She may be the daughter of legendary Italian director Roberto Rossellini and screen icon Ingrid Bergman, but Isabella Rossellini is not above dressing up in a praying mantis costume and simulating the insect's mating ritual for your amusement. The Wildlife Conservation Network board member has been, ahem, doing it two seasons now on the Sundance Channel's Green Porno series, which the actress also writes and produces. Rossellini's new series Seduce Me premieres April 20 on SundanceChannel.com. The reproductive habits of salmon, bats and bed bugs are the new focus in this round of nature nookie, shot with the same simple comic style that made her first series so successful.
In anticipation of Seduce Me's premiere, Rossellini phoned Movieline to discuss animal mating, recall who was laughing during those sadomasochistic scenes in Blue Velvet, and reveal how she does not plan on celebrating the centennial of her mother.
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If any of you were readers of Movieline during its print heyday, you know it was the place for candid celebrity interviews (Just ask Jennifer Lopez!) and since we revived the Movieline mantle last year, we've strived to lived up to that legacy. When you read a Movieline interview, you won't just get the same old tired questions like "What was it like to work with George Clooney?" and "I know your promoting some tiny indie movie right now, but can we talk about your superhero flick instead?" Here, we hope it's a good conversation first and foremost, and when it is, actors and artists often drop their guard, offering things you'd never expect.
Here's just a sampling of some of the most intriguing, eye-opening, and just plain revealing quotes we've collected at interviews in the past year:
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Even for the cast members of Glee, who are coasting through an Golden Globe-winning freshman year, last week's appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show was special. But for Harry Shum, Jr., who plays Mike Chang, the episode was his introduction to America via Matthew Morrison, who when summoned to show off his dancing abilities, turned the attention onto 25-year-old co-star: "This guy is incredible, and I'm so happy there is a show called Glee that can showcase the talents of someone who just breathes dance." For those who were unfamiliar until last week, Shum, Jr. starred in the iconic iPod "silhouette" campaign, appeared in two Step Up movies and co-choreographed a number during this year's Academy Awards.
In anticipation of the show's mid-season premiere tonight, Harry Shum Jr. phoned Movieline to discuss his whirlwind week performing for the Obamas and Oprah, his days dancing for Beyoncé and the unlikely companion he found on the set of Glee
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Anthony Hopkins may be a knighted, Oscar-winning movie star with over 50 years of acting experience, but in conversation, he's disarmingly down-to-earth. When he called up Movieline last week to chat about his new film, James Ivory's The City of Your Final Destination, there were no publicist go-betweens or assistants rolling the call -- just a ring from an unknown number, and that familiar voice warmly saying, "This is Tony Hopkins." You get the feeling that in his later life, Hopkins has no patience for Hollywood artifice, and it's a mien that makes him well suited to play Destination's Adam Gund, who's convinced that his ex-pat life in Uruguay is so casual and relaxed that his younger lover (Hiroyuki Sanada) will surely leave him at some point for something more exciting.
As Hopkins prepared to wrap his role on Marvel's megabudgeted Thor, he took the time to discuss his work on Ivory's film while extinguishing one rumor (that there's been friction between him and his Thor costar Chris Hemsworth) and fanning the flames of another (that his next film with Woody Allen is headed for a Cannes berth).
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The trajectory of Emma Stone's young career is a steep one, spiking from her screen debut as Jonah Hill's dream girl in Superbad (2007) to her iron-willed Wichita in last year's Zombieland -- both films that opened No. 1 at the box office. A couple of Stone's films in between -- The House Bunny and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past didn't fare too poorly either. So the 21-year-old's new film Paper Man arrives next week as a bit of a surprise (and not just because of its half-decade in development hell): A quirky, conscientious indie dramedy about writer Richard Dunn (Jeff Daniels) and the superhero imaginary friend (Ryan Reynolds) who exasperatedly shepherds him through the mid-life crisis blocking more than just Richard's second novel. Stone plays Abby, a sardonic teenage loner with a suspicious pal of her own (Kieran Culkin) and an instant kind of psychic appeal to the struggling author. It may not be her biggest film role to date, but in the folds of her small-town inertia and the haunted past rolling across her face like cloud shadows, it's inarguably her most dynamic.
In addition to teasing the raunchy work her costars Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet performed in Untitled Comedy, Stone recently spoke with Movieline about falling in love with her role, hypothermia, catharsis, and why she's not as intense an actor as you might think.
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If you're a fan of the Stargate franchise, you've got an inside man in David Blue. The actor doesn't just play Eli on Stargate Universe -- he's also a sci-fi junkie who'd watched every episode of previous Stargate incarnations before he was cast in the part. It's that kind of insider knowledge that leads Blue to say with confidence that the latter half of Universe's season one (which began airing last week after a hiatus) is its best yet.
Now shooting the second season, Blue took some time out to dish on the fanbase he's accrued with past roles (including a stint as Marc's boyfriend on Ugly Betty), whether he reads sci-fi blogs, and a bit of news he read on Movieline that led him to opine on how exactly Universe's Robert Carlyle resembles Alan Rickman.
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After season four's Chris March, Anthony Williams became only the second designer in Project Runway history to be eliminated and brought back in to compete -- and girl, did he compete: Anthony won his first challenge back, with guest judge Jessica Alba gushing that she coveted his black-and-white red carpet gown. We first spoke with the sunny southerner two weeks ago when he was booted, and now we can finally get the full story behind his Runway experience. After the jump, Anthony spills on competitor Mila's "astounding" attitude, his relief at being eliminated a second time, and his plans with Jessica Alba.
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Todd Bridges played the adorable older brother Willis on the classic sitcom Diff'rent Strokes, but you may not know that Bridges -- to a certain degree -- continued playing Willis after the show went off the air, despite his best efforts. The title of his new autobigraphy Killing Willis: From Diff'rent Strokes to the Mean Streets to the Life I Always Wanted signifies his struggle to cope with his identity and so, so much more. After years of well-documented drug abuse (both using and selling) and hard-fought recovery, Bridges talks to Movieline about surviving, the plights of his costars Gary Coleman and Dana Plato, and his father who didn't believe him when he said his publicist molested him at age 12.
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Welcome back to Moment of Truth, Movieline's weekly spotlight on the best in nonfiction cinema. This week, we hear from Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek about the band's new documentary When You're Strange, which opens Friday in limited release.
For a rock band whose filmed legacy includes at least a dozen concert and video compilations -- not to mention a full-scale Hollywood biopic -- it's not just a little bizarre that The Doors were never the subject of a feature documentary until now. Enter When You're Strange, director Tom DiCillo's fairly straightforward doc (narrated by Johnny Depp) interweaving archival performance and interview footage with extended, never-before-seen footage of late vocalist Jim Morrison's own experimental film, HWY: An American Pastoral. Some of it looks like it was shot yesterday, reinforcing Morrison's enduring mythology as a half-martyr, half-ghost whose mission is carried forward here by surviving members Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore. In a candid, freewheeling discussion recently with Movieline, Manzarek explained the film's mission, the Doors' cinematic influences, Oliver Stone's blundering and how making a movie is like "World War III."
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If you're not familiar with writer-producer-director Morgan J. Freeman, here is a primer: The multi-hyphenate's debut feature, Hurricane Streets, starring Edie Falco and Brendan Sexton III (Welcome to the Dollhouse), was the first narrative project to win three awards at Sundance in 1997. Freeman went on to direct other films including Desert Blue and American Psycho 2 while launching a successful career producing reality television shows for MTV. His first series, Laguna Beach, spawned two spin-offs and two years ago, Freeman created 16 and Pregnant, which has already spun off another successful social commentary series for MTV, Teen Mom.
Movieline caught up with Freeman recently to discuss how 16 and Pregnant has been a "dream come true" for his inner storyteller, why the series hits home with so many audience members and how all of his projects -- scripted or not -- are related.
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Carson Daly is a rarity among late-night hosts. The Santa Monica native broke into the afterhours landscape following a successful career in music, not comedy, and has spent the past eight years peacefully hosting NBC's late-night (or early morning) program Last Call with Carson Daly. When ConanGate threatened the 1:30 A.M. time slot that Daly had civilly occupied since 2002, the host stayed respectfully quiet about his network's late-night war (even as his peers took swings at him) and focused on transforming his program. After stripping away his desk, his tie and his live audience, Daly has finally found a documentary style that suits him. And even better, he can still spotlight the bands he loves and covers on his KAMP-FM morning radio show.
Daly recently phoned Movieline to explain why he holds no ill will toward NBC, how he embraces his early-morning time slot and what bands he was most excited to fight for during his days at MTV.
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Watch out, Chris and Liam Hemsworth: there's another pair of Australian brothers on the rise. Nash and Joel Edgerton have a long background in entertainment -- 35-year-old Joel acted in the Star Wars prequels as Owen Lars and starred in the recent Sundance hit Animal Kingdom, while 37-year-old Nash has done stunt work for some of the biggest blockbusters ever made -- but with their new film The Square, they're poised to break out Stateside. Nash directed the neo-noir, which finds a hapless adulterer scheming with an arsonist (played by Joel, who also wrote the screenplay) to pull off a con on his mistress's husband. This being a crime drama, things do not go as planned.
The brothers rang up Movieline today to discuss their collaboration, and they also dished on a ton of upcoming projects they're involved with, including Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, the Nick Nolte/Tom Hardy fighting drama Warrior, and Universal's upcoming prequel to The Thing.
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Erin Andrews has endured a rough year, one that keeps revealing difficult passages. The 31-year-old ESPN sportscaster's high-profile court case, where divorced father Michael David Barrett was eventually charged with filming Andrews through a peephole in her hotel rooms in several different states, ended in March as Barrett was sentenced to 30 months in prison. This month (and after our interview) it was revealed that Andrews had received death threats for over six months. Now, as Andrews waltzes and quicksteps on the 10th season of Dancing with the Stars, she talks with Movieline about moving on from the hellish court proceedings, finding new confidence, those romantic rumors with her dance partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy and the other ESPN personality she'd like to see on DWTS.
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[UPDATE: Spoiler revealed here.] Attention readers: Your imaginations are needed to help fill some gaps in a short film around which buzz has incrementally built over the last few months, and which actress Emma Stone briefly teased today in an interview with Movieline. That would be five-minute segment Kate Winslet and Hugh Jackman contributed to the anthology Untitled Movie -- which, depending on whom you ask, is a working title or the actual name of an all-star omnibus directed by the likes of Peter Farrelly, Brett Ratner, Elizabeth Banks, and others. Stone is in another short altogether, but to hear her tell it (and not nearly enough), keep your eyes on "The Catch."
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Swimming legend Summer Sanders has more than just four Olympic medals on her resumé. The Roseville, CA native has acted as a commentator during several Olympic games and hosted a consistent stream of television series: NBA Inside Stuff, The Sports List, MTV's Sandblast, Skating with Celebrities, and Nickelodeon's classic game show Figure It Out. Now, as a contestant on NBC's current season of Celebrity Apprentice, Sanders's Olympic-size goal is to please The Donald and deal with Cyndi Lauper's scatterbrained work ethic. The 37-year-old legend talked with Movieline about Celebrity Apprentice's zany cast, her favorite Figure It Out memories, and an inspiring trip to Rwanda.
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