Page 180 – Motion Picture Association

How “Queer Eye” Casting Director Danielle Gervais Found the Perfect Team

Posted on June 30, 2020November 16, 2020 by babrams

Danielle Gervais had the daunting task of finding the new Fab Five when the iconic reality series Queer Eye was rebooted by Netflix for a new generation. The Emmy-winning casting director scoured America with her team to find Antoni Porowski (food and wine), Bobby Berk (interior design), Karamo Brown (culture), Jonathan Van Ness (grooming) and Tan France (fashion). Five seasons later, countless lives changed, and many tears shed in the process, Gervais reflects on how it all came together and why choosing a favorite ‘hero’ is like choosing a favorite child.

How do you go about choosing the heroes? Is there a set of criteria that they have to meet, or do you go off gut instinct when you’re selecting them?

I think it’s a combination of both. We’ve done five seasons, so I think we learn every single season and what we’re looking for evolves. We do have a checklist that we certainly look for. I think we’re always looking to tell new stories, someone with a new voice, a new message to share. And a willingness to really just dive in and immerse themselves in the experience and give themselves over to the transformation.

What makes a great hero?

Someone who maybe doesn’t see this coming is always a lot of fun and can really make for a powerful story. So, we often look for people who are nominated by a friend or a family member. A lot of times we get people writing in saying, ‘They don’t even know that I’m writing in on their behalf.’ Those are the people that really truly never saw it coming. And they often make for a really great hero.

QUEER EYE (L to R) KEVIN ABERNATHY and ANTONI POROWSKI in episode 503 of QUEER EYE. Cr. RYAN COLLERD/NETFLIX © 2020

What happens if you find someone that you think is a good candidate, but then they’re resistant to change?

It’s tricky, right? I think it’s difficult and it’s something that we generally try to weed out during the casting process.

You’re probably quite good at that now?

There are people who are so deserving of this and you can imagine how many stories we hear from people writing in that would break your heart. Stories of triumphs and people that have been through so much and on paper it makes for incredible heroes, but they’re just not there yet.

How so?

They’re not there emotionally. They’re a little bit more closed off. Those are folks who are just not ready for it. And so, we generally will sort of backburner those folks and hope to come back to them because it won’t be the best experience for them, and it won’t work for us.

QUEER EYE (L to R) KARAMO BROWN and NATE MCINTYRE in episode 510 of QUEER EYE. Cr. NETFLIX © 2020

The show has been such a success. I imagine that five seasons in, you must get bombarded with people wanting to be on the show or nominating other people. Does that make the process easier or harder for you?

Oh my gosh. This show resonates with people all over the world. So yes, and we really hear from people from all corners of the globe, which is incredible and powerful. But I think what’s tough for us in casting is we’re limited to one city at a time. When the Fab Five are heading to a city, we need to stay within the general confines of that city.

A lot of what we do is actually quite proactive. We hit the ground running. We work with a local film commission, we read the news headlines in that city. We’ll try to put the call out to the types of people that we know we want to look for. But then we also try to be open to new stories because you just never know.

What different skills are required for casting reality TV versus scripted TV?

I’ve come up in the reality TV business, truth be told. So, I can tell you the skills that I look for. The casting team that I have is very top-notch. I look for specific interview skills and there are a lot of qualities that would align it with journalism. You have to have just a natural curiosity about people. I think that’s really important. I think the ability to identify story layers just from having conversations with people. To really know how to dig into someone’s back story. And to make people feel really comfortable in their own skin, sharing their stories. And those, I think are the biggest things for casting reality, especially on Queer Eye.

And the success of the show hinges on the chemistry between the Fab Five. Can you tell me a little bit about the process of casting them?

That was so fun, and it’s crazy that it’s been almost five years. It was daunting at the beginning because the original fab five were so iconic. Massive shoes to fill, right? We knew we wanted to fill each vertical with someone who was truly accomplished in that particular field. But we also knew that we wanted this fab five to reflect what the world looks like now. So, we knew we wanted to bring together five very diverse individuals with very different backgrounds.

For example, to fill the fashion vertical, we reached out to every fashion house, every up-and-coming designer, you name it. And we popped up hundreds and hundreds of people, just in that fashion vertical alone. And then ultimately what we did is, we narrowed them all down in each vertical and flew a group to Los Angeles and we dropped them all together in a hotel and we let them all meet one another. Then we just kind of watched who gravitated towards each other and who had sparks.

The original show played a huge role in bringing gay culture to a wider audience, in such a positive way. What role do you think that the current show plays?

I think we try to continue that journey. I think we try to build upon what the first iteration of the series did, and it was ground-breaking. We are taking that legacy, and we’re continuing to evolve it. We are constantly asking ourselves, ‘What is this show right now in the year 2020?’

And how does that influence the casting process?

We’re in the midst of casting right now. And there’s so much going on in the world. How do we bring that in, without it turning preachy? We don’t ever want to become like hyper-political or hyper preachy. We still want to keep the core of the show, which is fun, it’s laughter, it’s some tears. And so, I think we’re constantly trying to challenge ourselves to make sure that not only are we representing different communities that don’t often get a voice, including the LGBTQ community, but I think we’re also always trying to identify people that haven’t been on the show and who are reflective of where we are right now. Stories that we need to tell.

Do you have a favorite hero from the last season?

I tell you, it’s literally like picking your favorite child. It’s really hard because you get very attached to all of them, and they’re all special in their own way. That’s such a politically correct statement. It’s so hard because I cry at almost every single one. Rahanna [a struggling mobile dog groomer] – I bawled my eyes out. Jennifer [a devoted supermom] and her husband, I can’t stop crying. I’ve watched that so many times. I wait to watch them all, I really do. And then I sit down, and I binge them like everybody else.

For more of our Pride Month coverage, read about how Dashaun Wesley has the best job in America MC’ing HBO Max’s Legendary, check out our look at director Tom Shepard‘s Unsettled, covering the plight of the LGBTQ+ refugee, read our conversation with Disclosure director Sam Feder about the depiction of the trans community in film and TV, visit with director Daniel Karslake and learn about the shifting battle for LGBTQ+ equality in For They Know Not What They Do, and find out from director David France about the terror facing the LGBTQ+ Community in Welcome to Chechnya.

Dashaun Wesley Takes MC Duties to a New Level on HBO Max’s “Legendary”

Posted on June 30, 2020November 16, 2020 by babrams

It’s a party that’s been years in the making.

Legendary, the original HBO Max series that debuted on May 27, celebrates the “legendary” underground world of Voguing and Ball culture with a reality competition unlike any other on television. Eight houses (aka teams), mostly comprised of Black and Latino LGBTQ members, pour it all out and onto the stage in a series of challenges, showcasing everything from dancing and voguing to fashion and flair. During each episode, the panel of judges that includes rapper Megan Thee Stallion, actor Jameela Jamil (The Good Place), stylist Law Roach and ballroom icon Leiomy Maldonado weigh in on the performances. DJ MikeQ supplies the beat. Everything from skill and talent to flaunting your style, throwing shade, and striking the right attitude is taken into consideration as competitors are eliminated. The last house voguing wins a $100,000 prize.

Legendary, season 1, episode 7. Photograph by Zach Dilgard/HBO Max

“I’m just going to say, get ready if you haven’t seen Legendary yet,” says Dashaun Wesley, the host of the series, who’s been self-quarantining in Los Angeles since the coronavirus outbreak. “Get ready for the full visual pleasure. You’re going to have such a good time watching this show.”

Wesley speaks from experience. The actor/dancer known for the TV series Pose has been entrenched in the ball culture for years. When Scout Productions, the Emmy-winning production company that created Queer Eye began developing Legendary several years back, Wesley was originally brought in as a competitor. But as the idea evolved, it just seemed logical that he take on the hosting duties.

“Because I do this at regular balls,” says Wesley. “I host competitions and I’m on the megaphone. It was a given. It was such a wonderful opportunity when it was presented.”

Scout Productions also gave Wesley a say as Legendary took shape. He had a hand in everything, from finding the right mix of houses to making sure the show captured the true Vogue vibe.

Jameela Jamil. Photograph by Zach Dilgard/HBO Max

“We wanted to make sure that the show was going to be as authentic as possible,” continues Wesley. “That’s what I love about Scout Productions and the way we put this together. They really wanted to make sure the show was the real deal — hearing our words and going with our ideas was a big part of Legendary.”

Wesley admits that as host, there’s a lot of weight on his shoulders. But he knew that going in. Past experience had taught him how big a job it is. And he has learned that when it’s done right, hosting can be a lot of fun. And that’s why he is such a perfect fit for the role.

“You have to use your wits. You have to connect and make sure that you keep everything on a straight course so that it can run smoothly,” explains Wesley “You have to make sure that the contestants know what’s going on. You have to make sure the audience is entertained and keeps up with what’s going on at the ball too.”

One main task is staying on top of the judges. Not known for being shy, the panel can sometimes get a little fired up when discussing the different houses. When that happens, it’s up to Wesley to bring things under control. He describes it as being similar to a ringmaster.

“You’ve got to whip a little bit,” he jokes. “Every judge has his or her own view. Some judges are tougher than others. Some judges are lighter. When they start debating, I’m just there to pull everyone back together so that we can make sure that we can finish the show. You’ll see as time goes on throughout the season, when I need to speak up and keep things on track, I go right for it.”

L-r: Law Roach, Megan Thee Stallion, Jameela Jamil, Leiomy Maldonado. Photograph by Barbara Nitke/HBO Max

When asked to name his favorite part of hosting Legendary, Wesley quickly says the dressing up. For him, donning a great outfit and hitting the stage is what makes Voguing so much fun. It also gives him a chance to tap into his creative side. Though he credits the designers and stylist Eric Archibald for making it happen, Wesley contributes initial wardrobe ideas.

He’s particularly fond of his episode two look, describing it as “a silver kind of Tin Man outfit.” What made it really outstanding was what he wore over it. “At first, I had on this big trenchcoat, and then it’s on my back,” he says. “The jacket changes into this parachute backpack.”

Dashaun Wesley. Photograph by Barbara Nitke/HBO Max

Legendary shoots in Stamford, Connecticut. To keep it real, the audience is peppered with regulars from the ballroom circuit brought up from New York. Wesley believes this helps add to the excitement and the emotional roller coaster that sweeps in the viewer.

“You start off seeing the fashion and enjoying the show,” Wesley explains. “Then, when you’re really into it, you have a favorite house. When they’re up for a battle, that can put you through the woodwork. And if your house gets eliminated, then you start to debate. ‘Well, why did my house get eliminated?’ I like that people feel the feeling of what it’s like behind the screen. Not only do you get to watch, but you also get to understand what it’s like for you to think that someone is going to win — but they lose. It becomes a full range of emotions.”

As MC, Wesley has to stay above that and not get overly vested in the competition. He admits that’s one of the most challenging aspects of his Legendary role. He knows many house members and considers them friends. He understands how much of themselves they put into the competition and it hurts to see them get eliminated. But he knows that’s part of the premise and he can’t play favorites.

What Wesley can show is his pride for Legendary. He’s excited at the response the show is getting and how it is educating a broader audience about the Voguing and Ballroom culture, which dates back more than fifty years. He can’t think of a more appropriate time to give this aspect of the community a television platform.

“We do not have enough television shows around LGBTQ culture, for people of color, for the Black Latinos. We didn’t have something like this to look forward to,” says Wesley. “We now have a platform to speak. We are letting everyone know that there’s an opportunity to have our talents be shown. We are out with a television show around LGBTQ conversations, creatives, and performances. I’m glad this conversation is happening.”

For more of our Pride Month coverage, check out our look at director Tom Shepard‘s Unsettled, covering the plight of the LGBTQ+ refugee, our conversation with Disclosure director Sam Feder about the depiction of the trans community in film and TV, our talk with director Daniel Karslake on the shifting battle for LGBTQ+ equality in For They Know Not What They Do, and director David France on the terror facing the LGBTQ+ Community in Welcome to Chechnya.

“Unsettled” Looks at LGBTQ Refugees Seeking a Home in America

Posted on June 30, 2020November 16, 2020 by babrams

June celebrations, even virtual ones in this pandemic year, commemorate the birth of the modern LGBTQ liberation movement and the progress made over five decades since Stonewall, from marriage equality to the recent Supreme Court ruling protecting LGBTQ rights in the workplace.

But in many countries outside the U.S., LGBTQ rights mean only the right to survive.

San Francisco-based filmmaker Tom Shepard, whose many credits include the award-winning Scout’s Honor (2001) about the struggle to overturn the anti-gay policies of the Boy Scouts of America, wanted to understand better the stories of LGBTQ refugees fleeing places where brutality against LGBTQ people is commonplace. His new documentary Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America, which premiered June 28 on PBS’s World Channel then streams for free on pbs.org and worldchannel.org, follows four LGBTQ refugees and asylum seekers who faced persecution in their homelands before resettling in San Francisco.

“Most Americans don’t know this story,” says Shepard. “They understand there is a refugee crisis and might understand numbers and scope but they’ve never met a refugee.”

The film intimately introduces viewers to four of them — Subhi Nahas, a gay Syrian refugee who survived death threats from Islamic terrorists; Cheyenne Adriano and Mari N’Timansieme, a lesbian couple from Angola who battled violence and harassment from their family and neighbors; and Junior Mayema, a gender non-conforming gay man who escaped brutality the Democratic Republic of the Congo — and traces their struggles to make new lives and remain in the United States.

It was 2014 when Shepard first approached a Bay Area organization that assists refugees about making a film but he was rebuffed. “They were very protective of their clients. LGBTQ refugees go through trauma if not torture,” he says. So Shepard volunteered with the group for six months. He learned more about the complex issues facing refugees and asylum seekers. He connected with them personally, including Nahas and Mayema, and gradually earned their trust. He later met Adriano and N’Timansieme through their lawyer who was helping in their efforts to be granted asylum through the American immigration courts.

L-r: Junior Mayema, Mari N’Timansieme, Cheyenne Adriana, and Subji Nahas. Courtesy Open Door Productions.

“As a gay man, I saw the fast acceleration of LGBTQ rights over 20 years of making films,” Shepard says. “But [there’s a] dissonance between that and what’s happening in some places in Africa and the Middle East. There was a feeling of complacency, even here in San Francisco. You have refugee rights in one corner and LGBTQ rights in another are they are not talking to one another.”

One of the most compelling sequences in the film highlights a seminal moment for not only one of Shepard’s subjects but for the world. Subhi Nahas became the first gay man ever to testify before the United Nations Security Council when, alongside Ambassador Samantha Power, who served the United Nations from 2013 to 2017 under President Obama, he delivered eloquent testimony about the persecution he faced daily as a gay man in Syria.

L-r: Producer Jen Gilomen and director Tom Shepard. Courtesy Open Door Productions.

While all refugees face hardship, the stakes are higher for LGBTQ refugees, says Shepard.

“Going back decades, resettlement in the US was always based on family. A family would flee a war-torn country and, if they came to the Bay Area, would immediately be connected to a community center, a mosque, or [with] others from their country,” he said. “Not that it was easy but there were strong mechanics in place to get families a toehold. If you are a gay Iraqi and you come to the Bay Area, probably the last people you want to see are other Iraqis. That puts LGBTQ [refugees] at much higher risk for depression, isolation [and] PTSD from their backstories.”

Unsettled is also in many ways a portrait of San Francisco, which has a long and rich tradition of welcoming anyone fleeing oppression or conformity. Although still welcoming, San Francisco is now one of the most expensive U.S. cities. The film shows how all four refugees struggle to find housing and a means to survive there.

“I grew up in Colorado Springs. It was very conservative; the religious right had a stronghold while I was in high school,” Shepard says. “I fled to Sand Francisco and at that time, the mythology of San Francisco being an ‘emerald city’ was still true. I could get an apartment in the Mission for three hundred dollars with roommates. I could find my tribe as a gay man and as a filmmaker. That has changed; that whole ‘Tales of the City’ feel of the character of San Francisco, all that has changed. It’s one of the most expensive cities. How can a queer refugee live here on a refugee benefit of three hundred and thirty-five dollars? It’s really difficult now to break in here even for middle-class people. Those issues came to the forefront in the film even though I didn’t expect it.”

The plight of LGBTQ refugees is more critical since the Trump administration has severely curtailed the number of refugees allowed into the US.

“Since we made the film, there is more infrastructure and more awareness of what [refugees’] unique needs are particularly in the settlement world. The irony is that Trump has cut the refugee cap since he took office,” says Shepard. “The U.S. used to take about 100,000 refugees a year by the last year of Obama’s administration. Now it’s been cut between 75 and 80 percent. People are more aware; there are more volunteers but the number coming to the US has been reduced to a trickle. Then add COVID to it and the travel bans around COVID and it’s really down to almost nothing.”

Yet the United States continues to be a beacon of freedom to people like Subhi Nahas, Junior Mayema, Cheyenne Adriano, and Mari N’Timansieme—if only we can live up to their dreams.

For more of our Pride Month coverage, check out our conversation with Disclosure director Sam Feder about the depiction of the trans community in film and TV, our talk with director Daniel Karslake on the shifting battle for LGBTQ equality in For They Know Not What They Do, and director David France on the terror facing the LGBTQ+ Community in Welcome to Chechnya.

Watch Jennifer Hudson Channel Aretha Franklin in The Official Respect Trailer

Posted on June 29, 2020June 29, 2020 by babrams

If you’re going to attempt to have someone portray the incredible Aretha Franklin, you’d need an insanely talented and very brave performer. Luckily for director Liesl Tommy, Aretha herself selected Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Hudson, a sensational singer in her own right, of course. Franklin was consulting with producer Harvey Mason Jr. before she passed away, in 2018, about the long-gestating project. According to Variety, Franklin was involved with the film up until the very end and had been supportive of Hudson in the role. Now, MGM has released the first teaser for Respect, the culmination of many years worth of planning—and many iterations of cast and crew—and the results look and sound fantastic. The film will chart Franklin’s legendary career from when she was a young girl singing in her father’s church choir to becoming one of the most consequential musicians of the 20th century.

It’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role after seeing Hudson in this trailer. She made her big film debut in the 2006 film Dreamgirls, co-starring with none other than Beyoncé, and for which she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. It should also be noted that director Liesl Tommy is making her feature debut here, and you’ve got to love her swinging for the fences by taking on a biopic of such a legendary figure. Tommy was the first Black woman ever nominated for a Tony award for Best Direction of a Play in 2016 for “Eclipsed.” The script comes from Tracey Scott Wilson, based on a story by Wilson and Callie Khouri.

Respect is still slated to hit theaters this December, but we know how fluid these release dates are. Joining Hudson is an impressive cast including Forest Whitaker as C.K. Franklin, Audra McDonald as Barbara Franklin, Skye Dakota Turner as the young Aretha, Marlon Wayans as Ted White, Tituss Burgess as Dr. James Cleveland, Marc Maron as Jerry Wexler, Kimberly Scott as Mama Franklin, Saycon Sengblah as Erma Franklin, Hailey Kilgore as Carolyn Franklin, Heather Headley as Clara Ward, Tate Donovan as John Hammond, and none other than Mary J. Blige as Dina Washington.

Check out the trailer here.

Featured image: Jennifer Hudson is Aretha Franklin in ‘Respect.’ Courtesy MGM

A Stunning Surprise: Beyoncé Drops “Black is King” Trailer

Posted on June 29, 2020June 29, 2020 by babrams

It’s official—Disney+ is doing everything in its power to keep you glued to your TV screen in July. The first look at Beyoncé’s Black is King is here, a classic surprise release from the Queen herself, which she wrote, directed, and executive produced. Beyoncé has once again put together a visual album unlike any other, this time reimagining the themes from The Lion King to speak to all the young Black kings and queens who look to her for not only guidance but for the fearless creativity (and hard work) she’s famous for. The film, inspired by her album “The Lion King: The Gift,” will immediately be Disney+’s most ambitious original release. Beyoncé has expanded her role in the film as Nala to now encompass a second entirely new artistic project after the album. As she and her hugely talented ensemble have done in past visual albums like Lemonade, Black is King is going to be a must-see.

Here’s how Disney describes the project, which is slated to stream on Disney + on July 31:

Black Is King, written, directed, and executive produced by 24-time Grammy® Award-winner Beyoncé will premiere globally on Disney+ on July 31, 2020, and will arrive on the heels of the one-year anniversary of the release of Disney’s global phenomenon “The Lion King.”

This visual album from Beyoncé reimagines the lessons of “The Lion King” for today’s young kings and queens in search of their own crowns. The film was in production for one year with a cast and crew that represent diversity and connectivity. The voyages of Black families, throughout time, are honored in a tale about a young king’s transcendent journey through betrayal, love, and self-identity. His ancestors help guide him toward his destiny, and with his father’s teachings and guidance from his childhood love, he earns the virtues needed to reclaim his home and throne.

These timeless lessons are revealed and reflected through Black voices of today, now sitting in their own power. “Black Is King” is an affirmation of a grand purpose, with lush visuals that celebrate Black resilience and culture. The film highlights the beauty of tradition and Black excellence.

The timing for Black is King couldn’t be more potent. With the ongoing protests over police brutality and systemic racism after the death of George Floyd (to name but one recent victim of police violence) and the centrality of Black Lives Matter, as both a concept and a movement, Beyoncé has once again delivered a timely mediation on Black culture and community at a critical moment. Then again, when is it not a critical moment to talk about Black lives in this country?

Check out the trailer here:

Pixar Reveals a Beautiful New Trailer For “Soul”

Posted on June 29, 2020June 29, 2020 by babrams

In case you missed this over the weekend, here’s a dose of something dreamy to start your week. Pixar released a new teaser trailer for Soul on Saturday, narrated by Jamie Foxx, who lends his voice to the lead character Joe. Joe is a jazz musician, a true lover of music, who carries this love into his teaching band at a middle school. This new look at co-writer and director Pete Docter’s latest was revealed at the Essence Festival of Culture over the weekend and focuses on Joe’s community.

We learned during the first trailer the basic outline of Docter’s story. While Joe teaches kids, what he really dreams of is becoming a proper jazz musician. Then one day he gets his big break—he’s asked to play at a swanky jazz club after an audition, and he leaves the place on cloud nine. Unfortunately, soon he’s in the metaphysical clouds after he takes one wrong step and finds himself in the vast, fluffy precincts of the afterlife. It appears his dreams of becoming a jazz musician are put on hold; possibly for eternity.

This new look takes a closer look at Joe’s life before he takes that fateful step. We learn a bit about his relationship with his music-loving father, for example. What’s new about Soul is that the focus here is on Joe, his family, and the Black community he’s a part of, that nurtures and inspires him.

Joining Jamie Foxx are Quest Love, Daveed Diggs, Phylicia Rashad, Angela Bassett, Tina Fey, and Richard Ayoade. Soul was originally slated for a June 19 release, but the pandemic made that impossible. Now, Soul is set to sing into theaters on November 20.

Like all Pixar films, there is considerable talent amassed here. Docter has brought us Monsters, Inc., Up and Inside Out, three of the most searching films in the company’s history. Soul has an original score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and new jazz music by the multitalented Jon Batiste.

Check out the dreamy new spot here:

Here is the official synopsis and details from Pixar:

Directed by two-time Academy Award®-winner Pete Docter, co-directed by Kemp Powers and produced by Academy Award®-nominee Dana Murray, Disney and Pixar’s “Soul” opens in theaters on June 19, 2020. According to Docter, the idea for the story is 23 years in the making. “It started with my son—he’s 23 now—but the instant he was born, he already had a personality,” says Docter. “Where did that come from? I thought your personality developed through your interaction with the world. And yet, it was pretty clear that we’re all born with a very unique, specific sense of who we are.”

“Soul” introduces Joe Gardner, a middle-school band teacher whose true passion is playing jazz. “I think Joe is having that crisis that all artists have,” says Powers. “He’s increasingly feeling like his lifelong dream of being a jazz musician is not going to pan out and he’s asking himself ‘Why am I here? What am I meant to be doing?’ Joe personifies those questions.”

In the film, just when Joe thinks his dream might be in reach, a single unexpected step sends him to a fantastical place where he’s is forced to think again about what it truly means to have soul. That’s where he meets and ultimately teams up with 22, a soul who doesn’t think life on Earth is all it’s cracked up to be. Jamie Foxx lends his voice to Joe, while Tina Fey voices 22. “The comedy comes naturally,” says Murray. “But the subtle emotion that reveals the truth to the characters is really something special.”

Featured image: In Disney and Pixar’s “Soul,” a middle-school band teacher named Joe Gardner gets the chance of a lifetime to play the piano in a jazz quartet headed by the great Dorothea Williams. Featuring Jamie Foxx as the voice of Joe Gardner, and Angela Bassett as the voice of Dorothea, “Soul” opens in U.S. theaters on June 19, 2020.. © 2020 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

New “Candyman” Spot Creates More Buzz for Nia DaCosta’s Film

Posted on June 29, 2020June 29, 2020 by babrams

A new TV spot for Candyman utilizes the gut-punch of a prologue director Nia DaCosta shared with the world on June 17 and mixes in new footage to hype the upcoming horror flick. That prologue, a thing of haunting beauty, teased the backstory to DaCosta’s continuation of the horror franchise, which first began in 1992.

The prologue—created with shadow puppets—revealed the nested stories that hint at the origins of the film’s titular “monster” and the world in which he was created. We see an artist painting images, which speaks to Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s character Anthony McCoy, who moves with his girlfriend Brianna (If Beale Street Could Talk‘s Teyonah Parris) into a luxury condo in Chicago where the Cabrini towers once stood. This is where, decades ago, the legendary Candyman once terrorized people in the 1992 original. We see a factory worker who hands out candy to children—until he’s chased and beaten to death by the police. We see a young boy riding his bike, only to end up in jail and executed. And finally, we see Candyman himself, born into slavery, becoming an artist, and murdered when it’s discovered that he’s in love with a white woman.

In the new spot, Anthony (Abdul-Mateen II) asks William Burke (Colman Domingo), an older guy who has lived in the Cabrini Green neighborhood forever, about the legend of Candyman. The answer he gets further emphasizes the implicit message in the prologue; the things that happened to the original Candyman, and the things that keep happening to Black people in America, are the source of all the anguish and the horror.

“A story like that, pain like that, lasts forever,” William tells Anthony. “Candyman is how we deal with the fact that these things happen. That they’re still happening.”

Sadly, we know this to be true. DaCosta’s timely sequel is due in theaters on September 25, 2020.

Here’s the official, fulsome synopsis from Universal Pictures:

This summer, Oscar® winner Jordan Peele unleashes a fresh take on the blood-chilling urban legend that your friend’s older sibling probably told you about at a sleepover: Candyman. Rising filmmaker Nia DaCosta (Little Woods) directs this contemporary incarnation of the cult classic.

For as long as residents can remember, the housing projects of Chicago’s Cabrini Green neighborhood were terrorized by a word-of-mouth ghost story about a supernatural killer with a hook for a hand, easily summoned by those daring to repeat his name five times into a mirror. In present day, a decade after the last of the Cabrini towers were torn down, visual artist Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II; HBO’s Watchmen, Us) and his girlfriend, gallery director Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris; If Beale Street Could Talk, The Photograph), move into a luxury loft condo in Cabrini, now gentrified beyond recognition and inhabited by upwardly mobile millennials.

With Anthony’s painting career on the brink of stalling, a chance encounter with a Cabrini Green old-timer (Colman Domingo; HBO’s Euphoria, Assassination Nation) exposes Anthony to the tragically horrific nature of the true story behind Candyman. Anxious to maintain his status in the Chicago art world, Anthony begins to explore these macabre details in his studio as fresh grist for paintings, unknowingly opening a door to a complex past that unravels his own sanity and unleashes a terrifyingly viral wave of violence that puts him on a collision course with destiny.

Featured image: Featured image: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in ‘Candyman.’ Courtesy Universal Pictures/MGM

How Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods” Got Its Signature Look

Posted on June 26, 2020November 16, 2020 by babrams

Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel, known for his work on films like Bohemian Rhapsody, Drive, Three Kings, numerous X-Men installments, notes that his first feature with director Spike Lee always “felt like a distant dream.”

Not because he hadn’t crossed Lee’s path before, since the two had collaborated on numerous commercials, and he mentions having “known Spike forever it seems—we both came up in New York at the same time. I was making documentaries,” and Lee came roaring out of NYU film school with early features like She’s Gotta Have It and Do the Right Thing. But working on a feature together remained out of reach. Until the call for Da 5 Bloods came.

The call arrived when Sigel (who usually goes just by “Tom”) was in the middle of another Netflix-debuted feature, Extraction. He was on location for that film, which happened to be in Thailand. “How much that played into it,” Sigel muses, “I don’t know.”

But it certainly didn’t hurt, considering Thailand, along with Ho Chi Minh City, was also one of the main locales for Da 5 Bloods, a story in which four surviving African American vets reunite in Vietnam to dig up the remains of their fallen squad leader, along with a cache of off the books gold from a wrecked CIA plane.

The vets are also wrestling with the kinds of ghosts that come with a soldier’s PTSD, compounded simply by being African American in America, something that Lee has delineated throughout his work.

*DA 5 BLOODS (L to R) JOHNNY NGUYEN as VINH TRAN, CLARKE PETERS as OTIS and DELROY LINDO as PAUL in DA 5 BLOODS Cr. DAVID LEE/NETFLIX © 2020*

Part of that haunting is shown via flashbacks, though interestingly, the middle-aged actors all play their “recontextualized” younger selves as well (without Irishman-style de-aging, but rather, as themselves, occupying their own memories). Only the fallen leader, played by Chadwick Boseman, is young. Delroy Lindo as Paul, the most haunted of them all, and Clarke Peters as, perhaps, his opposite, the grounded-in-spite-of-the-pain Otis, are particularly outstanding.

In getting ready to tell their story, however, there was, as Sigel says, “accelerated shrunken prep time.” His familiarity with Thailand helped. “We looked at a bunch of locations that were being offered up, and while you always want to strive for the best locations you can, you have to choose your battles.”

As for the battles they were going to recreate on screen, it also helped that among his many credits, Sigel also shot second unit on Oliver Stone’s Platoon.

But that wasn’t the only movie referenced during that short, busy prep. The film makes several shout-outs to Apocalypse Now, including a river encounter that almost goes disastrously wrong (serving instead as foreshadowing), and a Ride of the Valkyries musical cue.

And while Sigel also looked at docs like Hearts and Minds and Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War, Lee had other antecedents in mind, as well: “Spike also spoke consistently about David Lean. This was an epic story he wanted to tell, and he wanted an epic canvas. He’d bring it up if he thought we were going too small.”

And while there is certainly some grandeur in the majestic drone-captured overhead shots as the titular Bloods glide their way upriver for the reckoning that awaits them, replete with boat traffic, the busy-ness of on-the-water markets, and an explosion of flora, perhaps it was Lean’s Bridge on the River Kwai, with its tropical locales and explosive ending, that comes closest to this current film. Which still managed to go small, in terms of visual verisimilitude, even during some of its fiercest action sequences and firefights.

DA 5 BLOODS (L to R) JONATHAN MAJORS as DAVID , ISIAH WHITLOCK JR. as MELVIN , NORM LEWIS as EDDIE , CLARKE PETERS as OTIS , DELROY LINDO as PAUL in DA 5 BLOODS . Cr. DAVID LEE /NETFLIX © 2020 — DA 5 BLOODS (L to R) JONATHAN MAJORS as DAVID, ISIAH WHITLOCK JR. as MELVIN, NORM LEWIS as EDDIE, CLARKE PETERS as OTIS, DELROY LINDO as PAUL in DA 5 BLOODS . Cr. DAVID LEE /NETFLIX © 2020

Most of those take place during the flashbacks to the war itself. “I felt that it was best to do it with authenticity,” Sigel says, “to do it the way you would do it, were you really a news cameraman, shooting with the military in Vietnam. That sort of war photography is how I started my career. He’s referring to early documentary work like El Salvador: Another Vietnam.

“So I proposed 16mm and reversal film stock. (Spike was) familiar with 16mm, and he’s familiar with shooting reversal, so he really embraced it. There was some pushback from production,” he says, which included the fact there was no lab to process dailies in Southeast Asia, requiring a huge turnaround time for film couriered to the US and back, on top of the fact they only had Boseman for two weeks. “Are you sure you want to do this?” they asked.

But Lee backed him, and Sigel found himself very excited by the green light and took it a step further: “If we’re going to do that, stay true to this format, (then the ratio is) 4 x 3. That’s what television was in those days.” This also helped with all the stock footage they used, which was also 4 x 3.

The liberating aspect for Sigel was to discover that you’re not beholden to any aspect ratio, nor to a single type of camera. They used an Arri 416 for the war-era footage, and then both an ALEXA Mini and LF for the contemporary—and widescreen—part of the story. There’s even some Super 8mm footage from one of the characters who shoots it in the film.

Sigel says they also made sure to show the pivot from when the Bloods moves from the city to the country in Vietnam. “We played with creating a distinction between when they first arrive at Ho Chi Minh City [formerly Saigon, when they were first there] and then there’s this transition when they hit the jungle and travel back in time.” The viewer feels this departure—from the bustling, rebuilt, and expanded city to the jungles that changed the Bloods so drastically when they were young.

It’s in the jungle that the Bloods discover the truth in Williams Faulkner’s phrase that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Sigel managed to capture the spirit of this truth with two different generations of film technology, and decades of expertise.

For more on Da 5 Bloods, check out our interview with screenwriter Kevin Wilmott and composer Terence Blanchard.

Featured image: DA 5 BLOODS (L to R) ISIAH WHITLOCK JR. as MELVIN, NORM LEWIS as EDDIE, DELROY LINDO as PAUL, CLARKE PETERS as OTIS and JONATHAN MAJORS as DAVID in DA 5 BLOODS Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2020

A Chat About Netflix’s “Disclosure” and Trans Representation on Screen

Posted on June 26, 2020June 26, 2020 by babrams

We have something very special planned for tonight, folks. As part of our ongoing Pride Month coverage, the Motion Picture Association has teamed up with Netflix for our next installment of our Film School Friday series. We’re really excited for tonight’s conversation with leading transgender and LGBTQ+ creators of Netflix’s groundbreaking documentary Disclosure. Our panelists are Disclosure‘s director Sam Feder (you can read our interview with Sam here), producer Amy Scholder, executive producer and one of the film’s standout contributors Laverne Cox, and Nick Adams, GLAAD’s director of transgender representation. The event will be kicked off with remarks from Rep. David Cicilline, co-chair, House LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus, and MPA’s chairman and CEO, Charles Rivkin. Our moderator is the MPA’s vice president of external and multicultural affairs John Gibson.

Our third Film School Friday begins tonight, at 7:00 p.m. ET (4:00 p.m. PT). You can RSVP and watch by visiting FilmSchoolFriday.com. You can join the conversation via the hashtag #FilmSchoolFriday by following us at @MotionPictures on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Our conversation will explore trans representation, inclusion, and depiction in film and television.

Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen offers an eye-opening look at the history of transgender depiction in two universal media: film and television. The story is told through the perspectives and memories of trans people in the entertainment industry — including the aforementioned Orange Is the New Black icon Laverne Cox, The Matrix mastermind Lilly Wachowski, Transparent and Hustlers star Trace Lysette, and 9-11: Lone Star actor Brian Michael Smith. It’s truly a must-see film, shedding light on how American culture has dehumanized and made assumptions about the transgender community.

Tonight’s event follows last month’s Film School Friday, which covered leading Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) creators, including director Kabir Akhtar, whose recent work can be seen on Mindy Kaling’s new Netflix series Never Have I Ever, and composer Sherri Chung, whose scores can be heard on CW’s hit series Batwoman and Riverdale. Our first Film School Friday event featured The Letter for the King composer Brandon Campbell, Star Trek: Picard actress Tamlyn Tomita, Fear of the Walking Dead cinematographer Andrew Strahorn, and Watchmen writer Stacy Osei-Kuffour.

We really hope to see you tonight!

How They “Live-Captured” Hamilton

Posted on June 25, 2020November 16, 2020 by babrams

In this new clip from the upcoming film version of Hamilton, which is coming to Disney + on July 3, you’ll be able to feel a little bit of the magic that existed in the theater for all those folks who got to see Lin-Manuel Miranda’s blockbuster Broadway musical. Yet as compelling as this clip is, and as great as it looks, it doesn’t quite represent what someone who got a chance to see “Hamilton” on Broadway experienced. Rather, this clip represents what director Tommy Kail and his cinematographer Declan Quinn decided, after two months of watching performances and poring over the script, would create the best possible way to capture the show’s brilliance. In a great new piece in the New York Times, journalist Michael Paulson reveals how Kail, Quinn, and the rest of the folks behind the live-capture of Miranda’s iconic show made it happen. But first, let’s check out that clip:

Before there was even a notion to create a film version of Hamilton for home audiences, Kail’s crew filmed two of the show’s final performances with the original cast with a plan of locking the footage away for up to six years. Then something magical happened; the film crew flew to London to show Miranda (he was there filming Mary Poppins Returns) what they had, and Miranda’s reaction was, well, jubilant. “As the screening got underway, he periodically interjected his approval, and when the final number began, he took off a shoe and threw it into the air,” Paulson writes for the Times.

Disney had already outbid competitors for the rights to the film when more drama was to follow. COVID-19 shuttered productions around the globe and changed the calculus for studios on their release schedule. Disney decided to forgo a theatrical release in light of all of us being marooned at home for months in favor of streaming Hamilton on Disney + on July 3.

As for the filming itself, Kail, Quinn, and the rest of their crew have created something unique—neither a feature film nor a documentary, but a hybrid of sorts, the “live-capture” of the stage show. “That’s why you hear the audience and see the audience a little bit,” Kail told the Times. “I wanted to create a document that could feel like what it was to be in the theater at that time.”

Quinn installed nine cameras around the Richard Rodgers Theater, seven of which were hidden behind black drapes so the audience wouldn’t be distracted. They shot a Sunday matinee and Tuesday evening show. Between those two shows, the cast also performed 13 of the show’s 46 numbers for the film crew, which utilized a Steadicam, a crane, and a dolly-mounted camera to capture close-ups and overheads. The sound was covered by more than 100 microphones, while the difficult job of editing all of this into a cohesive whole fell to Jonah Moran. Capturing the spirit and essence of the live performance while providing all the close-ups, panoramic shots, and details in the costume and the set was a massive undertaking.

The final result will be available for all to see—well, everyone with a Disney + subscription—and give millions of people who never got a chance to experience one of the decade’s most influential creations to see what all the fuss is about, while wearing their pajamas if they so choose.

Featured image: NEW YORK, NY – JUNE 12: Lin-Manuel Miranda and Christopher Jackson of ‘Hamilton’ perform onstage during the 70th Annual Tony Awards at The Beacon Theatre on June 12, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions)

David France on the Terror Facing the LGBTQ+ Community in Welcome to Chechnya

Posted on June 25, 2020November 16, 2020 by babrams

Oscar-nominated filmmaker and former investigative journalist David France has a new documentary, Welcome To Chechnya, debuting on HBO June 30^th, which has already won multiple awards on the film festival circuit. His film reveals the ongoing danger to LGBTQ Chechens targeted for persecution and death in a campaign to ‘cleanse’ the republic. France follows the activities of heroic activists, and profiles the people they hope to rescue out of harm’s way, requiring a new technique of ‘face doubling’ to keep the refugees safe. He also had to film entirely in secret, and at great risk. We spoke to France about his experience making Welcome to Chechnya, which sheds light on human rights violations that must be stopped. This powerful documentary should call people of conscience around the world into action.

You had to use guerrilla filmmaking in order to create this film. What was involved?

The first rule that we had was making sure no one knew we were filmmakers. I was working on the ground, mostly with Askold Kurov, my Russian producer and main cinematographer. We shot most of the film on a consumer camera and shot it in such a way that it would not be possible to know we were doing that. We were hiding the camera and using deceptive measures when we were filming. Any time we went into public was a risk that somehow would reveal the identities or locations of people who were in hiding. In some of the instances, we were posing as tourists, like when we were shooting in airports, which isn’t allowed in Russia. During the extraction in the film of Anya, from Chechnya, I was posing as a rich American tourist, and I had two phones with me. One I was using to shoot the extraction, and the other I had filled with video of tourist spots inside Chechnya.

You used a new technique to protect those at risk in your film, replacing 22 subjects with those that volunteered their faces for face doubling. How did you find those faces?

We recruited most of them from Instagram, where we looked for people who posted activist statements about Chechnya, and LGBTQ asylum and refugee rights. We asked them to lend their faces as an act of activism. We made our film in total secrecy, so we brought each one of them into the studio, and asked them if they would keep our secret, and what we were proposing for them. They all signed on with real eagerness. They wanted to do something that actually made a difference in the lives of Chechens, and this gave them that opportunity.

Grisha with his boyfriend, Bogdan. Photograph: Courtesy of HBO

Dr. Thalia Wheatley and Ryan Laney were instrumental in making the film a reality since the face doubling was essential to keeping your subjects safe. What were their roles?

Ryan Laney is a major VFX supervisor from LA, with major credits on blockbuster films. He was so excited about doing a film that would actually allow him to put his powers and his creative vision on something this meaningful. It was a great leap for him because at first he wasn’t convinced that he could do it. It was his idea to appropriate this technique, and turn the idea behind deep fake technology on its head, and use it for good in this way. He somehow found a way to do it where it’s never been done before. This is a feature-length film shot at 4K, shot under less than ideal circumstances, often running, with the images bouncing around on the frame, and yet he was able to build this algorithm that could follow these individuals, while using the faces of the activists, these face doubles who had volunteered in New York, to track those actions.

Were you concerned it would be hard to follow for the viewer?

We wanted to make sure the approach itself wouldn’t be distracting to the point of making viewers uncomfortable with the image, or unable to read the humanity in the individual. Dr. Wheatley is an expert in what’s called ‘the uncanny valley.’ She teaches at Dartmouth, and I asked if she could help us understand if we were doing the right thing. We gave her the five leading approaches we’d been working with and asked if she would enroll students in a study of the various approaches to gauge their emotional reactions to the individuals. We used one clip, that we altered in different ways, to see which ones made them feel more discomfort than others. What we used in the film was the surprising leader of the pack. We felt we had science on our side, so we had Ryan begin his painstaking work, which took him 10 months.

You also placed cameras inside the safe houses. It must have given refugees some power back to tell their own stories. What struck you most about what they filmed?

I was struck most by the footage that was shot by the people in the shelter who did not agree to let me tell their story. We had about a 70% agreement rate in the shelters, but some, for one reason or another, wanted to stay out of what I was shooting. Still, many of them, with the cameras left behind, told their own stories in very moving ways, mostly by casting a silhouette shadow of themselves on the wall, shooting that silhouette, and leaving behind their narrative. In case something happened to them, they wanted the world to know about their experiences. It was a declaration of their own truths, in a way I hope was meaningful for them. It was certainly meaningful for me to watch those clips and hear those stories.

Part of the danger for queer Chechens is the expectation by the government, as directed by Chechnya’s president Ramzan Kadyrov Kadyrov, that their families kill them. Can you speak to that?

The campaign that was first conceived by Kadyrov and his henchmen became broader as the months went by. It came to include political and security force pressure, on family members of queer Chechens, to carry out the so-called honor killings within their families. This is as part of their shared responsibility, in Kadyrov’s worldview, to continue his campaign of what he calls blood cleansing, this atrocious idea that it might be possible to round up and execute every LGBTQ Chechen and thereby somehow purify the ethnic race. Family members in Chechnya are often willing to carry that out. If not immediate family members, it’s a clan-based society, so each family may have thousands of members, and any one of those male relatives could potentially do the work. It makes it incredibly dangerous for the LGBTQ people who are left behind in Chechnya because this campaign is ongoing.

Beyond watching the film and sharing the importance of what is happening, what can people do in the US right now to help stop these atrocities?

The best thing anyone can do is to support these organizations financially. The work that they’re doing is incredibly expensive. The security protocols, the efforts to go into Chechnya and hide these refugees in a network of safe houses, tending to the medical needs, often paying for surgeries and psychiatric care for people who have weathered incredible hardship, it’s all expensive. All the work they do needs our help, which you can do by going to our website, where there is a button for donating to them.

Featured image: Photograph: Courtesy of HBO

New Book Will Reveal How Christopher Nolan Created The Mysterious Tenet

Posted on June 24, 2020 by babrams

You have to hand it to Christopher Nolan. His films are so consistently epic, so gleefully ambitious, that even before his films premiere they have us all asking how’d he do it? Whether it was rebooting the Batman franchise with his beloved Dark Knight trilogy, creating a heist movie like no other in his dreamy sci-fi masterpiece Inception, or taking us beyond the stars in his space drama Interstellar, a Nolan film is always an event. Which is why i09‘s exclusive about a brand new book detailing precisely how Nolan and his incredible cast and crew created his latest film, Tenet, is so exciting.

“The Secrets of Tenet: Inside Christopher Nolan’s Quantum Cold War” by James Mottram promises insights into every facet of how Nolan and his team crafted his latest. Tenet is centered on a team of international agents, led by John David Washington’s Protagonist, who are fighting for the survival of the world in “something behind real-time,” as Warner Bros.’ synopsis explains it. They are utilizing a method of time inversion (not time travel), which allows them, apparently, to work backward in time. At least we think that’s the case. Not only are we not even sure exactly how the time inversion bits work, but we’re also not sure if Keneth Branagh’s the villain. The thing, Branagh himself isn’t even sure, either! You have to love a Nolan film, even the actors are confused. Mottram’s book, due on July 31, will clear all this up.

“The Secrets of Tenet” promises “insights into all aspects of [Tenet’s] creation,” including “in-depth commentary from Nolan himself and a range of other key collaborators.” The book will “deliver an essential masterclass that lays bare the director’s process and his singular creative vision.” It includes a forward by John David Washington and a “backward” by Kenneth Branagh. We assume the book will also explain its subtitle, “Inside Christopher Nolan’s Quantum Cold War,” too.

With Tenet due in theaters on the same day as the book’s release, July 31, 2020, the i09 exclusive doesn’t include any spoilers, but if you’re eager to get a glimpse of some of the spreads in the book, we suggest you read the full piece here.

Caption: JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON stars in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action epic "TENET," a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon — Caption: JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON stars in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action epic “TENET,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon

Caption: (L-r) JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON and ROBERT PATTINSON and in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action epic "TENET," a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon — Caption: (L-r) JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON and ROBERT PATTINSON and in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action epic “TENET,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon.

Caption: (L-r) ELIZABETH DEBICKI and JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action epic "TENET," a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures — Caption: (L-r) ELIZABETH DEBICKI and JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action epic “TENET,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

L-r: Robert Pattinson and John David Washington in Christopher Nolan's 'Tenet.' Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures. — L-r: Robert Pattinson and John David Washington in Christopher Nolan’s ‘Tenet.’ Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

Featured image: Theatrical poster for Christopher Nolan’s ‘Tenet.’ Courtesy Warner Bros.

Composer Hans Zimmer is Crafting Something Really Special For Dune

Posted on June 24, 2020 by babrams

Hans Zimmer is a joyous man. We learned that when we interviewed him at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. He was there to talk about scoring Steve McQueen’s heist remake Widows, yet we ended up talking about a lot more, including his ever-shifting methods, depending on the director he’s working with. He was exceedingly humble for being one of the world’s most famous film composers. He was, most of all, infectiously joyous about his craft. This is why Zimmer’s chat with Variety about his current project, Dennis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Dune—as well as his work on No Time To Die and more—is both so exciting and so Zimmer.

Dune is an intergalactic epic, featuring Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, a brilliant young man who arrives on the deadly planet of Arrakis to protect his family and his peoples’ interests. This story is both a family saga, an inter-generational drama, and a massive sci-fi epic. It’s on Arrakis where the most important resource in the universe is located—spice. Spice has the ability to unlock human potential, yet Atreides will find that on Arrakis, he’s going to have to fight for his life, and the life of his family, against a matrix of powers, both human and alien, arrayed against him. There’s also the planet’s native, murderous sandworms, the rulers of the Arrakis’s vast, burrow-infested hinterlands. The film was finished before COVID-19 shuttered productions all across the globe, but Zimmer’s contribution is currently underway.

Here’s what Zimmer had to say to Variety about what he’s cooking up for Villeneuve’s epic:

“Right now I’m in the middle of making these sounds. I just have these ideas, and it’s like this every day. I’m doing all these experiments, and I have no idea if any of them will ever really end up in the movie. But we are so dedicated, trying to do something different, to do solid and honorable work, and do justice to the book… And some of them will probably be complete and utter disasters. But I’m having a go. Absolutely full on. I’m being obnoxious and telling people I need more time. The usual… I’m driving everybody crazy on Dune because I’m so full of ideas. And it’s Denis, you know? He lets me be part of this world. It’s totally and utterly inspiring, and it’s great people I get to work with – scrap the word “work,” it’s great people I get to play with.”

And how will he finish the score given the fact that it’s still hard to get full orchestras together? Here’s what he said on that front:

“Don’t know yet. So far I’m doing okay. There are possibilities opening up. Recording is going on in London and Vienna. And look, I’ve always used odd lineups, and I’ve sort of, for better or for worse, invented a way of working where you can have different small sections come in at different times. So to me, that’s not so different. Working remotely is horrible, but I’ve done it. And if we have to do it like this, we’ll do it like this.”

Dune is still set for release on December 18, 2020.

Caption: SHARON DUNCAN-BREWSTER as Liet Kynes in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Chiabella James

Caption: (L-r) Director DENIS VILLENEUVE and JAVIER BARDEM on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Chiabella James

Caption: ZENDAYA as Chani in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Chiabella James

Caption: OSCAR ISAAC as Duke Leto Atreides in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Chiabella James

Caption: (L-r) TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides, STEPHEN MCKINLEY HENDERSON as Thufir Hawat, OSCAR ISAAC as Duke Leto Atreides, REBECCA FERGUSON as Lady Jessica Atreides, JOSH BROLIN as Gurney Halleck and JASON MOMOA as Duncan Idaho in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Chiabella James

Caption: JASON MOMOA as Duncan Idaho in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Chiabella James

Caption: JOSH BROLIN as Gurney Halleck in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Chiabella James

Caption: REBECCA FERGUSON as Lady Jessica Atreides in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Chiabella James

Caption: (L-r) TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides and REBECCA FERGUSON as Lady Jessica Atreides in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Chiabella James

Caption: TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures

Featured image: Caption: OSCAR ISAAC as Duke Leto Atreides in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Chiabella James

Netflix Releases Ravishing First Trailer For Their Animated Musical Over The Moon

Posted on June 23, 2020June 23, 2020 by babrams

There are trailers, and then there are trailers. The first glimpse at Netflix’s Over the Moon definitely falls into the latter category. While one can never be totally certain about these things, it sure does feel like the streaming giant has an absolute smash on its hands here.

Directed by animation legend and Oscar-winner Glen Keane (you can read our two-part interview from a few years back with Keane here and here), Over The Moon tracks the story of a brilliant young girl who builds a rocket ship in order to fly to the moon and prove the existence of the mythical Moon Goddess. She’ll bring along her trusted best pal, Bungee (her pet rabbit), and, unfortunately, a stowaway in the form her of her little brother, and what she’ll find is a world unlike any she could have possibly dreamed.

The trailer is, in a word, gorgeous. Keane is a master illustrator, having helped create The Little Mermaid‘s Ariel, Beauty and the Beast‘s titular Beast, and a lot more. Over The Moon is his directing debut, off a script from the late Audrey Wells (The Hate U Give). Oscar-winning Gravity composer Steven Price is on hand to score the film, with musicians Christopher Curtis, Marjorie Duffield, and Helen Park creating songs.

The voice cast features Cathy Ang, Phillipa Soo, Robert G. Chiu, Ken Jeong, John Cho, Ruthie Ann Miles, Margaret Cho, Kimiko Glenn, Artt Butler, and Sandra Oh.

Netflix has partnered with Pearl Studios in China, the folks who produced DreamWorks’ Abominable, as well as with Sony Pictures ImageWorks. The animation looks ravishing. and is the product of deep research in China.

Over The Moon is set to premiere on Netflix this fall. Check out the trailer below:

Into the Unknown: Making Frozen 2 Trailer Reveals Disney+’s New Docu-Series

Posted on June 23, 2020 by babrams

It’s not so often we get a proper documentary on the making of an animated film, which makes Disney+’s Into the Unknown: Making Frozen 2 an intriguing new entrant. Now we get to see how the most successful animated film of all time was crafted, which, at The Credits, is what we do every day. It’s why we interview folks like Frozen 2 composer Christophe Beck and head of special effects Marlon West. Disney+’s new six-part documentary series promises to take us behind the scenes of the long, laborious process of making the sequel to the original Frozen in 2013, which, as you may have heard, was a wild success. Into the Unknown: Making Frozen 2, directed by Megan Harding, tracks the lead-up to the premiere of Frozen 2, following filmmakers Christopher Buck and Jennifer Lee, along with the artists, songwriters, and cast, a year before the premiere.

The new trailer sheds a light on the intense expectations everyone involved in Frozen 2 were taking on when they set out to the make their sequel. “It’s probably the toughest time in production when you’re a year out, it’s when all the balls are up in the air and the balls start falling,” says co-director Chris Buck says. It’s hard to follow up a hit, it’s way, way harder to follow up a global phenomenon. How do you not only capture what made people love the first film but give them something new? How do you build on a story and characters that millions of people fell in love with without retreading old ideas?

All of the central players are here, including performers Josh Gad, Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, and Sterling K. Brown. Then there are the absolutely crucial songwriters Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez. The trailer also boasts a brief cameo from Ron Clements, the director of The Little Mermaid and Moana, offering the Frozen 2 team some thoughts.

Into the Unknown: Making Frozen 2 debuts on Disney+ this Friday

Check out the trailer here:

Featured image: Elsa encounters a Nokk—a mythical water spirit that takes the form of a horse—who uses the power of the ocean to guard the secrets of the forest. Featuring the voice of Idina Menzel as Elsa, “Frozen 2” opens in U.S. theaters November 22. ©2019 Disney. All Rights Reserved.

Foundation Trailer Reveals Apple TV+’s Hugely Ambitious Sci-Fi Epic

Posted on June 23, 2020 by babrams

If you’re a fairly new streaming service and you’re prepared to go all-in on an epic sci-fi series, you could hardly pick better source material than legendary sci-fi author Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series. In fact, many consider it the greatest work of science fiction ever produced. This is precisely what Apple TV+ has done, and the first trailer for their adaptation reveals a hugely ambitious new show with excellent performers and the kind of big-budget production design and visual effects we now want and expect from our television series.

The series comes from a who’s who of ace creators and performers, including executive producer David S. Goyer, the man who helped Christopher Nolan craft Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. The saga stars the great Jared Harris as Harri Seldon; Lou Llobell as Gaal; Leah Harvey as Salvor; Laura Birn as Demerzel; Lee Pace as Brother Day; Terrence Mann as Brother Dusk; and Cassian Bilton as Brother Dawn. Foundation charts the story of a “band of exiles on their monumental journey to save humanity and rebuild civilization amid the fall of the Galactic Empire,” according to the synopsis. If that talk of a Galactic Empire reminds you of a certain iconic film saga, well, more on that in a second.

Speaking of Christopher Nolan—his brother Johnathan, no slouch in the sci-fi department (he’s the co-creator of Westworld, after all) was at one point going to attempt to adapt Asimov’s “Foundation” series for a film. As Goyer says in the trailer, “people have been trying to make Foundation for over 50 years,” and it influenced none other than George Lucas’s Star Wars. Now, thanks to a plethora of streaming services with the money to fund stories of this scale, Foundation has finally found its home.

Apple TV+ released the trailer at its Worldwide Developers Conference. Production on Foundation was halted due to the spread of COVID-19 back in March, and as of yet, there’s no premiere date. The trailer is chock-a-block with arresting images and promises we’ll be seeing Foundation in 2021. After seeing this, we hope that’s the case.

Check out the trailer below:

Featured image: Foundation. Courtesy Apple TV+

Director Ivy Meeropol on Her Deeply Personal HBO Documentary About Roy Cohn

Posted on June 22, 2020June 22, 2020 by babrams

After Ivy Meeropol directed her powerful and deeply personal HBO documentary Heir to an Execution (2004) about her grandparents Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were executed for alleged espionage in 1953 with prosecutor Roy Cohn leading the charge, she felt she’d finally put the subject behind her.

“I thought for years that a film about Roy Cohn was in order, that it should be done and I couldn’t believe no one had done it. But I really didn’t want to,” says Meeropol. “I went through a lot to make Heir to an Execution. It was really painful; it was a struggle and I came out the other side feeling like, ‘I have put this to bed. I said what I needed to say and I felt I contributed something to our legacy and to how [the Rosenbergs] will go down in history.’ And I had so many other stories I wanted to tell.”

Then came 2016 and the election of Cohn’s client and protégée Donald Trump.

“The day after Trump was elected, I could not believe what had happened. I was bereft and upset. Then I started talking to my producing partners and said, ’It’s time to do it.’” Meeropol’s documentary Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn had its world premiere at the 2019 New York Film Festival and is now airing on HBO. Showing how Cohn’s blatant hypocrisy and well-honed tactics of deny, deceive and distract are also Trump’s modus operandi makes the film both historical and chillingly relevant.

“I knew the hypocrisy was there, of course, once I learned while I was in college that Cohn was gay and died of AIDS [in 1986 at age 59, though Cohn denied he had AIDS right up to his death],” says Meeropol.

On a visit to the AIDS Memorial Quilt, Meeropol just happened to see the panel that an anonymous quilter had made for Cohn. “That’s where the film’s title comes from,” she says. “I was struck by that and it stayed with me all these years. I wanted to focus a part of the film on his life in the closet. But I did not know that his hypocrisy extended to his actively working against the gay rights bill in New York City all those years. [The film] builds to that revelation because that mirrors my realization, too — that one of the most openly gay closeted people would go on Larry King saying he opposes gay rights and women’s rights. This is who Trump is as well: someone who condemns people and denies them rights while living with impunity himself.”

Photograph of the AIDS quilt with Roy Cohn’s name and the words “Bully, Coward, Victim." Photograph by Courtesy of The NAMES Project/HBO — Photograph of the AIDS quilt with Roy Cohn’s name and the words “Bully, Coward, Victim.” Photograph by Courtesy of The NAMES Project/HBO

Once Meeropol committed to making the documentary, she had to deal with the fact that there was already another Roy Cohn film in the works, Matt Tyrnauer’s Where’s My Roy Cohn? which was released in September.

But Meeropol was convinced her film would offer a rare glimpse at another side of Cohn, one that she discovered after she “started digging around” in Provincetown. Meeropol’s family has a house in neighboring Truro so Provincetown, she says, was “a second home.” Meeropol’s digging led her to author Peter Manso, who had once bought a house in the town’s East End with Cohn and Norman Mailer. Manso shared with the filmmaker tapes of a never-aired interview he’d done with Cohn as well as a thick file of Cohn’s unpaid bills. “It opened up a treasure trove of incredible material,” says Meeropol.

Tape of Peter Manso’s interview with Roy Cohn. Courtesy HBO.

“It wasn’t until I met Manso that I felt [this film] had something more to contribute. My family story was not enough. As a filmmaker, I wanted new material and Cohn’s own voice,” she says. Once Meeropol homed in on the rich Provincetown material, “HBO came on board pretty quickly,” she says.

Director Ivy Meeropol. Photograph by Courtesy of HBO

Besides Manso, the film provides interviews with other Provincetown residents including director John Waters, who shares stories about seeing Cohn at cocaine-fueled dinner parties at Provincetown’s famed Front Street restaurant and with popular performer Ryan Landry who was a hustler once hired by Cohn. There are numerous archival photos of Cohn partying with scores of pretty young men which came into Meeropol’s possession when production had all but wrapped.

Meeropol had been trying without success to locate the buyer of a box of Cohn memorabilia from a major New York auction house. When her film was already in the color correction stage, someone telephoned casually asking if she’d be interested in a bunch of candid photos of Cohn. It was the kind of miraculous coincidence that happens with documentary, she says. “We immediately go to the New York apartment, we scan everything, and we swapped out all the [original] photos for these polaroids of Cohn with men, on boats…you want that intimate stuff.”

Cohn’s zealous and manipulative prosecution of the Rosenbergs as “atomic spies” in order to further his career led to their execution — though it’s now acknowledged that Ethel was likely innocent and that Julius’s espionage had little to do with atomic bomb secrets. The Rosenbergs left two young sons, Ivy’s father Michael, now 77, and Robert, who were adopted by Anne and Abel Meeropol. Much of the film’s intimacy and power comes from this deep, personal connection including scenes from the recent Broadway revival of Tony Kushner’s award-winning play Angels in America with Nathan Lane in the role of Cohn.

Michael Meeropol at Sing Sing. Courtesy HBO.

“I saw it when it was first on Broadway with F. Murray Abraham playing Cohn. I was so moved by it. It affected me and stayed with me,” says Meeropol. “Works of art around my family’s story such as Angels in America or E.L. Doctorow’s ‘The Book of Daniel’ are how I connected to it emotionally when I was younger and expanded my understanding and interest to want to know more.”

Meeropol wanted to make Heir to an Execution for personal reasons but also because she had begun to realize that more and more “my generation didn’t know who my grandparents were.”

Not only was history being forgotten, but it was also being repeated. “Trump is now the reason to keep beating that drum,” she says.

Featured image: Roy Cohn and Donald Trump at the opening of Trump Tower (1983). Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn

Hamilton Trailer Brings Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway Smash Into Your Home

Posted on June 22, 2020 by babrams

If there is one good thing to come of what COVID-19 has done to the entertainment industry, it’s the fast-tracking of the film version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. Miranda’s Broadway juggernaut is arriving on Disney + a full year ahead of schedule, and now we’ve got the first official trailer. Miranda’s miraculous musical, which began its’ run on Broadway in 2015, has been a very hard ticket to get (not that there are tickets to be had these days). This has meant that the vast majority of people only know about how good “Hamilton” is through reviews, word-of-mouth, and the fact that many in the original cast are now big stars. That’s all about to change, however.

It’s hard to remember now, considering “Hamilton” has been the most talked-about Broadway show for going on half a decade, but at the time, this was a musical unlike any other. Miranda and his immensely talented cast and crew created a retelling of America’s founding using hip-hop, R&B, jazz, and more traditional Broadway show tunes to track the epic lives of folks like Alexander Hamilton (Miranda) and his infamous antagonist, Aaron Burr (Leslie Odom Jr.). The film is a “live capture” of the musical from director Tommy Kail, bringing the talents of Miranda, Odom Jr., Daveed Diggs, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Christopher Jackson, Jonathan Groff, Phillipa Soo, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Okieriete Onaodowan, and Anthony Ramos into your living room. On July 3, you’ll be able to see Hamilton with the original Broadway cast while sipping your beverage of choice in your seat of choice.

Here’s what Miranda said in a press release:

“I’m so proud of how beautifully Tommy Kail has brought Hamilton to the screen. He’s given everyone who watches this film the best seat in the house. I’m so grateful to Disney and Disney+ for reimagining and moving up our release to July 4th weekend of this year, in light of the world turning upside down. I’m so grateful to all the fans who asked for this, and I’m so glad that we’re able to make it happen. I’m so proud of this show. I can’t wait for you to see it.”

Check out the trailer here:

Sam Feder Takes a Revealing Look at Transgender Depiction in Hollywood in Disclosure

Posted on June 22, 2020November 16, 2020 by babrams

Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen offers an eye-opening look at the history of transgender depiction in two universal media: film and television. The story is told through the perspectives and memories of trans people in the entertainment industry — Laverne Cox (also an executive producer of Disclosure), Lilly Wachowski and Jen Richards among them — and features clips and images that shed light on how American culture has dehumanized and made assumptions about the transgender community.

The director and co-producer behind Disclosure is Sam Feder. Feder’s past documentaries, including the award-winning Boy I Am and the highly touted Kate Bornstein Is a Queer & Pleasant Danger, also examine the reality of transgender lives.

Following its world premiere at Sundance this past January, Disclosure was scheduled to screen at Tribeca, CHP:DOX, Hot Docs, and many other film festivals, but was stalled by the coronavirus pandemic. Fortunately, it’s now available to watch on Netflix.

The Credits spoke with Feder about Disclosure, released both during Pride Month and at an inflection point around civil rights in the United States. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

It’s particularly timely for this film to debut, given the protests going on around the country.

The intersection of race and gender on and off the screen is crucial to understand, and Disclosure is grounded in that history, particularly in looking at how blackface and gender transgression were and still are twin fascinations in storytelling. Even just the production of Disclosure was made with a new world in mind, which deeply connects to this moment, you know the social uprising that has spread to every state.

Disclosure. Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson in a still in Disclosure. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix.

What has the feedback been from the LGBTQ community and the entertainment industry for that matter? Is there any comment or sentiment that has really touched or resonated with you in particular?

Well, what really moved me at our Sundance world premiere was when Kim Yutani, who is one of the senior programmers, said that presenting Disclosure was one of the highlights of her career. And another programmer said that the film will really shake up Hollywood, and that was very exciting to hear.

How long were you in production on this film? And did the story that you set out to tell at the beginning turn out differently at the end?

I started research in the summer of 2015, so about five years making the film. And yes, when I first started making the film, I wanted to look at all types of trans media, in particular, I really did want to look at independent film and documentaries. But as I was doing my research, it was just very quickly obvious how mainstream film and TV was a reference point for everyone I spoke to. I did about 75 research interviews of trans people internationally who have worked on one side of the camera or the other, to create the primary document for the film that I based it on because there’s no book on the history. As I was asking people about their relationship to media, without giving them any guidelines of what type, everyone went back to Hollywood, and so I switched gears pretty quick to focus on Hollywood.

Tell me about the curation of the footage and photographs. What was the process like? Was there a team?

The first step was doing research interviews, so the team was this group of over 75 interviews that I did with other trans people to find out what were people’s memories of trans representation, for better or for worse. And when I say trans representation, we’re really talking about any character that transgresses gender expectations. So when we look back at that footage from 1898, 1901 and 1904 that were made in the Edison studios and were initially just Edison tests, they weren’t necessarily films, but we were seeing men in wigs acting silly and it’s just fascinating that many stories that played with gender roles were always a thing in celluloid.

I created the database from those interviews and then did work with research assistants to find those clips, online or in art archives. And then we did work with an archival producer to then secure a lot of these clips. And then we used our First Amendment right to be able to explore those clips in the film.

Were there any stumbling blocks?

Not really, pretty much everything was accessible. I mean the biggest stumbling block was the fine line of not wanting to demonize anyone. Some of these images are horrendous and painful and unacceptable, but we do want to hold people accountable without perpetuating the violence.

Disclosure. Christina Hayworth, Sylvia Rivera, and Julia Murray in a still in Disclosure. Cr. Ava Benjamin Shorr/Netflix.

The film’s creative model called for hiring only trans people, and when you couldn’t, you mentored a trans fellow. Can you provide an example?

Just as the nexus of the research was all trans people, the story had to be told by trans people. There’s a sensitivity of telling a story that can only come from the people who’ve lived that experience, and so we prioritized hiring a trans crew. We did a national search and when we couldn’t find a trans person to fill key roles on set, we would mentor a trans person. We had about a dozen trans fellows on set, who were just phenomenal human beings — just brilliant, creative, loving people. Part of the behind-the-scenes work that I’m most proud of is that fellowship, seeing these women on set who are very established in the industry and were mentoring these young trans people. Our gaffer and grip, in particular, I would look around and see them drawing diagrams on the ground in between takes to teach our fellows certain technical skills. And then our fellows were sharing life experience, so it was definitely a win-win. Our gaffer was so moved by what she learned on set from the fellows that she went back to IATSE, which is her union, the largest tech union in the world, and she instituted the first trans sensitivity training there.

I was surprised when Laverne Cox said in the film that 80% of Americans do not know a trans person. What did you learn from this film? Did anything surprise you?

I think what surprised me most was how seeing all of these images in one place, seeing all the violence and shame and hate that I had internalized for so long, seeing it outside of myself in this specific context allowed me to move past it in a way. I stopped watching mainstream media probably 20 years ago, because I found it often so painful for so many reasons, not just about specifically trans. Putting the film together, you kind of see how ridiculous so much of it is and how far away from any true story it is. And so for me, it was a cathartic experience to make the film and that surprised me.

Disclosure. Angelica Ross in Disclosure. Cr. Ava Benjamin Shorr/Netflix.

Disclosure. Trace Lysette in Disclosure. Cr. Ava Benjamin Shorr/Netflix.

It’s such a comprehensive look at the trans community, from its pioneers, for lack of a better word, like Christine Jorgensen, to today’s advocates like Laverne Cox, Trace Lysette, Jen Richards and many others. How far do you think the community and the entertainment industry have come from the release of the iconic Paris Is Burning to television’s Pose?

Paris Is Burning was so important for so many people. The only critique about it was that some of the people involved felt exploited and I think that has really been remedied with Pose because you have so many trans people behind the scenes who are able to advance their career and all the women in Pose have now just catapulted into celebrity status. The fact that Pose centers on black trans women is extraordinary and so important, and I think that is what Paris Is Burning did, was center on black and brown trans people in a way that had never been done before. So they’re really great bookends for that legacy.

Featured image: Disclosure. Laverne Cox in Disclosure. Cr. Ava Benjamin Shorr/Netflix.

Celebrating Black Artists on Juneteenth

Posted on June 19, 2020November 16, 2020 by babrams

Today we celebrate Juneteenth, commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States on June 19, 1865. This was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and two months after the Civil War ended. It was on June 19, 1865, that Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, galloped into Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were free. Their delayed emancipation had finally come.

To celebrate Juneteenth, we wanted to share some of the stories and profiles we’ve done on Black artists. Here is a snapshot of some of the Black artists we’ve covered on The Credits whose work inspires us.

Simon Frederick, director of 'They've Gotta Have Us.' Courtesy Array/Netflix. — Simon Frederick, director of ‘They’ve Gotta Have Us.’ Courtesy Array/Netflix.

In They’ve Gotta Have Us now streaming on Netflix, British photographer-turned filmmaker Simon Frederick chronicles the history of Black Cinema by sitting down with some of the people who made that history. Produced by BBC Two and Ava DuVernay‘s ARRAY company, the three-part documentary series blends archival footage with dozens of interviews to survey eight decades of American filmmaking.

*Kenya Barris in #blackAF, episode 7. Photo: Gabriel Delerme/Netflix*

Emmy-nominated costume designer Michelle Cole re-teamed with Kenya Barris to add her signature magic touch to his new Netflix series #blackAF.

*DA 5 BLOODS (L to R) ISIAH WHITLOCK JR. as MELVIN, NORM LEWIS as EDDIE, DELROY LINDO as PAUL, CLARKE PETERS as OTIS and JONATHAN MAJORS as DAVID in DA 5 BLOODS Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2020*

Spike Lee teamed up with writing partner Kevin Willmott to shape the dramatic thriller Da 5 Bloods for African American characters—it had originally been written by two different writers and was developed by Oliver Stone. Lee and Willmott infuse the story with insights about the history of racism illustrated with archival footage of Martin Luther King Jr., renowned activist Angela Davis, and others.

*Featured image: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in ‘Candyman.’ Courtesy Universal Pictuers/MGM*

It’s safe to say that even without everything that has happened in the United States this year, this haunting prologue to co-writer and director Nia DaCosta‘s Candyman would still be incredibly potent. Yet DaCosta shared this two-and-a-half-minute work of shadow puppet wizardry in a country that has seen protests against police brutality and systemic racism in all 50 states (the protests have gone global, too) after the murder of George Floyd, all happening in the middle of a pandemic that has disproportionately affected Black, Hispanic, Latino and Indigenous communities.

Composer and longtime Spike Lee collaborator Terence Blanchard created the score for Da 5 Bloods, and he shares Lee’s desire to imbue this and all his projects with that strong sense of purpose. We spoke to Blanchard about his inspiration for Da 5 Bloods, and how his association with Spike Lee inspires him to continue growing as an artist.

All Day And A Night - BTS - Director Joe Robert Cole, Isaiah John, Ashton Sanders - Photo Credit: Netflix / Matt Kennedy — *All Day And A Night – BTS – Director Joe Robert Cole, Isaiah John, Ashton Sanders – Photo Credit: Netflix / Matt Kennedy*

“Great stories have great characters, and the key to great characters is empathy,” says writer-director Joe Robert Cole, whose latest film, All Day and a Night, is now streaming on Netflix. “Every film, television show, or story that I work on, I approach from character first and let that lead the way.”

*Celeste O’Connor stars in SELAH AND THE SPADES. Photo: Courtesy of Amazon Studios*

Rising star Celeste O’Connor plays the ingénue Paloma, the high school sophomore who senior Selah Summers (Lovie Simone) takes under her wing in writer/director Tayarisha Poe’s film Selah and the Spades.

*TCM host Jacqueline Stewart photographed on the TCM set on Tuesday & Wednesday, August 20-21, 2019 in Atlanta, Ga. Photo by John Nowak*

Jacqueline Stewart is a film scholar, researcher, author, and archivist. But when she gets before the cameras as the host of Silent Sunday Nights on Turner Classic Movies (TCM), she’s once again a kid watching movies late into the night with her aunt Constance.

director Stella Meghie. Courtesy Universal Pictures — *Director Stella Meghie. Courtesy Universal Pictures*

Writer/director Stella Meghie’s The Photograph is inspired by her grandmother, and stars Issa Rae as Mae, the daughter of a famous late photographer, who left behind letters and the titular photograph, which propel Mae to dig into her past personal history.

Tiffany Tenille in 'Jezebel.' Courtesy Array. — *Tiffany Tenille in ‘Jezebel.’ Courtesy Array.*

Though filmmaker Numa Perrier only spent four years of her life in Las Vegas, those formative years being surrounded by adult vocations served as the backbone for her autobiographical ’90s-set film, Jezebel.

*Cynthia Erivo stars as Harriet Tubman in HARRIET, a Focus Features release. Credit: Glen Wilson / Focus Features*

Cynthia Erivo received an Oscar nomination for her performance as Harriet Tubman and a second nomination for Best Original Song as the co-writer of Stand Up. She shares the honor with Joshuah Brian Campbell, a 25-year-old student currently enrolled as a Master of Divinity candidate at New York’s Union Theological Seminary.

And if you want a list of great films where Black lives truly do matter, you’ll be hard-pressed to do better than Desson Thomson’s watchlist.

Featured image: DA 5 BLOODS (L to R) Director SPIKE LEE, ISIAH WHITLOCK JR. as MELVIN, DELROY LINDO as PAUL, JONATHAN MAJORS as DAVID, CLARKE PETERS as OTIS and NORM LEWIS as EDDIE of DA 5 BLOODS Cr. DAVID LEE/NETFLIX © 2020