Oscar Watch: How NASA Footage Inspired the First Man Editor’s Style
The moon landing was welcomed as a shared triumph in American history, but no one had more at stake than the men who traveled there. The mission’s success was as much a feat of will as of science. First Man captures the danger and courage of pioneering space travel in both broad historic and intensely microscopic ways. Editor Tom Cross was inspired by the movie’s ambition of telling a famous story from a human perspective.
“It allowed us to delve into this first-person subjective type of storytelling where you feel like you are climbing into the space capsule or you feel like it is your hands on the rung of the ladder as you climb down and step on the moon,” Cross described...
Oscar Watch: How BlacKkKlansman‘s Composer Channeled Jimi Hendrix’s Iconic Riffs
Terence Blanchard landed on this year’s Best Original Score Oscar shortlist by crafting the stirring score for Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman. Based on a true story and set in 1971, the movie casts John David Washington as Ron Stallworth, a black cop who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan with his Jewish colleague (Adam Driver) by impersonating a white supremacist over the phone. Blanchard, a jazz trumpeter who grew up in New Orleans alongside Wynton Marsalis,...
Oscar Watch: A Quiet Place‘s Sound Designers on Triggering our Brain’s Reptilian Fear Response
Supervising sound editors Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van Der Ryn had the unusual challenge of applying their expertise to a film that would be so quiet, it had the word in its title. John Krasinski’s thrilling, chilling A Quiet Place was predicated on a brilliant idea; alien monsters have turned the planet into one giant Amtrak quiet car. Only in this world, if you make a sound you’ll suffer a fate far worse than the annoyance of your fellow train passengers...
Oscar Watch: Justin Hurwitz on Composing the Emotional Toll of Reaching For The Moon in First Man
Oscar and Golden Globe-winning composer Justin Hurwitz crafts scores that feature stirring and beautiful notes and chord progressions, but they are born from human experiences. Hurwitz mines melodies alongside his longtime creative partner, Damien Chazelle, who directs with music in mind. Their first three films together examined the human condition through musicians including a jazz trumpeter (Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench), a drum student (Whiplash), and a pianist (La La Land)...
Oscar Watch: A Quiet Place‘s Production Designer on Creating Killer Spaces
In John Krasinski‘s A Quiet Place, sound kills. Yet it’s not only what one might say (or scream) that can get you killed, but anything you come into contact with. This means the spaces within the world of A Quiet Place can go from a sanctuary to a trap in a heartbeat. In order to create an environment that was as claustrophobic and terrifying as the film’s brilliant premise, Krasinski tapped production designer Jeffrey Beecroft to build him a world in which everything was potentially fatal...
Oscar Watch: DP James Laxton on Creating Radical Intimacy in If Beale Street Could Talk
Oscar-nominated cinematographer James Laxton (Moonlight) and his longtime collaborator director Barry Jenkins did something novel with If Beale Street Could Talk, and we’re not just talking about the fact the film is adapted from the legendary James Baldwin’s titular novel. Unlike their previous collaborations, 2008’s Medicine for Melancholy, set in San Francisco, and 2016’s Oscar-winning Moonlight, set in Miami, Beale Street unfolds in a city neither had an intimate knowledge of—New York...
Are the Avengers Reassembling for the Oscars?
What will it take to bring back our beloved, fallen Avengers after the now infamous Thanos snap? If you’re thinking it’s Captain Marvel, you might be right about how things shake out in Avengers: Endgame, but it looks like we’ll be seeing them a whole lot sooner—at the Oscars. The Hollywood Reporter has it that the Oscars producers are looking to bring back the Avengers for the telecast (there will be no host this year),...
Exclusive Video: Oscar Short-Listed The Death of Stalin Composer on Scoring Lunacy
When we interviewed composer Christopher Willis about writing the now Oscar short-listed score for Armando Iannucci‘s hilarious, bleakly resonant dark comedy The Death of Stalin, he told us that one of his major influences in the film was the legendary Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich. “Because he was famous, he had a complicated relationship with Stalin, he was in and out of favor. There were times he thought he’d written a piece that had offended the authorities,...
Oscar Watch: How Composer Brian Tyler Spiced Up Crazy Rich Asians Score
Brian Tyler started playing drums at age four, taught himself piano, guitar and cello soon after, toured the world at age fifteen performing a concerto he’d written and paid his way through Harvard by playing in rock bands. More recently, he’s scored more than $1.2 billion worth of global blockbusters including Avengers: Age of Ultron, Fast & Furious, and Iron Man 3. His latest hit, Crazy Rich Asians,...
Know Before You Go: A Captain Marvel Primer
Captain Marvel may become the saving grace of the universe, but she’s been hidden in the shadows keeping her magnificence to herself. With spectacular trailers and awe-inspiring images of the Kree soldier in action, we are already obsessed with the photon blasting hero. Still, there are a lot of question marks about the character, especially considering she doesn’t remember her own past. Collider has the dish on what to expect and what you should know before heading to the theater...
Oscar Watch: Black Panther Cinematographer Rachel Morrison on how to Make an Intimate Epic
When Oscar-nominated cinematographer Rachel Morrison (the first woman ever nominated in the category for her work on Mudbound) started working on Black Panther, she had an uncanny feeling; this massive, ultimately groundbreaking Marvel mega-film felt much more like the indies she’s worked on in the past. Black Panther marked her second collaboration with writer/director Ryan Coogler (she lensed his breakout first film, Fruitvale Station), and although Marvel was pouring massive resources into this epic,...
Oscar Watch: Suspiria’s Prosthetic Makeup Artist on Turning Tilda Swinton into an Old Man
The original horror film Suspiria, made by Dario Argento in 1977, was wild and colorful, and the palette of Luca Guadagnino’s version of the story conveys quickly that this is not a remake. The dance company at the center of the story, next to the Berlin Wall, is bleakly lunatic, as are the street scenes of 1970s Berlin outside, where RAF protests hold sway and it is always raining.
The film opens on ex-dancer Patricia (Chloë Grace Moretz) paying a desperate visit to her therapist,...
Venom and Carnage are On a Collision Course for Sequel
Woody Harrelson’s Cletus Kasady promised in Venom, “There will be carnage.” And so there shall be. The mid-credits scene signaled a sequel to Eddie Brock’s (Tom Hardy) symbiote transformation that has now been officially green-lit.
Venom took a massive bite out of the worldwide box office chomping up $855 million. Unsurprisingly, there is more to come from the alien inhabited investigative reporter. Variety is reporting that the creative team is beginning work on Venom 2 slated for October 2020...
New Captain Marvel Images Tease the MCU’s Most Potent Superhero
Have you checked out the new Captain Marvel special look? If not, give it a quick watch as it pertains to these new images, which tease not only just how powerful Captain Marvel is, but how cosmic her issues are going to be in her big introduction into the MCU. The new video shows us how Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) is being pulled in multiple directions at once. She’s part Kree, therefore feels responsible to learn under the tough guidance of Mar-Vell (Jude Law)...
New Captain Marvel Trailer Teases Alien Invasion
Okay, technically this is being called a “special look,” but considering it boasts a good amount of new footage and even a bit more plot information, this new video released by Marvel functions as a trailer just as well. The first half of the video concerns Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) explaining to Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) that Earth is in the midst of an alien invasion by a nasty race of shapeshifters called Skrulls. We see one Skrull on the beach merely look at a young female surfer and begin to transform into her,...
The Title of Avengers: Endgame Was Planned Before Infinity War Was Released
The endgame has arrived for the Avengers and the fate of the universe is nearing. Following a nearly insurmountable defeat in Avengers: Infinity War, Marvel President Kevin Feige is one of the few people who know how it will all play out. MTV News stopped the exec on the Golden Globes red carpet last night to ask about the recently released title of the next film.
“It was in place before we started developing the movie...
How Ruth Ginsberg’s Nephew Wrote On the Basis of Sex
Before he experienced the memorial service epiphany that led to On the Basis of Sex, writer Daniel Stiepleman had knocked around for a few years, working in the Peace Corps, teaching high school English and producing TV commercials in Wisconsin. Then, he attended the 2010 funeral of his uncle Martin, the late husband of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. “Martin’s friend gave a eulogy and mentioned in passing that discrimination on the basis of sex was the only case Ruth and Marty ever argued together,”...
Stan & Ollie Director Revisits a Great Doubles Act
When he was a kid growing up in Scotland, filmmaker Jon. S. Baird loved Laurel and Hardy movies so much that he impersonated Stan Laurel at his school’s “fancy dress” day alongside a classmate dressed in an Oliver Hardy outfit. Three decades later, Baird pays homage to the great song-and-dance comedy team as director of Stan & Ollie. In the movie, opening wide January 11, Steve Coogan plays the duo’s rake-thin mastermind with Golden Globe-nominated John C...
Oscar Watch: Black Panther‘s Co-Editor on the Key Scene She Influenced
A rich African inspired heritage and fierce women warriors proved this year that fresh perspectives are long overdue on screen. Black Panther came out swinging and took a major swipe at barriers to cinematic representation. The immensely talented team dreamed up a world that was not only thrilling and gorgeous but also put new faces at the forefront of the superhero genre. Not only were there more black actors on screen than any other Marvel film,...
Oscar Watch: Cold War‘s DP Lukasz Zal on Crafting Pawel Pawlikowski’s Latest Masterpiece
Cinematographer Lukasz Zal won the prestigious Silver Frog Award at Camerimage for his work on Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War, a ravishing look at a romance over the course of 30-years and several thousand miles through Europe. Zal had worked with Pawlikowski on Ida, the director’s previous masterpiece, as a cameraman (he ultimately earned himself a co-cinematographer credit). For Cold War, Zal was in command of the camera team, and the result is breathtaking...
