Art Directors Guild Award Winners

Art Directors Guild Winners (thanks to ladylurks and Niles Hemming):

• Best period film design: Donald Graham Burt, Benjamin Button
• Best fantasy film design: Nathan Crowley, The Dark Knight
• Best contemporary film design: Mark Digby, Slumdog Millionaire

The Art Directors Guild has it figured out. If brilliant action movies like The Bourne Ultimatum and The Dark Knight aren’t “serious” enough for filmmakers who play dress-up for a living, just make sure there are plenty of categories to cover all the creative bases.

Looking for a way to make the Oscars unique, distinctive, truly inclusive, and relevant? Fiddling around with the Best Song format is a limp dick attempt. Revamp the entire structure into something really revolutionary. How about splitting the event into two nights (like the Westminster Dog Show!) Have 3 or 4 genre winners in every category the first night, and then Best of Breed on night two.

Tirade continued after the cut, along with the TV categories.

Original and adapted Screenplays are two different thing. Acting in a comedy or drama require different kinds of talent. Solution: Separate categories! Editing an action movie requires a different skill-set than editing a period drama. Designing costumes for a contemporary piece is nothing like designing for a fantasy film (The Costume Designers Guild takes the same view as the Art Directors with their multiple categories.)

This year they’ll whittle down the Oscars by an hour, threatening to turn it into another homogenized evening of list-reading. They’ve already thought up all kinds of ways to insult the winners — having them stand in the audience one year, instead of coming onstage, and playing off people 30 seconds into their speech (unless you’re an actor — then, please, ramble your scatterbrained ass off).

• Single Camera Television Series: DAN BISHOP, MAD MEN (THE JET SET)
• Multi-Camera Television Series: GREG GRANDE & MICHAEL WYLIE, LITTLE BRITAIN U.S.A.
• Television Movie or Mini-Series: GEMMA JACKSON, JOHN ADAMS
• Half Hour Single-Camera Television Series: JOSEPH P. LUCKY, WEEDS (EXCELLENT TREASURES)
• Awards Show, Variety, Music, or Non-Fiction Program: ROY CHRISTOPHER, 80TH ANNUAL ACADEMY AWARDS