Makeup Artist Laini Thompson on Helping Transform Andra Day Into Billie Holiday
For Billie Holiday’s listeners, her music is eternal, but her life story may be less so. Directed by Lee Daniels, The United States vs. Billie Holiday (now streaming on Hulu) envelops itself in both aspects of the star’s biography, opening on Billie (Andra Day) on stage, glamorous, impeccable, and singing “Strange Fruit,” the most political ballad in her oeuvre. Eerie and heartbreaking, “Strange Fruit” was first published in 1937 as a poem by Russian-Jewish schoolteacher Abel Meeropol,
“Snowfall” DP Tommy Maddox-Upshaw on Transforming Memory Into Light & Optics
Season 4 of the FX drama Snowfall opens on antihero Franklin Saint (Damson Idris) imploring CIA agent Teddy (Carter Hudson) to help him keep local gang rivalries in check. Tensions are getting out of hand in mid-1980s Los Angeles, even if Franklin, erudite and unassuming, appears as on top of his own drug-related dealings as ever. Far and near, the show’s other characters are going through upheavals of their own. Teddy’s machinations in Mexico go off the rails in part due to trouble with an Israeli gangster,
“Lovecraft Country” Creator Misha Green on Confidence and Taking Risks in Hollywood
Name a vocation and Misha Green has probably done it. And if not in her own lifetime, then through the lives of the characters she creates.
“My sister just reminded me the other day, she was like, ‘You actually got into UCLA for acting,’” Green said. “And I was like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s RIGHT!’”
But ultimately, it was a life behind the camera that Green preferred. She decided to study television and film at New York University and a few years later landed her first industry job as a staff writer for FX’s Sons of Anarchy.
“Star Trek: Picard” Director Hanelle Culpepper Charts a Diverse Path in Hollywood
America had its eyes locked on Mars this past week as the NASA rover, Perseverance, landed on the red planet and sent color photos back to Earth. It’s an optimistic step in space exploration that may expand human understanding of the Milky Way, but things don’t rest so peacefully in the galaxy on the first season of Star Trek: Picard.
The latest critically acclaimed series in the Star Trek franchise follows a synthetic attack on Mars that set the planet ablaze and propelled former admiral Jean-Luc Picard (Sir Patrick Stewart) into retirement.
“Minari” Editor Harry Yoon on Shaping the Film He Was “Born to Edit”
Minari is a moving portrait of a young family setting out on a new life in the Ozarks. It will invite you in with its photography (the work of Lachlan Milne) and production design (by Yong Ok Lee), pull at your heartstrings with its “sensitive and uplifting” score, and keep you wholly absorbed in the world of the Yis thanks to masterful editing by Harry Yoon.
Yoon spoke to us about how he approached cutting this film,
Daniel Kaluuya on Honoring Fred Hampton’s Legacy in “Judas and the Black Messiah”
Daniel Kaluuya is such a comedian it’s hard to imagine he’s made a career out of acting in some of the most profound dramas of the past five years—a fact that he too, seems to frequently forget.
“A lot of times it surprises me,” Kaluuya said. “I was driving around LA and I saw myself on a poster and I was like, ‘Oh sh*t!’ I thought I was just acting and I’m on a poster!
“Black is King” Producer Jason Baum on Beyoncé & the World of Visual Albums
Black is King, Beyoncé’s 2020 musical film that doubled as a visual companion to The Lion King, was lauded as dazzling, seductive, and, well, regal. Directed in tandem by Beyoncé and the directors Ibra Ake, Blitz the Ambassador, Emmanuel Adjei, and Kwasi Fordjour, the visual album dropped on Disney+ with very little fanfare, typical of the star’s preferred announcement style, or lack thereof.
From “Black Panther” to “Jeopardy,” Stunt Coordinator & Actor Zee James Hits Her Mark
Zee James is an actress, a stuntwoman and stunt coordinator, and a background performer in movies and on television, ranging from Black Panther and Dolemite is My Name to Bosch and Everybody Hates Chris. She has even demonstrated an entire category of Jeopardy! clues about martial arts. James spoke to us about taking advantage of opportunities that might not be exactly what she planned,
Composer Jongnic Bontemps on Scoring America’s Past, Present, and Future
Jongnic “JB” Bontemps knows how to turn emotions into a musical composition, whether it’s for a character in a narrative or a historical figure in a documentary. Composing on narrative features, documentaries, shorts, and video games, Bontemps can speak to his collaborators in whatever narrative language they need. For Creed II, he provided director Steven Caple Jr. with additional music worthy of the film’s fighting spirit. For the doc United Skates, Bontemps threaded hip-hop through the story of America’s underground roller rink subculture as it was on the verge of being erased.
Yuh-jung Youn on Creating Family in “Minari”
Writer/director Lee Isaac Chung’s film Minari is about a Korean family chasing the American dream in 1980s Arkansas. Steven Yeun and Yeri Han play parents Jacob and Monica, who have brought their two kids Ann and David to live and work on a farm, one Jacob hopes to make successful. Yuh-jung Youn plays foul-mouthed but loving grandma Soonja, who leaves Korea to come help care for the children. At first, David thinks Soonja just smells weird and doesn’t act at all the way a grandmother should,
“Clarice” Producer/Director DeMane Davis on Seizing the Moment
DeMane Davis, co-executive producer/director of the new CBS series Clarice which premieres February 11, calls her career “incredibly fortunate.” But Davis was ready when opportunity arose in the form of Ava DuVernay. When DuVernay opened the door for women directors on her groundbreaking series Queen Sugar, Davis burst through it. On crutches.
“I had broken my ankle and I’d had surgery; the cast had just come off and I was still on crutches,” recalls Davis in a phone interview from Toronto where she is shooting Clarice.
Charlese Antoinette Jones on Dressing History in “Judas and the Black Messiah”
With ample photographs and documentary material to peruse for inspiration, designing costumes for a film set in recent history has its upsides. On the other hand, the descendants of the subjects you’re working to dress—or the subjects themselves—may be spending time on set, checking for historical accuracy. Such was the case for Judas and the Black Messiah, director Shaka King’s (Shrill, Newlyweeds) depiction of the lead-up to and FBI assassination of community activist and Black Panther chapter chairman Fred Hampton.
“One Night in Miami” Star Eli Goree on Channeling Muhammad Ali
The first time Eli Goree tried to be Muhammad Ali in the movies, he failed. But when Ang Lee picked another actor for his ill-fated biopic about the heavyweight champion of the world, Goree forged ahead. In between TV gigs like Riverdale and The 100, he trained in boxing gyms, hired a dialect coach to master the fighter’s Louisville accent, and commissioned a stage play about Muhammad that he intended to star in for L.A.’s annual Fringe Fest.
Director Sam Pollard on the Legacy of Black Art in his New HBO Documentary
HBO viewers likely know the names Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, the artists who painted Barack and Michelle Obamas’ respective official portraits. The network’s latest documentary, Black Art: In the Absence of Light, an expansive, joyous 90-minute look at art history directed by Sam Pollard (MLK/FBI, Atlanta Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children) and executive produced by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,
Sundance 2021: Composer Kathryn Bostic on Scoring Two Docs About Trailblazing Women
As we near the close of the first week of Black History Month, it’s important to recognize those who are making history now. Given the overall lack of working female composers of any race, as a Black female composer, Kathryn Bostic has been carving out a road few have traveled, and she’s been doing it for decades. She arrived at this year’s Sundance with not one but two films for which she has supplied the score,
“Miss Juneteenth” Writer/Director Channing Godfrey Peoples on Her Potent Feature Debut
Writer and director Channing Godfrey Peoples‘ feature debut Miss Juneteenth is a subtlety powerful lesson in compassionate observation. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, with a theater degree from Baylor University (just a 90-minute drive south from Forth Worth on the I-35), Peoples’ Miss Juneteenth is a moving portrait of her hometown, and, more to the point, the tight-knit community of mostly Black people she grew up with. After graduating from the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California (where she met her husband and creative partner,
Sundance 2021: Writer/Director Carey Williams on his Romeo & Juliet Adaptation “R#J”
In partnership with producer Timur Bekmambetov, who is known for the innovative film style Screenlife as exampled by Unfriended and Searching, co-writer and director Carey Williams offers his feature debut with a modern and of-the-moment adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet,” R#J, told entirely through social media and smartphone screens. Using an entirely Black and Brown cast, and blending text messages and Instagram posts with timeless Shakespearian language,
Screenwriter Kemp Powers on Finding Truth & Beauty in “One Night In Miami”
After nearly two decades as a news reporter, Kemp Powers knew a good story when he found one. Discovering that four cultural icons — heavyweight champ Cassius Clay, soon to take the name Muhammad Ali; activist Malcolm X; crooner Sam Cooke; and NFL superstar Jim Brown — had hung out together in Miami in 1964 inspired him to recreate that night.
Powers’ play, “One Night in Miami,” enjoyed a string of regional productions before it was staged at the prestigious Donmar Warehouse in London in 2016,
Documentarian Sam Pollard on his Must-See New Film “MLK/FBI”
A couple of days after Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his era-defining “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial, J. Edgar Hoover’s second in command at the FBI penned a memo describing him as “The most dangerous Negro in America.” As documented in Sam Pollard‘s new film MLK/FBI (On Demand and in select theaters), that 1963 memo launched the Bureau’s obsession with discrediting America’s foremost civil rights leader by tapping his phones and bugging the hotel rooms he stayed in.
Translating the Untranslatable: The Impossible Art of Subtitling “Taco Chronicles”
Subtitle translation is a fascinating, complicated, and often overlooked part of the filmmaking process. It’s a delicate dance of literal translation and cultural interpretation, all the while practicing a serious economy of words. Most subtitles are capped at only forty-four characters (less than this sentence). Plus, the eye reads much slower than the ear hears.
My own up-close experience with the art form came with Netflix’s Taco Chronicles (Las Crónicas del Taco),
