One fiction, one documentary, Sicario and Cartel Land were the year’s two most vivid cinematic vocations of violence surrounding the Mexican drug wars. Here, courtesy of VICE, is a great conversation between Sicario D.P. Roger Deakins and Cartel Land director and cinematographer Matthew Heineman. They get deep into their visual ideas for the film as well as the narrative and moral issues those ideas are designed to represent.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 20, 2016Kevin B. Lee has been considering the candidates in the major Oscar categories. In this video essay, he breaks down the styles of the five candidates (The Hateful Eight, Sicario, The Revenant, Mad Max: Fury Road, Carol). The sound’s off as Lee narrates, but he also recommends watching the video silently to focus more on the cinematography. Pressed for time? You can read his essay here.
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 4, 2016Every cinephile knows the curatorial bliss of a great double feature. A flexing of film nerd muscles while sitting on your ass for three to five hours, a double bill brings two films into dialogue with one another based on style, subject, theme, or whatever connective tissue you can find. Double features, like well-sequenced mixtapes, require the instincts of a programmer. Thanks to streaming, digital rentals, and the perennial ease of sneaking into a second film at your local AMC, the work of making a double bill happen has never been easier. Below, I rally through 10 great double features from […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Jan 5, 2016In an interview with Variety for his new film Sicario, director Denis Villeneuve claimed that the movie’s cinematographer Roger Deakins “could shoot with a shoe and it would look great.” Hyperbole aside, Villeneuve isn’t far off: if you can affix a lens to it, Roger Deakins can coax lyrical yet naturalistic images from it. Armed with an ARRI ALEXA Studio on Sicario – a slight step up from a shoe cam – Deakins pushed the camera to its boundaries to capture both the cruel harshness of the sunlight and the menacing unknown of the shadows for Villeneuve’s politically and morally complex tale of […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Oct 14, 2015