The Missouri Policeman Who Prepared Sam Rockwell for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Sam Rockwell’s character, Officer Dixon, is by no means a model police officer in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. He’s violent, bigoted, temperamental and aloof. Yet, in order to play a character that gets everything wrong, sometimes you have to know what it looks like to get the job right. To research the role, Rockwell turned to Springfield, Missouri police officer Josh McMullin to learn the ropes.

Three Billboards dialect coach Liz Himelstein first contacted the Springfield Police department to research a Southwest Missouri accent.

How the Hair Design of Mudbound Became the Basis of an Oscar Nominated Performance

The heat and mud of the Mississippi farmland is palpable from the makeup to the clothing to the score in Dee Rees’ Mudbound. As the Jackson and McAllan families struggle through the muck and mire of poverty and racial tensions, they wear the Earth like badges of war. The oppressive climate was no trick of the camera, said hair department head Lawrence Davis.

“It was physically challenging just to be there walking through the mud,” Davis recalled.

Baby Driver’s Oscar-Nominated Supervising Sound Editor Dissects the Movie’s Unique Syncopated Style

As part of our Oscars week coverage, we’re re-posting our conversations with some of this year’s Oscar-nominees, while publishing new interviews throughout the week. Baby Driver sound editor Julian Slater is nominated alongside his collaborators Tim Cavagin and Mary H. Ellis. They’re up against Ron Bartlett, Doug Hemphill & Mac Ruth (Blade Runner 2049), Mark Weingarten, Greg Landaker & Gary A Rizzo (Dunkirk), Christian Cooke, Brad Zoern & Glen Gauthier (The Shape of Water),

I, Tonya‘s Oscar-Nominated Editor Tatiana S. Riegel on What Makes a Scene Work and Why

As part of our Oscars week coverage, we’re re-posting our conversations with some of this year’s Oscar-nominees, while publishing new interviews throughout the week. I, Tonya Editor Tatiana S. Riegel is nominated alongside Paul Machliss & Jonathan Amos (Baby Driver), Lee Smith (Dunkirk), Sidney Wolinsky (The Shape of Water) and Jon Gregory (Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri).  

One could make a case that the most competitive category in the upcoming Oscars isn’t for best picture or best director,

How The Shape of Water‘s VFX Producer Turned a Monster Into a Romantic Lead

In the final part of this two-part interview, visual effects coordinator and frequent Guillermo del Toro collaborator Luke Groves reveals how he worked with the filmmaker to craft some of The Shape of Water’s most awe-inspiring sequences and reveals how he and the visual effects team at Mr. X walked the line between CG magic and practical effects to create movie magic that looks impressively real.

I want to talk about the opening sequence because I know it was shot wet-to-dry which is absolutely incredible.

The Shape of Water‘s VFX Producer on Creating the Year’s Most Unique Leading Man

For all its ambitious underwater sequences and that stunning central creature, it’s oddly easy to forget the technical majesty at work in Guillermo del Toro’s meticulous, Oscar-nominated The Shape of Water. Not for its lack of quality, in fact, quite the opposite. The work, which makes every inch of del Toro’s beguiling fantasy possible, is so seamless as to give the impression that even the film’s most outlandish design elements are through some mysterious magic,

Love & Other Illusions: How Blade Runner 2049‘s Oscar-Nominated Sound Designer Played With our Heart Strings

As part of our Oscars week coverage, we’re re-posting our conversations with some of this year’s Oscar-nominees, as well as publishing new interviews with those vying for Oscar gold this Sunday. Sound editor Theo Green is nominated alongside his Blade Runner 2049 collaborator Mark Mangini. The Sound Editing category includes Julian Slater (Baby Driver), Richard King & Alex Gibson (Dunkirk), Nathan Robitaille & Nelson Ferreira (The Shape of Water),

How Blade Runner 2049’s Oscar-Nominated Sound Designer Pulled no Punches

As part of our Oscars week coverage, we’re re-posting our conversations with some of this year’s Oscar-nominees, as well as publishing new interviews with those vying for Oscar gold this Sunday. Sound editor Theo Green is nominated alongside his Blade Runner 2049 collaborator Mark Mangini. The Sound Editing category includes Julian Slater (Baby Driver), Richard King & Alex Gibson (Dunkirk), Nathan Robitaille & Nelson Ferreira (The Shape of Water),

Jennifer Lawrence Deconstructs the Typical Femme Fatale Role in Red Sparrow

Glimpses of a balletic profile and icy blonde hair are intercut with moments of startling violence—this is Jennifer Lawrence’s journey as ballerina-turned-Russian super agent in Red Sparrow. The films paint a picture of vicious femininity that would understandably incline many to assume that Lawrence’s Russian spy Dominika Egorova is simply one in a long line of big-screen femme fatales. Yet in Jennifer Lawrence’s ultra capable hands (and the actress her most stark),

Replicant vs. Replicant: How Blade Runner 2049’s Oscar-Nominated Sound Designer Pulled no Punches

K. vs. Sapper

It’s a mismatch. One replicant is 6’0” and slender. The other is a goliath, standing at 6’3” and weighing 290lbs. They’re all alone in a creaky cabin on a distant, desolate protein farm, and they know they are about to have at it. The slender replicant, Officer K (Ryan Gosling), is there to “retire” Sapper (Dave Bautista, most well known as the lovable brute Drax in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise),

Black Panther Fans Get a Big Surprise on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

The impact of Black Panther has been overwhelming. The thoughtful care that went into the African inspired design from the Wakandan nation to the fierce Dora Milaje costumes to the artfully choreographed stunts, the film was truly groundbreaking. Black Panther has been making historic waves in ticket sales too. It clocked in at the second largest box office earnings in the second weekend in American cinematic history.

How the I, Tonya Composer Helped Recast an Infamous Villain as a Tragic Character

When the news hit in 1994 that Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan had been struck in the knee just before a performance, viewers were gripped. As the sensational story unfolded and the assailant became tied to rival Tonya Harding, America thought it would never forget the event. Nearly 25 years later, it turns out that the details have grown fuzzy – some even remembering Tonya swinging the baton herself. Three-time Oscar nominated I, Tonya returned to the scene of the crime and uncovered fresh perspectives on the infamous event.

Baby Driver‘s Oscar-Nominated Editor Paul Machliss on Marrying Music to Mayhem

As part of our Oscars week coverage, we’re re-posting our conversations with some of this year’s Oscar-nominees, while publishing new interviews throughout the week. Paul Machliss is nominated in the Film Editing category, alongside his co-editor Jonathan Amos. They join fellow nominees Lee Smith (Dunkirk), Tatiana S. Riegel (I, Tonya), Sidney Wolinsky (The Shape of Water) and Jon Gregory (Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri).  

Of all the masterly edited films of 2017,

Watch as the Star Wars: The Last Jedi VFX Team Morphs Andy Serkis into Snoke

Few things in life are more mesmerizing than watching Andy Serkis’ motion capture performance transform into the final character. Yesterday, we had an in-depth discussion with the VFX team from War for the Planet of the Apes. There’s so much cool technology here and it is incredible how all of the pieces come together. The VFX wizards at Industrial Light & Magic have pulled the curtain back now on Serkis’ performance as Snoke in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Oscar-Nominee Aaron Sorkin on his Directorial Debut Molly’s Game

As part of our Oscars week coverage, we’re re-posting our conversations with some of this year’s Oscar-nominees, as well as publishing new interviews with those vying for Oscar gold this Sunday. Writer/director Aaron Sorkin is nominated for Writing (Adapted Screenplay) alongside James Ivory (Call Me By Your Name), Scott Neustadter & Michael Weber (The Disaster Artist), Scott Frank & James Mangold and Michael Green (Logan), and Virgil Williams and Dee Rees (Mudbound). 

Ralph Discovers a Whole New World in the First Teaser for Ralph Breaks the Internet

Ralph is back to do what he does best: wreck things. In the best, most fun and adventurous way, of course. The first trailer for Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 shows Ralph (John C. Reilly) and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) taking on the information highway. The arcade game characters get sucked into the world wide web, and their curiosity and spunky attitudes lead to one hysterical adventure after the other.

Ralph and Vanellope explore the clever,

The Incredible History Lesson That Informed WACO‘s Costume Design

Karyn Wagner has a gift for time travel. Her costume designs have populated the slave era south of Underground, death row during the Great Depression of The Green Mile, and a lush WWII romance in The Notebook. Her latest visit in history lands in 1990s Texas where a charismatic cult leader was building a large following in WACO. The six-part miniseries on the newly branded Paramount Network concludes tonight,

Oscar-Nominated Cinematographer Dan Laustsen on The Shape of Water‘s Fluid Fable

As part of our Oscars week coverage, we’re re-posting our conversations with some of this year’s Oscar-nominees, as well as publishing new interviews with those vying for Oscar gold this Sunday. Cinematographer Dan Laustsen is nominated alongside Roger Deakins (Blade Runner 2049), Bruno Delbonnel (Darkest Hour), Hoyte van Hoytema (Dunkirk) and Rachel Morrison (Mudbound). The full list of the Oscar nominees can be found here.

Danish cinematographer Dan Laustsen worked alongside Guillermo del Toro on and off for two decades,

Oscar-Nominee Martin McDonagh on his Dark, Brilliant Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

As part of our Oscars week coverage, we’re re-posting our conversations with some of this year’s Oscar-nominees, as well as publishing new interviews with those vying for Oscar gold this Sunday. Writer/director Martin McDonagh is nominated in the Best Picture and Writing (Original Sreenplay) category. The full list of the nominees can be found here.

How the Oscar-Nominated War for the Planet of the Apes VFX Supervisor Reversed Human Evolution

The Planet of the Apes reboot has been a massive success, and its impact on the film industry is hard to overstate. It began with Rupert Wyatt’s 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes and carried on with Matt Reeves Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in 2014 and his riveting coda, War for the Planet of the Apes, in 2017. The central character,