Looking Back on Some of our Favorite Stories of 2013
When we launched The Credits a little more than a year ago, we aimed to shed a light on the many talented filmmakers who often don’t get much press for their work. While we’ve occasionally spoken to folks who need no introduction (John Waters, for example), most of the filmmakers we’ve focused on have a little less name recognition but a huge amount of talent. We interviewed a lot of people, so the below roundup is really just a taste—there were far too many people to mention in a single post.
Walt Disney a Movie Character for 1st Time in Delightful Saving Mr. Banks
In the tradition of the behind-the-scenes Hollywood story comes Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks. The crowd-pleaser, set for a December 20 release, employs the studio’s time-tested, multi-layered storytelling approach to the tale of how Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) managed in 1961 to convince prickly Australian author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) to release the rights to her successful books about a nanny named Mary Poppins.
It’s a departure for the stalwart studio,
All Hail Mary: Three Minutes With Writer/Director Extraordinaire Mary Harron (VIDEO)
Mary Harron is probably most well know for taking Bret Easton Ellis’s notoriously gruesome novel, American Psycho, and adapting it for the big screen in 2000 as both writer and director. It has become a cult classic, cementing Harron’s status as a daring filmmaker with a penchant for taking difficult protagonists (some might argue despicable) and crafting compelling, often very funny, and ultimately challenging films around them. American Psycho was engulfed in controversy before the film even began principal photography—but Harron’s handling of Ellis’s graphic,
The Many Moving Parts to The LEGO Movie
The toys and games of our youth have long been fodder for filmmakers. There have been six films (all direct-to-video, it should be noted) made from Mattel’s ‘American Girls’ line. Dungeons & Dragons was made into a feature film in 2000 and starred Oscar winning actor Jeremy Irons. G.I. Joe has been called into duty twice, in 2009 and just this year, in monster big budget spectacles. Transformers have been clanging their multi-purpose parts together since 2007 in three films,
Star Wars: Episode VII’s Galaxy of Talent Behind J.J. Abrams
As useful as IMDBpro is, it’s recommendable to take the “projects in development” rubric with at least a grain or two of salt. Because really, how could one man have 28 projects in development, including the next Star Trek and Mission Impossible, while also working on a little film franchise called Star Wars?
If it were any one other than J.J. Abrams, you’d be right to assume that most of these would fall through,
Ender’s Game and 8 Films That Touch on Bullying
Looked at in a certain way, Ender’s Game follows The Hunger Games into theaters (even though the story itself predates it) as a film about the pernicious reality of bullying, and, the myriad ways one can stand up to it.
In each film, some form of tyranny is meted out, both from up close and personal and from afar. There are antagonists who tease, torment and threaten our protagonists,
Breaking Down Rom-Com Master Richard Curtis’s About Time
Richard Curtis wrote three of the most beloved romantic comedies of the mid 90s and early 2000s—in a remarkable string, he penned Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Bridget Jones Diary (which he co-wrote with Helen Fielding and Andrew Davies). His directorial debut in 2003, Love Actually, which he also wrote, was an international success and helped create cross-pond love for fantastic actors like Bill Nighy, Chiwetel Ejiofor (now poised for an Oscar nomination for his starring role in 12 Years a Slave),
Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of The Right Stuff With Writer/Director Philip Kaufman
“There’s a demon that lives in the air. They say that whoever challenged him would die.” –Levon Helm’s narration at the beginning of The Right Stuff.
Test pilots attempting to break the sound barrier at Muroc Army Air Field in California, where that demon lived, often died. It’s at Muroc where Philip Kaufman’s seminal film begins. Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) has been given the opportunity to try and break the sound barrier in the X-1,
Diablo Cody Discusses Paradise, her Directorial Debut
Diablo Cody is still probably best known for her freshman outing as a screenwriter with Juno, back in 2007. After all, the smart, offbeat comedy-drama about a pregnant teenager earned the Illinois-born-and-bred scribe a flurry of ovations for her original screenplay, including an Oscar, a BAFTA and honors from the Writers Guild of America. But come October 18, Cody, who has since penned and produced Jennifer’s Body, Young Adult and Showtime’s United States of Tara,
Spike Jonze’s Soulful, Searching Sci-Fi Romance Her
A Spike Jonze film is always an event. He’s made four features in fourteen years—starting with Being John Malkovich (1999), a film so singularly peculiar and original (a puppeteer finds a portal that leads into the actual mind of John Malkovich), that the long-time music video director found himself nominated for an Academy Award at the ripe old age of 30.
Malkovich was written by Charlie Kaufman,
Alexander Payne’s Nebraska Delights at the New York Film Festival
Alexander Payne first got Bob Nelson's script for Nebraska back in 2003 or 2004 (he isn’t quite sure). He liked it, and he immediately thought of Bruce Dern for the lead role, so he sent it to him. Dern liked it, and was surprised Payne had thought of him for the lead. Dern was so excited, in fact, he went to Toys R Us and bought a toy truck (a new truck has a lot of significance in the plot) and sent it to Payne,
The U.S. Premiere of 12 Years a Slave at the New York Film Festival
Screening in the United States for the first time, Steve McQueen’s powerful, heart rending 12 Years a Slave once again left a festival audience in silence and many viewers weeping in their seats. The story of Solomon Northup’s betrayal, his years of horror while a slave in Georgia, and his desperation to return home to his family in New York requires the viewer to face an unflinching portrayal of humanity at its worst trying to break a man taken at his best.
Chatting With Director Jim Mickle of We Are What We Are
For a key scene in the new drama We Are What We Are (opened Sept. 27), director/co-writer/editor Jim Mickle found himself up a creek holding a pile of bones.
“At some point, I think it was myself, it was a bunch of PAs, it was the prop gang, it was the art department, everyone had a stack of bones and they were just upcreek, just throwing it into the water,”
A Visual Guide to the 51st New York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival was created in 1963 at the Lincoln Center as the non-competitive "festival of festivals." As Richard Brody of The New Yorker wrote, "it was a time when the medium was still struggling to be taken seriously as an art form. Lincoln Center's own chairman, John D. Rockefeller III, thought the event had no business being there, protesting, 'Movies are like baseball.' " Film no longer has that problem,
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 & 7 Delicious Food Films
You might find it odd to begin a brief glimpse into some amazing films about, or crucially influenced by, food by starting with an animated film for children. But you’d be forgetting that one of the great food films of this age, or any other, was Pixar’s Ratatouille.
Sony Pictures' Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 premise is almost The Island of Dr. Moreau-esque—inventor Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) finds out that his infamous water-into-food invention survived his attempt to destroy it,
An Evening With Haifaa Al Mansour, Writer/Director of the Historic Wadjda
There have been many objects of fascination that have been a crucial part of great films. Think of the Red Ryder BB gun in A Christmas Story, or, to use an even more famous example, Rosebud from Citizen Kane. In Haifaa Al Mansour’s fantastic, ground-breaking Wadjda (the first feature length film to be shot entirely in the Kingdom), the object is a beautiful green bicycle.
Building the Perfect Engine: The Filmmakers Behind Universal’s Rush
Ron Howard’s Rush hits theaters September 20, and early reviews are hailing it as one of the greatest racing movies of all time. Centered on the intense, often brutal rivalry between Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl) and James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) during the 1976 Formula 1 season, Rush itself was built with the scrutiny and care of a great race car team. Once Peter Morgan's script made the rounds, an incredible team of filmmakers was assembled to create one of the year's most exciting films,
Bras in Space: The Incredible True Story Behind Upcoming Film Spacesuit
"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others,
Director David Twohy on how he Crafted the Riddick Trilogy’s Exoplanets
The basic premise behind each installment of writer and director David Twohy’s sci-fi film trilogy—Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick and Riddick—is pretty straightforward. Riddick, played by Vin Diesel, finds himself on a hostile alien planet inhabited by creatures that want to kill him. To add flare to what otherwise could become a tired storyline, Twohy constructs his films around dramatic human storylines and builds them up from a foundation of real-world science.
Could This Fall be the Best Film Season in Years?
There are major themes being explored in film in the coming months, in what looks to be a diverse and deeply challenging (in a good way) season of releases. Just going by the excitement of audiences at TIFF, there is reason to hope that we’re looking at one of the most quality-packed stretches in recent cinematic memory.
The plots are diverse, the casts are a mix of globally renown stars and newcomers, but the themes are universal.
