Art Directors Guild Winners (thanks to ladylurks and Niles Hemming):
- Best period film design: Donald Graham Burt, Benjamin Button
- Best fantasy film design: Nathan Crowley, The Dark Knight
- Best contemporary film design: Mark Digby, Slumdog Millionaire
The Art Directors Guild has it figured out. If brilliant action movies like The Bourne Ultimatum and The Dark Knight aren’t “serious” enough for filmmakers who play dress-up for a living, just make sure there are plenty of categories to cover all the creative bases.
Looking for a way to make the Oscars unique, distinctive, truly inclusive, and relevant? Fiddling around with the Best Song format is a limp dick attempt. Revamp the entire structure into something really revolutionary. How about splitting the event into two nights (like the Westminster Dog Show!) Have 3 or 4 genre winners in every category the first night, and then Best of Breed on night two.
Tirade continued after the cut, along with the TV categories.
Original and adapted Screenplays are two different thing. Acting in a comedy or drama require different kinds of talent. Solution: Separate categories! Editing an action movie requires a different skill-set than editing a period drama. Designing costumes for a contemporary piece is nothing like designing for a fantasy film (The Costume Designers Guild takes the same view as the Art Directors with their multiple categories.)
This year they’ll whittle down the Oscars by an hour, threatening to turn it into another homogenized evening of list-reading. They’ve already thought up all kinds of ways to insult the winners — having them stand in the audience one year, instead of coming onstage, and playing off people 30 seconds into their speech (unless you’re an actor — then, please, ramble your scatterbrained ass off).
- Single Camera Television Series: DAN BISHOP, MAD MEN (THE JET SET)
- Multi-Camera Television Series: GREG GRANDE & MICHAEL WYLIE, LITTLE BRITAIN U.S.A.
- Television Movie or Mini-Series: GEMMA JACKSON, JOHN ADAMS
- Half Hour Single-Camera Television Series: JOSEPH P. LUCKY, WEEDS (EXCELLENT TREASURES)
- Awards Show, Variety, Music, or Non-Fiction Program: ROY CHRISTOPHER, 80TH ANNUAL ACADEMY AWARDS
15 Responses for "Art Directors Guild Award Winners"
First Amendment to the Oscar Constitution: 5 categories for International Films. North America, South America, Europe, Asia, & Oceania.
I had an idea like that in my head yesterday. Best political drama, Best bio-pic, best musical, best fantasy, best action, best holocaust pic, best comedy, best period film, etc. stc.
OFF:
Cinema Audio Society (CAS) Awards:
Motion Pictures
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Quantum Of Solace
* Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E
Television Movies and Mini-Series
Generation Kill, Episode 5: “A Burning Dog”
* John Adams, Episode 1: “Join or Die”
John Adams, Episode 2: “Independence”
John Adams, Episode 3: “Don’t Tread on Me”
Recount
Television Series
* 24: “Redemption”
Dexter: Episode 5: “Turning Biminese”
House: Last Resort
Lost: “Meet Kevin Johnson”
Mad Men: “The Jet Set”
thank garras
I thought the reason why WALL-E didn’t get a chance to be in the final five was because of the Best Animated Film category. So why put more genre categories?
Oscars can’t have that many categories or it lessens the value of a trophy. Look at Grammys – they have some 300 categories and no-one gives a shit about them.
The Simpsons always make jokes about how unworthy that statue is.
But yes, if international cinema was to be noted more widely, I’m in. There’s just too much to be changed in Foreign Language Film. Of course, Oscars are an American (Hollywood) award, but they act like it’s for the whole world. They act as they honor the world’s best cinema, which is just not true.
Start with these:
- All countries may submit up to three films every year if they feel like they have a particularly good year. Most countries would still submit only one, it’s that costly to get a nomination.
- The group that pre-selects – come on, watch films all year so you don’t need the September 30th deadline. It’s stupid that a “year” starts from October and ends in September.
- If you need to add categories, three categories should be enough, this would add only one more to the list of 24. Still the main award – Best Picture would be there, but call it Best (North American with UK) Picture, cause this would still remain English-language. Best European Motion Picture and Best International Motion Picture (Not from America or Europe). Call them what you will, but since European filmmaking is already comparable to whole of North America, I think it deserves an own category.
- Don’t get stuck on languages. Who cares what language they speak in a film, film art is universal. Let English language films compete in Best Picture as before, but if, say, Sweden makes an English language film (Mammoth?), let it compete if the Swedes so desire.
I don’t know, it’s very hard to change the category rules. I’m no expert and I’m sure Academy has thought about reimagining this category. They added Foreign Language Film in the 50’s, but we are now living in times when people watch more foreign cinema, apart from the likes of Kurosawa, did that happen before in this magnitude. Maybe it’s because American cinema has become worse since the 70’s and people are still looking for art.
And if we want more international films to win other than Foreign Language Film, just add more international Academy members.
But, I’m fine with Oscars being American. It is – and always will be. Just don’t think it’s world’s awards then, face the criticism from abroad.
Maybe, there should be The Annual World Cinema Awards, too?
Seriously, and it may be because I’m so young, this is the first year that I’m truly disinterested…there are few nominees I’m truly rooting for this year, but I don’t want to watch for fear I’ll be disappointed. Heck, half the folk I’m rooting for I’m rooting for just because it’ll make things interesting, not really because they deserve it. The snubs this year I really took personal, lol. I thought Prince Caspian was amazing and deserved much more than it got (including box office, but that’s OT). OF course I’m in the TDK camp, and I’ll be supremely outraged if Heath doesn’t receive it. The list of amazing performances IMO that have been overlooked this year is amazing to me. Jeffrey Wright, Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, Sally Hawkins…and I thought Bolt was so thoroughly entertaining and Wall-E…just okay. And that’s the point that most self-respecting Oscar-watchers write me off as insane haha. So basically, why would I set myself up for deeper disappointment?
I agree that the foreign language film category is slightly silly with its “one film per country” rule, which invariably leads to travesties like Kurosawa’s “Ran” not being eligible for Oscar.
It’s a shame that the Best Picture race is so biased against non-English language speaking films. Which makes it all the more amazing that Slumdog might pull it off next week.
Does anyone have a problem with the AMPAS reverting back to its ten nominee run in the 30’s & early 40’s?
Here would be my Ten nominees for 2008:
The Dark Knight, Frost/Nixon, TCCOBB, Slumdog Millionaire, The Wrestler, Doubt, Che Part One: The Argentine, Wall-E, Milk, The Reader
One thing I’d love would be if the academy stopped trying to be so popular. If you don’t want the ceromony to run 4hrs, then obviously this show ain’t for you. Just like if you don’t want to spend all day watching football, then steer clear of the super ball. I’m so sick and tired of people whining about how long the show is, I love it that way, it’s the culmination of the film year and should be a big event. They should (as long as they keep it interesting) be proud of their bloatedness.
I used to hate the idea of genre divisions in awards, but my growing love of horror cinema is changing my mind. When I put together my personal “best of”s for the year, I have taken to anointing a “best horror movie”–not because the genre is inferior and deserves to be ghettoized (my top horror movie of the year usually breaks my overall top 10), but because the aims of horror cinema are so unique as to make comparison outside the genre kind of futile.
I mean, Wolf Creek vs. Junebug? The Strangers vs. Man on Wire? Is there really any point in holding such imaginary bouts?
It really is a predicament…How to keep the awards relevent and meaningful while having more categories (because if they end up like the Grammys even I’ll stop watching).
I’ve actually been thinking lately that they should revamp the way they do best picture. Basically, right now, you have four categories that honor a movie as an overall achievement: Picture, Foreign Language, Documentary and Animated Feature. I suggest keeping the last three as they are (in terms of types of films in them, we all know Foreign Language needs some work done in regards to stupid rules) and splitting picture into drama and comedy a la the Golden Globes (except musicals would go into whichever category they fall in, eg My Fair Lady would be in drama, but The Producers would be in comedy, thus, removing the situation where a movie like Walk the Line can win an award intended for comedies).
Then, the winners of those categories would become the nominees for Best Picture. So, a voter would vote for the winner in each of the five categories and then rank their choices from 1-5. If their 1st choice ends up as one of the final nominees, then that vote counts. If not, then they move on to the 2nd vote and then the 3rd, etc., until they reach a vote that is a nominee or they run out of votes. If none of their votes ends up as a nominee, then they do not get a vote for Best Picture. In my opinion, this would help remove some of the ghettoization of the other categories as they would be guaranteed at least a nominee among the final five and would greatly increase the chances of a Foreign Language, Documentary or Animated Film (heck, even a comedy which happens very infrequently) legitimately compete for and win Best Picture. Plus, it would add interest to the actual show because the final Best Picture nominees would not be known until some point during the telecast.
So what do you guys think. Could something like this work or even stand a chance at being implemented?
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