Having a conversation with Terry Gilliam is not unlike watching one of his films: In either medium, he likes to throw a lot of ideas out there, and he'll even recreate his trademark fisheye lensing for you by leaning forward to whisper something he knows he shouldn't. In short, it's an experience, as is Gilliam's latest effort, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. The onscreen story involves a mad doctor (Christopher Plummer), a devilish antagonist (Tom Waits), and a mysterious amnesiac (Heath Ledger); the offscreen story was dominated by Ledger's death midway into production, which resulted in a rewrite that finds Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell subbing in for the character in scenes Ledger had yet to shoot.
In a wide-ranging, cuss-heavy, finger-pointing discussion with Movieline, Gilliam opened up about Ledger, his problems with Hollywood, the Oscars, Fox Searchlight, The Departed...well, let's just say that there were few topics that went untouched. Enjoy!
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With awards season in full swing, Movieline has launched a new recurring feature called "For Your Reconsideration," where we speak to the talented people whose contributions to the year in film are worthy of a second look. This week: Ben Foster from The Messenger.
For years, directors have counted on Ben Foster to add verve and nerve to a host of supporting parts in films like 3:10 to Yuma, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Alpha Dog, but Oren Moverman's The Messenger affords him a different opportunity: the chance to harness all of his skill and become a leading man. As Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery, Foster expertly illustrates a man who's unmoored upon his return from the war, yet pulled into the gravity of two very different people: his new partner in a casualty notification unit (Woody Harrelson), and a young widow (Samantha Morton) who Will becomes consumed with after being forced to give her the bad news.
Foster had some bad news of his own to report when he called me last week to discuss the role. Once we'd gotten past that, the 29-year-old actor opened up about the effect of playing so many emotional parts, the way he reconciles his tattoos with his character, and how his feelings on the war are forever changed.
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After his 2005 film C.R.A.Z.Y. swept the Genie Awards and became an international hit, Montreal filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée had Hollywood's red carpet laid out in front of him. He chose, instead, to make the last sort of movie he expected: a traditional costume drama exploring the romance between Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The Martin Scorsese-produced, Jullian Fellowes-scripted The Young Victoria is the result, and in addition to attracting buzz for leads Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend, it landed Vallée an upcoming assignment directing Kate Bosworth in Lost Girls and Love Hotels.
So how did the irreverent filmmaker end up here? Vallée spoke to Movieline about how he brought his slightly anarchic touch to a staid genre, and how important two very unlikely influences -- Sigur Ros and Fergie -- were to getting it made.
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"Blink and you'll miss me," said Matthew Goode, describing his ill-fated, longtime partner of Colin Firth's devastated college professor in A Single Man. On the one hand, Goode does occupy a minimum of screen time in Tom Ford's directorial debut, a stirring '60s-set drama currently in the awards-season hunt. On the other, the striking, versatile 31-year-old Brit is pretty hard to miss in any of his films, from a romantic lead in Chasing Liberty to an ambitious Midwestern cutthroat in The Lookout to the social-climbing confidante of Brideshead Revisited. Single Man is Goode's return to indies after his bewigged antiheroics as Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias in last spring's Watchmen; he'll be back to the majors next year opposite Amy Adams in Leap Year. He spoke recently to Movieline about discovering A Single Man for himself, what scared him about Tom Ford, and how a small part can sometimes make all the difference.
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Reader, I'm not sure how your 2009 has been going, but you certainly can't have had a better year than Stephen Lang. The Tony-nominated character actor has had one plum part after another, beginning the year in Michael Mann's Public Enemies, then kick-starting The Men Who Stare at Goats by running full-force into a wall. Still, each of those parts was a mere prelude to his role as the fearsome Quaritch in James Cameron's Avatar, who wreaks vengeance on the Na'vi forest with little more than a coffee mug and a smile.
As much fun as Lang has been on-screen this year, he's even more fun off it. I talked to the buff 57-year-old about his remarkable run of roles and the two things James Cameron can't do, and the erudite Lang was happy to oblige.
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One of the true treasures among American actresses, Ellen Burstyn returns to theaters this week in Tennessee Williams's The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond. Based on a 1957 script long thought lost, the film stars Bryce Dallas Howard as Fisher Willow, a headstrong young woman looking for a little more excitement than staid upper-class Memphis is ready to provide just before the Depression. Fisher becomes involved with sharecropper Jimmy Dobyne (Chris Evans), who escorts her to a Halloween party where all kinds of Williams-esque drama breaks loose. Director Jodie Markell parses the material with care and reverence, rarely more evident than in the long scenes Burstyn shares with Howard as Miss Addie, a bedridden stroke victim who asks Fisher for a favor highly likely to crimp the holiday festivities downstairs.
Three days after celebrating her 77th birthday, the Oscar-winner talked to Movieline about finally getting a crack at Tennessee Williams, her own days of being wild, and why she hopes to have another look soon at her classic The Last Picture Show.
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With awards season in full swing, Movieline is launching a new recurring feature called "For Your Reconsideration," where we speak to the talented people whose contributions to the year in film are worthy of a second look. First up: Abbie Cornish from Bright Star.
There's something about the women in Jane Campion's films: They can say so much without saying anything at all. Bright Star's Abbie Cornish certainly gets to talk more than Holly Hunter did in The Piano, but as her Fanny Brawne falls in love with Ben Whishaw's John Keats, her quiet fortitude conveys intelligence, emotion, and deep passion. It's one of the year's most striking performances.
Now that Cornish has been able to carve out some spare time from shooting Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, the actress talked to Movieline about clothes, chemistry, and the one thing Campion and Snyder have in common.
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Rupert Friend knows a thing or two about being treated like royalty. Since he first began dating Keira Knightley when they met on the set of the 2005 film Pride & Prejudice, the British press has covered the two as though they were a glamorous king and queen -- with all the scrutiny that entails.
He's one half of a different British supercouple in Jean-Marc Vallee's The Young Victoria, where he plays the young Prince Albert of Belgium, who married Queen Victoria (Emily Blunt) in the mid-1800's. In a chat with Movieline, the 28-year-old actor talked about the time travel aspects of moviemaking, the tyranny of British regionalism, and the Rolling Stones.
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Jesse Tyler Ferguson almost missed out on Modern Family, ABC's breakout mockumentary that is already being heralded by the Hollywood Reporter as one of the best series of the decade. Recovering from his experience on the critically savaged and quickly canceled Do Not Disturb, Ferguson told his managers that he was finished with television and moved to New York last year to headline the Broadway musical based on Elf. Fortunately for Ferguson, his managers soft-sold him Modern Family, which the actor read five times over and fell in love with. Now, Ferguson can be seen on Wednesday nights as Mitchell Pritchett, the hilariously straight-laced former figure skater who has since settled down with his flamboyant partner -- the hilarious Eric Stonestreet -- and their adopted Vietnamese daughter.
Last week, Movieline caught up with Ferguson to discuss his brush with Adam Lambert, the truth behind that Julie Bowen-Sofia Vergara rivalry and the upcoming storyline about Mitchell and his old-fashioned father, played by Ed O'Neill, that brought him to tears.
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When the nominations for the Independent Spirit Awards were announced a few days ago, some of the names people expected to see in the Best Actor (like Michael Stuhlbarg for A Serious Man or Hal Holbrook for That Evening Sun) were left off the list, replaced instead by a name no one saw coming: Adam Scott, for playing an erudite misanthrope in Lee Toland Krieger's The Vicious Kind. Don't worry, though -- as Scott told Movieline, he's just as surprised as you are.
After playing roles in The Aviator, Step Brothers, and Tell Me You Love Me, the 36-year-old actor's had a great run of late. In addition to The Vicious Kind (which debuts this Friday), he's got the lead on the much buzzed-about comedy Party Down, and he also happens to figure into a popular Funny or Die short that premiered just last week. Is Adam Scott having a moment? He told me all about it.
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As the seemingly sure-of-herself Natalie in Jason Reitman's Up in the Air, Anna Kendrick strides into George Clooney's office and walks out with the whole picture. You could call it a breakout role, except the 24-year-old has quietly amassed a resume full of them: from a Tony nomination at age 12, to a bravura role in the Sundance hit Rocket Science, to a small part in a very big franchise, Twilight.
Kendrick's Up in the Air character makes her living by firing people, but in Movieline's extensive interview with her, I thought I'd explore the flipside. Over the next few pages, Kendrick takes you on an exploration of how she won every pivotal part in her career, and what each role meant to her as an actress. It's the story of one of Hollywood's brightest new talents.
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Adored, reviled, emulated and microanalyzed, Michael Haneke is everything an auteur should be. The Munich-born, Viennese-raised filmmaker won his first Palme d'Or with this year's The White Ribbon (opening in the U.S., finally, on Dec. 30). Something of a departure for the man preoccupied with the intersection of technology and senseless violence in movies like Benny's Video, Caché and both sadistic versions of his Funny Games, Ribbon sheds the director's favored, blueish palette for monochromatic black-and-white, and dials the clocks back to 1913, where a series of bizarre mishaps and cruel, gruesome pranks befall a German agrarian town. As the braided narratives draw to a close and the Great War begins, we've borne witness to numerous brutalities and acts of violence. But what surprises are the frequent, deftly staged moments that come in between -- displays of what some might consider sheer sentimentality: a child grappling with the concept of death; a boy pleading with his strict father to nurse an injured bird back to health; a school teacher asking for his beloved's hand in marriage. Has Haneke at last betrayed his soft side? Movieline met with the director on a recent visit to Los Angeles, where we spoke of the perils of authoritarianism, the label of "provocateur," and the ambiguity of art.
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Sam Rockwell began 2009 in Sundance's best one-man show, and he'll end it this week in one of Hollywood's higher-octane holiday ensembles. Everybody's Fine features Rockwell as the son of Frank Poole (Robert De Niro), a retired widower who hits the road to visit his grown children scattered throughout the United States. Among them are his married ad-exec daughter in Chicago (Kate Beckinsale), his youngest girl in Vegas (Drew Barrymore), and his musician son (Rockwell) in Denver. By bus, train and plane, Frank reconnects with his kids in a series of surprise visits that brings every last family secret -- some more dire than others -- around for reckoning. (Director Kirk Jones adapted the story from Giuseppe Tornatore's 1990 film Stanno Tutti Bene.) Talking to Movieline recently in New York, Rockwell discussed his Deer Hunter powwow with De Niro, the do's and dont's of acting in a remake and the diminishing returns of text messaging.
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Though Miramax scuttled his next project, Liars (A to E), it's not hard to imagine Richard Linklater will bounce back -- the tricky part is picturing just what he'll do next. Over his career, the Austin-based filmmaker has thrown his audience a few laid-back curveballs, moving from low-budget films like Slacker and Dazed and Confused to studio comedies like School of Rock and Bad News Bears. Linklater's newest film is Me and Orson Welles, and it may be his most unlikely yet: a period comedy starring Zac Efron, Claire Danes, and new find Christian McKay as Welles.
Still, despite Efron's star wattage, Linklater admits that getting the film into theaters was no easy task. In an interview Movieline conducted with the director last week, he opened up about those difficulties and talked extensively about an even more challenging project: the secretive drama he's been filming every year for the last eight years.
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Think of the look of any Johnny Depp character from the Tim Burton universe -- from Edward Scissorhands' bondage buckles to Ed Wood's angora sweaters to the breeches and waistcoasts of Sleepy Hollow's Ichabod Crane -- and Colleen Atwood was the woman who envisioned and executed it. One of the most sought-after and gifted costume designers working in Hollywood today, Atwood has been nominated for an astounding eight Academy Awards, of which she's won two -- for Chicago and Memoirs of a Geisha. Just reading about her 2009 slate is enough to render you exhausted: good thing she had Depp's measurements seared into her memory when work began on Michael Mann's Public Enemies (which comes out on Blu-ray and DVD Dec. 8th); then there was the business of putting all those other Oscar winners into revealing outfits for Nine; and let's not forget Mr. Burton, who called upon Colleen to reconceive the look of every character -- some real, some entirely virtual -- for his much-anticipated, 3-D take on Alice in Wonderland. We talked to Colleen about changing the chameleon Depp's colors, what surprises are in store for Alice, and her thoughts on Tim Gunn and his standby dismissal, "Too costumey."
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