(Spoiler alert: The ending of “Savages” is discussed in the first several paragraphs of this story.)

Prequel? Not exactly – at least writer Don Winslow doesn’t look at it that way.

Sure, he says, his best-selling new book, “The Kings of Cool,” picks up the story of the characters he killed off in “Savages,” the 2010 novel made into an Oliver Stone movie released July 6. And yes, he’ll cop to the fact that the book itself says, “The Kings of Cool: Prequel to Savages,” right on the cover.

But the veteran crime writer simply doesn’t look at it that way.

“I picked up the characters in ‘Savages’ a week before the end of their lives,” Winslow says, sitting in a conference room at Simon & Schuster, his publisher, a couple of weeks before Stone’s “Savages” was released – and savaged – by critics. “They were these old young people. But I also knew their backstory – and I got hungry to tell it. I didn’t want to do ‘The Previous Adventures of…’ because that seemed kind of shallow. But I wanted to tell the larger story of it.” (More…)

“Directing this film has been an act of survival,” Martin Donovan says, sitting in a Manhattan office on a warm June afternoon. “Directing a film was something I always wanted to do, something that seemed an inevitability in my development as an actor.

“I’m at an age where I thought, if I don’t make a film, I’ll die. It was the same at the time when I started acting.”

The film is “Collaborator,” opening in limited release Friday (7/6/12), in which Donovan plays playwright Robert Longfellow. (More…)

The first time, it was about creating a concert. This time, say Neil Young and Jonathan Demme, it was about capturing one. And doing it as faithfully – both visually and, more important, aurally – as possible.

That was the mission statement for “Neil Young Journeys,” the pair’s third film collaboration in documenting Young’s concert presence on film, which opened in limited release June 29. (2006’s “ Neil Young: Heart of Gold” was their first; “Neil Young Trunk Show” – 2009 – was the other.) (More…)