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:

[UPDATED] Guilds Round-Up: CAS, VES, ASC, MUAHS, CDG

The BAFTA and PGA weren't the only industry groups that got a word in yesterday. Here's a summary of other artisan guilds and societies that have had their say in advance of Friday's Oscar deadline:

AMERICAN SOCIETY of CINEMATOGRAPHERS

Arrival -- Bradford Young
La La Land -- Linus Sandgren
Lion -- Greig Fraser
Moonlight -- James Laxton
Silence -- Rodrigo Prieto
That's a mighty fine-looking lineup, folks.
In fact, swap one of these out for The Light Between Oceans and you have my own personal ballot. As it stands, this could be a perfect match-up with Oscar's cinematography branch. To see Bradford Young and Greig Fraser nominated alongside eachother would certainly make happy many a cinephile who have itched to see them recognized for years. But I have a sneaky suspicion Robert Richardson could still figure in for Live By Night. He's pulled the very same trick sans guild nomination before.

CINEMA AUDIO SOCIETY

Sound Mixing -- Live Action Motion Picture

Doctor Strange
Hacksaw Ridge
La La Land
Rogue One
Sully
I'm not sold on Doctor Strange as an Oscar nominee here (no MCU movie has been nominated in this category if you can believe it). As to what takes it over, I'm leaning towards Arrival, which is infinitely more deserving anyway, but quality of work is no guarantee with this branch. Are we all excited to see Kevin O'Connell (Hacksaw Ridge) lose his 21st Oscar to another musical on February 26th?
I know I am (*ties hangman's noose around neck*)

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.

Review - Sicario

Cops and cartels, midnight raids and public shootouts, blood vendettas and hidden agendas, and a whole lot of dead bodies literally walled up in a house of horrors. If you told me all of this sounds like it belongs in a trashy detective novel, I'd probably agree. If told me it all sounds like it belongs in a trashy movie I'd say, “Hold the phone! Who says the movie has to be trashy?”

And of course, it isn't. French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve insinuates and executes all of these familiar genre tropes with hitman-like precision in Sicario, delivering one of the most cringe-inducing, butt-clenching, excruciating films of the year... And I mean every one of those in the best possible way.

Working from a twisty screenplay by actor-turned-writer Taylor Sheridan (Sons of Anarchy), Villeneuve has crafted an excellent thriller that's every bit as refined (if not more so) as the glossy biopics and period pieces that angle for adult dollars at the multiplex every fall. Along with 2012's Prisoners and last year's Enemy, Sicario further embosses his reputation as a filmmaker capable of elevating even the pulpiest story material with his surgical attention to form and construct.

Review - Black Mass

After the better part of a decade squandered on commercially shiny yet artistically hollow multiplex vehicles, Johnny Depp has reemerged from the abyss and has his steely blue, contact-lensed eyes on awards validation in Black Mass. Though hardly a one-man show, all eyes are on Depp as the strictly criminal South Boston gang lord James 'Whitey' Bulger.

A wily machinist of the Irish mob with purported psychopathic tendencies, who manipulated a dubious informant alliance with the FBI to expand his own bloody empire throughout the 70s and 80s, Bulger provides the 52-year-old actor's juiciest opportunity in years. Resembling a grim spectre of death – capped with prosthetic fivehead and darkened eye sockets – he commands his scenes with quiet malice, hissing a sinister Southie brogue through blackened teeth.

Longtime devotees of Depp and his famously eccentric characters may hope that the inevitable "comeback" narrative set to unfold around his awards campaign takes. But they'd also be the first to admit that such an angle is sheer media-generated poppycock. Even when prestigious material eluded him, he's never stopped being one of the most ubiquitous and bankable stars in the industry.

Whether or not the quality of his performances have been as consistent as his mere presence is subjective of course, but Black Mass is at least a return to the sort of movies that serious film-lovers can get behind.

Review - Mission: Impossible -- Rogue Nation

In an age when cinephiles continue to bemoan the glut (and the fiscal success) of unoriginal populist entertainment, I feel it's important to remember not all unoriginal populist entertainment is created equal. There's that which is dumb, lazy or poorly made, and there's that which is so well executed it truly entertains despite its familiarity. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, the fifth in the series of Tom Cruise vehicles which had plateaued at 'mediocre' until Brad Bird's 2011 entry Ghost Protocol, falls comfortably into the latter designation.

Thankfully, you don't need to have followed the previous globe-trotting exploits of super spy Ethan Hunt (Cruise, barely aged since his first M:I outing in 1996) and his Impossible Mission Force, IMF, to enjoy Rogue Nation. You don't even need to follow this one all that closely. In a franchise whose primary draw is its star and his daring-do, story details erase themselves from one's memory as readily as the famously self-destructing messages that send Ethan on his next mission, should he choose to accept it. Which he does, of course.

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.

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.

Sound of Music's 50th: Austrian Alps and Julie's Face

In honour of the 50th anniversary of the world premiere of The Sound of Music (and truer to the actual anniversary date than the swell but superfluous tribute belted by Lady Gaga at the Oscars), The Film Experience's Nathaniel Rogers has made the beloved musical the latest subject of his perennial "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series -- always an Oscar off-season treat!

While the last two months of Oscar blogging have sapped much of the life force from my typing fingers, I have strength enough for this. How could I pass it up? The film sits comfortably within my top 20 all time, and is arguably the most durable relic of a now extinct studio culture that used to churn out lavish musical adaptations with a regularity comparable to the production of superhero movies today (I was clearly born in the wrong decade... sigh).

Director of Photography Ted McCord received the final of three career Oscar nominations for this movie, and considering that said movie was a record-breaking, Best Picture winning smash hit boasting breathtaking Alpine scenery as its backdrop, some might find it surprising that he didn't win. Admittedly, it'd be tough for any Academy member not to vote for Freddie Young's jaw-dropping widescreen cinematography in Doctor Zhivago that year, but it isn't hard to imagine McCord's splendid mountainscapes running a respectable second.

The most famous of these high-altitude shots will be, for many, the defining image of not only the film, but of the entire musical genre;

The sight of Julie Andrews spinning around the hilltops -- and trying nobly to avoid being blown over by the downdraft of the helicopter blades -- as the camera pushes in from hundreds of yards away, has rightfully earned its place as the most ravishing entrance in the cinematic headcanon.

And yet as unforgettable as it is, I'm not quite sold on it as the "best" shot of the picture. After all, McCord spun real visual magic with his interiors as well...

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!

Review - Selma

The image we're greeted with at the onset of Selma, staring directly at us, is the face of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But this is not the Dr. King we know from the sound bites and TV footage that immortalized him as a mighty orator with a famous dream. This Dr. King looks uncomfortable, restless and out of his element as he rehearses his Noble Peace Prize acceptance speech in the privacy of his hotel suite.

The Dr. King he himself sees in the mirror is unfamiliar to him as well; All dressed up to accept an award for peace when he knows how much violence and struggle is yet to be endured in his campaign for civil rights. Just as he gazes at his reflection, contemplating how far he's come and how far he's still to go, so too does Selma hold a mirror up to modern America and ask its people to consider the same questions.

Director Ava DuVernay (working from her largely rewritten draft of an original script by Paul Webb) has no intention of taking the easy way around the story of the protest marches King led from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, or of dampering its echoes in the troubled racial politics of today. Though set in the summer of '65, it is a film very much about the here and now, told with a verve and vitality that historical docudramas often lack.

Quick Review - Inherent Vice

I honestly didn't feel that inspired to write about this one, but since Paul Thomas Anderson is one of America's foremost auteur voices, I figured he at least deserved a separate post for his latest film Inherent Vice, rather than lump it in with the capsule reviews.

Suffice it to say that I land firmly on the thumbs-down side of this divisive L.A. noir as seen through a pair of aviator shades and a haze of pot smoke. It comes off more as an empty stylistic exercise than a trippy work of art to me.

Joaquin Phoenix stars as 'Doc', a perpetually baked hippie P.I. investigating the disappearance of a housing mogul and his ex-girlfriend. That's about as much of the plot as I can summarize, because after that things become impossible to follow.

'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 - Unbroken

Louie Zamperini has an incredible life story to tell. The odds were already stacked against him from a young age, growing up as one of four children of an immigrant family in Depression-era California. In spite of this, he made a name for himself as a competitive distance runner, represented America in the Berlin Olympics, served his country as a bombardier in WWII, survived a plane crash that left him stranded for 47 days in the Pacific Ocean, and lived out the remainder of the war in a Japanese POW camp under the harshest conditions imaginable.

Just that cursory synopsis of his bio is enough to make one wonder why his life story hasn't been made into a major motion picture already, but we finally get one in the form of Angelina Jolie's Unbroken, which arrived on Christmas Day. Zamperini passed away in July at 97 years of age, and while no one wants to rain on the posthumous parade of a man who endured through so much struggle, the sad reality is that an incredible true story does not necessarily an incredible movie make.

Unbroken is just not that good a film; A clichéd exercise that reaches for artificial inspiration while saying very little about the figure who serves as its subject. The problem is not in the story, but in the storytelling, as it fails to shape Zamperini's harrowing saga into any kind of effective structure.

Review - Foxcatcher

If you're a fan of the sport of wrestling, you may be familiar with the story of the Schultz brothers, a pair of Olympic champs who caught the eye of a millionaire philanthropist following the '84 L.A. Olympics.

But you needn't be a wrestling buff to appreciate this stranger-than-fiction true story, brilliantly dramatized by Cannes prize winner Bennett Miller in Foxcatcher. Just like his swell previous feature Moneyball, what Miller has achieved here is a sports movie that's not actually about the sport, but about something far bigger and more elusive. Incidentally, like Moneyball was in 2011, Foxcatcher is also one of the finest films of the year.

Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) is obsessed with being the best, but doomed to never feel like the best. Even his Olympic gold medal seems outshone by that of his older brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo), whose personal life is far more fulfilled.

Dave is more famous, a better wrestler/coach, a happy family man, and still quietly exudes his protective instincts towards his baby bro. A beautifully staged sparring sequence early in the film between the two brothers tells us everything we need to know about their relationship with hardly a single word of dialogue.