Latest Movie Features
Bradley Cooper on Writing, Producing, Directing and Starring in ‘Maestro’: “It All Feels Like One Thing To Me”
Before scoring three Oscar nominations this year for Netflix’s Maestro — including best picture, actor and original screenplay (the latter shared with Josh Singer) — Bradley Cooper had already garnered an impressive nine Academy Award nominations as an actor (Silver Linings Playbook in 2013, American Hustle in 2014, American Sniper in 2015 and A Star Is […]
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Why an Oscar Nomination Was On Sterling K. Brown’s Vision Board
An Academy Award nomination wasn’t on Sterling K. Brown’s bingo card for 2024. In fact, when he heard the news, albeit a bit delayed, on Jan. 23, his response, he tells THR, was, “Well, I’ll be damned.” Winning an Oscar, however, was always a dream of the actor’s and part of a long-term goal of […]
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‘Poor Things’ Producer Ed Guiney on the “Head-Scratching Moments” Pulling Off Yorgos Lanthimos’ Biggest Movie Yet
One might say Poor Things is an epic culmination for Ed Guiney: It’s a film ten years in the making that lurked in the shadows of the producer’s three other collaborations with director Yorgos Lanthimos (the duo also has a fifth project on the horizon: Kinds of Kindness). Based on a novel of the same […]
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Quiz: How Well Do You Know the 2024 Oscar Nominees?
1 Maestro opens with an extravagant shot that starts on a young Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) as he’s awakened with the news of his big break, filling in for the conductor of the New York Philharmonic. What thunderous score do we hear as L.B. rips open the curtains, grabs his robe, runs down the hall […]
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‘Oppenheimer’ Producer Emma Thomas on Making the Historical Epic a Summer Blockbuster: “That’s the Genius of Chris Nolan”
Emma Thomas has been producing Christopher Nolan’s films since Nolan’s 1997 short feature Doodlebug. 30 years and 12 feature films later, she most recently served as the producer on Oppenheimer, a historical epic about nuclear physicist and father of the atomic bomb J. Robert Oppenheimer, now nominated for 13 Academy Awards including best picture. “What’s […]
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‘Past Lives’ Producer Christine Vachon on Working With Debut Director Celine Song: “There’s a Passion That Comes With Making Your First Film”
After decades of producing critically acclaimed and groundbreaking independent films, Christine Vachon has landed her first Oscar nomination with Celine Song’s Past Lives. Appropriately, she found out about her nomination while she was on the ground at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where Past Lives premiered the year prior, becoming the sleeper hit of the […]
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Hollywood Flashback: ‘Cimarron’ Bet on Oklahoma and Struck Oscar Gold
Ninety-two years before Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon would wrestle with Osage County’s troubling history, there was another Oscar-nominated film that explored the very same Oklahoma terrain, even if it did so with kid gloves on. 1931’s Cimarron is best remembered today — if it’s remembered at all — for its epic opening […]
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‘American Fiction’ Composer Laura Karpman on Why Jazz Music Was Always Going to Anchor Cord Jefferson’s Directorial Debut
It’s hard to believe that Laura Karpman, a five-time Emmy-winning composer and Juilliard graduate who has scored narrative features (The Marvels) as well as documentaries (Pray Away) in a career spanning more than 30 years, has only now received her first Oscar nomination. Karpman is nominated for her score for Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction, a […]
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‘Oppenheimer’ Sound Editor Richard King on Going “Down the Rabbit Hole With Quantum Physics” In His Research
For sound editor Richard King, it wasn’t the explosion scene in Universal’s Oppenheimer — nominated for 13 Oscars, including best sound — that was most challenging to work on. Instead, it was the smaller quantum particle and wave sequence scenes inside J. Robert Oppenheimer’s head that were most demanding. “They couldn’t sound small, even though […]
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‘Barbie’ Producer Tom Ackerley on Blending Artistic and Commercial Needs: “Trust Your Filmmaker”
Tom Ackerley and his production company LuckyChap — which he runs alongside wife Margot Robbie — aren’t new to the awards conversation. Their 2020 feature Promising Young Woman won an Oscar for best screenplay, their Netflix series Maid was nominated for three Emmys and their debut production I, Tonya nabbed star Allison Janney an Oscar […]
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‘The Holdovers’ Producer Mark Johnson on the Anxieties of Trusting a Director: “The Process Works, but It’s as Frustrating as Can Be”
Mark Johnson is a veteran producer who won a best picture Oscar in 1989 for Rain Man, one of many collaborations with director Barry Levinson (the pair earned a second best picture nom in 1992 for Bugsy). Just over three decades later, Johnson earned his third Oscar nomination for Focus Features’ The Holdovers, his second […]
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‘Poor Things’ Hair & Makeup Designer Talks Creating Monstrous Faces With Human Hearts
When Poor Things hair, makeup and prosthetics designer Nadia Stacey began crafting the prosthetic looks for Willem Dafoe’s Godwin Baxter, her goal was not to make him look like a monster. Rather, she wanted him to look like there was a man underneath all the injuries that his father inflicted upon him with medical experiments […]
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‘Barbie,’ ‘Poor Things’ and More Costume Designers on How They Created Vibrant Looks and Used History Books as Inspiration
Barbie Costume design by Jacqueline Durran Jacqueline Durran had her work cut out for her, depicting the culture shock of Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosling) Rollerblading into the vibrant chaos of Venice Beach after leaving their idyllic pink Dream House realm. “It was the first moment of the clash between the unreal world of […]
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‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Production Designer Reveals Crew Actually Destroyed a House for Explosive Scene
Jack Fisk’s résumé lists collaborations with an incredible group of directors, among them Terrence Malick (Fisk has worked with the auteur since his debut, 1973’s Badlands), David Lynch (The Straight Story, Mulholland Drive) and Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, The Master). But Apple’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which scored Fisk his third […]
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‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Producer Daniel Lupi on Working With Osage Consultants on the Film: “You Always Felt Like You Were Making Their Story”
Producer Daniel Lupi had worked for years with the likes of Paul Thomas Anderson and Steven Spielberg, but until Killers of the Flower Moon, he had never collaborated with Martin Scorsese. So when he got the call to come on board, it was a no-brainer. “How could you say no to Martin Scorsese?” he says. “He’s […]
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‘American Fiction’ Producer Ben LeClair Thanked Star Jeffrey Wright for Getting the Film Made: “Jeffrey Took a Chance on This Movie”
Before American Fiction producer Ben LeClair ends his interview, he wants to apologize for overusing the word “crazy.” But, in this case, the adjective does not feel like filler in describing Cord Jefferson’s feature film debut based on Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure. When the comedic drama about a frustrated author (Jeffrey Wright), who writes […]
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