Best Cinematography 2000

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Best Cinematography of 2000

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Peter Pau)
16
84%
Gladiator (John Mathieson)
0
No votes
Malena (Lajos Koltai)
0
No votes
O' Brother, Where Art Thou? (Roger Deakins)
3
16%
The Patriot (Caleb Deschanel)
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 19

dws1982
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Re: Best Cinematography 2000

Post by dws1982 »

Won't vote in this lineup (never bothered with Malena and it's not the easiest thing on earth to see it these days), but my oddball replacements would be underrated, misunderstood Mission to Mars and Michael Winterbottom's The Claim, which seemed like the moment where he might cross over and work in more mainstream films. But it was given a one-week-only qualifying release at the end of December, then dumped back in theaters in April of 2001 and disappeared into obscurity. (I was also a big fan of Winterbottom's Wonderland--a 1999 film but a 2000 US release.) I'd also put up James Gray's under-appreciated The Yards, which unfortunately isn't, as far as I know, available in its original aspect ratio on home video, at least not in the US.
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Re: Best Cinematography 2000

Post by Mister Tee »

I don't know why I'm having so much difficulty keeping up with these things -- though in the case of this particular year, a fundamental dullness may have played a role. I don't find any of the omittees worth expressing outrage -- Traffic maybe the closest (though it was never going to happen, just because the branch hates directors doubling). I'm not so high on Requiem for a Dream, but, then, I only ever saw it in home video and didn't think much of it. Oh, maybe Before Night Falls.

Till this exercise demanded I view it, I'd gone pretty blissfully through life never having seen Malena. It's a vaguely insulting movie -- putting its female character through all sorts of degradation, basically so the young male narrator can tell us how it made HIM feel. It looks pretty, unsurprisingly -- that coast is photogenic -- but it's of no consequence.

So, Caleb Deschanel is passed over for The Black Stallion but nominated for The Patriot? Thanks, Academy. (Though, once again: pretty.)

I think BJ has it about right on Gladiator: it eschews the standard glorious-bright look of of an epic in favor a grittier, down-in-the-muck look. This definitely echoes Private Ryan, but it's a new look for this sort of film, and probably at least partially accounts for the seriousness with which many people took the film. Not a bad nominee, but not a winner.

I'm still kind of amazed that O Brother, Where Art Thou? became the hit it did. Prior to this film, it seemed like the Coens were going to stay in a Jim Jarmucsh-y cult cul-de-sac, with Fargo the outlier high grosser. Then O Brother -- which didn't even get particularly good reviews -- turned into a sleeper hit, playing deep into the winter, and getting unexpected Oscar nominations...and from there on, the brothers became Oscar regulars. Deakins, of course, makes his contribution: he does fine work here, and I can see voting for it.

But, like most, I see no reason to take the Oscar away from so ravishing a film as Crouching Tiger. I know it's become fashionable to dismiss Lee's film -- there are all these other wuxia movies, you know, and if we only sat through them all, we'd see that Lee's film is nothing special. But, screw it: I can't judge based on bunch of movies I've never seen; I can onlyj udge by what I see up on the screen. And what I see in Crouching Tiger is an exquisite-looking, delicately calibrated effort that easily rates this year's cinematography prize.
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Re: Best Cinematography 2000

Post by The Original BJ »

The color-coded stylings of Requiem for a Dream and Traffic would be my top alts. And among more fringe choices, the Malick-inspired beauty of George Washington also stands out. But the other candidates many of you cite are solid as well (I agree, Sabin, that Wonder Boys is more lovingly shot than one would expect for this kind of film).

I remember being pretty surprised by Malèna's nomination, though partly because I hadn't seen the movie yet. It's not an inexplicable citation -- there's obvious beauty in the glow of the film's sun-dappled images of war-era Sicily. But the film is a bland Miramax travelogue, bathed in some really questionable nostalgia -- a woman sure had to suffer a lot for a young man to so fondly remember his coming of age -- and the photography, which only exacerbates this aesthetic, is going to get a pass here.

I did think The Patriot would get nominated here when I saw it that summer -- Deschanel's work was certainly flashy, with memorable candle-lit night exteriors, sunshine-kissed interiors, and majestically shot battle sequences. But the movie is such junk it's hard to praise the cinematography as anything more artful than an achievement in cleaning up trash.

Gladiator was one of the first movies I can recall that seemed pretty obviously influenced by the aesthetic of Saving Private Ryan's battle scenes. This wasn't necessarily a terrible thing -- the opening battle sequence in the snow, for instance, was certainly striking. But it did make the film feel like a bit of a visual rehash, and this, along with the fact that (as Sabin notes) some of the Colosseum shots seem lifted from a video game, made me happy the film didn't win here (which I did think it had the potential to do).

I revisited O Brother, Where Art Thou? for the first time since its release about a month ago, and while I found that the film still didn't really click with my sense of humor -- I just don't find it all that funny -- I confirmed my initial enthusiastic reaction to the cinematography. The movie looks gorgeous, with Deakins's sepia-toned images providing a stylish and earthy portrait of the early-century rural South. Not quite the peak of Deakins's collaboration with the Coens -- that's right around the corner -- but pretty close in my book.

But I think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon just outclasses the field. The film is gorgeous top to bottom, with numerous sequences -- the overnight rooftop battle, the bamboo forest fight, the entire desert-set flashback, Zhang Ziyi's final leap -- achieving a visual beauty that's not only artfully rendered, but full of hypnotic mystery. The presence of the other action nominees on the ballot only highlights how Ang Lee's film avoids the manufactured look of so many Hollywood epics, and gives us spectacle of an almost painterly quality. A thoroughly deserving choice.
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Re: Best Cinematography 2000

Post by Precious Doll »

Big Magilla wrote:Among the nominees, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is head and shoulders above the rest, but had YiYi been eligible Wei-Han Yang's cinematography would get my vote. Also conspicuous by its absence, along with YiYi and the previously mentioned Wonder Boys and Almost Famous, is BAFTA nominee Billy Elliot (Brian Tufano).
Poor YiYi has not been well served by its various DVD & Blu Ray releases over the years. I wish I could remember what it looked like on the big screen. It clearly didn't leave any visual impression on me but it certainly did not look like it does on every home video release of the film, including the Criterion Blu Ray, which all have a horrible video like visual presentation. It's odd because the film would have been shot on film stock, unlike Amour & I Wish which both looked so obviously digitally shot on the big screen. Amour at least looks good on Blu Ray but I Wish still looks sub-standard on home video.

As for the films of 2000 nothing comes near the snubbed In the Mood for Love (which wasn't eligible until the following year anyway). My choice of the nominated films was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but I am curious how it would stand up today. Back when it was released I had seen very little of the Hong Kong cinema which had influenced Ang Lee and the film was so fresh and new. Over the years I've seen plenty of older Hong Kong/Taiwanese cinema and in particular the films of King Hu, most of which are better than Lee's film.

The other nominees are respectable enough and funnily enough the best aspect of all of them is their cinematography.

Major omissions for me are George Washington, My Dog Skip, The House of Mirth, The Virgin Suicides & Bossa Nova.
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Re: Best Cinematography 2000

Post by Big Magilla »

Among the nominees, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is head and shoulders above the rest, but had YiYi been eligible Wei-Han Yang's cinematography would get my vote. Also conspicuous by its absence, along with YiYi and the previously mentioned Wonder Boys and Almost Famous, is BAFTA nominee Billy Elliot (Brian Tufano).
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Best Cinematography 2000

Post by Sabin »

Missing in action: of course, Matthew Libatique for Requiem for a Dream. I’ve felt this film’s star falling a bit over the years but this was hugely influential stuff at the time. This branch always snubs the young turks. Also deserving, Dante Spinotti for Wonder Boys, which is a more innovatively shot film than given credit for. I wouldn’t have had a problem with John Toll for Almost Famous either. The ASC skipped John Seale for The Talented Mr. Ripley but nominated him for The Perfect Storm? No big loss there. I’d argue that the big omission from this group was probably Traffic, but that would mean nominating Steven Soderbergh himself for Best Cinematography. Considering that this lineup wound up including The Patriot and Malena, Soderbergh probably wasn’t far off from the final five. Same with Cast Away. Like with Forest Gump, there aren’t many shots that leap off the scree as immediately memorable but I think I predicted Don Burgess would get nominated back in 2000.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is an acceptable choice. It's beautiful and it deserves some recognition for how they found a way to sell the idea of flying martial arts warriors so well that we'd see copycats for years to come. I have two knocks against it. One is that I’ve always found something un-engaging about the film and it took other people to write about the remoteness of many Ang Lee movies to understand why (save for The Ice Storm). The second knock is how much it is outclassed by similar feats by Zhang Yimou (Hero and House of Flying Daggers), one of which I will have the opportunity to vote for. So, I pass on Crouching Tiger, though there's nothing wrong with its win here.

In retrospect, The Patriot and Malena are sort of domestic/foreign flips of each other. Both are packaged with meaningful intention but neither holds any weight to be taken seriously. They both look fine. Gladiator on the other hand was derided for its look, for its muddy visuals and dusty color palette. I always thought that was somewhat unfair considering the considerable VFX-undertaking the whole enterprise was. Even if that is the case, in hindsight it's clearly as visually influential as Crouching Tiger, but not really for the right reasons. Gladiator looks like a video game, switching visual tropes sequence by sequence as if the movie is approaching the final level.

The comments left under the 1996 post have encouraged me to rethink my vote for Roger Deakins for Fargo for a few reasons, one of which being that four years later would be a perfect opportunity to honor him for O’ Brother, Where Art Thou? As a film, it’s inferior to Fargo but its usage of digital intermediate makes it a milestone for cinematography. It initially struck me as a minor entry in the Coens oeuvre, but it’s warmed up to me over the years, especially considering that their recent movies resemble it more and more. I think it’s the easy choice.
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