Through the '90s, the Phoenix-born, Tulsa-raised Amber Valletta was the essence of the term "supermodel," one of a handful of striking beauties to inherit the title from the Linda/Cindy/Naomi generation who defined it. With a face that could radiate everything from Grace Kelly throwback glamour to an almost android-like futurism, Valletta helped sell the illusion for labels like Louis Vuitton, Calvin Klein and Versace. She then moved into TV hosting work (with friend and fellow supermodel Shalom Harlow on MTV's House of Style) and eventually began to land film work. Living now in Los Angeles with her volleyball champion husband Chip McCaw and their son, Valletta struts back onto screens today starring opposite Gerard Butler in Gamer, a mind-control video game thriller from gonzo filmmakers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. We talked to Valletta about it, in a conversation that at times became hampered by the hectic, easily distractable life of a modern model, mom and movie star.
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Dustin Milligan's role in Mike Judge's comedy Extract couldn't be coming along at a better time for the 24-year-old actor. After a season of playing male lead Ethan on the teen soap 90210, Milligan was ultimately let go in May amidst creative retooling. Now, though, as the dunderheaded male gigolo who comes between Jason Bateman and his wife Kristen Wiig in Extract, Milligan finally gets to show off his comic abilities in a way 90210 never let him.
Milligan spoke to Movieline about his thoughts on leaving 90210 (don't worry, we definitely brought up that picture) and his eagerness to leave his teen idol image behind in favor of becoming a comic scene-stealer.
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Production designer John Myhre has two Academy Awards on his (undoubtedly stylish) mantle, both earned for his sumptuous work on Rob Marshall's previous films -- 2002's Chicago and 2005's Memoirs of a Geisha. In the years that followed, he'd envision the sparkling '60s showcases of Bill Condon's Dreamgirls, and the cubicle farms and baroque hitman lairs of Timur Bekmambetov's Wanted. Though it's not due in theaters until the holidays, the accolades have already begun to trickle in for Nine, the all-star Broadway musical adaptation that reunites production designer with the director who twice guided him to gold. We spoke with Myhre shortly after he was named Production Designer of the Year by the Behind the Camera Awards.
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Mitch McCabe realized when she was young that aging horrified her, and as she grew older, she resorted to expensive facial salves and chemical hair-coloring treatments to reduce the signs of natural evolution.
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Logan Lerman may be the next Daniel Radcliffe, but unlike his predecessor, he won't have come out of nowhere. Lerman is the lead in February's fantasy adventure Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (directed by Chris Columbus, who helmed the first two Harry Potter films), but he first gained notice five years ago as one of the titular brothers in the WB drama Jack & Bobby. Now, Lerman's got two different films hitting theaters: My One and Only, where he plays a young George Hamilton opposite Renée Zellweger, and Gamer, an action movie from Crank masterminds Neveldine/Taylor.
Movieline talked to the 17-year-old up-and-comer about The Goonies, the idea of casting Uma Thurman as Percy Jackson's hideous villain, and his plans for weathering potential Potter-like fame.
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There used to be only one real way to qualify your documentary for an Academy Award: Sell the movie to a distributor at a major film festival (unless a studio financed it, which, let's face it, it didn't), run it for a week in New York and Los Angeles, send in your application and wait. Book a publicist around September at the latest -- someone with heavy-duty campaigning chops. Then watch your film fall behind one or two critically acclaimed front-runners by more famous directors. Then pray that all the expense and struggle is worth at least a spot on the Documentary Branch's short list, which you can't put on your DVD label anyway. Then do it all again two or three years later with the next project.
Or you can do it like Ondi Timoner, who is gambling her superb, Sundance-winning We Live in Public on the same mass-media concepts that, ironically, doomed her protagonist. Things have changed in 10 years -- or so she hopes.
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Rob Zombie's 2007 remake of Halloween became a surprise hit, taking in $60 million at the box office and reinvigorating a stale franchise with a unique spin that explored the childhood origins of the Man in the Shatner Mask. Its sequel, Halloween II, opens today on 3,000 screens, and marks the fourth feature-film outing for the Grammy-winning metal maestro-turned-director. In a recent conversation with Movieline, Zombie talked about the nightmare of making the first Halloween and his hesitation in coming back for seconds: Pity the horror auteur contractually obligated to carve up a nubile teen once per reel, when all he really wants to do is get inside her head.
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Exhausted the classic canon? Fed up with the current cinema of remakes, reboots and reimaginings? This week The Cold Case talks to Sam Rockwell about one of his most underappreciated career gems -- of which he's had more than a few.
"I remember being very influenced by Taxi Driver, and also Tommy Lee Jones in Coal Miner's Daughter a little bit," Sam Rockwell told me Thursday from his Boston apartment where he'd wound up after spending a day -- as he described it in his laid-back tone -- "mellowing out." "I remember thinking about those two particular performances for some reason," he continued. "I think because every guy struggles with loneliness, and being an outsider, it's tough. It was a really nice part to play." He could've been talking about Moon, this year's stellar, one-man sci-fi show for which, if there's any justice, he should receive a Best Actor Oscar nomination. But at the moment we were talking all about Trent, the sensitive redneck at the heart of 1997's criminally underseen Lawn Dogs.
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We continue our series of interviews with the winners of the 2009 Hamilton Behind the Camera Awards with Stunt Choreographer of the Year, Garrett Warren. A virtually indestructible one-stuntman-army (he's taken four real bullets and lived to tell the tale), Warren is the go-to guy for stunt coordination on 3-D motion capture movies like Avatar, Alice in Wonderland, A Christmas Carol, and The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. He's no stranger to non-CGI danger, either, having just dodged actual explosions and flying Grand Prix cars while serving as Mickey Rourke's Iron Man 2 stunt double. Read on to find out who insists on doing their own stunts, who prefers not to, and pick up a couple of Tintin and Iron Man 2 scoops while you're at it.
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Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock is as much a confluence of chance, mood and timing as it is an actual movie, one of those meant-to-be phenomena not so unlike the historic concert cited in its title. It started with Lee running into Elliot Tiber, the man whose Catskills motel served as ground zero for Woodstock's planners in the weeks leading up to Aug. 15, 1969; nearly 40 years later, Tiber was promoting his memoir on the same Bay Area television show where Lee was pushing his 2007 film Lust, Caution. Their introduction resulted in an adaptation by Lee's long-time collaborator James Schamus, who soon suggested comic Demetri Martin as a leading man.
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When director Rob Zombie debuted his rebooted Halloween in 2007, one of its most daring gambits was to delay the introduction of series heroine Laurie Strode until deep into the movie, instead focusing on the development of villain Michael Myers. However, in Halloween II (opening this Friday), the troubled, victimized Laurie finally comes to the fore, which is welcome news for her portrayer, actress Scout Taylor-Compton.
Movieline talked to Taylor-Compton about the controversy surrounding Zombie's take on the franchise, her daring new spin on Laurie, and her upcoming role as Lita Ford in the upcoming music biopic The Runaways (starring Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning).
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We launch today a series of conversations with the recipients of this year's Hamilton Behind the Camera Awards, a ceremony produced by Movieline to recognize the too-often overlooked achievements of Hollywood's below-the-line craftsmen and crew members.
We begin with Drew Petrotta, a property master who was tasked with the formidable job of tracking down and inventorying every single object seen on screen during the organized chaos of the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen shoot. From Megan Fox's motorcycle chamois to the all-important (if confusing) AllSpark sliver, it was his responsibility to make sure every actor had what they needed by the time Michael Bay shouted, "Action!" through his lucky bullhorn. He talked to us from the Detroit set of the Red Dawn remake that's currently shooting there.
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Welcome back to Movieline's One-Page Screenplay project, the screenwriting revolution that's single-handedly obliterating the brass-fastener industry. Coming soon: One-Page Screenplay for Kindle! And One-Tweet Screenplay! And Facebook Screenplay Updates!
Today's guest screenwriter is Megan Holley, who wrote Sunshine Cleaning, the indie comedy about sisters (Amy Adams and Emily Blunt) who get into the crime scene cleanup business. If you still haven't caught the quirky gem, it comes out DVD and Blu-Ray tomorrow. Today, Megan brings us Squashing Ticks. It's after the jump.
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Audiences who caught Inglourious Basterds this weekend must surely be curious about the velvet-voiced British actor who steals the film's midsection from Brad Pitt. Turns out he's not a Brit at all -- he's Irish actor Michael Fassbender, and Hollywood's got big plans for him. After first gaining notice for his harrowing work in last year's Hunger (which he lost 40 pounds for), Fassbender's gone on to land meaty parts in Jonah Hex and Joel Schumacher's Town Creek, and he was shortlisted for superhero stardom as one of the contenders for the title role in The Green Lantern.
Movieline talked to the 32-year-old up-and-comer about purple dildos, his superhero competition, and the Basterds role he really wanted.
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The first thing you heard about Big Fan after its premiere at this year's Sundance Film Festival was that its star, veteran comedian Patton Oswalt, was terrific. The second thing you heard was that he wasn't remotely funny. Mission accomplished, though: Those were precisely the dynamics screenwriter Rob Siegel (The Wrestler) sought in his directorial debut about Paul Aufiero (Oswalt), a parking attendant and sports-radio regular whose obsession with the New York Giants leads to a chain of misjudgments, misfortunes and turmoil for him, his famliy and the team itself.
It's a squirmy, often unpleasant and yet revelatory sit, for both Oswalt's disappearance in character and Siegel's continued, unflinching study of working-class obsessives. Oswalt talked to Movieline this week about Big Fan (which opens Aug. 28), giving comedy a rest, and his forthcoming work with "fucking pro" Steven Soderbergh.
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