“Babylon” Production Designer Florencia Martin Conjures Hollywood’s Decadent Early Days
She designed Paul Thomas Anderson’s flashback to 1970s-era L.A. in Licorice Pizza and shaped the fifties look inhabited by Marilyn Monroe in Blonde. Now, production designer Florencia Martin takes viewers back to 1920s Hollywood in Oscar-winning writer/director Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, which immerses Margot Robbie’s Nellie LaRoy and Brad Pitt’s Jack Conrad in the gloriously decadent ...
“I Wanna Dance with Somebody” Composer Chanda Dancy on Scoring Whitney Houston’s Complex Life
When the shortlist for the 2023 Oscars was announced, composer Chanda Dancy was included for her work on the film Devotion. If she is nominated, she’ll make history as the first Black female composer to be nominated for an Academy Award. Dancy brings that winning streak into 2023 with her score for the new film Whitney Houston: I ...
“George & Tammy” Costume Designer Mitchell Travers on the Power Couple’s Fashion Forward Approach
When George Jones and Tammy Wynette sang, the nation listened. The chart-topping talents performed some of the most memorable songs in country music history and their love story rivaled any of their lyrics. Together, they shaped the industry amid the rise of television and against the backdrop of a rapidly changing American landscape. Showtime’s limited ...
Why Every Digital Costume in “Avatar: The Way of Water” Really Exists
Daring adventures, illuminating discoveries, and unbelievable wonders are hallmarks of James Cameron’s blockbuster films. In trademark fashion, Avatar: The Way of Water is a technological feat that developed new filmmaking tools in production. Yet, costume designer Deborah L. Scott (Titanic, Back to the Future, Avatar, E.T.) said that is all secondary to Cameron’s driving force. ...
Best of 2022: “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” Hair Department Head Camille Friend on The Sequel’s Stunning Looks
Both 2018’s Black Panther and this year’s Wakanda Forever have hugely impacted popular culture, not least by expanding the acceptance and expression of Afro-Futurism in everything from fashion and hairstyles to architecture. Both production designer Hannah Beachler and costume designer Ruth E. Carter won Oscars for their work on the first film and are in the running for ...
Best of 2022: How The “Babylon” Sound Team Built a Sonic Bacchanal
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. The opening sequence to Damien Chazelle’s Babylon (in theaters today) hits you like one of the many lines of powder its characters will ingest. It’s eye-opening, choreographed chaos, leaving you with an intensely euphoric ...
Best of 2022: “The Woman King” Director Gina Prince-Bythewood on Her Singular, Sweeping Historical Epic
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. When director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s most recent film, The Old Guard, premiered on Netflix in July of 2020, the critically acclaimed action drama became one of the top 10 original launches in the platform’s history. Prince-Bythewood ...
Best of 2022:”Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” Animation Supervisor Brian Leif Hansen Packs Puppets With Emotion
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. Inside a nondescript warehouse on the outskirts of Portland, a little boy made of wood galvanized efforts by stop motion filmmakers for three years before emerging now to wow moviegoers in Guillermo del Toro’s ...
Best of 2022: “Nope” Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema on Capturing the Epic Scope of Jordan Peele’s Latest
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema failed to get into two Dutch film schools, so he worked in a soap factory, played in a band, and survived unemployment as a self-described “slacker” before finding his creative ...
Best of 2022: “Succession” Director Mark Mylod on Season 3 & TV’s Most Irresistibly Twisted Family
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. Succession director Mark Mylod knows his way around family drama. Mylod’s been with the series since the first season, directing the second episode (the pilot was helmed by co-creator Adam McKay), and is now ...
Best of 2022: “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” Production Designer Hannah Beachler Reveals Her Guide to Talokan
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. When Chadwick Boseman died unexpectedly after leading the cast as the title character in 2018’s Black Panther, it shocked and saddened the world. There was, understandably, some doubt as to whether a sequel could ...
Best of 2022: “Stranger Things 4” Music Editor Lena Glikson on Cutting Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. From the get-go, Netflix hit Stranger Things has excelled in the art and craft of needle drops. Encompassing eighties classics from David Bowie’s “Heroes” in Season One to “Everlasting Love” in Season Three, song ...
Best of 2022: Bill Hader on Bringing Up “Barry”
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. For eight seasons, Bill Hader gained a legion of fans with the hilarious characters he brought to life on Saturday Night Live. Since then, his popularity has only grown with his Emmy-winning portrayal of ...
Best of 2022: “House of the Dragon” Co-Creator & Co-Showrunner Ryan Condal on Season One & Beyond
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. The first season of House of the Dragon has come to a close as an unqualified success. The premiere saw the largest single-day viewership for a series debut in HBO’s history and continued to land ...
Best of 2022: “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” Writer/Director Rian Johnson Unpeels His Whodunit
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. When released in 2019, Rian Johnson’s star-studded, deliciously delightful who-done-it Knives Out was met with universal acclaim and became a smash hit. In it, star Daniel Craig shed all remnants of his Bond persona ...
Best of 2022: How the “Top Gun: Maverick” Sound Team Ingeniously Captured Raw Emotion Mid-Flight
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. Mark Weingarten is no stranger to navigating the challenges of a production sound mixer. Over his accomplished career, Weingarten’s mixed on Christopher Nolan’s WWII epic Dunkirk, traveled to another dimension in Interstellar, captured the ...
Best of 2022: “The Batman” Cinematographer Greig Fraser on Finding Light in the Darkness
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. At a gripping three hours, The Batman isn’t so much an endurance test as it is a lengthy visual puzzle, one that takes place primarily after hours. Director Matt Reeves’s take on Batman (Robert ...
Best of 2022: “Winning Time” Writer Rodney Barnes on Scripting HBO’s Fast-Breaking Lakers Series
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. It’s pretty much a slam dunk that Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty will appeal to basketball fans. After all, it tells the story of one of the most pivotal moments in ...
Best of 2022: “Everything Everywhere All At Once” Actress Stephanie Hsu on Landing the Role of a Lifetime
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. It’s very difficult to describe Everything Everywhere All At Once, the new genre-busting indie from writer/directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as Daniels. It’s a multiverse sci-fi brain twister, an action movie with ...
Best of 2022: MPA Creator Award Recipient Writer/Director Nikyatu Jusu on her Stunning Debut Feature “Nanny”
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. Deploying West African folklore to interrogate the myth of the American dream, writer/director Nikyatu Jusu‘s debut feature Nanny is a remarkably assured genre-melding experience. Nanny also gives viewers something that’s sadly still quite rare—it evocatively places ...
