Innholdsfortegnelse for Awards Special 15A - May 28, 2024 i The Hollywood Reporter

I actually wasn’t that interested in David Beckham. I mean, I knew he was this famous, branded guy and that Victoria was a Spice Girl. I loved football. My first documentary was about Pelé and [Franz] Beckenbauer coming to America to play for the New York Cosmos. Then one of my dearest friends ended up running [the football club in] Liverpool. I just started getting obsessed with Liverpool and following Liverpool. The reason this movie came to me is because I had worked with Leonardo DiCaprio many times. David had been meeting a ton of directors, and David called Leo to get his advice. David said, “Leo, I’m really struggling [about] who to get.” And he was like, “You’ve got to call Fisher.” David had just seen this movie that…

Albert Brooks: Defending My Life pays tribute to a pioneer whose irreverent humor has spanned late night TV, comedy albums, features, animated voice work and a novel. But what makes the film sing is the extended rap session between Brooks and his dear friend Rob Reiner, who directed the HBO documentary. The Hollywood legends met as teenagers at Beverly Hills High School, and Reiner structures the film around a lunch in which they swap anecdotes and punchlines about Brooks’ influential career. It’s an energizing way to frame what might otherwise be just another gushy celebrity profile. Onscreen, Brooks tells stories about the early days of Saturday Night Live and Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, his friendships with Carrie Fisher and Stanley Kubrick, the seven movies he’s written and directed and the…

For Netflix’s Life on Our Planet, cinematographer Jamie McPherson had to capture action that simply wasn’t there. In the pilot episode, “The Rules of Life,” McPherson framed this shot of cave lions facing off against woolly mammoths — two species that went extinct millions of years ago. “They’re essentially elephants and lions, so we have a sense of how they move,” explains the DP, who notes that VFX supervisor Jonathan Privett of Industrial Light & Magic supplied him with early mockups of how these long-gone creatures would interact. “We do walk and run cycles, so you can get a feel for how fast a mammoth walks,” notes Privett, who used studies of the animals’ modern evolutionary descendants to understand these ancient beasts. Since all that remains are their bones, Privett’s…

FX/Hulu’s Feud: Capote vs. The Swans depicts the infamous rift between writer Truman Capote and his “swans” — a handpicked collection of Manhattan socialites who ice out Capote from New York society after he publishes a short story loosely based on Babe Paley and her husband’s various infidelities. In this scene from the pilot, written by Jon Robin Baitz, the audience is treated to a meet-cute of sorts between Truman (Tom Hollander) and Babe (Naomi Watts) years before their clash that offers an idea of the deep connection between the two players.…

Taylor Mac, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated performance artist and playwright, once spent 24 hours on a Brooklyn stage reexamining the American songbook while wearing ornate drag. Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music devoted one hour to each 10-year span since 1776, tracing U.S. history — particularly that of marginalized groups — through a glittering series of vignettes including “Yankee Doodle,” minstrel numbers, the Carousel aria “Soliloquy,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” lesbian anthems from the ’90s and much, much more. Mac spent six years performing the show in small chunks around the world before mounting it as a onetime endurance test that ranked among 2016’s most acclaimed cultural events. A mere 650 people got to witness Mac’s feat live, but thanks to Oscar-winning directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (Common…

American Nightmare follows the story of Denise Huskins and partner Aaron Quinn, the victims of a home invasion in 2015 in Vallejo, California, that resulted in Huskins’ kidnapping. However, the couple was quickly accused of staging it all, with Huskins being labeled “the real Gone Girl.” Directors Bernadette Higgins and Felicity Morris (The Tinder Swindler) set out to tell Huskins’ story piece by piece, highlighting law enforcement behavior, victim blaming and trial by media. When did you first hear about Denise’s story and decide it’d be your next project? BERNADETTE HIGGINS It was just after The Tinder Swindler was released and we’d already decided that we wanted our next project to be together. And Raw, the company that we made Tinder Swindler with, had actually been trying to get access…

The Beach Boys (Disney+) This documentary follows the group’s family beginnings as their songs epitomizing the California dream drive their rising fame. It features never-before-seen footage and interviews with resident Beach Boys erratic genius Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, David Marks and Bruce Johnston and includes input from Janelle Monáe, Lindsey Buckingham, Ryan Tedder and Don Was. The Beach Boys was directed by Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny and written by Mark Monroe. James Brown: Say It Loud (A&E) This four-part doc takes a look at Brown’s life and legacy with the help of interviews from the likes of Mick Jagger, Questlove, LL Cool J, Al Sharpton and Terry Lewis (minus Jimmy Jam) as well as archival and never-before-seen footage. Say It Loud was directed by Deborah Riley Draper…