In Contention

Tag: Robert Elswit

  • Predict the ASC nominees

    Now that the DGA has spoken, something to pass the time.  Tomorrow the crafts guilds continue to roll out the season as the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) offers its picks for the best work behind the camera in 2010.  This is perhaps my favorite of the below-the-line categories, so I thought I’d offer up a lengthy preview.

    The Society is usually good for 80% when it comes to Academy crossover with its nominees. Sometimes you get a 5/5, sometimes a 3/5, but generally it’s 4/5. The trick is figuring out what the oddball selection will be. But let’s see what’s looking good for a nod, first.

    Leading the way this time around, like most years, would have to be Roger Deakins. His work on “True Grit” will likely win him an Oscar and the road there could very well begin with a win from the Society. He seems to be papa bear these days. Chalk it up.

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  • 12/13 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: HFPA’s “unsavory business practices,” Elswit talks ‘Town,’ the Zen of ‘TRON’

    • Golden Globes PR chief slams HFPA for “unsavory business practices.” [The Wrap]

    • David Heuring chats with “The Town” cinematographer Robert Elswit. [Variety]

    • Oscar marketing smackdown: “127 Hours” and “Buried.” [The Hollywood Reporter]

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘The Town’ screenwriter, director and star Ben Affleck

    Actor — and as of late, filmmaker — Ben Affleck makes his way to a cozy corner of Santa Monica’s Casa Del Mar hotel restaurant. He’s coming from a “Dad’s event” at his daughter’s school, he says, propping his feet up on a nearby chair.

    Currently shooting Terrence Malick’s latest film in Oklahoma, the multi-hyphenate has a window for awards season publicity and Warner Bros. seized the opportunity. Affleck’s second directorial effort, “The Town,” has kicked up enough buzz to legitimize an all-out Oscar push, and judging by most reactions to the film, it could be an effort well-rewarded.

    I pass along one such reaction — from actor Robert Duvall, who greatly enjoyed the film — and Affleck’s eyes light up. “Wow, really? That’s great to hear.” He playfully riffs on Duvall’s characteristic voice, adding, “He’s a spectacular personality. A genius.”

    That mixture of humility and humor highlights the majority of our conversation. Affleck is as affable as they come. Perhaps it’s years of navigating the game and knowing how to put his best foot forward with a journalist, but it rings through with authenticity. He’s a guy’s guy with a thoughtful charisma that has served him well over the years, but now he finds himself putting it all to use in the director’s chair. And while he is very appreciative of the success his latest film has achieved, he notes that he came to it apprehensively.

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  • The top 10 shots of 2007: part two

    Today we round out the top 10 shots of the year with the final five.  Check out part one if you missed it.

    Let’s dive in:

    #5

    Michael Clayton

    “MICHAEL CLAYTON”
    Director of Photography: Robert Elswit

    We were completely ripping off New York filmmaking from the 1970s, things like “Klute” and pretty much everything Owen Roizman has ever shot.  But Tony’s sense of these things was not lots of little pieces; he loves making kind of graphic frames that play as long as possible.

    –Robert Elswit

    Robert Elswit had a hell of a year in 2007, finally getting his due from the American Society of Cinematographers who awarded his work in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood.”  There was another film featuring Elswit’s unique signature, however, that flew under the radar for its considerable attention to composition and camera movement: Tony Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton.”

    Much is made of the film’s final sequence, a long shot focused on Clayton as he rides away from the hysteria in his life, desperate for his cab driver to “just drive.”  But a companion shot from earlier in the film was just as arresting, if not more so, as a purposeful point of transition to the second half of the endeavor.  A long tracking shot that never misses a beat, both behind and in front of the camera, the scene detailed is the expert, painfully clinical execution of Arthur Edens, played to an award-worthy T by Oscar nominee Tom Wilkinson.

    The final image is steeped in theme, and an initial tracking sequence under Edens’ opening monologue pulls the viewer into the film’s interior world, but this particular shot is so cold as to be frozen in its depiction of something at once gruesome and strangely beautiful, fluid.  I’m not privy to whether it may have been a directorial decision, though I suspect it may have been, but it is the crown jewel in a film packed with precision from Elswit.
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