving homage to the original film,” Smith said. “It was a real challenge for my assistant art director Amanda Nicholson and I to go shot by shot through the original film, find the pieces in the home that we could replicate, including the front door and its openness to the kitchen, and yet still make it do all the other 30 or 40 things that it physically needed for Noah’s scripts. It was no small feat.”

The show famously plays with reality, even keeping the cheeky “based on real events” title card. However, one of the main locations this season is an actual real place, Scandia, Minnesota, though Smith and his crew used Calgary as a stand-in for Minnesota and neighboring state North Dakota, also an important locale for Season 5. Smith’s background in designing Westerns, not to mention being an acclaimed Canadian artist himself, was kismet for the storylines, especially one involving shady, self-governing sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm), who gives off echoes of the Coens’ “True Grit” and, especially, “No Country for Old Men.” “We looked a lot at the paintings of Andrew Wyeth and were trying to get a vibe of this desolate, barren Western side of North Dakota,” Smith said. “As we worked through it, we wanted to topographically make sure that the viewer always knew if they were in North Dakota or Minnesota, and it just so happened that the villain was to the West in a more desolate, barren place.”

Smith even pointed out a horror vibe to this season, shades of “No Country” baddie Anton Chigurh. Halloween is a major theme, with allusions to the POV of Michael Myers in suburbia, à la John Carpenter’s 1978 “Halloween.” In addition, a Gothic holiday classic celebrating its 30-year anniversary logs in some serious screen time. “In the opening scene of the season, the school brawl, there is actually a setup of “The Nightmare Before Christmas“ as a student production,” Smith said. “If you look carefully, you can see miniature sets of that and the front doors of the school has some posters referencing it.”

In addition, a Jack Skellington mask can be spotted in the Halloween-night sequence and one scene is scored to “This is Halloween,” a song from the Henry Selick-Tim Burton film. Even in a show set a mere four years ago, the team still had to be laser-focused on detail: For instance, Kias are part of the narrative but had a major brand overhaul in 2020, so Smith and co. had to vet their accuracy. But given the “Fargo” milieu, Smith insisted it doesn’t always have to be exact. “There’s nothing worse than a period film where all of the cars are from 1945,” he said with a laugh. “That’s never been the case, and it’s no different with contemporary pictures. Deep at its core, we’re still trying to allude to the “Fargo” we know in our genetic viewing code, which is the 1996 picture. So it didn’t bother me to have anachronistic things that were further back in time, because I think it’s this strange reach back into the entire movie.”

This story first appeared in the Below-the-Line issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post How ‘Fargo’ Expanded the Coen-Verse With Help From Westerns and ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ appeared first on TheWrap.