Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Oscar Predictions: Best Cinematography

It's time again for the Oscars. It's been a long as Awards season as always. Guilds, Globes, BAFTAs, and critics have all made their picks  and I'm here to figure out what it all means. Yes, it's time for my multi-part Oscar predictions.
I'm going to go through each category, tell you who has been nominated and won for what, give a context for what that means, and order the nominees from most to least likely to win on Oscar night. That doesn't mean I'll be right, but it does mean I'll be informed. Wish me luck.

Previously:
Best Documentary, Animate, and Live-Action Short
Best Documentary Feature
Best Foreign Film
Best Animated Feature
Best Visual Effects
Best Sound Editing and Sound Mixing
Best Production Design
Best Original Score and Original Song
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Best Costume Design

Glossary:
BAFTA Awards - British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards
ACS Award - American Cinematographer Society Award

Again, it's up to the BAFTA and the guild award (American Cinematographer Society in this case) to guide me through this pick. They are almost equally reliable as indicators. The Oscar winner has had a BAFTA nomination in 19 of the last 20 years, also winning the award in eight of those years. The guild has nominated the Oscar winner 19 times out of 20 as well, with slightly better accuracy, matching winners 10 times. Winning both the BAFTA and ACS award is not a guarantee of a win though. The 9 times this has happened over the last two decades, the same movie won the Oscar only 7 times.


Birdman (Emmanuel Lubezki)BAFTA - Cinematography - Winner
ACS Award - Cinematography - Winner
There's no hard rules for anything, but being a double winner in the precursor awards is a great sign that an Oscar will follow.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (Robert D. Yeoman)
BAFTA - Cinematography - Nominee
ACS Award- Cinematography - Nominee
A lot of these technical categories feel like a coin flip for which way the Academy approval will go. As Hugo proved a couple of years ago, if they decide on a particular movie to sweep through the technical categories then precursor wins be damned.

Mr. Turner (Dick Pope)
BAFTA - Cinematography - Nominee
ACS Award - Cinematography - Nominee
Could the Dick Poop incident push it to victory? It seems unlikely, but as a double nominee, it wouldn't be unfathomable.

Ida (Ryszard Lenczweski; Lukasz Zal)
BAFTA - Cinematography - Nominee
No ACS nomination hurts.

Unbroken (Roger Deakins)
ACS Award - Cinematography - Nominee
No BAFTA nomination hurts.

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