“Succession” Composer Nicholas Britell Goes Behind Season 3’s Score
Rarely has awful behavior been accompanied by such beautiful music, but the fictitious scoundrels of Succession have now spent three seasons buoyed by brooding scores from pianist-composer Nicholas Britell. A three-time Oscar nominee, Britell honed his skills at Juilliard and Harvard before becoming the go-to composer for directors Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up), Barry Jenkins (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk), and Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave).
Vietnam Filmmakers in Focus: In Conversation With Dr. Ngo Phuong Lan
The Vietnam Film Development Association (VFDA) was established in July 2019 as a national film commission, and its top priority was fostering international collaborations.
With that in mind, we talk to VFDA chairperson Dr. Ngo Phuong Lan, the former director of Vietnam’s Cinema Department and former head of the organizing committee of the Hanoi International Film Festival (HANIFF). She is also a film critic and an author and co-author of seven books, including “
“Barry” Cinematographer Carl Herse on Lighting Season 3’s Dark Path
Barry cinematographer Carl Herse has his fingerprints all of season three in what is turning out to be a reckoning for the titular hitman (played by co-creator/writer/director Bill Hader). Herse joined the Barry team and lensed five of season three’s 8 episodes (1, 2, 6, 7, and 8) in what has turned out to be the darkest stretch of Barry’s decidedly pitch black journey thus far.
Citing influences as wide-ranging as Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood,
Breaking Down the Astonishing Technology Behind Ava DuVernay’s “One Perfect Shot”
The cathedral wedding in John M. Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians. Diana Prince boldly crossing a World War I battlefield in Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman. Lisa stuck on a zip-line suspended above a raucous crowd in downtown New Orleans, in Malcolm D. Lee’s Girls’ Trip. Cathartic, lovely, or almost distressingly hilarious, these scenes are indelible. What did their directors do to make them tick?
In One Perfect Shot,
“Succession” Director Mark Mylod on Season 3 & TV’s Most Irresistibly Twisted Family
Succession director Mark Mylod knows his way around family drama. Mylod’s been with the series since the first season, directing the second episode (the pilot was helmed by co-creator Adam McKay), and is now the most tenured Succession director of them all, with 12 episodes to his credit. He’s also something of an expert when it comes to palace intrigue, considering he’s a Game of Thrones alum, yet he admits that Succession‘s highly-anticipated and ultimately critically acclaimed third season presented some unique challenges.
“Jurassic World: Dominion” Co-Writer Emily Carmichael on Crafting the Most Dino-Packed Epic of Them All
Five billion dollars into the dinosaur cinematic universe launched 19 years ago by Steven Spielberg, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, and Jeff Goldblum, the Jurassic franchise comes to an end — at least for now — with the Friday [June 10] release of Jurassic World: Dominion. Sixth in the series of popcorn spectacles famed for VFX recreations of prehistoric “apex predators,” Dominion sees legacy characters from the original trilogy joining forces with Jurassic World stars Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt on a quest to save the world from ecological catastrophe.
“Ozark” Director Amanda Marsalis on Ruth, Wendy, and Bittersweet Goodbyes
When Ozark came to its bloody, sin-soaked end this year, you might have found yourself, Marty Byrd (Jason Bateman) style, sitting there quietly for a moment to do some accounting. The Byrd family had, against all odds, survived the chaos they’d been plunged into four seasons back when Marty’s business partner in Chicago made the mistake of cheating the wrong client. That put Marty in a life-or-death situation that would carry on for over a year—make matters right by laundering money for a powerful Mexican cartel,
“Stranger Things” Cinematographer Caleb Heymann on Season 4’s Monstrous Mayhem
*Spoilers below for the first seven episodes of season 4!
The first seven episodes — the last two are expected in July — of Stranger Things Season 4 go big. Hopper (David Harbour) is alive but in a Soviet prison. The kids are split up, with Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and Will (Noah Schnapp) living the opposite of a teenage dream out in California. The rest of the gang are still in Hawkins,
“Stranger Things” Casting Director Carmen Cuba on Finding Season 4’s New Faces
*There are spoilers for season 4 below, so proceed with caution if you’re not caught up!
With every new season of Stranger Things comes a new crop of teens to replace those ill-fated in prior seasons to the predations of the Upside Down that lurks under Hawkins. In addition, in Season 4, the show’s beloved original members are scattered across the globe, leaving room for new cast members to take on feature roles in Hawkins’ latest rescue.
“Severance” Production Designer Jeremy Hindle’s Dystopian Office Space
“Large room, four desks.” That’s the only description production designer Jeremy Hindle had to work with when he came up with this TV season’s most spookily immaculate office, as seen in Apple TV + series Severance. The high-concept sci-fi thriller, partially directed and executive produced by Ben Stiller from a script by first-timer Dan Ericson, centers on the tyrannical Lumon Industries corporation whose employees (played by Adam Scott, John Turturro, Britt Lower,
Bill Hader on Bringing Up “Barry”
For eight seasons, Bill Hader gained a legion of fans with the hilarious characters he brought to life on Saturday Night Live. Since then, his popularity has only grown with his Emmy-winning portrayal of the manic hitman/aspiring actor in the HBO series Barry. But to hear Hader tell it, performing wasn’t his initial goal. For as long as he can remember, he wanted to direct.
“Since I was fairly young…I would say 10 or 11 was when I first started to notice the ‘directed-by’ name,” Hader says during a recent Zoom interview.
Going to Flight School With “Top Gun: Maverick” Stars Glen Powell & Greg Tarzan Davis
Based on everything from the reviews to the overwhelmingly positive chatter online to the 5-minute standing ovation at Cannes, Top Gun: Maverick seems destined to become Tom Cruise’s biggest weekend opening in his career, which is saying something. For the sequel to the beloved 1986 film, Cruise, the film’s executive producer and star, waited until he had a great story and the right people in front of and behind the camera,
Going Down the Rabbit Hole With “Russian Doll” Editor Todd Downing
One of the best descriptions we’ve heard of Russian Doll, the consistently surprising, genuinely hilarious series from co-creator and star Natasha Lyonne, Leslye Headland, and Amy Poehler comes from the show’s most tenured editor, Todd Downing. Describing a moment in season two, episode six, “Schrödinger’s Ruth,” in which nearly every character who has been in the series shows up on a Subway platform in a crucial moment, Downing said he had a realization.
From “Moana” to “Lupin”: How the Tool “VoiceQ” Does Dubbing Right
It’s all about “lip flap” when it comes to quality voice dubbing for movies and TV. Voice actors make their living by synchronizing dialogue to the micro-movements that happen when on-screen characters open and close their mouths, AKA lip flap. Imprecise voice work results in cheesy-sounding foreign language adaptations. But voice dubbing, done right, has helped propel series like the Korean language Squid Game, Spanish-language Money Heist, and French-language Lupin to hit status in the United States.
“1883” Costume Designer Janie Bryant on Elsa’s Epic Journey
The farther west her family’s pioneer caravan travels, the heavier a burden customs become, narrates Elsa (Isabel May), the heroine of 1883 on Paramount+. Observant and headstrong, she is the missing link from the series Yellowstone, a presence felt but not seen. Over the course of this ten-episode prequel, we follow her family’s journey leading to their stewardship of Montana’s biggest ranch and to Elsa’s ignominious fate.
The Dutton’s arduous move from Tennessee begins thanks to Elsa’s father,
From “Pachinko” to “Severance,” Costume Designers Discuss Their Apple TV Series
Last Year, Apple TV+ won seven Creative Arts Emmys and landed four Primetime Emmy Awards. They have kicked off this year’s Emmy FYC season with a number of events that will take place at The Grove in Los Angeles.
Last Thursday evening (5/19) a panel of costume designers took the stage to pull back the creative curtain of their series. The artisans making the journey were Jane Petrie from The Essex Serpent,
“Russian Doll” Costume Designer Jennifer Rogien Travels Through Time in Style in Season 2
During Russian Doll’s first season, hapless downtown New Yorker Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) can’t escape her own birthday party. In Season 2, she finds herself trapped by missing laws of space and time yet again, except now she’s a full-on time traveler. Stepping onto the 6 train, she gets off in her own neighborhood in 1982, where, she is understandably disconcerted to learn that she is her mother, Nora (Chloe Sevigny). Just as she gets used to firsthand insight into Nora’s crappy relationships and pregnancy with her own self,
Composer René G. Boscio on Scoring Teenage Turmoil in “Emergency”
Carey Williams’s new film Emergency (premiering in theaters on May 20 and Amazon Prime Video on May 27) is billed as a comedy-thriller. But when college students Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins) and Sean (RJ Cyler), who are Black, and their buddy Carlos (Sebastian Chacon), who is Latino, find a drunk white girl they’ve never seen before passed out on the floor of their campus housing, it feels like Emergency is about to transform into straight horror.
“Moon Knight” Composer Hesham Nazih on Capturing the Sounds of Ancient Egypt, Modern Cairo, & Marvel Magic
Marvel’s Moon Knight recently concluded its first six-episode run (a second season is possible). Marvel’s latest Disney+ series centers on a mild-mannered British gift shop employee named Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac). Steven learns in the very first episode that he shares a body with an American mercenary named Marc Spector, who works as the human avatar for the ancient Egyptian god Khonshu (voiced by F. Murray Abraham). With the help of Steven and Marc’s mutual love interest Layla El-Faouly (May Calamawy),
“Moon Knight” Costume Designer Meghan Kasperlik on Minting a New Marvel Superhero
Moon Knight was a particularly intriguing challenge for costume designer Meghan Kasperlik. Coming off an incredible piece of work with her designs for the gritty crime series Mare of Easttown on HBO, where Kasperlik was key to helping Kate Winslet fully embody a detective in Delaware County, Pennsylvania (as a DelCo native, I remain amazed by this series on every level), Kasperlik plunged into the realm of superheroes,