Innholdsfortegnelse for January Awards 2016 i The Hollywood Reporter

VISUAL EFFECTS TO RE-CREATE PHILIPPE Petit’s 1974 high-wire performance at New York’s World Trade Center for Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk, which is on the Oscar VFX shortlist, the filmmakers had to start from scratch since the twin towers no longer exist. For visual effects supervisor Kevin Baillie of lead VFX house Atomic Fiction (Montreal’s Rodeo FX and Prague’s UPP also contributed to the film), that meant extensive research and an unforgettable helicopter ride. “We looked through thousands of reference books and photos from the library and called the New York Port Authority,” says Baillie. “We also took a helicopter up and had clearance to hover over ground zero at the height of the former twin towers. I will never forget looking down at the memorial and the reflecting pools and…

Ciro Guerra’s fourth feature dives deep into the Amazonian jungle with an unconventional narrative that is virtually impossible to sum up succinctly. His visually stunning Embrace the Serpent tells two parallel stories and focuses on four main characters — two botanists, an Amazonian native and a shaman — and the clash between the seemingly civilized botanists and the natives. The film jumps back and forth in time, refusing to unfold in a linear fashion. But plot is not the point: Guerra has created a fever dream with a sense of melancholy for a forgotten world. Yet amid all the jungle’s lush greenery, the 34-year-old native Colombian chose to film in black and white, inspired by the journals and photographs of the early 20th century explorer Theodor Koch-Grunberg. “These black-and-white plates…

After 55 years in Hollywood, publicist Dick Guttman decided to break the first rule of publicity — “get the hell out of the shot” — by penning a memoir. In Starflacker (a term his daughter coined), Guttman charts his career from his beginnings as a fresh-outof-UCLA 23-year-old — sent to Paris by his bosses at Rogers & Cowan as the press agent for Billy Wilder’s Love in the Afternoon — to his partnering with Jerry Pam during the 1970s to form Guttman & Pam to the establishment of his own firm Guttman Associates. Along the way, he represented everyone from Cary Grant and Paul Newman to Elizabeth Taylor and Barbra Streisand. In this excerpt, Guttman recalls how he invented the “For Your Consideration” Oscar screener long before DVDs or even…

Irish director Paddy Breathnach traveled 4,500 miles and a world away from Dublin to capture the subculture of Havana’s underground drag shows that forms the backdrop of his coming-of-age Oscar hopeful Viva. “I got interested in the world of Cuban drag artists while on holiday in the mid-’90s. The emotional power in the performances stayed with me,” says Breathnach. “A sheet hung up in a suburban backyard and a single lightbulb created a theater and a world of dreams out of nothing. This power of transformation and creation was driven by a desire to express identity in a raw, unabashed passionate voice. It was intoxicating.” Breathnach returned in 2001 and wrote the first treatment for what would become Viva: the story of Jesus, a young, gay hairdresser working at a…

WHEN TODD HAYNES shoots a love scene, he usually pumps up the volume (he blasted Iggy Pop while filming Christian Bale and Ewan McGregor going at it in Velvet Goldmine and Bob Dylan while Heath Ledger and Charlotte Gainsbourg were shooting their roll in the sack in I’m Not There). But for the love scene in Carol, Haynes’ 1950s period drama about an affair between a young department store shopgirl (Rooney Mara) and a wealthy suburban housewife (Cate Blanchett), the director chose to keep things quiet. “Everyone pretends they’re not feeling anxious or nervous,” says Haynes, 55, explaining his approach to shooting actors in bed. “But they are. So I try to create an environment that’s comfortable and predictable. You set your shots, get rid of people that don’t need…

There’s a debate raging on some gender–politics websites over Lucy van Pelt, stoked anew by the breakout success of The Peanuts Movie. Sure, she’s strong and assertive, a woman not easily pushed around. But is she truly a feminist, or just a bossy jerk to her little brother – and Charlie Brown, and pretty much any creature, two–legged or otherwise (see strip above), that crosses her path? Whichever way you come down on the question (“Lucy was probably just fed up with the patriarchy and took it out on Charlie,” is one feminist blogger’s attempt to square the circle), it’s inarguable that Charles M. Schulz, the late, great creator of the beloved comic strip, was a man ahead of his time, at least when it comes to gender equality. He…

Nine contenders advance — three highlighted here — as the Academy selects a Europe-heavy shortlist FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILMS Eagle-eyed Academy members might have a deja vu moment when flicking through their screeners for potential best film and best foreign-language titles. While The Martian widely is expected to be among those competing for the best picture Oscar in February, Theeb — which also was shot in Jordan’s immense UNESCOprotected sandstone valley of Wadi Rum — is among the nine shortlisted international titles and stands a good chance of making it to the final five, having already outlasted high-profile favorites including Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Assassin. Although their stories couldn’t be more different — Theeb is a World War I-set drama about a young Bedouin boy who finds himself fighting for survival against roaming…

WHAT’S THE GREATEST SKILL a cinematographer needs? “Having a strong bladder,” quipped Alwin Kuchler (Steve Jobs) in a rare moment of irreverence among six top directors of photography. In fact, that could be the easiest part of the craft, as DPs now are required to navigate increasingly powerful directors, studios that can alter their work on a whim and the pressure to employ digital effects so heavily it becomes almost another job — which is why Robert Richardson (The Hateful Eight), 60, argues it’s time for separate Academy Awards categories: one for old-school cinematography and the other for work with heavy effects. He and Kuchler, 50, were joined by Danny Cohen (The Danish Girl, Room), 52; Linus Sandgren (Joy), 43; Masanobu Takayanagi (Black Mass, Spotlight), 41; and Mandy Walker (Truth),…

THE FACT THAT Geoffrey Unsworth was David Lean’s original choice to shoot Lawrence of Arabia speaks volumes about how respected he was among British cinematographers. (The reason he wasn’t behind the camera on Lawrence is that he had already committed to doing the forgettable Danny Kaye comedy On the Double.) Unsworth had started out as a camera assistant on black-andwhite films at London’s Pinewood Studios in 1932, but it was with color that he really made his mark. The first film to bring international attention to his work was 1964’s Becket, starring Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole, for which Unsworth received his first Oscar nomination. (He’d eventually win two: for 1972’s Cabaret and 1979’s Tess.) It was a few years later, while shooting Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, when…