Robert Richardson has been all over the place, and for far longer than I realized. I came to know him as the guy who really brought Quentin Tarantino’s movies to visual life, starting with Kill Bill but really coming to fruition in Inglourious Basterds. The look of Basterds was key to confirming its cinematic departure from Tarantino’s previous efforts, and it also is just a gorgeous, gorgeous film. His work on Django Unchained was also some of the best photographic work of last year.
What I didn’t know is that he was Oliver Stone’s cinematographer through that director’s golden period, from Salvador and Platoon up until U Turn (probably a good point to part ways). Since then, aside from Tarantino, his most frequent collaborator has been Martin Scorsese, both in his documentaries like Shine a Light and his recent gorgeous visual work on Shutter Island and Hugo. He has progressed from the gritty realism of his 1980s work with Oliver Stone to more cartoonish visuals with Quentin Tarantino to the dreamscapes of recent Scorsese stuff, showing he now has the photographic range of an A-list cinematographer.
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