| Tuesday, February 7, 12:39 PM
Director Oren Moverman worked as a screenwriter before making his feature debut with 2009's The Messenger, a moving, well-received war drama that garnered Oscar nominations both for his screenplay and supporting actor Woody Harrelson. This week, Moverman reunites with Harrelson for Rampart, in which the actor plays an unstable Los Angeles cop whose life unravels after he's caught on tape beating a suspect. Playing deliberately with audience expectations of the genre, Moverman and Harrelson (working from an original draft by James Ellroy) craft a character piece that begins as a crime drama and gradually dismantles the reality of its world as the paranoia escalates. We sat down with the director recently to talk about the film and his collaboration with Harrelson.
| Wednesday, February 1, 10:01 AM
"It's actually a thrill to be talking about something else," Daniel Radcliffe chuckles, pausing to consider a question about his new movie The Woman in Black. He is, of course, referring to the ubiquitous presence of a certain blockbuster franchise that has consumed almost half of his life on the planet. Radcliffe was just an untested 11-year-old when cast as the eponymous hero of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone way back in 2001; now, having triumphantly wrapped the series with last year's Deathly Hallows, he's a seasoned 22 and ready to spirit himself into the realm that lies beyond Hogwarts. Audiences will have their chance to see Radcliffe's transformation (and marvel at his dashing new accoutrements) when The Woman in Black opens in theaters this week. In the meantime, we asked him to talk through his all-time five favorite films.
| Monday, January 23, 5:18 AM
| Wednesday, January 18, 1:27 PM
History is littered with the corpses of sports champs whose bids for movie immortality have been dubious at best; for every Hong Kong martial arts superstar and Austrian bodybuilder there are scores of straight-to-video beefcakes lacking the onscreen charisma to match their real-life skills. Rarer still is the successful female action hero crossover, but this week -- with the somewhat unlikely help of genre-shifting filmmaker Steven Soderbergh -- a new one arrives in the shape of Gina Carano, former Mixed Martial Arts fighter and now star of her very own spy thriller, Haywire.
The story goes that Soderbergh caught one of Carano's fights on TV one evening and couldn't believe the talented -- and visually striking -- fighter wasn't headlining her own movie. So, with the help of screenwriter Lem Dobbs (The Limey) and a supporting cast of thespian eye-candy that includes Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas, Channing Tatum and Michael Douglas, he set about putting together an action vehicle for Carano, in which the fledgling actress plays a CIA-trained assassin on the loose and out to avenge those who double-crossed her. With its minimalist plot, punishing (yet expertly-staged) fight choreography and throwback thriller cool, Haywire is the kind of film that seems almost too good to be true in the movie release graveyard of January -- and, if fate smiles upon it, should make a new action hero of its leading lady. We had the chance to chat with Carano about the movie recently; but first, she ran through five of her all-time favorite films.
| Thursday, December 15, 9:23 AM
Movies as we know them just wouldn't be the same without Roger Corman. Sure, filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron and Joe Dante probably would have found their way into the game eventually, but the fact remains that they all got their start under the tutelage of Corman and his low-budget genre factory -- a tireless B-picture production line that also gave early breaks to unknown young actors like Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone and Jack Nicholson. Perhaps more significantly, Corman was one of the pioneers of the independent movie model, cranking out scores of exploitation and genre films (and distributing foreign titles by Truffaut, Bergman, Fellini and Kurosawa) that turned profits even as they flaunted the traditional studio system. (Not to be discounted: he also directed a handful of genuinely fine movies, like the Edgar Allan Poe adaptation The Masque of the Red Death.) This week, Corman is celebrated in Alex Stapleton's documentary Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, a career-spanning look at his work that gathers together exultant testimonials from many of his most famous pupils. We caught up with Corman earlier this week for a chat about his career and his "graduates," his thoughts on independent film, and how the Lucas/Spielberg blockbusters spelled doom for genre pictures. First, here are Corman's five favorite films.
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