Celebrating The Little Mermaid‘s 30th Anniversary With Ariel
Thirty years ago, The Little Mermaid initiated the second golden age of Disney animated features, with a spectacular score, including what star Jodi Benson calls the “I dream” opening number that introduces us to the title character, “Part of Your World.” The young mermaid princess sings about wanting to explore the human world. “I want to be where the people are/I want to see/want to see ’em dancin’/Walkin’ around on those/(Whad’ya call ’em?) oh – feet.”
Jodi Benson’s sweet voice brought Ariel to life,
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World‘s Creators on the Trilogy’s Epic Conclusion
Director Dean DeBlois always knew How to Train Your Dragon would be a three-part series where fans would see its main character Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) grow up and bond with a loveable dragon named Toothless. Now in its final chapter How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World illustrates how the animation has matured in complexity and detail alongside its resonating story of friendship.
“Dean had his mind set on a trilogy that would conclude with Hiccup and Toothless learning how to stand on their own feet,” says head of character animation Simon Otto.
Cold War‘s Oscar-Nominated DP Lukasz Zal on the Perspective of Love
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
Cinematographer Lukasz Zal won the prestigious Silver Frog Award at Camerimage for his work on Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War, a ravishing look at a romance over the course of 30-years and several thousand miles through Europe. Zal had worked with Pawlikowski on Ida, the director’s previous masterpiece,
Roma‘s Oscar-Nominated Production Designer on Recreating Mexico City in the 1970s
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma is one of the most astonishing film experiences of the year. The word experience fits, as Cuaron and his team created a lush soundscape that’s nearly as captivating as the shimmering black-and-white cinematography. Then there’s Roma‘s exquisite design, which recreates Cuaron’s hometown of Mexico City,
The Favourite‘s Oscar-Nominated Production Designer Re-Makes History
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
England’s Queen Anne, who only reigned from 1707 to 1714, is hardly the most notable female British sovereign, but to watch her played by Olivia Colman in director Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite, one might wonder why this the first we’re hearing of her in so long. True to history,
Getting Inspired With Black Panther‘s Oscar-Nominated Costume Designer Ruth E. Carter
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
Part of Black Panther costume designer Ruth E. Carter‘s many responsibilities included steeping the characters of the fictional world of Wakanda in a wardrobe that spoke to the real Africa, while retaining the mythic quality that the reclusive, technologically advanced nation required. We saw this in her work on the bald,
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’s Oscar-Nominated Directors on Being Bold
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
Directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman asked themselves a question: how could they tell a story and be as wild and bold as they could adapting a comic book to the big screen that hadn’t been seen before. Enter Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Now the three are Oscar-nominated directors,
How BlacKkKlansman‘s Oscar-Nominated Composer Channeled Jimi Hendrix
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
Terence Blanchard landed on this year’s Best Original Score Oscar shortlist by crafting the stirring score for Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman. Based on a true story and set in 1971, the movie casts John David Washington as Ron Stallworth, a black cop who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan with his Jewish colleague (Adam Driver) by impersonating a white supremacist over the phone.
Black Panther’s Oscar-Nominated Composer on his Global Collaboration
The minute Ludwig Göransson finished reading an early draft of Black Panther sent to him by director Ryan Coogler, the Swedish-born composer knew exactly what he needed to do. “I called up Ryan and said ‘I have to go to Africa,'” recalls Göransson, who is now reaping the benefits of his due diligence. Additional to the Best Score Emmy he won, Göransson is also vying for an Academy Award this Sunday for his Black Panther music.
Roma’s Oscar-Nominated Sound Team on Making a Music-Free Film
Water sloshes in a rooftop laundry tub, a faucet runs, and the strains of a tinny radio shift to the quiet chatter of a family at home. Alfonso Caurón’s Roma depicts the daily life of Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), an indigenous maid in a white, middle-class Mexico City household, an employee who gradually emerges as a seventh member of the family for whom she works. Cuarón punctuates her days, shepherding four children out of bed,
Off With Their Wigs! Mary Queen of Scots‘s Hair & Makeup Genius Jenny Shircore
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
This holiday season we’ve been graced with not one but two incredible examples of hair and makeup mastery. The first came in Yorgos Lanthimos’ hilarious The Favourite, which captures the lunacy at court (and in the bedroom) of Queen Anne (a sensational Olivia Colman), who close friend Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) goes to war,
The Favourite‘s Oscar-Nominated DP on Creating one of the Year’s Most Ravishing Films
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
Before The Favourite came his way, Robbie Ryan had never worked with Yorgos Lanthimos, but he did admire the Greek director’s offbeat art house films Dogtooth and Killing of a Sacred Deer. So when Lanthimos invited Ryan to shoot his 18th-century black comedy about Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) and rival courtiers (Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone),
Oscar-Nominated Costume Designer Sandy Powell’s Magic Touch on Mary Poppins Returns
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
Three-time Oscar-winning costume designer Sandy Powell came to the production of Mary Poppins Returns with fond memories of the 1964 original, which was the first film she ever saw as a child. She was excited to be a part of creating the look of this new incarnation of the beloved nanny,
Avengers: Infinity War‘s Oscar-Nominated VFX Supervisor Talks Thanos
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
Avengers: Infinity War, one of the biggest movies in history, found its CGI footing through the collective efforts of 11 different VFX outfits. Visual effects supervisor Kelly Port succinctly sums up the focus for his team at the Los Angeles-based Digital Domain company. Port says, “Basically, all the super depressing scenes were us.”
Isabel Coixet’s Ravishing Elisa and Marcela Mark’s Netflix’s 1st Film at Berlinale
Spain legalized same-sex marriage in 2005, the first nuptials of the kind were held in the country in 1901. The true story of Elisa Sánchez Loriga and Marcela Gracia Ibeas, wed by an unwitting priest, is the subject of Isabel Coixet’s black-and-white competition entry to the 69th Berlinale film festival.
As far as the women’s intertwined lives, in Coixet’s telling, the wedding is almost a footnote. Elisa and Marcela opens in 1920s Argentina,
Mary Queen of Scots‘ Oscar-Nominated Costume Designer Alexandra Byrne
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
Mary Queen of Scots is a gorgeous film to behold, with the dueling Queens looking period-perfect from head to toe. “You’ve got two queens, two powerful women, two women who have never met,” hair and makeup artist Jenny Shircore told us. “Yet they’re influenced by each other’s beauty and power.
Oscar-Nominated Composer Nicholas Britell on Nailing the Tone for Vice and If Beale Street Could Talk
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
Juilliard-trained New York composer Nicholas Britell worked non-stop in 2018 and now he’s got two Oscar shortlisted movie scores to show for it. Early in the year, he teamed with Moonlight director Barry Jenkins to write the music for If Beale Street Could Talk,
First Man‘s Oscar-Nominated VFX Supervisor on Building the Biggest LED Screen Ever
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
Watching Damien Chazelle’s First Man offers the earthbound viewer the chance to realize they don’t have the right stuff finally. For folks of a certain age, becoming an astronaut used to be one of the coolest possible professions, the kind of thing you said you wanted to be when you were little and didn’t know what engineering was.
How Free Solo‘s Oscar-Nominated Directors get it Done
Jimmy Chin is a professional climber and filmmaker who specializes in nail-biting documentaries that take place on ludicrously sheer mountain faces. His work demands a supernatural degree of calm. Today, however, Chin sounds like just another irrepressibly stoked dude. He’s fresh from the annual luncheon for Academy Award nominees. Alfonso Cuarón, it turns out, had seen Chin’s latest film, Free Solo, which is nominated for Best Documentary Feature.
The Lego Movie 2‘s Animation Director on World Building Brick-by-Brick
Five years ago, the first Lego Movie surprised audiences with its nimble moral-dealing in the importance of flexibility and independent thought. Also the song “Everything is Awesome.” The sequel (not counting two in between spin-offs, Lego Batman and Lego Ninjago), director Mike Mitchell’s The Second Part, is back to address sibling rivalry and the value of collaboration. Finn, the human creator of the universe in which Emmet (Chris Pratt),
