John Cusack dives into the twisted psyche of 19th century author Edgar Allan Poe in this week’s The Raven , a fictional adventure-mystery that blends the writer’s real life with the kind of dark, macabre tales he wove — and Movieline has your chance to catch it before it opens on April 27! Enter Movieline’s 10-word review contest (critiquing any film from Cusack’s nearly three-decade career) and you could win a pair of tickets to the Los Angeles premiere and after party for the film. So turn on the hot tub time machine and crank up the high fidelity, tapeheads and grifters and America’s sweethearts, because, um, the cradle will rock over Broadway. Or something. It’s a sure thing! Oh, just say anything… Okay, that was terrible. But my point is, there are so many great Cusack flicks to choose from. Submit your best 10-word Cusack review in the comments below (or on Facebook or Twitter) and your faithful Movieline editors will pick the most clever, lyrical, and inspired one of the bunch; the writer of the best 10-word review will receive a pair of tickets to the Raven premiere and afterparty, to be held Monday, April 23rd at the LA Theater (615 Broadway, Downtown Los Angeles). CONTEST RULES: – Submit an original 10-word review of any John Cusack movie in the comments below. Entries must be exactly 10 words, no more, no less! – Enter with your full name and an email address where you may be reached. – Eligible entrants must be at least 18 years of age and able to attend the premiere in Los Angeles on the evening of Monday, April 23rd. One (1) winner will be selected. Tickets must be picked up at will call at the Los Angeles premiere and are not transferable. Contest ends Friday, April 20 at 3pm ET/12 pm PT — so get to reviewing! More on The Raven , in theaters April 27: The macabre and lurid tales of Edgar Allan Poe are vividly brought to life – and death – in this stylish, gothic thriller starring John Cusack as the infamous author. When a madman begins committing horrific murders inspired by Poe’s darkest works, a young Baltimore detective (Luke Evans) joins forces with Poe in a quest to get inside the killer’s mind in order to stop him from making every one of Poe’s brutal stories a blood chilling reality. A deadly game of cat and mouse ensues, which escalates when Poe’s love (Alice Eve, She’s Out of My League) becomes the next target. Intrepid Pictures’ The Raven also stars Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges) and Oliver Jackson-Cohen (Faster). Follow Movieline on Twitter .
On the last day of her twenties, Nellie McKay paused to contemplate the milestone before her — or not. Taking a deep breath that soon escaped as a halting laugh, the singer/songwriter/actress and all-around pop polymath brought to mind another benchmark that loomed in her decade past. “In P.S. I Love You ,” McKay began, citing the 2007 film in which she co-starred, “we go over to my sister, played by Hilary Swank, and we surprise her. And she’s really down and out. So I hold up a ‘Happy Birthday’ sign, and I say, ‘You’re 30!’ It’s a big laugh line — or it’s supposed to be a big laugh line. I don’t know if it landed. So that’s kind of surreal to have done that. But I don’t know if…” She trailed off. “Who knows?” McKay finally asked. ” I don’t know.” McKay’s feelings about 30 are reflected in her art, a trademark blend of genuine wonder and calculated mystique enveloping myriad styles and influences — musical, historical, cultural and otherwise. Eisenhower-era gloss? Check. Nixon-era rage? Check? Jazzy, postmodern feminist fusillades against the crises of capital punishment and environmental wreckage? Er, check ? The sweet irrepressibility of following your dreams, even if the path detours into fetching your next meal from a dumpster in Brooklyn? Check — at least for Ramona, the spunky songstress played by McKay in this week’s microindie Downtown Express . “It’s the land of plenty!”, Ramona coos with ironic relish to her new bandmate and beau Sasha (Philippe Quint), himself a Russian immigrant and subway busker whose forthcoming classical violin recital conflicts with his more rockin’ aspirations for the good life in America. The almost obsessive balance of passions and principles that has characterized McKay’s work since her 2004 breakthrough album Get Away From Me undergirds much of director David Grubin’s Express , but it’s the consequences — the privation, the insecurity, the searing frustration of it all — that stand out in McKay’s haunted screen persona. For all the creative and romantic capital that Ramona and Sasha may accrue, her eyes reflect the bitter awareness that utopia is out of reach. McKay is reticent about Ramona’s ghosts. “I have my own theory,” she said, “but I don’t want to interfere with what anyone might think while watching it. I guess I think there is something like that, but I think people should just invent it for themselves.” And McKay knows a few things about invention. The daughter of a British director and an American actress, her mythology commenced with a very public battle to release her debut as a double album (“Should have signed with Verve instead of Sony,” she sang in one typically melodic lament; Verve has since rescued her from the Sony deal’s scorched wreckage) and meandered through confused reports about her age, her upbringing, her activism and even the true meaning of her songs. What ratio of caustic social criticism to earnest romanticism was to be found in a ballad like “I Wanna Get Married,” and how were listeners to reconcile such schisms with album-length tributes to the likes of Doris Day ? That’s just for starters. More recently, McKay has explored the vicissitudes of notoriety with acclaimed tributes to Barbara Graham (the murderess put to death in California in 1955; her story inspired both the Oscar-winning film I Want to Live! and McKay’s 2011 song cycle of the same name) and the conservationist and writer Rachel Carson. The latter show, Silent Spring—It’s Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature , is touring presently, its own heroine reflecting Ramona’s brassy vulnerability in Downtown Express — and, in turn, reflecting much of McKay’s own complex, confrontational character. But ultimately, while McKay may have mellowed out slightly since her politically aware broadsides of eight or nine years ago, she seems to acknowledge that her sprawling worldview has only gathered more focus and strength when distilled through real-life subjects. “We’re just starting the Rachel Carson [show], so I’m still finding it,” McKay said. “But to be able to tell their stories and channel them some way is a relief and a pleasure. I think those shows are far superior to solo shows.” Asked what relief and pleasure she could take from such turbulent, troubled stories, McKay didn’t flinch. “Well, Rachel’s was troubled because we live on a devastated planet,” she replied. “But I think she found a lot of joy. And actually, Barbara did, too. Barbara knew how to have a good time.” Fundamentally, McKay said she cherishes the “relief from yourself” that her acting efforts have afforded her. “I don’t want to be myself,” she told me. “I have to live with her.” Yet she does hesitate when asked about the real Nellie McKay — the one Grubin cast after seeing her perform on Broadway in The Threepenny Opera in 2006, or the one who generously tips NYC subway musicians for making her commute “a beautiful thing” (as well as “to make up for the people who don’t give anything”), or the one who self-effacingly credits vodka for the chemistry shared with her Russian co-star Quint, or the one who even wants to put “the real Nellie McKay” in any kind of perspective at all. “I think you try to find what works, and that can be very elusive,” she said. “I mean, gee…” McKay paused again. “I have…” And then followed a longer, struggling pause, relieved only by invoking yet another pseudorealist icon: “I feel like Woody Allen tearing up the driver’s license in Annie Hall .” (Did I mention McKay also used to be a stand-up comic?) Which brings us back to 30 — or “57,” as McKay cheekily replies about her milestone before going a little darker about its meaning (or lack thereof). “I don’t know that any thing means much,” she said. “I don’t see that anything leads to much. I mean, I don’t really feel that things change . They just mutate. For instance, if you look through the century, certain things have gotten better and certain things have gotten worse. I wouldn’t say overall that things have gotten better. I think you could say things have gotten worse, but I don’t think you could say that things have gotten better. Overall. You can’t say that.” Does McKay — this ivory-tickling, ukulele-slinging avatar of ’50s class, millennial angst and every fraught neurosis in between — even think she was born at the right time? Another pause. “Well,” she said, “I think maybe you do choose your parents. I know I chose the right mother. But born at the right or wrong time? Gee, I don’t know. Do you think you were born at the right time?” Maybe? Would I like to have experienced the Jazz Era? The Renaissance? Sure. Slavery? The plague? Not so much. “I guess you deal with what you get,” McKay said. Indeed. And as tough and mercurial a nut as she is to crack, Nellie McKay’s art makes her mystery worth it. On screen, on stage, on record, you deal with what you get. The payoff is worth it. Downtown Express opens Friday in New York . PREVIOUSLY: Nellie McKay Plays My Favorite Scene [Top photo of Nellie McKay: Danny Bright; bottom photo of McKay and Philippe Quint: Susan Meiselas] Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Director Lee Daniels made Oscar magic tapping Mo’Nique for Precious ; the comic and talk-show host took the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress that year in addition to a slew of festival awards (including an acting prize at Sundance, where the film premiered in 2009). Now, Daniels has asked John Cusack to join his anticipated The Butler , playing the role of Richard Nixon. What does Cusack have in mind, and does his own masterpiece await? Good question, as the actor explained to Vulture at Monday’s premiere of The Raven . “I don’t know yet,” Cusack said. “I haven’t figured it out yet. We’re still working on it. You can never really do one definitive thing on a person. Not one movie or even one novel can really sum up a person — it’s just one angle. So I need to get in Lee’s head about what he has in store, because the perspective on [the movie] is people who worked for the president, so it’s a different angle, you know?” Cusack will join Forest Whitaker, who will play the White House butler who served eight U.S. presidents, while Jane Fonda will portray Nancy Reagan (gasp!). Cusack, who will be seen in the upcoming Adult World , is also set to star in another Lee Daniels project, The Paperboy , along with Zac Efron and Matthew McConaughey. [ Vulture ]
Posted onDecember 14, 2010by|Comments Off on Nicolas Cage Goes Nuts, and 6 Other Stories You’ll Be Talking About Today
Also in today’s edition of The Broadsheet: John Cusack is Edgar Allen Poe… Awards-season scientists link cunnilingus to Oscar consideration… Philadelphia gets the reality check it deserves… and more…
Chris Evans didn’t plan to sign up for so many comic book movies — really! So how did his superhero-studded career come together? The newly minted Captain America told Elle all about it, and Movieline has the first look.
Anton Corbijn’s The American looks and feels like a movie made by a filmmaker who hasn’t been to the movies since the ’70s — and I mean that as the highest compliment. This is Corbijn’s second feature: His first was the elegiac and gorgeously shot (by Martin Ruhe) Control, based on the life story of Ian Curtis, lead singer of the influential and much-loved Manchester band Joy Division, who committed suicide at age 23 in 1980. Before Corbijn was a filmmaker, or even a director of videos for the likes of U2 and Depeche Mode, he was a photographer specializing in rock ‘n’ roll types as subjects; he had photographed Curtis and the other members of Joy Division early in his career, having left his native Holland for England because, as he’s said in interviews, he wanted “to be where that music comes from.”
Lindsay Lohan is on the cover of this month’s Vanity Fair , and she’s conjuring the dignity of the Evelyn Waugh book of the same name. Click through for more Buzz Break, as January Jones makes a smart TV choice, Joan Cusack goes to cable, Stan Lee meets Nikita , and The Situation announces he’s at a disadvantage on Dancing with the Stars .
Want a tutorial in the hypocrisy, vitriol and deep unhappiness of the American left? You don’t need to subject yourself to MSNBC, or wade through the muck of Daily Kos. Actor John Cusack’s Twitter feed is a clearing house for liberal memes and nasty rhetoric. Here’s his peaceful entry from Aug. 29 [All spelling from original Tweets, but Cusack admits: “I type with I phone fast and loose with no spellcheck.”]: Johncusack: I AM FOR A SATANIC DEATH CULT CENTER AT FOX NEWS HQ AND OUTSIDE THE OFFICES ORDICK ARMEYAND NEWT GINGRICH-and all the GOP WELFARE FREAKS Presumably, this is a reference to the controversy over the Ground Zero Mosque. And “all the GOP WELFARE FREAKS” seems to follow on this theme: Johncusack: taht’s the gop philospy.. gourge the stae while claiming to be rugged individuaist who live by the free market – biggest joke there is.. Johncusack: think of our the us treasury as the last frontier to be stripped mined if only pesky gov itelf wasn’t in the way. Johncusack: privatized gains- socialized loses– complete hippcorites But elsewhere, Cusack said Glenn Beck (at his “Restoring Honor” rally) was “unifying whites -class war of blame and fear” and said Beck was starting a “class war to capitallize on economy they destroyed” – a strange accusation from a man that claims the GOP wants to gut the treasury. And what liberal rant would be complete without the leftist’s two favorite pejorative? Back’s tactics, he wrote were “strraigjt fr tfriendly racist playbiook.” A minute later, Cusack added, “Sorry frendly fascist playbook.” Elsewhere, he wrote: “[Charles] krathhammers a joke son please do me a fav and dont watch.” He called another Tweeter a “flag sucking halfwit,” presumably for the sin of patriotism. Strong words from a man who also Tweeted about having “to weed out all the little trolls who can’t bare it when someone has an opinion they dont like.” He “blocked as many haters as i could a i still can’t get below 200 thou,” but confessed, “i guess someone turned off the automatic hate spewing machine.. i kind of miss them.” Whew! Glad some of the hate’s gone from Twitter. Cusack, who, according to OpenSecrets.org gave $1,000 to Vice President Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign, has a long history of using strident partisan rhetoric. He called the Bush administration ” criminally incompetent robber barons ,” and “the neo-con/White House Iraq Group lunatics,” and demanded that Attorney General Eric Holder imprison the guilty Bush officials . He also did an anti-McCain ad for the far-left group MoveOn.org
Marc Istook travels to Yellowstone, ground zero for earth’s destruction in 2012. While there, he chats up stars John Cusack, Amanda Peet and Chiwetel Ejiofor about the end of the world. Add this to your queue Added: Wed Nov 25 01:19:05 UTC 2009 Air date: Tue Nov 24 00:00:00 UTC 2009 Duration: 02:04
Richard Heene, you’re going to dig this story. So, the other day we were kicking back, studying the Maya calendar, when we made two shocking discoveries: • One, the…
