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OSCAR PICKS about an exhausted Chinese-American woman (Michelle Yeoh) who can't seem to finish her taxes. Full of maximalist gonzo energy and mind-bending visuals, thanks to the work of DP Larkin Seiple and VFX supervisor Zak Stoltz, the result is a wild and entertaining genre-defying ride. Even the directors have a hard time defining exactly what it's about. "There's the family drama answer and the sci-fi answer and the philosophy answer," Scheinert says. Or, you could say it's a kung-fu flick that hops around multidimensional universes, with Michelle Yeoh as a reluctant savior figure at its center. The post team included supervising sound editor Brent Kiser, MPSE, sound designer Andrew Twite, and sound services were by Unbridled Sound. The extensive roto and paint work was done by Rotomaker and Noa Graphics Studios. VFX and animation were handled by Danny Madden, and the DI was performed by colorist Alex Bickel at Picture Shop. Set in 1923 on a mythical and remote island off the west coast of Ireland, The Banshees of Iinisherin follows lifelong friends Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson), who find themselves at an impasse when Colm unexpect- edly puts an end to their friendship, leading to di- sastrous, anarchic consequences. The film, another darkly-comedic drama from Martin McDonagh, who previously received the Best Director Oscar nomination for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, was shot on location on Inishmore and Achill Island on the west coast of Ireland. The writer/director's key crew included DP and regular collaborator Ben Davis, production designer Mark Tildesley and editor Mikkel E.G. Nielsen. Carter Burwell composed the score. Steven Spielberg, a two-time Best Director Oscar-winner (Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan), has always been drawn to projects about family and childhood. And although the veteran filmmaker is in the twilight of his long, storied ca- reer, he's currently on a roll, earning his ninth Best Director nom for his latest film, The Fabelmans, which explores the often difficult dynamics of fam- ily and parent/child relationships. The deeply per- sonal and semi-autobiographical film is also a love letter to the power of movies, as it tells the com- ing-of-age story of Sammy Fabelman (Spielberg's alter ego) and his filmmaking dreams. To make the heartfelt film, Spielberg reteamed with key longtime collaborators, including DP and two-time Academy Award winner Janusz Kaminski (Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan); editor and three-time Academy Award winner Michael Kahn (Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List); editor Sarah Broshar (West Side Story, The Post); and com- poser and five-time Academy Award winner John Williams (Schindler's List, Jaws). Both intimate and epic in its scope, the film charts how young Sammy's first amateurish teen- age films gradually morph into more ambitious and grander spectacles. To capture the former, Spielberg had his alter ego shoot with 8mm turret cameras of the period — a Kodak Brownie, a Eumig and a Bolex. Spielberg admits the quality of Sammy's films is much better than the ones he himself made. "I wish I could've recreated my 8mm films to the amateurish degree I shot them at when I was a kid," he says, "but I wasn't able to resist finding a better place to put the camera in 2021, when I made the movie, than where I put the camera in 1961." In the end, to make the footage work, Spielberg and his DP actually shot with both 8mm and 16mm, and in post degraded the 16mm footage to resemble 8mm film. The result is movies that look homemade, but which have a higher quality of film emulsion that hints at Sammy's innate talent. By contrast, the tornado sequence, in which Sammy's mother, Mitzi, piles Sammy and his sisters in a car to chase a tornado ripping through their neighborhood, was the most technically-tricky challenge of the film. After shooting the sequence with practical effects, the footage was enhanced by ILM, which augmented the bad weather. To complete the VFX, Spielberg and Kaminski then shot the actors and car on ILM's StageCraft virtual soundstages in Manhattan Beach, CA, surrounded by the vehicle's POV footage projected on massive LED screens. Joining the uber-prolific Spielberg is a director at the opposite end of the spectrum, writer/director Todd Field. It's been 16 long years since his last film, the Oscar-nominated Little Children, but the wait has been worth it. His new film, Tár, another high- ly-polished, multi-faceted gem, which he also pro- duced, is an immersive and gripping drama about erotic obsession, the beauty of art, as well as the ugliness of abusive behavior, all set in the highbrow world of classical music. It stars Cate Blanchett, Oscar-nominated for her powerful turn as the titular character, Lydia Tár, a superstar conductor and musician who's also something of an obsessive dictator who carefully micro-manages her famed career and public image, while off-stage her messy private life begins to spiral out of control. Behind the scenes, Field collaborated with Director Martin McDonagh's The Banshees of Inisherin is a Best Picture nominee. The Fabelmans' director Steven Spielberg was once again nominated. Spielberg partnered with many of his long-time collaborators.