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Considerations: The Best Picture Shortlist
Brían F. O’Byrne and Ralph Fiennes in Conclave
Every Tuesday Tyler Coates publishes his new Filmmaker newsletter, Considerations, devoted to the awards race. To receive it early and in your in-box, subscribe here. It’s my last dispatch of the year—I’ll be back with another newsletter the first full… Read more
Christmas with Art the Clown: DP George Steuber on Terrifier 3
David Howard Thornton in Terrifier 3
Movies are a uniquely collaborative art form. A painting, a novel or a song can be created in solitude, but you can’t make a commercial narrative film by yourself. That said, the original Terrifier came about as close as you… Read more
“Another Guy, Another Wig,” Alessandro Nivola Returns to Talk about Almodóvar, The Brutalist, and The Rhino: Back To One, Episode 322
Alessandro Nivola returns to the podcast (Ep. 37 and Ep.170) to discuss three performances he gives in three different films out at the same time this week—Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, The Brutalist, and Kraven The Hunter. He gifts… Read more
Gale Force Cinema: Studying with Luis Recoder and Sandra Gibson
One of the handmade filmmaking techniques included spray-painting strips of 16mm clear leader and using various objects as stencils
On September 26, I flew from Los Angeles to Atlanta, then drove north toward Rabun Gap, eventually turning west on Bettys Creek Road to find the sprawling 600-acre campus of the Hambidge Center in the heavy rain preceding the arrival… Read more
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All Protocols are Not the Same: Joanne McNeil on Bluesky
If you are a filmmaker, journalist, artist or someone else who creates work for an audience, most likely you’ve used social media to share it. Self-promotion is never fun, but it’s felt especially inconsistent (if not totally hopeless) ever since Elon Musk acquired Twitter, renamed it X and began throttling views to posts that include links. A number of users have escaped to new broadcast-based social media services that are “decentralized”—but what that word means depends on who you talk to. There are concrete differences between the AT Protocol, underpinning Bluesky, and ActivityPub, the protocol and standard for Mastodon as […]
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Considerations: More Golden Globes Silly Season
Every Tuesday Tyler Coates publishes his new Filmmaker newsletter, Considerations, devoted to the awards race. To receive it early and in your in-box, subscribe here. We’re now five weeks away from the Jan. 17 Oscar noms, and the last few days have seen which campaigns are working—at least with critics and whoever is voting for the Golden Globes these days. And miraculously, no main frontrunner has emerged in the best picture race, although the sure things are making themselves known. Over the last week, while publications began rolling out their year-end lists, critics in New York and Los Angeles voted […]
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“We Needed Crazier Ideas”: DP Mihai Malaimare Jr. on Megalopolis
During his storied career, Francis Ford Coppola forged relationships with some of film’s most renowned cinematographers: Gordon Willis, Vittorio Storaro, Bill Butler, John Toll and Jordan Cronenweth all shot multiple projects for him. But with Megalopolis, Mihai Malaimare Jr. becomes Coppola’s most frequent collaborator behind the camera. They first met when Coppola came to Malaimare’s native Romania to shoot 2007’s Youth Without Youth, the beginning of a low-budget experimental phase for Coppola that included the Malaimare-shot Tetro and Twixt. Even then, Coppola was already dreaming of his quixotic passion project Megalopolis, showing Malaimare concept art and B-roll of New York […]
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Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson on the Unique Challenge of Performing in Nickel Boys— Back To One, Episode 321
Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson are the stars of Nickel Boys, RaMell Ross’ bold and brilliant adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel that tells the story, cinematically, almost entirely in a first-person POV-style. Herisse and Wilson talk about the challenge of acting to the camera, their saga of navigating auditions, the “freedom” and “openness” they both felt from Ross, how the trust they built with the crew played a big part in performing in this process, and much more. Nickel Boys opens in select theaters on December 14th. Back To One can be found wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple […]
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Considerations: The Golden Globes Silly Season
Every Tuesday Tyler Coates publishes his new Filmmaker newsletter, Considerations, devoted to the awards race. To receive it early and in your in-box, subscribe here. It’s now primetime for FYC campaigning. I was inundated with digital codes and old-school DVDs early last week; studios know that voters—at least American ones—might have had lots of downtime and perhaps visiting family members to entertain. What better way to treat your guests than showing them A24’s entire 2024 slate (with the exceptions of the still-unreleased Babygirl, The Brutalist and Queer)? There were also a slew of FYC events in Los Angeles ahead of […]
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Awards Season Analysis: First Time Filmmakers in the 2024 Race
While it’s not uncommon for a filmmaker to earn an Oscar nomination for directing their first narrative feature—directors to do so since the turn of the century include Emerald Fennell, Jordan Peele, Benh Zeiltlin, Tony Gilroy, Rob Marshall and Spike Jonze—it’s very rare for a film debut to win best director. Only six have accomplished the feat: Marty’s Delbert Mann, West Side Story’s Jerome Robbins (sharing the Oscar with co-director Robert Wise), Ordinary People’s Robert Redford, Terms of Endearment’s James L. Brooks, Dances With Wolves’ Kevin Costner and American Beauty’s Sam Mendes. This year, the best director race is packed […]
