Posts Tagged ‘Anna-Kendrick’
Consider this a courtesy report on the fact that New Line is making a film based on the Warner Bros. cartoon character Speedy Gonzales, with George Lopez providing the voice of the character. Because, like the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies, the Garfield films, et al, this one is a movie purely for the kids. As an adult who always thought the character was the worst of WB’s stable, this sounds awful.
Speaking of Garfield, the writers behind that first movie (Alex Sokolow and Joel Cohen) are writing Speedy, which will be a live-action/CGI hybrid. Anne Lopez, wife of George, says “We wanted to make sure that it was not the Speedy of the 1950s — the racist Speedy. [He's] going to be a misunderstood boy who comes from a family that works in a very meticulous setting, and he’s a little too fast for what they do. He makes a mess of that. So he has to go out in the world to find what he’s good at.” My guess: he doesn’t become Mexico’s cultural ambassador to the UN. [THR]
After the break, Anjelica Huston and Philip Baker Hall help make the cast for Rogen and McAvoy’s upcoming ‘cancer comedy’ look more like one for a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. Could there be any more ridiculous story pairing? OK, sure there could, but it probably won’t happen today.
That ‘Untitled Cancer Comedy’ we’ve talked about before, previously called I’m With Cancer, has just added two immense talents: Anjelica Huston and Philip Baker Hall. If I wasn’t on board before, I am now. In a big way.
The film follows a guy, played by James McAvoy, who learns he has cancer and successfully battles the disease. Seth Rogen co-stars and produces, with Anna Kendrick and Bryce Dallas Howard along for the ride. Jonathan Levine is directing from a semi-autobiographical script by Will Reiser. [Variety]
Writing about films that don’t have a real title can be confusing, so I’ll try to make this clear. I’m With Cancer was once the title of a comedy / drama that will star Seth Rogen, James McAvoy and Anna Kendrick. That title has been abandoned for some time, so for the time being it’s just the Seth Rogen Untitled Cancer Dramedy, which isn’t really the way to pull in an audience. Neither is I’m With Cancer, I agree, but what do you call a sorta-comedy inspired by the screenwriter’s real battle with cancer?
Variety has new info on the film, with the most notable bit being that Bryce Dallas Howard has joined the cast. We’ve known for a while that The Wackness director Jonathan Levine would be handling directing duties. He replaced Nicole Holofcener. We also know now that Summit will release the film, though we do not yet have a date. The shoot begins later this month in Vancouver.
Here’s the synopsis, from a past press release:
McAvoy stars as a 25-year-old who learns he has cancer, a character based on the real experiences of screenwriter Will Reiser who was diagnosed with cancer in his mid-20s and successfully battled the disease over several years.
The notion of a cancer comedy may seem outlandish, but remember American Splendor, the film that was part adaptation of Harvey Pekar’s graphic novel Our Cancer Year and part biopic of Pekar. That film managed to blend comedy and deadly serious subject matter quite well, thanks in large part to the dogged, emotional performance from Paul Giamatti. If this film can manage the effective depth of American Splendor, it could be a good piece of work.
Twilight and Up in the Air star Anna Kendrick has been cast and Wackness director Jonathan Levine has signed to helm the very tentatively titled I’m With Cancer, an autobiographical story based on the experiences of Will Reiser, a producer on HBO’s Da Ali G Show and VH1’s Best Week Ever. Kendrick joins Seth Rogen and James McAvoy. Reiser’s spec script tells the story of a 25-year-old who learns he has the disease. Nicole Holofcener (Lovely & Amazing, Friends with Money) was attached to direct when the project was announced in October 2008.
This project just keeps getting better. We’ve been singing the praises of Kendrick since first seeing her in the Sundance dramedy Rocket Science, and like everyone else, were very impressed with her part in Up in the Air. And if you’ve been reading the site for a couple years, then you’ll know that we were one of the strongest supporters of Levin’s coming of age film The Wackness, which sadly got mismarketed and dumped in the marketplace by Sony Pictures Classics. You can read the official press release after the jump.
DIRECTOR JONATHAN LEVINE JOINS MANDATE PICTURES’ COMEDY GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINEE ANNA KENDRICK JOINS STARS JAMES MCAVOY AND SETH ROGEN PRODUCED BY SETH ROGEN, EVAN GOLDBERG and BEN KARLIN
Los Angeles (January 5, 2010) — Director Jonathan Levine (“The Wackness”) has been hired to replace Nicole Holofcener as director of Mandate Pictures’ untitled James McAvoy/Seth Rogen project (formerly “I’m With Cancer”). Anna Kendrick, hot off of her Golden Globe-nominated performance in “Up In The Air,” has signed on to play the role of Katherine, a young psychologist assigned to handle Adam’s case despite her lack of real life experience.
The film, which stars James McAvoy (“Wanted”) and Seth Rogen, is written by Will Reiser and produced by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Ben Karlin. Reiser is executive producing along with Mandate president Nathan Kahane. Mandate’s Tendo Nagenda is co-producing. The film will begin principal photography in February 2010 in Vancouver. Mandate International will be handling international sales at the European Film Market in Berlin next month.
McAvoy stars as a 25-year-old who learns he has cancer, a character based on the real experiences of screenwriter Will Reiser who was diagnosed with cancer in his mid-20s and successfully battled the disease over several years. This is Reiser’s first feature project.
Jonathan Levine is best known for “The Wackness,” a coming of age story set in New York City which he wrote and directed, starring Josh Peck and Ben Kingsley. Levine is represented by CAA, The Nervik Company and attorney Todd Stern of Weissmann Wolff Bergman Coleman Grodin & Evall LLP.
Anna Kendrick most recently starred in the critically acclaimed film “Up in the Air” with George Clooney. She can next be seen in “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” with Michael Cera and the “Twilight” franchise based on the novels by Stephanie Meyer. Both films are set to be released in 2010. Kendrick is represented by CAA, Fifteen Minutes PR, and attorney Todd Rubenstein of Morris, Yorn, Barnes & Levine.
James McAvoy, Seth Rogen, Will Reiser, Evan Goldberg and Ben Karlin are represented by UTA.
Dan Freedman, Mandate’s SVP of business affairs, negotiated the deals for the company.
(Anna Kendrick and George Clooney, above, in UP IN THE AIR.)Anna Kendrick has always excelled at playing the smartest person in the room, and one who you definitely want to watch your back around. We were introduced to Kendrick in her big-screen debut, Todd Graff’s Camp in 2003, when she played young teen actress wannabe Fritzi Wagner in a notable supporting role. Described by one adult character in the film as a “scary little girl,” Wagner begins the story as a mousy sidekick to blonde theater star diva Jill (Alana Allen), but then manages to quite literally push Jill off the stage in a fierce All About Eve-style turnaround. In 2007, Kendrick won critical acclaim for her work as manipulative high school debate champion Ginny Ryerson in Rocket Science. Like Fritzi Wagner, Ginny Ryerson had a freaky air of intelligence well beyond her years, and she also had bite. The character reminded a bit of Reese Witherspoon’s Tracy Flick in Election from a decade earlier, except that Ginny felt considerably more dangerous. In a Godzilla vs. Mothra battle between these two high school over-achievers, Ginny Ryerson would have eaten Tracy Flick whole.
Director Jason Reitman notes Rocket Science as the film where he first learned of Kendrick, and consequently, he started writing the role of Natalie Keener in his new film Up in the Air for her. Says Reitman of Kendrick after watching her in Rocket Science, “I thought she was simply incredible, different from any actress her age. She has a completely unique voice.” The voice of Kendrick is, in fact, very fresh in her generation of actors, and her work in Up in the Air is the showcase her career has been waiting for.
Up in the Air stars George Clooney as a corporate down-sizer named Ryan Bingham who fires people for a living. Kendrick’s Natalie is a young upstart at Ryan’s company who has come up with an efficiency plan whereby these firings can be done via teleconferencing, rather than in person, to save costs. Natalie is consequently sent on the road with Clooney’s Ryan to learn what it is like to fire people face-to-face, and she has an unexpected life turn along the way. The role of Natalie is a breakthrough for the actress, because it showcases her penchant for playing characters with icy intelligence and ambition, but Natalie also has an arc which smashes that ice and delves into the personality forces that drive such a person. Without revealing too much, Natalie is ultimately revealed to be very human, with a real heart, and Kendrick runs with the role, possibly all the way to an Academy Award nomination, as she is currently making the predictions list of just about every Oscar handicapper in town.
Kendrick has also been seen (by just about everyone on earth) in her role as Jessica in the Twilight Saga of films. She will also appear soon in director Edgar Wright’s film adaptation of the graphic novel Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
Jason Reitman has said that he wrote the role of Natalie with you in mind, but you did, in fact, have to read for it also. I know that was the case with Vera Farmiga as well.
Anna Kendrick: Yeah, but, I mean, it made a little more sense with me, than it did with Vera, just because I’m not famous. I’m not a name. I’m sure they could’ve gotten anybody they wanted, and I had to kind of prove myself to people who had doubts, I guess. In the end, I guess, I’m glad that I had to go in and prove that I had the goods, because otherwise I would’ve just gone into the movie being unsure that he really wanted me, and thinking, you know, “Couldn’t somebody else have done it better?” [laughs]
This is a character that in a lesser writer-director’s - or actor’s - hands could have been fairly one-note, but Natalie has a full arc.
It’s a really rare thing to find a role this meaty for a girl in her twenties. Yeah, she’s really complicated and really messed up, and that’s sort of what I love about her [laughs]. I think a lot of roles for young women are, like, you know, the girl that the guy falls in love with, and she doesn’t actually do anything other than, I dunno, understand him, or something [laughs]. And it’s really nice to have this character who has so many good qualities, but also so many flaws.
(Anna Kendrick, above, in UP IN THE AIR.)The scene where Natalie really comes into her own character-wise is when she has the conversation with Vera Farmiga’s Alex about the qualities they look for in a man. Let’s talk about the shooting of that. What type of rehearsals were done?
We didn’t do any rehearsals, actually, although that was my audition scene, and it was Vera’s audition scene also. I knew that….Jason said it was his favorite scene in the script, and so, having auditioned with it, I had basically thought it out, you know, from kind of every angle, almost to a point where I was worried that I oversaturated myself with that scene [laughs].
At some point, Natalie starts to see through George’s character completely, shortly after she has her breakdown scene. Since you didn’t shoot chronologically, how did you demarcate that point for yourself in building your performance?
Fortunately, all the stuff in Miami we shot in one week, in that chunk. So we did actually get to shoot the breakdown, and then a couple days later, the scene on the boardwalk where I yell at George Clooney. And I think it was actually really nice to have it coming off of the breakdown scene, because even though she’s just revealed so much about herself, and shown so much of her naiveté, and she’s in this really vulnerable place, and she’s holding onto, you know, a last shred of dignity…she still sees through him at that point.
How many of Natalie’s qualities do you think you have in common?
Um, I’m definitely a control freak [laughs]. I’m not as uptight as she is. I’m a little bit more awkward and clumsy, and definitely not as rigid, but I definitely like to be in control. I don’t think I concede as often as Natalie does.
Jason Reitman is very skilled at blending the tones of comedy and drama pretty seamlessly. Obviously, the script is a big part of this, but did you get any insight into how he pulls it off as a director?
I mean…that’s part of the magic and mystery of what makes him a great director, I guess. You know, if I knew how he managed to walk that fine line tonally, I’d certainly tell you. He’s really focused, and he gets very quiet, but it’s nice to feel like the person that you count on is really a safety net, and you can look at his previous work, and know just…I mean, how brilliant he is, which you see the first time that you meet him, and know that that’s a person that you can trust, and if he’s telling you to try it his way, there’s zero hesitation to try to give him what he wants.
Last night, we saw Jason, yourself, and most of the cast do the Q&A after the screening. Jason came in sort of like a ringmaster, full of high energy and really running the entire show. Is that how he is on the set often, or is that a persona he’s adopted now that he’s promoting the film?
[laughs] It’s like that in between takes, and when I say in between takes, I mean in between set-ups. When we’ve got a break, he’s so fun, but when we’re in a scene, he’s really focused, and that makes you feel really safe.
This dialogue could be read a variety of ways. How specific does Jason get in his direction on the way the dialogue is delivered?
You know, he is really specific, but I love that. I love knowing that he knows exactly how to make a moment work, and a line work, and if you’re not finding a rhythm that’s working, he’s got a suggestion that is going to fit into the plan. But he’s great about trusting people’s instincts, and so he definitely wants to let you try it your way, and see what happens, and if he needs to make adjustments, he does. We didn’t do any rehearsal, so it wasn’t as though he was nit-picking, but he definitely gets in there and gets specific about moments that he loves. But there’s also no arrogance about changing things if something isn’t working, and he’s so smart that he can just kind of come up with a solution, if something’s not working.
How fast did you warm up to George?
Immediately. He’s so sweet, you know, and wants people to feel comfortable. The first scene that we shot together was this little scene on a people-mover, and we were in between takes, and I really only met him very recently, and I was just sort of standing there in silence as they were changing a light or something, and he sort of turned to me and said, “You get nervous on the first day of a new movie?” and I was like, “Yeah,” and he goes, “Yeah, me too.”
At the age of 12, you were nominated for a Tony for your role in “High Society.” What do you remember now about that heady experience?
Very little. I mean, I remember being incredibly honored and overwhelmed, but at the same time, you know, you’re twelve years old. And you miss home, you miss your friends, and you know what a big deal it is…but at twelve there’s just no way to fully understand what it means to be nominated for a Tony Award. But in the end, I think that’s good because my little twelve-year-old head would have exploded if I’d been able to wrap my brain around it. In a way, I feel like it happened to a different person.
Todd Graff’s Camp was the first time we saw you on-screen. The scene where Fritzi poisons the diva during the performance of Stephen Sondheim’s “Company” is a classic.
Yeah, that was really fun. That was the first time I heard the expression “lightning in a bottle,” which Todd said [laughs]. I was just absolutely bowled over by the expression, and the use of it, in regards to a performance of mine.
There were a few years between Camp and Rocket Science where you weren’t seen on-screen much. Did you intentionally take time off?
No, I did a show in between shooting, and then I did a pilot or something, but listen, there are times when you’re just not working. It wasn’t intentional. It’s those kind of times that I think about when people ask me about, you know, how great my career is going, and that kind of thing, I keep thinking about all the times that I was unemployed.
You’ve already finished your shooting on Eclipse. Do you think you’ll be in the fourth film, Breaking Dawn, also?
I doubt it, just because I’m not really in the books, so I’m assuming that I’m not.
How did the atmosphere on the set change when Chris Weitz was brought in as the new director for the second film?
People ask if there was more pressure on the second one, but I think there was a sense that we’d done something right, and as long as we didn’t, you know, go nuts, that fans would probably respond in a similar way, and that actually provided a relatively stress-free set. And Chris is just cool as a cucumber, and literally, it feels just like you’re hanging out, and then occasionally, you shoot a scene, and then you go back to hanging out. So that was actually shockingly stress-free.
It seems like it must be a great way to experience the whole Twilight thing the way you have. You don’t have to carry the series, but are still a part of it.
Yeah, I say that. Honestly, I say exactly that all the time. It’s like I get to just hop on the ride and hop right off whenever I feel like it.
(Kendrick, above, right, with Nicholas D'Agosto in ROCKET SCIENCE.)In terms of actors and actresses, do you have any particular role models?
I feel like George is a big role model. The way that he treats people all day every day looks exhausting, because he’s just so consistently generous to people, and, you know, I think that takes a great deal of discipline. I mean, he’s Cary Grant, and everybody wants a piece of him. When we’re in all of these cities, everybody wanted to shake his hand. Everybody wanted to have a moment with him, and frankly, they didn’t just want a moment, they wanted more and more and more, and I don’t know how he doesn’t just get incredibly frustrated. I’m sure he does get incredibly frustrated, but the thing that makes him so admirable is the fact that he has the discipline to not show that he’s frustrated. I think both on and off the screen he’s incredibly generous, and if I could…I feel like if I could be half as kind and aware of other people’s comfort and needs, you know, I’d be a pretty good person.
(Vera Farmiga, right, and George Clooney in UP IN THE AIR.)Up in the Air introduces us to Clooney’s Ryan Bingham, a corporate down-sizer who travels the country some 300 days of the year firing vast numbers of employees for companies too gutless to do it themselves. Bingham has been aptly referred to by Reitman as a sort of “new species” of human, in that he travels so much that his home is in the air. He obsessively collects frequent flyer, hotel, and rental car points, and seems to have adapted the philosophy that if he just keeps moving, he’ll never have to get too tied down to any place…or anyone. At a hotel bar, he meets someone he perceives to be the female version of himself, Farmiga’s Alex, who shares a uniquely modern courtship scene with Ryan, as they seduce each other with the power of each other’s preferred traveler club cards. “Just think of me as you with a vagina,” Alex says to Ryan, and with that, he believes he has found his perfect woman. What Ryan doesn’t realize is that in his relationships with Alex, and his unlikely young protégé Natalie (played by Anna Kendrick), he is unconsciously forming a sort of surrogate family. In the sky.
The films of Jason Reitman walk a fine line between comedy, often black comedy, and drama. Deep characterizations of unlikely heroes are found in his Thank You For Smoking (2005), Juno (2007), and Up in the Air, but the films are also sprinkled with sharp comedic dialogue. Farmiga fits well into the Reitman universe, as she is able to deftly hit the comedic beats, but also bring to the surface the largely unspoken levels of loneliness which are definitely an element of what drives Alex. The world of plane-rental car-hotel-conference-plane that she inhabits is in part a role-playing fantasy, something she knows inherently but which Clooney’s Ryan must learn the hard way.
Between our first meeting with Farmiga and this most recent one, we also spoke with her in 2005 about Down to the Bone, the low-budget character study in which she plays a sometimes-recovering heroin addict (read that interview here). Down to the Bone won a Special Jury Prize for Acting at Sundance, and although few in the general population of moviegoers saw it upon release, Farmiga credited the film, at the time, with helping her land a role which just about everyone saw, as the psychiatrist Madolyn in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed in 2006. It seems likely that Farmiga was consequently offered a lot of paycheck-style studio film roles in the wake of The Departed, although one has to assume that Farmiga has largely avoided those projects. While she has made somewhat larger commercial films such as the recent Orphan, she has also continued to pursue roles closer to the indie Down to the Bone in both scope and spirit, playing a disability-obsessed sexual explorer in Quid Pro Quo, the wife of a Nazi officer in the bleak children’s tale The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and a woman in an interracial marriage in the lower-budgeted Never Forever. She had mentioned at the time of Down to the Bone’s release that these type of smaller, character-driven roles were where her heart was. You hear talk about wanting to mix more commercial projects with smaller, higher-quality ones from actors on the rise all the time, but Farmiga has actually followed through on it. With Up in the Air, she’s landed the rare project that is the best of both worlds these days, a studio film with dynamite characters.
[Note: There are some indirect plot spoilers in the text of this interview.]
Jason Reitman wrote this role for you in Up in the Air, but he also made you audition.
Vera Farmiga: Yeah [laughs]. Yes, he did.
What’s up with that?!
[laughs] He’s a master of contradiction. Look at all his characters. You know, I was very pregnant when we met. And then I was even more pregnant when he handed me the job, and by the time we started filming, I weighed more than George Clooney. I had just delivered a baby, and the studio was stressed about the decision. And so, he just said, “Vera, I hope you don’t mind,” and we’d already met, up for a chamomile tea, at Gramercy Park Hotel, early on in the process, but he couldn’t quite make the decision, because it was a big decision to make for him. I kept insisting…I said, “Call up every director. Call up Scorsese, he’ll tell you about my record...” [laughs]
Scorsese should be enough of a good recommendation, right?
But Jason said, “No, I talked to everybody!” And so I said, ‘Well, if I tell you I can do it, I can do it.”
Was your pregnancy the main issue?
Yeah, I think he was more…not so much physically…he was more worried about my mental capacity, and if I could handle all of it. In my eighth month of pregnancy…I think it was in my favor that everybody else that was being considered probably was pregnant, too. [laughs] But so, he actually made me read the scene with Anna Kendrick’s character. And he came back, to the Gramercy Park Hotel, with a video camera, and he’d hired two local actors from the city to sit in and read for George’s and Anna’s characters, and he videotaped me, and I got a call that night. [laughs]
(George and Vera compare frequent flier and travel mileage point cards.)You do a lot with silence in this film. Her non-verbal moments aren’t just reaction shots. She’s an enigma, and hiding a few things, and you can feel that in her glances. How much of that silence are you consciously filling, and how much is just your screen presence?
I love the silent moments. I cherish the silent moments in film. It’s even more important and telling of a character what they don’t say, what they choose not to say…and what they may be thinking but don’t say. What they can’t say. What they’re incapable of saying. That is as revealing, if not more, than what a person actually says, so I love that, and that for me is something that I focus on as an actor, and obsess over, and relish. [laughs]
It occurs that you have to be in the moment to do silence properly on-screen.
And sometimes I take it to extremes, because Jason’s biggest direction of me was, “Vera, you gotta say it faster. Can you pick up the rhythm?”
I guess I can also see that, because the first scene where you and George meet has a real Cary Grant-Rosalind Russell-His Girl Friday fast repartee to it.
Yeah, you’re right, because there is a rhythm...there’s a rhythm to Jason’s writing, and you have to honor it. It’s like the metronome’s on, and you do have to honor that metronome, and keep up with it. And that’s part of what’s so sexy [about the two characters], the rhythm, the tennis match, the banter. They finish each other’s thoughts, and they’re on very even, equal footing. But then there were moments, like at the wedding, when you see them exist without any words. What’s so sexy about this relationship is…it’s hardly anything that happens in the bedroom. There’s no allusions, there’s like one allusion to them having a romp, but I think what’s so sexy about it is that Jason is just very old-fashioned in the way he portrays a romance. Look at Juno. You root for the relationship, and it’s just so authentic and heartbreaking, but it’s really just the conversation between them, and who they are together, and words that they exchange…that’s what’s so sexy. I love that because I’m always on a hunt for a good old-fashioned romance.
"I love the silent moments. I cherish the silent moments in film. It’s even more important and telling of a character what they don’t say, what they choose not to say…and what they may be thinking but don’t say."
What is true of all of three of Jason Reitman’s film is that he keeps this fairly light tone overall, but also has these deep characters and overall themes. How much of the tonal balance, and how it should be played, is obvious on the page, and how much do you have to find in the execution?
He’s a master of finding that, and we also struggled at times. There are certain lines that my character has that are hilarious, but could be as vulgar as could be if you don’t hit the right chord with them. The “vagina” line [Editor’s Note: the classic one-liner delivered by Farmiga’s character.] is an example. Just talking about genitals is a funny thing, is a tricky thing, and the word “vagina” is not a word that you hear all the time. It’s such a critical word, but actually, when you say it, there’s all sorts of imagery that pops up, and you know that line, in particular, is probably going to be a sound bite in the film. And there’s a lot of pressure on that line, and I find with Alex, she says the most …she’s a sexual adventuress, the things that she says are demanding and liberal and unapologetic, and yet the key was to find a dignity in delivery, and infuse it with as much dignity and self-respect in honoring thyself, herself, an integrity of self, as possible. That was the key to Alex.
The key one-liners like that one…how much did you practice them on your own in front of a mirror?
That one – in my trailer, all the time.
If I remember correctly, that line is also delivered on the phone with George. So you didn’t have him to play off directly on one of the biggest quips of the film.
Yes, but George was in the room. He’s very generous and he’s available, and he was there, that was one of the first things we shot. The first scene is always the hardest scene for me in any film, always the first scene. I gotta get that out of the way, and then I can relax into a performance. It’s just how it is with me.
As Ryan falls in love with Alex, did you play her as falling in love with him, also? Because she pretends not to, but -
You don’t even know what she does for a living, exactly.
You don’t. That’s another thing I kept pestering Jason about. “What does she do? Who is she?” He goes, “I don’t know.” I’m like, “What do you mean you don‘t know? You’re the writer. Tell me what she does!” [laughs] And then he had to give me [something], because I said, “Listen, it’s gonna determine what shoes I wear, it’s gonna determine if I have a clutch or a handbag or a backpack or a briefcase.” He’s like, “Uh, let’s make it the same thing as Ryan - she instructs companies how to run a better business. She’s a businesswoman, in short.” But so, yeah, you don’t know much about her, at all.
It’s interesting because Jason also said last night at the Q&A that he doesn’t like back story. And back story is such the rage in American films today. We have separate films in super hero franchises just to explain the back story.
Yeah [laughs]. That’s true. It’s funny.
What did you have going through your head, though, in the scene when you are standing in the doorway, with him standing outside? You must’ve come up with some additional back story for her in that moment.
The staging of that scene is pretty genius. Jason’s got me at the top of the steps, with the exterior lighting of the brownstone highlighting me, and there’s George on the bottom of that staircase, looking up, meaning his big brown hound-dog eyes are gonna be the biggest, brownest hound-dog eyes he’s ever given, as he looks up, and she’s unattainable. So just that proximity and that elevation above him, in being on the top of the stairs when the truth of who Alex is unveiled…did a lot of the work. And then for me it was just responding to what I was being given. I was reacting to what George was being given, and was giving me, and that’s it…that reaction. I wasn’t really thinking, but sort of just looking at George, and reading his face, and just sort of serving back what he was serving me.
Jason has mentioned that George never leaves the set. Which could drive you crazy with some fellow actors, or it could be great. I assume the latter with George, because everyone seems to love him.
It’s good with George. You want him around, because he’s single-handedly responsible for that tone onset, which is a very frivolous jungle gym. Sense of humor is everything to him. He loves being at work. He respects the crew. He befriends them. He befriends everybody. He’s very open-hearted, and childlike, and happy-go-lucky, and eager to share himself. He loves to make people feel special about themselves. It’s a great gift that he has. He’s a magnet.
"I find with Alex...she’s a sexual adventuress, the things that she says are demanding and liberal and unapologetic, and yet the key was to find a dignity in delivery...That was the key to Alex. "
That was a long day. We shot the whole morning, so it wasn’t the whole day, but it was the first time that Anna and I got a chance to work together. It was really two different storylines. She was never onset when I was there…and we established our different relationships with the crew, and so I got very quiet that day, and I just wanted to watch her work, because she is so compelling, and she’s such a force of nature, at her age, she’s so self-possessed, and has a wicked sense of humor, and so sharp, and I loved watching her work. I became very sort of quiet that day, and even took my cues from her, watching someone being given this tremendous opportunity, and using it as a springboard…and I love the scene, and for Ryan it’s wonderful, because it’s everything his character has fought against, which is paternity, and husbandry, and yet here he is, taking to his somewhat…his travel wife and his business daughter. That was cool.
Every fifth or sixth word in my notes on The Twilight Saga: New Moon is ‘mope’. If there’s a more listless, disengaged piece of film this year I hope I don’t have to suffer it. (Actually, there is, and I did right after writing this. The guys’ flipside to New Moon: Ninja Assassin.) This second Twilight film is not a dreamy, thorny gothic romance; it is a stereotypical, unimaginative caricature of depressed teens expanded into 120 minutes. By comparison, Catherine Hardwicke’s creaky first film looks like a wise and knowing glimpse into youthful distraction and obsession.
There’s another thread that dominates my notes on New Moon, and which is really the crux of why the movie is so lousy: ‘heroine’ Bella (Kristen Stewart), who in this chapter is reduced to sub-character statues. She’s less substantial than tissue paper, but is featured in nearly every scene. Bella is listless and empty, devoid of any notable characteristic. She has no opinions and nothing interesting to say; her only characteristic is that she wants. But the object of her desire, the vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson, pale and grim), is equally as insubstantial. They’d make a perfect pair, if you were looking for a couple to fill out the deep background of a better film.
We open a short time after the events of the first film. Bella has been generally accepted into the ranks of the vampiric Cullen family. But her status as a human — that is, potential food — is underlined when an innocent paper cut leads to a violent family showdown. It’s one thing when your new girlfriend doesn’t fit in with the fam; quite another when she’d fit all too well on the dinner menu. There’s also the lingering spectre of rival vampire Victoria (the briefly-seen Rachelle Lefevre, to be replaced in the next movie by Bryce Dallas Howard) who, having been defeated in the last film, earnestly want to get her fangs into Bella.
So the Cullens, not to put too fine a point on it, fuck right off. Edward brushes off Bella in the way a confused teenage kid might (ironically making his action one of the few recognizable human moments in the story) and she’s left to mope around for months. Finally her eye lands on the newly beefed up Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), who hits werewolf puberty just as he and Bella are about to really hook up. Their friendship develops as she uses him to take her mind off Edward; she’s playing him along, and he’s too smitten to see it.
It’s a classic romantic setup, but new director Chris Weitz doesn’t get it. He knows that Bella and Edward represent grand romance to a legion of teens, so he smashes them together in the frame. But there’s no spark. He knows that Bella is meant to be distracted and wooed by werewolf Jacob, so he shoots Jake and his wolfpack brothers with their shirts off and pecs glistening, seemingly unaware of how laughable the crew is. Nothing genuine passes between any of the characters; you could mistake the film for a feature-length parody of the Twilight phenomena if you didn’t already know better.
Melissa Rosenberg wrote the script. She’s already a Twilight vet, having scripted the first film, and has plenty of experience with obsession thanks to her day job on Dexter. I’m told that her script is very much a direct adaptation of the novel, so I’m left pinning the blame for this snoozefest on Weitz’s perfunctory direction. At most, perhaps Rosenberg has to answer a seemingly truncated climactic sequence where Edward tries to end his life at the hands of the Volturi, a clan of bloodsucker royalty. (He basically attempts the vampiric version of suicide by cop.)
The craft in Catherine Hardwicke’s effort was definitely more rickety than what’s on display here; from any technical perspective this is a far more competent film. (Which generally means: more traditional, which is not necessarily better by any means.) OK, the effects here are better, thanks perhaps to extra dollars in the budget that were spent on shirts for the entire cast in the last movie. But when it came to the feel, Hardwicke got it and Weitz doesn’t. In Twilight, scenes between Bella and her father were touching, and Bella’s alienation was easy to understand. It gave her a reason to be drawn to Edward Cullen. In New Moon, there’s no reason at all.
Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson both struggle against the content vacuum that sucks the life out of the movie, but neither is even vaguely strong enough to put up the necessary fight. As Jacob, Taylor Lautner is marginally better, but he also gets the best material; he’s the only active, non-depressed character of the core trio. Michael Sheen and Dakota Fanning offer a little juice as Volturi elders, Sheen even channeling a bit of Christoph Waltz energy, but it’s a futile effort. So too with Anna Kendrick, who genuinely earns a laugh or two. But after seeing her sparkle in Up in the Air this is like catching her sneaking in a bored weekend of community theatre.
/Film Rating: 2 out of 10
Paramount Pictures has released a new clip from Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air. The clip features the lovely Anna Kendrick as Natalie, a young college graduate questioning George Clooney’s character Ryan Bingham, who she is stuck on the road with, about why he chooses to have more casual relationships than relationships of substance. There is also a lot more going on in the clip, such as Clooney snapping a photo of a cardboard cutout of a couple in love (and yes, that is Danny McBride…), but you don’t really need to understand whats he’s doing to enjoy the clip. As I’ve stated before on the site, this is one of my favorite films of the year. This clip alone probably won’t be enough to convince you to buy a ticket, but please, take my word for it. The clip is embedded after the jump.
I have a hard time calling this sort of thing a television spot, even though that’s technically what it is. But when you go over a minute and and half in length, I call it a trailer. Maybe we should term this new kind of commercial a “TV Trailer”. Anyway, this new TV Trailer for Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air premiered during the season finale of Mad Men, a show I desperately need to catch up on. Entitled “Everyone Needs A Co-Pilot”, this ad focuses more on Ryan Bingham’s relationships.
If you’re already sold on seeing this film, I would recommend staying away from this, or any other trailers for the film. I feel they are getting progressively worse in terms of showing you story points which occur in the second half of the film. Having the main character speak the lesson that you hope he might learn during the two hour cinematic journey is a bit too revealing for me, regardless of the fact that he could just be saying it to someone else, regardless of the fact that you don’t know how this film ends (and trust me, you don’t).
For those of you, like me, who didn’t see Mad Men this week…. or those of you with DVRs or itunes/torrent downloads, both of which bypass commercials, you can watch the new tv trailer embedded after the jump.
From Jason Reitman, the Oscar® nominated director of “Juno,” comes a comedy called “Up in the Air” starring Oscar® winner George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizing expert whose cherished life on the road is threatened just as he is on the cusp of reaching ten million frequent flyer miles and just after he’s met the frequent-traveler woman of his dreams.
Watch the trailer in High Definition on Apple.
While at the Telluride Film Festival, I had the chance to talk to Academy Award-nominated director Jason Reitman about his new, and much buzzed about film, Up in the Air. I conducted the interview in conjunction with my friend Alex from FirstShowing, filmed “up in the air,” (get it?) in a gondola traveling up and down the mountains of Telluride Colorado. This is probably the most unique interview I’ve ever been apart of, and it turned out pretty well. It’s a definite must watch, even if you haven’t seen the film (no spoilers are discussed). Watch the interview now embedded after the jump.
Reitman talks about a lot of different things over the course of the 23-minute interview: the pressure of being interviewed in front of the camera, his reaction to the first official public screening, the many differences from the book to the screen, why he considers this his most personal film, exploring his life questions on the big screen, why he is attracted to stories about family relationships, the backpack speech in Up in the Air, why it took six years to write, on why he produces films, Andrea Arnold and Fish Tank, his unique opening title sequences, the aerial photography in Up in the Air, the intricate details of traveling in the film, Jason’s own traveling rituals, Casting Zach Galifianakis and Anna Kendrick, the underrated and under-seen indie film Rocket Science, an update on his upcoming projects: Bonzai Shadowhands, Pierre Pierre, and Labor Day, and Twittering about the filmmaking process.
The biggest hit of the Telluride Film Festival was the surprise premiere of Jason Reitman’s adaptation of Up in the Air. For those of you who missed it, you can read my glowing review here. George Clooney stars as Ryan Bingham, “a corporate downsizing expert whose cherished life on the road is threatened just as he is on the cusp of reaching ten million frequent flyer miles and just after he’s met the frequent-traveler woman of his dreams.” Despite what the official studio released plot synopsis might lead you to believe, this film is not exactly a romantic comedy, it is much more.
Paramount Pictures has provided /Film with the exclusive premiere of the first teaser trailer for Up in the Air, which is an alternative cut created by Reitman specifically for the internet. The teaser is based around a speech that Bingham gives at motivational speaking gigs. It’s a very Fight Club-esque philosophy — that the things you own, and the relationships you carry, end up owning you and weighing you down. And this is the key philosophy of Ryan Bingham, who lives his life traveling around the world, free of relationships, family or compromises. Watch the teaser trailer after the jump.
Watch the trailer in High Definition here: 480p and 720p.
Up in the Air is currently scheduled to hit theaters on December 4th 2009.
