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.

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.

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.

Organist playing at Oakland's Grand Lake Theater before a showing of The Great Gatsby

The summer movie season began officially for me last weekend when we took in The Great Gatsby at The Grand Lake Theater in Oakland.  Built in 1926, just a year after Gatsby was first published, the Grand Lake boasts marvelous Art Deco interiors and some awfully sweet concessionaires.  The story fell flat for me but the costumes and sets were fabulously fizzy. So go. See it for yourself on the big screen. Then find out more about the sets here and here. Other things worth imbibing in, old sport:

1. Educator Madeline Levine on her own struggles with the empty nest.

2. Writer Susan Orlean works and works out at a treadmill desk–could you?

3.  Farewell to “The Office” featuring Creed’s swan song.

4. American Idol winner Candice Glover sings Lovesong and I Who Have Nothing.

5. Just in case you missed this earlier, Angelina Jolie explains why she’s undergone a double mastectomy.

6. The campaign to give Abercrombie & Fitch clothes to the homeless.

Happy Weekend!

"And I like large parties. They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy." F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

I love going to the movies.  Possibly because I grew up in small-town Idaho and didn’t really see that many movies in an actual theater.  I remember traveling an hour to see Julie Andrews sing do-re-mi in The Sound of Music at a movie theater in Idaho Falls.  I fell in love with Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights in St. Anthony, the next town over.  But mostly I saw films in our living room on an old console television–when it was getting reception. So it’s still a treat to settle into theater seats, have the lights go down and watch the glorious images start to roll.

One of my favorite things about seeing a movie on the big screen is taking in all the wonderful bits and pieces that the art production team has put together to set the stage for the story.  For many years now I’ve written an Oscars-themed story for the Bay Area News Group wherein I hand out my “Chaise Lounge” awards for the best set designs of the previous year’s movies.  I’ve included this year’s awards here along with a few images to show you what floated my boat (with or without a man-eating tiger) last year at the movies.

Note that even if you can’t catch these films on a big screen anymore, there are many that will still dazzle you on a television screen—even an old console  with bad reception.  “Lincoln” took home the set decoration Oscar last night, but my personal favorites were “Anna Karenina” and “Moonrise Kingdom.” So what tickled your design fancy last year at the movies?

Chaise Lounge Awards for Set Decoration in 2012

Judging by the war zones depicted in the movies last year, art production teams and set designers worked wonders with the color palettes of desert khaki, night goggle green and camouflage gray. Whether they were staging battles in “Zero Dark Thirty, “Lincoln” or “The Hunger Games,” the odds were definitely in their favor for medals of honor.

They also created extraordinary backdrops for the battlefields of the heart. Be it the tragic love story that played out on the big stage of “Anna Karenina” or the winsome first love that blossomed in the pup tents of “Moonrise Kingdom,” design pros created worlds filled with exotic marigolds and silver linings.

Therefore, I’m delighted to present once again my annual Chaise Lounge (or Longue for you Francophiles) awards for the best design elements in the movies of 2012 . . .

Best Kitchen - Anna Kendrick’s father’s white-on-white kitchen was “Pitch Perfect,” but I really worked up an appetite for the sleek art deco dining car in “The Hunger Games.”

Most Transformative Piece of Tableware - After parole breaker Hugh Jackman steals some silver serving pieces in “Les Miserables,” the noble bishop gives him two silver candlesticks on the condition he changes his life for good. Mercy me!

Best Bathroom - The street-savvy caregiver landed a job with real benefits in “The Intouchables” when he was given an elegant suite including a gorgeous bathroom with a spectacular freestanding tub in his boss’s Paris mansion.

Best Home Office—Imperial and austere, Jude Law’s neoclassical office in “Anna Karenina” took my breath away, even if it (and he) left Keira Knightly cold.

Most Romantic Wallpaper - I’d love to change my wallcoverings on a whim like Jim Sturgiss does in his Neo-Seoul apartment in “Cloud Atlas,” but I’m old fashioned enough to prefer the heavenly cloud-strewn wallpaper from “Anna Karenina”–said to be replicated from a paper found in one of Catherine the Great’s palaces.

 Best Calm Before the Storm Exterior Decor - The strings of poolside lights, along with the masses of sky lanterns, seemed especially lovely once the tsunami had taken its toll in “The Impossible.”

Best Salvage Yard Finds - When you’re talking about a revolution, be sure to do like “Les Miserables” and build a barricade out of what would now be fine French antiques.

Best Budget Remodel - The cinder block and lavender-walled dance studio in “Silver Linings Playbook” showed how a construction project could help rebuild a life.

Best Bachelor Pad – Though the roommate’s Star Wars half of the bedroom in “Pitch Perfect” was every Luke Skywalker wannabe’s dream and the retro-cool attic game room in “Moonrise Kingdom” recalled every boomer boy’s childhood, it was Scoutmaster Ward’s tidy tent in MK that tied my heart up in a perfect bowline knot.

Best Villain’s Lair - The one-two punch of the floating casino and the glamorous getaway sailboat in “Skyfall” gave Javier Bardem plenty of bite.

Deadliest Landscape Design - The cornfield in “Looper” was scary and the crazy cool acid pools in “Life of Pi” were deadly, but it was the killer bee infested forests of “The Hunger Games” that most made me want to head indoors.

Best ‘70s Revival - Johnny Depp’s beloved Collinwood featured haunted console televisions and oversized disco balls in “Dark Shadows” and Halle Berry’s San Francisco apartment in “Cloud Atlas” had a groovy ethnic artifacts vibe but it was Robert De Niro’s home in “Silver Linings Playbook” with the C. Jere-esque metal wall art and flocked Christmas tree that had the best mojo, not to mention the crabby snacks.

Best Plaid on Plaid - No contest, “Moonrise Kingdom.” The entire production was a tartan triumph.

Best Lighting - Watching “Lincoln” try to navigate the political waters in the dark, claustrophobic daylight interior shots, I was thrilled when the spaces were emancipated by the many beautiful gas lamps in the nighttime scenes.

Best Objets d’Art - Forget flowers and candy, I want to declare my affections with the exquisite little painted building blocks that Kitty and Levin used to pledge their love in “Anna Karenina.”

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

The Scottish manor house layered with antiques, modern art, a grand piano and a gramophone in “Cloud Atlas” hit all the right notes.  And the charming disarray of the door-less, badly plumbed, richly colored “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” made me want to pack my bags and relocate immediately.  But I succumbed to a grand passion for the rustic yet noble snow-covered wooden structures that made up the country estate in “Anna Karenina.”

Image Credits:

Anna Karenina – Laurie Sparham/Focus Features, Moonrise Kingdom – Focus Feature, Silver Linings Playbook – JoJo Whilden, The Weinstein Company, The Impossible – Jose Haro 2012 Summit Entertainment