"Spider-Man" was full of dippy, video-gamey effects. Nothin' doin'. Not while you're living in my house, young lady!
"Star Wars" and "Lord Of The Rings" both kicked serious motion-captured, texture-mapped, digitally-composited butt. And you can match their memorable scenes point for point. Digital characters so believably-rendered and seamlessly integrated with live action that you never question their reality for a moment: "Rings" has Gollum, "Clones" has Yoda. A "Custer's Last Stand" scene in which a handful of heroes hold off vastly superior forces: let me say that the "coliseum" scene in "Clones" was seat-wettingly good; dozens of Jedi frantically slashing crackling lightsabers as they're set upon on all sides. Atmospheric effects. Digital makeup. If you give the nod to "Clones," it's only because the story allowed them a wider variety of environments and situations.
Okay, I promise to stop bitching about "Chicago." I will merely say that there's really very little going on by way of sets and props there. It's not like "Moulin Rouge." Now that movie was ten pounds of dingo's kidneys in an eight-pound bag. But at least it had plenty of sumptuous sets and a cohesive design style to recommend it. "Chicago" is so streamlined that it could easily have been packed up and sent around the country as a touring production.
"Gangs Of New York" is the real spoiler here. It's hard to back "Frida" or "Road To Perdition." They're both period movies, yes. "Frida" also has elements of fantasy, but it wasn't made on the same scale as a big-budget Hollywood production. It seems like any argument you could make in favor of these two movies could also be made for "Gangs Of New York." And you remember the art direction of that movie. Thanks to old movies, we're vaguely familiar with what the first half of this century looked like. But mid-19th-century America? Unless the movie takes place in Gettysburg, it's a blank. So every prop and every working set is a focus of fascination.
"Lord Of The Rings" was nominated last year, but lost. It's a worthy nomination, but if they didn't give the first film the nod, why the second? My prediction and personal pick: Gangs Of New York.
I haven't a clue about what these people are looking for when they're voting. All I can do is think "hard-to-miss costumes…hard-to-miss costumes…" and pick the movie where a guy was wearing one of those novelty spinning bowties.
Once again, I find myself looking at "Chicago" because of its front-runner status (and, ok, because it's a costumed musical). And I wonder why anyone would vote for three of the others when they could just as readily vote for "Gangs Of New York" instead. Do you back the movie with the flashy stage costumes? Or the one that was the bigger dramatic and historical challenge?
Are you [obscene gerund] [obscene verb]ing me?!? You mean these are the films you nominated? You're telling me that a unibrow is better than all the makeups in "Lord Of The Rings"? Or even the simple but wholly effective transformation of Nicole Kidman into Virginia Woolf?!?
"Frida." And I want to see you in my office immediately after the telecast, mister!