Ranking the Oscar Nominees: Best Makeup and Hairstyling

And the nominees were:

Darkest Hour - Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski and Lucy Sibbick

Malinoski, Tsuji, Sibbick

Japanese makeup artist Tsuji was brought out of retirement by Gary Oldman to work on the film. He had previously been nominated, of all things, one of the better recent Adam Sandler films (Click) and one of the worst Eddie Murphy ones (Norbit). His work on both was admittedly very good, though I'd say the highlights of his career have been elsewhere, from his work on the extreme prosthetics for the Hellboy films and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, to his work in turning Joseph Gordon-Levitt into a young Bruce Willis in Looper. Malinowski, the make-up supervisor (whose body of work can be found here, http://www.theprostheticsevent.co.uk/portfolio-item/david-malinowski/) and Sibbick, too, have a strong body of work, from Malinowski's work on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and the upcoming sequel, and Sibbick's work on makeup and hairstyling-heavy films like Hercules, World War Z and Zoolander 2.


Victoria & Abdul - Daniel Phillips and Lou Sheppard

Sheppard, Phillips

Sheppard was part of the team which did the tremendous hairstyling work on John Adams, as well as other outstanding examples of work in Made in Dagenham, Guardians of the Galaxy, and last year alone Fantastic Beasts, Florence Foster Jenkins and Allied of which at least one should have garnered her a nomination. Phillips stellar filmography thus far has largely been centered around British prestige films like the television version of Bleak House, The Queen and of course Florence Foster Jenkins which he collaborated with Sheppard upon.

Wonder - Arjen Tuiten

Tuiten on the set of Maleficent

This is Tuiten's first nomination. Impressively, his first credit goes all the way back to 1995 when he was merely 15 years old, and from the early 2000s has already worked ob all manner of productions, from the immaculate makeup work on Big Fish and Pan's Labrinyth, to prosthetics designer on Unbroken.

My ranking of the nominees -

3. Victoria & Abdul 

All three of these are at the very least decent choices. I don't think there was anything particularly great here that needed to be awarded, the hairstyling all seems fine and fitting to the period, as is the makeup, but never stood out beyond that point. I suppose a film of this calibre though doesn't really deserve innovation on its technical fronts, and having said that this is easily one of the better partso f the film.

2. Wonder

Tough choice between these two, and I will say that perhaps Wonder's makeup does look more 'realistic', so to speak, in a general sense. It's pretty impressive work, evoking something like Mask albeit on a smaller scale, and most importantly it always felt like a real-life condition, speaking of which though the film isn't flawless on the whole, I really liked its presentations of a realistic struggle through disabilities.

1. Darkest Hour

I've heard reservations about the makeup being too over-the-top and distracting in certain scenes. Now I'll grant that there's perhaps a moment or too where Churchill's fake chin looks ever so slightly fake, but for the most part I thought it looked amazing and entirely natural to the character of ol' Winston, and like Tremblay I never felt it hindered the nature of the performance, as it seemed to almost accentuate the best moments of Oldman's performance by the sheer visual impact of this unique specimen of man fighting along in the darkest hour.