At Oscars, the name on lips and envelopes is 'Chivo'

Lubezki is behind some of the most dazzling film photography in recent years: the asteroid storm hurtling through the vast 3-D space of "Gravity," the seemingly continuous backstage sweep of "Birdman," the elemental beauty of Terrence Malick's films.

Much of the film's acclaim (it leads with 12 nominations), is owed to its lush immersion in a raw, 19th century wilderness (it was shot largely in the Canadian Rockies) and its balletic single-take sequences, most famously the single-take bear attack.

Lubezki has worked with the Coen brothers ("Burn After Reading"), Michael Mann ("Ali") and Tim Burton ("Sleepy Hollow").

Together, they frequented a local art house theater watching films by Kurosawa, Tarkovsky and Coppola that were sometimes accidentally projected in full-screen prints that showed the apparatus of moviemaking, like boom mics and lights.

Lubezki, who first wanted to be a still photographer, was converted to movies a week into film school.

In films like 2001's "Y Tu Mama Tambien" and 2006's "Children of Men," Cuaron and Lubezki have pushed the bounds of long, fluid takes by utilizing smaller digital cameras and the flexibility of Steadicams.

Filmmakers like Steve McQueen ("12 Years a Slave") and Cary Fukunaga ("True Detective") have also pushed further than the fabled long takes of Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil" or Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope."