The New World
Emmanuel Lubeski
Since every Malick film is a visual narrative rather than dialogue / plot driven the cinematography must be brilliant to succeed. It is.

Finalists: As Lylee remarked at Cinemarati the look and feel is sometimes more Bronte than Austen, but Roman Osin's continually roving camera (awesome tracking shots) and dramatic sense of light does much to reimagine Pride & Prejudice * The Constant Gardener's Cesar Charlone makes good on the promise shown in City of God. Highly ambitious and mostly successful * Two DPs also worth mentioning have developed dynamic enduring rapports with their auteur. I'm speaking of Pfister & Nolan on Batman Begins and Suschitzky & Cronenberg on A History of Violence *

Semi Finalists: King Kong -Andrew Lesnie always does muscular work for Peter Jackson. An insanely complicated feat to pull off no doubt but I'm always left wondering how much is cinematography vs. computer achievement * Tropical Malady -Pengpanitch, Tanapanitch & Vialard provide considerable assist to the director's hallucinatory dual vision * I loved Remi Adefarasin crystal clear work on Match Point * You have to admire Chalet & Maison's technical achievement of March of the Penguins * And finally there are noteworthy patches of visual splendor from two celebrated cinematographers in Jarhead (Deakins) and Memoirs of a Geisha (Beebe)* And the best shot work not on celluloid this year? Brothers by Morten Soborg.

Finalists: There are some inspired designs in Janty Yates work on Kingdom of Heaven * The plum assignment of Memoirs of a Geisha falls into Colleen Atwood's consummately professional hands *
Semi Finalists: Brokeback Mountain's Marit Allen is an undersung costuming talent. Mostly because she gets lower key work like this * Goodnight and Good Luck Louise Frogley. Costuming in black and white has its own challenges and she does fine work meeting them. * Mrs Henderson Presents gives Sandy Powell another fun opportunity to shine *

Finalists: Michael McCusker's does great work with the musical Walk the Line * Paul Tothill insures that Pride & Prejudice energy never flags and loses little info in the leaps* Laurence Briaud is fond of the jump cut in Kings and Queen but expressively so.
Semi Finalists: And finally some armchair gripping action cutting from King Kong (Terry Ryan), War of the Worlds & Munich (Michael Kahn), and Cinderella Man (Daniel Hall & Mike Hill) * Too many cooks for The New World ? Nah. Richard Chew, Hank Corwin, Saar Klein, Mark Yoshikawa are sympatico with Malick's vision. I'm not sure why they're recutting this picture. It was beautiful as is.

Finalists: None