Larktag asks, did Spectre have a different DP than Skyfall? A-yup; cinematographer on Spectre was Hoyte van Hoytema, who did Interstellar and Her, among others. He suggested to director Sam Mendes that they could get a nostalgic, more romantic feel by using 35 mm film, rather than digital equipment like the Arri Alexa DP Roger Deakins used for Skyfall. Unfortunately, I think it turned out less nostalgic than stultified, less romantic than old-fashioned. The bar was high, though; Roger Deakins is one of the most well-regarded cinematographyers, and his genius is all over films like The Shawshank Redemption, A Beautiful Mind, Kundun, and all the Coen Bros’ best (O Brother Where Art Thou?, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, etc.). Three things marked Deakins’ style for me in Skyfall: the gorgeous lighting traversing palettes across locations, the quiet or very smoothly moving camera that didn’t sacrifice clarity for action, and the framing that balances movement within each shot without resorting to the heavy-handed center framing that’s becoming all too common in action films.
While the colors were obvious and striking (the deep blue of the skyscraper scenes in Macau, for instance, or the vibrant reds in Shanghai, or the chilly desaturation on the Scottish moors), the lighting was quietly masterful: this was a film about mirroring and self-reflection, Bond seeing himself in others and examining his own psyche, and it used a constant motif of glass and mirrors to get that across. Nothing puts pressure on lighting design like filming so many glass walls: how the fuck did they get so many shots like this without the camera showing up in a reflection?
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Sherlock (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson Additional Tags: Starting Over, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, Developing Relationship, First Time, First Kiss, Songfic, Oral Sex, Frottage, Adultery, Second Chances, Bittersweet, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Emotional Hurt/Comfort Summary:
John’s moved back into Baker Street, so Sherlock takes him to Angelo’s. When so much has changed, let’s go back to the start .
I remembered how he left his ten year old son to look after his six year old son for three days, without enough food to share between them–
–but with a loaded shotgun and instructions to “shoot first” should the monster he was hunting turn up.
(All of which is bad enough even without the heavy implication in the episode that he left them alone as bait to draw the shtriga out.)
I remembered how even before Mary died, he was neglectful to his family to the point that Dean–who was less than four years old at the time–felt the need to comfort his mother through his absence.
I remembered how Dean visibly flinched at the memory of John coming back home after Sam ran away.
I remembered how Sam, at age fifteen, told Amy that she didn’t want to see his dad when he’d been drinking.
I remembered how after a sixteen year old Dean was forced to steal food in order to feed himself and his brother because of John’s neglect, John told the police officer who caught Dean to let him rot in jail.
I remembered how he treated his sons so poorly, offered them so little in the way of actual parenting, that the words “I’m proud of you” clued Dean in to the fact that his father was possessed.
I remembered how, when Bobby was looking after the boys in 1989 he took Dean out to the park to play catch, and John tore him a new one over the phone because he dared to suggest that a ten year old child might be better off playing ball than shooting targets for one day of his life.
After I thought about all that, and the countless other instances of neglect and abuse, I realized that “he did the best he could” is giving John Winchester far too much credit.
