Best Art Direction

In the days leading up to the Oscars, I'll be featuring the nominees in the various visual categories. This week, I've been looking at the nominees for Best Art Direction, which encompasses the entire look and feel of a film from the scenery to the lighting. Today brings us to the last of the nominees: There Will Be Blood.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson and gang did well with capturing the dangerous and spooky atmosphere of the oil industry at the beginning of the 1900s. Every frame portrays a dusty, dirty and oil-splattered world, all in that palette of slick blacks, coarse browns and sometimes fire-gold.

The film makes great use of its landscape, setting its characters against a barren desert or a shockingly blue sky. A few scenes — such as the one where an oil rig catches fire, ultimately tumbling to the ground in a heap of burning rubble — are particularly stark.

For more stills from There Will Be Blood, read more

In the days leading up to the Oscars, I'll be featuring the nominees in the various visual categories. This week, I've been looking at the nominees for Best Art Direction, which encompasses the entire look and feel of a film from the scenery to the lighting. Check out my galleries of production stills from Ridley Scott's darkly evocative American Gangster, the lovely Atonement and the fantastical world portrayed in The Golden Compass. Today I'm turning my sights to Sweeney Todd.

As I mentioned in my review of Sweeney Todd, the visual aspects of this film are largely why I liked it so very much. Tim Burton has a way with dark whimsy and Sweeney Todd is no exception. Burton's sinister, ominous-looking London is depicted in drab hues of browns and grays — all the better backdrop for the gallons of brilliant red blood that gush from Sweeney Todd's victims. By contrast, Mrs. Lovett's cartoonish and candy-colored dream sequence in which she entertains fantasies of marrying Todd and living "by the sea" are jarringly, ludicrously bright and hopeful.

Though I like all the nominees in this category, I must admit I have a soft spot in my heart for Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd.

For more stills from the movie, just read more

Every week up until the Oscars, I'll be featuring the nominees in the various visual categories. This week, I'm looking at the nominees for Best Art Direction, which encompasses the entire look and feel of a film from the scenery to the lighting. So far we've looked at stills from two other nominees in this category: American Gangster and Atonement. Today I bring you images from The Golden Compass.

Cheesy as this sounds, The Golden Compass really is a feast for the eyes. The imaginative, whimsical visuals stunningly bring to life the fantasy world as described in Philip Pullman's novels. The rich, golden hues and mystical landscapes give the appearance of a far-off world, but it's all so textured and lifelike, you get pulled in as though this place and these characters actually exist before you. I found this movie so visually mesmerizing and vivid, it seemed entirely possible by the end that I might encounter a talking polar bear or come to possess a magical compass. See what I mean?

For many more stills from The Golden Compass, read more

Every week up until the Oscars, I'll be featuring the nominees in the various visual categories. This week, I'll be looking at the nominees for Best Art Direction, which encompasses the entire look and feel of a film from the scenery to the lighting. Yesterday I featured production stills from Ridley Scott's darkly evocative American Gangster, and today I bring you images from Atonement.

As a huge fan of Atonement, I think Joe Wright should win all kinds of awards for the way he beautifully captured the world described in Ian McEwan's novel. The scenes at Cecilia and Briony's family's estate depict the lush lifestyle of an upper-class family as well as the hazy heat of English summertime. The later scenes, especially of Robbie picking his way through the wreckage of war, are full of dark despair. The art direction in this film shifts between passionate, wistful, doomed and tragic, in keeping with what's happening in the story. Indeed, the visuals here are as great a part of the storytelling as the actual action and dialogue are.

For more stills from Atonement, read more

Every week up until the Oscars, I'll be featuring the nominees in the various visual categories. This week, I'll be looking at the nominees for Best Art Direction, which encompasses the entire look and feel of a film from the scenery to the lighting. Today's featured movie is American Gangster.

With American Gangster, director Ridley Scott was given the challenging task of conveying the gritty, dangerous atmosphere of a drug-riddled Harlem in the 60s and 70s. There's a glitzy-glam aspect to it with the fashions and sensuality of the era, and then there's the pain of drug addiction, the grim realities of gang life and the ominous presence of racial tension. The result in Scott's movie is a world awash in browns, grays and blues, with the occasional shock of gold and glitter to show the opulence that these drug lords enjoyed when business was booming.

I find it fitting that Scott is nominated in this category for so vividly depicting the ugliness of this time period — as well as the bleakness of the drug trade. To check out a gallery of evocative images from American Gangster, read more

Every week up until the Oscars, I'll be featuring the nominees in the various visual categories. In this final week, I'll be looking at the nominees for best art direction, which encompasses the entire look and feel of a film from the scenery to the lighting. Yesterday, we saw a gallery from The Good Shepherd, and today's featured movie is one I never expected to see written in a sentence alongside "Oscar": Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

The sequel to the original theme-park ride-based movie, Dead Man's Chest is nothing if not eye candy, and I'm not just talking about Johnny Depp. In its well-conceptualized fantasy world, you get everything from regal, tall-masted ships to creepy sea monsters and nautical costumes, all of which help give the special-effects-heavy movie a unified look and feel. To see a gallery of images from the movie, read more

Every week up until the Oscars, I'll be featuring the nominees in the various visual categories. In this final week, I'll be looking at the nominees for best art direction, which encompasses the entire look and feel of a film from the scenery to the lighting. Yesterday, we saw a gallery from Dreamgirls, and today's featured movie is director Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd.

Starring Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie, The Good Shepherd tells the story of the CIA's origins with convoluted plot twists and sinister undertones. Set in early 1960s, the movie straddles the line between glamorous historical drama and shadowy thriller. To see a gallery of images from the film, read more