Another of our new awards for 2006, Best Cinematography honors the prettiest pictures of the year. First place goes to Good Night, and Good Luck, which utilizes gorgeous black and white scenery in its setting of the 1950s CBS newsrooms. Cigarette smoke fills every room, and the claustrophobic camera work adds to the tension of the film, giving it extra power in its crucial broadcast scenes.

And extremely close race in the category gave Brokeback Mountain second place, getting by largely on the cheap showiness of nature. The foothills of the Alberta Rockies stand in for Wyoming, and some simply stunning mountain scapes and prairie panoramas accentuate the beauty of this story.

Another largely black and white film comes in for third place here, in the form of Robert Rodriguez's comic and gore masterpiece Sin City. Unforgettable images abound in this film, which perfectly captures the comic style. Punctuated with color images at just the right times, Sin City was eye candy from start to finish.

Fourth place goes to the nature documentary March of the Penguins, which was able to capture incredible footage among a giant penguin flock over the course of a winter in Antarctica. Following them from the ocean to their nesting grounds and back (and back, and back again), this film transcended mere nature documentary and gave us a view of lands few have ever seen in person.

An animal of another kind features strongly in fifth spot, which goes to King Kong. Though much of the movie exists only on a computer hard drive, this film's cinematographers brought Skull Island to life, as well as Depression-era New York City. Breathtaking looks over these expanses turned Kong into something special.

Sixth place goes to another fantasy flick, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Gloomy atmosphere and marvelously designed set pieces got the voters's attention here. Another Anglophilic setting comes in for seventh spot, albeit a more realistic one. Pride & Prejudice boasts a wonderful look of the English countryside, as well as capturing the opulence of 19th century palaces and mansions.

Batman Begins grabs eighth spot based on its contrasts of the before and after Gotham City, along with its initial traverse through a Himalayan wasteland (Iceland, standing in for Tibet). Syriana is next, with a mix of dramatic desert and urban settings. A stark look is also employed in this film, giving it verisimilitude. Finally, we round out the category with Memoirs of a Geisha, capturing pre-World War II Japan in all its splendor and beauty. (Reagen Sulewski/BOP)

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