If this morning's Transformers: Dark of the Moon trailer left you thinking about nothing but robots, then check out this stylish, animated short from Tim Burton promoting his Museum of Modern Art exhibition at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto. It's refreshingly simple and short, yet still bears Burton's unmistakable touch. If this week's been tough, then take comfort; this robot understands.
Yesterday, The Guardian hosted a live online interview with David Lynch where fans submitted questions for filmmaker/hitmaker to answer via twitter. While Lynch's warm, inspired wit was on full display, he still maintained his lifelong refusal to answer any questions about the meaning of his films. The good news is that this means we can make our own guess as to what Lynch's explanations might have sounded like when limited to 140 characters. Take a look.
Last week I met actor Jesse Eisenberg for a lengthy discussion of subjects ranging from his coming-of-age in the New York theater to his beloved Zombieland and his awards-season prospects for The Social Network. We covered a lot of ground, which I'll be retracing this week in a five-part series here at Movieline.
In part three of our bar-side chat with Jesse Eisenberg, the conversation -- after drifting towards the positives and negatives of social media -- steered right back into what became the welcome theme of the conversation: Jesse Eisenberg himself. You see, Eisenberg has admitted before that he doesn't enjoy watching the films that he acts in, for an assortment of reasons (which he thoroughly explains here). That all changed with the release of Zombieland, a film that he watched and enjoyed multiple times. Perhaps this self-viewing breakthrough extended to his work on the critically acclaimed The Social Network?
Despite the fact that it's already December, the Oscar race for Best Supporting Actor still feels relatively wide-open. Which made it all the more fascinating to speak with not one, but two buzz-earning hopefuls at the same time, and both from a movie that has no shortage of strong supporting performances to boot. But if there's any hint of off-screen competition between Social Network actors Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake as they prep for possible nominations for their turns as rival Mark Zuckerberg BFFs Eduardo Saverin and Sean Parker, respectively, it didn't show. If anything, these co-stars have only grown closer from the experience of making David Fincher's acclaimed Facebook movie. (See? Social media does bring people together!)
Last week I met actor Jesse Eisenberg for a lengthy discussion of subjects ranging from his coming-of-age in the New York theater to his beloved Zombieland and his awards-season prospects for The Social Network. We covered a lot of ground, which I'll be retracing this week in a five-part series here at Movieline.
As our impromptu Hell's Kitchen rendezvous continued, Jesse Eisenberg naturally drifted into the subject The Social Network was in part based on: Facebook, and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg. The actor elaborated on his (short) experience on Facebook, the possibility of sending Mark Zuckerberg ill-advised late night emails, if he can still walk down the street without being recognized (or, as it turns out, without being given a noogie) and his new project -- which just may wind up somehow involving you.
Last week I met actor Jesse Eisenberg for a lengthy discussion of subjects ranging from his coming-of-age in the New York theater to his beloved Zombieland and his awards-season prospects for The Social Network. We covered a lot of ground, which I'll be retracing this week in a five-part series here at Movieline.
Let it be said, once and for all: Jesse Eisenberg is not shy. The young actor the media so often describes as nerdy or awkward in fact hinted at an endearing unpredictability last Thursday afternoon: Mere minutes after learning his Social Network performance as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg nabbed him the National Board of Review award for Best Actor, Eisenberg phoned to ask if we could ditch our original diner meeting spot -- and ditch his publicist, as it turned out -- to meet early, just us, wherever I happened to be at the time.
Steady yourselves, people of Earth: Justin Timberlake is on crutches. But as the singer-actor-pop demigod told me as he hobbled in for an in-depth chat alongside Social Network co-star/future Spider-Man Andrew Garfield last night, his injured leg may or may not be cause for concern -- and thankfully, it didn't stop him from making our late-night rendezvous.
Say what you will about his provocative, polarizing films, but don't think for a minute Darren Aronofsky ever takes the path of least resistance. The director's latest, Black Swan, springs from a place from which few filmmakers emerge alive -- the hyper-competitive world of ballet, where, upon earning the role of the Swan Queen in a new adaptation of Swan Lake, young prima ballerina Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) commences down the road to paranoia, lust and madness.
Thursday afternoon, I met Jesse Eisenberg at a New York City dive bar -- coincidentally named "Social" -- for a pretty sprawling interview that will publish here next week. As he was en route, he heard the news that he had won the National Board of Review's Best Actor award for his performance in The Social Network (which also claimed the group's Best Picture and Best Director prizes). I asked Eisenberg about winning that award and what the awards season -- and his real first go around with it -- means to him.
Keith Powell may play the stuffy, Harvard-educated writer James "Toofer" Spurlock on 30 Rock, but he's (wait for it!) downright approachable in real life. The Tisch graduate grew up a theater/film/TV nerd in Philadelphia and hasn't lost his ebullience for the hard work of doing funny right. We caught up with Powell to discuss Tina Fey, long shoots on 30 Rock, and what we can expect from the TGS with Tracy Jordan writers room in the weeks to come.
Considering the intense security I had to wade my way through recently to visit Helena Bonham Carter at her Manhattan hotel, for a few moments it actually did feel like I might be visiting the Queen of England. (As it turned out, it was just the Israeli Prime Minister's security detail.) Alas, no -- just screen royalty, as proven in her latest effort, The King's Speech.
Isaac Mizrahi, who judges and mentors contestants on The Fashion Show: Ultimate Collection, always has more to say about each week's results than what we see on TV. (Damn editors.) Since we didn't catch up with Mizrahi last week, we're reviewing two weeks of Fashion Show couture with him today -- including a dated red-leather tribute to Mary J. Blige, a baggy denim ode to grunge, and one of the weirdest necklines you've ever seen.
One good, sprawling interview with an international cinema star deserves another, and so we return to Vincent Cassel. When the French actor spoke to Movieline over the summer about his two-part gangster epic Mesrine, he also commented a bit about a little "independent movie" he was doing with director Darren Aronofsky. Mere months later, Black Swan has captivated critics, festival audiences and not just a few Oscar voters ahead of this weekend's theatrical opening.
After Dexter creators brutally murdered Julie Benz's angelic Rita last season, the Pittsburgh-born actress reincarnated herself on ABC's No Ordinary Family as a scientist with superhuman speed. When Benz phoned Movieline last week, she explained that her ability to keep picking herself up from one role and transition into the next was something that she learned during her sixteen-year ice skating career, where she competed on a national level before a stress fracture forced her off the rink and in front of cameras. Twenty years after her first role in George A. Romero's horror film, Two Evil Eyes, the actress has not only been killed off in one of the most savage television murders of all time, but she lives to tell the tale -- and run a six-second mile on-screen.
In the last year, Amber Tamblyn has turned over her detective badge from ABC's under-appreciated The Unusuals, inserted a welcome dose of estrogen into Danny Boyle's limb-sawing film 127 Hours, co-starred with her boyfriend David Cross in the IFC series The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret and released a book of poetry. As if that weren't enough, the Santa Monica-born actress is also practicing medicine on House, the Fox series where Tamblyn has declared residency for a 13-episode arc.
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