Mira Sorvino Pt 1: On "Hollywood," "Badland" and "Waterlily Jaguar"

Sorvino in Waterlily Jaguarby Nathaniel R

The actress Mira Sorvino has been on our screens both large and small for nearly 30 years now. In the past few years the headlines came for speaking out about sexual harassment and her political activism. Now, with Ryan Murphy's Hollywood campaigning for Emmy nominations, and two recent indies available to stream (Badland and Waterlily Jaguar), the focus is back where it originally began: her acting. We talked to her recently about her newest roles.

She can currently be seen as the co-lead of Melora Walters' Waterlily Jaguar. "It's a really interesting art film about the complicated end of a relationship" she says describing the drama about an alcoholic novelist and his wife. While the movie is anguished by nature, Sorvino is a canny enough entertainer to know just when to liven the mood without betraying the tone, in this case with heartbreakingly forced cheer.

But among her recent projects it's Ryan Murphy's high profile mini-series Hollywood which has reminded the most people of her gift. Even, in a neat life-imitating-art parallel, of her Oscar win...

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Zainab Jah and Jayme Lawson on the Vulnerability of Theater Acting

by Murtada Elfadl

Lupita Nyong'o and Zainab Jah in "Eclipsed"

We continue the conversation between Zainab Jah and Jayme Lawson from the Sundance 2020 film Farewell Amor, that we started yesterday. Both actresses have worked on stage and in film and today they're speaking to what diffrentiates the experiences. Jah also tells us about the time she co-starred on Broadway in 2016 with Lupita Nyong’o in Danai Gurira’s play Eclipsed, about five Liberian women and their tale of survival near the end of the Second Liberian Civil War in the early 2000s.

The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity...

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Interview: Eliza Hittman on 'Never Rarely Sometimes Always'

by Murtada Elfadl

The first great movie of 2020 has arrived. Visceral, exquisite and artfully rigorous Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always drops the audience into the experience of two teenage girls in rural Pennsylvania. Faced with an unintended pregnancy and a lack of local support, Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) and her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) embark across state lines to New York City on a fraught journey trying to secure an abortion. The performances from newcomers Flanignan and Ryder are stunning in their simplicity and authenticity and Hittman reaches new heights with her assured filmmaking no matter what you thought of her previous films, Beach Rats (2017) and It Felt Like Love (2013). The movie won raves at this year's Sundance and won the Grand Jury Prize, or 2nd place, at the Berlinale last month.

Ryder, Hittman and Flanigan at the Berlinale

We recently met with Hittman in New York. [This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.] 

Murtada Elfadl: Congratulations on the film. I saw it at Sundance. I really loved it. It's great.I wanted to ask you first about working with the actors. I hear Sidney Flanagan has never acted before and Talia Ryder has maybe done a couple of things,

Eliza Hittman: Stage. She's done musical theater.

They are amazing. I was flabbergasted by these performances. I read about your casting process, but can you talk about working with them on set, how did you manage to get these performances out of them?

We had a day and a half to prepare and to rehearse.

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Interview: Joker's Costume Designer Mark Bridges

by Nathaniel R

Mark Bridges with Joker costumes

Mark Bridges film career began, as so many have, rather inauspicously. His debut was a now forgotten horror film called Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992) but there's no keeping talent like his down... though it never hurts to attach yourself straight away to a future god-level auteur like Paul Thomas Anderson. Bridges was on board for Anderson's feature debut Hard Eight (1996) and the celebrated auteur wisely never let go of him thereafter. Inbetween Anderson films (and on them in point of fact) Bridges established himself as a world class costume designer of tremendous versatility, with a gift for not just memorable clothing but character-building.

His latest film, Joker, became his most widely viewed work and then an Academy favourite. We had a chance to talk to the two-time Oscar winner (Phantom Thread, The Artist) this past week about his design process, his favourites from his own filmography, and why he loves his job so much...

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Interview: Rodrigo Prieto on working with great auteurs and "The Irishman"

Rodrigo Prieto has long been one of the most versatile cinematographers in the world. He first came to international fame with the gritty Oscar nominated Mexican drama Amores Perros (2000) though filmmakers in Hollywood, we learned in our interview, had noticed his skill even earlier than that. Since then he's worked all over the world and in an impressive array of genres and styles.

We gave you a teaser of our long sit down with this great visual stylist a couple of months ago (we had to grill him about Brokeback Mountain first) but we were meeting to discuss The Irishman. Martin Scorsese's latest Best Picture nominee had yet to open when we spoke but it was a critical darling immediately and Prieto secured his third Oscar nomination for his contributions to the mournful epic. We spoke to him about his visual choices, what he loves about his job, and working with auteurs like Martin Scorsese and Ang Lee. How do they differ on set and which of Prieto's films had they seen to convince them to begin their long collaborations?

[This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity]

NATHANIEL: Your first several movies were in Mexico. It was Amores Perros (2000), wasn’t it, when Hollywood came calling? Could you feel your career exploding? 

RODRIGO PRIETO: It was actually a little bit before. My fourth movie All of Them Witches got international recognition. That's what got me my agents. I did another movie called  Un embrujo (1998)  that Carlos Carrera directed that got an award in San Sebastian  for cinematography. It put me on the “10 to watch list” in Variety. That's the one that made me think, you know, people might have started hearing my name a little bit...

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