Double Emmy Nominee Ann Dowd Talks The Handmaid’s Tale and The Leftovers

Frightening to begin with, The Handmaid’s Tale gets even more creepy fifteen minutes into the first episode with the introduction of “Aunt Lydia.” Played with fierce authority by Ann Dowd, Lydia hectors a group of young women forced to bear children for the men who rule near-future “Gilead.” Striding around the classroom in short hair, drab gown and combat boots, Lydia stops at the desk of a surly student and abruptly jabs the handmaid with a cattle prod.

Emmy-Nominated Veep Writers Master Insult-Driven Satire in the Age of Trump

On the face of it, few things sound less intrinsically funny than “presidential library.” And yet for ten wickedly hilarious episodes this spring, HBO comedy Veep packed in more jokes per minute than any of its competition by tracking the self-glorifying quests of a narcissistic politician, expert in the art of personal attacks, who’s willing to say anything and betray anybody if it means holding onto power. Portrayed by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Selina Meyer spends most of the season on a quest to memorialize her eight-month “legacy”

Writer/director Destin Daniel Cretton on Adapting Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle

Writer/director Destin Daniel Cretton re-teamed with his Short Term 12 star Brie Larson for The Glass Castle, based on Jeannette Walls’ best-selling memoir about her chaotic childhood. Walls’ parents struggled with substance abuse and mental illness, and their four children were often hungry and neglected. Larson plays Walls as a young adult, professionally successful as a gossip columnist in New York. As the film opens, we see her leave an elegant restaurant after dinner with her Wall Street fiancé and his prospective client. From her taxi,

The Brilliant Sound Technique That Makes Dunkirk so Viscerally Intense

We’ve written quite a bit about Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, specifically about the film’s boundary pushing technical brilliance. We explained to you why it matters that the film was shot in 70-mm (and how it affects your movie-going experience), and we wrote about how Nolan and his team’s use of IMAX cameras helped tell one of the most miraculous escapes in military history.

Now,

Game of Thrones Explainer: Bringing Dragons To Life Demands Animators Follow The Sun

First a skeleton, then the meat. Next some scales, then some fire. A layer of color. A layer of shading. Then some motion. Frame by frame.

It might not be as grueling as battling a dragon, or defending all of Westeros from hordes of White Walkers, but making the dragons of Game of Thrones come to is a Herculean feat all its own. It’s one that up to 30 animators do daily at visual effects company Pixomondo.

Taylor Sheridan Talks his Chilling Directorial Debut Wind River

From actor (lawman David Hale on FX’s Sons of Anarchy) to acclaimed screenwriter (2015’s Mexican drug-war thriller Sicario, 2016’s Texas-set neo-Western Hell or High Water) to writer-director (Wind River, opening today), Taylor Sheridan has had quite a career trajectory since he first popped up on the Hollywood scene in the mid-90s as a TV acting staple. The 47-year-old Lone Star native considers his three feature films so far to be part of a trilogy that examines the state of the American frontier,

The Handmaid’s Tale DP on Using Old Lenses, Vermeer and Drones to Conjure Dystopia

Liverpool-born cinematographer Colin Watkinson quit his job as a surveyor to work as an entry-level “runner” on a British soundstage, rose through the ranks to shoot Tarsem Singh’s The Fall in 2006, and on the strength of that film’s universally hailed visuals, became one of Los Angeles’ most prolific television commercial DPs. By the time cinematographer-turned director Reed Moreno invited him to shoot The Handmaid’s Tale in Toronto,

Landline‘s Costume Designer on Bringing Back ’90’s New York Fashion

Most of us would like to think that the 1990s weren’t that long ago, but the age of dial up Internet, CDs and home phones has already been made into period piece Landline. Love or loath what you wore at the end of the millenium, you’ll definitely recognize some of these looks. Costume designer Elisabeth Vastola combed through consignment racks to revive the era in a recognizable and authentic way. Set in New York,

Legendary Playwright, Author, Actor & All Around Icon Sam Shepard Passes Away

Sam Shepard, age 73, has died from complications due to Lou Gehrig’s disease at his home in Kentucky. It is hard to measure Sam Shepard’s impact on contemporary art, performing and otherwise, for several reasons. He was a prolific worker, yielding a vast array of award winning plays, short stories, film scripts, and memorable performances over his lifetime.

One cannot precisely say what Shepard is best known for. He co-wrote for Bob Dylan’s film Renaldo and Clara,

Talking to Emmy-Nominated Ewan McGregor About Splitting Himself for his Fargo Dual Roles

For years, Ewan McGregor yearned to play a role that required complete physical transformation, but the timing couldn’t have been worse when Fargo creator Noah Hawley asked the svelte actor to grow a beer belly. “I had a jawline that you could cut paper on and I’d never been so fit in my life,” laughs McGregor, who remembers returning to Los Angeles in top physical condition after shooting “Trainspotting 2” in his native Scotland.

Emmy Nominated Planet Earth II Composers on Scoring the Most Interesting Animals in the World

Ten years after the original series aired, BBC returns to explore our natural world in Planet Earth II. The stunning exploration of the green planet’s jungles, grasslands, deserts and more spawned a viral video of a daring iguana escaping certain death that couldn’t be more hair-raising if it had been scripted. The show’s dynamic score earned composers Jasha Klebe and Jacob Shea of Bleeding Fingers Music an Emmy nomination. The duo had worked separately on major blockbusters including 

Talking to the Director and the Star of the Sensational Documentary Step

Ever since Step wowed them at Sundance, the documentary that follows an all-girls step-dance team at an inner-city charter school dedicated to helping female African-American students pursue a college degree has been winning fans at festivals. Even Michelle Obama gave her seal of approval to “Step” in May, when the Lethal Ladies squad from the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women (BLSYW) performed at a National College Signing Day event in New York City.

Head of The Defenders Makeup Department on Juggling Four Marvel Superheroes

The Netflix residents of the Marvel Universe are all coming together for the first time on screen to team up as The Defenders. Makeup department head Sarit Klein had an intimate knowledge of the show’s characters going into production. She also worked as makeup head of previous installments Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist.

See how this Insane Stunt in Atomic Blonde Was Pulled Off

Director David Leitch is one of the film world’s premiere stunt choreographers. The former stunt coordinator made his name helming the first John Wick, and he brought his talents for creating mesmerizing, death-defying stunts to his next film, Atomic Blonde. Starring Charlize Theron as an MI6 agent who is sent alone into Berlin to retrieve a priceless dossier, while the city is becoming completely destabilized (the wall is about to come down) and just about everyone she comes into contact with wants to kill her.

Lisanne Skyler on her Warhol HBO Doc Brillo Box (3¢ OFF)

Most people are familiar with the groundbreaking artistry of the late Andy Warhol, known for replicating the packaging of popular consumer products. For filmmaker and documentarian Lisanne Skyler, Warhol’s take on pop culture hit close to home, even in it. Skyler’s parents bought a Warhol “Brillo Box (3¢ off)” for $1,000 in 1969 — managing to get him to sign it — and displayed it in their house for two years before trading it for another artwork.

Key and Peele Production Designer Reflects on a Career of Comedy

Production designer Gary Kordan is setting the scene for some of the funniest shows on television. From instantly iconic sketch comedy to powerhouse sitcoms, Kordan has built backdrops for some of the top comedians in Hollywood. His work adds realism and exceptional detail to outrageous scripts by heavyweights like Melissa McCarthy, Ben Falcone, Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele.

“Key and Peele is the gold coin in my pocket as a job in the television industry for a production designer,” Kordan said of the Peabody award winning sketch comedy show.

How Emmy Nominated Queen Sugar and 13th DP Kira Kelly is Breaking the Mold

It was a no brainer for cinematographer Kira Kelly to take the call when director Ava DuVernay sought her out. The project they initially discussed didn’t pan out, but Kelly was soon tapped for DuVernay’s stirring documentary 13th. Kelly’s mesmerizing work was the perfect fit for the high pressure interviewees she filmed and earned her an Emmy nomination alongside her co-DP Hans Charles. Following the success of 13th, DuVernay brought Kelly on to season two of her hit show Queen Sugar.

Comic-Con 2017: Composers Talk Music to Fight Super-Villains By

Comic-Con’s fifth annual “Musical Anatomy of a Superhero” featured composers from comic book movies and television shows. Brian Tyler showed us the funeral scene from Thor: the Dark World that had special meaning to him because it was a “pivotal moment” with no dialogue or sound effects, just the music to create the mood and tell the story. David E. Russo explained the challenges and opportunities of Gotham, a series that, in its third year,

Comic-Con 2017: Production Designers From Black Panther, Spider-Man: Homecoming & More

“How many of you love the movies because they look so goddamn cool?”  Production designer John Muto (Home Alone, River’s Edge) already knew the answer. “The audience doesn’t pay money to sit in the dark and look at drab images.”

Everyone loves movies because they look cool, and that was especially true of the people who came to Muto’s panel on production design.  “You know those images that get buried in your lizard brain,” he asked.

The Beguiled Art Director Sets the Scene for Beauty and Terror

The dilapidated Civil War era girls’ school you see in the intriguing Sofia Coppola remake of The Beguiled is actually a pristinely manicured historic plantation in New Orleans. On seeing the film, you won’t even recognize that the house was also used in Beyonce’s Lemonade. Art Director Jennifer Dehghan and her team are responsible for the transformation that included reverse landscaping to create an overgrown look,