No Cuts, Pure Tension: “Adolescence” Director Philip Barantini on Crafting Netflix Thriller in Unbroken Single Takes
British actor Stephen Graham is so reliably intense he played Al Capone for Martin Scorsese in Boardwalk Empire, stared down Al Pacino in The Irishman, executive producer and co-starred in the bare knuckle boxing drama A Thousand Blows, and earned the prestigious Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) award for his contributions to UK television. Now he’s co-written the acutely tense Adolescence (streaming on Netflix on March 13),
From Wings to Stars: Costume Designer Gersha Phillips on Redesigning Captain America
Gersha Phillips is no stranger to the kind of immediately recognizable costumes that tell a viewer immediately what world she’s in, like the intergalactic looks and Starfleet designs she crafted for the recent Star Trek feature Section 31 and the Star Trek series Discovery and Strange New Worlds. Skewing to the realism side of the closet, Phillips has designed the duds for My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 and director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s historical epic The Woman King.
From “Elf” to “Blue Bloods”: Veteran Producer Santiago Quiñones on the Unique Advantages of Filming in New York
Santiago Quiñones was a co-executive producer on Blue Bloods, CBS’s long-running police procedural that followed the Reagan family through their dynastic run within the NYPD. Quiñones, a born and bred New Yorker, joined the show assuming that, like previous projects, he might be moving on after a little while for another opportunity. Instead, he stayed for a decade, which kept him home alongside his family as his children grew and his colleagues became extended family members.
“Captain America: Brave New World” Composer Laura Karpman Crews a New Beat for a New Cap
The Academy Award-nominated composer Laura Karpman is now a consistent voice in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She scored Ms. Marvel, The Marvels, and What If? Now she adds Captain America: Brave New World to her impressive resume, which also includes American Fiction and Lovecraft Country.
In the tradition of Captain America movies, a conspiracy is afoot.
Brazilian Sociologist & Film Expert Ana Paula Sousa on the Power & Promise of the Oscar-Nominated “I’m Still Here”
One of the most striking scenes in Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here does not depict any of the violence instilled by the military regime that ruled Brazil for over two decades; nor does it show the despair of having a loved one vanish without a trace, while those so obviously responsible unashamedly deny any involvement.
Rather, it is the scene where Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) is being photographed with her children for an article in the national magazine Manchete.
From “Day of the Jackal” to “Captain America: Brave New World”: DP Kramer Morgenthau Breaks Down 70s Thriller Inspiration
Sam Wilson returns in director Julius Onah’s Captain America: Brave New World, here to take on twin domestic threats. Sam (Anthony Mackie) and his sidekick (and replacement as the Falcon) Joaquin (Danny Ramirez) have been sent to Mexico to stop Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito) from making an illegal sale. Sam and Joaquin recover the items but lose Sidewinder. The pair then head home to train with Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), a former super soldier introduced in the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,
Bare-Knuckle Couture: “A Thousand Blows” Costume Designer Maja Meschede’s Knockout Designs
Editor’s note: Spoiler alert! This story discusses plot lines of A Thousand Blows Season 1.
The subtle storytelling of Maja Meschede’s costume designs is hiding in plain sight if you’re able to look away from the simmering drama of A Thousand Blows, a six-part series from Peaky Blinders scribe Steven Knight that follows Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and his brother Alec (Francis Lovehall), two Jamaicans immigrating to London during the late 1800s.
From Acclaimed Ads to the Andes: Director Dougal Wilson’s Charming Feature Film Debut “Paddington in Peru”
Arguably the world’s most beloved (fictional) British immigrant, Paddington the Talking Bear arrived in London from South America in 2014 by way of the eponymous animated hit movie. Three years later, he returned for a sequel opposite Hugh Grant. This month, PG-rated Paddington in Peru (in theaters) continues the adventure as the marmalade-loving creature, based on Michael Bond’s children’s books and voiced by Ben Whishaw, returns to his native land in search of his beloved Aunt Lucy.
Red Alerts & Cherry Blossom Brawls With “Captain America: Brave New World” Production Designer Ramsey Avery
When Steve Rodgers (Chris Evans) passed the Captain America shield to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), the former Falcon sidekick had big boots to fill. The same could be said for production designer Ramsey Avery in developing director Julius Onah’s Captain America: Brave New World, which has earned over $200 million worldwide at the time of publishing.
Avery, who touts decades of credits, including being on the art department teams of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.
Producer Joseph Patel Explores Sly Stone’s Life & Legacy in “Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)”
Prodigiously gifted songwriter/singer/arranger/producer/bandleader/keyboardist/guitarist Sly Stone gets his well-deserved close-up in documentary makers Joseph Patel and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson‘s SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius). After earning an Academy Award for Summer of Soul, producer Patel and director QuestLove decided to deep-dive into the life and music of the man whose multi-racial band once thrilled hippies and Black audiences alike with ingenious funk-pop anthems including “I Want to Take You Higher,”
Be Still My Bursting Chest: “Alien: Romulus’s” Oscar-Nominated VFX Team on Finding Fresh Horror for the Franchise
Alien: Romulus Visual Effects Supervisor Eric Barba and FX Designer Alec Gillis bring the past and future together. Set between the events of Ridley Scott’s ferocious opener Alien and James Cameron’s muscular sequel Aliens, Barba, Gillis, and their team fused the tangible, practical horror and decay of the original films with a more modern, rock-and-roll sensibility. The viscerally immersive results earned the film an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects.
Electric Shock: How “A Complete Unknown’s” Oscar-Nominated Sound Team Re-Created Bob Dylan Going Electric
In the first part of our conversation with the Oscar-nominated sound team of James Mangold’s music biography A Complete Unknown, they talked about delivering an intensely music-centric film without using playback and differentiating between the soundscapes of 1961 New York, when Bob Dylan (an immaculate portrayal by Timothée Chalamet) first arrives in the city, and four years later towards the end of the film. Now, we continue the discussion with sound mixer Tod A.
“The Substance” of Nightmares: Oscar-Nominated Makeup Effects Master Pierre Olivier Persin on His Terrifying Transformations
Since its release last fall, writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s body horror thriller The Substance has artfully shocked Academy Award voters to the tune of five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. Outstanding Actress nominee Demi Moore portrays aging actress Elisabeth, who gets way more than she bargained for after injecting herself with a serum that makes her look younger in the form of lithe “Sue,” played by Margaret Qualley.
“A Complete Unknown”: Orchestrating 60+ Live Performances for Oscar-Worthy Sound
In one of this year’s tour de force performances, Timothée Chalamet’s Oscar-nominated portrayal of one of America’s greatest singer-songwriters took almost six years to perfect (partly thanks to COVD-19 delays in production). For director James Mangold’s music biopic, A Complete Unknown, Chalamet not only learned to play the guitar and harmonica for the film, but also mastered Dylan’s famously idiosyncratic style to deliver over 40 flawless live-to-camera performances as the narrative charts his meteoric rise after arriving in New York in 1961.
No More Games: “September 5’s” Oscar-Nominated Writers on the Day Terror Took Center Stage
The thriller September 5, directed and co-written by Tim Fehlbaum, revisits the day the Palestinian militant group Black September took nine Israeli athletes hostage during the 1972 Munich Olympics. Nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, the script, which Fehlbaum wrote with Moritz Binder, is a tightly-paced journalism procedural centered on the ABC Sports studio’s broadcast of the attack as it happened.
Peter Sarsgaard stars as Roone Arledge,
How Director Mohammad Rasoulof Shot his Oscar-Nominated “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” in Secret
Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof wanted to tell a big story — so he went small. The Seed of the Sacred Fig explores his country’s authoritarian rule, repressive justice, patriarchal dominance, and women’s rights through its impact on one family.
Taking place during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement, a nationwide protest sparked by the arrest of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman jailed for not wearing a hijab and beaten to death while in custody,
“Conclave” Oscar Nominee Peter Straughan on Scripting a Devilishly Good Vatican Thriller
Conclave is great, gripping entertainment from the first shot to the last. It’s a drama, both honest and escapist, deftly shot, performed, and staged by artists at the top of their respective games. In the hands of Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Peter Straughan, Edward Berger’s contemplative film moves briskly within the Vatican walls. A movie that takes us into one of the most secretive rituals on Earth – about the search for a new pope – is remarkably light on its holy feet.
Julian Brave NoiseCat & Emily Kassie’s on “Sugarcane”: Their Oscar-Nominated Exploration of Trauma and Truth
Toronto-born filmmaker and investigative journalist Emily Kassie has covered conflict around the globe, from the Taliban’s crackdown on women to child labor in Turkey. “But I had never turned the lens on my own country,” says Kassie. That’s changed with Sugarcane, which mixes a grassroots investigation with personal and collective reckoning of years of forced separation, assimilation, and abuse of Indigenous children by Catholic priests at St. Joseph’s Mission Indian residential school in British Columbia,
Oscar-Nominated Producer Maria Carlota Bruno on Recreating a Transcendent Heroine in “I’m Still Here”
In 1964, a coup d’état overthrew Brazilian president João Goulart, initiating a military dictatorship that lasted until 1985. The former congressman Rubens Paiva went into self-exile at the time of the coup but returned to Rio de Janeiro in 1970, where he settled into a pleasant household near Leblon Beach with his wife, Eunice Paiva, and their five children. Rubens continued quietly supporting dissident Brazilian expatriates and, in January 1971, was arrested and disappeared during a military raid.
“Nickel Boys” Writer/Director RaMell Ross on Camera as Consciousness in His Oscar-Nominated Film
An introspective, promising teenager hitchhiking to college gets a ride in a car that turns out to be stolen. The driver is Black, and so is the boy. Deemed an accomplice despite his innocence, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) is remanded to Nickel Academy, a segregated Florida reform school. Nickel Boys, the Oscar-nominated film based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Nickel Boys, follows the harrowing path Elwood is placed on by the Jim Crow South.
