This here is Jason Reitman. For the ones that don’t know much about pop culture, he is the director of last years hit Thank You for Smoking and soon to be this years hit Juno. He is also responsible for reuniting the Moldy Peaches. Look for our video review of Juno this coming week. Enjoy!
If I wanted to get really creepy, I’d say the song that describes my interview with Zach Galifianakis would be “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes. Well, I just said that this song describes my interview, so I guess creepy will start off this interview.
Interviewing Galifianakis is a rarity - you have no idea what to expect him to say. Prior to walking in, I had all of these skits in my head, jokes and ideas that I wanted to use, but what you are about to see is what came out. Gali. is a very, very funny man off camera as well as he is on.
Watch this unedited interview, where we start off talking about believing in one another, and end up talking about why he didn’t win an Oscar for his brilliant performance in OUT COLD.
Writing/Directing team Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden first burst on the scene in 2006 with HALF NELSON, which is full of awesomeness and almost won Ryan Gosling an Academy Award for Best Actor. A few years later they debuted their second feature, SUGAR. This go around they took their first stab at adapting for IT’S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY. In FUNNY STORY, high schooler Craig (Keir Gilchrist) checks himself into a hospital after wanting to kill himself. What he didn’t know was that he’d be staying in the adult wing of a psychiatric ward for five days. There he meets a girl, Noelle (Emma Roberts), and learns about life with a fellow crazy, played by Zach Galifianakis.
One of the topics we discuss in the interview is the comparison from the book to the script; a few things were changed and of course they couldn’t fit the whole book into a feature. If you’ve read It’s Kind of a Funny Story, you’ll really appreciate the style Fleck and Boden use to help explain the book’s full story.
Emma Roberts is everywhere. She got her start alongside Johnny Depp in 2001’s BLOW, and as Nancy Drew in the big screen adaption NANCY DREW. Now she’s starring in films done by popular directors Joel Schumacher and Wes Craven. If you look below, you’ll see directing team Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, the two who directed her in IT’S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY, a story about teenage suicide, love, and trying to figure it all out.
In this interview we talk all things FUNNY STORY and the awesome Queen/David Bowie dance number that happens in the film.
Matt Reeves started off directing episodes of Felicity, then made himself a household name in the geek world when he teamed up with J.J. Abrams to make CLOVERFIELD. Reeves is back, and staying in the horror genre with LET ME IN, the American remake of the 2008 Swedish vampire film, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. If you read my review (spoiler free), you see that this director is here to stay.
I missed the chance to interview Reeves at TIFF, and I blame having the worst sense of direction, but a second chance came via Fantastic Fest, and here we are. Check out the video interview after the break, where we talk car crashes, 8mm camera tattoos, and the appreciation of remakes.
Note: the audio was a little funky in the begining, but what I’m asking Reeves to talk about is the car crash scene in the film. Also, the lighting didn’t work well in our favor, but this is still an awesome interview. Enjoy!
“Don’t look into his eyes because he’s just looking where he’s going to fucking bite you.”
-Ben Mendelsohn (on his character “Pope” in ANIMAL KINGDOM)
The first words spoken to Ben prior to our interview was, “It’s very surreal sitting in front of you. Two days ago I watched you spike heroine into a girl’s arm and suffocate her and now I’m five feet in front of you having a conversation.” He laughed, as any man with a pinch of humor would, and then said “that’s fucking great.” Ben plays the villain “Pope” in David Michôd’s ANIMAL KINGDOM. He’s not just your average bad guy you’ll see in a DIE HARD flick, he’s the guy that’ll scare the piss out of you just by looking at you (I was five feet in front of that above stare). At the end of the film, you will hate this man. With that, you can imagine the level of difficulty it was holding composure while speaking to him.
That uneasy composure vanished within a few seconds after he started speaking. Like David, he’s just happy to be here. In our interview we spoke about how he got into the intensity of his character. I don’t want to write anything about that conversation here because I want you to just watch and listen. And here me roar, this man will get a heavy number of nominations for his performance, of that I have zero doubt in my mind.
Aussie company Blue-Tongue Films are about to bang Hollywood over the head. Remember that short film, I LOVE SARAH JANE? That was written by Spencer Susser and David Michôd, who both had feature films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival (HESHER and ANIMAL KINGDOM, respectively). Both recieved positive buzz and Michôd’s work went on to very deservingly win the Grand Jury Prize award for World Cinema - Dramatic.
Last week I chatted with Michôd about ANIMAL KINGDOM. If you’ve seen this film, then you already know how insane it is. We talk a lot about the characters and where the inspiration of ANIMAL KINGDOM came from (life does imitate art in this gem), what it was like winning at Sundance, and how Blue Tongue Films got their start. This is a great interview, make sure to watch it all!
P.S. - Sorry for the terrible lighting. This was shot on the iPhone 4 in a poorly-lit room. Good thing Michôd is such a stud!
Let me tell you this first hand, it’s very difficult to keep composure when sitting at a roundtable interview and speaking with three of the biggest Hollywood icons in film history: Bill Murray, Robert Duvall, and Sissy Spacek, who were attending SXSW to promote their latest film, GET LOW. Lucky for my blogging career, I kept my cool and asked my questions.
This video interview is a roundtable interview, which means there were other journalists there asking questions as well. Doing roundtables are very tricky because sometimes another journalist will ask some pretty bold and/or embarrassing questions. If some of these questions get low on the fun, tune that out, get weird, and watch Murray eat his sandwich (I know that’s all you’re here for anyway) until Duvall starts talking about mules and his hatred for O’ BROTHER WHERE ARE THOU - definitely the highlight of the interview. Then have your heart melted (like mine) when Sissy Spacek says hi to her mom on camera. Without a doubt the most adorable moment of my SXSW 2010 trip (thank you, Sissy - you’re. the. best!).
GET LOW is slated to open July 30, 2010.
Interviewing Harmony Korine is a rare treat. The 37-year-old writer/director/actor has lived a very strange and interesting life which shows through his work (books, photographs and films). Two years ago we spoke at SXSW’s 2008 festival for his film, MISTER LONELY, which went on to become one of my top films of 2008. This year he’s returned to promote his latest weird fest, TRASH HUMPERS (review can be found HERE), a VHS shot and edited film about three elderly sociopaths who trash (and hump) their town.
Before we got into the interview, Harmony brought out the awesome and drew and narrated a strange but thought-provoking poem on a whiteboard in the room we were in (see pic. above!). We also spoke about possible future projects which include vomiting dogs and a comedy that Celine Dion, Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers would want to see. This is without a doubt the most interesting part of my SXSW 2010 trip. Enjoy!
Here’s another video interview Rusty and I did with Derek Waters and Jeremy Konner, creators of DRUNK HISTORY. I particularly like this one a lot because we dive into DRUNK HISTORY’s past, present, and a bit of the future. Here’s a little sober history on DRUNK HISTORY: it was created by Derek Waters and features a drunk comedian narrating about an historical event. The fun part is when a famous actor (Michael Cera, Danny McBride, Paul Schneider, Will Ferrell, Don Cheadle, Crispin Glover, and John C. Reilly to name a few) dramatically and hysterically reinacts the event, including burps and fuck ups. Waters writes all the episodes while Jeremy Konner takes over the directing, shooting, and editing. Oh, and they find and supply the narrator with as much alcohol as they need to make DRUNK HISTORY possible. They are two of the coolest and brightest dudes you’ll ever meet in Hollywood (seriously).
You can catch all DRUNK HISTORY episodes on FunnyOrDie.com, or tune into the new “Funny Or Die Presents…” series on HBO. Hit the jump to see the interview, and head overHERE to see our first interview with the boys and actors John C. Reilly and Crispin Glover.
There’s a little bit of interference here and there in the interview. Sorry!
Every once in a while there’s a young actor or actress who shows promise from the very beginning. Saoirse Ronan is that young actress. She’s a smart girl who’s actively seeking different and intelligent roles at such a young age.
Here is the last in my three part interviews for HANNA. In this interview, Ronan and I talk about women and film and what HANNA is contributing to this topic, how fun it was kicking Eric Bana’s ass, and the difficulty of learning all the different languages she speaks in the film. To show me and the world how serious she is about her craft, Ronan speaks a little Dutch for me after asking about the language learning curve. I truly hope and believe this girl will have a long career in cinema. Enjoy!
Here’s the second of my three-part interview series I did for HANNA last week in LA. This one is with Eric Bana, who most may know as the hero or titular character of a film; for HANNA, he steps back on those duties and lets a 16 year old Saoirse Ronan (“Hanna”) take the lead - a wise decision for Bana, as he perfectly plays Hanna’s father in the film.
In this video interview, we talk about how awesome it was filming the single-shot fight scene (set to the repeat listening-contagious score by The Chemical Brothers) and what it was like getting his ass kicked by Ronan (separate scene). Check it out!
Joe Wright is responsible for the 2007 Oscar-winning film, ATONEMENT. I feel in love with ATONEMENT hard, and have paid close attention to Wright ever since. Two years ago, he directed his highly anticipated follow-up, THE SOLOIST, starring Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr., which strangley released unnoticed to most people. Well, Wright is back this year with his attempt at the action genre with HANNA, and I’m certain he’s going to make an impact.
Despite Zack Snyder’s unsuccessful attempt at girl power cinema, Wright’s HANNA is simply marvelous and well-illustrated (our review coming soon). Here’s the first in my three-part interview series for HANNA, where I sat down with Wright and we discussed the style he used for shooting and what HANNA is saying about women in film. Check out the video interview after the break.
Fun fact: ATONEMENT was the first film screening that GATW attended as official press.
Grief. This is what brought Mike Mills’ BEGINNERS to life. I spoke with Mills last week at SXSW on behalf of BEGINNERS, which is very personal take on the last five years of his father’s life. Over the last three years of covering interviews for GATW, I’ve learned this: directors are the most intriguing people to speak to. I know this is a pretty idiotic observation as it’s fairly obvious (there’s so much picking you can do at a person’s brain who’s made a film), but as I’ve grow with this site, my conversations with filmmakers are starting to get more interesting and sometimes much more personal.
In this interview, Mills opens up about the process of making this film, which was difficult considering its subject. Check it out after the break. Also, check out Mill’s blog where he recaps his SXSW adventure in a two minute video.
It’s not every day you get to sit down and chat with someone you grew up watching on the big screen. A few weeks ago, that happened to me, and that someone was Harrison Ford, AKA Han Solo/Indian Jones/Rick Deckard/Henry Turner/Jack Ryan. I would be lying to you if I said I wasn’t nervous. Ford has the reputation in the press world of being a bit grumpy, but if you watch this interview, you’ll see he’s just a very quiet, reserved, and soft-spoken guy.
I sat down with Ford last week to talk about his new film, EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES, in which he plays Dr. Robert Stonehill, the guy who puts his medical theories to test in hopes to save two children suffering from Pompe Disease. It was a quick interview, but I did manage to ask him a question about one of the most talked about things in film history. EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES opens nationwide this Friday, January 22nd.
(Sorry for the tiny bit of shaky cam on Ford - we didn’t film it.)
When writer-producer Oren Peli is talking about the thing he loves most — horror movies — he’s like a child opening gifts on Christmas Day. His eyes light up, and it’s obvious this is something he’d be more than happy to talk about all day long.
You probably know about Peli’s feature film debut “Paranormal Activity,” which he wrote and directed; last we heard, it made a bajillion dollars and got two sequels (and counting!). Peli wrote and produced the new horror movie "Chernobyl Diaries," about six tourists who get stranded in a city called Pripyat, one of the cities in Chernobyl that were affected in the nuclear explosion in 1986. Peli sat down with us to talk about how the film’s dialogue was improvised, why he didn’t direct the film himself and how he tried to approach the sensitive subject matter.
You’ve written a film based on an original idea, and “Chernobyl Diaries” is an idea based on a real catastrophe. Which do you find more challenging?
Well, everything has their own challenge. The real challenge here was a blessing and a curse. We felt like the Chernobyl incident, in its abandoned state, the people really do go over to do tours there, [so] it was already kind of like a great foundation for the story. But at the same time you want to do it justice — you’re not just creating a fictional place, you have to re-create a location. It was very important for us and for the director [Bradley Parker] that visually (and [with] the story) we get as many of the details right. The movie is obviously fictional. We’re not trying to say it’s a documentary. We wanted it to have a very realistic and plausible foundation. So that definitely makes it very challenging.
What steps did you take when writing to keep it entertaining while being mindful of the real and awful things that happened?
We don’t think that [the film] needs to be taken seriously — it’s just a horror movie, and we’re hoping people will see it as nothing more than that. There are definitely scenes we could have gone a lot further, and there are different directions we could have gone to as far as the marketing and the film itself that we decided not to go. We’re very happy what we end up with. I think most people see it for what it is.
I’ve seen a few people very vocal, but a very small minority have problems with the movie or with the concept — in many cases they haven’t even seen the movie. I think that if you find the subject matter insensitive, nobody is going to force you to see it. We actually had people from a children of Chernobyl charity who saw a cut of the movie and were very impressed with the way we recreated Pripyat because they are very familiar with it and they didn’t think we were insensitive at all. In fact, they were very happy because [the film] raises awareness for Chernobyl which — to some degree some of us still remember it, but for the new generation that’s not familiar with it at all, it’s not being talked about again. They’re actually very excited people are talking about it again and it’s back in the consciousness of people.
With “Chernobyl Diaries” you’re taking a big chance with a first-time director. What was it about Brad Parker that led you to believe he was going to create the vision you had when you were writing this?
It was definitely a little scary, because when we met Brad the first time we were blown away by how smart he was and how he was on the same page as us as far as our approach to bringing the movie to life. We had extreme confidence in his ability technically because he’s been a commercial director and second unit director for many years. He’s done just about anything [a director] can do except direct a feature.
Also Check Out: Next Factor: “Chernobyl Diaries” Star Jesse McCartney
You’ve written and directed your own material, and the first thing you directed was a huge hit. Why did you decided to pass the torch as far as directing goes?
When it came to this particular project, I was having dinner with a friend of mine [“Chernobyl Diaries” producer Brian Witten] and I said, “You know what would be a really scary horror movie? If a group of people went to Chernobyl and they got stuck there and all of this crazy stuff happens.” And he was like, “Aww! This is awesome, we should do it!” And I said, “No no no, I wasn’t talking about doing it — I just thought it could be a cool idea.” He kept saying we had to do it and I kept saying, “I can’t commit to directing anything right now, leave me alone!” [laughs] And he just wouldn’t drop it, and he said, “Look, you don’t have to direct it. We’ll get another director. You won’t have to do anything. I’ll do all of the producing — just write the basic story and we’ll take it from there.”
He finally talked me into it, and I ended up being more involved than I thought I would be. I feel I wouldn’t have been able to commit to directing it, and I became much more involved as a producer than I thought I would be. Brian did take a lot of the burden of being a producer off of me, so between him and Brad directing, I was still was able to become an integral part of the process.
Talk about the location where the movie takes place — it felt like a character in the film.
Basically the reason why the movie exists is because of Pripyat, so we knew we had to set it up appropriately for the story and also when you’re there re-creating it, so you really get the sense of being alone in an abandoned and forgotten town. A lot of it had to do with setting it up. The character of Uri [played by Dimitri Diatchenko] was really important as the guide who takes you there and the way the characters think, “Oh this is just a fun trip,” and once they’re there they are taken aback by the gravity of the situation. It kind of hits them and stops being fun. You can see them really not knowing how to feel about it. Then the movie changes. There’s a lot of things we had to do to set up the set; a lot of it was in the sound design — we stripped away the sound of a city full of life. There’s no source of sound at all except maybe the wind and your own footsteps.
Without giving anything away, the things that we do see in the movie, that was all practical effects, right?
It was a combination of both.
How do you balance using CGI and using practical effects?
That’s one of the reasons why we were so lucky to have Brad. With his background of being a visual supervisor, he knew what kind of things we needed to depend on practical effects for. In many cases, more than you realize, when it comes to the set, it’s a combination of practical effects and visual effects. I’ll give you an example: The Ferris wheel, we only built the bottom quarter of it. Everything else, when the camera pans up or when you see it in the background, is extended digitally. Brad would always know in advance, “We only need to build this,” or “We only need to do this kind of makeup effect.” He had the ability to make those kind of decisions and it all worked amazingly well.
Also Check Out: Horror = Tragedy + Time in “Chernobyl Diaries” Trailer
I read in the press notes that there was a lot of improvising. When you’ve written a full script and the actors are improvising, how do you keep a steady flow of where the script needs to go?
What we had originally was a treatment which was basically the whole story without any dialogue. So it would say, “Paul goes to Chris, ‘Let’s go over there.’” It wasn’t exact dialogue. And then we gave it to the actors after they were brought on board, and then we brought in two more writers [Shane and Carey Van Dyke] to flesh out the dialogue … Then once we had the full script with the dialogue, we gave it to the actors and said, “Okay, this is the script, but you don’t have to really stick to it. This is the general idea.”
… In other cases, there were some complex scenes that we’d have all the actors get together during rehearsal — sometimes it was even during auditions — [and] we would let them totally improvise the entire scene and we would have the video camera recording and would later be like, wow, this particular take or moment felt very natural and super authentic, and what we would do was actually transcribe the actual dialogue they came up with and put it into the script. So then the script would have dialogue that was their own improvisation. They would then read it back and it was their own voice, versus a writer forcing words into their mouth. So I think that’s why a lot of the dialogue in the movie feels very authentic.
Source: MTV’s NextMovie.com
A few weeks ago we spoke to Morgan Spurlock for his latest documentary, ‘Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope’, a film that captures the heart of Comic-Con culture and its diehard attendees. To get this film made, Spurlock was backed by four of today’s biggest pop culture geeks: Stan Lee, Joss Whedon (‘The Avengers‘), Harry Knowles (of Ain’t It Cool News), and Thomas Tull (executive producer of ‘The Dark Knight Rises‘).
This really proved that Spurlock’s not just a filmmaker, but also a fan determined to make an intriguing film for the people who love and understand geek-culture. You don’t need to know a thing about Comic-Con to be captivated by this new documentary.
So do you feel like a robot yet?
I feel like a robot every time I do these things. I mean, I enjoy it – if you don’t find a way to enjoy it you’ll go crazy. The worst part is when you’re in an interview with someone and you start talking about something and you go “wait, did I already talk about this in this interview?” I’m sure there are interviews where I told the same story twice.
Do you try to change it up and mess with the journalists at all?
[Laughs] I talk in French accents…
Alright, let’s jump into this. So the first thing I noticed when watching the film, there’s lack of you physically in the film.
And you said “thank goodness! [Spurlock] finally read the blog posts!” [laughs]
Haha, so talk about why you wanted to stay out of this film.
Because I finally wanted to make a movie people would like. [Laughs] No, when we first got the idea for the film … what makes Comic-Con a success, what makes movies and video games a success, everything Comic-Con represents is successful because of the fans. I am a fan, I’m truly a fan, but I didn’t want to make a movie of movie coming into Comic-Con. I have no purpose except to make the movie. I wanted it to be people who are coming to Comic-Con with a real sense of purpose and a goal. Holly Conrad, “This is my last masquerade. I’m going on a suicide mission to launch my career.” Skip Harvey and Eric Henson want to break into this business and this is their chance to show their portfolio. It might be the only shot they have. Chuck Rozanski’s story, you know, there’s real stakes. These are people who have real goals and I wanted to tell the story of Comic-Con from this diverse group of goals. I wanted it to be people who represent different worlds of Comic-Con but show the broadness of it, the different people that are there. I wanted to make sure the film humanized geek culture, an examination and celebration of what it meant to be a geek.
One of my favorite things about films is when they really pull out my emotions. When James Darling proposes to his girlfriend, I started crying.
Yeah, it’s beautiful. I’ve seen that scene probably a 150 times and I start welling up every time.
When I was watching it, I thought “I want to be in love now!”
“I want to be in love and I want to be at Comic-Con!” [Laughs]
I want to talk about the people in the film. I’m sure you looked at a lot.
About two thousand submissions.
So the people you did end up using for the film, what about them specifically stood out to where you knew they would make an interesting subject?
Yeah, it’s a gamble. You don’t always know. You call them on the phone. We interview them while I’m talking to them. This is after we get their initial videos. We put out a casting call through Ain’t It Cool News, through different Comic-Con websites, through comic book stores, and we ended up with somewhere close to two thousand submissions. First we separate them into genre of characters – who are they and what do they represent – and then from those we start cutting them down. The very first person that we selected was Holly. So here’s people that are cosplayers and costume makers.
With that, we look through all of them and here’s Holly’s video as she’s in the garage, working with friends, making this costume, here’s why she’s doing it, here’s why it matters to her. And I was like, “Her story is amazing.” There’s a richness to the story she told, and I sent it to Stan, Joss, Thomas Tull and Harry and asked what they thought; they all watched [her video] and said “she’s perfect.” So we used her almost as a litmus test for us as to what everybody else would be for the film – how passionate they are, what does it really mean to them, do they really have anything at stake, what are their goals. We started using that to cut down. It was hard. We followed 10 people total and a few didn’t make it in the film. There was a husband and wife from Columbia who had created a comic book company. They mortgaged their house to launch this company and they were running out of money. Her Visa came and his Visa never showed up. She was able to fly to Comic Con, so we followed her but she’s not the one who’s passionate about it. He was the driving force of this company … the narrative arc just didn’t work. You have to put things in that have a create a real flow of a film and it’s tough making those hard choices.
Being the filmmaker, what’s your process if something completely derails and goes into a completely different direction than what you at least thought it was going to go?
If you’re in a situation where things go in completely different direction usually, the biggest thing to do is we are going to stay with our subject, no matter what that is. So if something went not the way we expected it to, some sort of interaction, some sort of achievement, as long as you stay on them, like you said, the film draws out emotion. It is an emotional medium. And if you can stay with someone where things didn’t work out the way you wanted, you can still get something to some sort of emotional climax, or at least some sort of emotional closure. Even if it didn’t work out the way you anticipated, it can still work. Sh*t goes off the rails all the time, that’s what happens with documentaries.
When I was shooting ‘Super Size Me,’ I spoke to a couple of filmmakers, one of them was Eugene Jarecki, asking for advice. They said, “Let me tell you something, if the movie you end up with is the exact same movie you envisioned from the beginning, then you didn’t listen to anyone along the way.” And that’s what happens – this is an organic process. You have to go with the flow of the tide, otherwise you’re going to make a movie that’s very narrow in its vision. Things blow up and don’t work you’re like, “Well, that didn’t work. Day Two.”
I feel like, as a documentary filmmaker, one of your biggest responsibilities is to gain trust from your subjects and especial with Comic-Con and geek culture. To some people it’s a very sensitive subject. You know, for the people in the film, that’s their life.
That’s right – it’s their life, passion, and livelihood.
How do you, as a filmmaker, gain trust where they know you’re taking this very serious and not making fun?
I think with other films, if it’s films that I’m in, it takes me spending a lot of time with them, talking through the process. Usually if it’s a film I’m in, we spend a lot of time together before we even start shooting, just so there can be some sort of comfort level. With this film, we were lucky because I got to at least ride on on the coattails of respect, with Stan Lee, Joss Whedon, Thomas Tull and Harry Knowles. By having them involved, like I have said before it’s like a geek dream team – people who have already earned so much respect from people. I think if I would have went to Comic-Con alone, without them, I don’t think the movie would have happened. With them it brought a lot of old guard, new guard credibility to the movie.
‘Comic-Con, Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope’ is in theaters and available on-demand now.
Source: Screen Crush
OK, let’s recognize the big pink elephant in the room— The Farrelly Brothers made a movie about three beloved iconic Hollywood characters, The Three Stooges. It wasn’t easy — the boys have wanted to make this film for over a decade but had numerous problems, with casting as its most problematic. Finally, after a few well known actors signed on and then dropped out, three guys were picked and the movie was made. Was it any good? You’ll have to see it this weekend to find out.
Last week I sat down with the always gleeful Jane Lynch to talk about THE THREE STOOGES. We discussed what it was like keeping composure while sharing scenes with the greatest self-deprecating comedian of all time, Larry David, and how much women in Hollywood has changed over the last few decades. Lynch is an adorable majestic swan. Enjoy!
Source: Latino-Review
Jeff (Jason Segel) is a 30-year-old man living in his mom’s basement. He doesn’t work, and all his mom wants is for him to fix a broken wooden blind. He just wants to smoke a lot of pot and watch his favorite movie, M. Night Shyamalan’s “Signs.”
Writer-directors (and brothers!) Jay and Mark Duplass are best known as part of the Mumblecore generation, producing low-budget films with amateur actors, using loads of handheld shakycam. They garnered enough attention that they could cast name actors in their 2010 film, “Cyrus.” Now, with their new movie "Jeff, Who Lives at Home," they’ve graduated to even higher-profile fare. There’s a reason these two indie-turned-studio-filmmakers are in demand now: They know how to tell a good story, and they do so again with the sweetly comic “Jeff.”
Jeff, who doesn’t believe in coincidence but thinks everything happens for a reason, figures he can make his own destiny when he heads out to the hardware store to get some wood glue. On the way — is it fate? — he runs into into his brother Pat (Ed Helms), and they see his wife Linda (Judy Greer) across the street, getting in a car with an unknown man. So the two set out on the most bizarre and life-changing quest to find out if Linda is cheating.
Also Check Out: "Jeff" Directors Mark & Jay Duplass on Lovable Losers and Susan Sarandon
What really sells “Jeff” is the two leads and its supporting cast. Segel has grown up in comedy and broken out of being a one-trick pony. You can injure yourself laughing at Segel’s misfortunes as Jeff, and you will empathize (possibly ) when he’s telling his brother he just wants his wacky thought process to be understood. Susan Sarandon as Sharon, the boys’ single and very much lonely mother who’s longing to feel passionate for something, almost steals the movie.
Greer as Pat’s possibly cheating, but possibly misunderstood wife is here to remind us that she is not only good at slapstick comedy, but can also deliver a beautiful yet heartbreaking performance as a lonely wife, desperate to be loved. Ed Helms is known to play the guy down on his luck, but that’s because he does it better than most comedians working today. As Pat, you can see in his exhausted eyes that he’s just trying to better himself and failing miserably. He wants to succeed and doesn’t know how.
"Jeff, Who Lives at Home" is a winning movie from the Duplass brothers, a fascinating look at how sometimes the answers we are looking for are right in front of us.
Source: MTV NextMovie.com
We live in an era in which talented filmmakers sometimes trade in creativity and taking chances for remakes, reboots and 3-D gimmicks. We get it — they’re a giant cash cow. Leave it up to the up-and-comers to make unique and rare movies that won’t be seen by even a small portion of the people who saw “Clash of the Titans.” At least we know those crazy ones still exist.
Right now those hungry men are Brandon and Jason Trost, the duo that has made the most bonkers independent movie of this year — a movie about living the somewhat thug life called "The FP."
"The FP" is bats**t crazy. Here’s the synopsis (bear with us, it gets weird). The film is set in a post-apocalyptic future in the FP, known to you and me as Frazier Park. There’s famine, overpopulation and disease, and the people and streets are ruled by rival gangs who don’t use physical violence to reign supreme, but compete for territories in a vicious and deadly game of — here it is — an interactive dance-fight video game called "Beat-Beat Revolution."
The opening scene sets the story for the film: Beat-Beat Revolution champ BTRO (Brandon Barrera) and his younger brother and protege, JTRO (Jason Trost, who also cowrote and codirected the film), must compete against the vicious L Dubba E (Lee Valmassy) and his boys for the FP territory. In an epic techo music-fueled battle, BTRO is 187’d (“FP” slang for killed), and all hope is now lost. After going missing for a year, JTRO returns (with the help from his trash-talkin’ friend KCDC, played by Art Hsu) hoping to reclaim the throne his brother once owned and turn the FP into less of a s**thole.
Yes, this is a real movie, and yes, it’s just as absurd as you imagine it to be. ”The FP” is loud and often obnoxious, but the film works because everyone involved is obviously having a blast. It’s a lot of fun watching the actors keep straight faces while delivering the most ridiculous and over-the-top dialogue ever heard. These guys give N.W.A. a run for their money.
Absurdity aside, the movie is an ode to all of those great sci-fi and action movies from the ’80s, even down to the obvious John Carpenter-inspired synthesizing score. It’s no surprise that the Trost brothers have a love of exploitation cinema — they’ve been on low-budget movie sets their whole lives, and their father is Ron Trost, who’s done special effects for movies you’ve never heard of, like “Ghoulies IV” and “Big Bad Mama II,” and films you have heard of, like “Mortal Kombat” and “American Pie.” Written and directed by both Trost brothers, “The FP” is a labor of love. In Trost we trust.
"THE FP" opens today in select cities, but you can create your own screening nationwide throughTugg.com.
Source: MTV NextMovie.com
