Of the many young luminaries to walk the red carpet at this year's Hollywood Life Young Hollywood Awards, none caused quite the stir that Artist of the Year Adam Lambert did, his late arrival setting off a flurry of flashbulbs and shouted questions, all of which he took in stride. (Accepting the award later, he'd observe, "This is crazy. Last year I was living in a studio apartment at Wilcox and Melrose, and worried about whether or not I'd be able to get into Teddy's.")
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Though he's only 19 and just starred in his first movie, Alden Ehrenreich has already received the imprimatur of two cinematic titans: Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg. The latter rang Ehrenreich years ago after seeing him perform in a bat mitzvah video, and his guidance led Ehrenreich to pursue acting as a career. Then, after a couple of guest television guest spots and a stint at NYU's theater school, Coppola plucked him out of academia to star opposite Vincent Gallo in his new film, Tetro. We talked to the young actor about his quick rise, his cinematic mentors, and his take on Gallo's notorious sperm salesmanship.
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In 1995's Casper, Brad Silberling had directed the first studio release with a computer-animated title character; nine years later, he'd direct Jim Carrey in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events -- an eccentric children's fantasy just a little too Terry Gilliamesque in scope to pose any real threat to the Harry Potter franchise. Now Silberling returns to the toy chest for his big-budget spin on Sid and Marty Krofft's Saturday morning serial, Land of the Lost, opening today.
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Candid as he was last week about everything from Las Vegas to the inappropriateness of supplying weed to teenagers, director Todd Phillips might have yielded his most revealing anecdotes while discussing The Hangover's unlikeliest star: Mike Tyson. You already knew he could sing, but no one likely expected him to pull off acting as well. Nobody, that is, except Phillips himself, who recounted to Movieline just how one directs the ex-champ -- especially with Zach Galafianakis's life on the line.
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In a world of male-dominated feature film comedies, where dudeness and its gnarly idiosyncrasies tend to reign supreme, where do all the funny women go? This week at least two of them will unite onscreen in the underwhelming My Life In Ruins. Nia Vardalos and Rachel Dratch share a good, if unfortunate, amount of screen time in the season's preeminent ethnic mixer about an unhappy tour guide (Vardalos) and the group of stereotyped tourists (including Dratch) who tag along on her romantic journey to self-discovery. More important than its predictable plot, however, is Ruins's sidelong tale of comediennes faced with scant opportunity, capitulating to industry expectations for the sake of their careers.
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Exhausted the classic canon? Fed up with the current cinema of remakes, reboots and reimaginings? Welcome to The Cold Case, a new Movieline feature dedicated to rediscovering underrated and undervalued films -- and those who made them.
In 1987 New Line Cinema unleashed The Hidden, a $5 million flick about two L.A. law enforcers pursuing a body-swapping alien addicted to fast cars, loose women, loud hair-rock and killing puny humans. Directed by Jack Sholder, who'd made the lucrative A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, and scripted by Jim Kouf, who'd scored with Stakeout, it's a fast, violent, funny (and sadly forgotten) riff on '80s hits like The Thing, The Terminator and 48 Hrs.
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Though many of his famous peers like to say they'll soon make smaller, more intimate movies, only Francis Ford Coppola actually seems to be doing it. The director's latest, Tetro, is a moody family drama about young Bennie (newcomer Alden Ehrenreich) reconnecting with the titular brother (Vincent Gallo) who fled the family years before to escape from their overbearing father. When Bennie unearths one of Tetro's discarded stories and secretly adapts it into an acclaimed play, the already-riven family dynamics become even more fraught.
Movieline talked with Coppola about his own familial rivalries, the criticism his films have received (including the famous franchise he regrets serializing), and the splashy action film he's unexpectedly looking forward to this year.
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Yesterday, we brought you Part One of a fascinating roundtable discussion with brilliant sitcom provocateur Norman Lear, and two of his appreciative disciples, The Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane and Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal. In Part Two, Norman recalls the Maude abortion episode shitstorm, Phil relates the dumbest network notes he's ever gotten, Seth reveals which celebrities he's pissed off, and all three commiserate over the idiotic network pseudoscience that is "audience testing."
It's after the jump.
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Like that quintessentially American art form the musical comedy, the situation comedy -- the kind performed in three, ten-minute acts on a single set, shot with multiple cameras before a studio audience, and then beamed weekly into millions of living rooms -- was born here, too, on a show called I Love Lucy. Of its many innovators to follow, however, there can no disputing that one stands head and shoulders above the rest: Norman Lear is the sitcom's Gershwin. He's also its Rodgers & Hammerstein, and its Sondheim, all rolled up in one.
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Welcome to Movieline's One-Page Screenplay project, a groundbreaking creative experiment that asks Hollywood's most successful screenwriters to compose a script that exists on a single page -- and yet still somehow manages to present third-act stakes-deficiency problems. Today's estimable contributor is Jeff Lowell, a former TV writer on shows like Spin City and Sports Night, who now works in comedy features, having written John Tucker Must Die and Hotel For Dogs, and written and directed Eva Longoria shrew-from-the-grave comedy Over Her Dead Body. For us, though, he presents The Socialite And The Guy With The Real Job -- a breezy and satisfying romantic comedy that practically has Matthew McConaughey's potato-chip-grease fingerprints all over it.
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Weeks before its release this Friday, industry observers were sizing up The Hangover as the sleeper hit of the summer. Either way, director Todd Phillips has reached his peak here, corralling Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and, in a true breakthrough performance, Zach Galifianakis as a mismatched trio attempting to find their friend the morning after a spectacularly debauched Vegas bachelor party.
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From the very first minute of True Blood's second season (beginning June 14 on HBO), Rutina Wesley's Tara steps to the fore as this year's pivotal character. Sure, Sookie (Anna Paquin) may have all the vampire-lovin' fun, but it's Tara who falls under the spell of the mysterious Mary Ann (Michelle Forbes) while at the same time dealing with a close-to-home murder and a hunky new love interest (Mehcad Brooks). We spoke with Wesley about the job that made her cry, what she's learned from Anna Paquin, and how Tara's about to become a changed woman.
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There are two things I'm an unabashed fan of: sharp old broads and Pixar. Thus, when Disney came calling and offered us the chance to speak to Phyllis freakin' Diller about her appreciation for Pixar god John Lasseter (and her role in Pixar's second minor masterpiece, A Bug's Life), it was a no-brainer to accept. Before the 91-year-old comic trailblazer had to sign off to finish one of her paintings, we asked her about bugs, biopics, and Blu-Ray (the loaded disc for A Bug's Life is out now, and Diller was impressively on-point when it came to advertising it).
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Welcome to The One-Page Screenplay, the brass-fastener-obsoleting Movieline feature in which we ask some of our favorite screenwriters to produce a script that exists on a single page. (I then hand that unread script directly to my assistant, who compiles a four-word-long coverage report for me.) We're thrilled to report that today's offering, Messy Life, comes to us from the hugely talented team of Michael Brandt & Derek Haas -- the same Brandt & Hass who tamed the Bale in 3:10 to Yuma, and turned ballistics curvature into sheer visual poetry in Wanted. Enjoy. This is a good one.
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Since co-creating the sketch comedy group The Lonely Island with childhood friends Andy Samberg and Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone hasn't strayed far from his collaborators. The three were hired together by Saturday Night Live four years ago, and writers Taccone and Schaffer crafted many of the digital shorts that made Samberg a star. Taccone himself acted in the group's feature film effort, Hot Rod, and his profile was raised further when he co-starred with Samberg in the trio's "Jizz in My Pants" (the first video off The Lonely Island's debut album, Incredibad), but as Chaka in the Will Ferrell comedy Land of the Lost, he's finally striking out on his own.
We spoke to Taccone about his primitive Lost character, his facility for made-up languages, and the audition that almost landed him a spot in SNL's cast.
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