I wrote this article for the LAMB devours the Oscars series. It was posted on there yesterday, so now I can post it on here as well.

The title Art Director is given to the person who is responsible for the overall look of a movie. Nowadays the term ProductionDesigners seems to be more common but the Academy has kept the award name Best Art Direction for now. An Art Director or Production Designer is the head of the Art Department, responsible for everything including Costume and Set Design. The Set Director (included in this nomination) works below the Art Director. The first Academy Award in this category went to William Cameron Menzies for The Dove and Tempist in 1928. From the 1940’s to 1967 the Award was devided into two Awards. One for black-and-white and one for color films. In 1947 the title of the Award was changed from the “Interior Decoration” to “Best Art Direction – Set Decoration”.

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And the Oscar goes to…

…Hugh Jackman

His performance at the Academy Awards is worthy of an Oscar! He dances, sings, simply performs as if there is nothing on earth he would rather do! What a great host.

The whole show was new and exciting. There have been some great improvements. It feels quicker and there is a theme to it, showing the audience how a film is being made from make-up to editing to sound mixing etc.

As for the actual Awards: I am quite pleased with a lot of them. Penélope Cruz really deserved the Supporting Actress Award for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, WALL – E was my favourite for Best Animation and Sean Penn did a swell job on Milk, but what’s up with giving an Oscar to Heath Ledger? I love him, his acting and especially his Joker, but couldn’t they have given him an Honorary Award or something like that? It is so unfair to the actors who are still alive. Obviously they had no chance!

But now the best thing about the 81st Academy Awards: Kate Winslet finally got the Oscar she should’ve gotten five times before! And she gave such a beautiful speech.

Tonight is the night we have all been waiting for! Yay! Personally I haven’t really seen a lot of the films that are up for awards, which is a pity. My absolute favourite to win is Kate Winslet though. She just really deserves it after having left the Oscars five times empty-handed.

The poll results from the last few weeks are in and your votes were as follows:

Which film should win the Oscar this year?

The Reader 6

Slumdog Millionaire 5

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 2

Milk 1

Frost/Nixon 0

Which actress should win the Oscar?

Kate Winslet – The Reader 7

Meryl Streep – Doubt 5

Angelina Jolie – Changeling 2

Anne Hathaway – Rachel Getting Married 1

Melissa Leo – Frozen River 0

Which actor should win the Oscar?

Sean Penn – Milk 5

Frank Langella – Frost/Nixon 3

Brad Pitt – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 3

Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler 1

Richard Jenkins – The Visitor 0

Enjoy watching the Academy Awards tonight!

Update after the Awards: Your wishes have been granted. Two out of three anyway

This film, made in 1951, has won six (!) Academy Awards (for best Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Music, Screenplay and Best Picture). Unbelievable! After discovering how great Singin’ in the Rain is (though it got no Oscars at all), I thought I have to check this one out, too.

Gene Kelly is Jerry Mulligan, a wanna-be artist who stayed in Paris after finishing art school. “If you can’t paint in Paris, you’d better give up and marry the boss’ daughter.” And what do you know, he gets discovered by a rich and influential woman (Nina Foch). What Jerry doesn’t realize is that she is really after him, not his art.

Meanwhile, he falls in love with a young French girl (Leslie Caron), who is engaged to be married to a popular French performer. It all sounds a bit complicated but it is actually a pretty average story… boy falls in love with girl who is promised to another while another girl falls in love with the first boy who won’t have her.

What is special about this film are, of course, the songs and the dancing. Gene Kelly is an amazing dancer and it is really fun to watch him! The sets are really well done, too. It is a creation of the perfect Paris, how everyone would like to see it: little street cafés, markets, lots of French children playing on the street and a lot of café au lait. It is charming!

I like An American in Paris but I prefer Singin’ in the Rain. The latter is, although only filmed one year later, a lot more modern. The story is more interesting, the music is (in my ears) better and the sets and special effects are amazing. In both films, they somehow manage to have a big dancing finale which is not part of the story. They are dream sequences which seem to go on for a very long time. They are absolutely beautiful but seem a bit unnecessary. Like the filmmakers only wanted to put in some more dancing.

One thing that actually bugged me about An American in Paris (and this is entirely personal) was the choice of Leslie Caron as Gene Kelly’s love interest. She is a good dancer but I don’t find her even remotely pretty. I didn’t believe that a handsome man like Gene Kelly would give up his career for this girl. (God, that sounds bitchy…but this is a Hollywood film and it’s not playing by the rules )

Berlin, 1936. The Jew Salomon Sorowitsch is the best counterfeiter in Germany. He is living a comfortable life of gambling, booze and women until he is caught. Straight away he is sent to a concentration camp where he is able to use his skills as an artist to get some extra food by painting pictures of his superintendents.

After some time Salomon is transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he is forced to play a big part in Operation Bernhard. Here the Nazis want him to produce counterfeit British pounds and American dollars in order to fund the war and disrupt those economies. Salomon and the other inmates try to save their skin by playing along with the Nazis. Adolf Burger, who is politically active, is the only one to sabotage the operation. He manages to delay the process of making the perfect replica of the dollar long enough until the war is over.

Although the film is quite good and the acting is great, I was surprised to hear that it won the Oscar as Best Foreign Film.

The film is based on a true story. This is an interview with the real Adolf Burger, who survived the war.

Update (10. November 2008): This is the most popular post on this blog (so far) with over 350 viewes. Go The Counterfeiters!