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Peter Dinklage Joins “X-Men” Universe With Villainous Role

By
Greg Srisavasdi
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Peter Dinklage, known to Game of Thrones enthusiasts as the resourceful Tyrion Lannister, plays Dr. Trask, a scientist who becomes the biggest threat to the mutants (and eventually all of humanity) in X-Men: Days of Future Past.

“He really believes he is doing the right thing to save humankind,” said Dinklage, whose previous films include In Bruges and The Station Agent. “At the same time, in this time of the Vietnam War, one of the worst wars in our recent history – I guess they’re all really bad wars – he thinks this is an opportunity to bring the world together.”

X-Men: Days of Future Past – Peter Dinklage (Twentieth Century Fox, Alan Markfield)
X-Men: Days of Future Past – Peter Dinklage (Twentieth Century Fox, Alan Markfield)

To portray his 1970s based character, Dinklage didn’t have to dig too deep for his research. “I just saw some old pictures of my dad and his friends at the time, that’s where the look comes from,” joked the Emmy award winning actor.

To hear Peter Dinklage talk about the villainy behind Dr. Trask, click on the media bar below:

Starring Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, and a slew of other actors who are playing mutants, X-Men: Days of Future Past opens May 23.

Caleb Johnson Talks “American Idol” Finale: “I’m Fine Either Way”

By
Greg Srisavasdi
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0

Last night’s American Idol finale (part one) pitted powerhouse singers Caleb Johnson and Jena Irene. Johnson, who was battling though a vocal chord hemorrhage, performed the tracks “Dream On,” “Maybe I’m Amazed,” and “As Long As You Love Me.”

“It was just like you were on planet Mars,” said Johnson after his performances. “It’s just like a different world. All these people in the audience – the lights, the music. It’s powerful.”

For host Ryan Seacrest, hosting American Idol is always a fresh experience. “It is always incredible to be on that stage and look at the 7,000 people cheering for those two individuals that made it this far. I looked over to Caleb and Jena at the top of the show when we first said hello and I said, ‘What do you think?’ They said ‘Oh my god I can’t believe how big this is.’ They did a good job.”

Click on the audio bar below to hear Caleb Johnson talk about being fine either way with tonight’s American Idol results:

Check out tonight’s American Idol results on Fox (8 pm et/pt).

David Cronenberg On “Maps To The Stars” & His Creative Process

By
Greg Srisavasdi
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David Cronenberg’s prodigious and acclaimed career goes all the way back to the 1960s, and the 71-year-old filmmaker has done his share of stellar work. The Fly, Videodrome, The Dead Zone, A History of Violence, and Eastern Promises rank among his finest cinematic forays. His latest project Maps to the Stars is based on an original script by Bruce Wagner and it takes a look at various desperate figures who are trying to find their identity, and possible salvation, within the manipulative confines of Hollywood.

Olivia Williams, Robert Pattinson, David Cronenberg – Maps to the Stars (Entertainment One Films)

Robert Pattinson, who previously worked with Cronenberg in Cosmopolis, plays a limo driver/actor in the picture, and Julianne Moore joins in on the fun as an aging, overwrought actress whose career is overshadowed by the work of her iconic mother. Although the story is set in Tinselton, Cronenberg believes the narrative’s themes are universal.

“It’s not only about Hollywood and about the movie business,” said the filmmaker. “You could set it in Silicon Valley. You could set it in Wall Street. Any place where people are desperate, ambitious, greedy, (and) fearful. You could really set it anywhere and have that same tone and same ring of truth.”

During the Cannes Film Festival press conference for Maps to the Stars, Cronenberg talked about the creative process and motivations he carries before each project. “I don’t really feel I’m inventing myself,” said the director. “But I’m entertaining myself. I’m amusing myself. For me a project is kind of an exploration. I really am asking myself many questions on what it is to be a human being. What is the essence of the human condition, and there are many ways of approaching that.”

Click on the media bar below to hear Cronenberg talk about his filmmaking process:

 Maps to the Stars opens in theaters this fall.

Emily Deschanel Talks “Pretty Dramatic” Bones Season 9 Finale

By
Greg Srisavasdi
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“The Recluse in the Recliner,” the moniker for tonight’s season finale episode of Bones (FOX, 8 pm et/pt), could have been lifted from some Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode. Directed by David Boreanaz, the Jeffersonian crew investigate the demise of Wesley Foster, a conspiracy blog writer who was set to meet Booth (Boreanaz) and shed light on a prior case. Foster’s final moments aren’t a pretty one, as his body may have been burned into a recliner.

As Booth and his colleagues dig deeper into the case, they realize that whoever killed Foster did not want the scribe to meet our intrepid protagonist, and now Booth may be biting off more than he can chew. In a recent interview, Deschanel said that the finale will have huge repercussions for the Jeffersonian team.

Emily Deschanel – Bones (Fox Broadcasting, CR: Patrick McElhenney)

“Booth is up for promotion; the FBI agency in Berlin, their office in Berlin.. And, you know, you can’t say no to such a promotion,” said Deschanel. “It’s an honor, so he’s moving forward. He goes to the confirmation and things don’t go quite as planned, and things unravel from there and lots of things are revealed. I don’t want to say it’s a conspiracy theory because it may not be a theory. There really may be conspiracies happening against Booth and Brennan and possibly everyone at the Jeffersonian. But they’re targeting Booth right now.”

Bones executive producer Stephen Nathan added that tonight’s finale could be the show’s most gripping cliffhanger.

“What we wanted to do was after nine years you really kind of want to shake the tree and, you know, see what falls out,” said Nathan. “And we decided to really put them in a very challenging situation. Now having Booth be tempted by a promotion which could really change his career, but at the same time it changes his life in a very radical way, not only his professional life but his personal life and home life with Brennan, and Christine, and even his son. So, you know, he’s put in a situation, it’s sort of an offer he can’t refuse, but at the same time it slowly becomes an offer that is not really what it appears to be.”

Click on the media bar below to hear Emily Deschanel discuss tonight’s “pretty dramatic finale.”

Seth MacFarlane Finds “A Million Ways” To Love John Ford Westerns

By
Greg Srisavasdi
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Ted filmmaker Seth MacFarlane directs, co-writes and stars in A Million Ways to Die in the West. The Western features MacFarlane as a sheep farmer named Albert who, after backing out of a gunfight, finds courage when a mysterious woman (Charlize Theron) rides into his lawless town.

Amanda Seyfried, Liam Neeson, Giovanni Ribisi, Sarah Silverman, and Neil Patrick Harris also star in this Western comedy which, if MacFarlane keeps up his comedic hot streak, could give Blazing Saddles a run for its money.

A Million Ways To Die In The West (Universal)

During the A Million Ways To Die in the West press conference, MacFarlane talked about the acting challenges he faced during production. “There were two things that became apparent pretty quickly into the process, and one was the muscles didn’t take as much reconditioning as I thought it would,” said the filmmaker. “It was more like voice acting than I thought it would be. You’re using your whole body and there are some things that are different, but when you are doing a character, even in the booth, my face will do different things when I do different characters.”

MacFarlane credited Theron for elevating his performance. “I was with the most talented actress that I could have (worked with),” said MacFarlane. “What became clear as well, and this is probably old hat to actors but it’s new to me, was that your performance really does depend in a large portion to what you’re getting from the other person. I got so much from Charlize and was made so comfortable by her during this process that I got to like (acting) pretty quickly.”

In the audio clip below, MacFarlane talks about his love for John Ford Westerns and he discusses how The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance influenced A Million Ways To Die In The West.

 

The movie comes out May 30.

Review: “Maleficent Free Fall” Weaves Its Magic On IOS

By
Greg Srisavasdi
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0

Disney Interactive’s new release Maleficent Free All is a free to play title that is sure to bring devotees of the publisher’s successful app Frozen Free All. The puzzle game contains a rather simple goal – match three gemstones of the same color and rid the screen of darkness. Upon every color match, each tile will be lit, and you’ll have a number of moves to turn your puzzle board into a sunny, treasure filled spectacle.

Since it’s a freemium title, there are the requisite in-app purchases, with the most important premium centering on purchasing more lives to continue playing the puzzles. The good news is that your lives eventually refresh, and if you don’t want to pay a dime to purchase more lives, just put your mobile device or tablet down and return to the game within a half hour. Maleficent Free All gives you five lives to play with, so even if you screw up your puzzles, there’s enough game time to be had in one sitting.

Disney Interactive
Disney Interactive

I played the first 15 levels of Maleficent Free Fall without a hitch (young Maleficent is pictured in each of the levels), but puzzle solving took a more difficult turn with the second stage. This time out, Maleficent (who’s played in the film by Angelina Jolie), is an adult, so even though the three puzzle match dynamic is still employed, getting the right combination of gems, as well as making the right moves, gets a bit trickier.

Since certain gemstones are trapped in wire, they’re immobile until they’re matched up with two gemstones of the same color. As the puzzles get more difficult, there may be certain matches which are more immediate to the eye but may have absolutely no impact on solving the puzzle. The challenge of Maleficent Free Fall is to be economical with your choices, since every decision can lead to a beneficial or disastrous chain of events.

 

Disney Interactive
Disney Interactive

Fans of Candy Crush Saga and Frozen Free For All won’t be disappointed with Maleficent Free Fall. I downloaded the app in preparation for the upcoming Disney film and was pleasantly surprised. The graphics are spot on and the gameplay, especially if you love slide and match puzzlers, doesn’t disappoint. For a free to play title, Maleficent Free Fall is a more than worthy download, and it’s definitely an app that I’ll keep on my iPad for the weeks to come.

Grade: B +

Maleficent Free Fall Details (iOS): Version 1.0. / Size: 93.9 MB / Free / Rated: 4+

 

 

DVD Pick: “Seduced And Abandoned” A Seductive Look At Cinema

By
Greg Srisavasdi
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0

“Seduced and Abandoned,” a documentary which premiered last year on HBO, begins with a tragic quote from Orson Welles: “I look back on my life and it’s 95% running around trying to raise money to make movies and 5% actually making them. It’s no way to live.”

Writer/director James Toback has spent a majority of his life putting his various personal addictions, as well as hard earned revelations, into cinematic form. Whether it’s his addiction to women and sex (Two Girls and a Guy, The Pick-Up Artist), drugs and sports (Harvard Man), or straight up gambling (his Fyodor Dostoevsky influenced The Gambler), Toback isn’t afraid to turn his destructive passions into narrative form.

With Seduced and Abandoned (98 minutes), Toback’s lifelong addiction of cinema is front and center, as he and Alec Baldwin attempted to find financing for a film that would star Baldwin and Neve Campbell (she worked with Toback in his 2004 feature When Will I Be Loved). Their idea is to shoot a modern day version of Last Tango in Paris, the Bernardo Bertolucci feature which arguably contains Marlon Brando’s most emotionally revealing work.

“Making movies is the oxygen of my being,” says Toback, who intended his film to be an intimate tale of two people that would be set against a large, politically charged backdrop.

Their 2012 visit to the Cannes Film Festival (it was Baldwin’s first experience with the French Riviera) was met with a mixture of reverie and resigned disappointment. On the plus side, the documentary features interviews with a wide array of actors and filmmakers of the highest order (Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jessica Chastain, Roman Polanski, Bertolucci, James Caan, Ryan Gosling). If you want to check out a loving ode to cinema that’s filled with memorable stories (Gosling’s near death experience on a plane is a particular highlight), Seduced and Abandoned doesn’t disappoint.

Their meetings with financiers, billionaires, and movie studio power players, though often engaging and entertaining, end up as ultimately bracing conversations about the reality of the business. Producer Mark Damon claims a film with Toback, Baldwin and Campbell attached would only receive $4-5 million in financing (Toback was aiming for a budget over triple that amount). Even with all the wonderful discussions about the transcendent impact of cinema, Seduced and Abandoned is an honest look at filmmaking’s bottom line: if you don’t have a young, hot star attached to your film, don’t expect tons of money to back your production.

Toback and Baldwin certainly know this truism, but as Baldwin sums it best regarding his continued (and bittersweet) love for films – “You are seduced and abandoned over and over again.”

Special Features on the DVD includes a 9-minute lunch conversation between Toback and Baldwin. The chat mainly centrals on Toback’s early exploration into his psyche and how that journey influenced The Gambler (which was directed by Karel Reisz) and his 1978 drama Fingers.

** The Seduced and Abandoned DVD is Manufactured on Demand (MOD) via The Warner Archive Collection. To purchase this DVD, go to the Warner Archive site.

Drew Barrymore Cries Over “Blended’s” Emotional Moments

By
Greg Srisavasdi
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0

Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler have undeniable chemistry, as proven with their previous hits “The Wedding Singer” and “50 First Dates.” Their third pairing, Blended, opens nationwide May 23.

 

“Aside from what we do together, I’m so in love with what he did, from Saturday Night Live and Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison,” said Barrymore when asked about what makes her collaboration with Sandler tick. “I love this person so much. He’s so amazing and I appreciated him. But when it comes down to that one on one, when it’s just us two alone on a playing field, it’s just total respect. It’s like giddy. Giddy respect.”

Blended – Drew Barrymore (Warner Bros. Pictures)

In Blended, they play single parents who decide never to see each other again after a disastrous blind date. Through circumstance, their families are stuck together at an African safari resort for a week, leading to disastrous (and one would assume, eventually harmonious and loving) results. Although the flick has its share of laughs, Blended also possesses an emotional core which resonated with Barrymore. 

Click on the media bar to hear Drew Barrymore explain why Blended actually made her cry (she specifically cites a scene she performed with co-star Bella Thorne):

Last Comic Standing Host J.B. Smoove: “Comedy Is Drama”

By
Greg Srisavasdi
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0

Next week, NBC’s Last Comic Standing returns with a completely new look. JB Smoove, a talented comic who brings the ruckus on Curb Your Enthusiasm, serves as the show’s host, with Roseanne, Keenen Ivory Wayans and Russell Peters serving as the judges.

With the participants receiving an invite only shot at Last Comic Standing, the humor should be on a rather high level for season 8. The top 100 comics in the U.S. will duke it out for the top 20 spots, and only the top 10 comics will be picked for the challenge rounds.

During the NBC TCA press day, I asked Mr. Smoove if comedy is a harder craft to hone than drama. To the entertainer, both are actually one and the same, and he explained why many comics also have a natural knack for drama. Check out the video below:

To check out some funny videos that are spearheaded by Smoove (included the Segway Pimp), check out TheRuckus.com.

Last Comic Standing’s new season premieres May 22 (NBC, 9 pm et/pt).

Blu-Ray Review: James Cromwell, Genévieve Bujold Shine In “Still Mine”

By
Greg Srisavasdi
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0

The tag line for Still Mine (111 minutes, PG-13) is that “love is the ultimate triumph,” and it’s a phrase that is shouldered with a ton of perseverance from longtime couple Craig and Irene Morrison (Craig Morrison, Genevieve Bujold).

Now out on Blu-ray and DVD, Still Mine mines similar territories as Away From Her and Amour, as each film gives us an even eyed look at growing old. Craig is a hard as nails retiree who continues to fight even with his wife’s early signs of dementia, and since their home may be too much for them to handle, he attempts to build a smaller residence on their bountiful land (the story is set in St. Martins village in New Brunswick, Canada).

Complications ensue when a government inspector (Jonathan Potts) claims Craig’s plans are violating building codes, and Campbell Scott co-stars as the lawyer who tries to help the Morrisons achieve Craig’s seemingly elusive dream.

Still Mine – James Cromwell, Genévieve Bujold (Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment)

Before they’re ready to turn off the light and end another day, Irene makes romantic overtures to her longtime lover and says “I want to look at you, old man.” Filmmaker and writer Michael McGowan gives us a subtle, and ultimately unflinching portrait of a loving couple who’ve been married for 61 years. Everything comes to an end, but Craig is too stubborn and prideful to give in to the inevitable. Whether it’s continuing his battles with a building inspector (Jonathan Potts) or shutting his children out from his own decision making process, Craig is determined to do things his way.

Both Bujold and Cromwell have crafted distinguished acting careers, and Still Mine features some of their best work. McGowan could have turned the story into an overwrought drama that lazily tugs on our innate sentimentality, but instead he honors their story in a truthful, and ultimately heartrending light. The story of two old people waiting for that final sunset may come off as boring cinema, but Still Mine proves that even the simplest stories, if their aim is true, rarely miss the mark.

Unfortunately, there are no Blu-ray special features, as an audio commentary from McGowan and the two leads would have been more than welcome.

 

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