Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Nightmare Alley (2021)

Welcome back to the series, "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" by Nathaniel R. Each week we'll discuss a single movie via a particular shot. Anyone who'd like to participate can choose their own!

Best Prop

When you're reading your mark, as former circus psychic Pete (David Strathairn) teaches us, you're searching for external clues to internal damage. The fatal flaw of Nightmare Alley, up this year for Best Picture, may well be that Guillermo del Toro, though a gifted filmmaker, isn't much for interiority. But oh his surfaces! Overly lacquered beauty and the ugly rot it's faililng to hide are the greatest assets of his latest film. On that note we must pause to honor the funhouse sequence early in the film which operates like a veritable FYC ad for the Oscar-nominated Production Design. The set amazes and one particular prop in the 'funhouse', a mirror stating "TAKE A LOOK AT YOURSELF  SINNER" is a perfect offhand joke. We know very little about Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) but he already knows he's "no good". The camera lingers for a second on the mirror, to make sure we do... 

Click to read more ...

Oscar Volley: Best Cinematography, Half-Locked, Half-Not?

Continuing our Oscar Volley series at The Film Experience. Eric Blume, Elisa Giudici, and Glenn Dunks talk Best Cinematography. 

Greig Fraser shooting Timothée Chalamet in the desert for Dune (2021)

Eric Blume:  Glenn and Elisa, Do we all agree that we probably have two "locks" for Best Cinematography nominations:  Delbonnel for The Tragedy of Macbeth, and Greig Fraser for Dune?  Those feel like two very worthy nominees to me.  While I think Joel Coen's conception of his film is limited and flawed, I admired Delbonnel's execution of Coen's concept, really leaning into that austere Calvinist guilt like we got in Carl Theodore Dreyer movies, and stealing from Sven Nykvist's framing in Bergman movies...yet netting out in its own unique visual scheme to highlight those sets and costumes.  And I thought Fraser's work made Denis Villeneuve's arid sci-fi epic surprisingly sensual, which helped the film (which is dense and heavy) enormously by taking you out of your head sometimes and back to your senses. Do you think both are locks?  What are your thoughts on those two, and their closest challengers... 

Click to read more ...

Interview: Edu Grau on "Passing", queer cinema, and first time filmmakers

by Nathaniel R

Black and white photography has been the hot trend this past year. Despite that, the incredibly specific and resonant visuals of Passing have been underdiscussed.  Some of that we attribute to the quiet nature of the film itself; the watchful, perpetually anxious drama focuses on Irene (a splendid Tessa Thomson) a woman in 1920s Harlem who is shocked to discover that her childhood friend Clare (brilliant Ruth Negga) is living as a white woman, and not just "passing" but boastful about her subterfuge and marriage to a proud racist (Alexander Skarsgård).

We were thrilled to meet with the cinematographer Edu Grau to discuss his fascinating movie. We broke the ice talking about his changing name in film credits. With a self-deprecating laugh he explained that he went by Eduardo at the beginnign of his career because it sounded more serious but changed his mind. "Only the police use Eduardo," he says laughing "Everyone calls me Edu". There are a lot of Edwards and Eduardos in America, he adds, reasoning "Edu is more special!" The Film Experience agrees and suggests that people should commit the name to memory...

Click to read more ...

ASC and CAS nominations: 'Dune' & 'Power of the Dog' make both lists

by Nathaniel R

The American Society of Cinematographers and the Cinema Audio Society have released their nominations for outstanding work in film and television last year. As with the Art Directors yesterday, there are surprise omissions of notable contenders. West Side Story, for example, is not nominated for cinematography while another musical tick, tick...BOOM! misses with the sound guild. It's all leading up to an Oscar nomination morning that could be volatile.  The full list of nominations with notes after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Chart Updates: Film Editing, Production Design, Cinematography!

by Nathaniel R

All of the Visual categories in the Oscar charts have now been updated save Costume Design which we tend to give its own articles -- playing favourites, sorry! But looking over the charts and the possibilities, it does beg the question: are Dune and West Side Story just going to be nominated in every category? And will any other films core as many nominations?  The year isn't short on films that are visually remarkable of course. There's Power of the Dog, Nightmare Alley, Tragedy of Macbeth, The French Dispatch, The Green Knight, Passing, and more.

But the question is always what are voters actually watching and what are they liking? Being remarkable only gets you so far...

Click to read more ...