A good interview, from the filmmakers’ point of view, is one where the press walks away more interested in the project than when they came in. While I’m not planning to be first in line for the videogame adaptation Max Payne when it opens in October, I’m definitely curious. Part of that comes from the charisma of Mark Wahlberg and director John Moore, who at least talk a good game when it comes to this crime saga.

(CHUD)

The actress and comedian stars in VHI’s The Cho Show (tonight, 11 ET/PT), her first series since 1994’s short-lived ABC sitcom All-American Girl, an experience from which the outspoken San Francisco native still appears to be recovering.

(USA Today)

It’s a year of milestones for Kevin Bacon: The actor turned 50 (!) on July 8, he celebrates his 20^th wedding anniversary with Kyra Sedgwick in September, and it’s been 30 years since the release of his first movie, Animal House. Tonight, he sits in the director’s chair for a third time on Sedgwick’s hit series The Closer (Mondays at 9 pm/ET, TNT).

(Seattle Post)

The face in the photograph that accompanies this story is Melissa Leo’s. Leo is an actor and her face, unlike some of her far more famous peers, is naturally aged. Cosmetic tinkering doesn’t do it for her. “I’m not that kind of girl,” Leo said recently during a blunt and boisterous conversation in a downtown Boston hotel. “If they need to have bigger boobies, then I can just stuff the bra. I have definitely lost work over the years because my chest isn’t bigger than it is and because I don’t have platinum blond hair.”

For most of this decade, Leo has been playing women whose age falls somewhere along the spectrum of 40. (She’s 47.) And if you caught her as Benicio Del Toro’s beleaguered wife in “21 Grams,” you’re aware that Leo can exceed the spectrum.

(Boston Globe)

In his native England, Steve Coogan is a big star, known for his hilarious portrayal of nitwit radio presenter Alan Partridge, among other characters.

He also has appeared in the United States as a guest on such TV shows as Curb Your Enthusiasm, as well as in Night at the Museum and other films.

But it’s hard to imagine a bigger couple of weeks for Coogan. He appears as the desperate director in the huge comedy Tropic Thunder and has the lead role in the decidedly smaller (but still hilarious) Hamlet 2, about a failed actor, now teaching drama in Tucson, who writes a sequel to Shakespeare’s masterpiece to save the school’s drama department.

(Arizona Republic)

Only a few hours before I sat down at a roundtable with Jason Statham to talk about Death Race at Comic Con, I had left the Masters of the Web party, been thrown out of a Hard Rock Hotel room (with a bunch of other people; San Diego’s Hard Rock is the weak sister of that hotel chain) and eventually had a fully insane man threaten to cut my face off before claiming to be a cop. That led to me and Devin jumping in a cab to get out of dodge while Ryan Rotten watched our back. 

Hell of a night. 

With little chance to rest, I had to meet a bunch of the same people that had been busted at the hotel earlier, in a parking lot under a pop-up tent, to talk about movies. Not the worst job, really. It’s worth mentioning that while he hadn’t been in the last suite (and he didn’t threaten me) Jason Statham had been at the same party with us, and probably drinking much harder. (It was his birthday.) 

He sat down with a handful of hungover editors, peering at us from behind massive shades, and, like a pro, gave it a shot.

(CHUD)

The red-carpet area at the premiere of the Disney Channel’s new Cheetah Girls movie last week looked less like the typical Hollywood cast party than some sort of United Nations session.

“One-third of the U.S. population is now nonwhite,” said Ms. Chase, one of a handful of prominent African-American producers in Hollywood. “That is reflected in the Disney Channel projects because they are committed to diversity. It has been a priority for them all along.”

None of which should be particularly surprising in the 21st century, except that television in general seems to be caught in one of a series of repeating cycles in which diversity all but disappears from the small screen.

(New York Times)

Although Anne Hathaway’s career has gone from strength to strength in recent years, the star admits she didn’t think she’d ever make it into movies.

“I didn’t ever think I’d have a movie career, I always thought I’d be a theatre actress and so just the idea now that I’ve gotten to play so many different roles, I’m really having a blast doing that,” said the star who went from costume drama Becoming Jane to playing a special agent in new film Get Smart.

“My general broad thing that I look for when I’m choosing a role is I like to be the exact opposite of what was the last thing I played,” she admits.

“I like things that frighten me. I like doing things I don’t believe I can do and sometimes I can’t do them and they don’t turn out well, and sometimes they do connect and that’s always good, that’s always such a relief.”

Not so long ago, funny guy Martin Lawrence was tipped to be The Next Big Thing. John Patterson wonders how he got to Has Been so quickly.

(The Guardian UK)

In the first extract from his book, Sean Connery describes his childhood in an Edinburgh tenement and the surprising course that made him an actor.

(Times Online UK)