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maxbernini · 3 years

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sekou and zoe :0? for 3 headcanons

tysm anon 💕 sorry this is so long i’m on mobile & can’t do a read more

zoe m (assuming it’s her and not wtf’s zoe lol):

- zoe is THE postergirl for “pretending you’re famous in the shower and being interviewed”, which is cool, we all do it, except zoe doesn’t limit herself to the shower, nor is she silent. many times ava has come home to find zoe in the kitchen telling an invisible oprah a highly exaggerated version of her life: something about kieu my once being SO lovesick zoe thought she had a fever and had to carry her to the hospital, bridal-style, and also there were zombies. it’s an easy way to make nora laugh too, but on her worst days, zoe will hold her and when she’s calm, give an “off the record interview” where she details why she loves her sister, the strongest person she knows

- she writes fan-fiction. it used to be self-insert type stuff, you know, “my mom sold me to one direction” and the like, but actually...really really good? she had a solid wattpad fan-base for a reason. nora used to make her story covers on photoshop. she sticks to ao3 now, posting devastatingly gorgeous 30k pieces once every six months or so that garner their own mini fandoms. i’m not going to say what medias she’s writing for, but i’m not ruling out a certain cursed never-ending CW show, nor something completely different and wild like....RPF about the buzzfeed unsolved guys or whatever. or maybe less famous, very niche buzzfeed people which makes it better/worse (she gets her own ‘10 Lines In This Fanfic About Our Employees That Will Make You Cry Into A Pillow And Demand We Start A Union’ article)

- when the instas went on their social media detox / camping retreat / whatever the fuck it was, zoe enjoyed herself more than she thought she would. they were there to help constantin, yes, but it was healing for her, too. she, kieu my, and finn shared a tent, and on the last night, she stayed awake far longer than she should’ve, listening to their breathing, listening to the trees. if she concentrated hard enough, she could make everything fade away until she felt, for a strange, single moment, that she was the only person in the entire world. it was honestly comforting, all that peace and quiet and numbness, and yet, when asked about her exhaustion the next day, she says she stayed up on guard to protect them from any bears or serial killers; ismail immediately pretends to stab finn (“i was the killer all along!”), and amidst all the ensuing dramatic chaos, zoe thinks: i am very glad to not be alone. i am very glad to be alive.

sékou:

- with an older brother and two older sisters, sékou’s the ��baby’ of the family but they don’t baby or other him at all. they’re all close, despite the miles between them: his parents came with him to canada, though his dad, a doctor (and his son’s biggest defender, especially when it came to getting diagnosed within an ableist, racist healthcare system) had to stay in paris a little longer to sort out work stuff with the pandemic, meaning he and his mom spent the first few months alone - “but not lonely!” she says every morning over breakfast; she doesn’t mind cooking it because she loves him and he helps with dinner anyways, as that’s how he unwinds after school. dealing with numbers in recipes helps him stay sharp whilst allowing him to relax and have fun

- other unwinding techniques include IT-related commissions, video editing, art history, philosophy, and, of course, urbex. since it’s canon that la mif are too depressed to urbex now that he’s gone, i’ll say it’s the opposite for him. he does urbex in canada, and it’s nice to finally be with people who follow maps and put safety first and are rather clinical - though not necessarily boring - about their approach. he becomes the president of his uni’s urbex club, the quickest anyone’s ever risen through the ranks. still, sometimes down in those tunnels it’s dark enough that it’s easy to pretend he’s back in paris, the indecipherable shapes around him his old friends. he tags their initials on a wall, and never tells them, his own little secret

- determined to not fall out of touch to an irreparable degree though, sékou sends la mif letters/packages, often very personalized: it starts with, like, memes for jo, film recs for max, political articles for maya, positive affirmations for lola etc, before becoming an international small gifts exchange because everyone involved is extra. noticing two new guys on the group insta, sekou thinks it’d be rude to exclude them, figuring there’s no harm in sending a tiny boxing glove keychain he saw at the store the other day, or some sewing tips his eldest sister, a fashion designer, passes along. bc skamfr is often an unintentional comedy (eg: the car), everybody in la mif assumes they’re the only one getting sent stuff bc nobody talks about it out of guilt (“what if he’s not sending them things...”). so it’s quite a shock when sékou flies back home for summer and he and redouane are like, immediately going in for a hug, the first to do so, and bilal presents sékou with a homemade bowtie. max is very pouty about it but max is pouty about most things so jo elbows him in the ribs and they all hash it out at maya’s that night; sékou takes one look at the place and thinks: i’m glad your taste in decor is better than your wardrobe, and then thinks: i’m not sure where i want to live, there are so many things i want to do and discover and become, but there’s no where else i’d rather call home right now (is he talking about the city or his friends?? you decide!)

give me a character and i’ll tell you three pieces of headcanon i have about them!

#long post #ask #anon #:0 anon #headcanon meme #zoe machwitz #sekou #(last name when??)

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wineanddinosaur · 4 years

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Wine 101: Napa Valley

Inspired by one of VinePair’s most popular site sections, the Wine 101 Podcast takes an educational, easy-to-digest look into the world of wine. This episode of Wine 101 is sponsored by Louis M. Martini Winery. For more than 85 years Louis M. Martini Winery has crafted world-class Cabernet Sauvignon from exceptional vineyards of Napa and Sonoma Counties. Our founder believed in a simple, honest premise: The best grapes make the best wine. This guy was one of the OGs, guys. Today, the legacy of ingenuity, endurance, and passion continue at the historic winery in Napa Valley, with an acclaimed collection of unforgettable Cabernet Sauvignon wines. Louis M. Martini. Craft your legacy.

Welcome back to Wine 101. In this week’s episode, VinePair tastings director Keith Beavers takes listeners all across the Napa Valley and the 16 additional American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) that are responsible for some of the United States’s finest wines.

The area first gained international fame in the 1976 Judgement of Paris, when an American wine won big in a blind tasting. Since then, Napa Valley’s wines have grown to even greater heights and secured a place for decades in the White House. Beavers takes listeners back to the beginning and traces the links between California missions and the first vineyards. This history is loaded with a surprising amount of fur trapping and mountain men, and somehow gave way to the creation of the Valencia orange.

While many producers had to concede to the frustrations of Prohibition, a few of the Napa vintners who survived continue to grow today. By breaking down each region into its most famous producers, and the ties between different climates and grapes, this episode truly celebrates Napa Valley and all it has to offer.

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My name is Keith Beavers, and do we all like soup? I mean, it feels like there’s a real rift between people who do and don’t like soup.

What’s going on wine lovers? Welcome to Episode 24 of VinePair’s Wine 101 podcast. My name is Keith Beavers. I’m the tastings director of VinePair. Howdy.

Napa Valley, I mean, we all know “we know” Napa Valley, right? But there’s so much going on in that valley that we may not know about. It can be a little confusing, so let’s just break the Napa Valley down so we completely understand it.

When we talk about American wine, I mean Napa Valley is the first that comes to mind, right? It’s our big deal. It’s the wine region that put us on the map as a wine-producing country. In 1976, the Judgment of Paris, which I’ve talked about in previous episodes. There is so much to talk about with the Napa Valley, like how it began, how it got to where it is today. It’s a fascinating story.

So I’m going to riff a little bit on history, but I really want to give you a sense of the geography and what the Napa Valley is, so that when you’re in a wine shop, you look at a shelf and you’re like, “Okay, I understand all this Napa Valley right here. I got all this.”

Wine in California really started down in San Diego, which is kind of crazy with the Franciscan monks that were building missions all the way up through California. And they had this grape they used, there’s actually a native Spanish grape, but we ended up calling it the Mission grape, because it was planted at the missions. And this grape was planted in every mission the monks built from San Diego all the way north to Sonoma, which is the last mission built by them. And we’re going to get to Sonoma in another episode, which is actually a neighboring region of Napa, but this was the grape everybody used. Actually, in the early to mid-19th century, there were vineyards in Los Angeles. There was a Frenchman whose name, this is amazing, his name was Jean-Louis Vignes, which means John Lewis Vines. I call him Johnny Vines. He had a winery and vineyards in downtown Los Angeles. He planted the Mission grape, but he also brought in varieties from Bordeaux. And his story is really cool. I wish I could tell the whole thing, but he built a French community in downtown Los Angeles.

It was really thriving for a long time, and really awesome. And actually, if you’ve ever driven down Vine Street In Los Angeles, that is named after him. It’s so cool. This was also the era of “The Mountain Man.” There’s all these dudes just running around the hills of California, trapping animals, selling them, selling their furs, and their skins, and making tons of money doing it. Two prominent names, and they were actually friends, were William Wolfskill. I know, you can’t make that stuff up. It’s such a cool name. And a dude named George C. Yount. They were trappers and mountain men, and they had had some fun over on the coast. They were over there like trapping sea otters for a while.

And after they made a bunch of money, they came back into Los Angeles and the two of them parted ways. William Wolfskill wanted to stay in Los Angeles. He saw the wine thing happening. So he ended up starting his own wine company in Los Angeles, downtown Los Angeles, very close to Johnny Vines, actually, which is really wild.

And actually William Wolfskill also got into the citrus business and he was the one who developed the Valencia orange, The Valencia orange, how Los Angeles is that? It’s pretty crazy. George C. Yount ended up going with this really famous mountain man trailblazer dude, named Jedediah Smith. And he ended up north of San Francisco Bay in a place called the Napa Valley. Now George C. Yount wasn’t really a wine guy, per se. He was more about money and when the Gold Rush hit, he was living up here in Napa Valley. He was supplying supplies to the people during the Gold Rush. At some point, he acquires a large swath of land by a native of this area who was a vine grower.

And at some point, George plants vines on his property, but he didn’t really manage it. He actually hired a kid named Charles Krug to do that stuff. And Charles Krug eventually becomes the guy who really helps out a lot of people in this area to get the wine thing started. I’m really generalizing here, because there’s a lot of details, and I wish I could go into all of it, but I can’t.

But what this did was this began the first generation of winemakers in the Napa Valley. And from the late 1800s to 1919, this area — and Sonoma — was seen as a premier wine region. And there were people outside of the United States that had their eye on this area. And in 1919, when the Volstead Act was ratified, man, that messed everything up.

There was a hope in the beginning that wine and beer would be saved from this act, but it didn’t. The amount of alcohol was low enough that wine, beer, and spirits were all illegal. And that decade was a tough decade. A lot of vineyards closed in California and Napa and Sonoma, but through legal loopholes, some winemakers survived this crazy time.

And in 1933, when the Volstead Act was basically repealed, there were some winemakers left that really wanted to get this thing going again. They were ready. And by 1940, there are six winemakers: Beaulieu Vineyards, Beringer, the Christian Brothers, Inglenook Vineyards, Charles Krug, and Louis M. Martini, that formed what was called the Napa Valley Vintners, or Napa Valley Vintners Association.

And this is really cool. Their goal was, well, during Prohibition, bulk wine was sort of the thing that was part of the loopholes and everything. Their goal was to bring fine wine back to this area. And it began to work. And by the late 1960s, mid-to-late 1960s, America was getting really, the drinking culture was getting back into dry red wine because during Prohibition, it was all sweet red wine. That sweet tooth never really went away. But winemakers like Robert Mondavi, wineries like Trefethen, Freemark Abbey, Chateau Montelena, Sterling Vineyard, Stag’s Leap Cellars, Mayacamas, Stony Hill were showing that this area could make fine wine again. Actually, Robert Mondavi was the first, he was the guy that started doing the tasting rooms. The tasting rooms basically began with him.

And all this led up to 1976 with the Judgment of Paris, when American wine in a blind tasting won out over French wine. And these wines came from the Napa Valley. That kind of excitement led the United States to start creating and forming our own appellation system called the American Viticultural Areas. This is in 1978, and in 1980, the first AVA was awarded — not to Napa Valley, but to a wine region in Missouri called Augusta. So the Augusta AVA is awarded in 1980. Then eight months later in 1981, Napa Valley is the first AVA to be awarded to California. And this is where things go crazy. From the late ’70s until the 1980s, the wineries went from around 20 to about 200 or more.

And every year, a new AVA was being awarded in the Napa Valley. So Napa was the larger AVA, but all these smaller AVAs in the Napa Valley were also being awarded, to the point that in 1990, there was a petition to create a Bordeaux commune-style segmentation of Napa Valley. This never really came to total fruition, but it’s basically like that because the rules state that no matter what AVA you have in Napa Valley, you need to say “Napa Valley” and then the AVA that you’re in. So it’s almost like a village or something like that. So what does Napa Valley look like today? And how can we understand it?

Since 1981, it’s been awarded 16 more AVAs. So it’s really 17. You have the Napa Valley and you have 16 smaller AVAs within the valley and the surrounding mountains, which we’ll get into in a second. And it’s not the largest AVA out there. I mean, it is only about almost 40 miles north to south. And between the two mountain ranges, the valley itself, the widest it gets is about five miles, and the narrowest it gets is about one mile. So it’s not huge. It’s about one-eighth the size of Bordeaux. Speaking of Bordeaux, to understand Napa, really, because of me talking about the 1940s and the Napa Valley Vintners Association, this is a fine wine region.

I mean, there is affordable wine being made in Napa. Absolutely. But it is focused on refinement. There was a reason why they’re trying to make it into communes at one point. To give you a sense of this, Napa Valley only produces 4 percent of California’s annual wine production. So that’s pretty small. Eighty percent of the wineries make less than 10,000 cases a year. So it makes sense. Right?

And the magic of this place is you have these two mountain ranges on each side that were part of the formation of the San Andreas Fault. So, what we have here is we have San Francisco to the south. Then we have San Francisco Bay, north of San Francisco Bay is called San Pablo Bay. Just north of San Pablo Bay we go into a valley that is bordered on the east and the west by two mountain ranges. East side of the valley you have the Vaca mountain range, and that protects the valley from the heat of the Central Valley on the other side. On the west side of the Valley, you have the Mayacamas mountain range, which protects the valley from the coastal influence coming from the ocean.

So what you have here is you have a valley with a bunch of different kinds of soil compositions because of that San Andreas Fault craziness that helped develop these mountain ranges. And it’s protected from heat on one side and cool on the other side. So what you have is the breeze that comes from the San Francisco and San Pablo Bay rushes up through the valley all the way to the northern part of the valley.

And this is not a hard-and-fast rule because there’s a lot of factors involved, but generally, if you want to look at it this way, the AVAs in the southern part of the Napa Valley tend to be cooler, because they have more of an influence from the San Francisco and San Pablo Bay. As we get to the northern part of Napa Valley, that area has less of an influence from the bay, and it’s warmer in that area. But there’s a lot of factors involved, and at night it can get cool in all different parts, whether it’s north or south. So with all this elevation from the mountain ranges and with all of the different soils and with the breeze coming in and the cool nights and the warm days, it’s a perfect place to grow vines. And of course we know Napa Valley because of Cabernet Sauvignon, and we know Cabernet Sauvignon because of Napa Valley … and Chardonnay. But also Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot, Zinfandel, Syrah, Malbec, Cab Franc, Petit Verdot are all grown here as well.

And they’re mostly, a lot of those reds are made for blending with Cabernet Sauvignon, but you can do basically whatever you want in Napa Valley, but certain AVAs are just better for certain vines than other AVAs. To help wrap your mind around all this, you can think about it like this: The valley floor between the two mountain ranges going south to north, there are nine individual AVAs. On the bordering mountain ranges, there are six AVAs. And then there’s one AVA all the way out to the west. It’s almost partially in Napa, which we’ll get to last. And when it comes to the valley floor, we can actually group some AVAs into the heavy influence of San Pablo Bay.

So in the very Southern part of the Napa Valley, we have an AVA called Carneros. It’s the one of the coolest regions in Napa Valley. And it’s known for Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, but it’s also known for really good Pinot Noir because of that coolness. Just north of that, northwest is Coombsville. Coombsville is another one of those cooler regions. They make amazing Merlot, as far as I’m concerned. North of Carneros and northeast of Coombsville, on the northern border of the City of Napa, is Oak Knoll District, also known as a cool region. This is a great area for Zinfandel and Merlot. North of Oak Knoll is Yountville. And this AVA is, well, they make all kinds of wine there, but they’re really also known for their sparkling wine. And then east of that is the famous Stag’s Leap district. It’s famous because this is where Stag’s Leap Cellars is. This is the winery that won in the Judgment of Paris in 1976. It butts right up against the Vaca Mountain Range, and it has just an amazing climate for Cab and Merlot. It’s basically all they do. Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, and they make beautiful blends there. North of Yountville and Stag’s leap is Oakville. This is a pretty well-known area. This AVA, Oakville, is where a lot of the very well-known wineries are that we see on shelves. Screaming Eagle is from here, Harlan is from here, Far Niente, Opus One is from here. It’s kind of like in between. It’s right where the warmth and the cool kind of come together.

North of Oakville is Rutherford. This AVA is known for amazing Cabernet Sauvignon. This is actually the home of two pretty historic wineries: Inglenook and Beaulieu they’re part of that old-school, old-timer time before, you know, everything got better after Prohibition. And there are some pretty amazing patches of vineyards in here that make great and expensive Cabernet Sauvignon.

North of Rutherford, the mountain ranges kind of come close together. This is where the valley gets a little bit narrow. We get into the St. Helena AVA, and this is well known because this is where the famous Charles Krug, he was one of the most well-known wine consultants and winemakers in Napa Valley This is where he opened his winery in 1861.

North of St. Helena, now we’re up here, we’re away from the influence of San Pablo Bay. And this is where the Calistoga AVA is. And it’s one of the oldest areas in Napa for winemaking, but also, the AVA was only created in 2009, but here is the home of Chateau Montelena.

This is the winery that made the white wine that won the Judgment of Paris in 1976. It was a Chardonnay. So you have a Cabernet Sauvignon being made in the cooler region that won. And then you have a Chardonnay made in a warmer region that won. But the thing about Calistoga is it can be 95 degrees during the day, but at night because of a nearby valley, you can get down to 50 degrees. So it’s a perfect place for Chardonnay, and man, it’s a beautiful Chardonnay. And those are the nine AVAs that live on the valley floor. Now up in the mountains in the two ranges bordering the valley, there are six AVAs over on the eastern range, the Vaca Mountain Range, just east of that Stags Leap district up in the mountains is an AVA called Atlas Peak. It’s known for pretty amazing Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. You’re up there. It’s got a good elevation, got great acidity and these wines are beautiful, elegant, structured wines. At one time, an Italian winemaker tried to grow Sangiovese here and it didn’t really work, but they realized Chardonnay and Cab did, so of course, this is Napa, they work. They’re beautiful. Just northeast of that in this mountain range is the Chiles Valley, it’s a small AVA. It’s about 1,200 feet above sea level. And this is again mountains. Great Zinfandel comes from here, great Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc.

Just north of that is Howell Mountain. This is a really well-known AVA and it is about 1,400 feet above sea level. And it is very celebrated for their Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s very rugged. It’s a great place for Cabernet Sauvignon, with the sun and the elevation. It was actually once known more for Zinfandel, but because of the popularity of Cabernet Sauvignon, it just kind of overtook the Zinfandel. I haven’t had Zinfandel from Howell Mountain. I’m hoping somebody does make it, because I mean, it looks like it’d be an amazing place for that. Great. And on the western border of the valley, you have the Mayacamas Mountains and down in the southern part where Los Carneros is, so just north of Los Carneros and west of the Oak Knoll District, up in the mountains is the AVA called Mount Veeder. Just like Howell mountain, this place is really, really well known for its Cabernet Sauvignon. And of course, Chardonnay, and they’re playing with Malbec. North of that is the Spring Mountain District AVA. And of course they do Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, but again. it’s mountain fruit. So it’s this beautiful, structured, good acidity. And the thing about this is, on the other side of the Mayacamas Mountains is Sonoma. And that has the influence of the ocean. The Mayacamas Mountains actually are a source of cool air for the northern AVAs in the valley that don’t get the influence of the San Pablo Bay.

Then North of that, all the way up just south of the Calistoga AVA, up in the Mayacamas Mountains is the Diamond Mountain District. It’s known for extremely grippy, tannic Cabernet Sauvignon. But also this is the home of Schramsberg, which is one of Napa Valley’s premier sparkling wines. It’s a sparkling wine that was in the White House for a very long time.

If you have anybody coming from overseas to visit the White House, this is the sparkling wine that they offer. It’s almost like this is our Champagne, but it’s not Champagne.

Oh, and that is Napa Valley. So you have 16 AVAs, you have nine on the valley floor, you have six up in the mountains, and you had the larger area around it just called the Napa Valley AVA. And when you look at a label, you’ll see a winemaker’s name, you’ll see Napa Valley, and then you’ll see the AVA. Where the wine came from. If the wine just says Napa Valley, it can come from anywhere in the Napa Valley. That was a straight-up crash course, but I hope it gives you a little bit of a perspective on one of our most famous wine regions in the United States. So next time you’re at a wine shop and you see the Napa Valley section or the Napa section or the California section, you know what you’re looking at.

If you’re digging what I’m doing, picking up what I’m putting down, go ahead and give me a rating on iTunes or tell your friends to subscribe. You can subscribe. If you like to type, go ahead and send a review or something like that, but let’s get this wine podcast out so that everybody can learn about wine.

Check me out on Instagram. It’s @vinepairkeith. I do all my stuff in stories. And also, you got to follow VinePair on Instagram, which is @vinepair. And don’t forget to listen to the VinePair Podcast, which is hosted by Erica, Adam, and Zach. It’s a great deep dive into drinks culture every week.

Now, for some credits. How about that? Wine 101 is recorded and produced by yours truly, Keith Beavers, at the VinePair headquarters in New York City. I want to give a big shout-out to co-founders Adam Teeter and Josh Malin. I also want to thank Danielle Grinberg for making the most legit Wine 101 logo.

And I got to thank Darby Cicci for making this amazing song: Listen to this epic stuff. And finally, I want to thank the VinePair staff for helping me learn more every day. Thanks for listening. I’ll see you next week.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

The article Wine 101: Napa Valley appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/wine-101-napa-valley/

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johnboothus · 4 years

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Wine 101: Napa Valley

Listen Online

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Follow Keith Beavers on Instagram

Or Check Out the Conversation Here

My name is Keith Beavers, and do we all like soup? I mean, it feels like there’s a real rift between people who do and don’t like soup.

What’s going on wine lovers? Welcome to Episode 24 of VinePair’s Wine 101 podcast. My name is Keith Beavers. I’m the tastings director of VinePair. Howdy.

If you have anybody coming from overseas to visit the White House, this is the sparkling wine that they offer. It’s almost like this is our Champagne, but it’s not Champagne.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

The article Wine 101: Napa Valley appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/wine-101-napa-valley/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/wine-101-napa-valley

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sserpicko · 6 years

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Oscar: How Each 2018 Best Picture Nominee Got Here

There can only be one winner, but each of the Best Picture nominees overcame creative, financial and logistical hurdles to get this close to the finish line. Here are their war stories.

Black Panther

Fifty years ago, the phrase ‘Black Panther’ carried more political baggage than it does today, immediately summoning up images of a militant African-American revolutionary, named after by the controversial civil rights party founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California, in 1966. Created by Stan Lee in a bid to deliver the world’s first non-stereotype black superhero, the comic book of the same name materialized around the same time. Unusually, The Black Panther wasn’t an alter ego—it was the formal title for T’Challa, King of Wakanda—but Lee described the overlapping of names as “a strange coincidence”, adding that “maybe if I had it to do over again, I’d have given him another name”. The sensitive politics of the next two decades might explain why the character lay dormant as a movie property until 1992, when Wesley Snipes began work on the concept, eventually securing support from Columbia in 1994.

Directors John Singleton and Mario Van Peebles showed interest, but the project stalled, only to be resurrected by Marvel Studios in 2005, when then-CEO Avi Arad announced it as one of ten new films on the company’s slate. This time development moved forward at a faster pace: a script was commissioned in 2011, and by 2013, elements of the story began to appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with the character, played by Chadwick Boseman, debuting in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War. Ava DuVernay was briefly attached, then F. Gary Gray, and finally Creed director Ryan Coogler agreed to take the helm. Marvel President Kevin Feige acknowledges that it was a slow but sure process, and defends the timescale. “The only way we ever wanted to do this project was the right way,” he says, “and that meant finding a filmmaker who had something personal to say, who had a vision and could take this character into another arena, and showcase the power of representation on a canvas of this size.” —Damon Wise

BlacKkKlansman

When Jordan Peele pitched Spike Lee on the story that would become BlacKkKlansman, and lead to the iconic filmmaker’s first Oscar nomination for directing, Lee was sure he was making it up. “It was one of the greatest pitches ever,” Lee recalls. “Black man infiltrates Ku Klux Klan. That’s high concept. I said, ‘I’ve seen this a million times, it’s the Dave Chappelle skit.’ He went, ‘Nah, nah, this is real.’”

And real it is, even though Lee’s film bends the truth here and there to offer an engine to a story that seizes on the rhetorical parallels with the violence in Charlottesville last year, takes a sideways glance at the legacy of DW Griffith and Gone with the Wind, and revels in its 1970s setting to play on the tropes of Blaxploitation movies. Ron Stallworth, a black police officer in Colorado Springs, really did infiltrate the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. And really did interact with one-time Grand Wizard David Duke.

Lee turned to an old collaborator to play Stallworth. John David Washington was six years old when he was given a line in Lee’s Malcolm X. Reunited for BlacKkKlansman, Lee kept Washington away from the real Stallworth until the table read, determined that he find his own version of the character in prep. “It was my thinking that he would meet Ron and want to walk like him, talk like him,” Lee says. “It wasn’t like Malcolm X. No one knew who Ron Stallworth was, and that gives you freedom.”

Lee casts aside criticism of the film’s forthright allusions to current politics. “These are dangerous times. The film had to end the way it did,” he says, with footage of the Charlottesville rally and a tribute to Heather Hayer, who was murdered there.

And it took the commitment of all of his collaborators, including nominee Adam Driver and the iconic Harry Belafonte—a key player in the Civil Rights Movement—to fully realize it. “This film, the teamwork was amazing. We were like the Golden State Warriors, or the New York Knicks. We didn’t have to sit around saying, ‘Oh this is such an important film and we have to…’ It wasn’t even discussed. Everybody knew what we had to do.” —Joe Utichi

Bohemian Rhapsody

Bohemian Rhapsody is the miracle Oscar nominee this year. Typically when a production is mired with on-set problems, its doom is inevitable, but in the year-plus wake of director Bryan Singer’s firing, Bohemian Rhapsody has had immense luck, with the producers determined to buck sour Singer headlines, after he clashed with Oscar nominated star Rami Malek. Graham King shepherded Bohemian Rhapsody for eight years, and nothing was going to stop it now.

Sacha Baron Cohen expressed interest in the project early on, but dismissed it when King opted against a warts-and-all biopic.

Then King’s partner had a sense that Emmy-winning Mr. Robot star Rami Malek could do the trick, and indeed he did, with a dedication that went to masochistic measures.

“I told Graham King if he gave me this role, I’d bleed for it, and he showed me a picture of blood on the piano keys after the final day of our Live Aid shoot,” Malek says.

Editor John Ottman gets proper credit here with his first Oscar nomination, working with the producers to hammer an impressive first cut, before Dexter Fletcher stepped in for Singer to finish a handful of scenes. While a director always gets credit for a final cut, Bohemian Rhapsody is an example this season that there’s no ‘I’ in team.

The press has repeatedly asked the production team for their thoughts on Singer in the wake of the film’s success, especially on Golden Globes night when it won for Best Motion Picture, Drama and Best Actor.

King waved off the question, but Malek answered, “There was only one thing we needed to do: celebrate Freddie Mercury. He is a marvel. Nothing was going to compromise us. We’re giving him the love, celebration and adulation he deserves.” —Anthony D’Alessandro

The Favourite

It took two decades for Deborah Davis’s script for The Favourite to make it to screen. A searing three-hander based on the true history of the British Queen Anne and the two women who fought for her affections, Sarah Churchill and Abigail Masham, it was a tough sell even for a market in Britain that specializes in costume drama. A film in which three women rule the roost over their male counterparts, fall in love—and graphic lust—with one another and scheme their way to dominance? Whatever to make of that?

But Davis knew she had something groundbreaking, and producers Ceci Dempsey, Lee Magiday and Ed Guiney weren’t prepared to let the project go without a fight. In an inspired move, they showed the script to Yorgos Lanthimos, whose twisted and unique earlier features, including Dogtooth, The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer seemed like an odd fit for a story based in true history. And yet, working on the script with Australian writer Tony McNamara, Lanthimos found a lens on the story through his own fascination with the more awkward aspects of human interaction.

“I was intrigued in trying to create these three very complicated and complex characters for women, and work with three great actresses,” Lanthimos says. “It was in my mind thinking you never see that: three female strong leads.”

For Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone, the three actresses cast in these roles, all of whom picked up Oscar nominations, it was just as enticing a prospect. Lanthimos started them off with an unconventional rehearsal period, challenging them to play trust exercises, tie themselves up in knots and say one another’s lines.

“It’s strange and not strange,” Stone notes. “By the end, I think one of the most effective aspects of it was that we all felt very, very close to each other. We all touched each other, embarrassed ourselves in front of one another, and became more reliant on one another.” —Joe Utichi

Green Book

Nick Vallelonga had been carrying the story for Green Book in his head ever since he was five years old, and yet it was not until his 50s that he was able to see his dream become a reality. The plot came directly from a period of his father’s life, when, in the early ’60s, Tony “Lip” Vallelonga was hired by an African-American classical pianist named Don Shirley to be his driver and bodyguard during a potentially dangerous concert tour of the racially segregated southern states. “Even as a child, it struck me as something you’d see in a movie,” says Vallelonga. There was only only one problem: even though both subjects gave him their blessing, they also made Vallelonga give his word that the film would not be made in their lifetimes. After Tony and Don passed in 2013, within just three months of the other, Vallelonga began to map out this extraordinary road trip.

To help shape the script, Vallelonga turned to writer/actor Brian Currie. Then, two years later, during a chance encounter, Currie outlined the project to Peter Farrelly, and the idea stuck. “Home run!” exclaimed Farrelly. Together, all three began shaping the production, which passed through Focus Features and Participant Media before landing at Universal, with Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali as the leads. The result was Farrelly’s first non-comedy outside of the long-running partnership with his brother Bobby. “People had asked me over the years, ‘Do you think you’ll ever do a drama?’” Farrelly says. “And my answer was, ‘Sure, when it happens,’ because I never really planned. I probably should have, by the way, because I look at Rob Reiner’s career, and he was so smart. He did Spinal Tap, and then he did The Sure Thing, and then he goes off to do Stand by Me and A Few Good Men. He showed he could do everything. But we were just doing what came into our universe next, and we never really planned it. I didn’t plan this, but finally this dropped into my lap—I heard the story, and I thought, I gotta make this.” —Damon Wise

Roma

Alfonso Cuarón’s ode to his childhood in Mexico City, and in particular the domestic worker who helped made him, Roma was non-negotiable. “I had to do the film,” he says. “I told Carlos, my brother, ‘I don’t know if anybody is going to care about or like this movie. I have to do it because it’s something I need to do.’”

The notion started to form more than a decade ago, as Cuarón finished up 2006’s Children of Men. But there had been threads drawn from his youth in other projects—in his heralded Y Tu Mamá También, a voiceover for Diego Luna’s character tells a backstory that isn’t far off from Cuarón’s own—and he felt driven by a desire to tap more directly into that past.

Cuarón teamed up with Participant Media, who greenlit the $15 million the filmmaker needed; a tall order for a film that he knew he had to shoot primarily in Spanish, and in black-and-white. But so slavish was his desire to draw all this from his own very specific memories that Participant CEO David Linde would become one of the first and last people to ever see a script during production. He had intended to tap Emmanuel Lubezki to shoot the film, but ‘Chivo’ was unavailable when the dates finally set, and so Cuarón served as his own DP. He instructed his heads of department directly to get the details exactly as he saw them, rather than have them riff on the script. He gave his actors only what they needed for the scenes they shot, and then, only moments before they shot them. In the film’s lead, Cuarón found Yalitza Aparicio after an exhaustive search of Mexico. She was training to be a teacher when she heard about the audition. She is now an Oscar nominee.

Still, it was only after the process was completed that Cuarón understood the real challenge of Roma. With no stars, his black-and-white, Spanish-language opus was not built for the current realities of global theatrical distribution. Netflix came on board in April, when the film was looking set to debut at Cannes, and the controversy surrounding the streamer’s stance on theatrical put paid to a slot at the festival. It later debuted at Venice. But Cuarón is determined Netflix was the right home. “Our viewing habits are changing,” he says. “The challenge is now, how we can adapt ourselves, but present something that you believe is amazing and great cinema? It’s not so much about, ‘Let’s impose this kind of cinema on audiences.’ It’s also the conversation with them about how they want to watch.” —Joe Utichi

A Star Is Born

It’s hard to overstate the difficulty of shooting on stage in the middle of a music festival. Yet the cast and crew of A Star Is Born pulled off exactly that, with only a four-minute window for director and star Bradley Cooper to perform.

Serendipitously, it worked out thanks to the star of the film’s 1976 version. Kris Kristofferson happened to be playing Glastonbury on the planned shoot day, and offered a window of time in his own set.

“Bradley jumps on stage,” producer Lynette Howell Taylor recalls, “and says, ‘Hi, I’m Bradley Cooper. I’m here to perform a song from A Star Is Born, but you won’t be able to hear it. Please just look like you’re excited.’” With his vocal feed cut, only the front few rows could hear some of what Cooper sang. “We didn’t want the music to leak out.”

“There were many minutes along the way where we were running and gunning,” adds producer Bill Gerber, “But that one in particular wasn’t just a logistical threat, it was also incredible for Bradley to go from playing in controlled situations to all of a sudden literally singing live in front of 80,000 people.”

Gerber had been on the project since its early days, when, before timing got in the way, Clint Eastwood had been set to direct, with Beyoncé in the Lady Gaga role. Casting Gaga was initially a stretch for Warner Bros., Gerber says. “Even though Bradley and I were really blown away by the chemistry, the studio still wasn’t 100% sure. But to their credit, they said, ‘Do a test, spend what you have to spend, and let’s see.’”

During that test, Gerber saw the magic happen. “Bradley picked her up, and they walked out the doors of her house onto her lawn, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean. They looked at each other and it was undeniably brilliant. I thought, well, there’s our Gone with the Wind moment.” And the rest, of course, is history. —Antonia Blyth

Vice

Adam McKay probably wouldn’t have made Vice, his irreverent biopic of former Vice President Dick Cheney, if he hadn’t fallen ill for a couple of weeks at the end of 2015. The director had recently finished up The Big Short, an arch look at the financial crisis of 2008, and followed it immediately with a worldwide publicity tour, then a punishing awards season schedule. The net result was that McKay got sick, and while he was shivering with a particularly evil flu, he looked up at his bookshelves. “People give you books through the years,” McKay told the ACLU, “and you just shove them up there and don’t really think about them. And there was one about Dick Cheney, and it kind of struck me, like, ‘Wow, the book of history is about to close on that guy.’ I mean, you don’t really hear his name mentioned that much anymore, and you don’t hear [George] W. Bush’s name really mentioned, but, holy cow, those were a rough eight years.”

McKay started reading the book and found he couldn’t put it down. “I was amazed by what a large, epic American tale Cheney’s life story is—how far back it reaches, how many monumental moments in history he was around for. He had this Zelig-like presence in the ’70s through the ’80s. And then of course, I was amazed by how brilliant he was at manipulating the system.” The final impetus to tell Cheney’s story came in 2016. “Somewhere along that line,” recalled McKay, “Donald Trump got elected, and all of a sudden we started hearing people say, ‘Hey, I kinda miss George W. Bush. He wasn’t that bad, him and Cheney.’ And I really felt like I had to make the movie. I was like, ‘This is crazy that people are saying this.’ And that was it. We were off to the races.” —Damon Wise

Source: deadline

by Joe Utichi and Damon Wise and Anthony D’Alessandro and Antonia Blyth

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