Completed Category: Production Design

I finished two categories by watching Napoleon - two categories with the exact same slate of five nominees!  One of them is Production Design. 

BARBIE: This is the first of these five films that I saw, and this is the category that I most want it to win. And none of these other four have surpassed it in my opinion. It took some toys we had all seen and most of us even held in our hands and made a magical, beautiful world - with compelling undertones. I think the movie as a whole is juuuuuuust a smidge overrated and its takedown of The Patriarchy is to say the very least incomplete, but hey - y'all beginners gotta start somewhere. While the film is flawed, the Production Design is not, at all. You truly believe you are traveling between these two worlds, and that this one really exists out there somewhere, giving you some instruction for how to think about your own world. It will be a travesty when Barbie loses this category. 

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON: This has become a recurring theme here but Scorcese & Company did their jobs and their meticulous research so incredibly well, and created a world to tell us a haunting story, and I think it is a wonderful, scathing, entrancing film. However, in this category it is second place for me. I really don't want it to get shut out, so I won't be mad and throw things if it wins here. The degree of difficulty is more than you might think, with every little bit of house, business, outdoor, indoor, street, gathering, barber shop, car, explosion, you name it perfectly depicted. Strong strong silver medal.  Maybe we could have a tie? 

NAPOLEON: And this one, which I watched last night to complete the category, also did some visually marvelous work. With another incredible degree of difficulty. However, I understand that it also worked some magic with Visual Effects?  At any rate it was stunning, and somehow gorgeous when depicting bloody massacres, so hey - well done everybody.  I know this movie didn't work for a lot of people but I for one massively enjoyed batshit crazy Napoleon and Josephine, and all the other madness. It also made me nostalgic for when I read War and Peace. Mostly, I found it delightfully dark and amusing and weird and a totally solid entry here. 

OPPENHEIMER: Ya know, I recently went to Los Alamos. I've also been all around the Southwest, having grown up in Arizona, and been many times to New Mexico, but only the other year finally went to the actual weird little made-up town that still sits there in the middle of a gorgeous landscape where they unleashed hellish fury, terrifying and killing untold number of animals and plants, before moving on to kill hundreds of thousands of Japanese humans. You have to show i.d. to drive into the actual town. Anyway, I honestly loved the film Oppenheimer and I also honestly don't think this had the same degree of difficulty as several others in this category, but mostly I am going to have to say something here about the still-unanswered (as far as I can tell) 50-star flag thing. Much has been made of the use of USA flags with 50-stars in a climactic scene set when there were only 48 states. Some insist that director Christopher Nolan did it on purpose, with that scene in color being Oppenheimer's memory, envisioned  from 50-state 1963. I think those insisters are reaching. Some claim to have been extras in that scene and report (on the internet) that the flags were some cheap bulk props brought in, which would be such an astoundingly bonehead mistake that it's hard to believe -- but then again, look at the stupid things humans do on the regular, like destroy all the life they come across. Anyway, I know Oppenheimer is going to win something, but I'm scratching it from this category. 

POOR THINGS: I wish I could scratch Poor Things from existence. It doesn't get better any time I have to write about it as the weeks pass. However, I will say that this Production Design category is kinda like how I was for Editing with Everything Everywhere All At Once. Terrible, excruciating movie that I wish I had never had to sit through, but this one category was sure done well. And that, I fear, is why it will probably beat Barbie, much to my dismay. 

Order that I would like them to win: 
Barbie
Killers of the Flower Moon 
Poor Things
Napoleon
Oppenheimer

Order that I think they will win: 
Poor Things
Oppenheimer
Barbie
Killers of the Flower Moon 
Napoleon 

Oh, how I want Academy voters to do the right thing