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.

Review - Mad Max: Fury Road

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world. Max is just living in it. Well, existing in it.
By his own admission, survival is the one instinct that he – the last sane man in a world gone crazy – has been reduced to as he wanders through the post-
apocalyptic Wasteland in Mad Max: Fury Road, the fourth in a film series that hasn't revved its engines since 1985.

The real madman is producer-writer-director George Miller. Mad for deciding to pull his long dormant road warrior out of retirement 30 years beyond Thunderdome; Mad for conceiving the sort of world that heretofore could only have existed in a truck-driving anarchist's worst acid trips; And finally, mad for pulling it off with the sheer mind-shredding gusto that filmmakers half his age (he recently turned 70) consistently struggle to inject into modern action movies.

Best not to stand up after seeing this one. It'll melt your bones from the inside.