CinemaCon 2014: A Peek at Paramount’s Summer Lineup
Paramount’s got a slate of massive films coming out in the next few months, with perhaps it most marquee release bookending the run—Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, coming on November 7. Nolan himself will be on hand at CinemaCon, as he was in 2012 when he showed a five minute clip of The Dark Knight Rises during a Warner Bros. presentation. Tonight at CinemaCon, Paramount will be showcasing some of their upcoming films for eager audiences at 6:30pm...
CinemaCon 2014: 5 Jaw Dropping American Theaters
The worldwide motion picture theater industry descends on Caesars Palace in Las Vegas today for the fourth annual CinemaCon, the official convention of NATO [National Association of Theater Owners] that runs through March 27. CinemaCon is the largest annual gathering of cinema owners and operators from around the world, drawing filmmakers, distributors and exhibitors alike for a four-day celebration of the theaters and films we love.
We’ll be celebrating CinemaCon this week by highlighting theaters and the films that’ll be filling them this coming summer...
Fight Coordinator J.J. Perry Calls the Punches in Divergent
For most young adults, one of their most pressing questions is “What do I want to be when I grow up?” In the futuristic society in Divergent, the answer to that question is predetermined. At sixteen, they are sorted into one of five factions where they spend the rest of their lives. Shailene Woodley (The Descendants, Secret Life of an American Teenager) and Theo James (Underworld: Awakening) star in this adaptation of the bestselling young-adult novel by Veronica Roth...
How to Shoot Stunts & Action on a Budget
The stunts in the recent Liam Neeson action flick Non-Stop were breathtaking, thanks to the work of stunt coordinator (and Neeson body double) Mark Vanselow. In the upcoming Divergent, fight coordinator J.J. Perry helped turned Shailene Woodley into a credible action heroine. There will be more wild sequences on display in Noah, Darren Aronofsky's very singular take on the Biblical story in which he had his stars, including Russell Crowe, Ray Winstone and Emma Watson,...
The Grand Budapest Hotel Production Designer Adam Stockhausen Goes Handmade
Seven years ago, a young art director was given an appropriately quirky assignment on the set of The Darjeeling Limited: design the dishes for the dining cabin of Wes Anderson’s India-traversing train. It took “an awful lot of versions” to win over the discerning director, but Adam Stockhausen must have made a good impression—since then, he has served as production designer on Anderson’s last two films, Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel...
Getting Schooled by Anna Deavere Smith on her HBO Documentary
Playwright, actress, and professor Anna Deavere Smith does not like to be precious about the work she has done with her students over the years. She’s bracingly honest and laid back about the time and effort she’s devoted to helping young people who dream of carving out a career like the one she has had. “It’s not so noble as sharing the craft,” she said when asked why she continues to teach well into a successful career as varied as it is impressive...
Re-Drawing History With the Storyboard Artists of Mr. Peabody & Sherman
They rose to prominence more than half a century ago, a genius talking beagle who invented a time machine (plus won a Nobel prize and two Olympic medals) and the dorky little boy he adopted. As the whimsical world travelers who showed up in the middle of the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, Mr. Peabody and Sherman brought a generation of cartoon audiences to the farthest reaches of history thanks to their WABAC machine. Today, the characters are doing they’re own bit of meta time traveling,...
SXSW 2014: Home‘s Ronen Landa, the Horror Film Composer Scared of Horror
Composer Ronen Landa first came to SXSW in 2005. He was here with a documentary called The Dreams of Sparrows, a remarkable film shot in Iraq at the outset of the war. First time director Haydar Daffar collaborated with a team of Iraqi directors to capture life in Baghdad in 2003 and 2004. Landa had worked with the film’s producer, Aaron Raskin, who brought him in to compose. “It was a special project for me because it was such a momentous time,” Landa says...
SXSW 2014: Richard Linklater’s Epic, Masterful Boyhood
Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was in pre-production for roughly a year. The film took 39 days to shoot, and then two more years for post-production. It premiered at Sundance in mid January, played at the Berlin International Film Festival in early February (where Linklater won the Silver Bear for Best Director), and then played at the Paramount Theater here in Austin on Sunday morning, March 10, at 10:30 a.m. Linklater, a legend here in Austin, the founder and creative director of the Austin Film Society,...
SXSW 2014: Sarah-Violet Bliss & Charles Rogers on Grand Jury Prize-Winning Fort Tilden
How do you write and shoot feature in a few months, cut it, have it accepted by a major film festival and then have it win that festival's major award? Writer/directors Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers would be the perfect speakers on a panel here at SXSW on this very subject, considering as recently as last May, their Grand Jury Prize Winning feature Fort Tilden wasn’t even a thought in their mind.
“A lot of favors,”...
SXSW 2014: Catherine Gund’s Born to Fly Tracks Elizabeth Streb’s Genius
Dancers strut, cling, and leap from a giant swinging metal contraption. It looks like a massive mouse wheel, something you might see in a Cirque du Soleil performance or perhaps the circus. Despite the padding on the floor, the thing looks medieval and very, very dangerous, but the dancers atop, inside and below appear calm and in control. During one of the wheel’s rotations, a young man holding onto one of the bars appears to lose his grip, and as the heavy wheel swings down he’s brutally thrown onto the ground and into a block of padding...
SXSW 2014: Jason Bateman’s Directorial Debut Bad Words
There was something perfect about watching Jason Bateman’s Bad Words on opening night here at SXSW. There are no official press screenings here; your press badge allows you access to any film, but you take in the movie with the general public as well. The vibe is different from Sundance, which befits the laid back Austin setting. Screenings here differ from screenings at Sundance in another, significant way—one can enjoy a drink while watching a film...
SXSW 2014: Things to See & Hear
Now that SXSW is underway and The Credits lounge is open for business, let’s take a quick glance around the festival at some of the things going on over the next nine days. Obviously this is but a tiny little snapshot—SXSW is a festival with so much going on it’s a little like a moving Louvre, you can’t possibly hope to see everything in your allotted time, so you have to pick and choose your spots. Here are some of ours...
Building a Plane From Scratch With the Production Designer of Non-Stop
Have you ever walked through a missile silo? What about into the Oval Office or onto an alien planet? We didn’t think so. But chances are each of the millions of moviegoers who have flocked to see Non-Stop know what the inside of an airplane looks like. And since he was charged with creating an interior that looked totally realistic and doubled as a functional movie set, that posed a pretty big challenge for production designer Alec Hammond...
Flying the Unfriendly Skies with Non-Stop Stunt Coordinator Mark Vanselow
Using an airport bathroom can have the degree of difficulty of a gymnastics floor routine. But when your job is United States air marshal and there’s a mystery man on your plane threatening to kill one passenger every 20 minutes, taking care of business means means squeezing into the stall to swap punches with a bad guy like two angry sardines in a can. And though star Liam Neeson, playing air marshal Bill Marks, no doubt took some licks during filming,...
Post Oscars Wrap-Up: Our Social Awards Season App Delivers the Goods
The things that we could agree would happen, like Ellen hosting with her easy going charm (has there ever been a more relaxed, amiable host?) and Gravity mopping up a slew of technical awards. And how did our Social Awards Season App, the DataViz, fare in predicting the winners? Let’s have a look.
To access the DataViz and see for yourself, click here. For our brief synopsis, see below:
Best picture
Predicted Correctly?...
Our Social Awards Season App Gears up for the Oscars
We’re a week away from the biggest night in Hollywood, and our DataViz, a collaboration between The Credits and global social analytics and monitoring firm Brandwatch, a truly one-of-a-kind Social Awards App, is proving its mettle for the second year in a row. The DataViz tracked, crunched and analyzed how critics and the public predicted who would the various categories in the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Golden Globes, Producers Guild of American Awards and Directors Guild of America Awards,...
Looking at the Legendary Career of Oscar Nominated Visionary Hayao Miyazaki
This Friday marks the nationwide release of legendary Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki’s eleventh feature film, The Wind Rises. With this picture, Miyazaki is nominated for his third Oscar for best-animated feature film. He was previously nominated in this category in 2006 for Howl’s Moving Castle, and he won in 2003 for Spirited Away, the first anime movie to win in that category.
Miyazaki has had an enormous influence on animators worldwide,...
Honorary Academy Award Winner D.A. Pennebaker on the Award’s Beguiling Charm
When the late, great Peter O’Toole learned he was to receive an honorary Academy Award in 2002, his initial reaction caught Hollywood by surprise. The Irish-born wag, then 70, dashed off a letter to the Academy asking them to hold off on the honor until he was 80. “I’m still in the game and might win the bugger outright,” wrote O’Toole, who was counting on a future shot at winning a competitive Oscar after being shutout seven times.
O’Toole eventually relented and gratefully accepted his honorary statuette at the 2003 ceremony,...
In Their Words: Some of This Year’s Oscar Nominees on Their Craft, Part II
Yesterday we took a look at four filmmakers whose work has earned them an Oscar nomination (in Gravity cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's case, his sixth), sharing with you some of their thoughts on their craft. In one of the most anticipated Oscars in recent memory, it's refreshing to step back and reflect on exactly how these talented individuals created such memorable moments in such a fantastic year for film.
We continue this reflection on craft with part two,...
