Interview

Production Designer

The Revenant‘s Production Designer Jack Fisk on Filming in the Great, Deadly Outdoors

Production designer Jack Fisk has worked with some of the greatest living directors over his long, distinguished career. Terrence Malick, David Lynch, Brian DePalma, Paul Thomas Anderson, and now, Alejandro González Iñárritu. The privilege of working with an auteur goes both ways in this case; these directors have sought out Fisk because he, like them, is an artist.

Fisk's work on Anderson's There Will Be Blood might be the closest antecedent to his incredible work designing 

By  |  December 30, 2015

Interview

Screenwriter

Around the Web: Christoper Nolan’s Next Movie, The Force Awakens Fan Theories & More

Here's what we're reading around the web today:

Christopher Nolan's next movie is going to be Dunkirk, based on another of his original screenplays. The film is set during the legendary evacuation in France in 1940 during WWII, and once again Nolan will be utilizing a combination of IMAX 65mm and 65mm large format film photography, much as he did on his last epic, Interstellar. The Hollywood Reporter 

By  |  December 29, 2015

Interview

Costume Designer

Bloody Perfect: A Q&A With The Revenant‘s Costume Designer Jacqueline West

The tale of Hugh Glass, a 19th-century trapper and explorer mauled by a grizzly bear and left for dead by John Fitzgerald, one of his men, became the stuff of legend. Never quite on the scale of Johnny Appleseed or Paul Bunyan, but subject to similar embellishment, Glass’s story was told and re-told to stretch his wounded crawl back to civilization and revenge from, for instance, a truthful eighty miles to a ludicrous 200, with myriad other details hyperbolized until Glass’s own nature was mostly obscured. Now,

By  |  December 29, 2015

Interview

Director, Producer

Director Vanessa Block & Producer Steve Tisch Discuss Their Oscar Shortlisted Doc The Testimony

"The conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has cost more lives than any other since World War II." This startling fact is one of the first things you learn in director Vanessa Block's documentary short The Testimonyand it lingers in your mind long after the film is finished. What's more astonishing than this brutal metric is the unquestionable strength of the women who live in Congo, specifically Eastern Congo,

By  |  December 28, 2015

Interview

Costume Designer

Brooklyn Costume Designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux

Brooklyn, based on the novel by Colm Toibin, stars Saoirse Ronan as the young Irish immigrant Eilis, finding her way and falling in love in Brooklyn in the 1950s. We spoke to costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux (An Education, One Day) about sourcing vintage costumes and taking inspiration from old Hollywood moviestars.

The film is beautiful. How did the job come about for you in the first place?

By  |  December 28, 2015

Interview

Actor

Spend Christmas With Leonardo DiCaprio & 10 of his Best, Oscar Snubbed Performances

It would be difficult to find an actor more famously snubbed by the Academy than Leonardo DiCaprio. Despite his two-decade long career and his predilection for prestige projects, the actor, who got his start on shows like Parenthood and Growing Pains, has had no luck in turning up an Oscar since his first nomination at the age of 19. Embarking on an unofficial but career-long Oscar campaign with films like Titanic,

By  |  December 24, 2015

Interview

Hair/Makeup

Killer Looks: A Q&A With Camille Friend, Hair Department Head on The Hateful Eight

Camille Friend, Hair Department head on The Hateful Eight, will be celebrating twenty years in the business in 2016, and her filmography contains a bevy of memorable character looks which stand out in our movie culture. She has been department head hair stylist on several Eddie Murphy pictures including Dr. Doolitle 2 (2001), his Academy Award nominated role in Dreamgirls (2006), Norbit (2007), Meet Dave (2008),

By  |  December 23, 2015

Interview

Director

Director Amy Berg on her Joplin Doc Janis: Little Girl Blue

Director Amy Berg is best known for her hard-hitting investigative documentaries, particularly the Oscar-nominated Deliver Us From Evil (2006), about clergy sex abuse, and West of Memphis (2012), about the rush to judgement in the murder convictions of three young men in Arkansas who were released after spending nearly 20 years in prison. The prolific Berg also made An Open Secret, about the sexual abuse of teenagers and children within the entertainment industry,

By  |  December 22, 2015

Interview

Props, Special/Visual Effects

Check Out How They Updated This Classic Scene in Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Once again, if you haven't seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens, read no further. This video, produced by Tested, unlocks how Phil Tippett and Tippett Studios created the classic Dejarik holochess game for The Force Awakens, which was seen in the very first Star Wars. Don't remember that scene? Here's a refresher— R2-D2 plays Chewbacca while aboard the Millennium Falcon, and after the little droid pulls off a successful move against Chewie,

By  |  December 22, 2015

Interview

Costume Designer

Ant-Man Costume Designer Sammy Sheldon Differ

Sammy Sheldon Differ designed some of my favorite movie costumes in films like Stardust, Kinky BootsHitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and has worked with comic book characters from Hellboy and Kick-Ass to the X-Men. Next year, you'll see her work in Assassin's Creed, from director Justin Kurzel (he directed this year's striking 

By  |  December 22, 2015

Interview

Actor

New Footage in Batman v Superman International TV Spot

In this international TV spot for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the new footage is mainly the two titular superheroes beating the crap out of each other. Now that Star Wars: The Force Awakens has premiered, this is the next "big" film that fans are going to salivate over. It also represents the first time these two legendary characters face off on-screen. In fact, 2016 is the year of superhero v superhero battles; let's not forget about Marvel’sCaptain America: Civil War.

By  |  December 21, 2015

Interview

Cinematographer

Cinematographer Danny Cohen on Room & The Danish Girl

We talk to Danny Cohen, the cinematographer of two of the year’s most talked about films- Room and The Danish Girlabout how a crazy idea to actually shoot in a very small room paid off, why he and director Tom Hooper work so well together and why he’d love to tackle sci-fi.    

Jacob Tremblay and Brie Larson as Jack and Ma in Room.

By  |  December 21, 2015

Interview

Actor, Director

Let’s Talk About Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Have you seen The Force Awakens? If so, great, stick around so we can discuss it. If not, stop reading this article. This piece is going to do a bit of a deep dive and there's going to be spoilers aplenty. I'll give you a minute to bail. 

Are they gone? Good. Let's take a look.

The Big Picture

The script was penned by J.J. Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan (The Empire Strikes Back,

By  |  December 21, 2015

Interview

Actor

A Christmas Gift: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in Sisters

“Would you mind not drinking tonight, so I can let my freak flag fly?” Amy Poehler’s character asks her sister, Kate (Tina Fey), the more freewheeling of the two. This mostly sums up the movie, in which Poehler and Fey’s characters say farewell to the childhood home their parents have put on the market without their knowledge, and throw the rager they never got to as teens. From grocery store run-ins with old frenemies to unlikely romantic pursuits (and all the ways those can go wrong),

By  |  December 18, 2015

Interview

Director

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lands on AFI’s Movies of the Year List

While Star Wars: The Force Awakens only opened last night, it's probably safe to say the film is a huge successs. J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan have not only survived the most fraught resurrection in film history, they have plainly prevailed, with a 95% fresh rating on RottenTomatoes, a whopping 234 positive reviews out of the 246 that have been aggregated thus far.  

It was always going to be a success financially,

By  |  December 18, 2015

Interview

Actor

See Tina Fey in the First Trailer for Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

With Tina Fey's latest film, Sisters, opening against a tiny, obscure indie called Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Paramount has decided to pour it on with the first trailer for another one of her projects, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Based on the book "The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days In Afghanistan And Pakistan" by Kim Barker, Fey plays Baker as reporter at ProPublica (she was also the South Asia bureau chief for The Chicago Tribune from 2004 to 2009) who finds herself in Afghanistan and Pakistan,

By  |  December 17, 2015

Interview

Props, Special/Visual Effects

BB-8: From Napkin Sketch to Starring Role in The Force Awakens

We're just hours away from the premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakensand here's a great, spoiler free way to pass the time until you see it—a featurette on the new droid BB-8.

BB-8 is perhaps the most emblematic creation in all of The Force Awakens because this adorable "soccer ball" droid represents a return to the practical effects that director and co-writer J.J. Abrams was insistent upon.

By  |  December 17, 2015

Interview

Actor, Director

Director László Nemes & Actor Géza Röhrig on Their Heartbreaking Son of Saul

Director and co-writer Laszlo Nemes's Son of Saul, an astonishingly accomplished first feature, follows a Hungarian Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau for about 36 hours. Saul, played by Geza Rohrig, is a member of the Sonderkommando, the group that led people into the gas chambers and then disposed of their bodies. Saul identifies a new arrival as his son, and after the youth's murder attempts to arrange a proper burial for him.

By  |  December 17, 2015

Interview

Producer

Talking to Stacey Sher, Producer of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight

Producer Stacey Sher first worked with director Quentin Tarantino on his 1994 film Pulp Fiction, in which she was executive producer. Twenty-one years later she’s working with him again on his 70mm widescreen extravaganza The Hateful Eight,  their third film together (after 2012’s Django Unchained on which she was a producer). In between those films, even a partial list of her credits reads like a best-of list from the last two decades: Get Shorty (1995);

By Matthew Steigbigel  |  December 15, 2015

Interview

Actor, Screenwriter

J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Debuts Trailer

As select journalists left a screening for Star Wars: The Force Awakens last night (they're not allowed to say a peep about the film until it opens), they were greeted with the news that Warner Bros. had slipped in a brand new trailer for their most anticipated film of 2016, the J.K. Rowling scripted Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. 

Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them 

By  |  December 15, 2015