Oscar 2012 - Cinematography

Although I'm generally disappointed by the last year's movies, I still have to admit that there are a few sections which individually taken (and exclusively) for what they are offering, do not leave room for negative opinion. And the cinematography it's actually pretty much yearly sufficiently high to put you in doubt about any prediction.

"The Artist" - Guillaume Schiffman - is again the "different" entry due to it's black & white cinematography. The final result, starting with the dimensions up to the nuances wants to be something close to what you could have seen in cinemas in the '20s (well .. with the quality of the film of the present days and both the much lesser degradation factor). The movie was shot in color in the original, and the changes were applied after, but the result looks excellent. And it's not just about the color, but also the framing, etc. I find to be hard to predict something here, also because Schiffman (of whom I didn't hear up to this moment, working apparently only in the French cinema) just got the BAFTA. However ... the last movie in black & white that I remember to get the Oscar was "Schindler's List" (filmed directly in black & white). "The White Ribbon", recently nominated and "The Man Who Wasn't There" a bit older (which visually is a masterpiece although I've seen it in color, both being shot using the same subsequent "decoloring" procedure) passed unnoticed. So, the next one ...



"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" - Jeff Cronenweth - is probably the least likely to win here, but I can say that I loved what I've seen in it. The cinematography it's probably the biggest difference (positive one) from the original Swedish version. I have to admit that I am slightly subjective, because I have a weakness for filters and here we have cold ones alternating on the present action (and maintaining part of the eerie atmosphere) with warm tones, even close to sepia, covering basically all the flashbacks. Besides these the movie really has some exceptional shots, the type that you'll remember (at least in theory :) ) probably even after one year from seeing the movie = one example - the first trip in the car to the Vanger house. The last year I was totally unimpressed by the nomination Cronenweth got for "The Social Network". This year I would place him the second in my valor scale. However, as I was saying .. I doubt that he has any chances from the American Academy ...



"Hugo" - Robert Richardson - is the only 3D from the nominees, and probably that's its advantage (if it has any advantage). I don't know anyway how much from the 3D is actually part of the cinematography. If I would make a personal top, Richardson for me is at the first place in the list of who works at Hollywood in this area (overall I remain a devoted fan of Christopher Doyle, but I can't remember when that guy appeared on the credits of a mainstream movie outside Asia). What I like is especially the way Richardson handles the chromatic - "Shutter Island" and "Inglorious Basterds" being just two recent examples. Although "Hugo" looks very good, I think a big contribution to this is brought by the production design, and in lesser extent by the cinematography. On top of that, I'm not the biggest 3D fan and to cut it short, we have other titles that are I think at least more original on the visuals this year.



"The Tree of Life" - Emmanuel Lubezki - is I guess, although completely ignored at BAFTA, the most entitled to take a cinematography award this year, and I really think it will be like that (although I wouldn't bet ...). About the movie, I can say for now that it was a pleasant surprise. More, generally speaking I'll tell some other time. Because it's not the case to mix to much stuff now when I should be talking about the visuals. The problem is that I don't really know what to tell. It's probably the most different image from the five nominees talking about framing and focus. Stuff that really gives a note of originality. But the really nice part is that this doesn't come gratuitously, it's somehow in a similar tone with what we can call the action of the move and it helps a lot for the "watchability". Overall (= including also the VFX) I can say that visually the movie offers you something close to the feeling, if not over what "The Fountain" did (if the title doesn't sound familiar, you should watch it - if it sounds, I didn't pick it randomly having some common elements somewhere more or less in depth). The cinematography is clearly the part that gives weight to this production, and for me also the main reason to be seen.



"War Horse" - Janusz Kaminski - is the outdoor movie, in what we have here. Large spaces, panoramas, war scenes, stuff like that. Filmul has anyway also some very nice close-ups (= I got stuck in my head with a gros-plan with a reflection in horse's eye). I can't figure anyway how it could impress enough to grab an Oscar, mostly after the surprise (sort of) from last year when "True Grit" missed the award, being also outdoors, being also above what's here, and with Roger Deakins at his eighth nominee I guess without an Oscar. And talking about awards, Kaminski, the main cinematographer who works with Spielberg, did clearly better movies before (I mentioned "Schindler's List" a bit earlier).



Since my free time is shrinking down, with one week left until the Oscars, and since anyway I'm writing in quite a rush, I guess next time I'll jump to the final categories directly.

Oscar 2012 - Film Editing

There is said that at the Oscars the award for film editing announced the final one for best movie. I have no idea where I heard that, and I don't really believe it (a clear example: last year wasn't like this .. and still .. this year sounds more plausible). But let's check out the nominees ...

"The Artist" is I guess the best placed here. First, it's something different from the rest because the cuts in the scenes for the written inserts is something you see only in a silent movie. To that add also the air of the '20s at the way the scenes flow under your eyes. More exactly .. the line of the story in this movie is unrolled especially through the editing, not having any lines and it's something sufficiently well done so you won't feel the need for any dialogue (= short scenes + fast switching between frames). And to add something more (well .. let's say so) with one exception I'm pretty disappointed by the rest of the nominees here, so I don't see much competition.



I wrote about "The Descendants" last month. I don't remember saying anything about the editing. That's because, like the rest of the more technical aspects (having as exception the score & sound) is not that obvious. The only scene that stuck into my head (and that's also probably the reason why there is a clip with it + they included in the trailer) in which you can "feel" a bit the effect of what the editing does is obviously an alert one.



I liked the editing in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". It's sufficiently "helpful" for keeping the cold air and in the same time tensed that the movie has. And for looks a bit above what the same team (Angus Wall & Kirk Baxter) managed to do last year when they got the Oscar for "The Social Network". If I should choose according to my liking a movie from here it would be pretty hard to decide between this one and "The Artist". Dar obiectiv vorbind parca as merge pe varianta muta ;)



"Hugo" has as editor the all-time movie collaborator of Scorsese and a recognized name in this area: Thelma Schoonmaker. And this should mean two things: 1. there are clearly chances for an Oscar 2. if we look at the films the nominee has in her CV starting from before "Raging Bull" (as a sole example) and we make a comparison ... the chances here are mostly due inertia. But still "The Artist" has more.



Finally we have "Moneyball". Where I see no reason to be here besides filling the number of five nominees. I didn't even found (again ... after "the sound" entry) a clip to be very appropriate ...



Next time = very soon, something more interesting considering this year's nominees -> cinematography ;)

Oscar 2012 - Art Direction

This week I intend to do a posting marathon (at least compared to the usual rate of one/week) despite the fact that it's the last thing on a long list I really must get done (yeah, obviously I'm complaining again at the start of the entry, I'll do that forever - or at least until I'll get my pension and retire, live with it :p). To get faster to the subject anyway .. today art direction aka production design & set decoration aka shortly .. actually I won't stay and explain like list year because as I said I have no time, so I'll just quote:

" From early in pre-production, the production designer collaborates with the director and director of photography to establish the visual feel and specific aesthetic needs of the project. The production designer guides key staff in other departments such as the costume designer, the key hair and make-up stylists, the special effects director and the locations manager (among others) to establish a unified visual appearance to the film. " (from Wikipedia)

.. with an accent on the scene setting (arrangement, props, etc) in regard to the Oscar category. So, who are the nominees ..

In "The Artist" we have here the recreation of the 20's Hollywood = the locations + the film sets include .. other film sets, streets with the aspect of that period (= cars, shops, etc), cinemas, etc. What is wanted after all is not just a look & feel supposedly identical to that epoch but even something more, something that should look also a bit like what you can see in the movies from that time. I can say that the outcome is quite ok and for me it would be probably the second here, but quite far from the top of the list ..



The last "Harry Potter" is excellent on art direction, but this is sufficiently supplemented by VFX (and I refer to the classic type, not only CGI). At some point, you get a bit confused where one starts and where the other ends. Besides this you might be tempted to say that being the last from the series is the best on this area but I wouldn't bet on it. However, it's a bit hard to start digging my memory about what and where I've seen in the other .. seven episodes ...



"Hugo" as winner for art direction is the safest prediction I can make this year (I'm even more sure about it than the score about I talked last time). And for me it's right to be so because what the couple Dante Ferretti & Francesca LoSchiavo managed to do here is absolutely delightful. They won some years ago the Oscar for Sweeney Todd which I liked almost exclusively for this part. What you get to see here is more than you had there. The train station, the Paris at the beginning of the XXth century, Melies' studio, the clocks, and many other stuff practically form more than two thirds of what creates the feeling of this movie. But it's probably better to stop with the writing and leave the clip below including a short summary to visually display what's been done.



I finished (alphabetically and not only) with the top of the list. I'll pass to the outsiders with "Midnight in Paris" which as "Hugo" has (if I would be mean I could say as a real disadvantage comparatively) the location setting also in Paris (obviously ...). Woody Allen brings a bit of fantasy in his characteristic social comic, the result being a story in which a screenwriter aspiring to become a novelist, gone in vacation along his fiancee and her parents, makes a transition night by night somewhere in other temporal dimension. More about this when we get to the best movie nominees. For art direction we don't have something terribly spectacular (= neither the originality in "The Artist", neither the variation in "Harry Potter", and I won't start talking about "Hugo"). Well, the movie doesn't require it. The result is anyway decent enough, talking about the interiors, the streets, etc, being quite nice to watch. For me actually, unlike other sections where I still got a bunch of "?", here I can say I agree with all the nominees.



"War Horse" ends the list for art direction placing the focus mostly on location setting, considering that probably more than 80% of the movie takes place in open air (filmed apparently almost entirely in UK). Besides this we have the specific stuff for the first WW .. guns .. canons .. other guns .. And that's pretty much about it ..



Next time = very soon -> film editing ;)

Oscar 2012 - Film Score

This is another category where I had to check twice to be sure I'm not having hallucinations about what's on the list. The thing is that considering what it got here we have a more easier result to foresee, being already quite predictable even before the nomination process. And like specially set to support it we have three of five OSTs this tear which have more or less a French first half of the XXth century "air" (= accordion parts & stuff like that). So, guess about which I'm talking ... Well, maybe it's not clear enough :) Conclusion: let me go through the entries anyway, although it doesn't make much sense to get very long in what's next, all I hope for is that the audio material to stay on YouTube for at least a while from now ...

"The Adventures of Tintin" is the first surprise. Especially considering that Spielberg's production got excluded from "best animation". To be honest it was a pretty lame year for this area (and not only) and my expectation about this title were a bit bigger than a simplified and compressed story a la Indiana Jones looking like made specifically for an under 10 target (well .. maybe it's the fact that I got frozen in a cinema hall as real cause for my disappointment ...). Still, for me it sounds better for this to be here than the other nomination of John Williams (or let me say it more straightly: sounds more original to be here)



"The Artist" with the music by Ludovic Bource is clearly the winner here. Leaving the statistics aside = the Globe + other awards, it's probably the only soundtrack this year that makes itself heard when you watch the move, obviously one reason being that the movie is silent. Maybe it's a matter of taste, but generally I prefer a soundtrack that you can feel it's there (= Zimmer, Mansel, Morricone would be some examples) and not one which only is fits with the action on screen sufficiently so you won't notice the silence periods (as in the 60's or the 70's). From here comes probably also the main merit in this score = it supplements at a decent level (I can't say that I was extremely impressed) "the silence". And also I guess it has a bit more personality than the rest. Besides that .. more about "The Artist" when talking about other sections, it's enough space there to do it.



"Hugo" is the last from the series of three with the "French air" (which is normal considering the action setting). If I were to do a top probably Howard Shore would be the main candidate at this Oscar, after the one above. But as real chances it still quite far, so let's not spend to much time here ...



"Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy" with the music by Alberto Iglesias is the second surprise on this category. And one which gives me the opportunity to get a bit off-topic and say a few things about the movie because I don't know when I'll be able to do it next. It was the main title on the "must see" list for me this spring, and probably because of this I got a bit disappointed of the outcome. It's a spy thriller set somewhere in the 60's-70's (maybe there is an exact date around there, I don't remember) having as main subject the return in service of a British counter-intelligence agent having the secret mission to unmask a soviet mole infiltrated at the top of the hierarchy. The main problem of the movie is the bunch of flashbacks poorly edited (despite the fact that BAFTA threw a nomination also here .. well, it's an UK movie) which doesn't make any favor to the narrative style belonging to John le Carre ("The Russia House" with Sean Connery & Michelle Pfeiffer suffered from the same disease long ago). The soundtrack however is ok, although regarding what I said above you can't really feel it and send you to sleep once in a while (note that the piece below is an alert one). But again .. I have to refer to John le Carre, and who has seen something else adapted after him ("The Spy Who Came in from the Cold", "The Constant Gardener", etc) could probably confirm that is nothing more appropriate than a melancholic, slow tone, with slight spikes here and there, cold on each piece, but warm as a whole. However, what's missing is a sufficiently strong theme to remember ...



"War Horse" brings the second nomination this year (and a pretty predictable one considering the lack of candidates) for John Williams. I have a problem (which maybe it's a bit more taste related, I don't know ...) about the music composed by this guy. I can't argue with the cinematic character of the track, generally speaking, not only for "War Horse". But either he composed too much, either he recycled too much from what he composed, so for me it's a bit hard to listen one of his soundtracks from beginning to the end without getting bored (the exception remains "Star Wars" and specifically "The Phantom Menace"). Unfortunately it's pretty much the same case here. As I said "Tintin" sounds slightly better for me.



Finally I'll allow myself to do this year something that I've never done before = to revolt about an absence - Cliff Martinez for "Drive". Yes, I know that in "Drive" what's more obvious on the soundtrack is the songs part, and yes, I know that the idea when evaluating this category is not as much how it sounds to you when you listen in your headphones but more how it fits into the movie. I have considered these, and the verdict still stands that it deserved at least a nominee, especially compared with what got on the above list this year ....

Oscar 2012 - Sound Editing & Mixing

I wanted to post on Tuesday this entry, but I didn't have the time so I'll get a more "dense" weekend = I'll probably be back on Sunday with what we have for soundtracks this year. But until there, let's get back to the "pure sound". To summarized what is what, "editing" implies pretty much everything related to preprocessing, effects, ADR (dubbing over the initial recording), etc and "mixing" to be short, the merging of everything that's sound related (including the music parte aka "the soundtrack") into a final track that's what you finally hear. Not clear yet ? Check this out : http://www.mpse.org/education/whatis.html .

As usual (I'm actually starting to wonder if it's not something like a written rule somewhere ...) we have six movies here, from which four have a common nomination on both mixing and editing, and two only one on each side. Still as usual (at least I don't remember anything in the last years to contradict this ...) the two less nominated can be basically cut off the list as chances to win. ... But I see that I start forgetting the purpose of these entries which is less speculating Oscar predictions and more discussing the actual movies, so let's get to the point:

I wrote about "Drive" last year when I got four years of blogging. And I guess I said there how good is this movie regarding the sound. For what's strictly related to its nominee - only editing - I can tell that I remember even now after three months that's not only about screeches and engines sound but also Foley (check the link above) + something on which my ear (probably a bit deaf ...) doesn't get impressed very often: the volume fluctuations. But I assume that I already start to bore with what I'm rambling about, so I don't know if it's really the case to get into technical details that are anyway far from me to know them at a sufficient level. The thing is that in the end, strictly speaking between the score, mixing and editing the nominee came for the last. And the last no matter the level of appreciation from my war it's still not as good as the first two (what I was saying above about the volume + what the guy below tells about the elevator scene are more related with the mixing). This is one of the many weird things that I avoided to discuss about the nominees from this year. To conclude (considering also the "statistics" for chances had by movies uniquely nominated), although I'd like to be wrong, I doubt that "Drive" has much chance.



"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" - with a double nominee here - it's the American version of the probably well known Swedish original (at least as a book). What can I say about the movie .. for me is a bit overrated = I prefer the original version. It looks a bit more .. "natural" or different said "less hollywoodish" (and mostly due to Noomi Rapace, who although an actress that lacks the power of expression in my opinion managed to make a role better than what Rooney Mara did). I have to admit though that in the Fincher version the movie is better technically. And this includes the sound, and especially the final mix, where I'll take my risks in saying that I see it positioned first among the favorites (for editing they are clearly other movies which have better effects, and that's what counts a lot in there). To be fair, I have to say that I actually wouldn't bet a dime on the "sound mixing" this year, the opinion above being based on personal taste :) = which sounds better for my ear. If I would have to do a more objective analysis it would be hard to split between three titles, the next of these being just below the next clip ...



"Hugo" has also nominations for both editing and mixing. As above I don't see much chance on the editing. Yes, it may be full of clock ticks + other related effects but for me doesn't look that impressive to get an award. Besides that, if you manage to stay up without falling asleep (in my case it didn't work but just because I was extremely tired) while watching this clip http://soundworkscollection.com/hugo you'll probably conclude (from what I managed to get ..) that the preprocessing part was smaller and the accent was set on the final mix. Where, considering the bunch of nominations "Hugo" has there are chances for an Oscar (that might draw along it also one for Editing ...) but I still have hope that it will postponed for other categories. Off-topic: I preferred the clip below instead of the one longer than half an hour from the previous link, but I have to mention that this entry would be much "lifeless" without the excellent material released by Soundworks Collection, which produces this kind of clips for quite a while and bring a bit of light over the usual obscurity of this area.



If I can say something 100% sure for this entry (well .. 99.99% :P), is that "Moneyball" is clearly at the bottom of the list. The film is a real story from the baseball world, and has also other nominees, that will allow to detail it's subject other time. For sound however id just one - for mixing - and considering the other candidates I wouldn't even discuss it. Besides that, I can't even say that I heard something decent enough for being nominated. I mean ... there are ton of "sports related" movies where you have full stadiums, and the sound effects mixed on top, intersequenced with other stuff, etc, so smth like this won't raise any attention. I didn't even manage to find something relevant .. the only clip, in some sense related, being the one below (for how long it lasts on YouTube ...):



"Transformers" - episode 3 - has a double nomination. Which comes somehow naturally for a movie having the density of shells, explosions and other weaponry related stuff over the recommended limit (or in other terms the noise quantity prodiced by these). No matter the appraise for the sound here - and to be fair with real chances at least for editing considering the amount of work on prerecordings, robotized voices & stuff like that - I refuse to believe that, .. this thing .. can grab an Oscar. Hopefully I won't be disappointed by the results.



The last on the list (alphabetically) - "War Horse" - is in my opinion the first with chances on editing this year, and a serious candidate also for mixing (now, to be honest, if I manage to get right on something considering the rush in seeing the movies, it would be a real wonder :P). The movie is a story, a bit to tear-jerking and over-cliched in how it's told for me, about a horse which gets lost from his owner during WWI. As subject itself I can say that it has some more potential than I was expecting .. but more on this another time. The sound: for editing we have plenty of effects + .. the horse itself (or "the horses" to be more specific) .. I mean, to imagine everything that you here as the sounds it makes as production track (= shooting recorded material) I guess it's naive. The movie is perfect made in the end on this segment, and even if it's not something you'll see .. well hear .. for the first time it's a big plus over the rest of the nominees. And the rest (= the war, sound 7.1, etc) can be put without concerns at the same level with "Transformers". For mixing I'll be short: for me is not something extraordinary, but seems that the complexity which comes from what you hear on the effects side raises the level high enough to get something at least comparable with "Hugo" and "The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo" => so "War Horse" gets on the favorites list.



That's all for today .. I've already written probably too much for somebody who's evaluating "by the ear" :P. Stuff that I'll obviously do (very soon I hope) also for the "music" section :)