Makeup and Hairstyling

My film watching has been a little all over the place so far. I thought I was going to start the categories off with Visual Effects, but I ended up not being able to see Interstellar. So, then we'll start with the smallest of the categories: Makeup and Hairstyling. While the category hasn't terribly endeared me this year, at least I'm neither getting page views for google searches of "penis grandpa blogspot" nor dealing with tranmisogynistic representations as I did last year.

Up for the award are:

• Bill Corso and Dennis Liddiard for Foxcatcher
• Frances Hannon and Mark Coulier for The Grand Budapest Hotel
• Elizabeth Yianni-Georgiou and David White for Guardians of the Galaxy

I'm going to be straightforward here: I just don't believe Foxcatcher deserves this award. Nothing struck me as particularly interesting or challenging. Was it well-done, yes, absolutely. But I have my doubts that Academy Awards should be doled out for these representations. Accurate? Okay. Onerous? Not so much.

Say what I will about Wes Anderson like that this article has taken me forever to write because I'm so loathe to write something good about him, but he has an absolute talent for creating his own self-contained worlds and molding his actors into his characters. This, of course, is thanks in great part to the hairstylists and makeup artists. The Grand Budapest Hotel might owe the most of any of his films this these artists, and that is no small recognition.

Any time you have a mostly random assortment of alien characters taking center stage in a film, you're either going to have a lot of work in makeup and hair and / or visual effects. Guardians of the Galaxy obviously had both. With a whole rainbow of skin tones, the characters looked smooth, clean and as believable as the their human counterpart. Marvel has a lot invested in the Infinity Gauntlet storyline, so it's a good thing they have a solid hair and makeup department.


I'm pretty confident that The Grand Budapest Hotel will win the Academy Award for makeup and hairstyling. The transformations of the actors are just quirky enough to fit the mood of the film without being distracting, and just complete enough to let your brain forget the actors' previous characters without obscuring the actor themselves. The Oscar will be well deserved when it is presented, even if it's going to a Wes Anderson film.