Oscar's Best Cinematography 2023

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Best Cinematography goes to...?
20.00%
3 votes
Roger Deakins, Empire of Light
53.33%
8 votes
James Friend, All Quiet on the Western Front
0%
0 votes
Florian Hoffmeister, Tár
6.67%
1 votes
Darius Khondji, Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
20.00%
3 votes
Mandy Walker, Elvis
15 votes. You may not vote on this poll




The five nominees are...

Roger Deakins, Empire of Light


James Friend, All Quiet on the Western Front


Florian Hoffmeister, Tár


Darius Khondji, Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths


Mandy Walker, Elvis

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Wait, 'Decision to Leave' didn't get a single nomination in any category, let alone cinematography?

I have to assume it was ineligible for this years awards or something.



Roger Deakins, I guess
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Wait, 'Decision to Leave' didn't get a single nomination in any category, let alone cinematography?

I have to assume it was ineligible for this years awards or something.
It was eligible, and was submitted for best international film, but was shut out. Very disappointing.



It was eligible, and was submitted for best international film, but was shut out. Very disappointing.
That's simply extraordinary. Or absolutely unsurprising, depending on your viewpoint.



The trick is not minding
That's simply extraordinary. Or absolutely unsurprising, depending on your viewpoint.
I’d have to watch the others first, as I’ve only seen AQoTWF, but I have Argentina, 1985 queued up to watch soon.

Eo looks, quite frankly, weak. I’ll probably watch Au Hasard Bathazar this coming month first.



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I thought All Quiet was quite lame. I especially wasn't even really wowed by it's cinematography. I agree with Gideon Banshees deserved a nom over it.



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Shocked that The Banishees of Inisherin didn't get in here...that movie was breathtaking to look at.
How much of that is just because it's set in such a picturesque location, though? I liked the movie a lot, but I never thought the cinematography was particularly exceptional.
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Setting a movie in Ireland is just cheating.


I feel like The Batman was robbed here, that movie looked amazing.



Setting a movie in Ireland is just cheating.


I feel like The Batman was robbed here, that movie looked amazing.

Yeah, now that I think of it, The Batman definitely deserved a nomination in this category.





Florian Hoffmeister is enjoying his first nomination. The German-born cinematographer got his start in German and then British television series and movies. He made an impressive leap to features with Terence Davies Deep Blue Sea (2011) and has had somewhat uneven jobs since then including the Johnny Depp dud of a would-be-comedy Mortdecai (2015), Scott Cooper’s moody horror flick Antlers (2021), the Apple TV+ series ”Pachinko” (2022), and the upcoming fourth series of HBO’s ”True Detective” starring Jodie Foster. Tár is crisply shot but it lacks any of the inventiveness or scope that usually wins this award.




This is also the first nomination of James Friend and this remake of All Quiet on the Western Front is his feature film debut. He has worked in several television projects including to the Showtime series ”Your Honor” starring Bryan Cranston and Disney+’s "Willow". All Quiet on the Western Front picked up some big surprise nominations, including Best Picture. The original Lewis Milestone adaptation won Best Picture at the third ever Academy Awards while the cinematography lost to the documentary With Byrd at the South Pole. I don’t think Friend will win here but he is a young talent to keep an eye on.




Mandy Walker is the third of the first-time nominees in this category. She is Australian and only the third woman ever nominated here, the other two being fellow Australian Ari Wegner for last year’s Power of the Dog and Rachel Morrison for Mudbound (2017). This is her second round with Baz Luhrmann, having also lensed his would-be epic Australia (2008). The first time I noticed her work was for the underrated Lantana (2001). Since then she shot Billy Ray’s Shattered Glass (2003), John Curran’s Tracks (2013), Gavin O’Connor’s Jane Got a Gun (2015), Ted Melfi’s Hidden Figures (2016), and the live-action remake of Disney’s Mulan (2020). Personally I found Luhrmann’s Elvis to be relentlessly hollow and silly, but as with all of his movies like them or lump them they are at least bright and flashy…though Moulin Rouge! is the only one of his previous features to be nominated for its cinematography (LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring won). Will this latest take on The King of Rock & Roll’s life be the first female winner for cinematography?




Iranian-born Darius Khondji is a well-known veteran, though this is somehow only his second career Oscar nomination having been tagged previously for Oliver Stone’s adaptation of Evita (1996) – the year The English Patient won. But Khondi has the kind of stellar resume that should have netted him at least four or five more nominations and a win or two. His credits include David Fincher’s SE7EN (1995) and Panic Room (2002), Caro & Jeunet’s Delicatessen (1991) and City of Lost Children (1995), Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty (1996), Polanski’s The Ninth Gate (1999), Danny Boyle’s The Beach (2000), Wong Kar-Wai’s My Blueberry Nights (2007), Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2011), Michael Haneke’s Amour (2012) and Funny Games (2007) remake, Bong Joon-Ho’s Okja (2017), the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems (2019), and James Gray’s The Immigrant (2013) and Armageddon Time (2022). Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths is his -esque, personal, impressionistic dream trip, and though it may be little-seen, for anyone who actually bothered it is undoubtedly a visual feast. This is the third Iñárritu film to be nominated in this category, the other two were wins for Emmanuel Lubezki (Birdman and The Revenant). Bardo is Alejandro’s first feature since that award-winning pair and it may get Darius Khondji his long overdue statue.




Roger Deakins is one of the living legends of cinematography. After his first thirteen nominations confusingly went without a win he won back-to-back overdue Oscars for Blade Runner 2049 and 1917. Empire of Light is his sixteenth nomination, closer and closer to the eighteen career nominations held by both Leon Shamroy (Leave Her to Heaven, Cleopatra) and Charles Lang (One-Eyed Jacks, A Farewell to Arms). As long as he doesn’t drop dead he will very likely catch and pass them. This is Deakins' fifth collaboration with Sam Mendes (Jarhead, Revolutionary Road, Skyfall, and 1917). Despite the pedigree of the project, Deakins’ is the only nomination Empire of Light received. If Deakins was still somehow Oscar-less you’d have to predict he wins just because he had to at some point. It is beautifully shot, of course, though this melancholy love letter to cinema is hardly anything new, visually.



I forgot the opening line.
I've seen 4/5 as far as Best Cinematography goes - I haven't seen Empire of Light yet. It's the hardest for me to pick, because I thought all 4 I've seen so far have strong cases to put forward. I'm leaning towards Darius Khondji for Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths. It really struck a chord with me in a visual sense, and seemed most inventive and special. I think All Quiet on the Western Front and Elvis are favourites.
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Very cool Bardo got a little love here. Movie looks spectacular. I voted for All Quiet though. How gorgeous that movie is was definitely the highlight for me. Glad the movie got so many noms, because I think I was probably going to skip it, and it’s very good.

Haven’t seen Empire. Should rectify that soon.
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I loved Empire of Light, but I am sure All Quiet will win this one. War movies always have the upper hand.
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Mandy Walker did win the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Award last night for Elvis over only two of the four films she's facing come Oscar night (Empire of Light and Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths). But while the ASC also nominated The Batman and Top Gun: Maverick the Academy nominated All Quiet on the Western Front and Tár.

Walker is the first woman to ever win the ASC Award and a woman has yet to win the Oscar. Will she be the first there, too? If you want to use this guild award as a precursor it isn't very efficient. The Cinematographers began bestowing their own awards for the 1986 season of movies. In those thirty-six ceremonies since then their winner has matched Oscar's only seventeen times (47%). They have matched for the past three years straight (Dune, Mank, and 1917) but that ties the longest streak ever for the two being in synch. Three in a row happened only two other times with Braveheart, The English Patient, and Titanic from 1995-1997 and Lubezki's trio of Gravity, Birdman, and The Revenant from 2013-2015.

All of THAT would suggest that Elvis may not be winning next week. I still think it may go to Darius Khondji for his lifetime of greatness and never having won an Oscar before as much as for his work on Bardo.