Country with best cinematography?

[Drogue]

True, most movies do. I generally think a higher percentage of US ones do, due to the commercialisation of Hollywood, but due to the quantity, almost all my favourite films are US based.

[Japher]

Anything in English is good with me; I hate subtitles, I can't read.

[Az]

Originally posted by Drogue
True, most movies do. I generally think a higher percentage of US ones do, due to the commercialisation of Hollywood, but due to the quantity, almost all my favourite films are US based.

most crappy american movies aren't Hollywood.

[C0ckney]

i'm surpirsed spain hasn't been mentioned (or more likely i've missed somone who mentioned it ), there are some good spanish films out there, not as well done or thought provoking perhaps as french ones but enjoyable nonetheless.

i agree with drouge though, if i could only watch films from country it would have to be the US, simply because they produce so many and a lot are very, very good.

cheers to mike for posting that list, when i read andy's post on the first page, i was going to recomend him some older british films and every single one of them was on there

[The Viceroy]

What many people are surprised by, is that India makes the 2nd most movies per year (I believe Hong Kong is in first place).

Hindi movies have been about since the 1940's, and has become one of the most central aspects to everyday life in India, so much more than here in the UK.

As a westerner, I have to say 3 hour movies, all which seem to revolve around the plot of "Boy meets girl, parents don't approve, some tragedy unfolds" can seem a little dry, and almost impossible to stick with, but Indians just love it.

What I have found more recently though is, that these films seem to be copying the US/UK films .. (Just romanticised 3 hour versions, with a dance sequance and a boy meets girl added), and thats really sad to see. Now you will know why in India they call it "BOLLYWOOD" ..

Despite that, one attribute of Indian films which simply cannot be matched (for me) in any other country is the music. If you ever get the chance, just listed to the music from the film Taal and Dil Se ..

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by The Viceroy


Despite that, one attribute of Indian films which simply cannot be matched (for me) in any other country is the music. If you ever get the chance, just listed to the music from the film Taal and Dil Se ..

Well, not to contradict you, but how about the scores for ‘L’Ascenseur au l’echaffaud’ by Miles Davis, ‘the Moderns’ and ‘Trouble in Mind’ by Mark Isham, ‘Paris, Texas’ by Ry Cooder, ‘The Photographer’ by Philip Glass, ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ by Peter Gabriel, ‘Apollo’ by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, ‘Get Carter’ by Roy Budd, ‘The Wicker Man’, ‘The Exorcist’, ‘In the Heat of the Night’, ‘Fanny and Alexander’, et cetera....

[Spiffor]

Molly Bloom:
You forgot to add everything ever done by Vangelis for the film industry. This guy is a genius

[Dr Strangelove]

I am still adamant in maintaining that "cinematography" refers to the quality of the photography of a film.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Molly Bloom:
You forgot to add everything ever done by Vangelis for the film industry. This guy is a genius

I agree, Spiffor, mon vieux. I meant to cite 'Blade Runner', because I particularly love the track where Demis Roussos reproduces the sound of a muezzin, and also the track where Mary Hopkins vocalizes, wordlessly.

'Conquest of Paradise' is a terrific soundtrack album too, and his 'El Greco' album too. I was lucky enough to work with someone who knew Vangelis at music school.

And of course, I left out film soundtracks such as 'Performance' and 'Alfred the Great', 'The Third Man', 'Passion Fish', 'Cabaret', 'Deliverance' 'The Grifters', and so on.

Dr. Strangelove, you're right. In common usage, cinematography strictly refers to the skill of the film's photographer/camera operator, people such as Bergman's Nestor Almendros, and Orson Welles's photographer who was able to endow the sets in 'Citizen Kane' with an incredible depth and richness of light, dark and shadow. It's pretty pointless to try to suggest a 'best of' film country these days because film making has become a multi-national, international industry. What with filming American financed films in Canada with Mexican directors, Australian actors, Spanish camera operators, recording the soundtrack with a British composer and a Czech orchestra in Berlin and the dialogue at sound editing suites in London, it's a facetious exercise to claim national ownership of the resulting effort.

Besides which, the American dominance of much of Western (and world cinema) weights the decision heavily in its favour. But as someone pointed out (and as Bollywood and Hong Kong production line chop socky films also prove) quantity is not quality. There is as well the fairly salient point of availability of prints- I can't even recall seeing ' 'Til Human Voices Wake Us' on release in Melbourne, and 'Sling Blade' was slow to get a screening in Great Britain, and 'Pollock' hardly appeared on any screens in Melbourne. Similarly, it takes a lot of effort and publicity for non-American films to get the same penetration of market in the United States that they ought to get in terms of their quality- films such as 'Lantana' or the MacKinnons' 'Small Faces', or numerous Iranian, Chinese or Indian films worthy of being seen at more than one dedicated foreign film cinema in New York or San Francisco.

And yet disappointing fare such as 'Matrix II' is publicized until nausea sets in. I had great hopes for it and felt so let down. The publicity and internet material turned out to be more enjoyable.

[Fake Boris]

I do admit my wrong usage of the term "cinematography". My bad. I took the French meaning ("cinema taken as an artistic form") and ported it to English.
I also do admit my bad in using South American instead of Latino-American in describing Mexico.

As for the India movies thing: we hear a lot about their existence, but hell, even in international movie festivals they just don't show up. A shame, in my humble opinion. In comparison, Iranian or East-European movies get much more recognition.

And to all the people who still claim American movies to be superior, I won't abandon my position. My thread was about quality and tradition, not about occasional gems that can sometimes stand out of the mud. America has a poor cinematic tradition, especially given the number of movies it produces. It basically invented the "genre" movie, and trust me, will stick to it for a few centuries. (In this regard, French intellectual Barthes mocked Mankiewicz in a brilliant manner).
Coen Brothers? yeah, and what else? They are the intrinsic exception to the rule.

Which leads me to this conclusion: claiming that American movies are good because there are necessarily a few decent ones amongst the thousands they make, is not a valid argument to defend the idea of great movie tradition . A tradition is built on quality, not mathematics.

About storytelling and post-modernism: it is true, as pointed out, that movies have become internationally produced and projected, and thus show influence from many different eras and styles. This is exactly the reason why I was asking the question: now that multi-culturalism is becoming more and more of a reality, what are past styles and techniques that are worth recycling? (From there, granted most currents have emerged from country-specific circumstances, it is reasonable to ask:"who's got the best tradition?")

To those who still think movies should be about narrating a story: wrong. It is now widely accepted that in the last five milleniums of human history, about any story has been already told. Love, war, hatred, treachery, soaps, tragedy, social oppression, and so on. It has become absurd to the point that plot writers prepare a structure and fill in the blanks, literally. You know something's wrong when you can take 99,9999% of all that has been made between 3000 BC and 1900 AD and dissecate it with a narrative theory of your liking. Yet again, at the risk of repeating myself, America should have had a lot more to do with the deconstruction of these retarded structures during the past century. A tradition that has been repeating itself for so long can't be redeemed as a quality one. Today, American cultural imperialism is still the most dangerous threat against the emancipation of artistic liberties.

I will leave you on this Peter Greenaway's quote: "Cinema is too great a medium to be left to the storytellers".

(ok, i need some sleep )

[Ned]

The Lord of the Rings, Return of the King sets the new standard for cinematography. The movie simply is stunning.

Is this an American film? Peter Jackson is a New Zealander?

Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring won two years ago. RoTK should win easily this year.

Hollywood is the champ, but not all Hollywood directors are American.

[Bereta_Eder]

Is there a single country with the best cinematography?
I kind of like what each country can produce that can't really be done by another. Like Swedish, slowwwww very character focused almost esoteric films, those independent (mostly road or on the social edge) american movies, the sweetness and the bigger than life sense of certain french movies, the very personal thematology of a handful of greek movies, or the freshness unconventionality of certain british moveis.
They're all good!

[The Viceroy]

molly bloom, your more than welcome to disagree .. especially if you've heard the music before (which im assuming you have as you've disagreed) ???

Music is however completely down to taste !! which is why i said (for me).

As for Indians not turning up at international shows, I think that will change over the next few years, especially more so as directors are starting to co-direct with English and American directors.

Getting back to music though, I would say Spiffor, your absolutly spot on with Vangelis as a genius !!

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by molly bloom




Besides which, the American dominance of much of Western (and world cinema) weights the decision heavily in its favour. But as someone pointed out (and as Bollywood and Hong Kong production line chop socky films also prove) quantity is not quality. There is as well the fairly salient point of availability of prints- I can't even recall seeing ' 'Til Human Voices Wake Us' on release in Melbourne, and 'Sling Blade' was slow to get a screening in Great Britain, and 'Pollock' hardly appeared on any screens in Melbourne. Similarly, it takes a lot of effort and publicity for non-American films to get the same penetration of market in the United States that they ought to get in terms of their quality- films such as 'Lantana' or the MacKinnons' 'Small Faces', or numerous Iranian, Chinese or Indian films worthy of being seen at more than one dedicated foreign film cinema in New York or San Francisco.

So someone with sufficient capital should go into the business of financing the distribution of international films of note.

The blockbuster Chinese hit "Crouching Tigers, Hidden Dragons" was originally done in Chinese and distributed in the US with English subtitles. I recently found a copy in Enlish and the actors appear to be speaking English. Was the film altered with CGI to synchronize the actors lips with the sound track? The use of such technology would go a long way towards furthering the sale of films around the world.