For Your Consideration – Below the Line

Prey Editor Claudia Castello on the Women Who Inspired Her, the Value of Deleted Scenes, and Why She’s Waiting to Direct

March 8, 2023 Ian Spelling Comments Off

Claudia Castello is living the life. She’s spent part of her morning surfing and now, her hair still wet, she’s on a Zoom call from her home in El Salvador to discuss her work as the Co-Editor of Prey, Dan Trachtenberg‘s well-received Predator prequel that’s now streaming on Hulu. Castello and Angela M. Catanzaro earned an ACE Eddie Award nomination in the Best Edited Feature Film (Non-Theatrical) category for their […]

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On DPs Bianca Cline and Eric Adkins on Playing With Perspective and Why It’s Not Just a Movie for Kids

March 7, 2023 Jeff Sneider Comments Off

Last summer, Marcel the Shell With Shoes On charmed audiences across the world as the little guy made a giant leap to the big screen. Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp and featuring the voice talents of co-writer Jenny Slate, the A24 film currently finds itself nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and the technique with which it was made was rather remarkable, as it involved two DPs, […]

Ryan Lott on Son Lux’s Incredible Experimental Score for A24’s Everything Everywhere All at Once

March 6, 2023 Edward Douglas Comments Off

At this point, there’s very little that needs to be written about Daniels‘ absurdist comedy Everything Everywhere All at Once, because the Oscars are less than a week away, and it seems likely that the A24 movie is going to do very well in many of the major categories. One thing that hasn’t been written too much about is the film’s amazing score — a gorgeous piece of music by […]

Oscar Nominees Reviewed: Best International Feature, Where All Quiet on the Western Front Looms Large

March 3, 2023 J. Don Birnam Comments Off

On Jan. 24, Riz Ahmed and Allison Williams read out the names of all the movies and artists nominated for an Oscar at the 95th Academy Awards, which will be held on March 12. Among the nominees for Best International Feature were four European films and one Argentinian movie that may as well be European. Best International Feature is the Academy’s recently-renamed award for movies outside of the English language. […]

Oscar Nominees Reviewed: Best Documentary Feature, Where Navalny May, Unfortunately, Triumph Over All

March 3, 2023 J. Don Birnam Comments Off

In 1942, when the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature was first established, 25 movies were nominated and four received the Oscar. Back then, the award was a part of the Academy’s effort to support war-related movies, with propaganda films and morale-boosting documentaries from studios such as Disney and directors like Frank Capra occupying a bulk of the Academy’s time back then. Since then, the category has had as few […]

Oscar Nominees Reviewed: Best Animated Feature Finds Guillermo Del Toro Serving as the Master of Puppets

March 3, 2023 J. Don Birnam Comments Off

It is hard to believe that the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature dates only to this century, but then again it took the Oscars over 60 years to nominate an animated film — Beauty and the Beast — for Best Picture. Since then, Disney/Pixar films have dominated the landscape, with DreamWorks snatching an Oscar here and there. Indeed, in the only 20+ years of the category’s existence, several men […]

All Quiet on the Western Front VFX Supervisor Frank Petzold on Adding Rats, Soldiers, and Tanks to the Film’s War-Torn Battlefields

March 2, 2023 Edward Douglas Comments Off

Edward Berger‘s All Quiet on the Western Front is one of the films nominated in the Visual Effects category at the Oscars that some might not even realize has visual effects since the work by Visual Effects Supervisor Frank Petzold and his team is often imperceptible compared to the movies that are normally nominated in that category. Petzold has been working in visual effects for nearly 25 years, which includes […]

David Byrne and Ryan Lott on Working With Mitski to Craft the Oscar-Nominated Song “This Is A Life” for Everything Everywhere All at Once

March 1, 2023 Edward Douglas Comments Off

Almost everything revolving around Daniels‘ Everything Everywhere All at Once seems like a small miracle of sorts, including how well it has performed this awards season, making it the unquestionable frontrunner in a number of Oscar races, both above and below the line. Ryan Lott and his group, Son Lux, a three-piece experimental music group with Rafiq Bhatia and Ian Chang, were already well on their way to scoring Daniels’ […]

How Babylon‘s ADG-Winning Production Designer Florencia Martin Became Hollywood’s Go-To for Recreating Its History

February 23, 2023 Edward Douglas Comments Off

Sure, the headline above may strike some as a bold claim, but Production Designer Florencia Martin has indeed been exploring all sorts of periods in Los Angeles history, first by designing Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, and then Andrew Dominik’s Blonde. So when Damien Chazelle brought her on to design his new film, Babylon, he already knew Martin was a wise choice given how much experience she had in researching how Los […]

Top Gun: Maverick VFX Supe Ryan Tudhope on How the U.S. Navy Ended Up Being His Team’s Greatest Resource

February 22, 2023 Edward Douglas Comments Off

Few were surprised when Top Gun: Maverick, the highest-grossing movie of 2022 and one boasting great reviews, received six Oscar nominations — two more than its 1986 predecessor, which made a superstar of Tom Cruise. The one Oscar nomination that may have surprised some was Maverick‘s nod for Best Visual Effects, if only because the subtle work done by VFX Supervisor Ryan Tudhope and his team often hides in plain […]