Having had the chance to work with one of his heroes, Paul Newman (in 1989’s Fat Man and Little Boy), John Cusack turned to a Newman classic for a round of Movieline’s My Favorite Scene. “There’s a scene of Paul Newman in The Verdict that I would use as the best example of economy and what a close-up is supposed to mean,” Cusack explained during our chat for The Raven. “It’s the example where the film does what no other art form can do – a book can’t do it, and theater can’t do it, it’s only for film, and it’s the best example of it.” Pay attention, kids – Professor Cusack’s Film Language 101 is in session.
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He’s stared down the Terminator, tangled with aliens, and faced off against Doc Holliday with nary a glimmer of fear, so suffice to say Michael Biehn’s no stranger to playing hardened, iconic screen bad asses. (Think Biehn’s played tough? Just wait and see him mean, nasty, and unraveling at the seams in this week’s apocalyptic horror The Divide, a film whose production was reportedly a nightmare in itself.) But early on, Biehn says, he wasn’t so sure how serious he should be about acting – that is, until he saw Robert De Niro in a riveting classic role that convinced him that this was his calling.
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Aside from a few honors of the Teen Choice and MTV Movie variety, newly minted Screen Actors Guild Award and Golden Globe nominee Jonah Hill is an awards virgin -- which makes this year's lead-up to the Oscars particularly exciting for the actor, who earlier this year impressed critics with his role in Moneyball as Brad Pitt's Ivy League-educated, number-crunching Oakland A's wingman. The role, like his 2010 titular turn in Cyrus, was a welcome departure from the wise-cracking characters audiences have grown accustomed to seeing him play, from the early days of Knocked Up and Superbad to last weekend's The Sitter. Next up, Hill uses his sarcastic charm to crack down on a high school drug ring in the March 16 feature adaptation of 21 Jump Street, which Hill also wrote and produced.
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This weekend, most of the Harry Potter cast and filmmakers flew down to Universal Orlando's Wizarding World of Harry Potter to fête the home release of Deathly Hallows -- Part 2, the final installment in the film series based on J.K. Rowling's beloved books. At a Potter-themed party in Hogsmeade Village Saturday night -- complete with a performance by the frog choir, endless rounds of butter beer served by wizards and fireworks -- franchise star Rupert Grint took a moment to play a round of 'My Favorite Scene' with Movieline.
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This week, Movieline's favorite honey badger of directors, Tarsem (The Fall, The Cell), unveils his spin on Greek mythology in Immortals, a fantasy actioner that blends artistic influences as vast and varied as Caravaggio, classics, and Henry Cavill's abs. So who better to invite to a round of My Favorite Scene than the visionary filmmaker, who managed to pinpoint the uncanny cinematic parallels between the 1992 Belgian mockumentary Man Bites Dog, a Cannes Film Festival awardee, and that one episode from the "brilliant" first season of COPS.
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Speaking with Sigourney Weaver for this week's Abduction, in which the celebrated actress mentors young Taylor Lautner in the ways of the spy game, Movieline proposed a round of My Favorite Scene. Her pick? A scene from a Hitchcock classic starring screen legends Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman that moved Weaver so much she marveled, "It's like the whole movie turns into a different organism."
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There are few actors who have earned as much geek cred and devoted followings as Sir Patrick Stewart, and certainly none others who were also performing Shakespeare on stage in the U.K. the night before flying across the world to greet fans at Comic-Con. (If only one could achieve warp speed on commercial airlines these days, international travel would be much easier.) So, of course, Movieline jumped at the chance for a few minutes in heaven with the erstwhile Captain Picard; what more perfect a Comic-Con experience could there be?
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When he sat down with Movieline to talk The Hangover Part II (in theaters today), comedian-turned-actor Zach Galifianakis expressed a desire to balance his comedic work with dramatic roles. "I would love to do it if I could pull it off," he said. "I don't know if I can, but I would like to." Given that aspiration, Galifianakis couldn't have picked a more perfect film for his round of Movieline's My Favorite Scene -- one featuring funny man-turned-Oscar winner Robin Williams.
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Shiloh Fernandez makes Amanda Seyfried swoon with his bad boy ways in Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood, but when Movieline met with the 26-year-old actor in Los Angeles he revealed his softer side with a favorite moment from a romantic '90s-era classic -- and turned on the charm with a touch of good, old-fashioned flattery. "I read Movieline!" he exclaimed before diving into a nostalgic round of My Favorite Scene.
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The great tragedy in Drive Angry 3D's lackluster opening last weekend isn't that the B-movie homage didn't make more money, but that more people didn't get to see William Fichtner steal the show as The Accountant, the no-nonsense supernatural CPA from hell doggedly tracking Nic Cage's every move on earth. Fichtner, one of Hollywood's most beloved character actors, gives a master class in added-value acting in the film, which he discussed with Movieline last week before musing further on muscle cars, The Godfather Part II, and his soap opera beginnings.
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Reason #1 why we love Lea Thompson, who just landed a new ABC Family pilot, Switched at Birth: She's the girl we all wanted to be in the '80s. Reason #2: She's like the estimable honey badger when it comes to real talk about her old Red Dawn co-star turned Qaddafi of Hollywood, Charlie Sheen.
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Twilight fans who flock to see Drive Angry 3D this weekend in support of Billy Burke are in for a bit of a surprise, as the actor -- who plays the calm, mustachioed father to Kristen Stewart's Bella in Summit's Twilight Saga films -- swaggers his way through the South as a sexually-charged Satanic cult leader. To put it plainly, Burke's Jim Jones-meets-Jim Morrison villain gives co-star Nicolas Cage a run for his money in the anti-subtlety department, and Burke clearly relished every second of the departure from Charlie Swan.
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Much of the emotional power of Joel and Ethan Coen's Best Picture contender True Grit comes from the contributions of longtime collaborator and nine-time Oscar nominee Roger Deakins, a cinematographer whose compositions and visual choices lend the Western a subtle, nostalgic quality. It's fitting, then, that when Deakins played My Favorite Scene with Movieline recently, he pointed toward a film that also utilizes the understated to great -- but very different -- effect.
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