Black Belt, Mother, Zombie Survivalist: Mireille Enos of World War Z
It’s a big year for actress Mireille Enos. The Texas native returns for a third season of detective work in AMC’s The Killing, and fights zombies with Brad Pitt in director Marc Forster’s big-budget, apocalyptic thriller World War Z, out today.
While she’s mired in dire circumstances for make believe, in real life her career experiences have been pretty pleasant. She started early, training at The High School for the Performing &
Class in Session: Meet the Makers of Monsters University
Like most good college stories, it started at a party. John Lasseter’s surprise 50th birthday party nearly seven years ago, in fact. Ever the opportunist, John pulled party guest and award-winning entertainer Billy Crystal aside to talk shop. “He said, ‘We have an idea I want to tell you about,’” Billy whispers, playfully imitating the Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios chief creative officer. “‘What if Mike and Sulley are in college, and we make a prequel?’
Getting the Goods from Oscar Winning Screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher
Oscar-winning screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher made noir films and documentaries as a student at Harvard, and as a graduate film student at NYU, his short, Magic Markers, caught the attention of both John Singleton and Lee Daniels, who later asked him to adapt the novel “Push,” by Sapphire, otherwise known as Precious, for the big screen.
Fletcher’s directorial debut, Violet & Daisy, which he also wrote,
Chatting with Super Composer Hans Zimmer About Man of Steel
According to a 2007 British survey Hans Zimmer is considered “one of the world’s 100 living geniuses.” He shares space on the list with the likes of Stephen Hawking, Prince and Philip Glass. Zimmer’s own list of achievements includes an Academy Award, several Golden Globes, Grammys, Lifetime Achievement Awards, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and dozens of film credits that attest to his significant contribution to many of the industry’s finest films.
An Evening With Geena Davis
Geena Davis has worked in the movie business for more than 30 years, with a career that includes an Academy Award® for Best Supporting Actress for 1988’s The Accidental Tourist and another nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role for 1991’s Thelma & Louise. Now, Davis is working full-time to help improve the industry she’s made a career in.
“What we see on screen is so important because it makes it normal,”
Tracking the Action: Fast & Furious 6 Camera Car Driver Allan Padelford
If a stunt driver pulls off the craziest maneuver in movie history and there wasn’t a camera to catch it, did it actually happen? No offense to the bulging biceps of Vin Diesel or Dwayne Johnson, but all that adrenaline-soaked action is the real star of The Fast & Furious 6—and it would never make it to the big screen without camera car driver Allan Padelford.
A veteran of the last three Fast &
Breaking Open the Piano: Making Weird Music With Atli Örvarsson
Atli Örvarsson grew up in the town of Akureyri, with a population of a little less than 18,000 people. Although a small town, Akureyri boasts a vibrant musical culture. It was the perfect incubator for young talent like Örvarsson, who was exposed to classical music, jazz, and rock and roll from a young age.
Örvarsson’s credits include The Pirates of the Caribbean series, the recent Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters,
Producer Kai Cole Talks Much Ado About Nothing, Hubby Joss Whedon, & More
The Master of the Whedonverse takes on Shakespeare in 'Much Ado About Nothing,' which opened to rave reviews on June 7.
Shot in black-and-white in just 12 days, and featuring a group of friends (including Castle’s Nathan Fillion, Angel’s Amy Acker and The Avengers’ Clark Gregg), Joss Whedon’s wonderful, modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, just might be the biggest surprise of the summer.
The Internship: Bringing “Start Over” Comedies into the 21st Century
To celebrate the release of this weekend’s soon-to-be Vince Vaughn/Owen Wilson classic, we’ve chosen ten of our favorite career-in-crisis comedies released since 1980. (Sorry Baby Boom, you were thisclose!)
1) Private Benjamin (1980), dir. Howard Zieff
The poor little rich girl-turned Army recruit comedy was co-written by Nancy Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give, It’s Complicated) specifically for Goldie Hawn,
How’d They Do That? Building 1920s New York in The Great Gatsby
Digital FX firm Animal Logic helped craft the extravagant, hyper-vibrant world of New York in the roaring 20's for Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby. But how?
They lovingly refer to themselves as “animals,” but the staffers at Animal Logic, based at Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia, are really masters in special effects and animation. The company, which derives its name from the two sides of the business (the physical/creative and cerebral/technical),
Chatting With Now You See Me Head Magic Consultant David Kwong
How can a showy magic act known as the Four Horsemen (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco) convince a Las Vegas crowd—let alone the FBI and Interpol—that they just teleported a random audience member to a bank in Paris and promptly stole three million Euros? To pull off an illusion that could fool a packed house—plus millions of moviegoers—the producers of Now You See Me turned to head magic consultant David Kwong.
More than a Thriller: The East’s Real-Life Environmental Radicalism
How far would you go to fight for what you believe in? For some characters in Fox Searchlight's new film The East, the answer includes violence against the companies and individuals they oppose, and even self-sacrifice of their own lives. Many real-life radical environmentalists may agree.
Far from just another heated Hollywood fiction, The East reflects a history of anarchist environmentalism dating back to the 1980s.
After Earth Screenwriter Gary Whitta on the Script’s Evolution
Sometimes the process of making a movie is as much of a surprising journey as any adventure tale that is being told.
After Earth, for example, started as a story of a man and his son trying to survive a crash in the wilderness.
The movie's original outline called for the pair in contemporary Alaska. Will Smith, star of the movie and credited with writing the story,
Rounding up the Cast and Director of Eco-Thriller The East
In The East, Zal Batmanglij and his filmmaking partner, Brit Marling, deliver an edge-of-your-seat eco-terrorism thriller in which an undercover overachiever (Marling) infiltrates a militant anarchist eco-vigilante group (including Alexander Skarsgard and Ellen Page) that arranges “jams” against corporate evildoers. Without giving too much away, you may find yourself asking, "What's really in this prescription drug I'm about to take?"
This is the second big screen collaboration for Marling and Batmanglij (pronounced “Baht-mahn-glitch”),
From Minority Report to Iron Man, the Genesis of Gesture Technology
Good sci-fi movies have a way of influencing, if not actually predicting, the future when it comes to technological innovation. Take, for example, gestural interactions with computers — they are the next step after today's virtual keyboards.
One of the most popular movie approximations of this tech is used by Precrime Police Chief John Anderton in the 2002 movie Minority Report. Anderton solves a future murder by shuffling through holographic data with special gloves and a burning intensity.
Poetry From Conflict: Writer-Director Musa Syeed on his Valley of Saints
Conflict zones have a long history of providing an amply angst-ridden backdrop for cinematic romance, but in his narrative feature debut, Valley of Saints, Musa Syeed takes a surprisingly lyrical look a largely untold conflict in India’s Kashmir region, an area that Indians and Pakistanis have fought three wars over during the past century. And the one-time documentary writer-director does it by exploring the idea of protecting Kashmir’s ecological beauty as a way of restoring stability to the region.
Recreating the Past on Film, Historical Advisors Are a Director’s Lifelines
The year is 1805. Captain “Lucky Jack” Aubrey is surveying the foggy Atlantic horizon for the renegade Acheron, a Napoleonic privateer warship out to sink Aubrey and his fellow Brits into watery oblivion. As he peers through his telescope, Aubrey suddenly recoils in disbelief—the Acheron is headed straight for his ship!
But wait—what does that enemy ship look like? What color is the telescope Aubrey—or Russell Crowe in period attire—is holding?
Looking Back at Iconic Tentpole Movies and Imagining Their 2013 Versions
As summer movie season officially kicked off this past Memorial Day weekend, the slate of “tentpole” movies — the ones that are expected to hold up (like a tentpole, get it?) and turn a profit, bringing in big bucks both domestically and overseas — is bigger than ever: There’s Hangover 3, After Earth, Man of Steel, Monsters University,
500 Strong: The Joint Effort in Making 20th Century Fox’s Epic
How do you oversee the work of more than 500 people over the course of several years on a giant 3D animated film without losing your mind? Producer Jerry Davis of Blue Sky Studios, who helped shepherd the production of Twentieth Century Fox's Epic along with his producing partner Lori Forte, gives us the scoop.
Epic, which features characters inspired by William Joyce’s children’s book
Steven Soderbergh Through the Looking Glass: Behind the Candelabra
One of most fascinating developments out of this year’s Cannes Film Festival has been the inclusion of Steven Soderbergh’s cinematic swan song, the Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, in this year’s main competition as per the insistence of festival director Thierry Fremaux. Candelabra, starring Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his live-in lover Scott Thorson, and based on the Thoson-penned tell-all of the same name,
