Movieline hit the red carpet at Saturday's Spirit Awards, where Exit Through the Gift Shop took home Best Documentary, with one guiding mission: Find out who Banksy really is! But just in case we couldn't get to the bottom of that enigma, we had a backup mission: Find out what he'd look like if he came to an awards show incognito! Hit the jump to watch the results of Movieline's investigation into The Banksy Identity, as aided by a few celebrity informants.
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Backstage at the Spirit Awards Saturday afternoon, Darren Aronofsky was in a jaunty mood. And why not? With Black Swan's two biggest Oscar rivals, The Social Network and The King's Speech, absent from competition at the penultimate awards show of the year (TSN excluded by budget, TKS relegated to the foreign film category), the night belonged to Aronofsky's stylish psychological ballet thriller. So after Black Swan took home Best Cinematography (Matthew Libatique), Best Actress (Natalie Portman), Best Director, and Best Feature, Aronofsky took to the winners' room to have some fun with the press.
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Twilight fans who flock to see Drive Angry 3D this weekend in support of Billy Burke are in for a bit of a surprise, as the actor -- who plays the calm, mustachioed father to Kristen Stewart's Bella in Summit's Twilight Saga films -- swaggers his way through the South as a sexually-charged Satanic cult leader. To put it plainly, Burke's Jim Jones-meets-Jim Morrison villain gives co-star Nicolas Cage a run for his money in the anti-subtlety department, and Burke clearly relished every second of the departure from Charlie Swan.
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Before Patrick Fabian turned heads as a quasi-corrupt reverend named Cotton Marcus in last year's horror film The Last Exorcism, he was probably best known for playing Zack Morris' "cool" college teacher, Professor Lasky, on Saved By the Bell: The College Years. Or maybe from some of the dozens of other television credits he's accumulated since coming to Hollywood and waiting tables at a place that just so happened to be right near an old Oscar venue.
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Some actors are Method; others make up their own method. Like Nicolas Cage, who described his self-taught school of acting and held Movieline rapt with 8 other stories about crazy sex scenes, driving 180 mph on the highway, making the Oscars fair, and other Cage-y anecdotes only vaguely related to his latest vehicle Drive Angry 3D, a high-octane Southern-fried supernatural vengeance thriller disguised as homage to the car-obsessed exploitation flicks of the '70s.
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Continuing with our celebrity Oscar picks theme this week, next up is Kyle Bornheimer. You know him as Dave on the Thursday night NBC comedy Perfect Couples (or, perhaps from CBS's 2008 series, Worst Week), but, when not starring in television comedies, he's the host of his own private awards show called "The Bornies" which are... You know what, it's probably best to let Kyle explain along with his (very detailed! We love the spirit!) picks.
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A wise man once said that the road to the Academy Awards goes through Movieline HQ. Or something. For a healthy number of this year's higher profile nominees, anyway, that was indeed that case: From Annette Bening to Jesse Eisenberg to Hailee Steinfeld to Geoffrey Rush among numerous others, it was our pleasure to rendezvous with some of the year's most acclaimed actors, directors, and craftspeople. Read on for our comprehensive collection of Movieline Interviews with this year's Oscar nominees.
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Want to feel a little old? Alexa Vega, best known for playing Carmen Cortex in Robert Rodriguez's series of Spy Kids movies (the fourth, Spy Kids 4: All The Time in the World, is set to be released in August), is turning 23 this year. And having been acting since she played Emily Newton on Evening Shade when she was 5 years old, Vega has had plenty of time (and, as we found out, Oscar night cheese platters) as a professional actor to think about its ultimate prize. Which contenders does Vega like this Sunday? She envisions a nice night for the director of The Social Network.
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Michelle Rodriguez can do tough in her sleep, as evidenced in the upcoming alien war pic Battle: Los Angeles and, well, every other role she's ever done. But after building a career out of being Hollywood's go-to action chick, M. Rod's ready for a change of pace. She's penning a script, looking toward comedy, and embracing her inner geek... by taking us back to the good old days, when she used to hang out in basements playing Dungeons & Dragons while rolling on 'ludes.
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If you ever fantasized about stealing a car without consequences, having a threesome with a supermodel, or competing in a coked-up dance-off in an 80s movie, talk to Dan Fogler. The Brooklyn-born Tony winner gets to do all of those things and land the best lines in next week's 80's movie extravaganza Take Me Home Tonight starring Topher Grace and Anna Faris.
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Oscar week is going strong here at Movieline HQ, and in addition to last minute party preparations -- Julie is furiously working on her world famous potato salad -- we've asked celebrities from all walks of life to give us their fool-proof predictions. ESPN host/GoodFellas enthusiast Tony Reali was kind enough to take time away from his day job of keeping sportswriters in check on Around the Horn to participate in our little parlor game. Which Oscar hopefuls does he think should have speeches prepared for Sunday? Leave your mute buttons behind and click ahead to find out.
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If there's one thing to be said for Cedar Rapids director Miguel Arteta, it's that he defends his actors. If you come after one of the stars of his films -- say, Michael Cera in last year's criminally underrated Youth in Revolt -- you're going to hear about it, which Movieline did during this interview. The Puerto Rican-born Arteta is also apt to defend is his own bona fides: While he readily admits that he's not the first person you would think of to direct Cedar Rapids -- a film about a fish-out-of-water Midwesterner -- he knows what it's like to be a new person in a strange land.
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Around Movieline HQ, Kyle Killen is somewhat of a folk hero. The screenwriter was responsible for two of our most-discussed projects in 2010: The short-lived-but-brilliant Lone Star, and the Mel Gibson comeback vehicle The Beaver (which will finally hit theaters this summer; fingers crossed). Naturally, it was a no-brainer to ask Killen -- who recently had his pilot script for the Inception-like thriller REM picked up by NBC -- for his Oscar predictions in the lead-up to Sunday night. Will Best Picture go to those upstarts from Silicon Valley or the stuffy, upper crust royalty from 1930s England?
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If you thought you'd seen the last of pop phenom Justin Bieber (well, for a while) after his rocku-biopic Never Say Never opened two weeks ago, his Rolling Stone interview hit, he died in a hail of gunfire on CSI, and he cut that magical hair, think again: In an unprecedented move by Paramount and director Jon M. Chu, a new cut of the film is being re-released to theaters this Friday for a limited one-week run. So why the Bieber Redux? And why are non-Beliebers buzzing about the impact Never Say Never: The Director's Fan Cut could have on the future of filmmaking?
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Earlier today Movieline caught up with director/digital wunderkind Jon M. Chu, helmer of Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, to follow-up on the recently announced Director's Fan Cut hitting North American theaters on Friday. While you wait with bated breath for the full chat, posting on Wednesday, find out why Chu pegged David Fincher's The Social Network to come home with Oscar gold this Sunday.
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