When Isabelle Huppert, arguably the world's greatest screen actress, needs a minute to send a text message before your interview, you comply. Not necessarily out of deference or politeness (though those things, too), but because of the dazzling daydream potential. Is she sending script notes to Michael Haneke, planning their next collaboration? you may think. Who's she arranging a lunch date with? I guess it can't be Claude Chabrol... And on and on.
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Last year, Paul Haggis, the director of 2005's Oscar-winner for Best Picture, Crash, went through a very public breakup with Scientology. His first film after the defection arrives this week as The Next Three Days, the story of a man struggling to break his wife out of prison and restore his family. Coincidence?
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It's been a crazy seven months for director Doug Liman, who went from scrambling to finish his new film Fair Game ahead of its Cannes premiere to the whirlwind of press ahead of this month's opening in the States. In between he's taken lumps from the right, been the subject of Oscar speculation, and observed just how difficult it is to tell a story about the Central Intelligence Agency -- specifically, the true story of how agency operative Valerie Plame (played here by Naomi Watts), her husband Joseph Wilson (Sean Penn), and their marriage withstood her infamously blown cover in 2003.
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Even though it was a recent early Sunday morning when Jeff Goldblum spoke with Movieline, it was impossible to deny the energy coming from this man -- quite the contrast to last year's reports that he fell off a cliff and died while shooting a film somewhere in New Zealand. Not only is Goldblum still very much alive (or, if not, very talented at making you think otherwise), he's never actually ever been to New Zealand. Goldblum, alive and well, returns to theaters today in the new romantic comedy, Morning Glory.
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After ten months, one continent-sweeping comedy tour and one homoerotic cameo on Running Wilde, Andy Richter returns to the late night format tonight during Conan O'Brien's eagerly anticipated cable debut on Conan. In anticipation of the premiere, Andy Richter dialed Movieline last Friday to discuss the metamorphosis of his on-air relationship with O'Brien, the scathing Late Night reviews he is just now discovering and the man who threw a wrench in his and O'Brien's Tonight Show game, Jay Leno.
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Naomi Watts freely admits she had a hard time getting to know Valerie Plame, the ex-CIA agent notoriously outed by a Bush Administration henchman in 2003. But it wasn't because of what Plame couldn't tell the actress in preparation for Fair Game, the new film starring Watts as the newly exposed covert operative. It's because of the intimate yet necessary details of a marriage that, as a result of the scandal, nearly became some of the Iraq War's most infamous collateral damage.
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When Danny Boyle has an idea for a film, nothing is going to stop Danny Boyle from doing that film his way. Take 127 Hours, which almost didn't happen for a couple of reasons: First, Boyle thought to tell the story of hiker Aron Ralston's five-day ordeal completely from Ralston's perspective in the canyon in which he was trapped -- and from which he eventually extricated himself by amputating his own arm from beneath a boulder. A few years later, after Ralston finally agreed to the format, Slumdog Millionaire screenwriter Simon Beaufoy then balked at Boyle's offer, saying Boyle's vision was too entrenched in the Oscar-winning director's head. And what did Boyle do? What else? With Beaufoy's help, he wrote the screenplay.
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Todd Phillips, as I found out, is not afraid of confrontation. And maybe I shouldn't have been surprised that the director of The Hangover and this weekend's new release, Due Date, wasn't afraid to push the boundaries, even in an interview setting. Phillips makes it clear from the start that he's not particularly a fan of Movieline. And to be honest, knowing this now, I actually respect the fact that he went ahead and did this interview, even though, yes, we did get off to a rather rocky start.
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Over the course of six seasons on Weeds, Justin Kirk has portrayed one of the most colorful characters on television. As Andy Botwin, the crafty partner-in-crime/brother-in-law/love interest to Mary-Louise Parker's anti-heroine on the Showtime series, Kirk has enrolled in rabbinical school, smuggled Mexicans across the border, impersonated his dead brother to access a bank account, burned nearly $200,000 on vintage arcade games, dated an OB-GYN played by Alanis Morissette and baptized a trailer park resident in an inflatable pool. And thanks to a recent renewal by Showtime, Andy Botwin will live to explore other absurd scenarios during a seventh season next year.
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James Franco is someone I've never wanted to interview. As an admirer of his media persona, I never wanted to get too close -- to see what's going on behind the curtain. Indeed, when I finally did sit down with him last week to discuss his new film, things were going swell until raising that question -- a question met with a pause that felt like it lasted, oh, about 127 hours.
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When you think of smoldering television vampires, you think of Ian Somerhalder who portrays Damon, the sexy-but-evil Salvatore brother on the CW's hit series Vampire Diaries. When you think of philanthropic leaders, you probably don't think of Ian Somerhalder -- at least, not yet. The 31-year-old Louisianan was the first celebrity to involve himself in the Deepwater Horizon clean-up in April and as of last week, the actor was busy organizing a new foundation to launch on his birthday that will help the habitat. When the model turned actor turned philanthropist phoned Movieline last week, he discussed his own childhood interest in bloodsucking demons, this week's Halloween bloodbath, the secret to playing a sexy vampire and his do-gooder streak.
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As a graduate from Julliard, actress Gillian Jacobs initially seemed like the outsider in the cast of Community, which fits since her character, Britta, is an outsider as well. (Witness the way Britta pronounces "bagel.") Still, as the series has progressed, a funny thing happened: Jacobs ingratiated herself with fans in the same way Britta has with the study group; it's hard to imagine Community and/or Greendale working without her. Jacobs took time out of her lunch break to talk with Movieline about tonight's Halloween episode, the problem with worrying about TV scheduling and the truth about the friendliness of the Community cast.
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It took a while, but the hit-man caper/dark-comic love triangle Wild Target finally lands Stateside this weekend with its nifty cast of Bill Nighy, Emily Blunt, Rupert Grint, Martin Freeman and Rupert Everett. Nighy plays Victor Maynard, a veteran assassin who experiences a bit of a professional block when faced with the assignment to knock off a free-spirited thief (Blunt). Thrown together with a simple-minded witness (Grint) after a separate botched killing, the trio tests the bounds of each others' patience -- and volatile romantic chemistry -- in their flight to safety in the countryside.
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It has been a wild year for Jessalyn Gilsig. The Glee star -- who you also know from Heroes, Friday Night Lights and Ryan Murphy's Nip/Tuck -- was Public Enemy No. 1 for most of last season because of her portrayal as pregnancy faking Terri Schuester on the hit Fox series. The outrage has gradually changed, but it has also unfortunately coincided with less Terri than ever before; despite being a series regular, Gilsig has only appeared once this season. Fear not though, burgeoning Terri fans: That's all about to change.
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There may be a negative stigma associated with cancer but when it comes to Showtime's freshman series The Big C -- in which a superb Laura Linney stars as a suburban wife who reevaluates life after being diagnosed with cancer -- critics reviewed it positively and a record-breaking number of viewers secured the series a speedy second season pick-up. As the sure-to-be Emmy nominated series hurtled through its first season, executive producer/writer Jenny Bicks phoned Movieline recently to talk about writing cancer, avoiding the "best girlfriend" trap and a Weeds crossover episode.
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