It's a long way, literally and metaphorically, from the English Riviera to the badlands of the American west - yet Roger Deakins appears to have made it with aplomb. Born and raised in Torquay, Deakins is now firmly installed as one of Hollywood's most respected cinematographers, partly down to his lengthy collaboration with the Coen brothers. This year he was Oscar-nominated for a brace of films, No Country For Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James. And if he's miffed about not winning for one of them, he's not the sort to show it.
I was first turned on to the art of the cinematographer by the superb documentary Visions of Light, which showed how the best of them work a curious alchemy on a movie (turning money into light and then back into money, as John Boorman put it). But inevitably it is hard to judge their work in isolation. Nestor Almendros brought a dreamlike intensity to Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, but he presumably toiled just as hard on The Blue Lagoon. Or take Gordon Willis, whose experiments with under-lighting helped make The Godfather what it is, but who then went on to work on the likes of Malice and Bright Lights, Big City. Good cinematographers need good directors, just as good directors need good scripts.
Also on the show this week is the young film-maker Paul Taylor, discussing his award-winning documentary We Are Together. The film is well worth checking out. Ostensibly the feel-good tale of a South African children's choir, it's actually a haunting portrait of one embattled family and a wider study of a nation riven by Aids and poverty. The film's harsh context gives its musical interludes an emotional punch they might otherwise not have had.
There's a different flavour to the show this week. With your regular host, Jason Solomons, away on his holidays (Butlins again, I'm betting), I've been corralled in as guest presenter, cattle-prodded into the studio and gently ordered to "sound more excited". Actually I am excited. We've got the guests. We've got the clips. And we've got the brilliant Guardian writer Laura Barton, talking us through the week's stories and new releases. Whoo-hoo! Whoo-hoo! That's me sounding excited.
