Mission: Impossible – Fallout’s Production Designer on Building a World of Mayhem

The sixth installment of Mission: Impossible premiered last Friday to critical praise and a series-best opening at the box office. Among the numerous elements that made MI6 a standout was the continuation of outlandish, death-defying, and yet quite scenic stunts, mostly performed by Tom Cruise himself, in the role of Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt.

Hunt’s nemesis, Solomon Lane (played by Sean Harris),

The Riverdale Composer on Mixing Melodrama with Archie’s Innocent Past

Riverdale of the classic Archie comics was a quaint and wholesome every town with a spotless reputation. In print for more than 75 years, a recent shakeup led Archie Comics CCO, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, to create Riverdale. The edgy soap opera saga finally acknowledged that so many rivalries couldn’t remain peaceful and there had to be a dark underbelly in the town. Criminal empires, student-teacher relationships, and murder mysteries plague Riverdale with the heart of the original Archie characters intact.

Seeing (and Saving) the World With Mission: Impossible – Fallout‘s Location Scout

Jaunty banter, truly insane stunts and Tom Cruise’s seemingly superhuman inability to slow down aside, one of the most arresting aspects of Mission: Impossible — Fallout are the film’s environments. As IMF agent Ethan Hunt, Cruise is chased down, on a motorcycle, through the middle of Paris, crashes through London offices only to end up thwarted on the roof of the Tate Modern (at least the view is stunning), and winds up fighting for the health of the planet on an alarmingly remote bit of rock face in India (played here by an alarmingly remote bit of rock face in Norway).

Mission: Impossible – Fallout’s Stunt Coordinator on the Craziest Film in Franchise History

By now it is well known that Tom Cruise, age 56, performs his own stunts. What is not as obvious, unless you are familiar with his whole body of work, is that he is always training, that he learns fresh stunts for new films, and that, according to those who work with him, he shows absolutely no sign of slowing down. Of course, if you caught the commercial and critical hit sixth installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise over the weekend,

Bo Burnham and Elsie Fisher Discuss the Social Media Influences that Shaped Eighth Grade

When writer-director Bo Burnham set out to make Eighth Grade, his acclaimed new account of middle-school anxiety, he had plenty of reasons to be anxious himself. He’d never directed a feature film before, and his subject was a 13-year-old girl, something he’d never been. But any apprehension was balanced by his relief at not being in front of the camera.

“I was very aware of my limitations,” Burnham told The Credits recently while in Washington with his star,

How Politics Inspired the Costume Design of The First Purge

The Purge films have become a phenomenon of fear, hinging on the normalization of horrific acts. The first film premiered five years ago, and the franchise seems to have been a clairvoyant warning sign as political tensions struggle for the soul of our country. Playing to the celebratory nature of the event, SDCC fans were invited to ‘Purge City’, a play on ‘Party City’ where every fun event begins. The First Purge takes a chilling look back at the environment in which parties were able to convince voters to allow the violent tradition.

Meet the Mother of Mamma Mia!

If anyone can rightly claim to be the mother of Mamma Mia!, the worldwide jukebox- musical sensation both on stage and screen, it is producer Judy Craymer. The impresario, 60, first hatched the idea to build a story around family bonds and lost loves inspired by the songs of Swedish pop sensation ABBA in 1996 after collaborating with the group’s tunesmiths Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus on the 1984 West End stage production of Chess.

Marina Zenovich on Going Inside Robin Williams’ Mind in Her New HBO Doc

In making Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, premiering July 16 on HBO, director Marina Zenovich celebrates the life and comedic talent of the legendary performer who committed suicide in 2014, using Williams’s voice to tell much of his story as well as interviews with his first wife Valerie Velardi, son Zak Williams and many friends, including Mork & Mindy co-star Pam Dawber, David Letterman, Billy Crystal,

Ben Foster on his Moving Portrait of Fatherhood in Leave no Trace

In Leave No Trace, Ben Foster plays a man who’s fled American society, carrying just a few things with him — most significantly his teenage daughter, Tom (Thomasin McKenzie). Foster’s Will is apparently a military veteran, but writer-director Debra Granik never tells his story. The character seems a bit like a post-traumatic version of the violent men Foster has played in such movies as Hell or High Water.

The Last O.G.‘s Allen Maldonado on Riffing With Tracy Morgan, Writing Scripts & More

Allen Moldonado is a writer, performer, filmmaker, and entrepreneur, currently co-writing and co-starring in The Last OG, opposite Tracy Morgan. In an interview, he talked about his “Netflix for short films,” Everybody Digital, creating the character of Cousin Bobby as actor and writer, and surviving the “actor’s Olympics” of daily soap operas.

I love the idea of an app to watch short films. Tell me how it started.

Skyscraper‘s Production Designer Elevates the Mythic Subtext to Insane Heights

Production designer Jim Bissell faced a 226-story challenge when Skyscraper writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber enlisted him to create Hong Kong high rise “The Pearl.” Oscar-nominated for his work on Good Night, and Good Luck and experienced in the ways of architecture-driven action through his contributions to Tom Cruise’s dizzying skyscraper stunts in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Bissell needed to come up with a tower every bit as dramatic as the movie’s human star Dwayne Johnson.

Peaky Blinders Creator Steven Knight on his BAFTA-Winning Crime Epic

Peaky Blinders beat The Crown in May to win England’s BAFTA Award for best television drama, but series creator Steven Knight won’t be shocked if his show fails to snag American kudos when Emmy nominations are announced Thursday. “Peaky Blinders doesn’t do the things that other shows do,” he says. “It took a long time to get our first BAFTA but audiences in Europe and America are loving Peaky.

Succession Creator Dissects the Family Squabbles of the Mega Rich

Family dynamics are difficult enough to navigate under the most mundane of circumstances. Factoring in massive sums of money, dizzying power and toxic levels of sibling rivalry, what could possibly go wrong? HBO‘s big business melodrama Succession offers some twisty-turny answers as it examines the warping effect of inherited wealth as filtered through the wife and offspring of wily media mogul Logan Roy (Brian Cox). Airing on Sundays, the limited series tracks the machinations of young adults (Jeremy Strong,

Sorry to Bother You’s Costume Designer Deirdra Govan’s Vintage Vision

Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You is a revelation. It’s usually a cliché to say “you won’t see another film like it this year,” but you won’t see another film like it this year. Or next year. Or, likely, the year after that. There’s a reason Sorry to Bother You took years to make, even though everyone who read the script fell in love with it—when you go this far afield from what people expect,

Ant-Man and the Wasp‘s Costume Designer Explains Insect Couture

British costume designer Louise Frogley spent the first 35 years of her career focused on Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney movies like Traffic and Good Night, and Good Luck. In 2013 she got her first taste of the Marvel Cinematic Universe via Iron Man 3, followed by the re-booted Spider-Man: Homecoming. Now she’s taken on the skin-tight couture featured in Ant-Man and The Wasp.

Jennifer Morrison On How Acting Prepared Her for Her Moving Directorial Debut Sun Dogs

Jennifer Morrison has created some of the most lovable characters on film. Dr. Allison Cameron in House, Emma Swan in Once Upon a Time, and Winona Kirk in Star Trek are all strong and captivating women we love to watch on screen. Now, Morrison is shaping compelling new characters from behind the lens in her feature film directorial debut Sun Dogs.

Now on Netflix,

Writer/Director Boots Riley on his Staggeringly Original Sorry to Bother You

Sorry To Bother You is coming to a theater near you, courtesy of Annapurna Pictures, after being one of the most buzzed about films shown at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

The directorial debut from Boots Riley, articulate troublemaker and frontman for the band The Coup, has had a bumpy but fascinating road making it to the screen. This satiric, decidedly trippy film is about a young, seemingly malleable telemarketer named Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) and his girlfriend,

Jimi Hendrix-Style Cello Hybrid Defines Sicario: Day of the Soldado‘s Brooding Score

Icelandic musician Hildur Guðnadóttir was all over the first Sicario movie: She played the cello throughout the Oscar-nominated score written by her longtime collaborator Jóhann Jóhannsson. He died suddenly this winter. For the sequel Sicario: Day of the Soldado, Guðnadóttir scored the picture herself, but this time around, she cranked up the sense of menace by playing a one-of-a-kind instrument dubbed the “dorophone.” “It’s based on a cello,

How Director Kevin Macdonald Uncovered Bombshell Allegations in his Whitney Houston Doc

Before he shot Whitney, Scottish documentarian Kevin Macdonald did not consider himself a particularly avid Whitney Houston fan. The Oscar-winning director (One Day in September) preferred The Clash back in the day when Houston dominated pop music with her unmatched vocal power. “I was not into that kind of mainstream poppiness,” he says. “At the time you couldn’t avoid her music, but it was kind of unhip to like Whitney Houston.”

Good Skin and the ‘Western Squint’ Give Godless a Natural Look

Since the dawn of cinema, and on radio before it, lawless battles of good and evil on a new frontier have captured audiences. Then, Godless offered something entirely new in the grief-stricken community of La Belle, New Mexico. A town with a nearly all-female population, following a town tragedy, becomes caught in the crossfire of rival outlaws and they prove to be even stronger than their male aggressors. Godless makeup designer Tarra Day has worked on all manner of Westerns including Appaloosa,