CMU School of Drama


Thursday, January 27, 2022

Dune: Oscars win for Best Makeup and Hairstyling like past sci-fi?

GoldDerby: Gold Derby odds-makers are betting on Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” to clean up in the below-the-line categories – as of this writing it’s projected for six wins! – but one category where it might have some stiff competition is Best Makeup and Hairstyling. As I noted in my previous piece about the category, transforming actors for biopics has often led to Oscar gold, and yet there’s also plenty of historical precedent for the academy to pick a fantasy or science-fiction epic like “Dune,” which features exemplary work by Donald Mowat and his team of artists and stylists.

3 comments:

Jeremy Pitzer said...

It is crazy that this huge blockbuster is up for some serious awards and is in contention for awards like hair and makeup which are usually slam dunks for the major blockbuster that comes out in any given year. I think Dune definitely has the potential to win these awards, though it has some stiff competition, but I think Dune is very different from other sci fi epics like Star Wars or the more outlandish MCU movies. It is in many ways more grounded as it takes place on only two or three major planets which to my mind makes it more of a serious contender to the very sci-fi averse academy in terms of larger awards like direction or perhaps some acting awards. Personally, I loved the sort of minimalist palette of the makeup and costuming in the film as I think it suited the tone and themes of the film and I hope to see it celebrated by the Oscars.

Elly Lieu Wolhardt said...

This year the Makeup category at the Oscars turns 40 years old, with hairstylists added as award recipients in 1993. The ‘Best Makeup and Hairstyling’ category seems to always be an obvious win for sci-fi or fantasy feature films. Often,they include aliens or various creatures, which in turn increases the complexity and technical skill, and even creativity, needed to design and execute the makeup and hairstyling for those characters. However, recently, biopics have been a winner of this category, but given the wide variety of types of films and the different climates that receive and are the audience for these films year to year, it feels hasty to jump to this conclusion. While I haven’t watched Dune, I’ve seen a lot of the film’s promo and advertisement, in addition to images, and it seems like a gorgeous film. I’m not familiar with films in general, but with how the makeup and hairstyling of the film add to the world-building and add to the character development, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dune takes the ‘Best Makeup and Hairstyling’ award home.

Sophie Howard said...

It’s so interesting that the hair and makeup category for the Oscars was left out for so long. It’s probably because of sexism or some other form of bigotry because I had only heard about incidents in the crossfire of daily conversation. It's amazing to me that fantasy and biopic pieces can lose to fictional film just because I, personally, value personal stories a little bit above the gossip you hear in the ladies' room. I’m so amazed that SUICIDE SQUAD won the oscar for best hair and makeup because it looks so smacked together. I feel like I could design and create all of the suicide squad looks by myself in one night and I would be more fulfilled than if I did anything interesting. I’m really interested in how makeup artists create looks that look dirty/ or lived in without manually stressing any of the face or making anything that cant come off. At this point, their hair should stick to the model if the rest of the look is staying so correctly.