Best cinematography

[Max Jacoby]

Did 'Chicago' really get the Oscar for best picture? That's alomst as outrageous as 'A Beautiful Mind'. Well, it just goes to show that the 'Palme d'Or' is still the most prestigious artistic recognition one can get for a film. On top of that it is a truly international award, which the Oscars are not.

[Jonathan Spear]

""but the oscars are hardly worth discussing for lovers of film as art. watch "titanic" and then watch "landscape in the mist" and then never watch the academy awards again.""

 

You know, just because a film is low or no-budget, has absolutely no special effects and it's title, crew and cast's names are impossible to pronounce in English doesn't make the movie "art".

 

""in fact, while we're on the subject, tell me one best picture that was a masterpiece in any shape or form from the last ten years (cant be bothered to go back any further).""

 

I can be bothered to trek back a few more years..

 

"A Beautiful Mind", "Amadeus", "The Last Emperor", "Schindler's List", "Forrest Gump", "American Beauty".. the list goes on and on.

 

If I have to go into detail why each and everyone deserves to win in my opinion, trust me, I'll be more than happy too.

 

Bottom line -- all of the "Best Picture" winners are infinately better than what anyone on this board has yet to produce.

 

:P

 

Y'all are just jealous!

 

They should really have two forums here. One for film lovers and one for bitter, arthouse types.

 

If you can't appreciate films like "A Beautiful Mind", "Return of King", " Crash" or "Gladiator" than what the heck kind of movies do you like?

 

Jesus. I give up.

[Robert Edge]

Name one film that took home an Oscar for best picture that wasn't, in one way or another, an artistic masterpiece.

 

I guess it depends on what one means by the phrase "artistic masterpiece". For myself, when I use the word "masterpiece" to describe a work by Michelangelo or van Gogh, I kind of gag at using the same word to describe every film that has won an Academy Award for Best Picture back to 1930. And if I'm going to do that, I probably have to use the same word to describe every film that has won Best Foreign Film. For me, at least, there's a point when the word becomes meaningless.

 

If pressed, I suppose that I might apply the word to Citizen Kane. Anyone remember what year the Academy, showing its ability to appreciate highly original, important work, awarded Citizen Kane the Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Cinematography, Art Direction, Editing, Sound and Score?

[Jonathan Spear]

""guess it depends on what one means by the phrase "artistic masterpiece". For myself, when I use the word "masterpiece" to describe a work by Michelangelo or van Gogh, I kind of gag at using the same word to describe every film that has won an Academy Award for Best Picture back to 1930. ""

 

Why don't we have this discussion again in about fifty years. By then, you'll be fondly reminiscing about

the "good old days" and movies like "Braveheart" and "Titanic". You'll see.

[Max Jacoby]

You know, just because a film is low or no-budget, has absolutely no special effects and it's title, crew and cast's names are impossible to pronounce in English doesn't make the movie "art".

Who please said that?

 

Just by looking in Hollywood's own backyard how can they oversee masterpieces like 'The Thin Red Line' (in favour of 'Shakespeare in Love'!), Magnolia (not even nominated in a year where 'Gladiator' won) or 'Elephant' (winner of the 'Palme d'Or, but also not even nominated as 'Return of the King' won).

[Joe Taylor]

Okay, Jason already stole my thunder on this one, but I'll make of a list of Best Picture winners that most certainely cannot be considered "art." I'll begin with "Crash," because I'll never, ever forget this most artistic scene:

______________________________________________

Little girl runs out of the house, all happy and sunny. Her victimized dad is being held at gunpoint by another victimized minority.

 

LITTLE GIRL

Daddy! Daddy! You forgot you impenetrable shield!

 

Of course the little girl jumps in daddy's arms just as the victimized Arab shoots the victimized father. (Why does she jump in her father's arms?... so she can be shot, or course.)

 

Camera cranes up and angles straight down the big tragedy. (If only it were pouring rain.)

 

IN SLOW MOTION... OF COURSE. (And if you have not seen this movie, I am not kidding)

 

VICTIMIZED FATHER

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

 

But wait, there's a nauseating twist to this most unoriginal scene. The little girl has remembered her impenetrable shield. (The little goose) And the rascist cracker gun shop owner who sold the victimized wife the gun and bullets of the victimized Arab, gave her blanks. That dirty, rascist bastard. (Groan.)

 

Little girl lives, victimized father burst forth with tears of pain and joy. Victimized Arab learns a very valuable lesson. What, I'm not sure. But he has that cliched look on his face. In reality he would have panicked and hauled ass out of there. But that would not have look artistic in super slow-mo.

_______________________________________________

 

So, I'll begin with "Crash" and stop at the first year a movie deserved to win best picture. I imagine it will be in the 80's. Some of these winners make me sick, and I'm not being funny.

 

 

Crash - Very, very Sick. Criminally sick.

Million Dollar Baby - Sick

Lord of the Rings

Chicago - Sick

A Beautiful Mind - Sick

Gladiator

American Beauty

Shakespeare in Love - Sick

Titanic - Very Sick

The English Patient - Very sick

Braveheart - Sick

Forrest Gump

Schindler's List - Okay, this was a very good movie, we'll stop here. But I'm not letting "Driving Miss Daisy" off the hook. Or "Dances with Wolves" nor "Rain Man."

[Robert Edge]

"For myself, when I use the word "masterpiece" to describe a work by Michelangelo or van Gogh, I kind of gag at using the same word to describe every film that has won an Academy Award for Best Picture back to 1930. ""

 

Why don't we have this discussion again in about fifty years. By then, you'll be fondly reminiscing about

the "good old days" and movies like "Braveheart" and "Titanic". You'll see.

 

I know women who think that Mel Gibson looks a lot like Michelangelo's David, or would if he would just take his clothes off, so you could be right. I'm not sure, though, if they would use the word masterpiece to describe Leonardo diCaprio.

 

I forgot to mention in my post that Citizen Kane also won the Oscar for Original Screenplay. However, that award is kind of suspicious, seeing as how a lot of the writers in Hollywood in those days were communists.

 

I learned that from watching Mr. George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck. Seeing as how someone questioned anearlier comment I made in this thread about Good Night, I feel that I should clarify things.

 

Good Night, and Good Luck is one of the best lectures that I have ever seen. For one thing, Mr. Clooney does a lot of explaining right at the beginning so you don't get confused. Then, he does an amazing trick. He takes all these people who were three-dimensional characters in real life and makes them all two-dimensional.

 

I think that Mr. Clooney probably got this idea from watching Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, although I suppose he might have gotten it from a really original reading of a book called Aspects of the Novel, in which Mr. E.M. Forster talks about flat characters and round characters.

 

Anyway, Mr. Clooney really likes flat characters, to the exclusion of any round ones, which makes things really clear for the audience, and then he does something really important. He divides all of his characters into two camps, the good guys and the bad guys.

 

Well, all I can say is that he is so good at this that even though all his characters dress pretty much the same - not a white hat or a black hat in sight - you can always tell them apart. There isn't a second in the whole lecture where you get confused about who is a good guy and who is a bad guy.

 

He orchestrates this masterfully, but the important thing is that Mr. Clooney doesn't waste his talent on frivolous entertainment. He is a teacher, a man who imparts knowledge and understanding. Here is what Mr. Clooney teaches: there are good guys, and there are bad guys, and the good guys will eventually win even though the good guys are really, really outnumbered.

 

Now, some people will say that Arnold has already taught us this, so what do we need Mr. Clooney for? Well, the problem with Arnold is that he makes silly movies. Mr. Clooney, on the other hand, is an intellectual who knows how to harness the power of the movies to make us see good from evil and right from wrong so that we may all become better citizens. I, for one, am grateful.

 

Indeed, I'll go so far as to say that Mr. Clooney's next film should be a re-make of Dr. Strangelove, a film about a serious and important part of history that is irredeemiably flawed by mindless frivolity. Thank God no-one allowed Stanley Kubrick to unleash his twisted mind on a film about McCarthyism.

[Jonathan Spear]

""But wait, there's a nauseating twist to this most unoriginal scene. The little girl has remembered her impenetrable shield. (The little goose) And the rascist cracker gun shop owner who sold the victimized wife the gun and bullets of the victimized Arab, gave her blanks. That dirty, rascist bastard. (Groan.)

 

Little girl lives, victimized father burst forth with tears of pain and joy. Victimized Arab learns a very valuable lesson. What, I'm not sure. But he has that cliched look on his face. In reality he would have panicked and hauled ass out of there. But that would not have look artistic in super slow-mo.""

 

----

 

What are you so angry about?

[Joe Taylor]

I'm not angry. But I am appalled that people are applauding such a contrived, cliched, pretentious, obvious, unreal, piece of Tinseltown clap-trap.

 

There are more subtle ways to discuss social problems. I don't need people SCREAMING in my face.

[Guest Kai.w]

If pressed, I suppose that I might apply the word to Citizen Kane. Anyone remember what year the Academy, showing its ability to appreciate highly original, important work, awarded Citizen Kane the Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Cinematography, Art Direction, Editing, Sound and Score?

Sometimes I feel like Landon D. Parks. I'm not saying Citizen Kane is not a very important movie but if that's the only masterpiece you can come up with, I'd say it sounds a little generic.

 

-k

[Filip Plesha]

If there were that many "look good" shots, isn't that saying something about the cinematography? After all, that's what is being judged (in theory).

 

I think what he was trying to say is there are many "pretty" shots.

Sometimes it is easier to make pretty lighting than regular lighting.

It's easier to make a pretty shot with lots of colors, pretty woman, and soft lights, then say make

an attractive shot of a funeral on a graveyard on overcast day.

 

What I personally respect most in cinematographers is that they can make anything pretty without

going into clishe umbrella "pretty" esthetics.

I think "good" cinematography is when you make a pile of junk and a homeless man in it look good enough

for hanging an enlargement of the frame on your wall. Not in terms of technical quality, but in terms of

texture, composition, light etc.

 

Really, anything can be beautiful on film, and sometimes the most obvious beauty is the most uninspired one

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes I feel like Landon D. Parks. I'm not saying Citizen Kane is not a very important movie but if that's the only masterpiece you can come up with, I'd say it sounds a little generic.

 

People are usually afraid to say their opinion on pieces of art that are considered masterpieces, because of the risk of sounding like idiots. So everyone feels safe by mentioning the most obvious masterpiece.

I'm pretty sure half of the people mentioning Citizen Kane don't even own it on DVD, much less admire it trully.

But of course it is safe thing to say. I've even heard people calling it a masterpiece without even seeing it.

My point has nothing to do with that specific film, I just used it as an example because it is already mentioned here.

[David Mullen ASC]

He was being sarcastic -- "Citizen Kane" only won the screenplay Oscar out of all of its nominations (it lost the cinematography award to "How Green Was My Valley.")

[Brad Grimmett]

It's obvious that people's tastes differ greatly, not only on this forum, but everywhere. If you don't like a film, that's fine, but what confuses me is why people spend so much time thinking and writing about films that they profess to hate. Why not concentrate on films you like instead of films you don't? Sure, you can learn from films that you don't like, but why concentrate so hard on something that's not your taste, or that you think was poorly made? Instead, why not be happy that there is variety, and that there is always something out there that you can appreciate? Dragging down another film or filmmaker doesn't make you any better.

[Guest Kai.w]

He was being sarcastic -- "Citizen Kane" only won the screenplay Oscar out of all of its nominations (it lost the cinematography award to "How Green Was My Valley.")

Yes, I guessed that. I just think it a bit too easy to only tell us all the movies he thinks did not deserve the academy award (or "masterpiece" status) and the only "masterpiece" he could come up with is Citizen Kane.

I'm not saying Hollywood produces two or three masterpieces a year (as some others stated) but I'm absolutely sure there have been some more movies between the 1940 and today than just Citizen Kane (which actually ranks rather low on my subjective list of masterpieces) that deserve such a classification.

 

Plus, I think its sort of a part of the definition that masterpieces have some "timeless" qualities but to pass this test, time actually has to pass too. So, I don't think it a big surprise that lots of todays classics have not won an academy award at their time.

 

-k

[Robert Edge]

Every post that I made in this thread, starting with comments about the Academy Awards and Karl Lagerfeld, was intended to elicit a smile. That is true of many of the posts that I make on this site. The smile may be, he's joking, or it may be, he's serious but at least he doesn't take the world, or himself, too seriously.

[william koon]

When a vote doesn't go the way you think it should, it's too cheap and easy to always claim collusion, cheating, politics, etc. rather than admit that some people simply don't vote the way you would.

 

An "agenda" suggests that the Academy voters actually get together and agree on what they are going to vote for (Academy committees DO get together and decide what the nominees will be in many of the categories however.)

 

So it would be easier to ascribe an "agenda" to what gets nominated more than what wins the award.

 

Besides, the ASC also gave the Best Cinematography award to "Memoirs of a Geisha" and obviously many members actually felt it was the best-looking movie of the year. I was not surprised it won at all. It was gorgeous -- rich, colorful, moody, technically-challenging, widescreen period photography, the sort of photography that has always won awards since they started giving out awards for cinematography.

 

It's best not to think too much about awards. If you're nominated or a winner, they are great of course, but ultimately they are not particularly meaningful in determining worth, just popularity at that moment in time.

 

Years before I became an ASC member, I remember telling Roger Deakins (himself many times nominated but never winning the Oscar) that I lost the Spirit Award for "Twin Falls Idaho" and he said "heck, you can't lose what you never had." The work is what matters, not the award.

 

I agree with David. Anybody could win the award, the gossip still stays. Let us not think so much of the award. Work harder with your self satisfaction contributing towards the world cinemas. Let the world cinema goers appreciate your work. That is the real award. Whoever wins the award, let us congratulate him and may he continue contributing more and more. Really, I appreciate his work in the 'memoirs'. Well done indeed.