Since playing Lau in The Dark Knight, Chin Han has been on a Hollywood run, acting in blockbuster action movies like Ghost in a Shell, Skyscraper, and Captain American: Winter Soldier, as well as work on a less grand scale for Steven Soderbergh, Gus Van Sant, and the celebrated Netflix series Marco Polo. Now he stars in the eagerly anticipated new Mortal Kombat movie as the shape-shifting villain Shang Tsung. I asked him how he dealt with the history, fan passion and anticipation for the character in his preparation and how it affected him during production. He talks about his […]

She’s probably best known for her Emmy-Nominated performance as FBI secretary Martha Hanson on FX’s critically acclaimed series The Americans, and now Alison Wright has breathed life into another complex character in yet another hit series—Ruth Wardle on TNT’s Snowpiercer. In this hour, she gives us a peek under the hood of her craft and we get closer to understanding how she’s able to bring such naturalism and depth to all her performances. She talks about her early fascination with “The Method” that led her to the Lee Strasberg Institute, her “thought-linked” approach to the text which she developed over […]

Writer-director John Hughes had just begun to make a name for himself with three films he made for Universal (Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Weird Science) when Ned Tanen lured him over to Paramount with an overall deal designed to turn the filmmaker into a mogul. In less than three years, Hughes wrote, produced, and/or directed five movies for the studio (Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Some Kind of Wonderful, Planes Trains and Automobiles and She’s Having a Baby), all of which have now been reissued on Paramount’s “John Hughes 5-Movie Collection” Blu-ray with a generous supply of extra […]

Deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party Fred Hampton was a stirring orator, firing hearts and minds out of slumber and into action against US capitalism. So clear and infectious was Hampton’s guidance against the country’s racist and classist economic system that the FBI and Chicago police department assassinated the 21-year-old as he slept. In documentaries like The Murder of Fred Hampton, which don’t circulate enough, Hampton is seen delivering his famous speeches at rallies, casually moving fellow Panthers with his warmth in a mock trial at the headquarters, mingling at the Free Breakfast for School Children Program and […]

Olivia Cooke had no formal training and claims to have no real process. Is she just a natural? A freak of nature? How else to explain the incredible range and astounding talent of this rising star? I first took note of her work in the black comedy Thoroughbreds, and then Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One and the British mini-series Vanity Fair. She is on fire now with three new films, Little Fish, Pixie, and last year’s Sound of Metal. I ask her to break down one amazing scene in the latter, and she talks about the advantages of its immersive […]

The asymmetries of combat in a zombie movie are unlike any other: One must shoot to kill because only one side fights—the other side is merely hungry. The fate of humanity hinges on an efficiently delivered death blow. Characters can outrun the monsters or grab a knife in the kitchen for self-defense. Or, if the movie was made in America, there’s probably a gun. Only one side can handle tools. It is right there on the movie posters in which actors typically appear with their primary weapons. Brad Pitt has an assault rifle on the World War Z (2013) poster, […]

Yes, 2020 sucked. The worst year of our lives finally came to an end, and most independent films and filmmakers, like just about everything and everyone else, suffered. Grand Jury Prize winners were delayed, critics’ favorites were lost and buzzworthy breakouts, briefly the talk of Park City, remained in limbo, waiting for some nebulous future release date when movie theaters might re-open and vaccinated audiences might attend them. Normally, you could look back at a year’s worth of top Sundance titles, examine what became of them in distribution—as Filmmaker usually does—and glean some takeaways about the state of the marketplace. […]

Imagine taking a film class in which, during week one, you learn activist filmmaking strategies from Pamela Yates and Paco de Onís of Skylight, a human rights media organization based in Brooklyn. In week two, you discuss participatory documentary and community collaboration with Concordia University professor and filmmaker Liz Miller. A little later in the course, you encounter Brenda Manuelito and Carmella Rodriguez, cofounders of nDigiDreams, a woman-owned and indigenous-focused consulting and training company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  These are session descriptions of a graduate course titled “Advancing Human Rights Through Documentary Media,” developed and taught by Beverly Seckinger, a […]

There are several moments in Delroy Lindo’s performance as Paul in Da 5 Bloods where I believe the voiceless (Black solders who never came back from Vietnam?) speak through him. Sure that might be hooey, but the very idea that I believe it says something about his incredible work in Spike Lee’s celebrated Netflix film. On this episode, I ask Lindo to break down the filming of the gripping monologue that is the centerpiece of that performance, and about his initial apprehension and ultimate acceptance of the MAGA aspect of Paul’s character. He takes us back to his first formative […]

Christina Anthony plays Denise on the ABC series Mixed-ish. She generously gives us a fascinating inside look at working on a sitcom from the point of view of an actor who is totally new to the process. She tells the story of sitting at a table read 90 minutes after being cast on the show following years of struggling through more than 100 fruitless pilot auditions, talks about how her Chicago theater roots still pay dividends in her work, getting used to the idea of rotating directors, knowing when to speak up about issues with the script, and how she’s […]