Innholdsfortegnelse for Awards Special 1 December 2017 i The Hollywood Reporter

The respected cinematographer Roger Deakins has been nominated 13 times for the best cinematography Oscar, but his name has never appeared on the final Academy Awards ballot. And that, in turn, partially explains why Deakins has never won an Oscar. Why has his name never been on the ballot? How can that be? It all comes down to a quirk of the Oscar voting process. But, to explain, first some history. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was formed 90 years ago as a smokescreen. The idea for an organization that would bring together the greatest artists from across the film industry was proposed by the studio chiefs who ran the business because they thought that making their employees feel valued might help to fend off unionization in…

To put it in figure skating terms, the degree of difficulty that the I, Tonya hair and makeup team faced in transforming actress Margot Robbie into the spitting image of infamous figure skater Tonya Harding was the equivalent of a triple lutz, triple toe loop. Harding herself became notoriously recognizable thanks to her controversial rise — and widely publicized downfall. The 1991 U.S. Women’s Figure Skating champion and the first American woman to land a triple axel in international competition, Harding was later banned for life from the competitive sport after pleading guilty to conspiring to hinder the prosecution of the men who attacked skater Nancy Kerrigan at a practice session at the 1994 Figure Skating Championships in Detroit in the lead-up to the ’94 Winter Olympics. The hairstylists and…

Early in preproduction for Disney’s Coco — its Pixar movie (reportedly costing $175 million) set on the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead — the normally politically sensitive studio made a slight misstep. It tried to trademark the name Dia de los Muertos. The backlash was understandably ferocious, with a petition against Disney drawing more than 20,000 signatures. “[It] purely had to do with us not having a title yet,” says director Lee Unkrich. “That triggered a bunch of stuff, and it really blew up. It was heartbreaking for me, because we were working so hard to do everything right and respectfully.” Four years later, nobody is talking about petitions. Indeed, the film, which was released Nov. 22, just passed $300 million at the worldwide…

Cradle After winning the 2017 Student Academy Award, Devon Manney is gunning for Oscar gold with his short following a veteran as he returns home from the Iraq War after losing both of his arms. The 23-year-old made Cradle as his senior-year thesis film at USC’s animation program. Dear Basketball In 2015, Kobe Bryant used a poem to announce his retirement from a twodecade career in the NBA. Two years later, director Glen Keane, a 38-year veteran of Walt Disney feature animation, created a short of that poem with Bryant narrating over a John Williams-composed score. Fox and the Whale The CG/hand-drawn hybrid is the first professional film for director Robin Joseph, who did the majority of the production on his own. The short centers on a curious fox who…

It was a little bit of a cosmic nod,” says Sara Bareilles of how she came to write her song “If I Dare” for Fox Searchlight’s Battle of the Sexes. Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who were in need of an original song for their finished biopic about Billie Jean King, happen to be the next-door neighbors of Jessie Nelson, Bareilles’ writing partner on her Tonynominated musical Waitress. “The universe was like, ‘Hey! Take a look at this!’” Introductions were made and a screening was set. Starring Emma Stone and Steve Carell, Battle of the Sexes focuses on King’s efforts to win the same pay as her male counterparts, while simultaneously dealing with the personal journey of coming out. “I was, of course, aware of her as a feminist…

MUDBOUND Tamar-kali had only four weeks to compose, orchestrate, record and mix 40 minutes of score for Dee Rees’ post- World War II drama. PHANTOM THREAD Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood reunited with Paul Thomas Anderson for a fourth time to score this film about a fashion designer in the 1950s. THE POST Steven Spielberg brought on regular collaborator John Williams for the 1970sset Washington Post drama starring Meryl Streep.…

When done well, editing can play a big part in upping the tension and suspense in a film. This theme is perhaps nowhere more evident than in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, which allows moviegoers to experience the critical World War II event simultaneously on the beach, in the air and at sea. “The story had to be separated and crosscut in such a way that the audience could stay with you on these three parallel storylines — and where the timelines meet about twothirds of the way through the film,” says editor Lee Smith, adding that it was “trial and error and many screenings. We kept watching it and tuning the level of suspense.” Smith says another consideration was that Nolan’s latest was light on dialogue and heavy on experience. “We…

ANNA BEHLMER Sound Mixer In 1996, she became the first woman to be nominated for sound mixing for Braveheart, but after 10 nominations, she is still without a win. Her other nominations were for such films as Evita, The Thin Red Line and, most recently, 2009’s Star Trek. KEVIN O’CONNELL Sound Mixer O’Connell earned a record 20 Oscar nominations before winning best sound mixing in 2017 for Hacksaw Ridge. “As much as I thought I knew what it would feel like [to win], I didn’t. It was the greatest feeling in my entire life,” he said backstage after his win. VICTOR YOUNG Composer Young received 22 Oscar nominations, nabbing multiple noms several times (in 1941, he was nominated for four film scores). The composer won only once, after his death…

“That’s how I did my new age homework.” DEMI LOVATO The 25-year-old singer, joking about asking her parents about the Smurf characters (first created in 1958) while researching her role as Smurfette in Smurfs: The Lost Village. “Look, I’m actually a professional singer.” BENJAMIN BRATT The Coco voice actor, joking about what he’ll now tell his kids, who complain about his singing, after singing onscreen for the first time in the film with the help of a voice coach. “I was completely ignorant that there were that many female veterans.” PAT BENATAR The “Dancing Through the Wreckage” singer, talking about what she learned after performing the song for the soundtrack of the documentary Served Like a Girl. “Storytelling is something that’s just a part of me, something that I love…

Superhero fare — from Thor to Justice League and Logan — swept the visual effects shortlist Dec. 4, while tentpole sci-fi projects, such as Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Blade Runner 2049, also were well represented. THR took a dive into how the VFX teams created some of this year’s most imaginative effects, including the beasts, aliens and other out-ofthis- world creatures that filled their stories. Alien: Covenant • Fox Ridley Scott’s latest required bringing back the old — such as the Xenomorph, the creature featured in the 1979 Alien — and creating the new, like the species of extraterrestrials the Neomorph. MPC used real-world references for the latter, such as the goblin shark and praying mantis and the contorted and extreme motion studies by actor Javier Botet. Beauty…

The soaring ballad “Stand Up for Something” from the Open Road drama Marshall serendipitously came together at 35,000 feet. Songwriter Diane Warren had channeled ’60s soul anthems to pen the track for Andra Day (who also appears in the film), but craved another element to make it modern. “I told Andra’s manager that Common would be the dream,” she recalls. “Less than a week later, I was on a plane to Sundance, and he was sitting right behind me!” Warren and Common wrote their lyrics before and after Trump was elected, respectively. Says Warren of the song: “I hope it makes everybody stand up and not take any of this shit. [Trump] does every other horrible thing, but as long as we stand up, no one can fuck with us.”…

Sound editing and sound mixing are two separate categories in the Oscar race, but many laypeople would quickly admit that they don’t exactly know the difference. “I understand how some people would be confused by the two as the lines can be very hard to distinguish,” admits Julian Slater, who served as supervising sound editor, designer and rerecording mixer on Baby Driver. Sound pros often reach for metaphors, such as cooking, to explain the difference: Sound editing could be likened to preparing the ingredients, and mixing is when everything comes together to prepare the dish. Pros from three films reveal their recipes for awards-contending sound. Baby Driver For Edgar Wright’s bank robbery action film starring Ansel Elgort, the 35 songs featured were as much a part of the story as…

PICTURE The Shape of Water Guillermo del Toro’s romantic fantasy, which had been ignored by the Gotham and Spirit awards, came roaring back to life when the Broadcast Film Critics Association announced its Critics’ Choice nominations; it led the field by scooping up 14 noms, more than any other film. Wonder Woman Patty Jenkins’ superheroine movie has been making history ever since it was released in June. With a worldwide haul of $821.8 million, it is the highest-grossing superhero origin movie ever. And on Dec. 7, it landed on the American Film Institute’s list of the top 10 films of 2017. Blade Runner 2049 Denis Villeneuve’s visually striking sequel also wowed the BFCA voters, who rewarded it with seven noms, including best sci-fi or horror movie. But while it registered…

Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit is a relentlessly bleak look at the 1967 riots in the Motor City and, specifically, the Algiers Motel incident, during which three young black men were killed by the police. Questlove and his band The Roots provided the end title track, the searing “It Ain’t Fair,” which opens with gorgeous a cappella singing by Bilal before exploding into fierce raps by The Roots’ Black Thought (aka Tariq Trotter). The Roots, who are the house band for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, created a song that reflects not only on the ’67 riots, but also on today’s racially divisive environment (“Justice is never color blind, never gun shy. For one crime, you may never see the sun shine,” raps Black Thought). THR spoke with Questlove about why…

The current crop of awards contenders spans nearly 150 years — from 1887 in Victoria & Abdul to 1927 in Wonderstruck up to the present day, with plenty of stops in the 1940s via Dunkirk, Mudbound and Darkest Hour and a quirky detour to 2002 for Lady Bird. For composers, the era becomes another consideration when scoring a period piece, but they warn against being too doctrinaire when it comes to designing a sonic landscape confined to a specific time frame. “Principle rejection is a silly idea,” says Thomas Newman, who composed the music for Stephen Frears’ Victoria & Abdul. Newman’s score was primarily orchestral, but he also employed synthesizers — obviously an instrument not around in the 1800s — to provide a low-end and midrange drone to enhance certain…

Darkest Hour BRUNO DELBONNEL This frame shows the key moment when Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman) meets with King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn) for the first time, as he is about to become prime minister. “[The year] 1940 had the sunniest spring of that decade in Europe. And Buckingham Palace was totally blacked out, so the windows were boarded up and only a sliver of light [was] shown in the room,” says Delbonnel. “Here the sliver is bigger than the actual one. It was important to show the room, which conveys a turning point. In order to see each other, they have to be near the windows.” Delbonnel says director Joe Wright wanted to have each leader standing in a window, facing one another. “Churchill was trying to hide in some…