“One Battle After Another”: The Makeup Magic Behind Sean Penn’s Gasp-Inducing Third-Act Reveal
Spoilers below.
Director Paul Thomas Anderson wants audiences to see One Battle After Another‘s stellar ensemble cast, warts and all. As a result, makeup department head Heba Thorisdottir and special effects makeup artist and prosthetics designer Arjen Tuiten knew that less would be more, with the only exception being Sean Penn’s Col. Stephen Lockjaw, whose shocking third-act disfigurement is the result of a masterclass of makeup and prosthetics design from Thorisdottir and Tuiten.
Busan 2025: How Locations Shape Asian Productions, From “The Dark Knight” to “K-Pop Demon Hunters”
A scroll through cinema history reveals a selection of unique, now-iconic locations that have become synonymous with the movies they have helped bring to life.
Think David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia and the sands of Jordan’s Wadi Rum (utilized for modern audiences in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films). Think the Caped Crusader on the rooftop of Hong Kong’s International Finance Centre (IFC) Tower in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.
Getting Caught in “Kiss of the Spider Woman” Production Designer Scott Chambliss’s Perfect Web for Jennifer Lopez
Production designer Scott Chambliss is known in Hollywood for big tentpole movies— Star Trek, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and Mission: Impossible III are a few of his films—so he was a bit shocked in 2023 when writer-director Bill Condon called him about revamping Kiss of the Spider Woman as an old-fashioned MGM movie musical. Chambliss knew exactly how to win over the man who made Dreamgirls and wrote the movie version of Chicago.
“One Battle After Another” Cinematographer Michael Bauman Breaks Down Filming the Chaos in El Paso
Spoilers below.
About an hour into Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson, a washed-up revolutionary living off the grid in Northern California, sends his teenage daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) to her first high school dance, lights a joint, and queues up The Battle of Algiers when the phone rings. “Bob, we have trouble ahead and the road isn’t clear…”
He might be a burnout perpetually be-robed in tattered leisure wear that would make Big Lewboski proud,
Happy Accidents, Revolutionary Moments, & Killer Improv: Inside “One Battle After Another” With DP Michael Bauman
Spoilers below.
“That dude is unbelievable,” admits One Battle After Another cinematographer Michael Bauman to The Credits about Leonardo DiCaprio. “I mean, he’s a star and he brings people in [theaters] but his ability to expand the character is unreal.” Bauman has worked with Paul Thomas Anderson on five different features in one capacity or another, but it was the first time on set with DiCaprio on the acclaimed film,
How “The Smashing Machine” Makeup Designer Kazu Hiro Transformed Dwayne Johnson into MMA Legend Mark Kerr
Veteran prosthetic makeup designer Kazu Hiro has garnered two Oscars for his outstanding work: one for transforming actor Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill for Darkest Hour, and the other for transforming Charlize Theron into Megyn Kelly for Bombshell. More recently, he was nominated for sculpting Bradley Cooper’s visage as legendary composer Leonard Bernstein in Maestro.
But for writer/director Benny Safdie’s biographical drama about the beginnings of mixed martial arts (“MMA”) and what would eventually become the UFC,
“The Conjuring: Last Rites” Production Designer John Frankish on Creating the Hellish Smurl House
Production designer John Frankish knew instantly that making the homes the dark heart of The Conjuring: Last Rites was the way to go. From there, everything else would fall into place.
Directed by Michael Chaves, the ninth installment in The Conjuring Universe finds Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga’s paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren, taking on what could be their most insanely terrifying case yet—and that’s saying something.
From Tragedy to Art: How Director Olivier Sarbil’s War Injury Inspired the Deeply Personal “Viktor”
At first glance, Olivier Sarbil doesn’t look like someone who’s danced with death, but once you hear his story, you’ll wonder how he’s still here to tell it.
Born on the French island of Corsica, at 21, he joined the military as a paratrooper. Stationed in Rwanda, he witnessed the genocide of the Tutsi people, where more than 800,000 people lost their lives. The experience set Sarbil on a path documenting social conflicts,
Inside the Breakneck Cut of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” With Editor Andy Jurgensen
The best-reviewed movie of the season is also the most relentless. Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Oscar front-runner One Battle After Another races through its two-hour fifty-minute run time propelled by adrenalized performances from Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Chase Infiniti, Teyana Taylor, Benicio Del Toro, and Regina Hall as revolutionaries in the French 75 (in the case of DiCaprio’s Bob, Teyanna Taylor’s Perfidia Beverly Hills, and Hall’s Deandra),
Inside “Weapons”: Zach Cregger on Atlanta Crews, Practical Effects, and That Haunting Opening
Weapons became one of the year’s most acclaimed box office hits, and while the film’s success was certainly by design, it still surprised writer/director Zach Cregger. Cregger knows how to craft a movie that gets under your skin—his last film, Barbarian, was one of 2022’s most unsettling and surprising films, not even he could have predicted that Weapons would become a pop culture phenomenon.
The story Cregger presents in his new film is deceptively simple;
Costume Designer Suttirat Anne Larlarb on Dressing Scorching, Corporate-Controlled Future in “Alien: Earth”
Alien: Earth (streaming on FX) pictures our future here on Earth as a wildly advanced, increasingly grim corporate kleptocracy—a scorching hot planet that doesn’t get any more welcoming after it’s populated with flesh-eating “Xenomorphs” (thanks to a crashed research vessel owned by one of thoes corporate overlords, Weyland-Yutani) that is then pursued by a private army owned by tech genius Boy Kavalier’s company Prodigy. While face-bursting and brain-controlling eyeballs roam the rainforest,
How “Nino” Producer Sandra da Fonseca Turned a First Time Director’s Story Into Global Festival Gold
As producer Sandra da Fonseca is telling The Credits about the theatrical release of her newest film, Nino, serendipity strikes. “Oh, I just saw a bus go by with the film’s poster on it,” she says. “That makes me happy — it’s the first one I’ve seen!”
The poster may have been on the bus side, but Nino is gaining acclaim at rocket speed.
Scarlett Johansson on Her Directorial Debut “Eleanor the Great”: “I Don’t Think I Could Have Done It 10 Years Ago”
Grief makes people do crazy things.
And sometimes that includes moving across the country after the death of your closest friend, befriending a 19-year-old college student, and lying about your identity.
Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, Eleanor the Great, stars June Squibb as Eleanor, a 95-year-old woman who moves to New York after the passing of her dear friend. The film explores how grief spans generations,
“Alien: Earth” Cinematographer and Director Dana Gonzalez on Bringing Cinema’s Most Iconic Monster to TV
On Earth, everyone can hear you scream. No apologies for the dreadful play on the classic logline for Alien, which continues to reach new, strange heights in FX’s Alien: Earth, created by Fargo‘s Noah Hawley. Cinematographer and director Dana Gonzalez establishes the expressive vision in the pilot, titled “Neverland,” which introduces a young, terminally ill girl named Marcy Hermit (Florence Bensberg) to a future world in which she’ll survive,
Caged Dynamics: How DP Ula Pontikos Frames Willem Dafoe & Corey Hawkins in “The Man in My Basement”
The Man in My Basement marks Nadia Latif’s feature directing debut, and it’s a doozy. Latif adapted author Walter Mosely’s acclaimed 2004 novel of the same name, from a script she co-wrote with Mosely. The film is set in the quiet village of Sag Harbor, New York, where Charles Blakely (Corey Hawkins) is a man adrift until he gets a strange offer from an even stranger businessman, Anniston Bennet (Willem Dafoe), to rent out his basement.
From Abbey Road to “Alien: Earth”: Composer Jeff Russo on Bringing Xenomorphs Home Through Music
Alien: Earth doesn’t rehash the familiar, even if it beats with the acid-pumping heart of Ridley Scott’s original Alien. The series expands on the terrifying world Scott first unleashed on audiences on May 25, 1979 by focusing not only on the iconic Xenomorph, one of the most legendary movie monsters of all time, but by imagining what the world might look like decades later when the Xenomorph, and a slew of other captive galactic creatures,
How Director Justin Tipping Mixed Art, Nike Ads & Multiple Genres in His Singular Sports Horror Film “Him”
Supernatural sports horror film Him not only blends two hugely popular film genres but also draws inspiration from the art of Jeff Koons and Edward Hopper, as well as Nike ads from the 1990s—a blend of disparate influences that cohere into a singular cinematic experience.
Produced by visionary filmmaker Jordan Peele, a man who had made his own sui generis horror films, from Get Out to Us to Nope,
From USC Benchwarmer to Cartel Smuggler: Inside “Cocaine Quarterback” With Director Jody McVeigh-Schultz
If the infamous trope “I know a guy who knows a guy” had a poster child, it should be Owen Hanson. Chronicled in a three-part docuseries, Cocaine Quarterback: Signal-Caller for the Cartel, from director Jody McVeigh-Schultz, the shocking events reveal how the former USC walk-on went from National Champion to convicted drug cartel smuggler.
McVeigh-Schultz, best known for helming the school spying scandal docuseries Spy High,
Novelist & Screenwriter Charlie Huston on Preserving the Raw Truth of “Caught Stealing” With Darren Aronofsky
In 2008, author Charlie Huston and filmmaker Darren Aronofsky had breakfast. The filmmaker was interested in adapting the author’s debut novel, “Caught Stealing,” the first entry in the Hank Thompson trilogy. The collaboration didn’t come to pass.
In 2022, Huston revisited the script they wrote for Caught Stealing, which tells the story of Hank (Austin Butler), a former baseball star and now an alcoholic bartender, caught in the crossfire of criminals chasing a bag of dirty money.
Director Oliver Hermanus and Actor Chris Cooper Wax Lyrical on “The History of Sound”
Director Oliver Hermanus calls his latest film, The History of Sound, “a love letter to the films of the ‘90s.”
The period drama stars Paul Mescal as Kentucky singer Lionel and Josh O’Connor as Boston composer David White, who have a brief but life-changing romance in 1920 while hiking through rural Maine to record local folk music on wax cylinders.
Hermanus grew up in South Africa,
