Innholdsfortegnelse for Award Special 1 40B December 2018 i The Hollywood Reporter

Kesha The Bob Dylan-inspired “Here Comes the Change,” from Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic On the Basis of Sex, is the first song the pop singer has ever written for a movie. Lady Gaga Co-writing numerous songs like “Shallow” and “I’ll Never Love Again” for A Star Is Born heralded a new era for Gaga — performing her songs in character onscreen. Patti Smith Smith wrote the uplifting “These Are the Words” for the doc Pope Francis: A Man of His Word to encapsulate how the sitting pope is indeed a “man of his word.” Sade Director Ava DuVernay asked Sade to write an original song for A Wrinkle in Time — never expecting a yes — and got “Flower of the Universe.”…

Alexandre Desplat is at the top of the metaphorical dog pile. After winning his second Oscar for scoring The Shape of Water in March 2018, he returned to cinemas weeks later with Isle of Dogs, his fourth collaboration with director Wes Anderson. Fox Searchlight’s stop-motion animated film takes place 20 years in the future in the fictional Japanese city of Megasaki, where a corrupt leader banishes all dogs to an island because they carry dog flu. The story follows a young boy who travels to the island in search of his canine best friend and in the process befriends a ragtag group of dogs. Desplat has a long-standing love affair with Japanese culture, from collecting kimonos to his fascination with Japanese tea. “My admiration for the country and its music,…

While The Hollywood Reporter was happy enough with 2006’s Cars as entertainment, it was positively ecstatic about Pixar’s seventh film as a box office blockbuster. THR used phrases like “thoroughly pleasant,” “terrific characters” and “crowd-pleasing storytelling” in its review. However, in describing its June weekend opening, it used a front-page headline to announce that Cars had smoked the competition (bringing in $62.8 million, or $78 million in today’s dollars) and praised it for entering that veritable god-realm of top animated openings of all time. Then there were the toys: In 2011, THR reported that Cars and its two sequels were bringing in $2 billion annually in retail sales and had already generated more than $8 billion. When awards season came around, the original Cars did decently but didn’t reach the…

THE APARTMENT Billy Wilder’s romantic 1960 comedy centering on Jack Lemmon’s insurance clerk, who falls for Shirley MacLaine’s elevator operator, was nominated for 10 Oscars, snagging awards for best picture, director, original screenplay and editing. SCHINDLER’S LIST The little girl in red may remain a standout image from 1994’s best picture winner, but Steven Spielberg’s Holocaust drama, which won seven Oscars, was told primarily in black and white to depict the atrocities of life without light during this period in history. THE ARTIST Michel Hazanavicius’ 21st century love letter to old Hollywood (which is also silent save for one line of dialogue) took the best picture Oscar in 2012, along with the best actor (Jean Dujardin), director and costume design prizes.…

“Cinderella makes a glass slipper a shiv.”SARAH SILVERMAN The Ralph Breaks the Internet star, on The View, pointing out how Disney admitted to the unrealistic tropes it has promoted over the years through characterizations of princesses — and how filmmakers created more relatable ones for this animated sequel. “When the movie didn’t happen after 10 years, I certainly didn’t think that there was going to be one.”HOLLY HUNTER The Incredibles 2 star, telling an audience at New York’s 92nd Street Y about her Pixar sequel, which came out 14 years after the original. “When people are in that state, they don’t bother to get dressed.”SANDY POWELL The Favourite costume designer, telling Town & Country about the challenges of dressing the film’s Queen Anne, who spends an “awful lot of time…

When music producing partners Mike Woods and Kevin White attended an early screening of The Hate U Give, they walked out with an absolute conviction of what they needed to compose for the end of the movie. “What was really touching about the film was how real it was,” says Woods. “It was obvious that we needed a song that gave a scene that was so heavy a feeling of empowerment.” The question was, what kind of musical piece would provide a big finish to the adaptation of Angie Thomas’ YA novel, expressing anguish, determination and hope for characters fighting racial injustice and police brutality in 21st century America? Best defined as an anthem, “We Won’t Move” captures a sense of unwavering resilience. But articulating how a bona fide musical…

Terence Blanchard Blanchard has worked on Spike Lee Joints films for the past 30 years. The jazz musician first teamed with Lee on Do the Right Thing and School Daze as a session player before taking on composing duties with Jungle Fever in 1991. Since then, Blanchard has provided the score for all of Lee’s features, including his latest, BlacKkKlansman. Carter Burwell Burwell, who scored The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, has scored 16 films for Joel and Ethan Coen, excluding O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the folk music-centric Inside Llewyn Davis. Burwell signed on to the Coen brothers’ 1984 debut, Blood Simple, despite initially considering work as a musician as a side hustle, having studied architecture and fine arts in college. Justin Hurwitz As the story goes, Hurwitz and…

THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (NETFLIX) For their six-part Western — which was the first movie from Joel and Ethan Coen that used digital cinematography (an Arri Alexa) — the brothers reteamed with five-time Oscar-nominated French cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, with whom they had worked on 2013’s Inside Llewyn Davis. “The difficulty of this project was that we needed to do six different looks,” Delbonnel says of working on the anthology. “It was about this visual that we have of the American landscape based on paintings and illustrations,” he explains, in keeping with the film’s structure, done as if the viewer is paging through an illustrated book. “It’s a vision of someone telling a story.” The 45-day shoot — mostly on location in Colorado, Nebraska and New Mexico — encountered bad…

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE (SONY) This animated Spidey film featuring the Miles Morales Spider-Man (played by Shameik Moore) has a uniquely stylized comic-book look, and yet in many parts of the film, the approach to the sound went in the opposite direction. “Now there’s tons of stylized things in there,” supervising sound editor Geoffrey Rubay says. But “because the visual was so strong in one direction,” he adds, “we were tasked at times to ground it and give it some believability.” It was especially tough to edit sequences involving graphic representations of the characters using their “Spidey sense — getting that sense that they were reaching out and trying to get Miles’ attention or maybe having a group experience.” To pull it off, a variety of techniques were used. “Sometimes…

SONG “All the Stars,” Black Panther Kendrick Lamar landed not only an original song Globe nom Dec. 6 for this anthem but also, on Dec. 7, eight Grammy noms (the most of any artist), all related to the film’s soundtrack, which could be one of only a few film soundtracks ever to win album of the year. “Girl in the Movies,” Dumplin’ This Dolly Parton number, co-written with Linda Perry, was nominated for the original song Globe, Parton’s third nom from the HFPA. She’s been working the circuit on behalf of the tune, which she hopes will bring her a third best original song Oscar nom as well. “Trip a Little Light Fantastic,” Mary Poppins Returns Talk about a bizarre situation: Disney’s sequel earned Globe noms for best picture (musical…

ISLE OF DOGS THE GRINCH SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE MIRAI RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET…

It’s downright odd that it took until 2018 for someone to make a rom-com revolving around Dolly Parton’s unmatched catalog of empowerment bops, but here we are and here Dumplin’ is. Based on the 2015 YA novel by Texas-based author Julie Murphy, the film, which bowed on Netflix on Dec. 7, tells the story of Willowdean Dickson, the overweight daughter of a former pageant winner slash current pageant host, who signs up for her mom’s local pageant. Dumplin’, starring Jennifer Aniston and Patti Cake$ breakout Danielle Macdonald, features big hair, cute boys, dance numbers and a whole host of other hooks to hang a Parton needle drop on. While reaching out to Parton to ask for the rights to standards like “Two Doors Down” and “Jolene,” Aniston — who also…

Black Panther Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s “All the Stars” triumphantly roars over the end credits for the Marvel superhero blockbuster that’s been hailed as a watershed moment for onscreen representation. Boy Erased Troye Sivan, who wrote love song “Revelation” for Joel Edgerton’s gay conversion therapy drama and also stars in the film, thinks “it’s so crazy that we had to make this movie in 2018, that it does feel timely.” On the Basis of Sex Kesha wrote “Here Comes the Change,” lauding the inspiring journey of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. For the period film, she wanted the song to feel like it could play in the ’50s, ’70s or now. Little Pink House David Crosby, whose track “Home Free” plays over the eminent domain court case drama, says…

Twenty films are vying for the 10 slots on the visual effects shortlist (to be revealed Dec. 17). Among them are 10 films that required VFX pros to create terrifying dinosaurs, put a man on the moon and help Aquaman swim through Atlantis, as those master craftsmen detailed for THR. (The list is rounded out by Ant-Man and the Wasp, Bumblebee, Christopher Robin, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Incredibles 2, Isle of Dogs, Mission: Impossible — Fallout, Paddington 2, Welcome to Marwen and The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.) AQUAMAN (WARNER BROS.) The Jason Momoa starrer needed its leads to swim underwater in FX scenes. “Actors were ‘puppeteered’ in stunt harnesses utilizing a myriad of specialized rigs to swim them around proxy bluescreen sets and partial set builds,” says…

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY (FOX) Bohemian Rhapsody concludes with Queen’s indelible Live Aid performance at London’s Wembley Stadium, and making it feel real started with the actual material from the July 1985 show. “We had all of the original 24-track recordings from the Queen archives,” explains the film’s rerecording mixer and music mixer, Paul Massey. “Any time we needed a sweetener of an original cymbal hit or something because perspective in the film was requiring us to get close up to the drum kits, we could go back into the archives.” Once he had an overall sound he liked for the songs, Massey adds, he ended up “basically going shot by shot and seeing what I could do to enhance the perspective for the audience.” Massey wanted to create “an acoustic stadium…

22 JULY (NETFLIX) 22 July is a riveting drama from Paul Greengrass that traces the aftermath of Norway’s deadliest terrorist attack on July 22, 2011. The film is shot verite style and told in three acts, starting with the attack itself, followed by the aftermath for the survivors and the country, and concluding with a tense courtroom drama. Editor William Goldenberg (an Oscar winner for Argo) says the attack was the most challenging, in part because it involved lots of cross cutting and juggling between all the characters’ stories. Also, due to weather conditions, Greengrass had to abandon plans to shoot what would have ended the scene — an attempted escape by swimming off the island. “We had to come up with an editorial solution to get around that part…

In Minding the Gap, director Bing Liu and his friends skateboard around Rockford, Illinois, failing and nailing ambitious stunts with a youthful fearlessness as the filmmaker pieces together tales of racial identity, class and domestic abuse. To pull off this intimate documentary (which premiered in January at Sundance and is streaming on Hulu), Liu relied on his cast, including his own mother and the on-again, off-again girlfriend of one of his skateboarding pals, to reflect on their deepest traumas in front of his lens. The film, which was shot over 12 years, has earned more than two dozen honors since its debut, including Sundance’s U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Filmmaking. It was named to the National Board of Review’s top docs list and nominated for best doc at…