Four of the five nominees here match with the American Society of Cinematographers top award:
Mank, Nomadland, News of the World, and
The Trial of the Chicago 7. The one difference is Newton Thomas Sigel's work for the Russo Brothers'
Cherry was substituted for
Judas and the Black Messiah by that voting body.
This is
Sean Bobbit's first Oscar nomination, in spite of an excellent filmography. His first feature credit was Michael Winterbottom's
Wonderland (1999) and after that he did a lot of television, shorts, and documentaries. A few of those smaller projects were with director Steve McQueen. When he made the jump to features Bobbit has been his DP ever since for
Hunger (2008),
Shame (2011),
12 Years a Slave (2013), and
Widows (2018). In addition to that collaboration he’s also lensed Derek Cianfrance's
The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Neil Jordan's
Byzantium (2012), Spike Lee's
Oldboy (2013) re-make, Michael Cuesta's
Kill the Messenger (2014), Mira Nair's
Queen of Katwe (2016), David Gordon Green's
Stronger (2017), and last year Reed Morano's
The Rhythm Section as well as Shaka King's
Judas and the Black Messiah. Bobbit is a longer shot to actually win this year, but now that he has broken through he will likely be back.
Joshua James Richards is also a first-time nominee and
Nomadland only his fourth feature. He has shot all three of Chloé Zhao’s flicks. The indie success of
The Rider (2017) brought both the director and her cinematographer some attention and that has jumped to the next level with
Nomadland. Joshua also served as the film’s production designer. The look of heightened cinematic naturalism serves the project well. The no-frills verité camera capturing the isolation and occasional beauty of the transient lifestyle and the mostly non-professional actors worked perfectly. While his fellow cinematographers appreciated the effort I’m not sure if it will play “big enough" to capture votes from the other disciplines? Zhao did not bring Richards along for her MCU adventure
The Eternals (for that they used Ben Davis who has already shot
Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Doctor Strange, and
Captain Marvel) but when she inevitably returns to more personal filmmaking I suspect Joshua will be collaborating with her.
Dariusz Wolski also gets his first Oscar nomination, though he has been working in features since the early 1990s. After lensing dozens of music videos in the 1980s he made the leap to features with the likes of Peter Medak’s neo-noir
Romeo is Bleeding (1993), Alex Proyas’
The Crow (1994) and
Dark City (1998), Tony Scott’s
Crimson Tide (1995) and
The Fan (1996), Tim Burton’s
Sweeney Todd (2007) and
Alice in Wonderland (20120), and Ridley Scott’s
Prometheus (2012),
The Counselor (2013),
Exodus: Gods & Kings (2014),
The Martian (2015),
Alien: Covenant (2017), and
All the Money in the World (2017). He also shot all (so-far) of the
Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
News of the World is his first pairing with Paul Greengrass as well as his first true Western. The movie missed out on the big nominations like Best Picture and Best Actor picking up only Best Sound, Best Production Design, and Best Original Score nods (James Newton Howard’s ninth nomination). That may seem to make its Oscar odds unlikely here, but Best Cinematography is rarely paired with Best Picture these days, and a handful of the winners from this century have triumphed without the bigger nominations (
Blade Runner 2049, Memoirs of a Geisha, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Road to Perdition) so it would not be unheard of.
Phedon Papamichael is the only member of this class to have a previous nomination. It came for his black & white work in Alexander Payne’s
Nebraska (2013) where he lost that year to Emmanuel Lubezki and
Gravity, the beginning of Lubezki’s historic three-year run of Academy Award wins. Some of Phedon’s most high-profile credits in his over thirty-year career include
Ford v Ferrari (2019),
The Ides of March (2011),
The Descendants (2011),
3:10 to Yuma (2007),
Walk the Line (2005),
Sideways (2004), and
Identity (2003). Like
Judas and the Black Messiah Sorkin and Papamichael recreate late ‘60s Chicago, including the infamous riots around the Democratic National Convention and of course the resulting trial. Of the two projects, personally I give the edge to
Judas and the Black Messiah. But we’ll see how the Oscar voting pool feels and if maybe these two essentially cancel each other out?
Since the Academy dispensed with giving separate awards for color and black & white cinematography after the 1967 ceremony, in those fifty-three years there have only been fourteen primarily black & white features nominated:
In Cold Blood (1967),
The Last Picture Show (1971),
Lenny (1974),
Raging Bull (1980),
Schindler’s List (1993),
The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001),
Good Night, and Good Luck (2005),
The White Ribbon (2009),
Nebraska (2013),
Ida (2014),
Cold War (2018),
Roma (2018),
The Lighthouse (2019), and now
Mank (2020). It is definitely trending upwards as half of those noms have come in the last eleven years. The only two wins thus far are Janusz Kamiński for
Schindler’s List and Alfonso Cuarón shooting his own
Roma.
David Fincher is one of the most visually influential directors of his generation. Perhaps surprisingly given that calling card this is only the fourth of his movies to get a nomination in this category. Claudio Miranda was nominated for
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (
Slumdog Millionaire won) and Jeff Cronenweth was nominated in back-to-back years for both
The Social Network and
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (
Inception and
Hugo took the Oscars).
Mank has a fever dream quality to it while also hitting some of the visual tropes that Gregg Toland and Welles invented for
Citizen Kane (1941). That collaboration was incredibly influential right from the get-go, though it did not win the Oscar that year. With ten films nominated for their black & white photography it was Arthur C. Miller’s work on John Ford’s Best Picture winner
How Green Was My Valley that bested
Kane.
Erik Messerschmidt worked his way up the old-fashioned way, from grip and gaffer and lighting technician to shooting some second until footage. One of these jobs included being gaffer on
Gone Girl. Apparently Fincher saw something he liked a whole heck of a lot because he promoted him to director of photography for his Netflix series
”Mindhunter” and now Erik makes his proper feature debut as a cinematographer with
Mank. It is certainly the most ambitious and complex of the five nominees. Will that translate into an Oscar statue?