Oscar Volley: Oscar's Choice for "Best Cinematography" (and more)

The team is pairing off to discuss each Oscar race. Here's Glenn Dunks and Eric Blume...

ELVIS Cinematography by Mandy Walker OSCAR NOMINATED

GLENN: Hi Eric, let's talk all things camera and light—it's Best Cinematography. Can I just start by asking one big question regarding this particular category. What happened to Top Gun: Maverick here? Claudio Miranda, previous Oscar winner for Life of Pi, was supposed to be our runaway favorite and yet on nomination morning, Lydia Tár claimed one final scalp amid her reign of terror. And a second question, I suppose. Did that Top Gun miss just hand this trophy to All Quiet on the Western Front? As much as I am craving a win for Mandy Walker (for many reasons including how historic it would be), I just can't see anything but the German war movie coming out on top here.

ERIC:  Glenn, two excellent questions.  Let's tackle the first...

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Split Decision: "All Quiet on the Western Front"

No two people feel the exact same way about any film. Thus, Team Experience is pairing up to debate the merits of each of the awards movies this year. Here’s Eric Blume and Cláudio Alves on Germany's Oscar contender.

ERIC:  Claudio, let's get down and dirty on Edward Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front.  I'm in camp "love" and I think you're in camp "don't love"?  The only real dissent I've heard from folks is that "it says nothing new about war" (which I look forward to addressing).  But let's start with overall impressions of the film.

CLÁUDIO:  Well, it's adapting a seminal anti-war novel – maybe THE anti-war novel pre-WWII – already made into a Best Picture Oscar winner before. So it's not like it had much hope of saying something new about its subject. Nevertheless, Edward Berger and company bring plenty of "new things" to the narrative presented in the literary work and its previous adaptations, so there's that...

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Oscar Volley: Best Cinematography Predictions

Team Experience will be discussing each Oscar category as we head into the precursors. Here's Christopher James and Eric Blume...

BABYLON

CHRIS:  The Cinematography category has recently skewed heavily towards Best Picture nominees. Years like 2012 - 2015 would often have 2-3 nominees from outside the Best Picture race. However, the past three years have only had one non-Best Picture nominee crack the lineup (The Tragedy of Macbeth, News of the World, and The Lighthouse respectively). Sensing this trend, I'm starting my predictions by looking at the most likely overlaps between Picture and Cinematography this year. Janusz Kaminski is in good position for lensing The Fabelmans. Not only is it the presumed Best Picture frontrunner, but Kaminski is a two-time winner who has recently scored nominations for Spielberg projects like West Side Story, Lincoln and War Horse.

Bigger is often better, so I'm considering the other epics in the Best Picture race. Even with mixed reactions, Babylon is a large beast and Linus Sandgren has an Oscar for another film with director Damien Chazelle, La La Land...

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Revisiting "The Wings of the Dove"

by Cláudio Alves

In 1997, Eduardo Serra became the first Portuguese person to be nominated for an Academy Award. This honor came thanks to his work in The Wings of the Dove, a Henry James adaptation directed by Iain Softley. This piece of trivia was one of the reasons I was so eager to watch the film as I first started to fall in love with movie awards. The other point of interest was Helena Bonham Carter, for whom I had a raging fandom in my early teens. After all, this was also the picture that had earned the actress her first nomination. It should have also won her the statuette. This was the first film I remember looking for with such avidness, going into international sites so I could order a DVD from abroad. 

I fell in love with The Wings of the Dove when I was thirteen, and that passion has only strengthened in the years since. Indeed, every time I revisit it, I find new details worthy of admiration…

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Best Shot Index: The act of looking in 'The Last Picture Show'

by Nathaniel R

Bronze Medal choice for Best Shot

The power of Peter Bogdanovich's unassuming breakout feature, The Last Picture Show (1971) sneaks up on you. It's often called a coming-of-age film which is not inaccurate but... coming to what? and of which age? It's mosaic of characters ranges in age from teenagers to senior citizens and at times it feels like they're not so much coming into something as never leaving it; They're lost souls in a ghost town. If you've never seen the film you might assume that a movie theater is a main character but not really. The theater is just one of the haunts that the central trio of high school seniors (Jeff Bridgess, Cybill Shepherd, and Timothy Bottoms) kill time at. They're less interested in the movie than in making out in the back row, anyway...

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