For those of us who closely monitor the caliber of film costumes, Mark Bridges’s talent has been apparent for well over a decade, going back to at least Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights.” Efforts such as “Magnolia,” “Punch-Drunk Love,” “Blast from the Past,” “There Will Be Blood” and “The Fighter” have shown Bridges’s ability to design threads for numerous periods and in a vast array of genres. His collaboration with Michel Hazanavicus on “The Artist,” however, has probably presented him with his best chance to date to finally find a place in Oscar’s final quintet.

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“Margaret” writer/director Kenneth Lonergan finally speaks at length about his long-embattled sophomore effort.

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Tom McCarthy discusses the subtle links between “wall street” and “main street” in his skillfully rendered character study “Win Win.”

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Bret McKenzie is not a fan of musicals. Or so he says. But his (alleged) lack of interest in musical theater is somewhat ironic given that he has made his name as one half of the folk comedy duo “Flight of the Conchords” (his other half being Jemaine Clement), and that he is (in all likelihood) about to receive one, if not two, Academy Award nominations for Best Original Song.

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When Tech Support first launched at In Contention five years ago, Alexandre Desplat had proven his talents with top-notch scores for “The Girl With a Pearl Earring,” “Birth” and “Syriana.” Today we chat with him about a ubiquitous year doing what he loves to do.

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In 2011, New Zealand-based visual effects company Weta Digital was at it again with another banner year in the CG filmmaking landscape, perhaps the company’s biggest year to date. At the forefront were visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri, director of Weta Digital, and actor Andy Serkis, steward of the performance capture form and the face for a technology that could potentially, at some point, become a standardized tool in the filmmaker’s arsenal.

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Previously best known for “Hot Fuzz” and her work in British TV comedy, Olivia Colman’s award-winning dramatic turn in “Tyrannosaur,” coupled with a role as Meryl Streep’s daughter in “The Iron Lady,” has made her one of 2011’s most unexpected breakthrough actors.

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“Hugo” star Ben Kingsley first got his taste of collaboration with filmmaker Martin Scorsese in 2010 on the thriller “Shutter Island.” It was a long time coming, but for Kingsley, who says he always appreciated Scorsese’s work as a filmmaker, it was a unique characteristic of the director’s process that really spoke to the actor…

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In the first installment of this season’s Tech Support interview series, we sit down with “War Horse” cinematographer Janusz Kaminski.

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Actor Woody Harrelson gives perhaps his finest performance to date in Oren Moverman’s “Rampart.” As he continues to weather the press rounds, he talks to us about feeling funny playing a cop — among countless other things.

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Gary Oldman is well-known for being a part of ensembles, and often standing out amid them. This year, however, he finds himself fronting one, and with a subdued, internalized performance, at that. He talks about his work on “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” which could bring him his first-ever Oscar nomination.

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Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker has seen a lot in his 20 years at that post. This year his company has a typically heavy slate of awards hopefuls, two of them — “Midnight in Paris” and “Take Shelter” — beginning to light up the awards circuit. He recently discussed as much with In Contention.

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The awards talk around performance capture actor Andy Serkis has seen a bit of an uptick amid Fox’s Oscar push and a critics award nomination for his work in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” It seemed a good time to get his thoughts on the technology’s place in the awards season.

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“The Artist,” a silent, black-and-white, French-made ode to classic Hollywood, is one of the year’s biggest cinematic gambles, and it has paid off handsomely. Director Michel Hazanavicius and stars Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo talk about how it came together.

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As Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo” makes its way to theaters, and as Technicolor continues to march out its handsome, expensive, painstaking restoration of Georges Méliès’s “A Trip to the Moon,” the cinema of past and present converge at a key moment: the 100th anniversary of filmmaking in Hollywood.

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His historical drama about rival psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, “A Dangerous Method,” has been criticized in some quarters for playing it too straight — but veteran director David Cronenberg claims it’s more “Cronenbergian” than we might think.

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Screenwriter Nichols Stoller calls the Muppets “the gateway drug to comedy,” and he jumped at the opportunity to write a new feature film around the beloved characters. He talks about finding resonance for a new generation, getting celebrities on board for cameos and Frank Oz’s unfortunate dismissal of the new film’s intentions.

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Carey Mulligan is far from her break-out work in “An Education” when it comes to performances this year in “Drive” and particularly “Shame.” We sit down with the actress to talk about the direction she wants to take her career and the kinds of roles that interest her.

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