Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS won the marquee feature honor at the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Awards ceremony on Sunday evening (3/20) for his lensing of Dune. This marked the second career ASC win for Fraser who took the coveted feature film award back in 2017 for Lion. In-between Lion and Dune, Fraser was nominated on the TV side in 2021 for his work on The Mandalorian.
Fraser’s work on Dune topped a field of ASC feature award nominees also consisting of Bruno Delbonnel, ASC, AFC for The Tragedy of Macbeth, Dan Laustsen, ASC, DFF for Nightmare Alley, Ari Wegner, ACS for The Power of the Dog, and Haris Zambarloukos, BSC, GSC for Belfast. Wegner made history as just the second woman ever to be nominated in the high-profile ASC Award feature film category (the first being Rachel Morrison, ASC in 2018 for Mudbound).
Meanwhile, topping the ASC Awards’ Spotlight category–which recognizes exceptional cinematography in independent, foreign or art-house-type films–was cinematographer Pat Scola for Pig.
Rounding out the feature winners–this one for documentary filmmaking–was Jessica Beshir for her shooting of Faya Dayi, which she also directed.
Both Beshir and Scola are first-time ASC Award winners.
Television
Winners in the TV categories included James Laxton, ASC for The Underground Railroad; Jon Joffin, ASC for Titan; Tommy Maddox-Upshaw, ASC for Snowfall; and Michael Berlucchi and Marc Carter for Mythic Quest.
This marked Laxton’s first career ASC win. He was nominated back in 2017 for the feature film Moonlight. Both Moonlight and The Underground Railroad were directed by Barry Jenkins.
Maddox-Upshaw too is a first-time ASC winner (with Snowfall also representing his first Society nomination).
Similarly Berlucchi and Carter teamed on what was the first ASC nomination and win for each.
Joffin, though, is now a three-time ASC Award winner. He first scored an ASC Award in 2019 for an episode of Beyond. Two years later he won again for an episode of Motherland: Fort Salem. Overall, Joffin is a five-time ASC Award nominee.
Debbie Allen hosted the ASC Awards ceremony, which was held at the historic ASC Clubhouse in Hollywood.
Here’s a full rundown of the evening’s winners
Feature Film (presented by Erik Messerschmidt, ASC)
Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS for DUNE
Spotlight (presented by Sosie Bacon)
Pat Scola for PIG
Documentary (presented by Denis Villeneuve)
Jessica Beshir for FAYA DAYI
Motion Picture, Limited Series, or Pilot Made for Television (presented by Katherine McNamara)
James Laxton, ASC for THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD – Chapter 9: Indiana Winter
Episode of a One-Hour Television Series: Non-Commercial (presented by Morgan Cooper)
Jon Joffin, ASC for TITANS – Souls
Episode of a One-Hour Television Series: Commercial (presented by LaMonica Garrett)
Tommy Maddox-Upshaw, ASC for SNOWFALL – Weight
Episode of a Half-Hour Television Series (presented by Tamlyn Tomita)
Michael Berlucchi and Marc Carter for MYTHIC QUEST – Backstory!
Honorary kudos
Honorary awards were also presented at the ceremony with Ellen Kuras, ASC, becoming the first woman to receive the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award. The award was presented to Kuras by the aforementioned groundbreaking DP Morrison.
Peter Levy, ASC, ACS (Predator 2, Californication) received the Career Achievement in Television Award from his longtime collaborator director Stephen Hopkins.
Rebecca Rhine and Amy Vincent, ASC presented John Lindley, ASC (Field of Dreams, St. Vincent) with the ASC Presidents Award.
The inaugural Curtis Clark Technical Achievement Award was given to Panavision’s VP of optical engineering and lens strategy Dan Sasaki.
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More