Best of 2019: Joker’s Makeup Designer on Creating the Clown Prince of Chaos
*We’re reposting some of our favorite interviews of 2019. Happy Holidays!
It’s hard to think of a more iconic look from the world of comic books than the Joker — Batman’s most nefarious adversary. Nicki Ledermann was all too aware of this when she was approached to design the makeup for Joker, director Todd Phillips’ new feature that offers up the origin as to how Arthur Fleck,
Best of 2019: Breaking Down Three Key Scenes With Ad Astra’s Editors
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On Tuesday we published the first part of our conversation with Ad Astra editors John Axelrad and Lee Haugen. Director James Gray’s film (which he co-wrote with Ethan Gross) is the rare intimate epic. It involves some of the most breathtaking sequences in any film this year, as well as a very personal father/son story in which our hero,
See Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin in First Teaser for Respect
There are few icons who shone as brightly and powerfully as Aretha Franklin. So when you’re making a biopic about her, casting someone to try and fill her shoes is…not easy. Yet if there was any star who could pull it off, it’s gotta be Jennifer Hudson. Now you can see Hudson in the first teaser for Respect, just released by MGM. The film will follow Franklin’s incredible life and career,
Best of 2019: Carmen Ejogo on her Pivotal Role in True Detective’s Season Three
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In season three of True Detective, creator and writer Nic Pizzolatto returns to the series’ Southern Gothic roots, with two detectives, Vietnam vet Wayne “Purple” Hays (Mahershala Ali) and Roland West (Stephen Dorff) trying to solve the murder of one child and the disappearance of another in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Hays takes the lead on the case in 1980 and is doing desk work and starting to lose his memory by the time we reach 1990 (West,
Best of 2019: Makeup Designer Burton LeBlanc on Creating Misery in the Colonies in The Handmaid’s Tale
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In Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the radioactive Colonies are more felt than described. We’re told it’s where all Gilead’s undesirables, the childless handmaids, the criminals, the sick and insane, are sent to die. In Hulu’s adaptation of Atwood’s novel, however, the Colonies became one of the show’s most fecund sources of misery in season two. As Maria Elena Fernandez described in a piece for Vulture,
Best of 2019: Avengers: Endgame Visual Effects Supervisor on Happy Hulk, Lebowski Thor & More
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The Marvel universe’s supersized super-villain Thanos (Josh Brolin, plus CG) last year dealt a heavy hand to overpopulation in Avengers: Infinity War, wiping out half of humanity with a snap of his fingers warmed by his Infinity Stone encrusted gauntlet. Five years onward the Avengers are looking stuck, with those remaining still in mourning and low on solutions.
Best of 2019: Craig Mazin on Getting the Details Right for the Shocking Chernobyl
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In April 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Soviet Ukraine exploded, sending radiation into the atmosphere and ultimately causing many radiation-related deaths. While the disastrous accident, attributed to faulty reactor design and insufficiently trained operators, is widely known, the details of its aftermath are less so. Screenwriter Craig Mazin looks to change this and up the knowledge base with Chernobyl,
Best of 2019: Fleabag‘s Emmy-Nominated Cinematographer on Crafting a Nearly Flawless Second Season
*We’re reposting some of our favorite interviews of 2019. Happy Holidays!
There’s no such thing as flawless art. Flaws are baked right into anything a human being creates, and often they are hard to disassociate from the strengths that make any art worthwhile. Yet I’ve heard several people call Fleabag‘s second season flawless, and I’ve been hard-pressed to argue the point. Few shows on television are as personal,
Best of 2019: How Us Cinematographer Michael Gioulakis Captured Doppelgangers in the Dark
*We’re reposting some of our favorite interviews of 2019.
“I have an aversion to moonlight, at least in movies.” So says cinematographer Michael Gioulakis, who had ample opportunity to capture dark spaces in Jordan Peele‘s critically acclaimed horror film Us. Peele’s follow-up to Oscar-nominated thriller Get Out casts Lupita Nyog’o as a high-strung mother who’s being stalked, along with her husband (Winston Duke) and kids (Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex),
Best of 2019: Spencer Averick on Finding Truth & Humanity in the Edit of When They See Us
*We’re reposting some of our favorite interviews of 2019 from some of our favorite films and shows of the year.
Netflix rarely releases viewer numbers, but on June 12th, the streaming service tweeted that Ava DuVernay’s miniseries When They See Us has been its most-watched content in the US since the show’s premiere on May 31st. In the UK, When They See Us has been running second only to Black Mirror.
Best of 2019: The Irishman Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto on Crafting Scorsese’s Masterpiece
*We’re reposting some of our favorite interviews of 2019 from some of our favorite films and shows of the year.
Beloved auteur Martin Scorsese’s new film The Irishman has brought Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci together onscreen for the first time in 24 years and added Al Pacino, whom he’d never worked with before, building a cast that sounds truly compelling to lovers of great acting and great film.
The First Trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Mysterious Tenet is Here
Christmas has come early, friends. Warner Bros. has just released the first trailer for Christopher Nolan‘s mysterious, extremely intriguing new film Tenet. As always with a Nolan film, the cast is sprawling and excellent. John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Clémence Poésy, and two of the writer/director’s favorites, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh. The little we’ve known about the film—editor Jennifer Lame wouldn’t say a peep when we interviewed her about Marriage Story—was that it was going to involve international espionage.
Sandler, the Safdie Brothers & Kevin Garnett Talk Uncut Gems
It was a bit of a homecoming when Uncut Gems premiered December 8 at the new ArcLight Cinemas in Boston: the Safdie brothers, who directed, went to Boston University; composer Daniel Lopatin hails from the nearby suburb of Wayland; and star Adam Sandler grew up in Manchester, NH but started his career in Boston’s comedy clubs. Then there’s Kevin Garnett, the Boston Celtics great who plays himself in the film.
At the post-screening Q&A before a packed crowd,
What to Remember About Star Wars Before You See The Rise of Skywalker
These are the droids you’re looking for. Folks, the day has come—Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is upon us. It was 42-years ago when George Lucas started this whole thing with 1977’s Star Wars IV – A New Hope, and now we’re about to see the final chapter in the Skywalker Saga. There have been 8 films worth of lightsaber battles, Sith Lords, Rebel scum, droids, Hutts,
Here’s Your First Glimpse at A Quite Place: Part II
We’ve been waiting a long time to get our first look at A Quiet Place: Part II. Finally, Paramount has released a teaser revealing our first glimpse at John Krasinski’s followup to his surprising 2018 smash hit. Krasinki directs from a script he wrote and from the teaser it looks like the new film picks up more or less right where he left off in the first film.
Screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns on Helping Sam Mendes Write his WWI Epic 1917
“The third time,” director Sam Mendes said to screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns when asking her to co-write 1917 with him, “is the charm.” And in a film that shows how random luck is as much a factor in surviving war as anything else, he was right.
Wilson-Cairns had originally come to his attention through a combination of a well-regarded script on “the Black List” — that rundown of the best crop of unproduced spec scripts — with a project called Aether.
How Cinematographer Roger Deakins & Team Pulled off the One-Shot Masterpiece 1917
For Sam Mendes, the multi-hyphenate who produced, directed and co-wrote the script with Krysty Wilson-Cairns, 1917 was a personal story. It follows two British soldiers – Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) – tasked with delivering a message across enemy lines in order to stop a battle that could save hundreds of soldiers’ lives. The idea came to Mendes after his grandfather shared with him World War I stories where he himself had been a runner.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Early Reactions Tease Action-Packed Epic
We have reached the end of the line. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is hitting theaters in just three days, and many critics have already seen the film. Thus, the first reactions to co-writer and director J.J. Abrams Skywalker Saga capping film have hit the internet. Abrams and his team had a lot to do here, crafting not just a satisfying conclusion to the new trilogy Abrams began with 2015’s The Force Awakens,
Watchmen Buried a Major Easter Egg Right in the Original Poster
Watchmen had a just about perfect 9-episode run. Creator Damon Lindelof and his incredible cast and crew took Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ iconic graphic novel and made something entirely new out of it. Building from where Moore and Gibbons left off, Lindelof and his team hatched a completely gripping new story centered on Angela Abar (a sensational Regina King), a masked, ninja-like Tulsa Police Officer who goes by the name Sister Night.
How Watchmen Cinematographer Gregory Middleton Captured Hooded Justice’s Harrowing Origin
Vancouver-based DP Gregory Middleton has lensed his share of prestigious series before Watchmen, having scored Emmy and ASC nominations for his work on different Game of Thrones episodes, and finding himself behind the viewfinder for shows like The Killing, cult hit movies like James Gunn’s Slither and many more.
But it was working with director Nicole Kassell on episodes of The Killing—rather than his earlier toe-dip into the DC Universe,
