Dunkirk’s IMAX Release Magnifies Power of one of History’s Most Miraculous Escapes

History has decided its name: The Miracle of Dunkirk. In May 1940, Germany launched its war against Western Europe with a lightning invasion that saw Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands fall in quick succession. With the Low Countries devoured and a still ravenous appetite, the Nazis turned their gaze to France and continued their advance.

They moved rapidly westward across France toward the sea, eventually cutting off and encircling British Expeditionary and Allied forces in the small northern city of Dunkirk.

Tech Transformations: The Planet of the Apes Then and Now

In 1968, 20th Century Fox’s The Planet of the Apes opened to critical acclaim. At a time when science fiction stories were not taken seriously, the story of an astronaut crew crash-landing on a future planet where apes are the dominant species, captured the imaginations of audiences around the world.

Today, War for the Planet of the Apes – the third installment of the 2011 reboot, which began with Rupert Wyatt's 

Quentin Tarantino Prepping new Film About the Manson Murders

We mean this in a good way; we can’t think of a better director to tackle a film about the Charles Manson murders than Quentin Tarantino. The scoop comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which has it that Tarantino is already in talks with actors, and one can only imagine the mayhem of a movie about the most infamous murders in American history through Tarantino’s lens. 

THR reports that Tarantino has already written the script (naturally he’d direct),

How the Genius Cinematographer Brought Einstein to a Modern Audience

Casual historians often sum the life of Albert Einstein in a single equation: E=mc^2, but National Geographic’s series Genius reveals that there is so much more to the story. Cinematographer Mathias Herndl’s work on Genius sheds a new light on Einstein’s life. The famous physicist’s reckless youth and pacifist objections that give way to his invention of the atomic bomb in wartime inspired Herndl’s dynamic filmmaking. Ahead of the season finale,

Extreme Contrast: DP Shoots FX’s Fargo and Legion

Calgary-based cinematographer Craig Wrobleski happened to be in the right place at the right time four years ago when the makers of FX series Fargo came calling with an urgent request. "At the end of their first season, it was an intense schedule and they needed someone to help shoot some second unit stuff in Alberta," he says. "I live south of Calgary and had just finished another show, so they asked me to do some establishing shots."

Dressing the The Handmaid’s Tale From Covered Head to Booted Toe

Costume designer Ane Crabtree exerted plenty of impact on pop couture through her mob suits featured in The Sopranos and the robot cowboy outfits she made for Westworld. But nothing prepared the cheerful 52-year old wardrobe auteur for The Handmaid’s Tale. In the Hulu series based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, she dressed Elizabeth Moss' slave woman Offred and other female characters forced to bear children in the near-future fascist state of "Elysium."

Talking to The Journey’s Director Nick Hamm on Facing Ireland’s History Head-on

Belfast-born producer-director Nick Hamm has worked mostly in British television, although he's also directed theater and movies. As a filmmaker, he's drawn to stories that are contemporary, set close to home and involve real-life characters. 2011's Killing Bono was a comedy about teenage rockers upstaged by the Dublin schoolmates who founded U2. Hamm's new movie, The Journey, is a sometimes comic drama that fictionalizes a pivotal 2006 van ride shared by two confirmed enemies: Sinn Fein leader Martin McGuinness (Colm Meaney) and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) founder Ian Paisley (Timothy Spall).

Women Directors Made the Best Movies of the Summer

Director Patty Jenkins has been reaping breathless headlines since Wonder Woman’s premiere — having made a summer blockbuster that isn’t rote or corny, with a lead, relative newcomer Gal Gadot, who deservedly looks like the breakout star of the summer, the film has exceeded all of Warner Bros.’ box office expectations and met with critical success. Audiences are broadly into a superhero film about a woman, made by a woman,

Stunt Performer Annabel Wood is a Real Life Wonder Woman

When she hears the word action, Annabel Wood’s job is to take the command literally. She very often makes her living dying. All in all, Wood has died more times than she can count – and she keeps coming back from more. She’s a stunt performer, and one of the best in the business. She leaps off cliffs and castle walls, dodges speeding cars and motorcycles, and, dons prosthetics to become an ice zombie and charge into a camp prepared to do her worst.

How Taboo’s DP Conjured Painterly Tableaux of 19th Century London

When cinematographer Mark Patten got hired to shoot Tom Hardy's moody 19th century period thriller Taboo, he immediately invited Danish director Kristoffer Nyholm to check out British masterpieces at London museums. "I took Krisotoffer to see landscape paintings by William J. Turner, who was painting the Thames at the time of our story," Patten recalls. "We wanted to understand the way the light looks and start with that knowledge about the river because it gives so much life to Tom Hardy's character.

Writer/Director Edgar Wright Talks his Brilliant new Film Baby Driver

*We’re sharing some of our favorite interviews of the year this week in our ‘Best of 2017’ roundup.

It’s is odd that British auteur and fan-boy fave Edgar Wright, 43, known for spoofing horror flicks (2004’s Shaun of the Dead), buddy-cop procedurals (2007’s Hot Fuzz) and sci-fi thrillers (2013’s The World’s End) has produced his most mature and satisfying spin on a popular genre – this time,

Austin Composers Use Old Synthesizers for New Stranger Things Music

Ever since they bonded over a shared obsession with electronic dance music as Texas fourteen-year olds, Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein spent every spare minute listening to techno artists like Aphex Twin and creating tracks on their laptops. But after college, Dixon and Stein shared an epiphany that would eventually lead to a break-through gig as co-composers for '80s-era Netflix hit thriller Stranger Things.  "We didn't even knowing there had been these things called synthesizers in our teens,"

How the Genius Production Designer Took Audiences Inside the World of Albert Einstein

The first season of National Geographic’s Genius chronicled the life of a man whose name has become almost synonymous with brilliance – Albert Einstein. The story exposes the personal side of Einstein’s life that his scientific contributions often overshadow in textbooks. Filmed in the Czech Republic, primarily Prague, Genius production designer Jonathan Lee created over 600 sets to take audiences from Einstein’s small Swiss studio apartment to his famed lecture halls and Nazi Germany.

Pixels into Pig: Okja VFX Maestro Explains Digital DNA for Star Creature

Part super-pig, part hippo, part elephant, the CGI creature at the heart of director Boon Joon-Ho's mostly live-action animal rights adventure Okja wowed crowds at Cannes this spring without so much as a single line of dialogue. Starring alongside Tilda Swinton and Jake Gyllenhaal in the movie (available Wednesday June 28 on Netflix), the pixel-built beast known as “Okja” communicated through body language, wistful facial expressions and roly-poly heroics choreographed by visual effects wizard Erik De Boer.

Mars Executive Producer Justin Wilkes Talks the Category Defying Miniseries

Last fall, National Geographic premiered a new series that was as ambitious and innovative as its subject: the first manned mission to Mars. Over seven episodes, Mars featured inspiring interviews with some of the greatest minds of our age while visualizing the first human colonization of the red planet. Experts delve into the history of space exploration, the unbelievable technology that’s already been developed, and what it will take to make home on a new planet.

The Wizard of Lies Production Designer on Building Bernie Madoff’s World of Deception

Production designer Laurence Bennett was responsible for creating a visual language for a film without sound, and the results earned him an Oscar nomination. We're talking about Bennet's work on Best Picture winner The Artist, which followed the story of a silent movie star’s life turning upside down after he falls for a young dancer only to witness their careers zoom in opposite directions with the arrival of talking pictures.

While Bennett's currently working on David Simon's 

How Weta Digital & Andy Serkis’s Brilliance Elevate War for the Planet of the Apes

We've written about how the performance capture technology that Andy Serkis has helped create and Weta Digital has perfected made the Planet of the Apes reboot one of the most satisfying, compelling franchise remakes of the century. Serkis plays Caesar, the new trilogy's heart and soul—a chimpanzee that has become vastly more intelligent, and verbal, after he's exposed to an experimental drug meant to battle Alzheimer's disease in-utero in 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

John Waters Interviews Sofia Coppola at the Provincetown Film Festival

Sofia Coppola is Hollywood royalty, an Oscar winner for Lost in Translation, and she has a highly-anticipated new film, The Beguiled, ready to hit theaters. But the soft-spoken director is known for being reticent in interviews.

So it’s no wonder that the Provincetown International Film Festival (PIFF) paired Coppola with renowned raconteur John Waters for a one-on-one conversation when Coppola was honored recently as the PIFF’s 2017 Filmmaker on the Edge.

Check out This Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Clip From Nat Geo’s Genius

Last week we shared with you the story of how the hair and make-up departments working on National Geographic's Genius have transformed stars Johnny Flynn and Geoffrey Rush into the young and not-so-young Albert Einstein at the different stages of his life. Now, we've got an exclusive clip from behind-the-scenes of the show (Nat Geo’s first foray into scripted drama, by the way) that showcases the work of showrunner Ken Biller and cinematographer Mathias Herndl. 

Dear White People Creator Justin Simien Talks Race and Comedy

In Netflix series Dear White People, sarcastic black radio host Samantha (Logan Browning), worn out after a long day of anti-racist activism at fictional Ivy League Winchester College, asks her best friend Joelle (Ashley Blaine Featherson) to "Say something funny and specific." Joelle obliges with a snappy one liner involving Drake and his ancient sitcom Degrassi High, propelling the show into its next scene on a buoyant comedic note.