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This article is part of IndieWire’s 2000s Week celebration. Click here for a whole lot more.

When cinematographer Bradford Young was fresh out of Howard University, he would have done anything to get near the set of his idol Harris Savides. He eventually found a way to shoot behind-the-scenes footage for the French director Fabian Barron, who hired Savides to shoot an Armani fragrance commercial in Hawaii. When Young got to the forest set, with shafts of light streaming through the trees, he became confused when he flipped on his Dv camera to capture the scene.

“The model came on set, and I was like, ‘How’s he going to light her face?,’” recalled Young, who couldn’t believe what happened next: Savides walked on to set with a flashlight in hand and shined it at the model. “He was completely secure with this little flashlight on this million-dollar set.

Wassup and welcome to IndieWire’s 2000’s Week, our annual summer-time celebration of whichever decade we’re thinking on most fondly this particular season. As we’ve previously done with both the ’80s (rad) and the ’90s (the shiznit), we’re spending this stretch of the dog days of summer looking back on some recent history. Some very recent history, in this case.

Like those previous iterations, this celebration of the best of the early aughts’ cinematic output will kick off with our ranked mega-list of the decade’s 100 greatest films, which we will then follow with interviews with the people who made them, essays about the impact these contemporary classics had on the world at large, close listens of the scores and needle-drops that still reverberate in our ears, and so very much more.

As we’re fond of saying around these parts, if you’re worried about the...

Gun Van Sant's 2002 film "Gerry" is based loosely on a real-life incident in 1999 wherein Raffi Kodikian and David Coughlin, best friends for years, got lost while hiking in southern New Mexico. After a few days in the dry wilderness, the pair ran out of food and water, and feared starvation and dehydration. Kodikian claims that hunger and thirst began killing Coughlin. He begged Kodikian to murder him to end the pain ... which Kodikian did. Kodikian was eventually found and tried for second-degree murder.

"Gerry" is a fictionalized version of the same incident, envisioning the painstaking process of walking out into the desert ... and losing all sense of reality. Van Sant, however, transformed the story into a semi-abstract, narrative-free feature that involves more walking than talking. The two main characters Gerry (Matt Damon) and Gerry (Casey Affleck) walk next to each other, rarely talking. They walk behind one another. They walk out ahead.

They say that one person’s loss is another person’s gain, but cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt had mixed emotions about his recent good fortune in landing the coveted director of photography gig on “May December,” the latest film from Todd Haynes. The director is known for his Oscar-nominated collaborations with longtime colleague Ed Lachman, which include “Carol” and “Far from Heaven.” Lachman, however, suffered a broken hip after a fall while shooting Pablo Larraín’s “El Conde,” and Haynes needed a new set of eyes. So he turned to his filmmaker pal Kelly Reichardt for recommendations, and Blauvelt stepped aboard the darkly comic tale of a tenacious actress, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), infiltrating the lives of Gracie (Julianne Moore), a Mary Kay Letourneau-esque homemaker and her much younger husband, Joe (Charles Melton), who was 13 when they first got together.

“Kelly and Todd are teachers for me, I learned so much from them,...

As we continue to explore the best in 2023, today we’re taking a look at the articles that you, our dear readers, enjoyed the most throughout the past twelve months. Spanning reviews, interviews, features, podcasts, news, and trailers, check out the highlights below and return for more year-end coverage as well as a glimpse into 2024.

Most-Read Reviews

1. Body Parts

2. The Exorcist: Believer

3. Barbie

4. Beau Is Afraid

5. Priscilla

6. Suzume

7. Hypnotic

8. No Hard Feelings

9. The Zone of Interest

10. The Super Mario Bros. Movie

Most-Read Interviews

1. Claire Simon on Capturing the Female Body and What Sets Her Apart From Frederick Wiseman

2. “I Don’t Think Directors Should Be Amenable”: Erik Messerschmidt on Shooting The Killer and David Fincher’s Simple Process

3. Richard Kelly on Creative Heartbreak, Political Cinema, and Future Projects

4. Christopher Blauvelt on May December, Formatting for Netflix and 35mm, and Life Lessons from Harris Savides

5. Brandon Cronenberg on Infinity Pool,...

Sofia Coppola has revealed why she almost quit making films following her 2006 movie Marie Antoinette.

While speaking with Rolling Stone, in an interview published online Tuesday, the Priscilla director said that while she “had a great time with Kirsten [Dunst] and Jason [Schwartzman], being in Versailles and in Paris at that time,” it was also “a lot to manage so many people.”

“I was just worn out, and I was just like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do this anymore,'” she explained. “[Marie Antoinette] was just a hard shoot, and then I was just over it for a minute. My daughter was born, and I was trying to take a pause.”

The historical drama was based on the life of Marie Antoinette, from being a teen bride to a young woman and eventually the queen of France. At the time of its release, Coppola said she was a “little disappointed” with the mixed reactions,...

Sofia Coppola needed to take a “pause” from filmmaking following 2006 film “Marie Antoinette.”

The period piece, which stars Coppola’s longtime collaborator Kirsten Dunst and cousin Jason Schwartzman, received a mixed response at Cannes before winning the Oscar for Best Costume Design. Coppola previously described the film as a “flop” and shared that “nobody saw it,” despite the film making $60 million at the box office against a $40 million budget.

“I had a great time with Kirsten [Dunst] and Jason [Schwartzman], being in Versailles and in Paris at that time. But it was a lot to manage so many people,” Coppola told Rolling Stone. “I was just worn out, and I was just like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do this anymore.'”

She continued, “[‘Marie Antoinette’] was just a hard shoot, and then I was just over it for a minute. My daughter was born, and I was trying to take a pause.

With Martin Scorsese on the mind following the triumphant Cannes premiere of Killers of the Flower Moon, I’ve been looking to catch up on the last few unseen films from the master, which led to the uncovering of a delightful, expertly crafted homage to the Master of Suspense. Shortly after the Oscar-winning success of The Departed in 2007, the story goes like this: Scorsese came across remnants of The Key to Reserva, an unproduced script written by Alfred Hitchcock. He set out to direct his version of it in the precise style of the late director. However, there is a twist.

The script wasn’t real. The whole endeavor, which feels like an elaborate film school exercise, was actually a campaign paid for by the champagne company Freixenet. Shot by Harris Savides, with assistance from Ellen Kuras, and edited by Thelma Schoonmaker, the film stars Simon Baker along with a...

The technology of cinematography has undergone some of the most seismic shifts in film history this century, with what began in the 2000s as an almost entirely photochemical process transforming into the digitally captured, manipulated, and projected images of today. The art of cinematography, however — using light, color, and texture to express ideas and elicit emotional reactions from the audience — remains intact.

In 2017, IndieWire made a list of the best shot feature films of the century thus far; the list was updated in 2020, and what follows is the third and most extensive version of the list. It’s also the first to be spearheaded by the IndieWire Craft team, which has grown considerably since this list was first published. Ranking cinematography is, in some ways, a fool’s errand given the broad variety of genres, resources, and intentions encompassed by the films below, but these are 60 titles that IndieWire believes...

"Seven" wastes no time, introducing Detectives Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and Mills (Brad Pitt) to each other and the audience within five minutes. If the gruesome murder scene they investigate together isn't enough to establish a grim mood, then the opening titles are.

While it takes until the third act for the killer "John Doe" to appear, the title sequence gives viewers an early peak into his twisted mind. Kyle Cooper, the designer of the title sequence, has said, "I was really into horror movies when I was a kid, and I used to get frustrated when they'd hold back the monster to the very end."

A series of extreme close-ups, sometimes overlaid on top of each other, show gruesome pictures, the killer journaling and developing photographs, and destroying his own fingertips with a razor blade. Interspersed are credits, which were scratched onto a blackboard to ensure the typography was unclean.

In his arresting, thought-provoking directorial debut The Most Wonderful Day Of The Year, Australian Director Harry Windsor takes a nuanced journey into the feelings of dissatisfaction which push some people to hit the reset button. Through the eyes of a young mother whose home and life seem to brim with the supposed markers for happiness, we see what happens when the question of how satisfied you truly are is given the chance to develop into life-altering action. It’s a feeling that many of us entertain in idle ‘what if’ thought experiments but rarely follow through with and one which echoes Windsor’s own hesitant move from the world of film journalism to helming his first directorial project. Ahead of today’s online premiere of The Most Wonderful Day of the Year we had the opportunity to probe Windsor about his detailed and studied prep work for the script, how...

At around the halfway point of Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere a young girl and her distant father jumped into a swimming pool. The characters’ relationship was fraught, but Coppola had her cinematographer, Harris Savides, film it from underwater; holding on the moment when they mimed a tea party, lost in a world of their own and briefly forgetting the one above. “Ten decisions shape your life,” Julian Casablancas sang on the soundtrack, “you’ll be aware of five about.”

That moment is echoed in Aftersun, another story about a young girl, a distant father, a fraught relationship, and the kind of decisions that shape your life. It’s not the Chateau Marmont this time, but a budget holiday resort in Turkey; the kind that Irish and British people of a certain vintage might find particularly familiar. The director is Charlotte Wells, who was born in Scotland in 1987, and so her film’s soundtrack of Blur,...

With her first film in over a decade arriving to much acclaim on the fall festival circuit (including our own Venice review), there’s still a few weeks to go before Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog actually arrives in theaters and on Netflix, but in the meantime, a perfect primer has arrived.

While at the 59th New York Film Festival, where the western was the Centerpiece selection, Campion was joined by fellow Best Screenplay Oscar winner Sofia Coppola for an extensive discussion. The pair talked about the craft of filmmaking, how Covid-19 affected the production of The Power of the Dog, the adaptation process, the economy of storytelling, their admiration for Harris Savides, collaborating with Jonny Greenwood, and much more.

Watch the full conversation below, along with more talks on the film from NYFF59.

The Power of the Dog arrives in theaters on November 17 and hits Netflix...

Though he’s been active in the industry for nearly two decades, cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt made his feature film debut last year with David Fincher’s silvery period drama “Mank.” Messerschmidt’s credits include television work in projects as diverse as “Everybody Hates Chris,” Ridley Scott’s “Raised by Wolves,” and Fincher’s “Mindhunter.” Fincher, in fact, had hired Messerschmidt three years ago to lens his sequel to “World War Z,” but after that project was cancelled in early 2019, the director called the cinematographer with a different proposal.

“David said, ‘I’ve got this black and white movie I’m thinking about. Do you want to do it?” Messerschmidt recalled to TheWrap. “He’s kind of coy like that. So I didn’t really know anything about what the film was. But I said, ‘Sure.'”

The film, of course, was Fincher’s biopic of “Citizen Kane” screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz...

Everything with David Fincher is intention, precision, and exacting qualities. And some of that intention is the filmmaker knowing what he wants and surrounding himself with some amazing talents. Over the years, that’s included giants like Academy Award-winning composers like Howard Shore and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, legendary directors of photography like Harris Savides, Darius Khondji, and Jeff Cronenweth, to name just a few.

Continue reading ‘Mank’: David Fincher’s Longtime Editor Kirk Baxter Gets The Spotlight In ‘Precision Cutting’ [Video Exclusive] at The Playlist.

The American Society of Cinematographers will present its 2021 Board of Governors Award to director Sofia Coppola, the Asc announced on Thursday.

The award, the only Asc honor not to go to a cinematographer, is given to a filmmaker who is a champion of cinematographers and has made “significant and indelible” contributions to cinema.

Past winners of the Board of Governors Award have included Werner Herzog, Jeff Bridges, Angelina Jolie, Denzel Washington, Ridley Scott and Barbra Streisand. Coppola’s father, Francis Ford Coppola, received the award in 1998.

Coppola’s feature directing career began in 1999 with “The Virgin Suicides,” “Lost in Translation,” “Marie Antoinette,” “Somewhere,” “The Bling Ring,” “The Beguiled” and the recent “On the Rocks.” She also directed the 2015 Netflix special “A Very Murray Christmas” and a 2017 production of Verdi’s opera “La Traviata” at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome. She won an Academy Award for her screenplay to “Lost in Translation,...

David Fincher fans know a new project from the director is on the way thanks to his Netflix movie “Mank,” but a potential third season of “Mindhunter” continues to be of upmost interest. News broke at the beginning of 2020 that “Mindhunter” cast members Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany, and Anna Torv were released from their contracts, putting a third season in doubt. The crime series, in which Fincher serves as a producer and directs several episodes, is a critical favorite. Netflix has not canceled the show. Instead, Fincher released the actors from their contacts to free up their schedules since he’s working on “Mank” for much of 2020 and not actively developing “Mindhunter” Season 3 at the moment.

Whether or not “Mindhunter” ever returns for a third season remains a mystery, even for cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt. The Dp worked on all nine episodes of the crime drama’s second season, collaborating not...

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

The most iconic moment of Sofia Coppola’s 2013 satirical comedy “The Bling Ring” arrives at the 27-minute mark. Nicki Moore (Emma Watson) is smoking a joint in a friend’s room while trying on designer clothing. She has recently learned that her friends Rebecca (Katie Chang) and Marc (Israel Broussard) have broken into Paris Hilton’s home and stolen shoes and handbags. Nicki, chronically impatient and desperate for attention, turns to her friends and says, “I wanna rob.” Watson’s delivery has all the lackadaisical ignorance of a five year old asking for too many sweets. Here’s a teenage girl so obsessed with the rich and famous that she’s oblivious to the illegal implications of what she’s saying. It...

In the early days of Hollywood’s adaptation of digital cinematography, there were those artists, like Michael Mann and cinematographer Dion Bebe, or David Fincher and Harris Savides, who explored the unique properties of the medium, rather than simply try to make it look like celluloid. Even in 1080 HD-shot movies like “Zodiac” we saw how in low light and a night setting we could peer into this low contrast edge of exposure. While digital couldn’t, and still doesn’t, approach the incredible dynamic range that film negative can produce in rounding out an image’s highlights, there was incredible latitude filmmakers could find in the “toe” of exposure of a digital file.

There is one cinematographer, in particular, who has not only continued to explore the dark edges of the digital image, but used it as a canvas to paint. Bradford Young’s remarkable body of work this decade started off shooting on film,...

When independent film producer Marie-Louise Khondji founded Le Cinéma Club in July of 2015 in her bedroom, she had a singular vision for the curated streaming site. “The initial idea was really to create a platform where we can present one filmmaker and one film at a time,” she said in a recent interview, “while, at the same time, creating an easy guide for the audience to discover films and filmmakers they wouldn’t on their own.”

Each week, the site showcases a single film for free, helping guide its audience to an international array of established and up-and-coming talent. For Khondji, the one-week window was designed to “give better visibility” to the individual films and to create a sense of event around each pick. “We’re still in a relatively new era of digital distribution and I wanted to try this new model,” she said. “I was trying to imagine...

Highly curated, relentlessly knowledgeable, and totally free streaming site Le Cinéma Club is preparing for a robust new relaunch next month, bolstered by its release of Claire Denis’ ultra-rare “Keep It for Yourself.” The platform will relaunch on June 14, with a redesigned site and expanded editorial content, thanks to support from Chanel.

“It has been exciting and immensely gratifying to see Le Cinéma Club grow, and to work with so many talented filmmakers,” said founder Marie-Louise Khondji in an official statement. “With Le Cinéma Club my wish has always been to create a distinctive, dynamic and contemporary space for cinema online, and to address the need for new avenues of film distribution and promotion in a rapidly shifting media landscape. We’re delighted to bring Le Cinéma Club 2.0 to our global audience, and we couldn’t be more honored or grateful for Chanel’s support.”

Founded in 2015, Le Cinéma Club aims to “celebrate new talent,...

Playback is a Variety / iHeartRadio podcast bringing you conversations with the talents behind many of today’s hottest films. New episodes air every Thursday.

With 15 years in the film business behind him, 34-year-old actor Jonah Hill has made the transition to directing with “Mid90s,” a raw, personal story of his youth brought to life by an array of actors and non-actors. Inspired by filmmakers like Mike Nichols and Barry Levinson, who moved from comedy to drama with equal aplomb, Hill says he held out on tackling his first feature behind the camera because, after all, you only ever get one crack at it. The result is a work that has been compared to the cinema of Larry Clark and Richard Linklater, but nevertheless pulses with its own distinctive voice.

Listen to this week’s episode of “Playback” below. New episodes air every Thursday.

Click here for more episodes of “Playback.

If nothing else, Gus Van Sant’s latest feature, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, has engendered the most energetic discussion and retrospective viewing of his work in a noticeable length of time — since Paranoid Park, it seems? (We weren’t too keen on the film when seeing it at Sundance, but Lord knows it’s considered a step above some others.) Case in point: Le CiNeMa Club have the Academy Film Archive’s restoration of Four Boys in a Volvo, his 1996 piece “made from material shot for a Levi’s commercial on which [he] was given complete freedom.” Brief in length, intimate in focus, vast in its landscapes, and positively aglow from what is perhaps his first collaboration with Harris Savides — thus preceding Gerry by six years — it distills a remarkable amount of Van Sant’s predilections and appeal into four lucid, dream-like minutes.

Four Boys in a Volvo can be streamed,...

Neil Patrick Harris always loved the holiday season but even more so as a parent to 7-year-old twins Gideon Scott and Harper Grace.

“We go out to Christmas Eve dinner. We have been going to a Mario Batali restaurant called Babbo, which my husband worked for a bit. And he has a meal called the Feast of the Seven Fishes,” the actor, 44, told PeopleTV about his and husband David Burtka’s annual family Christmas traditions with their kids.

“It’s a traditional Italian meal, and our kids are adventurous eaters. We like to get dressed up that night on Christmas...

Danielle Harris is none too pleased about David Gordan Green’s decision to retcon her Jamie Lloyd (and Annie Brackett!) out of the Halloween series.

Early last month, the series veteran – Harris has notched four appearances opposite the relentless Michael Myers – posted a frank assessment of 2018’s hotly-anticipated reboot, which is expected to ignore all other instalments save for John Carpenter’s iconic, spine-chilling original.

Currently out promoting Inoperable, Danielle Harris has now offered more thoughts on Jamie Llyod being left out in the cold, and why she’s still hopeful that her fan-favorite will make a return in the not-so-distant future – you know, providing Green’s revival isn’t remember as the final Halloween.

Here’s what the actress had to say to Birth.Movies.Death:

They keep saying this is Halloween 3 and they’re never going to make another one. But somewhere along the way, if they make...

After working under Harris Savides for many years, in the past decade, Sam Levy has emerged to bring a distinct visual style to the face of American independent film. With his collaborations with Kelly Reichardt (Wendy and Lucy), Noah Baumbach (Frances Ha, While We’re Young, Mistress America), and more, there’s a energetic dexterity and understated beauty to his images that is among the finest of his contemporaries.

His latest work finds him re-teaming with frequent collaborator Greta Gerwig, but this time for her directorial debut, Lady Bird. I spoke with Levy about his part in capturing a film of enormous amiability and vitality, as well as his early days studying under Éric Rohmer, working with Spike Jonze on a secretive Frank Ocean project, and his favorite film of the last year.

The Film Stage: You’ve worked with Greta Gerwig on a handful of films. How early on...

Burning Witches Records has a new Halloween mixtape cooking in the cauldron for a good cause, and we have details on the fundraising cassette and digital release for the World Wildlife Foundation in today's Horror Highlights, as well as home media release details for Ghost Witch and Kill or Be Killed.

Halloween Cassette Fundraiser for World Wildlife Federation: On Cassette Store Day, October 14th, Burning Witches Records will release Witches' Halloween Brew, a 19-song collection on cassette and digital featuring a wide range of synth-centric composers. Sequenced by Mondo/Death Waltz's Spencer Hickman and featuring artwork by Kimberley Holladay, profits from the collection will go to the World Wildlife Foundation. In addition to the digital release on Burning Witches' Bandcamp page, the album will be released on three cassette variants (see below) limited to 75 apiece. Here's the official track list (via Vehlinggo.com):

Xander Harris – “Burn Slow...

Would you have guessed A Ghost Story’s aesthetic was primarily formed instinctually day by day? I wouldn’t have, and I didn’t. The fact derailed everything I thought I knew about Andrew Droz Palermo (Cinematographer: You’re Next, Rich Hill, A Teacher) and David Lowery’s (Writer/Director: Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Pete’s Dragon) formal motivations and forced the interview to operate in an intuitive mode similar to the film’s process.

Each day Andrew operated with the immediacy of a musician, or as close to that as the film industry allows. Even the most premeditated of shots/scenes could undergo major adjustments on the day, and they weren’t beholden to any rules for the sake of developing their own grammar. The film’s small budget allowed them to take their time and properly evaluate the results of their intuition.

I caught Andrew in between shoots.

Sofia Coppola movies are defined by desolate landscapes, lonely characters, a wry sense of humor, and painterly compositions. For fans of this aesthetic, it’s pretty hard to get it wrong, and Coppola’s nearly 20-year track record attests to the consistency of her talent. From her feature-length debut “The Virgin Suicides” through her latest endeavor, “The Beguiled,” Coppola’s dreamlike visuals and deadpan tone have remained a distinctive voice in American cinema, one filled with gentle, forlorn faces and a world that always seems as though it’s on on the verge of devouring them whole. (If there isn’t already a Reddit forum theorizing that all Coppola movies exist in a single universe governed by the laws of sadness, someone should kick it up.)

While Coppola’s career was set in motion to some degree by the influence of a very famous father, her filmmaking capabilities are hardly dictated by Francis’ accomplishments.

Best homecoming ever! J.R. Smith took to Instagram on Tuesday to announce some exciting news. The NBA star’s daughter, Dakota, who was born five months prematurely, finally went home with her ecstatic parents.

Related: NBA Star J.R. Smith's Premature Daughter Has Breathing Tube Removed

“We Walked In Together We Walked Out Together!!” Smith captioned a series of Instagram posts, holding his wife Jewel Harris’ hand as they pushed their infant daughter in a stroller out of the hospital.

The 31-year-old basketball pro went on to praise the staff for their support over the past few months, writing, “Thank you so much to our extended family at the #Nicu You all are truly the Worlds Greatest! @jewey808 back to #TeamNoSleep #KotasHome.”

Baby Kota was born back in January as her concerned parents reached out asking for prayers on social media. The couple posted an emotional video together explaining what happened.

Related: NBA Star...

It's been a good week for the Smiths!

NBA star J.R. Smith's baby daughter, Dakota, had her breathing tube removed on Tuesday night, his wife, Jewel Harris, revealed on their blog.

Related: NBA Star J.R. Smith Reveals His Wife Gave Birth to Daughter 5 Months Early: 'Please Keep Us In Your Prayers'

"We arrived outside of Kota Bear's room and proceed to walk in, after I sanitized my hands my next step is always straight to peek into her bed and see if she is sheepin (sleeping) or awake pulling at her Cpap continuously attempting to snatch it off. Baaby Bye!!! When I bent over and looked at my daughters face and seen that she had a Ram Cannula on I almost passed the hell out," Harris wrote on Wednesday. "I started jumping up and down laughing and screaming in disbelief."

"A few minutes later, Dakota's primary nurse joined us in her room, she walked...

Way back in 1967, Rex Harrison starred in the family musical Doctor Dolittle as a veterinarian who could, quite literally, talk to the animals. The movie was plagued with problems during production involving its reluctant star and all the animals; the challenges were well detailed in Mark Harris' absorbing book Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood. As Harris pointed out in his book, the rather old-fashioned musical also clashed with emerging trends during a very tumultuous time for the major Hollywood studios. Audiences were tired of the old formulas and yearned for something new, which began to be satisfied as movies like Bonnie and Clyde, In the Heat of the Night and The Graduate broke out big. Still, Doctor Dolittle (pictured below...

Read More...

Revenge action thriller teams Content Media with producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura.

Common, currently starring alongside Keanu Reeves in John Wick: Chapter 2 will play the lead in Quick Draw, which is set to begin shooting this summer.

Content produces and handles international sales, while CAA represents Us rights.

Harris Goldberg wrote the screenplay and will direct the film, which plays out across the mean streets of Los Angeles and according to Content’s representatives will feature “intense shoot-outs, choreographed car chases, and lightning fast hand-to-hand combat”.

di Bonaventura serevs as producer with Content Media’s Tom Butterfield and David Greenblatt through his Greenlit Creative company.

“Harris has such an incredible vision for this film that this collaboration is particularly exciting for us,” di Bonaventura, whose tentpole credits as producer include the Transformers franchise including June 23 release Transformers: The Last Knight, Deepwater Horizon, Shooter, Red, and GI Joe, said.

“The narrative he creates is incredibly rich and while...

Bad Girls Club Season 17 is here — and judging by the cast it’s going to be a good one! Starting out in the house this season are Deshayla “Shay” Harris, Francesca “Fran” Jacovino, Keyaira “Key” Hamilton, Kiyanna “Kiki” Bygrave, Sayyora Badalbaeva, Seven Craft (yup, you read that right) and Susan Shermann. The ladies range in age from 21 to 26, and boy are they feisty — with things kicking off in the very first episode. But who are the lucky ladies taking part? Sayyora Badalbaeva Age: 21 From: Northridge, California Nickname: The Exotic Enigma Instagram: @sayyoraink Sayyora was actually born...read more...

J.R. Smith is experiencing one of "the greatest days" of his life, thanks to his 1-month old daughter, Dakota.

The Cleveland Cavaliers star got to hold Dakota for the first time on Monday after his wife, Jewel Harris, gave birth to her in January five months premature. Dakota weighed one pound at birth.

"Today is one of the greatest days of my life," Smith, 31, Instagrammed alongside a picture of him holding his baby girl to his chest. "Today I get to hold my youngest for the first time! God is Great! #DakotaStrong."

News: NBA Star Jr Smith Reveals His Wife Gave Birth to Daughter 5 Months Early -- 'Please Keep Us In Your Prayers'

Last month, Smith and Harris emotionally told fans that their newborn daughter was born five months early in a video posted by Uninterrupted. They share two other daughters, Demi and Peyton.

"She's five days old today, her name is Dakota, and she weighs...

Ahead of the 2017 Academy Awards, which will be handed out live on ABC starting at 8:30 p.m. Et / 5:30 p.m. Pt, we’re looking back on the historic nominations, which were first announced on Jan. 24.

After two years in which the Academy Awards failed to nominate a single black actor in any of the four acting categories, the nominees for the 2017 Oscars are notably more diverse than ever.

A black actor is nominated in every acting category -- Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress -- in the same year for the first time in Academy history. The closest to the record has been three nominations spread across three of the acting categories, which was last achieved in 2013.

This year, Denzel Washington (Fences, Actor), Mahershala Ali (Moonlight, Supporting Actor), Ruth Negga (Loving, Actress), Viola Davis (Fences, Supporting Actress), Naomie Harris (Moonlight, Supporting Actress) and Octavia Spencer (Hidden Figures, Actress) were all...

Actor Justin Chon appeared in all five Twilight films and a number of TV shows before making his directorial debut in 2015 with Man Up. His second feature, the provocatively titled Gook, premiered in the Next lineup at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. The film was shot by Ante Cheng, a Los Angeles-based cinematographer from Taipei. Cheng had previously shot shorts and directed commercials and music videos before getting tapped by Chon for Gook. Prior to the film’s debut at Sundance, Cheng spoke with Filmmaker about shooting in black and white, his favorite Los Angeles-set films and finding inspiration in the words of cinematographer Harris Savides. […]...

J.R. Smith and his wife, Jewel Harris, are sharing their family's difficult time with fans.

The NBA star revealed on Saturday that Harris had given birth to their third child together five months prematurely.

Watch: 'Grey's Anatomy's' Sarah Drew Opens Up About Daughter's Premature Birth

"We have very important news," Smith said in the video, posted by Uninterrupted.

"Hi everybody, we decided to share with the world what's been going on with our family the past five days," Harris shared, on the verge of tears. "We know a lot of you guys congratulated us on the expectancy of our little baby girl, but we had her five months early."

"She's five days old today, her name is Dakota, and she weighs one pound," she added.

"We know we're not the only family going through this, who has been through this, and who will ever go through it, and that's...

Neil Patrick Harris is having the time of his life!

The actor, 43, has been sharing photos and videos from his time in Telluride, Colorado, with his family, including twins Harper Grace and Gideon Scott, 6.

“We are about to be taking on … the Barry Sonnenfeld luge,” Harris tells the camera at the beginning of one clip, referring to the director and executive producer of Harris’ new Netflix project A Series of Unfortunate Events.

His followers then get a first-person account of the entire ride, which Harper joins on her dad’s back. The two laugh and scream as they tube down...

See ya later!

This year has seen a lot of celebrity breakups, from Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's public separation to Taylor Swift's split from Calvin Harris And Tom Hiddleston.

But, like they say, the end of one chapter is just the beginning of another. Here's a recap of this year's most devastating breakups (in no particular order).

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt

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This year marked the end of Brangelina.

Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt in September after two years of marriage and requested physical custody of their six children -- Maddox, Shiloh, Pax, Zahara, and twins Vivienne and Knox. Both parties, who began dating in 2005, listed Sept. 15, 2016 as their separation date, and cited irreconcilable differences as the reason for their divorce.

Watch: Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt: A Timeline of Their Relationship From 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' to Divorce

Over the past few months, their divorce drama has continued to make headlines...

Everyone’s favorite family is off on another great adventure, hitting the African Sahara, the Caribbean and even Mt. Everest — all in a day!

Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka are vacationing at the Walt Disney World amusement park in Florida with their twins, Gideon Scott and Harper Grace, 6.

The happy family of four hit the resort’s Magic Kingdom park on Monday, with Harris documenting much of their experience on social media.

Filming on the Seven Dwarf’s Mine Train roller coaster, Harris captured Burtka, 41, and Harper screaming with delight.

Later, on the iconic It’s a Small World ride,...

I have a back file of reader notes asking for a Blu-ray for John Huston’s Moby Dick, and more pointedly, wondering what will be done with its strange color scheme. I wasn’t expecting miracles, but this new Twilight Time disc should make the purists happy – it has approximated the film’s original, heavily muted color scheme.

Moby Dick

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1956 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 116 min. / Street Date November 15, 2016 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store 29.95

Starring Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart, Leo Genn, James Robertson Justice,

Harry Andrews, Orson Welles, Bernard Miles, Mervyn Johns, Noel Purcell, Frederick Ledebur

Cinematography Oswald Morris

Art Direction Ralph W. Brinton

Film Editor Russell Lloyd

Original Music Philip Sainton

Writing credits Ray Bradbury and John Huston

Produced and Directed by John Huston

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Talk about a picture with a renewed reputation… in its day John Huston’s Moby Dick was not considered a success,...

Many promising films will likely get a release in 2017, but near the top of our most-anticipated is the latest feature from Sofia Coppola. After 2013’s The Bling Ring, she has now begun production on her remake of the 1971 Don Siegel thriller The Beguiled. With Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Colin Farrell, Angourie Rice, and Addison Riecke rounding out the main ensemble, Coppola has also found a cinematographer.

After working with Edward Lachman, Lance Acord, Christopher Blauvelt, and the late Harris Savides, it’s been revealed that she’s chosen Philippe Le Sourd (The Grandmaster) to shoot the film. The Civil War-era story follows Farrell as a Union soldier held captive by the Confederates in a girls’ boarding school, where he begins to con his way into their hearts. Thanks to a handful of Instagram posts, we can now see production has kicked off in Louisiana.

Update: Focus Features...

1916 Happy Centennial to Best Actor winner Peter Finch (Network), one of only two posthumous acting winners in Oscar history. The other is Heath Ledger. (Curiously they were both Australian)

1924 Marcello Mastroianni (La Dolce Vita, 8½) is born in Italy. Becomes one of the all time great movie stars by his mid 30s. His career spans over 50 years of cinema.

1933 Greer Garson weds Edward Snelson, first of three husbands, though the cohabitation is brief. Ten years later she famously marries her screen son in Mrs Miniver.

1934 ...And God Created Brigitte Bardot in Paris

1945 Mildred Pierce opens. Joan Crawford will win Best Actress for this fabulous noir melodrama

1949 Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis first film together My Friend Irma

1950 American indie icon John Sayles is born in New York. Among his most famous films: Return of the Secaucus 7, Passion Fish, and Lone Star

1951 Franchot Tone marries Barbara Payton, his third wife, a disastrous marriage for both.

Turns out, stripping down in front of a group of people is always nerve-racking - even when you look as good as Lea Michele. During an appearance on Monday's episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the Scream Queens star opened up getting naked for her Women's Health U.K.'s Naked issue cover this month."Now, what possessed you to do this?" asked host Ellen DeGeneres. "Did the stylist not show up, or what happened?" "It was a very quick fitting, I will say that," said Michele, 30, with a laugh. "No, I'd seen Chrissy Teigen's cover last year and...

Turns out, stripping down in front of a group of people is always nerve-racking – even when you look as good as Lea Michele.

During an appearance on Monday's episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the Scream Queens star opened up getting naked for her Women's Health U.K.'s Naked issue cover this month.

"Now, what possessed you to do this?" asked host Ellen DeGeneres. "Did the stylist not show up, or what happened?"

"It was a very quick fitting, I will say that," said Michele, 30, with a laugh. "No, I'd seen Chrissy Teigen's cover last year and I thought it was really cool.

Exclusive: A number of promotions and changes were just made at Dattner Dispoto and Associates, a talent agency founded in 1987 that represents below-the-line crew. nm2374492 autoJuanita Tiangco[/link] was named VP Commercials and Music Videos. Tiangco ran Dda's New York office for five years, repping such talent as Harris Savides, Lance Acord, Salvatore Totino, Tami Reiker and Jim Fealy. She returned to Dda in Los Angeles in 2005. She has been an agent for 26 years, including 16 at…...

Exclusive: A number of promotions and changes were just made at Dattner Dispoto and Associates, a talent agency founded in 1987 that represents below-the-line crew. nm2374492 autoJuanita Tiangco[/link] was named VP Commercials and Music Videos. Tiangco ran Dda's New York office for five years, repping such talent as Harris Savides, Lance Acord, Salvatore Totino, Tami Reiker and Jim Fealy. She returned to Dda in Los Angeles in 2005. She has been an agent for 26 years, including 16 at…...

When John le Carré’s name is attached to a movie or television series, you already know what to expect. An author whose firsthand experience in the intelligence world informs his work, the novelist has developed a singular approach to spy stories. The films and series based on his work have attracted sizable budgets and A-list casts despite the labyrinthine governmental entanglements and devastating, feel-bad endings that come with le Carré’s territory. But where some of those other projects managed to preserve the author’s grounded approach, “Our Kind of Traitor” represents a Hollywood pivot to a film that, while entertaining at points, dilutes le Carré’s potency.

The aforementioned star power here comes from Ewan McGregor, playing unassuming poetry professor Perry (introduced kissing and caressing a woman’s naked back, lest you think he lacks mainstream movie spy bona fides), who becomes an unlikely pawn in a cross-continent informational tug-of-war.

Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.

Watch Fandor’s tribute to Lgbtq cinema:

Our friends at Screen Slate, the top resource for NYC repertory screenings, have debuted a slick-looking new website.

Av Club‘s Jesse Hassenger on how Noah Baumbach helped Greta Gerwig become a brilliant soloist:

Baumbach, working with the late cinematographer Harris Savides, shoots Gerwig with a kind of watchful affection, getting in close as she drives around doing work errands, a hazy Los Angeles sun hitting the windows and Steve Miller Band’s “Jet Airliner” playing. “Are you going to let me in?” she asks another driver in talking-to-herself tones. This is one of the first shots of the movie, which follows Florence for a full eight minutes before introducing Stiller’s title character. In retrospect, it seems like Baumbach is tipping his hand about his interest in Gerwig. His instincts are dead-on; putting Gerwig at the front of the movie allows a hesitant character to make a vivid impression before smashing her into Stiller’s prickly garden of hang-ups and neuroses. Their romantic scrabbling, including a profoundly unsexy sort of sex scene, maintains the uncertainty of mumblecore but with a more articulate form of mumbling.

Listen to a one-hour talk with Jonny Greenwood on his Paul Thomas Anderson collaborations and more:

New York Times‘ Nina Siegal on how Robby Müller created the look of indie film classics, plus watch a masterclass from the director:

For Mr. McQueen, Mr. Müller developed a visual language to capture what appear to be men falling to their deaths in slow motion — a reference to the 1651 suicides of Carib Indians who leapt off a cliff rather than submit to their French colonizers on the island of Grenada, where Mr. McQueen’s parents were born. “Caribs’ Leap’’ is included in the exhibition.

The New Yorker‘s Richard Brody lists his 50 favorite foreign language films of the 21st century:

Ultimately, the movies on the list point forward to the future of the art, even if some of that future has already slipped into the past. The Chinese cinema has experienced, in this century, an outpouring of creative energy, thanks to the films of Jia Zhangke and other independent filmmakers there. I hope that the independent Chinese cinema will survive the government’s current wave of censorship and repression. In the Portuguese cinema, the baton has passed from Manoel de Oliveira and João César Monteiro to Pedro Costa and Miguel Gomes; the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, a one-man wave, has been followed by Jafar Panahi and Samira Makhmalbaf. It remains to be seen whether Romania’s one great filmmaker, Corneliu Porumboiu, will be able to coax that country’s rising industry away from its run of script-bound, Euro-generic social realism; whether Hong Sang-soo, currently the subject of a complete retrospective at Museum of the Moving Image, will inspire other filmmakers in South Korea; whether the Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako (who has worked often in Mali as well) and the Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun will inspire a younger generation of filmmakers in those countries; and whether Germany, which saw its modern tradition broken by the death of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the emigration of Werner Herzog, and the self-diminution-through-cultural-ambassadorship of Wim Wenders, will again become a spawning ground for daring young filmmakers.

Watch a video featuring BBC’s 100 greatest American films:

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