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Entries in Cinematography (389)

Sunday
Mar102024

Best Picture in Black-and-White: 2023 Edition

by Cláudio Alves

Re-releasing films in black-and-white, whether in theaters or through physical media, has become something of a trend. This year, Godzilla Minus One prompted a new edit with color stripped away, revealing a new way to consider its post-war twist on the kaiju mythos. I understand why audiences and filmmakers get carried away by these experiments. After all, for the past few seasons, it's a The Film Experience tradition to re-think the year's Best Picture Oscar nominees in silvery monochrome, pondering what each flick would look like transformed.

This is an exercise that can reveal qualities in composition and lighting, as well as provide a reference for the role of color in visual storytelling. Sometimes, its absence makes no difference. In other cases, a movie can't work in grayscale… 

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Thursday
Jan182024

Oscar Volley: Will there be any surprises in Best Cinematography?

Team Experience is discussing each Oscar category before the nominations are announced. Here's Eric Blume and Lynn Lee to talk Best Cinematography...

ERIC:  We have the pleasure of discussing the insanely talented cinematography candidates this year.  It seems like this year's two big awards players, Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon, will certainly make the slate here...so, can I say, why I am not particularly excited about the work of either Hoyte van Hoytema and Rodrigo Prieto for these two films?  Don't get me wrong, both are beautifully lensed films and these men are brilliantly talented, but their work seemed more standard than inspired. 

Neither world, neither Oppenheimer's labs and offices nor Moon's flat plains, are the most visually exciting terrains, and while both men work with their respective directors to build a few lovely frames, I was definitely more knocked out by the imagery in some other films this year...

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Friday
Dec012023

European Film Awards: Festival Darlings score big in the Craft Categories

Cláudio Alves

Last month, the European Film Academy announced their nominations in the above-the-line categories, with The Zone of Interest and Fallen Leaves in the lead. Now, it was a time for the winners of their craft prizes, also known as the Excellence Awards. These honors are decided by a jury of eight from a pool of selected titles, and this year, there was some double-dipping afoot. Both The Promised Land and Society of the Snow scored two prizes, while the remaining awards were divided among pictures that premiered in competition at Cannes – Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest, La Chimera, and Club Zero

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Tuesday
Nov212023

The beauty of Linus Sandgren's cinema

by Cláudio Alves

There's been much ado about Saltburn, Emerald Fennell's sophomore feature and follow-up to Promising Young Woman. However, most coverage tends to focus on the narrative's sudsy details, the picture's eagerness to shock and provoke. There's also a lot to lust over, of course, from Barry Keoghan's middle-class interloper to Jacob Elordi's aristocratic wet dream. And then there’s Rosamund Pike, exuding ice queen glamour on the side. Yet, judging by trailers and stills, one aspect of Saltburn's spell seems underreported – it looks gorgeous, crisp and colorful, all shiny and new, images so ripe you want to sink your teeth into them.

Though one shouldn't dismiss Fennell's contribution to this aesthetic – some would argue the poppy aesthetic of her debut was its best element – much credit must go to Linus Sandgren, cinematographer mirabilis…

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Friday
Sep292023

Review: "Mami Wata" Brings West African Folklore to the Big Screen

by Cláudio Alves

As if dipped in ink, the screen is a void, shadows so thick they seem to swallow the light. Gravity-pulling like a black hole, this emptiness must be broken. So, it is with water leading the way, that eternal life-giver, life-taker. And even before we see its tide, we feel an ocean calling. It emerges in white lines, foam on cresting waves, their back-and-forth movement an Atlantic embrace. No character has invoked her yet, but we already sense the immensity of Mami Wata, the mother-like water deity that appears across African myth and the diaspora. In a feat of miraculous cinema, Nigerian director C.J. 'Fiery' Obasi has used his third feature to summon the spirit, inviting us to commune with her. 

That's not to say Mami Wata – now in theaters – is a film aiming solely at religious ecstasy. If possible, it has even greater ambitions. Its tale is the story of a matriarchal society threatened by patriarchy and treacherous progress, of a sisterhood trying to resolve ancient contradictions while preserving the old ways into a changing world…

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