Eight months or so after his film Submarine buzzed its way into audiences' hearts (and Harvey Weinstein's wallet) at the Toronto International Film Festival, director Richard Ayoade had said pretty much all he could about his feature debut. So when we sat down in New York last week to talk about the much-talked-about coming-of-age dramedy, we ultimately wound up discussing the next best thing: The discussion.
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As unlikely showbiz career tracks go, Shawn Ku has one of the funkiest: Harvard-educated scientist. Passes up Columbis Medical School to hoof it on Broadway. Dabbles in acting for the camera. Moves behind the camera. Directs a teen musical for MTV. Wins big at Toronto for his theatrical feature debut Beautiful Boy, a heavy drama starring Maria Bello and Michael Sheen and opening this week. What could possibly be next?
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What does Kung Fu Panda 2 have to do with King of the Hill, Midnight Run, and Animal House? Ask screenwriters Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, who co-scripted and co-produced the Oscar-nominated 2008 global hit Kung Fu Panda and its sequel, in theaters this weekend. After working their way up the ranks with TV comedy gigs, the duo has emerged one of DreamWorks Animation's strongest writing teams -- and to think, it all started with a stuffy office job in Boston...
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When he sat down with Movieline to talk The Hangover Part II (in theaters today), comedian-turned-actor Zach Galifianakis expressed a desire to balance his comedic work with dramatic roles. "I would love to do it if I could pull it off," he said. "I don't know if I can, but I would like to." Given that aspiration, Galifianakis couldn't have picked a more perfect film for his round of Movieline's My Favorite Scene -- one featuring funny man-turned-Oscar winner Robin Williams.
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Each Sunday on the AFI campus in Los Angeles, a loyal group of industry pros and movie lovers gather to celebrate rare or forgotten genre cinema with a weekly screening series dubbed Reel Grit. For Reel Grit's 100th film, six AFI alumni -- editor Howard E. Smith (The Abyss), writer Jacob Forman (All the Boys Love Mandy Lane), DP Amy Vincent (Black Snake Moan), production designer Todd Cherniawsky (Avatar, Alice in Wonderland), director and AFI Dean Robert Mandel (School Ties), and producer Stuart Cornfeld (Tropic Thunder) -- selected films that influenced their work and careers, sharing anecdotes and appreciations over the course of a free 12-hour movie marathon.
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On the one hand, there's nothing Malcolm McDowell can tell you about A Clockwork Orange that he hasn't told someone else before. The 1971 Stanley Kubrick classic -- adapted from Anthony Burgess's novel about a young hooligan caught up in a dystopic society's attempts to cure "ultraviolence" -- has pretty much been parsed, discussed, annotated and mythologized down to atomic bits over the last four decades, most often with its star McDowell leading the way. On the other hand, it's hard to resist a storyteller so gracious and enthusiastic that you want to forget everything you know just to learn it all over again.
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Last year at this time, Hailee Steinfeld was just finishing work on her first feature film -- Joel and Ethan Coen's magnificent True Grit -- and was unknowingly enjoying her last few months of anonymity. Since the film's December release, the one-time Kmart commercial star has been on a nonstop red carpet tour from the Oscars to the BAFTAs to last week's Young Hollywood Awards, where Movieline played a lightning round of My Favorite Scene with the poised 14-year-old actress.
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Last year at this time, Will Forte had just wrapped his eighth season on Saturday Night Live and completed an exhausting round of promotion for MacGruber -- the film based on Forte's popular SNL character. Within a month, beleaguered by bad box office, MacGruber was entirely out of theaters. Then, in August, came the surprise announcement that Forte had decided not to return for his ninth season of Saturday Night Live.
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Physician-turned-comedian Ken Jeong (AKA Dr. Ken) got his start on the big screen with comic bits in films like Knocked Up, Pineapple Express, and Role Models, but he made his most memorable on-screen appearance in Todd Phillips' 2009 surprise hit The Hangover as a flamboyant gangster named Chow. This week in The Hangover Part II, Jeong returns to cause more mayhem on the streets of Bangkok with an entrance that manages to one-up the shocking sight of springing, fully nude, from the trunk of a Mercedes.
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Lakers forward Ron Artest is arguably the most colorful player the NBA currently has; athlete, rapper, brawler, music promoter, stand-up comedian -- he's like the new Dennis Rodman. Naturally, Artest is also making a movie about his life, so when he popped up at the Young Hollywood Awards (airing May 26 on Ion Television at 9pm ET/PT) of all places, Movieline picked his brain: Who could play Ron Artest in the Ron Artest movie?
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From her first leading role in the tiny horror thriller Rest Stop to her casting on the cult-darling TV series Kyle XY, Jaimie Alexander already knows a thing or two about career milestones. But little could prepare her for Thor, the Marvel blockbuster that over the last month has put her on silver screens and red carpets around the world.
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"That was really nice!" exclaimed 13-year-old Elle Fanning at Friday night's Young Hollywood Awards, where the actress picked up Actress of the Year honors. Presented the award by film legend Francis Ford Coppola (he cast her in his next film, Twixt Now and Sunrise, after seeing her in daughter Sofia's Somewhere), Fanning brought the house down at L.A. Live by doing what more seasoned actors might have held back. She cried.
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Because of his unique brand of hilariously discomfiting stand-up comedy and, in particular, his mock-confrontational talk show satire Between Two Ferns, which lampoons the celebrity interview itself with clear-eyed vitriol, you might not peg Zach Galifianakis for a warm interviewee. But, like most comics, he's nothing like any of his own characters -- including Alan Garner, the delusional man-child who, along with his fellow "Wolf Pack"-ers (Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and, this time around, a monkey) wakes up in a seedy Bangkok hotel room after yet another night of black-out debauchery in The Hangover Part II.
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Mimi Kennedy, who sit-com aficionados will remember as Jenna Elfman's mother on Dharma & Greg, is not only a co-star in Woody Allen's legitimate return to form, Midnight in Paris, but she's set to play Jason Segel's mother in the upcoming Five-Year Engagement. Emily Blunt made us excited for that movie, remember? We checked in with Kennedy at yesterday's L.A. premiere of Midnight in Paris to play our favorite cinephile game, My Favorite Scene. Which mindblowing movie did Kennedy pick as her favorite ever?
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In this summer's swashbuckling sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, British newcomer Sam Claflin goes toe to toe with Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) and a much more fearsome pirate: Blackbeard (Ian McShane), the legendary captain of a zombie ship on a quest to find the Fountain of Youth. But while Claflin holds his own as idealistic young Philip Swift, the missionary who falls for a mermaid (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey) and defies Blackbeard on pain of death, in real life he owes a debt of gratitude to the erstwhile Al Swearengen.
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