Innholdsfortegnelse for Award Special 42B, December 10, 2021 i The Hollywood Reporter

In quite possibly the funniest jump cut of this year, perhaps even the funniest sequence of all 2021 cinema, we watch in House of Gucci as curvy, coquettish Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga) lures her gangly nerd of a boyfriend, Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), into the trailer office of her father’s trucking business. With his floppy mop, goofy grin and thick aviator spectacles, Maurizio comes off as an innocent lamb, not the scion of a billion-dollar Milanese fashion empire. The couple starts making out and quickly moves to a desk as Dionysian clips from La Traviata blare in the background. Their sex is raucous — Gaga’s guttural grunts and shrieks soon compete with the operatic din. Cut to: Patrizia at the entrance of a cathedral clad in a busty white wedding…

In MGM’s Cyrano, actors Haley Bennett and Kelvin Harrison Jr. rise to the unenviable challenge of breathing fresh life into a tale that has been told to audiences for centuries in various forms since Edmond Rostand’s enduring 1897 play. In a break from previous tellings, Bennett’s Roxanne, the object of the outwardly noble and poetic but internally insecure Cyrano’s lovestruck yearning, would be fiercely independent, no prize to be won in a courtly contest. And Harrison’s Christian, the inarticulate suitor who woos her with heart-meltingly passionate professions of desire secretly devised by Cyrano himself, would be so earnest and endearing that audiences might just find themselves rooting for the titular hero’s romantic rival. Oh, and they’d be doing all this while frequently breaking into song in ways both intimate and…

In late 2019, Adam McKay flew to Ireland to his isolated lake house to write a draft for a project that he’d been thinking about for a few years: a film that would deal with the ongoing climate crisis. Previously, he’d written four or five premises, half a page each, to try and crack the idea, but nothing felt right. It wasn’t until he spoke to a friend of his — journalist David Sirota, who was frustrated with the lack in coverage of the climate crisis — that he felt he finally hit the jackpot. “David made a comment about how [the climate crisis was like] an asteroid [about] to hit the planet and no one cares — and it was perfect,” McKay tells THR. “I liked it because it…

Being the Ricardos The guild often recognizes actors for playing fellow actors — not to mention actors for playing fellow actors who are acting, like Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, Nina Arianda and J.K. Simmons in this I Love Lucy-centric project. Sorkin’s cast of The West Wing was nominated six times, winning twice; The Trial of the Chicago 7’s won this year. Dune Sci-fi films don’t tend to show up in this category — the casts of Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 were passed over — but blockbusters do (Black Panther and Hidden Figures even won). And Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista have plenty of admirers. Nightmare Alley What do Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Richard Jenkins, Willem Dafoe and Toni…

For stunt coordinator Rob Inch, 20th Century Studios’ The Last Duel was a full-circle moment. Before making it in the stunt world on such projects as The Bourne Ultimatum, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Black Widow, Inch spent his early career working as part of a touring medieval troupe, traveling to theme parks throughout the U.K. to sharpen his skills. So when he got the call from frequent collaborator Ridley Scott for The Last Duel, he drew upon that knowledge to help craft battle scenes, including the climactic, drag-out fight worthy of the film’s title. “It was taking me back to my roots because ultimately that’s my background,” explains Inch. The medieval drama stars Matt Damon as Jean de Carrouges and Adam Driver as Jacques Le Gris, two former…

Ethan and Joel Coen have a reputation for assembling high-caliber casts for their films, and 2007’s No Country for Old Men was no exception. Based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, the film starred Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Garret Dillahunt, Tess Harper and Kelly Macdonald in a neo-Western about a drug deal gone wrong. The Screen Actors Guild took notice and in 2008 awarded No Country the prize for outstanding cast in a motion picture, as well as best supporting actor for Bardem. Brolin accepted for the 47-person cast and praised the independent film for being “a risky movie, and it’s nice to have risky movies now” as “the studio system is backfiring.” Harrelson chimed in with a shoutout to the directors,…

In a story surrounding Richard Williams’ brazen commitment to guiding his daughters Venus and Serena to the top of the competitive tennis world, Reinaldo Marcus Green’s King Richard comes to its climax when Venus, at 14, plays in her first professional tournament against Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario, who at the time was among the world’s top-ranked players. Oscar-nominated editor Pamela Martin (The Fighter) already knew a thing or two about cutting tennis, having edited Battle of the Sexes, which chronicled a 1973 match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. But every story is different. Describing the arc of the climactic match in Warner Bros.’ sports drama, when Venus (Saniyya Sidney) begins strong and confident before the momentum changes, Martin says, “There’s the gamesmanship [when Sánchez-Vicario, played by Marcela Zacarías, pauses the…

Fred and Ethel Mertz are taking pots hots at each other once again — but this time with genuine venom, given that I Love Lucy actors William Frawley and Vivian Vance notoriously disliked each other. In Amazon’s Being the Ricardos, those cutting barbs are delivered with lacerating impact by J.K. Simmons and Nina Arianda, who also plumb deep wells of empathy for both performers in the unguarded moments when they’re not bickering with each other. Aaron Sorkin’s film chronicles a fraught moment in the making of the pioneering 1950s sitcom during the Hollywood Blacklist era, when stars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz (played by Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem, respectively) feared they might lose their livelihoods and their marriage after press reports surfaced that Lucy was a Communist and Desi…

CYRANO Director Joe Wright expands the world of Erica Schmidt’s off-Broadway stage musical, itself a retelling of Edmond Rostand’s classic play. In between serving as the ghostwriter for Christian’s (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) love letters to Roxanne (Haley Bennett), Peter Dinklage’s Cyrano exhibits his own talent for swordplay. The film also features Cyrano and Christian heading to battle at the Siege of Arras, part of the Thirty Years’ War. THE GREEN KNIGHT David Lowery’s stylish and beguiling adaptation of the epic poem is equally massive in cinematic scale. Dev Patel stars as the bold and brave Sir Gawain, who accepts a challenge from the mysterious title character to land any strike against him. After Gawain decapitates the Green Knight, who rises from the floor unshaken, he must adhere to his foe’s…

Robin De Jesús remembers when he first discovered the Rent cast album while sitting around with his theater-nerd friends as a high school freshman. “I saw a bunch of Black and brown faces integrated with white folks on the cover and thought, ‘Oh, wow, I didn’t know there was space for me here,’” the actor tells THR. Some 10 years later, De Jesús went on to appear in the long-running Broadway production of Jonathan Larson’s indelible rock opera, about the power of love and youth in revolt. Now, the three-time Tony nominee is starring opposite Andrew Garfield in director Lin-Manuel Miranda’s film adaptation of Tick, Tick … Boom! for Netflix. The musical is Larson’s autobio-graphical account of his restless struggle to break through as a composer, and it was written…