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:

'Boyhood' wins big with New York Film Critics

Richard Linklater's Boyhood came away with three prizes from the New York Film Critics Circle this afternoon (Picture, Director, and Supporting Actress for Patricia Arquette), launching what I can only hope will be a successful campaign to Oscar glory... in SOME category at least! I still have a hard time seeing this winning the Academy's top honour (appeal may not be broad enough), but its artistic relevance might push it to a win in Screenplay or even Director -- could you imagine a Picture/Director split for a THIRD consecutive year?!? Crazy, but not out of the question. At any rate, I would consider it a triumph to see it collect even one trophy at season's end, and this impressive showing with the New York crowd is a good start.

Summer catch-up

Just reserving this space to comment on a few spring/summer flicks I never got around to writing up proper. It's not like I have anything better to do until the awards movies start creeping out of their fall festival hidey holes.