Samantha Morton planted her flag stateside towards the end of the last decade, with an impeccable breakout performance as the mute ingenue of Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown -- a part for which she was nominated for her first Academy Award. In the years following, she emerged as a dependable powerhouse, imparting her gifts for nuance and emotional veracity to everything from period dramas like In America (which earned her her second Oscar nomination), to Hollywood blockbusters like Minority Report, to prestigious independent fare like Control and Synecdoche, New York. In her latest film, Oren Moverman's beautiful and difficult The Messenger, Morton plays a newly notified Iraq War widow who begins an affair with the soldier assigned with breaking the news. (He's played by one of the few young actors who could match her quiet intensity beat for beat: Ben Foster.) Movieline talked to Morton about the madness of her craft, the perils of buying burning homes, and her return to sci-fi in Andrew Stanton's much-anticipated John Carter of Mars.
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Actor Alessandro Nivola has something he'd like people to know: He's not British. Nor French, Italian, Irish, or Australian. As he told me last week, he'd forgive you for thinking otherwise, but in real life, Nivola's just a regular old Boston native who speaks with an utterly neutral voice.
Of course, Nivola himself would be the first to admit he's made things difficult for people. In his biggest roles, he's employed some sort of odd voice or accent (typically a British one, as in Laurel Canyon or Mansfield Park) and he shows off two more in theaters now: In the new film Turning Green, he's an Irish thug, and in Coco Before Chanel, he plays a Brit who speaks in fluent French throughout the picture. Do people in the industry ever forget that he's an American? "American?" laughed the affable actor. "When have people ever thought that about me?"
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Some of us at Movieline tried something a little different this year for Halloween: We found our inner Mariah, our outer Galifianakis, or we just traveled down as ourselves to the Savannah Film Festival. As hipsters from the nearby Savannah College of Art and Design swarmed the streets with go-cups and costumes of their own, the 12th annual event opened with a screening of The Messenger featuring stars Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster in attendance. Oren Moverman's drama (opening Nov. 20) chronicles the homefront grief of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the relationship of two Army casualty-notification officers -- heart-hardened Tony Stone (Harrelson) and sensitive Iraq veteran Will Montogomery (Foster) -- as they stoically alert people that their sons, daughters, husbands and wives have died overseas.
It was sobering, intense stuff for the holiday, lightened up a bit afterward by a Harrelson/Foster Q&A-session, complete with a hand-mic sword fight. I had a chance to talk with Harrelson about The Messenger's politics (or lack thereof), Zombieland's vegan Twinkies, and why Foster reminds him of a young Marlon Brando.
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As the hornier, less-sensitive half of New Zealand's fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo, Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement has earned legions of loyal fans. He also happens to be the best thing about Gentlemen Broncos -- the latest love letter to adolescent social retardation from Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess. In it he plays science fiction author and lecturer Dr. Ronald Chevalier, a deliciously self-regarding buffoon who wears a Bluetooth earpiece, high-waisted jeans, and answers the phone, "CheVAAHlier." Movieline spoke to Jemaine about his own nightmare mentors, the status of FotC's third season, his love/hate relationship with L.A., and his predilection for wearing really, really short shorts.
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As hard as this might be to believe, Peter Graves has no star on the Walk of Fame. That unforgivable transgression will at last be corrected tomorrow, however, when the Mission: Impossible mastermind and enduring standard bearer of gravitas and cool finally earns his rightful place on Hollywood Blvd. The following week, he receives an equally deserved Lifetime Achievement Award at the Ojai-Ventura International Film Festival. He'll be there, answering your questions following a special screening of Airplane! -- the disaster spoof that opened him up to a new generation of fans, who to this day still pester him to, "Ask me if I've ever been to a Turkish prison!" Movieline talked to Graves about some of his classic early roles, his badge as geek totem to sci-fi B-movie fans everywhere, and his response to J.J. Abrams' invitation to return to the spy franchise from which he long ago parted ways. The incredible Mr. Graves, after the jump.
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As rags-to-riches stories go, Troy Duffy's is tough to beat: A former bouncer and bartender from Boston, he sold his violent vigilante crime-thriller script to Harvey Weinstein and Miramax in 1997. That script, The Boondock Saints, eventually was developed into one of the most wildly successful cult classics in a generation -- but not by Harvey, whose relationship with Duffy soured prodigiously in the months after their deal was made. The project landed in turnaround, which was really just the beginning of Duffy's tobacco-streaked, booze-fueled, angst-ridden, massively hubristic legend that finally willed The Boondock Saints to the screen in 1999. (That journey is chronicled in the documentary Overnight, a fascinating, cringe-inducing romp that Duffy understandably disavows.) The rest is home-video history -- or at least it is until Friday, when The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day arrives in theaters with the original cast, crew and Duffy in charge.
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You've got to hand it to Jared and Jerusha Hess, the Utah filmmaker couple (Jerusha writes, Jared writes and directs) who hit comedy paydirt with 2004's Napoleon Dynamite: Regardless of whether or not they're your thing, they could never be accused of pandering to the mainstream. And never has that been more apparent than in Gentlemen Broncos, their third film together, and first featuring Sam Rockwell as an interstellar cowboy whose testicles have been removed for nefarious, if not entirely illuminated, space-research purposes. We spoke recently to the disarmingly polite and normal-seeming duo -- seen posing here in front of one of Broncos' lethal Battle Stags -- about the warped childhoods that inspired their worlds of weird.
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The word "superproducer" doesn't quite suit Lawrence Bender, as Quentin Tarantino's cinematic wingman just doesn't possess the bluster and braggadocio of some of his higher-profile contemporaries. But with the staggering blockbuster success of Inglourious Basterds -- closing in on $300 million worldwide -- he might have to start getting used to hearing it. Movieline talked to Bender about how he delivered the great American auteur's decade's-end masterpiece on a breakneck schedule that would have annihilated lesser men.
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You never know where Mike White -- the defiantly square-peg filmmaker behind The School of Rock, Nacho Libre, and Year of the Dog -- might pop up next. One second he's crisscrossing the globe in matching outfits with his gay dad on The Amazing Race, the next he's giving Zombieland audiences an object lesson on the mortal dangers of going pottie in a zombie zone. For his next act, look no further than Gentlemen Broncos, his second collaboration with Utah-based dweebcore auteur Jared Hess, where he plays Dusty, a barechested "guardian angel from hell" to the film's aspiring science fiction writer hero (played by Michael Angarano). We talked to White about that Zombieland cameo, the prospects for his School of Rock sequel, and finding the Zen in Hess's universe of the gleefully absurd.
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Adam Goldberg is often cast in roles that play on his own neurotic character, and in Jonathan Parker's sharp art world satire (Untitled), he initially appears to have a part that's made for him. His character Adrian is a musician (in real life, Goldberg has recorded two albums with his band LANDy) who's caught between two worlds: the mainstream, which has rewarded his painter brother (Eion Bailey) with irritating success, and the independent art scene, as represented by a self-consciously stylish gallery owner played by Marley Shelton.
Goldberg has a resume that plays like a manifestation of that artistic push-pull: independent films (two of which he's directed) jostle for space with big Hollywood productions and TV shows. Still, as he told Movieline, he's not quite as tortured about it as you might think.
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You might know Tobin Bell from playing the brilliant Jigsaw in all six Saw movies (despite having died on-screen a while ago, Bell's still managed to keep reprising the character and does so again in the installment out next Friday), but there's more to him than that role -- a lot more. As it happens, the Actors Studio veteran has built an interesting career out of small parts in some of the biggest movies and TV shows of the last few decades (including Tootsie, Goodfellas, The X-Files, ER, and The Sopranos), and as a natural raconteur, he's got a lot of stories to tell about each of them.
When I had the chance to interview Bell, I asked him an obligatory few Saw-related questions (for those, stop by next week), but what I really wanted to talk about were his on-set stories from some of those pivotal productions. As it turns out, that's what he wanted to talk about, too.
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Only three women have ever been nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards, but this year alone can boast three more that are in the running: Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker, the previously-nominated Jane Campion for Bright Star, and Danish director Lone Scherfig. Scherfig has gotten great buzz for her work helming An Education, and while the film's been a great launchpad for star Carey Mulligan, it's also shone a spotlight on Scherfig, who initially gained notice for directing Italian for Beginners and Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself.
Movieline recently caught up with Scherfig to debate several important matters: London vs. Paris, Sundance vs. Berlin, and British food vs...well, actually, there was no debate about British food. It was tough to make a case for it.
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After first making its audience-pleasing reputation in the Midnight section of this year's Sundance Film Festival, the blaxploitation send-up Black Dynamite concludes its nine-month fest rounds this week when it finally arrives in theaters. The sooner, the better: The outrageous story of nunchuck-swinging, kung-fu practicing, panty-wetting bad-ass (the brilliant Michael Jai White, who also co-wrote and produced) avenging his brother's death at the hands of "The Man," Dynamite is also a painstakingly precise stylistic exercise led by director Scott Sanders. It's simultaneously among the season's most entertaining and ambitious films; Movieline caught up with White and Sanders to discuss Dynamite's influences, its goals, and their hero's other plans for world conquest.
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After building a trailblazing career as an action director in Asia, John Woo left for Hollywood over fifteen years ago to make megabudget films like Face/Off and Mission: Impossible II. Still, the director always intended to return to his home country and bring his blockbuster knowledge to bear on a Chinese production, and he's done just that with Red Cliff, a massive war epic taken from Chinese history. The film was such a success in China that it outgrossed Titanic there; it'll have its Stateside debut next Friday through video-on-demand services before opening in theaters November 20th.
I sat down with Woo last week to talk about Red Cliff, his career, and his departure from Hollywood after directing the Ben Affleck thriller Paycheck. Part of our conversation (about what two English-language films might lure Woo back to the States) was published on Movieline last Wednesday; here's the rest.
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Thomas Jane, the star of HBO's Hung, also boasts a cinematic career full of vampire slaying, punishing, and mutant chronicling, which sets the perfect stage for his directorial debut. Dark Country, in which Jane also stars, is a brooding thriller created for DVD about a honeymooning couple who hit a man with their car when driving in the desert and their ensuing hell of dealing with his undead body. Jane spoke with Movieline about his directorial inspirations, his wife Patricia Arquette, and Hung's impact on his consummate love of his penis.
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