Cinematography of 2012

The Tree of Life - Emmanuel Lubezki

 

It couldn't be anyone else (although it was almost Robert Richardson). Terrence Malick's films always boasted exceptional cinematography, and The Tree of Life easily stands as the best of the bunch. From dreamlike memories of 1950s domestic life - both blissful & sinister - to absurdly ambitious depictions of the birth & infant years of the universe. Exceptional & impressive in every way.  

Hugo - Robert Richardson

Warm, glowing & perfect in every detail, Robert Richardson's swoon-worthy work for Martin Scorsese's epic but intimate masterpiece almost overtook The Tree of Life for first place. Where Tree of Life has an endless stream of unforgettable images, Hugo has single frames filled with so much incredible detail, you could press pause & just stare for hours. It puts Paris on an impossibly high pedestal.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - Hoyte van Hoytema

Dusty, stuffy & always perfectly composed, Hoyte van Hoytema's lensing is quiet & unobtrusive while it sucks you deeply into both the period & the dizzying plot. Looking like a spy thriller lifted straight out of the 70s, it manages to pay homage while creating iconic images all its own (the sound-proof room... the landing strip conversation...)

Martha Marcy May Marlene - Jody Lee Lipes

You could write essays on Martha's mental state based solely on the images composed by Jody Lee Lipes. Shot almost entirely in long, unhurried shots that, together with the editing & performances, create the ambiguous tension of Martha's existence. Subtle & unflashy, but exceptional.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Jeff Cronenweth

Shot on digital in gloomy alleys, apartments, libraries, & the notorious Vanger family island, Jeff Cronenweth's images are by turns intimate, sinister & shocking; always soaking up every last ounce of atmosphere, facial flinch or particular shade of black.  

Hanna - Alwin H Kuchler

There are massive tonal shifts in Hanna, & Alwin Kuchler's cinematography negotiates them all perfectly. From the intimate danger of Hanna's snow hunting to her first teenage experiences on the back of a motorbike, through the diverse escape & fight sequences in underground chambers, dilapidated playgrounds, shipping docks & abandoned theme parks to the cherry on top: a thrilling single-take that follows Eric Bana out of a train station, down an escalator into an empty subway & through a visceral fist fight with a small army of hit men. Exceptional, exciting & effective.     

Drive - Newton Thomas Sigel

Wrapping it's characters in a perpetual warm neon glow, Newton Thomas Sigel makes 80s retro look cooler than ever while enhancing the graceful tension of director Nicolas Winding Refn's pacing. Through the occasional emergence of human warmth & explosions of unexpected violence on screen, Sigel's camera remains as cool & collected as the Driver. 

War Horse - Janusz Kaminski

All the sentimentality of War Horse is forgivable solely on the grounds of how gorgeous it looks. From sun-kissed farmlands to the misty trenches of no man's land, War Horse is ever a thing of painterly beauty.

The Artist - Guillaume Schiffman

The Artist's Hollywood is not a flashy, glitzy Hollywood, but a quietly inventive perspective of one man's life in the movies. Remarkably gorgeous for a simple, uncluttered film shot in grainy period black & white.  

We Need to Talk About Kevin - Seamus McGarvey

A movie that drenches you in blood & violence without showing any actual violence & precious little blood. The colour red refuses to leave the Khatchadourian family alone, while Kevin's expressive eating habits take on a disturbing life of their own. Seamus McGarvey's camera brings director Lynne Ramsay's vision to life.

Honourable mentions:

Jane Eyre - Adriano Goldman

Midnight in Paris - Darius Khondji

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 

- Eduardo Serra

Another Earth - Mike Cahill

Moneyball - Wally Pfeister

Film Music of 2011

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross

From sparse, eerie pianos that know all the evil in Lisbeth Salander's world to restrained sonic landscapes layered with industrial noises & looping rythms, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross's score for Fincher's latest is clearly distinct from their Oscar winning (& Hanz Zimmer beating) Social Network score, & fits Fincher's new film like a black latex glove. A bold, ambient electro metal score that is gloomy, mesmerising &, when it needs to be, truly unsettling.     

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Alberto Iglesias

Rich, classy & atmospheric, Alberto Iglesias' score perfectly compliments the reserved intruigue of Tomas Alfredson's masterfully detailed film. The jazzy horns nearly bumped it to first place.

Hanna 
The Chemical Brothers 
(Tom Rowlands & Ed Simons)

The grinding beats for the fight & chase scenes are easiest to remember, with good reason, but the Chemical Brothers' score for Joe Wright's coming-of-age thriller is far more than a thumping electro score cut to action sequences (although there's nothing wrong with that). The clip above includes two good examples of the score's more haunting, thematic parts: the lullaby vocals & baby mobile chimes of Hanna's Theme evoke Hanna's coming of age in a world of wonder & danger, while The Devil is in the Details channels the sound of a theme park carousel on its last legs to capture the film's demented fairy tale theme. A diverse, exciting score.

The Tree of Life
Alexandre Desplat

An epic, impressionist score for an epic, impressionist film that takes in family, childhood, dinosaurs, God, the universe & everything.

Drive
Cliff Martinez

The perfect score for the year's slickest film: smooth urban beats channeling the slick artifice of the 80s while building an undercurrent of romance, tension and real feeling. Compared to Martinez's also excellent Contagion score, its the restrained atmospherics of Drive that really impress. Give this clip, for example, at least a minute to kick off, and two to really impress. Retro synth pop tunes from College, Electric Youth, Lovefox & Desire don't hurt either. 

The Artist
Ludovic Bource

A score that spans the film's full running time & speaks on behalf of its characters, channelling Hollywood circa 1930. Despite Kim Novak's accusations that the romatic themes ripped off Bernard Herrman's classic Vertigo score, this is still an epic, massively charming & effectively nostalgic achievement. 

Rango
Hans Zimmer

Inventive, playful, occasionally raucous Mexican flavoured western score.

Jane Eyre
Dario Marianelli

Weighty, brooding pianos & soaring strings to match Jane's hidden passion & heavy heart.

The Adventures of Tin Tin
John Williams

Like a brisk stroll down a cobbled European street suddenly diverting into an unexpected adventure: a playful, adventurer's score with jazzy basslines & interesting instrumentation.

Take Shelter
David Wingo


A minimal, mysterious score of ambience, dissonance & rhythmic bell sounds, reflecting the eerie uncertainty at the core of Take Shelter and building up to an emotionally epic climax.


Near Misses:

Hugo - Howard Shore

Moneyball - Mychael Danna

Another Earth - Fall on Your Sword

The Descendants - Various

Drive - Review

Much like this year's unlikely Oscar juggernaut, Drive is a stylised character study set in the world of movie-making, drenched in nostaligia & paying homage to genre films of a a bygone era by aping their style, with music doing the talking for a (mostly) silent character. But, like the praise inevitably afforded to any above average biographic performance, Drive goes beyond mere mimicry.

The setup is classic B-grade: an enigmatic Hollywood stunt driver moonlights as a criminal getaway driver. He lives a safely isolated existence, controlled by a strict set of cool sounding rules, until he falls for the girl next door & gets caught up in a battle of wits with ruthless gangsters & ex-Hollywood producers; but Nicolas Winding Refn's execution is pure, candy-coated style with flashes of jarring violence & characters that somehow breathe human inside their genre universe.

Of Gosling's three starring roles this year, Drive is by far his most exciting, taking in the legendary cool of Steve McQueen and the character intensity of a young DeNiro. It's an iconic, uber cool addition to his already diverse & impressive resume, while the rest of the cast is uniformly excellent, edgy & left field: Albert Brooks stands out as a charismatic, oddly considerate, often jovial, but ultimately deadly gangster & Carey Mulligan is utterly beguiling as the sweet but damaged girl next door but even Oscar Isaac, Ron Perlman, Christina Hendricks & Bryan Cranston bring distinct vitality to their small parts.

Cannes winning director Nicolas Winding Refn goes for broke, steeping every frame with distinct  atmosphere, pace & slick 80s cool. His plot unwinds slowly, tightly & ultimately explosively, washed in slickly detailed sets & outfits, lush lighting & photography, slow fading edits & Cliff Martinez's unashamedly electro-awesome score. Winding Refn has made a film that effectively reflects its enigmatic central character: immaculately groomed, low on words, a bit strange, quietly human & occasionally ultra violent.

A carefully personalised piece of genre film making & a welcome addition to 2011's Best Of list.

Drive - first official trailer

Official Trailer! Yes! It is Red Band, so apply appropriate caution if you are underage / sensitive...

& Carey Mulligan Clip:

Is Ryan Gosling driving 3 of 2011's Oscar vehicles?

Ryan Gosling has a reputation for being picky about his projects, but clearly good scripts are rolling in, and he has chosen very well this year. After last year's Oscar snub for Blue Valentine, he is back with a vengeance. 


The trailer for George Clooney's latest political thriller, The Ides of March, lands just in time to meet strong  reviews calling Gosling's Crazy, Stupid, Love 'fresh', 'crazy smart', 'romantic, touching... and screwball, yet reassuringly down-to-earth' and 'flirting with greatness' (okay, I just took the good stuff).

Although Crazy, Stupid, Love was arguably intended to belong to Steve Carrell and Julianne Moore, Ryan Gosling & Emma Stone are getting all the best reviews. Gosling plays flawlessly smooth playboy , Jacob, who has to come to grips with messy feelings when he unexpectedly falls for Emma Stone's Hannah. Gosling is being hailed for showing comic timing as sharp as his abs, although Emma Stone - hot off last year's Easy A -seems to be the real revelation. It's not typical Oscar fare, but with 10 slots, a classy cast and good reviews could take it far if it has significant box office numbers. 


Ides of March comes with ready-made Oscar pedigree, and would have to disappoint to miss out. Its also a meaty role for Gosling, as he navigates the ethics and betrayals of high-stakes politics, and plays off a top-notch ensemble cast.  





Still due for general release is the ultimate Gosling vehicle of 2011 - Nicolas Winding Refn's critically raved - & Cannes Best Director Winner - Drive. Gosling plays a loner Los Angeles wheelman, stunt driving for movie productions by day and steering getaway vehicles for armed heists by night, slowly drawn into a relationship with his neighbour - the lovely Carey Mulligan - by her ex-convict husband. More importantly, Winding Refn stacks up tension and unpredictability like a master, and Gosling inhabits the screen with epic presence, and brings human intensity to the action. An Oscar-contending performance, according to Sasha Stone over at Awards Daily.

Drive - movie clip

Perhaps I am just seeing what I want to see, but Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive looks promisingly fresh & intense. Cinematography & subdued score very effective.

We will soon know more when the first reviews start coming out of Cannes.

We can confirm this: There Will Be Driving

Ryan Gosling in Drive, the Ides of March & Logan's Run!

After 3 quiet years between Lars and the Real Girl and Blue Valentine, Ryan Gosling is back & churning out quality new projects like they were easy to find in Hollywood.

All Good Things

In addition to his Oscar-overlooked Blue Valentine, Gosling rounded off 2010 with another acclaimed performance as enigmatic rich kid in true-life murder mystery / love story All Good Things, with Kirsten Dunst & Frank Langella. I still have flashbacks of wanting to throttle Dunst in Elizabethtown, and the trailer (below) is pretty bad. But the film looks interesting & Gosling brilliant as ever:

Crazy, Stupid Love

Next year, Gosling is headlining 3 high profile movies:

First, he tries his hand at comedy / lighter drama opposite Steve Carrell, Julianne Moore & Emma Stone (nice cast) as womaniser Jacob Palmer (whose cold heart melts when he meets his true love, as usual) in Crazy, Stupid Love. Cool trailer below. 

The Ides of March

Then he joins one heck of a cast (Evan Rachel Wood, Marisa Tomei, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Geoffrey Wright) in George Clooney & Grant Heslov's adaptation of Beau Willimon's  play, political drama The Ides of March. Clooney & Heslov's last outing together was the brilliant Good Night and Good Luck, so colour this one 'excited'.









Lastly, Gosling headlines Drive as a Hollywood stuntman / getaway driver using his skills to protect Carey Mulligan, her baby & himself from sinister forces in Nicolas Winding Refn's adaptation of James Sellis's acclaimed novel. Debuting at Cannes, so it's not that kind of action thriller. I hope.

In other news, Gosling recently signed up again with Nicolas Winding Refn for his upcoming adaptation of sci fi classic, Logan's Run, about a future where life is perfect, but ends at 30, and was briefly attached (or rumoured to be) to Gore Verbinski & Jerry Bruckheimer's The Lone Ranger, with Johnny Depp as Tonto. He is no longer attached (or rumoured to be) to the latter, but looks like Logan's Run is happening.

TRAILERS & POSTERS AFTER THE CUT