Gillian Jacobs in 'Love' with Her New Netflix Series

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2016

This photo provided courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox shows cinematographer Emmanuel Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki on set for the film, “The Revenant”. Lubezki , left, and Forrest Goodluck as Hawk on set for the film, “The Revenant,” directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. At Oscars, the name on lips and envelopes is ‘Chivo’ o name resonates in Hollywood right now quite like “Chivo.” “I remember in ‘Y Tu Mama Tambien,’ we started talking about just That’s the nickname of the famed cinematographer letting the shot last until the natural consequence,” says Cuaron. NEmmanuel Lubezki, whose acrobatic long-takes and luminous “From then on, I guess, it was very difficult to go back.” Lubezki has images of natural light have made him revered like few others - and been at the forefront of a trend in movies that favors the visceral real- may make him a three-peat Oscar winner. ism of long takes over montage. Filmmakers like Steve McQueen (“12 Lubezki is behind some of the most dazzling film photography in Years a Slave”) and Cary Fukunaga (“True Detective”) have also recent years: the asteroid storm hurtling through the vast 3-D space of pushed further than the fabled long takes of Orson Welles’ “Touch of “Gravity,” the seemingly continuous backstage sweep of “Birdman,” Evil” or Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope.” the elemental beauty of Terrence Malick’s films. His audacious, real- time sequences have made him synonymous with a seamless magic ‘This wonderful trick’ not before seen in cinema. Such feats risk showiness, but in Lubezki’s hands, they can be jar- “I think it was John Huston who said, ‘When I shoot a whale, I shoot ringly immersive, presented through a crisp digital window. Scenes the face and then I cut and I shoot the tail. And everybody under- like the Arikara ambush of the company of trappers early in “The stands there’s a whale,’” says Lubezki. “But sometimes when you show Revenant” play out in real time, smack in the middle of a 360-degree the entire whale and when you show the parts that seem not as storm of action. The tense silence beforehand, the mayhem of battle important, there’s a deeper connection.” Emmanuel Lubezki arrives at the 88th Academy Awards and the fleeing retreat down a river all unfold without a single blink. After winning Academy Awards the last two years for Alfonso Nominees Luncheon at The Beverly Hilton hotel on Lubezki cautions “this wonderful trick” must always come out of Cuaron’s “Gravity” and Alejandro Inarritu’s “Birdman,” Lubezki is up Monday, Feb. 8, 2016, in Beverly Hills. — AP photos the material, (in “The Godfather,” he notes, it would be disastrous). this year for Inarritu’s frontier epic “The Revenant,” and he’s expected affected me more than almost anybody,” says Lubezki) and Cuaron. And it depends on a director who knows how to block the scene. But to win. Much of the film’s acclaim (it leads with 12 nominations), is Lubezki and Cuaron met as teenage film students in Mexico City. he does sense a shift in the language of film. “When you create these owed to its lush immersion in a raw, 19th century wilderness (it was Together, they frequented a local art house theater watching films by long shots, it feels to me as if I was transported there. It feels more shot largely in the Canadian Rockies) and its balletic single-take Kurosawa, Tarkovsky and Coppola that were sometimes accidentally dangerous and more mysterious,” says Lubezki. “Cutting and shoot- sequences, most famously the single-take bear attack. Yet Lubezki is projected in full-screen prints that showed the apparatus of ing with multiple cameras and so on was so effective 10 years ago but as modest as the cinematography of “The Revenant” is grand. moviemaking, like boom mics and lights. is maybe not as effective anymore as a trick. Probably this trick of the Lubezki, who first wanted to be a still photographer, was convert- long take will become old in a few years, too, and we’ll need to come Powerful feeling ed to movies a week into film school. Cuaron recalls it as an organic up with another trick.” “I don’t know if I’m an incredible cinematographer but I’m definite- marriage: “He was one with the media.” But Lubezki is by no means a one-trick pony. His films with Malick ly a craftsman that is trying to find a language for each project and “He would be fascinated by light,” says Cuaron. “What makes him (including “Tree of Life” and the upcoming “Knight of Cups”) are that’s what’s really exciting for me,” he says. “When you feel that it’s among the great cinematographers is he understands film as a lan- impressionistic and fragmented. Drawn to real environments and working, it’s a very powerful feeling. Sometimes you cannot even guage. The conventional way of seeing cinematography is just a set of eschewing artificial light, he’s ushered in a more naturalistic kind of sleep at night because you’re so excited.” tools.” In films like 2001’s “Y Tu Mama Tambien” and 2006’s “Children moviemaking that can verge on the sublime. “Maybe,” he says, Lubezki has worked with the Coen brothers (“Burn After Reading”), of Men,” Cuaron and Lubezki have pushed the bounds of long, fluid “there’s something that suddenly trickles into the movie that feels Michael Mann (“Ali”) and Tim Burton (“Sleepy Hollow”). But the two takes by utilizing smaller digital cameras and the flexibility of spiritual, that feels connected to something larger.” — AP directors he’s most steadfastly collaborated with are Malick (“He has Steadicams. Gillian Jacobs in ‘Love’ with her new Netflix series

illian Jacobs admits to warning her mother about the these actors from all their shows at one restaurant together and I explicit content in her new Netflix series “Love.” She didn’t was like, ‘This feels like a mural.’ It is kind of surreal.” Gillian Jacobs Ghave to do that when she was on network TV. “The con- Her last TV show, “Community,” set at a community college, tent is more adult. My mom is telling me she’s telling all of her aired for five seasons on NBC and one on Yahoo but seemed friends and family and co-workers to watch the show,” explained always on the chopping block. “Love” has already been picked up Jacobs in a recent interview. for a second season before Season One is out. “I mean it couldn’t “I keep being like, ‘But, you know, you know that there’s some, be more of a 180 from ‘Community,’” said Jacobs. “To have an you know, some adult content in here.’ She’s like, ‘They know, immediate two season pick-up on Netflix? I know, the whole they know.’ I’m like, ‘OK, but there’s some scenes in there I don’t thing has felt like a dream.” know if I want your co-workers to see.” “Love” follows Jacob’s But could there be another revival of “Community”? The Mickey and Paul Rust’s character, Gus, two mismatched misfits phrase “six seasons and a movie” was a running joke on the show, who embark on a relationship. The first season is available on poking fun at its unstable existence. Jacobs is open to - but not Netflix on Friday. certain - of a “Community” film. “There’s no script for that but I This new gig also has Jacobs feeling like she got invited to a think my informal poll shows the cast would like to do the movie. party with the popular kids in high school. “I went to a Netflix par- We all still love and miss each other and talk all the time.” — AP ty recently, and I was sitting there looking around and I was like, ‘I feel like I am at the cool kids table, like what is this?’ and it was all