Looking to lock in your final Oscar picks? Here’s some recent decisions that will help you along the way.
While it did seem like the front-runner all along, we were somewhat surprised to see Michael Haneke’s austere, but beautiful, black and white Cannes winner, “The White Ribbon” take the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Outstanding Achievement Award last night in Los Angeles.
The competition in the field, was pretty fierce and ‘Ribbon’ cinematographer Christian Berger beat out “Avatar” photog Mauro Fiorem, Barry Ackroyd for “The Hurt Locker,” Dion Beebes work in “Nine,” and Robert Richardson’s lensing on Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds.”
While “The White Ribbon” and its digital black and white photography is elegant and striking… call us purists, but we still prefer traditional b&w cinematography with those grains, contours and textures [nothing is on par with say Gordon Willis’ “Manhattan” or the great James Wong Howe’s work on films like “Seconds” (’66), “Hud” (’63) or “Sweet Smell of Success,” or Haskell Wexler’s incredibly textured work on “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (’66) for random examples off the top of our head].
For the Cinema Audio Society Awards, “Avatar” took a minor awards hit when it was bested by “The Hurt Locker” in the Sound Mixing category. Most Sound mixing plaudits generally go to true action or fantasy adventure pictures (“Lord Of The Rings” type movies generally reign here), though in a move that augurs quite well for “The Hurt Locker,” as again, last year the sound mixing award went to the film that won Best Picture, “Slumdog Millionaire”.
As for the Sound Editing award given out by the Motion Picture Sound Editors guild (MPSE), those prizes came out on February 20 and the two top awards went to “Avatar” and “Inglorious Basterds.”
For more related picks, the Costume Designers Guild (CDG) weighed in last week and the big winner was “The Young Victoria,” “Crazy Heart” and “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” but if you’re a sensible person you know the Oscars always favor period stuff and you’d be foolish to not bet on Sandy Powell’s “The Young Victoria” work.
Here’s “The White Ribbon” trailer if you haven’t seen it or the film yet. While we’re here, what film has your favorite black and white cinematography look to it? Feels like a good time to invite the audience to the message boards.