(l-r)Beau Bridges and George Clooney staring in The Descendents (Photo by Merie Wallace)

The director-DP duo that brought us Sideways - Alexander Payne and Phedon Papamichael, ASC – have reunited for The Descendents.

The film, starring George Clooney, takes you through the emotional journey as a Hawaiian land baron (Clooney) tries to re-connect with his two daughters after his wife suffers a boating accident.

“There are moments of truth in filmmaking that are a fleeting and delicate thing, but it is the stuff that touches the soul.”
— Haskell Wexler, ASC

Barry Ackroyd, BSC (The Hurt Locker), Christian Berger, AAC (The White Ribbon), Bruno Delbonnel, AFC, ASC (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince), Mauro Fiore, ASC (Avatar) and Robert Richardson, ASC (Inglourious Basterds) are the 2010 Academy Award® nominees for cinematography. This year’s nomination is the sixth for Richardson, who earned Academy Awards for JFK and The Aviator. Delbonnel’s nod is his third, and Ackroyd, Berger and Fiore are celebrating their first nominations.

On September 9th, in a special presentation held in Sydney Australia, Kodak introduced and celebrated the 2009 KODAK AWARD New Director of the Year winners to more than 200 members of the entertainment industry in the Asia Pacific region.  The KODAK AWARD New Director winner is Dael Oates from Prodigy Films Sydney and the KODAK AWARD New Director - Student or Current Graduate winner is David Rusanow from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne. 

As a follow-on to last week’s film formats for TV post, I would like to take a broader view of what people are shooting in the feature film arena these days:

Let’s start with 65mm color negative. The big, recent example of 65mm use is on The Dark Knight. It’s not an entirely 65mm production. The 65mm was cut into a number of 35mm shots, like the Bank Heist and the Batmobile chase scenes. 65mm was chosen to do this because it simplyis the best. In the opening sequences of The Dark Knight you can just see the quality that 65mm brings to the screen.