The Revenant’s Oscar-Nominated Hair Stylist Talks Frozen Locks
The Revenant, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s epic wilderness film currently being treated to a deluge of well-deserved Oscar buzz, has formed a reputation for its long and harrowing production that now nearly precedes the film itself. Filmed in below freezing temperatures in natural light and by the tenets of Inarritu’s now-trademark long shot structure, the shoot required constant attention and a crack team of extraordinary crew members to keep it running smoothly.
Faced with the challenge of having to transform Hollywood regulars like Domhnall Gleeson and Tom Hardy into convincing lifelong frontiersmen was Robert Pandini,...
How Oscar Nominated Winter on Fire Director Crowd Sourced the Revolution
Oscar-nominated documentary Winter on Fire started with a phone call director Evgeny Afineevsky received at home in Los Angeles from his friend, Russian producer Den Tolmor. "Den called me from Kiev and said 'History is being made, come over here right now.'" Afineevsky heeded the call and a couple of days later landed in a city whose people would indeed change the course of Ukrainian history. Starting in November 2013, ordinary civilians forced out corrupt Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych over the course of a bloody 93-day revolution that drew nearly a million protestors to Kiev's Maidan Square...
Know Your Oscar Nominees: Film Editors
Looks like it’s part III of our technical guide to the Oscars, with ground to cover even after our breakdowns of the sound mixing and editing category and costume designers. This time around, we’re moving into post-production and looking deep beyond the camera to the race for Best Film Editing, a particularly cutthroat category that pits four Best Picture noms and the year’s highest grossing film against one another. But before we dive into the best 2015 had to offer,...
Justice League: Part I Gets Official Start Date
With Batman v Superman set to face off on March 25, Warner Bros. is keeping the momentum going for their DC Comics' franchise with the announcement of an official start date for Justice League: Part I. Entertainment Weekly reports that Justice League: Part I will start principal photography on April 11, with locations including Iceland,...
Disney Reveals Star Wars Parks Experience Concept Art
This past Sunday, Disney offered the first glimpse of the new Star Wars experience set to open at Disney's Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney Resort in Orlando and Disneyland in Anaheim. These concept renderings of the themed lands suggest that Disney is going whole hog on the Star Wars parks—manna for fan boys and, if they're built to the level of detail these renderings suggest, and the scope Disney plans, more than interesting enough for the casual ...
Know Your Oscar Nominees: Sound Mixing & Editing
We've put together what we're calling our 'Technical Oscars installment.' Today, we turn to two of the most mystifying categories of the Academy Awards: sound mixing and sound editing. The two categories, both of which are shrouded in mystery for many annual viewers, almost always have extensive overlap and are often filled with popular Best Picture picks. This year is no different, with The Martian, The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road each healthily represented...
Disney Unveils New Alice Through the Looking Glass Trailer
Walt Disney Pictures dropped a new Alice Through the Looking Glass trailer at “The Wonderful World of Disney: Disneyland 60” special on Sunday night. If you're not hip to what's happening in Wonderland, here's a quick refresher: Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is returning to a Wonderland that's under siege, reuniting with friend and foe alike, to face off against Time itself, or in this case, himself. Time is a bizarre half clock, half human creature played by Sacha Baron Cohen...
New Batman v Superman Batmobile Clip
From their clever partnership with Turkish Air and these two great Super Bowl spots, to the last official trailer (which was, by far, the best of the bunch), Warner Bros. has been feeding us ample Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice bits. The latest little taste of titanic battle between Gotham's Dark Knight and Metropolis's alien god is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it clip of Batman (Ben Affleck) behind the wheel of cinema's most beloved car. It'll be interesting to see just how dark Snyder took the Dark Knight—...
Watch the New Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny Trailer
Netflix dropped a fresh Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny trailer, and it reminds us once again of how Michelle Yeoh as Yu Shu-Lien is still one of the most underrated bad asses in film this century. You remember her from Ang Lee’s 2000 Academy Award-winning original film, and now she's the center of Netflix's followup. Sword of Destiny will hit IMAX theaters and Netflix worldwide on February 26. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny's titular sword is the sharp edged Macguffin that sets this tale of love,...
Berlinale 2016: Director Gina Abatemarco on her Beautiful, Haunting Doc Kivalina
In the early 1900’s, the U.S. government opened schools for Inuit communities across the Alaskan Arctic. Hardly a noble act, the schools were a vehicle for forcing the settlement of tribes who had been living traditional nomadic lifestyles up until the Bureau of Indian Affairs demanded they enroll their children in those schools, thereby drastically altering these nomadic communities’ way of life. Director Gina Abatemarco’s documentary Kivalina, which opened at the Berlinale this week, dives deep into the difficulties that one of the villages faces today,...
Talking to Director Stephen Hopkins About Race
Race tells the incredible story of the track and field athlete Jesse Owens and how he came to win four gold medals in front of Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. We talk to the director Stephen Hopkins about why he considers Race more a political thriller than a sports film, the parallels between Nazi propaganda and social media and how he knew he’d found the right actor to play Owens. Do you think audiences will be surprised about how little they know about the details of Jesse Owens’...
Berlinale 2016: Jude Law Works the Good and Bad in Genius
Opening yesterday at the 66th Berlinale was Genius, a reflective tale of extreme talent and the monstrosity that can be wrought by it, based on the short creative life of early 20th century writer Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law). The movie is the directorial debut of British theater director Michael Grandage, who does an admirable job re-creating New York on the edge, crashing from Jazz Age paradise into slummy Great Depression chaos (Wolfe’s first novel, Look Homeward,...
Stephan James Trained Like Olympic Legend Jesse Owens for Race
The punishing training regimes that actors undergo to transform their bodies for roles is well-documented: think Hugh Jackman, Chris Pratt, Michael B. Jordan, Chris Hemsworth and Ryan Reynolds, who have all pumped up the volume on their muscles at various times to play heroes on the silver screen. Jordan, in particular, turned his body into a credible fighting machine for his outstanding performance in Creed.
But for Canadian actor Stephan James, who plays Jesse Owens in the upcoming film Race,...
How They Filmed the Climatic Final Battle in Star Wars: The Force Awakens
At the end of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the ground literally shakes when Rey faces off with Kylo Ren in an epic light saber duel. Then, it starts to give way. The scene required a lot of heavy duty effects work, which was handled by the team at Industrial Light & Magic.
Variety reports that the ILM team, led by f/x technical director Dan Pearson, needed to create a simulation engine to accurately depict the forest floor falling away beneath Kylo Ren and Rey’s feet...
This The Other Side of the Door Clip is Very Creepy
Director Johannes Roberts' The Other Side of the Door teases out two oft-used conceits in horror films; 1) people always disobey grave warnings, no matter how dire the promised consequences are, and 2) a mother will do anything, anything for her child. In this case, the mother (Sarah Wayne Callies) will do anything to bring her son (Jax Malcolm) back to life, which includes using an ancient ritual and disregarding a warning about the portal between life and death. Of all the warnings one might disregard,...
10 Cloverfield Lane Hides Subliminal Images in New Trailer
For those of you who saw Deadpool over President's Day weekend, you also got a chance to see the new trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane, the horror/thriller/sci-fi romp by J.J. Abrams production company Bad Robot. Now the film was already shrouded in secrecy, so the news emerging from the latest trailer is, if not surprising, at least interesting. According to ScreenCrush, right after the film's title there's a split-second flash of an image...
New Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 Image Released, Filming Underway
While Deadpool might be your favorite irreverent Marvel superhero at the moment, let’s not forget the mouthy, motley space crew who proved comic book characters could not only be truly funny, but lovable, too (we’re looking at you, Groot.) Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Groot (Vin Diesel), Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper), Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Drax (Dave Bautista) are back, and Marvel has officially announced the start of shooting on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol...
Star Wars: The Force Awakens Mysteries Answered
We love when Screen Rant puts together their video essays, and this one, titled “10 Amazing Movie Mysteries Finally Answered,” doesn’t disappoint. This video tackles questions you might have had about films as disparate as Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Captain America: Winter Soldier and The Lion King. What’s great about it isn’t that Screen Rant is revealing, say, who Rey’s parents are in The Force Awakens (that would be pure speculation,...
Inside the Numbers of Deadpool’s Historic President’s Day Weekend
Deadpool’s massive $150 million four-day haul over President’s Day weekend is a historic achievement, besting the next biggest opening, 2015’s Fifty Shades of Grey, by $57 million. Box Office Mojo’s reports that the film has now grossed $264.8 million worldwide as of this past Sunday. It’s playing in 3,588 theaters, at a $42,159 per theater average for the four-day weekend. Here are some of the numbers,...
Midnight Special Tests Information-Free Waters at the Berlinale
Science fiction, thriller, or family drama? Jeff Nichols’ latest film, Midnight Special, which opens this week after premiering at the Berlinale, absorbingly mixes all three genres. Lead actor and perpetual Nichols collaborator Michael Shannon is a valiant dad on the run, trying to save his eight-year-old son, Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), from both a religious cult and the US government. These two entities are equally fervent — if sometimes mysteriously so — and violent in their pursuit of little,...
