Young Victoria

Costumes designer Sandy Powell has eight Oscar nominations so far, and won three times -- most recently (2009) for The Young Victoria. She will never rival the record of Edith Head. It's unlikely that anyone else will collect 35 nominations, including an annual appearance on the lists for 19 consecutive years (1948-66), and win eight times.

That record is surely impregnable because the Academy used to award Best Costume Oscars for both B&W and Color until the end of the 1960s.

Head's physical appearance and loving bossiness seem to have inspired Brad Bird's fabulous design freak in The Incredibles. Powell's latest blase, supremely self-confident Oscar acceptance speech may prompt a similar tribute from Hollywood. A college dropout in London, keener to work (for avant-garde Derek Jarman) than learn, she had already proved herself by winning the award for The Aviator (one of three movies for Scorsese) and Shakespeare in Love.

Her latest award-winning movie outlines the youth of Britain's Queen Victoria, her arranged courtship by Prince Albert and their eventual marriage and early disputes. As played by Emily Blunt, the princess looks, speaks, sounds and wears costumes that are all far too lovely to suggest a disputatious self-assured piece of right royal arrogance.

We see her banish her mother (Miranda Richardson emoting gloriously as ever) and mum's nasty lover-adviser (Mark Strong also emoting attractively). She argues with her prime ministers, puts Albert in his place, and only finally finds her true love for him when he thwarts an attempt on her life. Emily Blunt had a tough task to make such a paragon of wilfulness credibly interesting, and she almost succeeds.

As period pieces go, and they do go on and on in the British movie industry, usually courtesy of the BBC, The Young Victoria is an above-average joy to behold, courtesy of Ms Powell and the movie's cinematography and court scenes.