Muriel Award: Best Cinematography

Last year, this category ended up a tight race that was decided by the last two submitted ballots. This year? Not quite that close, but still damned close.

Third place:



The Social Network (director of photography: Jeff Cronenweth) [75 points / 13 votes]

Second place:



Shutter Island (director of photography: Robert Richardson) [95/15]

And your winner...





True Grit (director of photography: Roger Deakins) [103/15]

"It's become somewhat passé to insist that the Western is dead and buried in American movies, because they keep cropping up here and there, even now in the 21st century when it's difficult to envision a world in which we have to ride on horseback to get from town to town, a time when outhouses and troughs littered the land and a place where we're so stone drunk we have to allow little girls to roll our cigarettes (okay, maybe the last one is timeless). Sure, our country's key auteurs aren't exactly racing to make pictures in this genre - not like Ford, Hawks, Mann, etc. - but a few American filmmakers have tried their hand at one (or more): Kevin Costner, for example, made Open Range in the early aughts and Ed Harris threw out Appaloosa back in 2008. This year, leave it to the daffy, inconsistent Coens to have a go at a full-fledged Western.

To photograph 'their' version of Charles Portis' novel, The Brothers once again reunited with British cinematographer Roger Deakins. He's been working with them for two decades now, and I presume they keep inviting him back because (a.) they get along together and (b.) the guy's really good. Deakins is no slouch at the "Western look" either: he worked on Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (shot in Canada) which, though few seemed to think was a great film, none would argue that it wasn't damn fine-looking. Though the Coens are more snarky than meditative and more verbal than scenic, Deakins' images hold their own.

In this age of video streaming and home theatres, I'm not the biggest advocate of 'having' to see movies on the big screen (heresy to some, I know), but I am grateful I was able to catch this one in a theatre. More than once I muttered to my viewing companion, "That shot is beautiful," which is rare for me, as I'm generally less interested in a movie's terrain or color scheme and more in its script and performances. The landscape of the American South-Southwest (the picture was shot in Texas and New Mexico) is treated lovingly and both the dry, desert scenes and snowy, rocky settings are equally evocative (who can forget the chilly weirdness of the Bear Man scene?). Hell, Ford himself might have hired the Deak to record some of his pictures in the Golden Age of Westerns ... but he'd have probably told this 'camera guy' to hurry up and 'stop making it so goddamn fancy'..." - Matthew Lotti

See the full results.