featuring some of today's leading film artists and craftspeople. Listings Updated November 27, 2007.
Directors | Producers | Screenwriters | Actors | Production Designers Costume Designers | Cinematographers | Editors | Special Effects | Animation Composers | Restoration | Miscellaneous |
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Martin Scorsese on the set of CAPE FEAR, discussing the weaving of cinematic nightmares. Irwin Winkler on his sophomore directing effort, capturing the brashness of New York City street life in the neo-noir NIGHT AND THE CITY. Robert De Niro crosses over to the director's chair for the slice-of-life A BRONX TALE. Carroll Ballard ponders the inscrutable aspects of Nature, Fate and Hollywood on the set of WIND. Dick Maas, the director of several hit Dutch films, ventures to the wilds of New York City in search of a breakthrough hit on the other side of the pond. Indie film distributor and director Fran Rubel Kuzui discusses her view from both sides of the studio/independent battle lines. Abel Ferrara ponders the muse behind his hyper-dramatic morality tale BAD LIEUTENANT. Spike Lee in a 1991
interview, on capturing the essence of jazz on film for MO' BETTER BLUES.
UPLOADING
SOON. |
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Barbara De Fina On location with CAPE FEAR, and behind the front lines of THE AGE OF INNOCENCE. Lynda Obst and Debra Hill 'tame the wild beast' as producers of THE FISHER KING. Charles Roven on doing the impossible: winning the confidence of filmmaker Chris Marker and getting the go-ahead for remaking the cult sci-fi meditation LA JETTE as the comic/romantic/apocalyptic thriller TWELVE MONKEYS. Dutch producer Laurens Geels on discovering a new world of filmmaking in the New World, as he transplants the notorious FLODDER family in New York City. |
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Richard LaGravenese on penning a true original, THE FISHER KING. Chazz Palminteri on rewriting his life for stage and screen in A BRONX TALE. Richard Price on not staying true to filmic convention, for NIGHT AND THE CITY. Wesley Strick on reinventing a true classic, CAPE FEAR. |
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Harvey Keitel bares his soul as he talks about work, art, family and bamboo. Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges face the challenge of playing dramatic comedy, from the set of THE FISHER KING. Nick Nolte on delving into the private demons behind a lawyer's public persona in CAPE FEAR. Eric Idle on the rewards of acting in a film directed by fellow Python Terry Gilliam, on the Rome set of THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN. |
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Jeffrey Beecroft on creating the ravaged future and haunted past of TWELVE MONKEYS. Production designer Robin Standefer and location manager Patricia Anne Doherty reveal how to uncover the truth of 1870s New York art and architecture (and how to fake it) for Scorsese's THE AGE OF INNOCENCE. "Quiet on the Streets" A 1989 article on location filming in New York City, featuring interviews with production designer Wynn Thomas on DO THE RIGHT THING, and location managers David de Clerque and Nick Bernstein on A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM and CADILLAC MAN. Interview II with Wynn Thomas on the set of Spike Lee's MO' BETTER BLUES. Interview III with Wynn Thomas following production of MALCOLM X. |
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Ruth Carter A young and rising costumer talks in a 1991 interview about her work with Spike Lee, merging the past with the contemporary for the high fashion of MO' BETTER BLUES. "A Red Knightmare" A 1991 article for New York Newsday about the design and construction of the hellish, ethereal Red Knight from Terry Gilliam's THE FISHER KING. Featuring interviews with costumer Beatrix Pasztor, and artists Vincent Jefferds and Keith Greco. |
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Ernest Dickerson A long-time collaborator with director Spike Lee, the NYU alumnus talks about the relationship which developed between the two, and how it blossomed in such films as MO' BETTER BLUES. Freddie Francis The acclaimed cinematographer and director of atmospheric British horror films in the 1960s and '70s discusses his collaboration with Martin Scorsese on CAPE FEAR. Tak Fujimoto on a '90s version of film noir, NIGHT AND THE CITY. Veteran British DP Stephen Goldblatt discusses the dangers of night shoots, the horrors of makeup, and the thrill of recreating exotic locales just a few miles from the 20th Century Fox commissary, on FOR THE BOYS. Before BRAVEHEART and LEGENDS OF THE FALL, two-time Academy Award winner John Toll experienced a trial-by-water with his first DP assignment, Carroll Ballard's WIND, shot on two continents as well as on much of the wet stuff in-between. |
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Mick Audsley on the editorial challenges of making time travel and insanity seem believable and sane! for TWELVE MONKEYS. Sam Pollard takes a jazz approach to editing a jazz film: Spike Lee's MO' BETTER BLUES. Thelma Schoonmaker on cutting to the chase with Scorsese on CAPE FEAR. Howard Smith on the aesthetics of editing, from action flicks like POINT BREAK to character dramas such as AT CLOSE RANGE |
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"Building a Better Rome: GLADIATOR FX Take Viewers Back in Time" (an ABCNEWS.COM article, cache copy courtesy of archive.org) features an interview with visual effects supervisor John Nelson. (Sorry, video clips are inaccessible.) "Blood on Their Hands: The Special Effects Artists Behind THE GODFATHER SAGA" features interviews with A.D. Flowers, Joe Lombardi, Dick Smith, Lawrence Cavanaugh and R. Bruce Steinheimer, all of whom got paid to help us pretend that some really bad people got their come-uppances in the most gruesome possible fashion. The photo essay "A Shooting in New York" reveals how to assassinate a mobster in Little Italy in full view of a hundred people, on location with THE GODFATHER PART III. Dennis Murren and Mark Dippe of ILM, Phil Tippett and Stan Winston on conjuring the revolutionary visuals of JURASSIC PARK. "No Visible Means of Support: CLIFFHANGER Visual Effects" features an interview with effects supervisor Neal Krepela, who reveals how a twelve-inch doll stood in for Sylvester Stallone, among other miracles. "Making Waves: How Special Effects Experts Created a Tempest in Cyberspace for THE PERFECT STORM" (an ABCNEWS.COM article, cache copy courtesy of archive.org) features an interview with visual effects supervisor Stefan Fangmeier. (Sorry, video clips are inaccessible.) |
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A symposium with three of the Disney Studio's masters: Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnson and Ward Kimball, on character animation and the making of the classic PINOCCHIO. |
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Elmer
Bernstein A
report from the recording stages of CAPE FEAR, as well as an in-depth discussion
on Bernstein's adaptation of Bernard Herrmann's music from the original
1962 version.
Michael Kamen talks about the "maximal" (as opposed to "minimalist")
music he composed for THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN. |
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"The Sounds of a Galaxy Far, Far Away" features a contemporary recording of the original 1977 70mm release of STAR WARS, whose soundtrack (according to trivia buffs) differs in slight ways from later broadcasts and video releases, not to mention the revamped "Special Edition." Robert Harris reminisces on the blood, sweat and tears of recreating LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and SPARTACUS. "Lost Horizon Found" tells the story of the restoration of Frank Capra's classic fable of Utopia. |
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Okay: There's a fire burning in a warehouse containing the only prints of every film ever made. Which film would YOU risk your life to pull from the raging inferno? Send your choices to the Great Cinema Survey, and read other readers' choices for movies which have already earned the selfless martyrdom of some immolated film buff. I'm on record that the film I'd risk turning extra-crispy to save is Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. "The Legacy of 2001" explores how closely Kubrick's vision of 21st Century science and technology matched the real thing. (ABCNEWS.COM article, cache copy courtesy of archive.org. Slide show inaccessible.) "Memorable Movie Robots", a slideshow written and compiled for CBSNews.com. (6/29/08) "30 Years Ago, A Saga Is Born", a slideshow written and compiled for CBSNews.com, detailing that moment a long time ago, in a moviehouse that sadly has since been multiplexed, in which a movie named STAR WARS came out of nowhere and changed the map of the cinema galaxy. (5/25/07) Market Research In 1988, a market research organization conducted two test screenings of Terry Gilliam's THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, in Paramus, N.J., and Garden City, Long Island. The fate of a director's years of sweat and toil was now in the hands of young people who had been recruited in a shopping mall who had never heard of Baron Munchausen (but HAD heard of Sting). What sort of issues help drive the development of a Publicity campaign especially when, as in the case of MUNCHAUSEN, the film is about someone that no one in the United States had ever heard of? What would a multi-million extravaganza be without Litigation? MUNCHAUSEN had its share. "Autumn Chills", a recently updated rundown of classic horror films just the thing when you want to rent a flick to watch before you can't fall asleep.
With Slideshow.
Had enough horror? "What's Running in Cupid's Video Player?" proves that man and his mate can't live on dread alone. A rundown of classic romances (comedies, dramas, tragedies), just in time for Valentine's Day. (ABCNEWS.COM article, cache copy courtesy of archive.org. Sorry, slideshow inaccessible.)
National Film Registry 2001 Additions celebrates the Library of Congress's annual listing of motion pictures selected for preservation, from Hollywood classics to artful independent cinema to documentaries and animated cartoons, not to mention that toe-tapping intermission short, Let's All Go to the Lobby. (Cache copy courtesy of archive.org.)
"Re-Viewing Vietnam" explores how the eyes of the community and of the audience change towards those movie veterans returning from Vietnam, as explored in such films as BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY and JACKKNIFE. Originally published in Unique Magazine.
"NotSoGoodFellas" An essay on the fall of the Mob Family and the Rise of the Rat. From Blitz
Magazine. "A New Breed of Science Fiction Heroes" An early article on the parallels between the protagonists of recent sci-fi films THE ROAD WARRIOR and BLADE RUNNER (okay, it was published in 1983), and their forerunners in two very un-futuristic genres: westerns and hard-boiled detective fiction. "Nowhere to Hide" An examination of the lawyer mask and the consequences of its effect upon lawyers, as depicted in films such as CAPE FEAR; an essay for The American Bar Association Journal. The CAPE FEAR Index A guide to articles and interviews on this site relating to Martin Scorsese's experiment in terror.
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Notable film-oriented sites, including commercial and fan-generated Web pages. Sources and credits for photographs on these pages. About the creator of WIDE
ANGLE / CLOSEUP,
David Morgan.
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