Simone Signoret in "Casque d'Or"

by Eric Blume

Today is the centennial of French Oscar-winner Simone Signoret.  Daniel paid lovely tribute to her last night for her brief role in 1950's La Ronde.  Her next big film, director Jacques Becker's 1952 movie Casque d'Or, made her a star six years before Oscar embraced her with Room at the Top. Becker captures all of Signoret's magic in this turn-of-the-century Paris underworld story.  It doesn't hurt that he has his cinematographer, Robert Le Febvre, lighting her in a gloriously celestial way throughout the movie...

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FYC: Sean Bobbitt for Best Cinematography

by Cláudio Alves

Director Shaka King (left) and Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt (right)

Sean Bobbitt started as a news camera shooter, a photojournalist more than a cineaste. His first feature was Michael Winterbottom's 1999 Cannes Competition entry Wonderland, an auspicious beginning to what would become a splendorous filmography. The collaboration with British director Steve McQueen came to define the cinematographer's career, their work running the gamut from commercials to museum installations and award-winning films like Hunger, Shame, and 12 Years a Slave. Despite all this, Sean Bobbitt has never been nominated for an Oscar. Thanks to Shaka King's Judas and the Black Messiah, that sad state of affairs may be about to change…

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Oscar Race: Best Cinematography

Here's an interesting punditry challenge. We aren't going to find out what the American Society of Cinematographers feels about this past year in cinema until March 9th, which is the day before the Academy's ballots are due. This allows us one whole month to wonder what the cinematographers in the industry are feeling about what they're looking at. Anything is possible, really, until it's not. Remember when Germany's Never Look Away scored an out of nowhere nod just two years ago? Here's what our crystal ball says right now though its imagery isn't always in focus.

PREDICTIONS

the only locks...

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Oscar Chart Updates: Cinematography

Previously: Production Design, Costumes, Screenplays, Visual FX, Animation & Docs, and Supporting Categories

News of the World

Where will Oscar voters turn for the Best Cinematography nominations this season. Will they be looking for evocative landscapes, genre polish, intimate dramas, gaudy musicals, or tour de force biopics? In an Oscar year that's been characterized by the near complete lack of the theatrical experience, the category that arguably most needs that to soar is a big question mark. With most voters not seeing the contenders on the big screen what will they make of, say, Dariusz Wolski's large open impressive vistas in News of the World? Will Hoyte van Hoytema's slick lensing of something expensive like Tenet have any thrilling sweep on television screens? Will Mandy Walker's work on Mulan have any takers since it fits both of those descriptions?

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Between Anachronism and Pastiche: The Look of "Mank"

by Cláudio Alves

After months of great anticipation and even greater expectations, David Fincher's Mank is here. For some, the picture's a rousing success, a politicized look at Old Hollywood's insidiousness through the eyes of Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz. For others, it's a disappointment, history and fantasy mushed together with pretension and aggrandizement. I find myself in the middle of these reactions, though my immediate feelings were probably more inclined to the latter than the former.

Still, a good way to consider a film's power is to see how it lasts in one's memory. For me, Mank has aged oddly in the last week. It's not that my perspective is warmer but that I can't shake it off. As the days go by I find myself ruminating on David Fincher's formal conception of this manky flick, its weirdness and intrinsic contradictions…

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