Innholdsfortegnelse for Awards Special 15A April 2021 i The Hollywood Reporter

When it comes to Academy Awards prognostication, there’s often no greater predicting factor than the existence of a previous nomination. That’s why, at the start of the 2021 movie awards season, Oscar diviners foretold a fourth nom for Michelle Pfeiffer (French Exit), a seventh nom for Tom Hanks (News of the World) and even a 22nd nom for Meryl Streep (The Prom). Once you’re in the Academy’s good graces, you’re seemingly in for life. Of course, Academy voters also love to anoint a Hollywood newcomer or two each year amid the rosters of awards veterans. These types of underdog nominations are normally few and far between, as the Academy tends to favor stars and stalwarts. But in a year of film industry anomalies, one of the most striking trends has…

It took 10 years and the fortuitous meeting of four writers to tell the story of how Fred Hampton, the inspiring leader of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers, was murdered by the FBI with the help of William O’Neal, an informant who infiltrated the Illinois chapter of the party. Kenny and Keith Lucas, twin brothers known for their comedy work as the Lucas Brothers, had been working on a script about Hampton when they brought it up to director Shaka King, who signed on to co-write and direct. “Fred is just one of those figures that we never understood why he wasn’t more known,” says Keith Lucas of the late Black Panther leader. Then, Will Berson, who had his own Fred Hampton script, joined forces with the trio.…

MANK NETFLIX PRODUCTION DESIGN Donald Graham Burt SET DECORATION Jan Pascale In David Fincher’s biopic about screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, Gary Oldman’s Mank attends an election-night celebration in California’s 1934 gubernatorial battle, in which Republican Frank Merriam defeated Upton Sinclair. The scene was filmed on location in the Cicada Club in downtown Los Angeles, which maintains its period art deco style. “The tally board, stage, theatrical lighting and decoration were constructed and dressed within the space to enhance the celebratory atmosphere for the anticipated results — including period microphones for radio broadcast and period graphics based upon actual imagery,” says Burt. That research included the actual election’s final vote count, which appears on the tally board. THE FATHER SONY PICTURES CLASSICS PRODUCTION DESIGN Peter Francis SET DECORATION Cathy Featherstone Following Anthony…

Whether it’s revisiting a historical event or amplifying the confusion emanating from a lead actor, each of this year’s Oscar-nominated film editors was faced with unique challenges to make their stories work. For Sound of Metal, it was a major shift in the opening of the movie. “The crucial moment for this film happened when we moved the concert up to the start,” says editor Mikkel E. G. Nielsen of his work on the film, which uses picture and sound to follow the experience of drummer Ruben (Riz Ahmed) as he suffers hearing loss. Initially, the movie opened with Ruben and girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke) in their Airstream. Instead, the opening shot introduces Ruben sitting at his drums in anticipation of a performance. “The concept — mirroring the end shot…

In Amazon’s Sound of Metal, which has earned six Academy Award nominations including best picture, Riz Ahmed plays the drummer in a heavy metal duo whose world is torn apart when he begins to lose his hearing. Ahmed’s Ruben, a recovering addict, turns to a sober living facility run by a fellow deaf addict named Joe, played by Paul Raci. Raci, who was raised as a child of deaf adults (CODA) and is fluent in American Sign Language, is an actor with four decades of experience on stage and screen. For this breakthrough role, the 73-year-old Raci has earned his first Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. He joins writer-director Darius Marder (who has been co-nominated for best screenplay) for a conversation about depicting the deaf community onscreen, and how…

Animation allows filmmakers to imagine vibrant new worlds that should induce amazement while still making sure the “audience can identify with the experience,” explains Disney legend Glen Keane, the director of Netflix’s Over the Moon. For Keane, one of the scariest parts of this movie was creating Lunaria, the city on the moon. “How are you going to create a world that’s so outlandishly wonderful and new, not earthly, the equivalent of Oz?” Keane says. “And how do you create a city on the moon that doesn’t look like it was from Earth? No matter what modern architecture I looked at, it always looked like something from cities such as Dubai or Beijing — modern architecture is so wild and creative and inventive.” In the end, Keane took inspiration from…

“Speak Now” from One Night in Miami IN A NUTSHELL Slow-build ballad that summons the spirit of ’60s civil rights leaders. CREATORS Written by Leslie Odom Jr. (who plays Sam Cooke) and frequent songwriting partner Sam Ashworth. PROCESS “I had written some lyrics, but I scrapped a lot of them once we were able to get on FaceTime and collaborate,” says Ashworth. “Leslie is an incredible singer with a talent for improvisation. Once he started recording his vocals, the melody took on a whole new life.” Adds Odom: “We listen in the pauses and the silences a lot. We’re on a hunt for the words and melodies that feel worthy of taking the place of that silence.” RESONANCE TO TODAY “As I am affected by the happenings on the planet…

JAMES MANGOLD ON OSCAR NOMINEE PHEDON PAPAMICHAEL James Mangold describes his longtime cinematographer, Phedon Papamichael — who earned his second Oscar nomination this year, for Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 — as “charming and extremely knowledgeable.” He adds, “My growth as a filmmaker is inextricably to tied to lessons I’ve learned from him. I think Phedon has taught me to be aware of what’s actually happening [on set] as opposed to arriving with too many preconceived notions of what I want. For many directors, I think there is a huge loss of treasure or brilliance in your movie when your preset ideas block you from seeing magic that is happening spontaneously on your set.” The director — whose work with Papamichael includes 3:10 to Yuma, Walk the…

It was the last day of shooting on Another Round and things were just about perfect. Director Thomas Vinterberg was setting up the scene at the local high school where his daughter Ida attended classes. The whole crew had come out to watch Mads Mikkelsen, who plays Martin, a high school history teacher in a midlife crisis — his job is uninspiring, his marriage is on the rocks — who confronts his disillusion and despair with a surprisingly sophisticated approach to day drinking. Many of Ida’s friends were there, some playing extras. The sun was shining. It was almost exactly as Vinterberg had imagined it. After the experience of making two English-language films — the Fox Searchlight-produced 2015 adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd and the 2018 submarine thriller…

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991) He won the Oscar for playing the psychiatrist turned cannibalistic killer in the film, which also won best picture. THE REMAINS OF THE DAY (1993) Hopkins didn’t win for his role as butler James Stevens, but he has named it among his favorites of his own films. NIXON (1995) Hopkins interviewed surviving members of Nixon’s inner circle as part of his research to play the infamous president in Oliver Stone’s film. AMISTAD (1997) Playing yet another American president, Hopkins’ work as John Quincy Adams involved delivering a sevenpage speech in one take. THE TWO POPES (2019) As Pope Benedict XVI, Hopkins, an accomplished pianist, actually played piano in the film, often improvising.…

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (Netflix) Stop-motion studio Aardman Animations gave this alien world an aquatic theme, which inspired its colors and patterns as well as its clamshell-shaped spacecraft. Soul (Disney/Pixar) In Pixar’s jazz-inspired fantasy film, the ethereal world of The Great Before took some cues from ancient sacred geometry and was made to feel “childlike” as the “home of newborn souls.” Wolfwalkers (Apple TV+/GKIDS) Cartoon Saloon conveyed the freedom of the lush forest with a hand-drawn, sketchy style of curves and flowing lines, an “almost rococo” aesthetic for the tale rooted in Irish folklore.…

Two Oscar-nominated scores for movies set in the heartland — those of elder statesman James Newton Howard (News of the World) and rising star Emile Mosseri (Minari) — could not be more different in style and sensibility. And yet they share a surprising number of traits: Both subtly tug at the heartstrings by exercising restraint; their subliminal tension is bolstered by the use of vintage, and in some cases ancient, instruments; and both underscore the search for meaning and solace by characters fleeing a troubled past. For Paul Greengrass’ post-Civil War Western News of the World, about the growing relationship between a world-weary Confederate veteran (Tom Hanks) and the traumatized orphan (Helena Zengel) he takes under his wing, Howard says: “One of the things we talked about was how do…

The Midnight Sky — George Clooney’s meditative adaptation of Lily Brooks-Dalton’s novel Good Morning, Midnight — contains ambitious visual effects work that claimed the top prize of outstanding VFX in a photoreal feature as well as a second trophy for its model of the spacecraft Aether during the April 6 Visual Effects Society Awards. Clooney portrays Augustine, a terminally ill astrophysicist based in an Arctic research station on a dying Earth as he tries to make contact with a spacecraft and its crew to warn them of the planet’s devastation. As director, he asked the team to combine the VFX grandeur of Gravity, in which he’d starred in 2013, with the gritty work in 2015’s The Revenant. Achieving this demanded a range of VFX techniques, including photoreal CG imagery to…