Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Oscar Predictions: Best Cinematography


The Oscars are coming up yet again. The guilds, Globes, BAFTAs, and critics have all made their picks. Now it's my turn to figure out what it all means with my multi-part Oscar predictions.

I'm going to go through each of the Oscar categories, tell you what has been nominated and won elsewhere, and order the nominees from who I think is 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.

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Previously: 
Documentary
Production Design
Original Song and Score  
Film Editing


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


The two precursor awards are about equally as good as predictors for the Oscar. BAFTA is perfect 20/20 nominating the Oscar winner but only picked the same winner as the Oscars 9 times. ACS nominated the Oscar winner a still pretty good 19 of 20 times but is slightly more in line picking winners, matching the Oscar winner 11 times. Together, the Oscar winning film has won either the ACS or BAFTA award 12 times. That leave a lot of years for the award to go in a completely different direction.

BAFTA - Cinematography - Winner
ASC - Cinematography – Nominee
Cinematography isn’t known as a great indicator of what will win Best Picture. In fact, it goes to the “runner-up” about as often as it does the Best Picture winner. I do have a hard time seeing how Roma is supposed to win Best Picture (which is the direction I’m leaning right now) without winning for Cinematography.

BAFTA - Cinematography - Nominee
ASC - Cinematography – Winner
Alfonso Cuarón is nominated for both Director and Cinematography for his work on Roma. He’s almost certain to win the Director award. I could easily see voters deciding this would be a good place to pick Cold War to actually win something. It’s losing to Roma everywhere else. The ASC award is evidence that Roma isn’t untouchable here. Either way, it’s interesting that the two frontrunners are both black-and-white films.

BAFTA - Cinematography - Nominee
ASC - Cinematography – Nominee
The precursor nominations are the only thing to convince me that it’s possible The Favourite could sneak in and get a victory. It doesn’t have the same profile of any recent “surprise” winners though (Hugo, Avatar, Pan’s Labyrinth).

ASC - Cinematography – Nominee
In the past, if there’s a “surprise” winner of the Cinematography award, it makes some intuitive sense. That's not A Star Is Born. No one is in a hurry to praise A Star Is Born’s cinematography. This award isn’t that susceptible to wave wins either. So, even if A Star Is Born wins big, Cinematography is likely to go elsewhere.

Never Look Away
Roma and Cold War have sucked all the air out of the room in the category for foreign films. I could maybe see Never Look Away getting past one but not both.

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