March 24, 2023
Although Michelle Yeoh has had many occasions this award season to grow used to ovations — many of them standing — she received her final one of the season walking into the media interview room at the Dolby after winning her Best Actress Oscar, and that one, apparently, took her by surprise. “That was quite a welcome!” she said. “Are you sure you’re press?” But indeed we were. After all, […]
So, there were award shows last weekend, in the run-up to Oscar, and you, dear reader, already know this. You know, for example, that Everything Everywhere All at Once won everything that it could win that weekend — from the editors, the writers, the ostensibly Indie folks, et al — cementing its status as this year’s Best Picture frontrunner. Former challengers, like The Fabelmans and The Banshees of Inisherin, appear to have […]
As the PGA and SAG Awards confirmed, multiverses and alternate timelines are no longer confined to Marvel movies and other genre fare. They are now the stuff of prestige films, too, as Everything Everywhere All at Once won the PGA’s version of “Best Picture,” and SAG’s equivalent of the same, with its “Best Ensemble” prize, which capped off a near sweep of the feature acting categories outside of Brendan Fraser‘s […]
In an age of instant news, one no longer needs to “wait” on things like football scores or tallies from award shows. They are live-posted and generally available as soon as you have a hankering to know them, right on that formerly NASA-sized computer in your pocket. (Or are you just glad to see us?) No, while things like, say, justice can take generations, news of results is usually instantaneous. […]
Recently, I had the pleasure of chatting with Xavier Grobet, ASC, about his work shooting Season 2 of The White Lotus for Creator Mike White and HBO. We talked about his previous collaborations with White, what gear and glass he used for Lotus (ALEXA Minis and Panavision Primos, mostly), how professional the Italian crews were, and the layered use of location, including the show’s Godfather references and the way a glowing, […]
“The past is never dead,” William Faulkner famously wrote, adding “it’s not even past.” The 20th-century literary icon and Nobel winner, who sojourned for a while in Hollywood to drink heavily and collect then-easy screenwriting money, was, of course, talking about the personal histories that ineluctably shape us. But being from the South, he was also aware of the broader weight of history, as well. Indeed, the region’s politics are […]
When we last greeted you in this columnar space, we looked back on the year that was and opined that all in all, 2022 wasn’t that bad after all — considering what could have been. A much easier conclusion to come to, of course, for those of us who are housed during storms, fed on a regular basis, and so far, not in active war zones. But what will this […]
The thing about the song “It Was a Very Good Year,” if you’re in the habit of listening to it at year’s end and wondering how it is that wall calendars go up and down so much faster than they used to, is that after the first few verses celebrating rambunctious youth, first loves and lusts (from a male perspective, granted — we need a definitive female cover of the […]
Our post-election, Georgia Peach logo-meets-Wakanda Forever column drew an interesting email from the New Mexico Film Office. Would we be interested in chatting, they asked, now that their governor, Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham, has also been handily reelected, as the state seeks to emphasize its specific differences with Georgia? Before, this kind of conversation would have been restricted to differences in production tax incentives, and perhaps the square footage of […]
So, nearly two weeks later, the election is almost wrapped up, and while it seems little substantive legislation will get done on the split-house Federal level over the next two years, American cultural shifts will keep moving around like tectonic plates in the hills near Hollister (look at the leadership changes on at least one side of the aisle, for example). Why, we’ve even had mail from at least one […]