You might not look at Kali Hawk's performance as the childish Trudy in Couples Retreat and think, "Michelle Obama," but according to the up-and-comer, that's exactly what the minds behind Saturday Night Live saw in her when they offered her a test deal. She turned down that opportunity but has picked up several since; in addition to playing Faizon Love's girlfriend in this weekend's number-one movie, she also landed a small role in the upcoming, Judd Apatow-produced movie Get Him to the Greek.
A free-spirited improviser on screen, Hawk is just as energetic and candid in real life, and when she called me from the backseat of a New York taxicab, she was willing to dish on just about anything, be it SNL, the actresses she beat for her Couples role, or the time she hurled insult after insult at Mariah Carey.
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Thomas Jane, the star of HBO's Hung, also boasts a cinematic career full of vampire slaying, punishing, and mutant chronicling, which sets the perfect stage for his directorial debut. Dark Country, in which Jane also stars, is a brooding thriller created for DVD about a honeymooning couple who hit a man with their car when driving in the desert and their ensuing hell of dealing with his undead body. Jane spoke with Movieline about his directorial inspirations, his wife Patricia Arquette, and Hung's impact on his consummate love of his penis.
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Cinematographer Christian Berger has been Michael Haneke's eye for many of that director's most critically acclaimed and talked about films, beginning with 1992's Benny's Video and continuing through 2001's The Piano Teacher and 2005's Caché. With this year's Palme d'Or-winning The White Ribbon, both men have taken a major aesthetic detour from the paranoid postmodern landscapes that characterized their previous efforts, landing instead in pre-WWI Germany, in an agrarian village full of dark secrets. Shooting in black and white with an assured hand, Berger paints stunning monochromatic landscapes, portraits and still lifes of a society savoring its last moments of innocence. We spoke by phone to Berger yesterday from his home in Austria.
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On paper, the idea of Paul Schrader leaving Hollywood for Bollywood shouldn't work. Schrader's had a hand in some of the most iconic American films of the last century -- he scripted Taxi Driver and The Last Temptation of Christ and directed films like American Gigolo and Affliction -- and the dark themes that have long fascinated him would seem a mismatch for the joyous, colorful world of Indian cinema. And yet, that's exactly what makes the concept so immediately compelling; like Steven Soderbergh's planned Cleopatra musical, the idea of Paul Schrader directing a Bollywood musical is simply too bold to ignore.
After reading the announcement of the project (titled Xtrme City) in Variety this week, I called up Schrader to learn just what he has in mind. "I've made a career out of doing oddball films that have a very niche market," he admitted to me, right off the bat. "This runs contrary to that image."
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There's a reason most film romances cut off after the guy finally gets the girl, and it's because after that comes all the tough stuff. Jay DiPietro's Peter and Vandy is principally concerned with studying those fraught parts of a relationship, and his time-shifting study of long-term lovers has two independent film darlings that are up to his challenge: Jason Ritter and Jess Weixler.
Ritter's finally overcome his status as "the son of John Ritter" to bloom into an indie leading man in his own right, while Weixler recently burst onto the scene with attention-getting performances in Teeth and Alexander the Last. Both actors have retained their easy chemistry long after shooting Peter and Vandy, which means their joint interview with Movieline was kind of a gigglefest.
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ABC's Modern Family is one of the few new network comedies this fall to connect immediately with viewers, blending a du jour single-camera format, mockumentary confessionals, and a pointedly old-fashioned sense of humor. It seems fruitless to pick a breakout star of an ensemble cast, but Ty Burrell's performance may demand that recognition. Burrell, who plays the imperviously dorky -- er, "cool" -- dad Phil Dunphy, handles Modern Family's unpretentious story lines with jocular ease. Movieline caught up with Burrell to discuss Modern Family's quirks, his basis for the character of Phil, and his upcoming screentime with Sean Penn and Rachel McAdams.
What did you first think of the show's concept?
It's funny because I have worked with Chris Lloyd on three shows and for Steve Levitan, this is my second. I loved the concept, but they could've told me it was about two guys who sit in the same room for 20 years, and I would've loved it. I have so much faith in their writing, but I mean I loved the idea and thought it was something totally new, using this style for a family comedy. I was really excited about that.
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Just because he hasn't made a film in America since 2003, "It doesn't mean I have given up on Hollywood," John Woo told me this morning in a discussion about his latest film Red Cliff. That film, like his next project Jianyu Jianghu (with Michelle Yeoh) are both Chinese-language, but Woo has still been linked to many Hollywood projects in development. In fact, Woo's IMDb profile is overflowing with films he's been attached to, but as he revealed to me, the two English-language movies he's most interested in directing have never been announced until now.
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This fall, ABC unveiled four new series designed to refocus the Walt Disney network on family-friendly programming while establishing a brand of comedy that could directly rival NBC's Thursday night line-up. The most anticipated of ABC's new shows, Modern Family, premiered two weeks ago as the lynchpin in the network's brand new Wednesday Comedy Night and immediately stomped out its mockumentary competition, The Office and Parks & Recreation in ratings.
Two months ago, at the mythic Television Critics Association event, we spoke to Modern Family's co-creator Steven Levitan about pitching comedies via PowerPoint, the stresses of working on such a buzzed program and the surprising advantages of shooting a mockumentary-style. Levitan, who has written for, executive produced or directed (or all of the above) The Critic, The Larry Sanders Show, Just Shoot Me, Frasier and most recently, Back To You, obliged us by sharing which networks wanted his latest project and wisely predicting that even with the critics' favor on his side, there are always "new mistakes to make."
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FlashForward may have plateaued suspense-wise during its second episode, but the show will likely accelerate again following Gabrielle Union's arrival on the series as Demetri's (John Cho) fiance Zoey. Union spoke with Movieline about working with Cho and the plight of her character, who's "flashforward" of April 29, 2010 seems to conflict with what we think we understand about Demetri.
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Return with us again to Movieline's One-Page Screenplay project, which aims to transform Hollywood by producing scripts so brief, even a studio executive might finish them. The latest contributor to the series is the Emmy-winning Peter Lefcourt, who's currently a co-executive producer on Desperate Housewives and also has written for Cagney & Lacey, Remington Steele, Scarecrow & Mrs. King, and Showtime's Hollywood satire Beggars & Choosers, which he created.
In addition to his TV credits, Lefcourt recently wrote the William H. Macy film The Deal, and his comic novel The Dreyfus Affair (about a love affair between two Major League Baseball players) inspired one of Hollywood's most storied development histories. A revival of his play La Ronde de Lunch opens October 9 at the Skylight Theatre in Los Angeles; for now, though, we have his one-page screenplay, Sunrise/Sunset.
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It's always an interesting experience to interview a child actor; some, especially those who've come out of the Disney school, are rehearsed and talkative within an inch of their lives, while others just seem like kids. You might expect Abigail Breslin to be a professionally groomed version of the former, but in fact, she's refreshingly normal and unaffected. Talking to her is like talking to your thirteen-year-old niece, although your niece probably wasn't nominated for an Oscar at ten years old.
Breslin switched gears a bit in her career to play a tough teen in Zombieland, and with the comedy riding high at the box office, I spoke to the actress about the making of the film and what she's got on deck next.
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Joan Holloway had a pretty humiliating day interfacing with Pete Campbell on yesterday's Mad Men, and Movieline is here to rub cinematic salve on the burn. We caught up with Christina Hendricks, the actress behind Sterling Cooper's former doyenne, and asked her about her favorite scene in film history. Though she was flustered upon fielding the question, her answer is spirited and (somehow, in a tangential way) quintessentially Joan.
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It's cold, it's rainy, and Peter Sarsgaard is the perfect stranger offering you a ride. Do you get in? That's the situation Carey Mulligan found herself in while shooting Lone Scherfig's An Education, and it wasn't just that she was channeling her character Jenny; Sarsgaard made Mulligan agree that if he couldn't charm her into the car, then she'd simply damn the stage directions and turn him down. Fortunately, like his supremely self-confident character David, the actor got exactly what he wanted.
In person, it's the reticent Sarsgaard who must be charmed, though I think I managed all right. Last Thursday, he sat down with me to discuss screen chemistry, the "golden handcuff" of a film franchise, and (prompted by two chairs slightly turned toward each other) his deeply ingrained fear of talk shows.
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It's about as unlikely a Hollywood discover story as you'll hear: One second, you're a tousled, twentysomething singer-songwriter paying your dues in Nashville; the next, you're hand-selected by Drew Barrymore from a pool of hundreds to play Ellen Page's love interest in her first new film since Juno. If you're Landon Pigg, it could -- and did -- happen to you. No stranger to the ups and downs of making a career in show business, we caught up with Pigg in L.A. shortly before Whip It's opening weekend, as he readied himself to get back in a van and head out on a very no-frills cross-country tour.
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It's an odd feeling to be interviewing Julianne Nicholson so soon after watching John Krasinski's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, because there's a distinct sense that the tables have turned. As the movie's lead, Sara, Nicholson interviews a series of dark and intriguing men in order to get at the root of why her relationship with an elusive ex (played by Krasinski) feel apart. Now, though, it's Nicholson who has to submit to questioning during the Brief Interviews press tour; fortunately, the actress was game to talk yo Movieline about Krasinski's unconventional ideas, the difficulty of balancing motherhood and a career, and the cast exodus from Law & Order: Criminal Intent (where she starred until recently as the partner to Jeff Goldblum).
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