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We're in the middle of June, and quite frankly, the dog days of summer can’t go away fast enough. Weeks into the summer season, we’ve only seen one big-budget movie worth talking about, and some people can’t even agree on that. (The movie is Iron Man 2, by the way.) This week heralds the opening of two sure-to-be-classic movies, The A-Team and The Karate Kid. If you’re like me - a person born in the 1980s who absolutely does not understand the fervent nostalgia for all things 80s - then you may be a bit baffled at the releases, one of which is a remake of a 1980s movie and one of which is an adaptation of a 1980s TV series. I see the A-Team trailer and wonder what the fuss is about making sure we have two separate instances of using the theme music, so you can understand how lost I feel right now.

Though next week is fast approaching, and with it one of the most highly anticipated films of the year (Toy Story 3), this week is yet another drop in the pond of mediocrity that is American cinema. What is there to be excited about this week? Not much of anything. So, this week’s A-List is going to talk about a topic close to my heart: cinematography. We don’t often give enough appreciation to the truly great cinematographers, old and new. Yes, directors may be considered auteurs, but they don’t operate the cameras or give the movies they direct as unique a look as do their cinematographers. Plenty of the best directors are well aware that the men and women behind the camera are equally, if not more, important, but most people don’t even know what the ASC is (American Society of Cinematographers). This week, we look at five of the best cinematographers.

Roger Deakins

Fargo. The Shawshank Redemption. Kundun. O Brother, Where Art Thou? The Man Who Wasn’t There. No Country For Old Men. The Reader. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. These are the eight films that Roger Deakins, possibly the best living cinematographer, has been nominated for at the Academy Awards. Zero is the number of times he has won. If Martin Scorsese winning his first Best Director Oscar in the 21st century seems tantamount to heresy, what do we say about Deakins? Here’s a guy who’s so good at what he does, so assured, that Pixar Animation and DreamWorks Animation hired him as consultants to recent films of theirs (WALL-E and How To Train Your Dragon). The visual style created by Joel and Ethan Coen is just as much thanks to Deakins and his gifted eye.

Deakins has been providing audiences across the world with memorable imagery, stuff that haunts and inflames us. For whatever reason, the image that keeps leaping out at me is that of Andy Dufresne walking into the prison of Shawshank for the first time, looking up at the endless wall of the main building as it consumes him. When you think of the many films he’s done with the Coens, or of his two films with Sam Mendes (Revolutionary Road and Jarhead), or of his countless other films, it’s hard not to see why he’s so loved in the industry. Why would two cartoons, one set in the future with robots, one set in the past with dragons, want to turn to Deakins? He may not have worked with robots or dragons, but if you want a movie to feel more realistic to the audience, Deakins is the man to help. Pixar, DreamWorks: good idea to call on him.

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