“It was fascinating and illuminating and exhausting,” Sarah Polley says, sipping iced tea in a Manhattan restaurant. “I wanted to focus on all these voices telling the story in different ways. To me, what was interesting was not the story, but the way you tell it.”
She’s talking about “Stories We Tell,” the personal (and yet universal) tale of Polley’s family, which opened in limited release May 10. The film – Polley’s third as a director – looks at Polley’s family history, focusing on the story of her mother, Diane, who died when Polley was 11. (More…)
Acting is about being in the moment and discovering the character within it.
But before emotional scenes in “What Maisie Knew,” Julianne Moore would often warn the other actor in the scene, “Now I’m going to cry here – but I’m not really sad, I’m just acting.”
And her co-star, then-6-year-old Onata Aprile, would smile, say, “OK,” and knock the scene out of the park. (More…)
Xan Cassavetes didn’t set out to make a vampire film. In fact, though her newest film is called “Kiss of the Damned,” opening today (5/3/13), she’s still not convinced she has.
Think of it instead as an obsessive love story, some of whose characters happen to be vampires. (More…)
Mira Nair’s film of the novel “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” isn’t about terrorism, Kiefer Sutherland observes, but about the reaction to terrorism – a very different thing.
“It’s what I was moved by when I read the material,” Sutherland, 46, says, relaxing in a conference room of a Union Square hotel in Manhattan. “My focus on 9/11 was on the victims – in the towers, in the planes – and all that loss.
“But I didn’t think of the profound ripple effect it had on people of the Muslim faith, on people of color – of the effect it had on them here and abroad. (More…)
Actor Alan Tudyk sounds surprised when I mention that I’ve been a fan for a while – pleased, but surprised.
He’s a lithe, light-fingered actor who casually steals scenes with impeccable comic timing and unexpectedly rubbery physicality. Tudyk has been good in a lot of bad stuff but he’s even better in good (if little-seen) comedies like Frank Oz’s original “Death at a Funeral” (in which he played a nervous potential son-in-law who accidentally takes a hallucinogen before a funeral) and “Tucker and Dale Versus Evil,” as a backwoods type mistaken for a serial killer. And let’s not forget Wash on “Firefly” – or Steve the Pirate in “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.” Arrrrh. (More…)
Actor Seymour Cassel is on the phone and, when asked what he’s been doing, says, “Well, I’m looking for work.”
We’re supposed to be talking about his latest film, a little indie that’s going out in limited release today (3/22/13) called “Silver Case.” But with a movie resume that includes more than 150 titles (15 since the start of 2010, alone), the veteran character actor has a lot to talk about. We barely get the chance to talk “Silver Case,” in which he plays a sly dealer, when he’s asked what else he’s been up to. (More…)
Everyone knows who Gen. Douglas MacArthur was. But Gen. Bonner Fellers? Not so much.
So when actor Matthew Fox took on the role of Fellers in “Emperor,” which opened in limited release March 8, he figured the interpretation was up to him. (More…)
It took five years for Ramona Diaz and her producing partners Capella Fahoome and Josh Green to make her documentary, “Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey,” which opened in limited release March 8. And every step of the way, they thought it would get easier. It never did.
“We thought, well, we’ll get it in the can and then it will be easy,” Fahoome says. “Then it was, well, we’ll get it edited. Then it was, we’ll submit to festivals.”
“But each step seemed tough in itself just to get through,” offers Green. (More…)
Getting a movie made is an Olympian task. Getting a movie made and released is even tougher.
So Alex Karpovsky’s accomplishment – writing, directing and starring in two movies that are being released the same day as a double-feature – seems positively Herculean.
But that’s what the 30-something multi-hyphenate will do this week, when his films, “Red Flag” (an improvised comedy) and “Rubberneck” (a scripted thriller), open in New York tomorrow (2/22/13); they’re already playing on Tribeca Films’ VOD outlet. (More…)
When he plays Boyd Crowder on FX’s wildly entertaining “Justified,” Walton Goggins is the charming face of evil, the yin to the yang of Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan Givens.
“I love my day job, with Boyd Crowder and his relationships on that show,” Goggins says. “I’m very grateful for this season.”
When I spoke with Goggins, he was part of a December press junket in New York for “Django Unchained,” in which he plays a vicious henchman of Leonardo DiCaprio, who nearly castrates Jamie Foxx. It is one of two visible (and slavery-era) roles he had in year-end movies that would go on to be Oscar-nominated for best picture (the other being “Lincoln”).
“Yeah, I have good management and a lot of kind people on ‘Justified’ who try to accommodate these other things,” he says. (More…)
