“Anora” Completes Its Cinderella Story With Fairy Tale Oscars Night
The 97th Oscars ended up being a true fairy tale story for writer/director Sean Baker’s Anora, with Baker capping an already magical night after winning Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Director—in which he gave a rousing acceptance speech defending the unparalleled experience of the theater experience—by seeing Anora take the top prize, Best Picture. ...
Brazilian Sociologist & Film Expert Ana Paula Sousa on the Power & Promise of the Oscar-Nominated “I’m Still Here”
One of the most striking scenes in Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here does not depict any of the violence instilled by the military regime that ruled Brazil for over two decades; nor does it show the despair of having a loved one vanish without a trace, while those so obviously responsible unashamedly deny any involvement. ...
From “Day of the Jackal” to “Captain America: Brave New World”: DP Kramer Morgenthau Breaks Down 70s Thriller Inspiration
Sam Wilson returns in director Julius Onah’s Captain America: Brave New World, here to take on twin domestic threats. Sam (Anthony Mackie) and his sidekick (and replacement as the Falcon) Joaquin (Danny Ramirez) have been sent to Mexico to stop Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito) from making an illegal sale. Sam and Joaquin recover the items but ...
The Future of Batman at DC Studios Includes Giving a Surprising Villain His Own Film
When DC Studios co-chiefs Peter Safran and James Gunn delivered an update on their upcoming slate of films and TV shows at a screening room on the Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank, they were revisiting the location of their first public reveal about their initial slate. Two years ago, in January 2023, Gunn and ...
From Acclaimed Ads to the Andes: Director Dougal Wilson’s Charming Feature Film Debut “Paddington in Peru”
Arguably the world’s most beloved (fictional) British immigrant, Paddington the Talking Bear arrived in London from South America in 2014 by way of the eponymous animated hit movie. Three years later, he returned for a sequel opposite Hugh Grant. This month, PG-rated Paddington in Peru (in theaters) continues the adventure as the marmalade-loving creature, based ...
Red Alerts & Cherry Blossom Brawls With “Captain America: Brave New World” Production Designer Ramsey Avery
When Steve Rodgers (Chris Evans) passed the Captain America shield to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), the former Falcon sidekick had big boots to fill. The same could be said for production designer Ramsey Avery in developing director Julius Onah’s Captain America: Brave New World, which has earned over $200 million worldwide at the time of ...
Be Still My Bursting Chest: “Alien: Romulus’s” Oscar-Nominated VFX Team on Finding Fresh Horror for the Franchise
Alien: Romulus Visual Effects Supervisor Eric Barba and FX Designer Alec Gillis bring the past and future together. Set between the events of Ridley Scott’s ferocious opener Alien and James Cameron’s muscular sequel Aliens, Barba, Gillis, and their team fused the tangible, practical horror and decay of the original films with a more modern, rock-and-roll sensibility. The ...
Electric Shock: How “A Complete Unknown’s” Oscar-Nominated Sound Team Re-Created Bob Dylan Going Electric
In the first part of our conversation with the Oscar-nominated sound team of James Mangold’s music biography A Complete Unknown, they talked about delivering an intensely music-centric film without using playback and differentiating between the soundscapes of 1961 New York, when Bob Dylan (an immaculate portrayal by Timothée Chalamet) first arrives in the city, and ...
“The Substance” of Nightmares: Oscar-Nominated Makeup Effects Master Pierre Olivier Persin on His Terrifying Transformations
Since its release last fall, writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s body horror thriller The Substance has artfully shocked Academy Award voters to the tune of five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. Outstanding Actress nominee Demi Moore portrays aging actress Elisabeth, who gets way more than she bargained for after injecting herself with ...
“A Complete Unknown”: Orchestrating 60+ Live Performances for Oscar-Worthy Sound
In one of this year’s tour de force performances, Timothée Chalamet’s Oscar-nominated portrayal of one of America’s greatest singer-songwriters took almost six years to perfect (partly thanks to COVD-19 delays in production). For director James Mangold’s music biopic, A Complete Unknown, Chalamet not only learned to play the guitar and harmonica for the film, but ...
First Image From Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” Reveals Matt Damon as Odysseus
Matt Damon had a meaty role in Christopher Nolan‘s Oscar-winning Oppenheimer, playing Leslie Groves, the United States Army Corp of Engineers officer who directed the Manhattan Project, cherry-picking Robert J. Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) despite the government’s concerns about his loyalties. As great as Damon was, it was Murphy’s movie—he had the title role, after all—but now ...
No More Games: “September 5’s” Oscar-Nominated Writers on the Day Terror Took Center Stage
The thriller September 5, directed and co-written by Tim Fehlbaum, revisits the day the Palestinian militant group Black September took nine Israeli athletes hostage during the 1972 Munich Olympics. Nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, the script, which Fehlbaum wrote with Moritz Binder, is a tightly-paced journalism procedural centered on the ABC Sports ...
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 ...
“Conclave” Oscar Nominee Peter Straughan on Scripting a Devilishly Good Vatican Thriller
Conclave is great, gripping entertainment from the first shot to the last. It’s a drama, both honest and escapist, deftly shot, performed, and staged by artists at the top of their respective games. In the hands of Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Peter Straughan, Edward Berger’s contemplative film moves briskly within the Vatican walls. A movie that ...
Julian Brave NoiseCat & Emily Kassie’s on “Sugarcane”: Their Oscar-Nominated Exploration of Trauma and Truth
Toronto-born filmmaker and investigative journalist Emily Kassie has covered conflict around the globe, from the Taliban’s crackdown on women to child labor in Turkey. “But I had never turned the lens on my own country,” says Kassie. That’s changed with Sugarcane, which mixes a grassroots investigation with personal and collective reckoning of years of forced ...
Oscar-Nominated Producer Maria Carlota Bruno on Recreating a Transcendent Heroine in “I’m Still Here”
In 1964, a coup d’état overthrew Brazilian president João Goulart, initiating a military dictatorship that lasted until 1985. The former congressman Rubens Paiva went into self-exile at the time of the coup but returned to Rio de Janeiro in 1970, where he settled into a pleasant household near Leblon Beach with his wife, Eunice Paiva, ...
“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 ...
“Conclave’s” Oscar-Nominated Costume Designer Lisy Christl on the Fashion of Faith
Following his Oscar-winning WWI epic, All Quiet on the Western Front, Edward Berger’s latest, Conclave, focuses on a different kind of battle, dropping us into the Vatican in his twisty ecclesiastical thriller. After the death of the current Pontiff, the honorable and evenhanded Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is charged with convening one of the most ...
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 Infrared Insanity in “Dune: Part Two”
In the first part of our conversation with Oscar nominee Paul Lambert, the visual effects supervisor of Dune: Part Two emphasized the benefits of utilizing as many of the practical shots as possible to maximize believability. A veteran of more than 25 years, he is aware that his best work may well go unnoticed: “My goal ...
