After humming along with this weekend's a capella comedy Pitch Perfect, you're going to want to know more about Skylar Astin, the 25-year-old Broadway alum who made his film debut in Hamlet 2, appeared in Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock, and sings his way into Anna Kendrick's heart this weekend as Jesse, Beca's adorably movie-obsessed aca-love interest and member of the Bellas' rival team, The Treble Makers. Movieline put ten questions (more or less) to Astin for a chat about Pitch Perfect, the summer camp vibe on set, his upcoming comedy projects, and — perhaps most importantly — why the '90s Swedish pop outfit Ace of Base deserves props.
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It's good to see Genndy Tartakovsky on the big screen. Even when he was working at Cartoon Network beginning in the 1990s, where he produced such contemporary animated classics as Dexter's Laboratory, Powerpuff Girls and the visually stunning Samurai Jack, Tartakovsky and his team created remarkably three-dimensional worlds using 2D animation. It was only a matter of time before he graduated to feature films, and on Friday his engaging and funny directorial debut Hotel Transylvania opened in theaters in 3D. more »
Oscar nominee Anna Kendrick (Twilight, Up in the Air) got her start on Broadway — nabbing a Tony nomination at the age of 12, no less — before making her film debut in 2003's musical Camp. In this week's infectiously fun college-set comedy Pitch Perfect she comes full circle playing Beca, an antisocial college freshman who reluctantly joins a ragtag campus a capella group as they attempt to pop song-warble their way to the top.
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In her new memoir My Mother Was Nuts, actress-comedienne-filmmaker Penny Marshall writes of her remarkable life: Growing up the youngest of three in The Bronx, she had a daughter followed brother Garry into showbiz, got famous as one-half of Laverne & Shirley, got married twice, got divorced twice, opened her home to friends like John Belushi, Carrie Fisher, Steven Spielberg, and Robert De Niro, and became the first female director to break the $100 million mark with 1988's Big, also notching films like Awakenings, A League Of Their Own, Renaissance Man, and The Preacher's Wife along the way.
Ringing Movieline to discuss her baldly honest, often hilarious memoir — which also reveals darker times, recreational drug use, an abortion, an on-set miscarriage — Marshall explained why she set out to write her life story to begin with: "You want to set the record straight on certain things, because there are so many rumors."
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Ten years ago Jenna Dewan-Tatum hadn't yet broken into Hollywood, landed her first acting role, or starred in her breakout film, 2006's Step Up, the dance romance that spawned a franchise and introduced her to future husband Channing Tatum. The then-"diehard dancer" had a case of tunnel-vision, Dewan-Tatum recalled as she rang Movieline to talk high school reunions and the wisdom that comes with looking back on life as she, Tatum, and the deepest cast of Young Hollywood stars this year do in Jamie Linden's indie ensemble pic Ten Years.
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Lizzy Caplan and Adam Scott haven’t hung up their pink bow ties just yet.
Although cult hit Party Down has been off the air for two years, fans of the show split their time between making Party Downton (Party Down + Downton Abbey) memes and petitioning for a film. And while there have been mini-reunions on Children’s Hospital and web series Burning Love, none compare to Lizzy Caplan and Adam Scott's team-up as feuding former couple, Gena and Clyde, in Bachelorette, in limited release now.
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New Zealand native Melanie Lynskey finds her way to the spotlight – at long last – playing a woman, stuck in a sadly hilarious vortex of post-divorce depression, who’s jolted out of her early mid-life ennui by an electrifying affair with a younger man (GIRLS’ Christopher Abbott) in Todd Luiso’s Hello I Must Be Going. It’s an extraordinary dual capacity for deeply-felt pathos and comedy that Lynskey possesses and showcases, often simultaneously, as Amy Minsky; for Lynskey, one of the most genuine actors in the game, it was the kind of role that’s come along all too infrequently in the nearly two decades since her assured debut at the age of 15 in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures.
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Keep The Lights On director Ira Sachs (Forty Shades of Blue, Delta) tapped into his own experience in a tumultuous relationship that would eventually morph into the film that screened to accolades at the Sundance and Berlin film festivals earlier this year, winning the New York-based filmmaker a Teddy Award at the Berlinale. Keep The Lights On morphed out of the disintegration of a relationship he had with a man that spanned a number of years in New York around the turn of the century. Career demands, extra-relationship temptations, addictions, obsessions and more play into the rocky road experienced by the young couple.
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Worlds collide in the raunchy comedy For A Good Time, Call..., the sweet and salty tale of two reluctant roommates (Ari Graynor and Lauren Anne Miller) tentatively building a friendship as they embark on a phone sex business venture together. It's a long-awaited starring vehicle for Graynor and Miller and a warmly funny offering in the current wave of raunchy R-rated female-driven comedies - and For A Good Time, Call... also marks the anticipated debut of shorts filmmaker Jamie Travis (The Patterns Trilogy, The Saddest Boy in the World), who here earns the distinction of inspiring Justin Long's performance in the film and getting to direct Kevin Smith jerking off in his feature debut.
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How do you get in touch with Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who lives with his family far outside the confines of Hollywood "in the woods," to ask him to be in your film? If you're like The Possession director Ole Bornedal, you go old school. "The script was sent to me with a really nice letter that Ole had written asking me to be a part of it," Morgan told Movieline. "It sat on my desk for a couple of days, but I kept reading this letter." Eventually Morgan read the script and, enticed by the familial relationships at the center of the demonic possession tale, got over his reluctance to take on the "overdone" horror genre to play a father desperately trying to reconnect with his daughter — and, in the process, save her from an evil spirit.
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In the latest installment of ARRIVALS, spotlighting breakthrough performers, Movieline chats with Dania Ramirez, who cycles to stardom opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Shannon in this week's Premium Rush.
As Vanessa, the tough bicycling beauty of David Koepp's adrenaline-fueled Premium Rush, Dominican-born Dania Ramirez (X-Men: The Last Stand, Entourage, Heroes) bursts onto the screen with such vitality that it's no wonder director Spike Lee gave Ramirez her big break, years ago, after recognizing her as a former extra on one of his shoots.
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Back in January Spike Lee debuted his latest joint, the self-financed indie drama Red Hook Summer, to a divided reaction at Sundance — but as he tells Movieline, he had a feeling his controversial look at faith and the church in the projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn, would leave Park City without a distribution deal. This week, following a solid opening in the New York area, the film expands to Los Angeles and beyond via self-distribution specialists Variance Films: "What would be the alternative to this? Not having distribution. And that’s not a choice. That’s not even a consideration."
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Introducing Movieline's ARRIVALS series, spotlighting breakthrough performers enjoying a bit of a "moment." Today meet British actress Carmen Ejogo, whose scene-stealing performance in Sparkle kicks off a big year in film and TV.
As much as Sparkle is about well, Sparkle (Jordin Sparks), the shy young singer who learns to come into her own in this weekend's R&B remake (not to mention Whitney Houston in what might have been her comeback), it's Carmen Ejogo's scene-stealing Sister — sultry, ambitious, and tragically doomed — who brings the film's cautionary lessons crashing home. Ejogo's offscreen story is even more intriguing: the MENSA member and one-time backing singer for Tricky (she does her own vocals in the film) got her start in the 1986 David Bowie musical Absolute Beginners and tried the leading lady route in her first crossover roles (Metro, What's the Worst That Could Happen), before earning notice in Sally Hemings: An American Scandal, HBO's Boycott, Lackawanna Blues, and last year's Away We Go.
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Former NFL linebacker-turned-actor (not to mention past and future President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho) Terry Crews took a slightly different journey to action stardom than folks like Sly Stallone, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren and Arnold Schwarzenegger; his route carved a path through the comedy world, with turns in films including Friday After Next, White Chicks, and Balls of Fury. Cast as the bicep-flexing, quip-happy Hale Caesar in 2010's The Expendables — a role he admits Wesley Snipes might have otherwise played if things had worked out differently — Crews more than earned his spot on the team, backed by Stallone's vote of confidence: "He literally told me, 'I’m going to make you an action star.'”
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Long before Chick-fil-A fried their way into the center of a gay rights firestorm, Compliance director Craig Zobel was searching for the right setting to tell his chilling tale of order and obedience gone terribly wrong at a fast food joint. “In the back of my head, I probably could have told you that they were on the wrong side of history,” said Zobel, who rocked Sundance with the drama, based on incredible true events, in which a telephone prankster manipulates the manager of a fictional chicken restaurant into the increasingly dehumanizing treatment of one of her employees. "I just didn’t want to look at it."
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