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),
Black Panther‘s Oscar-Nominated Production Designer Hannah Beachler Builds a new Nation
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
Everyone on the set of Black Panther had the weight of being a trailblazer. Realizing Wakanda for the screen meant reclaiming a painful history, honoring a rich heritage, and imagining the hope of the future right now. It also has the potential to confirm the demand for more diverse storytelling.
A Star is Born’s Oscar-Nominated Sound Mixer on Capturing Brilliance Up-Close
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
Warner Bros.’ A Star is Born, the fourth version of the film and Bradley Cooper’s first time directing, has earned a hero’s welcome as the best iteration yet of the tale of love, talent, and the price of fame. Lady Gaga stars as Ally, a struggling musician with powerhouse pipes,
A Quiet Place‘s Oscar-Nominated Sound Designers on Triggering our Brain’s Reptilian Fear Response
*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees.
Supervising sound editors Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van Der Ryn had the unusual challenge of applying their expertise to a film that would be so quiet, it had the word in its title. John Krasinski’s thrilling, chilling A Quiet Place was predicated on a brilliant idea; alien monsters have turned the planet into one giant Amtrak quiet car.
Berlin Station‘s Executive Producer on Making TV for Troubled Times
On one of the very few scripted television dramas to reflect the current global political climate, the covert C.I.A. operatives of Epix’s Berlin Station have found themselves mired in complex situations wrought by any number of familiar cranks and villains—internal whistle-blowers, far-right political parties, Russian thugs, mysterious hackers, and the list goes on. In depicting the inner workings of a fictionalized Berlin C.I.A. office, spy novelist Olen Steinhauer’s first television series works hard to examine the moral gray area of international espionage,
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’s Oscar-Nominated Directors on Being Bold
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, and their film has become a critical and commercial smash hit.
The coming of age story from Sony Pictures Animation follows Miles Morales (Shameik Moore),
Back to the Future With Star Trek: Discovery’s Production Designer
Star Trek: Discovery has been boldly going places even past incarnations of the iconic TV series have never been. It took a mere two episodes for the show to break completely new ground; the Starfleet’s first mutiny carried out by the star of the show, Sonequa Martin Green’s Michael Burnham.
The major advances are not the only narrative. Behind the scenes, a top-flight crew has been making the most of the latest technology and some very special locations to pull off the kind of show Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry would have loved and made,
Celebrating the ASC’s Top 10 Films of the 20th Century
The American Society of Cinematographers recently released their “100 Milestone Films in Cinematography of 20th Century.” For the uninitiated (which is 99% of the viewing public), the ASC is “an honorary organization made up of the best cinematographers in the world,” says cinematographer Richard Crudo, ASC (this explains why you often see an “ASC” after a cinematographer’s name in the credits.) “Membership is by invitation only and is extended after the candidate has been proposed by members and has passed a screening process.”
The titles in the ASC’s list were compiled through an internal poll conducted by the Society.
Star Trek: Discovery‘s Art Director Gives you the VIP Tour
When Art Director Jody Clement stepped in to work on CBS’s Star Trek: Discovery, she was no stranger to ambitious sci-fi television series. She’d already worked on Guillermo del Toro’s deliciously creepy The Strain, as well as BBC America’s narratively complex Orphan Black. For Star Trek: Discovery, Clement was stepping into both a major new show and TV history simultaneously.
“We do our initial research based on canon,
Star Trek: Discovery Set Designer on Developing New Worlds
Since 1966, Star Trek has been boldly going where no one has gone before. Through dozens of planets and vast reaches of space, the series has explored the most wonderful and most fearsome places the universe has to offer. Set designer Emilie Poulin is charting the Starfleet’s newest adventures on Star Trek: Discovery.
The locations on Star Trek: Discovery are very active. Because the storylines are rooted in exploration,
Cold Pursuit Director Hans Petter Moland on Liam Neeson’s Killer Plowman
In Hans Petter Moland‘s Cold Pursuit, Liam Neeson plays a humble snowplow driver named Nels Coxman living in the winter wonderland of Kehoe, Colorado. The film opens with Nels receiving Kehoe’s ‘Citizen of the Year’ award, which hs gratefully (and awkwardly) accepts. His beaming wife, Grace (Laura Dern) looks on. All is well. For roughly four minutes or so. In no time at all, the fuzzy, warm feelings give way to the title’s promise;
Director Catherine Hardwicke Delivers Gina Rodriguez as Action Star in Miss Bala
Catherine Hardwicke was 48 years old when she directed her first feature-length film. That movie, Thirteen, a dark look at a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, garnered Golden Globe nominations for its stars, Holly Hunter and Evan Rachel Wood, as well as an Oscar nod for Hunter and an Independent Spirit Award for Nikki Reed.
Though by Hollywood standards she came a bit late to directing, the success of Thirteen demonstrated she was meant to be at the helm.
Bird Box‘s VFX Supervisor on the Monster You Can’t See
What happens when Marcus Taormina tells people that he was the visual effects supervisor on the wildly popular Netflix film Bird Box?
“People have a ton of questions,” Taormina says, “but the central one is the creature question. I tell them that there is a lot on the editing room floor.”
What Bird Box’s invisible malefactors actually look like is one of the many ambiguities in the film that have preoccupied the Internet since Bird Box bowed over the Christmas holidays.
