Posted 10/16/08 3:43 pm EST by Jennifer Vineyard in News
Seth Green might be a comic actor, but he takes acting very seriously -- even for a cameo, and even for a movie like "Sex Drive."
"I'm straight-up Daniel Day Lewis the way I approached the role," Green boasted.
To portray an Amish character named Ezekiel -- even an Amish character who has spent a lengthy amount of time outside the Amish community -- Green did his research. He watched "Witness." He watched "Kingpin." And then he went Method. Read More...
Posted 10/16/08 12:31 pm EST by Jennifer Vineyard in Video
Twilight has one up on Harry Potter, at least when it comes to the music -- at least one member of the cast of “Twilight” has heard Twi-rock. (Daniel Radcliffe, however, has not heard wizard rock… yet).
“It’s such a cool idea,” said Kellan Lutz, who plays Emmett Cullen in “Twilight.” “I love this stuff! The Bella Cullen Project, they’re doing awesome.”
Lutz counts himself equally a fan of HP and Twilight, and is glad to see that wizard rock has opened the door for book rock. “I think there’s a lot of potential with all the fans that are out there,” he said. “How much they care about it, how passionate they are, it’s really cool to see." Read More...
Posted 10/16/08 11:42 am EST by Jennifer Vineyard in News
Ten women, trapped in a house, each battling the other for the chance to break out.
The plot for the next “SAW” movie? Nope, just a way to win a part as an ingénue in “SAW VI,” thanks to VH1’s new reality show “Scream Queens,” co-hosted by “SAW” star Shawnee Smith (who plays “Amanda”), "Dawn of the Dead" writer James Gunn, and acting coach James Homa.
“That was a great opportunity for me, in the ‘SAW’ movies, the twist that Amanda took a turn,” Smith said. “Still I looked for the human being in her. The idea at first was just to turn her into a super killer, which maybe I could have done, but Tobin Bell and I, we just got together and asked ourselves, ‘So how did they spend their days between then and now?’ We took walks and talked and that’s why the first thing you saw of Amanda in ‘SAW III’ was how I came in with a grocery bag. You gotta eat.” Read More...
Posted 10/13/08 2:11 pm EST by Jennifer Vineyard in News
Summer Glau is as much of a dancer as she is an actress -- as anyone who saw her moves on “Angel” and “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” or her stunts in “Serenity” would know.
“Being a dancer, being mindful of my physicality, being able to express myself through my movement,” she says, “that’s what really taught me a lot [about being an actress].”
So when are we going to see this classically trained ballerina really make the most of her talent?
Leave it to Joss Whedon to come up with a solution. Ever since casting her in a bit part as a ballerina on “Angel,” and then re-hiring her for “Firefly” and “Serenity,” he’s been percolating on a project they could do together, and he’s come up with one: a short film/ballet called “The Serving Girl.” Read More...
Posted 10/10/08 11:26 am EST by Jennifer Vineyard in News
Russell Crowe wasn’t the only one getting jiggy with Leonardo DiCaprio during the “Body of Lies” shoot – his other co-star, Oscar Isaac tried to get cozy with him in the field.
“I guess you could say my character’s maybe secretly in love with Leo’s character, yeah,” Isaac told us. “I think that’s exactly how I played it when I think about it.”
Based on David Ignatius’ 2007 novel, "Body of Lies" features DiCaprio as Roger Ferris, a CIA man in the field in the Middle East trying to lure a car-bombing terrorist out of hiding, and Isaac as Bassam, his translator and ally in Iraq (which was substituted for by shooting in Morocco). Read More...
Posted 10/9/08 2:28 pm EST by Jennifer Vineyard in News
FROM SPLASH PAGE: Just as "Hulk" director Louis Leterrier is begging the president of Marvel Studios to do a '1602' movie, '1602' writer Neil Gaiman tells us he's all for it. (For the record, so are we).
"I would love it if somebody made a '1602' movie," Gaiman said. "I would love to go and see that. That is something I would just love to sit in the audience and eat my popcorn on the first night and feel proud."
Begging might not even be required to make the Elizabethan-period superhero movie, unless Leterrier is intent to do it as a two-parter -- a tougher sell. Still, it's easier to make "1602" these days, Gaiman said, than it would have been years ago.Read More...
Posted 10/8/08 2:22 pm EST by Jennifer Vineyard in News
Haley Joel Osment has been a lot of things -- a boy who sees dead people, a robot who wishes he were a real live boy, a boy who pays it forward, a boy who lives with his two eccentric uncles and some lion.
But Osment, at 20, is a boy no more, and the kind of roles that interest him now are the sort that would aid in the transition between cute little boy actor and serious young adult actor. So one of the next things he wants to be is a Hitler Youth -- in a film called "Truth & Treason."
"It's a true story," Osment explained. "Some teenage members of the Hitler Youth in 1941 were listening to secret BBC broadcasts on the radio. They were picking up the BBC in Hamburg, and they were hearing all these things about the war that obviously the Nazi propaganda machine wasn't relating to the public, and they ultimately rebelled and started a pamphlet campaign against Hitler." Read More...
Posted 10/6/08 12:48 pm EST by Jennifer Vineyard in News
Even for someone who's grown up in the fresh-faced Disney-verse playing good-girl parts, the allure of becoming a werewolf is hard to deny -- so Christy Carlson Romano is putting in fangs and freaky-looking contacts for "Wolvesbayne."
"It's really cool," she said. "The special effects are huge, and the people who did the 'Buffy' makeup," Drac Studios, who also handled the upcoming "Watchmen" movie, "did it, so the makeup is looking great."
Known for her parts in the Disney shows "Even Stevens" (co-starring with Shia LaBeouf) and "Kim Possible," Romano is trying to step out from her kid-friendly past. "Now all my fans are in college and they're happy to see me do stuff like this," she said. Read More...
Posted 10/3/08 3:35 pm EST by Jennifer Vineyard in News
Autumn Reeser believes in love. In both her new show “Valentine,” premiering on the CW Sunday (October 5), and in her new movie “Possessions,” the former "OC" actress is trying to make true love happen at all costs – for her character in “Possessions,” and for everyone but herself in “Valentine.”
“I play Phoebe, who is the Goddess of the Oracle at Delphi, in ‘Valentine,’” Reeser said. “She helps everybody pinpoint who their soul mates are, so the rest of the gods can all go out and bring them together. She’s like a flower child, and she loves the idea of being in love. She thinks it looks wonderful.”
Well, except when it’s unrequited or ignored. In “Possessions,” her character Jessica’s true love is the ex-girlfriend of the lead character, Orlando (played by Trent Ford), whose body is slowly becoming possessed by a voice in his head named Jean-Luc. Read More...
Posted 10/2/08 5:03 pm EST by Jennifer Vineyard in Interviews
Steampunk is in the air this week at MTV News, so when author Neil Gaiman popped by our office to talk to us about "The Graveyard Book" (much, much more on that later), we had to ask him about being cited as a steampunk influence. Turns out, not only was he highly knowledgeable about the subject, but also, a bit of a fan.
"I've noticed that 'Neverwhere' gets pointed to as a seminal steampunk text," Gaiman said, "which I think is always very sweet of them."
Gaiman said that unlike movements like cyberpunk, which announced itself, "steampunk is one of these odd movements that sort of happened in retrospect." Read More...