TRAILER FOR BLADE RUNNER 2049

Roger Deakins Roger Deakins Roger Deakins! Denis Villeneuve and Ridley Scott have certainly drawn together an impressive cast and crew (and Jared Leto, alas) for the Blade Runner sequel that, frankly, nobody wanted anyway. But then there's Roger Deakins, right? Out on the 6th of October in both the US and the UK.

AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CINEMATOGRAPHERS 2015 AWARD NOMINATIONS!

Last year's American Society of Cinematographers nominations missed the Academy's five by just one - they chose Best Picture contender The Imitation Game over the greater cinematographic achievement, Ida. I suspect that this year's nominees, listed below, will follow the same pattern: Bridge of Spies, the Best Picture contender, will make way for The Hateful Eight, the more notable cinematographic achievement. Otherwise, expect a pretty close match. These nominations will be resolved with the ASC's awards on the 14th of February.

Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography

Roger Deakins (Sicario)

Janusz Kaminski (Bridge of Spies)

Edward Lachman (Carol)

Emmanuel Lubezki (The Revenant)

John Seale (Mad Max: Fury Road)

Spotlight Award
Adam Arkapaw (Macbeth)
Erdely Matyas (Son of Saul)
Cary Fukunaga (Beasts of No Nation)

REVIEW - SICARIO (DENIS VILLENEUVE)

A stylish thriller whose technical prowess is as exhilarating to behold as it is admirable, communicating writer Taylor Sheridan's simplistic story with verve and vibrancy. Sheridan lays a bare narrative out bare; director Denis Villeneuve turns bare into spare, constructing powerful sensory experiences out of otherwise simple scenes with a startling soundscape and striking cinematography. Sicario has many merits, but chief among them is the highly successful collaboration between Villeneuve and his DP Roger Deakins - the two have a neatly matched artistic sensibility, and their combined storytelling technique is remarkably cohesive. Indeed, Villeneuve and Deakins are so well matched that Sicario slightly suffers as the work of art that they clearly strive for it to be - its stylistic parameters are too confined, too closed to interpretation, just a bit too perfect, and the film loses something in the way of humanity and plausibility as a result. It gains so much in the process, though, functioning as much as a tremendously tense thriller as it does a deeply unnerving horror film - the two converge in moments of disarming distress, accentuated by fine sound design and a complimentary, elemental score by Johann Johannsson. Motions toward political drama are less effective, unwanted diversions into vaguely allegorical territory from the script, but the film's stylistic strengths are enough to overcome Sicario's missteps.