Jordan Zakarin2013-05-21T21:17:57-04:00Jordan Zakarinhttp://www.news.moviefone.com/author/index.php?author=jordan-zakarinCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Jordan ZakarinGood old fashioned elbow grease.Really Pro-Life? Ban Masturbation, Require Penis Probestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.12961252012-02-23T09:35:44-05:002012-04-24T05:12:02-04:00Jordan Zakarinhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-zakarin/announced a proposed ban on vasectomies, as a response to the state Republicans' efforts to limit abortion rights. They argued that, if the state had the right to control women's sexual health rights in the "interest" of the rights of unborn children, men should be placed under the same limits.
It was a clever point, to be sure, but I believe that, in light of the national attack on women's reproductive rights, did not go far enough. With Virginia seeking to force vaginal probes on its women and the nation-at-large at war over birth control, it has become clear that every drip of potential life is now legally sacred, and so our next logical step has to be to ban male masturbation.
After all, if contraception catches that life-giving discharge, denying the millions of potential little babies in its stream a chance at conception, isn't it just as bad to release by one's self? And in fact, if, as certain organizations insist, it should only be summoned from its testicular dwelling during acts of true and mutual love, isn't self-love a worse offense than sex?
But here's where it gets tricky. Unfortunately, given the sheer number of heathens now living in America (just as Rick "Satan is coming" Santorum predicted, of course), it'd be hard to live by the honor system on this one. Aside from everyone's grossest frat brother, few people come out and admit it each time they administer self-pleasure. So, just as Virginia is proposing, the state will have to take measures into its own hands.
Now that we've cleared a certain threshold in which probing the most intimate areas can be state-mandated, it should present no legal problem at all to require the urethral probing of adult men. While socks can be hidden and tissues flushed, it would be hard to hide the traces of sperm in the inner tubing leading to the tip of the penis. And to be sure that not a single life is wasted, inserting a probe inside the penis seems like a small sacrifice.
Indeed, we are at a crucial time for the Pro-Life movement. The same tired, one-side propositions aren't enough to gain public support or, most critically, save every possible human life; there are 20 to 150 million sperm in each millimeter of semen, making every stroke a genocide. No, if we're going to be serious about saving every single microscope bead of baby aspiration, we must ban masturbation.
And yes, starring in your own political advertisements counts.]]>President Obama's Super PAC Flip-Flop (VIDEO)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2012-02-22T15:37:02-05:002012-02-22T22:32:19-05:00Jordan Zakarinhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-zakarin/
Obama, an immediate critic of the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision that allows a sea of corporate and special interest money in political campaigns, toured the nation in 2010, warning Americans about the dangers that unfettered cash donations posed to discourse and representative government. At the time, Republicans were taking in the vast majority of the money, primarily through super PACs, which could support individual candidates.
Fast-forward to earlier this month, and Obama is now encouraging his own supporters to donate to a super PAC that supports his re-election. It's a major reversal, and given his GOP rivals' huge super PAC fundraising, perhaps an obvious one for someone seeking an even playing field. But it also represents something beyond a flip-flop. It sanctions special interest influence at the highest levels of government.
Neither Obama and his wife Michelle, nor Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill, will attend the super PAC fundraising events, but campaign staff and some cabinet members will.
Watch the video above as Obama rails against the campaign finance system -- and then abruptly changes course when it comes time for re-election.
CORRECTION: This video has been updated to correct the dates of two video clips.
]]>'John Carter' Producers On Budget Rumors & Creating Marstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2012-02-22T09:05:18-05:002012-02-22T10:01:20-05:00Jordan Zakarinhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-zakarin/
And to read the rumors surrounding the film's four years in production, the story of how the epic Disney movie got made seems nearly as legendary a tale.
"It's frustrating, because it's wrong," Lindsey Collins, one of the film's co-producers, says of years of trade reports that the film, the first live-action effort from Oscar-winning "WALL-E" director Andrew Stanton, was a bloated, over-budget mess.
"There's no way to talk about it without sounding defensive, but I'm going to sound defensive for a second and say this movie was made on budget," Collins asserted. "I think Disney took a huge leap of faith with us early on and said, Okay, we believe your number and it's higher than we wanted but we believe it so make it for that ... And in fact, in most areas, it came in under, and the one area we came in slightly over was offset by all the underages of the others, so it came within I think two percent of the budget."
The budget they say they hit was $250 million, which went into live shoots in desert locations and massive computer graphic work to create an elaborate world in which a leather-clad Taylor Kitsch, as Carter, leaps into a war between two rival nations and a race of green, horned, four-armed natives. Barsoom, as Mars is called by its inhabitants, is a rocky desert-scape littered with ornate cities, mystical ruins and anachronistic flying machines. And it's one that took over seventy five years of technological development to make believable on the screen.
Various attempts at adapting Burroughs' seminal, serial adventure series have been made since MGM and "Looney Toons" director Bob Clampett approached Burroughs in 1935 with the idea of making a cartoon feature from the Civil War veteran-turned-space hero's exploits. The test footage, however, did not impress, and the movie was scrapped. The property was acquired by Disney in the '80s -- Tom Cruise was wooed to star -- but that fell through, as did Paramount's attempts to make it, with both Robert Rodriguez and Jon Favreau attached to direct at different points.
Stanton, the current director, grew up a massive fan of the stories, and had always wanted to make the movie himself. Once that was mentioned to Pixar's chief John Lasseter, a quick meeting with then-Disney exec Dick Cook led to the studio scooping up the rights to the seemingly impossible-to-make movie.
"The Curse of John Carter? Yeah, I think everybody felt that the fact that this was a huge property," co-producer Collins laughed, adding that a meeting with Danton Burroughs, the author's grandson, gave her a sense of the books' long legacy. "If it's not done right, it's just going to seem silly and campy, you're never going to buy a live action person sitting next to a CG person. And at least that part, I completely appreciated. I was like, oh my god, how the hell are we going to do this?"
Luckily, Collins' co-producer on "John Carter" was Jim Morris, a Pixar exec who spent nearly two decades working for and then running leading special-effects house Industrial Light & Magic (ironically, "Star Wars" creator George Lucas' company -- how things come full circle).
"Our basic theory was that we wanted to have real stuff under peoples' feet and around them at all times," Morris said. "So what we did was shot them in these big landscapes and just did a little bit of enhancement. We would add ruins here and there and take natural formations and turn them into ruins, and the interior stuff, whether it's in the palace or light or whether it's in chambers, that work we shot on stage [in front of a green screen]."
It requires a certain buy-in from the viewer -- Carter has Superman-level leaping ability, he's often surrounded by the CGI aliens and the plot is tied together with magic thread -- but Morris and Stanton didn't want people to necessarily think of space when they watched it, even if it did take place on Mars.
"One of the ways that gave it a grit and a reality that differentiated it from some of the other films in the genre was to just shoot it like a period piece -- just a period that you didn't know existed," he explained.
The production did have some issues -- Morris explained that they had to condense story lines, give Kitsch's Carter a more sympathetic arc as a Civil War soldier who lost his family, and spend a bit more time on re-shoots than they had planned. The real challenge, however, has come in selling the film to the public.
"It's been tricky. It's been really tricky to market," Collins admitted.
The first step was changing the name. Initially called "John Carter of Mars," Disney chopped off the second half of the title, fearful that the inclusion of the planet's name would mean "people wouldn't give it the chance or the time of day to see that it was multifaceted," she explained.
Pixar's Morris acknowledges that the film's audience is still likely to skew toward young males, though he says Kitsch's hunk appeal has elicited positive responses from women in test audiences. His producing partner believes that they still have a chance to sell based on the long legacy of Burroughs' work.
"What we're trying to get across is that there's a strong story there. I've always been coming at it from the point of, look, I think women don't go see action films because ultimately there's no story, and I think the more we can be convincing, showing people by the fact that there's a good story," Collins said. "We'll see. It's tough. Hopefully the word of mouth will help us, too, because everyone goes in and says, 'Holy shit, that's not what I expected.'"
]]>ESPN's Linsane Headline Not an Isolated Lincidenttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.12888002012-02-20T12:27:38-05:002012-04-21T05:12:02-04:00Jordan Zakarinhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-zakarin/ESPN.com ran a headline on their mobile application about Knicks sensation Jeremy Lin, the 23-year-old, out-of-nowhere point guard who has lit up the league and lifted a disappointing team to national prominence once again. He's got legitimate NBA size and build, and real game, too, with the ability to drive hard to the basket, make impressive passes and nail last second three pointers. He's been the key to the Knicks' sudden seven game winning streak, and ball-crazy New York -- along with the sensation-crazy Internet -- has been going nuts for Lin, including finding every conceivable pun for a last name that stretches across his jersey alone in a league of Andersons, Jameses and Millers.
Jeremy Lin is Asian -- a Taiwanese-American from Palo Alto, California who went to Harvard -- and after a turnover-laden game that marked his first loss as a Knicks starter, ESPN.com splashed the words "A Chink in the Armor" underneath a photo of him mishandling the basketball. The Internet -- the same Internet that has turned a God-loving novice into a search term that out-Googles Jesus -- is outraged. And, of course, the headline was egregious, offensive and downright racist. But to act as if this gross mistake wasn't coming, to fake shock that anyone could even think of his race, is nearly as bad an offense.
As a sports-crazed kid growing up around New York City in the early part of the previous decade, I had posters and carefully-scissored Post and Daily News back pages chronicling the brief and glorious run of the 2000 National League Champion Mets lining my bedroom walls. I had Mike Piazza, the super star, Edgardo Alfonzo, the quiet rock, and Robin Ventura, the charismatic face of the team, staring at me from all directions, as if to say, we couldn't have done it without you, Jordan.
My real sports idols, however, were Gary Cohen and Howie Rose, the play-by-play broadcasters who wove those tales of hardball glory over WFAN, the radio station I'd listen to with the TV on mute and was the number one pre-set on all the various radios that I kept stashed under my pillow for all those extra-inning games on school nights. As a scrawny Jewish kid, I knew from an early age that my best chance to make it in pro sports wasn't on the field, but in the media (and I was already blogging, before that was a word).
Sure, I was a decent Little League player, with a few game-winning hits and a weird love for taking grounders, but I knew that the seemingly ironically titled Jewish Sports Heroes book that my grandfather once bought me during a stretch of illness wasn't something that required frequent reprint for new chapters dedicated to the new heroes. My dad took me to the batting cages far more than my average bat speed and slap-single power warranted, but there was no pretense that hard work and some help from those Fred McGriff-approved Tom Emanski training videos would put me on a path to actually being paid to play baseball. Those over-priced, green-bronze cage tokens were an investment in keeping me busy and bolstering a warped teenage self-confidence, not a down payment that would return the gold and treasure given out liberally to first round draft picks.
So, when a skinny kid began hitting homeruns miles out of Toronto's Skydome, and then cashed in with a massive contract in the Hollywood spotlight of Dodger Stadium, I was surprised, elated and proud to call myself a Shawn Green fan. Sure, he didn't play for my Mets, but he was a member of the other underdog team I was born into: the Jews, traditionally an even more hapless group of athletes. Now, I wasn't at all religious then and I still only know when the high holidays are here when I see my little brother tweet about a day off from school in late September, but damnit, I could reasonably imagine that this guy, unlike seemingly every other ballplayer, was just like me: he probably had zany relatives, was constantly called by a nervous-but-loving mom, spent half his childhood learning about the Holocaust and felt weirdly proprietary over bagels, especially when all the kids who got to celebrate Christmas were eating them before homeroom.
Green was one of the National League's best sluggers for a few years, and he'd have been a star no matter what. But naturally, because he was different, the media gave him special attention. Whether he liked it or not, he was the face of Jewish athletics, this generation's Sandy Koufax, who, over 30 years after his retirement, was still the gold standard for big league Yids. No doubt, he was covered as someone, something, different.
After a while, it began to grate on me: why couldn't we just appreciate his talent, and let him be a regular ballplayer, who gets interviewed and highlighted after a game winning RBI, with puns made on anything but the different religious symbol he wore on a silver chain underneath his jersey -- especially when huge, silver and diamond crosses were known to thump the chests of half of the league's players when they ran around the bases?
And when he came to the Mets, during their momentous (and then soul-crushing) 2006 run to the NLCS, forget it; I was interning for the team that summer, and one of my sharpest memories amidst all the winning and celebrating was the attention paid to the diminished right fielder who became the toast of the most Jewish part of the country.
I felt that, instead of being a star who happened to be Jewish, Green was famous for being the Jewish star. And the same thing is happening to Jeremy Lin, but a million times worse.
Lin, as I said, can ball. No doubt. And when boxer Floyd Mayweather said that Lin is only getting hyped because he's Asian, he rightly got smacked by the media and fans on Twitter. But the fact is that, Mayweather, probably quite accidentally, raised a valid point. Lin, with his monster numbers, buzzer-beating heroics and winning ways, not to mention feel-good, anyone-can-do-it populist story, would be celebrated regardless of his race, especially in a town that, quite literally, gives its sports heroes keys to the city. But it's hard for me to not think that Lin is also being viewed by some as a novelty act, a high-flying world-beater who, in street clothes, might be mistaken for a math major.
It's a quiet racism when compared to the injustices our country has legally and tacitly sanctioned, but Asian-Americans do indeed face their own uphill struggle against stereotypes and prejudice. And so Lin, in breaking all those stereotypes, is being giddily greeted as some sort of "Amasian" ninja (he's been called the Linja), his seemingly inexplicable success amplified by the fact that he looks different from anyone else on the court -- or, for the most part, any court throughout the nation.
I'm a Knicks fan and have enjoyed this run as much as anyone, especially after all the years I've suffered with this team. I've even made my fair share of Lin puns, which, in isolation, aren't particularly egregious. And I have had plenty of conversations with fellow liberal New Yorkers who wouldn't dream of making a racial slur but can't help but get excited over the bizarre and thrilling adventure on which this kid has led the Knicks.
We'd love him regardless of his race, because he's damn talented and a winner, but we should at least admit that the goofiness, the puns, the sudden inclusion on the national stage of All-Star weekend and the dedicated merchandise booth at Madison Square Garden -- all that is undoubtedly linked, in part, to his race. And it's okay to celebrate it -- every kid, regardless of race or religion, deserves a sports role model -- but don't act surprised when it suddenly goes awry, like it did with ESPN's headline. Yes, the writer has since been fired, but that doesn't mean the rest of us don't have some important lessons to learn as well.
A version of this story first appeared at The Merkinist. The author can be contacted here.]]>'Act Of Valor' And The Military's Long Hollywood Missiontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2012-02-17T09:13:35-05:002012-02-21T18:23:21-05:00Jordan Zakarinhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-zakarin/
The good guys have yet to suffer a single casualty until, suddenly, one of its leaders takes a rocket to the chest. The audience cringes, but the bang never comes -- the rocket clangs to the ground, unexploded, and the battle rages on.
The upcoming film "Act of Valor" is replete with that kind of action, but there are a few things it doesn't have: There are no corrupt officers, no damaged heroes, no queasy doubts about the value of the mission or the virtue of the cause.
That's because "Act of Valor" was born not in Hollywood, but in the Pentagon. It was commissioned by the Navy's Special Warfare Command and its success will be measured not in box-office receipts, but in the number of new recruits it attracts to the Navy SEALs.
"Early on, we were pretty honored and humbled to be asked to take a look at potentially telling their story," said "Valor" producer and former stuntman Scott Waugh, "to take a look at what telling their story would even look like."
This may be the U.S. armed forces' first feature-length recruiting film, but it's far from the first time unsuspecting audiences have been treated to Pentagon propaganda at the movies. As early as 1927, when military assistance on the film "Wings" helped it win Best Picture at the first Oscars ceremony, the Department of Defense has long maintained its own production office that offers filmmakers the latest in arms and high-tech vehicles at cut-rate prices -- as long as their scripts are deemed worthy.
That's not the most restrictive the government has been, however. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States officially entered World War II, the film industry fully enlisted in the war effort. Studios fell in line behind the government's Office of War Information, which included the Bureau of Motion Pictures and the Office of Censorship. Together, these agencies kept a close watch on Hollywood's output. Actors went to war on film (and some, in real life), narrated documentaries about the threat posed by the Axis powers, and lampooned America's enemies -- especially the Japanese -- using racial stereotypes.
While studios may have been happy to help out, they also didn’t have much of a choice; the Motion Pictures Bureau read over movie scripts and the Office of Censorship controlled all international film exports.
After the war, while House Committee on Un-American Activities waged a campaign against suspected Communists in Hollywood, the military sought to influence the industry with access to technical advice, weapons, vehicles and troops. The Film Liaison Office, established in 1948, was charged with reviewing scripts by filmmakers who wished to use U.S.-issued guns, tanks and ammunition to ensure that they portrayed the armed forces in a suitably positive light.
For nearly two decades, the Pentagon and Hollywood told stories of the Allies’ glorious victory, with John Wayne and friends taking down the Nazis time and time again. By the late sixties, however, filmmakers' love for the military began to sink like boots in the swamp as the horrors of Vietnam were broadcast nightly to homes nationwide.
From "M*A*S*H" to "Apocalypse Now" to "Platoon," heroism was supplanted by harrowing portrayals of hopeless, endless brutality. Soldiers coped with drugs, leaders went mad and the government conspired against its own men. Unsurprisingly, those war films, among the greatest of the past half-century, were produced without assistance from the Pentagon.
By the time "Platoon" was released in Christmas 1986, however, the Film Liaison Office had started reasserting a measure of control over the military's image. Earlier that year, Paramount Pictures released "Top Gun," which did for pilots what James Dean did for mopey teenagers with red cars.
The military was ready to capitalize on "Top Gun." After a two-hour romp in which Tom Cruise made the Navy look like an adventure filled with catchphrases and gorgeous women, theatergoers, who may not have known that the Pentagon worked closely with producer Jerry Bruckheimer to tailor the film’s message, were greeted by recruitment tables outside their theater. While it's difficult to quantify the movie's direct impact on the image of the military, recruiters to this day point to anecdotal evidence of a "Top Gun" boost.
Hollywood liked what it saw, too. With $176 million in domestic box office receipts and another $177 million internationally, "Top Gun" was such a hit that the film industry's requests for military assistance quadrupled by the outbreak of the first Gulf War a few years later.
Today, the Film Liaison Office is among the most powerful forces in the movie business. Teaming with each armed service’s own film arm, the office cuts sweet deals with studios desperate for the kind of real-life props and troops that can't be generated by computers.
Philip Strub, the current head of the office, wields one of the mightiest pens in show business. He reviews scripts sent in by producers and studios, deciding whether or not to provide material assistance based on, he said, "whether [the film] is something that might be of information value to the public or whether there is some benefit to military recruitment and retention."
As David Sirota recounted in his book "Back To Our Future," John McTiernan, director of famously Pentagon-rejected film "The Hunt for Red October," says studios began telling screenwriters and directors to be sure that they could "get cooperation from the military, or forget about making the picture."
As displeased creatives might tell you, every organization deserves to protect and promote its image, but most polish isn’t taxpayer funded.
Michael Bay has enjoyed a particularly fruitful relationship with the Pentagon, especially while making his blockbuster "Transformers" movies. The sci-fi series, in which gigantic alien robots team up with the U.S. military to defeat other gigantic alien robots, received record amounts of DOD aid, including various aircraft, tanks and active-duty soldiers (the first film alone had access to 12 different types of Air Force aircraft and troops from four different bases). Some "Transformers" scenes were even filmed in the Pentagon, as well as various other bases and training fields.
Strub acknowledged that the Bay movies aren't exactly realistic, but argued that they accurately reflected the way the military would act if facing down extraterrestrial invaders with a General Motors-inspired sartorial flair. A recently announced fourth "Transformers" movie is slated for release during Independence Day weekend 2013. Meantime, those impatient for more military-alien quarrels can check out "Battleship," the board game-turned-science fiction war flick starring Liam Neeson, which hits theaters in May. The Pentagon helped shepherd that one, too.
On the other hand, the Iraq War drama "The Hurt Locker," which starred Jeremy Renner as an explosive ordnance disposal officer, saw its Pentagon assistance pulled just before it began production. Strub attributed that call to last-minute script additions by director Kathryn Bigelow, including climactic sequences during which Renner's character recklessly heads into town and battle by himself.
"I think one of the things that we encounter is the tendency of filmmakers to stick to proven stereotypes," Strub said. "Whether they're in uniform or not, they seem particularly fond of the loner who must disobey the rules, thwart his or her own organization and kind of go rogue in the name of achieving justice or redemption or whatever the goal might be."
"The Hurt Locker" divided the Defense Department. Some decried it as a gross exaggeration of warfare, while others, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, hailed it as the most realistic sketch of life in Iraq to date. The film won Best Picture and Bigelow won Best Director at the 2010 Academy Awards.
The past decade has seen a flurry of other gritty looks at U.S. wars in the Middle East that have eschewed the support of the Film Liaison Office. Paul Greengrass’s "Green Zone," starring Matt Damon, was a less-than-flattering look at life in Iraq, Kimberly Peirce’s "Stop-Loss" focused on the purgatory between the front lines and the homefront, and Paul Haggis’ “In The Valley of Elah,” based on a true story, tackled post-traumatic stress disorder and its effects.
Unlike their Vietnam-era forerunners, however, most such films have failed to resonate at the box office -- even "The Hurt Locker" made just $17 million in the United States.
With ticket receipts fixed as the north Star guiding Hollywood, those fiscal failures haven’t gone unnoticed. And if the message taken from those losses is that today’s audiences prefer big booms to existential treatises on violence in their war films now, it only help increase the Pentagon’s influence on the industry.
Still, public opinion polls matter to the military more than box office numbers, and by 2007, the military realized it had to shift perceptions to up recruiting for the nation's two draining, unpopular wars. Bolstered by findings in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, an internal report that set a goal of increasing Special Operations Forces enlistment by 15 percent, the Navy solicited recruiting video pitches from friendly producers.
Among those, the "Bandito Brothers" -- Waugh and motocross champion Mike "Mouse" McCoy -- who had worked with other offices in the Army and Navy on a number of commercials through their production company of the same name. The pair spent six months visiting the Navy base in Coronado, Calif., conducting interviews and research as they developed their pitch.
That face time led them to suggest using real SEALs instead of Hollywood actors for "Act of Valor." The brass loved the idea, though the SEALs themselves were initially resistant to the idea of acting, Waugh said. They needed some convincing, he said, that, "it was going to be authentic and legitimate and not some hokey, cheesed-out Hollywood version of their community."
Eventually, the Banditos’ reassurances -- and, not least, the Navy’s move to make acting in the film a compulsory assignment -- compelled eight active-duty troops to step forward and play dramatized versions of themselves.
The film, also directed by the Banditos, is nearly all action and is based on five real-life stories strung together by Kurt Johnstad, who wrote the screenplay for the Greek war epic "300." The narrative has the SEALs tracking a Russian-Muslim-Filipino-Mexican terrorist cell seeking to set off a media frenzy and economic collapse within the United States with one deadly bomb.
The terrorists' international flavor presents a nice representative sample of U.S. enemies and bogeymen from the past half-century, though their most important trait is their inability to properly fire their guns.
The battle scenes were shot during live SEAL training missions, plotted out and blocked by the troops themselves, with cameras placed atop their helmets for a video game-like first-person view of the action. To a generation well-accustomed to guiding digital soldiers through combat zones, all that’s missing is a PlayStation controller in a theater seat.
The filmmakers said they were unconcerned with the recruitment angle of the film, focusing principally on the sacrifices made by the SEALs. They also stressed their full creative control of the film during its four-year production process, asserting that the only edits made by the Navy Special Warfare Command were designed to scrub military secrets from the final cut.
The Banditos, of course, were carefully pre-screened. Their final product is a mix of trying acting and "Call of Duty"-style action, earnest and visually impressive but unlikely to garner the kind of praise "The Hurt Locker" and Hollywood's grittier takes on combat have received. Then again, the military has never had Oscar in its sights -- he’s far too old to enlist.
Even McCoy admits that the picture is about changing perception and breaking away from the cynicism still pervasive in Hollywood, not winning gold.
"I'd like to see the legacy of Vietnam put to bed. Vietnam was 40 years ago, and I think arts and entertainment is still suffering from that hangover," he said. "It was a really bad time in American history, absolutely, but it's time to sort of forget that and forget those sensibilities and don't associate our troops and our men and women to that conflict anymore, and time to really open our eyes to say, 'What's going on in this world? What are our men and women in uniform really doing right now for us?'"
Will "Act of Valor" accomplish that? Relativity Media, which won a bidding war to distribute the film following the SEAL-executed death of Osama bin Laden, has been aggressively pursuing publicity, airing multiple trailer spots during the Super Bowl and holding big premieres on each coast -- the New York City opening was held on the USS Intrepid, while SEALs parachuted down to the theater for the Los Angeles bow. Every ad for the film touts the participation of real Navy SEALs; whether that is appealing to young audiences or smacks of propaganda, may help determine how it performs.
Only time will tell if the military can be a viable lead producer, and even Strub admits that the big screen is best at reflecting public opinion about a war, not leading audiences to a conclusion. “I'm of the opinion that movies don't create public opinion, but they can bring focus to it,” he said. “What's going on now, you can make an argument that it's too soon to tell."
In the meantime, the covert mission to win hearts, minds and boots will continue to run through Hollywood.]]>Dogs Against Romney Group Protests In New York City (VIDEO)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2012-02-14T18:30:53-05:002012-02-14T18:30:15-05:00Jordan Zakarinhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-zakarin/
Dogs Against Romney, a Facebook-based protest group, demonstrated outside Madison Square Garden to bring attention to the now-infamous incident in which the former Massachusetts governor, now a leading Republican candidate for president, put his Irish setter Seamus inside a dog crate and strapped it to his vehicle for a 12-hour drive to a family vacation.
Using the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show as a backdrop, a small cluster of protesters with signs that were media-ready with talking points braved the New York cold to greet passersby with their anti-Romney message. The Huffington Post was on the scene to take in the day's events.
]]>Mitt Romney's 'Restore Our Future' Super PAC Donors: Own Your Adtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/thenewswire//2.12703782012-02-11T13:11:14-05:002012-04-12T05:12:01-04:00Jordan Zakarinhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-zakarin/Citizens United decision, campaign spending in the 2012 election cycle is projected to reach a record high.
The decision, along with subsequent lower court rulings, enabled creation of so-called super PACs, which are independent campaign groups that are allowed to solicit and spend unlimited amounts of money in support of their preferred candidates or political issues. Independence, however, is a term that is quite loosely enforced in this case; while the super PACs can't officially coordinate strategy with a candidate's campaign, that doesn't mean that candidate's friends, former employees and business partners can't donate and help operate the committee. Nor does it prevent the candidate from asking their friends to chip in.
The Mitt Romney-supporting super PAC, Restore Our Future, is one of the best funded and active groups; thus far, it has spent over $18 million this election cycle. Largely, it has received donations from wealthy interests and former associates of the candidate; it has received 12 separate $1 million donations, including multiple seven figure deposits from employees of Bain Capital, the financial firm Romney founded. Romney, for his part, encouraged the creation of the Super PAC and attended more than one donor event.
In the video above, in order to give them the publicity they deserve, we put their faces to an attack ad that they helped fund.
]]>Daniel Espinosa, Swedish 'Safe House' Director, Tries For A Classic American Taletag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2012-02-10T10:09:44-05:002012-02-10T11:31:26-05:00Jordan Zakarinhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-zakarin/
"Safe House," the CIA thriller that opens in theaters on Friday, gives no overt indication that it is a foreign-language filmmaker's American feature debut. If anything, the film -- which features Denzel Washington as Tobin Frost, a CIA agent-turned-traitor, and Ryan Reynolds as Matt Weston, the young, idealistic, agent charged with keeping him in custody -- seems like a classic studio picture meant to bring out big audiences and churn out big popcorn sales. That's no mistake, either: Swedish filmmaker Daniel Espinosa ("Snabba Cash") synthesized a century of American cinematic history in an effort to deliver a movie that hits the beats familiar to Stateside ticket buyers.
Espinosa called The Huffington Post earlier this month to talk about the film.
This was your first English feature -- how was that experience, was it a big change for you?
It wasn't that big of a difference, it's a camera, it's a couple of actors and you have to make due with the time that you get. The only difference is that you have more time with the people involved. But basically, it's filmmaking, the same thing.
And you did it in South Africa -- what was the shoot like?
That was really cool. It's a country with such strong colors and such strong culture and so if you just put the camera out on the street, the pure vibe of the whole city will start influencing your work and the actors.
So you met with the studio and said you wanted to do the film your way, with your more unusual brand of filmmaking -- what are your trademarks as a director?
I did a movie called "Snabba Cash" and it has a fairly documentary style, and even though it's a gangster movie, it's based in characters. So I wanted to do an action movie with the people that actually have thoughts and feelings.
We find Denzel Washington's Tobin Frost to be a little more human than we'd expect; is it safe to call him an anti-hero?
Absolutely. I mean, he's the reluctant hero, he's the character who just wants to be an egotistical bastard, but throughout his journey, he meets this kid and he seems something in this kid that reminds him, of who he used to be before the world destroyed him. And I think that moves him, and I don't think he likes it
It isn't the most positive portrayal of the CIA; were you worried about how they'd react?
What, like they'd come crashing through my window?
Well, maybe that you'd be attacked in the press or people would react negatively.
I think in many ways, if you talk about being patriotic, I think it's a very American movie. The tradition in America has always been the cowboy. The cowboy doesn't ally himself with the rest of society or the government, he chooses to see right from wrong as strong as he can and he rides off alone in the end. That is the American hero journey, the lonely man.
It's interesting you say that; that's the legacy of American films, the John Wayne character, but do people from abroad still see that as the archetype?
John Ford, that's the base of American storytelling, and it's a huge part of your history, and it's also reflected in your politics. It's the self-made man. It's the man that arrives to the country and can create his own future with his own hands.
The film also tells a very contemporary story -- you have waterboarding scenes. Was the studio worried at all about showing Americans waterboarding people?
No, they were very supportive throughout the process to make a movie that was based in the reality we have today.
Why Ryan and Denzel for those roles?
You don't pick Denzel Washington, you ask him. With Denzel, he was only the one who should do the part. That's what I told everybody: if Denzel doesn't do it, I won't do it, because I thought this is the part he should have. If he didn't want to, I didn't think there was a movie there, because the character, how I worked with the writer, we designed it for him.
With Ryan, it was a meeting, I met with a lot of actors in his age group -- great actors -- and me and Ryan, we sat down and we spoke and we had a very strong connection. And I saw the work that he did in "Buried," I think it was a great piece of acting and directing, and I thought that there was something in Ryan that I wanted to investigate as a director. It's a journey we haven't done before.
What was that quality?
We just spoke about our lives and where we came from, and I could see in "Buried" that he had a core as a very strong actor and he had something that you almost could call a natural charisma, that, in many ways, Robert Redford had when he was young. But Robert never played into that charisma; he always played grumpy and he always played into the scenes, and I thought there was an opportunity with Ryan there was an opportunity to explore that.
"Safe House" is out in theaters now.]]>Daniel Espinosa, Swedish 'Safe House' Director, Tries For A Classic American Taletag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/thenewswire//2.12685392012-02-10T10:09:44-05:002012-04-11T05:12:01-04:00Jordan Zakarinhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-zakarin/
"Safe House," the CIA thriller that opens in theaters on Friday, gives no overt indication that it is a foreign-language filmmaker's American feature debut. If anything, the film -- which features Denzel Washington as Tobin Frost, a CIA agent-turned-traitor, and Ryan Reynolds as Matt Weston, the young, idealistic, agent charged with keeping him in custody -- seems like a classic studio picture meant to bring out big audiences and churn out big popcorn sales. That's no mistake, either: Swedish filmmaker Daniel Espinosa ("Snabba Cash") synthesized a century of American cinematic history in an effort to deliver a movie that hits the beats familiar to Stateside ticket buyers.
Espinosa called The Huffington Post earlier this month to talk about the film.
This was your first English feature -- how was that experience, was it a big change for you?
It wasn't that big of a difference, it's a camera, it's a couple of actors and you have to make due with the time that you get. The only difference is that you have more time with the people involved. But basically, it's filmmaking, the same thing.
And you did it in South Africa -- what was the shoot like?
That was really cool. It's a country with such strong colors and such strong culture and so if you just put the camera out on the street, the pure vibe of the whole city will start influencing your work and the actors.
So you met with the studio and said you wanted to do the film your way, with your more unusual brand of filmmaking -- what are your trademarks as a director?
I did a movie called "Snabba Cash" and it has a fairly documentary style, and even though it's a gangster movie, it's based in characters. So I wanted to do an action movie with the people that actually have thoughts and feelings.
We find Denzel Washington's Tobin Frost to be a little more human than we'd expect; is it safe to call him an anti-hero?
Absolutely. I mean, he's the reluctant hero, he's the character who just wants to be an egotistical bastard, but throughout his journey, he meets this kid and he seems something in this kid that reminds him, of who he used to be before the world destroyed him. And I think that moves him, and I don't think he likes it
It isn't the most positive portrayal of the CIA; were you worried about how they'd react?
What, like they'd come crashing through my window?
Well, maybe that you'd be attacked in the press or people would react negatively.
I think in many ways, if you talk about being patriotic, I think it's a very American movie. The tradition in America has always been the cowboy. The cowboy doesn't ally himself with the rest of society or the government, he chooses to see right from wrong as strong as he can and he rides off alone in the end. That is the American hero journey, the lonely man.
It's interesting you say that; that's the legacy of American films, the John Wayne character, but do people from abroad still see that as the archetype?
John Ford, that's the base of American storytelling, and it's a huge part of your history, and it's also reflected in your politics. It's the self-made man. It's the man that arrives to the country and can create his own future with his own hands.
The film also tells a very contemporary story -- you have waterboarding scenes. Was the studio worried at all about showing Americans waterboarding people?
No, they were very supportive throughout the process to make a movie that was based in the reality we have today.
Why Ryan and Denzel for those roles?
You don't pick Denzel Washington, you ask him. With Denzel, he was only the one who should do the part. That's what I told everybody: if Denzel doesn't do it, I won't do it, because I thought this is the part he should have. If he didn't want to, I didn't think there was a movie there, because the character, how I worked with the writer, we designed it for him.
With Ryan, it was a meeting, I met with a lot of actors in his age group -- great actors -- and me and Ryan, we sat down and we spoke and we had a very strong connection. And I saw the work that he did in "Buried," I think it was a great piece of acting and directing, and I thought that there was something in Ryan that I wanted to investigate as a director. It's a journey we haven't done before.
What was that quality?
We just spoke about our lives and where we came from, and I could see in "Buried" that he had a core as a very strong actor and he had something that you almost could call a natural charisma, that, in many ways, Robert Redford had when he was young. But Robert never played into that charisma; he always played grumpy and he always played into the scenes, and I thought there was an opportunity with Ryan there was an opportunity to explore that.
"Safe House" is out in theaters now.]]>'Rampart': Oren Moverman's Cop Drama Arrests Social Troublestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2012-02-09T10:41:43-05:002012-02-09T10:41:47-05:00Jordan Zakarinhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-zakarin/
In writer and director Oren Moverman's new drama, Harrelson plays Dave Brown, a member of the LAPD's Rampart division, the hard-scrabble group of cops charged with policing the grittiest parts of inner-city Los Angeles. The film is set in 1999, when the real-life Rampart scandal was making headlines, implicating the unit's officers in a string of alleged beatings, murders, robberies and conspiracies. Already a troublemaker with a long record of misbehavior that includes an alleged murder, Brown gets caught on camera severely beating a man who had plowed into him with his car.
When the video hits the local news, a scandal erupts and Brown's career becomes front-page news. Add in a less-than-ideal home life -- two ex-wives (who happen to be sisters) and a daughter with each -- and Brown is an anti-hero of the highest order, protesting his innocence even as he continues to break any and all police standards in his pursuit of gang members and criminals.
Originally written by Los Angeles institution James Ellroy ("LA Confidential"), the "Rampart" screenplay got passed on to Moverman, who was coming off an Oscar nomination in 2010 for co-writing the military drama "The Messenger," a film that also earned Harrelson an Oscar nod. First, the Israeli-born filmmaker took out many of the characters and plot twists in the initial "Rampart" draft, seeking instead to zero in on the one character. When he traveled to L.A. to do research for the re-write, the film's focus shifted even more dramatically.
In L.A., Moverman and Harrelson got a first-hand look at the daily lives of members of the Rampart unit, going on police ride-alongs and seeing up-close the tensions that mark the everyday interactions of police and civilians. Harrelson synthesized many of the people he met into his portrayal of Brown, while Moverman tried to understand the communities they policed. Statistical evidence mixed with sober observation helped him paint the picture of the streets that Brown splashed with blood.
"We live in a pretty biased society, and we know, for example, the drug problems in African-American communities are not bigger than the drug problems in white communities, but they tend to get arrested a lot more than the people in white communities," he said, calling it a "caste system that is created in this country, almost a Jim Crow kind of attitude, where people lose their hopes and lose their rights."
As Moverman met with officers, LAPD officials and many ex-convicts that had passed through the criminal justice system, he began to see issues far larger and more intractable than simply good guys vs. bad guys.
"I think we have to kind of zoom back from it and see these guys are caught in a game," Moverman said of inner-city police officers. "What are the problems that are really hurting our society, and what kind of society are we giving these guys to police? You look at a society that has turned incarceration into an industry, you look at a society that gives people jail cells over jobs, where the educational system is plummeting in quality, and those are the problems that are the core of the problems we have on the streets of both sides."
That's not to say that Moverman thinks that police are entirely victims, of course; when they break laws or internal ethics rules, he insisted, they should be punished. But that's just the beginning. "Whether it is department-wide changes or fixes or getting rid of bad apples, that's not going to change the situation we see all the time of police violence and brutality and a certain crossing of the line," the director said.
In the film, Brown often reminds people that he served in Vietnam, which he believes will help explain his brutality and law breaking -- after all, policing an inner-city has the same sort of bunker mentality, Moverman said, as policing a foreign territory.
"The point is we've turned a lot of our communities into war zones, and the behavior that comes with it will have atrocities involved, will have situations out of hand," he said. "And I'm not saying we should give up on trying to make cops more informed and better behaved and all that kind of stuff, but if you put a soldier in an occupation where he's basically policing everyone and looking at it as a siege, shit will happen."
"Rampart" opens in limited release on Friday.]]>Diane Disney Miller Remembers Dad: Walt's Secret Disneyland Apartment, His Passions & More (PHOTOS)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2012-02-07T08:28:54-05:002012-02-11T08:21:28-05:00Jordan Zakarinhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-zakarin/
The apartment isn't open to the public, but one frequent visitor is ready to open up about her fond memories of Walt's personal escape. Diane Disney Miller, Walt's daughter, is the founder and head of the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. To celebrate the DVD/Blu-ray re-release of "The Lady and the Tramp" and mark the 57th anniversary of the opening of Disneyland, she spoke to the Huffington Post about her father, the secret apartment and life with the world's most famous surname.
Could you tell me a little bit about the apartment? What your favorite part was, the important features?
It was their refuge, it was their little place. The decor, it was all little things that they picked up when they were traveling around the country various times, and it was decorated by Emile Kuri, who had decorated many of the films, including "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," and it was lovingly done. It was really a very cozy, family place.
Did a lot of people get to go up there, or it was a very private place?
Very private. It was for them. It was their residence there and they would invite people up, if there were special people in the park, mother and dad would go out and they would invite them up. Early, it was during "Davy Crockett," I remember there was some event there that day and Fess Parker and Buddy Ebsen were both out there for it, and dad was looking out that window and saw them and he said, "Hey, come on up!"
He told them how to get around, back behind, and get up to the apartment and there was a fire pole in it, it's not there now, but there was a door into the closet area that had a fire pole, like the firemen would have, and he showed it to them and said, "Why don't you guys slide down that?" And they did! People would say, did your father ever do that? I'm sure he didn't.
You had a screening room in your house, right?
Yes. He put it in when he started to do the live action films. The first one was "So Dear To My Heart," and then "Songs of the South," the Uncle Remus stories. That's when he put it in, because he wanted to come in and watch dailies.
What movies do you remember watching in the house?
All of those. I remember the early screenings of Bobby Driscoll and all of that. And actually he sent me out of the room because I was being too critical. I was only about ten years old. He didn't need my criticism.
What was his favorite ride?
They were all favorites to him, and he was always tweaking them, but he really was into Tomorrowland. The Monsanto House of the Future he thought was very interesting, he took my husband and I there and said you might want to get some ideas here for a home, and I'd never want to live in a house like that, but again, he got into all the animatronics when they did the New York World's Fair in 1963, they did the Tiki Bird room around that time in Disneyland.
And he was delighted with the new audio animatronics; that, for a while was definitely his favorite. And then they did another audio animatronics, and I don't think they have it any more, the Country Bear Jamboree, he was very excited about that, and then he was very excited about the haunted house, the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and none of those things were completed until after his death. But he was always looking to the thing he was doing to be the furthest thing.
Speaking of progress, some of the best animated movies today are computer animated. What do you think he would think of that?
Oh, he'd be delighted. Anything that he could use in any way, he would reach out and grab it. He'd love all these guys at Pixar, he'd love it.
A lot of people have said that your dad saw Mickey Mouse as his sort of animated self, an extension of himself.
I think eventually he did. We'd say that, my mother even said it. He did Mickey's voice for years and as Mickey became more of a celebrity, there was a distinct change in his character and his behavior. You'll notice he was a little rascal; when you look at the early Mickey, he did in all these little films all these almost vulgar things, but as he became more famous, as Dad said, there were a lot of things that he didn't think Mickey should do because he was the emblem of the company. And so that's when they invented Donald Duck and Goofy to do all those things. We've always said there was something to that, and Dad himself said he got us out of trouble when things were really low, and he was a symbol of laughter. But now he's simply sort of a host in his little tuxedo.
What made you want to start the museum? Why did you think it was important to get the message about his life out there?
I don't think anybody really knows him. His name is so familiar and the brand is everywhere and the company gets larger and larger, but there were a couple of really terrible books written about him. There was one that was a total invention. And I thought, what can I do? And the best way, I realized, we did a little film on him, and then we had a website done by the authors who made the film, Richard and Katherine Greene, and it would get lots of comments. It was presented like a virtual museum of Walt's life, and it would get comments like, where's the real museum?
And then I encountered enough people who said "I love your father" and enough of the negative comments, other little kids would say to my kids, "My mother said your grandfather was anti-Semitic" or "Your grandfather is frozen, isn't he?" And I couldn't let that stand. And I thought, I have a really good life because of him and the one thing I can do is establish this place, and I wasn't doing it just for him, I was doing it for all those millions of people that kind of love him.
What is the one thing about him that you think people should know?
No one understands that he was really a dad. He drove my sister and me to school every morning. Every weekend, either Saturday or Sunday, he'd say it was Daddy's day, where he'd take us all day to the local park where they had a beautiful carousel or take us to the studio -- we'd run around the studio on weekends when there was nobody there, we'd go into every animation room and prowl around the lot. He was really a dad. He went to every school function, every Father's Night.
I had a little friend, Elizabeth, and she was the daughter of [famed producer] Darryl Zanuck, and in the 7th-10th grades, she was very inclined to show business and she always made us do a skit for the school talent show. And several times, when it needed props, we went with my dad to the studio and we went to the carpenter's shop and he himself made some props for us. He was very good with his hands, he had worked as a carpenter with his father.
Watch a video with a short tour of the apartment, and then check out intimate photos of Walt and his family.
WATCH:
PHOTOS:
Correction: A previous version of this article erroneously stated that 2012 marks the 55th anniversary of Disneyland and "Lady in the Tramp"; it is actually the 57th.
]]>Gary Oldman, Finally An Oscar Nominee, Reflects On His Long Careertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2012-02-07T08:10:06-05:002012-02-15T12:56:23-05:00Jordan Zakarinhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-zakarin/
It has almost become a tradition: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences skipping over the unassuming British star as they bestow honors on flashier, more tabloid-ready actors. This year, however, his turn in the big-screen reprisal of the classic novel and BBC miniseries "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" was too hard to ignore. Oldman earned his first Oscar nod for his effort as retired spy George Smiley, a role he says marks a seminal moment in his career.
Oldman spoke with The Huffington Post late last week about the nomination, his career and his future plans.
How did you react when you found out about the nomination?
I was in Berlin, rather fittingly, and I was giving what I thought would be my last interview about "Tinker Tailor," and my manager came in and said I'd been nominated. It wasn't expected, because we were not there at SAG or the Globes, so I wasn't holding my breath, but I thought there was a chance. It's exciting, it's wonderful.
Is it something that mattered to you?
I've never really put myself out there in that regard. I think that with the success of this in England and with the reviews and the box office, I think it gathered a momentum. It wasn't something calculated, at the beginning: "Oh, I'm going to go all the way with this, let's go to the Oscars with this." I think it just gathered momentum, and I was intrigued and thought, well I can either get off the track and or continue and see where this goes. And I'm just determined to just enjoy every minute of it.
You've said that this is the kind of role you've waited 30 years to play. What did you mean by that?
Well, first of all, it's a role that's all subtext, it's all inside, it's all going on but you're not necessarily expressing it. It's an iconic part, it's just a wonderful leading role and it's the sort of role that one, in a career, dreams about. It's a role that will come along once or twice. If you look at any of those great parts, for instance, you take someone like Daniel Day Lewis -- who I think, any way you slice it, is a genius actor. But look at Daniel Plainview (Lewis's character in "There Will Be Blood"). I know he's playing Lincoln and I'm sure there are great expectations for it, but how often do you get a Daniel Plainview?
[Robert] De Niro has some incredible roles, but one does think of Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver." It's hard to top them. So this kind of role -- and when I say this kind of role, I usually play extrovert characters -- this role is also very quiet, it's subdued, it requires a different kind of thing, it's a minimalist performance in that sense. It's a "please don't ask me to bounce off the walls anymore," you know what I mean? I've been waiting for it.
What role has been the most challenging of all the very different things you've done?
This one was particularly challenging because, above and beyond the role, one had to sort of slay the ghost of [Sir Alec] Guinness [who played the part in the original BBC miniseries]. I'm up against, or compared to, someone who is such a huge success with the part. That was psychologically challenging to kind of get one's head around that.
I think the most challenging in a way and the most fun, looking back, was "JFK." Because there was very little on the page and [director] Oliver [Stone] gave me a bunch of airline tickets and some per diem and a couple of contact names and said, "Go to Dallas, go to New Orleans and find out who this guy was." And I just really pieced him together from there and came back and spoke, which influenced or informed the writing of Oswalt in that movie. You become a detective. So that's challenging, when a director has faith in you and there isn't very much there and you've got to fill in the blanks.
You wrote and directed one film -- 1997's "Nil By Mouth" -- it was a big critical success, and you said at the time you wanted to write and direct more. That was 14 years ago, and you haven't written or directed since. Do you still plan on doing another?
I'm out looking for money for one that I hope to do next year... which I'm not talking about at the moment. But I do intend to. I've just been doing a lot of things, I've been working and bringing up kids and being a dad. They're a little older now and I just felt there is a commitment, an emotional and personal commitment to a film that is beyond an actor. For me, Smiley was ten weeks really, obviously you have the work to do and the press and all that, but essentially it was nine or ten weeks, and Tomas Alfredsson, it was two and a half years. And I feel ready to do that now. The boys are getting older and I hope to step behind the camera next year.
When you read a script, what makes you want to do a film?
It can be many things. It normally is the material and the director. But I can give you a specific example. When I read the script for "Dracula," it had a line in it, he said, "I've crossed oceans of time to find you," I wanted to do the movie for that line. I wanted to say that line to someone. I just thought that was an amazing line, and I thought, Who wouldn't want to say that to someone they loved? And that hooked me.
What is the movie that you feel you're most remembered for?
It's surprising. The one that's normally at the top of the list would be "True Romance"; people also remember "The Professional." I think those are the top two.
You've worked with a lot of young talent recently, who has impressed you the most?
Daniel [Radcliffe] has impressed me enormously, that's an obvious one. Of the younger generation, of the 30-somethings, I like Ryan Gosling and of course, I've worked with Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch, they've impressed me enormously. ]]>Gary Oldman, Finally An Oscar Nominee, Reflects On His Long Careertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/thenewswire//2.12595182012-02-07T08:10:06-05:002012-04-08T05:12:01-04:00Jordan Zakarinhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-zakarin/
It has almost become a tradition: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences skipping over the unassuming British star as they bestow honors on flashier, more tabloid-ready actors. This year, however, his turn in the big-screen reprisal of the classic novel and BBC miniseries "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" was too hard to ignore. Oldman earned his first Oscar nod for his effort as retired spy George Smiley, a role he says marks a seminal moment in his career.
Oldman spoke with The Huffington Post late last week about the nomination, his career and his future plans.
How did you react when you found out about the nomination?
I was in Berlin, rather fittingly, and I was giving what I thought would be my last interview about "Tinker Tailor," and my manager came in and said I'd been nominated. It wasn't expected, because we were not there at SAG or the Globes, so I wasn't holding my breath, but I thought there was a chance. It's exciting, it's wonderful.
Is it something that mattered to you?
I've never really put myself out there in that regard. I think that with the success of this in England and with the reviews and the box office, I think it gathered a momentum. It wasn't something calculated, at the beginning: "Oh, I'm going to go all the way with this, let's go to the Oscars with this." I think it just gathered momentum, and I was intrigued and thought, well I can either get off the track and or continue and see where this goes. And I'm just determined to just enjoy every minute of it.
You've said that this is the kind of role you've waited 30 years to play. What did you mean by that?
Well, first of all, it's a role that's all subtext, it's all inside, it's all going on but you're not necessarily expressing it. It's an iconic part, it's just a wonderful leading role and it's the sort of role that one, in a career, dreams about. It's a role that will come along once or twice. If you look at any of those great parts, for instance, you take someone like Daniel Day Lewis -- who I think, any way you slice it, is a genius actor. But look at Daniel Plainview (Lewis's character in "There Will Be Blood"). I know he's playing Lincoln and I'm sure there are great expectations for it, but how often do you get a Daniel Plainview?
[Robert] De Niro has some incredible roles, but one does think of Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver." It's hard to top them. So this kind of role -- and when I say this kind of role, I usually play extrovert characters -- this role is also very quiet, it's subdued, it requires a different kind of thing, it's a minimalist performance in that sense. It's a "please don't ask me to bounce off the walls anymore," you know what I mean? I've been waiting for it.
What role has been the most challenging of all the very different things you've done?
This one was particularly challenging because, above and beyond the role, one had to sort of slay the ghost of [Sir Alec] Guinness [who played the part in the original BBC miniseries]. I'm up against, or compared to, someone who is such a huge success with the part. That was psychologically challenging to kind of get one's head around that.
I think the most challenging in a way and the most fun, looking back, was "JFK." Because there was very little on the page and [director] Oliver [Stone] gave me a bunch of airline tickets and some per diem and a couple of contact names and said, "Go to Dallas, go to New Orleans and find out who this guy was." And I just really pieced him together from there and came back and spoke, which influenced or informed the writing of Oswalt in that movie. You become a detective. So that's challenging, when a director has faith in you and there isn't very much there and you've got to fill in the blanks.
You wrote and directed one film -- 1997's "Nil By Mouth" -- it was a big critical success, and you said at the time you wanted to write and direct more. That was 14 years ago, and you haven't written or directed since. Do you still plan on doing another?
I'm out looking for money for one that I hope to do next year... which I'm not talking about at the moment. But I do intend to. I've just been doing a lot of things, I've been working and bringing up kids and being a dad. They're a little older now and I just felt there is a commitment, an emotional and personal commitment to a film that is beyond an actor. For me, Smiley was ten weeks really, obviously you have the work to do and the press and all that, but essentially it was nine or ten weeks, and Tomas Alfredsson, it was two and a half years. And I feel ready to do that now. The boys are getting older and I hope to step behind the camera next year.
When you read a script, what makes you want to do a film?
It can be many things. It normally is the material and the director. But I can give you a specific example. When I read the script for "Dracula," it had a line in it, he said, "I've crossed oceans of time to find you," I wanted to do the movie for that line. I wanted to say that line to someone. I just thought that was an amazing line, and I thought, Who wouldn't want to say that to someone they loved? And that hooked me.
What is the movie that you feel you're most remembered for?
It's surprising. The one that's normally at the top of the list would be "True Romance"; people also remember "The Professional." I think those are the top two.
You've worked with a lot of young talent recently, who has impressed you the most?
Daniel [Radcliffe] has impressed me enormously, that's an obvious one. Of the younger generation, of the 30-somethings, I like Ryan Gosling and of course, I've worked with Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch, they've impressed me enormously. ]]>John Goodman On 'The Artist,' Rumors, Death Hoaxes & Moretag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2012-01-31T09:21:59-05:002012-01-31T09:25:27-05:00Jordan Zakarinhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-zakarin/
Goodman, who was in London preparing for the upcoming BBC miniseries "Thicker," spoke to The Huffington Post about his role in the charming film that is sweeping awards season, as well as a number of his other big career milestones.
How did you get involved in "The Artist?"
They asked for me. My agent told me this guy wanted to do something and he showed me -- since they dont have a script, the guy had a scenario, basically scene-by-scene, explaining what was happening. But he tarted it up with all these old Hollywood pictures, pictures of old stars, of old advertisements, of old scenes from Hollywood. And I thought, This guy is really going through a lot of trouble, he must really dig what he's doing. And then he came to explain to me how he wanted to do it, and I flipped, I thought it was a great idea. It's just a great idea to tell a story.
Did you have an active interest before that in old Hollywood?
As I get older, I appreciate what they did more. Some of the stuff, I can't figure out how they did it. Just really effortless craftsmanship went into this stuff. And a lot of these guys were making it up, inventing the business as they went along. The guy I'm playing is one of these tough old bastards who came down from New York, fell in love with the movies and then wound up inventing the process as they went along.
You're portraying a very tough executive -- do you think that kind of character still exists in Hollywood?
You know what, I don't have much access to the executives, the big shots. I kind of try to avoid them. From my end of the spectrum, I just don't have that much exposure to them.
You're doing some speaking in the film, even if it doesn't make it into the sound mix. I read you were speaking English and Dujardin was speaking French, and you went back and forth without understanding each other.
Yeah, but it worked. There was common ground in that we knew what we were talking about, but there was some heavy focusing going on. Which kind of carried through to this whole ensemble feel of the piece -- everybody was really focused, because it was such a different way of telling a story. It created a great camaraderie among the cast.
Why do you think it's been so critically successful?
I think people enjoy seeing it. I think they enjoy seeing it with other people. It's a great, shared experience, it's one of the reasons we started going to the theater to begin with, to share a story with other people and see how they react to it, how they feel. And it's just a basic, decent, simple story that runs on a lot of different levels, too. It's a big warning, in this business, that nobody is irreplaceable.
How about that "Spring Break '83" movie, where you play a character named Dick Bender, it comes out this spring it seems?
What was this?
See, I have to deal with IMDB all the time, and rumors and figuring out what's true and what's not true. I'm looking at this film called "Spring Break '83"
Oh yeah! I remember this. This was something that was shooting up in Baton Rogue and [laughs] the paycheck was too good to turn down. So yeah, I flopped over on my back and I whored out, man. I put on the cheap cologne and I whored out big time.
So what exactly was this role as Dick Bender?
I don't remember. He was a rich guy who was yelling into a cell phone most of the time.
How often do you do that, just do a role for the check?
Oh man, not often. At that time, I think I was pretty desperate.
It looks like it's finally going to see the light of day. When did you make it?
Maybe like four, five years ago. Is it really coming out?
Yeah, I see it has you as Dick Bender and Alan Richardson as Brad, Joey Pantoloiano as Sgt. Coltrane.
I remember working with Lee Majors. Is Lee Majors in it, or maybe this is a different movie?
No, Lee is in it.
OK, yeah that's the one. But there have been movies that people have told me I was in that I wasn't in.
How often does that happen?
During interviews. People look on the computers and the computers are wrong.
Do people you know read news stories and then call you up and say, "I didn't know you were going to be in this movie" and you're really not?
I was dead a couple of times, shit like that.
How do you deal with a death hoax rumor on the Internet?
I don't care. It's so far out of my control, what am I going to do? Bust a blood vessel and really die?
I've always wondered about that, because it's my job to sort through those things and report what's true, and it gives me a headache -- how do the subjects deal with it?
Yeah, back to doing "Roseanne," when the television show was popular, she was tabloid bait. So I'd read shit about her that was all fiction, and there was a lot of stuff about me that was not true, and what are you going to do? You can't believe any of this shit, so it was kind of hard to get too worked up about it.
Yeah. When we started doing that show, there was a little unease in the country about the economy, and there were all these glitzy shows on TV that I really don't think reflected what the country was going through. I think our show was a good touchstone for what people were going through, just trying to scrape by, going paycheck to paycheck.
Did you hear that from a lot of people?
Yeah, I still get people that say, "You remind me of my dad" or, "Roseanne is just like my mom."
In the beginning, like this time last year, he showed it at Radio City Center and we all went and I think that was the first time I saw it, with a room full of Kevin Smith fans, so that was pretty cool. I was disappointed that it went straight to DVD, but I guess that was part of his process as well. You know, once I step out from in front of the camera, my work is done and I have no control of anything. It was fun to do, though. We had a good time.
What are you looking forward to doing beyond what you have planned?
I wouldn't mind being on a series again. You get tired living out of a suitcase. I get to work with Joel and Ethan Coen again [on "Inside Llewyn Davis"] and that's something I'm really looking forward to. I'd like a lot of things. I like doing big movies but that hasn't been the case, so these little ones are doing me just fine.
When the Coen brothers call, do you just say, "Yes"?
Yeah, it doesn't matter. "We've got you drinking out of a dog bowl." OK!
Justin Timberlake is the star, right?
Is he? I didn't know that.
Yeah, Timberlake, you, Garrett Hedlund, Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac as well.
Oh, OK. [Laughs.]
How often do people come up to you and say, "I don't roll on Shabbos"?
A lot. Once a week someone will bring up a DVD or something to sign or come out of the blue, blindside me. There was a festival in NY last year, and it was the first time everyone got together. The panel we did, no one could understand the guy interviewing us, and it was in a huge theater, and that kind of sucked, but it was great seeing everybody.
When you were making it, did you expect it to be such a cult hit?
I never know anything like that. I really don't care. I was having such a good time.]]>'Man On A Ledge' The Latest In Hollywood's Populist Embracetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2012-01-27T11:03:54-05:002012-01-27T11:14:05-05:00Jordan Zakarinhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-zakarin/
The film stars Sam Worthington as Nick Cassidy, an ex-cop who has been wrongly convicted of stealing a valuable diamond from a smug real-estate magnate played by Ed Harris. As Cassidy takes to the ledge of a high-rise hotel as part of an elaborate plan to reclaim the diamond and prove his innocence, a crowd of onlookers assembled beneath the hotel begins to cheer him on. And it isn't long before the audience itself is drawn into an us-vs.-them battle against the sleazy billionaire.
"One of the driving things in the story that always appealed to me is how difficult it is for the little guy to get a fair shake," the film's producer, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, told The Huffington Post over the phone this week. "The system keeps lining up against the little guy. The movie is meant to convey that in a completely entertaining way, but the underlying desperation that drives the decision-making is that you can't catch a break in the system if you're not a guy of privilege."
By channeling real-estate mogul Donald Trump, in all his blustering arrogance, Ed Harris makes himself the perfect target for multiplex audiences battered by the economy. But he's not the first onscreen businessman in recent months to assume the villainous mantle once reserved for Nazis, Communists and Islamic terrorists on screen. "Hollywood is full of a lot of people from the one percent," di Bonaventura said, "but it also tends to be a group of people that are very cognizant of the 99 percent."
Last November, Alan Alda played a softer but no less fraudulent billionaire in "Tower Heist," a film that starred Ben Stiller, Matthew Broderick and Eddie Murphy as wronged working-class stiffs looking to settle the score. Director Brett Ratner meant the film to be more apolitical than activist, but its underdog story dovetailed nicely with the then-nascent Occupy Wall Street movement, something from which the filmmaker didn't shy away.
Hitting theaters a just a week before Ratner's film was "In Time," the Justin Timberlake-Amanda Seyfried thriller that served in part as a sci-fi allegory for the widening income gap. "The movie is a comment on the inequalities that are crushing 99 percent of the people in our society," one of the film's co-stars, Olivia Wilde, told Fox411 when the film premiered. "The movie really makes a statement that it's not right, and that in order for that to be dismantled, there's going to have to be a change at the kind of basic core moral level of society."
Around that time came "Margin Call," a star-studded drama that took a sober view of the country's woes, placing blame not on individual bankers but on a deregulated system that incentivizes greed and corruption. The film, nominated on Tuesday for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, was released at a time when Occupy protesters were digging in on Wall Street and around the country. "The film got to be part of that dialogue, which was pretty awesome," writer and director JC Chandor told The Huffington Post earlier this week. "No one was throwing Molotov cocktails, no one was being crazy -- people were actively trying to engage in something that happened in their lives and they wanted to speak out about it."
In "Arbitrage," which debuted earlier this week at the Sundance Film Festival, Richard Gere delivers one of the best performances of his career as a Bernie Madoff-style investment banker who cooks the books to save his family. The film focuses at least as much on human drama as it does on the mechanics of his financial crimes, thereby observing the cardinal rule of socially responsible films in Hollywood: create something that will fill theater seats.
"There are plenty of people here that want to push that type of message," di Bonaventura said. "Our frustration has been that, when you try to push something too hard, the audience looks at it like medicine instead of entertainment. So, for us, one of the things about 'Man on a Ledge' is that we had to first and foremost make sure it was really entertaining. And then you're allowed to slip in societal inflections of political positions. I've found in my career that the movies that have generally done the best at conveying some kind of social messages are not about social messages."]]>