In Contention

Tag: Christian Berger

  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Cinematography

    Michael Gambon in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood PrinceWelcome to the first of two (and the only two) categories that have me pulling my hair out. The cinematography race is a strange breed this year. There isn’t the usual one or two “pretty” films that turn the Academy on at large, nothing with sweeping vistas and postcard composition, all the stuff that allows voters to stop being analytical and vote for mere aesthetic.

    Meanwhile, the precursor circuit has done little to clear things up. The critical favorite is over-rewarded and probably under-seen. Conventional wisdom favors a gritty film that isn’t the membership’s bag in this field, while the tech giant might be too much too soon. Meanwhile, the “prettiest” film is probably the least likely to win.

    The nominees are:

    “Avatar” (Mauro Fiore)
    “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (Bruno Delbonnel)
    “The Hurt Locker” (Barry Ackroyd)
    “Inglourious Basterds” (Robert Richardson)
    “The White Ribbon” (Christian Berger)

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  • ASC nominees

    The White Ribbon“Avatar” continues its guild steamroll with a mention from the ASC today, a mention I frankly didn’t think the film would get.  Then again, the guild is typically kind to digital photography where AMPAS is not (examples are “Collateral” and “Apocalypto”), so I wouldn’t say it’s a slam dunk in this category for Oscar.  Then again, maybe I’m blind to the writing on the wall here.  And “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” may have gone a long way toward dispelling digital bias in the Academy.

    I don’t get the love for Christian Berger.  I haven’t since day one.  There is nothing appealing to me about the way Michael Haneke visually captures his films.  There’s rarely anything appealing to me about his films period, truth be told.  But somehow going with black and white and employing his usual brand of tracking shots, long takes, etc., rarely with compelling composition (all my opinion, of course), it has managed to bring Berger laurel after laurel.  Critics awards are one thing, but an organization like the ASC, which I trust and respect, I don’t know.  Maybe I just missed the boat completely.

    “Nine” finally gets a guild mention and Robert Richardson, as always, is an ASC favorite once more.

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  • REVIEW: “The White Ribbon” (***1/2)

    The White RibbonLondon Film Festival

    With apologies to Pete Townshend, the kids are most certainly not alright.

    Such is the message we seem to be gleaning from the cinema of 2009, as a vast range of unrelated titles – “Precious,” “Coraline,” “Dogtooth,” “Antichrist,” “Fish Tank,” even “An Education” – appear united in visiting the physical and/or psychological damage wrought upon children by either obliviously or maliciously neglectful parents, in some cases planting the seeds of trauma for further generations.

    No film this year, however, addresses the matter with more thematic exactitude and near-scientific scrutiny than Michael Haneke’s grimly riveting “The White Ribbon,” a film which differs from the ones previously mentioned by taking an entire community, as opposed to a solitary family, as its allegorical subject. More expansive in its focus than any previous Haneke work, it nonetheless surprises with the intimacy of its gaze and the social responsibility of its treatise.

    Eternally fascinated by human behaviour, yet never a director much associated with the humane – his trademark chilliness reaching new heights (or depths, if you prefer) with last year’s “Funny Games” remake, which treated its papery characters with even more diagrammatic dispassion than the 1997 original – Haneke finally marries these two approaches here, empathizing with its considerable ensemble of characters even as it dissects them.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Cinematography – Volume I

    Saoirse Ronan in The Lovely BonesLIGHTS…CAMERA…you were probably waiting for the word “action,” no? Action is, after all, what many individuals go to a film to see. But the “lights” and the “camera” in this classic phrase bring a film beyond a book or a radio show…and capture the “action.”

    The individuals who paint the images of cinema with light and composition are rewarded in the Oscar category of Best Cinematography. Cinematographers are pivotal in the making of any film and it is thus unsurprising that directors often continuously work with the similar camera heads.

    Like many cinephiles, I must say this is my favorite of the so-called “technical” categories and I eagerly anticipate the race every year.  This year is no exception.

    Australian D.P. Dion Beebe might seem to be leading this year’s lenser race with his third collaboration with Rob Marshall, the musical adaptation “Nine.” Despite not being cited by the Academy for some of his more innovative work (see Michael Mann’s “Collateral”), Beebe has been previously nominated for 2002’s “Chicago” and won the Oscar in 2005 for “Memoirs of a Geisha.” “Nine” will give him the opportunity to pay homage to Federico Fellini while also capturing sprawling musical numbers, a feat this category tends to reward.

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