Oscar Countdown: Art Direction & Costumes
Who was best at decorating the sets? And the actors?
In advance of the Academy Award ceremony on Feb. 26, Screen Grab will predict the winners in all categories.
Art Direction: The Artist, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, War Horse. Art Direction is kind of a combined category that represents both production design and set decoration. Previous year’s awards have recognized fantastical films like Avatar and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and Sweeney Todd, so Deathly Hallows Part 2 might have one last shot here. Like Costumes, this might be the kind of category that pits the two most-nominated films against each other. The Artist superbly replicates the sets and locales of Hollywood circa 1930, while Hugo presents a kind of fairy-tale vision of Paris from about the same decade.
Prediction: Hugo’s two Italian art directors, Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo, are both movie veterans who’ve won Oscars before, so I think they have the edge over The Artist’s relative unknowns.