Best of 2023: Christopher Nolan on Exploding Myths & Exposing Humanity in “Oppenheimer”
*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year.
Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) stares wide-eyed into the pond spread out in front of him; his last conversation with Albert Einstein (Tom Conti) on the potential catalytic effects of the atomic bomb has rendered him speechless. The music swells as the screen fades to black — the final scene of Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated Oppenheimer.
Best of 2023: How “The Color Purple” DP Dan Laustsen Made Visual Music
*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year. This interview with “The Color Purple” cinematographer Dan Laustsen more than qualifies, and, with the film opening wide in theaters today, it feels like a fitting Christmas Day post. Happy Holidays!
Danish cinematographer Dan Laustsen has been shooting movies for forty years, earning two Oscar nominations along the way for his contributions to Guillermo del Toro’s films The Shape of Water and Nightmare Alley.
Best of 2023: “The Color Purple” Costume Designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck’s Stunning Creations
*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year. This interview works doubly well as “The Color Purple” is in theaters today. Merry Christmas!
There’s a famous line in Alice Walker’s 1982 novel The Color Purple that goes: “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” It’s a message that even God can become annoyed when people overlook the wonderful things he creates.
“All of Us Strangers” Cinematographer Jamie Ramsay on Lighting a Lonely Life
Based on Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel Strangers, writer and director Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers takes place between a barren tower block in London, where Adam (Andrew Scott) leads a solitary existence, and his childhood home in the suburbs, where he frequently visits his parents, who died thirty years earlier. In London, Adam spends his days alone, until his neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal) appears outside his door, proffering whiskey.
“Dr. Death” Showrunner, Executive Producer & Stars on Season 2
In the second season of the celebrated Peacock series Dr Death, the show takes on another doctor featured on the hit Wondery true crime podcast, “Miracle Man,” Paolo Macchiarini. The story is of the world-renowned surgeon (played here by Edgar Ramirez) celebrated for his groundbreaking work in regenerative medicine and organ transplantation, but ultimately disgraced by his misconduct, dangerous practices, and web of deceit.
His rise and fall are,
“Maestro” Editor Michelle Tesoro on Orchestrating the Epic Bernstein Love Story
To tell the story of composer Leonard Bernstein’s (Bradley Cooper) courtship with Costa Rican-American actress Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein (Carey Mulligan), Cooper, who also directed, and his editor, Michelle Tesoro (The Queen’s Gambit, When They See Us) varied the technical aesthetic throughout Maestro. As the couple first gets to know each other at a party, followed by wooing one another on stage at an empty theater,
Searching for That Ferocious “Ferrari” Sound With Supervising Sound Editor Tony Lamberti
How eager was Tony Lamberti to work on Michael Mann’s latest feature? Let’s just say the director had Lamberti, a Formula 1 enthusiast, at Ferrari.
The Oscar-nominated (Inglourious Basterds), Emmy-winning (John Adams) audio engineer got his first peek at the feature about Enzo Ferrari and his iconic racing legacy back in 2015. Overseeing a mix update on Mann’s crime thriller Blackhat,
Gael García Bernal on His Showstopping Performance in “Cassandro”
Gael García Bernal has played a political revolutionary, an eccentric symphony conductor, an animated trickster, and a victim of a beach that makes you age years in hours, but he’s never made as much noise in one film as he does in Cassandro, where Bernal had to rile up crowds of thousands as the eponymous lucha libre star. Cassandro, a Texas native known outside the ring as Saúl Armendáriz, became an unlikely wrestling champion in Mexico by flaunting his flamboyance.
“The Chi” Producer/Directors Deondray Gossfield and Quincy LeNear Gossfield on Shaping Lena Waithe’s Sharp Showtime Series
The Chi directors/producers Deondray Gossfield and Quincy LeNear Gossfield are living proof of the collaborative spirit. They live and work together (they’re married), and when they directed episode 4 in season 5, “On Me,” in Lena Waithe’s coming-of-age Showtime series, the talented creator recognized she’d found two collaborators who could take on a larger role for season 6. That meant both directing and producing.
“We were already fans of the show before we started working on it,
“Wonka” Production Designer Nathan Crowley on Creating a Chocolatier’s Whimsical World
For production designer Nathan Crowley, whose impressive list of credits includes The Dark Knight, The Greatest Showman, and First Man, creating director Paul King’s deliciously appetizing Wonka musical was an exploration of “whimsical, nostalgic, and romantic” visuals inspired by Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. “I’m used to doing practical films, and with Wonka, we had to find the realism of Roald Dhal and what that looked like.
“American Fiction” Writer/Director Cord Jefferson on Cutting to the Heart of the Matter
Writer/director Cord Jefferson’s narrative feature debut, American Fiction, has become one of the most talked about films this awards season, and for good reason. Adapted from Percival Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasure,” the satirical drama won the audience award upon its debut at the Toronto Film Festival, with a number of subsequent fests following suit, and was recently named one of the top ten films of 2023 by the AFI.
“The Color Purple” Costume Designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck’s Stunning Creations
There’s a famous line in Alice Walker’s 1982 novel The Color Purple that goes: “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” It’s a message that even God can become annoyed when people overlook the wonderful things he creates. One such creation is what the character of Celie represents. “She’s a beautiful flower and a beautiful person that’s being trampled on,” costume designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck tells The Credits.
How “The Color Purple” DP Dan Laustsen Made Visual Music
Danish cinematographer Dan Laustsen has been shooting movies for forty years, earning two Oscar nominations along the way for his contributions to Guillermo del Toro’s films The Shape of Water and Nightmare Alley. Director Blitz Bazawule, on the other hand, had never made a major Hollywood motion picture before helming The Color Purple (opening Dec. 25). But together, director and cinematographer melded their talents to resounding effect to create a sumptuous-looking movie musical based on Alice Walker’s 1971 novel.
“Wonka” Costume Designer Lindy Hemming on Dressing the Joyous World of a Budding Chocolatier
Costume designer Lindy Hemming knows her way around both sides of the color coin, having worked on Christopher Nolan’s texturally moody Batman trilogy and the playful palette of Paul King’s Paddington movies. She reunites with King for Wonka, whimsically outfitting the candy maker’s origins in a Gene Wilder prequel that has Dune actor Timothée Chalamet playing the title character to a joyous reaction among reviewers.
“American Fiction” Star Jeffrey Wright Authors a New Chapter in a Stellar Career
Jeffrey Wright has found a great role as Monk Ellison in writer/director Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction. The story is based on a 2001 novel called “Erasure” by Percival Everett and centers on a professor and writer fed up with the way the literary world limits how Blackness is portrayed in pop culture. In response, Monk writes a blatantly stereotypical novel full of gangs, thugs, and criminals using a pseudonym. To his shock,
“Saltburn” Cinematographer Linus Sandgren on Creating a Fluid Painting for Emerald Fennell
The comic drama Saltburn from director Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) is as beautiful as it is macabre. It’s 2006, and Oliver (Barry Keoghan), an awkward, lonely student at Oxford, finds his place within the scenic confines of his university by becoming friends with Felix (Jacob Elordi), who is everything Oliver is not — handsome, charming, and rich. Felix invites Oliver to spend the summer at Saltburn,
“Poor Things” Production Designers Shona Heath and James Price on Going Gleefully Mad for Director Yorgos Lanthimos
When we first meet Bella Baxer, she’s a bit unusual. Not in a physical sense. All her arms and legs are accounted for, and playing the character is Academy Award winner Emma Stone so that you can be the judge of her beauty. But something about Bella is off. Turns out, she’s the creation of Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), a renowned London scientist who reincarnated her adult body with the brain of a child.
How “Leave the World Behind” Production Designer Anastasia White Built a House for the End of the World
Leave the World Behind has five main characters. Four are human, and the other is the house where they find themselves holed up together as an apocalyptic event rages outside.
In the acclaimed 2020 novel by Rumaan Alam, the house has colorful interiors and a white picket fence. Not anymore. Sam Esmail, who wrote and directed the film, got Alam’s approval to use something more foreboding, according to production designer Anastasia White.
“Poor Things” Costume Designer Holly Waddington on Bringing Yorgos Langthimos’ Ecstatic Vision to Life
Before costume designer Holly Waddington got started on Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos gave her a visual reference: inflatable pants. The futuristic-seeming trousers made by London College of Fashion graduate Harikrishnan buck the movie’s late-19th-century setting, which encouraged Waddington to ignore the norms of time and space. No material would be too anachronistic, no fit too audacious. “I designed a whole series of things based on this idea of inflation and compression,”
“Nyad” VFX Supervisor Jake Braver on Digitally Dropping Annette Bening Into the Open Ocean
Diana Nyad would not be denied. Nyad attempted the treacherous endurance challenge of swimming from Cuba to the Florida Keys more times than a white-tip shark. The effort could have killed her—the ocean certainly tried—but ultimately, after multiple attempts, Nyad succeeded, cemented her legend, and now is the focus of Nyad, the new film from documentarians Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, the directing duo’s first narrative feature. Chin and Vasarhelyi won an Oscar for their work on Free Solo,
