In honor of its 30th anniversary (and to promote the upcoming Blu-ray release, ka-ching!), Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial will return to theaters in October for a one-night only special engagement in October, via Fathom Events. As a bonus, the digitally-remastered film will be accompanied by making-of materials and a remembrance by Drew Barrymore — Gertie! — and, probably, buckets full of Reese’s Pieces. From Universal Pictures: “TCM Presents ‘E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial’ 30th Anniversary Event” will take place Wednesday, October 3 at 7:00 p.m. local time, with special matinee screenings in select theaters at 2:00 p.m. local time. Presented by NCM® Fathom Events, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Universal Pictures as part of the studio’s 100th Anniversary celebration, the event features the all-new, digitally remastered feature film, as well as a special taped introduction by TCM host Ben Mankiewicz, who will take audiences through the making of this modern classic. Fans will discover how Spielberg came up with the idea for “E.T.” and learn what working on the film was like for the film’s three young stars. As an added treat, Drew Barrymore, who plays Gertie in the film and who currently co-hosts TCM’s “The Essentials” showcase, shares what the film means to her 30 years later.” I’m not a huge fan of these simultaneous digital projection events, but it could be a very special big screen first-viewing for parents with tots of their own. I mean, it’s E.T. ! Tickets and more info here .
What’s in a name? J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot sequel finally has one (per Deadline ) and despite my deepest, nerdiest hopes that early reports were on some crazy tip it’s been confirmed so I guess we’re stuck with it. I hope you’re ready for — drumroll please… Star Trek Into Darkness . Star Trek into what now !? I’m sure it was tough to come up with a naming convention that deviated from the original Trek movies’ Roman numeral + subtitle formula, or the TNG -era Trek s’ annoying penchant for terribly vague one-word descriptors (“Nemesis”? “Generations”?). At least those made more sense once you saw the movie. But Star Trek Into Darkness ? For starters, it sounds like Step Into Liquid and Step Up 2 The Streets , which makes me think Chris Pine and Co. are headed for a dance-off with outer space surfers to the music of a British glam rock band. On top of that, dropping the colon forces us to comprehend “Trek” as both a noun and a verb, which makes my brain hurt. Who wants to go Star Trekkin’ with J.J. Abrams? [*Commenter Elijah Sarkesian is right: Maybe someone just forgot the colon. If that’s the case then I forgive Abrams and will move Star Trek: Into Darkness into #10 right under Star Trek: Insurrection , because “insurrection” is at least an interesting vocabulary word.] Maybe I’m being too harsh on poor Star Trek 2 . Looking back on the Trek films, they weren’t all winners. Here’s how I’d rank the 12 franchise titles, from awesome ( KHAAAAAAAN! ) to turrible. 1. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan 2. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock 3. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home 4. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier 5. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country 6. Star Trek: The Motion Picture 7. Star Trek: First Contact 8. Star Trek 9. Star Trek: Insurrection 10. Star Trek: Nemesis 11. Star Trek: Generations 12. Star Trek Into Darkness Yep. Still not working. Sound off below. Together we can get through this, guys. Star Trek 2 is in theaters May 17, 2013. [ TrekMovie.com , Deadline ]
Ahead of Thursday’s trailer premiere, Steven Spielberg and Co. have released a first-look teaser for Lincoln , starring Daniel Day-Lewis as the 16th President of the United States. Get a taste of what Spielberg has in store with this somber (but stirring!) bit of footage from the film. Gettysburg Address, y’all! I like the conceit of Lincoln hearing his own inspirational words recited back to him, feeling his impact on his fellow man even in the sparest of moments in what looks to be a quiet Union encampment. Synopsis: Steven Spielberg directs two-time Academy Award® winner Daniel Day-Lewis in “Lincoln,” a revealing drama that focuses on the 16th President’s tumultuous final months in office. In a nation divided by war and the strong winds of change, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the war, unite the country and abolish slavery. With the moral courage and fierce determination to succeed, his choices during this critical moment will change the fate of generations to come. Lincoln hits theaters on November 9 and stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, David Strathairn, Lee Pace, Jackie Earle Haley, John Hawkes, and more. [ DreamWorks ] Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
As a movie title, The Place Beyond The Pines doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but that didn’t stop the latest project from Derek Cianfrance and his Blue Valentine star Ryan Gosling from being one of the most discussed films at the Toronto International Film Festival . The picture — which tells the tale of a bank-robbing motorcycle stunt driver (Gosling), a cop (Bradley Cooper) who fatefully crosses his path and their sons, did not have a distributor when it premiered at the festival on Friday night. That changed when Deadline reported on Sunday that Focus Features had acquired the film for release. On Saturday, Gosling and Cianfrance met with the press to discuss the making of the film, its thematic exploration of legacy, and Gosling’s fantasy about robbing banks on a motorcycle — an idea that figures into the plot of film. The Pines, Cianfrance explained, “is a place where you find your demons but also where you can find your destiny.” As for that title, it doesn’t sound so cumbersome when you consider that it could have been called Schenectady . Read on for the explanation. You said at the premiere on Friday that The Place Beyond The Pines is a movie about “Legacy.” Can you elaborate on that? Derek Cianfrance: It’s a movie about what we pass on. I started writing it in 2007 right before my second son was born. I was thinking about what kind of father I was going to become again, and I was thinking about this feeling I’ve had inside me my whole life. There’s this fire inside me that had helped me do many things in my life, but that also was very destructive. And I started thinking that my father — and my grandfather — had that fire and then wondering how far back it went and where it started. I was also thinking about this baby that was going to come into the world that was going to be clean and what I was going to give him. I was thinking how I didn’t want him to have the fire. I wanted him to be fresh and clean. Very quickly, that led to this idea about legacy. Ever since film school, I had wanted to make a triptych, like Abel Gance’s film Napoleon , but I didn’t know what story to tell. When I discovered this idea of legacy, I realized that that was how I would tell this story. That fire that you mention — it shapes who you become but you have to take control of it. DC: Yes, it’s the choices you make, but sometimes you’re born into a world with all of these repercussions that people have made before you. So you have to fight and claw to get out of that. You said at the premiere that you were reading a lot of Jack London at the time. I was reading pretty much everything I could find that Jack London had written. If you just take The Call of the Wild , for example, it’s about this domesticated wolf that hears the calling of his ancestors. When he howls at the moon, he feels the hunger — and how his ancestors were starving — and he can sing their song with them. That line continues, and I got kind of obsessed with this idea of evolution, of where that came from within me. And of my ancestors. And wanting them to be better than me. Wanting them to survive. If they’re worse than me, then they don’t survive. Then your bloodline doesn’t survive. And to survive is brutal. Ryan, what’s significant about the film for you? Ryan Gosling: I love Derek’s idea of passing the narrative. I saw this film called The Red and the White [Miklós Jancsó]. It’s this war picture and you’re following this one soldier, and, suddenly, he gets killed. Then you’re following the guy that killed him and he ends up attacking some woman. And the you follow the woman. It was completely different kind of experience, and when I saw it, I wondered why this type of picture wasn’t done more often. I thought it was very interesting that Derek wanted to do that. Initially, we talked about this film before Blue Valentine. I was saying to Derek that I always wanted to rob banks, but I’m scared of jail. But, if I was going to do it, I would do it on a motorcycle then drive up into a U-Haul [after the robbery to hide the bike] That’s how I would get away with it. And he said, “That’s crazy. I just wrote a script about that.” So, I said, ‘I’m in.” What appeals to you about robbing banks — the adrenaline rush? RG: There’s just all this money there, and some people are walking in with more than others. And what I learned from this movie is you just have to ask for it. [The tellers] have to give it to you. I’m not promoting this idea, but I would say don’t use a weapon if you’re going to do it. It’s just safer all around and less time in jail. And all of the people we interviewed said that the ones that did it nicely got less time. There’s a Hitchcockian element to this movie and your character. RG: I’m Janet Leigh. That’s how I’ve always thought of myself. Both Ryan’s character, Luke, and Bradley Cooper’s character, Avery are complex, morally flawed guys. But Avery, who comes from a so-called good family, isn’t punished for his shortcomings. Are you making a class statement there? DC: We shot this movie in Schenectady, New York. Schenectady, which is the Iroquois word for “the place beyond the pines,” is the place where my wife grew up and where one of my co-writers Ben Coccio grew up, and I feel like there are these tribes of people in these small cities and towns that keep themselves in certain strata, for lack of a better word. And this movie is about those different tribes that live in a contemporary American city. And I feel like the bloodline goes very far back. Avery is born into this small-town royalty. His father is a judge, but even though Avery went to law school, he wants to become his own man. His decision to become a police officer shows that he is trying to carve his own path and escape his father’s legacy, but it’s very difficult. Ryan, did you and Derek work together to develop your character? RG: We worked on it together. We talked a lot about the myth of Parsifal and the Red Knight. That was sort of what I used. A lot about this character was someone who ws posturing and posing and performing. We liked the idea of him maybe alluding to things that weren’t true, and him being a mystery even to himself — lost in his own mythology. All the tattoos I wear in the movie — I don’t know how necessary they are, but they were a part of trying to understand this character. What’s interesting about working with Derek is that you’re not allowed to take your decisions lightly. They’re permanent, and any step you take with your character, you have to embrace that. For instance, with the face tattoo [of a dagger] that I wear in the movie, it was the last one applied, and I felt like it was too much when it came down to it. I thought, I don’t want to have a tattoo on my face this whole movie. It’s just going to be distracting, and I think I’ve gone too far. And Derek said, “That’s what happens when you get a face tattoo. That’s how you feel. And now you’re stuck with it.” So then I had to go through the whole film having that tattoo on my face, and I regretted it the whole time. Only Derek would do that. Only Derek would do that. You really convey onscreen that you care for the baby you fathered with Eva Mendes’ character. RG: First of all that’s due to the fact that the kid that Derek cast, who plays my son as an infant — his name is Tony Pizza. It’s hard not to like a guy named Tony Pizza, Anthony Pizza Jr. So, I just liked that guy, and we really hit it off. DC: There’s a line in the film where Luke’s character says, “I never had my father and look at the way I turned out.” I think there’s this kind of shame in his character. He’s marked. And he sees this boy that’s clean, that has no marks, that hasn’t been tainted that thing happens that can happen, which is this overwhelming feeling of responsibility. This character takes responsibility because it’s something so pure in his life and he never had that. I know a lot of people who didn’t grow up with strong fathers or grew up with absent fathers and they turned out to be the most dedicated fathers. At the boy’s baptism, you cry onscreen. RG: I didn’t know that that was going to happen. Again, it’s a credit to Derek’s process because it’s never something that’s asked of you or in the script — those emotional benchmarks that you know you have to reach. I was just sitting in the church watching the baby be baptized, and I don’t know why I was emotional but I was. The motorcycle chase scenes are intense. How were they shot? DC: My reference points were Cops and America’s Wildest Police Chases . I wanted it to feel like a video that came from a camera mounted to the dash of a cop car. And so that raised the stakes for shooting. It raised the stakes for Ryan because there are some stunts in there where he really had to learn how to ride a motorcycle very well. There are certain takes where he had to park the bike, rob the bank, leave the bank, get back on the motorcycle, drive into traffic while being pursued by a cop car and go through an intersection avoiding 36 cars. And he had to do that 22 times. And every time I watched that scene, I think, he’s going to get hit — because every time he did it, he almost got hit. Ryan, did you do all of your stunts? RG: No, in scenes like that where Derek planned them as one shot, I had to do them. But there were a lot of things that the stunt driver Rick Miller did. When Batman gets on a motorcycle [in The Dark Knight films], that’s Rick Miller in the suit. He ‘s the best that there is. He and I rode motorcycles for a few months beforehand. And he showed me the best that he could. But these things take a lifetime to learn. I did my best, but my best wasn’t good enough. How scared were you? RG: I think you need it a little bit. Once you lose the fear, you got to get off it because then your mind starts to wonder and you get in trouble. But when I was a kid, I was walking to school and saw this guy on a motorcycle get hit by a car. He was laying on the ground, and I looked at him and he had blood coming out of his head. And my first thought was, I’ve got to get a motorcycle. Motorcycles put some kind of spell on you. It’s dangerous. Derek, in the the last third of the movie, you get remarkable performances from two young actors, Dane DeHaan and Emory Cohen, who play the sons of, respectively, Luke and Avery. How long did you have to look to find these two actors? DC: I auditioned over 500 kids for those roles. I thought I was going to cast raw people, but in order to keep this baton pass going, I needed them to be at a certain level. I met them very late in the process. The first thing I heard them discussing what who was a better actor, James Dean or Marlon Brando. And they could not agree. Then, they were debating whether Al Pacino or Robert De Niro was better. Dane said “Pacino,” and Emory said “De Niro,” and I realized that these kids had ambition to be great and that I could unleash that conflict on the movie. But at the same time, they had so much in common. They were flip sides of a coin. This is the second time you’ve worked with Derek. Why the repeat the performance? RG: I was excited to work with Derek again because so much of making a first film with somebody is getting to know one another and how you work — and you really just get started by the time it’s over. I feel like Derek and I had a shorthand when we came into this film. We were able to do much more in a shorter period of time. We both evolved and the film evolved together. We have instant access to each other, which you need when you’re making a film because time is always coming to get you. Derek, what’s special about working with Ryan? RG: I look like Derek. DC: He’s just a magic person. He makes things better. We’ve all seen him save people by getting hit by a car, and we’ve all seen him break up fights in the city. And that’s what he does in a movie. He makes the world a better place. He makes me a better filmmaker and everyone around him better. That’s why I have no doubt that he’ll be a great filmmaker. Ryan, when do you start shooting How to Catch A Monster and what can you tell us about it? RG: Beginning of next year. Christina Hendricks is in the film. I’m not going to be in the film. That’s probably all I should say about it. Are you two planning to work together again? DC: I hope so. RG: Yeah. DC: The next thing I’m doing is this HBO series [on bodybuilding] called Muscle. [Turns to Gosling] I’d love it if you could do it, but you would have to gain about 80 pounds of muscle over the next five years. Read more from the Toronto Film Festival. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Here are Selena Gomez , Vanessa Hudgens , Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine back together in Toronto to promote their film “Spring Breakers”. For this post, we’re going to focus on Selena because clearly the others didn’t get the Hollywood Tuna memo. No cleavage, no love. It appears to me that Selena’s young and wild little chesticles are trying to escape from that sexy leopard print dress. They need to be tamed. And guess what? I’m the perfect guy to be their handlers.
If there is any disappointment or bitterness that The Master was set to receive the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival today, only for the top prize there to be “re-assigned” due to a rule limiting the number of awards one title can receive, then director Paul Thomas Anderson did not show it this afternoon at the Toronto International Film Festival where the film is having its North American premiere. Anderson along with actress Amy Adams and producer JoAnne Sellar spoke with reporters at the festival along with TIFF co-director Cameron Bailey. “It was amazing what happened in Venice. Philip [Seymour Hoffman] was able to go over there because Joaquin [Phoenix] and I have duties over here at this festival,” said Anderson. “And, it was amazing what they gave us. The best part was that they gave [awards] to both of the boys.” Anderson acknowledged that he was aware of the apparent controversy, but said he was satisfied with the prizes The Master received at the Italian festival. “I’m thrilled with whatever they want to hand over. I heard some of the scuttlebutt recently but I’m just thrilled with what they hand over. And that’s all.” Along with the Best Actor prize being split by Hoffman and Phoenix, Paul Thomas Anderson was awarded Venice’s Silver Lion for Best Director, while Korean director Kim-Ki Duk’s Pieta received the festival’s Golden Lion. Asked if he was disappointed he couldn’t be in Venice to pick up the awards personally, Anderson joked, “Through our studies on this film we’ve gotten to where we can do time travel. I’m actually at two places at once. I’m at the Pizza Hut and the Taco Bell.” Audiences in Venice and now Toronto are buzzing over The Master . Laura Dern also stars in the film along with Hoffman, Phoenix and Adams revolving around “drifters and seekers” in post World War II America. The film revolves around the journey of a Naval veteran (Joaquin Phoenix) who arrives home from war unsettled and uncertain of his future – until he is tantalized by “The Cause” and its charismatic leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Anderson appeared to be a bit surprised by the buzz the film is generating, but said he is pleased. “I don’t know why the film is resonating. I’m not sure what’s going on. We were proud to show it, but for people to be gravitating to it in such a way, it just feels so gratifying.” “It’s a film you really have to think about and it’s part of the time we’re living in,” added Sellar. “There aren’t a lot of films out there at the moment like that.” Amy Adams said her experience on the set were not quite what she had expected going in, saying she was surprised by the leeway that she and her fellow actors were given. “I thought it was going to be very very serious, but we actually laughed a lot and had a lot of fun,” said Adams. “There was a lot of freedom and we were allowed to experiment and fail. But going into it, I thought it would be very, very serious.” “Over the years, Paul has become a freer director [and] more organic,” added Sellar. “For me and Daniel [Lupi], my producing partner, we were able to support his vision and make changes and go on the fly.” And now that Venice’s awards are history, chatter in Toronto is now already looking toward Oscar and The Master is getting plenty of buzz. Asked about the Academy Award conversation among TIFF attendees this weekend, Anderson said simply, “Great.”
Rust and Bone is essential. It’s life and death. It’s like fucking at a funeral. It throws the grit of existence in your face and while you reel at our insubstantiality and balk at our crudity as human beings, it shows you that love is the only transcendent force we possess. What separates man from beast. There is no doubt it will polarize. There is nothing commercial here apart from the pulling power of Marion Cotillard . Cinematographically it is an expressionistic essay; intellectually, a two-hour conversation with its filmmaker. And physically it is a kick in the teeth, a depiction of poverty, sex and violence which crosses most known codes of acceptability. Spoilers follow. I would expect nothing less from director Jacques Audiard . From Read My Lips to The Beat My Heart Skipped to A Prophet , (the latter both also shot by Stephanie Fontaine) this is as ever courageous work. He is skilled at combining grainy realism with something esoteric — beyond romance. He creates criminal heroes within almost apocalyptic fairy tales. The premise of Rust and Bone is unbelievable — risible, even — and sounds more French farce than dramatic arc: A love story between a bare-knuckle street boxer and a woman who trains orca whales and loses her legs after a Seaworld accident. Adapted from a series of short stories by Craig Davidson, Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts), homeless and penniless with his five-year-old son Sam (Armand Cerdue) on his shoulders, turns up at his estranged sister’s in Antibes in the South of France. She houses them in her grimy garage, he gets a job as a bouncer in the local nightclub and rescues Stephanie (Cotillard), bloodied after a brawl. They don’t see each other again until after the accident; until after Stephanie has lost both legs to a killer whale. She calls him. He shows her no pity, and from there a relationship develops. As we move forward the stakes are raised and the scales turn. Audiard uses his common thematic – the juxtaposition of two characters, one the likeable criminal, the other the vulnerable — as Ali, involved in illegal street fighting and surveillance crime, compromises his relationships with Stephanie, his son and his sister. Simultaneously Stephanie begins to find her new identity and gets released back into her life, with or without him. Relative unknown Matthias Schoenaerts ( Bullhead ) is astonishing as Ali. He does nothing and everything, and, looking like a pit-bull, is at once a combination of unhealthy-yet-attractive and physically fit. And the bond between him and child actor Armand Cerdue is also extraordinary, almost symbiotic. This is also the best work I have seen Cotillard do. There are multiple moments in the film which are almost transcendent and indelibly stain the mind’s eye. Your heart leaps when Ali and Stephanie first have sex and you see that she has found renewed hope; a will to live, the will to return to work and confront her assailant. You feel empowered when you see her amputated legs resplendent with fresh tattoos (reading ‘Droite’ and ‘Gauche’). And you reel when she walks, prosthetic limbs on display, into the middle of a fistfight — possibly one of the coolest female character moments I have ever seen. It is all-physical. This is apt because Rust and Bone is corporeal. It tells you this in the opening shot sequence, when a montage of water and feet in sandals is accompanied by the overbearing sound of breathing and footsteps. The film is all about the body, about control and the loss of it. About the dichotomy between unwanted pain and pain sought — the accident and the bare knuckle boxing. The violence, the sex, is thus immediate and visceral. And whether you want to be or not, you are there — you can almost touch it, feel it, reach them with your hands. The fine lines between power and death are visible here too. The metaphors are clear; from the force of the whales leaping in and out of the water to the unseen dangers of ice and snow, we know that nature is bigger than us and in that terrifying reductivity there is love between father and son, man and woman. It is terribly intense, and French. There is no other way to describe it. And whereas I went out and bought the soundtrack (Bon Iver, Lykke Li, with score by Alexandre Desplat) and want to go back and see it again, the ferocity with which I liked it — was moved and haunted by it, and found it real and refreshing — could also be the ferocity with which it is loathed and eschewed for being pretentious and even sentimental. But like Audiard, Cotillard, Schoenaerts and I suspect everyone else who worked on the project, I’m happy to have that argument and suggest that this film is so good, it stands alone. This is not half-baked ennui — whatever anyone else thinks about it. Read more from the Toronto Film Festival. Follow Lorien Haynes on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Days after his empty chair speech made Clint Eastwood a polarizing symbol of the Republican National Convention, hometown paper The Carmel Pine Cone scored an exclusive follow-up with the 82 year-old former Mayor. His explanation? He made it up on the fly moments before taking the stage. You don’t say! “They vet most of the people, but I told them, ‘You can’t do that with me, because I don’t know what I’m going to say’… There was a stool there, and some fella kept asking me if I wanted to sit down. When I saw the stool sitting there, it gave me the idea. I’ll just put the stool out there and I’ll talk to Mr. Obama and ask him why he didn’t keep all of the promises he made to everybody.” [ Carmel Pine Cone via USA Today ]
Prancing around in a fluorescent bikini while going on a partying and crime-fueled rampage through the so-called “red neck riviera” — that could be the one sentence log-line for Toronto’s Spring Breakers , which arrived in North America after its first premiere last week in Venice . Fascination with former Disney star Selena Gomez ‘s romp through the new film in a not-quite-so-squeaky-clean role continued on this side of the pond but Gomez, director Harmony Korine and fellow stars James Franco , Vanessa Hudgens , Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine provided a few racy laughs of their own in Canada’s biggest city Friday. Harmony Korine even joked that a few rugged gentlemen on spring break were taken by Gomez’s presence while they shot the feature. “All these thick-necked jock dudes were rubbing up against Selena,” he said. The cast said they had themselves never been on a spring break, but Harmony Korine surrounded the cast with people doing just that while they were in St. Petersburg, FL in what Rachel Korine described as a “youth rite of passage.” But before heading to the shoot and to those soon-to-be-famous bikinis, the women in the film did a bit of a pre-party get-together to set the mood for the film and at the request of Harmony Korine. Vanessa Hudgens hinted that the group likely took on some of the trappings of spring break before heading off for their celluloid version in front of the camera. “In the beginning, we hung out before shooting. We were girls being completely raw and we freed ourselves and did what we wanted. We were able to be completely free and push each other.” James Franco first came on board on the film, speaking with Korine about the concept well before actual shooting began. He crafted his character, who is a local thug that bails the girls out of jail after they hold up a dining joint in order to fund their spring break, by using props and music sent over by Korine. “Harmony is a master at finding locations and people and having them add texture [to his films],” he said. “He sent me music and images which helped me create my character. Looks and surfaces are very important in this film.” “But I think we made him our bitch!” Hudgens shot back with a laugh. As in Venice, Gomez was peppered with questions about her Disney entree to stardom and how a film like Spring Breakers will factor into her fan base, but the 20 year-old actress said that she decided to go for it, while acknowledging the role may be off-putting for some of her young admirers. “When my series ended, I was invited to do a couple of films. I thought the independent film route would be best for me, and I decided that if I’m going to do it, I’d like to do it with Harmony.” Continuing she said, “The biggest challenge is that I have a younger generation of fans who follow my music, shows and clothing line. Everything I do is for them and this may not be so accessible to them. But the other side is that people put you in a box and it is a challenge for me because some may not take me seriously because of the brand I have — that I’m fortunate to have — but it’s also about doing things that I just want to do for me.” Gomez was the first of the women cast in the film which Harmony Korine said he imagined long before writing the screenplay. He auditioned Gomez in his living room in Nashville, TN but worried that he might scare her off before they had a chance to work together. “Selena auditioned in my living room. When she came down to Nashville, I flipped over all of this crazy art I have in my house because I didn’t want to spook her,” he said. “I think he thought I was super, super Christian so he was hiding everything,” laughed Gomez. Read more from the Toronto Film Fest. Follow Brian Brooks on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Kristen Stewart said that the sex scenes and the nudity weren’t the difficult part of playing Marylou in On The Road . Rather it was her character’s emotional openness. “She loved so openly — and that’s hard ,” Stewart said of Lu Anne Henderson. She also referred to her character, who Neal Cassady married when she was just 15, as “a bottomless pit” — presumably a reference to her emotional capacity — who would have been “ahead of her time even now.” (For more photos of Stewart, check out our Toronto Film Festival photo gallery .) Stewart, who wore a sparkly floral dress and black high-tops, seemed her usual intense and uncomfortable self as she spoke during an extremely brief Q&A session that followed the movie. But the more she spoke about Henderson, the more animated the actress became, particularly when she said that Henderson, in spirit, “was so fucking there for me” on the set. The second and last question asked of her came from a fan, who drew winces when, in the spirit of On the Road , she asked Stewart where she’d choose to go if she could go anywhere. After taking a half-hearted stab at answering the question, the actress finally said, “I don’t know, dude.” Judging from the polite applause that followed the screening, the crowd liked but didn’t love On the Road, which, thanks in part to its source material, felt aimless at times. That said, the performances by Stewart, Garret Hedlund, who plays Cassady doppelganger, Dean Moriarty, and Sam Riley, who essentially plays Kerouac, are strong. Stewart doesn’t have a lot of lines, but she brings a sultry radiance to the screen that is impossible to ignore. I don’t know if this performance is going to net her an Oscar nomination, but it’s clear that she’s got the right stuff. As for the sex scenes, the most envelope-pushing performance of the film belongs not to Stewart but to Steve Buscemi who is depicted taking it up the bum from Hedlund. Well, you wanted to know, didn’t you? Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
