Sylvain Chomet is the director of "The Illusionist," the French adaptation of Jacques Tati's story of the same name. The film, which is entirely animated, is being released by Sony Pictures Classics on Christmas 2010.

“There was a moment in that movie where the triplets are watching television in bed”, explains Chomet. “I thought it would be funny to have the cartoon characters view a live-action clip close in feeling to its Tour de France cycling story. Filmmaker Jacques Tati's wonderful Jour de fête/Holiday sprang to mind because it featured him as a postman on a bicycle. So Didier Brunner (the producer) contacted the Tati estate, run by his sole surviving daughter Sophie Tatischeff, for permission to use an extract. Her authorization was based on pictures and a set of design developments for The Triplets of Belleville. She clearly liked what she saw because she mentioned an un-filmed script by her father and hinted that my animation style might suit it.” 

On the film's origins

THE ILLUSIONIST was written by the world famous Jacques Tati between 1956 and 1959. “The story was all about the irrevocable passing of time and I understood completely why he had never made it. It was far too close to himself, it dealt in things he knew all too well, and he preferred to hide behind the mask of his seminal character Monsieur Hulot. You could tell from the start it was not just another Hulot misadventure, all the heart-on-sleeve observations made that crystal clear. Had he made the movie - and I'm certain he had every camera angle already worked out - it would have taken his career in a totally different direction. He is actually on record saying THE ILLUSIONIST was far too serious a subject for his persona and he chose to make the classic Play Time instead”. 

Chomet read THE ILLUSIONIST script for the first time on his train journey to the Cannes Film Festival in 2003 for the world premiere of The Triplets of Belleville. “It was quite beautiful and rather touching. The surroundings could't have been more appropriate either, as much of the story takes place on railways. And if The Triplets of Belleville told a complicated story in a simple way, THE ILLUSIONIST was the complete opposite. Its narrative was so deceptively simple it was highly complex. Yet I could picture every single scene as I read the script, it visually spoke to me. It was something you'd never see normally done in animation. Nor did it follow the basic rules of animation as it really was squarely aimed at adults. How to make a grown-up cartoon equally appealing to kids? Those were exciting challenges.” 

A few small modifications

"I added in my own characters to give further emotional resonance to the overall arc of the story which is the end of one showbiz era – the music hall - and the beginning of another teenage-oriented one – rock 'n' roll music. Parallel to that you have this universal theme about father/daughter relationships and how bittersweet they often are. THE ILLUSIONIST contained everything I love about Tati and his connection to human foibles. All I had to do was add my visual poetry to his and I knew in my heart that combination was going to work. Yet it now seems natural in retrospect.” 

Aside from a few structural shifts there was only one major change to Tati's original treatment Chomet insisted on: “The story originally took place between Paris and Prague and I wanted that changed to Paris and Edinburgh. I went to Prague but just couldn't picture the action taking place there. And I had fallen in love with Edinburgh when I presented The Triplets of Belleville at the Edinburgh Film Festival. I found the city a very magical place - something about the constantly changing light - and my wife Sally and I decided to move there to set up a studio. I had lived in Montreal when making The Triplets of Belleville and there is a very Canadian feel to that movie. I believe it's important to live in the same environment you are trying to animate because your inspiration is then all around you.” 

He continues, “There is also the story strand that takes place in a remote village where the community gets electricity for the first time. I thought that isolation would fit one of the Scottish islands more than a hamlet outside Prague. I initially looked at Mull, which led me to the Isle of Iona, its small neighbour in the Inner Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland. When I read their local history I was astounded to discover that at exactly the same time the Tati story is set (1959), the islanders had a party to celebrate the arrival of electricity from the mainland. So that moment was 100% historically accurate. Also during the same time period the community would virtually be untouched by outside civilization, which made Alice's naivety work in context. It also made perfect sense for The Illusionist to be playing in these last outreaches of vaudeville, too.” 

August 28, 2010 - Eighteen legendary Republic Pictures stars unveiled the new Republic Pictures sign on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at CBS Studio Center on the Western Walk of Fame. This event kicks-off a month long commemoration of Republic Pictures 75th Anniversary coordinated by the Studio City Neighborhood Council’s Cultural Affairs Committee. The new Republic Pictures sign will be affixed to the CBS Studio Center building above the former gate entrance at Carpenter Avenue.

Other local events planned for the 75th anniversary of Republic Pictures include:

· On Wednesday, September 15, 2010 the Egyptian Theatre presents Republic Pictures films and trailers with live “vaudeville” entertainment. 7:30 P.M. at 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028.

· On Tuesday, September 21, 2010, the Studio City Branch Library welcomes Marc Wanamaker, Los Angeles and Motion Picture historian, as he speaks to guests on the history of Studio City and Republic Pictures. 7 P.M. at 12511 Moorpark St., Studio City, CA 91604. 

On Saturday, September 25, 2010, free of charge to the public, a grand Republic Pictures 75th Anniversary Event takes place from 11 A.M. – 5 P.M. at the former Republic Studios lot, CBS Studio Center, 4024 Radford Ave, Studio City, CA 91604. The day will include celebrity speakers’ forums, memorabilia and merchant stands, live music and entertainment, Republic Pictures movies, serials and trailers, children’s activity center, and food and drink

Founded in 1935 by Herbert J. Yates, Republic Pictures was an independent film production-distribution corporation with studio facilities. Republic focused in westerns, movie serials and B-films emphasizing mystery and action, the staples of Saturday afternoon matinees. The studio launched the careers of future cowboy icons John Wayne, Gene Autry, Rex Allen, and Roy Rogers, and rocketed serials like The Adventures of Captain Marvel and Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe into the public imagination throughout its fabled 24-year history. Notable Republic Pictures include Under Western Stars (1938), Flying Tigers (1942), Macbeth (1948), Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), The Red Pony (1949), The Quiet Man (1952), and Johnny Guitar (1954).

Andy Fickman is the director of "You Again," starring Kristen Bell, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Betty White. The film, which also stars Sigourney Weaver, Victor Garber, and Kristen Chenoweth, is being released by Disney on September 24.

Producer Eric Tannenbaum remembers, “Andy Fickman had just finished ‘Race to Witch Mountain,’ which had a great opening weekend for Disney. It was suggested that he be attached as director, so when he read it and liked it, things came together even more quickly.”

Fickman, who jokingly likes to refer to himself as “Herr Direktor” during principal photography, offers, “I loved the universal appeal of the script. Everyone has someone from their past that made their life less than wonderful.”

He proposes, “In high school, those arch enemies can have an even more profound power on your daily existence. I found the more people I spoke with, the more everyone had a ‘You Again’ person from their past, regardless of age or gender.”

As for helming Moe Jelline’s script, Fickman admits, “Exploring this theme was very exciting and a perfect place to breed comedy.”

An exuberant set

With such an exuberant director, filming was fun for everyone. Regarding Director Andy Fickman’s set etiquette, Producer Strauss comments, “Andy is one of those rare individuals who can just light up the room. He has this infectious energy that just makes you want to work hard for him. He really sets the tone for the set more than any other person I’ve met so that it becomes a family within days of

working together.”

Producer Tannenbaum agrees, “Andy knows how to create a ‘family’ environment. Most of these people, our actors, never worked together before, yet he makes a creative, fun, warm environment, so everyone felt extremely comfortable.” Tannenbaum adds, “With Andy, from the very beginning throughout development, casting and filming, it’s not been about ego. It’s been about ‘How do we make the best movie?’”

A director and his muse

Fickman and Kristen Bell have had a long-standing friendship since 2001. He is the one responsible for nicknaming her K-Bell, a moniker that she happily responds to.

Fickman reveals, “I first met K-Bell when she was a student at NYU, and I cast her as the lead in ‘Reefer Madness: The Musical.’ We went through the highs and lows of rehearsing and opening during the tragic events of 9/11 since our theater, Variety Arts, was located behind the red zone. Because we were in the heart of the incident, it bonded all of us further.”

Reflecting on their friendship that has inspired both of their creative sides, he continues, “When K-Bell moved to Los Angeles, we did a very successful musical called ‘Sneaux,’ and then for Showtime, we filmed ‘Reefer Madness: The Musical Movie,’ which premiered at Sundance as well as winning an Emmy and the Premiere Jury Award at the Deauville Film Festival. We reunited again for a wonderful breast-cancer benefit called Les Girls, and then she has been tremendously supportive of ‘Heathers: The Musical,’ a project I’ve been developing, by playing the lead in multiple readings.”

“K-Bell and I just simply click when it comes to our sense of humor; she is a wonderful muse for me.” As for teaming on “You Again,” Fickman admits, “K-Bell and I had been looking for something to work on, so when this script came to me, I saw K-Bell in the lead. That was a major enticement.”

Regarding her relationship with Andy Fickman, Kristen Bell, whose popularity

is rising, thanks to her roles in such comedies as “Couples Retreat” and “When in Rome,” acknowledges, “Andy was the one who convinced me to move to Los Angeles. I don’t think I would’ve done it if I had not known him.”

As for collaborating on this comedy, Bell confesses, “I owe Andy, but man, he put me through the wringer on this movie! Marni had a variety of injuries—ant bites, falls, trips, you name it!”

With a hint of a smile, Bell wonders, “It seems like Andy enjoyed every single minute of it!” 

According to the Hollywood Reporter, vampire stories (in film, TV, books, etc) have brought north of $7 billion to the Hollywood industry. What makes vampires so hot, cool--and bankable? 

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3iaea240932b26c233ce7281e3e4350d17?pn=1

Daniel Stamm is the director of "The Last Exorcism," starring Patrick Fabian and Ashley Bell. The film, which is being released by Lionsgate, comes out August 27.

In its second weekend, Lionsgate's macho actioner "The Expendables," directed by and starring Sly Stallone, broke through a crowded frame of new entries, claiming the top spot at the domestic box-office with an estimated $16.5 million at 3,270 locations.

In its second weekend, Lionsgate's macho actioner "The Expendables," directed by and starring Sly Stallone, broke through a crowded frame of new entries, claiming the top spot at the domestic box-office with an estimated $16.5 million at 3,270 locations.

Mao's Last Dancer," the feature film adaptation of Li Cunxin's best-selling autobiography, is directed by Bruce Beresford. The film is being released by the Samuel Goldwyn Company on August 20.

Producer Jane Scott had already met Chinese producer Geng Ling and invited her to join MAO’S LAST DANCER as co-producer (China).

“To shoot in China, I knew we had to have a Chinese co-producer and I really needed to have a co-producer whom I respected and who understood the project.  Geng Ling was absolutely the ideal person to work with me on the film.  I gave her the screenplay and she read it and loved it. And, I was so fortunate because Geng was able to guide me in the right way to do business in China.  She made a lot of things happen that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise including selecting the very best key crew and locations.”

Creating a Chinese cast and crew

A number of significant roles were cast in China as well as hundreds of extras, and young dancers from across the country.   A Chinese crew was appointed to work in tandem with the international crew from Australia, Mexico, Europe and elsewhere.

“We really had some of the most experienced people in China working with us.  Our Chinese 1^st Assistant Director Zhang Jinzhan – known as The General – had worked with such directors as Ang Lee, Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige; and, our Chinese casting director Li Hai Bin had worked with Quentin Tarantino among others,” Scott says.

Locations

Jane Scott, Bruce Beresford, Geng Ling, Herbert Pinter and Peter James travelled across China in search of locations.

“The village that Li Cunxin came from was a difficult location to find because when we went to where he grew up, we discovered that it had been absorbed by the city of Tsingtao. The little houses had been completely demolished and everyone had been rehoused in apartment blocks. Then we found a very picturesque village about 100 kms or so outside of Beijing in the mountains. And, it too, was more or less abandoned.  But, it was exactly what we needed for the film so with a few additions via the art department, it became the set for the home village,” Bruce says.

The art department, headed by Pinter, recreated Li’s childhood home and the village school using traditional Chinese stonework. The village, depicted during the harsh winter covered in snow and during the spring with cherry blossoms blooming, were created by Pinter’s team.

The other major location in China was the Dance Academy in Bejing where Li was sent to study and board as a young boy.  A disused dance school was found on the outskirts of Bejing and converted into a mini film studio with sets built for the dance classes, dormitory, theatre and communal dining scenes.

A logistical nightmare

Every morning, hundreds of cast and crew were assembled before dawn for the bus convoy to set.

According to Scott, “The film was enormous in terms of logistics.  Shipping people up to a mountain location and finding accommodations for everybody was pretty hard - - coupled with something like 85 trucks, carrying equipment, people’s luggage, etc. And then to run an enormous camp with Chinese food being prepared by Chinese cooks and Western food for the Western crew was huge!  Somehow these things are strangely conquered by film crews and film productions, almost on an army-style basis, and amazingly, it’s very possible to do as long as you have the right people to help you make the process work.”

“In Beijing, we had to bring in coach loads of young dancers whom we had to accommodate; they had to have parents with them and guardians and teachers and we had to keep up their dance schedule everyday so that everybody was fit and being properly fed and looked after. The rehearsal period of pre-production was almost as big as the shooting schedule - ferrying everyone in coaches to dance studios that weren’t always close to the hotel, sometimes even hours away. So, we would have 10 or 11 year olds practicing down one street an hour’s drive in one direction and 18 year olds in another direction and then there’d be somebody dancing in a studio we’d find in the basement of the hotel or something mad like that - - it was extraordinary.”

“For the actual filming just outside Beijing, we had the international crew plus the  hundreds of Chinese crew and hundreds of extras and actors and all of them had to be at the right place at the right time and go through wardrobe, or be given breakfast and put into the right place. So I’d arrive where we were filming, and outside the studio would be hundreds of ballet shoes drying, or all of the little t-shirts that had been dyed overnight, drying, and it brought home how many people were being moved around and brought to the location - and then of course, you’d step into the theatre at 7:30 AM and find everyone dressed and ready to go.”

August 18, 2010--The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) will honor vet actor and Oscar-winner Ernest Borgnine, who is 93, with its life achievement award. SAG made the announcement Wednesday, noting that Borgnine's performed in more than 200 motion pictures, five TV series and dozens of television films.

Drew Barrymore and Justin Long star in "Going the Distance," directed by Nanette Burstein and produced by Adam Shankman. The film, which surrounds a long distance relationship between Barrymore and Long's characters, is being released by  Warner Bros. on September 3. 

Why they chose to do "Going the Distance"

Barrymore reveals, "I liked this story because it had a lot of humor and it was sexy, but it was also surprisingly emotional. I couldn't stop thinking about these characters and I really cared about why or how they were or weren't able to work out their issues. Any story that deals with the complexities of a relationship in a very comical and contemporary way totally interests me."

"I'd been reading a lot of romantic comedies," Long recalls, "and this one really stood out for me in the sense that it was much more raw and realistic, and very funny, too. It didn't hold back at all."

On their respective characters

"Erin is a very strong girl; she can go to bars and win at video games and hang with the boys," Barrymore offers. "But she put a relationship ahead of her dreams before and resented it, so she's not going to do it again. I really liked playing someone with a sharp tongue and wit and honesty. I loved her bravado."

"Garrett's kind of stuck in a rut, both professionally and personally," Long asserts. "He's a low-level executive trying to gain a foothold in an industry that, in his opinion, has kind of sold out. And he's just been dumped by a girl he's been seeing for a few months because, once again, he couldn't go to the next level. Then he meets this girl, this crazy, pixie-ish, slightly badass girl who is cute and makes him laugh, and he's very intrigued--and, spoiler alert: they get together."

Not holding back

"Even though Erin and Garrett are separated by thousands of miles, we wanted to make sure that we didn't separate the heart and the humor," Barrymore states. "We tried to bring in both everywhere, across the board."

Long agrees, adding that "part of the appeal for me, and I hope for audiences, is that the movie doesn't hold back at all, just like relationships, just like life."

August 16, 2010 - A special project promoted by the Committee on Culture and Education of the European Parliament in partnership with Venice Days and with the collaboration of Europa Cinemas and Cineuropa, 27 Times Cinema: LUX Prize to foster a European Audience is bringing to Venice 27 young film lovers from the 27 countries of the EU. Cultural partner to the project, which includes a series of discussions at the Filmmakers Villa, is Variety, which puts out a daily at the Venice Film Festival and whose journalists will moderate some discussions. Says Giorgio Gosetti, Delegate General of Venice Days: "Our partnership with Variety adds further prominence to the event, for the quality of the critics involved and the international dimension it gives our daily discussions."

These chats will begin on September 2 with "Creativity, freedom and censorship: Jafar Panahi." Subsequent discussions will look at "The violence next door", "Which form will tomorrow's cinema take?" "The American and European independent production models," "Festivals and audiences," "Memory and cultural roots," "Debuting and establishing oneself," "The cinema-document and cinema of the real" and "European creativity and identities." 

The participants of 27 Times Cinema, aged 18-26, include emerging independent filmmakers, festival workers, photographers, critics and bloggers. Most studied film at university, although five have just graduated from high school. Two sell tickets at a cinema, and many have already held various jobs to put themselves through school. They were chosen through a rigorous selection process: in each country, a Europa Cinemas movie theatre chose a list of finalists from among the top applicants who sent brief reviews of European films seen in the last year and an explanation of why they wanted to come to Venice.

For 11 days, these 13 young men and 14 young women will take part in a fast-paced series of events with directors, critics and film industry professionals in a multi-cultural "campus" that features daily discussions with numerous participants on the foremost themes evoked by the films of Venice Days and the entire Festival. The chats will be filmed and placed online live - courtesy of the European film portal Cineuropa (www.cineuropa.org, MEDIA Programme), as well as on the websites of Venice Days (www.venice-days.com) and Europa Cinemas (www.europa-cinemas.org).

"The idea is a simple one," says Venice Days President Roberto Barzanti. "Yet the fact that this small and perhaps mad utopia - of recreating the genuine spirit of film festivals, eliciting the pleasure of the debate and ensuring that each film is a true discovery - has become reality is due to the passion of the president of the European Parliament's Cultural Committee, Doris Pack, the determination of her collaborators and the commitment of the European circuit of arthouse cinemas. I am certain that Venice, the Festival and Venice Days will be an unforgettable experience for these young men and women." 

According to Doris Pack: "The challenge, of course, is one which the Parliament faces every day, not always successfully, namely to listen to and provide a voice for its citizens. The aim of this initiative is to give a voice to a new young audience, by promoting dialogue among the young men and women invited to attend, European film industry professionals and representatives of the European Parliament."

27 Times Cinema is supported by the LUX Prize, the cinema award of the European Parliament, whose fourth edition will be held in Brussels in November. From the 10 European titles selected from last year's film season by a jury of industry professionals, the three finalists are: Filippos Tsitos' Plato's Academy (Greece), Feo Aladag's When We Leave (Germany) and Illegal (Belgium) by Olivier Masset-Depasse. The 2010 LUX Prize winner will be voted on by the 736 members of Parliament. The three LUX Prize finalists will screen as special events at Venice Days on September 10 and 11.

27 Times Cinema full list of participants includes: Markus Schinerl (Austria), Thomas Smolders (Belgium), Milena Paneva (Bulgaria), Michalis Michael (Cyprus), Christian Munks (Denmark), Moonika Olju (Estonia), Anna Törrönen (Finland), Hugo Barini (France), Hagen Reiners (Germany), Nick Shaw (Great Britain), Zoi Chaita (Greece), Kata Kovàcs (Hungary), Conall Ó Duibhir (Ireland), Isabella Weber (Italy), Dace Lea Briede (Latvia), Vytautas Katkus (Lithuania), Thorben Grosser (Luxembourg), Martina Portelli (Malta), Mirjam van der Veldt (Netherlands), Adrian Strzelczyk (Poland), Inês Daniel Bento (Portugal), Matous Sv?ràk (Czech Republic), Zuzana Novàkovà (Slovakia), Anca Munteanu (Romania), Urska Horjak (Slovenia), Eloy Domìnguez Serén (Spain), Fathia Mohidin (Sweden).

Julia Roberts stars in Ryan Murphy's "Eat Pray Love," the feature film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir of the same name. The film, which also stars Javier Bardem, James Franco and Viola Davis, is being released by Columbia Pictures on August 13. 

For production designer Bill Groom and costume designer Michael Dennison, Eat Pray Love required four different movie looks – one for each of the film’s locations.  They had to decide how this journey would unfold for Liz, and how her journey would be underscored by the sets and wardrobe.

One of the first things Murphy, Gardner, Wlodkowski, and Groom did during pre-production was to go on a world tour location scout.  As they traveled in the same places that Elizabeth Gilbert had written about, the creative inspiration for the production design came flooding in.  Groom began to sketch out the four elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, representing the look and feel of the very distinct worlds of New York City, Rome, India, and Bali, respectively.

Organic New York feel

Groom lives in Brooklyn, New York, so designing that portion of the movie came to him organically.  He saw New York as being part of an Earth element palate, using grays, blacks, and browns and textures like concrete, granite, and stone to illustrate the somber life Liz felt stuck in and hammer home the emotional state of the story. 

At the beginning of the film, Dennison says, “New York had the coldest feeling and the costumes reflect that.  They have the least amount of color in the film. It is a desaturated, diminished color world.”

Lonely Rome

While in Rome, Murphy commented that that section of the film would echo the intense loneliness that Liz was feeling after her break-ups.  For Groom, the Air element could stand for that emptiness.  Most of these scenes took place in the fall, so there was a lot of wind and space in the 2000-year-old city.  “Rome is where Liz breathes,” says Groom.  “She opens the windows, the curtains are blowing, and she finally lets go of her life in New York, takes a deep breath and starts to eat.”  

To contrast this section of the film with the colors of the New York sequence, Groom chose “the creamy, light, white colors of the wind and air,” he says.

Dennison chose autumnal colors for Rome, not only because Liz is there at that time of year, but also to play off of the city and its residents – through the costumes, audiences can see Liz transform into more of an Italian woman as she becomes more comfortable in her environment.  “The Italians’ sexuality exudes from their pores, in the city, in their food, and, of course, in the way they dress.  I did need for Liz to start feeling like she was becoming a part of Rome, and her Italian friends palettes reflected each other,” says the costume designer.

Indian Fire

Upon his first location scout trip to India, from the moment Groom stepped off the plane, the element for India would be Fire.  As Liz relinquishes control of her life, her emotions explode into a brilliant display of reds and oranges.  Groom says he read somewhere that India is the most decorated place on earth – even something simple and ordinary, like a truck carrying cargo on the road, is embellished with paint and texture.  

”India becomes a riot of color juxtaposed against the stillness of the spirituality,” says Dennison of the costumes in the sequence. “India is unique and mystical.  It is the center of spirituality.  People surround themselves with the vibrancy of color and the vibrations that color brings, and that places them in the liveliness of life.  In some instances, we heightened the color, because we are telling a story.  It was very important psychologically and subliminally that you have that feeling of buoyancy.” 

Also in India, Groom created an elaborate wedding.  He relished the opportunity – and was gratified that his work was taken for the real thing.  ”Even the most humble of weddings are colorful, decorated, vibrant events that involve the entire community,” he says.  “Ours was convincing enough that some of the members of the community where we were filming were a little upset they hadn’t been invited to the festivities.”

Natural Bali

When in Bali, Groom was overwhelmed by the beautifully intense natural environment.  In this part of the story, the romance between Liz and Felipe as Liz learns to find a free-flowing balance would pair nicely with the blue and green hues of the Water element.  

“When you arrive in Bali,” says Groom, “you are struck by the reflections of the sky in the rice field terraces, the roaring rivers that seem to sneak up on you, the volcanic lakes, and the beaches that remain pristine. For both Ryan and me, this was something we wanted to express in the movie.”

In Bali, Liz feels vibrant, free, and alive, and that is reflected in the intense color palette and lushness of the clothes. “This is the roller coaster part of the movie,” says Dennison. “Liz is going through so many different emotions and exhibits her vulnerability in her love for Felipe.”

Where they could, the filmmakers chose to shoot in the real-world locations mentioned in the book.  Though it was not always possible, there were some cases where the production could not resist.  For example, production designer Bill Groom met the real life Ketut Liyer and toured his Balinese compound, intending to get inspiration.  However, Groom knew right away he couldn’t improve on the real-life environment. In the end, says Groom, “Not only did we shoot at Ketut’s house where he currently lives with four generations of his family, but we even ended up pulling from one of Ketut’s real-life drawings to create the prop of the drawing Ketut presents to Liz on her first trip to Bali.”

Authentic Look--Local Crews

In all of the film’s locations, Groom and Dennison set up art and costume departments, working with local teams to prep the look of each country.   Local artisans – from rice farmers creating a paddy in Bali to seamstresses creating 100 saris for the Indian wedding – added details, workmanship, and authenticity to the sets and costumes that enriched the film, even though many, perhaps most, of these artists had never worked on a movie before.   

The distinguished actress Patricia Neal, the Oscar-winning star of "Hud," died of lung cancer on Sunday at her home in Edgartown, Mass., on Martha's Vineyard. She was 84.

"Let's Make Love," is George Cukor's third musical film, after "A Star Is Born," with Judy Garland, and "Les Girls,” and first picture with Marilyn Monroe.

Luke Wilson, Giovanni Ribisi, and Gabriel Macht star in "Middle Men," the story of the birth of the internet porn industry, directed by George Gallo. The film is being released by Paramount on August 6. 

Lead Roles

Wilson, whom many know from films such as Old School, Home Fries, Legally Blonde and Idiocracy, plays the lead character, 'Jack Harris.' As to his initial reaction to the story, "It always struck me from the start when I read the script that it would be a fun movie to watch. Whether I was fifteen, my age or my dad's age, this is something kind of different that we haven't seen before."

As for the two drug-addicted 'Middle Men' whom Luke Wilson's character gets involved with, the part of 'Wayne Beering' landed into the lap of Giovanni Ribisi, while the role of 'Buck Dolby' was taken by Gabriel Macht.

Gabriel Macht, who stars in The Spirit, admits, "I knew that this would be a wild ride in creating the character."

Giovanni Ribisi also had great appreciation for his co-stars and said, "In this movie, Luke is better than I have ever seen him. There is all this chaos going on around him, especially with me and Gabriel, but he's the calm in the storm - the guy who sort of made sense of it all."

The sentiment was quite the same as Luke remembers, "They're both really good actors and it was fun for me. It was like playing sports with someone better than you, which kind of validates your game to work with people that are really good like Giovanni and Gabriel."

The producers realized they had something very special with this trio and Director/Co-Writer George Gallo agrees having said, "These guys reached for places that are rare. They worked without filters and came up with some brilliant character traits which add to the fabric of the film."

Supporting the Middle Men

Though the movie focuses primarily on this odd trio of partners in a business that few admit exists, Luke Wilson, Giovanni Ribisi and Gabriel Macht were supported by a great cast of character actors; Jacinda Barrett, Laura Ramsey, Terry Crews, Rade Sherbedgia, with Kevin Pollak and James Caan.

James Caan, whose career spans over three decades including starring in Luke Wilson's first film Bottle Rocket as well as such classics as The Godfather and Brian's Song, plays the crooked lawyer, 'Jerry Haggerty.' He admits, "This movie is about a bunch of bad people and I play the worst."

Kevin Pollak, who plays FBI Agent 'Curt Allmans,' offers, "I've known George Gallo since I appeared in The Whole Ten Yards, so when he gave me this script, which is hilarious in that Midnight Run sort of way, I jumped aboard."

In addition to the above, cameo appearances were made by Robert Forster as 'Louie La La,' a Chicago wise guy who mentors Luke Wilson's character during his younger days, and Kelsey Grammer as 'Frank Griffin,' the District Attorney, who suspects 'Jack' of foul play in running his Internet billing business. Jason Antoon, who was last seen in Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock, has a larger part as 'Denny Z,' a nefarious adult entetainment producer.

"Dinner for Schmucks," which stars Paul Rudd and Steve Carell, is an adaptation of the French film "Le Diner de Cons." The film, directed by Jay Roach, is released by Paramount July 30.

French filmmaker Francis Veber has long been a keen observer of human behavior, casting an eye to the comic foibles of everyday people who, for whatever (un)fortunate reason, find themselves at the center of some absurd situation or another--someone pretending to be someone else, or dealing with a make-or-break moment in life while simultaneously crossing the path of, well, someone extraordinary. 

Among his list of comedies are such titles as "Le Jouet," "La cage aux folles," "La Chévre," "Les Fugitifs," "Le Jaguar" and "Le placard." He is held in such esteem that the French government has bestowed him its highest honor of Officier of the Légion d'honneur. 

A French Hit

His 1998 title "Le Dîner de Cons" ("The Dinner Game"), based on his stage play of the same name, received six nominations at the 1999 Cesar Awards, including two for Veber (Best Director and Best Writing)--it ultimately took home three statues (including one for Veber's writing). The storyline turns expectations upside down when the 'idiot's' bumbling actions force the main character to reconsider his life, ultimately becoming a better version of himself.

Among the original's fans in the United States were successful Oscar-winning filmmakers Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald ("Gladiator," "The Ring," "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"), who were immediately interested in the possibility of adapting the film for American audiences. The producers responded to the duality of the film and note, "We knew we'd like to produce a film just on the basis of concept alone--even though it is potentially a cruel subject, it is a very kind film, and it actually has a great big heart." 

Jay Roach jumps onboard

Once they committed to the project, the search was on for a fitting director and, eventually, they had the good fortune of crossing the path of Jay Roach, responsible for directing a passel of global blockbuster comedies (including the Austin Powers series and both Focker movies). As Parkes puts it, "Jay is like a scientist of comedy, such a perfectionist, and so knowledgeable." As luck would have it, Jay shared an agent with Francis Veber and, after seeing and loving the original, was eager to bring a similar story to life.

Drawn to the simplicity of the premise, Roach jumped at the opportunity to direct "Dinner for Schmucks" and says, "I knew I couldn't top what Francis did, as that film was nearly perfect--for me, it was about taking the same concept and doing a different interpretation, telling a slightly different version of the same story."

The film then began to move forward, with Jay bringing in writers David Guion and Michael Handelman to continue adapting the screenplay and bring his vision to life. The pair penned the screenplay "Used Guys" (currently being developed, with Roach attached to direct) and consider Roach "a very, very funny director, who also happens to be a very sensitive storyteller." Guion and Handelman labored to bring an updated version of "The Dinner Game" to life, striving to keep the heart of the original intact, per Handelman: "It was a movie that was very funny, but really, it's about finding the humanity in figures who are laughable." 

Similarities and Differences

First and foremost, it was decided that the American version would remain a character-based comedy, but it would also actually feature a titular dinner (actually never seen in the French version). American audiences would also meet the idiots (or schmucks) and come to understand and appreciate the people beneath the derogatory moniker. Roach states, "The original film ends with the promise of what could happen if these guys all got together, and I thought it would be fun to actually put them in the same dining room and take it a bit further. I like the idea of the company guys gathered and actually excited to have the fools come in and hang out with them."

The rest of the story bears many similarities to the original work but takes a slightly different path--in "Le Dîner," the corporate climber works as publisher, but was transformed into a financial analyst; the 'extraordinary' character constructs buildings out of matchsticks, and was morphed into a would-be taxidermist fond of using mice in tableaux. Jay Roach admits, "Although we haven't been entirely faithful to the original, I thought I could do it in a way that would borrow some of the basic premise, but the specifics would be very different and, I think, funny in a different way." 

Lucy Walker is the director of the nuclear weapons documentary "Countdown to Zero," which opens theatrically July 23.  The film premiered at Sundance in January and is currently screening at the Cannes Film Festival.

Q: What motivated you to make this film? Was there a specific precipitant? 

It was 2002, and my first feature documentary, Devil's Playground, about Amish teenagers, was coming out, and there was an article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine about one of the subjects of my film struggling to decide whether or not he should be Amish. I was reading that story - and then the cover story of that same magazine was about a nuclear bomb being detonated in Times Square in New York City, where I was living at the time. And I was thinking - what's the question? Let's all join the Amish! We'd better all get out of New York right now, if a nuclear bomb was detonated here, we don't want to stick around! It was the scariest thing I've ever read, to be told on exactly which blocks you would be vaporized, or burned to death, or smashed to bits, even in the boroughs you'd still be killed from blast and fallout could kill people all the way up to Boston, with a large enough warhead and the right prevailing wind. 

The timeliness and urgency of the nuclear weapons issue can not be overstated.

Because as we look into the future, the scenarios only get scarier…this could not be a more timely issue, and I jumped into it with both feet the moment that the opportunity presented itself…

Q: Could you address the three main areas of concern raised in the film: 

1. Rogue states making the bomb

If we don't want other countries to have the bomb, how can we justify keeping it ourselves? It's no good to reminisce about the old Cold War scenario in which there was a nuclear club of five nuclear weapons states, and the posture of mutually assured destruction (MAD) kept things under control. The nonproliferation regime is failing, and I believe we are at the tipping point. If Iran gets the bomb, how many other states will follow? We have only two choices: a world in which nobody has nuclear weapons, or a world with rogue states and even non-state actors having them. Which would you prefer to live in?

2. Terrorists making the bomb

Every step that is necessary for terrorists to make a bomb not only could happen, but it has already happened. Just not all in one sequence … that we know of … yet. Terrorists do have the intent, they have recruited nuclear scientists, they have tried to buy nuclear materials, and smugglers have sold nuclear materials to terrorists… it seems as if all these steps haven't yet connected into a continuous chain of events that results in an actual terrorist nuclear attack. But what's to stop that happening? And don't we want to do everything possible to prevent it? And if terrorists get the bomb, us having one will not help us. Terrorists are not bound by treaties and they cannot be retaliated against. They have no return address.

3. Human error setting off the bomb

I was fascinated to read Scott Sagan's book The Limits of Safety and articles about what he calls "the problem of the problem of redundancy [sic]"... I couldn't believe that more work was not being done, or being more widely disseminated, on the risks of nuclear accidents. It was fascinating to me that you could have theories about something as, well, accidental, as accidents. And then Bruce Blair started telling me his anecdotes about launch codes being misplaced or sent to the dry cleaners, or set to all zeroes,  and I wanted people to understand that human fallibility does not cease to apply because the consequences are so grave. The possibility of an accident or error can never be zero. And if the risk isn't zero, as time goes on, something terrible will eventually happen. That is a statistical fact.

Q: You have interviewed more than a dozen subjects for Countdown.  How did you secure their participation?  Why did you choose these particular individuals?  

A lot more than a dozen! I interviewed eighty-four people, from Dick Garwin, who developed the first hydrogen device (although he did not get the credit) as a twenty-year-old PhD candidate from Fermi's lab while on a summer internship at Los Alamos; to Frits Veerman, A.Q. Khan's best friend, who noticed that he was spying and tried to alert his bosses at the uranium enrichment facility in the Netherlands in the mid 1970s. I even conducted several phone interviews with A.Q. Khan himself: his opening line was "Madam, are you looking for a villain for your movie?” He's no fool, unfortunately. We've got a lot of material for DVD extras!

For research and development, I met with or spoke with over a hundred additional experts and trawled through hundreds of books and articles, and sifted an incalculable deluge of information and attended conferences all over the world in order to bring you the most interesting voices with the most important points across the whole subject area.

Q: Was securing your spokespersons a collective effort?   Who did the actual interviewing?  Were there questions about things you really wanted to know that did not get answered?

Yes, securing interviews was most certainly a team effort in which we used all our collective resources and relationships - myself, the producer Lawrence Bender, Participant, and also Matt Brown and Bruce Blair of Global Zero. 

I did the actual interviewing myself -- it's a part of the process that I enjoy, and in this movie it was particularly challenging. Nobody is going to say anything candid or private about nuclear weapons: it's the most clandestine, sensitive, confidential subject I can think of. 

Some of the leaders gave us only very short interviews, so it was a challenge to get more than a couple of basic questions answered, and some folks also vetoed certain topics -- for example former President Musharraf did not want to talk about A.Q. Khan, as a condition of granting the interview. 

The interview I conducted with Secretary Robert McNamara was a very emotional one as it was clear to us all that this was going to be his last interview. He was obviously aging, but he was wagging his finger at me, determined to make his point heard, that nations would be destroyed if we did not destroy nuclear weapons.

Did you find any heroes among your interviewees?

The good guy in this story, at the opposite extreme of the evildoer-hero spectrum, is the top cop of Georgia's radioactive smuggling unit. I couldn't believe how smart, effective, and helpful he was - it blows my mind that people so talented are so generous as to put their lives at risk to keep the rest of the world safe, and nobody ever even hears about them, much less thanks them. If it wasn't for this genius Georgian cop and his team, there would, without doubt, be a whole lot of materials for nuclear and dirty bombs on the black market around the world. 

I feel the same way about the folks I met who run the US Department of Energy programs to secure loose nukes and secure ports and borders worldwide from nuclear smuggling. It's the toughest and most important job in the world, and I can't say enough good things about these folks like Dave Huizinga and Igor Bolshinsky and Tracy Mustin, who are my absolute personal heroes. And not only do they serve us all so selflessly, they let me film, too! 

How long was the shoot?  In how many locations? How much time did you spend on average with each interview subject?  How many questions did you have to ask before getting the answers you wanted to hear/use?

We were shooting for over a year, but only sporadically. Often our interviews were very short, sometimes as short as twenty minutes, particularly with the VIPs. Long interviews are much better for warming people up and covering a lot of ground, so this was an excellent challenge for my interview skills to prioritize the questions and deliver candid exclusive insights on sensitive topics in very limited windows of time. I really enjoyed the challenge and am very proud of the interviews we secured and conducted.

And it's lucky I'm not starstruck, because our list of interviewees is like the list of the masters of the universe! Former leaders included President Carter, President Gorbachev, former President De Klerk, former Prime Minister Tony Blair, former President Shevardnadze, former President Musharraf…etc etc etc.

Q: How much time did it take to research and prepare this film?

The research was a massive amount of work, given the nature of the subject -- which couldn't be more technical, broad, complicated, sensitive and classified! 

I literally can't imagine a bigger research job. I needed to make myself an overnight expert in the history, science, and politics of these weapons -- from understanding North Korea, to following developments in Iran, to tracking down nuclear smugglers in Tblisi, to understanding the physics of fissile materials, to grasping policy arguments… so forgive me if I ever get mixed up on a detail... I can't imagine a subject that requires more research to grasp and master and communicate!

I was very grateful for many wonderful conversations and conference introductions and reading suggestions from so many people in the world of nuclear weapons, from the Department of Energy to the IAEA to nuclear weapons labs scientists to anti-nuclear activists to retired generals, even the real inventor of the hydrogen bomb -- everyone helped sharpen my thinking and direct me to the most urgent points.

Q: Were you constantly revising as world events changed around you?

This issue is on the front page of newspapers around the world every day....not a day goes by that the news doesn't tell me that this movie could not be more important or more timely! 

On the other hand, we knew we couldn't be merely "newsy" as we can't compete with the news cycle, and a movie deserves a long shelf life. I know that I still get a great deal out of older movies about nuclear weapons from Dr Strangelove… to The Day After, Threads, When The Wind Blows, Dark Circle... so much great work and more. So it was about sifting every piece of information to give audiences the tools to understand the news events as they continue to unfold.  

Woody Allen is the director of "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger." which stars Josh Brolin, Naomi Watts, and Anthony Hopkins. The film is being released by Sony Pictures Classics on September 22.

As is often the case with Woody Allen’s movies, YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER features a cast of prestigious and well-known actors as well as some talented newcomers. “It always surprises me how good they can be,” says Allen. “I don’t give them any rehearsal. Most of them ask me no questions about the character or about the script. They just come in and do it, sometimes on the first take or two, and then we move on.” 

Naomi Watts as Sally

In fact, Allen hadn’t even met Naomi Watts before she arrived on the set, and her first scene was one of the most emotional ones she had to play in the movie. “She came in that morning, said ‘Hello,’ and I said ‘Hello,’ and she started acting like a car that starts in third, without bothering to go to first or second,” says Allen. “She was great from the moment she opened her mouth. I’d never seen anything like it before: she walks in cold, and instantly calls upon her acting talent and does it great straightaway.” 

Josh Brolin as Roy

As Roy turns out one failed book after another, it eats into his confidence. “Roy doesn’t have sufficient talent to get beyond that first novel,” says Allen. “At first he didn’t mind trying, but it’s starting to occur to him that maybe he’s a one book phenomenon, a flash in the pan, and this is a very unpleasant thought.”

Stressing out in his room, straining to finish his novel, Roy becomes transfixed by a mysterious woman dressed in red who plays her guitar in the window across his courtyard. “He’s having a tough time,” says Allen, “and when he sees this breath of fresh air across the yard, he becomes intrigued with her and eventually she becomes a seductive fantasy for him.” Roy is by nature a “grass is always greener on the other side” type of person, perpetually dissatisfied with what he has, and drawn to what is beyond his reach; he becomes even more interested in the woman when he discovers that she’s involved with another man. 

While the characters in YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER don’t manage their problems in the most productive ways, Roy crosses a line that the others don’t. “Roy is the darkest, most complicated character,” says Allen. “He's dissatisfied with himself, he’s insecure, his relationship with Sally is deteriorating and he’s drawn to Dia, so he’s willing to make a bad moral choice, in the hopes that it will straighten his life out in some way.”

Says Allen: “Some actors have no questions, Josh has many, he really gets into it—he asked me about his haircut, how he should walk, dress, conduct himself, and that’s great, it works for him. I could only make one or two little suggestions here and there, but his answers were always better than mine. He thinks it emerged from a dialogue with me, but it's really him. What I did keep telling him was, ‘you’re a great actor, use your instinct, just trust it and it will make you great again.’”

Gemma Jones as Helena

When Allen was casting the role of Helena, Gemma Jones’ name kept coming up. “When I described the character, everyone said to me, ‘you mean Gemma Jones,’” he says. “We looked at many people for the role, and not only is she a wonderful actress, she just seemed a natural for this part, a part that really fit her like a glove.”

Allen has the highest praise for Jones’s work. “She came in and knew the character and what to do, and performed it immaculately, as beautifully as any author could want one of his characters played.”  

Antonio Banderas as Greg

Says Allen: “I needed someone who would be believable as an international art dealer, that was successful, and Antonio had everything I wanted—the stature, the elegance, the good looks that would make a woman fall for him, and he’s a wonderful actor.” While Greg might seem the one character in the film with his feet planted firmly on the ground, he also has some issues, albeit more subtle ones. “He married a woman who was bipolar, not a good choice, and he’s had a tough time with her, and he’s switched over now to a woman who has had a problem with dope and alcohol,” says Allen. “He’d probably be better off with Sally, but instead he picks her friend who has not had such a completely healthy past.” 

Quoting Macbeth

The film opens and closes with a line taken from “Macbeth”: “a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Allen explains: “All these characters are running around trying to find meaning in their lives, and find ambitions and successes and love. They’re all running around, bumping into each other, hurting each other, getting hurt, making mistakes—a constant chaos. But in the end, after a hundred years, everybody on earth along with them will be completely gone, and after another hundred years, there will be a new set of people. And after all of the ambitions, and aspirations, and the plagiarism and adultery, what once was so meaningful won’t mean a thing. Many years from now the sun burns out and the earth is gone, and many years after that the entire universe is gone. Even if you could find a pill that makes you live forever, that forever is still a finite number, because nothing is forever. It’s all sound and fury, and in the end it means nothing.” 

Considering the bleakness of his vision, why does Allen continue to make films?

“It’s a distraction that has its own little challenges and consequently keeps my mind off morbid thoughts.” 

Brad Peyton is the director of "Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore," the sequel to the 2001 hit "Cats & Dogs." The film, which is being released by Warner Bros., comes out July 30 in 3D.

"That picture of domestic harmony is just what they want you to see," claims Brad Peyton, who happily exposes the true story of backyard politics in "Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore."

"Once people bond with their pets and get to know their personalities, it's easy to imagine them doing things when we're not around," Peyton suggests. "This movie is just an extension of that idea--that animals have their own secret lives. Of course, we take it a lot further; we have them using jet packs and rocket cars. But it all comes from that basic curiosity that I think most of us have had at one time or another, wondering what our cats and dogs really do all day. It's why candid clips of animals caught in the act of being themselves are so popular on the Internet."

Drawing similarities to Bond

Longtime James Bond fan Brad Peyton likens the uneasy partnership between cats and dogs to that of the classic cold-war era scenarios in which "Bond and MI-6 are forced to collaborate with the Russians to get the über-villain who's threatening them both. They still don't like each other, but somehow they make it work."

Says Peyton, "We've got everything you'd want in an action adventure: jet-pack chases, explosions, fights, flights, spies, more explosions, and underground tunnels. It just happens to be with talking animals."

On his cast

"We were so fortunate to work with this fantastic group of actors," says Peyton. "With this kind of a movie, actors rarely get a chance to interact in person, but even so, their work came together in a way that created its own chemistry and in that sense they truly were an ensemble."

A complex shoot

"Every shot has its complexity, with multiple layers requiring follow-up, so it's been a fairly labor-intensive effort," says Peyton of the project's inherent challenges. "But that also meant I had more toys to play with."

Working with animals

"I was amazed at how well the cats take direction," Peyton says. "If I put my cat on a leash, he'd just stare at me. Boone's cats walk on leash, stay, and hit their marks. I was a little wary at first about what to expect. He said, 'We can get just as much from a cat as we can from a dog,' and I thought, 'Yeah, sure.' But it's absolutely true." 

Zac Efron stars in "Charlie St. Cloud," directed by Burr Steers, and also starring Amanda Crew, Ray Liotta, and Kim Basinger. The film is being released by Universal on July 30.

When the producer handed him the script, Efron felt an instant connection to Charlie St Cloud.  He recalls: “There was a familiarity, a lot that I could relate to and a lot that I recognized in Charlie.  It reminded me of the way I connect to my younger brother.  I thought Charlie’s relationship with Sam was real and honest, and I admired the qualities that I saw in him.  I thought they were very heroic.”

Understanding Charlie

But Efron knew that portraying this complex lead would be a challenging exercise.  The actor notes: “It was interesting to step into Charlie’s shoes and play a guy who’s down on his luck, who feels numb and doesn’t think he has much to live for.”  He laughs: “I tend to play characters who are more energetic, full of life and dance a lot.  But Charlie is very different.  The role was a 180-degree change, and that was extremely exciting.”

Life between Two Worlds

Efron explains Charlie’s precarious situation of being able to live between two worlds: “Charlie doesn’t know if he’s insane.  All he knows is that for an hour every day at sunset, he’s able to hang out with his little brother again.  The ability to see Sam is a huge gift, but at the same time, it’s very much a curse.  He becomes very unsocial and a pariah in town.  He can’t interact with society anymore, because he’s got this weight that he carries.”

Sailing

Efron has long admired the beauty of the sport, and he admits that he can now see how sailors become immersed in the sport.  Says Efron of his introduction to sailing: “Initially, it was difficult to learn.  There are so many factors that go into it.  It’s not just wind blowing into a sail and propelling your boat.  It’s incredibly precise.  One mistake, one lapse in judgment, and it can very quickly capsize.  I was shocked when I got out on the water in these small boats.  On the first day of sailing lessons, my instructor made a point of capsizing the boat.  The boat flipped over, and I was dumped in the water.  I was scared, but I also got it out of my system.”

In 1987, "Predator" introduced an enduring, popular character in sci-fi film history, an invisibility-cloaked extra-terrestrial warrior who wreaked havoc in the jungle.

Two-time Oscar winning actress Olivia de Havilland turns 94 today. Happy Birthday, Olivia.

I had interviewed Olivia de Havilland in 1989, while I was conducting research for the biography of George Cukor, published as Master of Elegance (William Morrow, 1994). It was Cukor who cast her as Melanie in “Gone with the Wind” and then continued to work with her long after he was fired by producer David O. Selznick.

Helen Mirren stars in "Love Ranch," directed by her husband-director Taylor Hackford (Ray). The film is released by E1 Entertainment on June 30.

“It was a rather beautifully written character which was why I wanted to play her,” recalls Helen Mirren, who won the 2006 Best Actress Oscar for "The Queen," about her reaction to the role of Grace on first reading. “She’s very tough at the beginning, very harsh and cynical,” she continues, “and in the process of the film she kind of reawakens. She re-finds her humanity in a way.”

“This one really appealed to me,” says Mirren before delineating the many levels of interest. “I love the subject matter, I love the milieu, I love the period -- the 70s. Taylor has always loved boxing and it has a very strong boxing theme, and it’s got a great role for me. So it was the first script really that had come our way that really appealed to both of us.”

“She’s a very good Madame and a very successful Madame,” says Mirren about her character,  “But she’s coming to the end of her comfort zone within the world that she works in. She really has had enough of it.”

Working with Joe Pesci

“He’s an incredible professional,” says Mirren about her leading man Joe Pesci. “Joe’s also a wonderful musician, and of course he’s got that incredible body of film work. But the other great thing about Joe is that he’s also a kind of a loose cannon. He’s kept his approach to performance very alive, and very, very much of-the-moment. And I love working with that kind of person. It’s very inspiring, and it pushes you into a kind of spontaneity, which I really enjoy.”

Unknown co-star Sergio Peris-Mencheta

“He’s such an incredibly charismatic actor,” says Mirren in assessing her relatively unknown co-star. “He, like me, comes from a theater tradition, so we have that in common, which makes us both work in a certain way. I can’t wait to see his performance on the screen – he’s really extraordinary.”

Entertaining role

Says Mirren about watching the boxing sequences from ringside, “I was just so full of admiration for the two guys, Bo and Sergio, doing the boxing. They were absolute heroes through all of that. It was so hard; it was so exhausting for them. You know we shot in three days what a normal film would probably take two weeks to shoot, if not three to four weeks. And it was achieved in three days, and it was a monumental achievement. It exhausted everyone. But I did find it very exciting.”

American accent

“It’s very weird,” admits Mirren who is no stranger to the US. “I live in America, I have American stepsons, an American husband, and I find it so difficult. Once I knuckled down to it, and I made myself work at it -- I had a great dialogue coach from here in Albuquerque -- once I kind of got it I can slip in and out of it quite easily. But I was very self-conscious at first especially because Taylor and my stepsons would laugh at me because they’re not used to hearing me sound like that.“

June 26, 2010 – Today Film Independent, the non-profit arts organization that produces the Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival, announced its 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival award winners at a brunch at CHAYA Downtown.  Audience award winners will be announced tomorrow afternoon at the Closing Night film, Despicable Me.  The Los Angeles Film Festival, presented by The Los Angeles Times, with its central hub at L.A. LIVE, began Thursday, June 17 and will end on Sunday, June 27. 

“There were thousands of movie fans at the festival this year, discovering new stories from our talented filmmakers,” said Film Independent Executive Director Dawn Hudson.  “We are delighted to have the support of the Los Angeles film-going community for these films and their creators”

The two top juried awards of the Los Angeles Film Festival are the Narrative Award and Documentary Award, each carrying an unrestricted $50,000 cash prize, funded by Film Independent, for the winning film’s director.  The awards were established by the Festival encourage independent filmmakers to pursue their artistic ambitions.

"In a year that celebrated an exhilarating spectrum of American and international cinema, it's so fitting that these jury awards reflect the incredible diversity of the Festival," said Festival Director Rebecca Yeldham.

The Narrative Award recognizes the finest narrative film in competition at the Festival and went to Pernille Fischer Christensen for A Family (En Familie).  The Documentary Award recognizes the finest documentary film in competition at the Festival and went to J. Clay Tweel for Make Believe.

The award for Best Ensemble Performance in the Narrative Competition went to Sabrina Lloyd, James Urbaniak, Lynn Cohen, Harry Chase, Nate Smith and Kamel Boutros for their performance in Adam Reid’s Hello Lonesome.  Given to an actor or actors from an official selection in the Narrative Competition, this is the seventh year the award has been given at the Festival. 

The award for Best Narrative Short Film went to Pablo Larcuen’s My Invisible Friend.  The award for Best Documentary Short Film went to Tomasz Wolski’s The Lucky One.  Beomsik Shimbe Shim’s Wonder Hospital won the award for Best Animated Short Film.

The Narrative Feature Competition jury was comprised of director Charles Burnett, screenwriter/producer Larry Karaszewski, and LA Weekly film critic Ella Taylor.  The Documentary Feature Competition jury was comprised of director/actress Karen Moncrief, director Arthur Dong, and film critic and journalist Robert Abele.  The Shorts Competition jury was comprised of writer/performer Sandra Tsing Loh, actor Andrew Garfield, and director Tommy O’Haver.

The 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival screened over 200 feature films, shorts, and music videos, representing more than 40 countries. This year, the Festival received more than 4,700 submissions from filmmakers around the world.  The final selections represent 28 World, North American, and U.S. premieres, which more than doubled from 2009.  The number of films competing in the narrative and documentary competition categories also increased this year from 13 to 18, of which half are World premieres.

The Festival kicked off on Thursday, June 17 with the Opening Night film The Kids Are All Right, directed by Lisa Cholodenko.  Summit Entertainment’s The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, directed by David Slade, had it’s world premiere at the Festival on Thursday, June 24.  The Closing Night film selection was Universal Pictures’ Despicable Me, directed by Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin.

In lieu of one Centerpiece Premiere, this year’s Festival held a number of high-profile Gala Screenings, which included: Sony Pictures Classics’ Animal Kingdom, directed by David Michod; Fox Searchlight’s Cyrus, directed by Jay & Mark Duplass; the world premiere of Mahler on the Couch, directed by Percy and Felix Adlon; the North American premiere of Revolución, a series of short films directed by Mariana Chenillo, Fernando Eimbcke, Amat Escalante, Gael García Bernal, Rodrigo García, Diego Luna, Gerardo Naranjo, Rodrigo Piá, Carlos Reygadas, and Patricia Riggen; and Paramount Vantage’s Waiting for Superman, directed by Davis Guggenheim.

In addition, the Festival held Conversations with Ben Affleck, Sylvester Stallone, John Lithgow, Roger Corman, Christopher Nolan, and Edgar Wright, with panelists and moderators including J.J. Abrams, Jeremy Renner, Curtis Hanson, Joe Dante, Peter Fonda, Peter Bogdanovich, Julie Corman, and Elvis Mitchell.  Coffee Talks, Tech Talks, Poolside Chats at the JW Marriot Pool at L.A. LIVE, the new Seize the Power: Marketing & DIY(stribution) Symposium, and free outdoor anniversary screenings of Desperately Seeking Susan and Back to the Future were held throughout the ten days.     

Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow was this year’s Guest Director of the 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival.  In her role as Guest Director, Bigelow attended the 9th annual Filmmaker Retreat at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, California, a gathering of Festival filmmakers, special invited artists and Festival staff. Jonathan Gold, Quincy Jones and Paul Reubens served as this year’s Artists in Residence.  As Artists in Residence, each programmed an event that inspired their work.  Jonathan Gold selected Katsuyuki Motohiro’s Udon, followed by a conversation about food and film, Quincy Jones selected Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple, followed by a conversation about movies and music, and Paul Reubens chose Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take It With You, followed by a conversation about classics and comedy.

I have been fortunate to make several films about North America’s neglected “backyard”--Central and South America.

David Slade is the director of "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse," starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner. The film is being released on June 30 by Summit Entertainment.

A Directorial Challenge

“What attracted me to this project was that it is a great story and a tremendous challenge for me as a filmmaker. I don’t like doing the same thing over and over again, because I learn from being challenged. On one level this was the biggest challenge out there - to make a film of this scope, in this amount of time, and to go into a different genre essentially. Yes, I've done a vampire film, but Eclipse is a very different kind of thing. This is a romantic story, which swings from a darker more abject feeling to very pure romantic scenes. To do very emotional scenes was a huge challenge and fun and a way to grow. But most importantly, I'm always looking for a great story and now, having read all of the books, Eclipse is my favorite story. So I think we're blessed with the best story, and directors like good stories cause we know that most of our job is done already,” laughs Slade. 

“Eclipse is one of the broader stories. I think that New Moon was very sophisticated in its involvement of emotions between the three characters,” comments Slade. “But what I wanted to do with Eclipse, because it had so many larger scale stories, was to go for a more cinematic approach to the film. Eclipse is packed with story and a lot of epic things that happen. It's a big thick book. So, I felt that this particular film had to have a really cinematic edge to it.”

Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg

“If I’m going to shoot a certain way, it's important to, wherever possible, write it into the script. I would show my storyboards to Melissa and she would incorporate those storyboards into the writing,” says Slade. “ Sometimes we'd talk about character and the specifics of ideas and back story. Melissa has a tremendous understanding of story and character, and she is just really fast and smart, really got an idea very quickly when I’d be trying to describe something aesthetically. Then we'd all get on the phone with Stephenie Meyer and run these ideas by her

and she’d give us great insight. Melissa was really a great brainstorming partner to get this epic story told. When we received Stephenie's approval, we felt like that's the last word on the subject, because this is her universe.” 

The Characters

“Edward is a good ideal for the pure true love that does exist in the world. Then Jacob is this more human love, which has flaws and faults, but it's still honest,” says director David Slade. “I think one of the things that is so attractive about these stories is that they do postulate the idea of true love in a culture where it's not very common. True love's a wonderful thing and sadly it's not been hugely abundant and apparent, especially in the media. But, it is difficult to make a great story out of something as simple as pure love, because usually, great stories come from great conflicts. What Stephenie's done so cleverly is make a great conflict, but not at the expense of true love, which is one of the reasons I personally believe these films and these books are so universally successful and popular.”

“We have the idea that love is dangerous, and vampires are dangerous too, but let’s make them somehow acceptable and let’s make them good. Let’s make them aspirational,” adds Slade. “Let’s allow our female protagonists to have choices. Again, I think these things are not common. The saga empowers the female protagonist to not have sex and for that to be okay.  That isn't to say that sex is bad, but it is to say that there could be a natural rhythm to a relationship that’s okay. I think that also it’s very attractive to the people who read these books and I find that to be culturally very healthy. After all we are living in a culture where women are

very overtly sexualized, particularly young women.”

“There's a lot of talk about Bella's choice in this film, that her choice is going to have

consequences, and of course it is. You do not come back from this choice. If you make the choice to become immortal, you do not become mortal again. It's one of the more extreme choices that a character in a fantasy story could choose. The story positions Bella to have to transform to make that choice. This is something that’s easily missed and I think it's important and it's summed up in the closing scene of the film,” says Slade.

“Bella has to emotionally transform to be able to make this choice fully and with all of her heart,” states Slade. “The true love that she has for Jacob, however misguided that love is, it still exists and it creates conflict for her. So this choice has tremendous consequences, but it is possible to make these choices and transform into a different kind of person, a person that can make this choice and live with this choice and this is what ultimately Bella is able to do, but she is only able to do it through going through this story. At the end, she understands that she has faced

all of these dangers and done it easily, and it surprised her. So she comes to this conclusion that she belongs in Edward’s world, much more so than she belongs in the human world. I think that makes it easier for her to make that choice - in fact, it makes it impossible for her not to make that choice.”

The actors

Slade found the individual rehearsal time with actor of paramount importance. “We're talking about lots and lots of characters in Eclipse and there's a certain degree of inheritance, history that is honored. A lot of actors means a lot of rehearsal and individual attention,” explains Slade. “As a director, I try and see every actor individually. In the early stages of pre-production, I would meet each actor on a regular basis and talk about each scene. For example, Peter Facinelli could tell me about how important the scarves are to his character and why. I want to be fully aware of whatever the little detail is that each actor brings.”

“Essentially I block each scene out with each actor separately, so when we come together as an ensemble, it makes it much fresher because everybody has a different point of view and the truth of the scene will just arise,” adds Slade. “I think it would be a folly to treat the Cullens as one thing - they're all individual characters. So, I spoke with each one about their characters, their interactions with other characters, what they like, and what they disliked about them.”

Slade says, “I thoroughly enjoyed the story and it gave us great insight and inspired

location choices and the tailoring of scenes. I think fans are going to love the fascinating details involved in the loves, fears and actions of an emerging vampire.”

Unique Universe

“The Twilight universe is completely unique. I cannot think of anything like this really,” says Slade. “The phenomenon is so huge and so disarmingly unlike what you'd expect, there really isn't a parallel. I came into this film not really understanding that. To a degree, it hadn't yet reached critical mass at that point. I don't think anybody could be prepared really for it as a filmmaker. When I was in talks to direct Eclipse and New Moon hadn't come out, we knew it was a huge big thing. But when New Moon came out, it just exploded in ways that I couldn't have possibly have imagined.”

Helen Mirren stars in "Love Ranch," directed by her husband-director Taylor Hackford (Ray). The film is released by E1 Entertainment on June 30.

“It was a rather beautifully written character which was why I wanted to play her,” recalls Helen Mirren, who won the 2006 Best Actress Oscar for "The Queen," about her reaction to the role of Grace on first reading. “She’s very tough at the beginning, very harsh and cynical,” she continues, “and in the process of the film she kind of reawakens. She re-finds her humanity in a way.”

“This one really appealed to me,” says Mirren before delineating the many levels of interest. “I love the subject matter, I love the milieu, I love the period -- the 70s. Taylor has always loved boxing and it has a very strong boxing theme, and it’s got a great role for me. So it was the first script really that had come our way that really appealed to both of us.”

“She’s a very good Madame and a very successful Madame,” says Mirren about her character,  “But she’s coming to the end of her comfort zone within the world that she works in. She really has had enough of it.”

Working with Joe Pesci

“He’s an incredible professional,” says Mirren about her leading man Joe Pesci. “Joe’s also a wonderful musician, and of course he’s got that incredible body of film work. But the other great thing about Joe is that he’s also a kind of a loose cannon. He’s kept his approach to performance very alive, and very, very much of-the-moment. And I love working with that kind of person. It’s very inspiring, and it pushes you into a kind of spontaneity, which I really enjoy.”

Unknown co-star Sergio Peris-Mencheta

“He’s such an incredibly charismatic actor,” says Mirren in assessing her relatively unknown co-star. “He, like me, comes from a theater tradition, so we have that in common, which makes us both work in a certain way. I can’t wait to see his performance on the screen – he’s really extraordinary.”

Entertaining role

Says Mirren about watching the boxing sequences from ringside, “I was just so full of admiration for the two guys, Bo and Sergio, doing the boxing. They were absolute heroes through all of that. It was so hard; it was so exhausting for them. You know we shot in three days what a normal film would probably take two weeks to shoot, if not three to four weeks. And it was achieved in three days, and it was a monumental achievement. It exhausted everyone. But I did find it very exciting.”

American accent

“It’s very weird,” admits Mirren who is no stranger to the US. “I live in America, I have American stepsons, an American husband, and I find it so difficult. Once I knuckled down to it, and I made myself work at it -- I had a great dialogue coach from here in Albuquerque -- once I kind of got it I can slip in and out of it quite easily. But I was very self-conscious at first especially because Taylor and my stepsons would laugh at me because they’re not used to hearing me sound like that.“

Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger are the directors of "Restrepo," the new war doc which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this past January. The film, which surrounds the Afghan-American war, is being released by National Geographic Entertainment on July 2, 2010.

How did you come across this particular assignment – what brought you there? 

Sebastian: We were on assignment for Vanity Fair and ABC News. After an embed with Battle Company in 2005, I’d had the idea of following one platoon for an entire deployment and both writing a book and making a documentary about their experience.

We hear the initial reactions of the soldiers upon hearing that they’ve been assigned to the Korengal Valley. What was your initial reaction?

Sebastian: When I stepped off the helicopter in June ’07 I was stunned by the ruggedness of the terrain – and the beauty. Then again, I didn’t have to spend a year there, and I assumed the fighting would be minimal, which of course it wasn’t.

What kind of advice/protection did the soldiers offer you while you were shooting? 

Did you receive any training/guidelines (for your safety) prior to shipping out?

Sebastian: They knew Tim and I had been in plenty of wars before this, so they didn’t really offer any advice. Once or twice during combat I was advised where good cover was (it depends on what direction they’re shooting from).

Did you take turns with the camera?

Tim: We each had a camera and filmed more or less of our own volition. If I was busy taking stills, Sebastian would make sure to cover the camerawork. There were scenes where we were both shooting, and we would divide things up in a crude manner – I’d take the wides, he’d take the tights, or I’d shoot the Afghans while he shot the Americans.

What limits were placed on your access?

Tim: No limits at all on access; none. There was a stated agreement that we would not shoot wounded American soldiers – or would get their okay later – and I think there was an understanding that we would be very sensitive about filming the dead. The army asks to review a rough cut later for security and privacy concerns, but they had no issues.

Did you stay the entire duration of their deployment?

Tim: No, we did five trips each, sometimes together, sometimes not. Each trip lasted around a month.

How much footage was shot vs. what made it into the film? Did you ship footage back as you went along?

Sebastian: We shot 150 hours of footage, and we’d bring our footage back on each trip and copy it and log it. We also shot around forty hours of interviews at the soldiers’ base in Italy about three months after the deployment.

Who are these soldiers? Did you get any distinct impression of them, where they came from, why they were there? Any specific qualities that come to mind?

Tim: No one had followed a platoon for an entire duration of their deployment, so we became incredibly close to many of the soldiers. They came from a variety of backgrounds and had joined the army for a myriad of competing reasons. Some said they needed to get out of their parents’ home and saw the army as offering them independence, others that they were seeking a rite of passage and new experiences. Many didn't think they had many options open to them and saw the army as the best opportunity on offer. They came from all over the U.S. – many from Texas and California, others from faraway places like Guam.

What kind of dynamic did you have with your subjects?

Sebastian: Each trip the dynamic got more and more relaxed and comfortable. It became clear to the soldiers that we were not doing a political story and that we were comfortable in that environment – and that we were willing to take the same risks they were and endure the same discomforts. Tim broke his leg in combat; I ripped my Achilles tendon. Then I got blown up, but none of those things kept us from going back out there.

After being under fire for a sustained period, how would you describe the effect it has on you? Did you notice any change in the soldiers over the course of your time with them?

Sebastian: Both of us have been war reporters for some time now, so this was not our first experience being shot at. Being in a combat zone can be both exhilarating and terrifying, combined with long stretches of boredom. Things appear very simple in a war zone as the clutter of daily living recedes with the larger equation of being killed or staying alive. Mix this with being drip fed adrenalin, and inevitably it's

going to make “coming back” incredibly difficult. I think this is something that the soldiers experienced, and to a lesser extent we also.

In one scene, we see a soldier making small talk during serious acts of war. It’s quite affecting and an interesting choice. Why did you choose to include it? Were there other moments like this that struck you?

Tim: There's a great emphasis in war reporting on capturing the actual “bang-bang” fighting of war – and many reporters feel that any work would be incomplete without a sense of this “action.” We were no different, but because there was an incredible amount of fighting going on in the Korengal Valley, recording the actual firefights got quite boring. What was infinitely more interesting and revealing was how the soldiers carried on in these situations. People who haven't experienced war inevitably base their understanding of it through the mediated versions of news or Hollywood. These representations are often limited and can't quite reveal the humor, boredom and confusion inherent in combat. It's something we felt was important to represent.

The film shows how multi-faceted the role of the captain is with respect to his team and the village/elders – being able not only to advance the military goal but also having to communicate the humanitarian aspects, too. Were there any dynamics of the platoon that you hadn’t anticipated that you were especially glad to have captured?

Sebastian: I was unprepared for just how smart and dedicated the officers were, and many of the enlisted men as well. I was also amazed by how open and welcoming they were with us – the press. It was not what I had anticipated.

Any interactions with the village people/elders that didn’t make it into the film that you wish you could have included?

Tim: There were many, many scenes of all types that we were heartbroken not to include in the film. There were very funny moments in the “shuras” – the meetings with the elders – and also very intense moments when someone was very angry. There were several scenes of locals saying how much they hated the Taliban and gave up information on them, and other scenes where they clearly hated the Americans and wanted them to leave. All of it shows the complexity of this kind of war, but we couldn’t put everything into the movie.

The film is very balanced and doesn’t lead you, but rather just shows you how it is. Could you describe whether you had any guiding principles about how/what you shot as well as how you edited, how you shaped the film ultimately?

Sebastian: We were not interested in the political dimensions of the war, only the experience of the soldiers, so we limited ourselves to the things soldiers had access to. We did not ask any generals why they were in the Korengal, for example, because soldiers don’t have that opportunity, either. Our guiding principle was that we would only have people in the movie who were fighting in the Korengal. It was that principle that excluded Tim and me from the movie as well… and prevented us from using an outside narrator.

Tim: It was a conscious choice. We are journalists, and as such, we are not supposed to “lead” people to a certain opinion. That is called “advocacy,” and it certainly has its special place in the media world, but as journalists, it’s not something we wanted to engage in. 

Jay and Mark Duplass are the writers/directors of "Cyrus," starring John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill. The film is being released by Fox Searchlight on June 18. 

Working with Jay and Mark Duplass has always been a unique experience for both cast and crew members, and the brothers saw no reason to change their idiosyncratic approach for their first Hollywood film. Their unconventional methods ranged from shooting the script in chronological order to allowing the actors to develop their own dialogue and blocking. Even the most experienced hands were surprised and energized by it.

“I think we should write a book about the ‘Duplassian Method,’ because it is fascinating on every level,” says co-producer Chrisann Verges. “For me, the most wonderful thing about the way they worked was that we shot in script order. We could see the story unfolding and watching dailies was like a soap opera. What’s happening to Molly and Cyrus and John today? The actors told me they really enjoyed that because they were able to grow in their relationships, much as you would in real life.”

Giving power to the actors

In another major break from more traditional filmmaking, the brothers don’t set up specific action for their shots. “We bring the camera to the actors as opposed to bringing the actors to the camera,” says Jay. “We found that we couldn’t get the performances we were looking for by putting actors on marks, so we started fostering realistic experiences and capturing them like documentary filmmakers. In the beginning, Mark was holding a boom, I was holding the camera, and it was all literally going down right in front of us.” 

As irregular as that technique may seem, it creates the immediacy the Duplasses—and their actors—value. “I love the way they use the camera,” say Marisa Tomei. “A lot of the time they had two cameras going at once, which allowed them to catch everything as it happened the first time. It was really great for the actors, because we were able to be right there at the same exact moment as our scene partners.” 

To further that sense of realism, the brothers flood the set with light so the actors can go where they want to go, without worrying about hitting their marks. “We had to spend a lot of time rigging the set,” says Verges. “But once it’s rigged, the actors can get in there and do their scenes. And once we started shooting, we shot a lot. Since we were using an HD camera, we didn’t have to be concerned with how much or how long we shot. We might shoot five hours of footage a day.”

As recently as five years ago, those long takes wouldn’t have been possible, but the advent of high definition systems, like the RED camera used on CYRUS, gives filmmakers amazing flexibility. “We did 15-minute takes in this movie and we got gold by not interrupting them,” says Jay. “Plus, shooting 35 millimeter film, you have a giant beast of a camera on your shoulders. I’m one of the camera operators and I’m not a strong person, so that was a big part of the decision to go with RED as well.” 

Improv

But it’s the improvisation that is truly the heart of the brothers’ unique brand of filmmaking. “We would start with the script and then go into improv,” says Verges. “Maybe the first third of a take was scripted, but just when you thought the scene was over, they’d let the camera run a little bit more and get these great nuggets at the end.”

And while that’s a big part of what makes their films special, it also means the filmmakers must be able to rely on their actors to know the characters inside and out. “These actors are really intelligent,” says Jay. “They know what they’re doing and they understand scripts and storytelling a lot better than most people. What Mark and I do is give them a very specific objective for each scene. For instance, ‘You are very angry with this person and your job is to get out of this room.’ 

“And then we secretly tell the other person, ‘Whatever you do, do not let this person out of the room,’” he continues. “If you just go with those two objectives, you’re going to have a scene, and if you have really good actors who understand the story and the characters, you’re going to see amazing, crazy things happen. The language and specifics and the subtleties change on every take.”

For the actors, improvisation brings both freedom and responsibility. “Once you start improvising, the characters take on a life of their own,” says Reilly. “Sometimes they leave the script behind. Most of the time, we did the scripted scene once or twice, and then we changed things around or looked for new jokes. A lot of times we never even did the scripted version. We used it as a blueprint for what was supposed to happen in the scene. I like improvising, but it’s also kind of like screenwriting on your feet.”  

Evaluating the method

After each day’s shooting, the brothers reviewed the footage and made decisions about the progression of the story based on what they felt worked. “Mark and I have learned to sublimate our preconceived notions and do what’s best for the movie,” says Jay.  

The result is a very personal film that reflects the Duplass brothers’ singular worldview. “This movie feels very homemade and I think that’s their intention,” says Jonah Hill. “And when I say ‘homemade,’ I mean it’s not like something you get at The Gap—it’s the sweater your grandma made you. It’s not like any other film I’ve ever made.” 

“I hope that people experience something they can connect to,” says Jay Duplass. “And I hope we frame it in a way that makes them laugh. Life can be very painful, so we try to put it up on screen in a way that makes people laugh at the whole situation.” 

“The main reason an audience comes to see a movie like this is to see something that is as true to life as you can get on film,” adds Mark Duplass. “Our goal is to deliver something that makes the audience feel like we put a microphone in their bedrooms and recorded the last conversation they had. We are trying to understand the human condition, but in a way that’s funny and makes us feel like we’re not alone. There are some very quirky characters that we’ve built here, but the truth is, they’re a lot like us.”

One of the most talked-about movie at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, and the winner of the Teddy Award for Best Feature Film at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival, "The Kids Are All Right" is directed by Lisa Cholodenko ("High Art," "Laurel Canyon") from an original screenplay that she wrote with Stuart Blumberg ("Keeping the Faith").

The gifted director Christopher Nolan has told the "Bellfast Telegraph" that his new, eagerly-awaited movie, "Inception," is his "James Bond" movie, with touches of his first success, the noir-thriller "Memento."

Trailer: http://emanuellevy.com/videos/view.cfm?id=220

Motivation to adapt the book and direct it as a film

I read Winter's Bone in one sitting. I had not done that with any book in a long time. I wanted to see how this girl, Ree, was going to survive. It felt like an old fashioned type of tale, with a character I couldn't help but root for, and with an atmosphere my mind was actively trying to conjure. It also felt fresh in that I do not often get a chance to imagine life like Ree's, whose circumstances lie outside the confines of my own.

Read our film review: http://emanuellevy.com/search/details.cfm?id=15103

Working the author Daniel Woodrell

To launch this project, Anne Rosellini, the producer, and I met with Daniel Woodrell in his home base in Southern Missouri and embarked on our first scout with him. We looked at creeks, caves, and homes of all kinds. We photographed yards, roads, and woods. Katie Woodrell, Daniel's wife, arranged for us to meet singers, storytellers, folklorists, and all manner of scholars and practitioners steeped in Ozark culture--past and present. Also, we had an informative and heartbreaking discussion with the sheriff about what the meth problem has been like over the last two decades. After this visit, we were very enthused. We had also learned that to move forward we would need a guide, a local person who could carefully and respectfully introduce us to a community that might, over time, be persuaded to work with us.

Actress Jennifer Lawrence

Jen took this role into her heart and worked very hard to enter Ree's world. She used what she's got from her Kentucky roots--family that could help her with hunting, wood chopping, and other skills she wanted to have for the shoot. And to my ear, she already had a beautiful way of pronouncing American English that seemed right for Ree. Though the script had some very foreign phrases for us, Jen was familiar with some of them, having heard similar phrasing growing up. When she arrived in Missouri before the shoot, she worked closely with the life models and the family on whose property we shot the film. She learned how to operate the equipment, learned all the dog's names, and bonded with their children. In her role, she plays an older sister to a boy and a girl. Jen developed her own way of working with the kids. She made things real for them. She could also improvise and rehearse with them to put them at ease. Jen is very invested in working with her fellow actors and crew, which means she is always learning, absorbing, and challenging herself. I feel very lucky that we had the chance to make this film together.

Ree as a character

Ree is focused on her commitment to see her brother and sister through their childhoods. She is willing to fight to keep her family from falling apart. I see her as a lioness trying to protect her pride. She is also a teenager who experiences helpless feelings when adults around her make deadly choices, and are drawn down into a way of life that destroys them. She can't do much to get her dad out of the meth world or help her uncle with his chemical dependency and nihilism, yet she still cares about them. That is wrenching for any young person. The only thing left for her is to try to be different.

Like many a movie hero, Ree must struggle. We don't get to see much of her teenage side. We never really get to see her have a good time with her friend Gail or flirt with boys. Throughout the story she is single-minded in what she needs to do. The search for her father is all-consuming. There is a deadline. In this heightened context, we see that Ree does not take "no" for an answer. In matters of justice, I love characters who don't take no. I want to know how they get that resolve. We may not know what fuels Ree, but we want to witness a girl who shows this much strength of character. Heroes are often terse and aloof, and I guess that's what keeps one thinking--"hmm, why does she go on, why doesn't she give up? Where does this kind of determination come from?"

Creating a realistic environment

We started by doing a search for a family living in a setting close to the one described in the book. We knew we had to find a family who would let us see their house, their clothes, their objects, their dinner, who would let us see them hunt, take care of their animals, and fix day-to-day problems as they arose. We ultimately found this family and neighbors who were willing to answer our questions and show us their day to day lives.

In order to create the feeling of a natural environment, we shot entirely on location on a real family's property. The costume department exchanged garments with local people who were willing to trade new Carharts for well-used ones. Real life is frayed, frugal, dusted with soot from stoves, heavy dust from the hardscrabble surface of the earth in these Southern Missouri counties. We had to work with these potent forces of the environment. Also, by casting many roles with people from the area, we had people correcting dialect and watching our backs in general, making sure we didn't go down any misguided paths.

Meeting challenges

Nicholas Stoller is the writer/director of "Get Him to the Greek," starring Jonah Hill and Russell Brand. The film, which is a spin-off of Stoller's 2008 hit "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," is being released June 4 by Universal.

When Stoller approached Jonah Hill and Russell Brand about partnering for another project, he found both men very receptive to the idea. Stoller recalls: “After Sarah Marshall, I had a meeting with Russell and pitched him this idea. Then I pitched Jonah the idea, and they both thought it’d be fun to work on a movie together.”

Read Review: http://emanuellevy.com/office/articles/edit.cfm?id=15753

Continuing the Story

For the filmmaker, Hill’s character proved to be more of a challenge to write than his comedy side- kick. Stoller explains: “Jonah’s part in Forgetting Sarah Marshall was very much a broad character, so broad it would have been hard to sustain a whole movie. It wouldn’t have made sense to have him play the same character.” Stoller decided to craft Aaron as a young record company executive who had three days to wrangle a rock icon from London to Los Angeles.

“We wanted to get across that when you imagine hanging out with a rock star, it seems exciting and thrilling,” explains Stoller. “You get to stay up all night and party. We wanted to capture the idea that it just never ends. And Aaron has a great time. Next morning, you wake up and start partying again. There is no end to it. It’s a triangle where it gets more fun, more fun, more fun, then it hits an out-of-control moment, and then it starts to plummet down toward Earth.”

Explains Stoller: “In the intervening years since we saw Aldous in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, he has fallen off the wagon and is a drunk disaster. And to everyone who has an issue with that, I would say that Star Trek reinvented its entire universe in the last film.” He laughs: “They have 50 years of people memorizing every detail of the Star Trek universe. So, I don’t feel too bad about it.”

Improv and Diddy

“We always shoot the script,” Stoller explains. “But we then do improv off of that. Rodney and I write lines and throw the actors lines and suggestions.”

Sean "Diddy" Combs also joins the cast. “Sean has never worked with our process,” Stoller says, “which is very specific. At the beginning, we would tell him, ‘Don’t worry about the script; just do this line.’ Jonah would work with him while we were shooting, and it worked great. Sean was very much a perfectionist. I would be satisfied with a take and he would say, ‘No, I want to do one more.’ He was

always right.”

Changing Locales

From his inception of the film, Stoller wanted to open up the adventure geographically. The major constant for Aaron and Aldous as they travel is the endless partying in countless clubs and hotel rooms. But it wasn’t enough to shoot in real clubs in distant locations; the team wanted every costume to have the look and feel of each locale. Commends Stoller: “Leesa Evans, our costume designer, did an amazing job establishing a look in each city.”

Superstar genetic engineers Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) specialize in splicing DNA from different animals to create incredible new hybrids. Now they want to use human DNA in a hybrid that could revolutionize science and medicine. But when the pharmaceutical company that funds their research forbids it, Clive and Elsa secretly take their boldest experimentation underground--risking their careers by pushing the boundaries of science to serve their own curiosity and ambition.

Derek Cianfrance is the director and co-writer of "Blue Valentine," starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. The film is screening at the Cannes International Film Festival this month and is being released in the U.S. by The Weinstein Company on December 31.

Review http://emanuellevy.com/search/details.cfm?id=15116

What was your inspiration for the film?

When I was a child I had two nightmares—nuclear war and my parent's divorce. This film confronts the second fear.

How did the film get off the ground? What was the process of getting the film made?

11 years of starts and stops. I distinctly remember printing out the first draft of the script in the summer of 1998, and believing we would be shooting by the fall of that year. 

I met Michelle Williams in the spring of 2003, and I tried, in vain, to get the film off the ground with her. Then I met Ryan in 2005, and we tried to get the film going in a couple of different scenarios and we just kept running into red lights. Bankruptcy, firings, death, etc., kept the film in a constant state of limbo. For a long time, the film felt cursed. 

I met my producers Jamie Patricof and Alex Orlovsky (Hunting Lane Films) and Lynette Howell (Silverwood Films) during this time, and I  felt very lucky to have them show such commitment to the film. They tried as hard as I tried; they got heartbroken as much as I did. We suffered together.

We just kept believing in it. Kept focusing on it. I kept watching the movie in my head over and over and over again. Kept preparing. Kept planning. Stayed inspired. Practiced. Kept working with the actors to make it better.

Once the opportunity came, when the light turned green, we just went straight into it and somehow we managed to turn our curse into a blessing.

I implemented a rigorous process which I had been preparing for those 11 years. And I was thankful for the time that I was forced to wait. The film is better for it.

I built the process around the need to be surprised and the need to make a living, breathing, adult film.

We made the film we wanted to make.

What is your favorite scene in the film?

So many. I can't pick one.

However, I will talk about how my favorite moments in the film are illuminated by the invisible, yet tangible connection between Ryan and Michelle.

I distinctly remember the first scene we shot with them together on camera—when Dean comes over with flowers to dinner at Cindy's parent's house. I was super nervous, because in making a portrait of an intimate relationship, everything depends on chemistry. If it is not there, then you have to resort to gimmicks and tricks to create a screen bond. Needless to say, I exhaled deeply when I saw them together for the first time. There was a magic spell between them. I embraced it, and we all were witnesses.

What was the most difficult scene to shoot?

Shooting the movie was like a vacation. All the hard work went into prepping the film and then the marathon edit. Shooting the film was the best time of my life. If I had to choose one, I’d say all the scenes in the future room because the scenes were relentlessly intimate and the space was cramped and claustrophobic. The shower scene, which we shot over two days, was particularly challenging. First off, we had two naked actors completely exposed in a slippery shower and two cameras, two operators, a boom operator, an A.D., and myself, all in a little bathroom. We were shooting long takes and the cameras kept steaming up and after 20 minutes they would shut down because of the heat. On top of that, the particular soap, provided by the hotel, was very harsh to the actor’s skin. Both Ryan and Michelle were covered in body rashes from continually having to wash themselves over and over. They never complained though and were champs the whole way through. However, by the 8th hour of shooting, on the second day, they were definitely ready to get the hell out of the bathroom. These, as planned, were the takes we used in the film.

The film is told in past and present moments with the past moments chronicled over a number of months and the present over just 24 hours. Why did you decide to tell the story this way?

The film deals in contrast: man/woman; love/hate; light/darkness; film/video, etc.

This same duality lives in the film's temporal structure. I wanted the film to play like a memory, with the past being long-term memory and the present being short-term memory. I’ve always been fascinated by what time does to experience. It seems to amplify it and embellish it. A simple moment can be remembered as something momentous. At the same time, I am amazed when time and moments fall through my grasp in my present existence. For instance, when I’m driving, 20 minutes feel like 20 seconds. Where does the time go?

I wanted to deal with these amplifications of time, and ellipses of time, in a cinematic way.

Describe the casting process and why location played such an important role in the film?

From the beginning I had always said that I wanted this film to be honest and to feature real people and real situations, rather than actors, whenever possible.

Location scouting and casting became part of the same process.

To cast the movers, we visited a number of moving companies in the New York area, not only looking for the ideal location, but also for the ideal movers. We auditioned the folks who worked at each of them. Jamie Benatti, whose family has owned Steinway movers for over 50 years, turned out to be the perfect boss, and one of his employees, Marshall Johnson, fit the role of Charlie (now Marshall).

We scheduled the moving scenes on May 1st, when our cinematographer Andrij Parekh was moving from his one-bedroom apt. in the East Village to Park Slope. We hired Steinway to do the move. Ryan reported to Steinway that morning, and worked with Jamie and Marshall all day moving Andrij's possessions into his new home.

Similarly, we filmed all of the retirement home scenes at Wayne Delaware Manor, an assisted-living facility in Pennsylvania. All of the background lived there, and we kept a low profile, taking over an empty room to film our scenes.

In the same way, we filmed the abortion scenes in a real Planned Parenthood clinic, using real personnel. Michelle went through the entire process in character, as though she was a regular person undergoing the procedure. In order to heighten the sense of intimacy, the crew was limited to me, as camera operator, and Mariela Comitini, our 1st A.D. as boom operator.

On that day we shot 5000’ of super 16mm film before lunch.

As one of the film’s screenwriters, what's the essence of the film and its characters are about?

Honesty. Beautiful ugliness. Terrible beauty. Love.

From Oscar-Award nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson, who made one of the most poignant docus about the Iraq War, “No End In Sight,” comes “Inside Job,” the first chronicle to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008.

The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, Inside Job” traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia.

Narrated by Matt Damon, “Inside Job” was made on location in the United States, Iceland, England, France, Singapore, and China.

Fergusson’s Goal

My film attempts to provide a comprehensive portrayal of an extremely important and timely subject: the worst financial crisis since the Depression, which continues to haunt us via Europe’s debt problems and global financial instability. It was a completely avoidable crisis; indeed for 40 years after the reforms following the Great Depression, the United States did not have a single financial crisis. However, the progressive deregulation of the financial sector since the 1980s gave rise to an increasingly criminal industry, whose “innovations” have produced a succession of financial crises. Each crisis has been worse than the last; and yet, due to the industry’s increasing wealth and power, each crisis has seen few people go to prison. In the case of this crisis, nobody has gone to prison, despite fraud that caused trillions of dollars in losses. I hope that the film, in less than two hours, will enable everyone to understand the fundamental nature and causes of this problem. It is also my hope that, whatever political opinions individual viewers may have, that after seeing this film we can all agree on the importance of restoring honesty and stability to our financial system, and of holding accountable those to destroyed it.

Interviewees (The Cast)

William Ackman – Managing partner, founder, and CEO of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management. He is known as an activist investor whose 2007 presentation “Who Is Holding the Bag?” was one of the first warnings about the impending crisis.

Daniel Alpert – Founding Managing Director of Westwood Capital with more than 30 years of investment banking experience, and a frequent commentator on economic policy and financial regulation. Jonathan Alpert – Licensed psychotherapist who treats a broad range of issues including career and workplace concerns. His clients include many financial executives and also a number of women who formerly were prostitutes whose clients were financial executives.

John Campbell – Department chair of Harvard University’s Department of Economics. Campbell has received various honors including President, American Finance Association, 2006; Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2000-present; Fellow, Econometric Society, 1990–present, Honorary Fellow, Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, 2008.

Kristin Davis – Best known as the “Madam” to countless investment bankers, Davis was convicted of promoting prostitution and served 4 months on Riker’s Island.

Martin Feldstein – The George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University and President Emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research where he served as President and CEO from 1977-1982 and 1984 – 2008. He was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors in the Reagan Administration. Under George W. Bush’s administration, he was appointed to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He served on the board of both AIG and AIG Financial Products from 1988 -2009.

Jerome Fons –Served as Managing Director of Credit Policy at Moody’s Investor Services, where he was also a member of the Credit Policy Committee. He is currently a consultant specializing in credit risk applications and litigation support.

Barney Frank – Democratic Representative for the state of Massachusetts who has served in the 4th congressional district since 1981. Frank became the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee in 2007 which oversees the entire financial services industry including the securities, insurance, banking, and housing industries.

Robert Gnaizda – General Counsel, Policy Director, and former President of the Greenlining Institute in Berkeley, California. A graduate of Columbia College and Yale Law School, he has been known as an advocate of social justice for over 40 years.

Michael Greenberger - Since July 2001, Michael Greenberger has been a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law where he teaches a course entitled "Futures, Options and Derivatives." He serves as the technical advisor to the Commission of Experts of the President of the United Nations General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System. He was a partner for more than 20 years in the Washington, D.C. law firm, Shea & Gardner, where he served as lead litigation counsel before courts of law nationwide, including the United States Supreme Court. In the Clinton Administration, Greenberger was Director of Trading & Markets for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, reporting to its Chairwoman, Brooksley Born, when Born attempted to regulate derivatives.

Eric Halperin – Special Counsel for Fair Lending at the U.S. Department of Justice and former director of the Washington Office and Litigation at Center for Responsible Lending. Glenn Hubbard – Chief Economic Advisor during the Bush Administration and current Dean of the Columbia University Business School. A supply-side economist, Hubbard was instrumental in the design of the 2003 Bush Tax cuts. The design was heavily opposed by economists. Hubbard is on the board of Met Life, was previously on the board of Capmark, and has consulted to many financial services firms. He has written many articles advocating deregulation of financial services.

Simon Johnson – An expert on financial and economic crises, Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington DC. From March 2007 – August 2008, he was Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He is co-author of the book “13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and The Next Financial Meltdown” and a co-founder of baselinescenario.com.

Christine Lagarde – The French Minister of Finance, Economic Affairs, Industry and Employment. She has also served as France’s Minister of Agriculture and Fishing, as well as Trade Minister. She was the first woman to ever become the Economic Minister of a G8 nation.

Jeffrey Lane – CEO of Modern Bank, and former Chairman and CEO of Bear Stearns Asset Management. Former VP of Lehman Brothers, a member of the Office of the Chairman, Co-Chairman of Lehman Brothers Asset Management and Alternatives Division, and Chairman and CEO of Neuberger Berman, Inc.

Andrew Lo – Harris & Harris Group Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the director of MIT’s Laboratory for Financial Engineering. He is the author of “Hedge Funds: An Analytic Perspective” and co-author of “The Econometrics of Financial Markets” and “A Non-Random Walk Down Wall Street."

Lee Hsien Loong – The current Prime Minister of Singapore, a position he has held since 2004. Previously, he was the Chairman of the Monetary Reserve of Singapore and he also served as Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Trade and Industry, and Minister of Finance.

Andri Magnason – An Icelandic filmmaker and the author of “Dreamland: A Self-Help Manual for a Frightened Nation,” and producer of “Dreamland,” a documentary about Iceland’s environmental and financial problems.

David McCormick – Former Under Secretary for International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Treasury from 2007-2009. Prior to that, he served as Deputy National Security Advisor to the President for International Economic Affairs. Before that, he had been the Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security, and he is currently on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon's Heinz College as a Distinguished Service Professor of Information Technology, Public Policy and Management at the Washington, DC campus. He graduated from West Point, served in the first Gulf War, and then became a software executive before entering government.

Lawrence McDonald - McDonald is a co-writer of “A Colossal Failure of Common Sense,” a book on the fall of Lehman Brothers. From 2004 to 2008, McDonald served as Vice President of Distressed Debt and Convertible Securities Trading at Lehman Brothers.

Harvey Miller – Called “the most prominent bankruptcy lawyer in the nation” by the New York Times, Miller is a partner at Weil, Gotshal and Manges, LLC, where he created the firm’s Business Finance and Restructuring Department specializing in distressed business entities.

Frederic Mishkin – American economist and professor at Columbia Business School, Mishkin was a member of the Board of Governors at the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2008. In 2006, he was paid $124,000 by the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce to write a report praising Iceland’s financial sector.

Charles Morris – Author of “The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers and the Great Credit Crash,” which analyzes the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the economy as a whole. He was the one of the people who predicted the crisis before it happened.

Frank Partnoy – Professor of Law at the University of San Diego specializing in corporate law, corporate finance and financial market regulation. Partnoy previously worked as an investment banker at Credit Suisse First Boston and Morgan Stanley. He is the author of “The Match King: The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals.”

Raghuram Rajan – An economist and Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago. In 2005, while serving as chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), he delivered a controversial paper criticizing the financial sector entitled “Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier” which argued that disaster loomed. The paper, which proved accurate, was aggressively criticized by Larry Summers, then the president of Harvard, and currently director of the National Economic Council in the Obama Administration.

Kenneth Rogoff - Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at Harvard University and the co-author of Foundations of International Macroeconomics. Rogoff has previously worked as Economic Counselor and Director of the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund and served as an economist on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Allan Sloan – Journalist who wrote for Fortune Magazine about the market, the crisis, and the wrongdoing that led to the financial crisis.

Ubini – Professor of Economics at the Stern eng – Chief Advisor to the China Banking George Soros- is a Hungarian-American currency speculator, stock investor, businessman, philanthropist, and political activist. He became known as "the man who broke the bank of England" after he made a reported $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis. He is founder and chair of the Open Society Institute / Soros Foundation.

Eliot Spitzer – Lawyer and former politician. He served as the 54th Governor of New York (Democrat) from January 2007 until his resignation on March 17, 2008. Prior to being elected governor, Spitzer served as New York State Attorney General. While serving as attorney general, Spitzer initiated a series of major lawsuits against all of the major U.S. investment banks, alleging fraud in their handling of stock recommendations, which resulted in settlements totaling $1.4 billion.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn Current Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund and former Minister for Finance, Economy and Industry, France.

Scott Talbott – Top lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable. The Roundtable lobbies on behalf of 100 of the top banks, credit card companies, insurance and securities firms operating in the U.S. Its membership includes many bailed-out banks including Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and PNC.

Gillian Tett – British author and award-winning journalist at the Financial Times, where she is the U.S. managing editor. She is the author of Fool’s Gold, which traced the development of the CDO market and its rthe financial cris Paul Volcker – An American economist who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve under Presidents Carter and Reagan from 1979 – 1987. He currently serves as Chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board under President Obama. Martin Wolf – Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times.

Gylfi Zoega – Faculty Chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Iceland.

Nicole Holofcener is the writer/director of "Please Give," which stars Catherine Keener, Amanda Peet, Rebecca Hall, and Oliver Platt. The film is released April 30 by Sony Classics.  Holofcener has previously helmed Walking and Talking, Lovely & Amazing, and Friends with Money. 

An Oscar-nominated Alter-Ego

Catherine Keener has been Holofcener’s frequent choice of alter-ego in her films. In PLEASE GIVE, Holofcener says, “Catherine’s character is in the midst of figuring out what gives her life meaning and what makes her feel good about herself and bad about herself. Catherine can relate to my own contradictions. Our collaboration has grown; I’m spoiled, because it’s so easy to direct her—it’s so easy for her to direct me!” 

On the Cast

Says Holofcener of her leading man Oliver Platt, “He’s funny and attractive in an unconventional way. It’s one of those intuitive things. He just felt right. He has this hysterical low-ball humor but he also can be dramatic, and he’s really likeable. That’s important, because he does this skunky thing.” 

About Rebecca Hall, Holofcener says, “Rebecca has that sweet, open, vulnerable, natural beauty that I think could be overlooked by someone…stupid. Or really not looking carefully.” Rebecca plays the “plain” sister to Mary’s hottie. 

Natural beauty also drew Holofcener to Sarah Steele, who plays Abby, Kate and Alex’s fifteen-year-old daughter (Steele is actually a 21-year-old college student). “I auditioned a lot of teenage girls, but when Sarah walked in, that was it. She literally flushed during the audition, which I loved. She's very present, a great listener, a very honest actor. She had the right combination of sweet innocence and the ability to be a horrible teenager. And she's funny, so Abby never seemed too dark or miserable, even when she was. She also happens to have beautiful skin, so clearly she's a good sport. Most of the people on the crew thought the zits were real and felt so badly for her.” 

“I'm happy when the actors have suggestions,” says Holofcener, “Especially if they're good ones, which they often are. Low budget movies unfortunately don't leave enough time to rehearse a lot, but if the script is in good shape, I don't think a great deal of it is necessary.” 

A Native New Yorker

While Holofcener now mostly lives and works in California, she is a native New Yorker; that kinship with the city is vivid in PLEASE GIVE. “I know the neighborhoods. I feel like I know where the characters would grow up and what streets they would live on. It’s nice to feel so comfortable with a city.” Kate and Alex’s apartment in PLEASE GIVE is actually the apartment that inspired the story—Holofcener’s friend bought the apartment next door, occupied by an elderly woman, and became close to the neighbor. Holofcener used their shared hallway and an apartment in the same building as principal shooting locations. 

Despite the heat, “The people I work with are talented and they really get me and support me and know me very well,” says Holofcener. 

She hopes that viewers of PLEASE GIVE share that commonality. “I guess it’s more interesting to me if a person comes out of the movie feeling all the things that the movie has stirred up in them. Not to think: “Hey, y’know, I’m a bad person!” Or “Hey, that’s just like me” – it should be a more emotionally felt experience. If I had to sum it up into a sentence I probably couldn’t. Which is a good thing.” 

Brooks Branch is the writer/director of "Multiple Sarcasms," starring Timothy Hutton and Mira Sorvino. The film is being released on May 7 by Multiple Avenue Releasing.

In creating the 1970’s milieu of Multiple Sarcasms, writer/director Brooks Branch drew inspiration from a time when American cultural, artistic and political spirit was in full bloom. While writing the script, Brooks sought to incorporate the nimble balance of comedy, drama and natural dialogue that is evocative of that era’s filmmakers.

“Life rarely exists as exclusively comedic or exclusively dramatic. Most of us struggle through a balancing act of the two. ‘Multiple Sarcasms’ became an ideal project for me to explore that balance, for as we all know the pursuit of finding what makes us feel complete comes with both pleasures and pitfalls.” 

Though Brooks has helmed numerous large-scale art, entertainment, music, design and publishing projects, Multiple Sarcasms marks his first feature film directing effort. 

“One of the luxuries of making a film independently is there is no pressure to make creative choices for reasons other than what integrity requires, so, for example, we were able to cast each role with exactly the right actor and they did an amazing job.”

The simple notion of romantic love can push people to test its viability; its resonance and ultimately the courage it takes to not play it safe and to change your life. It’s that idea that fuels the Summit Entertainment comedy “Letters to Juliet,” starring Amanda Seyfried (“Mamma Mia”), Vanessa Redgrave (six-time Oscar nominee), Christopher Egan (“Eragon”), Gael García Bernal (“The Motorcycle Diaries”) and Franco Nero (“Die Hard 2”).  The film is directed by Gary Winick (“13 Going on 30”) and produced by Caroline Kaplan, Ellen Barkin and Mark Canton.

Amanda Seyfried plays Sophie Hall, an aspiring magazine writer, who with her boyfriend Victor (Bernal) flies from New York to Italy for some much-needed romance. While Victor is off tending to some business, Sophia finds herself in the famous Verona courtyard of the star-crossed lover Juliet Capulet of Romeo and Juliet where woman from all over the world leave Juliet letters of love lost and hoped for. She discovers a  50-year-old letter written to Juliet by Claire Smith (Redgrave) searching for a young Italian who romanced her as a teen.

The end of an era?

The trades report today that the 23rd James Bond has been posponed indefinitely.  EON Productuon heads Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli jointly announced on Monday that they've put plans on hold for the next Bond picture.

"Due to the continuing uncertainty surrounding the future of MGM and the failure to close a sale of the studio, we have suspended development on 'Bond 23' indefinitely," the duo said in a statement. "We do not know when development will resume and do not have a date for the release of 'Bond 23.'"

It was the first statement from Wilson and Broccoli since last June, when the producers jointly dsiclosed with MGM that Peter Morgan, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade were writing the script for the film, which does not have a director officially attached yet. Purvis and Wade most recently worked on "Quantum of Solace" and "Casino Royale."

Daniel Craig told fans last fall that the 23rd James Bond film would start shooting late this year but MGM and EON never confirmed. Craig starred in "Casino Royale" and "Quantum of Solace," which took in nearly $1.2 billion in worldwide box office.

MGM's been in process of sorting out its future with its debtholders. Its last announcement came on March 31 when it received another month and a half of relief from payments on its debt, with its lenders agreeing to skip receiving payments until mid-May. It was the fourth time since September that lenders to MGM have made such an agreement, aimed at giving CEO Stephen Cooper enough time to restructure the storied studio.

MGM put itself up for sale in November, drawing a trio of binding offers last month. Lionsgate subsequently bailed out of the bidding, leaving only Time Warner and Len Blavatnik's Access Industries in the running.

MGM debtholders are believed to be split into two camps -- one that wants to accept the best offer; and the other that wants to prolong the process in hopes of keeping the studio alive. The remaining binding offers for MGM are believed to be in the $1.5 billion range, far below the $2 billion threshold price sought by MGM and its debtholders.

MGM carries debts of $3.7 billion. MGM's assets include its name and logo, the United Artists operations, a library with more than 4,000 titles, the James Bond franchise, half of "The Hobbit" franchise and a barebones film and TV operation.

MGM's only film release this year, "Hot Tub Time Machine," has grossed a moderate $42.4 million after four weekends.

EON noted that it's produced 22 James Bond films since 1962. Wilson and Broccoli took over the 007 franchise from Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli in 1995.

Kevin Asch's "Holy Rollers" stars Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Bartha, and Ari Graynor. The film is being released May 21, 2010 by First Independent Pictures.

The idea for Holy Rollers emerged in 2005 when Danny Abeckaser saw a news piece about an Israeli drug dealer during the late-nineties who used Hasidic Jews as couriers to smuggle ecstasy from Europe into the United States. Inspired, Danny raised the development money to finance the script and quickly enlisted director/producer Kevin Asch to develop the source material. They soon hired Antonio Macia, and leaned on Danny?s experience of growing up in an Orthodox Jewish community to shape their premise into a screenplay. The team agreed the most interesting plot angle to examine was the young Hasid struggling with his faith, and his gradual seduction into criminal life and its eventual spiritual consequences.

With a finished script, they were able to attach actors Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Bartha, but "they became more like partners in getting the film made and in making the best possible film," recalled Kevin. Jesse, Justin and the director spent the majority of pre-production throwing themselves into Hasidic communities and work-shopping the script. The cast studied with a dialect coach to learn Hebrew prayers, Yiddish, and to perfect their Brooklyn accents. Danny worked extensively on his character and rehearsed daily with Kevin and the other cast members. The team looked far and wide for the right „Rachel? and was blown away by Ari Graynor?s audition. The director remembers, “She immediately improvised with Jesse and Justin. Her audition felt like a rehearsal.” Q-Tip, who rounded out the cast, was Kevin?s first choice to play the cool drug supplier in Amsterdam.

Production began in January 2009, and ran for 4 weeks in New York City, on location. There were two 2nd unit days, one all the way in Amsterdam, and the other in Williamsburg?s Hasidic area, which lends the film a dramatic sense of authenticity. 

Holy Rollers Trailer: http://emanuellevy.com/videos/view.cfm?id=194

Andy Garcia stars in Raymond De Felitta's "City Island," which also stars Juliana Margulies and Alan Arkin. The dramedy was released by Anchor Bay Films in limited cities on March 19.

A Dysfunctional Absurdity

"You could say that it’s about the secrets of a dysfunctional family,” Garcia says. “But it’s also about hidden dreams and their fulfillment. The tone of the film has a certain dysfunctional absurdity to it, but it’s always rooted in emotional truth. There are a lot of surprises in it as all the different secrets and journeys of the characters intersect with one another and come together in the climactic moment. 

“Raymond’s a terrific writer and his sensibility is reflected in the script,” adds the actor. “And as they say, ‘If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage.’”

Taking on Multiple Roles

Garcia shared producing chores with De Felitta, Lauren Versal of Naughty Monkey Productions and Zachary Matz. “We all had our own responsibilities,” he says.  “My job was to support Raymond as much as I could and give him the tools he needed to make the movie. I also had a fiscal responsibility to shoot the movie on time and on budget.” 

On a small-scale independent film, that meant he had to sometimes say, “’This is all we’ve got.’” Garcia recalls.  “It’s a short conversation because the realities are the realities. We had to be creative and ready to invent things in a different way.”  

Independent Opportunity

Despite the logistical challenges, Garcia is appreciative of the opportunities the film has presented for him. “The most important thing is that we had the ability to shoot the movie,” he says. “There was a film I wanted to make for many years called The Lost City. It took me sixteen years to get it made. The money finally came together and it was going to be a very tight, very ambitious film for very little money. 

“And I said to my producer, Frank Mancuso, Jr., ‘I just want to be in a position where I have problems to solve. I don’t want to be talking about the possibility of having problems.’ When you’re in the position to set schedules and shoot quickly, it means you’re shooting the movie. 

“And that’s really the pressure of an independent film,” Garcia continues. “A big studio might take 60 days to shoot. We have to shoot in half the time and present the same level of product. That was a great burden on the crew and the crew was fantastic.” 

“In any movie, what I strive for is resonance,” says Garcia. “I want for people not to forget the film. It will affect each person differently. I’m not looking for any one specific reaction, but I do want the movie to stay with people and for them to talk about it a week later and tell their friend, ‘Oh, you’ve got to go see this movie.’ That’s all you can hope for.”

Good or bad, entertaining or boring, movies taking advantage of the new technology of 3D are attracting huge audiences.  How long will the trend last? Back in the 1950s, the new phenom lasted 3-4 years. Are 3D Movies here to stay?  Right now, commerially they make sense. Just look at the box-office of Easter Weeke d.

Clash of the Titans

Tyler Perry directs and stars in "Why Did I Get Married Too?" which also stars Janet Jackson, Michael Jai White, and Sharon Leal. The sequel is being released April 2 by Lionsgate.

Deciding to Make the Sequel

“I wanted to revisit these couples because they all had such great storylines and I felt like there was so much more that I wanted to tell for each and every one of them,” explains Perry.

The sequel, while offering ample doses of humor and levity, doesn’t shy away from the more sobering aspects of marriage, whether the issues involve infidelity, financial pressure, or the simple challenge of keeping love alive. “I’ve stressed each couple to their max with their situations, with whatever marital situation they were facing,” reports Perry. “Anyone who’s ever been married – or even in a relationship – will be able to relate to at least one of these four couples.”

Cast Bonding

A bond between the cast became equally strong off-screen during the production of the original film, and the prospect of a reunion was met with universal excitement from the cast. “They’re such a great group of people and we had so much fun on the first film,” says Perry. “We all bonded, and we missed each other.”

“If there’s a Madea character in this movie, it would be Angela and I wrote it thinking about Tasha playing the role,” admits Perry. “She’s really out of control but she brings life and fun to the movie.”

“Michael Jai White is one of the most generous actors,” reports Perry. “He's so committed, and he has this innocent quality that’s a lot like Marcus.”

Tragic news hits the set

In the middle of filming, tragic news hit the set and nearly halted production. “We were in the middle of a take when all of a sudden the energy drained out of the room,” recalls Perry. “I was on camera at the time but I felt the extras slowing down. I could feel the camera people not really paying attention. I finished and went to Reuben and asked what was going on.” That’s when Cannon told Perry the news of Michael Jackson’s death. “You could feel it everywhere,” says Perry. “I saw the energy leave the room.  It was really, really powerful that day.”

“We were able to really rally around (Janet) and protect her and support her,” says Perry. “It was great knowing I had an opportunity to be with her at a very difficult time and that I could put her around people who love her.”

Jackson startled the cast and crew with her commitment to Patricia’s emotional journey. During a climactic scene, Patricia, in a rage over the dissolution of her marriage, destroys a living room with a golf club.  Comments Perry:  “Janet put all of her pain and anger and energy into this performance in a way we’ve never seen from her before.”

Final Thoughts

Perry hopes the film will show audiences how love can prevail in any relationship. “What does it really matter if you’re having this argument or that argument in the big scheme of things?” asked Perry. “What if you lost the person that you really love and that you were arguing with, and never got a chance to tell them how much you did care? We have to appreciate our relationships every day because tomorrow isn’t promised.” 

Jean-Pierre Jeunet is the writer/director of "Micmacs" the French film starring Dany Boon. The film was screened at the SXSW Film Fest and will be released in May by Sony.

What was the initial idea for Micmacs? The hero with a bullet in his head? The junkyard dealers? The weapon sellers?

As usual, everything came pretty much at the same time. Already, there's always in the heart of me that story of Tom Thumb I mentioned earlier... As for the idea of the weapon sellers, that's been rattling around in my head for a long time now. When we were editing The City of Lost Children in Saint-Cloud, next to the Dassault factories, we often went to a restaurant where the Dassault engineers went to lunch, too. They were very straight-laced men, in suit and tie, with nice looking faces, but I couldn't help thinking they were creating and manufacturing incredible weapons to destroy and kill other human beings on the planet! It didn't seem to bother them very much! I was upset and shocked by that. At the same time, I didn't want to make an intellectual piece; I wanted to make a comedy. And what could be more different from arms manufacturers than junkyard dealers?

From there on, it was easy to imagine that gang of scavengers was going to join forces against those businessmen of death. David and Goliath, once again... The idea came naturally, especially since I'd wanted to face off the arms sellers with a gang of characters like the toys in Toy Story – I really admire the work of Pixar. People who are unique, marginal, a little naïve, but each of them, like in Toy Story, has a character trait, something distinctive that serves the story, that helps move the plot forward. Eccentric avengers, clumsy, sometimes poetic, always united and above all, deeply human. Our other big influence is Mission Impossible – I'm an unconditional fan of the series. It's obvious that in the plot construction, in its twists and turns, in the tale of manipulations – the fake trip to the desert, for example – there are moments reminiscent of the television series Mission Impossible...

In what ways are you and co-writer Guillaume Laurant complementary?

It's hard to say. It's a mysterious alchemy. A true partnership, where working together is a joy, and above all, we bounce off each other so well that almost immediately, we can't tell who came up with what anymore. Between us, it's an endless game of ping-pong. It's also obvious that our worlds are in synch. I love playing with the French language – and so does he. If I've made the choice to shoot in France and in French no matter what it takes, it's to be able to play with the language. My greatest influence, of course, is the writer Jacques Prévert (The Children of Paradise, 1945). It all starts there. He's a constant source of nourishment for me. Guillaume and I have the same passion for Prévert, for the poetic realism dear to Prévert and director Marcel Carné (The Children of Paradise). I try to put that poetic perspective in all my films, and he has a natural tendency to go that way too... Matter of fact, when the dialogue gets a little too ordinary for my taste, I tell him, “We need to, „re-Préverize? that!” It goes without saying that we had a great time with the dialogue for Omar's character!

What was the most difficult part of writing Micmacs?

We just had to find the right balance between the gang of junkyard dealers, who look like they just walked out of Toy Story, and the weapon sellers, who are more serious types. We didn't want to make the weapon sellers too serious, or to make them into caricatures, either. That was another balance we had to find. That was why, knowing so little about the weapons industry, before starting to write, I made my own little investigation. With the journalist Phil Casoar, I met and questioned a man who had retired from a job at the highest level of the weapons industry, a former secret agent and an engineer from Matra... We also visited a weapon factory in Belgium – in France, that wasn't possible. Really nice people, technicians who talk so passionately about their factory it could be a chocolate shop, only when the new caramel they've just invented hits its target, it makes a tank heat up to 4500°! Which means that on the inside, everyone burns to a crisp in a fraction of a second! Terrifying. And they talk about it as if it were just a technological innovation! All the lines in the film that refer to the weapons industry are authentic, like for example: “We don't work for the Attack Department; we work for the Defense Department.” That's a pretty marvelous justification to keep your conscience clean! Except that their “products” are sold, and at the end of the chain, they cause suffering, mourning, death...

Was it relatively easy for you to find the right characters for the gang of junkyard dealers and determine how their distinctiveness would serve the story?

That's where we could have the most fun and play with fantasy. The idea was to come up with characters with a specific angle, a little like Moliere (The Bourgeois Gentleman, The Miser, The Misanthrope).. At first, there were a lot more than there are now. And then with each successive work session, we eliminated, distilled and kept the essential elements. And at a certain moment, I decided that it was good to have seven. First because it's a magic number and secondly, because the story is also a sort of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs! As a matter of fact, their names are descriptive, like the dwarfs' names: Mama Chow because she cooks, Slammer because he just got out of prison, Elastic Girl because she really bends and stretches like rubber, Buster because he's all bust and broken up, Remington because he types on a typewriter, Calculator because she instinctively calculates everything. Only Tiny Pete has the name of a Naïve Artist I like a lot. A sort of Postman Cheval who created a work called The Ride out of salvaged materials. The wild automated sculptures Tiny Pete makes in the movie are the work of a different artist I discovered at Halle Saint Pierre, near my home in Montmartre, where I go often, since I love Naïve Art and Art Brut: Gilbert Peyre. I created the character of Tiny Pete so I could use his artwork. Luckily, Gilbert Peyre likes my films and was willing to loan them to us. Once we had defined the characters, we just searched for ways their characteristics could help the story development, the logistics of revenge and the plot twists and turning points...

Bazil, how did you imagine him?

He drives the story. Twice a victim of weapon manufacturers – they made him an orphan and because of them, he has to live with a bullet in his brain that could kill him at any instant. Of course he wants revenge! Adopting him, the junkyard dealers, united – also adopted his revenge. The fact that he has a bullet in his head allowed us to slip into fantasy, delirium, imaginary worlds... like so many little films within the film, little parenthetical animated sequences, and all the things I love so much...

You originally wrote the character of Bazil for Jamel Debbouze (Indigènes), but once again, like with Amelie who was supposed to be played by Emily Watson instead of Audrey Tautou, nothing went as planned...

After Amelie, I'd promised Jamel I would write a part for him. So I did. I wrote Micmacs... for him, taking the risk, without telling him exactly what it was about. He was all excited. He was just as excited when he read the script, if not more. So we went into production, and a few months later, he called me to tell me he wasn't going to do Micmacs... for personal reasons, he didn't want to be working at the time. And actually, since then he hasn't shot a thing. Of course I respect his decision. But even so, two months away from shooting, that was... a little tough! Luckily, fate seems to smile on me, so that even if nothing happens as planned, in the end everything happens like it's supposed to happen! Right away, I thought of Dany Boon to replace him. I'd already had him somewhere in the back of my mind, as another possible choice.

What made you think of Dany Boon, who's so different from Jamel?

That's really hard to say. A sort of sixth sense, an inner conviction. As soon as I saw Audrey, I know she was Amelie, even though she couldn't be more different from Emily Watson. Here, it was the same thing. I just knew it. Even before Dany did! As soon as Jamel gave up the role, I contacted him and had the revised script sent to him – we'd erased some of what had been custom written for Jamel, more especially with regards to his handicap: at first, he was the one who jumped on the mine.... Right away, Dany's agent called me back to say he didn't want to do the film, that it was for Jamel, not for him. The film was dead. The week after, I rewrote a version for a female lead, and even one for a child. When you fall into icy waters, if you don't fight your way out, you die! And then, finally, I got hold of Dany. I said to him, “Listen, you're right, you shouldn't do it if you don't feel like it's for you, it's really too bad though because I like what you do a lot, I have for a long time now.” He said he liked my films a lot too and was sorry to turn me down. And right there, I put all my chips on the table, and said to him, “What if we got together for an hour? To do some screen tests, just for fun, now that we know you're not doing the film. Just to see if we think we could work together some other time.” He said yes. It went really well. While we were doing the screen tests, I said to him, “It's really too bad, look how well we get along, look how well our worlds fit together.” He had a great time, and that night he called me to say he'd do the film. And today, when you see Micmacs, you can't imagine anyone else playing Bazil. Exactly like Audrey with Amelie. A lucky twist of fate. On top of that, fate was so kind to me that the very day we wrapped the film, the day I was “free” again, and Chanel asked me to direct their new ad for Chanel N°5 with Audrey Tautou. With that, my triptych with her was complete!

After Dany Boon came on board, did you make a lot of changes to the script?

Guillaume and I continued the work we had started when we had him read the script. But it was more details than anything else. And then we did real screen tests, this time. Because compared to Jamel's shrimpy little figure, Dany was afraid he was too bulky, too muscular and that it wouldn't work. Right away we realized that his gentle, dreamy side and his obvious vulnerability made up for his size and even made an interesting contrast. Quite the contrary, we didn't need to worry about thickening him up a bit, putting a big wool sweater or bonnet on him, making him into a big clumsy teddy bear, making him exactly the opposite of what we'd originally planned...

What, in your opinion, is the best thing about him?

It's going to sound like an awful cliché, but I can't help it. First of all, he's an incredible human being who, after the huge success in France of Welcome to the Sticks, is still utterly modest and simple. During our entire shoot, I never once saw him in a bad mood, or late, or on the telephone. I never saw him complain or be mean to anyone. Really. On top of that, he's funny and a delight to everyone. And above all, there are things I love about him professionally. We know how funny he can be, but he's also efficient and feels very profoundly. He's very technical, rigorous, knows his lines impeccably and at the same time is extremely inventive, coming up with new things I never would have thought of. He's very consistent, yet is constantly searching, leaving all doors open and letting himself go to inspiration. For example, in one shot he spontaneously started acting a little like the great French actor, Bourvil. I loved it. And we kept it in the edit. There's also, at a certain moment, an obvious tribute to Chaplin...Same thing there. He came up with that. It wasn't in the script at all. It was while we were shooting, at one point he got the idea of playing the scene that way. Afterwards, in the edit, I emphasized it with music... What's really surprising is how consistent he is. There's never a take that's not as good as the others, it's astounding! What surprised me the most was seeing how comfortable I felt with him right away, which isn't always the case with actors. Is it because he's from the North and I'm from the East, that we've both been through hard times that we've both worked in animation? There's something easy and obvious between us. Like getting back together with an old friend. It's really rare... What's really disgusting is on top of all that, he writes, performs in shows and directs films! On that note, I love working with actors who are also directors, like Mathieu Kassowitz or Jodie Foster. You explain to them what you're doing – “There'll be a tracking shot there, I cut here and pick up over there” – and they understand. It simplifies things.

In the end, the only area you're not consistent in is the music...

Yes, because each time I try to find the music that corresponds the most with the spirit and story of the film. We had the idea of composer Carlos d?Alessio before we even shot Delicatessen. For The City of Lost Children, we immediately wanted Badalamenti because of David Lynch (Blue Velvet). On Alien: Resurrection, we had a young composer (he cost less for Fox!) who wrote in the traditional musical style of action movies. For Amelie, our collaboration was exceptional and entirely by accident – or by fate! – with Yann Tiersen. The osmosis between the image and music was unbelievable. For Micmacs, at first I wanted to do something a little more modern, a little more rap, to take old music from action pictures and sample them, but it didn?t work. It just so happened that we were looking for an excerpt from an old movie for the credits – the credits within the credits was an idea I'd had for a long time.

Looking through Warner's Bogart box set, I watched The Big Sleep again, and found exactly what I was wanting. All of a sudden, while listening to the music of The Big Sleep composed by Max Steiner, I thought it would be ideal for all the action scenes. Luckily, there were beautiful recordings, since it had been re-recorded in the 1970's. But that wasn't enough. Once again, fate struck, exactly like it did for Amelie. One day, Dany's lighting double, who runs a restaurant, gave me a CD of one of his clients. I listened to it in the car on the way to the shoot and thought it was good. I met the composer, Raphaël Beau, a young music teacher who teaches to troubled kids in the suburbs. I told him I was interested but couldn't promise him anything just yet. He composed 25 pieces without being hired! Each time he composed for a certain sequence, it didn't work, but as soon as we put his music on a different sequence, it worked like a charm! So in the end, I told him, “You?re the one who's making the film!”

In Micmacs, we rediscover the Paris you love, the traditional Paris of always, but this time it coexists with today's Paris and its contemporary architecture. It seems like you wanted to keep us guessing by mixing up periods, and not just with architecture. For example, there's that beautiful shot with the tramway and an old salvaged industrial tricycle... And also there's that use of YouTube at the end of the film...

I had fun with YouTube, with using something that's so popular right now, even though I'm often criticized for being too retro. And I had to hurry up to do it before other people got the idea. As for Paris, I tried to change a little, since by now I've more than made the rounds of the traditional Paris I love – the bridge pillars, the metro, the train stations... I liked the idea of mixing in certain elements of today's Paris that I love too, and anyway, I can only film what I love. So a magnificent building from the 30's meets up with the new Line T3 tramway, the open-air metro with a modern post office surmounted by a neon light, the skylight at Galeries Lafayette with a department of lycra sports clothes, the Musée d'Orsay with a contemporary coffee shop...The challenge was to glorify the same city, but a little differently, and this time to include the suburbs. But it's still a Paris, if not idealized, that's at least seen through my imagination, through my filter... I can't resist emptying the streets a little, cleaning up the sky, playing with the colors. But of course I really enjoyed shooting on the Canal de l?Ourcq at the Crimée bridge, which I love. Prévert was photographed there by the great Robert Doisneau, there's the Marcel Carné school nearby and you can see the Arletty boat pass by on the Seine... It's where the classic film Gates of the Night (1946) was shot, a film by Marcel Carné with Jean Vilar playing Fate. And as chance would have it, we shot the home office of one of the weapons companies at the Jean Vilar Theatre in Suresnes. I love those lucky signs! I totally maintain and defend the heritage of Carné-Prévert.

You seem to have – and you can even see it in the film, in the junkyard dealers' cave for example – a real love for craftsmanship, in the noblest sense of the word.

I love it. I love the actual making of the film and I need to be there at every stage, every second. It begins with the choice of paper for the storyboard, all the way to the mix and calibration. Many directors get bored with those stages of filmmaking. I love filmmaking every single moment. Crafting is the ultimate pleasure for me. I always feel like a kid opening up his Meccano box and playing with each piece. And no way can I leave an unused bolt at the bottom of the box! At the same time, I also feel like a chef in his kitchen. When he makes a dish, he chooses the ingredients, he invents, he simmers, and he takes risks. Of course he has to like the dish, but the only thing he wants is to share it with others. It's the same for me. The pleasure is only worth something if I can share it with the audience. In the end, in the spirit of Micmacs, we could sum it up by saying that cinema is tweaking and cooking!

When You're Strange, a Film About the Doors, uncovers historic and previously unseen footage of the illustrious rock quartet and provides new insight into the revolutionary impact of its music and legacy. Directed by award-winning writer/director Tom DiCillo and narrated by Johnny Depp, the film promises to be a riveting account of the band’s history and the first feature docu about them.
 
The film reveals a intimate perspective on the creative chemistry between drummer John Densmore, guitarist Robby Krieger, keyboardist Ray Manzarek and singer Jim Morrison -- four brilliant artists, who made The Doors one of America’s most iconic and influential rock bands. Using footage shot between the band’s 1965 formation and Morrison’s 1971 death, When You're Strange follows the band from the corridors of UCLA’s film school, where Manzarek and Morrison met, to the stages of sold-out arenas.
 
When You're Strange captures the zeitgeist and fraction of an era while providing insight into who The Doors were, what they became and what they meant to our culture.  
 
Produced by Wolf Films/Strange Pictures, in association with Rhino Entertainment, and released by Abramorama Entertainment.  Additional credits for WHEN YOU’RE STRANGE include producers Dick Wolf, John Beug, Jeff Jampol, and Peter Jankowski.  The film is written and directed by Tom DiCillo (“Johnny Suede,” “Living in Oblivion”).  Narrated by Johnny Depp.  

Credits

Directed by Tom DiCillo
Narrated by Johnny Depp
Produced by Wolf Films/Strange Pictures, in association with Rhino Entertainment

 

Atom Egoyan is the director of "Chloe," starring Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, and Amanda Seyfried. The film is being released on March 26 by Sony Pictures Classics.

On Intimacy

"First and foremost "Chloe" deals with the nature of intimacy. But, I think the film is ultimately about what we look for in a relationship—to see someone else, as we would like ourselves to be seen and the idea of protecting someone else's right to be alone or to protect solitude. As Rilke wrote, it is one's role as a partner to protect the other's solitude and yet there's this balance between doing that and losing someone. That to me is what the film is about—how to be allowed to imagine ourselves and integrate that in a relationship. 

Contractual Relationships?

"In any love relationship, you have to project yourself but if you're not aware of the explicit agenda of the other person, the skew can become really dangerous, even explosive. This is the terrain the film deals with—both in the conventional idea of a marriage as well as an unexpected marriage between two souls who are searching for something they think they have found in each other.

Creative IUnterpretation of Self

 "In some ways, the film is about the necessity and the danger of creative interpretation of the self. Ultimately, we all need to believe in certain stories or narratives about ourselves. We all need to feel we have some control over how that narrative evolves, however we have no control over the variables—we can't anticipate all of the other emotional factors that come into play. 

Humans as Complex and Sensitive Souls

"There's always a variable when dealing with human beings. We are incredibly complex sensitive souls and no matter how you think a relationship is defined by parameters, those can always evolve – so we need to be invested in other people; we need to fall in love and we need to go to those places but we also need to equip ourselves in understanding how fragile other people are. If we don't there's bound to be consequences."

Tim Burton's 3D version of "Alice in Wonderland" divided film critics but not viewers.  By the end of the weekend, the picture will score over $200 million domestically.  Is it the star power of Johnny Depp? New technology?

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3ic7094b13c12aa2ace46a3b3474e0be1a

Madeo (South Korea)

The immense commercial success of the Oscar-winning drama, "Rain Man," could also be attributed to its ideological message about mainstream family values. In this case, the rediscovery of love between two brothers: one, an autistic savant (Dustin Hoffman), the other, a young hustler (Tom Cruise), and a fast-talking car salesman.

Q&A with Noah Baumbach & Jennifer Jason Leigh

Q: Noah, your movies as writer/director have been set on the East Coast. When you thought of the character of Greenberg, did you immediately think of him in Los Angeles? Or did you think of Greenberg and who he was first, and then think of the place he would be from and would be returning to?

Noah Baumbach: Early versions of the character of Greenberg have come up in different things I’ve worked on. Not necessarily movies I’ve made, but maybe half-written scripts or ideas. I have a draft of a play with a character who shares some of Greenberg’s temperament.  

A central idea I had in writing the script was that I wanted to make a movie in the tradition of American novels that I’ve loved, books by Philip Roth and Saul Bellow and John Updike, stories about men at crisis points in their lives. People have made movies of some of their novels, but I felt it was possible to create a movie that was part of that tradition and done purely cinematically.

I also wanted to make a movie that showed L.A. as a real city, not an industry town.  Jennifer is from L.A. and through her I started to experience the city this way. Part of my inspiration in making Greenberg was seeing L.A. as this remarkable, unique place where people actually lived and raised families.

I’d been re-watching some great L.A. movies from the 1970s, movies by Paul Mazursky and John Cassavetes and Hal Ashby and Robert Altman. They all had very distinct visions of the city. I love Altman’s The Long Goodbye; the L.A. of that movie is so specific and appealing and it has nothing to do with the movie industry. Joan Didion and Leonard Michaels – both of whom write about L.A. – were also an inspiration.

Jennifer Jason Leigh: Since I grew up in Los Angeles, I see the city in a very personal way and I wanted to show Los Angeles the way I grew up in it. There’s a light in L.A. that is very different from the East Coast, and there’s an expansiveness. There is much that is ugly in L.A., but also a kind of beauty in the ugliness. I love that there are still sections of the Sunset Strip without high-rises. That you can be at a farmers market surrounded by 1920s Craftsman homes and then halfway down the street is a ninety-nine-cent store. The way the dust catches the light, how green it is. The beauty of the sky in winter. 

Q: Playing favorites; which L.A. location(s) were you particularly pleased to give screen time to in Greenberg?

JJL: There are so many. It’s my home. Every location in the film is a place we know well. It’s hard to say which is my favorite; Greenberg’s walks up Fairfax and drives down La Brea, Florence driving on Sunset, the outdoor market in Silverlake, the hikes, Lucy’s El Adobe, even the vet’s.

NB: It all feels of a piece.

Q: This is your second project with cinematographer Harris Savides. How did you challenge yourselves anew after Margot at the Wedding, which had him working in a very probing, rugged, style? 

NB: Margot was rougher-hewn, hand-held; we used very old lenses and flashed the film. But we wanted Greenberg to be expansive. Although it’s about a man trying to do nothing, the world around him is open, beautiful, and active. So we shot widescreen. We looked at movies like Play It As It Lays, and at photographs by William Eggleston and Ed Ruscha.

Q: The climactic party sequence is in the movie tradition of bashes that escalate psychologically and physically. On the set, how did you encourage the key actors – like the tag team of Brie Larson & Juno Temple – and the supporting actors – like Dave Franco – to make it flow freely (or, not)? 

NB: We treated it like a real party. We had Brie and Juno and Dave invite their friends. Everyone there interacted for real, there was no fake talking in the backgrounds. Basically they threw a party for five nights and we shot it.

Q: There and in other scenes, music plays a big role in Greenberg; there’s the soundtrack that’s in the movie and then the music that you set the movie to. It establishes who these people are, and how Greenberg tentatively reaches out to Florence. Can you talk a little about James Murphy’s music?

NB: It’s the most score I’ve used to this point. I was coming off Margot at the Wedding which had no score, only songs. Jennifer and I were in the car in L.A. missing New York a bit (or I was, anyway), and writing Greenberg, and the song “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” came on. It was the first song I’d heard by LCD Soundsystem, and I was totally taken with it so I bought the record. James Murphy’s observations of New York City and about getting older felt to me like another version of Greenberg, and I listened to it a lot while I was writing. I made a mental note at the time to look into this band when I start thinking about the score for the movie.

James and I hit it off immediately, and coincidentally he’d planned to record his new record in L.A. while we were shooting. So he was around, on the set, in the movie, watching dailies. His songs act as another voice in the movie.

Many of the other songs in Greenberg – Albert Hammond’s “It Never Rains in Southern California,” Duran Duran’s “The Chauffeur,” Paul & Linda McCartney’s “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” – were written into the script. These songs come from the characters.  

Q: Speaking of the characters, the movie’s title is Greenberg, but when the picture starts we enter the movie through Florence’s perspective, which is lovely. We really fall for her immediately because she’s so likable. Did you know that you were going to begin things that way, or was that something that came out of having cast Greta Gerwig?

NB: It came before Greta, but it came late in the writing process. The early drafts all started with Greenberg. Some with him in New York. I don’t remember why I chose to start with her – it felt right and it was satisfying to delay his entrance. The beginning plays almost like a short film about Florence and then she hands the movie over to Greenberg.

Q: The compassion that is shown Greta’s character in Greenberg – if not always by Greenberg himself – seems to come from some place very personal, whether via Greta or yourselves. Do you feel you know women like that? 

NB: Yes, we’ve both known young women like Florence.

JJL: She’s unsure how to form a relationship, or of how one comes about. Her sexuality is somewhat mysterious to her and not yet precious; there’s an innocence to Florence. There’s no weariness; the hurts she has experienced haven’t yet left their mark.

Greta was the first actress we read for the role. She understood Florence in such a complete and lived-in way that we immediately felt the role was hers. Greta brought a kind of sunny open ungainliness to Florence; she can look very beautiful but also very awkward. She’s funny and terribly sweet, and so natural in the role it’s jaw-dropping.<