Innholdsfortegnelse for Awards Special 34C - December 14, 2023 i The Hollywood Reporter

When reading scripts, South African cinematographer Jamie D. Ramsay says he looks for “personal anchor points” that allow him to “channel an honesty of creativity.” And to paint a portrait of loneliness and loss in Searchlight’s All of Us Strangers, which follows Londoner Adam (Andrew Scott) in his relationship with Harry (Paul Mescal) amid frequent memories of his younger years with his now-deceased parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), the DP leaned into feelings of isolation that he experienced when he first moved from South Africa to his current home of London. “We’ve all felt loneliness in our lives,” he says. “That isolation was a very cerebral feeling, very conscious. I thought an interesting thing for me to be able to do with this movie is to implant this wound…

Casting director Ellen Lewis and head of Indigenous casting Rene Haynes came to Killers of the Flower Moon from very different backgrounds. The former had worked with Martin Scorsese for many years, beginning with Goodfellas. The latter had been at the forefront of casting Indigenous actors in everything from the Twilight series to the HBO film Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which earned her an Emmy nom. When Killers came around, says Lewis, “I contacted Rene immediately because I had met her on [the Netflix series] Godless and knew that I was going to want her with me on this journey.” Haynes was first hired to cast extras for War Party (1988). Production brought her to the Seven Reservations of Montana, where she says she “developed this strong attachment…

Charles Melton is explaining how his six-year, almost 100-episode Riverdale run prepared him for his critically acclaimed supporting performance in Todd Haynes’ May December, for which the actor is gaining serious Oscar buzz. “Ten months out of the year, 22 episodes, eight to 10 days to film one episode … That’s a lot of work in a short amount of time, and it really took everybody on set to come together to execute this process,” Melton tells THR. “That experience alone, and working with nearly 100 directors on that show, really gave me this confidence and this foundation — as, like, my acting school in a way — to really be able to come to a set like Todd Haynes’ and just completely let go.” The director, however, had never…

In 1997, the Screen Actors Guild award for best ensemble in a motion picture was expected to go to a “serious” nominee like The English Patient (which would go on to win the best picture Oscar), Sling Blade or Marvin’s Room (boasting a cast including Meryl Streep and Leonardo DiCaprio). But The Birdcage swooped in for a surprise win. Producer-director Mike Nichols and writer Elaine May had adapted the film from the French stage farce La Cage Aux Folles, moving the story of a gay couple who own a nightclub in Saint-Tropez to Miami, where Robin Williams and Nathan Lane, as Armand and Albert Goldman, become increasingly stressed out when Armand’s son, Val (Dan Futterman), comes to visit with his fiancée (Calista Flockhart) and her ultraconservative parents. The cast is…

It’s striking, looking through the international movies in contention for awards season this year, to see how many adult films there are. Not in the “XXX” meaning of the word, but adult in the sense of stories depicting grown-up, mature people with grown-up, mature relationships. Take IFC’s The Taste of Things from director Tran Anh Hùng. France’s official contender for the best international feature Oscar stars Benoît Magimel and Juliette Binoche as Dodin and Eugenie, a 19th century gourmet chef and his cook who bond over the joy of working together and their shared love of food as much, or more, than they do over their frequent tumbles beneath the sheets. “They’ve been together for 20 years, and she’s never wanted to get married because she wants to stay independent,”…

BEST PICTURE American Fiction, May December, Past Lives These relatively low-budget films — directed by Cord Jefferson, Todd Haynes and Celine Song, respectively — each landed a field-leading three Spirit Award nominations, including best feature, on Dec. 5, and then were included on the list of 10 AFI Awards honorees Dec. 7. Killers of the Flower Moon Martin Scorsese’s Apple drama, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, was chosen for best film and actress (Lily Gladstone) honors by the New York Film Critics Circle on Nov. 30 and the National Board of Review on Dec. 6 (the latter also awarded it best director and cinematography). It also made AFI’s top 10 list. The Holdovers It missed best feature and actor but landed supporting performance (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), breakthrough performance (Dominic Sessa), screenplay and…

Ben Affleck’s Air employs a large ensemble cast to tell the story of how Nike landed Michael Jordan and created the iconic Air Jordan line of shoes, with Deloris Jordan brokering a revolutionary deal for her son. Affleck — who pulls triple duty as director, producer (via his newly formed Artists Equity with Matt Damon, who stars in the film as Nike exec Sonny Vaccaro) and actor, playing Nike CEO Phil Knight — joined his stars Viola Davis (Deloris Jordan), Julius Tennon (Michael’s father, James Jordan; also Davis’ husband), Marlon Wayans (Olympic basketball coach George Raveling) and Jason Bateman (Nike marketing vp Rob Strasser) to discuss acting opposite a phone receiver and fighting for what you are worth, onscreen and off. This is a large ensemble cast. What role were…

It’s one thing to screen your feature directorial debut for Steven Spielberg. It’s another thing to screen your feature directorial debut for Steven Spielberg as part of a job interview. But that’s where Bradley Cooper found himself in 2018, when he was attached to star as famed composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein. It was in the spring of that year when Spielberg, who had been developing a film about Bernstein for years to direct himself, called to tell his leading man that he would no longer be directing the film, instead focusing on his long-gestating West Side Story remake. For most projects, this is the moment when it’s shelved, but Cooper, a self-professed lifelong classical music fan who would conduct imaginary orchestras as a child, had an idea: What if he directed…