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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Top Ten Cinematography Masterpieces?

BTW, what is John Toll doing DPing what looks like a cheesy direct-to-video movie like RISE: BLOOD HUNTER? :waaa:

To me, this guy is probably the greatest cinematographer of our age.
 
Tom said:
BTW, what is John Toll doing DPing what looks like a cheesy direct-to-video movie like RISE: BLOOD HUNTER? :waaa:

To me, this guy is probably the greatest cinematographer of our age.
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(Guess) Paying his rent?

As David Mullen was saying..... sometimes you can't afford to be picky.

Or maybe he's doing, or returning a friend a favor.
 
This guy won back-to-back Oscars in the 90s and has shot some of the greatest cinematography masterpieces of all times. I'm just confused how he got to this point? :umm:
 
Finner said:
The last few years though I have begun to feel that great cinematography is what style and pictures best tell the story. An exampleof this for me this year was Children of Men. There are lots of shots and lighting in it that simply look very poor, but yet its look, style and feel do an incredible job to help tell the story and pull you in.
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Yeah - I'm with you that beautiful is one thing and using the camera to help tell the story is another thing. I think Children of Men was far better because of the camera work, but I still felt some of the long shots would not have suffered if they were edited sequences instead. I do love long takes with cool camera work - ROPE being one of my favorites because the camera literally becomes one of the players and really helps tell the story. It's not a stunt camera, but it's a very tasteful, subtle camera that works on the viewer invisibly.
 
I agree. Children of Men is easily the best cinematography of 2006, beating out The Fountain and Pan's by a longshot, even though I really love those films as well. It's not always about the beauty of the photography. It's about the story. And that is something you really learn from experience, and by listening to the masters. Really great cinematographers focus on how the images will aid the story.
 
Il buono il brutto il cattivo (The good the bad and the ugly) Sergio Leone
Dai yat lui ying aau him/Di yi lei xing wei xian (Dangerous Encounter:1st kind) Tsui Hark
Idi i smotri/Иди и смотри (Come and see) Elem Klimov
Dovidenia v pekle priatelia (See you in hell friends) Jurai Jakubisko
Dwaj ludzie z szafa (Two men and a wardrobe) Roman Polanski
La verifica incerta Alberto Grifi
Wandâfuru raifu (After Life) Hirozaku Kore-eda
Angst Gerald Kargl (but shooted by Rybczynski)
O bandido da luz vermelha (The red light bandit) Rogerio Sganzerla
La nacion clandestina Jorge Sanjines

The firsts ten I think.Not the bests ten but I think important movies
for cinematography.
Of course masterpiece.
 
Tom said:
I agree. Children of Men is easily the best cinematography of 2006, beating out The Fountain and Pan's by a longshot, even though I really love those films as well. It's not always about the beauty of the photography. It's about the story. And that is something you really learn from experience, and by listening to the masters. Really great cinematographers focus on how the images will aid the story.
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I just finished watching "The Fountain" for the first time and I think that I have to agree with you children of men was definitely the best of the three.

Although I found the pacing to be a bit slow for my taste.(The Fountain) My hat's off to the Cinematographer.

But then again I liked the spiral stair single shot, and the fire and water fight, from the Tony Jaa flick "The Protector",

oh and "House of Flying Daggers"
 
Tom said:
I agree. Children of Men is easily the best cinematography of 2006, beating out The Fountain and Pan's by a longshot, even though I really love those films as well. It's not always about the beauty of the photography. It's about the story. And that is something you really learn from experience, and by listening to the masters. Really great cinematographers focus on how the images will aid the story.
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I disagree, but I see what you're saying. Children of Men has some amazing plan shots, but if you remove those, all you have is handheld, wide angle, natural lighting, etc... Its aesthetic is very functional for "realist sci-fi," but aside from a few brilliant shots, it's just not that pretty or varied.

Pan's Labyrinth looks great and I think its big achievement is that there are clearly very few sets and locations and yet the Del Toro and his DP achieve a really beautiful and varied look. The use of light and particularly color to differentiate between real and fantasy is nice, and the camera movement makes it very visually engaging. The Fountain is beautiful, too, but sometimes it just felt too strictly symmetrical and even static at times. I loved the organic look and blooming light, though, plus the cinematography definitely told the story well--the idea of approaching light and light as associated with death or whatever. In terms of pure aesthetics and technique, I'd say The Prestige was among the best of last year, but I only saw half of it... I loved the anamorphic flares and the very traditional yet very pretty and innovative look. The film itself was just okay...or at least what I saw of it was.

It's a matter of taste, though, obviously. I mean, you clearly prefer Malick and Lubiezki and the kind of beautiful yet realistic aesthetic where you stick mostly with natural light. (I like it, too, though; I just got my original 1978 poster for Days of Heaven in the mail...yay.) But...I prefer Kaminski or someone who's willing to filter the image to hell and even switch up between 20mm and 200mm lenses in the same scene. It's weird because this object versus presentation debate is the "dialectic" that dominated film theory from day one and it's still the major issue and divisive factor when it comes to taste in film, particularly cinematography.
 
Oh man, what does that Days of Heaven poster look like? Do you have a jpeg of it? A place to order it?

While The Fountain was my favorite movie of last year, I did think that some of the "jungle" scenes at "night" were overlit. It looked like something shot on a soundstage, not in a jungle. 99% of the picture was absolutely gorgeous work, though. The "bathtub" scene was not only a beautiful work of cinema photography, it was the best scene -- in terms of acting and emotional impact -- of anything I have seen in a long time.

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Nice screengrabs. I agree 100% about the soundstage look, but I'd blame this on the budget rather than the lighting, although the jungle scenes were my least favorite, too. The movie didn't hold up for me like it did for some of my friends, but I definitely liked it and really wanted to love it.

The poster's not too exciting, sadly; I'll post a picture once I frame it if you're curious, though. It was like $20 off ebay and it seems to be authentic, which is awesome, although the condition's not perfect. I don't normally buy full-priced DVDs (with HD around the corner), but the Criterion DoH release may find its way to my shelf....
 
Policar said:
The poster's not too exciting, sadly; I'll post a picture once I frame it if you're curious, though. It was like $20 off ebay and it seems to be authentic, which is awesome, although the condition's not perfect. I don't normally buy full-priced DVDs (with HD around the corner), but the Criterion DoH release may find its way to my shelf....
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Exactly. i stopped buying DVDs about a year ago, knowing I would be getting an HD-DVD player. But yes, DoH from Criterion is going to be awesome. I wonder if the elusive Malick himself might even be caught on video? heh.
 
I seemed to have missed this thread. But my favorites go to:

The Conformist
Days of Heaven
Apocalpyse Now
Blade Runner

What??? Damn you Ralph, you stole my thunder.
 
I really need to see The Conformist. It's been in my netflix queue for a while now...
 
Most directors claim to think visually, but some are better at it than others I suppose. You look at Ridley Scott's work, and everything he does is first and foremost composed for the camera, without feeling staged. He is a guy that imparts an incredible look to his films. Look at The Duellers, some candle light scenes rival Barry Lyndon in how exquisite and intimate they are, while Blade Runner is a masterpiece of asmotpheric moodiness. Everybody loves Alien, and how claustrophobic and neurotic it is, but I think the cinematography was the main factor for that achievement, rather than the set design, scene staging, etc. The camera is always angled and moves in ways that increase the uneasiness of every scene exponentially. Finally, though the story is weak and bit contrite and the cinematography pops out just on its own, Legends has some amazing images as well.
Other than that, besides all the classic work from Malick, Welles, Fellini, Antonioni, etc that has already been mentioned here, there are some other films which are already almost 30 years old and don't feel one bit dated to me, just because the cinematography was so incredibly suited to the story. Take The Road Warrior, if that's not the ultimate action extravaganza, I don't know what is. I still watch it once or twice a year. Or The Abyss, a masterpiece of technical achievement in underwater photography as well as low light interiors. Cameron can seem minimalistic in his approach to photography, but he also coaxes the best style out of his DP's to suit his films.

Just adding to the discussion,

Rudi Herbert
 
How 'bout Caleb Deschanel’s "The Right Stuff" and "The Natural"
 
What do you guys know about Darius Khondji? He just shot Wong Kar Wai's MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS. Looking through his IMDB, he's got some nice work in there, like Stealing Beauty (OMG at those scenes with Liv Tyler), The Interpreter and Wimbledon. Some really nice work, for sure, but I wonder what it was that made Wong choose him? It seems to me that after Doyle and Lee Pin Bing, WKW was in a position to get basically any DP on the planet. What causes directors to hook up with certain DPs is a fascinating issue for me.
 
Oh, yes, sorry about that. I was cutting and pasting.

BTW, while I've got you here David, have you had a chance to see much work from "Mark" Lee Ping Bin? I'm hoping I'm getting that name right. I watched Millennium Mambo and was really struck by the photography. I've Flowers of Shanghai coming up next.
 
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