Looking to lock in your final Oscar picks? Here’s some recent decisions that will help you along the way.
While it did seem like the front-runner all along, we were somewhat surprised to see Michael Haneke’s austere, but beautiful, black and white Cannes winner, “The White Ribbon” take the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Outstanding Achievement Award last night in Los Angeles.
The competition in the field, was pretty fierce and ‘Ribbon’ cinematographer Christian Berger beat out “Avatar” photog Mauro Fiorem, Barry Ackroyd for “The Hurt Locker,” Dion Beebes work in “Nine,” and Robert Richardson’s lensing on Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds.”
While “The White Ribbon” and its digital black and white photography is elegant and striking… call us purists, but we still prefer traditional b&w cinematography with those grains, contours and textures [nothing is on par with say Gordon Willis’ “Manhattan” or the great James Wong Howe’s work on films like “Seconds” (’66), “Hud” (’63) or “Sweet Smell of Success,” or Haskell Wexler’s incredibly textured work on “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (’66) for random examples off the top of our head].
For the Cinema Audio Society Awards, “Avatar” took a minor awards hit when it was bested by “The Hurt Locker” in the Sound Mixing category. Most Sound mixing plaudits generally go to true action or fantasy adventure pictures (“Lord Of The Rings” type movies generally reign here), though in a move that augurs quite well for “The Hurt Locker,” as again, last year the sound mixing award went to the film that won Best Picture, “Slumdog Millionaire”.
As for the Sound Editing award given out by the Motion Picture Sound Editors guild (MPSE), those prizes came out on February 20 and the two top awards went to “Avatar” and “Inglorious Basterds.”
For more related picks, the Costume Designers Guild (CDG) weighed in last week and the big winner was “The Young Victoria,” “Crazy Heart” and “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” but if you’re a sensible person you know the Oscars always favor period stuff and you’d be foolish to not bet on Sandy Powell’s “The Young Victoria” work.
Here’s “The White Ribbon” trailer if you haven’t seen it or the film yet. While we’re here, what film has your favorite black and white cinematography look to it? Feels like a good time to invite the audience to the message boards.
Dead Man.
Yes, good one.
ditto Dead Man.
But the Coen's Man Who Wasn't There also springs to mind.
"Manhattan" is the gold standard.
Carol Reed's The Third Man
Yes, Robert Krasker's work on the 3rd man is amazing, as is Gregg Toland's breakthrough visuals on Kane.
Sven Nykvist's early black and white stuff with Bergman is great too, though yes, his color stuff reigns supreme.
oh more are coming to mind, Sergei Urusevsk's "I Am Cuba." If you've never seen that film you must for the visuals alone. Some stunning camera moves in that.
PTA is a big fan too.
Cool. I really need to see this one, but it hasn’t come near me yet.
Ivan's Childhood and Andrei Rublev are breathtaking, as is Alexander Nevsky (though the former two are the better films in my opinion).
I appreciate real film as well, but I was surprised at how much I liked The White Ribbon visually. There's this subtlety of tones I've almost never seen before.
It would have to be either Wings of Desire or La Haine.
Re: "I Am Cuba"– yes, yes totally agree. The first two shots of that movie are ridiculous. Director Mikhail Kalatozov and Sergei Urusevsky also did this insane Russian movie before "Soy Cuba" called "The Cranes Are Flying" which won the Palm D'Or at Cannes 1958 which also has amazing visuals and performances. Also love the b&w cinematography of "La Dolce Vita," "La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc," and "Bunny Lake is Missing" but I just love those movies in general.