Tag: Academy Award

Rick Baker & Dave Elsey Win “Best Makeup” Oscar for “The Wolfman”

The Academy is pro-lycanthrope! Last night Rick Baker and Dave Elsey each won an Academy Award for Best Makeup in recognition of their fantastic work on The Wolfman. This is Baker’s second Oscar for werewolf work, the first being awarded for An American Werewolf in London on the eve of the category’s inception (insert Inception joke here).

I wasn’t able to find any video of the actual award for this (although I’ll update this post if one pops up), but apparently the Academy gives winners some extra time back-stage to continue their thank-yous.

Update: Six years later, the backstage video is long-gone, but here’s the award:

Congratulations to Mr. Baker and Mr. Elsey, and hey Rick? I really hope your Hugo Weaving wish comes true.

Feb. 28th 2011

Gore is Boring, Yak Hair is Awesome! NYT Interviews “Wolfman” Makeup Artist Rick Baker

Oh boy, it’s Oscar time, and if you’re  a blogger for a major media outlet and you haven’t got something to blog about, you’re fired. The Carpetbagger‘s Melena Ryzik is no slouch– last week she posted an interview with Oscar nominee and Werewolf News perennial favourite Rick Baker. There are no earth-shattering revelations, but it’s a good read nevertheless, especially if you’re interested in the ways crepe, human and yak hair can be combined to wolf out one’s face and body, even the relatively hairless Benicio Del Toro.

“There was a lot of handling of hair, where we actually have a lot of loose hair that’s glued on the actor’s face. It’s almost a lost art in the makeup field, but it’s something that I perfected because of my love of Wolfman.”

I was also pleased to read about Baker’s disdain for Hollywood’s current love affair with buckets-of-blood horror filmmaking.

“I’m not a fan of slasher movies, of what a modern horror movie is,” he said. “I’m not a big fan of ‘let’s see how we can kill the people in the most graphic ways.’ Zombie gore doesn’t bother me, but when it’s just somebody killing another human being in a graphic way, I’m not a fan of that.” … The gory stuff is really easy to do, and I found that out as a kid… the gory stuff doesn’t impress me.”

Amen! Give us realistic monsters to be afraid of, not boring deranged humans. Read the full interview here.

Feb. 11th 2011

Rick Baker & Dave Elsey’s “Wolfman” Makeup Nominated for an Academy Award

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the nominees for the 83rd Academy Awards, and I’m supremely pleased to see Rick Baker and Dave Elsey nominated in the Makeup category for their work on “The Wolfman“. They’re up against “Barney’s Version” and “The Way Back“, both of which I will glibly dismiss as contenders for this category because I haven’t seen them, and because come on it’s The Wolfman! This is Baker’s second Oscar nomination for werewolf makeup effects – he won the first Academy Award for Makeup in 1982 for his groundbreaking work on “An American Werewolf in London“. You can watch Baker and Elsey collect their hardware (and hopefully see The Social Network sweep everything else) on Sunday, February 27th.

Here’s a gallery of Baker and Elsey doing the work they were nominated for: transforming Benicio del Toro into the eponymous lycanthrope.

Jan. 25th 2011