Chloë Grace Moretz and Jamie Blackley star in If I Stay, a film based on Gayle Forman’s bestselling young adult novel about the relationship between a talented cellist (Moretz) and a fellow musician (Jamie Blackley). Their love for each other is palpable, but when fate hands them a devastating blow, will their union persevere through this tragedy?
Whether it’s going toe to toe with Julianne Moore in Carrie or dabbling in Martin Scorsese’s universe with Hugo, Chloë Grace Moretz has approached her movie roles with a steady and passionate keep it simple approach.
“I’ve always followed my heart,” says Moretz, whose other credits include scene stealing work in the Kick-Ass films and (500) Days of Summer. “And with every project I’ve ever chosen, it’s been something that I feel I couldn’t live without.”
At 17, Moretz is already an actress who’s carrying her own films, but even though she’s in a rarefied (and hard earned) place in her profession, she also knows the acting journey will have its highs and lows. Click on the audio bar below to hear Chloë Grace Moretz talk about her acting journey which started at the tender age of five.
Since the advent of cinema, indie filmmaking has always been a labor of love, and director Pieter Gaspersz’s debut feature After snugly fits into that category. Set in 2002, the drama centers on a middle class family in upstate New York who are trying to keep a tragic secret from their matriarch (Kathleen Quinlan).
With a bare bones budget and a 20-day production schedule, Gaspersz’s biggest creative coup was landing a grade-A ensemble to anchor the narrative. John Doman (The Wire, Damages) brings a heartbreaking gravitas as the seemingly strong as an ox patriarch, while Pablo Schreiber (Orange is the NewBlack) and Adam Scarimbolo also do fine work as the dad’s diametrically opposed sons. From top to bottom, each member of the ensemble (which also includes Diane Neal and Tracy Howe), are up to the task.
During the interview, Gaspersz talked about working with Quinlan. “You’ve prepared your shot, you’ve protected your actor,” said the director. “Kathleen and I were side by side – any time there was an intense moment, no one was allowed to talk. It was her and I on set and ready to go. You get into it, and her performance – her magic takes over. The director side disappears . . . and you’re just grateful to be there with the camera capturing it.”
Quinlan’s distinguished acting career started in the 1970s, and several of her most recognizable films include I Never Promised You A Rose Garden, Apollo 13, and The Doors (If you’re a fan of nuanced, coming-of-age dramas, check out Quinlan, Sam Rockwell, and Mischa Barton in Lawn Dogs).
“I was attracted to After because there was an actual story,” said Quinlan. “And there was an actual character and something to play which gets more and more difficult to find. Certainly, it’s always the writing first and Sabrina’s a fabulous writer. Each character is not just talking – they are speaking as a character.”
For Sabrina Gennarino, crafting After’s script began with painful self-reflection. “It was a healing process for myself,” said Gennarino, who also stars in the feature. “We lived the event – three blocks away. The whole works. It’s my take on how my family would have reacted if that was me . . . It is from mine and Pieter’s personal experience on where this story comes from. So I wrote what I knew.”
In the following audio clip, Kathleen Quinlan talks about the difference between fame and actually doing the work as an actor:
After is now available On Demand, iTunes, and Amazon Instant. For more info, check out the film’s official site.
Paolo Nutini’s new album Caustic Love, his first studio release since 2009’s Sunny Side Up, hits the U.S. starting September 16 (it debuted at the #1 spot on the UK Album chart and has placed in the top 10 the past 15 weeks). In support of his new work, Nutini starts up a U.S. tour next month, and fans who haven’t heard his latest music can check out the new short film that’s inspired by his song “Iron Sky.”
The track is one of Nutini’s most compelling lyrical pieces, and part of the song’s inspiration comes from Charlie Chaplin’s famous speech from The Great Dictator (Nutini employs a section of Chaplin’s stirring monologue in his song).
As much as I love Nutini’s previous material, there is an added maturity and universal dimension to “Iron Sky,” and it’s a track that attempts to reach the sonic and emotional depths of Marvin Gaye’s seminal album What’s Going On.
Director Daniel Wolfe’s short film for Iron Sky seamlessly blends with the song’s yearning for individuality in an high tech and industrial age. “I was sent the track with no explanation from Paolo,” said Wolfe. “As a child I stared at the planet Jupiter and had a vivid hallucinatory experience. A feeling of abject terror, in bondage to an omnipotent machine. When I heard the Chaplin quote (from the song) I remembered this clearly. So the video became a dystopian vision of the future as imagined by a child in the 80’s.”
After a September 15 stop in Toronto (Sound Academy), Nutini heads to the U.S. for select engagements. The dates are below:
9/17    Lincoln Theatre                      Washington DC
9/19    House of Blues                        Boston, MA
9/20    The Trocadero Theatre      Philadelphia, PA
9/22Â Â Â Â Terminal 5Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â New York, NY
9/23    Apollo Theater                        New York, NY
9/25    Roseland Theater                 Portland, OR
9/26    Fox Theater                               Oakland, CA
9/29    House of Blues                        San Diego, CA
10/2   Granada Theater                     Dallas, TX
10/4   Warehouse Live Ballroom  Houston, TX
Fritz Lang, a master of German expressionism (M, Metropolis) and a craftsman of the Western and film noir genres, is receiving a fitting spotlight from Cohen Film Collection with the September 9 release of Hangmen Also Die. The movie, which is coming out on Blu-ray and DVD, follows Lang’s lifelong themes of paranoia and societal corruption.
Shot by cinematographer James Wong Howe (Seconds), Hangmen Also Die centers on a surgeon/Czech patriot (Kiss of Death’s Brian Donlevy) who is on the run from the Gestapo after assassinating a high ranking Nazi. The patriot may have to eventually turn himself in, as the Nazis claim they will execute scores of innocent citizens until the assassin is caught.
The Cohen Film Collection, in collaboration with Pinewood Studios and the British Film Institute, were responsible for the restoration of Hangmen Also Die. The latest cut contains a one minute scene that was cut from the original release. As writer Tom Gunning attests in his book The Films of Fritz Lang, the director’s anti-Nazi films Hangmen Also Die, Ministry of Fear, and Man Hunt “allowed Lang to return to his strengths within genre filmmaking and refine his creation of an everyday terrain of paranoia in which ordinary events reveal themselves in an instant as sinister and deadly.”
Special Features on the disc include audio commentary from former New York Film Festival program director Richard Peña, a featurette and an essay on the film and Fritz Lang, and a before and after comparison between the two Hangmen Also Die prints.
As Taylor Swift continues to flourish and branch out as a musician, writer, and singer, she’s also branching out in the acting field. She explored her comedic chops in the 2010 comedy Valentine’s Day, and with The Giver she ventures into the dramatic arena.
Based on Lois Lowry’s evocative and prescient novel, The Giver has Jeff Bridges playing the titular character, a man who holds the memories of humanity before his environment turned into a safe yet emotionally empty society. Swift plays Rosemary, a youth who attempted to learn life’s valuable lessons and experiences from The Giver, but their bond leads to tragic results.
“I hope she continues (with) the acting,” said Bridges about his co-star. “She’s very talented, as well as being a great songwriter/performer. She was just wonderful.”
The Giver, which co-stars Brenton Thwaites (he’s The Giver’s latest pupil) and Meryl Streep, opens Friday.
Summers come and go, as all things do, but Dirty Heads are ready to move things forward with a fall/winter extension of their tour, staring with a series of dates on October 10.
Almost 40 shows have been confirmed, with the band making their way through Europe with stops in the UK (November 20 in Manchester), France (November 22 in Paris), Switzerland (November 23 in Zurich), and Germany (November 25 in Berlin). The group’s longtime collaborator and producer Rome (he co-wrote “Lay Me Down” with the band) will also support them on a majority of their dates. Rome’s latest single “If The World” was released in June.
Dirty Heads are currently on the road with Pepper and Aer supporting their fourth studio album Sound of Change, which debuted at the #8 spot on the Billboard 200. The group, whose past collaborations include work with Del the Funky Homosapien and Matisyahu, worked with Cypress Hill’s B-Real (“Franco Eyed”) and Tech N9ne (“Burn Slow) on this album.
Their single “My Sweet Summer” offers a sample of the various styles which inhabit their work in a surprisingly seamless (and catchy) fashion. The video’s below:
Opening nationwide August 22nd,When The Game Stands Tall centers on Bob Ladouceur, a football coach (he’s known as Coach Lad) who guided the De La Salle High School Spartans to a 151-game winning streak. Although De La Salle’s recruiting has been top notch (past players include Oakland Raiders running back Maurice Jones-Drew and former Baltimore Ravens wide receiver Demetrius Williams), it is Ladouceur’s hard nosed, unglamorous, and team first approach that were the ingredients to De La Salle’s continued success.
Jim Caviezel and Kerri Browitt Caviezel at Tri Star Pictures’ red carpet premiere of WHEN THE GAME STANDS TALL at the Arclight Hollywood Theatre. (Screen Gems, SPE Inc., CR: Eric Charbonneau)
An athletic life is not lost on Jim Caviezel , as he played high school basketball and his father was coached by UCLA legend John Wooden.  In playing Coach Lad, Caviezel found a unique entryway to the role.
“Right from the get go, I was transfixed by those boys looking at him (and) how they were looking at him. I saw myself not as Coach Lad but as those boys,” said the Person of Interest star. “That was the journey on how to play this guy.”
Click on the audio bar below to hear Caviezel talk about the lessons he learned from his father, and he also talks about the similarities between CoachLadouceur and the late great John Wooden.
When The Game Stands Tall, directed by Thomas Carter (Coach Carter, Save The Last Dance) also stars Michael Chiklis as assistant coach Terry Eidson.
Third Person, a multi-layered drama that is one of this year’s most overlooked films (the drama doesn’t pull its punches), hits Blu-ray, DVD and Digital HD September 30. The cast includes, Liam Neeson (playing a cold-hearted scribe with writer’s block), Mila Kunis (as a mother who’s lost custody of her child), Adrien Brody, Maria Bello, Kim Basinger, and Olivia Wilde.
Here’s the official boilerplate synopsis of the movie which was directed and penned by Paul Haggis (Crash, The Next Three Days):
“THIRD PERSON tells three stories of love, passion, trust and betrayal. The tales play out in New York, Paris and Rome through three couples who appear to have nothing related but share deep commonalities: lovers and estranged spouses, children lost and found. THIRD PERSON is a mystery, a puzzle in which truth is revealed in glimpses, and clues are caught by the corner of the eye—and nothing is truly what it seems.”
Bonus Features on the DVD & Blu-ray include:
Commentary (w/ Haggis, actress Moran Atias, and producers Jo Francis, Laurence Bennett and Michael Nozik.
Q&A with Paul Haggis
A featurette on the making of Third Person.
The below audio has Mila Kunis talks about understanding her character’s “emotional roller coaster” ride in Third Person:
Cristin Milioti, best known for her beloved recurring role on How I Met Your Mother and for her acclaimed turn as “Girl” on the stage version of Once, head back to television this fall with NBC’s A to Z. The story centers on a lawyer (Milioti) who meets her prospective soulmate (Mad Men’s BenFeldman) at a dating agency.
Ben Feldman & Cristin Milioti in ‘A to Z’ – (Photo by: Trae Patton/NBC)
Their mismatched relationship runs the gamut from “a to z” (hence the title), and the show will look at eight months, three weeks, five days, and one hour of their coupling. If the pair survive past that time period is anyone’s guess, but obviously if the show’s a hit we’ll get to examine many facets of their journey.
During the A to Z interviews, Cristin Milioti reflected on her time with How I Met Your Mother, calling the environment one of the warmest sets she’s ever encountered. Check out the video below and watch Milioti (and Ben Feldman) talk about How I Met Your Mother:
A to Z premieres on NBC October 2 (9:30 pm et/pt).
Now playing in select theaters, Calvarycenters on Father James (Brendan Gleeson), a devout man who is set to be killed by one of his parishioners. Father James has one week to get his house in order and decide if he will stop this impending tragedy or face this challenge head on. Director John Michael McDonagh, who previously worked with Gleeson in The Guard, was visually inspired by the paintings of Andrew Wyeth. The breathtaking and at times intimidating landscapes are courtesy of Easkey, a village located off the Irish West Coast.
Brendan Gleeson on the set of CALVARY. Photo by Jonathon Hession.
“We wanted the exteriors to be big, widescreen, cinematic – with all that nature. The mountains, the waves crashing in,” said McDonagh. “And then when we come inside, we go in really close and there’s lots of close-ups. It’s very claustrophobic inside . . . I didn’t want the film to be perceived as a small, parochial Irish film.”
In the audio clip below, McDonagh elaborates on the advantages of digital filmmaking (he shot The Guard on film and Calvary was shot on digital). McDonagh mentions Calvary actors Dylan Moran (he plays an obscenely rich man at odds with Father James) and David Wilmot (he plays a fellow priest), as well as cinematographer Larry Smith in the clip.
McDonagh, who is currently prepping on his next film War On Everyone, has grand designs on an ambitious project titled The Bonnot Gang. I asked him about the project, and here’s his response:
“It’s a true story about a group of anarchist bank robbers in Paris in 1911. And it is a Brian De Palma/Jean Pierre Melville type movie. It’d be the last film I’d made, I reckon. I think I would have need to have made six or seven before that because it would be like a Sam Peckinpah Western, but in modern garb. I’d say it’s The Wild Bunch crossed with Le Samouraï. In my head, my final film would be the greatest film, but I feel I need to know so much more about the techniques of filmmaking before I get to do it.
For that type of movie, it may only be $50-60 million. I’m not in that place yet to get that kind of money but I always feel like I’m not in that place yet to direct a script as it’s written. I don’t think I’m as accomplished as I should be to make that movie. Maybe it will be the last one.”
