Clark Gregg has gone from babysitting the Avengers to child actors. Gregg, aka S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Coulson, took a break from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to write, direct and star in his second feature Trust Me , in which he plays another kind of highly specialized agent — the Hollywood kind, for kids. more »
This Wednesday kicks off the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, and I got the chance to sit down with festival co-founders Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal to talk shop. Now while all film festivals have plenty of business going on behind the scenes, Tribeca puts it front and center with events like its Future of Film LIVE talks which focus on film distribution. According to Rosenthal, the festival is geared to reflect the hot topics of conversation in the film industry today: "We have to look at how the business is changing and how you create is different because of technology...so it's that merging together of that dialogue."
Remember Occupy Wall Street? Remember how popular support for the protest soared and then dwindled as organizers proved to be disorganized and ineffectual? In his new film, The Company You Keep, Robert Redford examines why so many movements like OWS fail. "They don't always succeed, they tend to evaporate," Redford notes. "I was curious about why. And what was the cost [for] those people that so believed?"
The Host author Stephenie Meyer is a sci-fi grrrl. Now that the Twilight creator is transitioning from vampires and werewolves to aliens, I asked her what it was like to work in the male-dominated science-fiction genre. "I grew up reading science fiction!" she told me. "There are many women out there reading science fiction and enjoying it — it's our genre too!" more »
Mark Wahlberg jumps back into action as an ex-cop out for justice in this week's Broken City, which sees him face off against none other than Russell Crowe as a crooked politician Crowe describes as "part Queens, and part Wall Street." After the jump, watch as Wahlberg talks up the Allen Hughes-helmed potboiler, what brings him back to the gritty action well time and time again, and the big-screen face-off with Crowe that was 15 years in the making.
Jacki Weaver says she has no Oscar game plan except to buy a new pair of shoes. "I love shoes. I love shiny things," the Australian actress told Movieline this afternoon, after learning she had been nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her fine work in David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook. more »
Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, and even rock hobbyist Russell Crowe are known double threats when it comes to acting and singing, but Tom Hooper’s big screen Les Miserables offers its biggest surprise by introducing the musical talents of Brit actor Eddie Redmayne. Trained as a chorister at Eton College (where he went to school with, yes, Prince William — more on that in a moment), the longtime Les Mis fan knew the musical so well he filmed his audition via iPhone while shooting another film. When he got to preparing for the film, however, his Les Mis fanaticism didn’t quite help.
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The hero of Jean-Luc Godard's Le Petit Soldat declared “The cinema is truth, 24 times per second,” as The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw noted while pondering frame rates and cinematic standards last year. Peter Jackson insists that it’s closer to 48 frames per second, as demonstrated by the groundbreaking new frame rate he utilized for this weekend’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. But do scientific theories about the way our brains perceive images and reality — truth unfolding onscreen, in front of our eyes — support Jackson’s brave new vision for cinema, or undermine it?
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The camps are entrenched, the battle lines drawn, and the barbs and quips are flying like cannon shot across the divide. But as the debate rages on Movieline -- and on other sites across the web -- over Peter Jackson's directorial decision to film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in 48 frames per second (as opposed to the more traditional 24), no single quip seems to draw the ire of the "traditionalists" more than this one, aimed square in the chest of the old timers: Resisting 48 frames is like resisting color.
As if an argument over aesthetic choice could be so absurdly reduced. Right, four time Academy Award winning legendary SFX master and Hobbit visual effects supervisor, Joe Letteri?
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Pop superstar Kylie Minogue may be an unlikely figure to appear as a tragic figure in French filmmaker Leos Carax's surreal Holy Motors, but given the numerous twists and turns the Australian-born singer has had, first gaining notoriety in what now seems like a former life as a soap star, the ever adventurous performer is always seeking out the new. So, Holy Motors is a perfect pit-stop. Describing this sensually unnerving and stimulating adventure is simply boarding a fast train to hopelessness, it's a day-long ride through Carax's imagination. But to give some sense of the film, which had its U.S. debut at the recent New York Film Festival and is slowly heading into theatrical release this week, Minogue is one character in a series of "appointments" for Monsieur Oscar. In her moment, she gets to do what legions of her fans love - she sings. But even for a crooning vet like Kylie, even that was a new experience.
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Just the words South Central will conjure up an image of mean streets and gangs, even by people who don't live in Los Angeles. The neighborhood is infamous for its hardened criminals and its gang-banger imagery has permeated the popular culture everywhere. Director David Ayer returns to the neighborhood he knows well in his latest film End of Watch, starring Jake Gyllenhaal (who is also an executive producer) and Michael Peña who give gripping performances as LAPD cops Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala tackling a better armed group of very tough group - both guys and gals. Ayer grew up in the neighborhood and knows the people he's brought to the big screen well. South Central was the setting for his first directorial feature, Harsh Times back in 2005. And LAPD cops were at the heart of his 2008 pic Street Kings. Ayer told ML that he initially wanted to move away from the cop-crime scenario after working on those films, but headed back to the genre even as he was trying to talk himself out of it.
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It's not after every interview that you stand up to leave and then your subject drops a bomb that changes how you see them, but at Fantastic Fest anything goes. So I was amused when, after talking opening night selection Dredd 3D (in theaters nationwide on Friday), lower jaw acting, and Indiana Jones baby names with actor Karl Urban, he mentioned he'd read my stuff. "Even the one where you said I have no charisma," he laughed. Mea culpa, Karl.
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Actor Michael Peña is set for what is likely his biggest starring role to date in director David Ayer's End of Watch. In the pic opening this weekend, he plays opposite Jake Gyllenhaal as a pair of good-guy but rough-and-tumble L.A. cops who face the complicated mean streets of the city's gang-ridden South Central neighborhood. At the Toronto International Film Festival where the film debuted earlier this month, Peña recalled his life growing up in a similarly rough are of Chicago, crediting sports and a former girlfriend who landed him a job at a bank for keeping the lure of gangs at bay. And, he hinted that his ego may have also played into his decision for a different life, which quickly took him to Hollywood.
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Last week at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone debuted their Broadway hit The Book of Mormon in L.A. previews and, following an enthusiastic opening, spoke about the catchy Mormonism-skewering play, future plans to adapt it into their third film musical. Parker even — half-seriously, I think — suggested who might be the perfect young actor to play the good-looking, All-American missionary hero who finds his dream of Latter Day stardom dashed when assigned to a remote African outpost with a schlubby, geeky partner. “Justin Bieber as Elder Price!” exclaimed Parker.
Premium Rush is about speed. So let's not pussyfoot around and get right to the action. The action flik, which led this week's box-office newcomers with a reported $6.5 million take, features Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Wilee, a bike messenger being pursued through the streets of New York City on his brake-less "fixie" — fixed-gear — rig. Among those chasing Wilee is corrupt detective Bobby Monday, played by Michael Shannon, who is hell-bent on intercepting the package that Wilee is carrying.
In advance of the film's release, Movieline sat down with director and co-writer David Koepp and his writing partner John Kamps (Ghost Town) to talk about writing a white-knuckle action movie without killing anyone and how cyclists are the most responsible travelers on the street. more »
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