Hidden in the midst of a dense African forest, Wakanda’s opulent capital of Golden City is the centerpiece of production designer Hannah Beachler’s world building in Marvel’s Black Panther. However, Beachler’s work on the film extends well beyond that vibrant Afrofuturist utopia, stretching from an Oakland apartment complex to a tony London art museum to a lavish subterranean South Korean casino. Before landing the job — which reunited her with Fruitvale Station and Creed director Ryan Coogler — Beachler wasn’t particularly familiar with the titular Marvel superhero or his isolationist homeland of Wakanda. Luckily, she knew someone who was. “I’d […]

You should be able to watch a movie with the sound off — even before Mac Miller’s 2013 album, this was a phrase you’d hear from some producer or director extolling the necessity of purely visual storytelling. But if this dictum is true, then the inverse should be true as well: You should be able to listen to a movie with the screen turned off. Anyone wanting to try this experiment should start with the soundtrack of Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, which is an astoundingly artful, immersive and intoxicating work. In addition to the crystalline dialogue tracks, Roma uses bespoke background […]

The career of costume designer Sandy Powell spans more than 30 years and three Oscars (for Shakespeare in Love, The Aviator and The Young Victoria) and shows a remarkable range, from period films like the beloved Carol to the mad modern world of The Wolf of Wall Street. Her costumes for this year’s The Favourite, a fiendish vision of Stuart England directed by Greek iconoclast Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth, The Lobster), represent some of the most creative work that Powell has ever done. “I knew that Yorgos would not be doing a conventional costume drama,” she says, “which was what made […]

Movies aren’t just willed into existence, however much Alfred Hitchcock might have wanted them to be. We love to talk about visionary directors, but we often fail to properly acknowledge the artists, craftspeople and technicians who make their works possible. Luckily, many of these individuals — the below-the-line talent, as they’re sometimes called — receive some recognition during awards season, particularly from the guilds and, ultimately, the Oscars. And those who look at the late-year awards rush only through the lens of who’s going to win the big prizes — picture, director, performance, etc. — risk missing out on some […]