Onward’s Story Supervisor on Crafting Another Poignant Pixar Tale

As fans have come to expect, Pixar will be hitting us all in the feels with their new release Onward today. The movie follows the adventures of elven teen Ian (Tom Holland), and his big brother Barley (Chris Pratt). They miss their dad, who died before Ian was even born. For Ian’s 16th birthday present, their missing father left a spell that would bring him back for 24 hours, so the family patriarch and his sons could spend some precious time together.

Mythological Creatures Stand In for a Very Human Story in Pixar’s Onward

In Pixar’s newest feature, Monsters University director Dan Scanlon’s Onward, the studio created a fantasy tale set in present-day suburban sprawl. Magic used to reign, we learn, but it was also difficult, and this world of elves, fairies, and centaurs long ago adopted and then adapted to technological comforts. Now, unicorns snack from trash cans in a whimsical simulation of Los Angeles, and the fatherless teenaged elf brothers at the center of the story,

Director Brett Haley on His Compelling Adaptation of All the Bright Places

Although he has just a handful of feature-length films to his credit, Brett Haley has become a master in creating character-driven worlds that resonate with audiences. The stories he tells are simple on the surface, but ultimately layered — from the septuagenarian romance in I’ll See You in My Dreams, to the legacy of an aging actor in The Hero, to the father-daughter bond in Hearts Beat Loud.

The Cast of Gentefied on Netflix’s Glorious New Series

Season 1 of Gentefied is now streaming on Netflix, which is cause for all fans of great content to celebrate. The show, which has been in the new “top ten in the US today” category on the site since its launch date on February 21st, focuses on an extended Latinx family in LA’s Boyle Heights. It follows them as they confront the gentrification of their neighborhood, and what it means to them as individuals,

Simon Frederick on the History of Black Cinema in his Doc They’ve Gotta Have Us

In They’ve Gotta Have Us now streaming on Netflix, British photographer-turned filmmaker Simon Frederick chronicles the history of Black Cinema by sitting down with some of the people who made that history. Produced by BBC Two and Ava DuVernay‘s ARRAY company, the three-part documentary series blends archival footage with dozens of interviews to survey eight decades of American filmmaking.

“I wanted to hear about the struggles and the successes,

Future Man’s Cinematographer Sylvaine Dufaux on Hulu’s Hilarious Time Tripper

In Hulu‘s Future Man, a gent by the unimprovable name of Josh Futturman (The Hunger Games‘ Josh Hutcherson) finds himself in a fairly extreme circumstance. Josh is a janitor by day and a bigtime gamer by night, and his life is reasonable and normal until it’s suddenly very unreasonable and abnormal. He’s recruited by a pair of time travelers (played by Derek Wilson and Eliza Coupe) and tasked with traveling through time himself to save humanity.

Writer/Director Rashaad Ernesto Green on his Bracing Love Story Premature

When Rashaad Ernesto Green and Zora Howard sat down to write a feature that Howard would star in and Green would direct, the pair already knew it would be a love story. No, Howard and Green are not a couple; they worked together on Green’s debut feature Gun Hill Road (2011) and on his 2008 short Premature. The two artists simply wanted to create “what we felt was missing in the current cinematic climate especially with relation to black stories,” says Green.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire Writer/Director Celine Sciamma on her Masterpiece

French writer-director Céline Sciamma, whose first three features, Water Lilies (2007), Tomboy (2011) and Girlhood (2014), established her unique voice with visually compelling depictions of coming of age, gender identity and the intimacy of girls’ relationships, has created a masterpiece with her fourth film, Portrait of a Lady on Fire. A sumptuous lesbian romance set in France in 1760, Portrait of a Lady on Fire won the best screenplay award and the Queer Palm at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and a host of year-end critics’ accolades.

Writer/Director Brenda Chapman on her Beguiling new Feature Come Away

Oscar-winning animation artist, writer, and director Brenda Chapman had never considered doing live-action before she read the script for Come Away, which came from first-time screenwriter Marissa Kate Goodhill. She was taken by the story, which is a “what if” tale, suggesting the origins for both Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland come from Victorian brother and sister Peter and Alice (Jordan Nash and Keira Chansa) who use their imaginations,

The Photograph Writer/Director Stella Meghie on Making Movies About Black Love

Director Stella Meghie has been on an accelerated rise in just these past few years. After an impressive feature debut with her 2016 indie comedy-drama Jean of the Joneses, the filmmaker followed up the next year with a studio picture, the YA adaptation Everything, Everything. After a return to indie filmmaking with 2018’s The Weekend, Meghie is once again working in the studio sphere—The Photograph is a Universal release (it premieres on February 14,

Little America’s Production Designer Amy Williams on Apple TV+’s Beautiful New Series

Apple TV+‘s Little America is the rare show that you could argue really and truly needs to be seen right now. The anthology series from executive producers Alan Yang (Parks and Recreation, Master of None) and Kumail Nanjiani (The Big Sick, Silicon Valley) focuses on the lives of largely working-class immigrants in America. Each episode focuses on the experience of a different character,

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,