Interview: Double Lopez on "Into the Unknown"

by Eric Blume

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down to speak with Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, nominated for the Best Song Oscar for "Into the Unknown" for Frozen 2.  This talented duo has already won the Oscar twice in this category, for the megahit "Let It Go" from the original Frozen, and "Remember Me" from Coco.  They could not be more charming and charismatic, as witnessed here...

[This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity]

Eric: At what point in the process were you brought in on FROZEN 2?

KRISTEN: Very early on when it was like, 'I think we're going to do Frozen 2. We're thinking it's about change.' Jennifer Lee [Frozen 2's writer/director] called us, sort of tipped us off.

ROBERT: It needed to happen because, you know, the sounds in a musical are as integral as any dialogue and in fact, they have to bear a lot more weight. So we had to be there. We helped influence the story and they helped influence the songs...

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Gloria Steinem is a lot more interesting than "The Glorias" would have us believe

Ren Jender reporting from Sundance

Director Julie Taymor's The Glorias adapted (by Taymor and Sarah Ruhl) from Gloria Steinem's 2015 book "My Life on the Road" premiered this past Sunday at Sundance to long applause and a talk afterward between Steinem and Taymor. But those who have read Steinem's books and paid more than cursory attention to her feminist activism will be disappointed in how clunky and oversimplified the script is. One groan-worthy device has Gloria, at various ages, (the majority of the time she’s played either by either by a stiff Alicia Vikander or a warmer, but still anodyne, Julianne Moore) sitting in a bus looking out the window and conversing with her previous selves...

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"An Officer and a Spy" and "Les Miserables" battle it out for the César

by Nathaniel R

France's Oscar parallel competition, the Césars, have finally announced their nominations for the film year. Roman Polanski's adaptation of Robert Harris's novel An Officer and a Spy leads the nominations. It's based on the Dreyfus affair and Emile Zola's "J'Accuse!" letter, both of which are also the topic of one of Oscar's earliest Best Picture winners The Life of Emile Zola (1937).  The drama leads the Césars with 12 nominations while the Oscar-nominated Les Miserables and the riveting queer romantic drama Portrait of a Lady on Fire were right behind with 10 nominations each. After the jump all the nominations and a few notes...

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"Ema" at Sundance

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

Chilean director Pablo Larraín was last at the Sundance Film Festival with frequent collaborator Gael García Bernal in 2013 for the Oscar-nominated No. Since then, he’s earned two additional bids from the Golden Globes in the foreign language category for The Club and Neruda. He even made his first film in English: Jackie. Now, Larraín is back with another Bernal film, showing in the Spotlight section after its premiere at the Venice International Film Festival.

Though Bernal plays a substantial role, this film is all about actress Mariana Di Girolamo. She stars as the title character, who is married to Bernal’s choreographer character...

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Sundance Review: Nine Days

by Murtada Elfadl

There’s a very fine between profound and superficial, what is genuinely revelatory and what is obvious. It’s a line that writer / director Edson Oda straddles in his sweeping drama about the meaning of life (yep, I know), Nine Days. Unfortunately to these eyes he ultimately falls on obvious and unearned, while asking the audience to believe it’s profound.  

Oda pulls us into a world wholly conceived by him. A man named Will (Winston Duke) who used to be alive now watches VHS tapes of people going on about their lives. When someone dies he gets nine days to interview unliving souls for the vacant position of a new life on earth...

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