The cinematography in There Will Be Blood was great, but it's sort of like Slumdog winning this year. Last year I would have given it to No Country For Old Men because nobody else shoots thrillers with that color and lighting anymore (it's all BLUE BLUE BLUE now), this year The Dark Knight. Either way, Mantle and Elswit are brilliant cinematographers and I can't really complain.

I think TWBB's cinematography is overrated. It is very good, yes, but last year had many brilliant showcases of cinematography (snack's mostly right with his statement about the nominees being better than this year's) and TWBB wasn't the best. Apart from Jesse James, Atonement had pretty beautiful cinematography as well.

Heh, I think the double nom for Deakins hurt him last year.

Definitely. If either of those films went to 2008 he'd have been a mortal lock for a win.

Yes, I suppose so.

I'd rank the cinematography nominees of this year and last year like this:

1. The Assassination of Jesse James
2. The Dark Knight
3. Atonement
4. There Will Be Blood
5. No Country for Old Men
6. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
7. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
8. Changeling
9. The Reader (which was probably nominated just on Deakins' name)

I have yet to see Slumdog.

Diving Bell is a bit low.

Well, it's pretty tough competition.

why are adverts saying it's the most "joyful and loved movie of the decade."

Can that be quantified?

Hmmm that would work better with the Carlsburg disclaimer.

Cos' they're supposed to advertise.

Duh. I get the "8 Oscars including Best Picture."

But I would think ROTK was more loved than Slumdog. More Oscars, more box office. Bigger critical response (RT, MC).

I don't like lies Lect.

But since you can't quantify that, heh...

ROTK could make a convincing argument however.

I'm sure many films have been advertised with that slogan.

Re: the topic, Picture, Director, Score, Song, Editing.

In cinematography, Nothing really compares to 4-5 of last year's films in my opinion, even maybe Curious Case and TDK. I think Assassination, I'm Not There, No Country, There Will Be Blood, and especially Diving Bell are better candidates for the award than anything from 2008.

I do think Slumdog was well shot, but not as good as say... 28 Days Later if we're going by DB films. As far as digitally shot films that made an impact, I thought Cloverfield was notable... nominate it? Probably not.

As far as more traditional fare, I really enjoyed Janusz Kaminski's Indiana Jones, which really captured the flair of mid 1950s America. but it may be impossible for him to shoot a film I don't like to look at. He's a real asset to Speilberg.

Curious Case would have gotten the award from me this year though.

I've heard that Let the Right One In, Definance are nice looking pictures. I haven't seen Changeling. I would have rather seen 4 Months nominated over The Reader in Cinematography.

No love for Atonement's cinematography?

Atonement would have definately deserved a nomination among this year's crop I guess. Last year (for me at least) was a year of really insane, well set pictures with interesting lighting and design.

Lyrik has made a good case for No Country and I've had a second look at it, and agree with him to a certain extent although my heart is still with Assassination and Diving Bell.

I don't quite get the love for Diving Bell's cinematography once we get past the first 30 minutes of the film or so (the out-of-the-eye shots are brilliant, I agree).

Assassination is wonderful, of course.

Well, I think the best cinematography is the kind that fits the film brilliantly and makes it better and more enjoyable without being distracting. Bay films fit the first qualification, but fail miserably in the second because all they do is SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE without fitting the rhythm in any way (unlike Paul Greengrass, who actually understands how to use it).

Now, the "distracting" part is hard to really define, because a geek like me ALWAYS notices the cinematography, but I think in my case it's something that doesn't take me out of the film. The Dark Knight is fantastic at that, because even though the cinematography rarely hit me when watching it the first or second time, many of the shots in it will haunt the recesses of my mind forever, and the lighting and technical finesse it's all pulled off with are amazing. However, it's not really flashy, not like Slumdog was (which was brilliantly shot, but in a different way because it helped show how chaotic a place like Mumbai is, and chaos is an Anthony Dod Mantle specialty).

Now, something like Atonement, well, it is a beautiful-looking film, and I've warmed to it dramatically, but the Dunkirk scene that's raved about just doesn't hit me all that much. It feels more like a "oh, cool, they decided to shoot there nonstop for five minutes", I heard as a hunch, but I think the use of sound in that scene is way more effective than the cinematography. The color and lighting is very good, though.

No, for No Country, I've done this before, but I'll have to pull up shots in a latter post. Most thrillers are constantly shot with that godawful bleach-bypass look. Sure, it was cool at first, but after The Ring, it's become a constant mild annoyance. Deakins is more original, though. See: the man vs. dog vs. Jeep scene, the first five minutes, the shots of Moss returning home, the hotel/town shootout, Chigurh vs. convenience store guy, and when Bell is outside talking to the other detective about "green hair...and bones in their noses" to the scene of him at the motel crime scene.

Assassination is beautiful, but outside of the "old-timey" lenses and time-lapse parts, it didn't really strike me as "shit, nobody does this anymore".

Diving Bell just hit the perfect strides when it came to intimacy, even in the later portions of the film. In fact, I think part of the brilliance of the cinematography is that it is able to go from being very internalized to expanding to a larger canvas. It's more conceptiual than framing near the end, but there's a story being told in the cinematography as well as the script, and I appreciate that.

Personally I thought The Reader was rather flat in comparison to something like Atonement (which to me are kind of in the same school... I don't pretend to be an expert on Cinematography, but like any film fan here I believe I at least have a sense of it... anyway...). Other than the scenes that take place in the German countryside and some of the shots of Winslet on the trolly I wasn't ever really wowed by it.

My favorite shots were those of Michael walking through the empty concentration camp.

the dunkirk sequence from atonement gets to wear the dunce cap.

Would Milk have won BP if Slumdog hadn't come out this year? It certainly seems to have been the closest, and it would've made for an interesting winner. Not sure how most people would've reacted to it, what with it being both political and largely unseen. Maybe it would've split with Ben Button.