And now, just in time for Oscar junkies, comes a new statistical mincing of the movies that may someday yield an award category of its own: best fit between a movie’s tempo and the natural rhythms of the brain.

Reporting in the journal Psychological Science, James E. Cutting of Cornell University and his colleagues described their discovery that Hollywood [...]

Seeing is believing but hearing also plays a key role in making things real in “The Hurt Locker.” Indeed, two of the nine Oscar nominations for Kathryn Bigelow’s film are for work by sound designer Paul N.J. Ottosson: one for achievement in sound (with Ray Beckett) and one for achievement in sound editing.
Ottosson, an Oscar [...]

When Hollywood types are asked to name their heroes, Martin Scorsese’s name always makes the short list. For budding directors, there’s no better guy to rip off, whether it’s for a lengthy tracking shot (“Swingers”) or gritty violence set to classic rock (everything Tarantino ever did).
So who does the “GoodFellas” director borrow from?
Scorsese, whom author [...]

Elm Street…a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there! Early last year, IESB visited the set of the new A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. There I was, sitting on a 737 on my way to Chicago, no, not on one of them there fancy aeroplanes, this one had no internet, no video screens [...]

Long known as a confectioner of imagined worlds both tender and fantastical, director Tim Burton now sets his sights on the most classic of fairy tales - Frank Baum’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’. It’s a story plucked for Burton to be transformed into a visual journey. The movie sees 19-year-old Alice returns to the magical world from her childhood adventure, where [...]

Steven Spielberg says there was only one reason to make his new “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn” with the cutting-edge performance-capture technology that James Cameron used on “Avatar.”
“It was based on my respect for the art of Hergé and wanting to get as close to that art as I could,” says the director, referring to Tintin’s author-illustrator, [...]

Kirsten Dunst made big news in the blogosphere last year when she was photographed dancing on the streets of Tokyo’s Akihabara shopping district while dolled up as a blue-haired anime princess. Turned out she was performing for a video collaboration between director McG and artist Takashi Murakami titled “Akihabara Majokko Princess.”
The video, in which Dunst [...]

For production designer Rick Carter, Avatar is the ultimate expression to date of one of the underlying themes of his work. Working primarily for Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, Carter has made films in which the characters—and the audience—go on journeys into different worlds. To bring these worlds to life, and make these journeys believable, has [...]