“On Swift Horses” Director Daniel Minahan & DP Luc Montpellier on Love in the Shadows in the 1950s
On Swift Horses director Daniel Minahan has long admired the work of cinematographer Luc Montpellier. “He shot Tales From the Loop, which is one of the best series I’ve ever seen. And [the 2022 film] Women Talking is just a feat of design and performance. So I said to him, ‘Your work is so beautiful ...
Max Minghella on Reuniting With Elisabeth Moss for his Horror/Comedy “Shell”
One expects Max Minghella to cite the influence of his father, the late director Anthony Minghella (The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley), on his acting and directing career. But it’s Minghella’s mother, Carolyn Choa, who gets the shout-out for her impact on his new film, the body horror comedy Shell, starring Elisabeth Moss and Kate Hudson. ...
“The Wild Robot” Writer/Director Chris Sanders on Kindness as a Survival Skill
With three Oscar nominations under his belt, animation auteur Chris Sanders knew a good story when he saw it the minute his daughter brought home Peter Brown’s children’s book “The Wild Robot” back in 2016. Sanders, who’d worked on The Lion King and later helmed How to Train Your Dragon, Lilo & Stitch, and The ...
“My Old Ass” Writer/Director Megan Park on Magic, Mushrooms, and Meeting Yourself
In Megan Park’s wide-eyed, warm-as-the-waning-summer-evenings sophomore feature, My Old Ass, time itself is a trip. When Elliott (Maisy Stella) ushers in her 18th birthday with a camping excursion à la psilocybin-laced mushrooms, the last thing she expects is her psyche to conjure up an “old ass” version of herself (at 39 years old), portrayed by ...
“Transformers One” Director Josh Cooley on Humanizing the Origin of Optimus Prime and Megatron’s Ancient Feud
Transformers One isn’t the first animated Transformers film, but it has achieved multiple firsts for the iconic franchise. The science fiction action film is an origin story that focuses on the early relationship of Orion Pax and D-16, how they changed the fate of their home planet of Cybertron, and how they became Optimus Prime ...
“Merchant Ivory” Director Stephen Soucy on His Must-See Doc for Film Lovers
The name Merchant Ivory is so synonymous with lustrous period films, particularly literary adaptations of the works of E. M. Forster and Henry James, that even some astute filmgoers assumed it was a studio or a brand. It was both those things, but it was foremost the names of two men—US-born director James Ivory and ...
Eye on the Emmys: “True Detective: Night Country” Writer/Director Issa López Delivers a Chilling New Season
*Ahead of the 2024 Emmy Awards on September 15, we’re looking back at our interviews with some of this year’s nominees. Issa Lopez notched three nominations this year—for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, Outstanding Directing, and Outstanding Writing (for episode 6.) Issa López loves to challenge herself. The writer/director, best known for the mystical 2017 ...
How “Afraid” Writer/Director Chris Weitz Cracked the Artificial Intelligence Code in His First Horror Film
What happens when a charming AI device makes itself indispensable to an unsuspecting family of five? In Chris Weitz‘s new horror film Afraid, the smooth-talking “AIA” aims for nothing short of total domination. The film stars John Cho, who caught his first acting break when Weitz and his brother Paul cast him in their directorial ...
“Deadpool & Wolverine” Second Unit Director & Stunt Coordinator George Cottle on Capturing Those Cameos
In the last installment of our conversation with Deadpool & Wolverine’s second unit director and stunt coordinator George Cottle, we covered the hysterical dance/action opening sequence and what it took to shoot the bone-crunching brawl inside a real Honda Odyssey minivan. Smashing box office records on every level—the first R-rated movie to open domestically over $200 ...
A Symphony of Success: Emmy Nominees Talk VFX, Composing, and Editing
We had the pleasure of hosting two panels this year—check out our first panel here— ahead of the 2024 Emmy Awards, which will be held live on ABC on Sunday, September 15, from 8-11 ET. For our second panel, our Emmy nominees came from a wide-ranging group of shows—Lessons in Chemistry‘s ace director Millicent Shelton, nominated for ...
All the World’s a Stage: The Team Behind “Sing Sing” on Crafting a Powerful Human Drama
Sing Sing screenwriters Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley are unusual, even in the world of indies. They immerse themselves in the world of the story they want to tell for years, in this case a drama program in a maximum-security prison. They surround professional performers like Colman Domingo in the case of Sing Sing, with ...
Twin Forces: “The Acolyte” Director Hanelle M. Culpepper on Crafting Amandla Stenberg’s Dual Roles
When she helmed the first episode of Star Trek: Picard in 2020, director Hanelle M. Culpepper made history as the first woman to launch a Star Trek series. She went on to win the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series for that project. This, along with her work on shows like Westworld, The Last ...
MPA Creator Award Recipient Writer/Director JA Bayona’s Epic Journey
J.A. Bayona’s Society of the Snow, a reimagining of the real-life 1972 Uruguayan plane crash in the Andes Mountains that caught the world’s attention, is a viscerally astonishing feat of empathetic filmmaking. It was nominated for two Oscars: Best International Feature for Spain and Best Makeup and Hairstyling (Ana López-Puigcerver, David Martí, and Montse Ribé), ...
“Space Cadet” Writer/Director Liz Garcia on Crafting Her Cosmic Comedy
It was an article about NASA’s first class of astronaut candidates in which women constituted half the participants that piqued Liz Garcia’s curiosity about the highly competitive candidacy process and ultimately prompted her to write about it. As the writer/director/producer (The Lifeguard, The Sinner) notes in her Director’s Statement, “Once I learned how astonishingly competitive ...
“Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” Director Mark Molloy on Capturing That Eddie Murphy Magic
Mark Molloy is just as much a fan of Beverly Hill Cop as you are. Growing up, the Australian native had an Axel Foley poster pinned to his bedroom wall and turned that into helming the fourth installment of the franchise, which hits Netflix on July 3, nearly 40 years after the original 1984 film. ...
“Fancy Dance” Writer/Director Erica Tremblay on the Power of Indigenous Storytelling
Fans of Lily Gladstone will be happy to know they can see her on the big screen again in Apple’s new release, Fancy Dance. The film centers on Jax (Gladstone) and Roki (newcomer Isabel Deroy-Olson), an Indigenous aunt and niece who live on the Seneca-Cayuga reservation and are dealing with the disappearance of Tawi, Jax’s ...
“A Quiet Place: Day One” Director Michael Sarnoski on Creating Emotional Stakes & Killer Silences
A Quiet Place: Day One turns up the action, tension, and scares. For filmmaker Michael Sarnoski, though, creating real emotional connections with his (mostly) new cast in the A Quiet Place world was key. Sarnoski wanted to maintain the intimacy from John Krasinski’s first two films, which depict a world run by blind, sound-hunting monsters ...
“Silo” Director/Executive Producer Morten Tyldum on Helming Rebecca Ferguson’s Sci-Fi Mystery
Apple TV+’s Silo, created by Graham Yost, is an ingeniously constructed sci-fi series that nevertheless opens with a shot worthy of any classic western—a Sheriff’s badge—and goes on to meld elements of that genre, along with police procedural and conspiracy thriller, in 10 satisfying episodes. The series’ claustrophobic setting, the titular Silo, serves as a character ...
“BRATS” Director Andrew McCarthy on Reuniting With the Iconic Brat Pack
It’s fair to say the youth movie genre in the 1980s was defined by the Brat Pack, the group of young actors who appeared together in such classics as Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, and St. Elmo’s Fire. They are famously familiar: Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, and Andrew ...
“Shakespeare but with football”: Director Matthew Hamachek Unpacks “The Dynasty: New England Patriots”
Director and executive producer Matthew Hamachek calls The Dynasty, the 10-part docu-series now streaming on Apple TV+, “Shakespeare but with football.” He’s not overstating it. As Dynasty charts the rise and fall of the six-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots over the course of 20 years, dazzling on-field highlights are deftly layered with the ...
