Morgan Spurlock is just one-sixth of the all-star documentarian ensemble responsible for Freakonomics, but he's unarguably the only director in the group who might prompt a double take if you saw him on the street -- "Hey, isn't that guy who did Super Size Me? What's his name?" Which brings up kind of a funny point.
Before David Cross hopped onto the phone last week to discuss The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, his British comedy series premiering on IFC this Friday, his publicist implored, "Please, no questions about the Arrested Development movie. There really are no new developments."
It took Stephen Frears more than four decades of directing for TV, stage and screen before he finally got an opportunity quite like Tamara Drewe, his adaptation of author/illustrator Posy Simmonds's celebrated graphic novel about love, lust, lies and gossip in the English countryside. It's hardly new thematic terrain for Frears, whose deft touch with sordid secrets and those who keep them has served him exceedingly well from Dangerous Liaisons to The Grifters to Dirty Pretty Things and last year's underrated Chéri. But those sources didn't have beloved illustrated sources providing guidelines and clues -- not to mention challenges.
Melissa McCarthy played the delightful Sookie on Gilmore Girls for seven seasons and Dena on the quaint Samantha Who? for two years. Now she's back as Mike & Molly's Molly Flynn, a fourth-grade teacher in Chicago who treats family, romance with Mike (Billy Gardell) and Overeaters Anonymous meetings with equal amounts sarcasm and sincerity. Just before last week's premiere, Movieline caught up with McCarthy about the show's buzz, how Mike & Molly recalls All in the Family, and future of her new character.
When we all last heard from Malin Åkerman, she was preparing for the hometown premiere of her fiery drama The Bang Bang Club in Toronto. But for at least one more weekend, she's keeping an eye on her darling The Romantics as it expands into limited wide release. The ensemble film features the Swedish-Canadian actress as Tripler, one of several college pals reuniting for the marriage of Lila (Anna Paquin) and Tom (Josh Duhamel) -- over the simmering objection of Tom's ex Laura (Katie Holmes).
Even if you don't know Sarah Drew, you know Sarah Drew. With appearances on Mad Men, Castle, Private Practice, Glee and many other top series over the course of the last few years, it's no wonder Drew describes herself as a "Guest Star Queen." That's about to change though: With her regular role on Grey's Anatomy -- itself which started as a guest appearance -- Drew is ready to take the next step in her career.
An interview with Martin Landau really shouldn't be called that -- more than just a simple Q&A, it's as though you're sitting in on an Actor's Studio session taught by the 82-year-old actor. Though my talk with Landau this week was pegged to the release of Lovely, Still, a new indie film where he finds late-in-life romance with Ellen Burstyn, it took no time before he began discussing the very nature of acting itself using some of his most famous roles as examples -- including his Oscar-winning turn as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood and his characters in Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest and Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors. In fact, when it comes to actors, it turns out that Hitchcock and Allen have more in common than you might expect.
When you're writing a script called The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever Made, you're setting the bar awfully high, and when Get Him to the Greek director Nicholas Stoller began work on the upcoming Muppet reboot with cowriter Jason Segel (star of the Stoller-helmed Forgetting Sarah Marshall), he admits that he started freaking out.
It took a while (and a studio debacle over The Wolfman), but Mark Romanek finally has a second feature under his belt. And it's not wanting for prestige: Opening today in limited release, Never Let Me Go features Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield as a trio of school friends turned romantic rivals turned... well, it's complicated. And, as Romanek sympathized, worth keeping on the downlow for folks unfamiliar with Kazuo Ishiguro's celebrated, genre-bending source novel. The director spoke further with Movieline about the variety of his young cast, the perils of marketing, and the pop star who might have the sway to draw him back to the music-video form that made him legendary.
Despite the most spirited endorsement of yours truly, Dustin Lance Black's directorial debut What's Wrong With Virginia hasn't found the warmest reaction this week at the Toronto Film Festival. This has been a bit confounding to Black, whose follow-up to his Oscar-winning screenplay for Milk tells the wild tale of mentally ill Virginia (Jennifer Connelly), her teenage son (Harrison Gilbertson), her Mormon sheriff/Senate candidate paramour Dick Tipton (Ed Harris), and the small-town cauldron of love, sex, longing, desperation and hypocrisy from which each attempts to climb on the way to a bigger, better life. Whatever that is -- each has a different conception, as does Black himself, who today spoke with Movieline about the Canadian cold front and what isn't as wrong with Virginia as some might think.
It's been a busy 15 months since Bo Burnham was featured by Movieline in The Verge, and movie roles, tours, network pilots, and Comedy Central specials have all followed. I spoke to the 20-year-old comedy songwriter just this afternoon, and he exclusively announced to Movieline his plans for a brand-new tour called Bo Burnham and (No) Friends, which starts in October, the same month as his Comedy Central special, Words, Words, Words. Burnham told Movieline what to expect from his new tour -- "weird" seems to be the answer -- discussed his new MTV pilot, and imagined a world where Yo Teach! was a reality.
Andrew Garfield's lunch arrived before he did this afternoon in Toronto: a light salad with chicken and broccoli, vinaigrette on the side, and six slices of tomatoes. Digging into the greens, one of the journalists gathered to discuss Garfield's new film Never Let Me Go asked if this was actually the Spider-Man diet. "It's food that I'm eating," the actor replied. "So yes." And so continued the enduring push-pull between the 27-year-old's smoldering, carefully cultivated dramatic presence and his future as the Great White Blockbuster Hope.
Adam Brody showed up for our interview toting an old-model Nikon camera and some heady memories of his time on the set of The Romantics, a sprawling ensemble dramedy about marriage, unmarriage, post-college malaise and the families we make of our friends. Starring as Jake, the engaged would-be novelist who may or may not catch the cold-feet bug going around his pal Tom's (Josh Duhamel) wedding (time alone in an attic with Malin Åkerman would do that to anyone, let's be honest), Brody brings his customary wry deadpan to the subject of fading ambition. He elaborated on this and other topics -- including the "surreal" qualities of Scream 4 and the failure of last year's Jennifer's Body -- this week in New York.
It's only a few days until this Saturday's Toronto Film Festival premiere of It's Kind of a Funny Story, and already, something feels very different for filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden. It isn't just the assurance that Focus Features will release the film in theaters October 8 -- as Boden puts it, "It's nice to be able to go to a festival and enjoy the response to the film without that added pressure of having to sell it" -- but the realization that after making very challenging, independent movies like Half Nelson and Sugar, Boden and Fleck have turned in a third feature that could finally be their mainstream crowd-pleaser.
Producer. Director. Oscar-nominee. Name brand? We'll see if it's in the cards for Lee Daniels, the multi-hyphenate behind Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire who made history this year as the first black director of a Best Picture candidate (and only the second African-American ever nominated for Best Director). Daniels today is among the mobilizing forces behind Prince of Broadway, a gritty, low-budget drama finally escaping festival purgatory en route to limited theatrical release. (It opens today in NYC and next week in LA.) Is this a toe-dip in the pool of a would-be empire-builder? Or just a guy paying his good fortune forward?
FILM NEWS 
