Roger Deakins, Perpetual Nominee

January 10, 2013 11:51 AM

Bond film Skyfall has been nominated for its first Academy Awards since 1982. Skyfall was nominated for original score, sound mixing, sound editing, original song, and cinematography. It is also cinematographer Roger Deakins' tenth nomination without a win.

You probably recognize his work, he's worked on every Coen Brothers film since Barton Fink (except Burn After Reading).

He's been nominated for....

1994: The Shawshank Redemption
1996: Fargo
1997: Kundun
2000: O Brother, Where Art Thou?
2001: The Man Who Wasn't There
2007: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
2007: No Country for Old Men
2008: The Reader (link contains still shot of a butt, potentially nsfw)
2010: True Grit
2013: Skyfall

(Skyfall previously)

posted by troika (48 comments total)

It is also cinematographer Roger Deakins' tenth nomination without a win.

It's a little early to be saying that, isn't it?
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 11:56 AM on January 10, 2013 [16 favorites]

Skyfall is pretty damn gorgeous.
posted by brundlefly at 11:57 AM on January 10, 2013 [4 favorites]

I adore and idolize Deakins - I've always said I would be glad to have his love child (if that were biologically possible). Somehow I hadn't realized he has never won an Academy Award for cinematography. I guess I just assumed he'd won every single time he made a movie, like it was part of his contract or something, or that the people of Earth were rational and realized when they had greatness in their midst.

If you'll pardon me I'm off to have some words with some people. What I'm not going to do is look up who won out over him all those times so that I can keep my blood pressure within some sort of range described as healthy.
posted by komara at 11:57 AM on January 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

Bond film Skyfall has been nominated for its first Academy Awards since 1982.

Well, to be fair this is the first year it's been eligible.
posted by asterix at 12:01 PM on January 10, 2013 [36 favorites]

[Unnecessary trivia: in this trailer for Deakins'-filmed Shawshank Redemption the music that is playing is the Miller's Crossing theme written by other constant Coen brothers collaborator Carter Burwell. Shawshank was produced by Castle Rock and distributed by PolyGram, Miller's Crossing was Twentieth Century Fox. I have no idea how that music got in there or why.]
posted by komara at 12:02 PM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Man, it really is nuts that he's never won. The Man Who Wasn't There is a stunningly-shot movie. I can't find the link, but I recall reading that Deakins couldn't find black-and-white film stock that would give him the crispness and range he wanted, so he shot it on film normally used for titles.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 12:03 PM on January 10, 2013 [3 favorites]

I'm kind of sad that Moonrise Kingdom didn't get a Cinematography nomination.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 12:09 PM on January 10, 2013 [6 favorites]

The Man Who Wasn't There was shot in color IIRC; there's bootlegs of the color version floating around. Which, honestly, is actually more impressive because you can't shoot a color film and just desaturate it.
posted by griphus at 12:09 PM on January 10, 2013

Oh, wait, I think I misread.
posted by griphus at 12:10 PM on January 10, 2013

so he shot it on film normally used for titles.

Whatever kind of film it was, it was color, converted to B&W in post.
posted by komara at 12:10 PM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

It is also cinematographer Roger Deakins' tenth nomination without a win.
It's a little early to be saying that, isn't it?
Bond film Skyfall has been nominated for its first Academy Awards since 1982.
Well, to be fair this is the first year it's been eligible.

Yikes, I am really off my coherent sentences game today. Sorry about that.
posted by troika at 12:11 PM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

What I'm not going to do is look up who won out over him all those times so that I can keep my blood pressure within some sort of range described as healthy.

I was all thinking "if he hasn't been nominated against himself he definitely would have won in 2007" but then I checked and Elswit won for There Will Be Blood and then I was thinking "eh maybe not."
posted by dogwalker at 12:20 PM on January 10, 2013

Skyfall is pretty damn gorgeous.

Yes, I saw it on one large, imax type screens with surround sound and it was breathtakingly beautifly
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:33 PM on January 10, 2013

Elswit won for There Will Be Blood

Okay I guess I can forgive that one.
posted by komara at 12:33 PM on January 10, 2013

Skyfall was visually gorgeous and Deakins is long overdue. I hope he gets it.
posted by gauche at 12:39 PM on January 10, 2013

The Man Who Wasn't There: most underrated movie on that list or most underrated movie of 2001? (or both?)

On the other hand, I don't know jack about cinematography except for what I like, but 2001 seems like a pretty good year for nominees, especially when you consider that the Oscars, well, are the Oscars.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Amélie
Black Hawk Down
The Man Who Wasn't There
Moulin Rouge!
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:40 PM on January 10, 2013

btw, Deakins has a forum on his website where he answers forum members' questions.
posted by Hypnotic Chick at 12:40 PM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Thanks, komara! You're right---that makes it even more impressive.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 12:42 PM on January 10, 2013

Turns out when you make a Bond movie with Oscar winner Judi Dench, Oscar winner Javier Bardem, Oscar winner Sam Mendes, Oscar nominee Ralph Fiennes, Oscar nominee Albert Finney, and Oscar nominee Roger Deakins (thanks for the tip, troika!), that movie turns out to be really quite good and in fact breaks a fairly large number of box office records.

Skyfall was indeed gorgeous (I saw it twice in theatres and it held up on a second viewing). I hope Deakins wins, not least of which because Skyfall is a great film that he undoubtedly help make great.
posted by librarylis at 12:44 PM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure if Skyfall held up on my first and only viewing of it, but yes, the landscapes were beautiful.
posted by GuyZero at 12:50 PM on January 10, 2013

I was just thinking the same thing about Thomas Newman, also nominated ten times without a win...

1995 Little Women, The Shawshank Redemption
1996 Unstrung Heroes
2000 American Beauty
2003 Road to Perdition
2004 Finding Nemo
2005 Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
2007 The Good German
2009 WALL-E
2013 Skyfall

It's also the fourth time a Bond song has been nominated for Best Song after Live and Let Die, Nobody Does it Better and For Your Eyes Only. No wins in that category for a Bond film yet.
posted by crossoverman at 12:52 PM on January 10, 2013

In 2007, Deakins was competing with himself.

Prediction - Life of Pi wins because color beats blue/gray/bleak (even if it was beautiful).
posted by kokaku at 1:11 PM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

2004: The Village, gorgeous and oh so underrated.
posted by eugenen at 1:27 PM on January 10, 2013

I enjoyed Skyfall for the usual reasons but I was stunned by how gorgeous it looked. The sequence in the skyscraper in Asia was like a Michael Mann film. That said, I hope whoever shot the 3D 'slo mo' scenes in Dredd 3D got nominated. They were like mini-art films.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 1:33 PM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Not much love for The Master aside from acting. PT Anderson I don't think has ever won one. Aha! The scientologists really do control hollywood!
posted by dimejubes at 1:33 PM on January 10, 2013

Though I understand that this was not the cinematographer's choice, I can't give an award to anyone who participated in filming an underwater fight where the method of killing the other person was choking.

You are already underwater. No one can breathe. The purpose of choking is to cut off the other person's ability to breathe. If anything, you are helping the person by choking them because it will be more difficult for them to inadvertently get water in their lungs.
posted by flarbuse at 1:35 PM on January 10, 2013 [11 favorites]

Skyfall is a great film that he undoubtedly help make great.
That is if you don't bother concerning yourself with that disaster of a story with all it's boring cliches and stupidities. Other than that, yeah, great.
posted by uraniumwilly at 1:38 PM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

I can't give an award to anyone who participated in filming an underwater fight where the method of killing the other person was choking.

Skyfall reminded me that you need a really heavy serving of suspension of disbelief to enjoy a Bond film. That was one of the least egregious of the movie's issues.
posted by GuyZero at 1:39 PM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Rule of thumb: give any song by Adele an award.
posted by dry white toast at 2:37 PM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

I can't give an award to anyone who participated in filming an underwater fight where the method of killing the other person was choking. ... The purpose of choking is to cut off the other person's ability to breathe.

I know next to nothing about combat, but the main purpose of strangling is to cut off blood flow to the brain, thereby causing unconsciousness. If someone is underwater and you don't strangle them, they are fine for as long as they can hold their breath. If someone is underwater and you strangle them, they black out in something like 10 seconds (according to Wikipedia).
posted by narain at 2:51 PM on January 10, 2013 [10 favorites]

(according to Wikipedia)

Underwater asphyxiation in popular culture:
posted by griphus at 3:24 PM on January 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

There's types of suspension-of-disbelief I'm better and worse at. Sounds in space, logically-inconsistent time travel, recovering from long falls, dragons with absurdly small wings, etc -- usually all fine. Deciding to [spoilers] hide out in Scotland with no weapons while announcing that location to your well-prepared enemies ... wtf. Bond's imbecility cost M her life; waiting to superkill every badguy until right after the nice girl was shot in the head cost her her life; and his condescension rather than being willing to help train the obviously competent Moneypenny doomed her to a desk job. But actually, I guess I can believe all this, inasmuch as the writers seem to also think it makes sense. Shot, shot, deskjob. That's women for you ... a waste of good scotch.
posted by chortly at 3:40 PM on January 10, 2013 [4 favorites]

Skyfall was a great old school Bond movie with all of the accompanying shortcomings. I really enjoyed it. I LOVED that the villain wasn't trying to blow up the world or smuggle a backpack nuke into a city or something. The scale seemed right. Bond movies were starting to suffer for stressing scale over everything else. Also: no fucking parkour.
posted by nathancaswell at 3:42 PM on January 10, 2013

Also the scene at the country house was fucking gorgeous.
posted by nathancaswell at 3:44 PM on January 10, 2013 [3 favorites]

I wasn't overly impressed by Skyfall's plot either, but my god, it really was gorgeous. I'll count it $15 well spent just to look at Deakins' cinematography. The casino in Macau, the silhouetted fight in the skyscraper, and all the Scottish landscape shots were all really stunning scenes, and kind of melted my grar at other aspects of the movie.
posted by yasaman at 4:19 PM on January 10, 2013 [4 favorites]

> Also: no fucking parkour.

That wasn't even the worst aspect of Casino Royale beginning with "p" and ending in "r". The poker scene is already super-dated. "It's 2006 and poker is hot, so let's get Bond in on a big game. But not everyone knows the rules, so let's have one character explain them to another in the clunkiest manner possible. Then we'll have Bond win the game in the most absurdly unlikely yet predictable way you could imagine."

I liked CR, which just made that scene all the more frustrating.
posted by The Card Cheat at 4:21 PM on January 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

Yeah, the poker scene (like every other poker scene for me) is a gigantic dead spot in the film.
posted by brundlefly at 4:25 PM on January 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

It's funny to me - in my experiences working with DPs it is simply understood that Deakins is the best alive. Conrad Hall (RIP) was the only name mentioned in the same breath with him.

And so I don't know about the Oscars this year. As beautiful as it is, if he won for Skyfall instead of his (to me) most notable achievement, Fargo, it would be a real Scent of a Woman moment.

I mean, he deserves it for sure, but I hope he no longer cares at this point. It will make no difference at all for those in the industry who know his name.
posted by Navelgazer at 5:53 PM on January 10, 2013

On the other end, Film Critic Hulk gives a primer on cinematography, talks about Gordon Willis, and destroys Les Mis.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 6:02 PM on January 10, 2013

It is also cinematographer Roger Deakins' tenth nomination without a win.

It's a little early to be saying that, isn't it?

Well... at this point in time it's technically true!
posted by carsonb at 6:36 PM on January 10, 2013

That is a lovely looking bunch of films.
posted by Artw at 6:38 PM on January 10, 2013

IT IS SUCH A BASIC AFFRONT TO EVERYTHING WE UNDERSTAND ABOUT CINEMATIC AFFECTATION. REALLY, JUST EVERYTHING ABOUT IT. HULK UNDERSTANDS HOW HOOPER COULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT HAVING A CHARACTER SING DIRECTLY AT US IN CLOSE-UP WOULD BE INTIMATE, BUT THAT IS ONLY THE CASE IF HE'S NEVER THOUGHT FOR ONE SECOND ABOUT HOW CINEMA ACTUALLY WORKS

Heh. Of course if you ask people what the best bit of that movie was they'd probably say the tear-jerker song with the big-old close-up.
posted by Artw at 6:46 PM on January 10, 2013

in my experiences working with DPs it is simply understood that Deakins is the best alive.

All the DPs I work with seem to feel that Emmanuel Lubezki is the best cinematographer currently working and I gotta say I agree. Deakins' body of work is certainly incredible but right now, in 2013? Lubezki.
posted by nathancaswell at 7:15 PM on January 10, 2013

Skyfall was beautiful, and I hope Deakins wins, but I'm mainly glad that Thomas Newman's score was nominated. I haven't been able to stop listening to it since viewing the film.
posted by gsteff at 8:25 PM on January 10, 2013

That Film Critic Hulk article was pretty awesome.
posted by octothorpe at 8:35 PM on January 10, 2013

Heh. Of course if you ask people what the best bit of that movie was they'd probably say the tear-jerker song with the big-old close-up.

Right, but just because it works once, doesn't mean he should have re-used the same technique over and over again!
posted by crossoverman at 11:25 PM on January 10, 2013

Skyfall was nominated for original score, sound mixing, sound editing, original song,

The score and song are the worst part of the film! (And that is saying something.) Deakins is one of the best parts, obviously.
posted by ninebelow at 3:44 AM on January 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

You wanna know what's missing from the Best Cinematography category this year?

Samsara
posted by dogwalker at 12:12 PM on January 11, 2013