My Award nominations: Cinematography

This is perennially my favourite category, and as it is every year, there was an abundance of excellent work to choose from. The Academy and I match up 3/5 this year. Find out which three they are, and what other two films I included as having the Best Cinematography of 2012 after the cut (complete with my fav shot from each nominee):

Review - The Master

It's been five years since I sat in a darkened theatre puzzling over the cinematic output of Paul Thomas Anderson. It was the peculiar final scene of his celebrated opus There Will Be Blood, which now lives in simultaneous reverence and infamy for its uber-quotable “milkshake” line and the ongoing debate it inspires between “genius!” and “hackery!”. I'll admit the bewilderment was initially off-putting, but there was a fascinating quality to what I had just seen that held my gaze even though I didn't understand it. Such a sensation lingers over the entirety of his latest picture The Master, a spellbinding head-scratcher which has been impressing critics and confounding audiences everywhere.

We first meet Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) stationed in the Pacific during the closing days of WWII, indulging in all of his most basic animal instincts, from banal activities like eating and sleeping to more masturbatory and aggressive releases. Upon returning home, he struggles with his readjustment to civilian life, hopping from place to place, his unpredictable and violent nature being an unsuitable fit for polite society. It isn't until he meets Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a charismatic preacher of his own spiritual philosophical science called The Cause, that Freddie seems to find some direction and meaning. The high-minded Dodd also sees in Freddie a challenge finally worthy of his perceived expertise; an person he can liberate from animalistic vices and refine as an “enlightened” man.