Walt Disney Studios Reimagines The Lone Ranger & Breathes Life Into Westerns
“So who was that masked man, anyway?” A question invariably asked at the end of every episode of The Lone Ranger television series. Armie Hammer, Johnny Depp, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski hope to provide a definitive answer to that question with the brand-new film The Lone Ranger, their reinvention of both the ...
Black Belt, Mother, Zombie Survivalist: Mireille Enos of World War Z
It’s a big year for actress Mireille Enos. The Texas native returns for a third season of detective work in AMC’s The Killing, and fights zombies with Brad Pitt in director Marc Forster’s big-budget, apocalyptic thriller World War Z, out today. While she’s mired in dire circumstances for make believe, in real life her career ...
Class in Session: Meet the Makers of Monsters University
Like most good college stories, it started at a party. John Lasseter’s surprise 50th birthday party nearly seven years ago, in fact. Ever the opportunist, John pulled party guest and award-winning entertainer Billy Crystal aside to talk shop. “He said, ‘We have an idea I want to tell you about,’” Billy whispers, playfully imitating the ...
An Evening With Geena Davis
Geena Davis has worked in the movie business for more than 30 years, with a career that includes an Academy Award® for Best Supporting Actress for 1988’s The Accidental Tourist and another nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role for 1991’s Thelma & Louise. Now, Davis is working full-time to help improve the industry ...
The Internship: Bringing “Start Over” Comedies into the 21st Century
To celebrate the release of this weekend’s soon-to-be Vince Vaughn/Owen Wilson classic, we’ve chosen ten of our favorite career-in-crisis comedies released since 1980. (Sorry Baby Boom, you were thisclose!) 1) Private Benjamin (1980), dir. Howard Zieff The poor little rich girl-turned Army recruit comedy was co-written by Nancy Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give, It’s Complicated) specifically ...
Chatting With Now You See Me Head Magic Consultant David Kwong
How can a showy magic act known as the Four Horsemen (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco) convince a Las Vegas crowd—let alone the FBI and Interpol—that they just teleported a random audience member to a bank in Paris and promptly stole three million Euros? To pull off an illusion that could fool ...
More than a Thriller: The East’s Real-Life Environmental Radicalism
How far would you go to fight for what you believe in? For some characters in Fox Searchlight's new film The East, the answer includes violence against the companies and individuals they oppose, and even self-sacrifice of their own lives. Many real-life radical environmentalists may agree. Far from just another heated Hollywood fiction, The East ...
After Earth Screenwriter Gary Whitta on the Script’s Evolution
Sometimes the process of making a movie is as much of a surprising journey as any adventure tale that is being told. After Earth, for example, started as a story of a man and his son trying to survive a crash in the wilderness. The movie's original outline called for the pair in contemporary Alaska. ...
Rounding up the Cast and Director of Eco-Thriller The East
In The East, Zal Batmanglij and his filmmaking partner, Brit Marling, deliver an edge-of-your-seat eco-terrorism thriller in which an undercover overachiever (Marling) infiltrates a militant anarchist eco-vigilante group (including Alexander Skarsgard and Ellen Page) that arranges “jams” against corporate evildoers. Without giving too much away, you may find yourself asking, "What's really in this prescription ...
Looking Back at Iconic Tentpole Movies and Imagining Their 2013 Versions
As summer movie season officially kicked off this past Memorial Day weekend, the slate of “tentpole” movies — the ones that are expected to hold up (like a tentpole, get it?) and turn a profit, bringing in big bucks both domestically and overseas — is bigger than ever: There’s Hangover 3, After Earth, Man of ...
500 Strong: The Joint Effort in Making 20th Century Fox’s Epic
How do you oversee the work of more than 500 people over the course of several years on a giant 3D animated film without losing your mind? Producer Jerry Davis of Blue Sky Studios, who helped shepherd the production of Twentieth Century Fox's Epic along with his producing partner Lori Forte, gives us the scoop. Epic, which features characters ...
In Honor of Star Trek: Into Darkness—Our 7 Favorite Invented Languages
Admittedly, writing about Klingon on the Internet is akin to shaving one’s entire body and jumping into a salt bath—we're opening ourselves up to an onslaught of criticism and fastidious fact-checking, so we’ll tread lightly here. But when Bing introduced Klingon to its web-based translation service on Tuesday in anticipation of this weekend’s release of ...
Where to Watch: New Site Offers Films & Shows, Legally & Seamlessly
Since our launch last September, The Credits has interviewed a diverse group of filmmakers, working our way through all the different jobs one could have in pre-production, on a film set, and in post. Directors, actors, cinematographers, screenwriters, art directors, costume designers, composers, editors, visual effects supervisors, casting directors, music supervisors, stunt performers and more have ...
Sarah Polley on her Astonishing new Documentary Stories We Tell
Once known primarily for her work as a child actress, as of late, Sarah Polley has distinguished herself as a writer and director, first, on 2006’s Away From Her, and then again with 2011’s Take This Waltz. This month marks Polley’s debut as a documentarian. In Stories We Tell, the Oscar nominee uses recollections of her ...
Heavyweight American Films Populate the 66th Annual Cannes Film Festival
The 66th Annual Cannes Film Festival is nearly upon us. Running from May 15th to the 26th, the Festival has already been praised for a well-curated lot of films drawn from an eclectic mix of established and rising international filmmakers. This year’s competition films seem a placid bunch, likely to garner more reflection and praise ...
Trailer Talk: Evaluating What’s Coming out in Three Minutes or Less
The end of this week saw the release of trailers for several of next fall’s most hotly anticipated film releases. Here’s our take on what to expect based on our extensive deep dives into their sub-three minute trailers… The World’s End Is it lazy to just write about films in terms of those that have ...
Eli Roth on Aftershock, Learning to Love Horror, and Woody Allen
Brilliant, demented horror master Eli Roth — the Frank Sinatra of The Splat Pack — is ready to make the next round of moviegoers barf, thanks to Aftershock, a shock fest that chronicles the hell-on-earth circumstances that befall coastal Valparaiso, Chile, after an earthquake levels the town. While the film is helmed by Chilean director Nicolás ...
The Greatest Gatsby: Before Leo,There was Redford
When Paramount purchased the film rights to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel for $350,000 (more than fifty times what the author earned for the book in his lifetime), studio head Robert Evans had no way of knowing just how different the 1974 film would look from his original vision. For a story that’s all about dwelling ...
Golden Age of Documentaries: A Q&A With Filmmaker Jamie Meltzer
Documentarian Jamie Meltzer knows how to pick his subject matter. Take his award-winning film Informant, which took home the Grand Jury Award at the DocNYC Festival as well as Best Documentary at the Austin Film Festival. Informant examines the life of Brandon Darby, a radical leftist activist turned FBI informant. Darby became a hero when he traveled to a ...
The Wild, Expensive (and not Always Improbable) Technology of Iron Man
You’d have to be a billionaire to equip yourself like Tony Stark, but it’s not entirely impossible. Tony Stark is back. After helping his fellow Avengers save the world against a Norse god and vicious aliens, he spent years working on his technology, because at heart, Stark is an engineer. Marvel president Kevin Feige told ...
