It had its big debut in Cannes in May and its U.S. release at the end of August. Now John Hillcoat ‘s Lawless is headed to Blu-ray and DVD. Based on Matt Bondurant’s novel The Wettest County in the World , the film stars Shia LaBeouf ( Disturbia ), Tom Hardy ( The Dark Knight Rises ), Academy Award-nominee Gary Oldman ( Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy ), Mia Wasikowska ( Alice in Wonderland ), Academy Award-nominee Jessica Chastain ( The Help ) and Emmy winner Guy Pearce ( The King’s Speech ). The Blu-ray Combo Pack and DVD will include special features. Hitting retail on November 27th, special features include an audio commentary from director John Hillcoat and author Matt Dondurant. It will also have two featurettes: The True Story of the Wettest County in the World and Franklin County, VA: Then and Now . Willie Nelson’s Midnight Run music video is also a part of the nifty additions. Commenting on the film in Cannes last May, John Hillcoat noted : “There are a lot of parallels to today with the economic crisis, today’s Mexican cartels, heroin in New York, crack and cocaine in the ’80s and the war on drugs. All this feeds back to Prohibition in the ’30s.” Lawless opened with just over $10 million in its opening weekend theatrical release in late August, and has taken in over $36.27 million through last weekend. Official logline : They were brothers who became outlaws, and outlaws who became heroes…The three Bondurant boys (Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jason Clarke), along with their sultry new hire (Jessica Chastain), command the most lucrative bootlegging operation in Franklin County, Virginia. The locals consider them “indestructible.” But the law – in the form of a corrupt special deputy (Guy Pearce) – wants a cut of their action, at any cost. When youngest brother Jack (LaBeouf) gets a taste of power with a deadly gangster (Gary Oldman), the whole business blows sky high. Based on the astonishing true story, the Bondurant brotherhood is the stuff of legend.
RZA ‘s kung fu actioner The Man With The Iron Fists is already a must-see thanks to its pedigree (RZA co-wrote, directs and stars, Eli Roth co-wrote and produces, Quentin Tarantino “presents”), cast (Lucy Liu, Gordon Liu, Pam Grier to name a few) and stylistic influences (Shaw brothers meets Wu Tang? Yes please! ). Speaking with Movieline, RZA dropped another worlds-colliding tidbit that might blow minds when Iron Fists hits theaters November 2: Russell Crowe ‘s mysterious, dagger-twirling character Jack Knife was influenced by none other than the late rapper Ol’ Dirty Bastard. That’s right — the spirit of Ol’ Dirty Bastard, AKA ODB, AKA Dirt McGirt, AKA Big Baby Jesus, lives on within Oscar-winner Russell Crowe. “When you see the film you will see a couple of ODB references and you’ll go, ‘Okay – that’s where he got that from,'” RZA promised when he rang Movieline (look for the full interview next month). “He does an ODB move exactly like ODB would do!” In the film’s press notes, RZA explains further: “My cousin’s not here anymore, but I wanted his spirit in the film. Russell and I talked about it, and he loved the idea.” The mysterious Jack Knife, an opium-addicted soldier enamored of China named for his weapon of choice, even has a signature jaw harp audio cue reminiscent of ODB’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya.” But the ODB-Crowe connection extended further on set as RZA pointed to the spirit of his late cousin and collaborator when filming hit a snag. “When we talked about the character one day we had a little problem that we had to figure out on the set,” RZA told Movieline. “And it seemed like we were going to have a bad day so I had to go to his trailer and tell him what was going on. To get him to feel comfortable at the time, I told him a story about ODB.” He continued: “The story was, one day ODB walked into the studio late as hell. He was so late, he’s ruined a whole day and wasted all this money. The beat is playing, he walks in, and in one take he performs “Shame On A Nigga.” He does this song in one take and if you notice in the song there’s a part where he goes, ‘Shame on a nigga who tries to run game on a —’ He doesn’t really finish the hook.” “I was like, ‘Do it over.’ He said, ‘No — that’s it. I’m keeping it. That’s what I like!’ One take . And this one take idea, I explained to Russell, is sometimes just a moment we capture. It doesn’t have to be done over and over. ‘He’s a guy that would come in and do it in one take. So I know we’re out of time, but for today you might have to go one-take, ODB-style.’ Now of course Russell’s a master anyway and he’ll do it in one take. But I think telling him that story at that time helped because we were about eight hours late and it helped us capture a lot of things in that one day that it would have taken us two days to do.” Check back for more with RZA and his directorial debut, The Man With The Iron Fists , including our full discussion of his lifelong love of kung fu, working with idol Gordon Liu, learning from the Quentin Tarantino school of cinema, and more. The Man With The Iron Fists hits theaters November 2. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
This week’s DVD releases include “lesser” but no less entertaining movies by two American mavericks working in their favorite genres: Robert Altman satirizing an American institution with an ensemble cast so large it practically needs the old Cinerama process to get everyone on the screen, and Joe Dante mixing laughs, jolts and teens in peril. HIGH: A Wedding (Anchor Bay; $9.98 DVD) WHO’S RESPONSIBLE: Written by John Considine, Patricia Resnick, Allan Nichols and Robert Altman; directed by Altman; starring Carol Burnett, Lillian Gish, Vittorio Gassman, Mia Farrow, Paul Dooley, Dina Merrill and Lauren Hutton. WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT: It’s the wedding day for Dino Corelli (Desi Arnaz, Jr.) and Muffin Brenner (Amy Stryker), but the happy couple don’t steal focus in Altman’s hilarious 1978 follow-up to Nashville . The class divide between the two families — Dino’s related on his mother’s side to the wealthy, snobbish Sloan clan while the nouveau-riche Brenners own a truck stop — provides the crux of the comedy, though all sorts of intriguing subplots, tropical storms, sexual secrets and all-around inappropriate behavior pop up throughout the happy day. With this many farcical goings-on in one huge mansion, it’s no surprise that Altman later turned this script into an opera. WHY IT’S SCHMANCY: While critics often dismiss A Wedding , given that it comes on the heels of the director’s masterpiece, it’s a biting, bracing comedy that ranks among the great screen satires of the 1970s. If you’ve ever been to a big wedding, you know the phenomenon of not knowing who everyone is, and this film requires at least a few viewings before you can nail down all the relationships among the 48 — twice as many as Nashville ’s 24 — characters. You’ll find those viewings to be rewarding, since there are so many hilarious performances and oddball supporting characters that you might miss the first time you watch. WHY YOU SHOULD BUY IT (AGAIN): This title was mostly lost in the shuffle for years. It was originally available on DVD only in a 2006 Altman box set with three other titles before becoming a solo release with little fanfare the following year. Now that Anchor Bay is giving A Wedding another go, movie fans who missed this gem in the Altman oeuvre have a chance to check it out. (Extras-wise, there’s but one featurette, and someone needs to release that opera on DVD, too.) LOW: The Hole (Big Air Studios; $14.99 DVD, $20.99 Blu-Ray) WHO’S RESPONSIBLE: Written by Mark L. Smith, directed by Joe Dante; starring Chris Massoglia, Haley Bennett, Nathan Gamble, Teri Polo, Bruce Dern, Dick Miller. WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT: After moving into a new house, brothers Dane (Massoglia) and Lucas (Gamble) discover a trapdoor held shut with a half-dozen padlocks. Consumed by curiosity, they open it, only to find a seemingly bottomless cavern on the other side. They soon realize that the hole knows what you fear most, and with the help of next-door neighbor Julie (Bennett), they fight to overcome their deepest terrors. WHY IT’S FUN: The Hole has that overly-bright look you’ll recognize from cable movies and low-budget direct-to-DVD flicks, but nobody juggles comedy and horror like Dante, the man behind both Gremlins films, The Howling , Piranha and Matinee . Even if he’s working on the cheap, he’s still inventive and funny, and the film offers some effective frights and charming performances (particularly from Bennett and Gamble), all wrapped up in a moral not unlike the one currently being offered up by ParaNorman . WHY YOU SHOULD BUY IT (AGAIN): Minimally released in U.S. theaters, it’s more than likely that you missed this one during its all-too-brief run on the big screen. So, this DVD is your only chance to see the movie at all, even if the handful of extras offered here are pretty thin gruel. Alonso Duralde has written about film for The Wrap , Salon and MSNBC.com. He also co-hosts the Linoleum Knife podcast and regularly appears on What The Flick?! (The Young Turks Network) . He is a senior programmer for the Outfest Film Festival in Los Angeles and a pre-screener for the Sundance Film Festival. He also the author of two books: Have Yourself A Movie Little Christmas (Limelight Editions) and 101 Must-See Movies for Gay Men (Advocate Books). Follow Alonso Duralde on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
This is a little ditty about John Mellencamp’s vaguely annoyed reaction to Bradley Rust Gray’s Jack & Diane. If you were born after the 1980s, you might not know that Gray’s “werewolf-lesbian-psycho-drama,” as it has been described, takes its title from Mellencamp’s giganto-1982 number-one hit and little else. (The National Endowment for the Arts chose the tune as one of the “Songs of the Century,” as in 20th, in 2001.) Mellencamp’s song is about a teenaged boy and girl living the so-slow-it-hurts Midwestern life of sucking down chili dogs outside the Tastee Freeze. Gray’s movie is about, well, two lesbians, one of whom happens to be a werewolf. With the movie now on VOD, Mellencamp, whose nickname is “Little Bastard,” apparently has been fielding a lot of questions about how his song ended up as the title of a movie — both use an ampersand — that has nothing to do with said tune, and on Monday afternoon issued an irritated sounding statement via his spokesman Bob Merlis. “You don’t hear my song in the film, and I played no part in suggesting or offering this title. It’s most apparent that the lead characters were named with the hope that the familiar title might resonate in some people’s minds,” Mellencamp said in the statement. “I guess that’s OK to do, strictly from a legal perspective, but riding on someone else’s coattails and having a moral compass is left up to each individual.” Merlis explained that Mellencamp “is not making a value judgment on the film. I don’t believe he’s even seen it,” he said. “He’s just wondering why this particular combination of names was chosen, with an ampersand joining them, for the title. It does hearken back to his song. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
In the cinematic world of Rian Johnson , where friends are collaborators and cast and crew a part of a close-knit filmmaking “family,” actor Noah Segan is a constant. But after appearing in Johnson’s debut film Brick and his follow-up, The Brothers Bloom , Segan received what he calls a “gift” from Johnson — one of the smartest rising writer-directors of his generation — in the form of what’s sure to be his breakout role: The finely-tuned, gun-obsessed futuristic cowboy Kid Blue in Looper , a “gat man” eagerly hunting down rival Joe ( Joseph Gordon-Levitt ) who’s so fraught with seriocomic human frailty he only grows more sympathetic as he becomes increasingly unhinged. To Segan’s credit, he shines in the role Johnson tailored for him, inspired by Segan’s own offscreen cinephilia and the actor’s favorite movie — the obscure Dennis Hopper-Warren Oates Western Kid Blue , his signature on Twitter , Tumblr and the film community for years. As Gordon-Levitt’s steely Joe attempts to change his fate by confronting his future self (Bruce Willis), Segan’s eager-to-please Kid Blue illustrates a pained parallel course of desperate self-determination gone wrong. For the actor, who considers Brick the start of his bona fide career and also appeared in Deadgirl , What We Do Is Secret , and Cabin Fever 2 , Looper could and should be the catalyst for Hollywood to take note. As he and the Looper crew took Fantastic Fest by storm, Segan spoke with Movieline about his uniquely personal relationship with Looper and director Johnson, the compelling complexities of Kid Blue, that one time he was on Dawson’s Creek , and why no industry honor could match the feeling of being welcomed as family at the best movie theater in Los Angeles. You and Rian Johnson go back all the way to the Brick days. How did he first describe Looper to you? I had read his short story called Looper before we made Brick , and it was two pages long and it was really the hook — like getting the chorus to a song in your head if you were writing a tune. It was the chase between the older version and the younger version of the same guy. He tucked it away into the archives and went about his business, made Brick , and [ Brothers ] Bloom , and then he mentioned he was revisiting it a few years ago. Sent me a draft about three years ago, and that was that. And he wrote Kid Blue specifically with you in mind? He did. Kid Blue is my nickname; it’s been my nickname for about ten years, since I was a teenager. It’s a reference to a pretty obscure 1970s comedic Western starring Dennis Hopper and Warren Oates, and a buddy of mine who’s a screenwriter back in New York turned me onto some great movies, the movies that I now love, counterculture ‘60s, ‘70s American New Wave — the Dennis Hoppers and the Sam Peckinpahs and the Monte Hellmans, the guys who now I consider my favorite filmmakers. One day he said, “There’s this movie, and you’re gonna dig it — it’s going to be your story. It’s called Kid Blue , and good luck trying to find it.” I go down to this place we had in the Village called Kim’s, which is this famous archive of cinema, bootlegs, and at the time, VHS tapes, of stuff you could never find anywhere else, and you didn’t know how it got there, and maybe it’s not supposed to be there, but if it existed it might as well be at Kim’s. I found Kid Blue there, a pan-and-scan VHS of a dub of a dub from Spanish television with subtitles, and I watched it — it’s the story of a Kid, like Billy the Kid, played by Dennis Hopper, trying to go straight. He realizes he’s getting a little long in the tooth for his lifestyle so he tries to go straight in this town at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution; hilarity ensues. There was something about it that just clicked with me so I stuck with it, and it became my nickname. It’s a pretty good nickname, I must say — long before I had even heard about Looper it was your Twitter handle, so I knew there must have been a history there. It surprised me as much as anybody, because, listen — you happen to be lucky enough to be friends with one of your favorite filmmakers, that’s kind of enough. You don’t expect anybody to write you a part. And then he writes me a part, and he writes me my part. He wrote a part that I think, not dissimilarly from Brick , has a lot of the sort of vulnerability and pathos and yet diligence that I guess Rian sees in me. It’s a great honor to be saddled with these big emotions and still be able to have fun with it. That must be an interesting experience in itself, to have a friend write a character for you knowing what you’re capable of and shades of what he sees in you — and it turn out to be a character like this. Kid Blue is not the hero but he and Joe come from very similar backgrounds. It’s very Oliver Twist. Yes! Joe is Oliver and I’m the Artful Dodger and Abe [Jeff Daniels] is Fagin, you know? The three of us, Joe [Gordon-Levitt], Rian, and I, are very good friends — we spend a lot of time together along with the other members of the family, whether it’s Ram [Bergman] his producer, Steve [Yedlin] his cameraman, or Nathan [Johnson] his composer. We all live in the same neighborhood, pretty much, and have keys to each others’ houses and BBQ all the time. I think first impressions make a big impact whether we’re aware of them or not, and the first impression of our relationship was obviously Brick . Dode in that movie is a foil for Brendan, for Joe’s character, and I think a lot of the dynamic that the three of us have is that we are foils for one another. So I imagine, whether consciously or not, Rian read into that. He read into the dynamic between me and Joe probably by watching us, just like I watch him and Joe. There are a lot of parallels between the Kid and Dode from Brick as well — the idea that here’s a guy who will stop at nothing to do what he thinks is the right thing, even if it’s absolutely not the right thing. You’ve floated the idea that Kid Blue could be Dode’s grandson if the Brick and Looper universes overlapped… I’m rolling with that so hard! I kind of rolled that one out and now I’m going to kick it into gear. What I would love is somebody to do some fanfic that’s like Dode had an illegitimate son and that’s his great-grandson. I think they start early in that family. [Laughs] They’re very similar guys, guys who have a duty and a purpose. I think that’s where the vulnerability and the pathos comes from — someone trying to do a dignified act in a very undignified way. Therein you get sympathy too, right, because we’ve all tried to do the right thing and realized we have absolutely no idea how to do the right thing. The great thing about Kid Blue is that we can still understand where he’s coming from, even as he’s not the best equipped to handle the situation, and perhaps isn’t completely all there. You still feel for him. I hope so. I think everyone’s in the gray here. No one in this movie is absolutely doing the right thing. So you cut the Kid more slack. It also helps that he’s goofy, he’s funny, and in a movie that doesn’t have a lot of comic relief a little bit goes a long way. Kid Blue is the most colorful character in a movie that’s populated with very straightfaced people. Yes, and I think that’s something that Rian gave to me — this Western character, this cowboy, in this post-manufacturing era dystopian society, here’s a cowboy who’s earned his stripes to be as silly as he wants to be. He is the character who brings that Western element to the film, in many ways — he’s basically a gunslinger, he has his signature gat, and he even rides the futuristic equivalent of a horse in the form of the slat bike. I get to ride that, I get to spin my gun, I get to talk with a drawl… I got to really play the points of a Western, which again is a great gift from Rian because he knows how much I love that stuff. The guns in Looper provide a lot of interesting analytical dissection, but from your perspective how much is Kid Blue’s obsession with his gat perhaps a phallic psychological extension? [Laughs] Not mine, right? The Kid’s… that’s a bigger conversation to have, no pun intended. I do not have the biggest gun in the movie, as you know — I think Emily [Blunt] actually has the biggest gun in the movie, and she’s also kind of the most bad ass, so maybe that explains the answer to your question right there. I hadn’t thought about that but it’s such an obvious question: What do these guns represent? Rian explains it in the movie as the idea behind the gat is it’s this precision instrument, a perfect device that has withstood the test of time. It’s a side-loading revolver, a single action gun — the same thing that cowboys used to use, so it’s proven itself as a worthy tool. The blunderbuss, the thing that the loopers use and that Joe uses, is this modern distillation of a shotgun, this new school version of a very brutal weapon that just needs to be vaguely pointed in a direction and it’ll get rid of everything in front of it. I think that explains where the characters are coming from; the Kid really wants to be viewed as skilled, as worthy, and I think Joe doesn’t care — Joe’s just thinking, “How am I going to get out of here?” Has The Kid watched a few too many Westerns himself? Absolutely. There’s a line that Abe says where he says, “You’re just emulating these movies.” These movie-movies. I almost see that as a response as much to the Kid as it is to Joe, in that poor Abe is saddled with this guy who, unlike Joe who he also raised and reared, the Kid is a company man. He’s hanging around and he’s pretty good at his job even though he’s kind of a goofball and a screw-up, they keep him around. He’s diligent and a good kid, but poor Abe’s thinking, he’s got the skills so I’ll let him wear his blue jeans and his cowboy boots and let him use his special Western revolver, but how annoying is it that he can’t be contemporary here in the future? You mentioned the filmmaking “family” built around Rian’s films, but what was it like to have folks like Jeff Daniels and Bruce Willis come into that from the outside? We thought about that a lot, specifically with Bruce. What was it going to be like, every step of the way, to have this guy who represents the modern movie star hanging around with us? Everyone was really excited when he became part of the family, but you’re in awe of this guy who is an icon coming in saying, “Let me join in on the fun.” My guess is he vibed that, that this was an opportunity to join the family, and as a great actor and collaborator who has done so much I imagine his reaction was the same as ours, which was that this was fantastic, this was a beautiful thing. With Jeff, the best analogy I could use was it was like having a family reunion and meeting an uncle you never knew you had. They were onboard the minute they saw what we were up to. You and Jeff Daniels share some heavy moments; The Kid aims to please Abe, but he never quite seems to get it right. What were your impressions from working together? Jeff’s a very stoic guy and about as pro as you’ll ever find; he runs a theater company and he comes correct. He’d sit back with his guitar between takes and do his regal thing, but when we got into our really emotional stuff and he saw that I was not really holding back, because I had prepared for so long to do it and didn’t know any other way, and frankly I’m not trained like he and a lot of people are — I just figured, be ready to just wallow for a while and have a tough day then have dinner with your friends and take a deep breath. He was very kind to me and saw that on that day and said, “When the camera’s on me you don’t have to go whole hog, you don’t have to drive yourself nuts.” And I said, “I’m ready for this and I’m doing it, and there’s only one way I know how to do it.” We did the scene and stayed with it and that night he was leaving the set with his fedora and scarf on, looking extremely gentlemanly, and he turned back and saw me smoking a cigarette outside my trailer trying to shake off the day, and he said, “You did a good job, Kid — we’re in a good one.” He knows how to deliver that line on set and off, you know what I mean? And it wasn’t dissimilar from Bloom — I had a tiny part in Bloom and flew out to Serbia to visit my buddies making this movie and do one scene of schtick and it was the same thing. There were these great actors, Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody, and it was like my dad had a secret family and they were the half-brothers I never knew about. It’s just something that Rian and his crew really engender, an inexplicable comfort. Looking at your career to date — I have a career? I sort of feel like my career’s about to start, I hope. You’ve been a working actor for so long, and have done a number of indie films but you seem to have done things you really were passionate about. What has your approach been in terms of balancing indie and mainstream and where you’d like to go? My experience working in the movie business — I was a camera assistant before I was an actor — began when I was a little kid, acting in New York. It was something that I did because I was not into doing team sports. I was a little kid who could read and look in the same place for more than two seconds at a time, so I think my folks figured, “He might as well do something with his time, why not have him do commercials?” It was the exact opposite of what you hear when you hear of stage parents, I either did it or I didn’t depending on if I wanted to, and it was an after school hobby sort of thing. But I think it was the seed of loving movies and loving sets. As I came of age I thought I wanted to be a cameraman, a cinematographer — that was sort of the family business, my grandfather was a photographer and my mother is a photographer, among other things, and I have a very close family friend who was a cameraman so I started working for him. I did that for a couple of years very seriously and thought I was going to do that until I met an actor who said, “You should think about acting.” It being show business, you introduce somebody and introduce somebody and introduce somebody and the fifth guy you’re introduced to sends you out on an audition and it’s for Brick . So my first experience working in a movie was working with the people who are now my best friends in the world, who I love dearly, and I think for better or for worse that’s what I want every time now. I got spoiled really, really early. That’s sort of what I’m looking for, people who have that kind of mentality and that collaborative vibe, with an evangelical, pure vision of a script — which is usually people who’ve written their own scripts, so I tend to like to work on stuff that’s being directed by the guy or girl who wrote it. I’ve always thought that it’s such a weird thing to not have to shovel shit in order to pay my rent, which is really the only thing that I’m qualified to do — I have a 9th grade education. I am not capable. I have no skills! What happened in high school? It wasn’t for me. I wasn’t a school guy. I had a big chip on my shoulder, listened to a lot of punk rock music and watched a lot of grownup movies. I remember being in school, right before I left, and they had us read Catcher in the Rye which is basically a guide on how to drop out of school. You’re supposed to read this in high school or junior high and appreciate it as a great work of American 21st century fiction but in reality it’s that, and it’s telling you, fuck ‘em . It’s sort of like, this guy did it — I guess I will too. There are so many would be teenage Holden Caulfields who would love to follow suit, to grasp that sort of freedom for themselves. I grasped it! Much to the chagrin of my folks and all the other adults around me, but at the end of the day I’m now sort of stuck acting in movies as my job. Well, that did lead you to one of your greatest early acting credits, by which I mean that one very special episode of Dawson’s Creek where Joey and Pacey get locked in a store overnight. I was! I think that was the second thing I did after Brick . Why was it very special? Because I’m Team Pacey, of course. [Laughs] I remember I had gotten that job and there was some talk that it would be a recurring character. I actually don’t know much about the show so you can tell me if I’m wrong, but it was late in the show and there was some talk of finding someone to spice it up, like Cousin Oliver on The Brady Bunch . I showed up and I only knew this one weird way to do my job and I had created this really weird guy who has like five lines, but is super weird and stoned, and I think it really went against what they envisioned for their show. I just re-watched it and I think you were quite striking. Besides, you’re now part of television history. I am? Well, those two were always meant to end up together. I’m glad it worked out for them. Joey is Katie Holmes, right? And Pacey is the tall guy? Are you telling me you’re not up on your Dawson’s Creek lore? That’s fine. So — indie movies, mainstream movies — how do you view the two worlds and your place in them? I’m really excited about potentially working on more mainstream movies. I look at a lot of the movies and big filmmakers we now take for granted; if you went back in time and went to Sundance and saw sex, lies, and videotape and then said, “That guy’s going to make three of the most charming, entertaining popcorn movies with the biggest movie stars in the world in it and they’re going to be good and everyone’s going to see and enjoy them,” nobody would believe you. If you went back in time and went to a four-walled midnight screening of Evil Dead and said, “That guy’s going to make Spider-Man movies and they’re really going to get people interested and excited,” nobody would believe you. Did anybody watch Memento and think, that guy’s going to make Batman movies? That’s a really cool thing to me, the potential to up the game. For me it’s even more luxurious because I can be a good actor in any movie; that’s my challenge. I’d better be whatever I need to be – sad, or funny, or believable, or not believable. I can do that in any kind of movie. I can do that for $5 on an iPhone or for $5 million on a big movie, or $500 million on the biggest movie. So it’s not really an argument for me. The argument is really for the filmmaker, and the producers. It’s nice, I’m a worker bee. I get to follow direction, literally. You seem to just really love being a part of it all. I’m really happy to be a part of something. That’s the thing, you have all these people, all these iconoclast and idiosyncratic people, and when it works all of a sudden these disparate things come together into a team sport. Everyone’s fighting to get on the team and to sort of get called off the bench a little bit here is really nice. I just want to do a good job. Speaking of being a part of something, you refer to the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles, my favorite theater, as “church.” When I first came to Los Angeles and wanted to do something in the movie business I started going to the New Beverly, because that’s where you go. Sherman Torgan, who originally ran it before he passed away, and his son Michael who took it over, have always been very kind to me, and within a couple years of being in L.A. I decided that I’m not really interested in how I’m going to feel if I make a bunch of money or win an award — that’s really fun stuff, that’s awesome, but I’m not really looking forward to that stuff as being watershed events. But if they ever know my name at the New Beverly, if they ever open the door and usher me in and say, “Noah, enjoy the show,” I’ll know that I’ve achieved some success. A couple of years ago Michael and Julia [Marchese] started doing that, and now I feel like a successful person. Now I feel like I belong. Looper is in theaters this weekend. What are you waiting for, go see it! While you’re at it, follow Noah Segan on Twitter and Tumblr . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
It’s good to see Genndy Tartakovsky on the big screen. Even when he was working at Cartoon Network beginning in the 1990s, where he produced such contemporary animated classics as Dexter’s Laboratory , Powerpuff Girls and the visually stunning Samurai Jack , Tartakovsky and his team produced remarkably three-dimensional worlds — populated with fully developed characters, ageless physical humor and memorable sight gags — rendered in 2D animation. It was only a matter of time before he graduated to feature films, and on Friday, his engaging and funny directorial debut Hotel Transylvania opened in theaters in 3D. Movieline talked to Tartakovsky about the challenges of making the transition from animated TV series to feature films and his push during production to achieve a hyper-exaggerated, Mad Magazine-meet- Looney Tunes style of animation that, he says, is largely taboo among the gatekeepers of the genre. The Moscow-born Tartakovsky, whose family moved to the United States when he was 7, also talked about working with Adam Sandler, who as the voice of Dracula, gives one of his best performances in a long time, and another genius of a certain type of animation, Saturday TV Funhouse creator Robert Smigel. Finally, he talks about his influences, which aren’t limited to cartoons. Indeed, there’s more than a little The Good, The Bad And The Ugly i in Samurai Jack , which, happily, Tartakovsky says he wants to revisit via a film or miniseries. Movieline: This is your first theatrical feature. Tartakovsky : Yeah, I’ve done long-form movies for DVD, but this is my first theatrical feature. What are the challenges of making that transition from TV to feature films? One of them is the simple idea that in television, you have episode after episode, so if you mess up one, the audience usually forgives you. In features nowadays, you work all this time and put out all this effort for one weekend. If you don’t open, you’re dead. And so it’s a totally different type of pressure where you’re working so hard to tell a good story and create good characters. Usually in TV, it takes six to eight, sometimes 10 episodes, to really get going and know what the show is. There’s always that moment in TV where a show clicks. Seinfeld had it. A lot of shows go through it. But in features, you don’t have that choice. You’ve got to figure everything out. You’ve got to know what your movie is. And you’ve got to know what story you’re telling. And all of this pressure and build-up was very different for me because I was like, this is it. This is the one shot that I get at this. When it came to the monsters in Hotel Transylvania , I thought I saw and heard a lot of references to pop culture: the Universal monsters, of course, but also Count Floyd from SCTV and Young Frankenstein. Tartakovsky: Well, the main monsters are all inspired by the iconic things that we know them by. but we actually tried not to put in too many references. So, for Dracula, we tried to make him his own design, even though he probably has classic flavors of Count Chocula and other things. [Laughs] But that definitely wasn’t on purpose. If anything, we were trying to do almost a Mad Magazine type of vibe. We tried not to take ourselves too seriously. So any of the references you may have thought you saw, definitely weren’t on purpose. I first became of fan of your work watching Dexter’s Laboratory , The Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack on Cartoon Network. I’m also a fan of screenwriter Robert Smigel’s Saturday TV Funhouse for SNL. How did you get involved with Sandler and Smigel and that crew? When I came on, Adam was already signed on to do the voice of Dracula. I worked on the script to take the tone and other aspects in the direction I wanted them to go, and then I gave it to Adam. He really liked what I did. No matter what movie he does, Adam brings in his own guys to help write whatever character he’s portraying, and one of the guys he works with is Robert Smigel. He asked me if I wanted to work with Smigel, and I said, ‘Oh yeah, definitely. I love the stuff he’s done.” And that’s how he got involved. So this project didn’t originate with you? I came on board after it had been going through the grinder for few years. Judging from some of the bios I read about you, you grew up a pretty alienated kid. Did monsters help you deal with those feelings? The actuality is that I was really scared of scary movies. I think kids either get off on it or they don’t. I was one of those that didn’t. I like knowing things. I didn’t like that feeling of, what’s around the corner? I never went to haunted houses or anything like that. But at the same time, I liked the idea of Dracula and Frankenstein – definitely the older movies weren’t as scary as today’s are. So, I definitely watched those. But, for me, where I really liked the monsters were in comedy, like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein , or, of course, Young Frankenstein is one of my favorite movies. That was my introduction to the monsters, until I read some of the books and thought more in terms of the truer sense of them. Weirdly, I saw Hotel Transylvania knowing that you were involved but unaware that Sandler was the voice of Dracula. And I have to say, I his usual trademark vocal tics weren’t obvious. That’s hilarious. I am a real Adam Sandler fan, but, at the same time, when a celebrity voice overtakes the character, it can throw you out of the film. You know, you realize who’s doing the voice and you’re just, ‘Oh, it’s that actor playing that character.’ And so, I was really worried about it. That’s why I tried really hard to push Dracula’s expressions and his posing and to push for Adam not to do his voice. At first, I think he was really hesitant—you know comedians are really hard on each other and they’re hard on themselves. They want to make sure they don’t sound hacky, or whatever. And doing something [as iconic] as Dracula, you’re opening yourself up. But I loved the voice Adam did. We started looking at it, and for me, I wanted this to be a broad comedy. So I kept pressuring him to do it as cartoony as he could get and still be comfortable. So whenever he yelled and did those big ranges and different rhythms, the happier I was because then we could make some really fun, old-school animation like the old school — like Mel Blanc when he would do Bugs Bunny or Daffy. For the emotional stuff, he definitely came down and we have that kind of contrast. I loved the scene where Dracula is chasing the airplane that’s carrying his daughter’s boyfriend, Jonathan (Andy Samberg) and sees him watching some sort of Twilight -like movie with bare-chested pretty boys. And even though the sunlight is burning him up, Dracula has to make some sort of smart-ass comment about the state of vampire movies today. Was that your idea? That was an Adam and Smigel idea, I think. I thought you were successful getting most of the actors not to sound too much like themselves. How did you manage that? It all depended on the character. With Fran Drescher, for the Bride of Frankenstein, we really wanted it to be her voice, which is super cartoony to begin with. With Kevin we decided to do Frankenstein as really conversational, so he could be more of his voice. If we were successful, I think it had a lot to do with the visuals. They way we executed performances and stuff, you weren’t paying too much attention to the voices because they just kind of all fit. Tell me about what you were striving for in terms of the animation. We really tried to push the animation to be better than other movies, to have it’s own point of view. And, again, to support the broad comedy of it, we wanted to do a Tex Avery-, Warner Brothers-influenced type of animation. When I first started doing it, everybody was so hesitant because that’s the big taboo in feature animation.: you can’t have things too over-exaggerated. I always thought that was ridiculous because for me the best scene in animation is in Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, where you’ve got these crazy looking dwarves and Snow White’s dead and they’re super sad. They’re as unrealistic as you get. They’re ridiculous. And then they shed a tear and the audience is rapt. They’re so involved in these characters. To me, it was always ridiculous that you can’t emote if you’re doing something cartoony and exaggerated. I always argued the opposite. The more cartoony and exaggerated you are, the more range of expression you have and it will be more believable. And so, that was the whole point. Push the expressions. Push the animation. Push the posing to a much more exaggerated level. When did that silly rule get made? Look at the movies. It’s really be around since Disney. Disney started really cartoony, and then it switched. It started going more and more realistic, and eventually that look kind of stuck. And that became the law. When you have a movie like Beauty And The Beast that’s very realistic making so much money, that starts the argument that you can only do it that way. It’s just a trend that never went away. Maybe you’re about to reverse that. I’m hoping. [Laughs] The animation is all CGI? Technically, it’s the same as any Pixar, Dreamworks or big CG feature. The only thing that’s really different is that we really pushed the drawing aspect of it. We tried to get funny expressions, funny poses and that’s what really stands out. We really broke the puppet. With CGI, you have this model of a puppet in the computer, and it can only do a limited number of things. But if you push it and stretch it and pull it and break it, it can do so much more. And that’s where the Mad Magazine theory came into play. If you pause on a frame of Dracula, you get a funny expression. And that’s a really hand-drawn 2-D animated theory, where you have a funny drawing and you laugh at it. And that’s what I wanted to get more of — that the movie is drawn, not so much just posed.
First, Abe Lincoln was a vampire hunter . Now he sounds like he might have been a very early member of the Green Lantern Corps. The 16th president’s tough formative years will be explored in The Green Blade Also Rises , which will mark the directorial debut of Terrence Malick ( The Tree of Life ) protege A.J. Edwards who also wrote the screenplay. Malick will produce the film, which despite its sci-fi-sounding title, will depict the hardships that molded young Abe into the man who became one of America’s most influential presidents. Lincoln has yet to be cast, but the filmmakers announced on Friday that Wes Bentley ( The Hunger Games ) will play the president’s first teacher, and Brit Marling (Another Earth) will play Nancy, Lincoln’s biological mother. Diane Kruger ( Inglourious Basterds ) and Jason Clarke ( Public Enemies ) are also on board as Lincoln’s step-mother and father. Edwards got his start as an editorial intern on Malick’s The New World and served as the editor on his most recent film To The Wonder .
Years in the making, director Ang Lee was apparently still tweaking his ravishing Life of Pi up until the Friday morning pre-gala screening of his latest for press and industry Friday morning. The epic 3-D adaptation of the book by Yann Martel delivered a rare cinematic experience about a young Indian boy who endures a seemingly endless time at sea. Fox released visuals from the film during summer, but suppositions about what the film is about may be dashed — at least for those who have not read the book. One thing is predictable, however: Oscar night will certainly reserve some — and likely many — spots for Life of Pi , Lee will certainly be up for another Best Director nomination, and the feature will undoubtedly be up for Best Picture. The Film Society of Lincoln Center scored a coup debuting this spectacle on its opening night of the 50th New York Film Festival . Also certainly in the running for accolades this awards season is the film’s young star, Suraj Sharma, who Lee found for the title role of Pi after months of searching. He gives a stunning performance as a highly spiritual and introspective young boy who finds himself the only human survivor after his ship sinks during a violent storm. Along with him are a gaggle of animals, including an adult tiger. Previous teasers about Life of Pie suggested the young boy befriends the Bengal tiger, almost as if the audience is being set up for a human-wild beast version of Blue Lagoon . In truth, their relationship is much more complex and those looking for a fantasy story with animals and humans living together harmoniously in paradise may be disappointed — this is not a South Seas 3-D version of Chronicles of Narnia . Still, a bond is established and they do happen on a sort of paradise island, but even that takes an unusual twist. Much of the film, however, is set aboard a life raft and Sharma assumes the duty of carrying the movie emotionally and physically as he finesses his relationship with the tiger, named Richard Parker. To get Sharma ready to portray a man fighting to survive at sea, Lee had him meet American author and sailor Steven Callahan, who actually survived weeks in open water and lived to tell about it. He wrote Adrift: 76 Days Lost At Sea (1986), which was itself a New York Times best-seller “I met him on a ship and it was raining with big waves,” said Sharma at the Walter Reade Theater Friday afternoon. “I met Steve and didn’t know who he was at that point. I found out he had survived 76 days at sea. He said you don’t feel anything, most of the time you feel completely blank. So when you do feel emotions, they are very strong, very powerful moments. So I tried to [employ] that in my acting.” Initially, it was Sharma’s brother who went after the part of Pi, but he was encouraged to audition as well. The process went on for six months and he received many call backs, but then he was asked to go to what he called Bombay (Mumbai) and his emotions turned. “I I was really excited when I went there and gave a final audition,” he said. “The first time I didn’t think I did very well, and then Ang talked to me and made me breathe in particular ways that brought out emotion inside of me. And by the end of it I didn’t even feel like I was acting anymore. I was just kind of an instrument of sorts.” After reading the novel Life of Pi , Lee said he found the book “fascinating” and “mind-boggling” but didn’t think anyone in their “right mind would put up money for this,” as he recalled today. Even author Yann Martel said that while writing the story he imagined it as “very cinematic in my mind” but he didn’t think the complications the story posed would make it possible to make it into a movie. “The literature is philosophy, regardless of how cinematic it is. And it would be very, very expensive and nearly impossible to do, and how do you sell this thing? I thought the economic side and the artistic side may not ever meet,” said Lee. Fox, however, did approach Lee several years ago and turning Pi into a feature became a possibility. “Elizabeth Gabler approached me and said it had always been their dream to work with me,” said Lee. “Little by little, it started to become my destiny and my faith, so to speak.” “We knew we could never make this film without a superior ‘guiding light’ in our leader and the filmmaker that was actually going to bring it to life,” recalled Fox 2000 head Elizabeth Gabler. “When we heard that Ang was possibly interested, I went to see him. And he said,’ Why is it that a studio would make this? It’s going to be a big, huge movie…I told him that audiences are always craving something original and new and we felt that under his directorship we would have something that could be extraordinary and new to the world in so many different ways.” While Gabler kept the budget under wraps, anyone who watches the film can easily see it must have gobbled up a hefty amount of money. Without providing a lot of detail, Lee said he spent a year animating a version of the story in order to communicate to his crew what he wanted, though once production began, circumstance ruled the day and Lee had to adapt to unforeseen challenges. “Planning and improvisation took place. For a movie like this, nothing works the way you plan it, so you just have to go along. One time it took one week to get something done in my shot list. Often it took one or two days to get something done on my shot list. I have a dramatic background, so I don’t usually use storyboards. The shots were so expensive for this, so I spent a whole year before making this movie to animate it so I could talk to the team about what it should be like. So, I wouldn’t call it so much improvising as surviving.” Follow Brian Brooks on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Also in Friday afternoon’s round-up of news briefs, newcomers Hotel Transylvania and Looper are tracking strong in the weekend box office. And two new titles are heading to theaters. Terrence Malick’s To The Wonder Headed to U.S. Theaters The film starring Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams and Javier Bardem is the story of Marina (Kurylenko) and Neil (Affleck), who meet in France and move to Oklahoma to start a life together, where problems soon arise. While Marina makes the acquaintance of a priest and fellow exile (Bardem), who is struggling with his vocation, Neil renews a relationship with a childhood sweetheart, Jane (McAdams). Bold and lyrical, the film is a moving, gorgeously shot exploration of love in its many forms. Magnolia Pictures, which picked up U.S. rights to the Terrence Malick-directed feature, plans a 2013 theatrical release. Generation Um… Heads to U.S. and Canadian Theaters The film is set at the end of another night out sets the stage for an intimate unfolding of the relationships John, Violet and Mia have, with each other and the city around them. As the day fades into night, secrets are revealed, compromises are made, loneliness is acknowledged, laughter is cherished, lies are dispelled and disappointment is dealt with – and the unusual circumstance that binds these three late-night characters together comes into focus. Phase 4 Films which picked up U.S. and Canadian rights to the film plans a Spring 2013 release. Around the ‘net… Andrew Garfield and Marc Webb Head for Spider-Man Sequel Garfield will return as Peter Parker and Marc Webb will direct the Columbia Pictures sequel set for May 2014. Emma Stone is in talks about a possible return. The next installment will be released on 3-D, Deadline reports . Fox Searchlight Eyeing Natalie Portman for Jackie Kennedy Drama The specialty division handled Portman’s Oscar turn in Black Swan . The Noah Oppenheimer scripted drama follows the former first lady in the immediate assassination aftermath of John F. Kennedy, Deadline reports . Sony’s Hotel Transylvania Tracking Solid $30M Weekend Hotel Transylvania and newcomer Looper are off to a stung start, with the latter tracking at $18 – 20 million. Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis starrer, Won’t Back Down , however, may only cross $5 million, THR reports .
We’ve seen a lot of movies this week here at Fantastic Fest, but there’s one in particular we’d like to spotlight for fans of pulpy, sexy action fun: Bring Me the Head of the Machine Gun Woman (2012) from Chilean director Ernesto Diaz Espinoza . Bring Me the Head… captures the “anything can happen” spirit of classic exploitation better than anything we’ve seen since Hobo with a Shotgun (2011). Espinoza is a specialist in what he calls “LatinXploitation”, low-budget movies about assassins and vigilantes shot guerrila-style on the streets of Santiago. His use of ’70s style graphics and AfterEffects “film grain” isn’t unique in the Grindhouse (2007) school, but in Bring Me the Head… he adds a fun new element. The film is structured like a game of Grand Theft Auto, down to the matching font on the title cards that begin each new “mission,” a schtick that keeps the film moving at a brisk, exciting pace. Bring Me the Head… is the story of a hapless nightclub DJ who stumbles his way into a very dangerous mission: apprehending the assassin known as the Machine Gun Woman, played by Chilean TV star Fernanda Urrejola , in only 24 hours. The stunning, machine-gun toting Fernanda (left) is a masochist’s wet dream in this movie. She spends the entire film clad in a latex bra, hot pants, fishnet stockings, and spike-heeled stripper boots as she shoots, stomps and seduces her way from the bloody opening to the even bloodier climax.When Fernanda deep-throated a gun 32 minutes into the movie, an audible shudder ran through the theater. And if that’s not enough for you, Paloma Scheider and Salome Silva toplessly tango in a nightclub six minutes in, and at the Q&A Espinoza revealed that he had shot over an hour of topless tango footage for that one scene. You’re all right by us, Ernesto! Bring Me the Head of the Machine Gun Woman is currently on the film festival circuit, so if a screening pops up at a theater near you, we can guarantee you this: if you’re a regular reader of this website, you’ll love this movie. Read Ernesto Diaz Espinoza’s hilarious drunken review of his own movie over at TwitchFilm.com
