BK 101: How International Cast & Crew of The Drop Studied Brooklyn
A Belgian, a Brit and a Swede walk into a Brooklyn bar. This is either the beginning of that rare joke involving Belgians and Swedes, or, it's exactly what was happening when the cast and crew behind The Drop were working their butts off to become credible Brooklynites while prepping for the crime thriller. Directed by the Belgian Michaël Roskam, and starring Tom Hardy (British) and Noomi Rapace (Swedish), much of the cast and a good number of the crew are from outside the U.S.,
Saying Goodbye to James Gandolfini in The Drop
James Gandolfini’s final film performance can be seen this September 12 in The Drop, directed by Michaël Roskam. The script, the first by master crime writer Dennis Lehane, is based on his short story “Animal Rescue.” Gandolfini plays Cousin Marv, a once formidable Brooklyn heavy who now runs his namesake bar, a place that does a little more than provide drinks to thirsty locals. Cousin Marv’s place is a also a ‘drop bar,’
Filming The November Man in Beautiful Belgrade
The entire process of filmmaking, from script to post, is about problem solving. The inviolable law of the medium is often Murphy’s Law, and filmmakers find themselves having to reverse course, rewrite, restructure, rethink their film due to some fresh problem. Yet, as David Mamet memorably wrote in one of his must read books on filmmaking (he has a few) “Bambi vs. Godzilla,” often it’s the problems that occur and their unexpected consequences that can make a scene,
54 World Premieres Highlight 71st Venice International Film Festival
The 71st Venice Film Festival officially opens the fall festival season on August 27, followed just two days later by the Telluride Film Festival and, six days after that, the Toronto Film Festival (TIFF). There’s been a bunch of press lately over the recent announcement by TIFF’s artistic director, Cameron Bailey, that from now on only world premieres and North American premieres would be allowed to screen during the festival’s all-important first four days.
Love & Struggle in the City in Love is Strange
Writer/director Ira Sachs and painter Boris Torres were married in New York City in 2011. They joined the many couples who exchanged vows after the state legislature legalized same sex marriage in 2011. Their twin children were born a week after their marriage. It was around this time that Sachs was thinking about his fifth feature film. “I wanted to make a film about love from the very particular perspective of my own age and experience—as someone who’s not either very old or very young,
The Cast of The Giver on Bringing the Book to Life on Screen
The film adaptation of The Giver has been a long time coming. In fact, it has been in the works for 18 years since Jeff Bridges found out about the Newbery Medal winning book while searching for a part for his dad, Lloyd Bridges, to play. Unfortunately, his father since passed away in 1998, but Bridges was already engaged with the book and the idea of a movie.
“I said,
If I Stay’s Social Media Smarts
The rise of Nicholas Sparks was an early sign of the success to come (find me one female between the ages of 12 and 40 who hasn't seen The Notebook), but when The Fault in Our Stars bombarded the box office, the triumph of the traumatic romance genre was in full throttle mode.
It’s a simple story that we’ve seen take over the screens in the past decade.
Filming in the Paris Catacombs for As Above, So Below
Imagine all your fears, mistakes and regrets returning to haunt you…while you’re trapped in a claustrophobic 180-mile underground cave system and mass grave. Apparently brothers John and Drew Dowdle found this premise inspiring enough to write Legendary and Universal’s new psychological horror film As Above, So Below. The same twisted minds behind Quarantine and Devil, the brothers are no strangers to inducing audience-wide panic attacks. Legendary CEO and As Above producer Thomas Tull called the Dowdles with the idea of setting a movie in the Paris Catacombs and the two filmmakers were all too happy to oblige him.
Into the Storm Brews a Mighty Economic Wind in Michigan
The premise of Into the Storm is simple and terrifying; a series of tornados, each more violent than the next, lays waste to a small town. These freakish storm systems (achieving EF5 status—the highest metric on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, with winds of more than 200 miles per hour) behave erratically and do things they haven’t done before, sending terrified residents under ground (if they’re lucky) and confuse and humble the storm chasers who follow and film them.
International Cast & Crew Cook Up The Hundred-Foot Journey
Sitting in the theater of the Museum of the Moving Image, everyone eagerly awaits the arrival of Bollywood icon Om Puri. Located in Astoria, Queens, the recent renovations at the museum added this 267-seat theater for events such as this, where locals and tourists alike can take in great films and sit for interviews with legends they likely have never heard of. Om Puri is here to be interviewed by Indian actress and author,
Fall Films Show Family Affairs Gone Bad (and Beyond)
As we look ahead to fall, we see several intriguing films coming out that focus, in one way or another, on family. While every year brings plenty of movies that focus on family matters, this year boasts what might be the single most astonishing film about a family ever created—Richard Linklater's masterpiece Boyhood. This gorgeous, meditative dance with time exposed the beauty, love, hardship and turmoil of one single family over 12-years, a feat of filmmaking that is all the more breathtaking for being in the service of a film that actually moves you. This fall’s family-centered films are a touch darker,
The Beautiful Art That Shapes & Sells Our Favorite Films & Shows
Sketches, illustrations, storyboards, concept art, posters, digital painting and even 'for your consideration' Emmy ads for print publications like Variety are just a few of the ways in which artists help filmmakers and television creators tell, and sell, their movies and shows. The artwork can be extremely visible to the public, as AMC's Mad Men has done so brilliantly with their poster design for each new season, or simply a tool for filmmakers to use to help them craft a specific scene or sequence.
Space Creators: Building the Guardians of the Galaxy
James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy opens on Earth, where a young Peter Quill sits alone in a hospital corridor, listening to his walkman. Prop master Barry Gibbs lead the search for the perfect cassette player, which took four months of internet searching and yielded only 16 cassette players in various states of disrepair that would be suitable for the film. Every detail in the film was chosen on purpose, often at great effort. In our opening scene,
Playing With Fire: Chadwick Boseman is James Brown in Get On Up
Some lives seem almost too perfectly suited to be portrayed on the big screen. The larger-than-life figures whose existences seem endlessly dramatic, enjoying the highest highs—success, adoration, fame, fortune, romance, and the lowest lows—shame, disgrace, and the specter of death. These individuals often turn out to be nearly impossible to portray successfully on screen. For every winning portrayal of an icon (Denzel Washington as Malcolm X, for example), there’s a dozen or more than seem to suffer from the responsibility of plausibly portraying an outsized personality,
Comic-Con 2014: A Snapshot of Films, Panels & Events
Comic-Con and its overflowing abundance is upon us once again. We’ll help guide you through the costumed chaos with a selection of offerings from top movie studios, the “only at Comic-Con” events, and our own wish list of events.
Major Studio Showings:
Thursday, July 24
11:15am Toy Story That Time Forgot (Disney)
If the words “you’ve got a friend in me” set your heart aflutter,
Welcome to the new Credits
After a lot of thinking, tinkering and testing, we’re very excited to unveil our new website. Like an improved Iron Man suit, The Credits has upgraded its software, streamlined its design and increased its adaptability. We’ve now got a fully responsive design and layout. This means that whether you're loading up the site on your smartphone, tablet or desktop, you'll get the full expression of The Credits at your fingertips.
Exec Producer & Writer on FX’s Tyrant Talks About Groundbreaking Show
FX's new show Tyrant is unlike anything currently on television. Showcasing Arab characters and cultures, set in the Middle East, the 10-episode first season is a bold step towards showing American audiences people and situations rarely depicted. While Netflix's Orange is the New Black is deservedly lauded for filling the frame with three dimensional female characters who are black, brown, gay and transgendered, Tyrant will put faces on our screen who have too often been portrayed as villains or marginal characters at best.
Taiwan, Paris & the Presidio: A Global Village Creates Lucy
Filmmaker Luc Besson has a thing for dangerous women. In 1990 Besson gave us Nikita, a felon-turned-assassin in La Feme Nikita. Four years later he came back with The Professional, in which a young girl named Mathilda (Natalie Portman) is trained by professional assassin Léon (Jean Reno) after her family is killed in a police raid. And three short years after that, Besson created his most powerful woman to date, Leeloo (Milla Jovovich),
Monkey See, Monkey Do: Fifty Years of Politics Surrounding the Apes Franchise
The hype for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is unavoidable. Rave reviews are already flooding the internet and much has been made about the cutting-edge motion capture technology that renders the apes shockingly realistic, but the parallels of violence and struggles for peace have also captured viewers’ attentions. The Apes movies have always served as allegories, influenced by the political, social, economic and environmental issues of their times,
Summer’s Pleasant Surprises
For those in the film prognostication business, this summer’s been a bit baffling. Many people assumed Tom Cruise’s Edge of Tomorrow would be a bust, and, regardless of it’s box office numbers, the film has been a critical smash. And Emily Blunt, Cruise’s ass-kicking co-star, is perhaps the most unexpected action hero of the summer.
It wasn’t terribly surprising that X-Men: Days of Future Past would be so good,
