When I first meet Audrey Tautou in a courtyard at the Four Seasons, I'm immediately struck by two things: Tautou's delicate, porcelain beauty, and the fact that this tiny woman, dressed to the nines, is struggling to lift and reposition a gigantic, shade-granting umbrella. Sure, it might be a little easier if we just move our chairs into the shade that's already there, but Tautou isn't daunted by taking on the tougher task, and it's that same sense of impossible, irrepressible ambition that makes her such a perfect fit to play Coco Chanel in Anne Fontaine's new biopic Coco Before Chanel, which traces the headstrong designer's eventful early life.
After Tautou finished with the umbrella, she sat down to talk with Movieline about her own childhood, her affinity for Chanel, and her position on doing more English-language films.
more »
As John Keats in Jane Campion's Bright Star, 28-year-old Ben Whishaw plays a most unconventional romantic hero: a poet, yes, but one who relies on his lover to save him, instead of vice versa. His Keats is a fragile man, bedridden by sickness, who finds color in his cheeks only when administered to by Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), quite literally the girl next door.
In real life, Whishaw exudes the same sort of unconventional romantic pull: He's a tangled mess of skinny limbs and lanky hair, but he's got a quiet charisma that can't help but compel. (It's no wonder that Julie Taymor wanted him to play Peter Parker.) I talked to Whishaw about giving a physically limited performance, Bright Star's most painfully deleted scene, and the love offerings he received every day from Cornish while shooting.
more »
Movieline's One-Page Screenplays have been many things, including epic (Rian Johnson's The Plains of Rothinian), smart-alecky (Diablo Cody's Father Approved), and just plain beautiful (Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick's One Small Step). But, we'd wager, they've never been controversial -- so why not have Tucker Max try his hand at one?
Max, for those unfamiliar, is the author of the drinking-and-debauchery memoir I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, which has been made into an independently-distributed film debuting this Friday. Since he started his own website in 2002, Max's true-life tales have won him a legion of devoted followers, and an equally passionate set of detractors who call his stories misogynistic.
What they'll make of his One-Page Screenplay remains to be seen. On with the show!
more »
In anticipation of tonight's Dancing With the Stars premiere event part deux, when the female celebrities take their inaugural spins and trips on the dance floor, we spoke to one of the program's professional dancers, Louis van Amstel. The Dutch ballroom dance champion has partnered with the likes of Priscilla Presley, Lisa Rinna, Monique Coleman and hopes to win his first DWTS title with this season's unlikely double, Kelly Osbourne.
En route to practice last week, van Amstel told us about his favorite partners, the strapless bra mishap that threatened ABC censors, Priscilla Presley's nerves and what to expect this season.
more »
Tonight brings the second season of Castle to ABC, returning Nathan Fillion to his titular role as a crime novelist who shadows NYPD homicide detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) on the trail of killers and (hopefully) his next story. Their chemistry recalls the flirty crimesolving of Moonlighting with grisly doses of CSI gore, establishing the grounds for a dark comedy whose cult following overlaps that of Fillion's career-making work with Joss Whedon on Firefly and, later, the film Serenity.
Or at least it overlapped last week when Fillion and I chatted at SoHo's Apple Store with a few hundred of his local fans on hand (and some not-so-local; one couple said they'd driven 17 hours from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to see Fillion). An edited version of our conversation follows the jump; a full podcast will be available from Apple later this week.
more »
It's been a while since Clive Owen's had to carry a movie on his broad shoulders, and in the upcoming Scott Hicks film The Boys are Back, he's front-and-center with nary a gun or glamorous love interest at his disposal. In a more intimate turn, Owen plays sportswriter Joe Warr, who struggles to raise both his six-year-old son (Nicholas McAnulty) and a teenage son from an earlier marriage (George MacKay) after his wife dies of cancer.
Adapted from Simon Carr's memoir, The Boys are Back espouses Carr's philosophy of always saying yes to your children, and Owen says it caused him to examine his own relationship with his daughters, Hannah and Eve. In a conversation with Movieline last week in Los Angeles, Owen opened up about his cinematic and real-life families, the nature of grief, and whether or not he's gearing up to do a sequel with Spike Lee.
more »
If you're a struggling actor, you might not be pleased with the luck Asher Book has had, and he knows it. At age six, he auditioned almost as a lark for Broadway's Beauty and the Beast and landed the role, and when he debated whether to bring a life of performing to a close in college, he was plucked from his studies to lead the boy band VFactory. It's at that point that Book decided to cut back on his acting auditions to focus on music; naturally, he got his first feature film lead in Fame within the year.
It may all sound a little too easy, and as Book told Movieline, it was -- until now.
more »
Stephanie Savage is responsible for bringing us two of the most popular coming-of age series in the past decade, The O.C. and Gossip Girl. Set on the opposite coast as its Californian predecessor, Gossip Girl similarly navigates the social strata of its wealthy, close-knit neighborhood while its characters fumble over each romantic endeavor and pitfall of the privileged in their paths toward adulthood. On the heels of Gossip Girl's third season premiere last week, we spoke to co-creator Savage about keeping the Upper East Siders relatable for future generations, their impending transition to college and the provocative first season scene that needed to be reshot.
more »
The evergreen interweaving-ensemble genre gets an urbane French twist this week in Paris, director Cédric Klapisch's tale of life, death, sex, love and middle-class inertia in the Gallic capital. Fusing Altmanesque whimsy to Crash's social initiative, the film showcases Romain Duris as terminally ill dancer Pierre and Juliette Binoche as his sister Élise, a social- worker single mom who moves herself and her three kids into Pierre's apartment to share his last days. From both his balcony and the street, the pair encounter a range of strivers, scholars, merchants, lovers and other dreamers for whom the city roils with potential even as it slowly devours each.
Klapisch breaks the drama up with dream sequences, musical interludes and sensational glimpses at the Parisian landscape, while Binoche's character struggles with the nature of compassion -- her most bountiful resource in an ancient city compromised by cold, cruel modernity. The Oscar-winner spoke with Movieline last week about relearning Paris for Paris, the joys of observation, and her favorite vision of Paris on film.
more »
Julie Taymor's Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark hasn't had the easiest time making it to the Broadway stage. On paper, it would seem to have everything going for it: a big budget, one of theatre's brightest directors, songs written by Bono and the Edge, and a cast that's had Evan Rachel Wood and Alan Cumming attached. Still, the show was hit hard by hiatus last month -- and then there was the little matter of casting Peter Parker. Taymor's Across the Universe lead Jim Sturgess had participated in readings and workshops, but he never officially signed on. Who did Taymor have in mind for the role, if anyone?
more »
Few countries outside the U.S.-European movie axis had quite the year Australia has had in Toronto, where the 2009 festival programmed an unprecedented 17 films from Down Under. They run the gamut from mainstream awards-season fare (The Boys are Back) to offbeat indie musicals (Bran Nue Day) to old-school revivals (the 1971 classic Wake in Fright) and ultimately to Last Ride, the sublime debut feature by director Glendyn Ivin. The film stars Hugo Weaving and 10-year-old Tom Russell as Kev and Chook, an ex-con father and his son on the run from something. They cross the Outback in stolen cars, hiding in forests and on desert ridges, mismatched yet devoted until a series of revelations rattles young Chook into second thoughts, then third thoughts, and finally action that will test the breaking point of family.
more »
Scott Bakula specializes in characters that exude a throwback masculinity tempered by a warm, easygoing trustfulness. It's not surprising, then, that Steven Soderbergh hand-picked the star of Quantum Leap and Enterprise for the part of Special Agent Brian Shepard in his fact-based corporate caper, The Informant!. Shepard is a good-natured lawman investigating a lysine price-fixing scandal, to whom it quickly becomes apparent that his star witness -- played by a doughy Matt Damon with demented abandon -- isn't exactly working with both cornholders intact. We talked to Bakula about the risks and rewards of playing the straight guy, his not-so-secret identity as an accomplished song and dance man, and the legendary magazine shoot that follows him wherever he goes.
more »
Karyn Kusama has occupied the director's chair on both sides of the mainstream filmmaking spectrum, from the microbudget Sundance darling Girlfight to the poorly received, big-budget anime adaptation Aeon Flux. She settles somewhere between the two tomorrow with Jennifer's Body, the breathlessly anticipated Megan Fox horror comedy that premiered to mixed reactions (including my own thumbs-up) last week in Toronto. The filmmaker sat down for drinks with Movieline on the final day of her Canadian marathon, elaborating on contemporary criticism, feminine monsters, guiding her young stars and what you might see on the Jennifer's Body director's-cut DVD.
more »
Sometimes Movieline's "My Favorite Scene" feature is a bit too intimidating. Who can choose just one of Charlie Chaplin's gymnastic eye rolls? Or one searing Marlon Brando monologue? I can't even decide between Lesley Ann Warren's several scenes of sauntering through the study while brandishing a cigarette and a candlestick in Clue. Maeve Quinlan, who starred for over a decade on The Bold and the Beautiful before landing the role of Constance Tate-Duncan on the new 90210, has a wide assortment of favorite movies and shared them all for our newest "MFS" installment.
more »
Topher Grace's post-That '70s Show career has, thus far, amounted to his role as Venom in Spider-Man 3, but that's about to change with the release of his next two projects -- Young Americans and Valentine's Day. In the former, the winsome 31-year-old actor stars with Michelle Trachtenberg and Anna Faris as an adulthood-fearing romantic. In the latter, he's part of a giant celebrity ensemble with Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway, and old sitcom pal Ashton Kutcher. Grace talked us about his upcoming projects, the legacy of That 70s Show, and the movie he'd least like to star in.
more »
