2017 Schurmys - Technical Awards

2017 Schurmann Film Awards

Technical Awards

Wonder Woman

Welcome to the first batch of awards being handed out. These are the technical awards. You probably don't know the names of the people doing this work (and neither do I and I fully accept that that makes me terrible) but the work they do is as important as the famous stars wearing their costumes, parading around their sets or being buried by CGI. These unsung heroes get a chance to step into the spotlight today.

Kong: Skull Island

Best Visual Effects:

Previous Winner - Arrival

Best Oscar Nominee - Blade Runner 2049

Worst Oscar Nominee - Kong: Skull Island

Predicted Oscar Winner - Blade Runner 2049

Nominees:

1. Blade Runner 2049
2. Dunkirk
3. Okja
4. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
5. War for the Planet of the Apes

Blade Runner 2049 used a mix of CGI and practical effects to create a perfect neon future and one of the best looking movies ever made. Dunkirk continues Christopher Nolan's love of practical effects with its aerial combat. Okja's super pigs feel incredibly real and Okja's chemistry with Mija deserves a shoutout to both Ahn Seo-hyun and the visual effects team. The Last Jedi is a Star Wars movie. It's got great looking big space action and lightsabres remain one of the coolest effects ever. The apes effects continue to impress with War for the Planet of the Apes.

Runner Up - War for the Planet of the Apes

Winner - BLADE RUNNER 2049

Atomic Blonde

Best Production Design:

Previous Winner - The Handmaiden

Best Oscar Nominee - The Shape of Water

Worst Oscar Nominee - Beauty and the Beast

Predicted Oscar Winner - The Shape of Water

Nominees:

1. Blade Runner 2049
2. Dunkirk
3. Logan
4. Loving Vincent
5. The Shape of Water

Blade Runner 2049 takes the noir futurism of the original and modernizes it and then adds a ruined Las Vegas as a beautiful cherry on top. It is a stunningly gorgeous film and everybody involved with the visuals deserves a big round of applause for their work. The beaches of Dunkirk as barren, desolate wastelands upon which hordes of soldiers can only wait for a miracle or die. Logan has some of the best near future design committed to film with its ideas appearing as a logical look into the future (eg touch screen elevator control panels). Loving Vincent painstakingly creates an entire film in hand drawn art matching the style of Vincent Van Gogh. The result is worth it. It is a film that is easy to watch and admire. The Shape of Water adds a fairy tale element and a classic Hollywood musical element to Cold War-era Baltimore. Guillermo del Toro films always have the best production design. The detail work is always exquisite in his films.

Runner Up - Blade Runner 2049

Winners - THE SHAPE OF WATER

The Lure

Best Hair and Makeup:

Previous Winner - The Neon Demon

Best Oscar Nominee - Darkest Hour

Worst Oscar Nominee - Darkest Hour

Predicted Oscar Winner - Darkest Hour

Nominees:

1. Atomic Blonde
2. Brawl in Cell Block 99
3. Darkest Hour
4. The Lure
5. The Shape of Water

Just look at Charlize Theron's hair in Atomic Blonde. Picture fucking perfect. Add that to the various bruises and injuries that occur throughout the film and you have a great job done by the hair and makeup artists. Speaking of injuries, there were perhaps no better gruesome images this year than in Brawl in Cell Block 99. Nothing quite as extreme as the splitting scene in S Craig Zahler's previous film, Bone Tomahawk, but still some human bodies being put through some pretty horrific shit in this prison fight drama. Darkest Hour's centerpiece is the transformation of Gary Oldman into a very convincing Winston Churchill. The speech and mannerisms are all Oldman but the look is all make up. The Lure does great mermaid prosthetics and great goth club makeup and great injury makeup and... well I think you're starting to get the point. The Lure is a lot of movie. Did you see Michael Shannon's fingers in The Shape of Water? And the great period work to transport the actors into the 1960s (especially Michael Stuhlbarg).

Runner Up - Darkest Hour

Winner - ATOMIC BLONDE

Lady Macbeth

Best Costume Design:

Previous Winner - Jackie

Best Oscar Nominee - Phantom Thread

Previous Oscar Nominee - Darkest Hour

Predicted Oscar Winner - Phantom Thread

Nominees:

1. Blade Runner 2049
2. Call Me By Your Name
3. A Ghost Story
4. Phantom Thread
5. The Shape of Water

Blade Runner 2049 continued the spirit of its predecessor with a futuristic noir vibe translating to the costumes but expands the colour palette creating bold and striking outfits. Call Me By Your Name puts Elio and Oliver in the ideal early 80s Italian summer outfits accenting the mood of the film. A Ghost Story manages the miracle of balancing an entire film on the spector of a white sheeted ghost and making it mournful instead of ridiculous. Phantom Thread's costume department created the stunning dresses necessary to give Reynolds Woodcock his reputation. Nearly every unveiling in the film is breathtaking. The Shape of Water gets a lot of points for the period outfits bringing a fairy tale sensibility to the Cold War 60s and even more for the design of the fish man.

Runner Up - The Shape of Water

Winner - PHANTOM THREAD

Alien: Covenant

Best Sound Design:

Previous Winner - Arrival

Best Oscar Nominee - Baby Driver (Both Editing and Mixing)

Worst Oscar Nominee - The Shape of Water (Both Editing and Mixing)

Predicted Oscar Winner - Dunkirk (Both Editing and Mixing)

Nominees:

1. Baby Driver
2. Dunkirk
3. mother!
4. Phantom Thread
5. Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Baby Driver expertly combined its soundtrack with the various action sounds across the entire film creating an adrenaline fueled sonic masterpiece. Dunkirk used the sounds of war perfectly in conjunction with the score to raise the tension of the film as it resembled a survival movie more than a war movie. Jennifer Lawrence's modulated and distorted screams filled the soundscape in mother! creating a horror soundtrack for the ages. Was there a showier moment of sound design this year than Alma eating breakfast in Phantom Thread? I think not. The Last Jedi continued the grand space operatic sound design of the entire Star Wars franchise but achieved its most powerful moment by cutting the sound completely.

Runner Up - Baby Driver

Winner - MOTHER!

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Best Editing:

Previous Winner - Moonlight

Best Oscar Nominee - Dunkirk

Worst Oscar Nominee - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Predicted Oscar Winner - Dunkirk

Nominees:

1. Baby Driver
2. Dunkirk
3. A Ghost Story
4. The Meyerowitz Stories
5. The Shape of Water

Some truly marvelous feats of editing this year. These are admittedly, five showy examples of great editing but hey, I'm not a professional editor so I notice the showy stuff more. Baby Driver edited its action scenes to its soundtrack. Dunkirk balances three timelines switching between them seemlessly. A Ghost Story crosses giant leaps of time through editing and knows exactly how long to hold scenes (even long static ones like the pie scene). The editing in The Meyerowitz Stories follows the ebbs and flows of the story, erratic and jarring (hilariously so) when tensions in the family are high and more spaced out and fluid when the family is coming together. The Shape of Water creates some absolutely magical scene transitions, most notably out of water droplets on a window.

Runner Up - Baby Driver

Winner - DUNKIRK

Good Time

Best Original Song:

Previous Winner - Sing Street - "Drive It Like You Stole It"

Best Oscar Nominee - Call Me By Your Name - "Mystery of Love"

Worst Oscar Nominee - Marshall - "Stand Up For Something"

Predicted Oscar Winner - The Greatest Showman - "This Is Me"

Nominees:

1. Call Me By Your Name - "Visions of Gideon"
2. A Ghost Story - "I Get Overwhelmed"
3. Good Time - "The Pure and the Damned"
4. Leap - "Cut to the Feeling"
5. The Meyerowitz Stories - "Genius Girl"

Personally, I thought "Visions of Gideon" was the better song from Call Me By Your Name. It certainly has the best use in the film scoring the devastating final shot but it's also one of my favourite Sufjan Stevens songs. The poignant "I Get Overwhelmed" perfectly matches the tone of A Ghost Story. Iggy Pop shows he's still a rock god by lending his devilish vocals to "The Pure and the Damned". Carly Rae Jepsen is the best pop musician working today. Originally written for Emotion, "Cut to the Feeling" was put on the shelf by Jepsen until she found a place to release it and an animated ballerina movie proved to be her vessel. "Cut to the Feeling" is a soaring achievement. "Genius Girl" is a heartbreaking ode to a father-daughter relationship and just one of the many examples from The Meyerowitz Stories of Adam Sandler's acting chops.

Runner Up - Call Me By Your Name - "Visions of Gideon"

Winner - LEAP - "CUT TO THE FEELING"

Baby Driver

Best Use of Pre-Existing Music:

Previous Winner - Moonlight - "Hello Stranger" - Barbara Lewis

Nominees:

1. Baby Driver - "B-A-B-Y" - Carla Thomas
2. Baby Driver - "Bellbottoms" - The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
3. Baby Driver - "Brighton Rock" - Queen
4. Baby Driver - "Harlem Shuffle" - Bob and Earl
5. Baby Driver - "Hocus Pocus" - Focus
6. Baby Driver - "Neat Neat Neat" - The Damned
7. Baby Driver - "Never Gonna Give You Up" - Barry White
8. Baby Driver - "Tequila" - Button Down Brass

Oh wait. Couple of problems with that set of nominees. First of all, it's too many. There should only be five. Second of all, surely I can find some non-Baby Driver examples from the year. You know what. I'm going to go ahead and only give one spot to Baby Driver in the final five because these are my awards and I can make up the rules as I go along and I think you, as a reader, can understand that I loved how Edgar Wright used music in Baby Driver.

The Real Nominees:

1. Atomic Blonde - "Father Figure" - George Michael
2. Baby Driver - "Bellbottoms" - The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
3. Call Me By Your Name - "Love My Way" - The Psychedelic Furs
4. Lady Bird - "Crash Into Me" - The Dave Matthews Band
5. The Shape of Water - "You'll Never Know" - Alice Faye

Atomic Blonde is the kind of movie where Charlize Theron's super spy goes out of her way to turn on "Father Figure" to soundtrack her fighting a bunch of police officers with a hose (also as something to hide her footsteps). It oozes a special kind of 80s cool that the movie kind of loses track of over the second half. Speaking of 80s cool, Armie Hammer dancing to "Love My Way" with glowing pink lights illuminating him. Greta Gerwig makes me appreciate Dave Matthews with both of her uses of "Crash Into Me" in Lady Bird. First as a hilarious smash cut reaction to teenage heartbreak and second as an affirmation of friendship. It is probably better to not know about how Guillermo del Toro uses "You'll Never Know" as it is a completely surprising moment of pure emotion. If you've seen the movie you know exactly what scene I'm talking about and if you haven't you'll know when you see it.

Runner Up - The Shape of Water - "You'll Never Know" - Alice Faye

Winner - BABY DRIVER - "BELLBOTTOMS" - THE JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION

T2 Trainspotting

Best Soundtrack:

Previous Winner - 20th Century Women

Nominees:

1. Atomic Blonde
2. Baby Driver
3. I, Tonya
4. Lady Bird
5. T2 Trainspotting

Atomic Blonde crafts a perfect 80s playlist for its foray into a divided Berlin from Depeche Mode to Ministry to George Michael. Baby Driver takes Edgar Wright's favourite music and crafts action scenes around them which is an amazing achievement. And Mr. Wright has impeccable taste in music. I, Tonya really could have been a case of soundtrack overload, trying to stuff too many recognizable hits in but it works enough giving a strong sense of the conditions Tonya Harding grew up in. Lady Bird is a greatest hits of teenage favourites from the early 00s. Dave Matthews, Justin Timberlake and Alanis Morissette are all represented. T2 Trainspotting uses a great mix of old favourites either from the original film or of similar mold and hip new songs continuing the spirit perhaps best exemplified at the end of the film when a montage set to Wolf Alice transitions into a final shot set to Iggy Pop.

Runner Up - Atomic Blonde

Winner - BABY DRIVER

The Snowman

Best Poster:

Previous Winner - Jackie

Nominees:

1. Baby Driver
2. The Disaster Artist
3. Kong: Skull Island
4. The Shape of Water
5. Star Wars: The Last Jedi

These five nominees are the opposite of the above Snowman poster. That might be funniest poster I've ever seen. It just makes me laugh every time I see it. And the best part is, stupid notes like that are barely in the movie. Oh boy. I'll talk more about The Snowman and how the main character is named Harry Hole in the Worst Of section.

Anyways, the five great posters. The design of a gun firing a car along sound waves on a pink backdrop is a stylish way to convey all the information about what Baby Driver is. It's an amazing poster. The early marketing for The Disaster Artist concerned itself with the iconic rooftop rant from The Room and they couldn't have picked a better touchstone. Just a messy concept that conveys just how fucked up Tommy Wiseau and The Room are and why audiences are fascinated with them. One thing Kong: Skull Island has is some incredibly visuals and those carry over into the poster. Just an absolutely stunning silhouette of King Kong towering over the scene. That Shape of Water poster is just absolutely gorgeous. I don't even feel like I have to promote it. Just look at it. Star Wars continues its strong run of posters. Nobody is better as filling a poster with all the stars than the marketing department behind the Star Wars saga.

Runner Up - Kong: Skull Island

Winner - THE SHAPE OF WATER

I, Tonya

Best Trailer:

Previous Winner - La La Land

Nominees:

1. The Beguiled
2. Blade Runner 2049
3. The Disaster Artist
4. I, Tonya
5. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

If I decided to nominate a sixth film it would be It Comes at Night. The trailer is a perfectly crafted horror trailer offering thrills and scares on its own while hinting at bigger scares in the film. The only problem is that It Comes at Night is not a typical horror movie. It is a great, tense movie but the trailer sells a post-apocalyptic monster movie of sorts while the film contains no supernatural monsters. Great trailer, great film, just a disconnect between the two.

The Beguiled's trailer is a perfect set up for the film starting with the tranquil atmosphere of the female only house that is interrupted by Colin Farrell and escalates to a haunting scream of despair. Blade Runner 2049 built its marketing around the Blade Runner name and the showstopping visuals keeping its plot a mystery for filmgoers. This is a smart strategy when Roger Deakins is doing some of the best worst of his career. This teaser to The Disaster Artist is 90% filming of the rooftop scene but it functions perfectly as an appetizer with James Franco's perfect Tommy Wiseau performance selling the film. The trailer for I, Tonya does a great job selling the Goodfellas-esque vibe of the film and while the film doesn't fully capitalize on that, the trailer sure does. Three Billboards has a perfect trailer. Distilling the film down to two minutes of furious anger from Frances McDormand and hiding all the questionable decisions the script would make. It completely sold me on the film and made it one of my most anticipated movies of the year. It's just a shame it couldn't live up to the hype its own marketing department created for it.

Runner Up - The Disaster Artist

Winner - THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI

Lovesong

Best Opening Scene:

Previous Winner - La La Land

Nominees:

1. Baby Driver
2. Lady Bird
3. The Meyerowitz Stories

It looks like the ideal way to open a movie in 2017 was in a car. Baby Driver's heist and chase set to "Bellbottoms" is the kind of instantly legendary scene that we will all remember for decades. Lady Bird's mother-daughter conversation that gradually becomes an argument that ends very abruptly is a perfect introduction to the tone of Greta Gerwig's film. Another tense parent-daughter relationship is introduced in The Meyerowitz Stories with Adam Sandler and Grace Van Patten looking for parking in New York. Of course, this is not the relationship at the heart of the film, and this is actual probably the tensest it gets, but it does a perfect job introducing the method of communication between members of the Meyerowitz family.

Runner Up - Lady Bird

Winner - BABY DRIVER

Phantom Thread

Best Ending:

Previous Winner - Moonlight

Nominees:

1. Call Me By Your Name
2. Logan
3. The Shape of Water

There were a lot of great endings this year. Get Out, Dunkirk, The Lost City of Z, The Big Sick, Good Time, Mudbound and It Comes at Night all deserve a mention but one movie not nominated deserves a truly special mention. Phantom Thread has an ending that re-contextualizes the entire film but not so much as a twist but as the logical end point to the story and if I wasn't so attached to symmetrically nominating the same number of films for Opening and Ending I would have put Phantom Thread on the list.

Call Me By Your Name ends with a static shot as the credits roll around it and "Visions of Gideon" plays. It is absolutely devastating. One of the most powerful shots of the year. I was physically shaken by the ending of Logan. A perfect culmination of over 15 years of Hugh Jackman playing Wolverine and an even more powerful final image than Call Me By Your Name. Another incredible final image is that of The Shape of Water especially paired with Richard Jenkins' narration providing a perfect quote for the occasion (spoilers for the next award)

Runner Up - The Shape of Water

Winner - LOGAN

The Big Sick

Best Line:

Previous Winner - The Witch - Woulds't thou like to live deliciously?"

Nominees:

1. The Big Sick - "What's my stance on 9/11? Oh um, anti. It was a tragedy, I mean we lost 19 of our best guys."
2. The Meyerowitz Stories - "Maybe I need to believe my dad was a genius because I don't want his life to worthless and if he isn't a great artist that means he was just a prick"
3. Phantom Thread - "Yes, the tea is leaving but the interruption is staying right here with me"
4. The Shape of Water - "Unable to perceive the shape of you, I find you all around me. Your presence fills my eyes with your love, It humbles my heart, For you are everywhere"
5. T2 Trainspotting - Choose life update

The punchline to The Big Sick's 9/11 joke maybe doesn't quite work without Ray Romano's set up but it is the funniest line of the year. Adam Sandler's monologue at his father's art exhibit towards the end of The Meyerowitz Stories culminates on this rumination of the failure of fatherhood and the anguish it causes children to carry through adulthood. Phantom Thread is full of high class quips but Daniel Day-Lewis' annoyance at Vicky Krieps' good intentions is the one that stuck with me the most. The Shape of Water found the absolute perfect words to end its story with. Just stunning. I'm not typing out the entire thing from T2 Trainspotting because it's basically a two minute monologue but it removes the youthful optimism and energy and the original Choose Life statement and imbibes it with the pains of wasted potential. One quick note before leaving here, I was very tempted to put the Shane monologue delivered by Dafne Keen at the end of Logan onto here but decided against it because it is lifted entirely from another film but it is really fucking powerful. 

Runner up - The Big Sick

Winner - THE SHAPE OF WATER

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

Best Scene:

Previous Winner - Hail, Caesar! - Would That It Were So Simple

Honourable Mentions:

1. Atomic Blonde - Stairwell Fight
2. Get Out - The Sunken Place
3. mother! - House of Horrors
4. Phantom Thread - Buttering Toast
5. Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Light Speed

Nominees:

1. Baby Driver - Bellbottoms
2. Call Me By Your Name- Father-Son Chat
3. Logan - Ending
4. The Shape of Water - Elisa "Speaks"
5. Wonder Woman - No Man's Land

Baby Driver's opening scene is already iconic. Edgar Wright spent 20 years waiting to make that scene and he made it worth the wait. When Elio's father invites him to talk on the couch late in Call Me By Your Name is the moment the movie comes together. Some amazing, spellbinding words from Michael Stuhlbarg in that scene. I'll go on record as saying the final shot of Logan is the most powerful single shot of the entire year. A shot that is the perfect capper to Hugh Jackman's years as Wolverine. This is the scene in The Shape of Water that starts with Elisa and the Fish Man sitting at the kitchen table. What transpires is Guillermo del Toro making pure movie magic. Wonder Woman stepping out onto No Man's Land is everything that movie wants to be. Powerful and striking. Just iconic.

Runner Up - Logan

Winner - BABY DRIVER - BELLBOTTOMS

And that's it for the technical awards. Come back tomorrow for a foray into the world of television where you learn what shows you've never heard of that I really like (spoiler, it's The Leftovers)

Technical Awards Stats:
Number of Nominated Films: 29
Film With the Most Nominations - The Shape of Water - 9
Films With Multiple Nominations:
9 - The Shape of Water, 7 - Baby Driver, 5 - Call Me By Your Name, 4 - Blade Runner 2049, Dunkirk, The Meyerowitz Stories, 3 - Atomic Blonde, A Ghost Story, Lady Bird, Logan, Phantom Thread, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, 2 - The Disaster Artist, I Tonya, T2 Trainspotting
Number of Winning Films: 9
Film With the Most Wins: TIE - Baby Driver, The Shape of Water - 4
Films With Multiple Wins:
4 - Baby Driver, The Shape of Water

Baby Driver