Page 188 – Motion Picture Association

Good Deeds Give us Reason to Hope (And Applaud)

Posted on April 7, 2020April 9, 2020 by babrams

If you’re lucky enough to be able to social distance and healthy enough to “simply” worry and absorb a relentless amount of bad news, then you’re probably primed for a little bit of positivity. If you live in a city where there’s nightly applause for our heroic healthcare workers, you’ve gotten a taste of how good it feels to take a moment to marvel at the courage and compassion of people all around us. People we usually don’t think about that much about. While we understandably focus on those in charge, it’s the “average” American who has stepped up, big time, in our collective moment of unprecedented uncertainty and fear. Regardless of your politics, if there’s one thing everyone is in agreement on, it’s how incredible the people on the frontlines of this pandemic have responded to this historic, terrifying challenge.

There’s also been a long-overdue reconsideration of what it means to be a “skilled” worker. Millions of us now realize that the people working at our grocery stores, delivering our food and medicine, cleaning up our hospitals, and doing all the jobs that literally keeps our society functioning are essential. They’re the ones who are not only supposed to leave their homes and apartments during this pandemic but the people we rely on to do so.

When it comes to the entertainment industry, there have been wonderful acts of solidarity, kindness, and creative problem solving to savor. On the kindness front, you can’t do much better than John Krasinski’s now beloved, DIY YouTube series Some Good News. Krasinski, Emily Blunt, and their family have opened up their home to deliver heartwarming, funny, and, per the title’s promise, very positive episodes. Whether they’re highlighting healthcare workers across the globe or rounding up the entire original cast of Hamilton to sing for a young girl who missed her opportunity to see the show due to the coronavirus, Some Good News has become hugely popular for a reason.

Or how about how costume designers have stepped up in a major way to sew masks, gowns, and other protective clothing for healthcare professionals fighting the spread of the virus? While the industry has seen productions frozen and premieres pushed back months, workers and companies alike have stepped up to do their part. “The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees union has mobilized an army of costume designers and wardrobe workers to fashion masks from donated fabric and other materials,” the Los Angeles Times‘ Anousha Sakoui writes.

Meanwhile, Apple has also been working to help healthcare workers, sourcing 20 million N95 masks and preparing to make one million face shields, per week. Then there are the medical shows like ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, The Good Doctor, and Station 19, as well as Fox’s The Resident, who have all turned over items in their wardrobes, including the crucial N95 masks, to hospitals. There are plenty of stories like this.

Studios and media companies are pitching in to deploy their expertise in entertainment and education to help kids who suddenly find themselves learning from home. One such example is National Geographic‘s new NatGeo @ Home initiative, which supplies videos, science experiments, quizzes, and classroom resources.

Or how about our late-night TV hosts, from Samantha Bee to Stephen Colbert to Trevor Noah, who have adapted to the shuttering of their production studios to deliver full episodes remotely, from the hosts’ respective homes. These episodes have been charmingly unslick, often very funny, and have leavened the laughs with crucial information from experts.

Also on the programming front, HBO has made 500 hours worth of their programming free. If you haven’t gotten around to watching The Wire but always wanted to, now seems like a good time.

Then there’s the PSAs coming from major studios and stars. In collaboration with the Ad Council, these PSAs have been broadcast across the studios’ wide array of channels, from the Disney Channel’s YouTube page in which popular stars of kid’s shows explain the importance of social distancing to fans, to the videos produced by NBCUniversal, available in both English and Spanish, focused on sharing crucial information with high-risk populations and the general public about protecting themselves and others. ViacomCBS’s #AloneTogether videos have featured everyone from Trevor Noah to 68 Whiskey‘s Gage Golightly.

Yes, we are living in frightening times. For many of us, our number one goal right now is to keep our healthcare workers and essential employees safe by staying home. We have, understandably, used at least some of our quarantine time to despair. So, it’s perhaps a healthy thing for us to remember that there are good stories out there, too, and daily acts of courage and kindness to applaud.

Featured image: NANTWICH, UNITED KINGDOM – APRIL 07: A show of rainbow coloured hands made by local children, in support of keyworkers and the NHS, adorns a grass verge covered in Spring flowers on April 07, 2020 in Nantwich, United Kingdom. There have been around 50,000 reported cases of the COVID-19 coronavirus in the United Kingdom and 5,000 deaths. The country is in its third week of lockdown measures aimed at slowing the spread of the virus. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Chris Hemsworth is a Mercenary With Nothing to Lose in Extraction Trailer

Posted on April 7, 2020April 18, 2021 by babrams

Perhaps what we need right now, those of us lucky enough to be able to stay home and practice social distancing, is a good, old-fashioned action flick. Something big. Something relentlessly entertaining. Something starring a well-known and liked star and written, directed and produced by folks who know their way around a spectacle. Well, we’ve got all that in spades in Extraction, Netflix’s upcoming thriller starring Chris Hemsworth, and produced and written by Hemsworth’s directors in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, Joe and Anthony Russo (the script comes from Joe.) Hemsworth stars as Tyler Rake, a black market mercenary going on a suicidal mission to rescue the kidnapped son of a big-time crime boss.

Directed by Sam Hargrave, longtime stunt coordinator on many of Marvel’s biggest films (he was both stunt coordinator and second unit director on Infinity War and Endgame), Extraction looks like the kind of relentless action flick we could use right now. Hemsworth’s Rake manages to capture the son (Rudhraksh Jaiswal), but that’s only the start of his issues. Getting him to his destination alive will be next to impossible unless the youngster listens very carefully to everything Rake tells him to do.

The action set pieces in the trailer look as good as you’d expect coming from someone with Hargrave’s background, and the chemistry between Hemsworth and Jaiswal seems winning. It’s got a bit of a Triple Frontier vibe going for it, only perhaps a little less brooding and a bit more mismatched buddy flick.

Extraction arrives on Netflix on Friday, April 24th. Check out the trailer below:

Here’s the official synopsis:

Synopsis: Tyler Rake ( Chris Hemsworth) is a fearless black market mercenary with nothing left to lose when his skills are solicited to rescue the kidnapped son of an imprisoned international crime lord. But in the murky underworld of weapons dealers and drug traffickers, an already deadly mission approaches the impossible, forever altering the lives of Rake and the boy. An action-packed, edge-of-your-seat thriller directed by Sam Hargrave, EXTRACTION is an AGBO Films and TGIM Films, Inc. production, produced by Joe Russo, Anthony Russo, Mike Larocca, Chris Hemsworth, Eric Gitter, and Peter Schwerin.

Featured image: Chris Hemsworth in EXTRACTION. Photo by Jasin Boland/Netflix.

Little Fires Everywhere Cinematographer Jeffrey Waldron on Crafting Chaos Beneath the Surface

Posted on April 7, 2020April 7, 2020 by babrams

One of the many, many odd things about life mid-pandemic is how suddenly bizarre it is to watch shows and films that depict people touching, hugging, kissing, and gathering in large numbers. Even the folks who just filmed these series agree. There’s a kind of pre-coronavirus surreality to it, and if the show or movie doesn’t hold your attention, you can, at least for this viewer, find yourself more invested in how weird it is to see people cavalierly not keeping their distance than you are in the actual story.

This kind of COVID-19 related preoccupation is not an issue, however, while watching Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere. An adaptation of Celeste Ng’s 2017 bestselling novel, Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington bring their considerable star power to this tale of suburban intrigue. Witherspoon plays Elena Richardson, a rich, white mother of four living in the suburban utopia of Shaker Heights, Ohio, where order and harmony are practically a canonical law. Elena has the kind of stylized, gorgeously designed, planned-to-the-minute life that works well on Instagram, all the unpleasant bits glossed over by the perfect filter. Then a mysterious new tenant moves into her rental home, Washington’s Mia Warren, and all sorts of new depths are revealed. Mia is everything that Elena is not; chill, arty, lax on stricture and structure and living a nomadic lifestyle with her teenage daughter, Pearl (Lexi Underwood). Elena and Mia are primed to tangle.

Little Fires Everywhere — “The Spark” Episode 101 — Mia (Kerry Washington) and Elena (Reese Witherspoon), shown. (Photo by: Erin Simkin/Hulu)

Little Fires Everywhere soon reveals the secrets, lies, and fury worming beneath the lacquered perfection of appearances in Shaker Heights. Themes of institutional racism, class warfare, the meaning of motherhood and the slippiness of identity are explored. It’s the kind of twisty, meaty drama that is all the richer for having two potent performers at its center, and precisely what you might need in our current age of frozen anxiety, as we sit and wait (if we’re lucky, that is) for this pandemic to pass, wondering what the world might look like when it does.

We spoke to one of the show’s two cinematographers, Jeffrey Waldron, about capturing the shifting moods of this blessedly absorbing drama.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJc3yTOpNDA

Can you tell me a bit about the initial conversations you had with director Lynn Shelton and the team about adapting Ng’s novel?

My initial conversations with Lynn, our EPs, and Trevor Forrest — my cinematographer counterpart who shot Lynn’s episodes — were about finding common instincts on two basic visual dynamics. The first was that the character of Elena (Witherspoon) represented a sense of order, that her life and world were predictable, well-planned, and well-protected — and that Mia (Washington) brought a sense of chaos to Shaker Heights; she’s more unpredictable, artistic, nomadic. The other key visual touchstone was the march of the seasons, from August to December, and with it a parallel descent from even warmth to moody cool tones.

Where was filming done, and how did that change your approach?

The show is set in Shaker Heights, Ohio but we shot the show entirely in Los Angeles. This brought specific challenges to not only finding locations that fit the story, but also fit the period, and then also fit the region. The aforementioned seasonal change also brought production challenges as we needed to mimic overcast skies, rain, and eventually snow.

Can you talk about your approach to capturing the various eras depicted in the series? How doe these choices might shape the way a viewer reacts to the show?

We wanted a vintage 90’s feel for the show, but we wanted control over those parameters (softness, blooming, flare, etc.), so Trevor and Panavision created some modified full-frame lenses based on all of the vintage qualities we wanted for the show. We looked at various levels of the modifications at our test and decided to go with the heaviest version. The hope is that the familiarity of this look lands our viewers in the time period, but that we can also harness these imperfections toward finding beauty in the mundane worlds.

Mia (Kerry Washington) and Pearl (Lexi Underwood), shown. (Photo by: Erin Simkin/Hulu)

And what about when you go back in time?

For our flashbacks, we used a couple of different Panavision anamorphic lens makes (cropping back to 16:9) for a subtle difference in optics. I did an entire flashback episode (episode 6) on the anamorphic and we let them play wide open quite a bit — exposing all sorts of aberrations and optical flaws, lending a grittier quality to the 1980’s New York landscape. It’s fun to bring these subtle cues to the story — and it was a fun diversion from the modern lens landscape that keeps getting sharper and sharper.

Little Fires Everywhere delves into aspects of a family drama, a mystery, and a thriller—how’d you handle the shift in tones?

This is a very delicate balance and essentially requires a versatile look that can be pulled a number of different ways. After seeing Trevor’s approach with the first episode — again setting up Elena’s sense of order, the warmth of late summer, and the blunted beauty of the suburbs — I endeavored with the second and third episodes to start pushing things darker, bringing additional shape to Elena’s life as the mystery of Mia starts to unfold, and bringing even more chaotic energy and mood to Mia’s world. I did want to preserve a bit of cinema as a nod to the language and tone that served as the fabric of Celeste’s book. The prose wasn’t sloppy or gritty, but it did go dark places, and so I tried to strike a tonal equivalent with camera and lighting.

Moody (Gavin Lewis), Pearl (Lexi Underwood) and Elena (Reese Witherspoon), shown. (Photo by: Erin Simkin/Hulu)

Can you give me an example of how a certain choice, in lighting, camera placement, lens, etc., helps shape the way a viewer feels while watching the show?

That’s certainly the hope; that the cinematography is coloring your experience of the events, but doesn’t draw attention to itself. I think the final sequence of the third episode is a good example of contrasting cinematic decisions that build upon each other to create an experience. You’ve got the very grounded, flat, warm feeling video camera footage of Elena marching through the house with a lit birthday cake, cut against the silhouette of a car parking in the blue shadows, backlit feet hurrying across the pavement — until Bebe invades the warmth of this birthday party and the camera flies toward her face. Elena’s suburban dream is challenged with the clash of these colors, camera movement, lighting shapes — and hopefully as you feel is the turbulence and chaos, rather than any of these individual creative decisions.

Elena (Reese Witherspoon). (Photo by: Erin Simkin/Hulu)

Did you have any other touchstones—be it from a film or TV series you particularly liked—you thought of while working on this show?

I was a 90’s kid, and partially a product of the suburban 90’s experience — my memories as an adolescent in that era and what it felt like were as pivotal as any film reference. Additionally, we looked at other suburban life references such as Sam Mendes’ (and Roger Deakins’) Revolutionary Road, and Lynn Shelton had a trove of great original photographs on her office wall that were a great source of inspiration for me!

What do you hope people take away from the viewing experience?

I hope people are swept up by the show’s essential mystery, as well as the fun of these amazing actresses going head to head. I’m most hopeful that the show encourages conversations about the country we live in, as there are core questions raised here about class, race, and ultimately what it means to be a mother.

Little Fires Everywhere is currently streaming on Hulu.

Featured image: Mia Warren (Kerry Washington) and Elena Richardson (Reese Witherspoon), shown. (Photo by: Erin Simkin/Hulu)

John Krasinski & Emily Blunt Reunited the Hamilton Cast on Some Good News

Posted on April 6, 2020 by babrams

The second episode of Some Good News, John Krasinski’s charming DIY series on YouTube, is epic. Not that the first glimpse of Krasinski’s surprise show, which is produced with help from his talented family, wasn’t sensational. The first episode included an interview between Krasinski and Steve Carell about their work on The Office, which was timed to the show’s 15th anniversary, some love for the heroes working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic, and a beautiful interview with a young girl recovering from cancer.

For the second episode, which was released this past Sunday, Krasinski once again focused on the healthcare professionals all over the world fighting on our behalfs against the pandemic. The episode also spotlights the companies, manufacturers, and individuals who have been churning out the essential PPE and equipment our healthcare workers rely on.

Then there was the episode’s big reveal; Krasinski brought on a young girl named Aubrey whose chance to see Hamilton was scuttled due to theater shutdowns. This young girl happens to also like a little film called Mary Poppins Returns. Now, you’re likely aware that Krasinski happens to know Mary Poppins, so to speak. His wife Emily Blunt starred in the film, so, Blunt appeared to say hello and make the young girl’s day. But that was but the appetizer; soon their delightful zoom call gets another entrant—Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and original star of Hamilton, who then brings in the entire original Broadway cast to sing “Alexander Hamilton” to her.

Check out the second, very adorable episode of Some Good News below:

Featured image: The entire original cast of Hamilton joins John Krasinski and Emily Blunt on ‘Some Good News.’

Here’s more of our coverage on how COVID-19 is affecting the entertainment industry, and how the entertainment industry is trying to do their part to help:

Late-Night TV Adapts to a Changed World

An Aspiring Costume Designer Contemplates Life after COVID-19

John Krasinski Creates Some Good News & Interviews Steve Carell

The Walking Dead & Better Call Saul Director Bronwen Hughes Talks Drama, Real & Imagined

Costume Designers Guild to Sew Masks for Hospitals

The below-the-line talent who will be hit the hardest.

Read Christopher Nolan’s Passionate Piece on the Importance of Movie Theaters

How studios and celebrities are using their massive platforms to spread crucial information about COVID-19.

How cinematographer Kira Kelly shot Netflix’s Self Made and is responding to her sudden furlough.

Amy Adams & Jennifer Garner Team Up to Help Kids Affected by COVID-19

Never Have I Ever Director Kabir Akhtar on Filming Mindy Kaling’s New Netflix Series

Posted on April 6, 2020April 6, 2020 by babrams

When director Kabir Akhtar heard the news that producer/writer/star Mindy Kaling was, along with co-creator Lang Fisher, putting together a new series at Netflix that would focus on a first-generation Indian American teenage girl, he thought, I need to be a part of this.

“Just the idea that a show could be made about a first-generation South Asian American,” Akhtar says, a first-generation South Asian American himself, who grew up in suburban Philadelphia, “I was sitting at home, by myself, and I instinctively raised my hand as if to say, ‘Oh, me!’ Growing up in the 80s and 90s, there were no stories like that being told anywhere. Nobody on TV looked like me. I was really, really excited to get connected to this project.”

So that’s precisely what Akhtar set out to do, get connected to Kaling’s project. He reached out to his agent and manager to see if they could get him on her radar.

“I was jumping up and down, saying we have to find a way to get connected to this,” he says. “I like my agent and manager very much, and truly do not understand their jobs at all (laughs), so they waved their magic wand and next thing I knew I was filming two episodes.”

Akhtar has been a steadily working director, and helming episodes five and six of a story focused on Devi (newcomer Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), an overachieving high school sophomore with a short fuse, felt like a really perfect fit. And it was. He began his career as an editor—a very good editor—winning an Emmy for cutting the pilot for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and nominated for two more, one of which came from his time cutting one of the most brilliant comedies of the modern era, Arrested Development. The switch to director has gone smoothly, with Akhtar helming episodes of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Grown-ish, the Beverly Hills reboot, the High School Musical series, and The Unicorn. Then everything changed.

“Watching Never Have I Ever now, it’s crazy to think just a few months ago was a different time,” Akhtar says. He was set to begin work on the reboot of Saved by the Bell when the spread of COVID-19 meant production had to be stopped. Looking back on his work on Kaling’s new series, he marvels at how odd it now seems to see characters hugging or high fiving. “It suddenly feels surreal. We’re all in this crazy place together.”

Director Kabir Akhtar attends the 2016 Creative Arts Emmy Awards Press Room Day 1 at the Microsoft Theater on September 10, 2016 in Los Angeles, California.

“I was mid-way through filming an episode of Saved by the Bell a few weeks ago when we got shut down,” Akhtar says. “Everybody got shut down. It’s really wild to think that less than two months ago I was shooting an episode of a show with scenes with 200 people! And it’s really, really eye-opening to consider not only how recently everything was so different, but also to consider when the world might be like that again. When and if.”

Never Have I Ever is slated to begin streaming on Netflix on April 27. Akhtar noted how promoting things right now seems, well, odd, and how the usual process of rolling out a new series has been altered significantly, at least for now.

“Normally, when I’ve worked on a show and it comes out, the one thing you always see is billboards and bus ads, but nobody’s driving around,” he says. “Will there be billboards, and if so, will anyone see them? Even new shows that I’ve been watching since being at home, I’ve just found them all online.”

Not only is promoting your work during a global pandemic odd but so, too, are the other aspects of his career, like taking meetings for potential new jobs.

“Talk about the new normal, I had a Zoom meeting about a job a couple of days ago. Just the whole thing is a little strange, it’s not just that you’re meeting someone for the first time on a video call, but also people on these calls are hanging out in their bedrooms to get a little peace and quiet,” Akhtar says. “This meeting was about a show I was excited to talk about it, and they were talking about planning on filming in June in Vancouver. Part of me is like, Great, that sounds awesome! And part of me is like, is that really going to happen? Can that happen?”

Another weird aspect of the new normal is how every conversation begins and ends with talk of the coronavirus. Even the most mundane ritual of the working world, the email, has been transformed by the stampeding virus. Vulture even wrote a piece about our new pandemic etiquette.

“It seems unthinkable a month ago, but now every single conversation you have with someone starts with, ‘How are you holding up? Are you guys okay? This thing is crazy,’ Akhtar says.

For streaming shows, you’d think the pandemic might actually be a boon, and if you’re the folks behind Tiger King, you probably agree. “A very big part of why all of us watched Tiger King wasn’t that we were all really into tiger cubs, it was we’re all trying to stay connected to each other,” Akhtar says. “Since we can’t go out with friends now, at least we all felt like we were doing something together. There’s definitely a bunch of shows that are airing now that have been in the can for a while, and a bunch that coming through the pipeline, and I think all of us are going to need that.”

L-r: Dana Vaughns and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan in NEVER HAVE I EVER. Photo by LARA SOLANKI/NETFLIX — L-r: Darren Barnet and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan in NEVER HAVE I EVER. Photo by LARA SOLANKI/NETFLIX

“We’ve all lost our cultural touchstones temporarily, there are no sports to watch, we don’t have movies to go see together…the only thing we’re all really able to do together is watch TV, and try to feel connected,” Akhtar says. “Never Have I Ever is a very smart comedy, the writers did a fantastic job. I was really, really proud of the work and, I guess, on the one hand, seeing a South Asian lead character just be a quote ‘normal’ American kid, to me that’s unusual, you never see that on television. But the good news is that it’s totally normal now. I’m excited for people to check it out.”

While we’ve all been social distancing, washing our hands (over and over and over), absorbing an endless amount of truly terrifying news, and marveling at the folks on the frontline of this pandemic, from nurses and doctors to the people delivering our food and working in our grocery stores, Ahktar hopes that Never Have I Ever can play a small but important role in peoples’ daily lives; making you laugh.

“I think it’s hard to remember, I know it’s very hard for me to remember, that it’s okay to laugh, even now,” he says. “I know that we’re surrounded by terrible news, and I don’t find myself watching comedies that much, but when the mood strikes, I have to remind myself to not feel bad about it. It’s important for all of us because we’re all collectively going through something very traumatic, and it’s not healthy for me to read the news all day long, even though it’s what I’m doing. So I hope that people are okay, and when they need an outlet they have a place to turn.”

Featured image: L-r: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Richa Moorjani, and Poorna Jagannathan in NEVER HAVE I EVER. Photo by ARA SOLANKI/NETFLIX.

Writer/Director Eliza Hittman on her Bracing, Brilliant Film Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Posted on April 6, 2020 by babrams

When Eliza Hittman, writer/director of Never Rarely Sometimes Always, took the stage after the premiere of her film at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24th of this year, she was greeted with rapturous applause. She and the stars of her film have gained critical acclaim for her intimate, powerful portrayal of one teenager’s perilous journey of the soul. Never Rarely Sometimes Always is about the challenges facing 17-year-old Autumn (Sidney Flanigan), who has an unintended pregnancy and, finding no local support, travels with her cousin and best friend Skylar (Talia Ryder) to New York City seeking an abortion. It has been lauded for how it captures the loyalty and compassion between female friends and the dangers for young women who find themselves in that position. So far it has won the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Neorealism at Sundance, and the Silver Berlin Bear Jury Grand Prix at the Berlin International Film Festival. With a 99% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie was set for release on March 13th through distributor Focus Features, and all signs pointed to a successful arthouse run and more acclaim.

No one could have foreseen just how frozen in place the world would become. Never Rarely Sometimes Always, like so many other films, was removed from the calendar for theatrical release because of COVID-19. Fortunately, it has now been made available on demand through nearly every platform. Certainly, producers and distributors would always rather see their movies playing in theaters, but this option offers a way for the film to not only find viewers, but might also lead to its discovery by a wider audience, putting it on the radar for many who might have otherwise missed it altogether. Though going straight to streaming is not ideal, it may be something Hittman might come to appreciate, given her inspiration and motivation for creating the project in the first place.

The writer/director’s idea for the film was born out of an article she read, and was shocked by, in 2012. Hittman relates, “I made a micro-budget feature in 2012 called It Felt Like Love, and while I was editing that film, I took a break, read a newspaper, and was struck by a headline that I read about Savita Halappanavar, who died in a hospital in Galway after being denied a life-saving abortion. I started to wonder ‘well, how far would she have had to travel to save her own life?’” The answer, she discovered, was London.

Talia Ryder stars as Skylar in NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features

“I got a book called “Ireland’s Hidden Diaspora”, about how women would cross the Irish Sea to London and back, in one day. I read about the network of women that had organized to help women as they took this journey. I thought about this untold journey that women all over the world take.” Hittman initially wrote a treatment for a story in Ireland, about an Eastern-European au pair who had been hired to work in the countryside. At the time, she was working on small films in Brooklyn, which led to her decision, as a US filmmaker, to explore the US equivalent. She felt that since the challenges to women with unwanted pregnancies are universal, and are certainly prevalent in America, she would look to construct the story locally.

Researching and learning as much as she could about the experiences of women in the US became a top priority. Hittman, who excels at and is known for anchoring her stories in reality, turned to locations near New York. She explains, “Women come from all over to New York. When you leave New York and drive 3 hours west, you’re in a part of Pennsylvania that feels like Appalachia. It is really like traveling back in time. I decided to take a little road trip. I drove to rural Pennsylvania and landed in a coal-mining region. I walked into a pregnancy center and said I’d like to take a test. I sat and listened to a counselor, and when I left, she gave me a little gold bag with some homemade printed flyers.”

When she started working on the film, Hittman felt it essential that it be grounded in credibility, so she reached out to Planned Parenthood, who proved to be an invaluable resource, including allowing her to film in one of their clinics in New York, and opening doors to her by letting her interview people who are part of their front lines. Says Hittman, “A lot of the story was inspired by sitting and talking to social workers. I met one social worker at a clinic in Queens, who had worked at Planned Parenthood and had gotten a full-time position elsewhere. Hearing her very candid perspective of what she would encounter inspired me. One thing that she said that I thought was really profound was, ‘The abortion is never the crisis. It’s whatever is going on at home that you can’t fix in the course of a twenty-minute counseling session for an abortion.’”

For Hittman, making sure she grounded her characters was essential to articulating the story of Never Rarely Sometimes Always in her own voice as a filmmaker. “It was important for me to be really credible, and get all kinds of perspectives, find my way through the story, and tell it subjectively through the characters. It was so important for me to imagine the experience of walking in other people’s shoes. I thought about how much persistence it took for someone to get through an experience like that, and also the amount of shame and secrecy that accompanies that. It’s not a procedural drama. We don’t show and explore everything, but we explore what we can through the eyes of a 17-year-old.”

Featured image: Director Eliza Hittman on the set of her film NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Angal Field/Focus Features

HBO Makes 500 Hours’ Worth of Programming Available for Free

Posted on April 3, 2020April 3, 2020 by babrams

There have been watch lists galore since millions of people started practicing social distancing, self-quarantining, and sheltering in place due to the spread of COVID-19. Rian Johnson and Edgar Wright shared their favorite 70s musicals and comedies, respectively, while James Gunn offered a top-10 list of films you probably haven’t seen but should. Our own Desson Thomson gave us a thorough compendium of shows and films we could be enjoying, too. AFI announced a brand new movie club, complete with fun facts, trivia, and a guest celebrity to announce each day’s selection.

Now, HBO has revealed that they’re going to make 500 hours’ worth of programming available to everyone, for free, for a limited time starting today.

.@HBO is making almost 500 hours of programming available to stream for free for a limited time.

Starting Apr. 3, series & blockbusters including #TheSopranos, @siliconHBO, @VeepHBO, #TheWire & more will be available to stream for free: https://t.co/7Teq44pXq3 #StayHomeBoxOffice pic.twitter.com/l9dDxiImVO

— HBO PR (@HBOPR) April 2, 2020

This means it’s time to start making your top-five list of which series, docuseries and documentaries, and Warner Bros. films you want to prioritize. The nine series that HBO is making available to everyone: Ballers, Barry, Silicon Valley, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, Succession, True Blood, Veep, and The Wire.

A little advice to anyone out there who has always meant to watch The Wire but hasn’t yet: Now is your time to watch The Wire! Do it! An informal poll taken of my colleagues revealed a desire to watch David Simon’s nearly flawless series, to revisit David Chase’s The Sopranos, and quite a few wishes that Sex and the City was on the list.

For the full list of what you can start streaming today, click here.

Featured image: The Sopranos (P621) “Made In America” 03-22-2007 Director: David Chase DP: Alik Sakharov Scene 61-63-65-67 (int) Holsten’s Diner “The gang shows up for family dinner” James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano) Edie Falco (Carmela) Robert Iler (Anthony Jr.) Photo Credit: Will Hart / HBO

Watch Shazam Director David F. Sandberg’s New Short Horror Film

Posted on April 3, 2020April 3, 2020 by babrams

Look, the most important thing for everyone to do right now, those of us not in essential jobs and not on the front lines of fighting the spread of COVID-19, is to practice social distancing. There was a whole flurry of Tweets going around at the beginning of the pandemic, reminding us what some other famous folks did during their quarantine. For example, did you know that Shakespeare wrote “King Lear” while in quarantine during the plague? Musician Rosanne Cash reminded us how productive the Bard was during his own lockdown in a Tweet heard round the world:

Just a reminder that when Shakespeare was quarantined because of the plague, he wrote King Lear.

— rosanne cash (@rosannecash) March 14, 2020

While this fun-bordering-on-annoying Shakespeare fact is probably true, it was widely read as perfectly emblematic of our era’s obsession with productivity. Yet don’t bother trying to convince Shazam! director David Sandberg this. It appears during his quarantine, Sandberg went back to his roots of cranking out clever, creepy short horror films and whipped up this tasty little terror, Shadowed.

Before helming Shazam!, Warner Bros. most lovable superhero film, Sandberg’s breakout film was the ingeniously crafted Lights Out, which then lead to the larger horror film Annabelle: Creation. Yet Sandberg built up his big league chops by crafting really clever, really creepy short films, collaborating with his wife Lotta Losten. Lights Out itself began as a short film, which Sandberg then expanded into a terrifically unsettling feature. So, what was Sandberg to do while under self-quarantine other than team up with Losten and crank out a new short horror film?

A reminder; no one needs to be super productive while practicing social distancing or sheltering in place! But for someone like Sandberg, with his ace partner Lotsen and a long history of making great little short films with the equipment he has at hand (and years of expertise crafting them), we can enjoy Shadowed without feeling any guilt that we’re not also creating while quarantining.

Featured image: A still from Shadowed. Courtesy David F. Sandberg

A Quiet Place: Part II & Top Gun: Maverick Get New Release Dates

Posted on April 2, 2020 by babrams

While all dates are subject to change at the moment considering the unprecedented situation we find ourselves in, there is some news on the film release front worth sharing. Paramount Pictures has announced that two of their big releases for this year have new release dates. John Krasinski’s highly anticipated A Quiet Place: Part II and the return of Tom Cruise’s speed-needing super pilot in Top Gun: Maverick will be out on the first weekend in September and during Christmas, respectively.

Krasinski’s follow-up to his 2018 surprise smash hit was due in theaters on March 20. Now, Paramount has A Quiet Place: Part II slated for September 4. The film had already been screened (and loved) by critics, and, should all go according to plan, we will now be able to end our summers in the theater taking in Krasinski’s thriller. Part II will follow the remaining Abbotts, Evelyn (Emily Blunt), and her children Marcus and Regan (Noah Jupe and Millicent Simmonds, respectively) as they venture out into the larger world, coming in contact with other survivors (played by Cillian Murphy and Djimon Hounsou, no less) trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world besieged by monsters that hunt by sound.

As for Top Gun: Maverick, the film was initially going to take flight on June 24, but will now break the sound barrier on December 23. The sequel to the 1986 hit sees Tom Cruise’s titular flyboy becoming a flight instructor himself, teaching the next generation of hotshot pilots how to stay alive at Mach 4. Those pilots include someone connected to Cruise’s past—Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Maverick’s late friend and former co-pilot Goose (Anthony Edwards). Goose died in Top Gun thanks in an accident Maverick carries tremendous guilt over.

Featured image: L-r: Featured image: “A Quiet Place: Part II” teaser poster. Courtesy Paramount Pictures. Tom Cruise plays Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick from Paramount Pictures, Skydance and Jerry Bruckheimer Films. Credit: Scott Garfield. © 2019 Paramount Pictures Corporation.

Late-Night TV Adapts to a Changed World

Posted on April 2, 2020April 2, 2020 by babrams

As the spread of COVID-19 stalled productions and delayed film premieres, you could make a case that the most visible manifestation of the global pandemic on the entertainment industry was the lack of late-night TV shows. Starting around mid-March, every single one of the late-night programs, from The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to Full Frontal With Samantha Bee to Conan, went dark. The folks that millions of Americans invite into their living rooms and bedrooms every night, some to make sense of the blizzard of news, some to simply have a few laughs before bed, were practicing social distancing like the rest of us non-essential employees. Until they weren’t. No audiences. No green rooms. No live guests. Yet late-night TV is back, with the shows now airing from the living rooms and homes of the hosts themselves, put together by their nimble crews, iPhone cameras, and game (and remote) interview subjects.

The new, stripped-down shows are intentionally and unavoidably comically different from their previous iterations. Gone are the lavish production values, the excellent house bands, the meticulously crafted segments, and, of course, the in-person celebrities. Now, hosts and their crews are reinventing how to produce their shows on the fly. Take the popular, routinely hilarious segment “A Closer Look” on NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers. Meyers used to read this often exquisitely written segment from cue cards, now, he’s using teleprompter software that was downloaded onto his devices.

It hasn’t been the smoothest process, for Meyers, his fellow hosts, and their hard-working crews, but their game attempts are winning. These are massive studio productions suddenly trying to adapt to YouTube-style aesthetics, and quick. As Mike Shoemaker, an executive producer of Meyers’ show, told the New York Times’ Dave Itzkoff, “YouTubers are saying, ‘Dude, your lights; your sound. Of course YouTubers are good at this. We’re not good at it.”

Yet the shows they’re producing are good, even if the aesthetic is way more your neighbor’s YouTube channel on home brewing than Jimmy Kimmel’s “Slow Jam the News” or James Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke.” The attempt to keep delivering both comedy and useful information during this pandemic, regardless of how slick it looks, has been entertaining and enlightening.

Although the pre-pandemic shows and their new, minimalist versions still largely rely on the personalities of their hosts, what we’re seeing now on late-night feels simultaneously charming and raw. And also historic. Watching Colbert perform a monologue from his bathtub in his South Carolina home (in a full suit), or Bee broadcasting from her home in upstate New York (while chopping wood), or Trevor Noah interviewing Dr. Anthony S. Fauci on March 26 in a widely-seen, highly informative clip that currently has nearly 11 million views, late-night feels more personal, and more necessary, than ever before.

Late-night has always been a place where the real world and its occasional, unavoidable horror was processed and discussed by hosts who hold a unique place in our society. These shows reach a huge swath of the public, from college-age students to retirees. For the 2018-2019 seasons, for example, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert averaged 3.67 million viewers a night. During times of crisis, most memorably after 9/11, hosts from David Letterman to Conan O’Brien to Jon Stewart took to the airwaves to express their fear, their heartbreak, and their hope for the future. Their raw, human reaction to an event that had captured the attention of the global community was a salve for many.

That is true now more than ever. The spread of COVID-19 is the rare event you can say is truly unprecedented. And today’s hosts and their hard-working crews are putting in a ton of hours, remotely, to deliver their shows to an anxious public. Molly McNearney, the co-head writer and a producer on Jimmy Kimmel Live (and also Kimmel’s wife), told the Times’ Itzkoff that it took three hours to shoot six minutes’ worth of his monologue. “Just trying to get his eye line correct took forever. He’s used to having a teleprompter guy and a team of 140 people helping him there.”

Their efforts are worth it. Late-night has been altered, along with the rest of society, yet it remains a hilarious, and often very helpful release valve for the innumerable anxieties we’re amassing throughout the day. While real-life heroes are out on the frontlines of the pandemic, working in hospitals and clinics, delivering food and medicine, our late-night hosts and their crews are doing their part. When they eventually return in their fully produced, studio-shot forms, the experience, and the spirit of these stripped-down productions, will carry on.

Featured image: L-r: CHICAGO, IL – OCTOBER 16: Trevor Noah on The Daily Show Undesked Chicago 2017: Lets Do This Before It Gets Too Damn Cold Comedy Centrals The Daily Show with Trevor Noah taping Monday, October 16 through Thursday, October 19 from Chicagos The Athenaeum Theatre and airing nightly at 11:00 p.m. ET/PT, 10:00 p.m. CT on October 16, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Jeff Schear/Getty Images for Comedy Central). WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 26: Samantha Bee attends “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee” Not The White House Correspondents Dinner at DAR Constitution Hall on April 26, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for TBS) 558302

ESPN’s Michael Jordan Documentary The Last Dance Reveals 1st Trailer

Posted on April 2, 2020April 18, 2021 by babrams

There’s a certain beat that will instantly transport those of us who were avid sports fans in the 90s. The beat comes from a song (which I’d never known until this moment, after Googling it) by the British rock band The Alan Parsons Project. The song is called “Sirius.” This brief instrumental, under two minutes long, was adopted by the Chicago Bulls to introduce their starting lineup during their epic run of six NBA championships between 1991 and 1998. For millions of people, you cannot hear “Sirius” without thinking of one man; Michael Jordan.

Thus it makes perfect sense that the song is present in the first trailer for The Last Dance, ESPN’s 10-part documentary series that tracks the Bulls rise in the 90s and the ascension of Michael Jordan as one of the biggest global superstars in sports history. Directed by Jason Hehir, who got unprecedented access to the Bulls’ 1998 season, the series includes interviews with Jordan and his teammates like Scottie Pippen, Steve Kerr, and Dennis Rodman, as well as his legendary coach Phil Jackson, and rivals from Patrick Ewing to Charles Barkley. There’s also an interview with noted basketball enthusiast Barack Obama.

The Last Dance was originally slated for a June 23 release, but ESPN has moved it up to April 19 to account for the fact that most of the country is at home practicing social distancing due to the novel coronavirus. Two new episodes of the doc series will be released every night through May 17. For international viewers, you’ll be able to catch The Last Dance on Netflix starting on April 20.

Check out the brief but highly enjoyable trailer here. For one chill-inducing moment, notice when Jordan and the late Kobe Bryant pass each other outside of their respective locker rooms:

Here’s the official synopsis:

In the fall of 1997, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls began their quest to win a sixth NBA title in eight years. But despite all Jordan had achieved since his sensational debut 13 years earlier, “The Last Dance,” as coach Phil Jackson called it, would be shadowed by tension with the club’s front office and the overwhelming sense that this was the last time the world would ever see the greatest player of all time, and his extraordinary teammates, in full flight.

Featured image: PHOENIX – JUNE 20: NBA Commissioner David Stern presents Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls the championship trophy after the Bulls defeated the Phoenix Suns in Game Six of the 1993 NBA Finals on June 20, 1993 at America West Arena in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images)

Here’s more of our coverage on how COVID-19 is affecting the entertainment industry, and how the entertainment industry is trying to do their part to help:

An Aspiring Costume Designer Contemplates Life after COVID-19

John Krasinski Creates Some Good News & Interviews Steve Carell

The Walking Dead & Better Call Saul Director Bronwen Hughes Talks Drama, Real & Imagined

Costume Designers Guild to Sew Masks for Hospitals

The below-the-line talent who will be hit the hardest.

Read Christopher Nolan’s Passionate Piece on the Importance of Movie Theaters

How studios and celebrities are using their massive platforms to spread crucial information about COVID-19.

How cinematographer Kira Kelly shot Netflix’s Self Made and is responding to her sudden furlough.

Amy Adams & Jennifer Garner Team Up to Help Kids Affected by COVID-19

Rick and Morty’s Season 4 Trailer is as Bonkers as You’d Hope

Posted on April 1, 2020April 1, 2020 by babrams

Need a laugh? Yeah, us too. We all do about now, and there are few more reliable places to get a bunch of them then Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon’s Rick and Morty. Season four continues on May 3, which, yes, feels like a very long time from now. The Emmy Award-winning animated comedy aired five episodes of season four at the end of last year (December 15 to be exact), and now we’ve got the second half of season four coming our way. Our favorite sociopathic genius scientist Rick Sanchez (voiced by Roiland) and his sidekick grandson Morty (also voiced by Roiland) are front and center in this new trailer, reminding us that this is one of the most happily insane comedies on television.

Adult Swim has announced that season four includes another five episodes. The trailer gives us a glimpse of Summer (voiced by Spencer Grammer) as an apparent god-like figure ruling over a bunch of aliens, Rick and Morty in some super-powered Gundam suits, and the perpetually mocked Jerry Smith (voiced by Chris Parnell) trying (and failing) to remind his family that he has dreams, too.

The trailer is packed with the usual cosmic hijinx that Rick and Morty has been supplying since the beginning, ratcheted up to 11. How many times has Morty ended up naked and terrified in this series? Too many to count, and here he is again in his birthday suit running for his life.

There is something to be said for enjoying a comedy that is gleefully committed to gonzo storytelling right about now. While the vast majority of us are practicing social distancing while our healthcare providers are quite literally showing us what heroism looks like in real life, a fun, wholly insane animated comedy is not a bad way to spend some time.

Check out the trailer here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPDqQDTnJKE&feature=emb_logo

Featured image: Rick and Morty, season 4. Photo courtesy Adult Swim.

Here’s more of our coverage on how COVID-19 is affecting the entertainment industry, and how the entertainment industry is trying to do their part to help:

An Aspiring Costume Designer Contemplates Life after COVID-19

John Krasinski Creates Some Good News & Interviews Steve Carell

The Walking Dead & Better Call Saul Director Bronwen Hughes Talks Drama, Real & Imagined

Costume Designers Guild to Sew Masks for Hospitals

The below-the-line talent who will be hit the hardest.

Read Christopher Nolan’s Passionate Piece on the Importance of Movie Theaters

How studios and celebrities are using their massive platforms to spread crucial information about COVID-19.

How cinematographer Kira Kelly shot Netflix’s Self Made and is responding to her sudden furlough.

Amy Adams & Jennifer Garner Team Up to Help Kids Affected by COVID-19

Steven Spielberg Introduces the New AFI Movie Club

Posted on April 1, 2020 by babrams

While those of us not on the front lines of battling the spread of COVID-19 are all hunkered down and doing our part by staying at home, we’ve gotten our fair of share of great watch lists from some major talents. Rian Johnson and Edgar Wright shared their favorite 70s musicals and comedies, respectively, while James Gunn offered a top ten list of films you probably haven’t seen but should. Our own Desson Thomson gave us a thorough compendium of shows and films we could be enjoying, too. And now living legend Steven Spielberg is here to launch the American Film Institute (AFI)’s brand new feature to help us watch movies again together while remaining apart.

The AFI Movie Club will deliver a classic film every day which folks can gather around and watch, with bonus material about each film provided by one of America’s most prestigious film institutions. AFI will provide special guests to announce each film, behind-the-scenes trivia, and plenty of topics for your family or friends to weigh in on. It’s a way for us to enjoy films together again while remaining safely socially distanced and offers their own expertise (and film curation) in the bargain. Imagine that it’s like going to a theater, in your home, with a great Q&A session after.

The first film in AFI’s Movie Club is as classic as it gets—The Wizard of Oz. Spielberg knows that just about everyone has seen the Judy Garland-led iconic film, yet he asks us what better message could we possibly hear right now than, “There’s no place like home”?

Visit the AFI Movie Club homepage to get all the fun facts and “family-friendly discussion points” while you stream The Wizard of Oz at home.

Here’s Spielberg’s AFI Movie Club introduction:

Featured image: Featured image: (Center L-R) Director/producer STEVEN SPIELBERG and TYE SHERIDAN on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’, Amblin Entertainment’s and Village Roadshow Pictures’ action adventure “READY PLAYER ONE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by: Jaap Buitendijk. Courtesy Warner Bros.

Here’s more of our coverage on how COVID-19 is affecting the entertainment industry, and how the entertainment industry is trying to do their part to help:

An Aspiring Costume Designer Contemplates Life after COVID-19

John Krasinski Creates Some Good News & Interviews Steve Carell

The Walking Dead & Better Call Saul Director Bronwen Hughes Talks Drama, Real & Imagined

Costume Designers Guild to Sew Masks for Hospitals

The below-the-line talent who will be hit the hardest.

Read Christopher Nolan’s Passionate Piece on the Importance of Movie Theaters

How studios and celebrities are using their massive platforms to spread crucial information about COVID-19.

How cinematographer Kira Kelly shot Netflix’s Self Made and is responding to her sudden furlough.

Amy Adams & Jennifer Garner Team Up to Help Kids Affected by COVID-19

An Aspiring Costume Designer Contemplates Life after COVID-19

Posted on March 31, 2020March 31, 2020 by babrams

The call came in 2014. It was 6 o’clock at night, Rachel Apatoff remembers. Would she be interested in working as a costume production assistant on a little TV show called Mad Men? It would bring her a straight 10 months of work, a nice stretch of employment for anyone in the industry, not just for a costumer.

Well, sure, Apatoff told them. When did they want her to start?

Tomorrow at 8 AM, they said.

“That’s the way the industry works,” says Apatoff, a 34-year-old costumer and aspiring costume designer living and working in Los Angeles. “I think in some ways I am uniquely suited for that because I am a very in the moment kind of person.”

But even for an in-the-moment being like Apatoff, and even for an industry where unpredictability is just another Tuesday, the coronavirus has been devastating.

When it hit, Apatoff whose specialty is period costumes had been working six days a week, even turning down jobs. Most lately she had been working full time on the new Amazon pilot for A League Of Their Own. Like so many others in the industry, she watched as productions ground to a halt.

She acknowledges that, in the greater scheme of things, she was relatively fortunate. A League of Their Own had just finished production and she was already looking for new work. But as The Credits continues to document and report in articles like this, many others in the industry, including friends of hers, saw projects halted in midstream.

It wasn’t just the flow of costumer jobs that stopped. It was a halt in momentum for her dream agenda: to be a fully dedicated costume designer. Last fall, that momentum had begun when she was hired for her first feature film as a designer. Operating with “a quarter of the money it should have had,” it was a challenging shoot. But for Apatoff, the experience was “was astonishing, exhilarating, thrilling, even in the most frustrating and hair-tearing moments. You’re working 100 hours a week, you’re not getting paid anything, and your project is impossible and it’s still the most fun to be able to say, ‘Okay, this character feels sad and lonely in this scene and we’re going to show that by having her wear her dead dad’s old sweatshirt because, you know, she wants to feel more loved and safe.” You get to dive so deep into the little nitty-gritty details of how people feel about their situation and about themselves, and how they present themselves as a result.”

She resumed costumer work while the movie was in post, with the hopes that its release and its appearance in festivals would help her line up my next designer gig. But when the pandemic expanded worldwide and L.A was put under shutdown, everything, as Apatoff recently put it, “completely abruptly, unceremoniously stopped.”

A proud member of IATSE Local 705, the Motion Picture Costumers Union, Rachel had patiently and methodically built a career as a costumer. The job on Mad Men had led to another job on TV’s The Man in the High Castle. She had continued as an assistant costumer, and then as a costumer on television shows such as 2018’s Strange Angel and The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.

Being a union member, Apatoff says, “gives me health care and a pension. And on union productions, a certain level of pay, and a certain level of respect, where crew members from other departments understand better what you do, and give you the space to do your work because it’s just as important to the whole as theirs is.”

But then there’s the dream. Designing that feature last fall “totally reaffirmed what I always wanted to do.”

How far back does that dream go? Waaay back, according to Rachel. As an infant, her very first words, directed to her terminally pants-wearing mother, were “Put on a skirt.”

“My mother also told me she worried when I was very young because when she was young she would play with dolls and she would make up stories, but when I was young I would just change their clothes all the time.”

But as Rachel and her mother have come to understand, “I was just telling a story in a different way. If you have Barbie and she’s in a bathing suit, then she puts on a party dress, and then she’s wearing a wedding dress, that’s a narrative.”

Apatoff's work on the feature film she just wrapped. — Apatoff’s work on a pilot she worked on.

It turns out, Rachel will be her own wedding Barbie. She and her fiancé, a working screenwriter in Hollywood, plan to get married on July 4, and they are hoping life will have returned to something closer to normalcy, so that Rachel’s grandparents, who live in Chicago, can be part of the ceremony.

When life does resume, and the industry does get fully back to work, she plans to regain that momentum again, as she continues to negotiate the balance between working as a union costumer and building experience and credits as a costume designer. Like everyone else on the planet, she’ll be watching and waiting.

Featured image: Rachel Apatoff.

A Most Beautiful Thing Director Mary Mazzio Films a Miracle on the Water

Posted on March 31, 2020April 3, 2020 by babrams

Director Mary Mazzio was set to take her documentary A Most Beautiful Thing to SXSW this year. Then the spread of COVID-19 became such an undeniable reality in the United States that SXSW was canceled. The news of that cancellation came along with the shuttering of film and TV productions all across the globe. Once theaters started closing, world premieres were pushed back months, too.

“It’s a bummer, but we’ve now pivoted, says” Mazzio says, whose doc is now slated to be released on June 12. Yet as we’ve all come to learn, there are few hard dates in the era of the novel coronavirus, but one thing is certain; Mazzio’s film will be a must-see whenever it premieres.

A Most Beautiful Thing is centered on the first African American public high school rowing team in the United States. The team from Manley High School was made up of young men from the West Side of Chicago, many of whom were in rival gangs, yet they poured into the same boat to compete. Narrated by Common and executive produced by NBA legends Dwyane Wade and Grant Hill, Mazzio’s film not only explores the story of the rowing team, but the trauma, violence, and grinding poverty that each endured on their way to the water. A full 50% of the film’s screening profits will be donated to support inclusion efforts within the sport of rowing as well as trauma research.

Mazzio knows a thing or two about the sport—she rowed for the United States in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. Her path towards directing a documentary about an inner-city rowing team didn’t begin with a hot tip from a former Olympian, but instead a tweet by Arshay Cooper, the author of the memoir “Suga Water.”

“We’re quirky, unique people,” Mazzio says of rowers. “So I ordered the book off Amazon, read it, and then I tweeted at Arshay, About a nanosecond later, a tweet comes rocketing back at me. Fifteen minutes later, the phone rings. “Thank you for reading my book, would you ever make a film about it?”

Arshay Cooper on location in Oakland. ©2019 Richard Schultz. Courtesy 50 Eggs Films

The path to turning Cooper’s book into a documentary wasn’t as smooth as a perfect day on the water, but Mazzio had found a subject near and dear to her heart. She also had years of experience getting well-received, difficult-to-make documentaries produced through her production company 50 Eggs. For ample evidence of her chops, you can’t do better than her 2017 documentary I Am Jane Doe, a searing, critically acclaimed look at a group of American mothers waging a legal battle on behalf of their middle-school daughters, who were trafficked for commercial sex.

Finding funding wasn’t initially easy, but Mazzio was committed. Coming off the success of I Am Jane Doe, which was not only critically acclaimed but had a material impact in battling child sex trafficking, Mazzio had momentum. “When a story comes in like this, it doesn’t walk in with a budget,” she says. “But what an exceptional opportunity it was! Here’s a sport I love, and here’s this story about an exceptional team and how this sport dramatically changed the lives of these young people. I knew instinctively the timing was right for a film like this and all that it stood for, but it was challenging at the beginning,” she says.

Mary Mazzio and DP Joe Grasso on location in Chicago. © 2019 Clayton Hauck. Courtesy 50 Eggs Films

“Then I was having a conversation with Bill Hudson, a philanthropist on the west coast, and he was saying, ‘We have this lily-white sport, and there’s a pathway to college here for so many people who don’t have this opportunity.’ So he fell in love with my project, and once you get the first money in, you catch some wind. I’ve got this incredible story that speaks to trauma in low-income communities, and then all of a sudden Bill makes a few calls and my existing network of support gets excited.”

Mazzio says that production began on the film with an informal but crucial tour of Chicago with Arshay Cooper.

“The first thing Arshay does is have me come to Chicago to a ride around,” she says. “We headed to the west side. It blew me away, the topography, every other corner is a different gang’s territory. ‘How do you get to school in this environment,’ I asked him. Therein lies the problem. I thought we were going to have a retrospective of their lives 20 years ago and bring it up to date, and then maybe, if I got lucky, I’d get them all on the water.”

One of Mazzio’s initial ideas was to interview Michael O’Gorman, a former world champion coxswain and a coach of the Vesper Boat Club, Stetson University, and the Chicago Rowing Center. Mazzio had found out that O’Gorman had also coached the team in Chicago.

“Then, three weeks later, Mike dies,” Mazzio says. “So there was a memorial for him at an Irish bar outside of Philly, and it was really exceptional, all these guys telling these stories. So Arshay beckons me over and tells me that he’s thinking of getting the team back together and going out to race. The hair on the back of my neck goes up. ‘We’re going to race at the Chicago Sprints,’ he tells me. And I said, ‘Are you ready? Do you really want to do the training?'”

Malcolm Hawkins and the team working out. ©2019 Richard Schultz. Courtesy 50 Eggs Films

Mazzio realizes the documentary she’d envisioned is changing before her eyes. Arshay calls up the U.S. Olympic coach, Mike Teti, to see if he’d help train them. “That’s like calling Warren Buffet after starting a lemonade stand,” she says. “Mike loves it. He’s all in. We go out into the Olympic training center and he loves the guys. He becomes their unofficial coach.”

A Most Beautiful Thing dives deep, going beyond the inspiring story of these guys getting back out on the water and explores their backstories, interviewing their families, finding out about what it was like growing up in these neighborhoods in Chicago.

“We exposed a vein that was so extraordinary. Their mothers were talking about intergenerational violence, going back to sharecropping, even working on a plantation,” Mazzio says. “We’re having these very deep conversations about impediments in these neighborhoods, and law enforcement, and the toxicity of those relationships. Arshay was arrested at 16 for nothing, and he was working part-time at a Starbucks and sees the cop who arrested him. He gave the cop a latte, on him. Twenty years later, that cop was at his wedding. They stayed in touch. He’s just a natural connector. So Arshay calls me up and he says he wants to invite the Chicago Police Department to see the rowing team.”

The Manley Team on location in Chicago. ©2019 Clayton Hauck. Courtesy 50 Eggs Films — The Manley Team on location in Chicago. L-r in the back: Arshay Cooper, Malcolm Hawkins, Preston Grandberry, and Alvin Ross. Ray “Pookie” Hawkins in front. ©2019 Clayton Hauck. Courtesy 50 Eggs Films

Mazzio films the moment the Chicago PD shows up. “They invite the cops into the tank. These tall, gangly, white Chicago cops who don’t know how to row, and here are these young men, three of whom were in gangs, one of whom is under house arrest, and they’re teaching the cops how to row. Behind the camera, I almost cried three times. We were on this bizarre planet far away. Arshay rolls around at the end of the session and asks the cops if they want to race at the end of the summer. That began a series of training sessions, where the guys and the cops were going out on the water. As Arshay said, ‘I never thought I’d have the opportunity to yell at a cop!’ What an amazing gesture by Arshay and the guys to extend the opportunity for a dialogue with these cops. That was exceptional, and completely and wholly unexpected.”

Exceptional and wholly unexpected is a great way to describe A Most Beautiful Thing. See it, when you can.

Spike Lee Shares his Unproduced Script for Jackie Robinson Biopic

Posted on March 31, 2020March 31, 2020 by babrams

Yesterday we got a surprise gift from writer/director/actor John Krasinski revealed Some Good News, his DIY news program he revealed on YouTube that he and his family filmed from their homes. True to its title, Some Good News showed us video from all over the world, from Italy to the United States and points in between, which featured much deserved praise for healthcare workers battling the spread of coronavirus. Some Good News also featured two interviews; one with Krasinski’s former co-star at The Office, Steve Carell. The second interview was with a young girl named Coco, who had just completed chemotherapy. Some Good News was both joyous and lovely.

Writer/director Spike Lee has now also given something to all of us practicing social distancing at home, a different kind of gift but one near and dear to his heart—the unproduced script for his long-gestating Jackie Robinson biopic. Your first thought might be the same as ours; why hasn’t this script been turned into a film!? Yes, we did have writer/director Brian Helgeland’s 42, starring Chadwick Boseman as Robinson, the first African American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era. Yet there’s plenty of room to get Spike Lee‘s take on Robinson’s historic, iconic life. Alas, we’ll have to settle for the script.

Regardless of why it was never produced, Lee shared the script in an Instagram post, which he began, “Afternoon From Da Corona Epicenter Of The USA-NYC.” The screenplay has remained with Lee and his production company for years, and now, considering we’re all searching for things to watch and read as we stay at home, there couldn’t be a better time to get a look at the Oscar-winning Lee’s take on a true American hero.

Check out Lee’s Instagram post, and read the script here:

View this post on Instagram

I Dug Deep Into Da 40 Acres Vault And Pulled Out This Script From One Of My EPIC Dream (Never Got Made) Projects-JACKIE ROBINSON. You Do Not Have To Be A Baseball Fan To Enjoy. This Script Is A Great American Story. Be Safe. Peace,Light And Love. And Dat’s Da “Brooklyn Dodger”Truth, Ruth. YA-DIG? SHO-NUFF [click the link in the bio]

A post shared by Spike Lee (@officialspikelee) on Mar 29, 2020 at 11:18am PDT

Featured image: Director Spike Lee and actor John David Washington on the set of BlacKkKlansman, a Focus Features release. Credit: David Lee / Focus Features

Here’s more of our coverage on how COVID-19 is affecting the entertainment industry, and how the entertainment industry is trying to do their part to help:

John Krasinski Creates Some Good News & Interviews Steve Carell

The Walking Dead & Better Call Saul Director Bronwen Hughes Talks Drama, Real & Imagined

Costume Designers Guild to Sew Masks for Hospitals

The below-the-line talent who will be hit the hardest.

Read Christopher Nolan’s Passionate Piece on the Importance of Movie Theaters

How studios and celebrities are using their massive platforms to spread crucial information about COVID-19.

How cinematographer Kira Kelly shot Netflix’s Self Made and is responding to her sudden furlough.

Amy Adams & Jennifer Garner Team Up to Help Kids Affected by COVID-19

John Krasinski Creates Some Good News & Interviews Steve Carell

Posted on March 30, 2020March 30, 2020 by babrams

If you’re looking for something funny and heartwarming (and frankly, who isn’t right now?), John Krasinski has got you covered. The writer/director of A Quiet Place (parts I and II) and, of course, a former member of The Office‘s phenomenal ensemble cast, has a new YouTube series called Some Good News, which delivers exactly what its title promises. The first episode, now streaming, also includes an interview between Krasinski and Steve Carell about their work on The Office, which is timed to the show’s 15th anniversary. The interview starts at the 5:50 mark. It’s joyous.

Krasinski recorded this from his home, which adds to its adorableness. For example, the logo was created by a budding designer who also happens to be his daughter. Some Good News includes a section about the healthcare workers who have been going above and beyond to battle the spread of COVID-19. The footage features applause for these heroes, from Spain to London to New York City, and even out at sea. It’s extremely touching to see how people are showing their appreciation for doctors, nurses, and more who are on the front lines battling this pandemic.

Some Good News doesn’t only include Krasinski’s interview with Carell, but there’s also an interview with a young girl named Coco who just finished chemotherapy treatment. Grab your tissues.

Check out the full episode below.

Featured image: Steve Carell and John Krasinski on Krasinski’s Some Good News, available on YouTube.

Here’s more of our coverage on how COVID-19 is affecting the entertainment industry, and how the entertainment industry is trying to do their part to help:

The Walking Dead & Better Call Saul Director Bronwen Hughes Talks Drama, Real & Imagined

Costume Designers Guild to Sew Masks for Hospitals

The below-the-line talent who will be hit the hardest.

Read Christopher Nolan’s Passionate Piece on the Importance of Movie Theaters

How studios and celebrities are using their massive platforms to spread crucial information about COVID-19.

How cinematographer Kira Kelly shot Netflix’s Self Made and is responding to her sudden furlough.

Amy Adams & Jennifer Garner Team Up to Help Kids Affected by COVID-19

Post-Production Crews Pivot To Homework To Keep The Lights On

Posted on March 30, 2020March 30, 2020 by babrams

Anybody walking down West 45^th Street in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood on a recent Tuesday might not have noticed them. In the narrow parking lot of the eight-story building marked 432, men loaded equipment cases into waiting vehicles. Two of those enclosures contained Sony BVM-X300s, top-of-the-line professional monitors that colorists use to finish tv shows and films for broadcast. Each can easily cost $30,000.

This wasn’t the scene of a brazen heist in broad daylight; it was the execution of one TV and film industry studio’s business continuity plan. By the end of the week, New York City would be under an unprecedented lockdown to slow the COVID-19 outbreak, which required most businesses to keep all of their employees at home.

Keith Shapiro, the head of the post-production finishing team at Hell’s Color Kitchen, was getting ahead of the mayor’s impending order by enacting his company’s plan to disband its 10 employees temporarily. They would reconvene virtually to continue working on the eight TV shows and documentaries they had been hired to complete.

“We had a day of planning for the change and a day of getting it done,” says Shapiro. “Then it was like, ‘OK, hopefully, see you soon.’”

Shapiro credits MPE, Hell’s Color Kitchen’s parent company, for the smooth transition. The organization typically rents editing and sound-mixing equipment to others, so it was no problem for him to get the expensive units into his team’s hands to set up makeshift editing suites at home. And MPE also invested in a remote media server that could house and feed massive digital files out to remote locations.

The biggest hitch so far, he says, has been in altering long-held daily routines. Half of the team has been laboring together for decades. “Work has been about the same, we’re just not in the same room anymore,” he says. “We’re a family, so our only issue is that the family is separated.”

Mature IT and telecoms help smooth transition

To bridge the distance, Shapiro’s crew uses the remote conferencing service Zoom for daily check-ins. And because people can’t just get up and talk about something with a colleague in the next suite over, Shapiro says he’s noticed a 50 percent upsurge in emails.

Hell’s Color Kitchen is still flush with work, and Shapiro doesn’t see any diminishment coming soon. “There’s a lot going on—we already had business booked, and clients are telling us they still want to finish their projects,” he says.

That optimistic view isn’t shared across all parts of the industry. Coronavirus is hitting many hard. Film festivals, premieres, and awards shows like the Daytime Emmys are off. Owners have shuttered movie theaters. Studios have pushed back release dates and stopped production on 31 films so far. Even The Great British Bake Off hasn’t escaped the virus unscathed.

Many post-production shops and their employees are feeling the impact. Below-the-line filmmakers, from editors to cinematographers to costume designers, are freelancers. An unprecedented work stoppage for folks whose livelihoods depend on the next project is a very scary proposition.

But others like Hell’s Color Kitchen are weathering the storm by pivoting to remote work. The Visual Effects Society published a work-from-home best practices guide. And some editors offered similar stories of rapid switching to fulfill their commitments and keep the lights on.

Working around working from home

One New York-based supervising editor for a weekly show who wasn’t authorized to speak said his team of dozens needed to get creative when someone on staff was potentially exposed to COVID-19. They were only a fifth of the way through putting together the next episode, which was scheduled to air in a week, when they needed to abandon the office. Now, instead of being in a single Manhattan studio, they had scattered to the outer boroughs, New Jersey and even as far as Pennsylvania.

And, unlike Shapiro’s group, they had no media server that could support remote connections so all of the editors could have access to and work off of the same files.

So they quickly bought hard drives that could hold up to 16 terabytes of data and dumped copies of the same project files on all of them. Then everyone went home toting their editing systems. “Doing that saved our asses,” the editor said. “We used to call it a sneakernet because you actually walked the raw footage from place to place.”

TV and film production is creative work that doesn’t necessarily demand labor to be physically located in one place. But unlike writers or designers, who can continue producing even while being fairly mobile, there is at least one element specific to post-production that can pose challenges to remote work. The raw digital video files needed to put together a piece can be massive. One broadcast-ready, half-hour cable show can easily top 3 terabytes, for instance.

The reality is that residential internet upload and download rates can decrease dramatically when an entire city’s workforce is operating from home. And remote video editors can easily pull a terabyte of files across the internet every day.

The editor said he’d taken to staying up late into the night, keeping himself up by playing guitar, to transfer data when network traffic diminished. To finish the job, the team convened on Zoom and collaborated through Slack. Aspera provided high-speed data transfer to move files around.

But even with those limitations, he said remotely pulling together a show for broadcast on deadline was akin to a miracle. He gave praise to his team’s tenacity.

“By the Wednesday before broadcast, it seemed like a daunting task—many of us hadn’t slept much,” he says. “But we all realized the sheer challenge of it. So I said to all the editors, ‘No matter what happens, we’re going to put a show on the air, and we will always remember we succeeded at doing that.'”

Featured image: Colorist Jon Fordham’s set up at his home allows him to work remotely.

Here’s more of our coverage on how COVID-19 is affecting the entertainment industry, and how the entertainment industry is trying to do their part to help:

Contagion Star Kate Winslet Wants You to Help Stop the Spread of COVID-19

The Walking Dead & Better Call Saul Director Bronwen Hughes Talks Drama, Real & Imagined

Costume Designers Guild to Sew Masks for Hospitals

The below-the-line talent who will be hit the hardest.

Read Christopher Nolan’s Passionate Piece on the Importance of Movie Theaters

How studios and celebrities are using their massive platforms to spread crucial information about COVID-19.

How cinematographer Kira Kelly shot Netflix’s Self Made and is responding to her sudden furlough.

Amy Adams & Jennifer Garner Team Up to Help Kids Affected by COVID-19

Contagion Star Kate Winslet Wants You to Help Stop the Spread of COVID-19

Posted on March 30, 2020March 30, 2020 by babrams

Studios, stars, and now the cast of one of the best films ever made about a pandemic have come together to deliver PSAs about the spread of COVID-19. Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 film Contagion is a deeply chilling thriller, and also a realistic glimpse at how healthcare professionals, government officials, and regular people try to deal with a global pandemic. Writer Scott Z. Burns researched the film by going to the CDC and learning first-hand how they handle pandemics, but he wasn’t the only member of the Contagion team to consult professionals. Star Kate Winslet, who played an epidemiologist trying to stop the spread of a lethal virus in the film, also consulted with experts. Winslet appeared in a recent PSA offering tips on the best way to flatten the curve and stop the spread of the novel coronavirus in a new PSA.

“I spent time with some of the best public health professionals in the world,” Winslet says in the video. “And what was one of the most important things they taught me? Wash your hands like your life depends on it. Because right now, in particular, it just might.”

Check out Winslet’s PSA here:

Winslet joins a growing list of stars and studios pitching in to do their part. The major studios, in collaboration with the Ad Council, have created a host of PSAs, some geared towards kids, some towards parents, and all towards getting the right information out there, and broadcast them across their wide array of channels. These efforts include PSAs like this from Disney, in which Zombies 2 star Meg Donnelly shares her tips for staying inside on the Disney Channel’s YouTube page. NBCUniversal has a host of videos, available in both English and Spanish, focused on sharing crucial information with high-risk populations and the general public about protecting themselves and others from the coronavirus. ViacomCBS’s #AloneTogether videos have featured everyone from Trevor Noah to 68 Whiskey‘s Gage Golightly, who share the importance of social distancing and how you might be able to help higher-risk groups in need.

These studios are hardly alone. Comcast, Fox, Verizon Media and WarnerMedia have utilized their reach to deliver information, offer services, and add share a little joy where they can. Every bit of useful, correct information that stars, studios, and individuals share, from China to Italy to the United States, can help save a life.

Featured image: Kate Winslet, who starred in Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Contagion,’ delivers a PSA to help stop the spread of Coronavirus. Courtesy Columbia Public Health.

Here’s more of our coverage on how COVID-19 is affecting the entertainment industry, and how the entertainment industry is trying to do their part to help:

The Walking Dead & Better Call Saul Director Bronwen Hughes Talks Drama, Real & Imagined

Costume Designers Guild to Sew Masks for Hospitals

The below-the-line talent who will be hit the hardest.

Read Christopher Nolan’s Passionate Piece on the Importance of Movie Theaters

How studios and celebrities are using their massive platforms to spread crucial information about COVID-19.

How cinematographer Kira Kelly shot Netflix’s Self Made and is responding to her sudden furlough.

Amy Adams & Jennifer Garner Team Up to Help Kids Affected by COVID-19

Go Inside Warworld, Westworld’s New WWII-Themed Park

Posted on March 27, 2020March 27, 2020 by babrams

It feels like several years ago when we interviewed Westworld cinematographer and director Paul Cameron about the series’ ambitious third season (it was actually only 11 days ago). Since then, the world has gotten significantly scarier thanks to the spread of COVID-19, which makes Westworld‘s third season, fully wrapped long before the pandemic hit, extra comforting right now. That is, as comforting as HBO’s wildly ambitious, consistently intense sci-fi series can be. In last Sunday’s episode, we were once again back inside the park, this time in a brand new section we’d never seen before called Warworld. HBO has released a new behind-the-scenes featurette that takes you inside the creation of Warworld, which is set in a Nazi-occupied town in Italy.

The episode, shot by Richard J. Lewis and written by series co-creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, alongside Matt Pitts, sees Maeve (Thandie Newton) “waking up” in this new park, soon to be reunited with her old flame Hector (Rodrigo Santoro), now calling himself Ettore. “Where are we?” Maeve asks. “Stranded in hell,” Hector/Ettore replies.

Hector/Ettore wants to take Maeve and escape from the Nazis in a plane he’s got waiting for them. The town is lousy with soldiers, and as realistic as it all appears, Maeve being Maeve—exceedingly smart—quickly realizes she’s in a simulation, that poor Hector/Ettore doesn’t even remember her, and she’ll have to figure out a way to outsmart the creator of Warworld, rather than play out poor Hector/Ettore’s planed-based loop, to escape.

This being Westworld, the scenes in Warworld are gorgeously produced. They were shot in Bethulu, Spain, a small town that retains its old-world charm. “Bethulu was pretty frozen in time,” says production designer Howard Cummings in the video. Despite Warworld being set in Italy, the Westworld crew found Bethulu to be irresistible.

Check out the featurette here. Westworld returns for episode three this Sunday night at 9 pm E.T.:

Featured image: Thandie Newton is Maeve in Westworld. Photograph by John P. Johnson/HBO