This weekend I will be going to see the exhibition of the costumes for this year’s Oscar nominees in the category of Best Costume Design here in Los Angeles. The exhibition which is at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising is open to the public from February 9 until April 17, 2010. Included, of course, are costumes from The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus whose costume designer, Monique Prudhomme, has been nominated for the Oscar in this category for her work on the film.

Prudhomme, who has a background in fine arts, flew to Los Angeles from her home in Vancouver this week to view the exhibit and was pleased to see the costumes re-assembled two years after the project was completed. Of the death of Heath Ledger midway through the film, Prudhomme told Judy Graeme of LA Observed, the cast and crew felt that “his spirit was always hovering over us.”

I will be sharing my experience at the exhibition with you after my trip to the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising early in the week. I’m really excited about going.

Source: Hollywood Today

By Karen Ostlund

Who will be the new winner of the Oscar statuette for Best Costume Design in 2010?

HOLLYWOOD,CA(Hollywood Today)2/9/2010– FIDM Museum & Galleries in downtown Los Angeles have the answer.

The 18th annual exhibition ” The Art Of Motion Picture Costume Design” will open to the public, Tuesday, February 9th and continue through Saturday, April 17th.

Over 100 costumes from over 20 films of 2009 will be featured, including last years’ winner Michael O’Connor from “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” and 2008 winner “The Duchess” from the same costume designer.

Garments showing from 2009 Oscar winner “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”, were worn by actor: Keira Knightley as Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and Ralph Fiennes as The Duke of Devonshire.

2010 Academy Award Nominee for Best Costume are:

Janet Patterson from “Bright Star”

Sandy Powell from “The Young Victoria”

Monique Prudhomme from “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus”

Collen Atwood from “Nine”

Catherine Leterrier from “Coco – Before Chanel”

The winner will presented at Kodak theatre in Hollywood, March 7th 2010.

Coordinator Mary Burrough explained about the missing collection of the five nominee’:

“All costumes from our Oscar nominee’s are present in this new exhibition, except the garments from the movie “Coco – Before Chanel”,They belong to the privat Chanel House”

BAFTA, British Academy of Film and Television have four nominated costumes in the exhibition, for their BAFTA Awards, February 21st 2010::

Janet Patterson from “Bright Star”

Odile Dicks-Mireaux from “An Education”

Arianne Phillips from “A Single Man”

Sandy Powell from “ The Young Victoria”

The Costume Designers Guild have six nominated costumes presented, and the Guilds’ final winner will be announced February 25th, in the categories,”Excellence in Period Film” and “Excellence in Fantasy Film”:

Ann Roth from “Julia & Julia”

Colleen Atwood from “Nine”

Jenny Beavan from “Sherlock Holmes”

Sandy Powell from “The Young Victoria”

Monique Prudhomme from “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”

Michael Kaplan from “Star Trek”

So what have the four designers to say about their Oscar nominated costumes?

Monique Prudhomme explain the concept of her garments:

-“The are creations from both the Middle Ages as well as from the Renaissance.It’s a mix of every period and every ethnicity that I found interesting”

Colleen Atwood, best known for making the clothes of Johnny Depps’ character in the movies “Public Enemies” (2009) and Sweeney Todd” (2007). She admits:-”I watch a lot of Italian cinema, which influenced the style of the garments in the movie Nine”.

In the film she used over 1.000.000 crystallized Swarovski elements to 36 costumes, and nine different applications of crystal in 31 styles and 22 colors to make the actors of “Nine” to stand

out.

Janet Patterson, says:

-“Dressing 18-year-old Fanny in “Bright Star” was an exceptional challenge because she was playing with her own identity and creativity though her costumes”

Sandy Powell was allowed access to the archive at Kensington Palace of Victoria’s own clothes in the making of “The Young Victoria”:

-“Visting the archive was useful and inspirational, because there no photographes of Victoria until she was much older in the 1860’s”

“Apart from that, research was made the usual way, which is looking at paintings and other contemporary sources”. “For me it is remarkable how tiny the clothes were at that time era”

FIDM Museum & Galleries are open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm, and admission is free of charge.

Source: Dreams Terry Gilliam Fanzine

By Phil Stubbs

In December 2009, Dave Warren spoke to Dreams about the design of The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus. An experienced Art Director, his credit on this picture is “Original Design and Art Direction”, which he shares with the film’s director, Terry Gilliam. In this interview, Dave explains his experience of working on Dr Parnassus, and in particular the design obstacles that needed to be overcome – to bring this picture from conception to completion.

Phil Stubbs: How did you get involved with the project?
Dave Warren: Actually, I’ve known Terry on and off since 1992. I did a thesis in college about Terry and I interviewed him towards the end of it. In a funny kind of way, it’s almost like he’s sown the seeds of a career to reap fifteen or twenty years later. It’s not quite as cut and dried as that, but I sense there’s something like this going on. After that interview he asked: what do you do? I said I was trying to be an illustrator. He said: you must come in with your work, I’d love to see what you do. I thought: Terry Gilliam is clearly a man with time on his hands! At that stage he’d probably just done The Fisher King and that was going to open. I did meet him, I went up to Highgate, I did the whole show-and-tell thing.

Then I had this phone call out of the blue while he was working on The Defective Detective. He was with Paramount trying to get it off the ground for $25m. He said he could do it for that, and they said he couldn’t. He got a little development budget together.

At this point Dante Ferretti was in the UK, probably for early meetings for Interview with the Vampire. Dante Ferretti is an old mucker of Terry’s, having done Baron Munchausen. So Dante came for six to eight weeks with Terry on production sketches for The Defective Detective, which I still have photographs of somewhere (so remind me of that one day). I got a phone call from Terry (or Maggie) asking if I could come and help Dante put this model together of the big cityscape of The Defective Detective. I did that for a month. Then the film went off to land of development, which is beyond the rings of Saturn, never to come back. Dante went on to do Interview with a Vampire, and he told me: if you’re not working then you can come with me. So I was set on the horrendous steel rails of the film industry, never to get off. And I’ve never looked back.

Years and years later, I was working on Sweeney Todd at Pinewood as an Art Director with Dante as the Production Designer. By this time Dante’s spiralled off into a different stratosphere with Martin Scorsese. So I think it would be a rare thing for Dante to work with Terry again because they have gone off in different directions. Yet I know that Dante has a huge amount of respect for Terry. (imitating Dante) “He’s an artist… a filmmaker, yes, but more than this, he’s a great artist.”

Terry came in to see Dante. I think he was also coming in to catch Richard Zanuck who was producing Sweeney Todd – to see if he could try and get some finance from that direction for this new film with the wagon. So Terry was chatting to Dante, and I met Terry again. Funnily enough we had built a caravan for Sweeney Todd. The Italian hairdresser, Pirelli, has this caravan in a big open marketplace; he had this competition with Todd. Terry was looking at it, looking at wheels and bits and pieces like that. He was mumbling about having to build this big wagon to go around the centre of London, and I thought little more of it. Sweeney Todd carried on, it finished and we all went our separate ways, and then I had this phone call out of the blue from Terry.

At that stage Terry didn’t mention what my role might be. He uses this phrase like he does with everybody: Can you help? Do you think you can help, we are putting this thing together, can you help? I said, “What do you want… do you want some money? I could come in and work.” It was so weird because it was like fifteen years had never happened. I was driving up to Highgate again, going up to see the boss in the famous loft. I had a very nice afternoon with him, we chatted about it. I’d already seen the script so I had done some sketches and a little bit of research. I went in there and whacked what I’d done on the table. Terry said “Great… great… I see you are thinking about it… but you should have a look at what I’ve got.” And of course Terry had already put together this wonderful leather bound book with key frame images for all the major scenes. He’d got it, he knew exactly what the film needed to look like. He just hadn’t filled in all the gaps yet. It led from there really.

READ MORE HERE

Source: CountDown Oscars

Dave Warren and Monique Prudhomme, nominated in the Oscar Categories of Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design made the following statements to CountDown Oscar about their nominations.

Dave Warren, nominated with Anastasia Masaro for their art direction of “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” recalled director Terry Gilliam and the cast and crew being in great pain after actor Heath Ledger’s death during the shooting of the film. “But Terry very much wanted to get it done. Everyone was committed, everyone seemed to rally around to move ahead with it.” One of Warren’s most rewarding experiences on the film was when he and his artistic team went to a screening and could clearly recognize the images on screen as the designs they penned on paper. “That doesn’t happen as often as one would think in film,” Warren said, laughing. “It felt good for all of us.”

“I would like to thank the Academy for this honor,” said Monique Prudhomme, a nominee for best costume design for Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.” In a statement, Prudhomme thanked Gilliam “who took me on his wagon and came this far. This is a tremendous moment for all of us.”

Source: Reuters

By Alex Dobuzinskis

Sony Pictures Classics, the art-house unit of Sony Pictures that released coming-of-age tale “An Education,” also garnered 13 nominations, while its parent Sony Pictures received five.

“It’s something that we worked very hard on, and we’re glad that the academy recognized the films,” said Tom Bernard, co-founder of Sony Pictures Classics. “And we’re positioning the films to hopefully capitalize on the recognition.”

MORE THEATERS, MORE MONEY

The company plans to expand Oscar nominated film “An Education” to 800 theaters, and widen nominated movies “The Last Station” and “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.”

Bernard said Oscar nominations can increase a movie’s box office revenue by at least a third.

READ MORE HERE

UPDATE! Just spoke had a message from Dr. Parnassus concept artist, Daniel Auber, and he say’s he totally agrees with the film makers! He’d like to make their statement a double!

We couldn’t agree with them more! The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus has been nominated for the Oscar in the categories of Beat Art Direction and Best Costume Design!

Terry Gilliam’s Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus has been nominated for two Oscars! Dr. Parnassus has been nominated in the categories of Best Art Direction and Best Costumes. Congratulations! We are so proud of you!

The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus stars Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Jude Law, Christopher Plummer, Tom Waits, Verne Troyer, Lily Cole and Andrew Garfield.

Source: SilvaScreen Records

Three songs from our releases have made the Academy Award shortlist to compete for Best Original Song at the 82nd Awards. They are Trust Me from The Informant! sung by Steve Tyrell, We Are The Children Of The World and We Love Violence from The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus sung by Jam Theatre Company Choir and The Sir Ian Blair Memorial Choir. The songs will be judged on January 12th and nominations announced on February 2nd. The Academy Awards take place at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles on March 7th.

Source: The Wrap

By Steve Pond

The science fiction films “District 9″ and “Star Trek” and Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” are among the films shortlisted for the makeup Oscar, the Academy announced on Monday.

The rest of the shortlist, from which the nominees will be chosen after a “bakeoff” at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater on January 23: “Il Divo,” “NIght at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian,” “The Road” and “The Young Victoria.”

Three of those films will join a checkered list of nominees in a category that has always been something of a pain for Academy members who conscientiously try to see every nominee before voting.

I was very excited when I heard that Sony Picture Classics had begun its awards campaign for The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus, however, I’ve been a bit concerned because I don’t see the awards campaign and our movie being discussed on the sites that are so important to the awards season campaign for a film. This just will not do. I know that the screeners are being put together to send to voters and that the film has been submitted for a SAG nomination, but I can’t help but wondering when SPC will start the push for the film. I hope it will be soon. This film should be receiving nominations for all of these awards this year, Indie Spirit, Golden Globes, Oscars, all of them. This movie so deserves to be acknowledged in this manner. I personally, definitely want to see Christopher Plummer nominated for a much deserved Oscar for Best Actor, I’d like to see a Best Ensemble Cast For SAG and on and on. I want to see Gilliam get his much deserved Best Director.

In the meantime, we as fans should be helping promote the awards campaign. We need to go to the sites below and first click the contact link and ask them when we will be seeing Doctor Parnassus and more about its awards campaign on their site. Also join their forums and start talking about the film and DEFINITELY about the awards campaign for it. Get it out there. Let people know about it. It’s vitally important that you raise public awareness of the film. All these sites have very influential forums and in just a couple of minutes a day you can do a great deal of good for this film and its awards campaign. If there isn’t a topic on the forum for discussing Dr. Parnassus’ awards campaign and or the movie, start one. Please everyone be proactive in this today! Show Terry Gilliam and the cast how much you appreciate their gift to us of this fantastic film! Keep your emails brief and to the point and polite please, but definitely contact them.

Come on guys, let’s get the word out about this. Put it on your LJ, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter it, put it on other forums.

Contact and Go To The Forums At These Sites:

The Envelope

Awards Daily

Cinematical

UPDATE: I have also just been made aware of a thread on IMDb at the link below

IMDb

Thank you all so much! Now let’s get this out there starting TODAY!