Cinematographer Christian Berger has been Michael Haneke's eye for many of that director's most critically acclaimed and talked about films, beginning with 1992's Benny's Video and continuing through 2001's The Piano Teacher and 2005's Caché. With this year's Palme d'Or-winning The White Ribbon, both men have taken a major aesthetic detour from the paranoid postmodern landscapes that characterized their previous efforts, landing instead in pre-WWI Germany, in an agrarian village full of dark secrets. Shooting in black and white with an assured hand, Berger paints stunning monochromatic landscapes, portraits and still lifes of a society savoring its last moments of innocence. We spoke by phone to Berger yesterday from his home in Austria.
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A movie mashup like Zombieland could only be made by a man with credits as eclectic as the film's many influences, and it found its perfect helmer in first-time feature director Ruben Fleischer. The 34-year-old cut his teeth on low-budget music videos before moving onto bigger artists like M.I.A. and Dizzee Rascal, then found success directing commercials, producing the MTV series Rob & Big, and helming episodes of Jimmy Kimmel Live. Now, after a quick shoot and post-production schedule, Fleischer's found himself shepherding one of the most anticipated films of the fall into release tomorrow.
The day after he turned in his final cut, I traveled to Fleischer's office on the Sony lot to get the scoop on Woody Harrelson's casting, the Jonah Hill film he'd first tried to direct, and the perils of luring actresses to a movie called Zombieland.
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Now that ABC's picked up a new sitcom from them, what better time to check in with (500) Days of Summer screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber? Since the film's release, (500) Days of Summer gone on to be one of the year's biggest indie hits, and though there's been plenty of praise for the script's unique jumps in chronology, there's also been criticism that love interest Summer (Zooey Deschanel) is little more than a cipher. Movieline wanted to get Neustadter and Weber's take on that argument, as well as discuss the film's unlikeliest lost scene, their writing credit on The Pink Panther 2, and the British newspaper that opened a whole new can of worms for the real Summer.
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Production designer John Myhre has two Academy Awards on his (undoubtedly stylish) mantle, both earned for his sumptuous work on Rob Marshall's previous films -- 2002's Chicago and 2005's Memoirs of a Geisha. In the years that followed, he'd envision the sparkling '60s showcases of Bill Condon's Dreamgirls, and the cubicle farms and baroque hitman lairs of Timur Bekmambetov's Wanted. Though it's not due in theaters until the holidays, the accolades have already begun to trickle in for Nine, the all-star Broadway musical adaptation that reunites production designer with the director who twice guided him to gold. We spoke with Myhre shortly after he was named Production Designer of the Year by the Behind the Camera Awards.
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We continue our series of interviews with the winners of the 2009 Hamilton Behind the Camera Awards with Stunt Choreographer of the Year, Garrett Warren. A virtually indestructible one-stuntman-army (he's taken four real bullets and lived to tell the tale), Warren is the go-to guy for stunt coordination on 3-D motion capture movies like Avatar, Alice in Wonderland, A Christmas Carol, and The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. He's no stranger to non-CGI danger, either, having just dodged actual explosions and flying Grand Prix cars while serving as Mickey Rourke's Iron Man 2 stunt double. Read on to find out who insists on doing their own stunts, who prefers not to, and pick up a couple of Tintin and Iron Man 2 scoops while you're at it.
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We launch today a series of conversations with the recipients of this year's Hamilton Behind the Camera Awards, a ceremony produced by Movieline to recognize the too-often overlooked achievements of Hollywood's below-the-line craftsmen and crew members.
We begin with Drew Petrotta, a property master who was tasked with the formidable job of tracking down and inventorying every single object seen on screen during the organized chaos of the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen shoot. From Megan Fox's motorcycle chamois to the all-important (if confusing) AllSpark sliver, it was his responsibility to make sure every actor had what they needed by the time Michael Bay shouted, "Action!" through his lucky bullhorn. He talked to us from the Detroit set of the Red Dawn remake that's currently shooting there.
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If the name Neill Blomkamp isn't yet familiar to you, give it a week. Hand-picked by Universal based on the strength of his short films and commercials, the gifted director -- a 29-year-old, South African-born Vancouverite -- was months into pre-production on the Halo film when studio infighting scuttled the project. Guided by mentor Peter Jackson, Blomkamp instead went to work on Sony's District 9 -- an original idea about a race of insectoid aliens, held for decades against their will in a slum in Johannesburg. It's a rich concept that provided him the opportunity to weave weightier themes about race, cruelty and intolerance into an undeniably fun summer thrill ride. And Blomkamp delivered, producing the thinking-man and thinking-woman's alternative to the glut of sci-fi brainlessness currently dominating the box office. Movieline spoke to the director on the cusp of his well-deserved breakout success.
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As a photographer, Bruce Weber's impact has been unmistakable: He's shot covers for every top magazine, ushered in a new era of mainstream homoerotica with his Abercombie & Fitch campaigns, and immortalized in portraits some of the biggest stars and supermodels of the last few decades. As a filmmaker, though, his work has been harder to appreciate simply because it's less available, a problem the Sundance Channel hopes to rectify this month by bringing eight of his films to television for the first time ever (including his Oscar-nominated Chet Baker documentary, Let's Get Lost).
I spoke to the legendary photographer and raconteur for Movieline, and discussed his films, his famous subjects, and photography in the age of digital narcissism.
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With studios tightening their belts and mini-majors dropping like flies, the days of festival feeding frenzies are long over. But then there's always the exceptions to the rule. As Fox Searchlight's Adam gets nudged into the big, bad world today -- gradually, of course, on four screens, typical of the measured strategy that turned Little Miss Sunshine and Juno into massive sleeper hits -- we asked director Max Mayer, an East Coast theater veteran, to recount the night his microbudget romance was scooped up at Sundance.
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The gang behind Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock gathered last night for the film's New York premiere, a tented affair beneath hot, unforgiving monsoon skies. I guess it was better than the last Lee event I attended here -- the Lust, Caution debut where the pushy Hong Kong press called me white trash (true story!) -- but Woodstock's much-improved vibes were bound to trump all red-carpet discontent. Especially for Lee and his longtime creative partner (and Focus Features benefactor) James Schamus, who both offered insights on how to best channel the free, permissive '60s spirit on film -- starting with an acid trip.
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A little concerned about the surplus of new villains in Iron Man 2? Don't worry -- as the filmmakers told Movieline at Comic-Con, they are, too. Still, they argued, it was essential to introduce those new characters to fix the one niggling issue they had with their original film: the villain.
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With just days to go before Judd Apatow cuts the cord on Funny People -- his third, most thematically ambitious film -- Hollywood's reigning comedy mastermind sat with us this morning for an in-depth discussion that touched upon his childhood, his career, and his philosophies on what makes good movies work.
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Vinessa Shaw remembers when she first stepped on the London set of Eyes Wide Shut, where the one-time child actress would eventually spend the better part of six months working on Stanley Kubrick's final film. As Domino, the prostitute with whom Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) shares a preempted encounter on his late-night walking tour of New York, Shaw portrayed one of many casualties in Kubrick's wasteland of sexual obsession; her kiss with Cruise -- perhaps EWS's most purely erotic moment -- signaled a peak of intimacy from which their characters would plunge in the day to follow. She was 21.
That was over a decade ago. Today, exactly 10 years after Eyes Wide Shut's July 16, 1999, theatrical release, Shaw talks to Movieline about nabbing her breakthrough role, shattering the notorious perfectionist's all-time take record, and life (and work) after Kubrick.
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As LA's Outfest Film Festival celebrates Strand Releasing with a retrospective honoring the company's twenty years in the film industry, we couldn't help but wonder: Where would the state of independent film be without Strand? Partners Marcus Hu and Jon Gerrans have distributed films by some of cinema's most acclaimed directors, including François Ozon, Gaspar Noé, and Hal Hartley, and their pivotal influence and trailblazing tastes helped kick off the New Queer Cinema movement. Where other independent distributors have crashed and burned, Strand has been responsible for releasing great movies for two decades.
To commemorate the moment and to shed more light on how Strand has survived and thrived, Movieline spoke to both Hu and Gerrans as well as friend-of-Strand Gregg Araki and director Fenton Bailey, whose film Party Monster found a savior in the company.
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As the director of the seminal high school film Heathers, Michael Lehmann knows a thing or two about navigating a world filled with peer pressure and backstabbing -- just the attributes that make him the perfect creative adviser to talk Hollywood at the Sundance Labs. That isolated, idyllic workshop experience in the wilds of Utah might seem like an entirely alien world to the Hollywood veteran, but he tells Movieline that it's one that provides some of his biggest artistic highs (as well as, on occasion, some emotional lows for the vulnerable, fledgling filmmakers gathered there).
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