Sam Worthington, Stephen Lang in Avatar (top); Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker (middle); Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law in Sherlock Holmes (bottom)
Avatar, The Hurt Locker, and Sherlock Holmes were the motion picture winners at the Art Directors Guild Awards announced Saturday (Feb. 13) night at the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills. The awards took place before an audience of more than 700 guests, including guild members, industry executives, studio heads and the media. ADG Chairman Thomas A. Walsh presided over the awards ceremony with Paula Poundstone serving as host.
The individual winners in the motion picture categories were Karl Juliusson for The Hurt Locker (contemporary film), Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg for Avatar (fantasy film) and Sarah Greenwood for Sherlock Holmes (period film). Television winners included Dan Bishop for the "Souvenir" from Mad Men; Kalina Ivanov for the TV movie Grey Gardens; and Joseph P. Lucky for the episode "Ducks and Tigers" from Weeds.
Additionally, honorary awards were presented to Production Designer Terence Marsh for Lifetime Achievement and to Warren Beatty for Outstanding Contribution to Cinematic Imagery. Production Designer Michael Baugh was given a Creative Leadership Award.
According to Steve Pond in The Wrap, Warren Beatty's "rambling eight-minute acceptance speech — about the same length as the speech he gave when receiving an honorary Oscar in 2000, which was the longest Oscar speech in decades — used vomiting as its central metaphor, to the clear discomfort of some in the audience." The actor-director-producer-etc. reminisced about the time when his mother cradled his head whenever he vomited as a kid, which was supposed to be an analogy to what art directors do for him in his movies. Oh.
According to the ADG's press release, presenters for this year's awards included Kevin Alejandro (Southland); Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker); Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Governor Jim Bissell; Production DesignerAlbert Brenner; Production Designer Rick Carter; Richard Chamberlain (Shogun and Doctor Kildare); Jessalyn Gilsig (Glee); Angela Kinsey (The Office); CCH Pounder (Avatar); Kerr Smith (Life Unexpected); Rich Sommer (Mad Men); Oscar-winning Production Designer Paul Sylbert; and Gene Wilder (Young Frankenstein).
At the ceremony, the ADG inducted three additional legendary Production Designers into its Hall of Fame, bringing the roster to 30. The new inductees were Malcolm F. Brown, Bob Keene and Ferdinando Scarfiotti. The release adds that at the beginning of the awards ceremony, "the ADG debuted a short film, by filmmaker Cindy Peters, titled The Case of the Bad Production Designer, the theme of which was Production Design: The Good, the Bad, and the Ideal."
How much of Avatar's sets were computer generated?