When Brad Pitt won the Venice Film Festival’s Best Actor award two weeks ago for his portrayal of the legendary leader of the James Gang in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, the victory amounted to yet another confirmation of the star’s lofty perch at the top of Hollywood’s A-list. Golden-haired, […]

 
With NBC’s Heroes one of the most talked-about shows on TV, an enthusiasm for super-powered heroes no longer carries the social stigma it once did. 2008 promises yet more comic book characters migrating from the page to the cinema , with big budget debuts for the long awaited Watchmen, Iron Man, The Flash, and half […]

 
You can attribute Woody Allen’s upcoming misfire Cassandra’s Dream to a range of factors: a miscast Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor as skint London brothers ensnared in a doomed murder-for-hire plot; an underdeveloped script with an ending foreshadowed around the fourth or fifth minute; Philip Glass’ overdramatic score; Allen’s rudimentary framing and disinclination toward coverage; […]

JOSH SCHWARTZ was shooting the finale of “The O.C.” in Pasadena last season when he began to get an inkling about the potential of his next project. “All these teenagers from the neighborhood had gathered, upset the show was ending,” said Schwartz, the young writer-producer who created the gauzy Newport Beach teen soap. “They said, […]

When I was a kid I thought that Kurt Russell was the coolest guy in the world. He was tough, mean, trashy, funny, and even kicked demon ass in Big Trouble in Little China. And yeah, he was Snake Plissken. But outside of the John Carpenter films, he didn’t do much for me.  At the […]

 
It’s hard to balance work and family. I work in an industry that has a relatively short window of opportunity, extremely long hours and can take you away from home for months at a time. The rewards can be fantastic: fame, wealth, artistic gratification, never standing in line for a table at a restaurant. But […]

You may or may not have heard that there is a distinct possibility that the Writers Guild, the Directors Guild AND the Screen Actors Guild will all be striking next spring, if negotiations with the Producers Guild do not get settled between now and then.

With the chance that they might go months without any […]

It was in many ways a typical film-school scene. On a recent hot afternoon, a group of eager young students crowded around a big-time director, asking for advice about backlighting and the best way to establish a scene of anarchy.  
But the students quizzing David O. Russell, the director of “Three Kings” and “I ? […]

Sean Penn is one of the great actors of his generation, yet he’d like to give it all up to remain behind the camera.  
“It’s a good idea,” Penn said at the Toronto International Film Festival, where “Into the Wild,” his fourth directing effort, played in advance of its Sept. 21 theatrical debut.  
The Toronto festival […]

Even people who don’t care much for George Clooney (and there are some) would admit he handles this fame business with consummate skill.   At a time when so many celebrities revel in being loud and embarrassing - falling drunkenly out of cars, flaunting their addictions, careering in and out of rehab - Clooney stays […]