Also in Monday afternoon’s round-up of news briefs: Oscar-winner Alex Gibney is boarding the new CNN Films for doc projects. The Weinstein Company scores first Oscar DVD mailer for one of its titles. And Girls ‘ Lena Dunham scores cha-ching for a book project. Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 to Premiere at Rome Film Festival Though the upcoming festival has scored the world premiere of the final installment of the mega-franchise, stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson will not be in Rome for the premiere. The pic directed by Bill Condon will screen in the Alice in the City section of the festival, which focuses on films oriented for a youth audience, THR reports . Hungry Hungry Hippos to Get Big Screen Outing Hungry Hungry Hippos is part of a roster of planned films that also includes Monopoly (a project that at one point had Ridley Scott attached) and Britain’s Action Man, the latter despite his American cousin GI Joe having already featured twice in multiplexes. Hasbro has been inspired by the multibillion-dollar success of its Transformers franchise in the hands of Michael Bay, and apparently has not let Battleship’s disappointing $300m (on a $200m budget) haul earlier this year upset its plans for worldwide domination, The Guardian reports . Alex Gibney Strikes Deal to Make Docs for New CNN Films Unit Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney ( Taxi to the Dark Side ) and director Andrew Ross ( Page One: Inside the New York Times ) has signed on to develop docs for the new CNN Films. CNN Films will kick off with Richard Robbins’ Girl Rising , THR reports . Weinstein Company’s The Intouchables is First Official 2012 Oscar Screener Mailed to Members TWC is the first to send out a DVD screener to Academy members. Every member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences received a screener of the hit French film over the weekend. The Intouchables is France’s entry for Best Foreign Language Oscar consideration and has grossed $360 million worldwide, Deadline reports . Lena Dunham Book Goes for $3.5 Million to Random House Her SXSW title eventually grossed $392K, but it got her a gig with HBO and the subsequent Girls series. Now, the filmmaker/TV star has landed a book deal for upwards of $3.5 million for Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s Learned , Deadline reports .
So maybe Daniel Craig lost last night’s SNL spotlight to Big Bird . He still held his own and promoted Skyfall with fun little riffs on his James Bond persona, starting with his opening monologue — an Oscars-style In Memoriam tribute to all the poor guys he’s killed over the years while dutifully serving as Hollywood’s iciest action hero. Watch above to see Craig uncharacteristically (but nevertheless quite charmingly, I must say) go a bit goofy on the SNL stage (unfortunately NBC hasn’t released the monologue excerpt on its own, but here’s the full episode). For another dose of 007’s big SNL promo push, hit the Bond-themed digital short below detailing 50 years of lesser-known Bond Girls… [via NBC ] Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The scene outside East Hampton’s usually civilized Guild Hall was almost as frenzied as a mosh pit on Saturday night when an overflow crowd turned up to watch Alec Baldwin interview fellow leading man Richard Gere . The spirited conversation, which focused mostly on Gere’s pre- Pretty Woman career, was a precursor to the Arbitrage actor receiving the Hamptons International Film Festival’s 2012 Golden Starfish Award for Lifetime Achievement in Acting. Over the course of the discussion, Gere talked about some of his more unusual moments working with such storied directors at Terrence Malick, Richard Brooks, Francis Ford Coppola and Paul Schrader. For instance, he recalled his frustration working with Malick on Days of Heaven because of the lack of guidance that the filmmaker gave to his actors. Malick “is a really interesting guy,” Gere said, “but one of his quirks is that he doesn’t always know what he wants.” Indeed, during one frustrating scene, Gere said he found himself asking that very question of the director who then pointed to “linen curtains blowing” in the breeze of an open window. “I meant like that,” Gere said Malick told him, and in that case, the actor told Baldwin, “I knew exactly what he meant.” The silver-haired Gere also talked about Brooks’ secrecy regarding scripts. He recalled that when he asked the director if he could see the screenplay to Looking for Mr. Goodbar , Brooks invited him to his Los Angeles home, where the filmmaker’s wife, actress Jean Simmons greeted Gere and led the actor to a “romantically lit room.” There, Brooks gave him a half hour to read the script, which Gere implied, was not enough time, until he discovered that Brooks had “blacked out everything that was not my part.” The discussion took an amusing turn when Baldwin brought up the subject of American Gigolo and asked Gere if he was uncomfortable about his emergence as a sex symbol. The actor replied that it was an “interesting dilemma” and eventually invited his WME agent Andrew Finkelstein, who was sitting in the audience, to join the conversation. (Finkelstein was an assistant to the late ICM agent Ed Limato, who worked with Gere at the time of that 1980 movie.) Finkelstein replied that Limato “didn’t like” that the media was focusing on Gere’s “hunkishness,” adding: “You were a better actor than a hunk.” The line drew a big laugh from the audience, and Gere, wearing a wry smile on his face said: “I’m a better actor than a hunk. Thank you, Andrew.” Finkelstein recovered nicely by yelling out: “Richard is now looking for an agent.” Shortly before Gere was presented with his Golden Starfish award, Baldwin asked the actor if any of his leading ladies had ever fallen for him. “Someone told me that one of them had, and I said, ‘I wish they had told me!'” Gere replied. “But I’m not going to answer that question.” Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
“My name is Inigo Montoya. You watched my movie, now prepare to watch my special edition Blu-ray!” Yes, it’s been 25 years since Mandy Patinkin’s Princess Bride performance became a fixture of pop culture — so he and his co-stars celebrated with a special screening at the 50th Annual New York Film Festival. Movieline was on the red carpet and heard from Patinkin himself as well as Cary Elwes how that famous sword fight came to be! Watch now. Director/producer Rob Reiner also revealed how the movie was released without ANY publicity. No trailer? No poster? No commercials? INCONCEIVABLE! Check out the video below to reminisce along with Inigo and Westley… Follow Movieline on Twitter . Follow Grace on Twitter .
Love, Marilyn and Silver Linings Playbook are opening the Hamptons International Film Festival followed by a slate that includes a number of premieres. As the festival gets into full swing, ML is featuring a snippet from the world premiere of Oscar-nominated Griffin Dunne’s The Discoverers . The film centers on washed-up history professor Lewis Birch (Dunne) who takes his begrudging teenage kids – Zoe (Madeleine Martin, Californication ) and Jack (Devon Graye, American Horror Story ) – on a road trip to a conference in hopes of putting his career back on track. But, when Lewis’s estranged father Stanley (Emmy Award-winning Stuart Margolin) goes AWOL on a Lewis and Clark historical reenactment trek, Lewis is forced to make a family detour. The Birch family find themselves on a journey of discovery and connection as they make their own passage west. Added log line: The Discoverers is a bittersweet comedy and moving debut feature from writer/director Justin Schwarz led by Dunne’s striking comeback performance. This engaging tale of family dysfunction and rediscovery also features a talented ensemble cast including David Rasche, ( In the Loop ), Dreama Walker ( Compliance ), Ann Dowd ( Compliance ), Cara Buono ( Mad Men ), Becky Ann Baker ( Girls ), Scott Adsit ( 30 Rock ), and John C. McGinley ( Scrubs ). Watch the video on YouTube
The unshakeable bond between a shy nerd from the ‘burbs and his faithful dog is the heart of Frankenweenie , the black and white stop motion picture (in theaters today) Tim Burton refers to as a “memory piece.” Drawn from his own childhood memories of growing up in Burbank, California, it’s an ode to the kooky neighborhood kids and adults Burton knew, the monster movies that shaped him, and, as Burton told Movieline with a smile, his way of teaching kids about one of the toughest facts of life: Death. “It was originally such a memory piece for me, in the sense that it was personal,” Burton told Movieline at Fantastic Fest, where Frankenweenie debuted as the opening night film. “I think it started with that MOMA show, I saw a lot of the old drawings that I’d done, and there was something about the drawings that I wanted to try to recapture.” Frankenweenie brings Burton back to his roots, a feature-length extension of the live-action short film that jump-started his career and earned him cult status – and famously got him fired from Disney. Taking the story of Frankenweenie and fleshing out his nostalgic vision of his old stomping grounds, Burton added characters (including the heavily accented Japanese-American kid Toshiaki, “my favorite”) and texture, and a healthy dose of movie geek references, from Frankenstein to Godzilla and beyond. “[I added] other kids that I remember in school, and teachers, and the geography of Burbank — the real setting,” he explained. “I tried to make everything more personal — even if it was a couple of kids mixed together. For me it made it feel more natural. I didn’t feel like this was just a short, that I was just going to pad it out with something. There were other monsters and other things I’d been thinking about over the years. I tried to treat it as expanding on those feelings and those memories of that time.” In keeping with Burton’s oeuvre, Frankenweenie is playfully macabre. But moreso than his other films, especially those aimed at children, it deals openly with the difficult subject of kids and death. “For me it was a way to explore the concept of death in a slightly abstract but safe way,” Burton offered. He pointed to his own childhood experience that inspired the tale. “My dog, whom I loved, they said he wasn’t going to live — he had this thing called distemper so he wasn’t supposed to live very long, but ended up living quite a long time. So there’s always this weird specter of death hanging over which I didn’t quite understand.” “At the same time I love Frankenstein and I learned about it through those movies, which deal with abstract things and things that are quite hard to explain to children in a slightly safer way,” he continued. “I grew up in a culture where death was very negative, but you see certain Hispanic cultures that have Day of the Dead and they treat it in a more positive way. For me it was an attempt to show death in a different way that’s not negative.” Yes, but is Burton prepared to see the potential increase of copy-cat “science experiments” in young Frankenweenie viewers with dearly departed pets of their own? “Better that than most of the kids that I knew who were torturing animals!” he laughed. “If it takes kids away from that, it’s probably for the best.” Read more on Frankenweenie and read Movieline’s review . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
“This is the end/hold your breath and count to ten…” Adele ‘s moody retro James Bond theme song has hit the web in full! How does it measure up to its predecessors? (Best theme in many Bonds, no?) Listen to the U.K. crooner sing “Skyfall” and chime in with your thoughts after the jump. I can’t quite tell how the lyrics have anything to do with the plot of Skyfall , but it’s a nice return to form. Adele’s certainly one of the strongest Bond theme singers in 007 history. Where does “Skyfall” rank among the best and worst Bond songs of all time ? [via the official 007 Twitter ]
Indie auteur Joe Swanberg has established himself as the reigning poster child of mumblecore, for better or worse , but as the most surprising filmmaker contributing to the Sundance hit horror anthology V/H/S (in theaters Friday) he begins branching out of his comfort zone with a newfound energy; his entry, The Sick Thing That Happened To Emily When She Was Younger , was filmed using Skype — and a script! — and is also one of the more memorable and inventive shorts in the midnight crowd-pleasing omnibus. Between his V/H/S segments (he also acts in Ti West ‘s road trip gone horribly wrong) and the forthcoming Drinking Buddies , which blends his improvisational style and mainstream stars Anna Kendrick and Olivia Wilde, Swanberg says he sees 2012 as a turning point in his creative evolution. “I feel like I’m ready to be a filmmaker,” he declared to Movieline. Read on for more with Swanberg on how he and West accomplished a lot with very little for V/H/S , why acting in Adam Wingard’s Your Next reinvigorated him as a director, and how his Drinking Buddies stars took to the Swanberg method. You’re involved in two of the segments that most scared me, so well done. How did you first get recruited for V/H/S as a director and as an actor in Ti West’s short? I might venture to say that you out of the entire slate of filmmakers are not so much, or at all, thought of as a horror filmmaker. I would agree! One of the cool things about V/H/S is I think it’s one of the first times it’s actually visible how interconnected the independent film world is, and how easily it crosses genres. I think there was a perception for a long time of mumblecore being this very inclusive little group of [Andrew] Bujalski or Aaron Katz and the Duplasses and I or something, and that the horror world did its own thing and the documentary world did its own thing. But all of us have been friends for a really long time and we just make different kinds of movies. I think Simon Barrett and Adam Wingard went to bat for me as a director for V/H/S , and it helped that [producer] Roxanne Benjamin had seen some of my other films. But I acted in Ti [West]’s first, so that was my first involvement in the project. He shot his in May and I didn’t shoot mine until August, so it was a while where I feel like Adam and Simon were lobbying for me to get the chance to do one of these. Simon wrote your segment, which makes your V/H/S segment the first time you’ve directed something you haven’t written yourself. Not only is it the first time that I’ve directed something I haven’t written, it’s also the first time that I’ve directed something that was scripted. My own films are all improvised. So it was really fun for me to play with somebody else’s material. And Simon wrote it knowing that I was going to direct it and I think he expected that I would just throw the script away once we started, but I actually really loved his script and thought it was a good first chance to go ahead and do that. Your segment uses a Skype chat as its set up for tension; we watch as Emily (Helen Rodgers, pictured with Swanberg above) experiences something strange as she chats online with her boyfriend. How did you fake it, or did you? For V/H/S we actually just used Skype, we didn’t fake it. I did a bunch of research into the best way to fake it and I realized the best way was not to fake it. We were going to build this crazy, elaborate rig with multiple cameras that were connected to each other, and the more I looked at it and researched screen capture stuff I realized we could do high definition screen capturing and actually record live Skype conversations. So it’s a film made without a camera – laptops were our cameras. But you used lighting rigs and such? Adam Wingard DPed my segment and I wouldn’t describe it as a typical lighting set-up but it was modified for our purposes. Adam was usually moving with Helen – the other funny thing is because it’s a real Skype conversation, Helen was the camera operator, essentially. She not only had to act, she was in charge of what was seen and what wasn’t seen. So we had to do pretty elaborate choreography about where and when to turn the computer, when to set it on the bed, all these sorts of things, and Adam was usually following her off-camera with lights. The computer gives off a decent glow so we had some light motivated by the computer but we also had back-up lights, and the cool effect of that is, because it’s a real Skype conversation, one of the reasons we decided it had to be real Skype was that every time it gets bright on Helen’s screen you actually see that reflected on Daniel’s screen. If it wasn’t a real Skype conversation it’d be really difficult to get those lighting rigs set up right, but it’s fun to watch and it adds to the realism because when Helen turns on a light on, Daniel’s room brightens as well. It felt almost like directing dance. And we ended up editing after the fact but most of the takes are long, unbroken, four or five minute takes involving starting in the bedroom and going out to the living room, or weaving around the kitchen, so we had to light and choreograph these long 360 set-ups. That’s pretty fantastic a feat to pull off. In Ti’s segment you acted and also operated the camera, home video-style. It’s cool to see performers having to innovate and actually work with the technology, whether in laptop or camcorder form. One of the cool things about this project was the chance to do that. I’ve used Skype before in Young American Bodies , the webseries I do – we recorded a few scenes in that which were like Skype conversations – but outside of that it becomes really gimmicky if you were to do a whole feature film based around Skype or iChat. That becomes the thing. And one of the great opportunities of VHS is I feel like all the directors were liberated to play around with ideas that might not hold up for a feature running time but that work as shorts. The Skype thing was really fun when I realized that people only have to watch it for 20 minutes, and not for an hour and a half. Well, now Paranormal Activity 4 is running with the Skype thing. I’m not saying they copied you, but yours did come first… [Laughs] I know those guys, and I doubt that they’ve seen V/H/S . It’s unlikely that it influenced them. I don’t know when they shot that movie… In Ti’s segment, what did you actually shoot on and how difficult was it to be mindful of your performance and operating the camera at the same time? I forget the model of the camera we used but it was a little handheld portable – Ti did a bunch of research on cameras. We needed one with a light, because some of the real scary things about Ti’s are when the light switches on in the hotel room from the camera. As an actor it was a fun challenge to have to be mindful of that stuff, and it’s helpful in a way because one of the difficult things about acting especially when the goal is naturalism or realism is to not overthink it. You have to just be in a situation and react. So having the camera and having something to do with my hands that was occupying my brain I think made it easier for me performance wise to react to Sophia [Takal] and be in those scenes. It’s a much different experience than having a crew and a camera pointed at my face feeling like, ‘Okay, here’s the big moment – now act natural,’ with 30 people watching and we only get to do it two times so get it right. Both you and Ti seemed to pull off these segments using so few resources. These must be two of the most affordable short films ever made. Yeah, especially going to Sundance with V/H/S was really crazy – Ti’s and my segments were not the most effects-heavy of the bunch. The Radio Silence one at the end has a lot of really amazing visual effects, and David Bruckner’s, they built that monster creature and Glenn McQuaid’s has that video killer. Ours have pretty much practical effects. But all of them were really affordable. Even the super effects-heavy ones were made on moderate budgets, so it was great to go to Sundance and have the movie feel big despite the fact that it’s a low budget movie. In your career so far you’ve made so many films in such a short time – you’re one of the busiest filmmakers around, especially since you’re not only directing movies, you’re also acting in other people’s films. How do you feel like 2012 Joe Swanberg is most changed from 2005 Joe Swanberg? Starting with going to Sundance with V/H/S , I’m having the time of my life in 2012. It’s been the best, most fun year of my life as a filmmaker and it’s because I feel like I’m doing so much outside of what I’m typically known for. All the movies that I made in 2010 and 2011 when I was hyper-productive, that was sort of my last big push almost as a student; I was making a lot of work in an effort to keep getting better as a filmmaker and keep pushing myself to try things I hadn’t done before. Now I feel like with V/H/S and Drinking Buddies , which I just finished and stars Olivia Wilde and Anna Kendrick and Jake Johnson and Ron Livingston – it’s a much bigger production than I’ve done before – I feel like I’m ready to… be a filmmaker. I’m embracing being a director and what that means. Obviously I’ll be practicing and learning my whole life, but I feel like the kind of workmanlike attitude I’ve had the last couple of years is paying off now in the sense that I’m getting to put that practice into bigger productions that are being seen by more people. Do you feel like this evolution is marked in your process, or your creative choices? It’s in both, actually. A big turning point for me came when I was acting in You’re Next , Adam and Simon’s movie. Getting to be on the set of not a big budget movie, but one much bigger than the ones I make, and seeing Adam, who I’ve worked with really closely on $10,000 movies directing a much bigger movie with a full-sized crew and 20 actors and all these elaborate action sequences, I realized I’m interested in challenging and pushing myself. I don’t just want to shoot conversations in apartments. It would behoove me as a filmmaker, I realized, to know how to do that other stuff. Even if I never make an action movie it would be useful as a director to know how to shoot an action sequence. So I came away from that acting experience feeling energized as a director, to try new things. And V/H/S was the first thing I did. After that I went with an attitude of, like, cool – here’s an opportunity for me to do something I’ve never done before and to really mess it up. Not take the easy route. Figure out how to do this camera work and figure out how to do special effects and really make something that’s going to push me out of my comfort zone. And did that extend to Drinking Buddies ? The same was true with Drinking Buddies , which was still improvised but improvised on a much bigger level, with a full crew that I had to learn to work with. I basically took the process that I normally use with three actors and two crew and do it with 20 actors and a 40-person crew. I’m looking for those challenges now. I’m looking to broaden my spectrum a bit. Drinking Buddies is your biggest movie to date, and it features mainstream actors – how did they adjust to your process? You’ve practically established your own indie subgenre working in a specific style and with regular collaborators. When you were casting did you find that many mainstream actors fell into step with your sensibilities? I went into the casting with the same attitude that I’ve used to cast all of my movies with my friends, which is, who are these people? Are they easy to talk to? Do they have interesting lives and things they’re interested in outside of acting that we can use in the movie? Are they fun to be around? It really was almost the identical process, and the result was I ended up with more people who I love and who gave amazing performances and who are totally ready to show up and figure it out every day. It’s possible they were intimidated by the situation but they never let on. They were really excited to collaborate with me and create these characters. I’m deep into editing right now, and the performances are amazing. Everybody’s going to look at these actors in a new way because of this movie – they’re all really alive in an exciting way. So it’s given me confidence to keep doing this and to feel like I can work with bigger name actors, and that the process isn’t antithetical to the kind of work I’ve been doing in the past or that they’ve been doing. What did you learn about Anna and Jake and Olivia that you then integrated into their characters? All of them, the way that I like to work is that everybody is kind of playing a version of themselves. I write characters and create a very simple set-up, and with the actors I flesh it out. There’s not one specific thing I could point to other than to say when you watch this movie you’ll be watching a really interesting hybrid of my ideas that I came into the movie with and their personalities that they brought to it. There’s a lot of acting happening, and there’s a lot of real stories being told. As is always the goal, I feel like I came out of the film feeling these people were my friends and not just actors I hired for a movie. We all learned a lot about each other during the shoot because that’s how the process works. The more everybody shares, the better the movie is and also the easier it is to create these relationships that don’t actually exist in real life. Side note: I noticed that when you announced your cast for Drinking Buddies you earned a mention on Perez Hilton. Was that the moment when you realized you’d made it in Hollywood? I actually wasn’t aware of that! One of the things about making movies that people started to watch and write about is that they also write mean things a lot of the time. [Laughs] I’ve been pretty disconnected for the past couple of years from any of the press stuff surrounding the movies, so I typically hear about it via friends. I certainly never go looking for it anymore. But now I know! V/H/S is in select theaters Friday. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Disney’s first trailer for the big budget Wild West spectacle The Lone Ranger has everything but, y’know, the Lone Ranger himself — Armie Hammer , who’s glimpsed here and there amid director Gore Verbinski’s bright, sweeping vistas, but certainly isn’t the center of attention. Based on this you’d think The Lone Ranger is about horses, runaway trains, slo-mo shoot-outs, and Johnny Depp as a painted face, bird-on-head, perpetually grimacing Tonto . Which, let’s be honest, is why this movie exists in the first place. Depp’s sage (and apparently humorless) Tonto penetrates the iconic Western landscape like a punchline, delivering an accented line: “There come a time, kemosabe, when good man must wear mask.” I’m sure his is a culturally-sensitive and realistic portrayal of Native American heroism. This should make for some very interesting Independence Day ’13 viewing. Meanwhile, let’s see some more Hammer, Disney! Otherwise it’s The Tonto Show , which, who am I kidding, I’d watch anyway. The Lone Ranger hits theaters July 3, 2013. Synopsis: From producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski, the filmmaking team behind the blockbuster “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, comes Disney/Jerry Bruckheimer Films’ “The Lone Ranger,” a thrilling adventure infused with action and humor, in which the famed masked hero is brought to life through new eyes. Native American spirit warrior Tonto (Johnny Depp) recounts the untold tales that transformed John Reid (Armie Hammer), a man of the law, into a legend of justice—taking the audience on a runaway train of epic surprises and humorous friction as the two unlikely heroes must learn to work together and fight against greed and corruption. Verdict: Hi-ho, Silver, away…
If you can’t get enough photos of Johnny Depp with a dead bird on his head, well, saunter over here and take a gander. On Tuesday, Disney released a new batch of stills and the teaser poster to Pirates of the Caribbean pardners, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski’s take on The Lone Ranger . Depp plays the masked lawman’s oddly attired Native American sidekick Tonto, and, according to Disney, “recounts the untold tales that transformed John Reid”( Armie Hammer ) into the Lone Ranger.” Disney plans to release the movie on July 3, 2013. The Lone Ranger cast also includes Helena Bonham Carter, William Fichtner, Tom Wilkinson and Barry Pepper. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
