Welcome to our special Academy Awards SHOOT >e.dition, which includes all 16 feature story installments of SHOOT ’s “The Road To Oscars” Series , as well as other related coverage. The weekly “Road To Oscar” Series began back in October 2019. This series has shared insights from assorted Oscar contenders and/or nominees, including: Directors Todd Phillips ( Joker ), Rupert Goold ( Judy ), Greta Gerwig ( Little Women ), Bong Joon Ho ( Parasite ), Jay Roach ( Bombshell ), Steven Bognar (... Read More 

The road to making movie history may include a brief detour and navigation through insecurity as producer Emma Tillinger Koskoff can attest. Koskoff is a two-time nominee this year for the Best Picture Oscar--on the strength of her work on director Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman (Netflix) and Todd Phillips’ Joker (Warner Bros. Pictures). This marks just the fifth time in Academy Award history that a producer has been nominated for two Best Picture Oscars simultaneously--the first four being... Read More 

Todd Phillips, speaking after a screening of Joker (Warner Bros.) last week in Hollywood, noted that he didn’t view its 11 Oscar nominations as somehow vindicating in light of the earlier criticism the film received in some circles for its violent content. Garnering the most nominations of any movie this year--including Best Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay (with Scott Silver) for Phillips--was simply “thrilling and exciting,” affirmed the filmmaker, adding that any “vindication,” if... Read More 

LOS ANGELES -- If history is any indicator, Sam Mendes has to be considered the clear frontrunner to win the Best Director Oscar after last night (1/25) taking the coveted DGA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Feature Film on the strength of 1917 . He topped a DGA field of nominees that also consisted of Bong Joon Ho for Parasite , Martin Scorsese for The Irishman , Taika Waititi for Jojo Rabbit and Quentin Tarantino for Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood . Only seven times in the DGA’s 70-year-plus history... Read More 

The awards season norm has seen the nearly annual emergence of at least one difference between the Best Director Oscar and DGA Award nominees lineups. In only five of the 72 years of the DGA Awards have the Guild nominations exactly mirrored their Academy Award counterparts. This time around directors Todd Phillips and Taika Waititi are in line with that history. Phillips earned his first career Best Director Oscar nod for Joker (Warner Bros.) but was not among DGA Award nominees. Waititi, who... Read More 

For writer-director Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite (Neon), editor Jinmo Yang has already earned assorted accolades including his first Oscar nomination as well as an ACE Eddie Award win for best edited dramatic feature film. Last May, Parasite won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or. And this month Parasite earned a total of six Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture, Best International Film (South Korea) and Best Director. Parasite introduces us to the Park and Kim families. The former clan... Read More 

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Female filmmakers were shut out, "Parasite" made history and "Joker" edged out "The Irishman," "1917" and "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" in Monday's Oscar nominations. Todd Phillips' R-rated superhero smash "Joker" topped all films with 11 nominations to the 92nd Academy Awards, while Martin Scorsese's elegiac crime epic "The Irishman," Quentin Tarantino's 1960s Los Angeles fairy tale "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" and Sam Mendes' continuous World War I tale "1917" all trailed close... Read More 

Costume designer Mark Bridges is a three-time Oscar nominee, twice winning Academy Awards--in 2012 for The Artist , and in 2018 for Phantom Thread . His other career nod came in 2015 for Inherent Vice . The Artist was directed by Michel Hazanavicius while both Inherent Vice and Phantom Thread were helmed by Paul Thomas Anderson, with whom Bridges has a lengthy and distinguished shared filmography spanning such titles as Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood and The Master . Bridges has... Read More 

Collaborative waters run deep for director Todd Haynes, cinematographer Ed Lachman, ASC, and editor Affonso Goncalves, ACE. Lachman’s working relationship with Haynes dates back to the 2002 release Far from Heaven . Lachman earned Academy Award nominations both for that film and for Haynes’ 2015 drama, Carol . Lachman also lensed the Haynes features I’m Not There and Wonderstruck , as well as the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce , for which he garnered an Emmy nomination. Mildred Pierce ,... Read More 

It took nearly a decade to get their movie made--or from another perspective, to gain an understanding of a “foreign” language that’s overlooked by, if not invisible to many. Either way, the film was worth the wait for writers Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster, promoting a deeper appreciation of that language’s universal value and the message it imparts. The film penned by Fitzerman-Blue and Harpster was A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Sony Pictures). Their journey began by chance one... Read More 

Director Jay Roach first saw the script to Bombshell (Lionsgate) when actress/producer Charlize Theron sent it to him to provide notes. “I was so hooked by the story. After, I spoke so passionately about why it mattered and encouraged her to do it,” recalled Roach who added, “I cared so much about what these women were up against, what their predicament was. I don’t watch a lot of Fox (News). I have a lot of skepticism about a lot put out by Fox. I didn’t think it would be a place where a big... Read More 

Last year when accepting her DGA nomination medallion for Lady Bird , Greta Gerwig said to her peers in the audience, “Storytellers are healers and I am so honored to be included among you.” Storytelling can indeed be healing--by raising awareness of peoples’ circumstances or plights and in turn fostering empathy for others, even helping us to look at ourselves and life differently. By continuing her healing ways, Gerwig may soon be receiving another DGA medallion as director of Little Women (... Read More 

Editor Wyatt Smith, ACE was finishing up director Rob Marshall’s Mary Poppins Returns when he got the chance to connect with filmmaker Kasi Lemmons. “I was coming off a big Disney film looking for a smaller character-driven drama,” recalled Smith who acknowledged that on the surface he wouldn’t seem like a leading candidate for such a gig--much less Lemmons' film about the life of Harriet Tubman, a black female hero whose work via the Underground Railroad brought countless slaves to freedom... Read More 

While Renée Zellweger has deservedly received widespread acclaim for her portrayal of Judy Garland in Judy (Roadside Attractions)--and Darci Shaw for playing Garland as a child star--production designer Kave Quinn deserves “supporting actors” consideration as both of those performances were enhanced by her work recreating the worlds of 1930s’ Hollywood and ‘60s London that the superstar singer/actress inhabited. Specifically Quinn helps take us back to London in the late 1960s when Garland is... Read More 

Composer Alexandre Desplat, a 10-time Oscar nominee and two-time winner (for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel in 2015, and Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water in 2018), is once again in the awards season conversation--this time on the strength of Little Women (Sony Pictures Entertainment/Columbia Pictures), his first collaboration with writer-director Greta Gerwig. Desplat was drawn not only to the opportunity to work with Gerwig but also the brilliance of her script, based on the... Read More 

While his body of work is quite diverse, cinematographer Eigil Bryld has built within that a bit of a niche in politically charged stories as reflected in his Emmy-winning effort on Netflix’s House of Cards , his recent turn lensing the HBO limited series The Loudest Voice starring Russell Crowe as Fox News creator Roger Ailes, and now on the feature front with The Report (Amazon Studios), written, produced and directed by Scott Z. Burns. Based on actual events, The Report stars Adam Driver as... Read More 

Oscar-winning sound mixer Tom Fleischman already has an eventful awards season in store. The Cinema Audio Society recently announced that Fleischman will receive its highest honor, the CAS Career Achievement Award, to be presented at the 56th CAS Awards on January 25, 2020 in Los Angeles. He is being recognized for assorted accomplishments such as five Academy Award nominations, including a win for Hugo , four Emmy Awards culled from multiple nominations, and seven CAS Awards from a total of 13... Read More 

Don’t judge a clown by his makeup--or a book by its cover--would be a prime lesson learned by production designer Mark Friedberg whose brilliant work on Joker (Warner Bros. Pictures) might not have been if he hadn’t overcome his initial reluctance to take on what from afar seemed like another blockbuster film in the comic book genre. Of the Joker script, Friedberg recalled, “Ironically when I was first called, I didn’t want to even read it as I didn’t think I was the guy to make a superhero... Read More 

LOS ANGELES -- All the world’s a stage. And director Rupert Goold knows his way around a stage for varied pursuits. He is artistic director of the Almeida Theatre in London, served in the same capacity at the U.K.’s Headlong Theatre and Northampton Theatres, as well as associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company. For his work on stage in live theatre, Goold is a two-time recipient of the Olivier, Critics’ Circle and Evening Standard awards for Best Director. He has directed revivals, opera, musicals,... Read More 

LOS ANGELES -- Judy (Roadside Attractions) takes us back to two eras--1969 when Judy Garland, portrayed brilliantly by Renée Zellweger, is towards the end of her life. It’s at a juncture when Garland is in dire straits, has health issues, can’t get a good paying gig in the U.S. and is struggling with her third ex-husband Sid Luft over custody of their children for whom she can’t suitably provide. Her only viable alternative is London where she is still revered, and can make major money with a running... Read More 

Writer-director Chinonye Chukwu became part of the Oscar season buzz when her Clemency (Neon) won the Grand Jury Award in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Featuring a compelling performance by Alfre Woodard as prison warden Bernadine Williams, Clemency puts a different perspective on capital punishment. We see that years of carrying out death row executions have taken a profound toll on Williams. An emotional distance, if not outright blockage, has... Read More 

Robert Eggers made an auspicious feature directing debut with The Witch , which earned him Film Independent Spirit Awards for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay in 2017. Two years earlier upon its worldwide premiere at Sundance, The Witch won the Directing Award in the U.S. Dramatic category. The indie horror hit brought to audiences the terrors of a 1630s’ New England family with a psychological folk lore bent. Now Eggers’ second feature, The Lighthouse (A24), takes us back to the... Read More 

Writer-director Bong Joon Ho found his film Parasite (Neon) in a unique position prior to when it hit U.S. theaters earlier this month. The movie was already a commercial and critical success--a box office hit in his native South Korea, and winning the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or back in May. Parasite has already been named South Korea’s entry for the best international film Oscar, and is seen by many as a contender for other mainstream Academy Award honors. Speaking to SHOOT through an... Read More 

Marielle Heller has a talent and affinity for teaming with actors to help nurture tour de force performances from them. Her two last features are prime examples: Can You Ever Forgive Me? with Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant earning Oscar nominations for best lead actress and best supporting actor, respectively, earlier this year; and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Sony Pictures), which is scheduled for a November 22nd release and features a brilliant turn by two time Academy Award... Read More 

Nominated for the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and then winning Audience Favorite distinction at Sundance’s London fest, The Farewell paradoxically marked a major industry hello, signaling the high-profile arrival of director Lulu Wang. She described her Sundance experience in Park City, Utah, as a “dream scenario,” with her parents seeing The Farewell for the first time in a theater with 1,200 people. Then came rave reviews, and a phone call Wang fielded the... Read More 

Scott Z. Burns has worn different industry hats with great aplomb. He was a producer on the Oscar-winning feature documentary An Inconvenient Truth and then its sequel. His writing credits range from director Paul Greengrass’ The Bourne Ultimatum to Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant!, Contagion, Side Effects and the recent Netflix release Laundromat . Burns also served as a producer on Side Effects and Laundromat . Now he has further extended his filmography and storytelling reach with The... Read More 

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. -- The audience appetite for documentaries has grown significantly, fueled by the times according to Steven Bognar who teamed with Julia Reichert to direct American Factory (Netflix, Participant Media, Higher Ground Productions), which chronicles the culture clash that ensues when a shuttered General Motors plant in Dayton, Ohio, is taken over by a giant Chinese company. “People are aware that documentaries are vital cinema,” affirmed Bognar, adding that viewers are clamoring for the truth during... Read More 

Cinematographer Dick Pope, BSC is a two-time Oscar nominee, for Neil Burger’s The Illusionist in 2007 and Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner in 2015. Edward Norton starred in The Illusionist and now Pope finds his latest collaboration with the actor, Motherless Brooklyn (Warner Bros.), in the awards season conversation. Norton not only stars in the film, but also wrote, directed and produced it. Norton portrays Lionel Essrog, a lone wolf private detective living with Tourette Syndrome. He looks to solve... Read More 

One DP had a gratifying experience working on Alma Har’el’s first narrative feature film, feeling simpatico with the director’s visceral and poetic approach. Another cinematographer was drawn to the prospect of lensing an old-school cop film, adding to a recent flurry of work which marked his return to HBO’s Westworld --not just as a DP but for the first time as an episodic director. And our third lenser reunited with director Andy Muschietti to turn out the box office hit, IT Chapter Two ... Read More 

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Renée Zellweger, Al Pacino and dozens of other Academy Award nominees bowed their heads in a moment of silence Monday for Kobe Bryant to open the annual Oscars luncheon, a somber moment in an otherwise sunny annual affair that serves as a meet-and-greet, celebration and training session for each year's class of nominees. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President David Rubin asked the audience to honor the NBA star and 2018 Oscar winner, and his daughter, who were among nine people... Read More 

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