#movie:a-wrinkle-in-time | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kevinpolowy · 6 years

Text

'Everybody wants to be seen': Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling on 'Wrinkle' costar Oprah's best wisdom

yahoo

As the Three Ladies of A Wrinkle in Time, Ava DuVernay’s new adaptation of the 1962 summer reading list staple, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, and Oprah Winfrey worked extremely closely with one another. Which means Witherspoon and Kaling had the chance to ask the woman otherwise known as America’s Mother Goddess (she prefers “Sister Goddess,” FYI) “a billion questions.”

At the film’s Los Angeles press day, we asked Witherspoon and Kaling for the best knowledge they had dropped on them from the iconic O.

“How to make a margarita,” Kaling cracked (watch above). “Listen, the things that she says, the anecdotes that she tells you, can open up your whole mind to [all] your experiences. But I will say, her margaritas are pretty amazing.”

She also makes killer homemade truffle popcorn, according to Witherspoon and costar Chris Pine. But there was one little nugget of insight from Winfrey that resonated most with the Big Little Lies star. “Something beautiful she said to me: I said, ‘What was the thing that you learned the most on The Oprah Show?’ And she said, ‘Everybody wants to be seen.’”

To Witherspoon, it relates perfectly to Wrinkle, for which DuVernay reimagined the main character of Meg Murry as a teen of mixed race.

“If you talk about this movie in that perspective, little girls have always looked the same way on film, and mainly it’s little boys starring in movies,” she said. “So seeing a little girl who’s a person of color at the center of this huge Disney movie is profound. And people want to be seen.”

A Wrinkle in Time is now in theaters.

Watch the cast talk more about how A Wrinkle in Time was “Ava DuVernayed”:

yahoo

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

‘We’re in the midst’ of Hollywood change: Oprah, ‘Wrinkle in Time’ co-stars talk more diverse blockbusters

Oprah Winfrey adores her ‘Wrinkle in Time’ Barbie because she was too poor for the real doll as a kid

Oprah explains why she makes so few public appearances with Stedman

#_author_id:97e0bfc0-9e83-11e3-bfb8-cce40eaac22c #movie:a-wrinkle-in-time #News #video #Interviews #Oprah Winfrey #Reese Witherspoon #Mindy Kaling #_uuid:7a4b0dbb-d514-3b8b-82e4-358d62e2d1e9 #_draft:true

2 notes · View notes

ethanalter · 6 years

Text

The inside story of Oprah Winfrey's mind-blowing 'A Wrinkle in Time' moments

Oprah Winfrey looms large as Mrs. Which in A Wrinkle in Time (Photo: Atsushi Nishijima/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection)

Warning: This story includes spoilers for A Wrinkle in Time.

Whether she’s delivering moving awards show speeches or contemplating presidential runs that clearly unnerve the current POTUS, there’s no question that Oprah Winfrey looms large over American culture. In Ava DuVernay’s new adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s classic novel A Wrinkle in Time — which opened behind Black Panther at the box office this weekend, marking the first time in history that two blockbusters helmed by black filmmakers have occupied the top two slots — the director carries that idea through to its logical conclusion. When Winfrey makes her first appearance in the film as the planet-hopping mystic, Mrs. Which, she is deliberately larger than life… not to mention larger than anyone else in the frame.

Manifesting herself in the backyard of the film’s young Earth-bound heroine, Meg (Storm Reid), Mrs. Which stands at a regal 18 feet — the exact height of Meg’s house. Later on, when the action moves to the alien world of Uriel, she sprouts up to a lofty 35 feet, towering over the lush landscape as well as her colleagues Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling) and Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), not to mention Meg and her kid sidekicks Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe) and Calvin (Levi Miller). Although Mrs. Which eventually shrinks to human size for the rest of the sextet’s journey to find Meg missing father (Chris Pine), her introduction effectively establishes her as a force of nature one must look up to, not just in terms of physical statue, but also wisdom and heart. It’s definitely made an impact on audiences, who have taken to Twitter to express their affection for this BFGO — as in, Big Friendly Giant Oprah.

I… I saw a giant Oprah

— Glenn Scott (@glennsc) March 12, 2018

but giant oprah deserves an oscar

— fiona applebee’s (@glamgrrl101) March 12, 2018

I’ve told multiple people since seeing the movie that sometimes you just need a giant Oprah telling you to be a warrior. https://t.co/RmRVbgqFTF

— Connie Camazotz ✨Not IT (@ConStar24) March 12, 2018

It’s weird, go see the weird giant Oprah movie

— JUSTIN CHARITY (@justincharity) March 9, 2018

I’m really glad A Wrinkle in Time exists and I hope it inspires female empowerment among the youth but there’s a scene where Reese Witherspoon turns into a piece of kale and they use her to fly around Oprah who is temporarily giant-sized.

— Teri Cwiek (@tericwiek) March 11, 2018

Winfrey didn’t stipulate the literal size of her role in her contract, of course. Rather, her appearance is DuVernay’s creative extrapolation of a small, but memorable detail found in L’Engle’s novel. On the page, Mrs. Whatsit has trouble materializing, often taking a little longer to adopt a solid form than her fellow witches. “She’s never quite solid,” points out Rich McBride, VFX supervisor for A Wrinkle in Time. “She’s still in this slightly transparent form. Materializing is not one of her strong points, as they joke about in the movie. But that first moment with Mrs. Which in the backyard is so important, Ava wanted her to have a real presence — which is a funny thing to say about Oprah Winfrey, because she has a presence of her own anyway!”

While digital trickery was obviously used to stretch Mrs. Which out to her different heights, McBride confirms that Winfrey — who previously acted for DuVernay in the Oscar-nominated Selma — was physically on set for those scenes, requiring the crew to use old-fashioned movie magic to create the illusion of size. “For the backyard scene, we put her up on a scissor lift so that the characters were looking up at her and running lines for the scene,” McBride recalls to Yahoo. “In other cases, we had an eye-line pole to say, ‘Here’s where her eyes will be when you’re addressing her,’ and then she would be off-camera with a mic so that she could run lines that way.” According to Christopher Batty, a previsualization supervisor at the effects house Proof Inc. which collaborated with McBride on the big effects sequences, Winfrey was eager to be an active scene partner for her co-stars. “Even when she wasn’t in the frame, she was always on set feeding lines. She’d be standing next to Ava and they’d give her a mic, and you’d just hear her voice booming through the set. That really helped the other actors.”

Reese Witherspoon romps around on the lush planet of Uriel, where Oprah Winfrey appears 35 feet tall (Photo: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection)

Winfrey’s commitment to the film took her all the way to New Zealand, which doubled as Uriel — minus those gossipy, floating flowers and otherworldly vegetation. “When we were on location, the plan was that he would have these various devices to allow the other actors to interact with Oprah,” McBride explains. “We didn’t use the scissor lift there, but we did have the eye-line pole, as well as a TV monitor that was a feed of Oprah saying her lines. We’d put that monitor on a stand high enough that everybody would be looking up at Oprah saying her lines and interacting with her on the TV.”

That location footage was later used as reference and matching material for bluescreen shoots that took place back on the soundstage. “We’d take all of the set-ups that we shot on location to see what elements we were going to need for Mrs. Which and then lined them with compositing so you could see where she was going to fit into the shot itself and shoot her as an element. In some cases, we’d put Oprah up on a 5-foot platform and all the other actors underneath her based on where they were in the location footage. In both cases we had principal actors working with each other. Ava was always looking for ways to make sure that everybody could react to each other — especially the kids — so they could feel the emotion of the scene.”

Oprah Winfrey and Storm Reid in A Wrinle in Time (Photo: Atsushi Nishijima /© Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection)

Because of her height, the early interactions between Mrs. Which and the three kids are mostly emotional rather than physical, with one notable exception. While on Uriel, Mrs. Whatsit transforms into a flying creature that’s part manta ray and part lettuce leaf and takes Meg, Charles Wallace and Calvin on an aerial tour of the planet. Soaring at 35 feet above the ground, she passes by Mrs. Which’s face, and Charles Wallace reaches out to touch her cheek, a magical moment of contact between a little boy and a giant Oprah.

That effect is all the more magical considering that Winfrey and McCabe were never in the same frame. “We had an accurate pre-viz model of Oprah, and then it was just a case of seeing how close we felt getting a camera to her,” Batty explains. “Once got framing on her that we like, we backwards-engineered it to get Derek’s performance. He was standing on top of a bluescreen platform that stood in for Oprah and if I remember correctly, they had a series of pads for him to physically touch at the appropriate distance away. We also had a finished animatic that we showed him so he could see what the goal of the shot was; he’s a really smart kid and really savvy, so he knew what the deal was. After that, it was just scaling issues and measurement issues that we had to deal with [digitally] to make the scene work. Even at the last minute, we were trying alternate shots of his performance and Oprah’s performance. Ava always likes to get the best moment she can.”

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

‘A Wrinkle in Time’ trailer: A thrilling fantasy journey for Disney’s newest warrior

Ava DuVernay made Oprah, Reese, and Mindy her ‘little dolls’ in their colorful ‘Wrinkle in Time’ looks

Oprah Winfrey, Recy Taylor, and Hollywood’s untold stories

#Storm Reid #_uuid:d161cede-723e-3a81-be95-235c6723f799 #movie:a-wrinkle-in-time #Mindy Kaling #_revsp:wp.yahoo.movies.us #Gugu Mbatha-Raw #video #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #_author:Kevin Polowy #News #Chris Pine #Oprah Winfrey #Interviews #Ava DuVernay

1 note · View note

gwynnew · 6 years

Text

'A Wrinkle in Time' trailer: A thrilling fantasy journey for Disney's newest warrior

youtube

Not all warriors need superpowers — some of them just need science, and love. The new trailer for A Wrinkle in Time delves into the story of Meg Murray (Storm Reid), an ordinary girl who is called to an extraordinary quest by three supernatural beings (played by Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling). Watch it above.

As the trailer reveals, Meg — who will soon be called a “warrior” by the voice of Oprah — starts out as an underachiever and a troublemaker. She blames her misbehavior on the disappearance of her astrophysicist father (Chris Pine), who is presumed dead after an experiment with time travel, a concept she and her mother (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) explain in a charming demonstration to her friend Cal (Levi Miller). However, Meg soon learns that her father is alive, and that she is the only one who can save him against the dark forces of the universe. The trailer previews the dazzling but perilous interplanetary journey undertaken by Meg, Cal, and Meg’s brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe) in order to locate and rescue her father. In addition to the three female guides, the trailer highlights Zach Galifianakis’s character, the Happy Medium; Michael Peña’s red-eyed villain; and a mysterious flying creature. (If you’ve read the book, you probably have a guess.)

The Disney film, directed by Ava DuVernay, is the first theatrical film adaptation of the beloved 1962 sci-fi/fantasy novel by Madeleine L’Engle.

A Wrinkle in Time opens in theaters on March 9.

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

How Ava DuVernay updated ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ for the big screen by embracing diversity

‘A Wrinkle in Time’ trailer: A thrilling fantasy journey for Disney’s newest warrior

Ava DuVernay made Oprah, Reese, and Mindy her ‘little dolls’ in their colorful ‘Wrinkle in Time’ looks

#movie:a-wrinkle-in-time #Mindy Kaling #_revsp:wp.yahoo.movies.us #Reese Witherspoon #_draft:true #video #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #_uuid:5f8e62bf-9ef6-3eb0-970a-cd79e68b287a #_author:Kevin Polowy #News #Oprah Winfrey #Interviews #Ava DuVernay

2 notes · View notes

kevinpolowy · 6 years

Text

Oprah Winfrey adores her 'Wrinkle in Time' Barbie because she was too poor for real doll as a kid

yahoo

Oprah Winfrey hosted the highest-rated daytime talk show for more 25 years, earned two Oscar nominations and won an honorary statuette, lays claim to a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and launched her own television network (called, well, OWN).

Getting a Barbie doll modeled after her character Mrs. Which in Disney’s upcoming fantasy A Wrinkle in Time, however, is easily a life highlight.

“To now have a doll made in the image of your character is a pretty phenomenal moment,” she told Yahoo Entertainment while joined by costars/fellow Barbie recipients Reese Witherspoon (Mrs. Whatsit) and Mindy Kaling (Mrs. Who) while promoting Wrinkle. “It is not lost on me that that has happened… It’s a pretty phenomenal thing.”

Mattel’s Barbie-style dolls of Mindy Kaling, Oprah Winfrey, and Reese Witherspoon’s characters in A Wrinkle in Time. (Photo: Mattel)

The honor not only represents how far the media icon has come since her formative years in Mississippi, but also reflects a clear sign of the times.

“I grew up a poor negro child,” Winfrey said, in what may have been a reference to Steve Martin’s oft-quoted opening line from his 1979 comedy The Jerk. “I had, literally, a corncob doll… where you take the corn, shuck it, and then you try to make a little doll and you use the silk for the hair.”

Winfrey interrupted herself: “I know you’re looking at me like I’m from Little House on the Prairie.”

She continued, “The idea of a Barbie doll — Barbies were always too expensive. You’re not going to get a Barbie. You’re certainly not going to find a brown one.”

Witherspoon and Kaling are equally as thrilled.

“I ordered seven of mine off of Amazon,” Witherspoon laughed. “And they’re all over. I’m giving them out to basically anyone who comes to the house.”

Or to paraphrase the immortal words of her costar, “YOU GET A DOLL! YOU GET A DOLL!”

A Wrinkle in Time opens March 9.

Watch the cast talk about their colorful costuming:

yahoo

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

‘A Wrinkle in Time’ trailer: A thrilling fantasy journey for Disney’s newest warrior

Oprah Winfrey Officially Shoots Down Presidential Rumors For First Time Following Golden Globes

Oprah Reacts to Trump’s Tweet After President Called Her ‘Insecure’: ‘I Just Thought, What?’

#_author_id:97e0bfc0-9e83-11e3-bfb8-cce40eaac22c #video #news #Interviews #movie:a-wrinkle-in-time #Oprah Winfrey #Reese Witherspoon #Mindy Kaling #exclusives #toys #_uuid:c0075497-96e5-3c1a-a19a-ee0525ce50e7 #_draft:true

1 note · View note