On a recent day in Los Angeles the charismatic, now-83-year-old Robert Guillaume recalled with little effort and copious charm the skepticism he initially felt at the idea of a cartoon film about a lion who becomes the king of the animals, for which the filmmakers wanted him to voice a wise mandrill-baboon. "When they first described it to me I wasn't all that impressed with the idea," he admitted. "It didn't make a lot of sense." Eventually the parts combined into Disney's 1994 classic The Lion King, and Guillaume saw what made it all so special. "I still think it's kind of a miracle, that it must have touched people very deeply when they first saw it."
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Some moviegoers may recognize Stellan Skarsgård as the frequent Lars von Trier collaborator who this November will appear in Melancholia, his fourth film from the controversial Danish director. But more mainstream audiences will recognize the 60-year-old Swedish actor (and father of True Blood breakout actor Alexander Skarsgård) for his work in five mega-blockbusters in the past five years including Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Mamma Mia!, Angels & Demons and most recently Thor, which starred Skarsgård as a scientist who ultimately befriends Chris Hemsworth's title character.
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Sure, many film critics will review (and like Movieline, pan) Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star this weekend. But what better way to prepare for the porn-themed Happy Madison comedy starring Nick Swardson than with the expert critique of an actual porn star? Enter Joanna Angel, the five-time AVN Award-winning adult film entrepreneur who writes, directs and produces her own films under her Burning Angel Entertainment production shingle.
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At age 74, Jane Fonda still beams with a dogged courage that has fueled her cinematic, political, and entrepreneurial endeavors. Biographer Patricia Bosworth would know firsthand, having met the two-time Oscar winner during their thespian days with Lee Strasberg in New York City's Actors Studio. For four decades Bosworth has studied the shapeshifting Fonda, and when it came time in the early 2000s to write her biography, Fonda agreed to interview with the woman who had, by that time, written tomes about Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando.
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It's a curious version of the real pro wrestler Kurt Angle that you get from the ring persona he's projected over the years as a star of the WWE (née WWF) and now TNA Wrestling, where he's currently the reigning World Heavyweight Champion. The real-life former Olympic wrestler has played off his 1996 gold medal win as wrestling's bona fide "American Hero" since his 1998 WWF debut, juggling multiple wrestling companies and countless ring titles while a version of his own personal life, warped through the wrestling world's faux-realist backstage lens, is broadcast every week to millions of fans. But what Angle really wants to do -- what he wanted to do even before pro wrestling came calling -- is act. Seriously act.
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Maybe it's coincidence that Ezra Miller had two films premiere at last year's Tribeca Film Festival, including Beware the Gonzo -- which finally arrives theaters this weekend in limited release and is currently available everywhere on VOD. (His 2009 Tribeca entry, City Island won the festival's audience prize.) But it's no accident: Since his 2008 screen debut in the harrowing prep-school drama Afterschool, the 18-year-old actor has built a reputation behind the scenes for fearlessness, intensity, comic chops, and holding his own against alpha-castmates like Andy Garcia, Liev Schreiber and Helen Hunt. And coming soon: Tilda Swinton.
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It's no coincidence that Josh Hartnett has been off the grid, so to speak, in the years following his most recent string of mainstream turns (The Black Dahlia, Resurrecting the Champ, 30 Days of Night); after spending a decade in Hollywood, the 33-year-old tells Movieline, other interests and challenges called. "I've been trying out a lot of different things," Hartnett explained during a chat about his latest art film endeavor, Guy Moshe's hyper-stylized Bunraku. "I started this business so young, I kind of grew up in it... I'm just living a rather unique life, I think, and I enjoy it."
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After a career in Hollywood that has spanned four decades, two Oscar nominations, three wives and one notoriously bad mug shot -- Nick Nolte returns to the big screen this Friday with his most personal role yet: that of a former alcoholic who desperately seeks forgiveness from his mixed martial arts-fighter family (Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton) in Gavin O'Connor's Warrior. During the film's press day last month, both O'Connor and Nolte confessed that the struggles of Nolte's character Paddy O'Connor were based largely on the actor's own cycle of substance abuse, sobriety and redemption-seeking -- a cycle that sadly continued while the pair filmed Warrior in and around Pittsburgh last year.
Last month, the 70-year-old actor met with Movieline to discuss his R-rated Warrior adventures, his unlikely handgun crusade and the secret to playing a good, chain-restaurant-obsessed gorilla.
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They say to write what you know. Unfortunately, in the case of screenwriter Will Reiser, what he knew was cancer. Six years ago, Reiser was diagnosed with cancer in his back, and -- after surgery to remove the tumor -- decided to handle the life-changing situation the only way he knew how: by finding the humor. Thus, 50/50 was born.
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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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Television watchers have been hip to Chris Pratt since he first appeared on The WB series Everwood in 2002. Other supporting roles in television (The O.C.) and film (Bride Wars) followed, but the Minnesota-born star really came into his own with his winning turn as Andy Dwyer, pratfaller extraordinaire-cum-romantic lead, on the beloved NBC series Parks & Recreation. Now, with three films coming out this fall, including two next month, Pratt is poised to tackle the big screen with a fervor his Parks & Rec alter ego would usually reserve for the Meat Tornado.
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By virtually any Hollywood standard, even if another film featuring Jessica Chastain weren't released in 2011 after this week, she'd have already had a pretty phenomenally successful rookie year in the business.
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If it feels like Andrea Riseborough has been on the cusp of a breakout for the last calendar year, that's probably because she has. Last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, Riseborough appeared in three films -- Never Let Me Go, Made In Dagenham and Brighton Rock (out in limited release now) -- and this year she'll show up in Toronto, again, with the Madonna-directed W.E.; the life of a budding breakout actress never seems to slow down.
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Much of director Olivier Megaton's female assassin pic Colombiana coasts on a certain popcorn movie badass factor -- lithe star Zoe Saldana as stone-cold killer hell-bent on vengeance for the murder of her family, slinking through missions in skintight catsuits (or less) and gracefully blasting away bad guys with beautifully cold precision in the grand tradition of producer Luc Besson's most famous female killers. But Saldana feels a more weighty responsibility when it comes to her action heroine debut and how its success might affect opportunities for women in film to follow.
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When Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth) set out to update the scariest movie he'd ever seen as a child -- the 1973 made-for-television movie Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, about inhabitants of a house who discover sinister creatures living in the basement -- he intended to frighten and thrill a new generation of youngsters. Even co-star Katie Holmes, who makes a rare genre appearance in the Del Toro-produced and co-scripted horror pic, found the script to so terrifying that she knew she had to do it. But is Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, as the MPAA deemed, too scary for kids?
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