Sean Weitner | I'd like to thank the little people

Rather than dive right into the more prestigious categories, let's dig into the technical categories. To me, the most hotly contested category this year is Art Direction. The nominees there are Amélie, Gosford Park, The Fellowship of the Ring, Harry Potter and Moulin Rouge — worthy nominees all. But think about what got left out! Ghost World and The Royal Tenenbaums would not be among my favorites for the year if not for their scrupulous production design. That the art direction will be excellent in films like Gosford Park and The Fellowship of the Ring is a gimme, but I think we have to give props to those films that, because they were set in the present day and were without fantastical environs like Hogwart's, are too easily overlooked. The Academy's selection of Amélie does justice to this idea.

Also: A Beautiful Mind for Best Makeup? I don't know if I thought that the aging of Russell Crowe at the end was so superlative. If we're going to talk about outstanding makeup that's featured in a film for as short of a timespan as old Crowe was in A Beautiful Mind, what about Gary Oldman's delicious fright mask in Hannibal? It only gets fleeting screen time, but it's marvelously effective, much more so that the rote agifying Crowe received.

Andy Ross | Art direction and makeup

It's so true that the Art Direction and Makeup categories are very much the same, in that they aren't well named.

Art Direction is almost always about the best fantastical or British aristocratic world. I have a hard time remembering a nominee set in a present, non-sci-fi world. I do think that The Royal Tenenbaums was an accidental omission, and not just because I liked that movie. The Academy must have seen that the Art Direction was very careful and intricate. Then again, it didn't fall into the precedent of past/future world set by past years. Ghost World is only a surprise to those who have seen the comic and know how different and more colorful the movie is. The amount of detail in the backgrounds is only great compared to that in the comic frame, not that of other movies. The Oscars can't really be responsible for noticing that. Makeup should be renamed "Prostetics and Stage Makeup" immediately. Last year, Topsy Turvy was nominated, much like Moulin Rouge this year, fulfilling the "Stage" part. But, "Prosthetics" always take the award, ever since Mrs. Doubtfire. I do understand A Beautiful Mind, because the makeup was present enough to be noticeable. That explains why it shouldn't get the award and, also, why Hannibal was jilted. It has to be just enough to notice the spectacle, but not enough to be lost in the fiction of it.

Sean Weitner | Baker in limbo, spelunking with Seymour

You're right, the stage/prostethic split is an embarrassment no matter how you slice it; traditional makeup artists have to compete against Rick Baker's creatures, and Rick Baker and his ilk only get the satisfaction of beating Topsy Turvy.

Although I bring up Rick Baker to segue into this shocker: They skipped his work for Planet of the Apes! Say what you will about some of the extravagantly fantastical stuff like The Nutty Professor; Baker turned Helena Bonham Carter into a sexy monkey. That's the kind of jaw-dropping achievement that you give awards for. Meanwhile, Fellowship of the Ring (another makeup nominee) was pretty skimpy in terms of giving us made-up monsters; the hordes around Saruman were shown pretty fleetingly, which basically only leaves the last battle. And as commendable as Fellowship's makeup is, Planet of the Apes's prosthetics towers over it. So the same question comes up: Why only three nominees?

Andy, I think you're underselling Ghost World. I got dizzy during the first scene when we get to watch Enid (Thora Birch) walk around her bedroom. It was dressed to such a precise degree that it makes all other house or teen-bedroom sets seem pre-fab. In many ways, it's perfect exposition. Ditto for Seymour's (Steve Buscemi) pad; when he and Enid walk into the back room where the records are, it's literally like cracking open King Tut's tomb. And don't the fine details — the Coon Chicken painting, Enid's drawings — fall under the auspices of Art Direction, too?

Andy Ross | Nope

Here's why Ghost World still doesn't deserve the nomination. Best Art Direction should be a recognition of the precise, difficult creation of the world of the film. The "difficult" here is the important part. You can set a film in a park — take Dog Park with Luke Wilson — and put in much less work towards art direction than a film like Lord of the Rings or Gosford Park requires. Best Art Direction should be the result of a complex creative team, not a smart personal shopper. I'm not saying that Ghost World's backgrounds were the result of a hipster intern with an understanding of character, but they could have been.

Best Art Direction has to be for movies in which intense art direction is strictly planned out in the script stages. This is certainly evident in period pieces and sci-fi, but also comes through in The Royal Tenenbaums. I just don't see that onscreen with Ghost World.

On a less aggressive note, I totally forgot about Planet of the Apes, which deserved the nomination for best makeup more than any other on the list. Maybe it lost the nomination because it did a little too much patting itself on its own back in the recent DVD.

However, I wouldn't bash Fellowship of the Ring, which I think used makeup really well to hint at size differences. Maybe that's something that went over Oscar's head, but it still deserves a nod — if only for the hobbits' feet. I think Planet of the Apes lost out because it's a category without a beautiful speech giver, and therefore got fewer nominations.

Eric Wittmershaus | Nope?

It was good to see Amélie on there. I totally overnominated it in my predictions, even though I was trying to be somewhat realistic. I mean, Jeunet and crew deserve considerations for direction/art direction just based on the film's excellent use of color, let alone all the things that probably garnered Amélie the nomination, like the melting-into-a-puddle of water and talking-to-imaginary-friend bits.

Sean, thanks for pointing out the intricacy of the characters' bedroom sets in Ghost World. I remember seeing Seymour's room and feeling ashamed at how spartan my own is. As far as the other art direction nominees go, they seemed to be in about the right place. I wonder if Harry Potter was on there because folks felt guilty for not giving it other nominations. I mean, it's kind of sad when you make a major Hollywood movie with alleged universal appeal and all you can garner is favorable reviews and a few minor Oscar nominations.

Andy, you seem to be saying that movies shot on location should never win Best Art Direction. As much work goes into scouting/selecting locations as goes into making sure which books are on the lead characters' shelves. You could also argue that it's much more challenging to try to manage and work with the chaos implicit in shooting location scenes than it is to work with carefully scripted sets that eliminate the uncertainty factor. I thought Ghost World's scenes in the diner, in the art class, walking around on the street were all well-shot, well-chosen and well-put-together. There was one time in the film that I remember seeing a boom microphone briefly, so if you want to carp on that, go ahead. But don't declare a movie out of the running because it's shot on location.

Andy Ross | Still nope

I'm not saying that films shot on location are worse films. Look at how much New Zealand's landscape added to the effect of Fellowship of the Ring. I'm just saying that Ghost World doesn't have the kind of grandeur in art direction that the Oscars are looking for. And, I see where they are coming from in their love of synthetic grandeur. Isn't the house in Gosford Park so much more impressive when you find out it was completely a set, designed around the needs of a camera crew?

Plus, you've confused the seperation between location shooting and sets. The two bedrooms you and Sean like so much definitely fall under the controlled set category. If you can show me that the street scenes in Ghost World have the same attention to art direction as the mines in Lord of the Rings, then you have my vote.

Eric Wittmershaus | This washed out, Southern California feel

It's not a matter of confusing location shooting and sets. I was taking off from your comment that a movie shot in a park can't have artistic direction as good as a movie with intricately planned sets. But to get back to your semi-rebuttal, I didn't like just the bedrooms in Ghost World. I thought the whole thing was extremely planned out. I mean, how did they find that little dive restaurant? The porn store? That particular bus stop? It all had this very well-put-together washed-out, Southern California feel.

And while I understand your viewpoint with respect to location shooting, it's not like these guys just walk over to the park across the street. Part of the artistic director's duties as I understand them are finding the perfect park in which to shoot a movie, then figuring out the perfect day to shoot there, then selling all this to the director. For all Ghost World's little weird idiosyncratic locations, I think it deserves a nod.

Andy Ross | You're right

Yes, scouting locations is part of the art director's job, and an intricate one at that. However, no matter how much skill goes into it, it's still not the kind of artistry that deserves time at the podium. Location scouting is equivalent to the sound engineer recording background noise — an integral part to making a quality film, yet nothing to be blown away by. Maybe that aspect of art direction can be honored at the technical Oscars the night before, but the main Oscars are about artistry and awe.

Eric Wittmershaus | An Andy Ross-dominated world

Maybe this is just me, but I get just as excited about well-chosen, well-used (because the art director does more than select locations) locations as I do about the other stuff. I mean, that extra-long traffic jam in Weekend? The whole time I was wondering where they found that road was and how they commandeered it for their movie. To put it another way, the carnival scene in Amélie was an example of wonderful artistic direction, yet it clearly wasn't an intricately constructed set.

In an Andy Ross-dominated world, films of the French New Wave and Dogme 95 wouldn't have a chance in the world of art direction. Maybe you'd correct the handicap by giving them an edge in cinematography or direction, though.

Andy Ross | Yup

Of course the French New Wave and Dogma 95 wouldn't have a chance in the world of art direction. I would think that they would be insulted at the idea of being included alongside the likes of Moulin Rouge and Lord of the Rings. The same goes for other categories. Would you call it "Best Lighting" in Dogma 95, since their is no active lighting allowed, only found light? Why not "Best Light Found"?

Maybe if the IFC is looking to rewrite the rules of art direction, locations and the rules of Dogma could be considered, but I'm just talking about the rules and precedents set by the Oscars.

And, the carnival scene in Amélie was a nice location and well shot to fit its existing artistic style, but not necessarily a great example of art direction.

Eric Wittmershaus | O Tenenbaum

By and large, I would agree with you. But whether someone wants an award is irrelevent to the question as to whether they deserve it. And no, I wouldn't say most movies of the French New Wave would deserve consideration for art direction (Weekend is the only one that comes to mind); what I'm objecting to is your absolutist argument that no such film should be eligible because it could never hold a candle to brilliant set assemblege. I think Ghost World is an excellent example of how to integrate painstakingly pieced-together sets with carefully chosen, well-suited locations, and for that it deserves a nod. I'm not taking anything away from Tenenbaums, however.

Andy Ross | To change the subject

I think Eric and I can agree to disagree on the Ghost World argument. So, how about we talk about those that were nominated?

I think if you include the creation of the sets in Fellowship of the Ring as the main strategy for creating size difference between characters, then that film beats all others in the category hands down. The two exact copies of Bilbo's cottage, one for Gandalf and one for Frodo? So perfect that they can be blended together? Even Amélie, as wonderful as it is, can't compete with that.

Eric Wittmershaus | Jackson's action

Yeah, I'm in total agreement here. It's really gotta go to Fellowship of the Ring. I think you could also argue that Jackson deserves the director award hands-down. He coordinated thousands of people and filmed three movies at exactly the same time.

Yet I don't think the movie deserves Best Picture (hey! …). It had too many corny bits of dialogue ("Where are we going?") and too much fighting and Jim, who is not contributing to this feature, made a great argument against its use of special effects when Bilbo and Galadriel became possessed by the ring. Why use special effects rather than good, old-fashioned acting?

Sean Weitner | Haunted Holm

Andy, now you're treading into different territory. Is the hobbit-hole-size effect a visual effect instead of an art director's flourish? But with that exceptional example or without it, I think you're right in praising this film above its competition. Moulin Rouge's vibrancy never really suggested that it was fully thought-out; it's one of those movies that totally catches you up in an endless barrage of half-thoughts so entertaining that most of the time you don't wonder how much better it would have been with whole thoughts.

We haven't really touched on the other technical categories. Tagging Memento for editing is obvious to the point of being stupid. Were A.I., Pearl Harbor and The Fellowship of the Ring really the films that cornered the market on visual effects last year? I always expect the professionals voting for these nominations to generate some non-obvious choices and reward some avant-garde work.

On the matter of Bilbo's fright mask: Ian Holm had, up until that point in the movie, done a magnificent job — award-worthy, really — as Bilbo. He had conveyed the strange hold the ring had on him with in wonderfully actorly fashion. So we come to the scene later in the movie where he's been without the ring for some time, and he meets Frodo, who's bearing the ring, and in a desperate moment, lunges for it, his faced CGI-contorted into a growling maw.

The point of the ring is that it represents temptation and power. It's a symbol. Holm had until that point acted very humanly toward it, but it's the be-all and end-all of power, and this last act required a superhuman flourish. It also signifies the debilitating effect the ring can have on you — it's the moment where Bilbo reveals his inner Gollum. It's a very well-thought-out, tasteful scene. And, to use the dichotomy you've set up, if it weren't, I'd be more apt to fault the director than the picture.

Eric Wittmershaus | Triple threat

Yeah, but he still gets my imaginary Best Director nod just for coordinating all those people on three movies and coming out with something coherent. And you can make the case for the Bilbo craziness, but that Galadriel thing was weak.

Andy Ross | The Galadriel thing is awesome

A good actor knows when to step aside and give time to the set pieces, including the CGI pieces. It's a great accent point for the scene.

And, to use the populist argument I'm am fighting against in another thread, I've heard more people mention that moment of the film than any other. Something about it had to be powerful.