“Snow White” Cinematographer Mandy Walker on Casting a Visual Spell Through Past & Present
Nestled between a dental office and a local tavern in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Atwater Village is Tam O’Shanter, a Scottish restaurant inside a storybook style Tudor cottage, its interior a blend of rustic elegance and historical charm, a vestige of “Old Hollywood.” In the corner of the dimly lit room is Table 31, ...
“Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip” Director Marvin Lemus on a Family Adventure Through New Mexico
The title says it all: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip is a PG comedy that follows a rambunctious family on an RV trek through New Mexico. Their destination? A very old village in Mexico, home to an ancient stone idol. By returning the haunted talisman to its ancestral home, ...
Reel Returns: Connecticut’s Film Investment Fuels Economic Growth in a Competitive State of Play
The evening before my conversation with Jonathan Black, a co-founder of the Connecticut Film and TV Alliance (CTFTVA), he was attending a hearing in Hartford. The Finance, Revenue, and Bonding Committee was listening to public testimony on Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont’s proposed film tax credit cut from 30% to 25%, a move that could strike ...
Inside “The Residence”: Creator Paul William Davies on Crafting a White House Whodunit
The Residence, produced by Shondaland for Netflix, is the much-anticipated whodunnit that is Shonda Rhimes’ second show set in the White House. The first, of course, was another beloved, Kerry Washington-led Scandal, which dealt in the shadowy world of Washington’s Olivia Pope, the queen of fixers. Now Rhimes and her collaborator Paul William Davies return ...
SXSW 2025: Tapping Into Texas’s Vast Potential to Become the Next Cinematic Frontier
This year’s SXSW film festival in Austin blew into town with a considerable tailwind of enthusiasm for the Lone Star state’s film and TV future. Every state in the union can claim unique cultures, geographies, and mythologies, but there’s no disputing that Texas looms very large in our collective cultural imagination. It’s a state that ...
From “Elf” to “Blue Bloods”: Veteran Producer Santiago Quiñones on the Unique Advantages of Filming in New York
Santiago Quiñones was a co-executive producer on Blue Bloods, CBS’s long-running police procedural that followed the Reagan family through their dynastic run within the NYPD. Quiñones, a born and bred New Yorker, joined the show assuming that, like previous projects, he might be moving on after a little while for another opportunity. Instead, he stayed ...
Producer Joseph Patel Explores Sly Stone’s Life & Legacy in “Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)”
Prodigiously gifted songwriter/singer/arranger/producer/bandleader/keyboardist/guitarist Sly Stone gets his well-deserved close-up in documentary makers Joseph Patel and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson‘s SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius). After earning an Academy Award for Summer of Soul, producer Patel and director QuestLove decided to deep-dive into the life and music of the man whose multi-racial band once ...
How Director Mohammad Rasoulof Shot his Oscar-Nominated “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” in Secret
Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof wanted to tell a big story — so he went small. The Seed of the Sacred Fig explores his country’s authoritarian rule, repressive justice, patriarchal dominance, and women’s rights through its impact on one family. Taking place during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement, a nationwide protest sparked by the arrest of ...
“Nickel Boys” Writer/Director RaMell Ross on Camera as Consciousness in His Oscar-Nominated Film
An introspective, promising teenager hitchhiking to college gets a ride in a car that turns out to be stolen. The driver is Black, and so is the boy. Deemed an accomplice despite his innocence, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) is remanded to Nickel Academy, a segregated Florida reform school. Nickel Boys, the Oscar-nominated film based on Colson ...
Director Wes Ball & Oscar-Nominated VFX Supervisor Erik Winquist on the Groundbreaking Visuals of “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes took the franchise to new heights of photorealism and immersive filmmaking. The groundbreaking series has pushed the envelope in motion capture and beyond, starting with 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes and carrying on through three subsequent films. The latest film, Wes Ball‘s 2024 epic Kingdom ...
Oscar Nominated VFX Supervisor Paul Lambert on Turning the Worm in “Dune: Part Two”
Just nominated for his fourth Oscar for Dune: Part Two, VFX Supervisor Paul Lambert is a three-time Oscar winner—for Damien Chazelle’s First Man and two of director Denis Villeneuve’s films, Blade Runner 2049 and Dune: Part One. Having now worked on three of Villeneuve’s films thanks to Part Two, he has developed a shorthand with ...
Issa Rae on the Importance of Filming “One Of Them Days” on the Streets of Los Angeles
In its opening weekend, One of Them Days earned back nearly all of its $14 million dollar budget, cementing its status as a comedy hit, the number two spot at the box office, and led many on social media in a rallying cry for more Black, female-led comedies. One of Them Days is centered on friends and ...
Oscar-Nominated Makeup Artist Julia Floch-Carbonel on the Beauty of Transformation in “Emilia Pérez”
Emilia Pérez made history by casting Karla Sofía Gascón, the first transgendered woman to be nominated for a best actress Academy Award. The musical melodrama from director Jacques Audiard centers on Gascón’s portrayal of Mexican cartel boss Manitas, who undergoes surgery to begin a new life as Emilia. Nominated for an astonishing 13 Oscars, the ...
How “One Royal Holiday” Was One Royal Savior for an Inn in Connecticut
The premise of Hallmark Channel’s One Royal Holiday is as cozy as a snowy Christmas morning—Anna (Laura Osnes) helps a mother and son who are stranded in a blizzard, only to discover the pair are actually royalty. Gabriella and James Galant (played by Victoria Clark and Aaron Tveit) are members of the Royal Family of ...
Making Macondo: How the “One Hundred Years of Solitude” Cinematographers Brought Gabriel García Márquez’s Epic to Netflix
Directors Alex García López and Laura Mora have undertaken the historic feat of adapting Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez’s 1967 novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, into a sixteen-part Netflix series, the first half of which was released on December 11. Unlike the book, which moves back and forth in time across seven generations of ...
How a Historic House in Connecticut Gave “Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane” the Perfect Location
Christmas may be over, but Christmas movies are a delight anytime. There are plenty of classic Christmas movies for pretty much every taste. The sentimental (or viewers of a certain age) might tell you that there’s no improvement upon Frank Capra’s 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life or, just a year later, George Seaton’s seminal 1947 ...
“Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” Directors Nick Park & Merlin Crossingham go Back to the Bakehouse
It has been almost two decades since the Oscar-winning stop-motion animation delight Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Now, the dynamic duo is back in a new adventure, Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl; however, the world has changed. Not only is the feature streaming on Netflix, a platform that did not exist in 2005, ...
Best of 2024: “Shōgun” Editors Aika Miyake and Maria Gonzales on Cutting Mariko’s Heroic Path
*This interview was selected by measures having nothing to do with science as one of our standouts from 2024. Miyake and Gonzales unpack how they helped the story of Anna Sawai’s incredible Lady Mariko. The first season of Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo’s masterful Shōgun was an expertly paced slow-burn drama that plunged viewers into 17th-century ...
Best of 2024: 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), ...
Best of 2024: How “The Penguin” Production Designer Kalina Ivanov Helped Bring Gotham Back to New York City
*This interview was selected by measures having nothing to do with science as one of our standouts from 2024. The creation of Gotham for HBO’s shockingly good series The Penguin fell, in large part, to ace production designer Kalina Ivanov. Here’s how she pulled it off. Production designer Kalina Ivanov was destined to be part ...
