Innholdsfortegnelse for Award Special 4 38B November 2018 i The Hollywood Reporter

The Golden Globes and the Oscars both strive to celebrate the best films and filmmakers of a given year — but apart from that, they don’t have much in common. The Globes, besides honoring the best of film, also honor the best of TV; Globes attendees sit at tables eating and drinking; and there are two categories of Globes nominees for best picture, actor and actress — (a) drama and (b) musical or comedy. The Oscars, meanwhile, are strictly limited to film; attendees sit in rows in a vast auditorium, with food and drink accessible only in the lobby; and there are no genre awards — for picture or for actors. More pertinently, Globe nominations and winners are determined by the roughly 90-member Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a group of…

It may come as a surprise that it took this long, but for the first time in the decade-long history of The Hollywood Reporter’s composer roundtable, someone broke into song. Perhaps less surprising, that someone was show-tune veteran Marc Shaiman, who finds himself in the awards hunt this year with Rob Marshall’s Mary Poppins Returns (if Shaiman lands an Oscar this year, he’ll achieve EGOT status). Shaiman, 59, joined an eclectic group of film music vets and upstarts who find themselves — and their music — in the awards season conversation: Terence Blanchard, 56, Spike Lee’s longtime composer of choice, who provided the score for BlacKkKlansman; Justin Hurwitz, 33, who, two years after taking home two Oscars for La La Land, reteamed with director Damien Chazelle for First Man; Hans…

As a man whose music captured the Gen X zeitgeist in all its grungy, angst-ridden glory, Trent Reznor seems a fitting choice to compose the score for Jonah Hill’s affecting coming-of-age drama Mid90s, the actor turned filmmaker’s directorial debut. Aggressive and, at times, downright angry, Reznor’s seminal Clinton-era band Nine Inch Nails captured the malaise of a generation seemingly adrift before the cultural upheavals of 9/11, smartphones and social media. The titles of the band’s biggest hits really say it all: “Hurt,” “Head Like a Hole,” “March of the Pigs,” etc. It’s perhaps surprising then that Reznor’s score for Mid90s is completely devoid of the dark undertones regularly on display in his songwriting. Gentle and earnest, the soft, piano-driven themes Reznor penned with his partner, Atticus Ross, provide sturdy support…

Margot Robbie and Saoirse Ronan spent most of their time on the set of Mary Queen of Scots avoiding each other like the plague. In fact, the stars of Focus Features’ $25 million period drama (which opens Dec. 7) about the 16th century rivalry between royal cousins Mary Stuart and Queen Elizabeth I went to such extreme lengths to stay out of each other’s way before filming their one and only scene together, they had teams of assistants make sure the actresses entered and exited sets from different doors. The idea was that when the women finally did meet for the film’s climactic encounter — like Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in what director Josie Rourke describes as “a kind of Renaissance version of Heat” — their reactions would…

ACTOR John Krasinski A Quiet Place Though a popular actor on TV’s The Office, and one who has been good in films, too, he has never received major awards recognition — but that could change now, as he both directed and stars in this acclaimed blockbuster, an elevated horror flick that follows a family trying to outrun monsters with ultrasensitive hearing. Lucas Hedges Ben Is Back and/or Boy Erased The 21-year-old went through awards season for Manchester by the Sea, picking up an Oscar nom but a Globe snub. This year, voters can pick between his lead turns as an addict (opposite Julia Roberts) in dad Peter’s pic Ben Is Back (above) and as a gay conversion therapy patient in Joel Edgerton’s Boy Erased. John David Washington BlacKkKlansman Denzel’s 34-year-old…

“We definitely took a more classic approach” to Lady Gaga’s look for her Star tour, say her stylists, “but made sure that there was still an element of fantasy.” 1. White-hot debut “We wanted to channel old Hollywood glamour but also let her be her,” explain Gaga’s stylists Tom Eerebout and Sandra Amador (they answered THR’s questions via a joint email). Gaga, for her role as an aspiring singer who falls for a country rocker (Bradley Cooper), channeled Marilyn Monroe during an Aug. 31 Venice Film Festival photocall, wearing a flowing white dress by Azzedine Alaia paired with Gianvito Rossi shoes. 2. Feathered froth For her big debut, Gaga donned feathered Valentino with Chopard earrings. Worn to the Venice premiere, the dress, fittingly named “Flamingo,” was designed by Pierpaolo Piccioli.…

There are plenty of screenwriting teams that have a strong rapport and even the ability to finish each other’s sentences. But get Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan in the same conversation, and the two have the type of banter that can only come from a pair that’s bonded in work as well as in life. Dano and Kazan, who have been a couple since 2007 and have an infant daughter together, collaborated on the page for the first time for Dano’s directorial debut, the period melodrama Wildlife, based on the 1990 book by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford. Dano, 34, had fallen in love with the story — a 1960s-set domestic drama centered on a troubled marriage — when he read it, and since he had been looking for a…

Rami Malek is best known for playing the twitchy coder at the center of hacker TV series Mr. Robot, but for his latest film, Bohemian Rhapsody, he transforms into Freddie Mercury, the frontman of Queen, famous for his confidence and charismatic and colorful stage presence. The 37-year-old actor has already earned critical acclaim for his performance in the Fox rock musical, which traces Mercury’s rise to stardom leading up to Queen’s legendary reunion at Live Aid in 1985. Malek spoke to THR about how he learned to walk in a rock star’s shoes, what makes this film (which has earned north of $384 million to date worldwide) so timely and how he dealt with the unexpected exit of director Bryan Singer, who was fired before the film wrapped. How did…

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs NETFLIX Part sincere and part smarmy, part amusing and part windy nonsense, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs plays like an old Western-themed vaudeville show featuring six unrelated sketches of drastically differing quality. Despite the snark and irreverence, genre specialists will eat up the devotion to detail here, from the relish the Coens take in writing colorful 19th century Western vernacular to the musical choices and the lovely between-acts artwork. Redeeming the erratic material is the constant pleasure provided by the splendid team of Coen collaborators. Carter Burwell’s wonderfully resourceful score is abetted by no end of Western tunes that have been neatly worked into the flow of events. Bruno Delbonnel’s cinematography rapturously embraces the stunning locations found in Colorado, Nebraska and New Mexico, while Jess…

Indie distributor GKIDS is seeking to extend its remarkable track record (10 animated feature Oscar nominations since 2009, second only to Disney/Pixar) with Mirai, a touching, time-traveling story with a 4-year-old protagonist named Kun, whose life is turned upside down when his baby sister, Mirai, is born. Opening Nov. 30, the film was written and directed by respected Japanese animator Mamoru Hosoda, whose credits include The Boy and the Beast, Wolf Children and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. With a rare 100 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie, which sees Kun meeting a teenage version of his baby sister, is a personal one for the director: The idea came to him when his own son was joined by a baby sister. The director says he also wanted…

It’s remarkable how often Films That Directed Themselves turn out to be by women. When Natalie Portman presented the Golden Globe for best director in January, she pointedly went off-script to say, “And here are all the male nominees.” She might as well have been saying “Where’s Greta Gerwig?” The actress-director’s Lady Bird, after all, won a Globe for best musical or comedy. And likewise a few years ago, Ava DuVernay was notoriously snubbed by the Oscars while Selma competed for best picture. Unthinking sexism? Too many good movies? Whatever the excuse, it’s not because female directors aren’t out there. This year, at last a half-dozen are in the mix. And their films hit timely issues: women’s power, ambition, identities and social worth. The films range in scale from Josie…

For a 1957 Broadway musical that was about juvenile delinquents, racial prejudice, gangs and homicide, West Side Story did exceptionally well. It ran for 732 New York performances and had a national tour and a two-year run in London before returning to Broadway for another 249 shows. The basic plot has white Jets gang member Tony falling for Maria, the Puerto Rican Sharks leader’s sister, and that leads to problems. “I think it was the first musical to take utterly serious subject matter and not try to prettify it,” says film critic and historian Leonard Maltin. “And while it drew on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the songs and dialogue made it completely contemporary.” The Broadway production formed the basis for the $6 million ($51 million today) screen version that United…