Shortlist:
American Hustle
Dallas Buyers' Club
The Great Gatsby
The Lone Ranger
Catching Fire
Bad Grandpa
and
Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

I am particularly glad that Bad Grandpa made it. That was some great makeup.

The troll Edward in Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, achieved through practical FX and puppetry, is an amazing achievement. Very evocative of Jim Henson's films. The film would be a deserving nominee.

I liked Hansel & Gretel Witch Hunters, though it is odd to think of it potentially Oscar-nominated in any way.

Why is The Hobbit not on this short list? The work on the dwarves alone should be enough.

Not any odder than Norbit, The Time Machine or The Wolfman

True.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug's exclusion is odd. Even though I know that much of the hair and make-up didn't require new skills and/or push the team to their limits (because they have done it 4 times prior), it is still surely better than the make-up and hair styling in, say, The Great Gatsby or The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, which is largely forgettable and unspectacular. The hours spent are alone enough proof that it should be on the shortlist.

Oscars are over TH as evidenced by lack of any real support for the first movie outside of some technical nominations. They have other blockbusters that fill out their quota this year.

^Yeah, but credit is where credit's due and that is in the tech categories. So, xeah, The Hobbit's exclusionis kinda cray. My only explanation is that it there is no new work here not already seen in part one.

Oscars don't really work like that, do they? And besides these technical categories really get crazy sometimes. Especially the VFX one.

Obviously they don't, yes, but that's not a good thing.

And...I mean...Norbit!

Same can be said for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, no?

But it wasn't nominated last year.I guess the way it works is that if you get nominated for it once and the second time there is nothing new, you're not being considered.

It's weird, but it was similar with LOTR Fellowshiü of the Ring and Return of the King won Makeup Oscars, but The Two Towers wasn't even nominated. Go figure.

Ah ha! So all hopes are pinned on There and Back Again then!

I'm not saying it is, but that's just how Oscars work. I don't see why we even need to have this kind of talk. There are always a couple of WTF moments with their nominations and also a couple of WTF wins. There's really so little we can debate about what they do as sometimes there's just no valid explanation. Those people, they just kray kray.