Life of Pi Oscar 'an insult to cinematography'

We are talking about cinematography in this topic, not the films as a whole. Saying that, Skyfall still blasts Life of Pi out of the water for me in every way.

If Avatar can win it, why cant Pi? For me it was not a good movie anyways.

I haven't looked it up yet, since I don't really follow the Oscars or any awards for that matter, but if there is no category for CGI or special effects then I think that needs to happen, and until it does happen, cinematography should go to movies like that as long as there are no other movies with real cinematography to compete (which these days there aren't many).

Also, The Artist was a great movie. First of all, it's not entirely a silent picture. And second, there is so much more depth to it than that aspect. Beside the fact that in this day in age it could pull off being a silent black and white film and still gain a popular audience, it not only showed the value of silent film stars, but also the entire movement, all the while through symbolism and multiple layers. Nevermind the fact that, yes, it did have great cinematography and directing. If you cannot see this about that movie, then you either have no appreciation for film, no appreciation for history/social studies (can't think of the right word right now), or both.

EDIT: Also let's not forget that awards like that are popularity contests anyway, only even considering box office successes. Have you ever heard a movie nominated that didn't have huge advertising campaigns or its name in magazines for months? Come on now, it's a business, whether we like it or not.

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You have a segment called Visual Effect. The Oscar boards are not all full of duds!

Movies like Pi and Avatar should be eligible for this segment. Not Cinematography.

Hurt Locker.

^I'm confused by your reference to The Hurt Locker in response to that quote.

Hurt Locker was not a box office success, that is what i was trying to say by your statement of awards are given based on box office success.

Oscars committee does have a tendency to go with the fan favorite and have made some disasters in awards. But you have to admit, they do get it right most of the time.

i think most of the time the nominees are all for the most part really excellent movies. but the choices just seem limited, since ive seen other much better movies that would never be nominated. example, i personally like festival winners, like cannes, much better than oscar winners, but they seem to be in two different categories in terms of business politics.

aaaaand i have to say, i looked up the stats on hurt locker and apparently it has incredible reviews and was a box office hit. but more importantly my point was that they're only movies which are known by everyone, they've become common knowledge they've gotten so much hype. even before i'd seen a dvd case of the movie i'd heard of the hurt locker. every movie nominated has been heard of even by those not up to date with popular culture. i guess thats a better way to explain it

Hurt Locker raked in the money after winning the Oscar. Till the Oscars its net gross in US was only 12M if recall correctly (newspaper). It worked worldwide. US business was pretty poor. 15M budget and only 15.5M earned according to IMDB.

http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2009/HURTL.php

^^Nice site!

Cannes, you have to say that is a global show, so the database of movies shown would be of a much wider range. So you would have better movies there always.

Hollywood - Good.
Global Cinema - Better.

But oscars is only for Hollywood. So they have to work with what they have got... right?

I wouldn't consider it working with what they have got when they only work with 7-8 films throughout most of the categories

the article i saw, it wasnt releases in US until like a year after its original release, did really well, and was in the next years oscars.

O' Brother Where Art Thou was the first film to be digitally colour graded, giving the entire film the sepia tone you see. Beautiful....but Deakins did not physically do it. Someone at a computer did. He sat there and told them what to do, so why is it so hard to believe that Claudio Miranda did the same thing? How many films are colour graded digitally now? One of the most important people in the VFX room is the DOP believe it or not.

I'm not going to get into a debate about Life of Pi and whether or not it should have won, but I honestly believe Avatar won because nothing like that had been done before and the cinematographer had to throw basically everything out the window and start from scratch, nothing had been shot with 3D cameras at the time.

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