It's the quotidian, almost invisible bits that matter most behind the camera on a movie set. Take the sliver of video newly available on a Tumblr called Mouth Taped Shut, by all appearances another bit of authorized viral marketing for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo -- this time featuring David Fincher directing Daniel Craig, Christopher Plummer extolling Fincher's virtues (and leveling a not-so-prescient Oscar-season pledge) and snapshots from the production.
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Few films in recent memory traverse the urban terrain of Los Angeles as memorably as Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive, the stylish, sublime (and yes, ultra-violent) September 16 "fairytale" starring Ryan Gosling as a soft-spoken stunt man who gets mixed up with vicious gangsters in the city of angels. Using practical locations from downtown to the Valley, Refn paints a portrait of L.A. seldom seen in even the best L.A. stories -- and with nary a glimpse of glitzy Hollywood in sight. Dive into Movieline's interactive Drive map and explore the landscape of Refn's Los Angeles, in the director's own words.
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Gordon Willis is the best cinematographer America ever produced. There. I said it. If he'd only shot the Godfather trilogy, Manhattan, Zelig and All the President's Men (let alone Pennies From Heaven, Interiors, Klute and Broadway Danny Rose), he'd have at least earned consideration among the greats like Gregg Toland and Billy Bitzer and his Oscar-winning contemporaries Conrad Hall and Haskell Wexler. And very few would argue against Willis being the best American cinematographer to never win an Oscar -- until tomorrow, that is, when Willis will join Roger Corman as a recipient of a long, long over lifetime-achievement Academy Award. In a series of clips after the jump, see some of what the Academy missed (and is finally making up for) all these years.
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If you called in sick Monday with an acute case of oinkitis, you may have completely missed the fact that Movieline hosted its very first, celebrity-packed awards ceremony: The Behind the Camera Awards. Held at the swanky Highlands club in Los Angeles's Hollywood & Highlands complex and co-sponsored by Hamilton (manufacturer of high quality pocketwatches and wristwatches for over a century; Hamilton: The American Brand Since 1892™), it was a night for those who make their living in front of the cameras to pay sincere tribute to the stars on the other side. So to honor them -- and commemorate yours truly of having achieved the entertainment-website-legitimizing equivalent of a Bar Mitzvah -- we thought we'd round-up all our fascinating and revealing interview exclusives with the Behind the Camera Awards winners in one place. Enjoy them again, or for the very first time. And for our red carpet coverage and a picture gallery, be sure to head over to the BTC homepage.
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Screenwriting prodigy-turned-attractive vampire Nikki Reed appeared at the Hamilton Behind the Camera Awards on Sunday not just to herald Susan MacLeod for her visual effects work, but to gab a bit with Movieline about the upcoming Twilight: New Moon and next year's Twilight: Eclipse. The 21-year-old who once co-wrote Thirteen (using her own scary teen experiences as source material) believes her Twilight role Rosalie Hale will receive necessary color in the coming installments -- some of it even more gruesome than Thirteen's drug-addled fist-fights. Clip after the jump.
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Last night at the Behind the Camera Awards, before Joseph Gordon-Levitt went on to do a (500) Days of Summer pantomime with Zooey Deschanel, he was on the red carpet singing the praises of writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. (Gordon-Levitt also told us he hasn't started preparing for his upcoming stint hosting Saturday Night Live, but he can't wait until that very first meeting with the writers.) Still, despite the fun and excitement of taking home an award, one of three men had an even more momentous occasion to celebrate this weekend.
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1. Diane Kruger
Protractors ready: Diane Kruger reigned as the night's most symmetrical human being. A perfected Maureen McCormick, if you will. Kruger beats the record previously set by Cameron Diaz and obsessive-compulsive kids' drawings in the game "Hangman."
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After the polyglot heaven that was Inglourious Basterds, many of its actors have become just as well known for their facility with accents and languages as they have for their actual performances. Diane Kruger is no exception -- formerly wasted in arm candy roles, the actress came alive as if for the first time when speaking forceful German and English in Basterds, and now she's bringing that skill set to the upcoming thriller Unknown White Male, starring Liam Neeson and January Jones.
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Last night's Hamilton Behind the Camera Awards ceremony was as packed with meta-literal moments as it was with unabashed enthusiasm for the cinema. Onscreen talents such as Jason Bateman, Bill Paxton and Diane Kruger mounted the Highlands stage to thank their behind-the-camera colleagues, who then jumped in front of our cameras to accept their awards. But the most meta moment was claimed when Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt honored screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber by ditching their presenter script to improv how 500 Days of Summer would have looked without Neustadter and Weber's screenplay.
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There aren't many Hollywood events where you might spot Hitchcockian goddess Tippi Hedren, Austrian cinematographer Christian Berger and legendary costume designer Ann Roth strolling the red carpet alongside the ravishing Diane Kruger (with date Joshua Jackson on her arm), the fierce Zoe Saldana, and (500) Days of Summer's fractious -- but pretty damn cute -- couple, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. But then there aren't many ceremonies like the Hamilton Behind the Camera Awards -- an event expressly mounted to recognize the achievements of cinema craftsmen and professionals whose work is too often glossed over every awards season.
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Before this year, only horror geeks would stop Eli Roth on the street. Now, though, the Hostel director has cultivated a whole new fanbase as an actor after appearing as the Nazi-bashing Bear Jew in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Roth attended last night's Behind the Camera Awards with his friend and Basterds costar Christoph Waltz, and he had plenty to say to Movieline about his newfound recognition (as well as heaps of praise for Basterds editor Sally Menke, who was honored last night). Still, while the Bear Jew is all well and good, what we really wanted to know about was Roth's inauspicious acting debut in Barbra Streisand's The Mirror Has Two Faces. (No, we're not making that up.)
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The Angelina Jolie/Johnny Depp thriller The Tourist is one of Hollywood's hottest projects, and it's something of a hot potato. Jolie and Depp replaced Charlize Theron and Sam Worthington, respectively, and until recently, Oscar-winning director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others) was attached to direct. Last week, though, several outlets reported that von Donnersmarck was off the picture and that Alfonso Cuaron and other directors were circling the project in advance of a February start. I caught up with von Donnersmarck on the red carpet of the Behind the Camera Awards last night, and when I asked him what had happened with The Tourist, his answer surprised me.
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There's one woman in the world who understands Quentin Tarantino better than anybody, and that's Sally Menke. Since her work on Reservoir Dogs, Menke has cut every single one of Tarantino's films, and for the last decade, she's eschewed almost all other jobs to devote herself solely to the genre-blending auteur. This Sunday, Menke will be receiving the Lifetime Achievement honor at the Hamilton Behind the Camera Awards, and as Inglourious Basterds begins its transformation from unexpected summer blockbuster to even-more-unexpected Oscar player, we thought there'd be no better time to talk to Menke about how she does what she does.
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Every other year or so, film editor Dana E. Glauberman gets The Call. The tradition began quietly enough in 2005 with an indie adaptation of the novel Thank You For Smoking. Yet by last spring, as the first of Jason Reitman's footage from the set of Up in the Air arrived in Glauberman's editing suite, the duo's meticulous shaping and storytelling process began anew on their biggest project to date. Expectations run high after their previous collaboration Juno became an Oscar-winning box-office smash, and indeed Up in the Air is already showing similar promise after its Toronto Film Festival premiere. But to hear Glauberman tell it when Movieline caught up with her this week, that's just another day at the office.
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Throughout her career in visual effects -- starting with 1995's Die Hard With a Vengeance and most recently with 2007's The Golden Compass -- Susan MacLeod has been around the blockbuster more a few times, but never as a visual effects supervisor, and likely never on a project surrounded by as much anticipation as this month's New Moon. Having served as Chris Weitz's VFX producer on the Oscar-winning Compass, MacLeod was one of the first colleagues the director called after taking on the sequel to Twilight. She eventually came aboard as the film's VFX supervisor, battling wolves, vampires, apparitions and more in her and her crew's race to realize novelist Stephenie Meyer's bestseller on a wild 10-month schedule. MacLeod spoke with Movieline today about getting creative, working fast, and a few hints at what fans can expect from New Moon.
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