Directors Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala on Their Chilling New Film The Lodge

The Austrian aunt and nephew directorial duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala shocked even the most audacious horror buffs with their 2015 debut feature, Goodnight Mommy, which was chillingly austere before it ramped up to an unforgettably gruesome twist. Their follow-up, The Lodge (it premiered this past February 7), stays unsettling for its entire runtime; here, the two bring the European sensibility that marked their first film to a bigger American cast.

Costume Designer Erin Benach on Dressing Harley Quinn & Other Deviants in Birds of Prey

Played by Margot Robbie, the titular anti-hero of Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) crashes a semi into a chemical plant, breaks an antagonist’s legs, and goes on the run from the police, and all that’s just during the first half of the movie. During the course of a gleefully violent spree through Gotham, Harley parties with the city’s dissolute elite, rescues a pint-sized pickpocket and forms a vigilante lady-squad whose moment to shine is a mini-war with a couple hundred hired thugs.

The Lighthouse’s Oscar-Nominated Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke on Capturing Madness

We’re looking back at some of our interviews with this year’s Oscar nominees in the lead-up to this Sunday’s telecast. This story was originally published on October 18, 2019.

When I caught Robert Eggers The Lighthouse at the Toronto International Film Festival, I was, to put it mildly, enthused. Relentlessly original, hypnotic, and gleefully insane, it was the work of an artist and a long list of collaborators going full tilt.

Unraveling Marriage Story with Oscar-Nominated Editor Jennifer Lame

We’re looking back at some of our interviews with this year’s Oscar nominees in the lead-up to this Sunday’s telecast. This story was originally published on December 5, 2019.

It was well past 9 pm on a Sunday night when the word “hello” drifted through the speaker of my phone. On the line was editor Jennifer Lame who pulled herself away from Christopher Nolan’s action-thriller Tenet.

How Sundance Award-Winning Feature I Carry You With Me Came Together

The film I Carry You With Me (Te Lloevo Conmigo) landed in the NEXT category at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival with buzz about its great potential, as it was the first narrative directed and co-written by documentarian and Academy-Award nominee Heidi Ewing. It found an audience and great success in Park City. By the end of the fest, it had a distribution deal through Sony Pictures Classics in partnership with Stage 6,

Joker’s Oscar-Nominated Composer Hildur Guðnadóttir on Creating a “Wordless Dialogue”

We’re looking back at some of our interviews with this year’s Oscar nominees in the lead-up to this Sunday’s telecast. This story was originally published on October 7, 2019.

A female composer being hired for a studio film is a rarity, with 94 percent of the 250 films released in the US in 2018 scored by men. It is to his credit that director Todd Philips hired Icelandic cellist and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir to create the score for Joker.

Oscar-Nominated Visual Effects Supervisor Pablo Helman on De-Aging the Iconic Actors of The Irishman

We’re looking back at some of our interviews with this year’s Oscar nominees in the lead-up to this Sunday’s telecast. This story was originally published on December 6.

In 2015, visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman was working with Martin Scorsese on Silence, a stirring film about the Christian faith during 17th century Japan. The two ended up having a conversation that ignited a technological advancement within the visual effects industry—one that will likely become a new standard in how images can be captured and processed during filmmaking.

How Little Women‘s Oscar-Nominated Costume Designer Jacqueline Durran Shaped the Story

We’re looking back at some of our interviews with this year’s Oscar nominees in the lead-up to this Sunday’s telecast. This story was originally published on January 2.

In the opening scene of writer-director Greta Gerwig’s adaption of Little Women, Jo March (Saoirse Ronan) walks into the New York offices of the Weekly Volcano and offers a novella to its publisher Mr. Dashwood (Tracy Letts),

How Parasite’s Oscar-Nominated Editor Helped Shape Thrilling Shifts in Tone

We’re looking back at some of our interviews with this year’s Oscar nominees in the lead-up to this Sunday’s telecast. This story was originally published on January 2.

Palme d’Or winner and Best Picture Oscar contender Parasite shocked audiences this autumn on the strength of writer-director editor of Bong Joon-ho‘s meticulously constructed blend of comedy, melodrama and thriller elements. The story follows the poor but well-educated grifters in the Park family,

Writer/Director/Star Numa Perrier on Her Autobiographical Sex Work Film Jezebel

Though filmmaker Numa Perrier only spent four years of her life in Las Vegas, those formative years being surrounded by adult vocations served as the backbone for her autobiographical ’90s-set film, Jezebel (now available on Netflix). Not only did Perrier write, direct, and produce, but she also stars as her older sister (executive producer Livia Perrier), who used to work as a phone sex operator and with whom Perrier shared cramped living quarters.

The Gentlemen’s Costume Designer Breaks Down the Felonious Finery

Early in his career, British director Guy Ritchie specialized in making good movies about bad guys. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch and RocknRolla told stories about pugnacious criminals plying their trades in and around London’s working-class demimonde. His latest romp The Gentlemen (now in theaters) marks a return to form with its cast of alpha males Matthew McConaughey, Hugh Grant, Colin Farrell and Charlie Hunnam augmented by the presence of elegant Downton Abbey star Michelle Dockery.

Production Designer Arwel Jones on Designing a New Dracula

Consistent with Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Netflix’s new three-episode Dracula series begins with a hapless English solicitor, Jonathan Harker (John Heffernan), ignoring the Transylvanian locals’ misgivings to make his way on a snowy evening to Count Dracula’s forbidding castle. In the original novel, Harker is initially impressed with his host’s social graces before realizing he’s a prisoner, but 2020’s Dracula (Claes Bang) is ratty haired and grim, intent on getting the social skills he’ll need for England from his guest.

How Oscar-Nominated Songwriter Joshuah Brian Campbell Helped Harriet Find its Voice

One of the more inspirational moments of Harriet, the stirring 2019 feature about Harriet Tubman, the legendary 19th-century slave turned abolitionist, happens when Cynthia Erivo sings Stand Up, an uplifting anthem to human dignity and the struggle to be free.

Erivo has deservedly received an Oscar nomination for her performance as Harriet Tubman. But she also landed a second nomination for Best Original Song as the co-writer of Stand Up.

How The Irishman’s Oscar-Nominated Production Designer Crafted Scorsese’s Mob Epic

Central to Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman is retired hitman Frank Sheeran’s (Robert De Niro) fifty-year oral history of his time with the mob, culminating in his murder of Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). The three-and-a-half-hour epic spans from 1949 to 2000, with most of the 295 different sets and locations made up to look like Philadelphia and environs between the 1950s and the 1970s. Designing the look of the film was a huge undertaking for the art department—“you’re reading the script and you’re thinking,

Legendary Animator & Oscar-Nominee Glen Keane on his Kobe Bryant Collaboration Dear Basketball

In light of the tragic news of the death of NBA legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna Bryant, 13 (the second oldest of Bryant’s four daughters with his wife, Vanessa), and seven other people in a helicopter crash in California, we are re-posting this interview with animator Glen Keane, who worked with Kobe on their film Dear Basketball, which ultimately earned them an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film.

In this second of a two-part interview with veteran Disney animator Glen Keane,

Legendary Animator & Oscar-Nominee Glen Keane on Teaming up With Kobe Bryant, his Disney Past & More—Part I

In light of the tragic news of the death of NBA legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna Bryant, 13 (the second oldest of Bryant’s four daughters with his wife, Vanessa), and seven other people in a helicopter crash in California, we are re-posting this interview with animator Glen Keane, who worked with Kobe on their film Dear Basketball, which ultimately earned them an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film.

Glen Keane is not just a living legend.

How 1917’s Oscar-Nominated Prosthetics Designer Designed the Grisly, Gripping Drama

World War I epic 1917 conveys the carnage of combat with uncommon grit. Informed by writer-director Sam Mendes‘ heartfelt story and his gifted design team, the film, nominated for 10 Academy Awards including best picture, immerses viewers in a “No Man’s Land” littered with dead animals, rotting corpses and dying soldiers. Prosthetics designer Tristan Versluis, Oscar-nominated with makeup designer Naomi Domme, did most of the heavy lifting when it came to blood,

1917’s Oscar-Nominated VFX Supervisor on Creating Relentless Immersion

“I think what’s really kind of interesting is all the movies this year are using visual effects for widely different reasons,” notes 1917’s Oscar and VES-nominated visual effects supervisor, Guillaume Rocheron. And in an Academy FX slate that ranges from Avengers: Endgame to The Irishman, he has a point.

For the Visual Effects Society’s awards, the final two feature film categories are divided into two: One where visual effects predominate in photoreal features—hence Endgame is up against the Rise of Skywalker,

The Irishman’s Oscar-Nominated Editor Thelma Schoonmaker on her 53-year Collaboration with Martin Scorsese

Three-time Oscar winner Thelma Schoonmaker‘s association with Martin Scorsese even pre-dates his storied collaboration with Robert DeNiro. She edited his Who’s That Knocking At My Door in 1967, picked up the first of eight Oscar nominations for editing Woodstock, went on hiatus for a few years, then returned to the Scorsese fold in 1980 to edit his famously brutal Raging Bull. Since then, Schoonmaker’s cut every Scorsese movie,

Honey Boy Cinematographer Natasha Braier on Earning an ASC Spotlight Nomination

“It is, of course, an honor to be selected for this by the ASC (American Society of Cinematographers), but it’s also a responsibility.” That particular responsibility belongs to Natasha Braier, ASC, ADF, the cinematographer for Shia LaBeouf’s stark memory-play Honey Boy.

Upon learning she’d been nominated for one of ASC’s Spotlight Awards this year, she called it “a huge honor to be recognized by my colleagues with (this) nomination.