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Entries in Joshua James Richards (3)

Wednesday
Apr282021

93rd Academy Awards: Black-and-White edition

by Cláudio Alves

Despite some semi-shocking results in the major categories, this year's Oscars were relatively surprise-free. Sure, the Best Original Song choice was unexpected, but there are very few precursors for that particular category, leaving it always a bit up in the air. Only one "below the line" or "technical" category managed to shock me. That was the Cinematography race. While David Fincher's Mank had nabbed the ASC prize, I assumed Nomadland would get an easy win on Oscar night. After all, it swept the critics' prizes, won the BAFTA the production went into the ceremony as the Best Picture frontrunner. Nomadland even won that last one. Nevertheless, Joshua James Richards' poetic landscapes were ignored in favor of Erik Messerschmidt's silvery monochrome for Mank...

The conclusion to this specific race is even crazier when one considers that the Fincher flick was Messerschmidt's first feature. That being said, Mank's in black-and-white, making it part of a trend to (over?)reward grayscale cinema at the Oscars. If you want to win a Cinematography Oscar, don't forget to drain the color out of your picture. Would Nomadland have won if it had been shot in black-and-white? Last year, I explored how AMPAS has been infatuated with monochrome cinematography, going so far as to nominate such a hostile, complicated art film as The Lighthouse. Furthermore, because Parasite was re-released in black-and-white, I also made a photo collection examining how each Best Picture nominee would look in glorious black-and-white. Inspired by those past write-ups, here's a collection of screenshots from the other Best Picture nominees, four of which were defeated by Mank in this category...

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Saturday
Feb132021

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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Saturday
Feb092019

Beauty Break: ASC Tributes + Best Cinematography Honors

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...

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