Innholdsfortegnelse for Award Special 2 37A November 2019 i The Hollywood Reporter

What do independent films such as The Farewell (A24), The Peanut Butter Falcon (Roadside), Downton Abbey (Focus), Honey Boy (Amazon), Waves (A24), Hustlers (STX), Uncut Gems (A24), Judy (Roadside), A Hidden Life (Fox Searchlight), The Lighthouse (A24), Booksmart (Annapurna) and The Last Black Man in San Francisco (A24), and big studio films like Joker (Warner Bros.), Little Women (Sony), Ford v Ferrari (Fox), Just Mercy (Warner Bros.), Queen & Slim (Universal), A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Sony), Us (Universal) and Avengers: Endgame (Disney) share in common? They all have passionate champions, but — either because they have divided viewers or have not yet been seen by enough Academy members — they currently do not appear to be assured of Oscar recognition. Their fates are likely to be sealed over the…

CAPTAIN MARVEL Ringing in the era of female superheroes who take the lead in their own stand-alone films, Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers cheekily proves she’s not “Just a Girl” while fighting for the Tessaract, set to the No Doubt song. HOBBS & SHAW David Leitch’s Fast & Furious spinoff starring Dwayne Johnson (Hobbs) and Jason Statham (Shaw) features an increased number of fight scenes, along with high-speed car chases and an intense battle set on Samoa. JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 — PARABELLUM With horses, motorcycles and a closing VR set piece, Parabellum has no shortage of stunts. The finale sees Keanu Reeves (John Wick) fend off a horde of martial artists in a house of glass. SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME Tom Holland’s Peter Parker didn’t face Thanos like in Endgame,…

CATS The role of Victoria in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical requires extensive ballet training. So for Universal’s adaptation of Cats, director Tom Hooper called upon 27-year-old Francesca Hayward, a principal dancer in London’s Royal Ballet. The Kenya-born ballerina also sings “Beautiful Ghosts” in the film, a new song Lloyd Webber penned with Taylor Swift, who stars as Bombalurina. After the film wrapped in April 2019, Hayward returned to The Royal Ballet to dance the role of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet in May 2019. Her repertoire also includes The Nutcracker, The Winter’s Tale, The Sleeping Beauty and Giselle. THE FAREWELL The depiction of familial bonds in writer-director Lulu Wang’s The Farewell are autobiographical and nuanced, with the film-maker’s great-aunt Hong Lu playing opposite Awkwafina’s Billi and Zhao Shuzhen’s Nai Nai…

Director Rian Johnson loves a good puzzle. Not even a five-month global shoot for Star Wars: The Last Jedi could keep him away from The New York Times crossword, which he printed out and kept near his monitor so he could scribble answers between takes. “It’s just a nice little ritual that helps keep you centered,” says Johnson, 45. So when he got to work on his latest film, the modern-day whodunit Knives Out, it was only natural that he tackled it much like he would a brainteaser. The first piece of any good mystery is a death: Mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) assembles his family for his 85th birthday and winds up dead before the next morning. Next, the suspects: His family members, a sweeping ensemble cast that…

AVENGERS: ENDGAME PROS Marvel’s final installment of its 22-film saga, which is now the highest-grossing film ever (unadjusted for inflation), is packed with a wide cross-section of stars. And a Marvel superhero film, Black Panther, won this award in 2019. CONS Unlike Black Panther, it has little social relevance and no shot at individual acting noms. BOMBSHELL PROS There’s quite a trio at the center of this Lionsgate pic — Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie — plus, in supporting parts, actors’ actors John Lithgow, Connie Britton, Richard Kind and Allison Janney. CONS Female-centric nominees are rare (Hidden Figures and Lady Bird were recent exceptions), and tonally similar The Big Short and Vice weren’t nominated. BOOKSMART PROS Directed by an actor, Olivia Wilde, Annapurna’s coming-of-age comedy stars two of…

How do you capture the essence of a person? Is it as simple as narrowing down a physical look, mannerisms or the sound of one’s voice? In portraying a character, actors grapple with finding another person within their own instrument. But when a single character is played by multiple actors, the creative choices for how best to convey a connection between them are as unique as the individuals portraying them. In Netflix’s The Two Popes, both Juan Minujín and Jonathan Pryce did copious research on the real Jorge Bergoglio, who in 2013 became Pope Francis. But when it came to resembling each other, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles never pushed for the actors to mirror each other’s performances. “Fernando didn’t want that I mimic gestures of Jonathan, because the movie talks…

LAURA DERN Marriage Story Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, which stars Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson as a couple going through an ugly divorce, has among its key players a trio of divorce lawyers, played by Alan Alda, Ray Liotta and Laura Dern. The characters were fictional, but the actors did their own research to get into the roles. Liotta tried to meet with famed Hollywood lawyer Marty Singer, but the busy attorney got called away. “Some emergency came up — who knows what actor did what, that he had to protect,” Liotta tells THR. Dern, however, was able to meet with several lawyers, including Laura Wasser, whose clients include Ryan Reynolds, Heidi Klum, Ashton Kutcher, Christina Aguilera and Johnny Depp. “She’s one of the great powerhouses in her industry,” says…

Since 2016, Julia Butters had been flying relatively low on the Hollywood radar, playing Anna-Kat, the youngest daughter on the ABC sitcom American Housewife. But her quiet intensity on the show caught the attention of Quentin Tarantino, who was so impressed with Butters that he wrote a part for her in his period Tinseltown saga Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Butters, age 10, stole scenes playing Trudi Fraser, the straight-shooting child actor who shares the screen with Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton in a TV Western called Lancer. She talked to The Hollywood Reporter about her new cachet as muse to a director who makes movies she’s still too young to see. I understand Quentin Tarantino discovered you by seeing you on TV. That’s right. I was telling a scary…

A small nose prosthetic is carefully applied, a brunette wig is fitted into place, a set of teeth are popped in, and before you know it, Renée Zellweger has made a remarkable transformation into iconic screen legend Judy Garland. Zellweger plays Garland in her later years in Rupert Goold’s biopic Judy, a role that has earned her praise and frontrunner status in the best actress Oscar race. For makeup and hair designer Jeremy Woodhead, less was more, he says, “to let Renée shine in her performance and not detract from it by overloading her with prosthetics.” Judy, out Oct. 4 from LD Entertainment and Roadside Attractions, dramatizes the life of an aging Garland in 1968, a year before her death at age 47, as she arrives in London for a…

Canadian-born stunt performer Monique Ganderton has an action-packed résumé, from doubling as Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde to most recently serving as Marvel’s first-ever female stunt coordinator for Avengers: Endgame. For the second-to-last film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s phase three, Ganderton wore two hats by doubling on set for Proxima Midnight (who is voiced by Carrie Coon) as well as overseeing all stunt action for the film. When considering the responsibilities of a stunt coordinator — choreographing action while ensuring creative storytelling and safety for all stunt performers — it’s no surprise that Ganderton describes the task as “a really complex brain game.” Add to the mix the impact of being the beloved franchise’s first female stunt coordinator, who orchestrated the MCU’s battle of all battles featuring the most…

MARTIN SCORSESE Muses: Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro Robert De Niro pulled his old friend and co-star Joe Pesci out of semi-retirement for the chance to reteam with filmmaker Martin Scorsese on The Irishman. At the Los Angeles premiere of the Netflix epic, De Niro told THR: “We’re friends and he loves Marty and I said, ‘Come on, this is it, let’s do it, let’s try and do it.’ He understood, he loves Marty and wanted the experience of working with him again and me and Al [Pacino].” Before The Irishman, the trio made three acclaimed dramas together: 1980’s Raging Bull, 1990’s Goodfellas and 1995’s Casino. The first nabbed an Oscar win for De Niro, the second a win for Pesci. Over the years, the team of Scorsese and…

Judy Garland’s life story is so notorious that author Jacqueline Susann cribbed it and former child star Lindsay Lohan relived it. The chanteuse was plucked from vaudeville obscurity as a child and processed through the Hollywood abattoir, commanded to lose weight, work herself sick, sing like an angel, maintain a pristine “girl next door” persona and rely on pills to pump or zap her energy at will. Audiences are witness to the harrowing lifelong effects of these early traumas in biographical drama Judy. The Renée Zellweger vehicle is the kind of hagiographic musical biopic the Academy gobbles up — full of dueling compassion and voyeurism, the looming phantom of death, emotional manipulation, relentless drug use and gutting flashbacks. (It’s classic Oscar bait that biopic satire Walk Hard nearly decimated, yet…

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) is not only Rick Dalton’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) stunt double; he also drives his drinking buddy around town. Plus, he comes to Rick’s rescue in very significant ways later in the film. JOJO RABBIT Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) and Yorki (Archie Yates) are best friends in Taika Waititi’s comedy. The aspiring Nazis’ views change over the course of the film, but their friendship endures. ROCKETMAN Elton John (Taron Egerton) and Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) move into a flat together to work on their songs and build a friendship. They remain loyal to each other even as John struggles with substance abuse.…