How Superflys’ Costume Designer Curated the Sensational Look

Costume designer Antoinette Messam got hired on December 18 to costume the suave hustlers of Superfly and on January 19, cameras rolled in Atlanta. “It was like the fastest production ever!,” says the Jamaican-born designer. Getting up to speed in a hurry, Messam went “power-shopping” over the holidays in Toronto, where she loaded up on Fresh Company clothing. She then scoured stores in New York, explored off-the-grid spots in Atlanta and scoured the web for online purchases.

Ocean’s 8 Production Designer on the Art of the Con Artist

Alex DiGerlando made his reputation as a production designer when he conjured the gritty swamp vibe for 2012’s Beasts of the Southern Wild. DiGerlando followed that stunning achievement with his spooky evocation of rural Louisiana subcultures in the first season of True Detective. Heist movie Ocean’s 8 represents a radical shift in milieu for the NYU-educated production designer. Working with director Gary Ross,

Cameron Britton Breaks Through Playing Real Life Serial Killer Ed Kemper in Mindhunter

Netflix true crime drama Mindhunter moves efficiently in tracking the origins of forensic science as experienced through FBI odd couple (Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany) until midway through its second episode. Then, Cameron Britton makes his entrance. Playing real-life 70’s-era serial killer Ed Kemper, Britton strolls into an interrogation room and takes the show in utterly unnerving new direction through his embodiment of folksy evil incarnate.

A frontrunner in Emmy’s Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series category,

Legendary Cartoonist & Screenwriter Jules Feiffer on the Mystifying Rituals of Male Friendship in Bernard and Huey

Bernard and Huey is a new film based on an old script. Jules Feiffer wrote the screenplay decades ago, but very little updating was needed for a beautifully performed (and partially Kickstarter-funded) movie that is almost a companion piece to Feiffer’s screenplay for Carnal Knowledge. Both films center on a long friendship between two men, one who has many short-term affairs with women and the other who, at least initially,

Costume Designer Jane Petrie on the Royals Step Into Modernity in Season 2 of The Crown

Lushly shot, exquisitely produced, expensive and popular, Netflix’s The Crown is praised not just for its (mostly) accurate rendering of major and minor events in the history of Britain’s royal family, but for its credible portrayal of their homes and haunts and the clothes they wore there. The period costumes, executed in attentive, realistic detail by Michele Clapton and Timothy Everest in the first season, and by Jane Petrie in season two,

Sound Editors Harness Horses, Wind & Gunshots for Netflix’s Western Godless

When it comes to designing sound for westerns, seven-time Oscar nominee Wylie Stateman keeps his ears attuned to wind, horses, gunshots and what he calls “the ride up and the ride out.” Speaking from his Twenty Four Seven Sound studio in Topanga Canyon near L.A., Stateman says, “You need to capture the sense of the countryside and traveling by horseback because that’s what makes a western what it is. It’s all about the big sky and the ride up and the ride out,

Making the Met Gala in Ocean’s 8 Sound as Cool as it Looks

There are few things more frustrating to a moviegoer than missing a line of dialogue. Scripts have been carefully crafted to tell a story in merely a few hours making nearly every word vital to the plot. If you can’t hear what is said, you could miss something important. Particularly in the dialogue heavy Ocean’s 8 where the heist of the century is discussed in detail by eight sharp, savvy, and hilarious women.

Atlanta‘s Brian Tyree Henry has Arrived

As Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles on FX’s critically acclaimed Atlanta which ended its second season in May (and was just picked up for a third season), Brian Tyree Henry can do more with one grimace than many can do with their whole body. He’s instilled Paper Boi with heart, humor and a lovability that makes him one of the best characters on television right now.

But he hasn’t stopped there,

Westworld’s Production Designer Breaks Down Season 2

Production designer Howard Cummings’s thirty year career has encompassed an incredible range of varied and stylized work: from the fantastical designs showcased in Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightening Thief, to the grounded realism seen in such films as Francis Coppola’s The Rainmaker, to the expressive realism seen in his 20 year stint working with director Steven Soderbergh on movies like The Underneath,

Hereditary‘s Production Designer on Building the Scariest Movie of the Year

This is no exaggeration: Hereditary is the scariest movie in years and sure to become a horror classic. Writer/director Ari Aster brings a horrific tale of how we might just be unable to escape our familial bonds. He tells this through the Graham family—when Ellen, the mother of Annie Graham (an Oscar worthy Toni Collette) dies her private presence begins to haunt the whole family through her things, her secrets and perhaps even her spirit.

Andrea Riseborough on Bringing the Complex, Searching Nancy to Life

English Actress/Producer Andrea Riseborough might be the most successful performer you won’t recognize, and that’s exactly as she likes it. Highly in demand by both the UK and the US film industry, she is known for disappearing into her characters, and creating indelible performances that enhance every one of her projects. To see her in the terrifying Black Mirror episode “Crocodile” is to witness an actress at the very top of her game. 

Writer/Director Ari Aster on his Terrifying Debut Hereditary

When critics bend over backwards to keep a movie’s secrets under wraps, presume that the title in question is a step beyond the norm and well worth seeing. That is the case with Hereditary. Writer-director Ari Aster’s feature debut caused festival goers at Sundance and South by Southwest to squirm, shudder and gasp out loud at what transpires onscreen. Starting on June 8, the public will get to witness this grandly operatic yet exceedingly unsettling horror thriller about a grieving family seemingly beset by sinister forces – if they dare.

Actress-Turned-Composer Amelia Warner Helps Re-Imagine Frankenstein Origin Story in Mary Shelley

It was a dark and stormy night two centuries ago when 18-year old Mary Shelley, staying at Lord Byron’s estate in Geneva, Switzerland, responded to her host’s scary story contest by writing “Frankenstein.” Then came the hard part: persuading someone in London’s male-dominated book industry to publish the story under her own name. Starring Elle Fanning, Mary Shelley, which recently opened wide, tracks the heroine’s love affair with poet Percy Shelley and the crushing disappointments leading up to her creation of the now-classic horror tale.

How the VFX Team of The Looming Tower Recreated Pre-9/11 New York

Nearly every American over the age of 25 remembers the horrific day of the September 11 attacks. Images of that day are tragically familiar. The events were so meaningful and are so well known that VFX artists on Hulu’s The Looming Tower took deliberate care to vigilantly recreate pre-9/11 New York. The series, starring Peter Sarsgaard, Jeff Daniels, Tahar Rahim, and Wrenn Schmidt, explores the tense relationship between the FBI and CIA that obstructed vital intelligence about the impending attacks.

BBC America’s President Sarah Barnett On How Killing Eve Slayed In Its Debut Season

After viewing the pilot of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s bleakly comedic series Fleabag a few years ago, both Sarah Barnett, president and general manager of BBC America, and Nena Rodrigue, the network’s executive vice president of original programming, acquisitions and production, were “fan-girling over Phoebe,” as Barnett puts it, drawn to her distinct point of view and wit. “We totally fell in love with Phoebe’s voice.”

They wanted to work with her, and soon enough,

Brian Tyree Henry on Hotel Artemis & Working With his Best Friend (Sterling K. Brown)

If you’ve been sleeping on Brian Tyree Henry, you better wake up immediately. The triple threat is ready to dominate the TV, film and stage this year and he’s only just getting started. First up on his plate is the delightful summer action flick, Hotel Artemis, from writer/director Drew Pearce. Henry plays Honolulu, one of a pair of bank robbing brothers (alongside IRL bestie Sterling K. Brown) who after a botched robbery end up at the Hotel Artemis—an underground hospital in Los Angeles for criminals ran by The Nurse (Jodie Foster).

13 Reasons Why‘s Music Supervisor on Selecting Music for the Mayhem of High School

Netflix’s hit show 13 Reasons Why has had its share of controversy from the beginning. The show centers around teen character Hannah Baker’s suicide, how various traumatic experiences led to her deciding to end her life, and how friends and classmates deal with the knowledge that they potentially had a hand in her decision. Though mental health professionals and other groups have had concerns around the depiction of rape, bullying, suicide, and gun violence,

First-Time Showrunner Breaks Down his Dark hit Series The Sinner

Derek Simonds had been toiling on the periphery of show business since 2001, when his indie film Seven and a Match toured the festival circuit, but progress proved fitful. He developed Call Me By Your Name, penned some TV pilots and worked as a story editor on ABC drama The Astronaut Wives Club, but, Simonds says, “I was still banging on doors to be heard.”

Writer/Director Veena Sud on her Timely Netflix Drama Seven Seconds

A young detective, frantic because he cannot reach his pregnant wife, is driving through the snow, trying to reach her on his cell. He hears a sickening thud, but does not realize what he has hit – who he has hit – until he gets out of the car and sees the mangled bike under his wheel. A black teenage boy named Brent Butler was riding that bik,e and the cop is white.

When his colleagues arrive,

Joy Nash on her Breakout Role as Plum Kettle in Dietland

At one point in the two hour premiere of AMC’s latest drama, Dietland, Margaret Atwood’s most famous quote is uttered by main character Plum Kettle: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” Other than being a perfect encapsulation of our current times, it’s also a sentiment that can anchor the stickily interesting Dietland, based on the novel by Sarai Walker and brought to AMC by TV veteran Marti Noxon.