Matthew Libatique has been killing it as a cinematographer, and his work is worth spotlighting during Asian Pacific American Heritage Month as it winds down

Matthew Libatique accepts his trophy for Best Cinematography for Black Swan at the 2011 Film Independent Spirit Awards.

Matthew Libatique is another Asian American craftsman in the film industry whose body of work is always worth celebrating, whether during Asian Pacific American Heritage Month or any other month of the year. The Pinoy cinematographer shot most of Darren Aronofsky's films, including Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream. Yep, all those memorable close-ups of dilated pupils in Requiem were Libatique's handiwork.

Libatique bounces back and forth between indies and the mainstream. He lensed one of my favorite caper flicks, 2006's Inside Man, which is also one of the best joints by Libatique's filmmaking idol Spike Lee, and he shaped the vibrant look of the first two Iron Man movies. In 2010, when Jon Favreau decided not to return as director for Iron Man 3 (Shane Black, who directed Robert Downey Jr. in the wonderful Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, later ended up with the job), someone in the comments section of The Playlist wrote, "I say they give [the director's chair] to the DP, Matt Libatique."

This post almost didn't happen because of Blogger's stupid new restrictions on image size. Apparently on Blogger, you can no longer upload and post images in as large a size as you want, which ruins the point of posts like this one about Libatique's work, where I wanted to convey the boldness of his visuals through hi-def images. You can't convey that when you're confined to posting images that are merely the size of a USPS stamp.

So instead of following these inane restrictions, I'm working around them, and I found a better way to convey the awesomeness of his visuals: by simply posting the most interesting-looking footage of Libatique's work.







Libatique to American Cinematographer on the distinctive look he gave to Inside Man's interrogation scenes, which he photographed with Kodak Ektachrome 100D 5285 reversal film that was cross-processed and put through a bleach bypass: "Using a bleach bypass neutralizes the color temperature and creates more contrast than simply cross-processing. Basically, it unifies all the color. Spike wanted a look that would jump out and tell you you're somewhere else."





From American Cinematographer's 2006 article about Libatique's cinematography for Inside Man: "For example, when hostages are released, and at other moments of high tension in the film, Libatique encouraged [A-camera/Steadicam operator Stephen] Consentino to use progressively shorter shutter angles. 'You normally shoot with a 180-degree shutter, but we were going down to 90, 45 and even 22.5 degrees on the action scenes,' says the operator. The technique creates 'this feeling of frenetic action because it eliminates any motion blur that is normally in the shot. It gives you a very anxious feeling while you're watching the movie.'"

The style guide for A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Blog

(Photo source: BACKYard Woods Explorer)

• Titles of songs, album tracks, short stories, TV series episodes, DVD or Blu-ray featurettes and cable channel or radio station programming blocks are always contained within quotation marks. Example from July 29, 2011: The "Rome, Italian Style" block on A Fistful of Soundtracks airs Mondays through Thursdays from 11am to noon. (However, even though Adult Swim is still technically a Cartoon Network programming block, the name isn't contained within quotes because Adult Swim evolved from a single-night block to a larger entity that Nielsen officially recognized as distinct from Cartoon Network in 2005, much like what happened to Nickelodeon's Nick at Nite.)

• Occupations or descriptive adjectives and nouns that appear before people's names are never capitalized. Example: constant self-recycler James Horner.

• Terms like "Filipino American," "Asian American" or "African American," which some writers prefer to hyphenate, are not hyphenated.

• The interpunct that used to be part of the Frito-Lay product name "Chee·tos" is absent whenever Cheetos is mentioned because of Frito-Lay's current official spelling, which removed the interpunct. Example: Why the hell does John Malkovich look like a human Cheeto during Transformers: Dark of the Moon?

• Numbers from one to nine are spelled out. Numbers above nine are written as figures (10, 11, 12, etc.) but are spelled out whenever they're the first words in sentences.

• The movie title Se7en and the procedural title Numb3rs maintain their unique spelling even though it looks stup1d.

• If a person is a Jr. or Sr., there is no comma between the name and Jr. or Sr. Example from January 13, 2009: Downey Jr. never drops character until the commentary is over.

• An ellipsis indicates a hammy pause. Example: "Dammit, Bones... this girdle you gave me for... my birthday... is too... constricting."

• Titles of movies, TV series, radio programs, podcasts, books, comic book series, magazines and newspapers are always italicized.

• Cardassians are whores for fascism. Kardashians are whores for attention.

(Photo source: Overthinking It)

• Names of online magazines like Salon and Slate are italicized. Names of blogs like DISGRASIAN, Burnt Lumpia and MovieMorlocks are not italicized.

• A Corolla is a car I damaged while driving it when I was a teen. A Carolla is a racist douchebag whose ass will get damaged by a gang of Pinoy teens if he ever sets foot in Daly City.

• Names of races and nationalities like African, Latino and Filipino are capitalized, but racial adjectives like "black," "white" and "brown" are not.

• "Sit for Baines" is a Back to the Future prequel fanfic about teenage George McFly's bumbling attempts to get to better know his crush Lorraine Baines by babysitting her younger brothers. "Shit for brains" is Fox News whenever it refers to Common as a gangsta rapper.

• Though this is an American blog and the word "license" is always spelled with just one "c," the British spelling of the 007 movie title Licence to Kill is left unchanged.

• "Michele Bachmann" is spelled with just one glassy "i."

"Rock Box" Track of the Day: The Dubliners, "The Rocky Road to Dublin"

Song: "The Rocky Road to Dublin" by The Dubliners
Released: 1964
Why's it part of the "Rock Box" playlist?: Because of Warner Bros.' announcement from the other day that Robert Downey Jr.'s Sherlock Holmes sequel finally has a title (Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows), today's track from the "Rock Box" playlist is the Sherlock Holmes bare-knuckle boxing sequence music. It's the Irish folk band The Dubliners' 1964 recording of "The Rocky Road to Dublin," a 19th-century "slip jig" about an Irishman who travels from the town of Tuam to Liverpool to look for work and--here's a shocker--he gets in a fight, where his moves probably aren't as well-thought-out as the moves Sherlock comes up with to win the pitfight.

Coming Soon to a Theater in an Alternate Reality Near You

This was originally going to be a regular feature on my blog. Two April Fools Days ago, I posted some fake movie posters I made in Photoshop and was going to create some more, but I forgot that I suck at Photoshop, so Coming Soon to a Theater in an Alternate Reality Near You never became a regular thing.

Lately online, I've spotted some amusing posters for movies that don't exist, including a You Offend Me You Offend My Family poster of a whitewashed version of Better Luck Tomorrow, so I'm bringing back Coming Soon to a Theater in an Alternate Reality Near You to compile the cleverest or funniest examples of fake poster art.


I'd enjoy this John Boorman-directed Bruce Lee version of The Matrix way more than the actual Matrix. Poster by Sean Hartter.


Mister Miracle by Hartter.


Black Panther by Hartter.


Coming soon to a TV in an alternate reality near you: the Lost spinoff Reyes and Straume (also by Hartter).


From the Vulture blog's "Date Night–Inspired NBC Team-Ups We'd Like to See on the Big Screen" slideshow.


From a 2004 Television Without Pity Pixel Challenge.


From Fark.com's "movies that never existed but should have" forum.


From Cracked.com's "If Hollywood Decided to Give Everything a Gritty Reboot" contest.


Another Cracked gritty reboot: Edward Norton's Cheers.


Another fake Cheers movie poster, this time from Worth1000.com.

The next three are from Cracked's "Worst Possible Casting Decisions" contest.

Memorable quotes from commentary tracks #3

Jack Black: Look at my dick! Oh, it's gone. It's out of focus now.

Lincoln Osiris-voiced Robert Downey Jr.: Was you chubbin' up?

Black: [Laughs.] You know, Ben would lift weights, and I would chub up.

Osiris-voiced Downey: Baruchel comes into his own here too.

Black: Everyone has their own preparation.

Ben Stiller: Yeah, Jay's great in this scene.

Osiris-voiced Downey: Jay B. brings it.

Stiller: He's the grounding force.

Osiris-voiced Downey: Man, look at Brandon T. That's a beautiful man.

Stiller: Yeah, Brandon has great skin. Really, uh, just has a thing that just jumps off the screen.

Osiris-voiced Downey: Well, he's handsome.

Stiller: He is.

Osiris-voiced Downey: Man, look at him.

Stiller: The thing about... And Brandon did a great job in this scene...

Black: He does glisten.

Stiller: ... because this is a big reveal for his character.

Osiris-voiced Downey: You was all over him about the knittin' and how he need to make the knittin' look a certain way. You were fuckin' up in his head that day, man. I don't know how he made it, you toxic muthafucka.

--from the Tropic Thunder cast commentrak