Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Stacy Ferguson, Sophia Loren, Daniel Day-Lewis in Nine (David James / The Weinstein Co.) (top); Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon (Films du Losange / Sony Pictures Classics) (middle); Sam Worthington, Michelle Rodriguez, Sigourney Weaver, Joel David Moore in Avatar (Mark Fellman / 20th Century Fox) (bottom)
The American Society of Cinematographers has announced its list of nominees. They are Barry Ackroyd for The Hurt Locker, Dion Beebe for Nine, Christian Berger for The White Ribbon, Mauro Fiore for Avatar, and Robert Richardson for Inglorious Basterds.
Dion Beebe previously won the ASC Award for Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) and was nominated for Collateral (2004). Robert Richardson's nod is his ninth; he's never won. Christian Berger, Mauro Fiore, and Barry Ackroyd are first-timers. Berger has already won best cinematography awards from the Los Angeles and New York critics, and the National Society of Film Critics.
ASC nominations are usually similar to Oscar nominations for best cinematography. But similar doesn't mean exactly alike. Robert Richardson, for example, has had nine ASC nominations but only five Oscar nods. (At least he's taken home two Academy Awards, for The Aviator and JFK.)