The British Academy has officially blessed Edward Berger‘s delightfully claustrophobic Vatican thriller Conclave with 12 BAFTA film nominations, which leads all other films.
We had a chance to chat with Berger and one of the film’s stars, Isabella Rossellini, who plays Sister Agnes in the adaptation of Robert Harris’s novel. Drawing on her own experience of going to a school run by nuns, Rossellini told us, “I remember they were very direct but also very respectful, and so when I played Sister Agnes, I thought of them and was very glad to have had that experience, so I didn’t hesitate. I knew them well.” Rossellini is nominated for Best Supporting Actress.
Berger, meanwhile, revealed to us the key to Ralph Fiennes Cardinal Lawrence, who is tasked with running the conclave that will select the new pope. “Ralph’s character is basically based in doubt. He says at some point, “I have difficulty with prayer.” Just imagine. That’s like me saying I have difficulty believing in the power of the camera I’m using, or a writer saying, “I don’t believe my words anymore.”
Conclave’s 12 nominations include Best Film, Best Director for Berger, outstanding British Film, Best Leading Actor for Ralph Fiennes, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Peter Straughan. In 2023, Berger’s World War I drama All Quiet on the Western Front landed a record-tying 14 BAFTA nominations for a non-English language film, which he shares with Ang Lee’s masterpiece Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Writer/director Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez was close behind with 11 nominations with his tale about four remarkable women in Mexico pursuing their own dreams no matter the costs. Meanwhile, writer/director Brady Corbet’s American epic The Brutalist, which tracks visionary architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) fleeing post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild his legacy in the U.S., carved out 9 nominations.
Sean Baker’s cracked, courageous take on Cinderella, Anora, received seven BAFTA nominations, which included Mikey Madison landing one for leading actress, playing Anora, a sex worker who elopes with a billionaire Russian whose family is very unmoved by the seriousness of their union or Anora belonging in the family.
This year’s BAFTA Film Awards are blessed with a wider variety of genres than ever before, including horror (The Substance, Heretic), historical epics (Corbet’s The Brutalist and Steve McQueen’s Blitz), musicals or music-centric (Wicked, A Complete Unknown), and big-budget spectacles, be they sci-fi (Dune: Part Two) or sand-and-sword epics (Gladiator II).
Fiennes is joined in the hunt for the leading actor category with Hugh Grant (Heretic), Adrien Brody (The Brutalist), Colman Domingo (Sing Sing), Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown), and Sebastian Stan (TheApprentice).
Emilia Pérez‘s three main actresses, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, and Zoe Saldaña, are all nominees for their performance. In the best leading actress BAFTA race, Gascon is joined by Cynthia Erivo (Wicked) — her first-ever main BAFTA award nomination, Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Hard Truths), Mikey Madison (Anora), Demi Moore (The Substance), and Saoirse Ronan (The Outrun).
For the full list of the nominations, check out BAFTA’s site.
Writer/director Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu continues his streak of delivering singular, stunning cinematic spectacles that have ranged in scale from the terrifyingly intimate (The Witch) to psychotically intimate (TheLighthouse) to the rousingly epic (The Northman). With Nosferatu, Eggers has found perhaps the perfect material for his sensibilities—rich in detail, steeped in myth, and drenched in pathos, with each sequence building upon the last in this delicious gothic nightmare. Aiding Eggers’ efforts was production designer Craig Lathrop, who helped build a cold and lonely world in which characters can get as lost in their physical reality as they can in their own heads.
In the case of Count Orlock (Bill Skarsgård), we’re dealing with a creature out of place and out of time, a wondrous grotesque haunting his decaying castle. It’s where young, opportunistic Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) goes to strike a deal with the Count. As the classic tale goes, Hutter’s world turns upside down, as does his beloved wife, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), who becomes an object of the Count’s obsession, less so his love.
It’s another chilling achievement from Eggers, with whom Lathrop has worked on all his films. Once again, they created a world that feels as real as the slick grime on the castle walls but as otherworldly as the Count’s terrifying hold on the people he encounters. Recently, Lathrop spoke with The Credits about recreating Wisborg, Germany, in the 1880s and building a world of shadows for the auteur.
What did you find most fulfilling about creating this world? What was new for you?
The streets. They’re probably the largest single sets I’ve ever done. They were so tall and so many blocks of streets. I wanted all the buildings to have their own personality and individuality, so it’s a lot of detail. I was able to grade the streets so people were going uphill when they should be, whenever I wanted them to feel like they had extra effort to get someplace. But then I also got to do a castle. The monastery was not a small set by any means, but for one of the smaller sets, that was exciting to do, primarily because I talked people into doing that style of the monastery when I wasn’t sure how I was going to get it painted.
The real solution was a company in Italy. They have a product with a terrible name called Tattoo Wall. They print on a very thin, flexible membrane. When you put it on uneven surfaces and around corners, it stretches a little and has a more forgiving nature. It’s thin enough that the texture of the plaster underneath it actually transfers through, so the wall looks real. Then, there’s a proprietary flat matte covering that goes over it as well.
On top of that, we did a little bit of painting. It pushed a lot of the effort onto graphics. We used a lot of actual frescoes from which we sourced imaging, but the ceiling was bespoke. We had to design and push things around to make that work. I thought it turned out great, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it. I originally thought maybe we could afford to paint it. Even then, if we could afford it and if we had the time – which we didn’t have either – it’s a big task. I have great scenic artists, but it’s asking them to recreate a 15th-century masterpiece.
Did you want to use any building techniques from that time period? Was it a combination of the past and present?
It’s always a combination, depending on what you need to do. On this one, we didn’t have as much where I’m trying to figure out how to recreate the old styles in the way that we build sets, because most of the stuff is straightforward in terms of set building. You’re still asking carpenters to build things that aren’t plumb or square, and that’s always challenging. For instance, the tiles in the castle are basically castle tiles. That’s what they call them. They’re thick terracotta tiles. We put that on a sand bed, so it was uneven. We painted a lot of them as well. We stenciled them so they would look like medieval tiles. They were actually not dissimilar from the tiles they would’ve used in the day. The grips weren’t so happy with me because there was nothing they could roll on, but it would’ve looked terrible if I had done it differently.
Where did your imagination immediately go when you first read the script and thought about the castle?
The main thing is that it should be not just unkempt – it should be falling apart. It should be deteriorating, much like Orlock. You have a few items, more inside the tower room, which was the Hutter bedroom. I was thinking of the castle as being 100 or 200 years old. I looked at the 16th century as if it had just sat there for 150 years. It couldn’t be what we were seeing, these beautifully whitewashed, spit-shined old castles. They are gorgeous, but they look like they’re ready for tourists to visit.
Orlock is not a creature with many possessions, but what items in the house did you think said a lot about him?
Everything was examined. Some of the stuff we made – certainly his ring, the little chest he opens up to get the coins out to give to Hutter when they’re signing the contract, the contract itself and all of the paperwork, the sarcophagus, the carriage. We built the carriage, too. We call it the ghost carriage. There were some little details that you’ll never see.
Any other details you hope audiences catch on repeat viewings?
On the carriage, there are bas-reliefs of a giant battle, which is basically a Vlad the Impaler battle. You can’t see it all, but there it is. There were a lot of areas where I knew it would be unlikely that we would catch it, but I knew the actors would see it.
Robert Eggers initially wanted to make Nosferatu more expressionistic, but over time, he grounded it. For the both of you, how else did the vision evolve?
By the time we started, we decided to make this world as real as possible, as authentic to the period as possible. I mean, you can never be completely authentic. The idea for him, which I agree with, is that the more supernatural events going on, the harder they hit if the world is real. I started off with the period that we were talking about as being the base level. I had to do a lot of research to try to find all the little bits and bobs and learn more about the architecture, the props of the period, and the lighting, which is where you start. On top of that, you start doing all the regular design ideas where you’re thinking about the character and the emotional beats of the film and how you would design a contemporary film – only now are you doing it as if contemporary is 1838. You don’t know anything that happens after it.
The family pulls into a gas station for a quick fill-up and some snacks, a very common vignette for millions of people across the world. The difference here is that the parents, Cameron Diaz’s Emily and Jamie Foxx’s Matt, are not your usual PTA-attending, Girl Scout Cookie-drive leading ma and pa, and when they dispatch two bad guys in full view of their shocked children, the jig is up. At one point deeper into the trailer, the kids say, “I can’t believe they were spies…they were in a pickleball league.” Fair point.
As dad Matt tries to explain to the kids, fifteen years ago, he and mom were nonofficial covert operatives for the CIA. Yet, instead of toiling within the massive agency forever, the two went off the grid to start an actual family of their own. This is, we’re guessing, not quite protocol. When their enemies find out the pair aren’t just alive but sitting ducks living the suburban life, the entire family is in danger.
Back in Action marks Diaz’s return to the big screen after an 11-year hiatus from acting and reminds us, with a few well-timed barbs, how much a weary nation needs her comedic chops. The new trailer packs plenty of thrills—flame throwers, car chases, parachute escapes, plane crashes, the great Glenn Close—and is a good reminder of what made Diaz such a star in the first place.
Diaz and Foxx are joined by Kyle Chandler, the aforementioned Glenn Close, Andrew Scott, Jamie Demetriou, McKenna Roberts, and Rylan Jackson. Seth Gordon directs from a script he co-wrote with Brendan O’Brien, one of the co-writers of Gordon’s Neighbors.
Diaz hasn’t been exactly resting in her time away from movies since she announced her retirement in 2014. She’s appeared in episodes of The Drew Barrymore Show and RuPaul’s Drag Race and launched her successful wine brand Avaline. She’ll also be heard voicing Princess Fiona again in the upcoming Shrek 5.
It’ll be especially great to see Diaz and Foxx paired together, considering this marks Foxx’s return after a medical emergency last year.
Check out the trailer for Back in Action, which arrives on January 17.
For more on big titles on Netflix, check these out
Director Leigh Whannell is a veteran of the horror genre, and that includes taking on iconic characters from Universal’s deep bench of monsters. His 2020 thriller The Invisible Mancame amid a global pandemic when the terror of fighting an enemy you couldn’t see was all too real. Now, on January 17, Universal will release his latest twist on a classic monster with Wolf Man.
The film features Christopher Abbott as Blake, a San Francisco-based husband and father who comes into a strange inheritance—his father has left him his remote childhood home deep in the Oregon woods. That would be all well and good, but the handoff isn’t without mystery. Dad has vanished and has been presumed dead—not the most auspicious way to inherit a home—yet Blake convinces his wife, Charlotte (Julia Garner), to take a break from their busy city life and make it a family trip, bringing along their daughter Ginger (Matlida Firth) to their new little house in the woods. What could possibly go wrong?
Things go immediately wrong. An unseen animal attacks them before they’ve even stepped foot on the property, and they’re forced to barricade themselves within the house while the creature prowls just outside. Worse still, Blake sustained an injury while defending the family in the initial attack, and you can probably guess what starts to happen from here. Poor Blake begins to feel strange and then looks like a stranger. Soon enough, Charlotte will have to decide what to do with a husband who is no longer himself, retaining only the faintest connection to the sweet guy she married as he transforms into a wolf, man.
While werewolves have long been a big part of folklore and myths dating back centuries, in the cinematic world, they burst onto the screen in director George Waggner’s iconic 1941 movie The Wolf Man for Universal. Here, Whannell was determined to create Blake’s transformation from husband into a creature using as many practical effects as possible. Forget relying on computer wizardry to turn the sweet-faced Abbott into a monster, this was a hand-crafted effort.
“I wanted to actually see it,” Whannell said in this behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Wolf Man. “I needed it to exist as if it was happening right in front of you. For the look of Wolf Man, I knew I wanted to do something very different,” Whannell said.
To that end, Whannell deployed special make-up effects designer Arjen Tuiten to create something novel and terrifying.
(from left) Charlotte (Julia Garner), Blake (Christopher Abbott) and Ginger (Matilda Firth) in Wolf Man, directed by Leigh Whannell. Photo Credit: Nicola Dove/Universal Pictures
Tuiten did some thinking on what they could do a little bit differently in Wolf Man to “dare to step away from what had been done in the past.” Some serious legends have worked on previous iterations of the character, including 7-time Oscar winner Rick Baker, who won one of those Academy Awards for his work on director Joe Johnston’s 2010 film The Wolf Man, turning Benecio del Toro into the hybrid beast. Whannell and Tuiten knew trying to one-up Baker was a mug’s game, so their strategy was to take it in a completely different direction.
Christopher Abbott as Blake in Wolf Man, directed by Leigh Whannell. Photo Credit: Nicola Dove/Universal Pictures
Inspired by films like John Carpenter’s The Thing and David Cronenberg’s The Fly, they the job of understanding what would happen if “two anatomies tried to mix that don’t quite go together” seriously, as Tuiten put it.
The results of the work that Tuiten and his team did were so convincing that co-star Julia Garner said she was speechless when Christopher Abbott got out of his trailer. Tuiten explains that even the crew, who have seen it all, came up to him to tell him Abbott’s transformation had them properly spooked.
“Creepy and absolutely crazy,” Matilda Firth, the youngest performer on set, confirmed. It’s labor-intensive work to turn a performer into a monster, with craftspeople working on every last detail, from single hair to nails to every inch of deformed skin. “It’s not the Wolf Man you’ve seen before,” Whannell promises.
Check out the Wolf Man monster’s workshop here:
Check out the results of their tireless efforts here:
Wolf Man howls into theaters on January 17.
For more on Universal Pictures, Peacock, and Focus Features projects, check out these stories:
Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist has found its way into all the awards conversation, with everything from Corbert’s masterful direction to the performances by Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce, Dávid Jancsó’s editing, Lol Crawley’s cinematography, Judy Becker’s production design, and Daniel Blumberg’s score getting notice. The film is centered on visionary architect László Toth (Brody), who flees post-war Europe after experiencing the ravages and suffering of the Holocaust. He finds his way to the US, where he spends decades in the struggles to build his artistic legacy, lauded and stymied by industrialist millionaire Harrison Lee Van Buren (Pearce).
The film’s composer, Daniel Blumberg, is discovering what it’s like to rocket to the top of Hollywood’s A list. His work is being mentioned alongside seasoned Oscar winners Kris Bowers, Trent Reznor, and Atticus Ross as a potential winner at the Academy Awards with only his second feature film score. The London visual artist and indie musician/composer replaced Corbet’s longtime collaborator Scott Walker, who passed away before production and to whom the film is dedicated.
Blumberg and Corbet have been friends for years, and this film is a close collaboration between them. Blumberg and other musicians often played live on set during the filming. The Credits spoke to Blumberg about that, as well as working with 88-year-old renowned classical pianist John Tilbury, leveraging multiple musical eras and instrumentation to capture the scope of Corbet’s epic film.
You lived in the same space as director Brady Corbet in pre-production and through much of the filming. In what practical ways did that immediacy impact the finished music?
We’ve been very close ever since we met. I’ve stayed on his sofa many times, and we’re used to sharing spaces. When I finish a record, he’s one of the first people I show it to, and during his writing of the script, we talked about it a lot. I lived with him during pre-production and filming. Brady wanted to shoot to music on set, so I had a little room with my keyboard and a single bed. The demo for the opening of the film was done a few nights before being shot. It was great; instead of having to send it to him or have a more distant interaction, I could do it in real-time. Being on set, having the actors and the environments, and being near Brady gave me a sense of the temperature of a scene or what he wanted it to be. When doing a score, I don’t want it to feel like this alien thing stuck on top of something else, I want it to be part of a whole picture, and have it all make sense as one piece of art.
Daniel Blumberg. Courtesy of A24
Mission accomplished.
Thanks. I have a good example of where living on set made a difference. Since I don’t read music, I always have to work it all out practically, so I try chords to see how they can build together. I always record on my Dictaphone, and there were lots of stops and starts. Brady heard me through the wall, struggling to find my way. He came in and said, “That’s what it should sound like: an artist working it out.”
Music in The Brutalist is doing so much through the 3 1/2 hours. It’s a great example of the balance of minimalism and maximalism. The use of piano feels at times traditional or nostalgic, but you also use it in the context of found sound or industrial noise.
Using a prepared piano was an idea that came from reading the script, with all its architecture and construction. I love that when you use screws and interfere with the strings of the piano and the hammers hit those strings; it’s like a percussive instrument. The piano also has huge acoustic potential. Where you put microphones can change the sound, and I used a lot of microphones on the low end.
And you have this colossal talent in pianist John Tilbury.
Yes, and he brought so much. Nostalgia is a great word for it. He’s 88, and I recorded him in his garden. He’s got a Steinway in his garden in Kent. His studio is this pretty shed out there. I had a mic on him so you could hear his stool shuffling. The idea was you could hear the presence of the artist throughout. I also had two microphones in the room, so you could even hear the birds walking or the rain falling on the roof. John was playing so beautifully, it just all ending up going in the recording.
There’s also this balance of emotional instrumentation and a sort of alienating dissonance, sometimes from the same instrument in the same cue.
Right. Brady and I talked a lot about that. For example, for the opening, he wanted it to be quite optimistic, and brass instruments can be really warm but also very harsh. We worked on finding that balance.
You hear both comfort and isolation.
Axel Dörner, who is just an exceptional and unique trumpet player, could offer both of those qualities. There were times he was playing his trumpet to sound almost like it was a drill, and we ended up putting a lot of that on the building site. Part of the responsibility of scoring is zooming in on László Tóth, Adrien’s character. That’s why I wanted to use sounds of John Tilbury’s playing because we wanted to follow László’s journey as an artist and find that intimacy.
The theme is used in very different ways throughout the score.
We loved the main theme and were trying to figure out where it could go from there. It was so simple, and it felt like it could be flexible. At one point, it develops into Erzsébet’s theme. It becomes something very romantic. Then, the whole second part of the film gets more and more intense, and that’s when you hear it at its most dramatic. Towards the end, there’s one cue where it’s stretched, where I used a live recording, and it’s based on the theme, but it’s me on the piano, a double bass, and two trumpets. So it’s definitely referred to a lot if you’re listening.
The jazz club cue is a fascinating mix of 40s jazz, then bebop, and then this crazy devolution.
When I first got the schedule, I saw the first day of shooting was that scene, and it was so scary for me. I wanted to evoke the 40s, and I got this group of independent musicians together, all of who are brilliant improvisationalists. That’s their musical field. Pierre Borel, the saxophonist, Joel Grip on the double bass, Antonin Gerbal on the drums, and Simon Sieger on piano, who is from the Art Ensemble of Chicago. They all know how to play jazz and can evoke that era. Then, in that scene, once the characters do drugs, Brady wanted to do a Vista Vision effect that stretches the light out, and I knew they could play like that, stretching things out musically. I didn’t want to do it as an after-effect; I wanted it to be part of the experience of the scene. That way, Adrian and Isaac, as László and Gordon, could move to the music. That it was done the first day of shooting and doing it live was crazy, but it brought together all the departments in a wonderful way.
All that live acoustic music is in such contrast to the cue with synths in the 80s scene at the end of the film.
I knew Brady, just like he did Vista Vision, wanted to switch visually to an early digital process for the 80s, and it just made sense to use synths. Vince Clarke came to mind because he defined the era of the 80s with Depeche Mode and Erasure. We’re label buddies. We both release music on Mute Records. Daniel Miller, who runs Mute, introduced us. I went to New York to work with him and brought all these themes that I heard throughout the film, and they’re all on that track. You hear them all again. Then I finished it with Brady in London. We literally got two bottles of wine, and I got my Moog out. No microphones. I just plugged in a synthesizer.
People are really responding to the score. You’ve been in the conversation for an Oscar nomination.
It’s so thrilling that people are enjoying the film. We just made what we thought was right. I love Brady. We’ve been through great times and bad times, and he just made the film he needed to make. I’m just so happy for him. Sometimes art is made, and no one or almost no one sees it, but to know Brady’s work and the work of so many talented people is finding an audience that loves it, it’s just amazing.
The Brutalist is in theaters nationwide.
Featured image: Adrien Brody in “The Brutalist.” Courtesy of A24
For a film set in Las Vegas, it’s surprising that director Gia Coppola chose grit over glitz for The Last Showgirl.
“I wanted to make a movie in an intimate way. I adore [John] Cassavetes and how he made movies,” says Coppola, who cites Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie as “one movie I looked at for sure.”
Coppola worked from a script by Kate Gersten, who adapted her own play. “By staying intimate, I get to keep my creative autonomy. When I came across Kate’s play, it lends itself structurally to doing a movie in that way. There are not a lot of locations and a small cast, so you can be insulated,” says Coppola, granddaughter of filmmakers Francis Ford Coppola and the late Eleanor Coppola. She began collaborating with producer and Coppola cousin Robert Schwartzman in 2021, opting for a modest budget and an 18-day shoot to keep creative control.
The Last Showgirl pulls back the curtain on a fading Las Vegas act called Le Razzle Dazzle, a Follies-like extravaganza featuring scantily clad chorus girls in giant headdresses. Le Razzle Dazzle is based on Jubilee, the last show of its kind in Vegas, which closed in 2016 after 35 years.
Pamela Anderson in “The Last Showgirl.” Courtesy of Roadside Attractions
The film is anchored by Pamela Anderson’s tour de force as Shelley, who’s been with Le Razzle Dazzle for three decades and proudly sees herself as carrying the tradition of Les Folies Bergere. Shelley may be a bit delusional, but her dedication, professionalism, and pure heart are endearing and even noble. Anderson is being lauded for a role that mirrors her own career and reveals a depth few knew she had. But with the show about to close, Shelley is dismissed by the entertainment industry since she’s no longer useful and treated as a joke since she’s no longer young. Her college-age daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd) arrives to question her mother’s choices, and Shelley makes no apologies despite being painfully aware of the price she’s paid by focusing more on her career than on motherhood.
Billie Lourd in “The Last Showgirl.” Courtesy Roadside Attractions.
“I wanted to tell a mother-daughter story for a long time. I was raised by a single mom, so it’s very meaningful, and then I became a mother myself, so I understand that aspect of motherhood,” Coppola says. “But it’s also a story of chosen family and the workplace family, and a lot of people can relate to that.”
Coppola said she’s been drawn to “the landscape of Las Vegas” for a long time. “I always wanted to tell a story there. I was a photography major in college; I would drive cross country and always stop in Las Vegas to take pictures and wonder what the day-to-day life was like there. So, for all of that to be in one script, I couldn’t ask for anything better. I was like, ‘Please, Kate, let me be the one to do this.’”
Pamela Anderson in “The Last Showgirl.” Courtesy of Roadside Attractions
Coppola was inspired by nonfiction views of Vegas, from documentaries to the work of the late journalist and art critic Dave Hickey, who lived in Las Vegas from 1992 to 2010.
“I didn’t look to movies for inspiration on this project; I was looking to photography. I knew this world because of that,” she says.
For the textured, intimate look of the film, Coppola reunited with cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw, who shot Coppola’s 2013 directorial feature film debut, Palo Alto, and her most recent, Mainstream, in 2020. Arkapaw shot The Last Showgirl on 16mm film to capture a raw, grainy quality, the director says, with Arkapaw using a handheld camera and custom anamorphic lenses.
Pamela Anderson in “The Last Showgirl.” Courtesy of Roadside Attractions
“We came up together in some ways; she’s gone off and done Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, so we were fortunate to get her back for our small film,” says Coppola. “She used a handheld and stripped off the lighting budget so we could shoot on film. I trust her wholeheartedly. She can do whatever she wants, and I can focus on the actors and story. Most of the crew were women; it was who I gravitate toward and what felt right for this project.”
That includes Coppola’s mother, costume designer Jacqueline Getty, who coordinated all the contemporary outfits and selected various showgirl outfits. But Le Razzle Dazzle‘s actual costumes and headdresses are the original Bob Mackie pieces from Jubilee “that have not left the building in thirty years,” says Coppola. “We were fortunate that we got to use these pieces; otherwise, this would not have worked. A lot of choreography went into making it look like the dancers had been doing this for thirty years. We had a lot of Jubilee dancers come in and show us how to handle the headdresses. The dancers usually walk for just three minutes, but we were doing a movie so [the actors] must hold for longer. Their necks were cranking; they are giant and heavy pieces.”
Pamela Anderson in “The Last Showgirl.” Courtesy of Roadside Attractions
The focus on character and the intimacy of the setting serves The Last Showgirl’s themes about how the entertainment business discards women as they age.
“I see it all around me. It’s a systemic issue,” Coppola says. “I see it with working mothers; I feel it in my own life as a working mother. It’s a juggling act and a sacrifice, and it’s hard to do both. I see it economically. I see it culturally, even as simple as going to the market and a machine taking over someone’s job. As things get older, whether it’s architecture to humans, it’s only more interesting. Why has our culture so easily discarded all that in exchange for consumerism or something overly sexualized? I hope my journey with this project is about how we can find a way to embolden the past and pay tribute as we forge our modern paths.”
Pamela Anderson in “The Last Showgirl.” Courtesy of Roadside Attractions
The Last Showgirl is in theaters now.
Featured image: Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl. Photo by Zoey Grossman
The devastating wildfires burning across Los Angeles reached the Hollywood Hills on Wednesday night, nearing iconic landmarks like the Hollywood Bowl. At the same time, fires have already impacted communities and thousands of people, including in the Palisades, Altadena, the San Fernando Valley, and Malibu. As of Wednesday night, the L.A. Fire Department reported that the Palisades Fire was zero percent contained and is the most destructive fire in L.A. history, destroying more than 1,000 structures and leading to at least five deaths. There are six active wildfires in the Los Angeles area—the Palisades, Eaton, Hurst, Woodley, Lidia, and the latest Sunset Fire, which broke out Wednesday night in the Hills and is close to other iconic spots like the Hollywood sign and Walk of Fame. Famous residents, like Mark Hamill, who fled Malibu with his family, have shared on social media how terrifying the fires have been and called it “the most horrific fire since ’93.”
Various organizations have begun to mobilize aid efforts for the city, with fires leading to a reported 130,000 residents under evacuation orders. These efforts include aid intended for first responders, members of the entertainment community impacted by the fires, and more. Below is a list of some of the organizations that are collecting donations and offering aid:
The Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation issued a funding alert calling for donations on Tuesday to help keep LAFD firefighters safe by covering the costs of tools and safety equipment for LAFD firefighters, with the raised funds for safety equipment and crucial tools like hydration backpacks and emergency fire shelters. As noted in The Hollywood Reporter, The Annenberg and Wasserman foundations immediately provided $1 million to the fund, which helps equip LAFD members with supplies like emergency fire shelters and hydration backpacks.
The Screen Actors Guild: SAG canceled their live, in-person announcement of the SAG Awards nominations on Wednesday due to the fires. They are now accepting donations to the SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s natural disaster relief fund, which goes directly to the SAG-AFTRA community.
The Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF)’s Defy:Disaster is now accepting donations from members of the entertainment community and the public to support first responders, firefighters, and neighborhoods affected by the fires. EIF has been around since 1942 and has raised and directed millions of dollars in the past that have gone to first responders across the state, including after the deadly Camp and Woolsey fires in 2018. “Our hearts go out to all who have lost their homes and those who are uncertain what the days ahead will hold,” EIF president and CEO Nicole Sexton said in a statement. “There is an urgent need to provide shelter, food and water, medical care for individuals and families, as well as care for pets that have been displaced.” The EIF administered Oprah Winfrey and Dwayne Johnson’s People’s Fund of Maui, which was launched in 2023 in response to the devastating fires in Kula and Lahaina. The effort led to $60 million in residents’ bank accounts in six months.
Wildlife philanthropies and funds are being set up, including across GoFundMe, which has created a central hub for all of its verified accounts that are raising funds for wildfire relief efforts. GlobalGiving works with local organizations to assist with disasters. In the short term, GlobalGiving is providing food and emergency medical supplies to impacted residents and their pets, as well as aid to front-line workers. They’ve also launched the California Wildlife Relief Fund to support the longer-term needs that will arise once the fires are contained.
Chef José Andrés’ food relief nonprofit World Central Kitchen is in L.A., providing first responders and evacuees with water and sandwiches and is accepting donations to help them provide fresh meals to communities in need in California.
Featured image: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 8: Firefighters battle flames from the Palisades Fire on January 8, 2025 in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images)
The devastating fires raging across Los Angeles have caught the world’s attention with their ferocity and unpredictability.
The toll of the damage will take months to assess, but even last night, fresh fires were breaking out; the latest, named the Sunset Fire, broke out in Runyon Canyon in the Hollywood Hills at around 5:30 p.m. The fires have already hit the Palisades, Altadena, the San Fernando Valley, and Malibu. The Sunset Fires now raging in Runyon Canon in the Hollywood Hills are close to iconic locations, such as the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Hollywood Boulevard, which puts it near everything from the TCL Chinese Theater to the Magic Castile and the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The Sunset Fire is also close to the Hollywood Bowl, one of the city’s most enduring landmarks.
While city officials and firefighters race to try to control the spread of the fires, small measures are being taken further afield that impact the city’s marquee business—Hollywood itself. The deadline for the Oscar nomination has been extended two days, to January 19, due to the fires. The nearly 10,000 Academy members voting window opened on January 8 and was originally set to close on January 12. That voting deadline has been pushed to January 14, with the nominations to follow five days later. The ceremony is set to take place on March 2, with Conan O’Brien hosting.
The Academy’s CEO, Bill Kramer, sent an email to members on Wednesday afternoon outlining the date changes: “We want to offer our deepest condolences to those who have been impacted by the devastating fires across Southern California,” the email read, in part. “So many of our members and industry colleagues live and work in the Los Angeles area, and we are thinking of you.”
The voting extension follows premiers and events that have been postponed or canceled. Those include the planned Tuesday premieres for AmazonMGM’s Unstoppable and Universal’s Wolf Man, while Paramount canceled their Better Man premiere and Max canceled their The Pitt premiere for Wednesday.
More cancellations and postponements have come, including the 30th annual Critics Choice Awards ceremony, which has been moved from January 12 to the 26th.
Featured image: NEW YORK – FEBRUARY 25: Overview of Oscar statues on display at “Meet the Oscars” at the Time Warner Center on February 25, 2010 in New York City. (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images)
Writer/director James Mangold currently has a major movie in theaters, his Timothée Chalamet-led Bob Dylan film A Complete Unknown. Mangold’s evocative look at Dylan’s early years in New York paints a vivid picture of one of the most iconic artists in American history as he finds his footing, voice, and singularly chameleonic approach to stardom. Mangold’s got another huge project on the horizon that, while not completely unknown, certainly classifies as intriguingly mysterious and is far, far away from Greenwich Village in the early 60s—a Star Wars film that will take viewers to a time never before captured in any film or TV series in franchise history.
Mangold is working on the script with co-writer Beau Willimon, and they’ve set themselves a massive challenge—they’re going to eschew the Skywalker Saga entirely. Mangold and Willimon plan to take viewers back millennia before Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala—and their kids, Luke and Leia—and explore the galaxy’s deep past. This offers them a lot of narrative flexibility and a Death Star’s worth of risks.
Speaking with MovieWeb, Mangold revealed a bit about how he’s approaching the challenge. While he and Willimon aren’t ignoring the Star Wars canon, the film is currently titled Dawn of the Jedi, after all, they are attempting to tell a completely new story, which means taking the risk of relying far less on the well-known mythos and narratives of the franchise. Here’s how Mangold put it to MovieWeb:
“The Star Wars movie would be taking place 25,000 years before any known Star Wars movies takes place. It’s an area and a playground that I’ve always [wanted to explore] and that I was inspired by as a teenager. I’m not that interested in being handcuffed by so much lore at this point that it’s almost immovable, and you can’t please anybody.”
This is, of course, a bold move given the history of Star Wars mega-fans finding fault when a story veers from the canon or what they feel are the unbreakable tenets of the franchise as it was first conceived by George Lucas. Rian Johnson and his cast faced backlash from vocal fans for his narrative choices—and casting choices, sadly—in The Last Jedi, and that was despite continuing the Skywalker Saga and including iconic characters like Luke and Yoda.
“Success is never guaranteed, but the reality is that the way to get most people to agree is to move them; to somehow find the humanity in a situation,” Mangold said. “Whether it’s a mega-franchise or a smaller dramatic movie, whatever they are, usually the movies you remember are the ones that move you.”
At the Star Wars Celebration last year, Mangold said his approach to the film was thinking of it as a “biblical epic,” name-checking Cecil B. Demille’s TheTen Commandments as inspiration. There’s no doubt that as he and Willimon have been working on the script, they’ve made changes and found new areas of intrigue, so there’s no telling if the movie they end up writing takes the same approach. Yet what certainly hasn’t changed is Mangold’s desire to bring something new to the galaxy. As he told MovieWeb, twhat he and Willimon are after, most of all, is emotional impact.
“The ones that leave you cold, even if they’re clever, even if they’re spectacular, even if they’re dazzling, somehow just become replaced by the next dazzling object a year later. It’s the feelings, it’s ‘the feels,’ right? That truly defines how we feel about these movies and whether we care to visit them again.”
Featured image: HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – DECEMBER 10: James Mangold attends the Los Angeles Premiere of Searchlight Pictures “A Complete Unknown” at Dolby Theatre on December 10, 2024 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)
Production designer Inbal Weinberg perfected her meticulous eye over years of collaborations with filmmakers who “are serious about every detail,” including Derek Cianfrance, Luca Guadagnino, and Martin McDonagh. However, meticulousness took on a whole new level when Weinberg worked alongside renowned Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar on his first English-language feature, The Room Next Door, which opened in Los Angeles and New York on December 20 and expands to select cities on January 10.
Based on the novel “What Are You Going Through” by Sigrid Nunez, the film boasts many of Almodóvar’s signature touches, such as saturated color, melodramatic flourishes, and a plot that centers on the inner lives of women.
Oscar winners Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton star as writers and old friends who reconnect in New York. Swinton’s Martha is a former war correspondent now battling untreatable cancer. She explains to Moore’s Ingrid, a novelist who fears death, that she’s decided to end her life before cancer does. Martha asks Ingrid to simply be in the next room of a rented house in upstate New York so Martha won’t have to die alone.
It was important for Almodóvar, working in a culture and language outside his own, to have someone familiar with New York City exterior and interior locations. “I relished in my responsibility of being the New York representative. I’ve lived there for 20 years; it’s my favorite place in the world,” says Weinberg over Zoom from North Carolina, where she’s on location shooting Cianfrance’s latest,Roofman.
The Room Next Door has two crucial living spaces: Martha’s Manhattan apartment and the upstate house she retreats to with Ingrid. “I contacted friends and colleagues who are writers and artists, and I photographed the interiors of the apartments of female reporters and war correspondents to have interesting photos for Pedro to look at when I traveled to Spain,” Weinberg says. “He is always super curious about how people live. He was open to exploring, so we went back to some of these homes with his team.”
Weinberg researched many houses in upstate New York, Long Island, and New England, where the script had originally set the house that Martha rents. She presented these ideas and options to Almodóvar, who, not surprisingly, gravitated quickly to a contemporary, modernist home. “We went into that world of modernism. I sent him references of contemporary or iconic mid-century homes. We traveled to three or four modernist houses built by architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, and Gerald Luss, who was one that he really enjoyed,” says Weinberg.
Almodóvar decided to recreate a modernist house in Spain. “I would have gladly built a house in Spain, but it was a huge endeavor for a fairly small film. It was too risky,” says Weinberg. As the team scouted contemporary houses in Spain, the production designer had to consider and point out to the Spanish crew that the landscaping and vegetation had to pass for upstate New York.
“Their world is Mediterranean. I grew up in Israel, and the vegetation in Spain is similar. But the Northeast [of the US] is wildly different; it looks nothing like the vegetation in Spain,” she says. “We found an area with pines. They were not the same pines as in New York, but it could pass. Then we had to do the exteriors. It isn’t easy to express to a production company why they had to spend money to [replace] flowers and plants that were too Mediterranean and too manicured. No one thinks of landscaping with production design.”
The modernist house they settled on for shooting was called Casa Szoke, nestled at the base of mountains in Madrid near the historic town of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Both Weinberg and Almodóvar were drawn to the house’s “unusual angles and sloping ceiling” and “something interesting about breakage in the views, the extreme angles,” says Weinberg. “There was a lot going on … so much tension. So the architecture mirrored the drama.”
Since contemporary architecture can sometimes seem cold, she noted, the design team repainted the house’s white walls with color, replaced blonde wood with darker, warmer wood, and clad the existing built-in furniture in bright colors. Much of these touches are movie-set temporary, so everything is put back to its original state when the homeowners return, Weinberg says.
Then there are the tiny, specific details that likely escape all but the most eagle-eyed of moviegoers but that give Almodóvar movies their aesthetic.
“Pedro is very tactile. He always has to feel a fabric, whether it’s for wardrobe or for furnishings. He has the eye of a decorator,” Weinberg says. “He really loves the richness of fabrics and color, so it is an enjoyable part of filmmaking for him being embedded in the design process.”
Since The Room Next Door is about two writers, it comes as no surprise that Almodóvar would be “extremely specific” about every book in both houses, even if they would never be seen on screen.
“He cares so much about the bookshelves. Martha was a war correspondent, so I took pictures of the books in the homes of war correspondents. We purchased those titles and shipped them in crates to Spain,” says Weinberg. “Pedro reads so much; he is super on top of current literature. He trusted me, I think, because I am also a voracious reader. It was a huge effort. Even the coffee table books were carefully picked. He needs to see about fifty titles before choosing.”
Even for often monochromatic New York City, Almodóvar almost always opted for the most colorful option for the sets, furniture, and decor, says Weinberg.
“I come from a social realism background but I reassured myself that this was not a documentary, it was an Almodóvar film and people are expecting certain things,” she says. “They are not going to scrutinize; he’s managed to build his own universe at this point. So we are inviting people into his version of the story in New York.”
The Room Next Door opens in select cities on January 10.
Directors Alex García López and Laura Mora have undertaken the historic feat of adapting Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez’s 1967 novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, into a sixteen-part Netflix series, the first half of which was released on December 11. Unlike the book, which moves back and forth in time across seven generations of the Buendía family, the show is chronological (and it was shot chronologically, too), but beyond the change in timing, the series is loyal to Márquez’s magical realism, which is woven as a beautiful matter of course into the show’s naturalistic aesthetic.
The story opens at the wedding of José Arcadio Buendía (Marco González) and Úrsula Iguarán (Susana Morales), cousins who are warned by Úrsula’s mother that their union will produce an offspring with a pig’s tail. Úrsula avoids sex with her new husband, and during a cockfight, José Arcadio’s adversary, Prudencio Aguilar, calls him impotent. He kills Prudencio, who appears as a bloodied ghost around the couple’s home until they leave their village behind. Leading a small group, José Arcadio founds Macondo, a utopian town unconnected from the world but for a group of Gypsies who pass by every few years.
The Gypsies’ leader, Melquiades (Moreno Borja), introduces the townspeople to wonders like magnets and ice, and his influence pushes José Arcadio, already an idealist and a dreamer, into a life of scholarly withdrawal that eventually becomes madness. Before then, José Arcadio and Úrsula have three children. The oldest, also José Arcadio, disappears with one of the Gypsy women. Aureliano, who eventually becomes a colonel fighting against the Conservative government in Colombia’s civil war, has accurate premonitions of many things, but not his own death by firing squad. The youngest, Amaranta, finds herself in a love triangle with her stepsister, Rebeca, a once-silent orphan delivered to the Buendía household along with a sack of her deceased parents’ bones. The sack remains in the house intact, trundling from room to room on its own.
The series was shot by cinematographers Paulo Perez (episodes 1, 2, 3, 7, and 8) and María Sarasvati Herrera (episodes 4, 5, and 6). Whether indoors or out, the show feels close to the natural world, the nights lit by candles and the days by bright equatorial sunshine. The voice of Aureliano Babilonia, a sixth-generation Buendía and the one to decipher Melquiades’ writings about his family, narrates the story as he learns it, an element which Perez reflects in the cinematography’s flexibility. “Babilonia doesn’t know what’s going to happen, so it has to be a very free camera,” Perez said. His episodes make use of a handheld camera, and we feel part of the characters’ action as they embark on what begins, at least, as an adventure. “We wanted to feel the freedom of the people of the [Caribbean],” Perez said. “In this moment, it was the diaspora, the dream of a new time, of a new civilization. We wanted to feel this type of energy in the camera.”
After many years in Macondo, the rest of the world eventually makes contact with the first two generations of the Buendías. “When my block arrives, religion and the government enter Macondo, and many things change,” said Herrera. “Paulo’s block was about discovery, about freedom. Ours was much more controlled, even the Steadicam, the sequence shots.” Herrera worked with director Laura Mora to establish a framed, pictorial language that highlights what the characters experience as their individual lives and town undergo radical change.
Both before and after Macondo’s discovery by the outside world, significant action takes place at night. “We talked a lot about how moonlight should be — which color, which texture? Every night is different,” Herrera said. Perez lit much of his block with fire from candles and torches, while Herrera, who shot more nighttime interiors, relied on LEDs. Both cinematographers aimed for a realistic sense of darkness. “I like the darkness,” Perez pointed out. “You see what’s important in the frame, and that feels natural.” And at five square kilometers, the entirety of Macondo couldn’t be lit, anyway.
All the different versions of Macondo were built on a farm about four hours from Bogota. The Buendías’ house, which grows through the episodes to accommodate the expanding family, was protected under a hangar-size tent. The tent couldn’t support lights, so the cinematographers worked with cherrypickers and balloons to hang lighting. For the exteriors, they worked with available light, shooting early and late to avoid the harshness of the equatorial sun directly overhead. Both inside and out, there was an emphasis on the genuine. “The magic realism happened very naturally,” Perez said, and the cinematographers carried that ethos over to how One Hundred Years of Solitude was shot.
Perez and Herrera also worked to keep the cinematography consistent between episodes. “There were these gaps between blocks where many things changed in the town over the years,” Herrera said. “So we had to find a way to respond to what was happening in the story, but at the same time, merge between blocks so it didn’t look like a completely different show.” She and Perez watched each other’s work to create a consistent language, matching colors and contrast between the episodic leaps. A focus on Marquez’s original work also brings consistency. “We worked a lot with the book,” Perez said, with the pair looking at how they could recreate this monumental work of literature in a way that would help people understand it. As we watch a full frame of characters disappear to leave behind a single Buendía, or get close to another family member, isolated in a close-up, anamorphic lenses and a diaptor bring to life the Buendías’ fate first set out by Marquez’s words. As for the cinematographers’ relationship to the original work? “We know it by memory,” Herrera said.
The second season of HBO and Sony Pictures TV’s gripping drama The Last of Us will sink its teeth into our eyeballs this April, Sony confirmed Monday night at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
A riveting new one-minute teaser for the series was released on Monday, revealing glimpses of what’s to come and confirming that April showers will also bring April zombies (one assumes that in the world of The Last of Us, flowers still bloom in May.) The teaser gives us a look at Kaitlyn Dever playing Abby, a well-known character from the video game series who is new to the show. “It doesn’t matter if you have a code like me,” she says, walking down a shadowy hallway with a gun in her hand. “There are some things everyone agrees are just wrong.”
We also see a glimpse of Jeffrey Wright’s Isaac, another character from the video game series who is making his first appearance in the show. The teaser gives us glimpses of season one stars Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), and ends with hundreds, if not thousands, of the infected slamming themselves into a snowy refuge’s protect walls.
We’ve learned in the full trailer for season 2 that the action picks up five years after the first season’s events. Season 2’s logline confirms that “Joel and Ellie are drawn into conflict with each other and a world even more dangerous and unpredictable than the one they left behind.” In the full-length trailer, we were also introduced to Catherine O’Hara’s new character, seemingly playing a therapist who we find working with Joel. We all know Joel needs therapy—he’s done things he never thought he’d have to to survive the outbreak. Once Ellie was made his charge, he only had to dig deeper and go darker, including capping season one with a vengeful bloodbath at a hospital where Ellie was moments away from being dissected for the zombie serum she seemed to possess in her blood.
The trailer also revealed Ellie in her new home in the mountains, safely secured there by Joel after he went on his rampage to free her. Although everyone appears to be in a better place than the one we left them, the trailer also gave us a glimpse of one of the infected—at one of the later, more terrifying stages of mutation—crawling toward an unsuspected potential victim.
In The Last of Us, safety is an illusion, and most codes, even codes of morality, eventually get broken.
For more on The Last of Us, check out these stories:
Christmas may be over, but Christmas movies are a delight anytime. There are plenty of classic Christmas movies for pretty much every taste. The sentimental (or viewers of a certain age) might tell you that there’s no improvement upon Frank Capra’s 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life or, just a year later, George Seaton’s seminal 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street. Bob Clark’s 1983 film A Christmas Story immortalized Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley)’s quest to secure a Red Ryder Range 200 Shoot BB Gun into a domestic epic, giving proper weight and gravitas to the desire of a child to get the perfect Christmas gift. For those who prefer their eggnog with a bit more kick, a three-year stretch in the late 80s saw back-to-back-to-back classics: Planes, Trains, & Automobiles (1987), Scrooged (1988) and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989). The list is long and getting longer all the time—Alexander Payne’s The Holdoverscame out just last year and is already credibly considered a Christmas movie for the ages.
Hallmark Christmas movies deserve special mention. With over 300 films and 30 new ones added yearly, they’ve significantly impacted the communities where they’re filmed. Take Connecticut, for example. The state recently unveiled the Connecticut Christmas Movie Trail, showcasing its popularity as a filming location for holiday movies. Connecticut’s natural beauty and charming towns might surprise those who’ve never visited—neighboring New York gets a lot of attention, understandably, but Connecticut is a filmmaker’s paradise, too. Picture-perfect squares, historic inns adorned with twinkling lights, and quaint shops lining the streets create a scene straight out of a movie set. No wonder so many holiday movies are filmed here.
The Connecticut Christmas Movie Trail features 22 filming locations across the state, from Mystic to New London and Waterford to Bridgeport. One such location is the Silas W. Robbins House in Wethersfield, a picturesque town on the Connecticut River, where the film Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane was shot.
Directed by Maggie Greenwald and adapted by Caitlin D. Fryers from Mary Beth McDonough’s novel “The House on Honeysuckle Lane,” Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane stars Alicia Witt as Emma Reynolds, a driven New York City lawyer who returns home for Christmas after her parents pass away. She plans to sell the family home on Honeysuckle Lane and sell off her parents’ belongings, but fate has other plans. Colin Ferguson plays Morgan Shelby, an appraiser hired to value the antiques. When Emma discovers mysterious letters hidden in her mother’s desk, she and Morgan team up to unravel the mystery, and the Christmas magic begins.
The Silas W. Robbins Bed and Breakfast was the perfect setting for the Honeysuckle Lane home. Built in 1873 by Silas Robbins, owner of the seed business Johnson, Robbins, and Co., the house is a stunning example of Second Empire Style. This architectural style originated in France during Napoleon III’s reign and became popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Silas W. Robbins House exemplifies the style with its mansard roof, wood and brick construction, slate shingles, cast iron cresting, and a grand double-door entryway. Restoration of the historic property began in 2001 and was completed in 2007.
The Silas W. Robbins house’s rich history and detail made it an ideal location for director Greenwald and her team to portray the house on Honeysuckle Lane. Olga Cherkasova and her husband Dimitry fell in love with the property and bought it, even though they weren’t familiar with B&Bs. “The property was that incredible,” Cherkasova says.
Cherkasova describes the filming process as demanding but richly rewarding. She cherishes the experience of being part of the creative process and witnessing a creative vision come to life, and was impressed by the cast and crew’s dedication and hard work.
“To be a part of the creative team and be involved in the creative process, just being in the group with such wonderful creative people,” she says. “I really want to emphasize how great that experience was to see people that create something selflessly, at four o’clock in the morning, high on coffee (laughs), creating something magical.”
A scene from Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane. Courtesy Hallmark.
Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane wasn’t just a boon for the Silas but for the entire Wethersfield community. Cherkasova says the filming brought people together, so much so they were willing pitch in and become a part of the film.
“It brought our community together,” Cherkasova says. “Neighbors, local businesses, and organizations—there was so much excitement in town. I was personally so humbled to see my neighbors in this old historical town, with a lot of older people, so excited. It’s a really quiet town, and we’re known as a quiet getaway. The support and patience of everyone was amazing, and it showed how strong our community spirit is. Everyone volunteered to be extras! These were long, sometimes 16-hour days, and people wanted to be a part of it. Everyone came together, and we were happy to create something bigger than ourselves. Again, magic.”
The benefits extended beyond the town itself. The production crew boosted the local economy in ways big and small.
“During Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane, there were almost 100 people on site every day,” Cherkasova says. “Those people needed to eat and to stay somewhere, so the local catering company, the hotels, the shops all benefited. And when the movie came out and highlighted the properties in the movie, all of them but one kept their actual names in the film.”
One of Cherkasova’s biggest takeaways was the work ethic and dedication of everyone involved in filmmaking, from the actors to the tireless crew members behind the scenes.
“We all see the glamorous part of movie making, but I got to see the hard work of the actual crew, the people who are responsible for food or costumes or makeup or equipment or the lighting,” Cherkasova says. “Many people don’t know how hard those people work, how dedicated they are, and how they drop everything to create something magical. It’s just amazing.”
As for what the Silas W. Robbins and the town of Wethersfield offered, Cherkasova feels understandable pride in how camera-ready they all were.
“The only thing they had to bring was fake snow and extra Christmas decorations; the town had everything else the production needed.”
It has been almost two decades since the Oscar-winning stop-motion animation delight Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Now, the dynamic duo is back in a new adventure, Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl; however, the world has changed.
Not only is the feature streaming on Netflix, a platform that did not exist in 2005, but technological and production processes have evolved exponentially, opening up a world of creative opportunities.
In Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Wallace invents a “smart gnome” called Norbot who develops a mind of its own and turns bad. However, it turns out an old foe is behind it and out for revenge. The film pays homage to such films as Cape Fear, The African Queen, The Italian Job, and Village of the Damned.
Here, Nick Park, co-director and Wallace and Gromit’s creator, and Merlin Crossingham, co-director and Aardman’s Creative Director, discuss how massive technological leaps since the original film (which Park co-directed and Corssingham served as second unit director) enhanced their world-building, yet their reliance on artisans remained as vital as ever in their beguiling new Wallace and Gromit adventure.
Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl introduces audiences to Norbot. What were the key considerations in creating the character?
Park: He had to fit in with the Wallace and Gromit world. Some of my early drawings had him with a more organic mouth because I hadn’t really thought too far about how he would be animated. When we began to work together, we started looking at ventriloquist dummies and how sinister they are in horror movies and the one that a British comedian called Harry Hill had.
Crossingham: He’s a Wallace invention, so that was also a very important starting point to inform the way he looked. The evolution process once we’ve designed the characters moves to how they perform, so we did have him blinking, looking, and talking in an elaborate way. However, the more we stripped Norbot back, the funnier he got. It’s that feeling of unease where even when he’s good, he looks a little unsettling. We locked his eyes to make him feel like a machine because we didn’t want him to feel like Pinocchio. That was really important. He rotates from the middle because we wanted him to feel like a robot. We didn’t want to anthropomorphize him into a young boy.
How have materials and processes changed since Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?
Crossingham: When it comes to the puppets, silicone is a good example. Historically, you could make it look good, but it wouldn’t move well, or it would move well, but it wouldn’t look good, but now you can do both, and the scale is convincing. We can still make sure the fingerprints are in Wallace’s sleeve that would have been modeling clay, but now we can use a silicone version. We’d still use modeling clay if we need it, but 3D printing for prototyping and making molds is a game changer in the model-making department. Although there are great technological advances, it’s still handmade and the craft of the build is fundamental.
Even though the materials have changed, the aesthetic has stayed intact. How do you achieve that?
Park: The handmade quality is key to the ethos of Wallace and Gromit and the humor and charm and everything that go with it. We’ve shot everything Aardman since A Matter of Loaf And Death using digital technology. That has been a big thing to adapt to, but it gives you great advantages. If a shot goes wrong in any way, it’s easier to fix. If a leaf falls off the tree or a picture falls off the wall, you can easily fix it this way. We used to have to live with it or reshoot it.
Crossingham: A core principle is that we try to shoot everything in front of the camera. For example, when Norbot is being hacked and has got a projection on him, our director of photography found a miniature projector that would be light and color stable so it could be left on for weeks. It’s not a post effect; it is actual numbers being projected on top of Norbot as he’s been hacked. Technological craft hacks like that are a lovely hybrid of the traditional stop motion technique and finding modern solutions. We never would have thought that was possible. You could have had the more obvious things, such as water and fog, but even five years ago you would have had to have a mega budget to do that much water. Now, our in-house team at Aardman is like, “We can do that for you and stylize it to fit it to our Wallace and Gromit world.” That’s key.
Park: With the quality of Wallace and Gromit’s world, where everything is a bit rounder and a little bit chunky and lumpy, they can make the water animate so that it fits that world.
You have this in-house, but do you have a pool of local artisans and craftspeople you can dip into?
Crossingham: The armatures, which are the fundamental bones of Wallace and Gromit, are made by a miniature engineering company called John Wright Modelmaking, who are also based in Bristol. They’re not part of Aardman, but they make the component parts, and then our miniature engineers use those to fabricate our puppets. We have a huge skill base at Aardman, and most of the creative talent, the craftspeople, are freelance. We don’t hold a huge staff base so the crews will come and go, but the majority live within the Bristol area. That talent base has grown with the studio, and they don’t just work for us, but it’s really important to nurture and support that.
I saw an unfinished version of Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, so I saw how the sausage was made. It showed things like the studio ceiling beyond the shot and the degree of blending physical production, matting, and CG.
Crossingham: It’s another one of those things where post-production used to be a hallowed thing. You’d really have to count your shots and ask, “Can we do that shot? Do we need to take it to London?” Now, we have a digital post-production pipeline that can do almost anything we can ask for within time and money allowances. It’s a case of saying, ‘Where do we where do we want the time and the energy spent?’
Park: We have always had, with films like Chicken Run and Were-Rabbit, these big visions. We joke that it’s easy to write that there will be 19 dancing caribou and storyboard that, but then it’s a big question for our art and camera department to ask, “How the hell are we going to shoot this?” As you saw when you could see ceilings, we really wanted these high shots over the aqueduct at the end. We tried to keep as much as possible built for real by the art department, so the valley was all real, but the camera couldn’t get high enough with the rigs we’d got. The ceiling got in the way. The aqueduct itself and the legs became CG, which gave us a lot more flexibility with lots of other shots as well. We could move things around much more easily.
Crossingham: There were three different scales of the valley, and being able to meld them together was great. Also, the use of digital skies has become more commonplace because we previously would have had to paint them.
Park: In the old days, if a character wanted to leap, leave the ground, or throw anything, you would have to have wires holding it and hide them and stop them reflecting the lights and stuff. Now it’s much quicker to do that, maybe against a green screen, and do it that way. The animator doesn’t have to get distracted by hiding wires. They can have it on a rig, be more intuitive, and grapple with it much quicker. Then, we can paint it out in post.
Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is now streaming on Netflix.
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The 2025 Golden Globes were held on Sunday night in Los Angeles, with awards bestowed upon one of 2024’s most marquee television series, and a pair of challenging, masterfully constructed films took top honors.
The Brutalist was named the best motion picture — drama, with helmer Brady Corbet winning best director, and his leading man, Adrien Brody, won best actor in a drama. During his acceptance speech, Brody, who plays László Tóth, a Holocaust survivor who comes to America hoping for a better life, spoke directly to his mother, a Hungarian immigrant. “I do not know fully how to express all of the challenges that you have faced and experienced, and the many people who have struggled immigrating to this country,” he said. “I hope that this work stands to lift you up a bit and to give you a voice.”
On the film side, Emilia Pérez was named the best motion picture – musical or comedy and best non-English language film, with Zoe Saldaña winning the best supporting actress award for her stunning turn in the film. “El Mal,” one of the big numbers from the film, won best original song.
On the TV side, FX’s lush, period-perfect epic Shōgun slayed its share of prizes, winning four awards, including the top honor for best TV drama. One of 2024’s big surprises was Richard Gadd’s semi-autobiographical Netflix series Baby Reindeer, which was named best limited series, anthology, or TV movie, one of its two awards. Hacks, the Jean Smart-led biting comedy on HBO, won the best TV series — musical or comedy. Smart won best performance by a female actor in a musical or comedy.
One of the evening’s big surprises was Fernanda Torres’ win for best actress in a drama for her phenomenal work in I’m Still Here, playing Eunice Paiva, a mother and wife who must reinvent herself after her husband is disappeared by the police during Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1971. Torres bested both Angelina Jolie (Maria) and Nicole Kidman (Babygirl).
Demi Moore won best actress in a comedy for her turn as Elisabeth, a middle-aged actress willing to tap the black market for a drug to look younger in writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s fearless film The Substance. The win capped a stirring comeback for Moore, who said in her acceptance speech that awards weren’t something she could enjoy when she was one of the world’s biggest stars in the 1990s.
“Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a popcorn actress, and at that time, I made that mean that this is not something I was allowed to have,” Moore said. “That I could do movies that were successful and made a lot of money, but that I couldn’t be acknowledged.”
Sebastian Stan nabbed the best actor in a comedy award for playing Edward in writer/director Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man, an aspiring actor who undergoes a radical medical procedure to transform his appearance into leading man material. The results lead to unexpected consequences.
Director Jon M. Chu’s Wicked won the award for cinematic and box office achievement, while Flow was the best animated film.
Some of the other performers to take home an award were A Real Pain‘s Kiernan Culkin, winning best performance by a male actor in a supporting role in a motion picture, The Penguin‘s Colin Farrell for best performance by a male actor in a limited series, anthology series, or TV movie, True Detective: Night Country‘s Jodie Foster for the same category for a female actor, and The Bear‘s Jeremy Allen White for best performance by an actor in a TV series — musical or comedy.
For a full list of the awards, check out the Globes’ official site here.
Featured image: BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 05: Zoe Saldana, winner of the Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture award for “Emilia Pérez,” poses in the press room during the 82nd Annual Golden Globe Award at The Beverly Hilton on January 05, 2025 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
Horror fans were given a fresh infusion of Dracula mythology on Christmas Day courtesy of Nosferatu. Written and directed by Robert Eggers, the gothic tale, set in 1838, follows the bloodsucking Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) as he preys on beautiful Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) and her new husband (Nicholas Hoult). Nosferatu boasts an impressive supporting cast who are, like its stars, all-in on yet another of Eggers’ deliciously detailed period pieces, including co-stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, and Willem Dafoe.
Shot mainly at Prague’s Barrandov Studio and inspired by F.W. Murnau’s 1922 film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, the moviemarks Eggers’ sixth collaboration with cinematographer Jarin Blaschke. Oscar-nominated for his black-and-white filming of 2019’s The Lighthouse, Blashcke deployed mood-evoking light and meticulous camera movement to conjure a sense of Central Europe-rooted dread. “My dad was an engineer, and his dad was an engineer, so sometimes I approach things as an engineering problem,” says Blaschke. “If I don’t want the camera bouncing off around the room, how can I engineer the shot elegantly by trimming away all the excess? For me, the experience of watching a film should be as clean and pure as possible.”
Speaking from his new home in London, Blaschke talks about the power of single-take scenes, praises 35 mm film, and breaks down Nosferatu‘s slow and spooky reveal of the shadow-cloaked Count Orlok.
Nosferatu transports viewers to this 19th-century realm of horror in a completely absorbing way.
We tried to make something that had an effect adjacent to hypnosis.
Lily-Rose Depp as Emily delivers an unnerving performance when she’s in the throes of possession. It seems like your camera captures her climactic breakdown in a single unbroken take.
That came out of the rehearsal room. Robert’s there with the movement coach and Lily. We have a conversation about, “Here’s the bed; that’s where the wall would be.” They put [the action] in a certain order. Then I meekly hold up my hand and say to Lily, “Well, what if you did it in a different order so I could get it all in one [camera] move? If you did the shaky bit first and then the backbend—would that still work for you?” I look for a three-act structure in the [camera] movement: What’s the right energetic sequence, and how do you get the camera there?
There are several one-take scenes featuring several actors who must hit their marks and speak their lines without any mistakes. Was that stressful to pull off?
I understand that some people will push back because we pre-position the camera and then put the actors in the shot. But remarkably, the actors in Nosferatu seemed to like the live tension of doing sustained scenes. It’s lovely to watch things melt away where you’re being led but not fed.
You shot Nosferatu on a 35-millimeter celluloid film. Why?
I just think there’s more complexity and subtlety to the color with celluloid film. With digital, if you have mixed light, it’s orange and blue — very clean-cut. But with film, it can get messy in a really nuanced way that I like.
Most of the movie was made on a soundstage in Prague, right?
We went to eastern Czech Republic for a couple of exteriors and built a gypsy village on a farm estate outside of Prague but other than that, yeah. Our production designer, Craig Lathrop, and his team built the castle’s interiors completely on the soundstage. And I had my specifications. I needed sets raised so I could have lights bounce up from underneath and come back through the windows, or sometimes, I’d need a bunch of space on one side and not the other. And there were a lot of discussions about how to move the camera. If it’s a crane shot, they’d have to maybe take a wall out and build stuff with a remote head on a crane in mind, allowing us to go in a straight line. That also means they had to line up the doorways. You could do a kind of fish around, but our camera doesn’t want to fish around. You want this relentless, uncanny camera [movement], and you want it to be precise.
Several shots position the character’s face dead center, almost like a formal portrait. How does that level of symmetry reflect your aesthetic?
If you pause the movie at any point, I want the frame to work. With other directors, a lot of time, the first week, they’ll be, “Okay, let’s do a rehearsal, and we’ll find it in rehearsal,” and I’m like, “That’s putting the cart ahead of the horse here.” For me, it’s about planning a series of frames and then figuring out how to move the camera. And then we place the actors.
The actors go where the camera wants. That [approach] came out of The Northman, which is all about fate and how everything’s inevitable, so there’s not anything you can do about it. Similar logic here in Nosferatu. We frame to the architecture, especially in an oppressive magical castle, and then you put the actor’s action there. We wanted to create illustrative images that give you a storybook feeling.
There are basically no over-the-shoulder shots in Nosferatu. Intentional?
When you go to a photo gallery, do you ever see an over-the-shoulder shot? That’s not a good picture! That’s not a portrait. How many out-of-focus shoulders do you need in your movie? It’s not a good frame.
Do you have a background in still photography?
Not professionally, but I’ve had a camera since age ten. [Jarin gets up and retrieves a binder from a book shelf]. This is binder number 20 of negatives that I started collecting in 1994. Still photography definitely offers ideas I can explore in our movies.
Lighting plays a huge role in Nosferatu, creating atmosphere and shadows. The moonlight, the candlelight, and the firelight all seem very organic.
I’ve learned most of my lighting through trial and error for the last 20 years after film school, just from observing things in the world. Like “This scene would be great if it looked like that cathedral I visited in some European city during the winter. What would the colors be? What angle would the light be?” I want the audience to believe that this is what a Transylvanian nobleman’s castle really looks like. I’m not going to set up a backlight that wouldn’t be in the room. Or moonlight: What does that look like for me at night? Well, I don’t see color. That answers the questions in a really clean way.
You’ve teamed with Robert Eggers on six movies now. How did you guys collaborate on the look of this film?
Sometimes, it’s hard [to figure out] what’s Rob and what’s me, but Rob likes the symmetrical frame for sure. He’s very classicist. He got as far forward as the Renaissance and saw no reason to go into anything else. [laughing]. In this context, it works because our story is set in 1838. The way we see things in Nosferatu is inspired by the taste of the characters in the movie and the era they represent.
When we first see Count Orlok in his castle, he’s lit and photographed as a shadowy figure. Can you break down the slow reveal of this mysterious character?
All the ways you could obscure this person, we used them all! Silhouette with the lights behind him. Then we cut to the other side where Thomas is front-lit, but you only get Orlok’s back and his hands. At the end of the scene, Orlok is front-lit, but you do a chop and only see his hands because everything above is dark, or it’s a shot of his eyes, so you don’t see the rest [of his face]. Every which way, we exhausted all the options.
Panavision Arriflex. Arricam ST camera. We shot on Kodak 5219 stock. For the dream sequences, I used a lens based on a 19th-century design. We also had high-speed lenses made by Panavision for our production. We went through five different versions. One had too much character, and Another was too clean. Version number five was great.
Why did you need a new type of high-speed lens?
To capture the candlelight. In the [gypsy] inn, for example, we’re able to see the old grandma with a single candle, and you can actually read the lighting on her face. I wanted to use real fire, as opposed to The Witch or The Lighthouse or The Northman, where we simulated firelight, but it wasn’t actually fire.
Being able to work four months on this movie must have meant a lot, economically, to the camera department you assembled for Nosferatu. What kind of qualities do you look for in your crew members?
I want nerds. Even though I’m a very technically oriented person, I tend to get along with actors even more than crew members because actors really put themselves into the work. Those are the kind of people I’m looking for.
Costume designer Arianne Phillips has never met Bob Dylan, but she did discover a personal connection while researching the singer’s early days for her new project A Complete Unknown (in theaters now). “I was born in 1963 in New York City on Cornelia Street,” she says. “I thought I knew a lot about Bob Dylan, but in the course of my research, Ilearned that right around the corner, Bob Dylan was living on Fourth Street at the very same time. I have great stories from my parents about that time. Something was in the air.”
Phillips, who won an Oscar winner for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and previously teamed with Complete Unknown director James Mangold on his Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, crafted nearly 70 costumes for TimothéeChalamet. He portrays Dylan’s rapid-fire evolution from Minnesota-bred folkie to New York rocker heckled by purists for “going electric” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
Speaking to The Credits from her Los Angeles home, Philips, wearing a black and white striped “Breton” top straight out of the sixties, explains how she dressed Chalamet’s Dylan in three distinct styles to reflect his ever-changing musical transformations.
A Complete Unknown focuses on the halcyon days of Dylan’s early career. How did you structure the costume story?
We broke the film down into three beats: 1961-62, then 1963-64, and then 1965, so we had a beginning, a middle, and an end.
You started researching Dylan in 2019. So much has been written about the man; I wonder if you relied on any particular reference as your foundational text?
The script. And Jim Mangold’s direction. His vision was my guiding light. As Bob said to Jim, and Jim said to me, “We’re making a fable.” We weren’t making a documentary. You could drive yourself insane trying to excavate “the truth” because everybody who was there has a different account of what happened.
In 1961, Dylan shows up in Greenwich Village looking like a working-class folk singer. What kind of clothes did you select for that period?
Bob Dylan arrived in New York City in search of Woody Guthrie [portrayed in the film by Scoot McNairy], so I used that as the beginning of my character arc. It was documented in the book “A Freewheelin Time” by Dylan’s girlfriend at the time, Susie Rotolo [represented on screen by Elle Fanning’s “Sylvie Russo” character], that Bob only had a rucksack. He had mythic [stories]. “I was a hobo; I jumped trains.” Bob was really a young man from Minnesota, but since he modeled himself after Woody Guthrie, he had that working man aesthetic when he was nineteen years old, wearing carpenter pants—dungarees as they called them. I embraced that.
Dylan’s clothes changed from the grungy corduroy hat and organic fibers into suede jackets like the one he wears on the cover of his “Freewheelin'” album. He’s also wearing Levi’s 501 [jeans] on that cover. We take them for granted today as an American classic, but back then, they were a symbol of youthful rebellion. You couldn’t wear blue jeans to Disneyland! It represented this sort of post-beatnik folkie world and understanding that helped me thread together Dylan’s aesthetic.
In 1964, Dylan goes to England. How did that impact his look?
He was very influenced by the first time he went to England. Dylan meets the Beatles, hangs out with Donovan, and changes to more of a mod look with skinnier jeans and Chelsea boots. We see this guy who starts out in dungarees and Pendleton work shirts finding his style, his voice, both visually and musically. Dylan never signed up to be a folk singer; he doesn’t want to be boxed in, and that’s precisely what our story’s about.
By 1965, Dylan was sporting tailored suits and polka dot shirts ahead of the infamous Newport Folk Festival gig. What’s the backstory there?
Dylan’s having clothes made for him the first time. I pieced together my own backstory for how that happened. His manager, Albert Grossman [Dan Folger], dressed well and spent a lot of time in England, so we designed his suits and shirts as the real Albert Grossman would have had them made. We found pictures of Dylan being measured in some of these great English made-to-measures shops, so I imagined that Albert Grossman took Dylan to shops on Saville Road or Carnaby Street.
So the silhouette changes, with skinny suits…
And his hair’s getting bigger! I worked closely with Jaime Leigh McIntosh, the hair stylist, and it was really fun seeing his hair getting bigger, tipping toward the Summer of Love. At the same time, his silhouette becomes sinewy and becomes this rock and roll archetype.
How did you fabricate the clothes for TimothéeChalamet?
We used all kinds of fabrics true to the time, like hopsacks, which are harder to find these days, and we were always searching for vintage wools with a certain weight. We had all the shirts made of beautiful cotton and silk blends in Los Angeles by the amazing shop Anto Bespoke, who also made shirts for Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra. Since Bob wore a lot of leather and suede, we also had specialty makers and boot makers.
What about vintage clothing?
Timmy wears some vintage pieces, as do other characters. I always like to add a base layer to the overall concept, just as we did with Walk the Line and The People VersusLarry Flynt and W.E., where we recreated famous events. It’s impossible to re-create the fabrics and the prints of those times; there’s a feel to them and the way the clothes hang on you.
Once he becomes famous, Dylan starts wearing sunglasses. Where did you find the shades?
That’s actually wardrobe and props working together. Initially, I pulled from Old Focals in California, owned by this wonderful guy Russ Campbell, and he knew exactly what the glasses were: Bausch + Lomb. So, we used vintage sunglasses sourced through Old Focals.
The dark glasses seem to go hand in hand with Dylan’s rising fame?
From my personal assessment, Dylan was shy and socially awkward, and the fame happened so fast that he really needed those sunglasses for his anonymity. You can imagine what it must have been like for a young person to get that much attention.
A Complete Unknown captures this early sixties subculture populated by colorful characters like musicologist Alan Lomax (Norbert Leo Butz], Dave Van Ronk [Michael Chernus], and Pete Seger [Edward Norton]. What size crew did you hire to bring this story to life?
I had up to 40 people on my crew. Timmy had almost 70 costume changes, and we had 128 speaking parts. One through ten on the call sheet each had at least 15or 20 changes. And then we had 5,000 extras to dress, so we had teams of crews fitting background players for all these big concert scenes.
This chapter of Dylan’s story is rooted very specifically inGreenwich Village. Where did you shoot A Complete Unknown?
In New York and New Jersey. I was very fortunate to make a movie where it took place – that is a gift these days and not always something you can afford to do budget-wise. The great thing about filming in New York is that you get to work with so many talented East Coast artisans who also work in theater. It’s very helpful to have costumers, ager-dyers, tailors, and seamstresses who understand how to develop costumes for people who perform live in front of an audience, as they do in this film. You want your clothes to help the actors access their characters, so for me, making a costume that feels like the part is just as important as how it visually informs the audience.
A Complete Unknown is in theaters now.
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Disney+ unveiled its first animated Spider-Man series over the holidays with this glimpse at Marvel Animation’s Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.
The trailer opens on the iconic theme song—you know the one—where “Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can” and was written by Bob Harris and Paul Francis Webster for the classic 1967 cartoon series. Peter Parker is voiced by Hudson Thomas, and we see just how far from a superhero Peter starts off to be; he’s hit by a car while he’s running late for school.
Yet this Peter does have a homemade Spidey suit, which he quickly puts on after slipping out of class to stop a crime. The criminals are not impressed and mock his costume. “Is my suit really that bad?” Peter asks honestly.
Iconic Spider-Man villain Norman Osborn, better known as the Green Goblin, is here voiced by the great Colman Domingo. Norman begins the series helping Peter, even fashioning him a new suit, a departure from the recent live-action films where Tom Holland’s Peter Parker gets his high-tech Spidey suits from Iron Man himself, Tony Stark.
The core of the Peter Parker character has always been his inherent goodness and the fact that, unlike other superheroes, he’s just a kid.
Check out the trailer below. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man swings onto Disney+ on January 29:
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A new teaser trailer for director Julius Onah’s Captain America: Brave New World arrived on New Year’s Day, giving us our first glimpse of Harrison Ford’s President Thaddeus Ross’s alter ego, the mean red machine known as the Red Hulk. A new synopsis reveals that the plot hinges around Sam Wilson/Captain America (Anthony Mackie) meeting the newly elected U.S. President Ford and being foisted into the middle of an international incident “before the true mastermind has the entire world seeing red.” Sound like someone?
The brief teaser shows us Anthony Mackie’s somewhat newly minted Captain America flying into action, utilizing his captain’s shield to destructive effect. The big finish is when Ford’s Thaddeus Ross changes from an old man to the Red Hulk and smashes his way toward a ready-for-action Captain America.
When Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige presented some footage of Brave New World at Cinema Con last year, he said the vibe of the film is decidedly more of a grounded, gritty action flick, akin to the Russo Brothers’ beloved Captain America: The Winter Soldier. That was a fitting comparison, considering Winter Soldier was Mackie’s first MCU film, where Sam Wilson became Captain America’s most trusted ally. This was because Cap’s best friend, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), had been turned into the Winter Soldier, Cap’s brain-washed antagonist, and Sam Wilson was the man Cap could count on the most, which is why he was selected at the end of Avengers: Endgame by an aged, retired Steve Rogers to carry on the shield.
Next came the Disney+ series Falcon and the Winter Soldier, whichshowed us just how hard it was for Sam to replace a white icon and savior figure. By the end of the series, Sam has accepted the role and proven himself capable of carrying the shield.
Brave New World finds Sam after he’s accepted and grown into the role. The cast also includes Danny Ramirez, who returns as Joaquin Torres, the young man who takes over from Sam as the Falcon; Liv Tyler as Betty Ross; Tim Blake Nelson as Samuel Sterns/The Leader; Carl Lumbly (reprising his role of Isaiah Bradley from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), Shira Haas as Ruth Bat-Serpha/Sabra, and Giancarlo Esposito as the villain Sidewinder.
Check out the trailer below. Captain America: Brave New World smashes into theaters on February 14:
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This interview was selected by measures having nothing to do with science as one of our standouts from 2024. Arthur Max was absolutely crucial to Ridley Scott’s vision of creating a completely unhinged, dementedly decadent Rome. To that end, Max delivered, creating not one but two Colosseums for Scott’s epic.
Oscar-nominated production designer Arthur Max has worked on 16 of Ridley Scott’s films. These include some of American cinema’s most indelible cinematic spectacles, such as the original Gladiator (for which Max scored his first Oscar nod), Black Hawk Down, and The Martian. Despite the impressive body of work between them, Max thinks that the Roman epic actioner, Gladiator II, is their most ambitious yet. For instance, his crew built not one—but two—replicas of the Colosseum, where the numerous gladiatorial battles were staged.
Pedro Pascal plays General Acacius in Gladiator II from Paramount Pictures.
Sharp-eyed viewers may experience déjà vu. In the opening sequence, Pedro Pascal’s General Acacius leads the Roman navy in a savage invasion of Lucius’ (Paul Mescal) adopted hometown of Numidia. The naval battle and ensuing siege were filmed in Morocco after Max’s team repurposed the set from Kingdom of Heaven, another film he had worked on with Scott almost two decades ago. “It was in the spirit of recycling in the best possible way. It survived very well, which is a testament to how it was built and maintained,” says Max.
Taking place 15 years after Russell Crowe’s Maximus died in the original film, combat in the Colosseum is now even more sadistic and cruel. After the Roman navy defeats the Numidians—killing many villagers, including Lucius’ wife in the process—he and his fellow slaves are brought to Rome. There, Machiavellian businessman Macrinus (Denzel Washington) adds him to his stable of gladiators, who are forced to fight to the death against some ghastly beasts— a rhinoceros, tigers, and baboons—merely to entertain the royal court and the masses.
More than two decades after Gladiator won Best Picture in 2001, Max reflects on how much technology has changed. “Since we didn’t have the same technology on the first film, prep, building, and shooting took much longer even though the scale was proportionally smaller [on Gladiator], and we shot both in the same locations. This time, we made a bigger movie in a shorter period of time, thanks to the evolution of technology,” he reveals.
What are some of the major differences in your work when comparing the two films?
On the first one, we didn’t have all the tools to truly celebrate the glory of ancient Rome. But now, technology allows us to amplify the physical set and the architecture. It’s much quicker and you can go bigger. The scale was big on Gladiator, but it wasn’t as big compared to the ruins of ancient Rome. We were really struck by the immensity of their architecture. So, I tried to do it justice in this movie.
Lucius’ hometown, Numidia, was filmed in the desert of Morocco on the former set of Kingdom of Heaven. What was it like to revisit that set after almost twenty years?
It was in the spirit of recycling in the best possible way, but it wasn’t big enough. The front wall on Kingdom of Heaven was 500 feet long. We wanted to celebrate the scale of the Roman Empire and Lucius’ world. So, we added a couple hundred feet to the length and width and created a port as well since we had ships in this naval attack. It seems anomalous to have Roman warships in the desert, but our visual effects director thought it was easier to put the water in digitally rather than filming on water.
Director Ridley Scott and Paul Mescal on the set of Gladiator II from Paramount Pictures.
There was actually no water in that naval invasion sequence?
We had a small tank for close-ups in the water. But that was minor compared to the size of the wall, and it was only used for close-ups where the actors were physically in the water and then extended digitally. The post software for water now is very sophisticated. It’s much easier to work in the dry when you’re doing elaborate camera work, stunt work, and explosions with 12 cameras and trying to meet a schedule. We did the water work in Malta in a beautiful tank facility. But in Morocco, we had blue screens attached to hydraulic vehicles, which creates a big cyclorama wherever you need it.
Gladiator II from Paramount Pictures.
What about the ships? How did you get those into the middle of the desert?
We built two full-sized Roman warships: the ramming ship and the siege tower ship for the attack. To build General Acacius’ fleet, we redressed those several times with different sails, paintwork, and flags to get a fleet of hundreds of ships with great variety. How did we move them around with no water would be your question, right? Our special effects supervisor, Neil Corbould, found a really brilliant solution with a remote-controlled hydraulic all-wheel drive that was electric battery operated. It was like an enormous e-vehicle that moved industrial objects, and we built our ships on those. The ships could pitch, yaw, and roll just like a real one on water. But it was a lot more practical to load the crew and equipment, dress it, do stunt work, and manipulate in the dry. Technology came to our rescue.
For the gladiatorial battles, you returned to Fort Ricasoli in Malta, where you built one of the two replicas of the Colosseum at 60% scale.
In Gladiator, I think we only used two-thirds of the fort due to time and money. But this time, we used the whole fort. It’s an archeological historical site, so we had to get government permission to work there. It was quite difficult, and we took a lot of care in handling the rubble. In fact, they found some new ruins that they didn’t know were there, so they were quite happy about that.
Pedro Pascal plays General Acacius in Gladiator II from Paramount Pictures.Gladiator II from Paramount Pictures.
It’s extraordinary that you were filming and working at an archeological site!
The fort dates back to the 18th century and has been used as a fortress. We were allowed to work within certain limits to clear away some of the rubble. They were nervous about it, understandably. We were very careful about it; we had engineers and supervisors from the archeological department monitoring everything. So that’s why we could build larger sets this time. Some of it had to be done by hand, like an archeological dig, and we discovered cisterns under the arena that we didn’t know about the first time. On Gladiator, there were some temporary modern walls in the interiors going up to the roofs of the fort. I got an old plan from the building department and noticed there were spaces behind the wall, so I asked the government if we could dismantle the wall, which was very modern; it wasn’t an old original wall. We were curious about what was behind it, and perhaps we could see it in the film, which we did.
Paul Mescal plays Lucius and Pedro Pascal plays Marcus Acacius in Gladiator II from Paramount Pictures.
Were you near where you built the Colosseum replica for the original Gladiator?
Absolutely the same footprint. John Mathieson, our DP, was very keen to be exactly where it was because of the light—the sunlight doesn’t change over 25 years. So, he wanted the sun to move around the set exactly as before. The only thing was, the existing walls of buildings constrained the size, so we weren’t able to build the whole thing. We extended it digitally with blue screens and plates. With technology advancements, it was much easier and quicker this time around.
Check out part two of our conversation with Arthur Max about creating the mock naval battle in the Colosseum and more.
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