On paper, the idea of Paul Schrader leaving Hollywood for Bollywood shouldn't work. Schrader's had a hand in some of the most iconic American films of the last century -- he scripted Taxi Driver and The Last Temptation of Christ and directed films like American Gigolo and Affliction -- and the dark themes that have long fascinated him would seem a mismatch for the joyous, colorful world of Indian cinema. And yet, that's exactly what makes the concept so immediately compelling; like Steven Soderbergh's planned Cleopatra musical, the idea of Paul Schrader directing a Bollywood musical is simply too bold to ignore.
After reading the announcement of the project (titled Xtrme City) in Variety this week, I called up Schrader to learn just what he has in mind. "I've made a career out of doing oddball films that have a very niche market," he admitted to me, right off the bat. "This runs contrary to that image."
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There's a reason most film romances cut off after the guy finally gets the girl, and it's because after that comes all the tough stuff. Jay DiPietro's Peter and Vandy is principally concerned with studying those fraught parts of a relationship, and his time-shifting study of long-term lovers has two independent film darlings that are up to his challenge: Jason Ritter and Jess Weixler.
Ritter's finally overcome his status as "the son of John Ritter" to bloom into an indie leading man in his own right, while Weixler recently burst onto the scene with attention-getting performances in Teeth and Alexander the Last. Both actors have retained their easy chemistry long after shooting Peter and Vandy, which means their joint interview with Movieline was kind of a gigglefest.
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It's always an interesting experience to interview a child actor; some, especially those who've come out of the Disney school, are rehearsed and talkative within an inch of their lives, while others just seem like kids. You might expect Abigail Breslin to be a professionally groomed version of the former, but in fact, she's refreshingly normal and unaffected. Talking to her is like talking to your thirteen-year-old niece, although your niece probably wasn't nominated for an Oscar at ten years old.
Breslin switched gears a bit in her career to play a tough teen in Zombieland, and with the comedy riding high at the box office, I spoke to the actress about the making of the film and what she's got on deck next.
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It's cold, it's rainy, and Peter Sarsgaard is the perfect stranger offering you a ride. Do you get in? That's the situation Carey Mulligan found herself in while shooting Lone Scherfig's An Education, and it wasn't just that she was channeling her character Jenny; Sarsgaard made Mulligan agree that if he couldn't charm her into the car, then she'd simply damn the stage directions and turn him down. Fortunately, like his supremely self-confident character David, the actor got exactly what he wanted.
In person, it's the reticent Sarsgaard who must be charmed, though I think I managed all right. Last Thursday, he sat down with me to discuss screen chemistry, the "golden handcuff" of a film franchise, and (prompted by two chairs slightly turned toward each other) his deeply ingrained fear of talk shows.
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All hail Juliette Lewis -- Hollywood's most inscrutably eccentric Queen of Cool, inside of whom pounds the beating heart of a born rock-and-roller. Whether suiting up to play Iron Maven, the reigning badass of the Whip It roller derby, or fronting her own rock outfit, which she started just six years ago and is now touring with the likes of Cat Power and The Pretenders, Lewis will knock the wind right out of you. We caught up with her at a hotel in West Hollywood shortly before Whip It's L.A. premiere, where she riffed on her music, her movies, and getting inside the mind of the Maven.
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If you had any doubts that ABC is positioning FlashForward as the next Lost, the introduction of Dominic Monaghan as a regular cast member in tonight's episode should indicate that the network isn't playing around. Still, as Monaghan told Movieline, his FlashForward character is as different as could be from Lost's Charlie -- and that was completely by design.
Don't worry, though: Over the course of a wide-ranging interview, Monaghan did talk Lost (addressing both his character's death and the rumors he'll be returning this season) and even touched on the impending shoot of The Hobbit, revealing the one big regret he has for accepting the role of Merry in Lord of the Rings.
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Since bursting onto the indie scene in 2002's Rodger Dodger, Jesse Eisenberg has cornered the market on vulnerable adolescent males. He's boldly navigated the treacherous terrains of divorce in The Squid and the Whale, campus bullydom in The Education of Charlie Banks, and teen midway love in Adventureland. But his most formidable foe was yet to come: In the audience-pleasing Zombieland, Eisenberg battles an army of the undead alongside Woody Harrelson, Abigail Breslin and Emma Stone. We met Eisenberg recently, before it was announced that he'd landed the coveted role of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in David Fincher's The Social Network. As you'll see from our candid interview, no one could have been more shocked about his good fortune than Eisenberg himself.
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"Annie smiles too much!" "She's too much of a goody-goody!" "She always has the least interesting storylines!" When 90210 premiered last year to enormous expectations, actress Shenae Grimes saw her lead character come in for a whole lot of criticism, but there was one thing her detractors didn't know: Secretly, Grimes agreed with them.
In a candid, exclusive interview with Movieline, the 19-year-old Toronto native detailed her frustration with last season's storylines and praised new showrunner Rebecca Sinclair for taking Annie down a dark path at the same time as the show itself gets a necessary infusion of California sunshine. Whether we were talking about screen time, the firing of Dustin Milligan, or the rap ascent of her former Degrassi costar Aubrey Graham, the rejuvenated Grimes had plenty to say.
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When I first meet Audrey Tautou in a courtyard at the Four Seasons, I'm immediately struck by two things: Tautou's delicate, porcelain beauty, and the fact that this tiny woman, dressed to the nines, is struggling to lift and reposition a gigantic, shade-granting umbrella. Sure, it might be a little easier if we just move our chairs into the shade that's already there, but Tautou isn't daunted by taking on the tougher task, and it's that same sense of impossible, irrepressible ambition that makes her such a perfect fit to play Coco Chanel in Anne Fontaine's new biopic Coco Before Chanel, which traces the headstrong designer's eventful early life.
After Tautou finished with the umbrella, she sat down to talk with Movieline about her own childhood, her affinity for Chanel, and her position on doing more English-language films.
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As John Keats in Jane Campion's Bright Star, 28-year-old Ben Whishaw plays a most unconventional romantic hero: a poet, yes, but one who relies on his lover to save him, instead of vice versa. His Keats is a fragile man, bedridden by sickness, who finds color in his cheeks only when administered to by Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), quite literally the girl next door.
In real life, Whishaw exudes the same sort of unconventional romantic pull: He's a tangled mess of skinny limbs and lanky hair, but he's got a quiet charisma that can't help but compel. (It's no wonder that Julie Taymor wanted him to play Peter Parker.) I talked to Whishaw about giving a physically limited performance, Bright Star's most painfully deleted scene, and the love offerings he received every day from Cornish while shooting.
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It's been a while since Clive Owen's had to carry a movie on his broad shoulders, and in the upcoming Scott Hicks film The Boys are Back, he's front-and-center with nary a gun or glamorous love interest at his disposal. In a more intimate turn, Owen plays sportswriter Joe Warr, who struggles to raise both his six-year-old son (Nicholas McAnulty) and a teenage son from an earlier marriage (George MacKay) after his wife dies of cancer.
Adapted from Simon Carr's memoir, The Boys are Back espouses Carr's philosophy of always saying yes to your children, and Owen says it caused him to examine his own relationship with his daughters, Hannah and Eve. In a conversation with Movieline last week in Los Angeles, Owen opened up about his cinematic and real-life families, the nature of grief, and whether or not he's gearing up to do a sequel with Spike Lee.
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The evergreen interweaving-ensemble genre gets an urbane French twist this week in Paris, director Cédric Klapisch's tale of life, death, sex, love and middle-class inertia in the Gallic capital. Fusing Altmanesque whimsy to Crash's social initiative, the film showcases Romain Duris as terminally ill dancer Pierre and Juliette Binoche as his sister Élise, a social- worker single mom who moves herself and her three kids into Pierre's apartment to share his last days. From both his balcony and the street, the pair encounter a range of strivers, scholars, merchants, lovers and other dreamers for whom the city roils with potential even as it slowly devours each.
Klapisch breaks the drama up with dream sequences, musical interludes and sensational glimpses at the Parisian landscape, while Binoche's character struggles with the nature of compassion -- her most bountiful resource in an ancient city compromised by cold, cruel modernity. The Oscar-winner spoke with Movieline last week about relearning Paris for Paris, the joys of observation, and her favorite vision of Paris on film.
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Scott Bakula specializes in characters that exude a throwback masculinity tempered by a warm, easygoing trustfulness. It's not surprising, then, that Steven Soderbergh hand-picked the star of Quantum Leap and Enterprise for the part of Special Agent Brian Shepard in his fact-based corporate caper, The Informant!. Shepard is a good-natured lawman investigating a lysine price-fixing scandal, to whom it quickly becomes apparent that his star witness -- played by a doughy Matt Damon with demented abandon -- isn't exactly working with both cornholders intact. We talked to Bakula about the risks and rewards of playing the straight guy, his not-so-secret identity as an accomplished song and dance man, and the legendary magazine shoot that follows him wherever he goes.
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Karyn Kusama has occupied the director's chair on both sides of the mainstream filmmaking spectrum, from the microbudget Sundance darling Girlfight to the poorly received, big-budget anime adaptation Aeon Flux. She settles somewhere between the two tomorrow with Jennifer's Body, the breathlessly anticipated Megan Fox horror comedy that premiered to mixed reactions (including my own thumbs-up) last week in Toronto. The filmmaker sat down for drinks with Movieline on the final day of her Canadian marathon, elaborating on contemporary criticism, feminine monsters, guiding her young stars and what you might see on the Jennifer's Body director's-cut DVD.
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Saturday Night Live cast member Bill Hader makes his leading-man debut at the movies this week in Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs -- sort of. Sony's 3-D adaptation of the illustrated kids' classic features Hader's voice as that of Flint Lockwood, a young scientist who invents a machine capable of creating rather delicious meteorological phenomena. Complications naturally ensue in Flint's tiny island town, including hassles by the local cop (voiced by Mr. T) and romantic palpitations brought on by a visit from aspiring TV weathergirl Sam Sparks (Anna Faris). It's a fun, great-looking film with a bit of a cheeky streak (Neil Patrick Harris actually provides the "voice" of Flint's monkey Steve) and a showcase for Hader in a genre at which he's quietly excelled below the radar for several years now.
But there's way more back story that Movieline wanted to hear, including his days P.A.-ing for James Franco, his accidental film debut in Collateral Damage and his credo for getting ahead in Hollywood -- or anywhere else for that matter. Hader obliges us after the jump.
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