Jeremy Beck

The Golden Compass – Michael L. Fink, Bill Westenhofer, Ben Morris, Trevor Wood

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End – John Knoll, Hal T. Hickel, Charlie Gibson,      John Frazier

Transformers – Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Russell Earl, John Frazier

Will win: I rail about this category annually, so this year, in a feeble protest, I’m shifting it to an earlier position in the sequence of categories (‘cause, like, now it has to be noticed, right?). Anyway, winning an Academy Award is the highest honor a film can receive (at least from the American media), but obviously not all Oscars are created equal. While publicists might try to make a movie like Memoirs of a Geisha sound impressive by proclaiming that it won three Oscars, that quantitative accomplishment becomes less meaningful when you learn that those three wins were for cinematography, art direction, and costume design. You know what other movie won exactly three Academy Awards? The Godfather. I look forward to the Gregg Easterbrook column debating which was the better film. Read More

American Gangster – Arthur Max, Beth A. Rubino

Atonement – Sarah Greenwood, Katie Spencer

The Golden Compass – Dennis Gassner, Anna Pinnock

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street – Dante Ferretti, Francesca Lo Schiavo

There Will Be Blood – Jack Fisk, Jim Erickson

Will win: For the record – and I sort of alluded to this earlier, but you, er, might have skipped over it – “art direction” is a fancy way of referring to a movie’s physical production design, namely its stages and sets. The award is also sometimes dubbed “art direction / set decoration”, just to make things extra confusing. Read More

The Bourne Ultimatum – Christopher Rouse

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly – Juliette Welfling

Into the Wild – Jay Cassidy

No Country for Old Men – Ethan Coen, Joel Coen (as Roderick Jaynes)

There Will Be Blood – Dylan Tichenor

Will win: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly has an outside chance, but this is really about the big dogs facing off again. It should really be no contest; No Country for Old Men is paced so efficiently and edited with such precision that no other movie stands a chance. Throw in the fact that the far more purposeful There Will Be Blood runs two-and-a-half hours, and the Coens take home another one. Read More

Across the Universe* – Albert Wolsky

Atonement – Jacqueline Durran

Elizabeth: The Golden Age – Alexandra Byrne

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street – Colleen Atwood

La Vie en Rose – Marit Allen

Will win: Hey, a category Atonement might actually win! Nothing’s certain though. I don’t think Across the Universe poses much of a threat, since the movie was so brutally panned that I bet a significant number of voters skipped it, but everything else remains in contention. Elizabeth: The Golden Age is one of those dratted Victorian era pieces (wait, that’s probably the Elizabethan era) that always fare well at the Oscars (recent winners in Costume Design have included Topsy-Turvy, Shakespeare in Love, and Restoration). La Vie en Rose is one of those wretched biopics that’s allegedly infused with authenticity – they’re always dangerous here. And Sweeney Todd has such a great overall look that voters might translate that into a high opinion of the movie’s costumes. Read More

Atonement – Dario Marianelli

The Kite Runner – Alberto Iglesias

Michael Clayton – James Newton Howard

Ratatouille – Michael Giacchino

3:10 to Yuma – Marco Beltrami

Will win: Musicals tend to rule in this category, but the Academy couldn’t find any it liked this year (given that Across the Universe just covers countless songs by the Beatles, it doesn’t qualify), so that gets us absolutely nowhere. What is informative, however, is that six of the past seven winners were also Best Picture nominees – using that logic, we’re narrowed to two choices. As fine a film as Michael Clayton is, I can’t recall anything about James Newton Howard’s music – it may have functioned admirably, but if so, it did its work in the background. Dario Marianelli’s score for Atonement, in contrast, exists almost as its own character, mirroring the movie’s broad range of emotions with wondrous sonic versatility. It is truly arresting music and should have firmly implanted itself into voters’ memories. Read More