The wonderful world of Adam Stockhausen

by Cláudio Alves

Over the past decade, Adam Stockhausen has become one of Hollywood's most formidable production designers. Working his way up as an art director, the first movies he got to design weren't the most prestigious fair. Indeed, Wes Craven's late-career horrors didn't give him much opportunity to show off. That all changed when Wes Anderson, Steve McQueen, and Steven Spielberg all started to go to him as their preferred designer, relying on Stockhausen to create whole worlds from scratch, whether within a realistic milieu or total fantasy. Back in 2014, Grand Budapest Hotel earned him an Oscar, and Stockhausen is back on the hunt for more gold. Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch just arrived in American theaters, and the new West Side Story is on the horizon. Could he even nab an elusive double nomination?

Here are some highlights from Adam Stockhausen's filmography as production designer, from Anderson's whimsy to Spielberg's glitz…

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Cannes Diary #07: The French Dispatch, a Boomer, and a lot of "I liked it, but..."

by Elisa Giudici

Three Floors (Nanni Moretti)

Cannes Film Festival has a color coded hierarchy. The lowest of the low are Yellow pass holders. With their slightly less powerless Blue cousins, they spend a lot of time (aka hours) in queue, hoping for a miracle. Pink journalists arrive later, having a high priority pass that lets them sleep a little more. At the top of journalist hierarchy, the aristocracy of pass holders: legendary Le Blanche, aka White pass holders. They can arrive at the last minute, waving their credentials to open every door.

The tales say so though I've never witnessed this with my own eyes. This year, with the (still not that reliable but definitively improved) ticketing system, things were a bit different. Even I, a humble yellow pass holder, was able to see almost every single movie on my list. Here are the four competition films I saw today...

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Cannes at Home: Day 7

by Cláudio Alves

Last year, while the Cannes Film Festival did not occur, the organizers revealed a list of titles selected. Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch was among them, and, unlike many other films slotted for the 2020 Croisette, it rescheduled all release plans so it could still premiere at the festival. After a one-year delay, it's finally upon us, and the reviews skew positive. Let's hope it's worth the wait. Another main competition title to take its bow today was Kirill Serebrennikov's Petrov's Flu. It's the Russian director's second film to compete for the Palme d'Or and his first release since a controversial conviction for embezzlement. Still banned from leaving Russia, he attended the festival by FaceTime. More on that later. For now, let's look back at these directors' previous successes – a bittersweet comedy on dysfunctional families and a galvanizing political allegory about modern Russia…

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Almost There: Ralph Fiennes in "The Grand Budapest Hotel"

by Cláudio Alves

With Netflix's The Dig arriving friday, let's talk about the remarkable Ralph Fiennes. Oscar-wise, the British actor hit it big quickly, earning a nomination for his third feature, Best Picture champion Schindler's List. For a handful of years, it seemed like he'd become an awards season perennial, but things turned out differently. While he conquered another Oscar nomination for 1996's The English Patient, he's won little buzz since. That doesn't reflect a decrease in the quality of his work nor a turn to less prestigious fare. Oddly, even when he gets great reviews in titles beloved by AMPAS, an acting nomination remains elusive. This was never more evident than in 2014 when Fiennes delivered a tour-de-force in one of the most nominated movies of the year, The Grand Budapest Hotel…

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The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson's latest

by Murtada Elfadl

Wes Anderson’s new movie, The French Dispatch, is about a fictional weekly magazine that was inspired by The New Yorker. That’s big news for this writer who got their subscription while still a teenager, and used to look at the “goings on about town” and imagine living in New York, while being so far away in Khartoum. Immediately the film shoots to the top of my most anticipated for the year...

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