Also announced last night were the ASC Awards. Never particularly a help for guessing Best Cinematography, since the guild has a better grasp on their category than the open vote in the Academy does. Roger Deakins has won ASC three times. He has zero Oscars to show for it.
That said, this year, the American Society of Cinematographers nominated seven films. Five of them (The Grandmaster, Gravity, Inside Llewyn Davis, Nebraska, Prisoners) were nominated for the Oscar. The other two (Captain Phillips, 12 Years a Slave) were not, but were highly thought of in such circles. But, given that they nominated the entire Oscar category here (and made it even harder with some extra choices to boot), we pretty much figured that the winner would let us know what was going to win the Oscar. And we weren’t wrong.
The winner, not surprisingly, was Emmanuel Lubezki for Gravity. I think we all assumed Gravity was the slam dunk winner in this category, especially considering the trend of going with this type of cinematography in recent years (Avatar, Hugo, Life of Pi). I can’t see it losing at this point (and even ever). It’s the flashy choice, and this win essentially sealed up yet another category before Oscar night, making our jobs a hell of a lot easier.
