A Star Is Born
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Matty Libatique on Lensing Bradley Cooper’s A Star is Born
“Music is essentially 12 notes between any octave,” intones Sam Elliott’s character in A Star Is Born. “It’s the same story, told over and over. All any artist can offer the world is how they see those 12 notes.” That nugget of wisdom extends to the realm of cinematography, too, where the artists toil within an “octave,” using notes comprised of medium shots and close-ups, push-ins and tracking shots. But like great musicians, great cinematographers make audiences forget the basics of cinema grammar and lose themselves inside a rush of images, which DP Matty Libatique certainly compels them to do […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Dec 17, 2018 -
Filmmaker‘s Look at the Below-the-Line Stars of Some of the Awards Season’s Best Films
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 […]
by Bilge Ebiri on Dec 17, 2018 -
“We Wanted to Keep the Light as Unobtrusive as Possible”: A Star is Born Cinematographer Matthew Libatique
This is not a good time to be in love. At least not if you’re a movie character in an awards season that is awash in tragically doomed romances. In the last week alone I’ve seen couplings quashed by systemic racism (If Beale Street Could Talk), politics (Cold War), and unconquerable inner demons (a second go-round for me with A Star is Born). No one seems to be swimming off into the sunset with their fishman this year. In addition to ill-fated relationships, Beale Street, Cold War and A Star Is Born share another common element — sumptuous cinematography. In […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Dec 8, 2018 -
Into the Spotlight: Bradley Cooper on A Star is Born, Consulting with Terrence Malick and Shooting his First Feature in 42 Days
Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut, A Star is Born, is the kind of movie that feels as though it contains decades’ worth of saved-up ideas and feelings, yet never strains under the weight of its ambition. It’s simultaneously sweeping in its scope and razor-sharp in its clarity, passionate and exuberant but restrained and confident. Although the tale has been told several times before, most memorably in George Cukor’s 1954 CinemaScope extravaganza, Cooper (who collaborated on the screenplay with Eric Roth and Will Fetters) makes it his own by using the basic premise as a springboard for a sophisticated meditation on fame […]
by Jim Hemphill on Sep 17, 2018 -
Editor’s Note
One thing independent feature films often aren’t able to deal with is very recent history. Films take so long to get developed, financed and produced, and by the time they arrive, whatever proximity they once had to the zeitgeist can be a step removed, which makes the exceptions to this problem thrilling. In this issue, Vadim Rizov interviews director Shevaun Mizrahi about her documentary, Distant Constellation, featuring the residents of a nursing home in Istanbul overshadowed by mega construction sites. Mizrahi shot the film over many years, and as news breaks now about Turkey’s currency crisis—which has its roots in […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 17, 2018
