RBG Co-Directors/Producers on Their Groundbreaking Subject – Part I

Ruth Bader Ginsburg – the Brooklyn-born, 85-year-old grandmother of four who became the second female to be appointed as a Supreme Court justice in 1993 – has been having a pop-cultural moment since 2015 or so. That’s when the liberal-leaning Harvard grad was cheekily dubbed The Notorious RBG (a play on the late rapper Biggie Smalls, a.k.a. The Notorious BIG) by a pair of young female writers who saluted this petite powerhouse’s stealthy sense of bad-assery in book form.

Tully‘s Production Designer Anastasia Masaro on Finding Magic in Life’s Mess

It’s been seven years since Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody, the creative forces behind Juno and Young Adult, last collaborated. Now, with Tully, the pair close out a thematic trilogy of sorts – stories that have, at least in some way, been autobiographical for the pair of creatives. “They have this kind of connective tissue between all of them,” Reitman said at the New York premiere of the film.

Striking a Balance of Cruelty and Whimsy for the Score of A Series of Unfortunate Events

Child marriage, infant abuse, insatiable greed, and murder plots do not seem like the makings of a family program. And yet, Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events achieves just that by channeling the highly stylized essence of Daniel Handler’s classic thirteen book series for young adults. Now in season 2, the plots have grown wackier and darker. The show is reliant on composer Jim Dooley to maintain levity. Dooley can attest to the music’s influence,

Dawn Porter on her Netflix Docuseries Bobby Kennedy for President

It’s been 50 years since the turbulence of 1968 changed this nation forever. From the escalating Vietnam War to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. to the riots outside the Democratic convention, that year was one of the most difficult our nation has ever faced, and that serves as measuring stick anytime a particular year in America feels especially fraught. Last year was one such year. So was 2016. The same could said of 2018.

Director Sebastian Lelio on Capturing Forbidden Love in his Urgent new Film Disobedience

Director Sebastian Lelio has had quite the exciting past few months. Lelio’s last film, A Fantastic Woman, about a transgender woman whose partner tragically dies, swept the awards circuit. It won 17 awards including the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film—which was the first Chilean film to do so. Right now, there’s no stopping Lelio and his work.

In theaters today, Lelio is tackling another story about women’s interior lives.

Cult or Cultural Utopia? The Directors of Wild Wild Country Let Viewers Decide

You would be forgiven for having difficulty placing the term ‘Rajneeshpuram.’ The violent clash between the followers of Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and the residents of Antelope Oregon in the mid-1980s seems like the makings of a famous event, but it has somehow faded from cultural memory. Directors Chapman and Maclain Way admitted the incident did not ring a bell to them either when they began their research for breakout Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country.

The Handmaid’s Tale’s Samira Wiley Talks Religion, Love, and Season 2

Fresh from their Peabody Award win, The Handmaid’s Tale returns for a highly anticipated 2nd season. Season 1, which was filmed before Donald Trump was elected, became more than just a cautionary tale after his campaign and first year in office. Though sometimes difficult to watch, it represents some of the best writing and acting on the small screen. It also affirms just how successful and multi-layered a show with a strong female presence,

Director & Cinematographer Warwick Thornton on his Outback Western Sweet Country

Growing up in the Australian outback, director and cinematographer Warwick Thornton wasn’t exposed to many big screen movies.

“We had a drive-in on Friday and Saturday nights. I remember Star Wars four or five years after was released; that’s how long it took that print [to travel to the outback],” says Thornton, 48. “So that’s the Hollywood cinema I grew up on. I never watched westerns in cinemas because [the cinemas played] just big,

Super Troopers 2 Star Kevin Heffernan Discusses The Gleefully Insane Sequel

If for no other reason than sheer longevity, comedy collective Broken Lizard deserves a shout-out for sticking together. The five guys who specialize in “low brow humor for high-brow people,” as ensemble member Kevin Heffernan puts it, started cracking each other up around 1990 as undergrads at Colgate University. Twenty-eight years later, they’ve created R-rated Super Troopers 2 (opening today), which aims to outdo the raunchy slapstick featured in their 2001 sleeper hit.

Mudbound & Come Sunday Composer Tamar-kali’s Singular Path

At less than 2% of all composers, the percentage of female scoring artists working in the film industry is the lowest and most out of balance with the number of men getting hired. There isn’t any official data on how many of those are women of color, but it’s an even smaller fraction. With her critically acclaimed score for Mudbound, and now with her new work for the film Come Sunday,

Kay Cannon on her Hilarious Directorial Debut Blockers

If you’ve ever been a Teen Movie fan, the last several years haven’t really been for you. While the late 90s and early aughts had more than their fair share of teen movies (many now classics), it’s been few and far between for a studio coming-of-age flick. But in the last month, we’ve been blessed with not one, but two studio teen films: Greg Berlanti’s Love, Simon and Kay Cannon’s Blockers—both that have made progressive new changes to the teen film formula.

The Good Wife Costume Designer Dan Lawson Brings his Skill to New Detective Series Instinct

Dan Lawson certainly possesses the gift of garb. The established costume designer is an Emmy nominee for his work on CBS’s The Good Wife, and now brings his winning style to that show’s spinoff The Good Fight. He also is a recipient of the Theater Development Fund’s Irene Sharaff Young Master Award for excellence in costume design — the first to be honored for television.

Because wardrobe is so essential to character and story,

Writer/Director Chloe Zhao on Her Tender Look at a Real American Indian Cowboy in The Rider

The Rider, a meditative half-fictional drama set on the Pine Ridge Lakota reservation in South Dakota, first premiered at Cannes last year, where it won the Art Cinema Award. The second feature film from the Chinese director Chloe Zhao, it opened in wide release this past Friday. Zhao, who attended undergraduate and film school in the U.S., was living in New York before she decamped to South Dakota, where she made Songs My Brother Taught Me,

Director Brad Silberling’s An Ordinary Man Takes on a Notorious Bosnian War Criminal

Filmmaker Brad Silberling first became fascinated with natural-born monsters in 2008 when he learned about Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić. Known as “The Butcher of Bosnia,” General Mladić commanded the massacre of some 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica during the Yugoslav civil wars. Following the atrocities, Maleic and politician Karadžić, aided by loyalists, hid from Hague-based International Criminal Court prosecutors for 14 years, shuffled about by loyalists through a succession of low-rent Belgrade safe houses. After reading testimony from Mladić‘s former body guards,

Blockers Actor Jimmy Bellinger Promises This Isn’t the Prom Night You Remember

Parents have long agonized over the question of when their child is old enough to make mature decisions. The real answer is that it’s different for everybody, but that doesn’t make parenting any easier. There is a lot of worrying and well-intended intervention that happens when kids come of age. And if your parents are Leslie Mann, John Cena, or Ike Barinholtz, there are also a lot of laughs. Jimmy Bellinger stars in the wild new comedy Blockers as high school senior,

How A Quiet Place Sound Designers Made Audiences Afraid of Their Own Noise

There are rules to the monster invasion in A Quiet Place and you must learn them quickly to survive. The movie’s characters have had over a year to observe the creatures, but the audience is gifted only a few precious minutes to learn before the first attack. The predators are blind, but they hear everything. Barefoot steps on a soft sand path is permissible. Screaming is not. Supervising sound editors Ethan Van der Ryn and Erik Aadahl,

Chatting With I Feel Pretty Stars Amy Schumer & Rory Scovel About Chemistry, Confidence & More

In I Feel Pretty, Amy Schumer plays Renee, a young woman who works for a cosmetic company and dreams of being “undeniably beautiful.” In a twist on the long-time movie tradition of a hit on the head that triggers – or cures – amnesia (see: I Love You Again, Overboard, Desperately Seeking Susan, and many more), Renee has an accident on a SoulCycle and somehow sees herself as the beauty she has always longed to be. 

The Beyond Skyline Composer on Making Aliens Sound as Big as They Look

Captain America: Civil War star Frank Grillo will not be appearing in the Avengers’ showdown against Thanos later this month, but he’s been busy battling aliens of his own. Grillo leads the human fight against an intergalactic invasion in Beyond Skyline. The film is something of a family drama with Mark (Grillo) trying to reconnect with his son Trent (Jonny Weston) during the chaos. Composer Nathan Whitehead wrote the eerie and epic score that weaves together a tense father-son dynamic with colossal creatures.

Jessica Jones Costume Designer on Losing the Cape in Favor of Leather & Denim

Krysten Ritter wears jeans for every scene she plays as the star of Netflix series Jessica Jones. Technically a super-hero capable of jumping off skyscrapers and landing on the sidewalk without a scratch, the hard-drinking private eye from Hell’s Kitchen has no patience for the tights/cape/mask routine. Instead, Ritter’s character is dressed by costume designer Elisabeth Vastola in boots, jeans and motorcycle jackets that owe more to Marlon Brando’s iconic Wild One rebel couture than cartoony costumes.

Cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen on Breathing Life Into A Quiet Place‘s Terrifying Apocalypse

In a landscape dominated by whizz-bang actioners, A Quiet Place stands alone. Directed by John Krasinski and starring Emily Blunt, it’s a nearly dialogue-free, smartly subtle genre exercise that’s as much creature feature as it is a stirring family drama, a post-apocalyptic thriller centered on a family beset by malevolent monsters that use sound to track their prey. But in a landscape of utter quiet, it’s the film’s gorgeous look – executed by cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen – that ultimately fills out the lush world in which the monster movie peril plays out.