The American Society of Cinematographers will hold their annual awards dinner tonight where they'll be honoring Jeff Bridges with their Board of Governors Award, three-time Oscar winner Robert Richardson (Hugo, Aviator, JFK) with the Lifetime Achievement Award, and two time Emmy winner Jeffrey Jur (Carnivàle, Bessie) for the Career Achievement in Television Award. They'll also hand out some competitive prizes and presumably give Alfonso Cuarón yet another trophy for his mantle (let's hope he has steel reinforced shelving at home given this season's worth of hardware.) UPDATE: oops we were wrong and Cuarón lost for practically the first time this season.
Let's look at that beautiful imagery from the winners and nominees again with a few bonus gifs...
- WINNER: Łukasz Żal, PSC for “Cold War”
What an incredible DP Żal is. After the consecutive Pawel Pawlikowski's successes of Ida (2013) and Cold War (2018), will he be in demand in Hollywood or just stick to work across the ocean? While his best work has been in black & white in Poland he does color and cinema from other countries as well...
This past year he shot the Russian biopic Dovlatov (2018) and we liked his fine sensitive work on the Swedish troubled teen drama The Here After (2015).
Are you happy with this win from the ASC? And who do you think should win the Oscar? And, in case you missed it, my own ballot of the year's best cinematography.
ASC THEATRICAL FEATURE NOMINEES
- Alfonso Cuarón for “Roma”
- Matthew Libatique, ASC for “A Star is Born”
- Robbie Ryan, BSC, ISC for “The Favourite”
- Linus Sandgren, ASC, FSF for “First Man”
Sandgren outdid himself with First Man, besting his own Oscar-winning work on La La Land, but he did not, sadly, transfer to the Oscar list. He lost his presumed spot to Caleb Deschanel's work on Germany's Oscar nominated epic Never Look Away.
Spotlight Award
- Joshua James Richards for “The Rider”
So pretty.
- WINNER: Giorgi Shvelidze for “Namme”
This was Georgia's Oscar submission for 2018. The film has no US distribution unfortunately. And now that it's won we're frustrated that we can't see it. Boo!
- Frank van den Eeden, NSC, SBC for “Girl”
Say, does anyone perchance know what's going on with Netflix and the trans ballerina drama Girl? They've never, to my knowledge, published a release date for it though it does have a page on Netflix. I've even seen it listed on various sites as 'available to stream' on Netflix which it is not. What's the hold up? Or did they just lose interest altogether when the Belgian entry missed the Oscar finals for Best Foreign Film? They probably should have just started streaming it when it snagged a Golden Globe nod rather than hold out until it was no longer in the news cycle. There was no point in waiting since they didn't have to steer around a window for theatrical release.
Say what you will about its worthiness as a film -- and people sure have, it's proven quite divisive -- but it is gorgeously lensed.
OTHER WINNERS
Motion Picture/Miniseries for TV James Friend, BSC for Patrick Melrose, "Bad News"
Episode of Non-Commercial Television Adriana Goldman, ASC, ABC for The Crown, "Beryl"
Episode of Commercial Television John Joffin, ASC for Beyond, "Two Zero One"
Bud Stone Award Franz Kraus
MORE BEAUTY!
Here are three gifs dedicated to the non-competitive honorees tonight.
• Look, it's all five cinematographers who were Oscar-nominated for shooting Jeff Bridges (though none won). It remains a tragedy of truly epic proportions that Michael Ballhaus didn't win the Oscar for The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) among the tippity-top of all cinematography achievements in the 1980s. Ballhaus was one of the all-time greats and he died two years ago without ever winning an Oscar or being given an Honorary.
• Highlights from Robert Richardson's career (his chief loyal employers are Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino, and Martin Scorsese)
• Highlights from Jeffrey Jur's career (He regularly lensed features, too, up until My Big Fat Greek Wedding in 2003 but from them on its been almost exclusively TV work)