In just seven days…I can make you a great album cover!
Ladies and gentlemen, a new age is upon us. The final installment of the Harry Potter series will be hitting theaters in mere weeks. What will we do without Harry, Hermione, and Ron? For the last ten years we have always had a new Harry Potter movie to look forward to, and before that we had a new book to pine after. Personally, I’ve always been into the Death Eaters and villains in Harry Potter. I was so anxious to see what Voldemort would look like on screen, outside of my imagination. I’ve gotta tip my hat to Jany Temime. Temime designed the costumes for all of the Potter movies including and after Prisoner of Azkaban. She brought our favorite characters to life, and created some seriously evil beings.
Voldemort is the obvious choice for scariest character in the movie. Not having a nose really makes a guy look threatening.
Snape is a guy that just gives you the creeps. His cape always seems to be billowing a little more frequently than the others. There’s something especially creepy about a guy who is constantly switching sides — you can hardly keep up with whose team he’s on!
But, my personal favorite Harry Potter villain… Bellatrix Lestrange. Fiona Weir did an outstanding job when she cast Helena Bonham Carter in the role. Lestrange is chilling, and at times puts Voldemort to shame.
12:01 A.M. on July 15th can not come soon enough for many adoring Harry Potter fans. I’ll see you there.
I found myself watching a rerun of the MTV Movie Awards in an effort to lull myself to sleep last night. Instead, I was enchanted by the shows elaborate and fantastical set this year. The Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, California was transformed into a magical wonderland filled with butterflies, jewels, caves, moss, etc. The creative mind behind this transformation was MTV’s production designer, Leroy Bennett. The obvious front runners in any MTV race are Twilight and Harry Potter, and the set accurately reflected the themes of these movies. The set would have fit in perfectly in any werewolf, vampire, or wizard world. Eerie trees and billowing fog created a beautiful and picturesque backdrop for the evening’s events.
Here are a few shots of Bennett’s work.
Here 35 year old Reese Witherspoon accepts the MTV Generation Award for her body of work.
I saw a very great movie last night, adapted from a very great book: Jane Eyre. Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga and starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, it’s a gothic, moody period piece with mystery, romance, etc. But look at those clothes!
Going for tousled here.
Looking sharp, and sharply unpleasant.
Formaly informal.
Ahh, love and fashion.
So it has come to this: it is down to you, and it is down to me. The final category in our exhaustive Oscars week coverage of arcane design categories: Costumes!
The nominees are:
Alice in Wonderland – Colleen Atwood
The King’s Speech – Jenny Beavan
True Grit – Mary Zophres
I Am Love – Antonella Cannarozzi
The Tempest – Sandy Powell
I am tired of disparaging Alice in Wonderland, so let me just say No and that be the end of it.
I am equally tired of explaining why The King’s Speech is not great art, and the costumes couldn’t have been easier to reproduce, so let me just say Good Try.
And now we come to the real candidates.
I Am Love features costumes in the stylish vein, supplied by an Italian, natch. The clothes are indeed beautiful; do we reward subtle and effective? The age old question. You will have to wait on my answer.
The Tempest was another Julie Taymor “radical” re-imagining. The product was kind of blah, but the costumes were surely inspired. Something to think on.
True Grit featured costuming so lived in, so definitive of character, and so divorced from showy-ness, that it has to be the winner. The over-sized coat of the heroine, Rooster’s billowing coat and distinctive eye patch, and the tastled dandyism of the Texan all put this movie over the top for me. So there you have it! The best of the least appreciated, Basis Design style!
Now enjoy the Oscars, new betting and rooting interests discovered!
The moment you’ve all been waiting for! Appetites whetted by our insightful post about cinematography, you’ve returned for our dissection of possibly the most popular of all the Oscar categories: Art Direction!
This year the nominees are as follows:
Alice in Wonderland (Robert Stromberg & Karen O’Hara)
Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part I (Stuart Craig & Stephenie McMillan)
Inception (Guy Hendrix Dyas, Larry Dias & Doug Mowat)
The King’s Speech (Eve Stewart & Judy Farr)
True Grit (Jess Gonchor & Nancy Haigh)
This is a tricky category. Do you want to reward movies who did a wonderful, and wonderfully subtle job of making their worlds look real? Or do you reward spectacle and particular effort? Well we’re wishy washy on that. Go with you heart, we tell ourselves (and our cats). Evaluations:
True Grit is a movie that takes place about 75% outdoors. While many of these outdoor shoots are of course art directed to within an inch of their lives, the directors and DPs have a lot more control when it comes to shooting in the open air. But there is a great little room created in the film, where Rooster makes his bed – it’s real and charming and, bizarrely, Chinese.
The King’s Speech is not a bad movie. But it is not a great movie. And there is nothing about it, aside from possibly costumes, that has any relationship to visual art. And even the costumes are simple; the King only wears a few clothes, all of which have been photographed to within an inch of their lives.
I will fight my gag reflex and talk about Harry Potter now. Forget that the cute kids first drafted into the franchise have aged into bad actors and a fashion plate; forget the awful dialogue, the interminable length of the dreary films, and the total lack of realistic behavior from the teen-aged protagonists. Let’s talk about the sets, which are very good. Dark when need be, whimsical when need be, and consistent across 7 lumbering atrocities, the sets are quite good.
Alice in Wonderland. What to say about the modern incarnation of Tim Burton? That he is trite? Trapped in a terminally cute faux-goth adolescent pose? That his movies are no longer any good at all? All of the above, if you’re grumpy old me. I watched this film recently, hated it, and took note of the sets in particular, which are almost uniformly computer generated and very fake-looking. The whole thing is queasy and stupid, with no zip, no humor, and no attempt to be faithful to Carroll. Get lost. (Except for you, Mia Wasikowska. We love you and can’t wait to see you in Jane Eyre!)
Now let’s talk turkey; let’s talk about the clear winner in this category, in our always humble opinion.
Let’s talk about Inception.
Was it all a dream?
Inception is a masterpiece. This is true in obvious ways; it’s a great action movie, the special effects are mind-blowing, and the story is immaculate. But it’s also a great entry in the canon of art films disguised as popular entertainment. This is a movie about filmmaking, about consciousness, about memory, and about the human condition. And it’s also got a James Bond section, a Last Tango in Paris section, a treatise on the nature of obsession… I could go on.
For the purposes of this article, it has some of the best art direction I’ve ever seen. Paris folding in on itself. The snow fortress. The Asian Mansion. The street riot. The vast and ruined dream city. On and on and on. This is the winner. Props!
Here at Basis we take a special interest in the annual Academy Awards. With the caveat that all awards shows are essentially meaningless and nominations truly are an honor, it’s fascinating to see how public acclaim, critical acclaim, and industry acclaim all merge into one glitzy explosion of self congratulation and, yes, acclaim.
We’re a design blog, and we’re addicted to the big show, so this week (the Academy Awards are on February 27th, a Sunday) we’ll be looking at a few of our favorite categories: Cinematography, Art Direction, and Costumes. Today is Cinematography. Here are the nominees for this year:
Black Swan (Matthew Libatique)
True Grit (Roger Deakins)
The Social Network (Jeff Cronenweth)
Inception (Wally Pfister)
The King’s Speech (Danny Cohen)
This is a very interesting list indeed. The King’s Speech is an exceptionally odd choice, as the camera work in that film is about as dull as dishwater. Nothing against the movie itself; but there is certainly no outstanding artistry in how it was shot. While Inception was a very good movie and the special effects were tremendous, one has doubts whether the actual lighting and camera work had much to do with the look of the cities folding in on themselves, impressive though those sights were. (This is why no pics of those films).
In the humble opinion of this humble blogger, only Black Swan, True Grit and Social Network are nominees worth considering in this category. And they’re all quite different.
Black Swan depends on changing colors, film stocks and focus depth. It’s a wild and inventive visual ride, and matches the movie itself thrill for thrill, intensity for intensity. It reflects the emotions of the movie, projects them for the audience. It’s definitely the most obvious, the most showy, of the nominees, and it’s a major achievement from Matthew Libatique.
True Grit is another outing from the Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan, and their magnificent Director of Photography, Roger Deakins. Deakins, I am convinced, can do anything. The cinematographic style in Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou?, The Big Lebowski and Intolerable Cruelty could hardly be more different. He’s a master of all looks, all genres and all techniques. In True Grit he goes for a natural look, but a hard one. He photographs vistas, battle, and most impressively, the flight and plight of a pure black horse on a pure black night, ridden to exhaustion and beyond.
The Social Network is diamond cut. Precision is a David Fincher trademark, and his DP, Jeff Cronenweth, makes it happen. He also shot Fight Club – The Social Network uses the same colors, the same subterranean lighting, but removes every bit of grime – precise as a computer. It’s extremely effective in the film.
In the end, while the choice was hard for us here at Basis, it had to be made.
Congratulations, Matthew Libatique – you are the winner of the first of our fake February Oscar Pre Game Awards! Black Swan is gorgeous, harrowing, and a major thrill. Next up: Art Direction!
On June 14, 2010, In art, By Wes
I watched the popular 2007 documentary My Kid Could Paint That over the weekend, and I came away very interested, stimulated, and impressed. The story is one of a 4 year old child, Marla Olmstead, who executes beautiful abstract paintings on large (for her size) canvases. They sell for upwards of $20,000. Something funny though; whenever a camera was recording Marla paint, the work she did was sub-par. It looked like what it was, a four year old girl getting dirty and smearing paint over a canvas. The end results were not, seemingly, as good as the other paintings she’d produced and sold. Her parents explained it away by saying she was nervous, she did silly things, etc. Here the plot thickens; the father is an amateur artist himself. 60 Minutes did an expose on the family, essentially declaring Marla a fraud. The Olmsteads retaliated by releasing their own DVD, The Making of Ocean, which shows Marla making a painting from beginning to end, apparently with no help. This was the result:
For a child not yet old enough for Kindergarden, that’s not bad at all. But is it art? One of the more essential questions asked in the doc is: What is the worth of modern art? If “your kid could paint that,” does that mean it’s not art? Is a 4 year old capable of great art, of interpretive genius? Do you measure worth through the value of the paintings?
Look again at Ocean. Notice a few things about it.
The lines on the painting are mostly thick. With a few variations, the lines are thick and unsteady. The colors are unsophisticated in a cohesive sense. We see very little mixing between colors, between “zones.” When color is mixed, it’s not done with a deft or sophisticated sense; it’s merely on top of another color, or smeared. There are no brushstrokes, no clear intermingling of complimentary color. There are Mickey Mouse ears.
Now look at some of Marla’s other paintings; paintings which have sold for huge amounts of money, and which the Olmsteads claim she did herself, with no help or input whatsoever.
Take note of the fine, thin lines. The sophisticated mixing of colors to achieve the muted backgrounds. Note how the backgrounds fade into one another. Notice how the colors are complimentary. Notice how the same symbols are repeated with integrity and reasonable precision.
Here we have a super-advanced sense of blending, color, brushwork, and, again, complimentary color.
Decide for yourself. Decide this as well; how do we judge modern art?
My Kid Could Paint That was directed by Amir Bar-Lev.
On April 22, 2010, In Branding, By Wes
Louis Vuitton has been in the habit over the last several years of producing beautiful, cinematic print ads with idiosyncratic subjects; it’s rare to see a company trust their readers quite this much. Here are the ads, and two points for guessing the subjects without reading the descriptions:
Did you guess? It’s Mikhail Gorbachev, former Soviet Premier and legendary birthmark-haver. Very well respected internationally for opening up the restrictive USSR.
I’ll be honest, at first I didn’t recognize this one, even though I’m a huge film buff. First thoughts: “Okay, French, definitely…somewhat older…uh…” It’s Catherine Deneuve! The daring and gorgeous star of provocateur Luis Bunuel’s Belle du Jour, a seminal work (puns!).
Uh, creepy much? Here we have revered filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, author and director of the Godfather trilogy, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, and, uh, the Robin Williams vehicle Jack. At his feet, warmed and enlightened by his very bare-chested presence, is his daughter Sofia. Sofia has a mixed track record as a writer-director (in the opinion of this blog) hitting it out of the park with the little-understood and less-loved Marie Antoinette, but submitting less accomplished efforts with The Virgin Suicides (one of my favorite books ever) and Lost In Translation (Everybody loves Bill, but, I mean, c’mon).
On March 15, 2010, In Film, architecture, By Wes
Here’s a Russian-doll type of post; a new building in Chicago (urban architecture capitol of the world) that isn’t just a showcase of great design itself, but is also meant as an incubator for design students and their work.
The brand-new Media Production Center at Columbia College Chicago, complete with sound stages, up-to-the-minute editing facilities, and first rate sound and video equipment:
What lies within...
The MPC is just one of about a dozen Columbia College building scattered throughout the south loop of downtown Chicago. Beyond it’s outward beauty, the building is also LEED certified, and has a lovely green roof; as in vegetation grows upon it, creating energy and serving as natural insulation (which the press file has no photograph of, bizarrely).
And they built it just in time for my graduation! In May 2009! Blerg.