Know Your Oscar Nominees: Production Design

And we're back (again) for part VI of our "Know Your Oscar Nominees" technical guide. So far we've covered the short film category (that's live action, animation and documentary), visual effects, editing, costume design, and sound mixing and editing. Now it's time to look at production design.

If there’s an overwhelming theme that the films nominated for best achievement in production design share,

The Comic Anarchy of Sacha Baron Cohen and The Brothers Grimsby

A few months ago, Sacha Baron Cohen’s long-retired Borat dropped by at Jimmy Kimmel Live, showing off his famous comic chops and eliciting ecstatic whoops from the studio audience. The occasion for the visit? Baron Cohen’s newest film, an action comedy called The Brothers Grimsby, which promises to introduce a new charming misfit to the unsuspecting public: Nobby. But before we talk about the film (and the lovable Nobby),

Chatting With Day out of Days Writer/Director Zoe Cassavetes

In Day Out Of Days, starring Alexia Landeau and Melanie Griffith, writer/director Zoe Cassavetes follows the struggles of a forty-year-old actress trying to stay relevant in Hollywood. We talk to Cassavetes about making her second feature film, crowd-funding and what she learned from her trailblazer parents, John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands.  

I was reading that you chose to go down the crowd-funding route to finance the film so you could cast your friend and co-writer,

Know Your Oscar Nominees: Live Action, Animated & Documentary Short Films

We've covered a slew of the either often overlooked or misunderstood nominated categories for this year's Oscars. Earlier today we published our technical guide to visual effects, and in the past week or so we've looked at editing, costume design, and sound mixing and editing. Now we're going to shift our focus a bit and look at the short film category; live action, animated and documentary.

Know Your Oscar Nominees: Visual Effects Supervisors

And we’re back with another guide to the Oscars’ often overlooked technical categories. We've covered the nominees for film editing, sound mixing and editing, and costume design, and now we’re set to explore another visual category that could be anyone’s game. Showcasing some of the years’ biggest blockbusters (as well as some astonishing technical achievement), Best Visual Effects nominations have been awarded to a wide range of the year’s films,

The Revenant‘s Oscar-Nominated Makeup Artist Sian Grigg Talks Dirtying DiCaprio

There’s a certain kind of person usually acknowledged in an actor’s acceptance speech: parents; significant others; publicists and agents; perhaps even influential teachers or directors; but rarely are fellow crew members honored in the quite the same gushing way. Not so for Leonardo DiCaprio, who thanked longtime makeup artist Sian Grigg at the Golden Globes after his recent win for his fabulously dedicated performance in The Revenant. But take one look at the transformative work Grigg contributed to turn “L.A.

The Revenant’s Oscar-Nominated Hair Stylist Talks Frozen Locks

The Revenant, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s epic wilderness film currently being treated to a deluge of well-deserved Oscar buzz, has formed a reputation for its long and harrowing production that now nearly precedes the film itself. Filmed in below freezing temperatures in natural light and by the tenets of Inarritu’s now-trademark long shot structure, the shoot required constant attention and a crack team of extraordinary crew members to keep it running smoothly.

Girlfriends’ Guide Divorce‘s Costume Designer – Part 2

In Part 1 of our discussion with award winning costume designer Cynthia Summers, we discussed how Summers made her way from Vancouver, British Columbia to defining the style for such iconic shows as The L Word and Bones.

Here we will focus on Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce, the hit series on Bravo.  Our conversation with Cynthia Summers is slightly edited for length.

Girlfriends’ Guide To Divorce‘s Costume Designer Cynthia Ann Summers

Much of our image of contemporary fashion and style and its link to a specific geography has been shaped by film and television. For New York, the iconic television series Sex and the City created a look that sustains to this day. For L.A., it has been Showtime’s breakthrough series, The L Word, and now the Bravo television hit, Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce.

How Oscar Nominated Winter on Fire Director Crowd Sourced the Revolution

Oscar-nominated documentary Winter on Fire started with a phone call director Evgeny Afineevsky received at home in Los Angeles from his friend, Russian producer Den Tolmor. "Den called me from Kiev and said 'History is being made, come over here right now.'" Afineevsky heeded the call and a couple of days later landed in a city whose people would indeed change the course of Ukrainian history. Starting in November 2013,  ordinary civilians forced out corrupt Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych over the course of a bloody 93-day revolution that drew nearly a million protestors to Kiev's Maidan Square.

Know Your Oscar Nominees: Film Editors

Looks like it’s part III of our technical guide to the Oscars, with ground to cover even after our breakdowns of the sound mixing and editing category and costume designers. This time around, we’re moving into post-production and looking deep beyond the camera to the race for Best Film Editing, a particularly cutthroat category that pits four Best Picture noms and the year’s highest grossing film against one another. But before we dive into the best 2015 had to offer,

Berlinale 2016: A Recap

With Meryl Streep presiding over the festival’s international jury, the 66th Berlinale handed out awards yesterday and drew to a close. The Golden Bear went to Fuocoammare, or Fire at Sea, a tragic and topical Italian-French co-production from the director Gianfranco Rosi. Taking place on the Sicilian island Lampedusa, the documentary thoughtfully and powerfully examines the ongoing refugee crisis, through the lens of a 12-year-old Italian boy,

Know Your Oscar Nominees: Sound Mixing & Editing

We've put together what we're calling our 'Technical Oscars installment.' Today, we turn to two of the most mystifying categories of the Academy Awards: sound mixing and sound editing. The two categories, both of which are shrouded in mystery for many annual viewers, almost always have extensive overlap and are often filled with popular Best Picture picks. This year is no different, with The Martian, The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road each healthily represented.

Disney Unveils New Alice Through the Looking Glass Trailer

Walt Disney Pictures dropped a new Alice Through the Looking Glass trailer at “The Wonderful World of Disney: Disneyland 60” special on Sunday night. If you're not hip to what's happening in Wonderland, here's a quick refresher: Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is returning to a Wonderland that's under siege, reuniting with friend and foe alike, to face off against Time itself, or in this case, himself. Time is a bizarre half clock, half human creature played by Sacha Baron Cohen.

New Batman v Superman Batmobile Clip

From their clever partnership with Turkish Air and these two great Super Bowl spots, to the last official trailer (which was, by far, the best of the bunch), Warner Bros. has been feeding us ample Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice bits. The latest little taste of titanic battle between Gotham's Dark Knight and Metropolis's alien god is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it clip of Batman (Ben Affleck) behind the wheel of cinema's most beloved car. It'll be interesting to see just how dark Snyder took the Dark Knight—

Watch the New Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny Trailer

Netflix dropped a fresh Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny trailer, and it reminds us once again of how Michelle Yeoh as Yu Shu-Lien is still one of the most underrated bad asses in film this century. You remember her from Ang Lee’s 2000 Academy Award-winning original film, and now she's the center of Netflix's followup. Sword of Destiny will hit IMAX theaters and Netflix worldwide on February 26. Crouching Tiger,

Berlinale 2016: Director Gina Abatemarco on her Beautiful, Haunting Doc Kivalina

In the early 1900’s, the U.S. government opened schools for Inuit communities across the Alaskan Arctic. Hardly a noble act, the schools were a vehicle for forcing the settlement of tribes who had been living traditional nomadic lifestyles up until the Bureau of Indian Affairs demanded they enroll their children in those schools, thereby drastically altering these nomadic communities’ way of life. Director Gina Abatemarco’s documentary Kivalina, which opened at the Berlinale this week,

Judd Apatow Brings the Love to Netflix

The warts and all view of relationships we know and love from Judd Apatow’s comedies is set to become bingeable with today’s premiere of his Netflix series Love. Love follows dorky nice guy Gus (Paul Rust) and freewheeling tough girl Mickey (Gillian Jacobs) as they embark on a relationship. The half hour comedy series was created, written and executive produced by Apatow, Rust and Lesley Arfin. It was originally conceived as a film by husband and wife team Rust and Arfin (who was a writer on the Apatow-produced Girls) and Apatow helped them develop it into a TV rom-com about a slow-burning romance.

Talking to Director Stephen Hopkins About Race

Race tells the incredible story of the track and field athlete Jesse Owens and how he came to win four gold medals in front of Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. We talk to the director Stephen Hopkins about why he considers Race more a political thriller than a sports film, the parallels between Nazi propaganda and social media and how he knew he’d found the right actor to play Owens. Do you think audiences will be surprised about how little they know about the details of Jesse Owens’

Berlinale 2016: Jude Law Works the Good and Bad in Genius

Opening yesterday at the 66th Berlinale was Genius, a reflective tale of extreme talent and the monstrosity that can be wrought by it, based on the short creative life of early 20th century writer Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law). The movie is the directorial debut of British theater director Michael Grandage, who does an admirable job re-creating New York on the edge, crashing from Jazz Age paradise into slummy Great Depression chaos (Wolfe’s first novel,