The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) announced their nominees for the 25th American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement Awards today and everyone is already singling out Roger Deakins, who’s been nominated by the ASC nine times and won twice, but more importantly has been nominated by the Academy eight times and never won. Will True Grit be the horse to finally bring him an Oscar?
The nominees are as follows:
- Matthew Libatique, ASC (Black Swan)
- Wally Pfister, ASC (Inception)
- Danny Cohen, BSC (The King’s Speech)
- Jeff Cronenweth, ASC (The Social Network)
- Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC (True Grit)
Deakins previously won for The Shawshank Redemption (1995) and The Man Who Wasn’t There (2002) and was nominated for Fargo (1997), Kundun (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2001), No Country for Old Men (2008), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2008), Revolutionary Road (2009) and The Reader (2009). In addition to his nomination for True Grit, Deakins will also be honored as the recipient of the ASC’s 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award.
Personally, I love Deakins work, but out of all the years he’s been nominated this is the one year I can look at his work and say I could see why the Academy may not give him the Oscar. True Grit, for as excellent as it looks, is almost a visual homage in many ways to classic John Wayne movies (The Searchers is the first that comes to mind) and some may say for that reason he doesn’t deserve the win.
Looking at the batch of names he’s up against, I see a couple names that could easily beat him; Libatique for Black Swan and Pfister for Inception specifically. If you ask me, the work by Cronenworth and Cohen is beautiful, but I think the other three brought a lot more to their respective films.
The major surprise omission for me is the work of Enrique Chediak and Anthony Dod Mantle on 127 Hours, a film that saw Danny Boyle snubbed by the DGA earlier today and now misses with the ASC when it had some of the best camerawork of the year. Another contender I had in my current Oscar predictions was the work of Robert Elswit on Ben Affleck’s The Town with Robert Richardson’s work on Shutter Island in my sixth spot. How Cohen’s work in The King’s Speech edges out either of these gentlemen is beyond me. I didn’t even have Cohen as a contender, but that will now have to change.
I’ve already pointed out Deakins’s incredible track record with the ASC and Pfister was previously nominated for a pair of other teamings with director Christopher Nolan on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Cronenweth, Cohen and Libatique, however, are all three first time ASC nominees.
The ASC will announce their winners on February 13.
