Interview

Editor

Best of 2019: Breaking Down Three Key Scenes With Ad Astra’s Editors

*We’re reposting some of our favorite interviews of 2019. Happy Holidays! On Tuesday we published the first part of our conversation with Ad Astra editors John Axelrad and Lee Haugen. Director James Gray’s film (which he co-wrote with Ethan Gross) is the rare intimate epic. It involves some of the most breathtaking sequences in any film ...

By Bryan Abrams  |  December 20, 2019
Behold David Ehrlich’s Epic Supercut of 2019’s Best Films

As the end of the year draws near, the world is blanketed in Best Of lists. The best 10 films of the year. The best 20 films of the year. The best albums, the best TV shows, the best this and the best that. You can hardly do better than Slate‘s movie critic Dana Stevens’ ...

By Bryan Abrams  |  December 10, 2019

Interview

Editor

Breaking Down Three Key Scenes With Ad Astra’s Editors

On Tuesday we published the first part of our conversation with Ad Astra editors John Axelrad and Lee Haugen. Director James Gray’s film (which he co-wrote with Ethan Gross) is the rare intimate epic. It involves some of the most breathtaking sequences in any film this year, as well as a very personal father/son story in ...

By Bryan Abrams  |  September 27, 2019

Interview

Editor

Ad Astra’s Editors Talk Space Pirates, Murderous Monkeys & More

James Gray’s Ad Astra travels as far as the icy colossus Neptune, an achingly gorgeous planet, as blue as our own, but, alas, utterly lifeless. Only that’s not entirely true in Gray’s space epic, which finds Brad Pitt’s astronaut Roy McBride traveling to the distant giant planet to find his father, Clifford (Tommy Lee Jones). It ...

By Bryan Abrams  |  September 24, 2019

Interview

Sound Designer

How Ad Astra’s Sound Team “Weirded Things Up”

When the aural landscape of a film or television series aims to heighten the story the effort is usually dialed in subliminally. The audience doesn’t even realize what’s happening they’re just captivated by what’s in front of them. In Ad Astra, a 20th Century Fox film directed by James Gray (The Lost City of Z), ...

By Daron James  |  September 23, 2019

Interview

Special/Visual Effects

How the VFX Team Behind Ad Astra Achieved Deep Space

How do you conceptualize a future that feels familiar yet doesn’t exist? For, visual effects supervisor Allen Maris and the entire crew detailing director James Gray’s vision behind Ad Astra, that question became a guiding theme. The 20th Century Fox sci-fi thriller puts Brad Pitt in a spacesuit and asks him to save mankind. Not ...

By Daron James  |  September 20, 2019
Ad Astra Reactions Hail James Gray and Brad Pitt’s Sci-Fi Masterpiece

Co-writer and director James Gray teamed up with Brad Pitt for their sci-fi epic Ad Astra. The film bowed at the Venice Film Festival this past weekend and thus far, the reactions and reviews are more or less raves. Gray and Pitt’s pairing is like Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix’s teaming up for Joker in one ...

By Bryan Abrams  |  September 3, 2019
Brad Pitt His Deep Space in Ad Astra‘s Gorgeous IMAX Trailer

If you’re not excited for James Gray’s sci-fi epic Ad Astra starring Brad Pitt, we suggest you board this particular shuttle. A new trailer for the film gives you plenty of reasons to be pumped up and suggests that you should probably see it in IMAX if you can. Gray, Pitt and the rest of the cast ...

By Bryan Abrams  |  August 21, 2019
Brad Pitt & Director James Gray on Their Space Epic Ad Astra

Mysterious abound in director James Gray‘s sci-fi epic Ad Astra, which stars Brad Pitt as an astronaut whose mission might reconnect him with his father, long thought dead, deep in outer space. There are plenty of reasons to be intrigued by Ad Astra. James Gray makes very, very good films. His Two Lovers (2008), The Immigrant (2013) and The Lost City of ...

By The Credits  |  August 14, 2019
Ad Astra‘s Second Trailer Reveals Brad Pitt’s Epic Sci-Fi Drama

Writer/director James Gray is a man who makes very good films, and he takes his time on each one. Two Lovers (2008), The Immigrant (2013) and The Lost City of Z (2016) couldn’t have been more different from one another, yet each bore the mark of Gray’s meticulous craft. With Ad Astra, which he co-wrote with Ethan Gross, Gray has ...

By The Credits  |  July 18, 2019
Brad Pitt Heads to Deep Space in First Ad Astra Trailer

You always want to pay attention when James Gray releases a new film. The director of the vastly underrated The Lost City of Z (2016) and the equally vastly underrated The Immigrant (2013) has been working on his sci-fi film Ad Astra for years. The story follows astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) who voyages to the far reaches of the ...

By Bryan Abrams  |  June 5, 2019