How Macbeth‘s Producer Brought the Rogue Adaptation to the Screen
Though Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth isn’t necessarily the kind of adaptation that promises to satisfy strict Bard purists, it may be one of the more accessible and artful adaptations committed to the screen. A measured melodrama, graphic western and disturbing horror film wrapped in a neat Shakespearean package, this Macbeth for a new age stars Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard as the titular Lord and Lady. Treading the well-worn story of greed and loss with newly thoughtful footsteps,...
Composer Kerry Muzzey on Scoring Intimate Doc The Seer
The upcoming documentary The Seer: A Conversation With Wendell Berry– directed by Laura Dunn with executive producers Terrence Malick and Robert Redford- tells the story of small generational farmers in Kentucky through the eyes of the poet, writer, activist and farmer Wendell Berry. We talk to the composer Kerry Muzzey about scoring the film and how he got over his initial fears.
You’ve said that you felt like the score for this documentary needed to be Americana,...
A Conversation with Director & Artist JR About his Film ELLIS
Last night installation artist JR's short film about immigration – Ellis, starring Robert De Niro and written by Academy Award winning screenwriter Eric Roth, premiered in New York. We had a chance to chat with JR about his film, his inspiration and more.
JR’s Background:
For those unacquainted with him, JR is a pseudonym for an artist and photographer who has made the choice to remain anonymous. His gallery is the streets of the world and his audience are those who are not the typical museum visitor...
The Sound of Fear: Composer Jóhann Jóhannsson on Scoring Sicario
Scoring Denis Villeneuve’s latest film Sicario, about the brutal battle against Mexico’s drug cartels, required quite a tonal shift for composer Jóhann Jóhannsson from his work on last year’s The Theory of Everything. He talks to The Credits about how he gravitates towards darker worlds and the challenge of scoring action sequences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XLQ1bkSLDo
Sicario is a very tense film. Creating that mood is obviously a big part of your job when you’re scoring...
Juliette Binoche on Being Drawn to The 33
Juliette Binoche has the lead female role in The 33, a movie named for the 33 male Chilean coal miners who spent 69 days below ground in 2010. Although the glamorous French actress is widely known for appearing in The English Patient, she rarely does big international-cast productions, preferring to work on a smaller scale with such notable art-film directors as Oliver Assayas, Michael Haneke, Abbas Kiarostami and Hou Hsiao-hsien. But Binoche was drawn to the real-life part of Maria Segovia,...
Cinematograopher Goes Dark With The 33 Miner Drama
Cinematographer Checco Varese understands terror. After all, he shot horror maestro Guillermo del Toro's vampire series The Strain and in his earlier years, the Peruvian-born director of photography filmed war zone documentaries. But nothing prepared Varese for the pitch-black adventures in underground filming he encountered while making miner drama The 33. Inspired by the 2010 ordeal in which 33 Chilean miners spent 69 days trapped 2,600 feet beneath the earth, the movie stars Antonio Banderas,...
Andy Serkis Talks About his Star Wars: The Force Awakens Character
Of the many things we know next to nothing about in Star Wars: The Force Awakens is Supreme Leader Snoke, a crucial villain played by Andy Serkis. We knew Snoke would be rendered in performance-capture (of which Serkis is the undisputed king), and we knew he was bad (in Star Wars, anyone with 'supreme' in their title is bad), but that was about it. We heard his voice in that very first trailer, and it was gravelly and villainy...
Around the Web: It’s General Leia, Not Princess, Mad Max: Fury Road & More
Entertainment Weekly’s big Star Wars: The Force Awakens feature, with four separate covers, includes this tiny but not insignificant detail—in the film, Princess Leia is now General Leia. Director J.J. Abrams told EW this: “She’s referred to as General, But … there’s a moment in the movie where a character sort of slips and calls her ‘Princess.’”
Ever wondered why she was referred to as a Princess in the first place?...
Woody Harrelson, Kate Winslet, Casey Affleck & More in Thrilling Triple 9 Trailer
Director John Hillcoat's upcoming cops and robbers thriller Triple 9 boasts an out-of-this-world cast and a very dark premise. A crew of dirty cops, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave), Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad), Anthony Mackie (Captain America) and Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead) are blackmailed by the Russian mob, lead by Irene (Kate Winslet) to execute an impossible heist,...
Around the Web: News on Deadpool, X-Men: Apocalypse & More
Collider spoke to Simon Kinberg, writer/producoer on X-Men: Apocalypse and producer on Deadpool, about Fox's two highly anticipated superhero films in 2016. We suggest you read the full interview, as it's rich in detail about both films. One thing we'd like to highlight here is, for X-Men, how the breakout from Days of Future Past, Evan Peters' Quicksilver, has a much bigger role in ...
New Zoolander 2 Posters Includes These “Phones for Giants”
Zoolander 2 brings fashion icons Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) and Hansel (Owen Wilson) well into the moment, fifteen years after they made their first appearance in Zoolander, before social media was even a thing. They've got an Instagram account now, where they can showoff their latest poses, selfies, and celebrity run-ins. "What are these, phones for giants?" Zoolander quips in the caption for the main poster, riffing on the size of these iPhone 6's and calling back the sight gag from the original ...
Talking to Bryan Cranston & Director Jay Roach About Trumbo
Blacklisted in 1950s Hollywood for having been a member of the Communist Party, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo continued to do what he did best: write scripts. He just couldn't do that under his own name, even when he penned two Oscar-winning movies, Roman Holiday and The Brave One. This period in the writer's life is the subject of Trumbo, directed by Jay Roach and with Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston in the title role...
Around the Web: Ash vs. Evil Dead, The Force Awakens Chronology & More
The gang at iO9 is very bullish on Starz’s Ash vs. The Evil Dead, and we can see why. The official synopsis for the show is as follows: "Ash (Bruce Campbell), the stock boy, aging lothario and chainsaw-handed monster hunter who has spent the last 30 years avoiding responsibility, maturity and the terrors of the Evil Dead. When a Deadite plague threatens to destroy all of mankind, Ash is finally forced to face his demons –personal and literal...
Watch the Thrilling New Star Wars: The Force Awakens TV Spot
"I have lived long enough to see the same eyes in different people" begins the brand new TV spot for The Force Awakens. And this isn't just a re-cut of the images we've seen before—here we get to see Daisy Ridley in proper ass-kicking mode, as this TV spot puts our heroine Rey at the very center of the action, and suggests this voice over (which we've read on The Verge is delivered by Academy Award-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o, ...
The Strange, Wild History of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld
With the opening of newest James Bond adventure Spectre, we’re taking a look at that title and seeing both a return of James Bond’s long lost nemesis and a jumping off point for the current Bond franchise to reboot the “what-once-was-old-is-new-again” relationship between Bond and his most nefarious enemy. Much as Skyfall filled in Bond’s early backstory, which was absent from the previous films and author Ian Fleming’s books, Spectre is a re-imagining of the iconic Bond enemy within the new continuity of the modern franchise...
Disney Fulfills Terminally-ill Star Wars Fan’s Wish to see The Force Awakens
Star Wars fan Daniel Fleetwood's wife began a campaign on his behalf to see The Force Awakens early, and the plea quickly went viral. Fleetwood has a rare form of cancer called spindle-cell sarcoma, and he was worried he wouldn't live to see the December 18 release. His wife Ashley sprung into action with this Tweet:
#forcefordaniel help my man get his last wish, to see a screening of Star Wars before cancer takes him...
The 33 & the Surprisingly Rich Tradition of Mining Movies
Warner Bros’ upcoming release of The 33, which recounts the 2010 rescue of 33 trapped Chilean miners and the plight of their families and friends above ground, is part of a long history of movies’ fascination with miners and their way of life. It makes sense: mining is a tradition full of inherent drama and danger; there’s conflict between business and labor interests; as well as generational conflicts. By no means a definitive list, here’s 10 of my personal favorite films with storylines or themes that compliment the much-anticipated The 33...
The Top Ten Best Bond Villains & Their Bizarre Quirks
Over the past 50 years, James Bond has racked up a significant amount of enemies. From the relentlessly evil Ernst Blofeld to the easily eliminated Dr No, the international man of mystery is no stranger to high-flying combat and even higher-stakes conflicts.
To keep things interesting, the series has established a well-loved tradition of villainous idiosyncrasies, imbuing each new Bond threat with just the right amount of unique or defining features to make them a bit more terrifying,...
The Peanuts Movie’s Animation Supervisor on Getting the Gang’s into 3 Dimensions
This week marks the return of cartoonist Charles M. Schulz’s beloved "Peanuts" crew, with Charlie Brown and the gang making their big screen debut in 3D in The Peanuts Movie. Peanuts purists, of course, might be tempted to thumb their noses at a contemporified, animated version of the classic newspaper strip cartoon, a thought that was well anticipated by director Steve Martino and his animation team at Blue Sky Studios. With three years of research and development behind them,...
New Star Wars: The Force Awakens Character Posters Revealed
Well, you had to know that the final Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer wasn't going to be the very last thing released before the December 18 premiere, right? These five new character posters, three of which were shared on Instagram by the film's stars, all share a common theme—the right eye of the character is covered (or in the case of Carrie Fisher's Leia, simply obscured). What's that about? Just aesthetic cohesion and nothing more?...
