Father’s Day With the Lannisters: Game of Thrones Thrilling Finale

An absolute ton of spoilers below. Just a ton. Don't read if you're not caught up.

The end of the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones, “The Watchers on the Wall,” saw Jon Snow leaving Castle Black after surviving the first onslaught of Mance Rayder’s Wildling army. Giants, mammoths, Wildlings and Crows were strewn inside and outside the wall, dead and soon to be burned. Jon was leaving, alone, without his sword and,

Watch How to Train Your Dragon 2‘s Dean DeBlois Take Kids’ Questions

We learned a lot from talking to writer/director Dean DeBlois. One is, he must be one of the most calm, even tempered and laid back individuals helming a major film franchise in the business. Two, a lot of work, and risk, went into making How to Train Your Dragon 2, a sequel that is being heralded as one of the best in animated history. And three, the man is committed to creating an animated trilogy that’ll live on and inspire kids and adults alike for years to come.

How to Train Your Dragon 2‘s Writer/Director Dean DeBlois

When Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders film How to Train Your Dragon was released in 2010, it was a critical darling but had something of a sleepy opening. Adapted from Cressida Cowell’s book, How to Train Your Dragon contained everything that you expect from a stellar animated film—a great script, no small amount of wit, dramatic depth and fantastic effects. At its core it had a relationship that was hard to beat,

Building Edge of Tomorrow’s Armored ExoSuits

How might a soldier be able to fight giant, sophisticated, and fantastically violent aliens with sundry razor-sharp tentacles and a taste for carnage? Simple: just create an articulated armored suit capable of protecting a soldier’s body while delivering a massive amount of firepower from weapons mounted to the carapace. This was the challenge the filmmakers behind Edge of Tomorrow created for themselves, and instead of relying on CGI to create these fantastic and fearsome combat “jackets,”

Looking Back at the Original Godzilla

In August of 1954, Toho Studios began shooting a film unlike any that ever been made in Japanese cinematic history. Three photography teams were required: a special-effects photography team to cover the film's star, a principal photography team to capture dramatic scenes between the rest of the cast, and a composite photography team who would help mesh star and cast into a cohesive whole.

That film was, of course, the original Godzilla, 

Director Gareth Edwards, Producer Thomas Tull & Star Ken Watanabe Talk Godzilla

We combed through a few Godzilla round table interviews Warner Bros. recently uploaded to their press site in anticipation of the iconic monster's May 16 landfall, and have provided some choice quotes from three major players involved in the film—director Gareth Edwards, producer and Legendary Pictures Chairman and CEO Thomas Tull, and star Ken Watanabe.

DIRECTOR GARETH EDWARDS

On creating the look of Godzilla

"We imagined that sixty years ago,

Mr. Sunshine: David Lynch, Auteur of the Uncanny, Talks Inspiration

One of the first words out of David Lynch’s mouth nearly brought the house down at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on a drizzly night last week. The icon behind films as disparate and evocative as Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, as well as the groundbreaking television series Twin Peaks, was patiently listening as Paul Holdengräber, the erudite director of public programs at the New York Public Library,

Angus MacLachlan on the Art of Writing for and Directing Actors

Paul Schneider won Best Actor at the Tribeca Film Festival last week for his role as Otto Wall in Angus MacLachlan’s Goodbye to All That. The character was a tricky one—Schneider was playing someone affable and intelligent, but also unfocused and obliviously selfish. He spends most of the film in a state of confusion about why his life seems to be falling apart. His wife has left him, his daughter doesn’t feel safe in his new house,

Tribeca 2014: Kelly Reichardt’s Tense, Thrilling Night Moves

A group of environmental activists watch a somber film about the slaughter of the planet. A woman’s voice narrates the horrors of mankind's insatiable greed—eroding beaches, melting ice caps, deforestation, and carbon emissions to name a few of our sins, with a call to action as well. "Let the revolution begin…for the future, for the people, and for the planet."

This film-within-the-film ends to a smattering of clapping. The filmmaker is present, and she's asked to answer questions from the group.

Tribeca 2014: Writer/Director Angus MacLachlan’s Goodbye to All That

Writer-director Angus MacLachlan’s Goodbye to All That includes one of the more frank and pathos-free sex scenes in recent memory. Otto Wall (Paul Schneider) and Mildred (Ashley Hinshaw), who recently met on the online dating service OkCupid, sit opposite one another on chairs, naked. They are describing, with exacting detail, what they’d like to do to each other. Otto’s wife has recently left him, and he’s experimenting for the first time in his life with online dating.

One Mama Bear, Two Cubs, and Three Filmmakers: Disneynature’s Bears

The world of wildlife filmmaking has changed dramatically in recent years. BBC’s Planet Earth set a new standard. High-definition cameras, stunning aerial shots, and time-lapse photography gave viewers incredible access to animal behavior never before caught on film. Disneynature’s Bears, which includes veterans of those productions, takes a different tack. Yes, it’s filmed in HD, and the gyro-stabilized shots from helicopters are spectacular, but the family-geared film has a different goal.

Award Winning Documentarian Rachel Beth Anderson on Filming in Conflict Zones

Rachel Beth Anderson is a cinematographer-turned-director who has spent her career working almost exclusively in conflict zones. She was recently awarded the cinematography award for a U.S. documentary at Sundance, along with Ross Kaufman, for her work on E-Team, which followed a group of four Human Rights Watch workers documenting war crimes around the world.

Along with filming in Syria, Anderson has worked in Libya,

Cleveland’s Flexibility Gives Captain America its Punch

In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) spend some time at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, the massive flying aircraft carrier where this crucial agency at the heart of the Marvel Comics Universe deals with the paranormal and superhuman threats to America. This time they're dealing with a foe potentially more powerful than the Captain—the eponymous Winter Soldier.

When directors Anthony and Joe Russo were scouting for a location that could serve as the grand lobby of this flying strategic command center,

Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me Director Chiemi Karasawa’s Rising Star

Although she’s being heralded as a breakout director for the acclaimed documentary Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, Chiemi Karasawa is no overnight sensation. The California native moved to New York the day after she graduated from Boston University’s film program and began working for a film producer. She apprenticed as a script supervisor, then worked for many years in that position on numerous films including High Fidelity, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3,

Talking With Diego Luna About Directing Cesar Chavez

Directing his second feature, and his first in English, Mexican actor Diego Luna turned to one of the most admired figures in recent history: Mexican-American labor leader Cesar Chavez. In the 1960s Chavez co-founded the United Farm Workers, organized an historic grape boycott, and led a 300-mile march from Delano to Sacramento, California that drew global attention to the plight of migrant farm workers.

Michael Pena stars in the biopic that focusses on Chavez’s early years,

Noah: Artistically Ambitious, Economically Advantageous

At first blush, it appeared that Noah represented writer/director Darren Aronofsky’s first real foray into pure big budget spectacle. The indie auteur that burst onto the scene with his twitchy, unsettling debut Pi, only to follow that up with one of the most breathtakingly devastating cinematic depictions of addiction in many years with Requiem for a Dream, was now going big budget CGI in the retelling of the Biblical story of Noah's ark on a grand scale.

SXSW 2014: Richard Linklater’s Epic, Masterful Boyhood

Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was in pre-production for roughly a year. The film took 39 days to shoot, and then two more years for post-production. It premiered at Sundance in mid January, played at the Berlin International Film Festival in early February (where Linklater won the Silver Bear for Best Director), and then played at the Paramount Theater here in Austin on Sunday morning, March 10, at 10:30 a.m. Linklater, a legend here in Austin,

SXSW 2014: Sarah-Violet Bliss & Charles Rogers on Grand Jury Prize-Winning Fort Tilden

How do you write and shoot feature in a few months, cut it, have it accepted by a major film festival and then have it win that festival's major award? Writer/directors Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers would be the perfect speakers on a panel here at SXSW on this very subject, considering as recently as last May, their Grand Jury Prize Winning feature Fort Tilden wasn’t even a thought in their mind.

SXSW 2014: Jason Bateman’s Directorial Debut Bad Words

There was something perfect about watching Jason Bateman’s Bad Words on opening night here at SXSW. There are no official press screenings here; your press badge allows you access to any film, but you take in the movie with the general public as well. The vibe is different from Sundance, which befits the laid back Austin setting. Screenings here differ from screenings at Sundance in another, significant way—one can enjoy a drink while watching a film.

SXSW 2014: Things to See & Hear

Now that SXSW is underway and The Credits lounge is open for business, let’s take a quick glance around the festival at some of the things going on over the next nine days. Obviously this is but a tiny little snapshot—SXSW is a festival with so much going on it’s a little like a moving Louvre, you can’t possibly hope to see everything in your allotted time, so you have to pick and choose your spots.