One Category at a Time: Best Cinematography

You know how much I love guys like Chivo and Deakins and Richardson,
but I gotta be honest: It's soooooooooooo refreshing to see some new faces in the Best Cinematography race. With only a single previous nomination between the five of them, this year's nominees represent a future full of promise for the art form, and one of them will be nabbing their first Oscar.

My Award Nominations: Cinematography

The best of 2016's photographic achievements basically came down to a six-horse race for me, and not so different from Oscar's final five. My 'just missed' selection still managed an Oscar nom, and I'm not complaining. I seriously considered allowing myself six Best Cinematography nominees this year, but rules are rules. My five finalists are:

Review - La La Land

We all know the how the showbiz story goes: Boy and girl meet, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl's careers diverge. It's a sturdy formula that the movies have retooled and retold a million times, from the silent escapades of Show People to the melodramatic tumult of A Star is Born (all three of them, and counting) to the worldly post-modernism of Annie Hall to the silent escapades of The Artist – Funny how things come full circle.

Point being, if you want to play that old song again, you need to riff; Improvise; Make it special. Fortunately for hopeless romantics everywhere, 32 year old writer/director Damien Chazelle is indeed a special talent, who has now performed a spectacular riff on the 'Hollywood love story' in La La Land;
A dazzling musical ode to a city, to a genre, and to anyone who ever dared to dream large and love larger.

It was Chazelle's sizzling sophomore feature Whiplash that put him on the map two years ago, snagging a trio of Oscars and topping this critic's 'Best of 2014' list. So when it was announced that his next dream was to make an original movie musical – that rarest of beasts – I was on board. All pretense of objectivity aside, I probably loved this film before the ink was dry on the first draft of the screenplay.