Weekly round-up of filmmaking articles

‘Black filmmakers are offering an unvarnished look at the legacy of the 1960s civil rights era, examining America’s tortured history of racism and drawing parallels to contemporary cries for social justice in some of the year’s most captivating films.

Regina King’s “One Night in Miami,” Shaka King’s “Judas and the Black Messiah” and Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods” serve as a triptych of the Black experience, inviting viewers inside the great debates that accompanied an earlier generation’s fight for equality. Together, they chart the course of that turbulent decade.

These filmmakers double as historians, contextualizing the past to determine how we got to where we are. King (credited for writing the “Judas” story with Will Berson and the Lucas Brothers), Lee (who partnered with Kevin Willmott for “Bloods”) and Kemp Powers (who adapted his “One Night in Miami” play for the screen) detail their process.’

#filmmaking #inspiration #storytelling

Read the article in full, here.

‘Matthew Modine, who played Private Joker in Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 Vietnam war film, locked heads with Private “Pyle” actor D’Onofrio while filming the famous boot-camp scenes. In the film, Modine’s character is ordered by Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, the senior drill instructor played by R Lee Ermey, to assist “Pyle” with the basic training their platoon is put through.

Kubrick put Modine and D’Onofrio through boot camp for real, which led to hostility between the pair, especially due to the latter’s method acting style. In the film, the platoon is punished for every mistake the inept “Pyle” makes.’

#filmmaking #behindthescenes #artsandentertainment

Read the article in full, here.

‘WandaVision is unlike anything we’ve seen before in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including in the way it looks. A crucial part of that is the cinematography.

For most of its nine-episode run, it has ran through several decades of American sitcoms, starting in the ‘50s with the classics and breaking through the fourth wall in the ‘00s. Along the way, it has constantly played with its aspect ratio, how it’s filmed and framed, and the colour schemes — all in order to pay homage to the family sitcoms it’s partly inspired by.’

#filmmaking #cinematography #behindthescenes

Read the article in full, here.

‘Global events leave their mark on cinema – and things don’t get much bigger than a worldwide pandemic. And not always in the ways you’d expect. So, if we’re looking for clues about films that will be released in the years to come, is cinema history any help?

Should we expect hordes of allegorical aliens and zombies – or a soothing succession of romcoms and musicals?

The pandemic is the biggest global crisis since the second world war, and, if we look back to the cinema of that era, one trend in particular stands out: the arrival of film noir. Classics of the genre, such as The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity and The Killers, were dark, cynical tales about murder plots, manipulative women and morally compromised men. Might post-Covid cinema take an equally dark turn?’

#filmmaking #storytelling #creativity

Read the article in full, here.

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