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'Arrival' Looked Amazing — Meet Bradford Young, the Guy Who Made It Happen

Arrival doesn’t look like any other science fiction film, and that’s in large part because of Bradford Young. The cinematographer was already widely admired in the film industry for his work on features like Selma and A Most Violent Year, but the scale and unique look of Arrival are getting him some new attention. As awards season approaches, Paramount has posted a video tribute that showcases Young’s dazzling work on the sci-fi sleeper hit (which was named one of Yahoo’s 10 best films of 2016). Watch it above.

Related:  ‘Arrival’: An Astrophysicist Fact-Checks the Science and Gives It an ‘A’

Young, who’s from Kentucky, credits his talent for creating beautiful images to being raised in his family’s funeral home. “I didn’t know what a cinematographer was growing up, but I grew up around a lot of image-intense environments,” he said in an interview for the EFTI school of photography.  Young was actually director Denis Villeneuve‘s second choice for Arrival, after 13-time Oscar nominee Roger Deakins (the DP for such classics as The Shawshank Redemption and The Big Lebowski), who was busy making Hail Caesar! for the Coen brothers. But it doesn’t appear that Young will be anybody’s second choice from now on: He’s already been booked as the cinematographer for Lucasfilm’s 2018 Han Solo film.

Bradford Young talks about ‘Arrival’: 

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‘Arrival’ Exclusive: Watch Amy Adams Make Contact With E.T.

Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) has a “very particular set of skills” in the new sci-fi drama Arrival. Banks is recruited to travel to the desert site where a massive, egg-shaped spaceship has landed — one of 12 around the globe — where she’ll use her renowned abilities as a linguist to try to communicate. The government needs to know what these extraterrestrials want, and Banks has been charged with starting the conversation.

Related: ‘Arrival’: Creating an Alien Language from Scratch Is a Long, Drawn-Out Process

In an exclusive clip from the film (watch above), Banks makes her first attempt at getting the dialogue started. It’s human relations with Heptapods, as they become known, which makes it all the more fitting that Banks holds a sign up that simply reads, “HUMAN.” The two E.T.s on the ship, gliding around a glass enclosure like they’re inhabiting some kind of intergalactic aquarium, respond back with their own form of written communication. Facebook and Google aren’t going to be able to help translate this time though, which means it’s up to Miss Banks to save us.

Based on the short story “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, Arrival was written by Eric Heisserer (Lights Out) and directed by Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Sicario). The film costars Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, and at least two crazy-looking aliens. It opens Nov. 11.

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'Arrival' Review: Amy Adams Stars in a Smart, Moving Sci-Fi Drama About an Alien Encounter

By David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

If the gatekeepers of classic screen sci-fi are at all anxious about the stamp that director Denis Villeneuve might put on his upcoming Blade Runner project, a sequel coming 35 years after the iconic original, then the class, intelligence and cool visual style of Arrival should provide reassurance. How refreshing to watch an alien contact movie in which no cities are destroyed or monuments toppled, and no adversarial squabbling distracts the human team from the challenges of their complex interspecies encounter. Anchored by an internalized performance from Amy Adams rich in emotional depth, this is a grownup sci-fi drama that sustains fear and tension while striking affecting chords on love and loss.

Paramount's Nov. 11 U.S. release is significant in its distance from the summer popcorn field, instead going in amongst the end-of-year prestige pictures. That means genre fan boys are less likely to be its target audience than discerning adults, who should be drawn in by the contemplative drama's fascinating questions about our concepts of time and its order, memory, communication, and more indirectly, life and death.

Scripted by Eric Heisserer based on Story of Your Life, by short fiction writer Ted Chiang, Arrival is more or less the anti-Independence Day. Instead, Villeneuve's film asserts its place among far more nuanced explorations of human-alien interaction such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Contact, as well as in a venerable tradition of cerebral literary sci-fi. Its logic isn't always quite 100 percent clear but it's always interesting.

Related: 'La La Land': Venice Review

Adams plays Dr. Louise Banks, a divorced linguistics professor who lives alone since losing her 12-year-old daughter Hannah to a rare form of cancer. In an opening voiceover set, as is the beautiful concluding scene, to the somber strings of Max Richter's "On the Nature of Daylight," Louise talks to the departed Hannah. "There are days that define your story beyond your life," she says. "Like the day they arrived."

The "they" of that sentence is 12 alien spacecraft that land at 12 seemingly random points around the globe, 1,500 feet high, elongated egg shapes suspended just above the ground. Having translated sensitive Farsi documents for the military, Louise is recruited by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker), along with theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), to travel to Montana where the nearest spaceship arrived and to attempt to make contact with its occupants. CIA Agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlbarg) is the chief government liaison on the ground.

While the spacecraft appear to cause no gas, waste or emissions of any kind to be released into the atmosphere, they are viewed as a threat, causing widespread alarm — people start panic buying, looting and violence break out, stocks plummet. An international state of emergency is declared to deal with what excitable news pundits are calling the "alien crisis," and China and Russia get especially nervous.

To the credit of Heisserer's thoughtful screenplay, those factors are relegated to steadily reverberating background noise as Louise, Ian and their military escorts make a series of exploratory forays inside the Montana spacecraft. Those initial scenes are both scary and poetic, as minimal gravity allows them to float up into an antechamber where a window opens and two aliens materialize out of the dense, cloud-like mist within. Dubbed heptapods, the massive creatures look like blobby crosses between an octopus and a spider, and Johann Johannsson's unsettling music — an ominous drone punctuated by horn blasts that sound like other-worldly whale calls — underscores their strange majesty.

Related: 'The Light Between Oceans': Film Review

While Weber and Halpern want fast answers, Louise refuses to be rushed, explaining that no communication can be successful without the fundamental language tools in place. That takes her back in her head to the verbal development of Hannah (played at different ages by Abigail Pniowsky and Julia Scarlett Dan), and plants a captivating sense of the personal in her interactions with the heptapods. Remaining behind a transparent protective barrier, the aliens respond to Louise by fanning out a single tentacle into a splayed claw, which squirts an inky fluid that then forms into circular hieroglyphs.

With weeks of work, those symbols are decoded into a basic language, starting with names and working up to more challenging questions about the heptapods' purpose on Earth. Much of this involves nuggets of linguistic, scientific and mathematical geek-speak. But the refusal of the director and screenwriter to talk down to their audience — or to be afraid of giving Arrival intellectual as well as dramatic life — is one of the movie's chief strengths. Likewise, the absence of heavy-handedness in its socio-political message of progress through unity and open dialogue.

Another is Adams' moving performance. Restraint is very much the defining note here, but within that generally muted emotional palette, Louise registers as a woman who has accepted her solitude and pain while never attempting to cover her deep wound. That makes her extraordinarily receptive to connecting with a mysterious species whose intent is automatically interpreted by much of the planet as hostile. Renner is given less to do, though the mutual respect and burgeoning friendship between Ian and Louise is drawn in gentle, affecting strokes by both actors. Their rapport builds to a touching final reveal that earns its emotional impact subtly, not with the usual flood of sentiment.

The film arguably could have used an occasional touch of humor, though Ian's amusing discovery that Sheena Easton had hits in the '80s in all the nations hosting spacecraft is a cute aside.

Related: 'Morgan': Film Review 

Cinematographer Bradford Young shoots the drama in a graceful, composed style, adhering to a sober, calmly observational approach even when temperatures onscreen are at their highest and nerves at their most jangled. That measured handle on the material extends also to the alien depiction. Production designer Patrice Vermette and visual effects supervisor Louis Morin create a seamless unit between practical and digital toolboxes that evokes the sense of awe and wonder Steven Spielberg so unforgettably tapped into in the final scenes of Close Encounters.

Arrival boldly snubs the standard alien-invasion vernacular of contemporary movies to explore a mood and language of its own. It may be a touch too subdued for the mainstream, but the movie has brains and originality, qualities these days too seldom valued in the genre.

Venue: Venice Film Festival (Competition); also in Telluride, Toronto festivals Opens: Tuesday, Nov. 11 (Paramount) Cast: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Mark O’Brien, Tzi Ma, Abigail Pniowsky, Julia Scarlett Dan Production companies: 21 Laps Entertainment, FilmNation Entertainment, Lava Bear Films Director: Denis Villeneuve Screenwriter: Eric Heisserer, based on the story, 'Story of Your Life,' by Ted Chiang Producers: Shawn Levy, Dan Levine, Aaron Ryder, David Linde Executive producers: Stan Wlodkowski, Eric Heisserer, Dan Cohen, Karen Lunder, Tory Metzger, Milan Popelka Director of photography: Bradford Young Production designer: Patrice Vermette Costume designer: Renee April Music: Johann Johannsson Editor: Joe Walker Visual effects supervisor: Louis Morin Casting: Francine Maisler, Lucie Robitaille Sales: Sony/FilmNation

No rating, 116 minutes.

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'Arrival' Trailer: Amy Adams Desperately Wants to Have a Word With the Aliens

Watch tons of trailers, plus free full-length movies and TV shows on Yahoo View.

Last week’s short teaser for director Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi drama Arrival has now been followed by the film’s first full-length trailer (watch it above), giving us a deeper look at Amy Adams as the linguist enlisted by the government to figure out how to communicate with aliens that have been touching down at various points across the globe. She is joined by Jeremy Renner’s mathematician and Forest Whitaker’s military official as they try to figure out whether these visitors mean to do us harm.

Related: Amy Adams on the Red Carpet: Photo Flashback!

There have been some highlights for sci-fi fans already this year, including indies like Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special and Netflix hit Stranger Things. Renner has previously described Arrival as “if you blended a Kubrick and a Spielberg movie.” The Arrival trailer suggests a meditation on the importance of language and communication (both among earthlings and with extra-terrestrials) against the looming threat of a possible cataclysmic confrontation.

Related: Jake Gyllenhaal, Denis Villeneuve to Reunite for Crime Drama ‘The Son’

Villeneuve has found success with other intense thrillers, including Prisoners, Enemy, and Sicario. He will next direct the upcoming Blade Runner sequel with Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling, which will hit theaters next sometime next year (remarkably, two years before the date when the original film was set).

Arrival touches down in theaters on Nov. 11.

Watch a clip of actor Terrence Howard talking about working with director Denis Villeneuve on ‘Prisoners’:

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Amy Adams Aims to Chat With Aliens in First 'Arrival' Teaser

After Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Amy Adams has amassed some serious expertise in dealing with extraterrestrials. This fall, she’ll put that experience to good use in Arrival, which has just delivered its ominous first short teaser (watch it above).

Related: Amy Adams’ ‘An Object of Beauty’ Adaptation Finds New Writer 

Adams stars in this sci-fi drama from director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Sicario, and the upcoming Blade Runner sequel starring Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford) as a linguist who’s paired with Jeremy Renner’s mathematician by the government to communicate with alien visitors — maybe friendly, maybe hostile — whose crafts have mysteriously touched down around the globe. To get the job done, she has to go inside one of their ships — a journey that, in this brief first look, proves simultaneously terrifying and awe-inspiring. As you’d expect from a first teaser, we don’t yet get a look at the film’s intergalactic visitors, but it’s already clear that Villeneuve will be bringing the same sort of oppressive, imposing, foreboding feeling to his latest that we saw in his prior two studio outings.

Related: ‘Blade Runner’ Sequel Moves Up Release Date to Fall 2017

Based on Ted Chiang’s short story Story of Your Life, Arrival will aim to put a new twist on a familiar sci-fi premise — language as a means for both dialogue and war — when it lands in theaters on Nov. 11. The film, which also co-stars Forest Whitaker and Michael Stuhlbarg, will follow this quick clip with a full-length trailer on Tues., August 16.

Five clues about ‘Blade Runner 2’ hint at whether it’ll be great or terrible:

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'Arrival': An Astrophysicist Fact-Checks the Science and Gives It an "A"

What is it about the hit science-fiction thriller Arrival that makes it seem more plausible than most Hollywood alien movies? The answer may be, simply, science. For a new episode of his web series Science vs. Cinema, astrophysics professor and self-described film geek Andy Howell takes an in-depth look at how realistic the science of Arrival actually is. What he discovers is that the filmmakers put a massive amount of thought and energy into every detail of the movie, and that even its craziest plot points were backed up with real-life hypotheses and equations. Watch the full video above. (Warning: It contains some major spoilers toward the end, but Howell gives a heads-up that allows you to skip ahead.)

Related: ‘Arrival’: Creating an Alien Language From Scratch Is a Long, Drawn Out Process

Arrival tells the story of a linguist (Amy Adams) and theoretical physicist (Jeremy Renner) who are hired by the U.S. government to communicate with aliens whose ships hover mysteriously above Earth. The aliens look nothing like humans, nor do they speak anything recognizable as a language. It’s therefore up to the two experts to decipher whether the creatures mean harm or good to humankind.

Physicist Stephen Wolfram uses a white board to explain the science behind the ‘Arrival’ spaceships in a still from ‘Science vs. Cinema’

In the video, Howell talks with the actors and creatives behind the film, as well as scientific experts who served as consultants (including a linguist, a theoretical physicist, and a computer programmer). Director Denis Villeneuve explains that the spaceship design was inspired by an actual asteroid in orbit in the solar system, while famed physicist Stephen Wolfram pulls out a whiteboard to demonstrate how the ship could hypothetically move through space. The real-life computer code used in the film to help decipher the aliens’ written language is explained, along with the actual procedure linguists use to speak to people who don’t share a common language. Finally, Howell dives headfirst into the actual scientific hypotheses behind the film’s big twist (explained in more detail in the short story that inspired the movie, ‘Story of Your Life’ by Ted Chiang, who is also interviewed in the episode).

Related: ‘Arrival’ Review: Amy Adams Stars in a Smart, Moving Sci-Fi Drama About an Alien Encounter

The film does contain some scientifically questionable moments that are mentioned in the episode (like a scene in which Amy Adams’ character should logically be wearing a mask to breathe) and others that are glossed over (like the paradox inherent in the film’s climax). Still, Howell sees Arrival as a triumphant fusion of Hollywood and science — and his video is recommended viewing for anyone who wants to dwell a little longer on one of the most thought-provoking films of 2016.

‘Arrival’ exclusive clip: Watch Amy Adams make contact with E.T.:

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Will This Finally Be Amy Adams' Year? Actress Gives Pair of A-Grade Performances in 'Arrival' and 'Animals'

In news that should surprise no one, Amy Adams delivers not one but two stellar performances in a pair of buzzy movies that will follow debuts in Venice with screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival this week. The five-time Oscar nominee could soon be adding to that total, perhaps getting another chance — or two — to become a first-time winner.

Adams is landing the biggest kudos for Arrival, Denis Villeneuve's slow-burn sci-fi alien invasion drama set off by 12 gigantic, Frisbee-shaped UFOs touching down at seemingly random points around the globe. She's also reliably stunning in the brutal and beautifully shot Nocturnal Animals, the sophomore directorial effort of fashion icon Tom Ford about a woman who receives a shocking book written by her ex-husband, which then plays out as a story-inside-a-story.

Related: 'Arrival' Review: Amy Adams Stars in a Smart, Moving Sci-Fi Drama About an Alien Encounter

Of the two, Arrival is the vehicle more likely to earn Adams some awards attention for her role as Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist and professor at a prestigious university recruited by the U.S. military to help understand and communicate with the enigmatic extraterrestrials.

Independence Day: Resurgence this film ain't. French Canadian filmmaker Villeneuve (Prisoners, Enemy) is just as — if not more — concerned with the personal effects the E.T. landing has on the psyches and emotional states of his human subjects as he is the world as whole. This gives Adams, as a woman who we've seen endure her own crisis prior to the arrival, and who could hold the key to Earth's survival, ample time to shine as a lost soul in need of healing. And though the actress has a simpatico costar in Jeremy Renner as the mathematician she's teamed up with for "the show," Arrival is her vessel.

Critics have taken note. The Playlist's Jessica Kiang calls it "a quietly huge performance" while The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney noted its richness "in emotional depth." "Someone give an award already," Slashfilm's Angie J. Han declared after a Toronto screening. And the movie in general has triggered major feels at TIFF, just from our own unofficial gauging of film press reactions.

Related: 'Nocturnal Animals' Review: A Dark, Stylish Melodrama Starring Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal

In Nocturnal Animals, Adams delivers what might as well be considered a dual role. In the present day, her Susan Morrow is a jaded, pill-popping, one-percenter who holds extravagant art openings and shares a ridiculously swank Los Angeles home with her unfaithful businessman husband (Armie Hammer).

Her world is rocked when she receives a manuscript of the new book by her estranged ex-husband (Jake Gyllenhaal). He's dedicated the novel (called Nocturnal Animals) to her, and it's a devastating thriller about a man whose wife and daughter are kidnapped one night on a dark West Texas highway.

This triggers flashbacks to memories of her meet-cute with the writer, when the then-Southern-drawled Susan (in scenes reminiscent of Adams' breakout role in the North Carolina-set indie Junebug) was young and hopeful and petrified by the thought of one day turning into her bourgeois mother.

Animals is more of an ensemble film than Arrival — Aaron Taylor- Johnson and Isla Fisher also appear, and the standout of the bunch is Michael Shannon as a terminally ill cop clean out of damns to give. But Adams anchors the film, and it's through her worried eyes (and some comeuppance) that we experience the film's emotional and physical brutality.

"Adams' innate vulnerability is nicely played off here against Susan's sleek appearance," wrote THR’s Rooney in his review, adding that she is the "compelling center" of the film. "I know Amy Adams is putting all her Oscar chips on ARRIVAL but don't overlook her incredibly specific work in NOCTURNAL ANIMALS. She's fab," tweeted Vulture's Kyle Buchanan.

An Oscar nomination for either — or both — would add to Adams' previous Oscar nods for Junebug, Doubt, The Fighter, The Master, and American Hustle... and amazingly, all those nominations would be over only an 11-year span. "Amy Adams should get nominated for Best Actress for both films and win both Oscars in a tie," thinks Collider's Matt Goldberg.

As the Los Angeles Times' Glenn Whipp notes, Adams could be this year's Leonardo DiCaprio. He was famously 0-for-5 before finally bear-hugging an Oscar earlier this year for The Revenant. "The 42-year-old is overdue," says Whipp, who also cautions that neither Arrival nor Animals is the type of film traditionally championed by Oscar voters.

But hey, at the very least, Adams has doubled her odds.

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'Arrival' Poster Makes an Architectural Mistake in Hong Kong

By Vivienne Chow, Variety

Amy Adams-starring sci-fi thriller Arrival has accidentally sparked a new wave of anti-China sentiment in already politicized Hong Kong.

In what is not so much an alien invasion as an architectural invasion, one of the film’s latest posters has superimposed a Shanghai landmark over an image of Hong Kong.

The poster released on Tuesday depicts a gigantic spacecraft as part of an alien invasion hovering over Victoria Harbour. But an image of the Oriental Pearl Tower, a TV tower located in Shanghai’s Pudong district, has been pasted into the foreground of Hong Kong’s iconic skyline.

The poster has gone viral on social media as Netizens shared the erroneous image. By Thursday evening nearly 1,500 had left comments on the film’s official Facebook page, with hashtags such as #hongkongisnotchina, #WhyOrientalPearlTowerHere and other angry criticisms. “Just don’t promote your movie in HK [Hong Kong] if you don’t respect HKers [Hongkongers],” wrote Allan Chan. “Fire the person in charge of your marketing design,” wrote Douglas Black.

Related: ‘Arrival’ Architectural Invasion Stirs Political Reaction in Hong Kong

Some responded by mocking the movie’s tagline “Why are they here?”. “Btw good question. Why are they here? Those Chinese,” Jacob Wu commented. Local politicians also took advantage of the designer’s insensitiveness and used it for their campaigns ahead of the city’s September Legislative Council election.

Horace Chin Wan-kan, dubbed "Godfather of localism," who is running in the election, commented: “The movie adaptation of the sci-fi novel Arrival, which obtained the Nebula Award, [has] decent director Denis Villeneuve and actors Amy Adams [and] Jeremy Renner. However, everything is ruined by this improper poster.”

The film, formerly titled Story of Your Life, is a production of Lava Bear, FilmNation and 21 Laps Entertainment, with international sales handled by FilmNation. Paramount Pictures will release it in North America on Nov. 11. A release date for Hong Kong has not been announced.

Adams plays an expert linguist called on by the U.S. government to solve the alien mystery. The film’s first full-length trailer was released on Tuesday (August 16) together with 12 promotional posters.

Hong Kong, which was a British colony until 1997, has been rocked by political turmoil in recent years amid increasing control from Beijing. In recent months the clash of ideals has escalated into calls by minority groups for independence from China.