Best of 2013: Sets

Best Art Direction/Production Design

• Adam Stockhausen, Alice Baker, et. al. for 12 Years a Slave, for finding perfect objects to strike McQueen's fascination with wrenching as much story detail and atmosphere out of a scene, like the makeshift pencil/ink or the gears of the boat, and for evoking the dramatic backdrop of the plantation.

• Andy Nicholson, Rosie Goodwin, Joanne Woollard, et. al. for Gravity, because every element of its story, barring the terrifically chaotic clouds of debris, is right there in its minimalist yet sweepingly interactive set; keeping us in constant stress over what will or won't work in Ryan's favor.

• K.K. Barrett, Gene Serdena, et. al. for Her, for avoiding the temptation to overtly futurize cityscapes, instead filling them with bold, primary colors, staying in tune with Jonze's airy atmosphere while composing a completely plausible evolution of technology.

• Unccredited for Museum Hours, for utilizing so many pre-existing locations that an art direction credit would feel redundant, allowing the museum's paintings and sculptures to pass back and forth between the still life depictions of city and character, existing within and mirroring one another.

• Jack Fisk, Jeanette Scott, et. al. for To the Wonder, for keying up Malick's relationship with nature and linking it to the film's contrasting of the pastoral romantic rapture of France and alluring but antiseptic Americana, and for the purely expressionistic but plausible details of the house.

Extreme Honorable Mentions begin with two animated films, the first being The Wind Rises, which earnestly evokes the dangers of its setting and injects it with the same bouts of whimsy we've come to expect from Miyazaki, and the second is the more flat-out fanciful, Ernest and Celestine, which does like to show off just a bit, but emerges with such genuine and loving ardor with its clever world-building. Speaking of show-offy, Xavier Dolan's Laurence Anyways starts at 11 with its production values and never quite dials it down during its nearly three-hour running time, from the disco to the house inhabited by the family of drag queens to the cloudbursts of clothing, each frameable image is a keeper, and Behind the Candelabra also gets a glamorous (albeit much more shimmery) treatment to its sets, but in ways that emit the nuance of the story and central romance, beautifully.

Further honorable mentions go to The Selfish Giant, for painting such a stirring, Kes-like portrait of an impoverished milieu; The Bling Ring, for going in a completely opposite direction and showing us a world outfitted by excessive shrines to people's own successes; The Great Beauty, for managing to at least thrill visually where its script doesn't, going all-in on the ridiculous constitutions of Art that its protagonist would be irritated by, even if  I wish the movie as a whole felt less cowed by the familiar techniques that they connote; Only God Forgives, for being unabashed formalistic erotica, even if merely acknowledging it makes me sick to my stomach (which, I'm sure, is exactly what Refn intended); Antiviral, for that amazing billboard of Hannah Geist, and its acerbic construction of a dystopian universe; Mother of George, for using the city, the apartments, and the places of worship to evoke a specific mood and psychology of its characters; and Saving Mr. Banks, for the complimentary Pooh Bear, and for other fun Disney-related product placements nods.