This year’s Oscars has a stronger Australian presence than ever with 15 nominations and the effects have already been felt. Mad Max: Fury Road has smashed through the competition with six wins, leaving coveted Oscars in the hands of eight talented Australians. Fury Road came second with ten nominations losing to the Revenant who managed to snag twelve.
Fury Road, which we reviewed favourably, hit the ground running, winning the early awards of the ceremony including Best Makeup and Hairstyling which went to Elka Wardega, Damien Martin and Lesley Vanderwalt. Not much later Max won again with Best Production Design with awards going to Colin Gibson and Lisa Thompson. Ben Osmo, Chris Jenkins and Greg Rudloff took away Best Sound Mixing while Jenny Beavan won Best Costume Design. Things only got better from there when the Best Film Editing award went to Margaret Sixel while Sound Editing went to Mark Mangini and David White.
‘You can pop the corks at home – we’re bringing back gold,’ Vanderwalt stated.
Yet the sweep was not clean for Fury Road, in the latter half of the show Road simply could not stand the heat of the competition. With Australian John Seale losing best cinematographer to Emmanuel Lubezki for the Revenant and George Miller lost best director to the Revenant’s Alejandro González Iñárritu and again lost best picture in favour of Spotlight.
