Oliver Stone doesn’t take a breath. “You don’t know a lot about Bush,” he says. “You think you know. A lot will shock you.”

The controversial director is feeling the heat from what certainly will be the most talked-about film of 2008, but Stone is someone who never lets them see him sweat.

Days away from his “W.” opening at the multiplex, Stone is mulling over if and when the real commander-in-chief will see the biography Stone directed about his life.

(Chicago Tribune)

The filmmaker formally known as Guillermo del Toro, now referred to ubiquitously as Guillermo “I’m making The Motherf****** ‘Hobbit’” del Toro, appeared tonight at the Director’s Guild of America in midtown Manhattan as part of The New Yorker Festival series of talks. During the conversation withNew Yorker staff writer Daniel Zalewski, the director of such modern genre masterpieces as Pan’s Labyrinth and the “Hellboy” series talked up some of his future projects, including the aforementioned two-film Tolkien adaptation as well as a new version of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”

Currently at the beginning of pre-production on The Hobbit, del Toro discussed his process of gathering ideas, or “feeding his brain,” in order to conceptualize his own vision of Middle Earth unique from where Peter Jackson went in his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy…

(Coming Soon)

In the 30-plus years Ridley Scott has been making films, he’s covered all manner of subjects, from fencing to replicants, the Crusades to the drug trade. In his new film “Body of Lies,” Scott examines the role of the CIA in the war on terrorism.

The movie stars some of Hollywood’s biggest names. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a talented young agent with a strong moral code and a thing for a traditional Muslim woman; Russell Crowe is his take-no-prisoners boss who gives top-secret commands from his cellphone while toting his children around suburbia.

Adapted from a bestselling novel by David Ignatius, the spy thriller addresses the complexities of covert US operations in the Middle East and is replete with hyper-real torture scenes.

We caught up with Scott in Los Angeles just before the film’s release.

(Boston)

Jonathan Demme’s latest movie, “Rachel Getting Married,” opened in Manhattan this weekend. Demme, who lives in Rockland and won an Oscar for “Silence of the Lambs,” brings “Rachel” to a special screening tonight at 7: 30 p.m. at Nyack’s Riverspace.

Steve Manin, a friend and neighbor, talked with the director.

(LO Hud)

When I was writing the other day about Gary Fleder’s “The Express,” which tells the soulful story of Syracuse running back Ernie Davis, I mentioned that Fleder had spent a lot of time in recent years directing TV pilots.It’s not exactly glamorous work, but I know several directors who say it’s been an invaluable educational tool in terms of communicating with actors, experimenting with new technology and being more economical in their work. “If filmmakers would do more TV pilots, they’d probably make movies a lot faster,” says Fleder. “It really helps you sharpen your craft.”

It’s also a great way to meet good screenwriters, which turned out to have a big impact on Fleder’s work on “The Express”.

(LA Times)

Filmmaker Michael Moore released his latest documentary for free on the Internet on Tuesday, marking a first for the maverick director who aims to encourage young people to vote — preferably for Democrats — in November’s U.S. presidential election.

“Slacker Uprising,” a feature-length film documenting Moore’s tour of swing states during the 2004 presidential election year, was made available for a free download instead of being released in movie theaters.

(Reuters)

Shuttling between independent and studio pictures since helming 1993’s successful “The Joy Luck Club,” Wayne Wang has seen his latter career marked by a distinct duality of purpose. It’s no surprise then that the filmmaker recently chose to shoot two divergent low-budget movies back to back, then release them almost simultaneously as companion pieces.

Making the gentle and heartfelt “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” opening Friday in L.A., followed by the brash, more experimental “The Princess of Nebraska,” premiering online on YouTube on Oct. 17 (youtube.com/ytscreeningroom), had its risks, both practical and artistic, harking back to such other notable Wang pairings as “Chan Is Missing” (1982) and “Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart” (1985), flip-side views of San Francisco’s Chinatown; and 1995’s Brooklyn-based art-house hit “Smoke” and its immediate follow-up, “Blue in the Face.”

Nonetheless, the director’s latest efforts represent a much-needed creative U-turn after helming an uneven string of big-budget studio films, including the Jennifer Lopez hit “Maid in Manhattan” and the more disappointing “Because of Winn-Dixie” and “Last Holiday.”

(LA Times)

Some writers encamp at coffee shops. Others lug their laptops to leafy parks or hushed university libraries. When D.J. Caruso came to Los Angeles, though, he found some of his best creative hours were spent amid the hustle and bustle of Union Station. Watching the parade of people with suitcases and train tickets spurred his imagination.

Caruso, whose latest film, a combustible thriller called “Eagle Eye,” opens Friday, recently returned to the din of the venerable depot, smiling as he watched the waves of arriving passengers, among them an elderly man in an electric-blue silk suit and a woman with twin boys, sullen and tethered by leashes like a pair of sad poodles.

(LA Times)

When playwright Neil LaBute broke through in the film world with his 1997 low-budget hit “In the Company of Men,” here’s how the business worked: Studios sought out new talent and would work these filmmakers into their plans.

Now, as LaBute noted recently over lunch downtown, the process is reversed: The filmmaker is the one trying to conform to the ever-dwindling distributors’ agendas. “I’m now looking at places going, ‘Can I find stuff that they’re trying to do that I can fit into comfortably and still make the kind of movie that I’m not apologizing for?’ ” he said.

So while LaBute, who lives in the northwest suburbs, continues to dissect problematic males and spiky relationships in his unflinching plays, his movies have explored similar themes less directly. Case in point: “ Lakeview Terrace,” a tense suspense drama about a cop ( Samuel L. Jackson) who torments his new neighbors, a mixed-race couple (Kerry Washington and Patrick Wilson).

The movie, which opens Friday, feels like and is being marketed as a thriller, yet it also bears the director’s fingerprints.

(Chicago Tribune)

David Lean was famous for his perfectionism, and like every director afflicted with that quality he didn’t — couldn’t — make perfect movies. His films betray the anxiety of their making. He also couldn’t make many. He completed just 16 in his long career, a paltry 4 in the 30-plus years that followed the great international success of his wartime epic “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957). That movie ends, after nearly three hours of conflict, peril, courage, violent death and decidedly mixed motives, with a single summarizing word, spoken twice: the word is “madness.”

And if you were to watch all 16 of David Lean’s pictures, being shown at Film Forum’s centennial retrospective (through Sept. 25), you might find that word echoing in your head even as you’re admiring their impeccable craftsmanship: the precise editing, the elegant compositions, the smooth camera movements, the unimpeachable performances. The madness in his method is what gives his work its quivering, almost alarming life.

(New York Times)