“One of the most brilliant sci-fi films I’ve ever seen,” said Steven Spielberg about Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two. This is just about the highest possible praise from one of the best who ever did it.
Spielberg and Villeneuve appeared together on the DGA’s Director’s Cutpodcast, where the man who brought us Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., and War of the Worlds gave all the extraterrestrial flowers to the Arrival and Dune helmer.
“So let me start by saying that there are filmmakers who are the builders of worlds, and we know it’s not a long list, but we know who a lot of them are,” Spielberg said. “Starting with [Georges] Méliès and of course [Walt] Disney and [Stanley] Kubrick. George Lucas, George Pal, Ray Harryhausen … [Frederico] Fellini built his own worlds. Tim Burton, obviously. Wes Anderson. Peter Jackson. James Cameron. Christopher Nolan. Ridley Scott, Guillermo del Toro. The list goes on. But it’s not that long of a list, and I deeply, fervently believe that you are one of its newest members of that list.”
Not a bad way for Villeneuve to ease into the interview. Spielberg wasn’t close to done.
“This is truly a visual epic, and it’s also filled with deeply, deeply drawn characters,” Spielberg said. “Yet the dialogue is very sparse when you look at it proportionately to the running time of the film. It’s such cinema. The shots are so painterly, yet there’s not an angle or single setup that’s pretentious…you have made one of the most brilliant science fiction films I have ever seen.”
Caption: JAVIER BARDEM as Stilgar in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Villeneuve might have felt like he’d just inhaled a heady dose of Spice after that, but Spielberg wasn’t done. He was particularly mesmerized by the way Villeneuve, his cinematographer Greig Fraser, and the rest of the creative team turned the desert into an ocean of possibility.
“There is such a yearning for water in this movie. For all the sand you have in this film, it’s really about water — the sacred waters that you are yearning for; green meadows and the blue water of life. You filmed the desert to resemble an ocean, a sea. The sandworms were like sea serpents, and that scene [of Paul] surfing the sandworm is one of the greatest things I have ever seen, ever. But you made the desert look like a liquid.”
Villeneuve noted that to capture key moments, like when Paul [Timothée Chalamet] and Chani [Zendaya] kiss while sitting on a dune, that shot required four days of filming to make sure they were always getting the two young, would-be lovers at the perfect time of day. Even the dunes themselves were cast, selected for how they were oriented to each other within each frame. Villeneuve called this particular effort to choose the perfect dune “the strangest casting I’ve done in my life.”
Caption: (L-r) ZENDAYA as Chani and TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides. in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Spielberg’s attention to detail, as you’d expect, led to some very specific observations like this one he made about the Harkonnen spice harvesters that are deployed throughout the desert planet of Arrakis to suck up Spice, the planet’s highly-coveted natural resource. “I thought the machines were incredible in the first Dune, and I don’t know what you did, but you did something to detail them more this time with the sand falling off the treads; that was awesome. Warner Bros. paid for more pixels, is that right? Because of the success of the first film, it’s good to have more pixels in our business.”
When Spielberg asked Villeneuve what it was like working with his cast, the Dune director said there was one performer, in particular, we should be on the lookout to become a director.
“There’s someone that spent a lot of time behind the camera listening — Zendaya,” Villeneuve said. “She’s very clever. I would not be surprised if one day we learn she wants to go behind [the camera].”
Check out the full podcast here:
For more on Dune: Part Two, check out these stories:
Featured image: Caption: RCaption: (L-r) ZENDAYA as Chani and REBECCA FERGUSON as Lady Jessica in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
One of the most enjoyable recent examples of a director and a star getting the best out of each other is that of Greek writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos and two-time Oscar winner Emma Stone. The dynamic duo is on quite a run, which began with Lanthimos’s sensational 2019 The Favourite, continued with last year’s outstanding Poor Things (which netted Stone her second Oscar), and will carry us into this summer’s Kinds of Kindness, with Searchlight Pictures just releasing its first cryptic trailer.
What you’ll be able to glean from the Kinds of Kindness trailer will have more to do with a vibe than any concrete story elements. Lanthimos and Stone have left the past behind—the early 18th-century of The Favourite and the punkish Victorian fever dream of Poor Things—for a contemporary tale. Once again working from a script he co-wrote with screenwriter Efthimis Fillippou (who also co-wrote The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and Lanthimo’s breakout hit Dogtooth), Lanthimos guides Stone and a talented cast through a “triptych fable” concerning a wayward man, the return of a police officer’s missing wife, and a woman on the lookout for a very particular kind of romance.
Joining Stone in the cast is her Poor Things co-star Willem Dafoe, as well as Jesse Plemons, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, and Hunter Schafer
Check out the trailer below. Kinds of Kindness hits theaters on June 21:
Here’s the synopsis from Searchlight Pictures:
Kinds of Kindness is a triptych fable, following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing at sea has returned and seems a different person; and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.
For more stories on films and filmmakers, check these out:
Jeremy Allen White’s career is really cooking now. Scorching after recently winning a Golden Globe, Emmy, and SAG Award for his portrayal of Carmy Berzatto in FX’s tasty kitchen dramedy The Bear, Allen might be handing in his apron and chef’s knife for a pair of scuffed jeans and a guitar.
White is currently in talks to play none other than the Boss in a movie about Springsteen’s seminal 1982 album “Nebraska,” Deadline scoops.
The film would be written and directed by Scott Cooper, the writer/director of the Jeff Bridges-led Crazy Heart, which was centered on Bridges’ faded country musician and earned Bridges an Oscar for Best Actor and musicians T Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham Oscars for Best Original Song. The Boss film is titled Deliver Me From Nowhere and is being produced by Eric Robinson and Ellen Goldsmith-Vein of the Gotham Group, with A24 in talks to join. It also represents Scott Stuber’s first project—he’ll also produce—since joining Netflix as the head of their film division.
The new film is an adaptation of Warren Zane’s 2023 book “Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska,” and will follow the young Springsteen on his journey to make his sixth album, a departure from his previous work and one representing the Boss at his most stripped down and personal. Springsteen recorded “Nebraska” in the sparest, least fussy way possible—on a four-track cassette in his bedroom in New Jersey. This was a few years before he and his E Street Band became a phenomenon with “Born in the U.S.A.”
For more big stories and interviews, check these out:
Featured image: The Bear — Season 2 — Season two of FX’s “The Bear,” the critically acclaimed original series, follows Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri) and Richard “Richie” Jerimovich (Ebon Moss- Bachrach) as they work to transform their grimy sandwich joint into a next-level spot. As they strip the restaurant down to its bones, the crew undertakes transformational journeys of their own, each forced to confront the past and reckon with who they want to be in the future. Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), shown. (Photo: Courtesy of FX)
In part one of our interview with Dune: Part Two cinematographer Greig Fraser, the Oscar-winner took us on a trip to the planet of Giedi Prime, home to the vampiric Harkonnen clan, to reveal how he captured that bloodless light during Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler)’s gladiator scene, those inky blacks during Feyd’s fateful meeting with Lady Margot, and how the surprising inspiration for those “anti-fireworks” after Feyd’s victory.
Caption: AUSTIN BUTLER as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Now we turn to Fraser’s method for filming action sequences, something Part Two delivers in astonishing variety and vividness, yet with a spatial coherence and clarity that has become his hallmark.
Fraser’s gift for the arresting action set piece is there right from the start of the film, in a balletically shot firefight between the Fremen and Harkonnen soldiers. A Harkonnen troop carrier drops off a platoon of soldiers in their heavy, Arrakis-proof suits designed to keep the pale killers alive in the desert planet’s harsh environment. The Fremen have other ideas. The native inhabitants of the planet deploy one of their most trusted weapons—a thumper—the percussive device that calls the planet’s legendary, lethal sandworms from below to devour everything within the thumper’s radius. Although the Harkonnen soldiers find and destroy the thumper, the Fremen emerge from the sand itself and attack. It plays, initially, like a classic ambush scene, but that’s when things get really interesting.
“I feel like part of my job is I’m acting as the audience’s subconscious,” Fraser says when asked about his approach to action sequences. “Denis and I would often refer to our mothers, and ask, would our mothers understand this? What we meant is, would somebody who did not study film but who likes what they like without understanding exactly why understand this sequence? So visually, on every shot of the film, I tried to make the shots as simple as possible.”
Director/Writer/Producer DENIS VILLENEUVE and Director of Photography GREIG FRASER on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Niko Tavernise
Simplicity might be the core of Fraser’s approach, but his sequences often touch the sublime. This is the case when the Harkonnen soldiers escape the Fremen ambush by floating up to the top of a rock outcropping in a paradoxically gentle maneuver, almost a dark sibling to the fizzy lifting drink scene in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Their escape is short-lived, however—they’re sighted by Fremen snipers and dispatched, their bodies sucked dry of moisture by Stilgar (Javier Bardem) and his soldiers. Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) retches at the sight; the entire scene, however, is a thing of beauty.
Caption: JAVIER BARDEM as Stilgar in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
“It was such a complicated story, and those action set pieces were very complex,” Fraser continues. “I mean, riding a sandworm is very complex—so I tried to make sure that we were telling the story as concisely as possible, which allowed Denis and Joe [Walker], our editor, to hold on shots as long as possible. So I think the trick, for me, is simplicity. Every shot needed to be as clear as possible. To not confuse the audience with too much handheld or too much messiness, but to keep things sharp and clear.”
Fraser brings an equally arresting simplicity to the many group shots that populate Part Two, as Paul (Timothée Chalamet) navigates his evolving relationship with Chani (Zendaya) and the Fremen, half or more of whom, led by Stilgar, believe he’s the savior prophesied to led the Fremen against their oppressors, a myth embedded deep within Fremen culture by the Bene Gesserit, the mysterious sisterhood who pulls the levers behind many of the galaxy’s power players and of which his own mother Jessica is a part. There are many scenes in which a half dozen characters of import—whether it’s Paul, Chani, Stilgar, and Lady Jessica in the earlier parts of the movie, or Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler), Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), Beast Rabban (Dave Bautista), and more on Giedi Prime—are in a single frame, with disparate motives. Yet the images are always precise, the framing, at least to this viewer, suggesting a “Last Supper” tableaux in which every individual is in perfect visual and narrative harmony.
Caption: REBECCA FERGUSON as Lady Jessica in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
“I think it goes back to knowing that if you look at an image fast you need to understand what’s going on there,” Fraser says. “There are thousands of shots in these movies, and you need to understand as fast as possible what’s happening so part of your brain can turn to listening to the dialogue or understanding the plot point. So every time there was a group shot or a complicated shot, I looked as deeply as I could to clarify it and make it as simple as possible, either through lensing or depth of field or lighting.”
Caption: ZENDAYA as Chani in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Fraser says his approach to filmmaking is rooted in a deep sensitivity to visual noise, a preference he takes into his personal life.
“Maybe that’s a result of being a cinematographer and having created thousands of images,” he says. “I’m very sensitive to visual noise and clutter, so I will always try to declutter my space, be it my house or be it my frame.”
Caption: (L-r) AUSTIN BUTLER as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen and LÉA SEYDOUX as Lady Margot Fenring in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
If simplicity and spare beauty are two of Fraser’s guiding principles, he was also well aware of how one of Part Two’s main emotional themes would affect his visual approach—suspicion. While Part One tracked Paul’s journey from a twiggy princeling to an increasingly resilient and vengeful survivor by the film’s end, Part Two finds a more commanding Paul wrestling with his suspicions of his own fate, his mother’s meddling in Fremen affairs, and what he should he do with his growing power. Many of the non-believing Fremen, including Chani, are suspicious of the entire idea of a non-Fremen savior, while elsewhere in the galaxy, internecine battles within House Harkonnen, between House Harkonnen and Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken), and between the chief weaponizers of suspicion itself, the Bene Gesserit, seed every moment with danger and duplicity.
Caption: TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. PicturesCaption: REBECCA FERGUSON as Lady Jessica in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
“It’s very much something we think about,” Fraser says of the prevailing mood of whispery unease. “It’s all lens choices and what it does to you emotionally. The difference between a 50-millimeter and a 75 or 85 millimeter, it’s absolutely instinctual, I’ll give you that. There are no rules, rhymes, or reasons scientifically why I can tell you certain things feel a certain way, but Part Two needed to be exactly what you’re talking about, everyone being suspicious of each other, so we went with slightly longer lenses than what we were working with on Part One, working more in the 75, 85, 135 range. And I think those lens choices help add to that feeling of suspicion. That feeling is exactly the intent.”
Caption: (L-r) STELLAN SKARSGÅRD as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and AUSTIN BUTLER as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Fraser’s lens choices changed significantly for Part Two for another crucial reason: in order to evolve with Paul’s maturation from princeling to revolutionary.
“In Part One, we used anamorphic lenses for a lot of the scenes not based on Arrakis. The reason for that was because we wanted a simple delineation between inside and outside, between Paul’s life before Arrakis and Paul’s life after, once he’s in the desert,” Fraser says. “So whenever we were in the desert or outside, we effectively chose to shoot on spherical lenses as opposed to anamorphic lenses. Now, in Part Two, we’d moved on from that part of Paul’s journey, so we decided to only shoot on spherical lenses. Different DPs can opine about their belief on what it does psychologically, but for us, it felt a little more immediate to shoot spherically. It felt a little more present.”
Caption: (L-r) TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides and JOSH BROLIN as Gurney Halleck in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
What also helped ground the viewer in the present was the fact that much of Dune has been shot on location, including in the Arabian desert in Abu Dhabi’s Liwa Oasis, where a big chunk of the landscape for Arrakis was filmed. Filming in this gorgeous, raw, ruthless environment gave Fraser, the cast, and the crew a deeper sense of the beauty and terror the Fremen’s home planet was meant to capture for the viewer.
“The desert can be stunning and beautiful and welcoming and warm—not in a temperature way, but in an inspiring way—but it can also be terrifying,” Fraser says. “Especially in the middle of the day. As a human, you know if you got stuck out there, you’d be in trouble. So psychologically, when you’re out there, even with your crew and your backup support, it’s still terrifying.”
Caption: (L-r) ZENDAYA as Chani and TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides. in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Looking back on what they were trying to achieve out there in the desert, Fraser recalled a line from Part One.
“There’s a difference in how the desert feels in the middle of the day versus the end of the day. It’s like what Chani says at the end of Part One, that the desert is so beautiful when the sun is low,” Fraser says. “We needed to make sure when we were in the heat of the battle—that we were doing it in the middle of the day. The reality was we were shooting this in the winter, in October and November, which meant the sun was quite low. Most DPs would pay money to have a low sun when they were shooting, but for us, we had to tackle it when the sun was at its highest point for that exact reason: to give it that sense of foreboding. We had to pick our battles when it came to shooting in the desert because it has multiple personalities.”
Greig Fraser on the set of “Dune: Part Two.” Photo by Niko Tavernise
Multiple personalities would be a decent way to describe Paul during his bloody, brutal journey across the two films (and into a possible third) thus far. A prince, a prophet, a revolutionary, an agent of chaos, a potential tyrant. Paul might not be completely clear on what, exactly, his future holds, but Greig Fraser is.
For more on Dune: Part Two, check out these stories:
Featured image: Caption: A scene from Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
The first trailer for Bad Boys: Ride or Die has arrived, reuniting Will Smith’s Mike Lowery and Martin Lawrence’s Marcus Burnett for another heady dose of action. Smith and Lawrence re-team with their Bad Boys For Life directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah for the fourth film in the franchise.
It’s been a while and a whole different world since we last saw Smith and Lawrence’s onscreen chemistry in full gear—Bad Boys For Life arrived before the pandemic and was a major hit in 2020. The directing duo known as Adil & Bilall went on to work on Marvel’s Disney+ series Ms. Marvel (their Warner Bros. film Batgirl was famously shelved), but now they’re back with their two leading men in a new action flick.
The trailer reveals that our bad boys’ former boss, Captain Conrad Howard (Joe Pantoliano), has been framed (despite the fact that he’s dead). It’s up to Mike and Marcus to find out what the hell is going on and who is trying to make their old comrade look like he was working with the narcos and to clear his name. The job is going to be dangerous, especially when Mike and Marcus find themselves framed and on the run, and the action in the trailer is as unstinting as you’d expect from the franchise.
Smith’s confident Miami cop Mike Lowery and Lawrence’s more scattered (if no less effective) Marcus Burnett have been mixing it up together since Michael Bay’s 1995 original Bad Boys, which arrived right before Smith became a bonafide movie superstar with Independence Day and Men in Black following shortly thereafter. Joining the dynamic duo on this new adventure are Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Rhea Seehorn, Eric Dane, Ioan Gruffudd, Paola Núñez, Melanie Liburd, Tasha Smith, Jacob Scipio, and Jenna Kanell.
Check out the trailer below. Bad Boys: Ride or Die hits theaters on June 7:
For more upcoming films from Sony Pictures, check out these stories:
Featured image: Will Smith and Martin Lawrence star in Columbia Pictures’ BAD BOYS FOR LIFE. Photo Credit: Ben Rothstein. Kyle Kaplan. Courtesy Sony Pictures.a
Scarlett Johansson is looking to be the likely candidate to lead Universal Pictures’ new dinosaur epic. Johansson is in talks to star in the new Jurassic World movie by The Creator director Gareth Edwards.
Universal is moving with the speed of a velociraptor to put the pieces together, which already includes a script from original Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp.
This would mark Johansson’s return to the movie franchise business of which she was a part for so long and knows so well. She starred as Black Widow in multiple Marvel Studios films, including her own standalone film, while still finding time to work on smaller prestige projects, like her two Oscar-nominated turns in Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit. (She also starred, many years ago, in Jonathan Glazer’s nearly flawless sci-fi thriller Under the Skin, in case you want to put that on your watch list.)
Johansson would be stepping into one of the most storied franchises in the movie business, one that began in 1993 with Steven Spielberg’s game-changing adaptation of Michael Chricton’s novel. Spielberg directed the original Jurassic Park in 93 and the follow-up, The Lost World, in 1997. That was followed by Jurassic Park III in 2001, and then the franchise entered a new era with 2015’s Jurassic World, which starred Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, who went on to lead two more films.
Koepp’s script for the new Jurassic World is said to usher in a brand new story with a whole new cast (that means that not only will Pratt and Howard not be returning, but neither will original stars Laura Dern, Sam Neill, or Jeff Goldblum). It’s not thought that the new film will be a period piece, so we’re looking at sticking with the present day.
For more on Universal Pictures, Peacock, and Focus Features projects, check out these stories:
Featured image: CANNES, FRANCE – MAY 24: Scarlett Johansson attends the “Asteroid City” photocall at the 76th annual Cannes film festival at Palais des Festivals on May 24, 2023 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images)
The first reactions are in for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,Adam Wingard’s follow-up to Godzilla vs. Kong, which promises more Kaiju action and a pair of new villains that make even Mecha-Godzilla look tame.
The new villains coming to give Godzilla and Kong a run for their apex predator money are Scar King and Shimu, but you’ll need to see Wingard’s latest to get a better sense of who these new beasts are.
Caption: SKAR KING in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “GODZILLA x KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
We’ve learned from previous trailers that Godzilla x Kong will find the balance that existed between the greatest of apes in Kong, the king of the Titans in Godzilla, and the rest of the world thrown totally out of whack. Godzilla was a protector of nature; Kong was a protector of humanity—but now that balance is about to be obliterated thanks to some new bruisers were ill intent. Kong, Godzilla, and the young girl Jia (Kaylee Hottle) can sense something is coming.
The new threat is so great that these two legendary beasts will have to team up if they have any hope of stopping the forces arrayed against them. “They’re pretty nasty guys,” director Adam Wingard says of his new bad Kaijus, “but they’re also multifaceted. There’s a lot going on.”
So, where have these new brutes been all this time? It turns out the problems have been hidden beneath the surface of our world and are connected to the origins of both Godzilla and Kong. Brian Tyree Henry joins returning Godzilla vs. Kong stars Rebecca Hall and Kaylee Hottle. Newcomers include Dan Stevens (who the reactions state was clearly having a ball), Alex Ferns, and Fala Chen. Wingard directs from a script by Godzilla vs. Kong scribe Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett (You’re Next), and Jeremy Slater (Moon Knight), and works once again wth Godzilla vs. Kong alums cinematographer Ben Seresin, production designer Tom Hammock, editor Josh Schaeffer, and composers Tom Holkenborg and Antonio Di Iorio.
Caption: (L-r) REBECCA HALL as Dr. Ilene Andrews and DAN STEVENS as Trapper in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “GODZILLA x KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Dan McFadden
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire arrives on March 29.
Let’s take a brief tour of the initial reactions:
#GodzillaXKong hits plenty of sweet spots for me! Tons of wild kaiju action, a brutal villain for Kong, a powered-up Godzilla, Dan Stevens having a blast, some legit surprises, and so many colors. Bring me more MonsterVerse! pic.twitter.com/eaxDkJwmnF
#GodzillaXKong is nonstop/fun Kaiju action that fans of monster movies love. Both Godzilla and Kong take centerstage in this latest entry in Legendary’s evolving Monsterverse.
Brian Tyree Henry & Dan Stevens are fun together. But this movie belongs to the giant monsters. pic.twitter.com/daJ3UyIbsW
— B E A N Z (Miss U Mom) (@BeanzGotGamez) March 26, 2024
#GodzillaXKong is an ATOMIC BLAST! A fantastically weird, psychedelic trip through the Shōwa Era w/all the vibrance of an 80s album cover. This thing is an absurdist romp – crimson apes, frost dragons, a delightfully absurd Dan Stevens. Another FUN entry in the MonsterVerse! pic.twitter.com/Qmzx8Jytug
#GodzillaXKong is a really great King Kong movie. The human stuff is notably clunky (poor Rebecca Hall saddled with so much dry exposition) but Kong has so many scenes centered on him and I just loved the big guy. And the final fight sequences are pure monster mayhem delight. pic.twitter.com/un2iVtHz8f
GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE rules. Dir. Adam Wingard fully embraces the tone of a fantasy rock opera, complete with a synth-heavy score, heavy metal visuals, and killer 80s needledrops.
Incredibly silly and heartfelt at times, it’s a sincere love letter to the Shōwa Era. pic.twitter.com/bwRJvJdSpb
GODZILLA X KONG is an absurdly fun ride. A teaming of titans with tremendous scale and a fast-paced adventure. This movie knows to deliver pure fun on a huge scale. My advice, just strap in and enjoy the ride. pic.twitter.com/w8WCk2c0C1
#GodzillaXKong is a momentous spectacle that dazzles with its vibrant technicolor visuals. The epic battles btwn the titans are jaw-dropping and are accompanied by a story with a gargantuan heart. Plus, there’s Dan Stevens flexing in a Hawaiian shirt for 2 hours. pic.twitter.com/PsBMAdsQjH
— Shannon | #FreePalestine 🇵🇸 (@shannon_mcgrew) March 26, 2024
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is the most enjoyable MonsterVerse movie yet, the one where it feels everybody understood the assignment. Story is a bit thin, but the titan smashing more than makes up for it. #GodzillaXKongpic.twitter.com/gk8gDeYXhT
#GodzillaXKong is like an ‘80s cartoon come to life; this thing is so insanely colorful and toyetic, it’d shock Joel Schumacher. Collects a compelling coterie of non-humans in an AVATAR meets PLANET OF THE APES way, and as for humans, Dan Stevens is having a ball. So was I! pic.twitter.com/0Gf1Wmh4re
Featured image: Caption: (L to r) GODZILLA and KONG in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “GODZILLA x KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Composer Atticus Ross teamed with Trent Reznor over the past 15 years to conjure dread-filled tension in David Fincher thrillers The Social Network, Gone Girl, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo before plunging into afterlife limbo with their Oscar-winning score for Soul. But Atticus was on a new journey to the realm of feudal Japan when, in 2021, producer Jamie Wheeler approached him about scoring Shōgunin collaboration with his younger brother Leo Ross and longtime engineer Nick Chuba. Set in 1590, the ten-episode Shōgun (streaming Tuesdays through April 23 on FX / Hulu) chronicles a power struggle between Lord Toranaga (producer/actor Hiroyuki Sanada) and his rivals. Leo Ross says, “We tried to make music that was not ancient but also not modern, not eastern and not western — just Shōgun.”
Speaking from their studios in Los Angeles, the Ross brothers and Chuba describe their creative back and forth with showrunner Justin Marks, explain their high-tech take on ancient gagaku instrumentation, and reveal how musical rubber bands came to define one villain’s theme.
Your music for Shōgun sounds epic and foreboding, as befits the tone of this historic saga. How did you arrive at the sound?
Atticus: After the producers gave us the script, they came back from shooting footage and said, “We all feel that it needs to be epic, and we think it should be an orchestra.” And we were like, we don’t think it should be an orchestra. But we think we can establish the scale of an orchestra with a more unique language that speaks directly to Shōgun and its world.
The score is filled with passages where it’s hard to tell exactly what instrument is being played.
Leo: I’m glad to hear people say, “What is this sound?” It’s a smear or a whoosh. We wanted the audience to feel a sense of wonder and unease in this land that [English pirate John Blackthorne] didn’t really believe existed.
Atticus: This was a very long, thought-out process.
But you guys did draw on the ancient tradition of Japanese gagaku ensembles, right?
Leo: When we got the Shōgun project, we started to investigate recording period Japanese instruments. The goal being not to create traditional Japanese music but to provide ourselves with the raw material that we could then process [in order] to bring the music into this zone of unease. We did a lot of research and, long story short, we found [Japanese musician] Taro Oshiro, who became our arranger and facilitator of finding many incredible Japanese players.
How did you treat these gagaku performances from Taro’s team?
Nick: They have a lot of [musical] phrases that we would manipulate in the computer so we could develop our own language to build the score.
Can you give an example of how you’d manipulate acoustic music from Japan?
Nick: One sound we used a lot is this reed instrument called the hichiriki. We’d record Japanese musicians playing a bunch of their phrases and run them into the computer through effects – delays, reverb, and stuff. Then we’d re-record that as audio with all the effects, put it into a sampler and map it out across the keyboard that you might play two octaves lower. So rather than a synthesizer with an oscillator generating a tone, the tone is now this hichiriki that’s been completely messed with and re-played.
Atticus: We had Taro traveling all around Japan, finding the right musicians. The music does sound very big, but this wasn’t like some studio production with hundreds of people you’d get at a scoring session. Nick is sitting in my studio right now, Leo’s in his studio—this was a very home-made, DIY score.
Leo: A lot of it happened on Zoom, similar to this. Taro would be in his studio in Japan with three or four musicians and with his mum, because Taro couldn’t speak that good English, but his mom could.
Atticus: It was a wildly exciting exercise to get these recordings back from Japan. For us, it was important to make something that felt unique and appropriate to this story, but that was also authentic to us as musicians.
Leo: At its core, we wanted the instrumentation to be Japanese, but the goal was never to emphasize the place or the period.
Atticus: But these [gagaku] instruments are specific to that period of time, so we’re acknowledging that history.
Nick: Depending on how deep you want to go into it, gagaku music had once been the imperial court music of Japan, but the emperor had waned in power when this story was happening. Toranaga [Hiroyuki Sanada] acknowledged the emperor by bringing back gagaku music as a popular style. Obviously, we were more drawn to the sound of it, but there was a historical element as well.
Drums play a dramatic role in your score. How did you shape the percussion elements?
Leo: We recorded mainly taiko drums and again did heavy processing and re-sampling. We used the drums more to punctuate moments rather than to have a groove. We had a lot of discussions with the [co] showrunner Justin Marks. Basically, he didn’t like grooves. [laughter]. When characters have a conversation where they’re saying something that’s a big story moment, we’ll “sting” the drums.
Atticus: You could describe this notion of the drums of war coming into every action sequence as a bit of a cliché. The groove conversation was essentially Justin saying, “I don’t want to do what everyone else does.”
Leo: Any sort of violence I’ve been involved in, there wasn’t a groove playing underneath it. [laughter].
Atticus: I’ve been punched in the face a couple of times, and I wasn’t feeling the groove at all when that happened.
Your score is loaded with texture and atmosphere. Did you also create specific themes for different characters?
Atticus: Maybe not in the same sense that you would for Star Wars or something, but there very much are themes.
Leo: In the first couple of episodes,we wanted to establish this zone of “Where the hell are we? What is this sound?” But as the show goes on, themes emerge for many characters. [English pirate] Blackthorne has a theme rooted in the main title. Mariko has a theme, Toranaga has a theme, and Ishodo Kazunari has a theme, which is essentially Toranaga’s theme but played on rubber bands.
Rubber bands! How does that happen?
Leo: I actually did that. I’m the expert rubber band player. Ishodo is kind of a buffoon, the guy who wants to be Toranaga but never will be, so it became a question of “How do we express that?” When you listen to stringed instruments of the gagaku period, they don’t have a lot of sustain. It’s like “bink bink bink.” The rubber band also doesn’t have sustain, so it fits in that world, but also, it sounds a little bit silly.
Atticus: There was an incredible amount of thought that went into this music because the needle we were trying to thread is a difficult one. But just hearing the way Justin and [co-creator] Rachel [Kondo] talked about the show, the level of detail in the costumes and the sets, seeing the footage for the first time, which was definitely a wow moment — we knew Shōgun was something special. That required something similar in the music.
Circling back to the Japanese inspirations that found their way into your score, what piece of music affected you the most when you first heard it?
Nick: When the singing monks came in, I listened to them on a loop with my eyes closed.
There is a cornucopia of comedy happening in Problemista, Julio Torres’ debut feature. In a little over 90 minutes, writer/director Torres pokes fun at cryonics, the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of the U.S. immigration system, and the eccentricities of the art world. Along the way, there are jabs at Craigslist, FileMaker Pro, and Bank of America. All of it is wrapped around a virtuoso performance by Tilda Swinton as a madcap, multicolored-hair patron of the arts who doesn’t suffer fools or anyone else who crosses her path, for that matter.
Torres, who was born in El Salvador, says the inspiration for Problemista grew out of events in his own life after he moved to New York to attend school and pursue a career in comedy. In the ensuing years, as Torres was earning four Emmy nominations as a staff writer on Saturday Night Live and co-creatingand starring in the off-the-wall HBO comedy series Los Espookys, which brought him a Peabody Award, the elements of Problemista were taking shape.
(L-R) Larry Owens, Julio Torres Credit: Courtesy of A24
“It was somewhere around five years ago that I started thinking about it,” Torres said during a recent conversation via Zoom. “It wasn’t so much that I had one idea and started writing. It happened slowly and naturally. I started collecting different ideas and very gradually built what the movie became. When they all came together it was, ‘Hey, it’s time for a script!’”
The idea of Torres directing happenedmore recently.
In 2021, with Swinton on board to play Elizabeth, Torres secured financing and distribution from A24 for his alluringly sweet and surrealistically absurd tale of Alejandro, a Salvadoran immigrant scrambling to avoid deportation as he pursues his dream job of designing toys for Hasbro. In his quest, Alejandro crosses paths with Elizabeth, a blustery art critic caring for her deceased husband Bobby (RZA), an artist who has been cryogenically frozen in the hopes he can be thawed and revived once a cure is discovered. Elizabeth offers Alejandro the opportunity to curate a show of Bobby’s work, a collection of 13 paintings — all depicting eggs in various artistic settings. If Alejandro is successful in securing a gallery exhibit, Elizabeth will sponsor him for a visa.
“I had no intention to direct when I was writing it. I had in the back of my mind that I would like to be in it,” Torres continues. “Then, in our search, it became more and more obvious that the truest vision of the movie would come from me. Even though I felt I wasn’t quite ready, I was motivated by Tilda and other people in my life to do it. I don’t know that I was necessarily the best choice. But I think I was the more appropriate choice.”
(L-R) Julio Torres, Tilda Swinton Credit: Jon Pack
Torres cites a range of filmmakers that he feels helped guide his choices. Terry Gilliam and Bong Joon-ho are mentioned first. Torres then adds how his cinematic tastes were honed during his teenage years by the films of David Lynch, Wes Anderson, the Coen brothers, and Sophia Coppola.
“I’m trying to think of some of my earlier favorites,” Torres says. “The one that keeps coming to mind is Jonathan Glazer’s movie Birth with Nicole Kidman. Everyone whose work is so different, like a Gregg Araki or a John Waters, for example. That’s what I try to aspire to. They are fully formed voices that are marching to the beat of their own drum. That is what I hope to do.”
Another inspirational muse was New York City itself. Torres wanted to capture his adopted hometown the way he grew to love it — warts and all. “As opposed to the mass-produced New York that we see in a lot of film and TV,” he explains. “I was very keen on showing all the movement, all the garbage… this cacophonous symphony that I think is very true to the New York that I have experienced… and in many ways, the movie ends up being that. I don’t know if it’s a love letter, but at the very least, it’s a thank-you note to the New York where I live.”
As fans of Torres may expect, Problemista is filled with unique and unusual ideas and imagery. As a child, Alejandro’s mother builds a playhouse for him that is right out of a fairy tale. His toy ideas include a Barbie doll with crossed fingers to demonstrate deception and Cabbage Patch dolls with smartphones attached to their wrists for texting their emotions. The maze-like depiction of the immigration system evokes the work of M. C. Escher. Alejandro’s inner conflicts come to life as a knight battling mythical demons. The egg paintings offer a simplistic elegance that elevates their preposterousness.
(L-R) Julio Torres, Tilda Swinton Credit: Jon Pack
But it’s Swinton’s intrepid turn as Elizabeth that stirs the pot, bringing all the madness to a boil. Torres indicates he didn’t have her in mind when he created Elizabeth. He wanted the character to form on her own instead of shaping her to a particular performer. But he was thrilled when Swinton expressed interest and couldn’t be happier about how sheembraced the role.
(L-R) Tilda Swinton Credit: Jon Pack
“She brought this immense strength and teeth to the monstrosity of the character,” explains Torres. “There’s a sort of mythical aura to her. She just made her so specific, unlike any character we’ve seen before. She created someone that maybe we’ve met but have never seen in movies.”
Swinton was also totally invested in Elizabeth’s frightful look that just screams disarray. This included a color combination from hair department head Kay Georgiou that starts out as blonde on top and cascades into tangled strands of bright magenta. Makeup department head Jackie Risotto picked up on the magenta color for Elizabeth’s cheeks, contrasting it with heavy, intimidating black eyes. Costume designer Catherine George added a wardrobe exclamation point with a panache of colors and styles.
(L-R) Tilda Swinton, Julio Torres Credit: Courtesy of A24
And Swinton was game to take it a step further. Torres remembers the first day she got into costume, she accidentally put the coat on backward. When she did, Swinton suggested that maybe Elizabeth would be someone who does exactly this. “We ended up not doing that, but I love that this was her instinct,” says Torres. “That this is where her mind goes.”
And as he had initially considered, Torres ended up playing Alejando. In hindsight, his blend of pluckiness and childlike innocence proves to be the perfect anchor for the story. Torres admits there’s a little bit of Alejandro in him. “He really is the result of my experience. My outside is very different, but I think at my core I am very much like him — someone who’s observant, a little timid and is piecing things together as he goes along.”
As Torres pieced Problemista together, he learned a lot about the filmmaking process. Perhaps his biggest takeaway from the experience was the role the director plays in the final outcome.
“What surprised me most was how joyous making a movie can be and how important it is that everyone making the movie feels like they’re a part of it,” says Torres. “You quite literally need the labor of so many people. It behooves a director to foster an environment that makes everyone feel seen and excited to come to work, because the hours are long and it’s hard work. So I hope people enjoyed making it. I certainly did.”
After beginning its exclusive engagement in New York and Los Angeles, Problemista is in theaters nationwide now.
These are the musings of Oswald Cobblepot (Colin Farrell), also known by his unbeatable gangster nickname, The Penguin, in the official trailer for the upcoming Max series of the same name. Oswald is talking about a gangster he knew when he was growing up, a guy so respected, even beloved, that they threw a parade in his honor when he died. It’s safe to say the kind of life Oswald has led likely won’t lead to any parades when he waddles his last, but a guy’s gotta dream.
Farrell returns to play the rotund demigod of the Gotham underworld, a role he deeply inhabited and one of the many wonderful surprises nested in writer/director Matt Reeves’s excellent The Batman. The Penguin will follow Gotham’s rising crime king after the events depicted in The Batman, in which the Penguin managed to keep his head and some of his power, while Gotham’s undisputed mob boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) got capped by the Riddler (Paul Dano).
Things won’t be easy, however, for Oswald’s push to control the Gotham underworld. There’s a power vacuum now in the aftermath of Carmine Falcone’s death, and the next king or queen of these mean streets will have to be more than tough and even more than smart—they’ll also have to be a little lucky. Oswald Cobblepot is probably a decent bet in this regard.
Joining Farrell is Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone, Clancy Brown as Salvatore Maroni, and a slew of great performers like Carmen Ejogo, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Michael Kelly.
Check out the teaser trailer here. The Penguin arrives on HBO Max this fall:
For more on Warner Bros., Max, and more, check out these stories:
Twenty-six years after Tim Burton and Michael Keaton delivered one of the most offbeat, beguilingly charming horror comedies of the 1980s, the Juice is loose again. The first teaser trailer for Burton and Keaton’s long-awaited sequel to their iconic Beetlejuice has arrived, and the reunion is so sweet they had to name it twice.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice finds Keaton returning to the playfully malicious spirit he inhabited, and he’s joined by his Beetlejuice co-stars Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz and Catherine O’Hara as Delia Deetz. The new cast members include Jenna Ortega, as Lydia’s daughter, Astrid, alongside Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Arthur Conti, and the great Willem Dafoe.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will find the Deetz family returning home to Winter River, with Lydia still haunted by her experiences two decades ago, when she was Astride’s age, and encountered Beetlejuice for the first time. Lydia’s fortunes take a turn for the even more troublesome when Astrid, as rebellious as Lydia herself was at that age, discovers the mysterious model of the town in the attic, and the portal to the Afterlife is accidentally opened. The title Beetlejuice Beetlejuice begs the question—when will someone add a third Beetlejuice and summon the spectral trickster?
Burton directs from a screenplay by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar (Wednesday) and a story by Gough & Millar and Seth Grahame-Smith, based on characters created by Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson. Burton’s creative team behind the camera includes cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos and members of his Wednesday team, like production designer Mark Scruton and editor Jay Prychidny, alongside his longtime collaborator, costume designer Colleen Atwood, creature effects and special makeup FX creative supervisor Neal Scanlan, and composer Danny Elfman. Hair and makeup designer Christine Blundell is on board to give Beetlejuice his signature dead-but-lively looks.
Check out the trailer below. Beetlejuice haunts theaters on September 6:
For more on Warner Bros., Max, and more, check out these stories:
Featured image: Caption: MICHAEL KEATON as Beetlejuice in Warner Bros. Pictures’ comedy, “BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Parisa Taghizadeh
How big is House of the Dragon season 2 going to be? So big they’ve just released two trailers to prepare you for the war to come.
The green trailer focuses on Queen Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) and her father, Ser Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), dealing with the aftermath of the death of King Viserys (Paddy Considine). The King’s rule had been peaceful, but his final years, as his health deteriorated and his house was rife with rumor and intrigue, were marred by ruthless maneuvering. Queen Alicent and Ser Otto believe they are the two people who know how to steer the realm back towards a peaceful rule, lorded over by Alicent’s son, King Aegon. Yet vipers circle above and below, and Ser Otto assures his daughter that the price for peace very well means war.
The black trailer focuses on Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy), the daughter of the late King Viserys, and the person he chose to succeed him. Yet, as season 1 ended, it was Alicent’s son Aegon who took Rhaenrya’s place. “I need to fight this war and win it,” Rhaenyra tells a round table of her people, including her beau (and uncle), the dangerous Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith). She’s supported as well by the petulant and equally dangerous Prince Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) and Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint).
Both the green and the black trailers offered plenty of dragon shots, and that’s fitting, considering when we spoke to showrunner Ryan Condal, he teased how much more dragon-centric season 2 would be.
“We’ll definitely introduce more of them as we go along. I think that’s part of the fun of doing the show. They are characters, and in season two, they’re needed for their most famous purpose, which is to decimate and cause death and destruction.”
Condal also discussed how they worked on differentiating the dragons in House of the Dragon from the beasts fans got to know and love in Game of Thrones.
“In season one, the dragons were designed over the course of a year, where we did a lot of early concepting on basic things like how our dragons are different from what you saw in the original series and honoring what they did with Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion,” Condall said. “Then it was figuring out, during a time when there were many more dragons, was there just one breed? We came up with these three different genotypes of them, where they’re all the same species but have different breeds with different shapes, colors, and sizes.”
The returning cast for season 2 also includes Eve Best, Fabien Frankel, Tom Glynn-Carney, Sonoya Mizuno, Harry Collett, Bethany Antonia, Phoebe Campbell, Phia Saban, Jefferson Hall and Matthew Needham. Dragon newcomers are Abubakar Salim as Alyn of Hull, Gayle Rankin as Alys Rivers, Freddie Fox as Ser Gwayne Hightower, and Simon Russell Beale as Ser Simon Strong.
Check out the two trailers below. House of the Dragon season 2 returns to HBO on June 16:
For more on Warner Bros., Max, and more, check out these stories:
Yesterday, we got our first glimpse at director Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus, the latest installment in the Alien franchise, yet one that is taking a different approach from the more recent films. Alvarez, with the blessing of both Ridley Scott and James Cameron, has made an “interquel,” a film that connects Scott’s groundbreaking 1979 sci-fi horror classic Alien and Cameron’s sizzling 1986 follow-up Aliens.
This means that because he’s set his Romulus in the 57-year span between Ellen Ripley’s (Sigourney Weaver) battle with a vicious Xenomorph aboard the spaceship the USCSS Nostromo in Alien and Ripley’s rematch with another Xenomorph (an alien queen, no less) and her offspring aboard the Sulaco, the look and feel of Alvarez’s film will be similar to those iconic installments, and that’s clear, thus far, in both the trailer and the first images. Think claustrophobic spaces, clunkier technology, more space truckers in a rundown long-haul vessel than space explorers in a billion-dollar ship, which we saw in Prometheus.
Romulus is centered on a crew of young space colonists who come into contact with a fearsome Xenomorph, the acid-spewing, multiple-mouthed creature that literally burst onto the scene in Scott’s original. Romulus boasts an ensemble of young performers led by Cailee Spaeny, Isabela Merced, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Spike Fearn, and Aileen Wu.
Alvarez revealed to The Hollywood Reporterthat his idea to focus on these younger characters was drawn from a deleted scene from Aliens.
“There’s a moment where you see a bunch of kids running [and riding a big wheel] around the corridors of this colony. And I thought, ‘Wow, what would it be like for those kids to grow up in a colony that still needs another 50 years to terraform?’” Álvarez told The Hollywood Reporter. “So I remember thinking, ‘If I ever tell a story in that world, I would definitely be interested in those kids when they reach their early twenties.’”
Romulus is set 20 years after Ridley Scott’s Alien, and it carries a lot of DNA from the original and Cameron’s sequel.
“Alien: Romulus takes 20 years after the first one, and for me, I don’t see it as upsetting the canon,” Alvarez told Variety. “It’s something I take personal pleasure in doing, making sure that it all tracks and is all part of the big Alien franchise story — not only in the story but also when it comes to how to make it. I talked with Ridley [Scott] as a producer and had long chats with James Cameron about it at the script level. After the movie was done, I showed it to them.”
Alvarez hired a lot of the same people, including folks who made miniatures on the original films, yet he was able to liberally choose elements he liked from both Scott and Cameron’s films.
“I think what happens when you come into a franchise like this one is that everybody has a different idea of what this is or must be,” Alvarez told Variety. “When I did Evil Dead, some people thought it was a twist that I played it with a straight face because, for a lot of people, that is a comedy. But if you saw the first one when you were a kid, like I did, there’s nothing funny about it. In the Alien franchise, there were places that the directors and Ridley were more interested in that necessarily wasn’t related to the horror of it all. But for me, Alien works at its best when it’s scary and when it’s action, like Aliens. The horror and the shock of that world is personally what I liked the most.”
If you polled all the people who have now seen Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two in theaters about what was the most visually striking moment, my guess is it would be the Sandworm Express in a runaway. We’re talking, of course, about Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) riding the universe’s most dangerous mode of transport—a colossal sandworm—across the dunes of Arrakis. And while that sequence is staggering in its audacity and surprising in its alchemical verisimilitude (it feels as if that’s precisely what it would be like to try and surf on a skyscraper-sized alien terrestrial annelid), for my money it’s the silky blackness conjured in a seemingly infinite hallway on the planet of Giedi Prime, home to the vampiric Harkonnen clan, the most aggressively unlikable of the Dune-verse’s many villains.
That scene finds a recently victorious Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (Austin Butler) stalking a solemn figure in striking blue, Lady Margot (Léa Seydoux), through a darkness so rich you feel like you could ladle it on your vanilla ice cream. As Feyd makes his move (a threat rather than a come-on, although to him they’re one and the same), and Lady Margot makes her case (she’s a member of the Bene Gesserit, therefore making her case includes using a means of voice control that issues commands on a subconscious level), inky black fireworks explode over the planet in the background, “anti-fireworks,” as cinematographer Greig Fraser explained, created by an ingenious mix of video and lighting technology inspired by, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, jellyfish.
Caption: (L-r) AUSTIN BUTLER as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen and LÉA SEYDOUX as Lady Margot Fenring in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
This entire sequence lasts no more than a minute or two, yet it sticks in the mind, one of many such visual mind-worms, if you will, that Fraser, Villeneuve, and the rest of the Dune: Part Two creative team seeded in their stunning film. So, how did Fraser pull off that particular visual coup?
“Well, if I tell you that, I have to murder you,” he laughs, then pauses for effect. “This is where it’s extraordinary to work with a visionary director. His brief to me was that Feyd is walking down this hallway after a celebration of him, but instead of fireworks, they should be anti-fireworks, the opposite of fireworks, which is a real head-scratcher technically.”
Caption: LÉA SEYDOUX as Lady Margot Fenring in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
Fraser loved the concept but was initially at a loss on how to go about achieving it. Yet the Oscar-winning cinematographer (for Dune: Part One) has years of experience testing new techniques and arriving at novel approaches, from his work in Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty to Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One: A Star Wars Story to Matt Reeves’ The Batman. He was part of the team that deployed cutting-edge technology to Disney+’s The Mandalorian. For the anti-fireworks, he relied on new technology and the clever idea of his fellow Oscar-winner from Dune: Part One, production designer Patrice Vermette.
“We’re very fortunate technologically that we can run video through lights,” Fraser explained. “So I was running video through those lights of arc welders, inverted fireworks, and jellyfish. That was an idea Patrice had, to run some video of jellyfish, and while you don’t see them on the screen, the fireworks are inspired by these video files running through the lights.”
Dune: Part Two picks up where the first installment ended, with Paul Atreides and his mother, the increasingly powerful Bene Gessiret member Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), relying on the help of the Fremen, the native inhabitants of Arrakis. This came after House Atreides was decapitated by the Harkonnens in a sneak attack that capped Part One, killing Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) and leaving Paul fatherless, Lady Jessica a widow, and the scattered remnants of House Atreides leaderless. The sequel—properly considered a continuation by Villeneuve and his team—picks up with Paul and Lady Jessica under the protection of the Fremen in their Arrakis stronghold of Sietch Tabr, a system of caves and tunnels buried beneath the harsh glare of Canopus, the star that blazes above the desert planet.
Director of Photography GREIG FRASER on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Niko Tavernise
While Paul contends with his feelings for Chani (Zendaya), a Fremen with ferocious fighting ability and little use for prophecy, his bleak visions of his own ascendance and the numberless deaths it will bring, and his own mother’s schemes to bring this all to pass, trouble continues to brew on Giedi Prime. The aforementioned victory achieved by the psychopath Feyd-Rautha in a gladiator battle with some conveniently maimed Atreides captives is another of the movie’s masterpiece spectacles. Giedi Prime is shot in such a way that you begin to understand why the Harkonnens are hairless and pale, given that the light on their planet, such as it is, looks as if it’s a poison rather than a source of warmth and growth. Achieving this bloodless look was another feat of technological mastery and artistic courage.
Caption: (L-r) STELLAN SKARSGÅRD as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and AUSTIN BUTLER as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
“There’s an element of my job that’s technical, and there’s an element of my job that’s very arty,” Fraser says. “So there are those two aspects of my brain, which is why I think I enjoy the job so much—I can get into the techie stuff, but I can also apply that in an artistic way. For years, I’ve been experimenting with using infrared light to film things. This goes back to the days of Zero Dark Thirty, where I used infrared to light some of the raid scenes, but that was a night vision camera, not an infrared camera. I started experimenting with what infrared light could do.”
Fraser explained that the concept of infrared cameras is not only not new, but it’s something people see all the time. It’s what you’re looking at when you check your Nest camera or see any grainy security footage at night.
“That’s the ghoulish look that comes from cameras at night, and I’ve always loved that look,” Fraser says. “So when Denis and I talked about the light in Giedi Prime being different and colorless, I told him that I thought I had the right technique for this, and I presented it to him, and he loved it. It’s otherworldly, yet we recognize it, but we’re not sure why.”
Director/Writer/Producer DENIS VILLENEUVE and Director of Photography GREIG FRASER on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.Photo by Niko Tavernise
The system Fraser devised to create the unsettling look on Giedi Prime was a lot more complicated than merely using infrared cameras, of course. He had the advantage of being able to work with performer Roger Yaun, who plays one of the captive Atredies soldiers, Lieutenant Lanville. As a special “gift” for Feyd-Rautha, his grotesque uncle, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), the main villain of Part One, unleashed an only moderately injured Lieutenant Lanville on his nephew Feyd. The wounded Atreides soldier proved a capable, if overmatched, combatant. Yaun turned out to be the ideal performer for Fraser to test his lighting method.
“I did a couple of different demonstrations. Thankfully, we had access to Roger Yuan, who was one of the actors in that gladiator scene. He has a really nice shiny head, so he was a good stand-in for what skin would look like when shot like this,” Fraser says. “So I did a test out in the sun, and I did a test in the shade, and I did another test inside the studio that was lit with only infrared light, so it was in the dark. I knew that would be impossible to shoot for real, but we went out and bought 20 security lights and did that test inside. The benefit was that pupils dilate in the dark; they become massive, but the camera can see them. But it would be really hard to stage a scene in the dark, and we preferred the outside look after that series of tests. What’s great about Denis is when he loves something, you know about it. He’s not shy about expressing his love, so when he first saw that test, I can’t repeat the expletives that came out of his mouth.”
The entire gladiator sequence on Giedi Prime is a stark reminder of what kind of enemies Paul, Lady Jessica, and the entire population of the Fremen have in the Harkonnens. It’s also a stunning example of the craftsmanship of dozens, even hundreds of people, coming together to make a single moment sing. That pale, murderous light, the triangle-shaped Colosseum, the crowd shouting Feyd’s name, the performers, led by Butler himself, drawing ever closer to the requisite violence.
“I’ve expressed my adoration for our amazing production designer [Patrice Vermette], and I will continue to do it,” Fraser says. “The design of Giedi Prime, the design of the entire movie, is extraordinary. But I particularly love that coliseum.”
Check back tomorrow for part two of our conversation with Greig Fraser.
For more on Dune: Part Two, check out these stories:
Featured image: Caption: AUSTIN BUTLER as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
With HBO’s Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon season 2 taking flight this June, now seems like a grand time to whet our appetites with some images from the upcoming season ahead of the trailer release, which arrives tomorrow.
The images include returning figures like Emma D’Arcy’s Rhaenyra Targaryen and Matt Smith’s Daemon Targaryen, her volatile beau (and uncle, befitting the Westerosi tradition of, well, you get it.) We also get fresh looks at Olivia Cooke’s Queen Alicent Hightower, Rhys Ifans Ser Otto Hightower (her father), Steve Toussaint’s Lord Corlys Velaryon, and Ewan Mitchell’s petulant and dangerous Prince Aemond Targaryen.
The first season of House of the Dragon, the first Game of Thrones spinoff to make it to air, managed the tricky feat of giving GoT fans a heaping helping of the palace intrigue, dragon fire, and power-obsessed family squabbles that made the original show such a hit. House of the Dragon focused on arguably the most dramatic family of them all, House Targaryen, a brood with enough intrigue to full a dozen palaces. Set 200 years before the events in GoT, Dragon dropped us into a united Seven Kingdoms, thanks to the dragon-lord Targyens, but peace is hardly the default setting in Westeros.
When we spoke to showrunner Ryan Condal, he teased how much more dragon-centric season 2 would be.
“We’ll definitely introduce more of them as we go along. I think that’s part of the fun of doing the show. They are characters, and in season two, they’re needed for their most famous purpose, which is to decimate and cause death and destruction.”
Condal also discussed how they worked on differentiating the dragons in House of the Dragon from the beasts fans got to know and love in Game of Thrones.
“In season one, the dragons were designed over the course of a year, where we did a lot of early concepting on basic things like how our dragons are different from what you saw in the original series and honoring what they did with Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion,” Condall said. “Then it was figuring out, during a time when there were many more dragons, was there just one breed? We came up with these three different genotypes of them, where they’re all the same species but have different breeds with different shapes, colors, and sizes.”
The returning cast for season 2 includes Eve Best, Fabien Frankel, Ewan Mitchell, Tom Glynn-Carney, Sonoya Mizuno, Harry Collett, Bethany Antonia, Phoebe Campbell, Phia Saban, Jefferson Hall and Matthew Needham. Dragon newcomers are Abubakar Salim as Alyn of Hull, Gayle Rankin as Alys Rivers, Freddie Fox as Ser Gwayne Hightower, and Simon Russell Beale as Ser Simon Strong.
Check out the images below. House of the Dragon season two returns to HBO this June:
Featured image: Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) in “House of the Dragon.” Courtesy HBO.
The Alien franchise is taking us back to its roots.
Director Fede Alvarez has unveiled the first look at his Alien: Romulus, which has been approved by both Ridley Scott and James Cameron and is connected to their films in the venerable sci-fi horror franchise. Getting Scott and Cameron’s approval is the highest possible praise the director could get, especially for a film that’s being billed as an “interquel,” connecting the franchise’s two most iconic installments, Scott’s Alien (1979) and Cameron’s Aliens (1986).
Romulus is centered on a crew of young space colonists who come into contact with a fearsome Xenomorph, the acid-spewing, multiple-mouthed creature that literally burst onto the scene in Scott’s original. In Alien, Sigourney Weaver’s indomitable Ellen Ripley battled and eventually vanquished the aforementioned Xenomorph after a grueling duel aboard the spaceship the USCSS Nostromo. James Cameron picked up the story seven years later with Aliens, which followed Ripley joining a military mission to a space colony to investigate a fresh xenomorph attack. Romulus slots between these two films and boasts an ensemble of young performers led by Cailee Spaeny, Isabela Merced, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Spike Fearn, and Aileen Wu.
Alvarez revealed to The Hollywood Reporterthat his idea to focus on these younger characters was drawn from a deleted scene from Aliens.
“There’s a moment where you see a bunch of kids running [and riding a big wheel] around the corridors of this colony. And I thought, ‘Wow, what would it be like for those kids to grow up in a colony that still needs another 50 years to terraform?’” Álvarez told The Hollywood Reporter. “So I remember thinking, ‘If I ever tell a story in that world, I would definitely be interested in those kids when they reach their early twenties.’”
At the Gotham Awards this past November, the annual celebration of independent film, Priscillastar Cailee Spaeny revealed to Varietythat a lot of the same people involved in Cameron’s Aliens worked on Romulus:
“It’s supposed to slot in between the first movie and the second movie,” Spaeny told Variety. “They brought the same team from Aliens, the James Cameron film. The same people who built those xenomorphs actually came on and built ours. So getting to see the original design with the original people who have been working on these films for 45-plus years and has been so much of their life has been really incredible.”
Spaeny also said that Romulus was an opportunity to play in a world she loved growing up.
“I love watching those old ‘70s, ‘80s action sci-fi films. And I’m such a fan of that IP and Sigourney Weaver. It’s legendary to get to be a part of it.”
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There are few directors as perfectly suited to make a love letter to the stunt profession than David Leitch. The former stuntman and coordinator turned director of breathless action films like Bullet Train, Deadpool 2, and Atomic Blonde is the man behind The Fall Guy, a loose adaptation of the 1980s TV series of the same name, starring Ryan Gosling as stuntman Cole Seavers, a longtime professional at doing the impossible so a leading man can look like a superhero on screen. Yet in Leitch’s new film, Cole suddenly finds himself forced to play a real-life hero after the star of an upcoming movie goes missing. Universal has released a new trailer, revealing a bit more backstory to Leitch and Gosling’s action flick.
The film-within-a-film that centers The Fall Guy is directed by Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), whom Cole has a massive crush on. Despite Jody’s insistence that they need to keep it professional, the two have enough chemistry to provide her film with all its pyrotechnics.
While Colt and Jody try to get on with the business of showbusiness, a problem arises on set—the star of her film (and the man Colt is doubling), Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), goes missing—thus, Colt is deployed to track Tom down and save the film. The stuntman becomes the leading man. Insanity follows when Tom turns up dead, and Cole finds himself in the middle of an action movie with no safety harness, no wires, and very real danger.
Leitch directs from a script by Drew Pearce.
Joining Gosling, Blunt, and Taylor-Johnson are Hannah Waddingham, Winston Duke, Teresa Palmer, Stephanie Hsu, and Lee Majors.
Check out the trailer below. The Fall Guy arrives on May 3:
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Nine years after George Miller’s more or less flawless Mad Max:Fury Road introduced an unbelievable Charlize Theron as Furiosa, the story of how Theron’s one-armed warrior supreme came to be is racing toward theaters. The latest trailer for Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga paints a clearer picture of what kind of story Miller aims to tell, and that’s one of vengeance. Furiosa is, of course, centered on a young Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) and reveals how this singular woman came to become the fearsome and fearless liberator we came to know in Fury Road. Here, she has to battle against the man who obliterated her childhood and took away her beloved mother, Chris Hemsworth’s Warlord Dementus.
Furiosa will take us back to that original sin committed against her as a child when she was snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and ended up in the snares of Dementus, the leader of the great Biker Horde. The trailer reveals a key moment before Furiosa is snatched away—her mother tells her that no matter what, she has to find her way home. Thus began her years-long struggle against the lunatics roaming the vast wasteland and vying for supremacy in a broken world. Furiosa will fight them all to keep her mother’s promise.
Miller’s latest is set 45 years after the collapse of society and details how the young Furiosa managed to become a master of all things mechanical and survive a war between Warlord Dementus and Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme). The new trailer delivers more looks at the ingenious practical effects and unparalleled stunts that made Fury Road a phenomenon and multiple Oscar winner.
Furiosa’s exploits in Fury Road were significant—risking life and what was left of her limbs to free a gaggle of female prisoners from Immortan Joe, the sadistic ruler of the citadel. In Furiosa, it seems Immortan Joe, being the enemy of her enemy, might prove himself to be a friend of sorts to our heroine.
Once again, Miller directs from a script he wrote alongside his Fury Road co-writer Nick Lathouris, and he’s built the world of Furiosa with plenty more Fury Road alums, including production designer Colin Gibson, costume designer Jenny Beavan, and makeup designer Lesley Vanderwalt, each of whom won an Oscar for their work on Fury Road.
Check out the trailer below. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga revs into theaters on May 24, 2024:
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Featured image: Caption: Anya Taylor-Joy in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Village Roadshow Pictures’ action adventure “FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan’s secretive project has just gotten a bit more concrete.
Warner Bros. has revealed the writer/director and his longtime collaborator’s new film will be coming to theaters near you on March 7, 2025. The project is big enough to warrant screenings in IMAX, no less.
Warner Bros. is describing Coogler’s latest as an event film, which isn’t surprising given the fact that this is the man who has delivered Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Another of Coogler’s frequent collaborators, Oscar-winning composer Ludwig Göransson, who has nabbed the award for his recent work in Oppenheimer and Coogler’s Black Panther, will executive produce alongside Rebecca Cho and Will Greenfield
Coogler wrote the script for the new project and will direct as well as produce through his company, Proximity Media, alongside Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian. Warner Bros. eventually landed the project after three weeks of interest from several studios, topping Universal in the final round. The film reunites Coogler and Jordan yet again, who first broke out with Coogler’s star-making 2013 directorial debut Fruitvale Station, which he wrote on spec. This time around, studios were vying for a chance to work with the star auteur on his latest. Jordan has had a role in all of Coogler’s films, including leading his Rocky franchise reboot Creed in 2015 and starring as the villain Erik Killmonger in both of Coogler’s world-beating Black Panther films.
Reports suggest that Coogler and Jordan are ready to start filming soon in New Orleans. Coogler’s project is a brand new concept and reportedly has franchise potential of its own. The details of the script are being guarded, but the bits that have been revealed thus far describe a possible period thriller with anime influences (Coogler’s a huge fan) and a connection to the undead.
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The first trailer for The Acolyte has arrived, revealing creator Lesyle Headland’s twisty upcoming live-action Star Wars for Disney+. The very first frame introduces one of those cuddly Star Wars creatures the franchise is famous for, yet this little guy (or girl) is a Padawan, a trainee in the arts and practices of the Jedi order. “Close your eyes; your eyes can deceive you,” says a Jedi Master (Lee Jung-jae) to his young students, “we must not trust them.” Trust will be a major factor in the new series, which focuses on the end of the High Republic era when darkness rises in the galaxy after a brutal crime spree.
Thrilling sequences are revealed here, including some Trinity-like hand-to-hand combat from Carrie-Anne Moss, trading her Matrix black leather for the dark robe of a Jedi Master. Moss’s character is fighting against a young warrior (Amandla Stenberg), once a student of the Jedi Master played by Lee Jung-jae, who is now on a dangerous path and possessing formidable power. That aforementioned shocking crime spree—the killing of Jedis—has brought these three together during a dark, turbulent time. The trailer ends with a ferocious lightsaber battle, with Stenberg’s warrior marshaling a power well beyond her years.
Joining Lee Jung-jae, Stenberg, and Moss are Manny Jacinto, Dafne Keen, Charlie Barnett, Jodie Turner-Smith, Rebecca Henderson, Dean-Charles Chapman, Joonas Suotamo, and Carrie-Anne Moss.
Headland not only created the series, but directed the first two episodes. A stellar crop of helmers joins her—Kogonada (episodes 3 and 7), Alex Garcia Lopez (episodes 4 and 5), and Hanelle Culpepper (episodes 6 and 8). Composer Michael Abels, the man behind the music of Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us, scored the series.
Check out the trailer below. The Acolyte arrives on Disney+ on June 4:
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