The Academy Awards happen this weekend and so it’s time once again to celebrate my favorite design elements in last year’s movies.  Of those films nominated for Best Production Design I’m pulling for Hail Caesar! and its giddy rendition of ‘50s LA.  But I suspect the Technicolor toss-up will go to La La Land.

If I were handing out awards, here are a few things I am Loving about last year’s set designs.

Best (and Worst) Bachelor Pads – Dev Patel’s ocean view apartment provided a perfect perch to search the world to find his roots.  By contrast, Casey Affleck’s basement digs in Manchester by the Sea offered no relief from his past.

Best Hideout – The elegant Georgian mansions offered more than Love & Friendship to Kate Beckinsale.

Deadliest Kitchen –Despite all its up-to-date trappings there was no heart to Rosamund Pike’s Gone Girl home.

Hippy-est Hut – Viggo Mortensen’s forest dwelling in Captain Fantastic was a survivalist’s paradise.

Best Contemporary Castle – The Camelot-era White House was a shining spot in Jackie. 

Best Dreams Do Come True House – Emma Stone’s Chateau Marmont bungalow provides a clear signal that she’s made it big in La La Land.

Best Slipcover – Proving once again that money can’t buy you love, this nothing-out-of-the-ordinary chenille blanket provided the perfect backdrop for the happy marriage in Loving.

Best Music Room —The eclectic mishmash of Meryl Streep’s apartment hit all the right notes in Florence Foster Jenkins. 

And now, the Grand Chaise—the one with the leopard print velvet slipcover—is awarded to The Place I Wish I Called Home: 

All my finalists offer water front views from spare structures.  I fancied the quiet Japanese dwellings in Silence and the modern Commie clubhouse in Hail Caesar! But the place that spoke my design language best was Amy Adams’s down-to-earth lakeside retreat in Arrival.

What a wonderful spring we’re having here in Northern California. I’ve been working on my garden removing the things that didn’t survive the deer or early frosts and then shopping for and planting more of what seems to thrive. The temperature is just warm enough to feel rejuvenating as I work outside and the light is so cinematic it deserves some kind of award.  Best Seasonal Glow–or something to that effect.

Last week, my landscape designer and friend Keeyla Meadows lended some expert help. Together we shopped at the wholesale nursery for more grevilleas and hellebores and added a white rhododendron and some daphne–fingers crossed that it survives since daphne can be so temperamental.  Then we spent a day placing and planting before the rains started up again.  At the end of that very full day of digging, watering, fertilizing and cleanup we sat down for a cup of tea in the twilight.  A large bird flew by and landed in a nearby eucalyptus tree directly across from where we were sitting. It immediately started to “whoo hooo” so we thought we knew what we were looking at but to confirm I fished out an old pair of binoculars.  Sure enough there was a great horned owl (“uncommon but widespread” says my Sibley Field Guide to Western Birds) challenging us to blink first.

According to “Birds–A Spiritual Field Guide “ (yes, I have ALL the bird books) the owl can be seen as either an omen of something terrible to come–think spooky Halloween creature–or a symbol of wisdom. Either way it seemed quite mystical to have it appear and communicate with us at that moment. We chose to think of “our” owl as a wise messenger blessing our clever efforts to outsmart the deer and anticipate the rain.

Usually this time of year is when I produce a post about my favorite set designs from the previous year’s movies.  Alas, I’ve been immersed in novel revisions or garden plans the past few weeks and didn’t take the time to put one together but if the Academy Awards show peaked your interest in seeing some of the nominated films here’s my 2 Cents on 2015 movie design.  Of the films nominated for Best Art Direction I was rooting for The Martian. I wasn’t up for seeing either The Revenant or Mad Max: Fury Road on the big screen but the rest of my family did and raved about Max’s visuals so I’m not surprised it won. Of the films I saw I absolutely loved the sinister modern house in Ex Machina (read about the mostly Norwegian locations here and here)

And the beautiful color palette of Brooklyn.

How fitting that the female leads of these two films also wore some of my favorite Oscar gowns.

To quote my backyard visitor–Whoo hooo!  What were your favorite movie sets from last year?  How about Oscar fashions?  I’d love to hear.

Our property is bordered on three sides by open space owned by the utility company.  The other side includes a raised berm that runs between our driveway and the home of some sweet elderly neighbors who have lived there for thirty years.  When selecting plants for the garden, we discussed the general plan for the space on our side of the shared berm. Our intention was to add more deer-resistant plants like the rhododendrons that line their side of the berm. (Our side consisted of bare dirt and an overgrown phormium on its last stick-like legs.) The neighbors agreed to the plan but then I inadvertently (truly) deviated from it by purchasing an especially pretty red maple while shopping for the back yard plants and planted it on what I thought was our side of the property line. That red maple has turned into one especially pretty red flag.

The neighbors had some concerns. (Again, have I mentioned they’re lovely people?) They thought the tree might be on their property and weren’t interested in maintaining it long term–even if their long term isn’t so long.  I understood where they were coming from but thought that I’d planted it on our side and furthermore fully intend to care for it. We consulted the parcel map but it was hard to determine where the line fell.  The property is oddly shaped with a triangular bit that extends over towards the neighbors’ house.  All well and good if you know where any point of the triangle exists, but just by looking at the map it’s hard to make that out. Using a VERY long tape measurer and measuring from the back (we think) of our property, M.J. laid out a possible borderline but things were iffy enough that both sides agreed it was best to hire a surveyor to settle the matter.

In the meantime we rebuilt the shabby little plywood fence at the edge of another border and painted it a neutral gray to disappear behind the plants about to be planted.  It’s a low fence–only three feet high.  But it serves as a screen to block the view of the large cement blocks that anchor a transmission tower that stands in the utility company open space. Clearly this little fence would do nothing to stop that tower from tumbling down in the case of an earthquake or prevent trespassers from leaping stepping over it. But it quietly suggests that the massive tower footings and strangers (there’s no hope for the deer) belong on the other side of the fence. Guess we have some border issues as well.

This week when I bought the rest of the new plants I purchased two especially pretty red rhododendrons as a peace offering to the neighbors. We’ll plant them on the to-be-determined border in front of their kitchen window where before there was only dirt and if we have to we’ll adjust the maple placement to make sure it’s definitely on our side of the line. We’re doing our best to make everyone happy with their lots in life.

Besides plants and dirt, here are a few other things that caught my attention this week:

Martha Stewart’s favorite clematis (and check out that garden structure to support them!)

Thinking a Calder-like mobile in the new garden could be cool.

Could these be the ultimate oatmeal raisin cookies?

Have you settled on your work uniform?

How one casting agent changed pop culture.

Happy Weekend All!

We saw Mr. Turner in a small, narrow theater outfitted with rows of two seats on either side of a central aisle–think small commuter plane. And because we got there just before the film started we were sitting on the second row. Five minutes in I started thinking about calling my chiropractor.

Nevertheless, the stunning imagery and cinematography kept me engaged throughout the entire two and a half hours that actor Timothy Spall brought Turner and his paintings to life.  I winced at Turner’s personal life and marveled at how he capture sun, rain, wind and fog with paint and spit (did I mention he’s a bit off putting?).  It made me want to see the real paintings–most of which are found in the British Isles though not all together as Turner had hoped.

I dare say I strolled by the Turners in my youth as I hunted down more familiar portraits and tableaus. I don’t remember them because landscapes are lost on the young.  Now the good ones seem miraculous. Try photographing a sunset sometime and you’ll see how hard it is to capture that moment and make it unlike any other sunset you’ve ever photographed.  Turner did it using paint, watercolor, pencil, pen, ink and, yes again, spit.

Here are a few of Turner’s masterpieces interspersed with my favorite gowns from this year’s Oscar Awards, like Jennifer Hudson’s yellow sheath by Romona Keveza.

Or Rosamund Pike’s lace and satin strapless gown by Givenchy Haute Couture.

Then there was the elegant (but must have weighed a ton) pearl encrusted halter gown by Francisco Coasta for the Calvin Klein Collection on Lupita Nyong’o.

The textured confection by Alexander McQueen on Felicity Jones.

And the elegant Lanvin separates worn by Meryl Streep.

Forces of nature all.

This weekend is the Oscars and rumor has it that actress and design enthusiast Julianne Moore is helping to decorate the official Green Room.  I’m looking forward to seeing what she comes up with. I’m also excited about taking one more glimpse at the art direction and sets from the past year’s movies.

Whether it was the rat-a-tat-tatty backstage actors’ nests in BIRDMAN, the righteous ‘60s digs in SELMA or the futuristic funhouse of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, the sets from this year’s movies enthralled and entertained.

Thanks to all the set designers and art directors who made last year’s movies BELLE-isimo. To you I present my annual Chaise Lounge (or Longue for you Francophiles) awards for the best design elements in the movies of 2014:

Best Kitchen – The colorful upstart Indian kitchen in THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY may not have earned the Michelin star but it got my vote. Runner up: The off-the-rails food truck in CHEF.

 Best Lighting – I went WILD for that little glowing tent out on the trail.

Best Color Palette–Who could resist seeing Wes Anderson’s world through rose-colored glasses in THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL?

Best Library – The multi-dimensional/time travel farm house bookshelves were (INTER)STELLAR.

Creepiest Cottage – The pool house/cottage in THE ONE I LOVE proved that fantasies–real estate or marital–aren’t always the best reality.

Best Houseboat – Spacious and done in a thoroughly modern grey-on-grey color scheme, the ark in NOAH offered a rustic-chic place to come in out of the rain.

Worst Bachelor/Bachelorette Pad – The sad computer filled room in THE IMMITATION GAME vied with Bill Murray’s ramshackle dump in ST. VINCENT and Rapunzel’s rocky tower in INTO THE WOODS for dreariest place to pine for an unrequited love.

Best Hangout – The rooftop on Tina Fey’s childhood home was the only place to find peace in THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU.

Best Chamber of Horrors – Take one urban loft piano hall add a dungeon like practice room, then mix in the wood-paneled Old Boy’s Club rehearsal room and you’re sure to get WHIPLASH. Runner-up: The eery Roman bone chapel in TRIP TO ITALY.

And now, the Grand Chaise—the one with the leopard print velvet slipcover—is awarded to The Place I Wish I Called Home:

Though I lusted after Neil Patrick Harris’s modern house in GONE GIRL, things just got a little too messy for me.  And the rap star razzle-dazzle of Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s place in BEYOND THE LIGHTS turnt me up.  But I think the tired grandeur of the viager Parisian apartment in MY OLD LADY seemed cozy cool—especially if I could bring in a few more lamps and see it in the golden glow of THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING.

This was a busier than usual holiday season with all the kids and spouses (and a new fiance!) home.  So I’m just now taking a few moments to ponder some favorite things from 2014.  Perhaps you too are finding this Friday more about retrospection than resolutions.  If so, you might also be thinking about some of your favorite things in 2014. With the help of Goodreads, Spotify and my Calendar 5 app here are my top three 2014 things in a range of design and entertainment categories.

Best International Design Things

This was a year of extraordinary travel for me. It’s hard to pick just three highlights, so I fudged a little here.

Macchu Pichu and other wonders of the Andes  - Peru

Swiss Open-Air Museum – Ballenberg, Switzerland

Porsche Museum + Weissenhof Estate – Stuttgart, Germany

Best Domestic Design Things

Matisse: The Cut-Outs (particularly the “Swimming Pool” dining room installation) – MoMA, NYC

Surf Craft – MinGei Museum, San Diego, CA

San Francisco Decorator Showcase 2014

Best Books

Goodreads tells me that I read or listened to 26 books last year.  Looking over the list I could tell you a few things l liked–and some things I didn’t–about every one of them.  But here are the three books published in 2014 that will stay me.

Frog Music - Emma Donoghue

Levels of Life – Julian Barnes

Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel

Best  Cookbooks

Looking back, I primarily cooked from old favorite cookbooks and blogs. However, three new welcome additions include:

Barefoot Contessa: Make It Ahead - Ina Garten

My Paris Kitchen - David Leibovitz

Plenty - Yotam Ottolenghi

Best Movies

Travel and our mid-year move cut down some of our first run movie watching this year, but three films I expect to recall include:

Beyond the Lights

Boyhood

Noah

Best TV

So little time to watch TV, really, though this is the year I figured out what all the buzz about Scandal and The Americans was about. Otherwise, I sat still long enough to watch these new shows/seasons:

Blackish

Hell on Wheels: Season 4

Jane the Virgin

Best Theater

We saw a number of terrific plays last year including a hilarious/creepy/touching community theater production of Side-Show starring one of M.J.’s work colleagues. Here’s the best of the rest.

The House That Will Not Stand – Berkeley Rep

Tribes – Berkeley Rep

Pygmalion – Cal Shakes

Best Music

According to Spotify’s Year in Music feature, a third of what I listened to last year was folk-pop and I mostly listened to it on Tuesday.  Go figure.  Right now I’m writing this post to a new playlist of unknowns that Spotify has produced for me based on my 2014 history.  Lots of folksy pop tunes—pleasant, not-too-demanding stuff to evoke a mood while I think about other things.  Here are three artists and songs that stood out from the lyrical hushed emotions that were apparently the soundtrack of my 2014:

Mary Lambert – Jessie’s Girl

Noah Gundersen – Poor Man’s Son

James Vincent Morrow – Cavalier

Best Live Music (including Musical Theater)

Though I heard lots of good performances in my church community we didn’t attend too many other concerts or musicals (with the exception of the VERY BAD Idina Menzel vehicle “If/Then” on Broadway) this year.  These three were terrific, nevertheless:

Glen Hansard – Fox Theater, Oakland

Into the Woods – San Francisco Playhouse

The California Revels “An American Journey” – Scottish Rites Theater, Oakland

Looking forward to discovering some new favorite things with you in 2015.

The Blue Belles

Sandra Bullock (Alexander McQueen) in deep space navy.

Lupito N’gano (Prada) in sky blue.

The Ice Queens

Cate Blanchett (Armani Prive) in barely-there baubles.

Angelina Jolie (Elie Saab) in tinsel-town silver.

 The Ladies in Red

Anna Kendrick (J Mendel) in cut-out crimson.

 Pink rocking her Ruby Red Slipper dress.

And I was happy to see Meryl Streep (Lanvin) looking so effortlessly elegant. That’s a look I could see myself copying. So what were your favorite frocks of the evening?

2013 Chaise Lounge Awards*

Given the number of solitary protagonists in films this year, movie set designers were often limited to outfitting claustrophobic dwellings the size of a lifeboat, a space capsule or an abandoned car. But fortunately they were not slavishly bound to small-scale design in every film.

Leonardo DiCaprio splurged on luxurious objets d’art, circa 1920  in “The Great Gatsby” and 1990 in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Jennifer Lawrence piled pattern on pattern on the walls of her ’70s suburban home in “American Hustle” and Joaquin Phoenix found rosy-hued design love throughout the futuristic cityscape of “Her.”

So thank you to the art directors who once again used scrumptious furnishings, wallcoverings, textiles and art to tell tales at the movies. Here are my annual Chaise Lounge (or Longue for you Francophiles) awards for the best design elements in the movies of 2013 . . .

Best Closet–Nothing says you’ve arrived like a two story custom closet from which to fling your pastel-hued shirts a la “The Great Gatsby.” Though as long as we’re talking fantasy, I wouldn’t mind occasionally popping into the time travel closet in “About Time.”

Best Bathroom—Layer multiple patterns of foil wallpaper and you have one mighty fine disco bathroom where con artists can do the (“American) Hustle.”

Best Kitchen–Modest and cluttered, Brad Pitt’s kitchen telegraphed the beauty of everyday life before all zombie hell broke loose in “World War Z.”

Worst Laundry Room–Since the nuns refused to come clean, the convent laundry in “Philomena” harbored plenty of dirty little secrets.

Best Terrace–Even if their relationship was on shaky ground, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy found some beautiful rockwork terraces in Greece to shore up their marriage in “Before Midnight.”

Best Winter Retreat–Who wouldn’t want to build a snowman at the beautiful ice palace in “Frozen?”

Best Those Were The Good Old Days Décor–Like Cate Blanchett in “Blue Jasmine,” I would have felt pretty blue about having to slum it in San Francisco after losing that fabulous house in the Hamptons.

Best Villain’s Lair–Grand but menacing, Donald Sutherland’s digs (as well as the victors’ prize homes) made neoclassical design feel especially nasty in “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.” And though Daniel Brühl’s father wouldn’t back his racing career, the ancestral Austrian home gave me quite a “Rush.”

Best Bare Bones Media Room–You don’t need a million bucks in order to catch up with family while catching the game in “Nebraska.”

Best Feminine Mystique Interiors–Rosy red and pink wall panels, lampshades and screensavers lit up Joaquin Phoenix’s emotional wasteland in “Her.”

Best Sex and the Single Girl Pad–Amy Adams’s sleek white brick apartment in “American Hustle” was no scam. Least likely to win this category, Keri Russell’s sad “Austenland” bedroom hustled any potential Darcys away.

Worst Cruise Cabin–No matter the expansive ocean views, it’s a toss-up who had the more horrific quarters between Tom Hanks’s floating prison in “Captain Phillips” and Robert Redford’s sinking ship in “All Is Lost.”

Best Dead End Digs–Narrow hallways ending in tiny doors in ‘60s Greenwich Village musicians’ apartment buildings showed that “Llewyn Davis” wasn’t getting inside any scene. Runner-up–the spare hilltop Australian bungalow in “Saving Mr. Banks.”

Best Robot Décor–Once you’ve seen one Ye Olde Pub interior–and a bunch of severed blue-blood limbs–you’ve pretty much seen them all in “The World’s End.”

Best Workshop–Though Robert Downey Jr.’s workshop went kablooey, the make-do Midwestern garage helped prove that Ironman will always save the day. Also nominated, Lily Tomlin’s bike shop in “Admission.”

Cheeriest Aboveground Underground Club–The salmon pink and sky blue paint job gave hope to those in need at the motel where Mathew McConaughey ran the “Dallas Buyers Club.”

Best Home Appliance/First-Aid Kit–The total home health care healing machine in “Elysium” was out of this world.

Best Wedding Decor–Show up to see your daughter married then end up falling in love with the groom’s father and moving into his lovely Italian villa? Turns out “Love Is All You Need.”

Best Outdoors Massage Parlor–Catherine Keener’s lovely trellised garden made for a great spot to dish the dirt in “Enough Said.”

And now, the Grand Chaise—the one with the leopard print velvet slipcover—is awarded to The Place I Wish I Called Home.

Though I could commit to the brown shingle-style house with the private dock in Connecticut in “The Big Wedding” or spend a fair amount of time killing time in the rambling Georgian villa on the Cornwall coast in “About Time,” my heart goes to Tobey McGuire’s rose-covered writer’s cottage in “The Great Gatsby.”  The Arts & Crafts interiors and homey flower gardens made me want to kick up my heels, old sport!

*A version of this post ran 2/23/14 in the Bay Area News Group papers.

Photos provided by Annapurna Pictures, Fox Searchlight, Lionsgate, Disney, Sony Pictures, and Warner Brothers 

So then there’s the day your daughter’s work and name makes it into the New York Times and you marvel at life’s unexpected blessings.

Flipping through the June issue of Vanity Fair on my way out to D.C. last week I noted that when actress Christine Baranski was asked what she considered the lowest depth of misery she said “Being stuck indefinitely in an airport when I’m desperate to get home.”  Amen, sista!

Take yesterday. After an action-packed few days seeing sights, visiting family and helping my son move into an apartment for the summer, we showed up at Dulles ready to replenish supplies and nap our way back to the Bay Area.

Dulles TSA had something else in mind.

The security lines were short, but they moved at glacial speeds. When I finally walked through the scanner, my underwire bra set off alarms and things got frisky.   While a very serious TSA attendant pulled on rubber gloves and explained just where she was going to inappropriately touch me, I saw the officer at the conveyor belt elbow-deep in my purse.

“We’re gonna have to run this through again, ma’am,” he said as his colleague briskly went about her business.  What the ??

Lotion, I figured.  Maybe my Burberry lip gloss.  But no, the culprit was a small eidelweiss-covered Swiss Army knife attached to my car keys.

And I repeat, what the ??? The little knife hadn’t been a problem flying out.  I’d carried it in my purse because I’d read just last week that small pocket knives were allowed again.  After losing several when they were first banned, I’d stopped bringing them along when I travel.  But at home I carry one all the time because the little scissors implement is so handy.

Several moments of heated discussion ensued.  My husband valiantly tried to break off the knife blade (technically, the real offender) against the stainless steel counter but to no avail. Eventually, we abandoned the knife fight in order to catch our now boarding flight.

Breathless, and frankly close to tears, I settled into my seat and waited for take-off.  And waited some more. An hour later we were still on the tarmac and I was getting hungry. The security snafus had precluded buying snacks before we boarded and the flight crew couldn’t sell food until we were air bound.   I surveyed my options.

An 1/8 of a bar of  dark chocolate left over from my carefully prepared departure picnic and a few Red Vines from a movie with my sister were all I had with me. Despair.

Too hungry, frustrated and tired to concentrate on my book, I decided to watch a bad movie with good performers—Billy Crystal and Bette Midler in Parental Guidance.  The story was crap cliched, but Crystal and Midler are old pros and their banter—along with a decent vegetarian Thai wrap once the plane was in the air—worked wonders.  Once the movie was over I finished reading my book (Conversions by Craig Harline —excellent!) and worked on a needlepoint canvas of fallen angels while listening to Tom Jones sing Leonard Cohen’s Tower of Song.

It was dicy whether we’d make our L.A. connection but the helpful crew called ahead and we raced over to the gate just in time. A catnap later we had landed at SFO and were filing a claim for lost luggage (of course). Around midnight/3 a.m.-my-body-clock-time we pulled out of the parking garage and headed across the Bay Bridge for home.

***

My bag showed up here at noon today.  Hauling it up the stairs was just another confirmation that travel is hard. It’s easier at the beginning when you’re abuzz with adrenalin and anticipation.  But by the end of even the best trips you’re tired and a little peevish and the thought of spending 6+ hours eating carbs you’d never eat at home while trying not to bump elbows with a stranger as you watch endless episodes of the interchangeable Catfighting Housewives just seems like too much.  Especially after your favorite key chain pocket knife has just been confiscated.

But deep breaths, the right movies, a decent vegetable wrap and some nice attendants—thank you Virgin America for the last two—go a long way towards making the unbearable bearable.

Next up—the good stuff that makes travel worth all the trouble.