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. TIFF’s decision is based on the fact that Telluride,...
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, Oh this is going to be a cinch to get made,...
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. A best-selling young adult novel turns into a film with an overwhelming fan base...
Creating the Incredible Time Travel Sequence in Lucy
If you have not seen Luc Besson’s Lucy but plan to, do not read this article. Just stop. There are SPOILERS AHEAD.
Towards the end of Luc Besson’s mind-bending Lucy, Scarlett Johansson's title character, having nearly reached harnessing 100% of her brain capacity, travels back in time. This capability, which was brought on by having a drug she was forced to smuggle, internally, leak inside of her, sends her back eons to the birth of the universe...
How Into The Storm‘s DP Filmed in Torrential Rain & 100-mph Wind
How do you take a moderately budgeted action film that requires Biblically ferocious storms causing massive damage and make it look like money was no concern at all? With ingenious filmmaking techniques, expertise along a broad spectrum of skills, and a whole lot of problem solving is how. Into the Storm was initially contracted with the VFX house Rhythm & Hues to handle the creation of the cataclysmic tornados that are the film’s raison d’etre,...
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...
Industrial Light & Magic’s Cody Gramstad on Painting Lucy’s World
There have been plenty of spectacular special effects to feast on this summer, which has really been the case every summer since the blockbuster was invented. Edge of Tomorrow offered Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt on a time-looped platter for voracious aliens, while Guardians of the Galaxy’s glorious, color-soaked space epic includes the spectacle of a gun-toting raccoon and a sentient tree-person that feeds off the flowers that grow on his own body. It’s good stuff...
Costume Designer Alexandra Byrne on Gearing Up the Guardians
Oscar-winning costume designer Alexandra Byrne is a major reason why Guardians of the Galaxy doesn't look like your average space epic. Part of the film's appeal is its visual splendor and wit—along with all of the eye-popping special effects there is an undeniable charm and style on display that bring to mind Han Solo's timeless black vest and buttonless collared deep-v (also known as the pared-down space pirate look). From Peter Quill's leather jacket to Rocket's sleeveless armored vest to Gamora's battle-ready green bustier,...
The Very Real Effect Fictional Characters Have on Tourism
If you've been to Albuquerque anytime in the past few years, you've probably noticed that the city embraced a little show called Breaking Bad. Walter White's visage, as well as Jesse's, Hank's and the beloved hitman Mike's, could be seen peeking out of store windows on T-shirts and spray painted on walls. Such was the mass appeal of Breaking Bad that graffiti artists honoring the show unveiled their work in Leicester Square in London...
Watch Artists Hand Paint Murals for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
As we wrote back in May, not all advertisements are created equal. Colossal Media is responsible for the hand painted, photo realistic murals that you see scattered through New York City (and in cities across the country), that look more like art than ads. They are, in fact, as close to works of art as an advertisement can get, creations that are crafted with painstaking precision. You know they’re doing something right when their murals make you thirsty for a beer you don’t even like...
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, Madhur Jaffrey, after an early screening of the Hindi actor’s latest film,...
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shelled Out Big Bucks in New York
New York City is in trouble once again (just once it would be fun if the city in peril were, say, Charleston) and it’s up to four heroes (really five, counting reporter April O’Neil) to save the city, and mankind, from a remorseless villain and his minions. We’re talking about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, of course, which opens this Friday, but before the film’s villain Shredder threatened to destroy New York City, the film’s production poured money and jobs into the city and state...
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, Peter's mother is dying of cancer,...
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,...
Garrett Brown: An Interview With a Visionary—Part II
In part one of our two-part conversation with Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown, the Philadelphia-based cinematographer talked about holing up in a motel for a week in the early 1970s to experiment with designs for a more commercial version of his revolutionary camera stabilizer. He talked about shooting his first-ever feature film using a Steadicam on Bound for Glory. And he described his improvised solution for filming one of the most famous scenes in all of cinema history: Sylvester Stallone running up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum in Rocky...
15 Images Celebrating Batman’s 75th: Still Swinging After All These Years
DC Comics formally recognizes March 30, 1939 as the official debut of Batman, created by comic book artist Bob Kane. Or was it his secret collaborator, Bill Finger? It's fitting that the exact origin for our most tortured superhero is still somewhat murky (and part of a panel at this year’s Comic-Con, “Who Created Batman?”). Whoever deserves the credit, the first time we got a glimpse of the caped crusader was actually in May of 1939, issue number 27 (the official publishing date of this issue was March 30,...
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, then be sure to attend ABC and Disney•Pixar’s first look at the upcoming holiday special,...
