Each year, as the seemingly-endless award season gets underway, I tell myself "THIS is the year Roger Deakins will win a little gold statue for Best Cinematography; this is finally the year." And then, each year, I am disappointed (sometimes bitterly so). This year, the suspense was short-lived. Deakins wasn't even nominated.
So I'm keeping myself busy by watching this mash-up of the nominees.
Having seen only Moonlight—which was certainly cinematographically distinctive (though I couldn't escape the idea that its memorableness was due more to its art direction than to its cinematography—I have little-to-no opinion of who should win. Bradford Young's work on Arrival looks stunning, though. (Here's a Sed contra video essay from Kevin B. Lee, who things that the look of Arrival is more of a technical decision than a creative one. And let's finish this off with a great little video from Scout Tafoya on "The Greatest Cinematography of All Time.")