Oscar Telecast Retrospective Part 2: Mad Max's Golden Hour

With Rock laying waste to the elephant in the room through that biting monologue, it was time to get on with the show...

The Huntsman sisters, beautiful bad-asses Emily Blunt and Charlize Theron, flirt with writers everywhere while introducing Best Original Screenplay, which went to Spotlight's Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer (not “John”, Charlize!).

The victory was not only richly deserved, but also immediately exposed the Thank-You Ticker for the disastrous experiment that it was, as Singer began his speech by repeating “We've gotta thank...” four times over with numerous names in between.

Chivo wins ASC for 'The Revenant'

Hard not to see that coming. That historic third consecutive Oscar is practically on his mantle.

What I wonder about now is how this impacts the Visual Effects race. Will the academy revert back to that unfortunate trend of lumping the two together? I mean, The Revenent's effects are impressive, but are there enough of them to overcome the likes of Star Wars, Mad Max, or even The Martian?

My Award Nominations: Cinematography

This category becomes tougher and tougher for me every year. As mentioned in yesterday's prediction (of Chivo's soon-to-be historic 3rd consecutive win), we are indeed in a golden age for the art of Cinematography. Shamefully, my top five are nearly identical to the consensus formed by the ASC, BAFTA, and Oscar, but I could swap them out for another five and still have a tremendously rich ballot. There's just too much good stuff out there:

One Category at a Time: Cinematography

Many a critic agree that cinematography is experiencing a new golden age, and this year's Oscar lineup is strangely both indicative, and yet not indicative of that truth. One the one hand, the enormous spectrum of tools and technologies lensers have these days to craft breathtaking images is well represented in the potpourri of formats nominated for Best Cinematography, ranging from 16mm to 70mm celluloid to digital and even thermal imaging.

But on the other hand, the equally wide array of fresh and invigorating voices behind the cameras (think Masanobu Takeyanagi, Maryse Alberti, Hoyte van Hoytema, etc.) remains steadfastly locked out of this branch's insular preferences. Perhaps that's why this was one of two categories I anticipated with perfect accuracy pre-nominations; They have their favourites. All five men have been nominated before, three of them have won before, two of those three have won multiple times, and one of them is on the verge of making Oscar history.

Early Oscar Predictions: Cinematography

The thespians aren't the only ones who have to “perform” on set. Camera operators and directors of photography have their own marks to hit and creative decisions to make, working closely alongside the director to capture images that will compose the final product. Since I'm so crazy about cinematography in general, I determined that this category needed its own post.

Oscar Postmortem Pt. 4: Telecast Highlights

I always record the Oscars so I can go back and rewatch it later the same week.

It's practically a necessity since I'm often so distracted with my prediction lists and my agony and ecstasy over the winners and losers and whatnot, that I miss some of the little moments that make this whole meat parade worthwhile!

There are still glimmers of fun left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as awards season. So allow me to parse through the 3+hour telecast and highlight the diamonds in the rough. And believe me, it was rough.

Things didn't start off so bad, though. Rather than force host Neil Patrick Harris to struggle through an opening monologue, they fed him one solid joke and then he was off to the races with his song-and-dance routine, "Moving Pictures".

This show got 99 problems, but graphic design ain't one!

Lovely sets and animated title cards.

Chivo Wins Fourth ASC Award for 'Birdman'

The American Society of Cinematographers is a guild that knows the score. They've honoured Roger Deakins three times for some of his richest, most indelible work, and they've awarded Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki four times for Children of Men, The Tree of Life, Gravity, and now Birdman.

My Award Nominations: Best Cinematography

This was a great year for this category. Many DPs exhibited rich and varied work that was not only visually dazzling, but saturated with thematic subtext. Whittling it down to ten was tough enough, but then choosing five after that was even more painful (Bradford Young, I'm so sorry!).

Here are my Best Cinematography nominees for 2014, each accompanied as usual with a frame that stood out to me as especially memorable:

One Category at a Time: Cinematography

Twenty-two business days to go until the Oscars; Essentially New Year's Eve for film lovers and award obsessives, both camps into which I fall. How will I ever pass the time?

Why, by continuing my annual tradition of analyzing the various Oscar races in 'One Category at a Time', the very first article series I began back in 2008 when this was just a baby blog. I suppose six years old still seems kinda babyish, but relative to the age of the Internet, I guess that makes this site now more of a disrespectful teenager that wishes it could be more like the grownup websites. That's an appropriate description, I think.

Anyway, back to this year's series, which I will be kicking off (as I did last year) with my favourite category Best Cinematography. This year's race feels eerily similar to last year's, with one inarguable frontrunner soaring well above its competition... and it's the same person too!

'Imitation Game' sneaks into ASC nominees

I've liked a lot of movies for their cinematography this year. Even films that I'm not crazy about on the whole (Unbroken, Inherent Vice, The Homesman) have impressed with their photographic imagery, and I still have yet to see both of Bradford Young's 2014 projects, Selma and A Most Violent Year.

It makes it all the more a shame that the American Society of Cinematographers can only nominate five (barring a tie like last year). This year they are:

Birdman - Emmanuel Lubezki
The Grand Budapest Hotel - Robert Yeoman
The Imitation Game - Oscar Faura
Mr. Turner - Dick Pope
Unbroken - Roger Deakins

It looks like Lubezki's collecting interest on his overdue Oscar win from last year. He should have had two statues before Gravity, so you won't find me complaining when he becomes the first DP to go back-to-back since John Toll won consecutively in 95/96.

(Unless Interstellar pops up on the Oscar ballot, which might give me pause. The guild and AMPAS rarely go 5/5.)

Review - Birdman

Ids, egos and superegos collide and combust (in a single take!) on stages as concrete as the Broadway theatre and as fantastical as the imaginings of a self-obsessed actor in Alejandro González Iňárritu's Birdman. As in the myth of Icarus, to which his wily script often alludes both visually and verbally, Iňárritu has high-flying ambitions for what is possibly his most personal film to date. But rather than crash and burn, his satiric slant on the artist's odyssey soars magnificently on its dark feathery wings.

Michael Keaton stars – in a performance that vies to redefine his career – as Riggan Thompson, a washed-up former movie star seeking respect and validation by directing and starring in his own adaptation of Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love on Broadway. He had once played a popular superhero (the eponymous Birdman) in a series of lucrative but disposable comic book blockbusters that brought him fame and fortune, but not artistic fulfillment.

Now, some twenty years after hanging up his dopey bird suit, he's risking so much more than just his money and reputation by mounting this prestigious production. The tenuous relationship with his recovering drug addict daughter (Emma Stone), his fragile sense of self, and even his grasp on reality hang in the balance while the pressure mounts.

Sunday Top Ten: Pet peeves and highlights of the 2013-14 Oscar season

The big show is coming up on being only a week old, but it feels like ages ago, so I think it's high time for me to finally put the season to bed. 2014 is now here, with its own slate of hotly anticipated Oscar hopefuls in the pipeline, and it's time to get to work on scoping out those, but not before capping off the awards derby that was with my annual list of highs and lows.

Oscar Postmortem Pt. 3: The show

Properly reviewing an Oscar ceremony can be tedious business, so I'm not gonna do it. Not properly, at least. The whole never quite amounts to the sum of its parts (although the Condon/Mark production from 2009 comes awfully close), so it's easiest just to look back and assess those parts at face value. Let's take a look at some moments that stood out (for me anyway) at the 86th Academy Awards

After last year's show hosted by Seth McFarlane came under such harsh critical fire, the pressure was on returning producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron to atone. They made all the safest possible choices, and it started with the selection of Ellen Degeneres to return as host after her first kick at the can seven years ago.

Ellen assures viewers around the world, "We're fine. Thank you for your prayers" in regards to the rain.

ASC Award goes to Gravity

Like we all knew would happen, Emmanuel Lubezki has won his third American Society of Cinematographers Award for his groundbreaking work on Gravity. The Oscar is all but his at this point (I'd like to see the Academy even try and screw him over this time).

One Category at a Time: Cinematography

There are just 22 business days left until the Oscars, and yet it still feels like they're an eternity away. Part of that may have to do with the fact that the Winter Olympics (the only arena in which my home country can even come close to claiming world-power status, so I'll be watching them intently) has pushed the awards ceremony, and consequently the voting period, back a week.

That's an awful long wait, during which an awful lot can happen to affect the race. Gravity stands as the frontrunner at this moment, but we may have plenty of reason to believe otherwise by the time Oscar night is upon us. Heck: we have plenty of reason to believe otherwise right now! But I'll get to that category in due course. Obviously, I tend to start these prediction columns with the categories that are easiest to call, and one of the easiest calls this year is Best Cinematography.

My Award nominations: Cinematography

I'm kicking off this year's award nominees with my favourite of all categories, Best Cinematography. There was a lot of great work to pick from this year, and inevitably I had to leave some excellent work off my final five (some that will probably be Oscar recognized anyway).

Check out my top five below, accompanied by my favourite shot from each.

Seven nominees from ASC!

To cap off the busy day of precursor announcements, the American Society of Cinematographers has had their say. This category has felt for a while now like a tight six or seven horse race for only five slots, and that theory has been proven quite literally by the guild. In a shocking tie for that fifth slot, we have seven nominees for the ASC's top prize of the year, meaning this gives us no help in making our Oscar predictions (except perhaps that we can now relegate Rush to the also-rans).

The nominees are:

Barry Ackroyd, Captain Phillips
Sean Bobbit, 12 Years a Slave
Roger Deakins, Prisoners
Bruno Delbonnel, Inside Llewyn Davis
Philippe Le Sourd, The Gransmaster
Emmanuel Lubezki, Gravity
Phedon Papamichael, Nebraska

Review - Gravity

220 miles above the earth and with little chance of coming back down. That's not only the basic premise, but also the way one feels after having just watched Gravity, Alfonso Cuaron's long gestating follow-up to 2006's Children of Men. After literal years of hype and ecstatic festival buzz, the question for me was whether Cuaron's magnum opus could possibly meet my out-of-this-world expectations. The answer is a resounding YES. Gravity is a triumph; A groundbreaking invention of pure cinema that captivates from its awe-inspiring start to its potent final images.

The opening title card ominously warns that life in space is impossible, before cutting to the still serenity of Earth, glowing blue against the infinite blackness. A white dot creeps into view, slowly growing in the frame until we can recognize it as the space shuttle Explorer. Veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney doing his best George Clooney impersonation) and rookie Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) are making repairs to the Hubble telescope. Matt makes jokes and regales mission control with amusing anecdotes while he putters around on his mobile thruster pack. Ryan is nervously tethered to her work, trying hard to keep her breakfast down on this routine mission. But of course, nothing about space travel is routine. With little warning, a field of satellite debris tears through the shuttle and leaves the space walkers stranded. From here, Gravity takes off on a dazzling roller coaster ride that rarely lets up, as Ryan must learn to defeat her traumas (past and present) and muster up the courage to make it back home.

Early Oscar predictions - Part 3

We're taking a look at Best Animated Feature and three of the visual craft categories this week; Cinematography, Editing, and Effects. Next week we'll complete the visual crafts with Production Design, Costume Design, and Makeup.

Best Animated Feature

Another unrequested Pixar sequel (well, prequel) doesn't have me all that titillated, but the steadily increasing quality of Disney's output these last few years has me excited for their upcoming musical fantasy Frozen, based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen. If Pixar and Dreamworks disappoint, that might also open the doors to GKIDS' art house titles, which this year includes 2012 Cannes entry Ernest & Celestine.

Sunday Top Ten - Pet Peeves of the 2011-12 Oscar season

This little custom of mine has become a nice form of post-Oscar therapy for me. It's perfect for bringing some closure to the season and releasing the pressure valve on the season's many frustrations. You may note that I didn't include any of this year's big nomination snubs, and there were plenty to choose from: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for Art Direction, The Tree of Life for Visual Effects, Captain America for Original Song... but I came to terms with those a month ago, so it's more useful for me to unload my other awards season woes, some of which you might share, others you might disagree with. You'll have to keep reading to find out.