The Rewards of the Craft: Emmy Nominees on the Joys & Challenges of Television
We had the pleasure of hosting two panels this year—check out our second panel here— ahead of the 2024 Emmy Awards, which will be held live on ABC on Sunday, September 15, from 8-11 ET. Like last year, we sat down with some nominees from some great, disparate, challenging shows. In our first panel, Planet ...
“Emily in Paris” Star Ashley Park on ‘brat summer’, Her Singing Chops, and Season 4’s Stakes
As the first five episodes of season four of the hit series Emily in Paris dropped on Netflix on August 15, fans were eager to delve back into the world of Emily (Lily Collins) and Mindy (Ashley Park) as they navigate messy relationships, major career changes, and general adulthood woes, in Paris. At the conclusion ...
Benetone Films Co-Founder Kulthep Narula on Taking Thailand’s Film Industry to the Next Level
From Hollywood to Bollywood, Benetone Films has provided production services for over 100 feature films, TV series, and 1,000 TV commercials in over two decades. The Bangkok-based company is also a key provider for foreign productions filmed on location in Thailand. Ten projects have been approved through Thailand’s incentive scheme, including 2020’s The Forgotten Army ...
Twin Forces: “The Acolyte” Director Hanelle M. Culpepper on Crafting Amandla Stenberg’s Dual Roles
When she helmed the first episode of Star Trek: Picard in 2020, director Hanelle M. Culpepper made history as the first woman to launch a Star Trek series. She went on to win the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series for that project. This, along with her work on shows like Westworld, The Last ...
“Fancy Dance” Producer Heather Rae on Putting Together Erica Tremblay’s Moving New Film
For Heather Rae, it’s all about heart. The award-winning producer of Frozen River, Wind Walkers, and Tallulah, and the director/producer of the acclaimed documentary Trudell, believes her place is at the heart of a production. And just as important, Rae is driven to make films with heart. Fancy Dance, Rae’s latest film, now streaming on ...
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), ...
“Space Cadet” Writer/Director Liz Garcia on Crafting Her Cosmic Comedy
It was an article about NASA’s first class of astronaut candidates in which women constituted half the participants that piqued Liz Garcia’s curiosity about the highly competitive candidacy process and ultimately prompted her to write about it. As the writer/director/producer (The Lifeguard, The Sinner) notes in her Director’s Statement, “Once I learned how astonishingly competitive ...
“Fancy Dance” Writer/Director Erica Tremblay on the Power of Indigenous Storytelling
Fans of Lily Gladstone will be happy to know they can see her on the big screen again in Apple’s new release, Fancy Dance. The film centers on Jax (Gladstone) and Roki (newcomer Isabel Deroy-Olson), an Indigenous aunt and niece who live on the Seneca-Cayuga reservation and are dealing with the disappearance of Tawi, Jax’s ...
Writer/Director Andrew Haigh Revisits His Career at the Provincetown International Film Festival
Each June for 26 years, the Provincetown International Film Festival (PIFF) unspools a singular mix of first-rate features, documentaries, and shorts; in-person filmmakers; and an unpretentious vibe that’s uniquely Provincetown. A highlight this year was British writer-director Andrew Haigh, who was feted with the PIFF’s highest honor, the annual Filmmaker on the Edge Award. Haigh ...
“Shōgun” Editors Aika Miyake and Maria Gonzales on Cutting Mariko’s Heroic Path
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 Japan with a passionate obsession with the rigors and wonders of the period and location. The new Shōgun shifts its center of balance from the swashbuckling but woefully out of his depth British pirate Blackthorne ...
“Under the Bridge” EP/Director Quinn Shephard on Lily Gladstone & Riley Keough’s Twisty Murder Mystery
In 1997, fourteen-year-old Reena Virk went to a party and never came home, then became front page news around the world when a tight-knit circle of girls and one troubled teenage boy were implicated in her murder. Journalist Rebecca Godfrey wrote about the crime in her acclaimed book “Under the Bridge”, and now Hulu’s narrative ...
Netflix’s Production of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” is a Bold Showcase of Latin American Culture
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” With these haunting words, acclaimed as one of the best opening lines in literature, Gabriel García Márquez introduces readers to the enchanting world of Macondo in his celebrated novel, ...
Reimagining Korea’s Dynamic Film & TV Industry With Wow Point Executive Producer Yoomin Hailey Yang
Wow Point CEO and executive producer Yoomin Hailey Yang is blazing a trail for young female producers in the Korean film and TV industry. After stints working with Korean broadcaster MBC and agency-producer BH Entertainment, she co-founded Wow Point with leading Korean filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho (Train To Busan, Peninsula) in 2021. The Seoul-based company has ...
Writer/Director Jane Schoenbrun on Their Stunning New Film “I Saw the TV Glow”
While a student at Boston University, writer/director Jane Schoenbrun enjoyed “many formative movie experiences” at the nearby Coolidge Corner Theater. “A fond memory is of a zombie movie and me and all my friends dressing in zombie makeup,” says Schoenbrun. “It was one of the happiest memories of my college experience, and it probably says ...
Taiwan Based Producer Sam Yuan on His Netflix Series “Shards of Her” & More
In a career that spans over two decades, Taiwan-based producer Sam Yuan has been involved in a variety of productions, from critically acclaimed GF*BF and box office megahit Our Times in his early days to the more recent, Golden Horse-winning My Missing Valentine and Netflix hit series Shards of Her. He is currently the secretary ...
From “SNL” to the Director’s Chair: Julio Torres Lights Up With “Problemista”
There is a cornucopia of comedy happening in Problemista, Julio Torres’ debut feature. In a little over 90 minutes, writer/director Torres pokes fun at cryonics, the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of the U.S. immigration system, and the eccentricities of the art world. Along the way, there are jabs at Craigslist, FileMaker Pro, and Bank of America. All ...
The Sartorial Feast of Feudal Japan with “Shōgun” Costume Designer Carlos Rosario – Part Two
In Part One of our conversation with costume designer Carlos Rosario, we talked about the monumental effort his team went through to research, design, and handmake 2,300 costumes for FX Networks’ gripping historical saga. We continue the discussion today on how his team designed a distinct closet for each of the three main characters. Unlike ...
“Damsel” Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo on Flipping the Fantasy Script With Millie Bobby Brown
Sure, she’s in distress, but Millie Bobby Brown’s Elodie is hardly in need of saving in director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo‘s revisionist fantasy film Damsel. Fresnadillo’s fantasy epic takes the typical story of a young woman desperate for a prince to puzzle out her troubles in a medieval setting, turns it upside down, and sinks it deep ...
“The American Society of Magical Negroes” Writer/Director Kobi Libii Puts a Spell on Old Tropes
The American Society of Magical Negroes has a provocative premise: What if Black people could join an underground league that gave them the power to erase any white person’s distress? Racism, the movie argues, stems from white anxieties. If that discomfort can be vanished, Black bodies won’t face as much risk. Kobi Libii’s satirical take ...
The Sartorial Feast of Feudal Japan with “Shōgun” Costume Designer Carlos Rosario: Part One
“I wanted to create from a white canvas without any mental references going into the project,” costume designer Carlos Rosario (The Girl in the Spider’s Web, Jolt) explains why he chose not to read the James Clavell bestselling novel before working on FX Networks’ cinematic historical saga, Shōgun (将軍), and only used the 1980 miniseries ...
