Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel on Shooting Spike Lee’s Epic Da 5 Bloods

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On its surface, Spike Lee’s latest joint, Da 5 Bloods, is about four Black Vietnam war veterans who return to the country decades later to bring home the remains of their leader, Stormin’ Norman (Chadwick Boseman), who was killed in action. Secondary to this mission, the remaining four of the five Bloods (played by Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr., and Norm Lewis) also plan to locate and dig up a chest of gold bars they’d buried in battle. During the war, their final mission had been to retrieve the bars from a crashed CIA plane, but at Norman’s urging, they took possession of the gold as a form of reparations, instead. Now in their 60s, the time has come for Paul (Lindo), Otis (Peters), Eddie (Lewis), and Melvin (Whitlock Jr.) to bring it home, a journey that thoughtfully brings up a range of moral questions.

Cut with historic news footage of the Vietnam War and contemporary coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement, contrasted with speeches from Martin Luther King Jr., renowned activist Angela Davis, and various racist politicians, Da 5 Bloods is a uniquely prescient movie. As he jumps between war-time flashbacks and the men’s present mission, Lee’s work covers a lot of ground, from reckoning with PTSD and the corrupting power of money to the present-day danger posed to civilians by decades-old landmines. Paul and Otis both have children who show up unexpectedly during their fathers’ mission, and though Melvin and Michon (Sandy Huong Pham) are themselves adults, each clearly carries the scars of intergenerational trauma. Much of the film turns on how the past informs the present (even Hedy, a French heiress neutralizing landmines in the jungle, is working to atone for the inherited harm of her colonialist ancestors), and Lee’s DP, Newton Thomas Sigel (Drive, The Usual Suspects), invokes distinct aesthetics to set apart past and present and city versus jungle. We had the opportunity to chat with Sigel about his varied choice of aspect ratios used to convey this epic tale, shooting on location in the jungles of Vietnam and Thailand and his first time working on a Spike Lee joint.

 

Can you tell us about the process and intentions behind developing the film’s different aspect ratios?

The most radical of the three choices were the flashbacks, the portion of the film that you see with Chadwick Boseman playing Stormin’ Norman and you’re back in the war in Vietnam. We decided to shoot on 16mm and to use reversal stock, basically, to reproduce the same process that a newsreel cameraman would have done were he embedded with the U.S. military in the war in Vietnam. It’s also where I started as a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker. We thought that that was the most appropriate format for that, and it actually also worked nicely in conjunction with all the archival footage that Spike chose to put in the film. That was the most significant choice of varying the aspect ratio.

Initially, the film starts with a widescreen format which on Netflix was in their 16:9 envelope, so to speak, or display, which means it’s letterboxed top and bottom. When the Bloods hit the jungle and they’re taken psychologically back to where they had their experience in Vietnam, we open up the letterbox on the top and bottom and go to 1.8:5. So even though it’s technically not as widescreen a format, it actually opens the screen up even more.

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
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

While many viewers will instantly catch the Apocalypse Now reference as the Bloods helicopter into the jungle, what other works influenced the movie?

I think for Spike, David Lean was somebody he referred to a lot, and not just The Bridge Over the River Kwai, but really more specifically that he felt he was telling a very epic story not only about Vietnam but about Black America, as well. I think David Lean was a fairly constant reference to Spike throughout the process of making the movie.

Did shooting on location in the jungle strongly influence your process?

I’m not quite sure how you could have done it without the jungle, you know. I’ve done my fair amount of shooting in those kinds of environments. It wasn’t particularly new or novel to me, but it was definitely a challenge to deal with a story that is about four aging men going back to discover their formative years in Vietnam. You had tremendous heat, distant locations, and steep hills that we were working on, and 50- and 60-year-old men trying to run up and down them like Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was certainly a challenge and honestly, I expected it to be much more of an issue than it proved to be. I was surprised at how well the guys did in prep. But as always, when you’re dealing with remote, tropical, jungle-type locations, you’re dealing with heat, you’re dealing with being able to get equipment in and out of distant locations, and you’re dealing with a very harsh, brutal sun. You can either try to get rid of it or you can kind of embrace it as something that really was an actual reflection of what that environment was for these guys when they had their initial experience.

In the scenes where Eddie uses a Super 8 camera, was he actually filming?

The flashbacks to Stormin’ Norman were all done with 16mm film and 16mm reversal. One of the characters, Eddie, played by Norman Lewis, was an avid photographer during the war and continues to carry his Super 8 camera that he had back in the day. We gave Norm Lewis a Super 8 camera and Super 8 film and had him shoot when he was pretending to shoot. So the scenes in which he’s carrying that camera, taking shots of his mates, really was footage that Norman shot himself.

 

How was the experience working with Netflix for a big epic film like this?

Spike’s movie was the third movie I’ve done for Netflix, so I’m fairly familiar with their process. I have to say, I think they’re great. They’re very filmmaker friendly. They have their opinions and they obviously have their concerns about money like every studio does. But I think, especially when you work with somebody like Spike Lee or the Russo brothers, who produced the Netflix movie I did before that, they really are so committed to building relationships with great talent that they’re very deferential to filmmakers. I know they were with Spike, and I’m sure that they voiced some of their opinions about the film as it was being cut, but at the end of the day, they were like, you know, it’s your movie and you’re going to do what you do. Spike made the movie he wanted to make, no question.

This was your first time making a film with Spike Lee. How was it?

I’ve known Spike for many years, from New York when I was making documentaries and he was coming out of NYU and doing Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barber Shop and She’s Gotta Have It. And we’ve done commercials in between movies. I always enjoyed working with him and I obviously have enormous respect for him—he’s one of the great American masters. He’s one of our great American filmmakers working today. So I was on another movie, and during the Christmas hiatus, Spike called me and asked if I was interested. Initially, I was very concerned about not having enough time from one movie to the next, but he was very confident that it would be all right. I took the bait and I’m very happy I did.

For more on Da 5 Bloods, read our interviews with screenwriter Kevin Wilmott and composer Terence Blanchard.

Featured image: 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

Zack Snyder Reveals The First Look at His Snyder Cut Justice League

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And there you have it, the first glimpse—and we do mean glimpse—of Zack Snyder’s vision for the “Snyder Cut” of Justice League. Snyder has revealed the teaser via tweet, and we’ve got it for you below. Snyder was, of course, the original director of Justice League before he had to exit the production due to a family tragedy. The result was that the Justice League everyone saw in 2017 was partially Snyder’s, partially director Joss Whedon’s, and totally out of whack with that Snyder had originally conceived.

What followed was wild. Fans kicked up a fuss about seeing the version that Snyder had intended. On Justice League‘s two-year anniversary, #ReleaseTheSnyderCut trended worldwide. That was when, as The Hollywood Reporter wrote, Warner Bros. chairman Toby Emmerich called Synder and said, “This is real. People out there want it. Would you guys ever consider doing something?”

Snyder of course would consider it and has been working on it, with the Snyder Cut version of Justice League slated for release on HBO Max in 2021. Snyder and his wife and producing partner Deborah Snyder are assembling the cast for ADR (additional dialogue) and their original postproduction crew for all of the VFX, score, and editing work that his new version will require.

“It will be an entirely new thing, and, especially talking to those who have seen the released movie, a new experience apart from that movie,” Snyder told The Hollywood Reporter. Now we have a sense of how much Snyder will be able to draw on unused shots from not only Justice League, but Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. The teaser deploys dialogue from that film, via Jesse Eisenberg‘s Lex Luthor, and essentially confirms what Snyder already hinted at; the villain of his Justice League was and will be Darkseid. In the brief teaser, we see Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman checking out a depiction of Darkseid, followed by the flashback to the battle that explained the Motherboxes that were so integral to Justice League‘s plot and a glance at Darkseid.

We’ll get more Justice League reveals from Snyder during Warner Bros. big virtual event DC FanDome, and we’ll be sure to update you then. For now, check out the teaser below.

Featured image: The Snyder Cut is real. Zack Snyder’s Justice League is coming to HBO Max. Courtesy Warner Bros./HBO

Composer Sherri Chung on Batwoman, Riverdale & More

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Composer Sherri Chung faced the production freeze due to COVID-19 with equal parts equanimity and patience. Because her work is often done alone, the self-quarantine aspect of the pandemic hasn’t changed her process all that much. Chung has a studio where she has her own recording stage that can fit about 15 players, so that part of her process has been shuttered, but the fact that she was already on a natural hiatus, as she described it, working through mid-May on shows that had already wrapped, she hasn’t felt quite so marooned. “For me, this feels normal,” Chung says. “I didn’t have to change my method. True, I’m not doing a whole lot of recording at the moment. For composers with weekly episodes, they’ve found ways to do it. Editors were able to take their rigs home, so we had to wait a little bit for them to finish their work, so they changed air dates, but for the most part, it was a bit the same. But of course, the world isn’t the same.”

Composer Sherri Chung at work. Photo credit: Steve Earle.
Composer Sherri Chung at work in less anxious times. Photo credit: Steve Earle.

The last time I heard Chung speak was on May 29, when she took part in our Film School Friday virtual panel discussion, four days after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, touching off protests against police brutality through the country and eventually the world. The event featured leading Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) creators and to celebrate AAPI Heritage Month. Some of that discussion focused on how much the world of film and television had changed since the pandemic swept across the globe. Now, Chung and I spoke about how the world had changed again in the aftermath of Floyd’s death. One of the first things we spoke about was the speed with which millions of people went from cautious isolation to willingly plunging into massive crowds to join the protests.

“We sort of live in bubbles as composers, living under a rock, when the quarantine started, I was sort of embarrassed that my life has mimicked quarantine for years. But this is different,” Chung says. “We talked at first about how the pandemic is the great equalizer, but then you realize it didn’t hit everyone the same. It not only affects older people or people with compromised health more, but it affects Black communities more. In terms of the industry specifically, there’s been such a greater awareness in the things that we say, there’s an awareness in our community to create a dialogue. In terms of art, I’ve noticed a lot of friends are writing music inspired by current events, what’s going on, whether it’s the pandemic or the protests and Black Lives Matter. I feel like there’s even more of a community than I was feeling before.”

In her normal, working life, Chung is the co-composer, along with Blake Neely, on two of the CW’s (and now HBO Max) biggest shows—Batwoman and Riverdale. In the world of Batwoman, the recent big news was that Ruby Rose, Batwoman herself, would be leaving the show. Yet Chung was excited about how showrunner Caroline Dries and executive producer Greg Berlanti were approaching the change.

“Ruby Rose played Kate Kane, and in the world of the show Kate was filling in as Batwoman because Gotham was missing Bruce Wayne,” Chung says. “What I think is great is that it sounds like they’re going to treat this as Kate Kane leaving Gotham, and a new character comes in to carry the torch as Batwoman. When Luke Perry passed away on Riverdale, I’d never dealt with that before. It was heartbreaking. Sometimes these things that are heartbreaking or surprising, things that out of our control, can actually create a beautiful platform for creativity. It can open opportunities for the writers to create new avenues for the characters, and therefore the music does that, too.”

On both Batwoman and Riverdale, Chung’s favorite characters to score are the bad ones. Whether that’s Batwoman’s presumed-dead twin sister Beth Kane in season 1 or the Gargoyle King in Riverdale season 3, Chung loves writing music for a monster.  “In [executive producer] Greg Berlanti’s world, I love when they add new villains, and I know there’s a new villain coming in Batwoman,” she says. “And you have these creative calls with the showrunners and producers, and everyone wants to make sure we’re getting a new sound for the new villain. I always look forward to the beginning of these shows, because everyone’s always refreshed and there’s this sense of, ‘Okay, what do we want to do!’ In particular with Batwoman, I’m excited to meet the new Batwoman, whoever she’ll be, and discuss whether we’ll have new sounds for her. But I do especially love writing for the villains.”

Chung has recently landed an exciting, albeit unmentionable, new project with HBO Max and Amblin and Warner Bros. Animation that she’s eager to begin. “I’m super excited about it,” she says. “I can’t wait for the world to see.” What kind of world that is one can only guess, but as bleak as 2020 has been, there have also been signs of hope. “All these people I’ve followed on social media have switched to use their platforms to speak about things that are meaningful,” Chung says. “It used to be about using your platform for self-promotion, and now that’s changed. There’s more awareness now. What people are talking about has changed.”

Featured image: Composer Sherri Chung at work. Photo credit: Steve Earle.

Candyman Director Nia DaCosta Reveals The Film’s Incredible Prologue

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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.

The prologue reveals four 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, an artist who, along with his girlfriend Brianna (If Beale Street Could Talk‘s Teyonah Parris), moves into a luxury condo in Chicago where the Cabrini towers once stood, and 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.

Watch the gorgeously crafted gut-punch below:

And if you’re curious who did the puppetry and created the score, DaCosta’s got you covered:

Candyman is now slated for a September 20, 2020 release.

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 Pictuers/MGM

Cinematic Soul Food Movies Where Black Lives Do Matter

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The tsunami-like effect of the Black Lives Matter movement is not only sweeping us forward towards an uncertain future but, like a riptide, pulling us backward through ignored history. It is a time to look forward as constructively as we reassess the trajectory of the journey that stretches behind us. One of the ways where we can do both is by revisiting the movies made over the years, some of which we may have seen, many of which we probably haven’t, where Black lives really do matter; where we can spend virtual time with characters who are pursuing the everyday things that matter to everyone. Call it the whole nine yards of life itself.

The seam of movies, dramatic and documentary, that reexamine the transgressions, oppressions, and flagrant crimes of racism, from slavery to Jim Crow, from housing to schooling, from schooling to policing, is rich and deep. But what about movies about breaking bread or breaking up, or about killing time on the neighborhood street just before dinner? And what about movies where two charming and goofy characters like Kid ’N Play are simply focused on throwing a perfect House Party (1990), or where a working family man named Stan (in Charles Burnett’s achingly poetic 1977 Killer of Sheep) holds a warm cup of tea against his cheek and dreams of a better life? We are talking about simple, down-to-earth, straight-to-the-heart movies where the characters just happen to see brown or black faces when they look at the mirror.

After a couple of decades of film reviewing, I knew I had my list, but I also wanted to chat with two colleagues from the Motion Picture Association who also see those same faces in the mirror, and who had lists of their own.

I asked John Gibson, our VP of External and Multicultural Affairs, and David Hudson, our Senior Director of Digital Content & Social Media, not only to share some recommendations but to focus on a few films that had really spoken to them.

If there’s one recurring theme in their favorite movies that, for David and John, have always had a powerful impact, it’s family. When talking about those films, David and John spoke of how they triggered personal memories of their own.

In the mid-1990s, when movies about the African American experience often centered on bleaker themes of gangland life or slavery, “it was really great to see a film that was about a Black family and especially one that reminded me of my own,” David said.

David Hudson
David Hudson, Senior Director of Digital Content & Social Media for the MPA

That movie was George Tillman Jr.’s 1997 Soul Food. David was 9 or 10 when he first saw it, and he was hooked. Centered around a character known as Big Mama, a familiar moniker in the culture for strong matriarchal figures, it reminded him of his late grandmother whose dinner gatherings always brought his family together.

“She was the glue that held a lot of us together…and we were always willing and happy to come together, around that dinner table. It was all love and all fun, and those are some of the fondest memories I have growing up.”

While the movie is culturally specific, it’s also universal, he said. “Regardless of whether you’re Black, white, Asian American, or whatever, at the core of the movie are the dynamics of a family that loves each other, that have their own ups and downs, and who have to try to figure out how to navigate that.”

 

Spike Lee’s 1994 Crooklyn was the movie that literally brought it home for John, not only for its depiction of a relatable Black family that endured ups and downs: A loving and strong mom, a gifted yet struggling musician-father, and a daughter who played the ever-watchful hawk to her four brothers, but also for the way it evokes life on the street outside the front door, where everyone knows everyone.

“I’m a child of the late seventies, so those experiences of being outside with your friends is much different than it is now,” said John. “Every time I see Crooklyn, it just gets to me because it reminds me of a simpler time when neighborhoods and communities were really connected, and the kids were outside playing games. There was no worry of gang activity or concerns about people lynching your kids. There were strong moms and dads in the household. Nowadays, you would be hard-pressed to even know your neighbors.”

John Gibson
John Gibson, VP of External and Multicultural Affairs for the MPA.

It’s not just family movies that reach John. Films like Antwone Fisher and Moonlight, Creed and Creed II that center on powerful father/paternal figure-son relationships, “tend to really pull at my heartstrings.” For so many reasons we didn’t tend to see a lot of films that showcase the nurturing of young Black males. No matter how old you are, it’s a special moment when someone, whether it be your dad, godfather, uncle, or that person who fills that paternal role, gives you love and support. We need more films and shows to showcase that.

John was particularly moved by Moonlight which, as we observe Pride Month, is the first film with an all-Black cast, and LGBTQ themes, to win the Oscar for Best Picture. The first act revolves around a young boy dealing with the hurt and abandonment as a result of his mom’s fight with drug addiction while trying his best to navigate his environment. In his space of loneliness, he encounters a drug dealer who steps in as a father figure.

 

“It is a component of the Black experience rarely seen in film,” John says. “You have really good people who made bad decisions. Growing up, you’d be going to school and people would see you walking slowly, and they would tell you to hurry up and go to school, mind your manners, pay attention to your teachers and get good grades. Or when dusk came, and the street lights came on, and you knew it was time to come inside, and you could hear your mom calling your name a couple of blocks away, they’d say, ‘Didn’t you hear your mom call you? Get in the house!’ In a sense, they wanted better for you than they could imagine for themselves.”

The conversations with David and John covered several other movies for which we are running out of real estate to share. But at the end of this article, you’ll see 30 recommended movies from our combined lists that came from these dialogues that, in some way or another, depict positive aspects of the African American experience, to add to your own personal Watchlist.

Despite our attempts to discuss movies that don’t take racism head-on and focus more squarely on Black life itself, there was one sobering conclusion. Even in those films, it is virtually impossible to avoid the elephant in the room.

Even the very absence of racism can be glaring. John appreciated Stella Meghie’s 2020 romantic drama The Photograph for example, not only because of what it was, but what it wasn’t. “There was no pain or anguish from either of the leads,” he says. “Neither needed rescuing. Both came from loving, supportive families. You just had two highly respected professionals who happened to be Black and in love with each other. And that’s so important for all of us to see. All of us are not going through pain and anguish.”

 

David was as moved by the love story at the center of Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk as he was driven to tears by the interactions with police that take place in the same movie.

“You can never fully escape those negatives that we have to constantly fight against,” said David. “It’s always there, whether it’s in the background or the foreground.” Watching Beale Street in the theater with his wife, he thought about the family he plans to grow. “There is so much extra that we have to fight against in society as Black folks, just in order to protect ourselves and those who are closest to us and those who we really care about.”

But between the peaceful demonstrations taking place around the country, the explosion of articles and discussion on the subject, including frank conversations such as these taking place within our own industry, it reminds us that while progress has been made, there’s still a considerable amount of work left to be done to not only accurately showcase the diversity of the Black American experience, but to provide opportunities at all levels within the industry for Black creatives to have meaningful input and decision making authority.

There is nothing like the power of film or television to impart positive influences, said John, who works with national civil rights organizations, leading multicultural non-profits, film festivals, and congressional caucuses to advance and promote diversity, inclusion, and authentic cultural representation across the industry. “Which is why it’s so important that we have diverse stories and diverse storytellers to tell them, to show that we are much more connected than we are divided.”

The Combined 30: Recommended Movies to Watch.

Killer of Sheep (1977) – Charles Burnett

Eve’s Bayou (1996) – Kasi Lemmons

Crooklyn (1994) – Spike Lee

I am Not Your Negro (2017) – Raoul Peck

She’s Gotta Have It (1986) – Spike Lee

Poetic Justice (1993) – John Singleton

House Party (1990) – Reginald Hudlin

Moonlight (2016) – Barry Jenkins

The Five Heartbeats (1991) – Robert Townsend

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) – Behn Zeitlin

Pariah (2011) – Dee Rees

Soul Food (1997) – (George Tillman Jr.)

Brown Sugar (2002) – Rick Famuyiwa

Medicine for Melancholy (2008) – Barry Jenkins

Girls Trip (2017) – Malcolm D. Lee

Cooley High (1975) – Michael Schultz

School Daze (1988) – Spike Lee

Belle (2014) – Amma Asante

Beyond the Lights (2014) – Gina Prince-Bythewood

Love and Basketball (2000) – Gina Prince-Bythewood

If Beale Street Could Talk (2019) – Barry Jenkins

Antwone Fisher (2002) – Denzel Washington

A United Kingdom (2017) – Amma Asante

Think Like A Man (2012) – Tim Story

Creed (2015) – Ryan Coogler

Black Panther (2018) – Ryan Coogler

Creed II (2018) – Steven Caple, Jr.

The Brothers (2001) – Gary Hardwick

Something New (2006) – Sanaa Hamri

To Sleep with Anger (1990) – Charles Burnett

Featured image: (from left) Michael Block (LaKeith Stanfield) and Mae Morton (Issa Rae) in The Photograph, written and directed by Stella Meghie. Photo Credit: Sabrina Lantos/Universal Pictures

Training The Pups in Think Like A Dog

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Gil Junger, writer/director of Think Like a Dog, gave animal trainer Sarah Clifford a tough assignment. First, she had to train the title character, a shaggy dog named Henry, to do a variety of stunts that would allow the viewer to suspend disbelief that this dog was communicating telepathically with a kid. Second, find a way to make the dog and said kid, played by Gabriel Bateman, comfortable enough that we would believe they had been together for years. Third, to find a way to make Henry hold his head still and keep his eyes on the camera for extended takes. In an interview with The Credits, Clifford talked about some of the techniques she uses to allow a pup and a boy to appear like they really are mind-melding.

 

When the dog is in the title of the movie, you know the trainer plays a critical role. What were some of the biggest challenges of this film?

It’s funny, some of the things that look simplest on paper are some of the hardest things to train a dog to do. As the animal coordinator and one of the trainers, and you can’t just read the script and say, ‘Okay, I’m going to train the dog to do this trick and this trick.’ Fortunately, I have experience with talking dogs on movies and TV shows before, so I realized the complexity of it.

Most of the time we just train the dog to respond to cues like ‘look’ and ‘watch’ or ‘watch me.’  That’s the first step. When you train a dog with ‘watch me,’ you start very simply by holding a treat right to your forehead. When they make that eye contact, if you’re a clicker trainer, you can click and pay the dog. It takes time and multiple sessions. When you want to train a dog to look at an actor, you teach him to do the same process, except the dog is listening to you and the reward comes from the actor. You have to have that time to work with the dog and the actor, so the dog learns the behavior of listening to the trainer but focuses on somebody else. One of the most important things I told Gil was that we had to spend time with Gabriel Bateman, who plays Oliver, because the dog and the kid have to have that bond.

Sarah Clifford and her dog Wiley.
Sarah Clifford and Happy the Dog.

So it’s not enough that the dog gets to know and like the actor?

We really had to train Gabriel to learn the cues, too. He has to be willing to reward the dog because that’s really what the animals work for. Praise and love are also rewards, but the dog work for treats. You’re doing it over long hours, over and over again, so that’s what keeps them motivated.

What kind of camera tricks are deployed to help the dog seem like he’s actually communicating with Oliver?

Gil was really good about doing singles on the dogs where we could have just the trainer and the dog and a camera, and that’s hugely important for getting those reactions. Sometimes we used squeaker toys to get the little emotional reaction. We use words or little siren noises. Anything to evoke some kind of performance. In the animal training world, we call them noisemakers, little noises that we use to capture their attention. Sometimes you take a bag of treats and jiggle them over the lens.

What did you say to Gabriel to acclimate him to the dog?

It’s really important to me that the dog isn’t just staring at its’ trainer the whole time. I told Gabriel he would have to learn to become a trainer as well. You have to learn every cue. You have to tell her to sit, you have to tell her to speak, you have to learn our hand cues. You have to be able to give the dog treats. Gabriel’s so intelligent that he just instantly got it. He was great with the dogs, and they had a genuine bond. There was this one scene where they’re in the bedroom together and Henry leans in and just licks his face. You can’t train that! It was perfect timing, and we didn’t cue it. Those are the types of scenes you get when you have the time to let the animals and the actors bond. We like to train the animals and then step away, if we can, as much as possible, and that gets the best performance.

Gabriel Bateman in 'Think Like A Dog.' Courtesy Lionsgate.
Gabriel Bateman in ‘Think Like A Dog.’ Courtesy Lionsgate.

How do you know when you’re looking for a dog that he or she will be amenable to training?

Shelter dogs are always our first go-to. I always try to rescue. The main thing is personality. Having a dog that, of course, is people-friendly. High energy is a great thing for movie dogs. That high energy dog that’s almost too much to be somebody’s pet? Those dogs tend to be better at having a job, better at training. Because you can take that really crazy high energy dog, and you can train them to be calm, but you can’t take a dog who’s fearful and shy and low-energy [and reverse that]. You take all those instincts that a dog has and you use those as tools to train.

Think Like A Dog is available now for digital download, Blu-ray, and DVD.

Featured image: Madison Horcher (“Sophie”, Left) and Gabriel Bateman (“Oliver”, Right) in THINK LIKE A DOG. Courtesy Lionsgate. 

See the Trailer For Andy Samberg’s Sundance Record-Setter Palm Springs

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Way back four millennia ago, Palm Springs, a film directed by Max Barbakow and starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti, broke a Sundance sales record when it sold to Hulu and Neon for $17.5 million this past January. Now, you can check out the first trailer and see what all the buzz was about. Palm Springs finds Samberg and Milioti in an existential comedy set in the California desert that takes a beloved film conceit (more on that in a second) and adds a dash of irreverence and a slew of excellent performances. The basic outline is this: Nyles (Samberg) meets Sarah (Milioti) at a wedding, she’s the maid of honor but a total black sheep, and Nyles is a weirdo but in a likable, Sambergian way. They click. They head out to the beach at night and that’s when things get weird. Now look, if you want to know absolutely nothing more about this film—because the trailer gives away the conceit—stop here.

Okay, here’s the thing with Palm Springs—it’s a time loop movie. Like Groundhog Day, Nyles and Sarah are stuck in Palm Springs at this wedding venue, day after day after day.  No matter what they do, no matter how careless they are with their lives, they keep waking up on the day of the wedding.

When the movie premiered at Sundance, there was considerable effort by critics not to spoil the film’s Groundhog Day-like premise, but the trailer reveals that and more. It’s currently sitting at a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with Variety‘s Peter Debruge writing that “Palm Springs is to time-loop movies as Zombieland was to the undead genre: It’s an irreverent take on a form where earlier iterations were obliged to take themselves seriously.” Now, we’re not so sure that Harold Ramis’s Groundhog Day was taking itself that seriously, but we get his point. Yet Palm Springs isn’t just a time-loop story, it’s also a romantic comedy, a genre that has been on life support for a while now. The film works in that genre, too, as far as the critics are concerned. Hulu and Neon sure seem to think so.

So, see what all the fuss was about. Palm Springs will premiere on Hulu and in select drive-in theaters on Friday, July 10.

Featured image: L-r: Cristin Milioti and Andy Samberg in ‘Palm Springs.’ Courtesy Hulu.

The Batman & More Set For Warner Bros.’ Huge Virtual Event in August

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“The world only makes sense if you force it to,” Batman says in one of his more famous quotes, this from Frank Miller’s beloved miniseries “The Dark Knight Rises” (the quote was then used in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice). With that in mind, Warner Bros. has announced they’re launching a Comic Con-like mega-event—albeit virtual, this year—called DC FanDome, in an effort to force a little sense onto a non-sensical world. The event will take place online on August 22, beginning at 10 am PST, and will last for 24 hours. Anyone from anywhere can log in, for free (!!), and check out six different, fully programmed virtual worlds. This massive virtual event will give Warner Bros. a chance to hype some of their most hotly anticipated upcoming projects from their DC Multiverse, which includes films featuring Batman, Wonder Woman, and more. The six worlds include a Hall of Heroes, DC InsiderVerse, DC YouVerse, DC WatchVerse, DC KidsVerse, and DC FunVerse. That’s a lot of verses!

The FanDome promises to reveal a bunch of announcements about upcoming DC films, TV shows, games, and comic books. It will also include a chance for fans to hear directly from the people who create the content they love. This includes creators from Matt Reeves’ The Batman, the Dwayne Johnson-led Black Adam, Patty Jenkins‘ Wonder Woman 1984, and the release of the Snyder Cut, Zack Snyder’s long-awaited version of Justice League that’s set to be released on HBO Max in 2021.

Here’s an introductory tweet from DC Comics:

And that’s just on the film front. On the TV side, the DC FanDome will include creators from Batwoman, Black Lightning, DC’s Stargirl, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl and more. While Warner Bros.’ hasn’t released exact details yet, what’s guaranteed is virtual panels with directors, writers, and select cast members. We might even get our first glimpse at The Batman. 

Of the six different, fully-programmed worlds inside the virtual FanDome, it will be the Hall of Heroes where the main panels, reveals, and special programming will take place. Yet each one of the worlds will have its own never-before-seen stuff. For example, the DC YouVerse will highlight fan-generated content, while the DC WatchVerse will include hours of new content, panels, new footage, and more.

This being a global event, the FanDome will be available in 10 languages, including English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. The DC FanDome announcement follows the news, way back in April, that San Diego Comic-Con had been canceled for the first time ever, and would be offering an online version.

For more information on DC FanDome, visit their website here.

Featured image: An image from writer/director Matt Reeves ‘The Batman.’ Courtesy Reeves/Warner Bros.

Writer/Director JD Chua & Producer Juan Foo on Singapore’s First Creature Feature Circle Line

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JD Chua had the distinction of being director Michael Mann’s only intern when he was in Hollywood, the man who made, in a seven-year period, three of the best films of the 1990s—The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Heat (1995), and The Insider (1999). As a child, one of Chua’s favorite films was Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans. “I remember immersing myself in the laserdisc,” he says. “I didn’t care too much into knowing who the filmmaker was back then.”

Eventually, Chua would care. In fact, he’d seek Mann out in an intrepid, admittedly bonkers quest that ultimately paid off. Chua ultimately worked with Mann on Blackhat and powerhouse producer Jason Blum on Dark Skies. Chua returned to Singapore, where he directed the country’s very first creature feature, Circle Line. Then, like everyone else on the planet, Chua had to face a different kind of monster—the novel coronavirus—which caused an unprecedented global shutdown to the film and TV industry (and to so many other “non-essential” jobs). Suddenly Circle Line‘s May release was not happening.

JD Chau (at right, pointing) on the set of 'Circle Line.' Courtesy Joan Foo.
JD Chua (at right, pointing) on the set of ‘Circle Line.’ Courtesy Taipan Films Pte Ltd Singapore.

We’ve been talking to creatives all over the world to find out how they’ve been handling the stoppage in work, making the most of their quarantine, and their hopes for the future. Those interviews have included chats with Indonesian director Kamila Andini, Korean film critic Youn Sung-un, Indian filmmakers Tannishtha Chatterjee and Priyanka Singh, Filipino filmmaker Keith Sicat, and Thai filmmaker Nirattisai Ratphithak.

Today, we speak not only to Chua about his creature feature and how he’s handled his quarantine but to his producer Juan Foo, who schools us on what it’s like making films in Singapore. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

JD, tell me about your background—how did you get into filmmaking? 

I always think getting into any world is all about accessibility. Growing up, I was surrounded by movies. The foundation was built young for me. My parents love the movies, especially the serious ones. My earliest memories are of watching The Last Emperor in the cinema. I didn’t understand why they stuck a pearl in the Dowager’s mouth and the scene stuck with me. My father loved gangster films, and my mother loved musicals.

And which films were seminal for you?

During my formative years, I was drawn to the spectacle of Independence Day, Broken Arrow and Eraser, movies with loud explosions, and clear protagonists and antagonists.  Soon I matured into movies like Se7en, Bullitt, Silence of the Lambs. When Heat came along on VHS rental, I remembered being floored by it. Again, I didn’t know who made the film. Then, I saw one of my favorite films, The Insider. By then I had the Internet so I came to recognize one of my heroes, Michael Mann. By the time Mann’s Ali hit the screens in 2001, I became his diehard fan. I studied how his films were made and the people he worked with.

Little did you know at the time you’d end up interning for him. 

After graduating from film school, everybody was eager to make their next big project, aiming to win awards and recognition. I had a path to choose: make a film I want to make by pretending to know what I do not know, or travel and learn from the people who inspired me. I chose the latter. I actually flew halfway around the world to track down my hero Michael Mann to ask for an internship. I had very little resources, but it’s a risk I took because I knew that this is exactly what I wanted. It took me several weeks to find him, and I managed to persuade him to take me under his wing. Thinking back, I must have been truly insane. As a kid watching his films, I never thought a couple of decades later, I would work in his projects.

JD Chau (at right, arms crossed) on the set of 'Circle Line.' Courtesy Joan Foo.
JD Chua (at right, arms crossed) on the set of ‘Circle Line.’ Courtesy Taipan Films Pte Ltd Singapore.

I’d love to hear about some of your early work in film. How did you become a better filmmaker?

I believe having an ethical and strong character is important in being a better filmmaker. You’ll be better equipped to take risks and be daring enough to venture into the uncharted world. There will be actions where people will label you as insane. If you’re capable enough, you’ll spin it around and label yourself as driven. And this is also how you can contribute to your surroundings. Also, be good to the people you work with, genuinely, and don’t treat them as simply a step to your next aspiration.

Juan Foo, tell me about the Singapore film industry and what Circle Line‘s future looks like.

Juan Foo: The film industry here is like the Wild West. Anything goes, and if you succeed, you can be king for a few days. Flexibility over structure (read: no unions). It’s a small, closely-knit community trying to find their way around making films that culturally resonate, but also making commercial hits that can put Singapore on the movie-making map. The scalability of films and talent is a constant challenge. Filmmaking processes are available and comparatively affordable, but trapped in the ‘guerilla-indie’ production quality. There are some filmmakers who have a taste of big productions from working on Crazy Rich Asians and Westworld, which were partially shot in Singapore, and they’ve huge withdrawal symptoms after being part of those films.

How so?

They lament the gap in the budget and scale they had. Mostly, talented filmmakers survive with television work, corporate work, and commercials. A handful of filmmakers work solely in long-form. Funding is available at a very cursory level because the ecosystem of box office receipts sustaining studios is not mature yet. Many interesting cross-cultural stories that I believe are commercially viable exist, but a lack of producers and a small market limits greenlighting.

How are you handling the release of Circle Line now that it’s been delayed by COVID-19?

There was so much excitement and anxiety for Singapore’s first attempt at a monster-creature film. We did a pre-release teaser drop at Comicon Singapore last December to drum up momentum for our May release and we were on the clock to try to finish it on time. But COVID-19 happened and everything kind of stopped. We’re still seeking a good release date for the film among the Hollywood blockbusters edging us out and the Chinese films reserving the next pecking order.

Looking on the brighter side of the situation, we now have more time to refine and improve the film, and the delay also gives us some time to maneuver some longer-term plans of marketing and sales, which are crucial for any movie.

Do you think this pandemic will change the way you work? Or change the industry?

The pandemic has re-aligned some fundamental priorities. More thought processes in pre-production will now include more risk management considerations and anticipating and addressing problems. More emphasis on safety, and personal hygiene measures, which I think were taken for granted or dismissed as hassle.

Whether it changes the industry adversely, in terms of economics, I think that will be reliant on responses to the waves of the virus as it traverses the globe. There must be a concerted effort by everyone to take action and prevent the spread. I hope cinemas still will be something we look forward to patronizing. At the heart of all of this is telling and sharing stories with each other. Being a producer more on the development spectrum, this time-out from the daily grind also allowed me to go back to reading and ruminating on stories, historical events, and digesting them into materials that we can use for creative work. It also gave me some ‘me’ time to think of the future and what’s ahead. Development time is so crucial and often so absent that it literally took a circuit breaker to reign us in and allow us to reflect and recompose. Whether this pays off in the long term will remain to be seen, but time to sharpen stories is always valued.

Featured image: JD Chua on set of ‘Circle Line.’ Courtesy Taipan Films Pte Ltd Singapore.

Think Like a Dog Writer/Director Gil Junger on his Family Friendly Canine Comedy

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Think Like a Dog is a warm-hearted fantasy adventure about a boy who invents a contraption that enables him to read his dog’s mind. It is reminiscent of Disney live-action classics like The Absent-Minded Professor and The Shaggy Dog. In an interview, writer/director Gil Junger talked about the pleasures of ignoring the show business adage about never working with children or dogs and how the film is a love letter inspired by his own experience of re-connection to his family. Think Like A Dog is available now for digital download, Blu-ray, and DVD.

 

The traditional show business advice is “no children, no animals.”

I chose to ignore it because I wrote the film for my children. It was a love letter to my children, family, and my dog, believe it or not.

I was glad to see that you used real animals, not CGI.

I wanted the entire film to be authentic, and as believable as a talking dog movie could be. So right off the bat, there was never a consideration that the dog would have a mouth moving. No way. And in fact, the conceit of the film, which is that the boy has the science experiment by which he can end up hearing telepathically his dog’s thoughts — before I wrote the script, again with the aspiration of doing something that can feel believable and feel real, I actually did a bunch of research, including into terminology of what thought transfers could be. Also analog information to digital information, analog energy to digital energy, amplification of minutia, and the electrical currents in the brain.

Where did this research lead you?

I came across this article from a scientist in 1862 who was doing the exact same experiment on humans. He truly believed that thoughts are actually formed by electrical disturbances in the brain, and he truly believed that if he could create a device sensitive enough to measure the change in those little neurons, in theory, we should be able to amplify that and hear, in essence, what the other person is thinking. I think I screamed when I read who the scientist was: some guy named Alexander Graham Bell. It’s the truth.

Ah, he was no slouch in the invention department! And how was it to work with the dogs?

I hired a company that I know is incredibly good at training animals, and I said, “I know it’s an almost impossible ask, but, I really want to do whatever it takes to help the audience believe that this dog is connecting with this boy.” Now, here was what they really did that was amazing.  The instant Gabriel Bateman, the actor, showed up on set for rehearsals, they made sure that every moment when Gabriel was not on set working, he was with that dog, to the point where that dog went home with him to his hotel numerous nights to stay with him, to sleep with him, to hang out with him. It created a comfort level between him and the dog, and the trust level that I think you see in the film. Literally, as soon as I’d say “Cut,” the dog would just run into Gabriel’s lap because they just bonded. And Gabriel is so gifted. It’s bizarre. When he did my movie, he was 13, and just the conversations we’d have about life, and feelings, and emotions, and loss. It was like, whew! He’s incredibly bright. So those were two reasons why working with children and animals in this movie was a joy. Period.

L-r: Kunal Nayyar and Gabriel Bateman in 'Think Like A Dog.' Courtesy Lionsgate.
L-r: Kunal Nayyar and Gabriel Bateman in ‘Think Like A Dog.’ Courtesy Lionsgate.

I especially enjoyed seeing Kunal Nayyar as the tech billionaire who wants to steal the invention, a very different role from Raj on The Big Bang Theory.

It was actually the producers’ suggestion, which I thought was a great one. And then to his credit, he picked up the phone and called me, and he said, “Look, I really like this script, but I have a couple of questions for you and I wanted to talk to the director directly to see if we’re on the same page with this character. This guy is a bad guy. Why? What instinctually, emotionally causes him to be this bad, and this mean to kids?’ I thought that was a very insightful, deep question, to really take the character seriously and understand his thirst for hunger, and his quest for knowledge. I said, ‘Because as a businessman, once you have the ability to read someone else’s mind, you could out-negotiate anyone because you know what they’re thinking. What you could end up with is a monopoly on the most important thing there is to sell: knowledge.’ He was like, ‘I love that answer.’

Interestingly, he quoted one exchange in the script that made him want to do this movie. Megan Fox, who plays the mother, [says about her marriage], ‘We’ve kind of grown apart, and it’s like we’re two strangers in the same house.’ And the customer says, ‘What happened?’ And Megan Fox just looks at her and says: ‘Life.’ The reason I wrote that one word was because it’s true. At the time, I was in a marriage that was, I guess you could say falling apart. There wasn’t a huge argument or a big fight, or she cheated, or I cheated or any of that craziness. It was just, we got so distracted by adult human complications, we didn’t prioritize our love for each other, but we weren’t aware of that.

Which brings us back to one of the central themes in your film.

The perspective I was trying to highlight in the movie is: just come back to gratitude and appreciate what’s right in front of you. Not the car, not the house, not the job, not the promotion, none of that matters. It’s all inside. It’s also a lesson that I’ve learned. If you really take a look at who you are, and the gifts you have that you were born with, it is one of the belief structures that has made me, at 65, by far the happiest I’ve ever been. By far. The reason is that I’ve finally learned to love me. Me! And it’s amazing. My preset ideas of insecurities and why I’m not smart enough and why I’m not good looking enough, and why I’m not more successful, and all this crap that I absorbed as a kid, and then ended up believing, it formed a prism through which I’ve viewed life…but then finally, I just got tired of running from me. And what could have been all of those relaxing, peaceful moments of appreciation, filling it with projects, and with things I can achieve, and things I can learn, and things I can do. So it literally has been in the last five years, actually since I started writing this movie when I just went: I don’t need to prove to anyone that I’m a valuable person. I just need to believe it. It’s just the reason that we all deserve to be loved. It’s pretty simple. So, I tried to infuse the movie with that.

Featured image: Gabriel Bateman in ‘Think Like A Dog.’ Courtesy Lionsgate.

#blackAF Costume Designer Michelle Cole on Re-Teaming With Kenya Barris

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The creator of the hugely successful sitcom Black-ish, and its spin-offs Grown-ish and Mixed-ish, chose to step in front of the camera for #blackAF. The mockumentary series is Kenya Barris’ first project for Netflix. Based on his own life, Barris plays himself, alongside Rashida Jones as his wife Joya, in the show, which is now streaming. He’s an extremely wealthy TV showrunner with six kids, struggling with issues around race, class, and identity. The image he projects is integral to the themes explored in the show, so it’s fortunate that he had his long-time collaborator, Emmy-nominated costume designer Michelle Cole on hand to add her signature magic touch. We chat with her about what the clothes in the show represent, mining Barris’ own wardrobe and getting a kick out of going OTT with the designer labels.    

 

You and Kenya Barris have collaborated for years now since Black-ish first aired. What were the initial conversations you had about the concept for #blackAF and how clothing and style would play into the series considering it’s such a huge part of the show?

It’s probably been close to seven years now, working with Kenya. He’s very visual and I think that’s what makes him so unique and so great. As far as set, props, everything, down to the music, his hands are everywhere, all over it. So, I think when you work with someone like this, it steps up your game because he stays on top of fashion. You know, he has six kids and his first three kids are daughters.

Is it rewarding to work with someone who places such importance on costumes?

Kenya has a closet. I say this to everybody, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in anything twice. I really don’t. Maybe a t-shirt twice, but he has such a unique flair about his own personal look and he wears clothes extremely well, so that’s great when you have an actor that has fun with clothes. Kenya has a lot of fun with clothes. I love that about him.

The cast of #blackAF. Photo: Gabriel Delerme/Netflix
The cast of #blackAF. Photo: Gabriel Delerme/Netflix

Barris wears a lot of very high-end designer fashion on the show. How did you pull that together without breaking your budget?

When you have a first season show, the price point’s a little lower. We all want it to look great and we were able to spend some money, of course, but some of those sweatsuits are very expensive, so they were out of his closet, which was great. He played the part. He wanted to look good. At times we had scenes where he went a little bit over the top, and that was fun. That was fun to do because he’s a big character in the show and it is a show that is based on his life.

The clothing plays such a huge part in the show and obviously the coded nature of clothing is discussed in the storylines. Can you discuss what they represent in the show and in Black culture? Obviously style is more than just looking good to Barris and it really means something. How did you interpret that?

I think that culturally, we’ve always taken great pride in the way we look, whether we had the money or didn’t have the money. It’s part of who we are, part of our culture. I think most Black folks want to look great. We want our hair to look great, our jewelry. Kenya talks about his necklace [the thick gold chain that is the symbol of his identity crisis in the show] and I think that’s a cultural thing as well. I think it’s something really neat. I’ve done so many Black shows from In Living Color to Martin to The Bernie Mac Show, and I can tell you every Black show I’ve ever done, the cast always looks great. I can remember my grandmother pressing underwear and sheets when I was growing up in Kentucky. There was great pride and I think that is a big part of us.

Kenya Baris in episode 1 of #blackAF. Photo: Netflix.
Kenya Baris in episode 1 of #blackAF. Photo: Netflix.

A lot of the clothes that Kenya wears on the show are limited edition. Was there anything that you sourced that you were really excited about?

I loved his blue velour Gucci sweatsuit with the orange Gs all over it. Only certain people can wear that, you know? I’ve heard people say they’ve tried to find that sweatsuit and they can’t find it. I loved that.

L to R) KENYA BARRIS as KENYA BARRIS and RASHIDA JONES as JOYA in episode 4 of #BLACKAF. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX/NETFLIX © 2020
L to R) KENYA BARRIS as KENYA BARRIS and RASHIDA JONES as JOYA in episode 4 of #BLACKAF. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX/NETFLIX © 2020

Did you have a favorite outfit?

When he’s wearing silk shorts and a silk Gucci shirt on the beach in Fiji. That’s truly one of my favorite outfits. He won’t go into the ocean to save his life. Who does that? I think we did a great job of expressing him being a little bit over the top, a little bit eccentric. He’s chic, he’s urban.

L to R) RAVI CABOT-CONYERS as KAM, JUSTIN CLAIBORNE as POPS, KENYA BARRIS as KENYA BARRIS and SCARLET SPENCER as IZZY in episode 8 of #BLACKAF. Cr. GABRIEL DELERME/NETFLIX © 2020
L to R) RAVI CABOT-CONYERS as KAM, JUSTIN CLAIBORNE as POPS, KENYA BARRIS as KENYA BARRIS and SCARLET SPENCER as IZZY in episode 8 of #BLACKAF. Cr. GABRIEL DELERME/NETFLIX © 2020

Barris is playing himself, so he must have had strong opinions on what he would wear on the show. In what ways did he make the costumes his own?

You’re shocked when he comes out of his trailer because let’s just say you put three costumes in his trailer, he’ll take a t-shirt from one, and then maybe a pair of pants from another one and then sneakers from another one. He’ll do it his way. It’s okay because he’s a great dresser.

You have more freedom on Netflix to use logos and visible labels and things like that compared to network TV. Was that liberating for you?

I think it was so important for this show because it is so much about the cars, the music, the home, and the clothes. It was really fun and liberating to be able to go over the top. For example, we put the little one in Gucci sneakers with Gs all over them. You can’t do that on a major network. I thought that as far as the look of the show was concerned, we got really lucky to be able to use the logos.

With shows that have such broad appeal like Black-ish and Grown-ish, you’ve really had an opportunity to influence how people dress. You had a huge cultural impact in the 90s with In Living Color and the Fly Girls, even influencing a Karl Lagerfeld Chanel collection… does it feel as though you’re having another moment?

It’s funny because the biggest praise for me is from my peers. When #blackAF first premiered, I had so many texts and phone calls. Like, ‘Oh my God, it looks so good.’ It was kind of fun to see how everybody reacted to this show. It was such an honor to be really a part of it. I take each job because creatively they’re different. With the Fly Girls, we didn’t know In Living Color was going to burst the way that it did. No clue it was going to do that. And we didn’t have a clue that Grown-ish was going to just blow off the map with clothes and things. So, I think that you just do your best job. I go by intuition. I don’t wear clothes like that at all, so I think for me, it’s just my alter ego.

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

Bond is Back as No Time To Die Reveals Earlier-Than-Expected Release Date

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It looks like 007 will be returning for duty a little earlier than expected. Universal and MGM’s hotly-anticipated No Tim To Die has a brand new release date—again—and this time it’s good news. Director Cary Fukunaga and star Daniel Craig will get to reveal Craig’s last turn as her Majesty’s most lethal spy on November 20, 2020, here in the United States. This comes after the original release date of April 10 was put on hold due to the spread of COVID-19. No Time To Die was one of the first big-name films to move release dates, to November 25, 2020, back in early March. Yet a new update on Twitter revealed that Bond’s coming back a bit earlier:

This new release date is big news for Bond heads the world over, and marks yet another major film getting a fresh date. Warner Bros. has moved Christopher Nolan’s Tenet from July 17 to July 31, 2020, making Nolan’s latest the first major blockbuster to open since the pandemic changed everything in mid-March. Warner Bros. also moved Wonder Woman 1984 from August 14 to October 2, 2020. The Matrix 4, another massive Warner Bros. production, is now moving to April 2, 2022, from the original release date of May 21, 2021.

No Time To Die‘s late-November release date puts it at the start of the holiday season here, the same day Pixar releases their latest effort, Soul.  We already know that Craig’s last mission as Bond will be the longest film in the franchise’s history. No Time To Die picks up five years since the events in Spectre, with MI6’s legendary super spy nursing his wounds in Jamaica. “After five years of retirement, who has he become?” Fukanaga asked in a No Time To Die teaser. “He’s sort of a wounded animal struggling with his role as a double O. The world’s changed, the rules of engagement aren’t what they used to be. The rules of espionage are darker in this era of asymmetric warfare.“

Of course, Bond won’t stay retired for long. Once CIA agent Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) shows up, 007 plunges back into action. And with this amount of runtime to work with, he’ll have plenty of runway to see old friends like Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), old enemies like Blofeld (Christoph Waltz), meet new allies like Nomi (Lashana Lynch), and finally, deal with new threats. Specifically, Safin (Rami Malek), who, according to Fukanaga, will be challenging Bond and threatening everyone and everything he holds dear.

Featured image: James Bond (Daniel Craig) and Dr. Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) drive through Matera, Italy in NO TIME TO DIE,  a DANJAQ, and Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. Credit: Nicola Dove © 2019 DANJAQ, LLC AND MGM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Oscar-Winning Writer Kevin Willmott on Re-Teaming With Spike Lee For Da 5 Bloods

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What happens when four Black Vietnam vets re-unit in present-day Ho Chi Minh City to retrieve a CIA shipment of gold left behind in the jungle forty years earlier? As imagined by Spike Lee in his new Netflix film Da 5 Bloods, the old soldiers’ quest leads to carnage, flashbacks, greed, and nervous breakdowns. As with every Spike Lee film, Da 5 Bloods manages to be timely, too, thanks to Lee’s commitment to investigating how race shapes the lives of every American, whether they realize it or not.

The story was initially crafted by Los Angeles screenwriter Danny Bilson and his late partner Paul DeMeo and developed by Oliver Stone before making its way to Lee about three years ago. Lee then teamed up with writing partner Kevin Willmott to re-shape the dramatic thriller for African American characters played by Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Norm Lewis, and Chadwick Boseman. Blending influences from Apocalpyse Now and Treasure of Sierra Madre, 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.

Willmott, who won an Oscar for co-writing Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, spoke from his offices at the University of Kansas, where he teaches film history, to discuss Delroy Lindo’s transformative performance as a Trump-supporting Vietnam vet and Da 5 Bloods’ secret weapon: Marvin Gaye’s still-potent 1971 album “What’s Going On?” to enhance the emotional wallop of the film’s most affecting scenes.

 

Da 5 Bloods addresses American racism in an especially timely way right now in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. How’s it feel for your movie to be landing at this particular moment when people have taken to the streets to address the very themes dramatized in your movie?

You can never plan for these things but you always hope your film speaks to the problems in our society in some direct way. It’s great to see that Da 5 Bloods in many ways targets exactly what’s going on right now.

Da 5 Bloods draws on a classic hunt-for-treasure plot in the vein of a Treasure of Sierra Madre, but within that framework, you incorporate a lot of facts about the history of racism in America. How did you and Spike arrive at that balance between history lesson and dramatic tension?

The gold in the jungle part of the film came from Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo’s script. What Spike and I did was to link the story to the consciousness of Black soldiers in Vietnam fighting this unpopular war for rights they don’t have at home. That’s not new for Black soldiers, but what’s different about Vietnam is that there was a war going on back home for those rights. The fact that [civil rights] folks are marching, Dr. Martin Luther King is speaking out, the Black Power movement is starting to happen after his death, and the anti-war struggle too, so you have this whole turbulent thing happening in the United States that creates this whole other level of unity and love and brotherhood these Black soldiers feel for one another.

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

Each vet has his problems but the most damaged character has to be PTSD-afflicted Paul, the MAGA hat-wearing Trump supporter played by Delroy Lindo. What’s the psychology behind that character?

All of our main characters have totally legitimate grievances, but Paul is so angry and so estranged from his family, so unwilling to talk about his problems or get help—all these things isolate him and makes him feel like he’s gotten a raw deal from America and that’s why he’s a Trump supporter. I think a lot of these people have gotten a raw deal. But then they blame their problems on immigrants and they blame Black people, they blame gay people, all the mystical left-wing world of things that can be blamed. With people like Paul, Trump harvests all that unfocused anger and feeds it back to them. Some people feel like the world has left them behind, and in a bizarre way, there’s a small group of Black people who connect to that. A lot of them are military people. I grew up in a small town called Junction City Kansas. It’s connected to Fort Riley Kansas, which is where the Big Red One [Black infantry division] is based. I know these people, and like Paul, some of them are Black. That’s the sad reality.

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
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

Delroy Lindo had supporting roles in two previous Spike Lee movies but here in Da 5 Bloods, he takes it to a whole new level.

The minute Spike cast Delroy, I knew he’d be great mainly because he has such an amazing intensity, especially in the jungle scenes at the end where he’s by himself doing those monologues. I hope this role gets him the attention he deserves because Delroy nailed Paul and really knocked it out of the park.

The film references Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammed Ali, and Black Panthers including Angela Davis and Bobby Seale. In what ways do you see this earlier period of Civil Rights activism reflected this summer following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many other Black citizens.

One of the great things about this moment is that people have been able to take the horrific murder of George Floyd and hopefully turn it into something that will create change. In that sense, there’s a link to the horror of 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Bobby Kennedy’s death, the Democratic Convention and all that stuff you see in the film, where people were coming out of this trauma to build something to finally address the legacy of police brutality. I was a kid during that time but it feels very similar to what we’re seeing now. People are finally getting so tired of seeing these murders over and over again so they’re really motivated to make a change. That gives me hope.

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
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

Marvin Gaye’s soulful protest songs from his 1971 album “What’s Going On?” play a big role in Da 5 Bloods. Were these songs always part of the script?

From the very beginning, Spike said he’d use the whole Marvin Gaye album “What’s Going On?” in the movie and I just about blew a gasket because the idea was so great. Marvin Gaye’s brother was in Vietnam, writing him letters about it, so “What’s Going On?” comes out of the experiences of soldiers who saw the horror of Vietnam and going through all this rejection, not being able to find jobs when they came back home. Black veterans specifically had a hard time of it because people would say to them “Why were you over there fighting when you should have been back home fighting?” It’s almost like Marvin Gaye’s music was composed for the film. We’d go through the script saying ‘This scene is about this song’ and ‘That scene is about that song.’

Spike Lee has one of the most distinctive voices in American cinema. Having collaborated with him on BlackKKlansman, Chi-Raq, and now Da 5 Bloods, what’s Spike like to work with?

He’s great to work with. The thing I love most about Spike is that he knows what he wants so there’s never miscues about the intent and purpose in what we’re trying to do. I think we have kind of a natural shorthand. And the other thing is that Spike truly cares about the cause. He really does care about changing the world through the power of film. That’s what I love about film, and so does Spike. It’s always great when we can do something that speaks to the world in some kind of way.

Da 5 Bloods is available now on Netflix.

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

Composer Terence Blanchard on Scoring Spike Lee’s Must-See New Epic Da 5 Bloods

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Spike Lee’s films’ timeliness speaks to his prescience, and to his fearless, decades-long willingness to examine the continued and persistent injustice experienced by Black Americans. His new film Da 5 Bloods lands in the midst of a pandemic disproportionately affecting Black, Hispanic, Latino and Indigenous communities, and a wave of demonstrations protesting police brutality and systemic racism against Black people by those who are sworn to protect all Americans following the murder of George Floyd. Composer and longtime 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. The film begins streaming today, June 12, on Netflix.

It has proven a successful formula, as exampled by Blanchard’s many awards and nominations from their work together, most recently with BAFTA and Oscar nominations and a Grammy win for BlacKkKlansman. The Credits 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.

 

The album What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye figures prominently in Da 5 Bloods. How did that influence you in creating the score?

It’s interesting with Spike’s films, he uses the source material in a way that lets you know the timeframe and gives you a flavor of the period. What it does for me, when it comes to Marvin Gaye, obviously, it inspires me to be better. What I tried to do with the score is to make the film timeless, and allow the source material to be the frame that sets the period.

"Da 5 Bloods" scoring session with Terence Blanchard and Spike Lee on Wednesday, October 30, 2019 at Sony Studios. Photo by Matt Sayles for Netflix @msayles www.mattsaylesphoto.com
“Da 5 Bloods” scoring session with Terence Blanchard and Spike Lee on Wednesday, October 30, 2019 at Sony Studios. Photo by Matt Sayles for Netflix

Any art can be an act of consciousness-raising, and that’s certainly true for artisans working on a Spike Lee movie. How does your work reflect that intension? 

Just by dealing in the truth of my own experiences, and in my own truths in terms of how they reflect the characters and the story. I remember the way I created the introduction to Malcolm X was remembering an experience I had as a kid. I was in a summer jazz program in the park, and a person who grew up in a church knowing Martin Luther King Jr. Somebody put on a record of Malcolm X, about ‘the blue-eyed devil’ and saying that the revolution is going to have blood. People were cheering, and it scared me to death. That’s where the heartbeat in the intro came from for Malcolm X. It’s related to my actual experience of hearing one of his speeches for the first time. The same thing applied in Da 5 Bloods. I’m old enough to have had uncles in the Vietnam War who told their stories. One scene that captures the emotion for me is the one where Martin Luther King Jr. dies. I always thought about the irony of these guys putting their lives on the line for a country that doesn’t really give a sh*t about their lives. While they are doing that, the person that’s fighting for their rights to just be is murdered. They are out there protecting the people who, in their own country, are actually killing them. The irony of that is incredible, and yet they still did their jobs. That speaks to their heroism, their bravery, and their integrity. Those are all the things that are floating through my mind while I’m writing the music for these guys. I always try to make sure that I draw on my own experience.

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

There’s a wind instrument used in a number of cues that is really haunting. What is it, and how did it wind up in the score? 

It’s called a Duduk. The guy who played it is Pedro Eustache. He’s an amazing reed player. He’s one of those freak of nature dudes who can play hundreds of instruments. When he came in, he immediately fit the film, and we started adding him to places we didn’t originally have him. He brought a certain color and tone to the film that was perfect.

This is one of your most elegiac scores. It feels like it is expressing loss of innocence, the emotion of these Black men coming back from Vietnam to both racism and rejection, and the emotion of what’s happening out there right now. Can you talk about that in terms of the film?

There is the sense, when working on Spike Lee films, that these films are much bigger than us as individuals. The importance of his movies is incredible. My contribution is just writing and putting notes on a page. These guys are giving their lives. The least I can do is pay attention, and try to do my job to the best of my ability. Spike gives me the ability to do that. When I look at what’s going on in this country emotionally, that helps to drive my work too. With BlacKkKlansman, I think what shook everybody up was that montage at the end. You watch the movie and you think, ‘that was then, not now’. Then you look at the montage, and realize, ‘no, it’s right now.’ I think that’s what happens with this film Da 5 Bloods. You can watch this movie and think, ‘That was a hell of a period’. Then, you look at Delroy Lindo’s character, what he’s dealing with, and really, we are still struggling with the same issues. We have a country that likes to pride itself on being a place that is more progressive than it actually is.

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
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

Spike is conscious and very aware of what’s going on, and that’s the thing that makes it an honor to work on his films. We are trying to make these statements that are much broader than the films themselves. In terms of subjects he examines, it keeps coming back to the same thing. Aren’t people tired of dealing with this? We’ve gotten to the point now where we are all asking ‘why don’t we just fix this because your approach is not working.’ That’s the beautiful thing about watching the people in these demonstrations and protests. I love seeing people from all different backgrounds protesting this injustice because they know. It’s almost like they’re saying ‘we are not going to have this sh*t on our watch, and it’s our turn with this country, so we’re going to nip this in the bud right now.’

What is the most joyful aspect of working with Spike Lee?

He’s brilliant. This guy is unique. He has his own style, and he stretches himself with every project. He doesn’t rest on his success. He doesn’t just sit and think he’s done. No. He’s always trying to push the envelope. Like any person with curiosity, he’s always trying to better himself and learn. That makes everyone he works with reach a little higher with every project. He also gives us a lot of room. He trusts us to the point where he gives us room to do our thing. When anyone that brilliant puts that much trust in you, you just can’t f*ck it up.

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

Watch Regina King & Damon Lindelof’s Peabody Award Acceptance Speech for Watchmen

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HBO received four Peabody Awards this year, which tied it for the most of any cable network or streaming platform. The awards went to three of their very best series—Chernobyl, Succession, and Watchmen—and the documentary True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality. For Watchmen, one of 2019’s best shows, period (remember 2019?), creator Damon Lindelof and his star Regina King accepted the award in a charming video from their homes that we’ve embedded below for your viewing pleasure. The series was a brilliant, bold adaptation of Alan More and Dave Gibbons’ masterwork graphic novel, with Lindelof and his team using their iconic story as a launching pad to explore race in America. In fact, the entire engine of Watchmen‘s story was built upon the 1921 massacre of black residents of Tulsa—which we first see through the eyes of Will Reeves [Danny Boyd Jr.], and upon which the entire, multigenerational saga churns.

The Peabody Awards called Watchmen a “frank, provocative reflection on contemporary racialized violence, the role of police, and how Americans understand their place in the world after a large-scale disaster.” It’s important to note that King and Lindelof’s acceptance speeches were filmed before George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and the subsequent protests against police brutality that rose up around the country, and the world. Yet because Watchmen deals directly with racism and the often un-taught massacre in Tulsa, both King and Lindelof’s speeches don’t seem delivered from another planet.

“This show not only evoked thought and conversation but exposed history that had been forgotten, all while we were able to entertain,” King says.

“Tulsa became the foundation of a new interpretation of Watchmen, reframing the traditional superhero origin story, born not from the aftermath of an exploding fictional planet but from the ashes of a very real place in Oklahoma that was erased from history 100 years ago,” Lindelof says. “It is in the memory of the lost lives of Greenwood — not victims, but mothers and sons and fathers and daughters and doctors and lawyers and journalists and veterans — that we dedicate this award.” Lindelof also notes that it was his creative partners that helped make Watchmen such a must-see, and ultimately led to all the accolades. He ends his portion thanking his team, “all of whom agreed this was not my story to tell, so they stepped forward and told it themselves, with candor, authenticity, and grace. I have never been more honored in my life to shut the hell up and listen.”

Check out King and Lindelof’s acceptance speech here:

Featured image: Damon Lindelof and Regina King on the set of ‘Watchmen.’ Photograph by Mark Hill

Director Daniel Karslake on the Shifting Battle for LGBTQ Equality in For They Know Not What They Do

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Documenting the contemporary gay and transgender experience of young Americans and their families through the lens of religion isn’t easy. First, there’s the matter of finding interview subjects. For the follow-up to his Oscar-shortlisted documentary For the Bible Tells Me So, which focused on the homophobia of the religious right, filmmaker Daniel Karslake met with about thirty different families before matching with the four subjects and their parents at the center of For They Know Not What They Do, which begins streaming on June 12. Karslake alternates their experiences coming out or transitioning with testimony from progressive religious leaders like Bishop Gene Robinson and Reverend Dr. Jacqui Lewis, while showing what his protagonists are up against via ample footage of anti-LGBTQ religious services and political rhetoric delivered in the name of the so-called religious freedom movement. Why only footage? Nobody from the movement would agree to be interviewed. Which leads us to Karslake’s most pressing imperative: getting a range of familial experiences on camera, as they relate to different approaches to Christianity, and coming out the other side with an empathy-inducing portrait. For They Know Not What They Do accomplishes this feat in a deeply moving way.    

The McBrides: Life-long Presbyterians, David and Sally McBride were shocked when their youngest boy came out to them as a transgender woman.
The McBrides: Life-long Presbyterians, David and Sally McBride were shocked when their youngest boy came out to them as a transgender woman.

With a shared focus on contemporary gay and transgender experiences against the backdrop of a right-wing backlash, Karslake’s interviewees include: Sarah McBride, the first transgender person to address the Democratic National Convention, and her Presbyterian parents; Vico Báez Febo, a young gay Latinx man and his loving, Catholic Puerto Rican parents; Elliot Porcher, a non-binary rising college student from a multi-racial household; and finally, Rob and Linda Robertson, evangelicals who advocated for conversion therapy for their son, Ryan, a decision that would prove deadly. For They Know Not What They Do is heartbreaking, but it’s also full of warmth, with Karslake elegantly demonstrating that the arc of a Christian family with a gay or transgender child can turn out tragic or triumphant, but the outcome will strongly hinge on individual interpretations of faith.

For every exquisitely painful moment wherein the Robertsons relive how their beliefs led Ryan to conversion therapy, addiction, and overdose, you have the Báez-Febos, whose religious faith comes across just as unshakeable, but who never doubt their son, just as he is, as a child of God. While for a secular viewer, it’s easy to simply wish away the parental religion in support of their children, Karslake’s achievement is to benevolently convey how difficult wholesale religious divestment would be for most of his subjects. Instead, contrasting families like Sarah’s, Elliot’s, and Vico’s with the Robertsons’ growth and redemption, the film is an insight into how faith and LGBTQ acceptance can fully co-exist. The message is paramount to the director’s intended audience. “You can’t make a movie that changes hearts and minds of those people who are not yet with us unless you meet them where they are,” Karslake says. “I made the movie for the Robertsons of the world, who don’t yet know they have a gay or trans son or daughter, so that they won’t make that same choice. Because it happens so much more than we know.”

For its audience as a whole, For They Know Not What They Do is also an effective warning about the U.S. political and religious right, which, having lost their battle against marriage equality, have refocused their attacks on transgender rights. While raising money within the gay community to make the documentary, Karslake faced some skepticism. “Why do we need another film about this?” was the general question, but that moment of complacency has already passed. “The good news is that a lot of that has shifted back, and people get that the fight for equality on a lot of levels is not over by far,” he says.

Several of Karslake’s upcoming projects expand into less-explored areas of that fight. He is executive producing Robert, a documentary about Robert Biedron, the first openly gay man to run for president in Poland, where about a third of the country has declared itself an “LGBTQ-free zone.” He’s also on the producing team for 1946, the titular year that an error led to the word “homosexual” being added to the Bible for the first time, leading to unquantifiable wreckage. Karslake’s projects have a tendency to resonate with the fight for social justice today, whether they reflect on contemporary battles or shed light on lessons from history. We’re particularly looking forward to Hitler’s Man in Hollywood, the director’s first narrative project. The subject? Georg Gyssling, a Nazi envoy to Los Angeles who, from 1933 through 1940, successfully repressed anti-German sentiment and positive portrayals of Jewish characters in every major studio film to come out of the U.S., the supposed land of the free.

To see For They Know Not What They Do, you can access the streaming link through supporting a local theater here.

Featured image: VICTOR BAEZ & ANNETTE FEBO, WHOSE CATHOLIC TRADITION AND PUERTO RICAN UPBRINGING GREATLY CONCERNED THEIR GAY SON, VICO. Courtesy DK Works.

Review Roundup: Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods is a Timely, Must-See Epic

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“Da 5 Bloods feels as timely as a minute ago,” writes the San Jose Mercury News‘s Randy Myers in his review. That often seems true of a Spike Lee joint. He has an uncanny ability to capture the moment in films that are often set in the past. He did as much with his stellar, Oscar-winning BlacKkKlansman, and now it appears he’s made another stunningly relevant film in Da 5 Bloods, this one set partially during the Vietnam war.

Perhaps it’s not so uncanny, though. Lee has been making prescient films about the realities of life for Black people in America for decades, from his game-changing Do The Right Thing through documentaries, searing biopics, heist films, romances, an adaptation of an ancient Greek play set in modern Chicago, and more. Spike Lee is an American institution, and there is no filmmaker more attuned to the realities of this country and our current moment than he is. That he made Da 5 Bloods long before our current national reckoning with police brutality against Black Americans and systemic racism yet the film still feels as “timely as a minute ago” should not be surprising. The reviews are in, and there is widespread agreement that Da 5 Bloods is yet another must-see Spike Lee joint.

Da 5 Bloods focuses on four Vietnam war veterans returning to the country to search for the remains of their squad leader (played by Chadwick Boseman), and, while they’re there, to dig up a huge cachet of gold they buried during the war. Lee once again blends archival footage throughout, and stages the scenes of Boseman and the four soldiers during the war in a format that appealingly recalls films from the era, like Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Joining Boseman are Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, and Isiah Whitlock, Jr.

Here’s a spoiler-free glimpse at what the critics are saying. Da 5 Bloods will stream on Netflix on June 12:

Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post: “Its moments of stinging insight and soaring cinematic rhetoric once again prove why Spike Lee might be America’s most indispensable filmmaker.”

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone: “Spike Lee’s game-changing Vietnam epic lobs a grenade at systemic racism that speaks to black history from slavery to George Floyd. Lee has made more than a soul-stirring film for our time. He’s made one for the ages.”

Justin Chang of Variety: “Here Lee reminds us – as he did in his recent, galvanizing “BlacKkKlansman” – that his notorious powers of provocation are inextricable from his often under-appreciated skills as a storyteller.”

Bilge Ebiri of New York Magazine: “It is one of the greatest films Spike Lee has ever made.”

Chris Evangelista of Slashfilm: “As he’s done so many times before, with BlacKkKlansman being the most recent example, Lee is able to wrap his messaging up in an entertaining package, crafting what could be considered a war pic and a heist story that has so much more on its mind.”

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

Watch The Final Face-Off in Jaws Ahead of the 45th Anniversary

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We’re rapidly approaching the 45th anniversary of the film that turned summer into blockbuster season—Steven Spielberg‘s seminal Jaws. Before Jaws, summer was not synonymous with not Hollywood’s biggest, brashest blockbusters. Then on June 20, 1975, a 28-year old Spielberg delivered a film that changed the calculus of how movies are distributed. Adapted from Peter Benchley’s novel by Carl Gottlieb, Spielberg’s game-changing thriller about a rogue great white with a taste for human flesh marks the moment the industry changed. Once Jaws took a massive bite out of the box office and the imaginations of moviegoers, the summer blockbuster was born.

If you want to relive the final climactic showdown between Brody (Roy Scheider), Quint (Robert Shaw), and Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), Universal Pictures has made the entire 10-minute face-off between man and Carcharodon carcharias (the scientific name for the great white shark, naturally) available on YouTube. We’ve embedded it below for your viewing pleasure.

The reason Universal has done this is not only because of the pending 45th anniversary but because for the first time ever Jaws is available in 4K. If you pony up for the full package 4K Ultra HD package, it comes with a 44-page collectible booklet that includes storyboards, rare photos, and more. For you Jaws scholars out there, the new release boasts three hours worth of bonus features, including deleted scenes and outtakes, a featurette on the legacy of the film, a “Making Of” featurette, and the simple fact that you’ll be seeing Jaws in its most vivid iteration yet.

Check out that final shark attack here:

Featured image: American actor Richard Dreyfuss (left) (as marine biologist Hooper) and British author and actor Robert Shaw (as shark fisherman Quint) look off the stern of Quint’s fishing boat the ‘Orca’ at the terrifying approach of the mechanical giant shark dubbed ‘Bruce’ in a scene from the film ‘Jaws’ directed by Steven Spielberg, 1975. The movie, also starring Roy Scheider and Lorraine Gary, was one of the first ‘Summer Blockbuster’ films. (Photo by Universal Pictures courtesy of Getty Images)

A Fun GIF Reveals Into The Spider-Verse 2 Has Begun Production

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For fans of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse—and there are millions of us—some good news almost snuck by us on Monday. The lead animator on the film’s highly anticipated sequel, Nick Kondo, quietly sent out a tweet alerting the world to the fact that Into the Spider-Verse 2 had begun production. We’ve known for quite a while now that the sequel to Sony’s Oscar-winning film was slated for an April 2022 release date, but since then the world has changed and absolutely nothing has been certain. Now we know that Into the Spider-Verse 2 has swung back into production, directed by Joaquim Dos Santos (Avatar: The Last Airbender) from a script by David Callaham (The Expendables), with a new release date.

Kondo’s tweet includes a cool GIF:

Like nearly every other major production, Into the Spider-Verse 2 has a new release date—October 7, 2022. That’s only a six-month difference from the original premiere date. The folks we know who are definitely involved in Into the Spider-Verse 2 along with Kondo, Dos Santos, and Callaham are Shameik Moore, set to return as Miles Morales, and producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Pretty much everything else about the film is under wraps, including who will be returning from the gangbusters cast. One imagines many of Miles’ old pals will be back, including Jake Johnson as Peter B. Parker, Hailee Steinfeld as Gwen Stacy, John Mulaney as Spider-Ham, Kimiko Glenn as Peni Parker, and Nicolas Cage as Spider-Man Noir.

While Into the Spider-Verse 2 gets back to production, it joins what is now being called the Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters, which includes Tom Holland’s Spidey films, Venom, and Venom: Let There Be Carnage and the upcoming Morbius. 

Featured image: Peni (Kimiko Glen), Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), Peter Parker (Jake Johnson), Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage) in Sony Pictures Animation’s SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE.

The Many Lives of Indonesian Director Kamila Andini

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Talking with multi-award-winning Indonesian filmmaker Kamila Andini might lead one to believe that she either possesses the power of time travel or that she’s in some way leading parallel lives, such is her unbelievably heavy workload.

When Indonesia imposed stay at home restrictions, Andini had just arrived back from Melbourne, Australia, where she had staged a theatrical performance, rich in local Indonesian traditional dance, of her 2017 film The Seen and Unseen (Sekala Niskala).

She’s now mid-edit on her latest feature film Yuni, speaking regularly with her Thailand-based editor, Lee Chatametikool. “We do Zoom meetings. Right now, it’s his to edit. We’re taking it slow, given the situation, but we’ll have to figure out how and when we’ll be able to sit in the same room together.”

Contemporaneously, she’s writing a new script, Nana (working title), and inviting investors to get on board the project. “In the beginning, I thought this (the lockdown) was going to be easy and that this would be a good time to write at home, but I have little kids (6 and 3) at home, and it’s all on me!”

Like nearly every other industry, filmmakers and TV creators have undergone an unprecedented global shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. We’ve been talking to creatives all over the world to find out how they’ve been handling the stoppage in work, making the most of their quarantine, and their hopes for the future. Those interviews have included chats with Korean film critic Youn Sung-un, Indian filmmakers Tannishtha Chatterjee and Priyanka Singh, Filipino filmmaker Keith Sicat, and Thai filmmaker Nirattisai Ratphithak.

Kamila Andini
Kamila Andini

For Andini, writing screenplays while home-schooling two young ones may not reflect an advisable recipe for work/home life balance, but it doesn’t stop there. She must also find time in the daily schedule to run a media production company, Fourcolours Films, which she runs with husband and sometimes co-creator Ifa Isfansyah. “We are using this time to reflect and try things we’ve not tried before. We’re developing a lot of story ideas, exploring genres, though we don’t know if we’ll ever get to produce them or not.”

Changed conditions have motivated Andini, and fellow filmmakers, to think differently about their approach to production. “How do we create with limited resources? What can we do within a studio, with minimal crew, with intimate kind of stories?” Once production is allowed, “No one will have access to a big budget.”

While Jakarta and Yogyakarta host much of the filmmaking in Indonesia, Andini has a passion for telling stories set in East Indonesia and further afield. Her 35-minute short film Memoria (2016) told the story of survivors of sexual abuse in Timor Leste. She joins regular Zoom meetings with the communities in the Eastern parts of Indonesia. She believes it is important to capture authenticity in her work and uses her craft as a voice for the people whose stories are rarely told. She’s excited by the idea that she can achieve that with a small crew in a way that meets the new requirements of shooting during the time of the Covid-19.

As if her plate was not yet full enough, Andini and Isfansyah administrate a film school – Jogja Film Academy. Founded six years ago, the school now has the necessary government approvals to operate as a fully-fledged business. “We started with 30 students, and now have 120 students. It runs quite well, even in these conditions. Ifa is still teaching classes (online)”.

The venture, like others pursued by Andini and Isfansyah, has the under-privileged in mind. “In Jogja, the cost of living is not as expensive as Jakarta, so we’ve tried to build a film school that is accessible to students from less-comfortable backgrounds.” The school caters to students 18 and up, with a focus on the art in preference to the more technical aspects of filmmaking, which can be cost-prohibitive. Many come to study from remote areas across Indonesia.

We wrap up our conversation with the happy recollection that Andini’s films have achieved much success at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Her latest film Yuni is a recipient of the 2018 MPA APSA Academy Film Fund. Her feature films The Mirror Never Lies (2012), won the Best Children’s Feature Film in 2012 and Seen and Unseen (2017), won the APSA for Best Youth Feature.

 

Similarly, Ifa Isfansya’s feature Abracadabra (2019), won a feature film pitch-dating competition run by the MPA, Asia Pacific Screen Awards, and Busan International Film Festival in 2015. His feature Memories of My Body (2018), was also a recipient of an MPA APSA Academy Film Fund development grant in 2013 and was directed by Kamila’s father, Garin Nugroho. It went on to win the Cultural Diversity Award under the patronage of UNESCO at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards in 2018.

Whatever the future holds, you can be sure that Andini will be ready—and very, very busy.

Featured image: DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES – DECEMBER 11: Kamila Andini poses during a portrait session at the 14th annual Dubai International Film Festival held at the Madinat Jumeriah Complex on December 11, 2017 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for DIFF)