In the reboot of “Father of the Bride,” now streaming on HBO Max, costume designer Caroline Eselin knew that she wasn’t going to emulate either of the previous incarnations of the film when it came to creating the wedding dress worn by Sofia (Adria Arjona). Instead, she drew inspiration from the new movie’s Miami setting and the city’s vibrant style.
This time, Andy Garcia is the title character who must come to grips with the marriage of his daughter and is determined to pay for her wedding. The film, directed by Gaz Alazraki, revolves around a sprawling Cuban American family and the well-to-do Mexican American family Sofia marries into.
Sophie’s sister Cora (Isabela Merced) is a budding fashion designer tasked with helping to create the wedding gown. Says Eselin, “We did things through her lens when it came to Sophie’s dress and the bridesmaid dresses.
This time, Andy Garcia is the title character who must come to grips with the marriage of his daughter and is determined to pay for her wedding. The film, directed by Gaz Alazraki, revolves around a sprawling Cuban American family and the well-to-do Mexican American family Sofia marries into.
Sophie’s sister Cora (Isabela Merced) is a budding fashion designer tasked with helping to create the wedding gown. Says Eselin, “We did things through her lens when it came to Sophie’s dress and the bridesmaid dresses.
- 6/17/2022
- by Jazz Tangcay
- Variety Film + TV
Based on Colson Whitehead‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name and directed by Academy Award winner Barry Jenkins, “The Underground Railroad” is a 10-episode limited series that was released in its entirety on Amazon Prime Video on May 14. Although set in the 1850s, the story, which features everything from skyscrapers to elevators to underground railroads, is not, in terms of its themes, exclusive to that specific period in U.S. American history. It is both a story about Black endurance, resistance and resilience and one that serves as a reminder that racism is not only encrusted into the inception of the U.S. but still very much alive and kicking today. Scroll down to watch our 14 video interviews with top Emmy contenders from the show.
Thuso Mbedu stars as Cora Randall, an enslaved girl who makes a bid for freedom from slave-holding Georgia and, in turn, takes possession of her personhood.
Thuso Mbedu stars as Cora Randall, an enslaved girl who makes a bid for freedom from slave-holding Georgia and, in turn, takes possession of her personhood.
- 6/26/2021
- by Luca Giliberti
- Gold Derby
Emmy Award winner Doniella Davy served as the makeup department head on Barry Jenkins‘ 10-episode limited series “The Underground Railroad,” which is based on Colson Whitehead‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The series marks the third collaboration between Jenkins and Davy, who previously worked on the former’s past two feature films, “Moonlight” (2016) and “If Beale Street Could Talk” (2018). In our exclusive video interview (watch the chat above), Davy talks me through the importance of depicting the “emotional realism” of the characters, the reflection of Cora’s (Thuso Mbedu) harrowing journey in the makeup, and the reason behind her Emmy episode submission.
The story is centered on Cora, an enslaved girl who makes a bid for freedom from slave-holding Georgia in 19th-century southeastern United States and, in turn, takes possession of her personhood. Even though the story is set in the 1850s, it isn’t specific to...
The story is centered on Cora, an enslaved girl who makes a bid for freedom from slave-holding Georgia in 19th-century southeastern United States and, in turn, takes possession of her personhood. Even though the story is set in the 1850s, it isn’t specific to...
- 6/21/2021
- by Luca Giliberti
- Gold Derby
“We are depicting a truth; we’re taking a huge part of American history and showing it to you in another way,” underlines Caroline Eselin, the costume designer on “The Underground Railroad.” Based on Colson Whitehead‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, the 10-episode limited series is directed by Academy Award winner Barry Jenkins and marks the third collaboration between Jenkins and Eselin, who also served as a costume designer on the former’s past two feature films, “Moonlight” (2016) and “If Beale Street Could Talk” (2018). In our exclusive video interview (watch the chat above), Eselin discusses tackling the grand scope of the series, reflecting protagonist Cora’s (Thuso Mbedu) journey in her clothes, and marinating periods in the show’s designs.
SEEJoi McMillon interview: ‘The Underground Railroad’ co-editor
The story is centered on Cora, an enslaved girl who makes a bid for freedom from slave-holding Georgia in 19th-century southeastern United States and,...
SEEJoi McMillon interview: ‘The Underground Railroad’ co-editor
The story is centered on Cora, an enslaved girl who makes a bid for freedom from slave-holding Georgia in 19th-century southeastern United States and,...
- 6/21/2021
- by Luca Giliberti
- Gold Derby
Troop Zero is the kind of film you just wish they made more of. A simple, good natured story, well told without an ounce of pretentiousness. A feel-good movie about a ragtag troop of girl scouts called ‘Birdies’? Unless you’ve just fallen into a crocodile infested pit (for heaven’s sake call somebody), Troop Zero cannot fail to make you smile.
Costume designer for Troop Zero is Caroline Eselin-Schaefer, she of Moonlight (2016), Under the Silver Lake (2018), If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) and many, many others. Intuitive and meticulous, Caroline Eselin is someone who really ‘feels’ the projects she works on. Troop Zero is indicative of this approach. Very kindly she has agreed to share with us her inspiration and process for the movie. Read on – if you’ve got this far it just gets better.
Troop Zero features a predominantly young cast and is set in 1977. Moreover it is...
Costume designer for Troop Zero is Caroline Eselin-Schaefer, she of Moonlight (2016), Under the Silver Lake (2018), If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) and many, many others. Intuitive and meticulous, Caroline Eselin is someone who really ‘feels’ the projects she works on. Troop Zero is indicative of this approach. Very kindly she has agreed to share with us her inspiration and process for the movie. Read on – if you’ve got this far it just gets better.
Troop Zero features a predominantly young cast and is set in 1977. Moreover it is...
- 1/20/2020
- by Lord Christopher Laverty
- Clothes on Film
Given the remarkably positive nature of her first collaboration with Barry Jenkins on Moonlight, costume designer Caroline Eselin dove head first into the director’s next film, If Beale Street Could Talk. Set in Harlem, the period film follows Tish, a young woman in the midst of a stellar love affair, who becomes pregnant, just as her fiancé is hauled off to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. While Beale Streetwas appealing given its director alone, an artist Eselin greatly admired who’d won Best Picture with his last film, the project was a “beautiful opportunity” for more reasons than one. For the first English-language film adaptation of indispensible novelist James Baldwin’s work, Eselin was able to travel back to a “rich and multilayered, complicated time, as things are now, too.” “Rich with love, explored in every way,” Beale Streetwas this costume designer’s dream, crafted in...
- 1/12/2019
- by Matt Grobar
- Deadline Film + TV
For weeks, director Barry Jenkins and the department heads of his latest film, “If Beale Street Could Talk,” met at production designer Mark Friedberg’s Manhattan home, where they crafted the look of the movie, released on Christmas Day, scene by scene.
Costume designer Caroline Eselin, who had worked with Jenkins on his Oscar-winning “Moonlight,” cherished the process and left with what she describes as “the most amazing gift ever” — one of the books Friedberg made for everyone out of the material generated during those creative sessions.
The James Baldwin novel on which “Beale Street” is based was a rich source of visual inspiration. Like the book, the film, set in 1970s Harlem, centers on a young African-American couple — Tish Rivers (KiKi Layne) and Fonny Hunt (Stephan James) — who are building a future together when Fonny is accused of rape and sent to jail for a crime he didn’t commit.
Costume designer Caroline Eselin, who had worked with Jenkins on his Oscar-winning “Moonlight,” cherished the process and left with what she describes as “the most amazing gift ever” — one of the books Friedberg made for everyone out of the material generated during those creative sessions.
The James Baldwin novel on which “Beale Street” is based was a rich source of visual inspiration. Like the book, the film, set in 1970s Harlem, centers on a young African-American couple — Tish Rivers (KiKi Layne) and Fonny Hunt (Stephan James) — who are building a future together when Fonny is accused of rape and sent to jail for a crime he didn’t commit.
- 1/11/2019
- by Carole Horst
- Variety Film + TV
by Nathaniel R
Paddington 2's great costumes were snubbed by BAFTA last year and the Cdg this year. But Lindy Hemming won the Oscar for Topsy Turvy (1999) without either of those nominations so there's still hope.The Costume Design Guild was founded in 1953 with an initial group of 30 members. Today they have an international membership of 700+. They've been giving out awards since 1999 but the categories weren't fully as they are know (period/costume/fantasy) until 2005.
Though their tastes do align with Oscar it's difficult to wholly prognosticate from their awards since the Oscar nominees are generally a mix of their Period and Fantasy nominees with an extra title thrown in (plus every once in a while the costume branch within the Academy will surprise with a contemporary nominee). Much more frequently Oscar will just add one film that wasn't honored at all by the Cdg! They do it nearly all...
Paddington 2's great costumes were snubbed by BAFTA last year and the Cdg this year. But Lindy Hemming won the Oscar for Topsy Turvy (1999) without either of those nominations so there's still hope.The Costume Design Guild was founded in 1953 with an initial group of 30 members. Today they have an international membership of 700+. They've been giving out awards since 1999 but the categories weren't fully as they are know (period/costume/fantasy) until 2005.
Though their tastes do align with Oscar it's difficult to wholly prognosticate from their awards since the Oscar nominees are generally a mix of their Period and Fantasy nominees with an extra title thrown in (plus every once in a while the costume branch within the Academy will surprise with a contemporary nominee). Much more frequently Oscar will just add one film that wasn't honored at all by the Cdg! They do it nearly all...
- 1/10/2019
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
There has never been a movie that looks and feels quite like “If Beale Street Could Talk.” Whereas most films about love are designed to make you desire two characters, kept apart by narrative conflict, to come together; director Barry Jenkins invites his audience into the expansive feeling of love. Jenkins attributes the uniqueness of his film to the fact there has never been a feature-film adaptation in English of author James Baldwin before.
“I think one of the really beautiful things about adapting this work from the page to the screen is intellectually, as you read it, Baldwin can describe how that love feels,” said Jenkins. “The way Baldwin writes, you’ll look at a paragraph and there’s no periods in it. It’s just this running collection of moods and thoughts and feelings, that feel like these waves cascading across one another.”
To find and fine-tune the...
“I think one of the really beautiful things about adapting this work from the page to the screen is intellectually, as you read it, Baldwin can describe how that love feels,” said Jenkins. “The way Baldwin writes, you’ll look at a paragraph and there’s no periods in it. It’s just this running collection of moods and thoughts and feelings, that feel like these waves cascading across one another.”
To find and fine-tune the...
- 1/9/2019
- by Chris O'Falt
- Indiewire
To look at Felicity Jones as the young Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the opening scene of “On the Basis of Sex” is to glimpse a microcosm of the next two hours: Outfitted in a 1950s-silhouetted dress, jacket and seamed pantyhose, Ginsberg is one of the few women at a Harvard Law School introductory seminar among 450 men dressed in gray suits.
“It’s a full ensemble that is quite feminine, but in an appropriate way for where she was,” says the film’s costume designer Isis Mussenden. “Seeing it juxtaposed like that immediately tells our audience that this is someone special. It immediately tells us we’re in another era. And that she’s a fish out of water.”
Such is a key job of a film’s costume designer: to provide an audience shorthand so the story can begin.
Designers for films including “If Beale Street Could Talk,” “Mary Queen of Scots,...
“It’s a full ensemble that is quite feminine, but in an appropriate way for where she was,” says the film’s costume designer Isis Mussenden. “Seeing it juxtaposed like that immediately tells our audience that this is someone special. It immediately tells us we’re in another era. And that she’s a fish out of water.”
Such is a key job of a film’s costume designer: to provide an audience shorthand so the story can begin.
Designers for films including “If Beale Street Could Talk,” “Mary Queen of Scots,...
- 1/5/2019
- by Randee Dawn
- Variety Film + TV
As 2018 draws to a close and various critics groups and deliberating bodies measure the year in movie superlatives, a look below the line at the Academy’s crafts races reveals an art form invigorated by many of today’s most brilliant cinematic minds.
Perhaps the most fully realized visual effort is director Barry Jenkins’ follow-up to the Oscars-crashing “Moonlight”: an adaptation of James Baldwin’s “If Beale Street Could Talk.” For the task of translating 1970s Harlem to the screen, Jenkins tapped underappreciated production designer Mark Friedberg, who despite genius efforts on films like “Far From Heaven” and “Synecdoche, New York,” has never been nominated for an Oscar. “Moonlight” composer Nicholas Britell returned with intricate themes to bear, along with costume designer Caroline Eselin, who embraced a far juicier opportunity this time around. Cap it off with lush photography, once again courtesy of Dp James Laxton, and this is quite an attractive package.
Perhaps the most fully realized visual effort is director Barry Jenkins’ follow-up to the Oscars-crashing “Moonlight”: an adaptation of James Baldwin’s “If Beale Street Could Talk.” For the task of translating 1970s Harlem to the screen, Jenkins tapped underappreciated production designer Mark Friedberg, who despite genius efforts on films like “Far From Heaven” and “Synecdoche, New York,” has never been nominated for an Oscar. “Moonlight” composer Nicholas Britell returned with intricate themes to bear, along with costume designer Caroline Eselin, who embraced a far juicier opportunity this time around. Cap it off with lush photography, once again courtesy of Dp James Laxton, and this is quite an attractive package.
- 12/5/2018
- by Kristopher Tapley
- Variety Film + TV
As the A24 logo appears on screen the sound of ocean waves and Boris Gardiner’s soulful 1973 “Every N***r is a Star” comes on the soundtrack. The film then cuts to Juan (Mahershala Ali) pulling onto a quiet, brightly colored residential street in the hot mid-day sun. In a continuous shot, Juan gets out of his car to survey the drug corner he controls. As he converses with one of his dealers and an addict looking to score, the camera swirls around the three men, who fall in and out of frame.
From a narrative standpoint, we are grounded in Juan’s power and control over this patch of Miami, while seeing glimpses of his compassion that will make him the father figure to the film’s protagonist, Chiron. However, that use of sound, movement, light, and color also introduces us to the world of “Moonlight.” Sound and character ground us in the familiar,...
From a narrative standpoint, we are grounded in Juan’s power and control over this patch of Miami, while seeing glimpses of his compassion that will make him the father figure to the film’s protagonist, Chiron. However, that use of sound, movement, light, and color also introduces us to the world of “Moonlight.” Sound and character ground us in the familiar,...
- 2/9/2017
- by Chris O'Falt
- Indiewire
Each year at the Oscar ceremony I hope against hope that they'll ditch one of the numerous superfluous montages celebrating something or other throughout history and just do a runway show of the year's best costumes. On rare occasions we've seen a living tableau before the winner was announced and at least once, a Whoopi ceremony, the host actually incorporated costume design into the gig.
Imagine Seth MacFarlane coming out as Fantine in a shredded Les Miz gown or Queen Ravenna's raven collar dress. Sorry, no! I apologize deeply for putting those images in your head. Let's just say that I feel reasonably certain there will at least be a stovepipe hat during the ceremony in honor of Lincoln.
Oscar Nominees
• Jacqueline Durran, Anna Karenina
• Joanna Johnston, Lincoln
• Eiko Ishioka, Mirror Mirror
• Paco Delgado, Les Misérables
• Colleen Atwood, Snow White and the Hunstman
will win: Anna Karenina, it's not quite...
Imagine Seth MacFarlane coming out as Fantine in a shredded Les Miz gown or Queen Ravenna's raven collar dress. Sorry, no! I apologize deeply for putting those images in your head. Let's just say that I feel reasonably certain there will at least be a stovepipe hat during the ceremony in honor of Lincoln.
Oscar Nominees
• Jacqueline Durran, Anna Karenina
• Joanna Johnston, Lincoln
• Eiko Ishioka, Mirror Mirror
• Paco Delgado, Les Misérables
• Colleen Atwood, Snow White and the Hunstman
will win: Anna Karenina, it's not quite...
- 2/17/2013
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
Ultra Culture has a great post on the British ratings board featuring 10 amusing nuggets from their annual report. Conclusion: at least they're better than America's sex-hating violence-loving MPAA.
Boy Culture is British actor Luke Evans (left) going back in the closet, on the eve of his double-feature blockbuster breakout (The Immortals, Three Musketeers)? Strange story.
Cleveland is very excited to have The Avengers film and wants Ohio to become a big movie-making draw. Between Ohio and Michigan's efforts, the Midwest is really trying to up the "shoot your film here" game.
Google interviews author George Rr Martin on his Dance of Dragons tour. It's an hour long but you Game of Thrones junkies will probably want to give it a listen.
Playbill The King's Speech is headed to Broadway in 2012 just as we feared. Ha ha. Not really on the fear part. It's already practically a stage play so it should be fine.
Boy Culture is British actor Luke Evans (left) going back in the closet, on the eve of his double-feature blockbuster breakout (The Immortals, Three Musketeers)? Strange story.
Cleveland is very excited to have The Avengers film and wants Ohio to become a big movie-making draw. Between Ohio and Michigan's efforts, the Midwest is really trying to up the "shoot your film here" game.
Google interviews author George Rr Martin on his Dance of Dragons tour. It's an hour long but you Game of Thrones junkies will probably want to give it a listen.
Playbill The King's Speech is headed to Broadway in 2012 just as we feared. Ha ha. Not really on the fear part. It's already practically a stage play so it should be fine.
- 8/8/2011
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
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