Earlier this month at the Langham Huntington hotel, network executives mingled with talent and press at the NBC Universal TCA party. Somewhere in the midst of the strawberry shortcake buffets, an irritating Naughty Chef demo and expensive suits, Kathy Griffin stood shouting, "Who wants to talk to me? I'm Kathy Griffin!" It seemed like as good a time as any to play a round of Movieline's My Favorite Scene.
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George Hamilton may have seemed like the movie star who has everything: A half-century show business tenure, worshipful fans and the most famous tan in Hollywood. But there was one thing eluding him: A biopic. This week's period dramedy My One and Only takes care of that, featuring breakout star Logan Lerman as young George Deveraux, a wisecracking 15-going-on-40-year-old who joins his mother (Renee Zellweger) and older brother (Mark Rendall) on a cross-country journey away from his philandering bandleader father (Kevin Bacon).
Movieline caught up with Hamilton this week to talk about the peaks and perils of fame, his otherworldy glow, what Twilight taught him about teen girls, and why Quentin Tarantino has him all wrong.
As we told you yesterday in our review, though Brad Pitt gives Inglourious Basterds its marquee value, Mélanie Laurent provides its heart and soul. It falls to the 26-year-old French actress to anchor some of the World War II film's most challenging scenes as Shosanna, the Parisian theater owner who's seen her entire family slaughtered by Nazi Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) and seizes the opportunity to lure the S.S. into her theater for murderous revenge.
Though cool and collected on screen, in person Laurent (pictured above in an exclusive still from Basterds) is all impish charm, suggesting a younger, delightfully bratty variation on Marion Cotillard. As she folded her legs beneath her and smoked a slim cigarette, Movieline asked Laurent to elaborate on all things Basterds, including the unconventional demands made on her by Quentin Tarantino, her relationship with onscreen suitor Daniel Brühl, and the Shosanna scenes that Laurent found pivotal, yet ended up on the cutting room floor.
To hear him tell it, even Bobcat Goldthwait probably wouldn't have bet on going two-for-two with his recent renaissance as an independent filmmaker. Not that he doesn't have faith in his work -- which has made sizable strides since his 1991 cult classic Shakes the Clown -- or that he nurses a false-modesty streak. Anything but. Instead, the man best known as a growling, yelping '80s comedy icon didn't anticipate that his squirmy blend of pathos and pitch-black humor might find an audience at the Sundance Film Festival (twice), or that his long relationship with Robin Williams might culminate in this week's sensational World's Greatest Dad.
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In its eleventh season, Big Brother is one of the most addictive reality programs on television today. Isolating its contestants in a cushy house for nearly three months, nerves fray and tension builds until houseguests are embattled in the most wicked non-violent warfare allowed on network TV. Fortunately, Julie Chen has been there each season to calmly guide us through the increasingly grotesque challenges, action-packed eviction ceremonies and movie-hawking celebrity appearances. Her professional delivery gives Big Brother its shred of credibility and keeps viewers from dipping into the same insanity that sweeps the houseguests. Last week, Julie Chen spoke to Movieline about favoring contestants, the dangerous side effects of the live feed and feeling vindicated by the show's success.
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The new Alexis Bledel comedy Post Grad explores that tricky period when a young person is on the precipice of major change, and it couldn't be a more timely subject matter for Bledel's costar, Zach Gilford. He'll soon be heading to Austin to shoot his final season of Friday Night Lights, after which he hopes to graduate to a big-screen career. Post Grad's release this Friday represents the opening salvo of Gilford's senior year, but he'll also be seen in the upcoming Dare, where he plays a confused jock pulled into the sexual orbit of a drama student (Emmy Rossum) and her male best friend (Ashley Springer).
Movieline talked to the 27-year-old about his upcoming projects, the novel experience of shooting Post-Grad during the writer's strike, and his burning to desire to substitute teach.
Last week, Jeremy Piven introduced his WWE Raw guest co-host and The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard co-star Ken Jeong to a packed arena as "the Asian gentleman from The Hangover." Piven could have easily continued his credits: "You might also recognize him as the Asian gentleman from Knocked Up, the Asian gentleman from Step Brothers, the Asian gentleman from Pineapple Express and the Asian gentleman from Role Models." Ken Jeong is the busiest "Asian gentleman" in Hollywood, with today's The Goods premiere, future releases All About Steve and Couples Retreat, not to mention his upcoming NBC series Community. Last week at NBC's Television Critics Association event, Movieline sat down with the doctor-turned-actor, who readily discussed his time in the ring with Piven, his upcoming series with Chevy Chase and being naked in a trunk for The Hangover.
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Movieline navigated the sprawling buffets and flock of critics at last week's Showtime TCA event to find Kevin Nealon, towering over the swag-lagged crowd at the Huntington Library in Pasadena. There to promote Weeds, the Aliens in the Attic survivor was excited to get in on Movieline's My Favorite Scene action. His answer might surprise you.
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You might know Bandslam as that Vanessa Hudgens movie that's coming out on Friday, but it's actually Aly Michalka who's first-billed. That billing suggests the interesting career crossroads Michalka now finds herself at: The 20-year-old has developed a huge following after being groomed by Disney (with starring roles on the channel's movies and series and a band -- formed with younger sister AJ -- on a Disney-owned label), and while her first theatrical role in Bandslam leverages that audience, she'll soon be moving into more grown-up fare with the thriller The Roommate and the provocative comedy Easy A.
Movieline talked to the actress about navigating that transition to adulthood, with guidance from Disney and Rivers Cuomo along the way.
Time again to add another entry to Movieline's growing One-Page Screenplay database -- the ultimate resource for all your abbreviated screenwriting needs. We continue to nurture emerging talent with today's guest scribe, Jonathan Herman, who has scripts currently set up at Warners and Universal. This kid is going places! And today the place he is going should be somewhat familiar to you: back to the mean streets of the Taxi Driver universe, to tie up some loose ends. Hey -- there's Iris, still working her favorite corner. Everyone wave hi to Iris!
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In the past year, How I Met Your Mother celebrated its first Emmy nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series, a lucrative syndication deal and its highest ratings in four seasons at CBS. The show is run by co-creators Craig Thomas and Carter Bays who also quadruple as executive producers, writers and theme song performers. On the eve of the series' fifth season, Movieline caught up with Craig Thomas to discuss the Emmy recognition, sitcom immortality and Barney's views on religion.
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If the name Neill Blomkamp isn't yet familiar to you, give it a week. Hand-picked by Universal based on the strength of his short films and commercials, the gifted director -- a 29-year-old, South African-born Vancouverite -- was months into pre-production on the Halo film when studio infighting scuttled the project. Guided by mentor Peter Jackson, Blomkamp instead went to work on Sony's District 9 -- an original idea about a race of insectoid aliens, held for decades against their will in a slum in Johannesburg. It's a rich concept that provided him the opportunity to weave weightier themes about race, cruelty and intolerance into an undeniably fun summer thrill ride. And Blomkamp delivered, producing the thinking-man and thinking-woman's alternative to the glut of sci-fi brainlessness currently dominating the box office. Movieline spoke to the director on the cusp of his well-deserved breakout success.
In Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, Daniel Brühl plays a Nazi war hero who's become a huge German movie star, and while the role of an S.S. soldier might be foreign to Brühl (in fact, he objected to and then declined the obligatory military service asked of every German adult), playing a movie star surely isn't. In reality, Brühl is one of Europe's hottest actors, a position he cemented with his leading role in 2003's wondrous Good Bye Lenin! Since then, Brühl's become a fixture in both German and Spanish cinema, and though he's acted in English language films (including a small role in The Bourne Ultimatum), the romantic Nazi he plays in Basterds is likely to augur his American coming-out party.
I talked to the 31-year-old actor about his eccentric Basterds audition, the reaction to the film in Germany, and his upcoming reunion with Lenin director Wolfgang Becker.
After a short hiatus, we're extremely pleased to announce the return of Movieline's One-Page Screenplay. Did you miss it? Of course you did. In today's auteur-centric cinematic environment -- where films regularly run into a third, completely unnecessary hour -- isn't it something of a relief to find a lean, satisfying story you can enjoy in under a minute, leaving you a bonus of 149 to use as you see fit? Say, getting drunk?
Today's One-Pager comes from John Hlavin, a veteran on FX's The Shield who recently sold his first feature script to Warner Bros: The Gunslinger, a revenge-driven action picture about an ex-Texas Ranger hunting for the men who killed his brother. Today, John tries his hand at something a little lighter, with a Rapturous romcom called Revelations.
Don't ever accuse Paul Giamatti of playing himself -- even when he literally plays himself, as he does in his new film Cold Souls. The Oscar-nominee took a studio hiatus for writer-director Sophie Barthes's indie meta-comedy, featuring Giamatti as a fussy New York actor struggling desperately with his title role in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. He finds a potential solution in The Soul-Storage Company, a gleaming, high-tech facility where one Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn) guides Giamatti through the extraction of the soul that he believes is weighing him down. Trouble and even international intrigue ensue, with his soul hijacked to Russia and his professional and personal lives trapped in a tailspin until he can rescue it.
Giamatti talked to Movieline this week about reconciling his deadpan self and his neurotic Cold Souls likeness, how soul storage might have helped on Sideways, and how dreams can be an actor's best coach.
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