In its eleventh season, Big Brother is one of the most addictive reality programs on television today. Isolating its contestants in a cushy house for nearly three months, nerves fray and tension builds until houseguests are embattled in the most wicked non-violent warfare allowed on network TV. Fortunately, Julie Chen has been there each season to calmly guide us through the increasingly grotesque challenges, action-packed eviction ceremonies and movie-hawking celebrity appearances. Her professional delivery gives Big Brother its shred of credibility and keeps viewers from dipping into the same insanity that sweeps the houseguests. Last week, Julie Chen spoke to Movieline about favoring contestants, the dangerous side effects of the live feed and feeling vindicated by the show's success.
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Last week, Jeremy Piven introduced his WWE Raw guest co-host and The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard co-star Ken Jeong to a packed arena as "the Asian gentleman from The Hangover." Piven could have easily continued his credits: "You might also recognize him as the Asian gentleman from Knocked Up, the Asian gentleman from Step Brothers, the Asian gentleman from Pineapple Express and the Asian gentleman from Role Models." Ken Jeong is the busiest "Asian gentleman" in Hollywood, with today's The Goods premiere, future releases All About Steve and Couples Retreat, not to mention his upcoming NBC series Community. Last week at NBC's Television Critics Association event, Movieline sat down with the doctor-turned-actor, who readily discussed his time in the ring with Piven, his upcoming series with Chevy Chase and being naked in a trunk for The Hangover.
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You might know Bandslam as that Vanessa Hudgens movie that's coming out on Friday, but it's actually Aly Michalka who's first-billed. That billing suggests the interesting career crossroads Michalka now finds herself at: The 20-year-old has developed a huge following after being groomed by Disney (with starring roles on the channel's movies and series and a band -- formed with younger sister AJ -- on a Disney-owned label), and while her first theatrical role in Bandslam leverages that audience, she'll soon be moving into more grown-up fare with the thriller The Roommate and the provocative comedy Easy A.
Movieline talked to the actress about navigating that transition to adulthood, with guidance from Disney and Rivers Cuomo along the way.
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If the name Neill Blomkamp isn't yet familiar to you, give it a week. Hand-picked by Universal based on the strength of his short films and commercials, the gifted director -- a 29-year-old, South African-born Vancouverite -- was months into pre-production on the Halo film when studio infighting scuttled the project. Guided by mentor Peter Jackson, Blomkamp instead went to work on Sony's District 9 -- an original idea about a race of insectoid aliens, held for decades against their will in a slum in Johannesburg. It's a rich concept that provided him the opportunity to weave weightier themes about race, cruelty and intolerance into an undeniably fun summer thrill ride. And Blomkamp delivered, producing the thinking-man and thinking-woman's alternative to the glut of sci-fi brainlessness currently dominating the box office. Movieline spoke to the director on the cusp of his well-deserved breakout success.
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Don't ever accuse Paul Giamatti of playing himself -- even when he literally plays himself, as he does in his new film Cold Souls. The Oscar-nominee took a studio hiatus for writer-director Sophie Barthes's indie meta-comedy, featuring Giamatti as a fussy New York actor struggling desperately with his title role in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. He finds a potential solution in The Soul-Storage Company, a gleaming, high-tech facility where one Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn) guides Giamatti through the extraction of the soul that he believes is weighing him down. Trouble and even international intrigue ensue, with his soul hijacked to Russia and his professional and personal lives trapped in a tailspin until he can rescue it.
Giamatti talked to Movieline this week about reconciling his deadpan self and his neurotic Cold Souls likeness, how soul storage might have helped on Sideways, and how dreams can be an actor's best coach.
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As a photographer, Bruce Weber's impact has been unmistakable: He's shot covers for every top magazine, ushered in a new era of mainstream homoerotica with his Abercombie & Fitch campaigns, and immortalized in portraits some of the biggest stars and supermodels of the last few decades. As a filmmaker, though, his work has been harder to appreciate simply because it's less available, a problem the Sundance Channel hopes to rectify this month by bringing eight of his films to television for the first time ever (including his Oscar-nominated Chet Baker documentary, Let's Get Lost).
I spoke to the legendary photographer and raconteur for Movieline, and discussed his films, his famous subjects, and photography in the age of digital narcissism.
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With just days to go before Judd Apatow cuts the cord on Funny People -- his third, most thematically ambitious film -- Hollywood's reigning comedy mastermind sat with us this morning for an in-depth discussion that touched upon his childhood, his career, and his philosophies on what makes good movies work.
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If Comic-Con has a geek goddess, it's surely Kristen Bell. The actress is a regular fixture at the Con, and her resume nails every niche: a cherished cult TV show (Veronica Mars), a stint as a superheroine (Heroes), a videogame voiceover (Assassin's Creed)...hell, the women even donned Princess Leia's slave bikini for Fanboys. Bell was at this year's Comic-Con promoting the voice she contributed to Astro Boy, but beyond that she's poised for mainstream success, with a slew of big comedies (including the Vince Vaughn-Jon Favreau reunion Couples Retreat) on the way.
Bell took the time to talk to Movieline about her Con dominance in a wide-ranging interview that also touched on Veronica Mars, her stint on Party Down, and her excitement over campy auteur Tommy Wiseau.
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There's this thing about women named Juliet: They're famous for meeting tragic ends. Elizabeth Mitchell's character on Lost was no different -- after finding unlikely love with Sawyer (Josh Holloway), she sacrificed herself to set off a crucial bomb -- but luckily, Mitchell's career has new life after that death. In addition to a mysterious number of additional episodes she'll shoot for Lost's final season, she'll be seen later this year toplining ABC's reboot of the alien miniseries V.
At Comic-Con, I talked to the actress about Juliet's journey, the tumultuous period after she learned of her Lost fate (then had it somewhat revoked), and the alien-hunting yet to come.
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Saffron Burrows is not a beleagured, once-famous actress. She just plays one in the movies -- in Shrink, specifically, opening Friday and featuring Kevin Spacey as Henry Carter, a pot-loving therapist to the stars who battles listlessness, grief and professional dereliction while dealing with a fraught cross-section of Hollywood talent. There's horndog action star Jack (Robin Williams), OCD-addled agent Patrick (Dallas Roberts), motherless teen and pro bono case Jemma (Keke Palmer), screenwriter godbrother Jeremy (Mark Webber), and, of course, Kate Abramson (Burrows), the gorgeous movie star better known for her failing marriage than her most recent hit.
In the spirit of Short Cuts, Magnolia, Crash and other ensemble yarns of Angelenos in crisis, director Jonas Pate ties them all together, with Carter's own quest for catharsis leading the way. The lovely Burrows talked to Movieline this week about the emotional costs of fame, the advantages of being English in Hollywood, and the one Shrink-related question she won't answer (sort of).
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Can the studio system be toxic? It was for director Boaz Yakin, who made Remember the Titans and the Brittany Murphy/Dakota Fanning comedy Uptown Girls, yet found himself so compromised that he spiraled into a deep depression. When Yakin first burst upon the scene with 1994's Fresh, he was heralded as an original new voice, and it's that voice Yakin tried to tap into again for his new indie, Death in Love (starring Josh Lucas, Jacqueline Bisset, and Adam Brody). It's a tough work, grappling with explicit sexuality and religious guilt, and those were just a few of the things Yakin wanted to discuss in a wide-ranging, confessional interview with Movieline.
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Vinessa Shaw remembers when she first stepped on the London set of Eyes Wide Shut, where the one-time child actress would eventually spend the better part of six months working on Stanley Kubrick's final film. As Domino, the prostitute with whom Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) shares a preempted encounter on his late-night walking tour of New York, Shaw portrayed one of many casualties in Kubrick's wasteland of sexual obsession; her kiss with Cruise -- perhaps EWS's most purely erotic moment -- signaled a peak of intimacy from which their characters would plunge in the day to follow. She was 21.
That was over a decade ago. Today, exactly 10 years after Eyes Wide Shut's July 16, 1999, theatrical release, Shaw talks to Movieline about nabbing her breakthrough role, shattering the notorious perfectionist's all-time take record, and life (and work) after Kubrick.
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When Adam Brody left The OC two years ago, he was tipped as the cast member with the best shot at a film career -- a title he still holds, even if it's been a bumpier ride than he would have liked. Now, after two of his biggest projects were aborted -- a Revenge of the Nerds remake, which was shut down as shooting began, and George Miller's Justice League, where Brody's hopes of playing The Flash were derailed by the writer's strike -- the 29-year-old is set to return to theaters with the Diablo Cody-scripted Jennifer's Body and the Boaz Yakin-directed indie Death in Love, which opens this week. We sat down with Brody to talk about all four films.
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As LA's Outfest Film Festival celebrates Strand Releasing with a retrospective honoring the company's twenty years in the film industry, we couldn't help but wonder: Where would the state of independent film be without Strand? Partners Marcus Hu and Jon Gerrans have distributed films by some of cinema's most acclaimed directors, including François Ozon, Gaspar Noé, and Hal Hartley, and their pivotal influence and trailblazing tastes helped kick off the New Queer Cinema movement. Where other independent distributors have crashed and burned, Strand has been responsible for releasing great movies for two decades.
To commemorate the moment and to shed more light on how Strand has survived and thrived, Movieline spoke to both Hu and Gerrans as well as friend-of-Strand Gregg Araki and director Fenton Bailey, whose film Party Monster found a savior in the company.
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If what you seek is some respite from the parade of vibrating-panties and ex-girlfriend fantasms that passes for romantic comedy fodder these days, we'd guide you to writer/director Max Mayer's Adam, opening in limited release later this month. A micro-indie romance that was one of the first selections to be snapped up by Fox Searchlight at this year's Sundance, Adam tells the story of young, brilliant New Yorker (British actor Hugh Dancy) who suffers from the socially debilitating Asperger's Syndrome, and Beth, the new tenant who finds herself falling for him against her own better judgement. As played by Rose Byrne -- who's already made a name for herself Stateside playing terrorized protégée to Glenn Close's velociraptor attorney on FX's Damages -- the talented Aussie actress shows a deft gift for blending light comedy and pathos, in a performance that's earning her comparisons to a young Diane Keaton.
Movieline had the opportunity to talk to Byrne about her heroes (Keaton is one, it turns out), her upcoming turn as Russell Brand's significant rock-star-other in Get Him to the Greek, and what her TV nemesis is really like when the director yells, "Cut!"
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