Yes, yes. The King's Speech will win, and no matter how hard we try to tell ourselves any other film has a chance in hell, its abiding safeness will triumph Sunday night. But I'd like to think the Academy will spread the love around -- a win for The Social Network here, a Natalie Portman winner's guffaw there, and some gold for Hailee Steinfeld. Hope she brings her blingitude for the big night.
The startling beauty of Joel and Ethan Coen's Oscar-nominated True Grit -- and in most Coen brothers films, for that matter -- owes to frequent collaborator and award-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins, who's lensed all but one of their films since 1991's Barton Fink. But as much as the nostalgic Western serves as a throwback to simpler times, simpler heroes (and heroines), and a yearning to stick to one's principles in the face of obsolescence, True Grit could also mark a wistful point in Deakins career -- his last film shot on film.
Much of the emotional power of Joel and Ethan Coen's Best Picture contender True Grit comes from the contributions of longtime collaborator and nine-time Oscar nominee Roger Deakins, a cinematographer whose compositions and visual choices lend the Western a subtle, nostalgic quality. It's fitting, then, that when Deakins played My Favorite Scene with Movieline recently, he pointed toward a film that also utilizes the understated to great -- but very different -- effect.
FILM NEWS 
