Director David Twohy on how he Crafted the Riddick Trilogy’s Exoplanets
The basic premise behind each installment of writer and director David Twohy’s sci-fi film trilogy—Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick and Riddick—is pretty straightforward. Riddick, played by Vin Diesel, finds himself on a hostile alien planet inhabited by creatures that want to kill him. To add flare to what otherwise could become a tired storyline, Twohy constructs his films around dramatic human storylines and builds them up from a foundation of real-world science.
What’s it Like to be a Science Advisor for Alfonso Cuarón’s Upcoming Gravity?
In Alfonso Cuarón’s upcoming film Gravity (opening Oct. 4), George Clooney and Sandra Bullock play an astronaut and a medical engineer stranded in space.
Cuarón reportedly spent five years perfecting the look of scenes set in zero gravity, but figuring out how to film floating actors was just one of many technical details necessary for a movie set entirely in space. And one key player in the film’s accuracy never stepped foot on the set.
Talking Title Sequences With Creator of ‘Art of the Title’
Art of the Title is the most comprehensive online resource of title sequence design you’ll find.
Ian Albinson’s our kind of movie lover—appreciating all the work that goes into the film experience, not just the bold face names.
“From the tense closeups of Kim Novak’s face in 1958’s Vertigo to the singing ruby lips of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in 1975;
Singing for his Supper: 7 Questions With Icon John Waters
How many of us can say we really did it our way? Frank Sinatra sure seemed like he did. Who else? Who else seemed to not only live the life they wanted to lead, but a life that was in many ways counter to the way everybody else was doing it? Sinatra certainly did it his way, but he was hardly an outlier—he had a whole pack.
You know whom I’m driving towards,
Famed Scientist Elizabeth Loftus on Plausibility of Four Mind-Bending Films
Christopher Nolan has made two mind-blowing films in which the psyches of his characters were chessboards at best, battlefields at worst. Memento made Nolan something of a household name—by the time he made Inception, he was one of the leading directors in Hollywood.
Elizabeth Loftus PhD. is not a household name (few scientists are), but she’s well known in the scientific community as an expert on memory. She’s a professor at the University of California,
A Q&A With Producer & Filmmaking Powerhouse Christine Vachon
Christine Vachon is one of the most important film producers in New York. She has maintained close relationships with a bevy of influential filmmakers while shepherding some of the most challenging, dark and often beautiful films into the world. She has helped provide a voice for directors who might otherwise have been marginalized—she has helped provide some of the juiciest (and most harrowing) female roles to actresses from Julianne Moore to Cate Blanchett to Hillary Swank,
Talking With Legendary Director William Friedkin
William Friedkin, legendary director of The French Connection (1971), which won him the Best Director Oscar, and The Exorcist (1973), one of the greatest horror films of all time, recently published his memoirs, The Friedkin Connection, a candid look at his early life and his long movie career.
We caught up with him as he was touring the country to promote his book,
Film Historians on the Landscape of Cinema During the Civil Rights Era
Today marks the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington. Leaders from all over our country are gathering in D.C. to mark the occasion, with a speech at the end of the day's proceedings by President Obama.
As we wrote yesterday, there are powerful documentaries on the civil rights movement available on DVD that, truly, every American should watch. What we started wondering was what narrative films we were being made at the time that might have had an impact,
Talking to Jane Lynch About her new Film Afternoon Delight
Since premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, writer-director Jill Soloway’s provocative comedy about sex, marriage and finding oneself, Afternoon Delight, has garnered praise (Soloway won best director at this year's Sundance Film Festival) — with many singling out Jane Lynch’s performance as one of the fest’s best. Afternoon Delight follows Rachel (Kathryn Hahn), a hip, Silver Lake, California, mom with a lackluster sex life, who takes in a homeless stripper (Juno Temple) to spice things up.
George Mastras on Writing & Directing One of Breaking Bad’s Best Episodes
George Mastras has been a criminal investigator for the public defender’s office in Washington D.C., a counselor at a juvenile correctional facility during the crack epidemic of the 1990s, a litigator in New York, and a defense attorney in Los Angeles. Then he quit, bought a one-way ticket to China and backpacked around the world for two years. He wrote a novel while he was in Indonesia that was published by Scribner in early 2009 to very good reviews.
Writer/Director/Producer/Star Lake Bell on In a World…
In the dramedy 'In a World…', out August 9, writer/director/producer/star Lake Bell visits the voiceover industry as a newbie competing for the same gig as her industry-veteran father. Here, Bell, who has delivered memorable acting turns in such movies as No Strings Attached and It’s Complicated, talks about writing the script for her feature-film directorial debut, why she loves trailers, and what “voice” annoys her most.
The Credits: What insight can you offer about voices and accents?
Retired Director of NASA’s International Space Station on Plausibility of Elysium
The idea of putting all of Earth's richest people in space permanently has its appeal. Some very much would like to go, and a few of us would like to send them there.
Is such a thing possible, though? To build a huge, permanent, self-sustaining home-off-of-home?
Director Neill Blomkamp, the man behind the fantastic aliens-as-refugees film District 9, uses that idea in his new film Elysium (which opens August 9) to explore the relationship between the have-lots and the have-nots.
Narrative Darwinsim: House of Cards Showrunner Beau Willimon Gets Creative
Since shooting on House of Cards began just one year ago this month, Netflix’s debut series has been the focus of tremendous buzz and speculation—due in large part to its innovative distribution model, stars Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, and executive producer and sometimes director David Fincher. But from the very beginning, it’s been 35 year-old showrunner Beau Willimon who has been in charge of completely overhauling the 1990 British miniseries of the same name and turning it into one of television’s most compelling and often prescient pieces of programming.
Handicapping the Emmy’s With John “The Actor Whisperer” Pallotta
Some exciting things happened this year when the Emmys were announced by Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul and host Neil Patrick Harris (filling in for House of Cards’ Kate Mara, who was stuck on location in Santa Fe): American Horror Story — an extreme, boundary-pushing creepfest — lead the pack with 17 noms, and the Netflix series House of Cards made history by scoring nods for Best Drama,
Editor Alisa Lepselter Talks Blue Jasmine, Her 15th Woody Allen Collab
After working as an Assistant Editor on movies for the likes of Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Nora Ephron, and getting her break cutting Nicole Holofcener's first feature Walking and Talking (1996), Editor Alisa Lepselter, A.C.E. got the job of a lifetime—she cut Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown (1999). Fifteen years later she is on her fifteenth collaboration with Allen for his newest movie, Blue Jasmine,
Comic-Con 2013: In Praise of the Character Actor
In recent years there has been a rise in appreciation of those most special of actors–the character actors. You know them precisely by never really knowing them–you recognize their face, you appreciate their work, but you can rarely recall their name (if you ever knew it in the first place).
Irwin Keyes, character actor extraordinaire, is happy to explain the difference between a supporting actor and a character actor. “It’s not just supporting the lead,”
Talking With DP Jonathan Ingalls About Killer Whale Documentary Blackfish
For the past 10 years, producer, director, and cinematographer Jonathan Ingalls has been making compelling documentary television (MTV’s I Used to be Fat, A&E’s The First 48 and films such as City Lax: An Urban Lacrosse Story.) This week, perhaps his most controversial project, Blackfish, directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, hits theaters in New York and Los Angeles, after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in January and making a giant splash.
Married Directors Robert Pulcini & Shari Springer Berman Talk Girl Most Likely
A background in documentary filmmaking came in handy for long-time co-directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini when they needed to film a man in a mollusk-inspired exoskeleton on the busy streets of New York City.
“People are really scared off of [filming on a city street] without a lot of crew,” Berman told The Credits. For example, when 2007’s I Am Legend filmed a major sequence on the normally swarming streets of New York,
Getting Chatty With Gaby Hoffmann About Sebastian Silva’s Crystal Fairy
Anyone who remembers Gaby Hoffmann as the adorable little girl in huge movies like Field of Dreams and Uncle Buck will be riveted by her very grown-up performance in her latest film, a Chile-based road-trip movie directed by Sebastian Silva [of 2009’s Sundance winner The Maid].
Hoffmann plays Crystal Fairy, a hippie who meets Michael Cera’s pleasure-seeking, drug-loving character, Jamie, at a party —
Eastern Influence: Pacific Rim Latest Film to Draw Inspiration From Japan
The early reviews suggest that Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim (which opens this Friday) is nice blend of what you want out of your summer blockbuster—spectacle, suspense and solid storytelling.
Pacific Rim is also a nice blend of the Japanese tradition of Kaiju films (the most famous example being Godzilla) and mecha stories (about robots or machines), popularized in Japanese manga and anime.
