Spinning Platters Interview: Rashida Jones and Will McCormack on “Celeste and Jesse Forever”

Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, co-stars and co-writers of CELESTE AND JESSE FOREVER

As if her skyrocketing acting career, Harvard education, impeccable comic timing, exquisite beauty, and legendary lineage weren’t threatening enough, Rashida Jones comes one step closer to total world domination with the release of Celeste and Jesse Forever. In addition to being her largest film role to date, Celeste and Jesse marks Jones’ screenwriting debut; she co-wrote the film with actor Will McCormack, who also appears in the film, and whom Jones briefly dated in the late ’90s before jointly realizing they were better as friends. Sadly, that kind of relationship decision-making wisdom eludes the title characters in their film, Celeste (Jones) and Jesse (Andy Samberg), an LA couple attempting to navigate a divorce while remaining best friends. Needless to say, these good intentions merely end up paving the freeway to heartache hell in this disarmingly intelligent, emotionally honest alternative to the usual rom-com fluff.

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Spinning Platters Interview: William Friedkin on “Killer Joe”

William Friedkin directs Emile Hirsch and Juno Temple on the set of KILLER JOE

“Fire away. Anything. Don’t be polite.” William Friedkin is feeling pretty candid these days. Maybe it’s because after nearly six decades in the business, the Academy Award-winning director of such classics as The French Connection and The Exorcist has nothing left to prove. Maybe it’s because he’s been working on his memoirs, due next year from HarperCollins, and is still in confessional mode. Or maybe he’s just well past the age where you stop giving a fuck what anyone thinks about you (he turns 77 this month). The night before our conversation, Spinning Platters attended a screening of his gleefully sadistic new movie, the NC-17-rated Killer Joe, followed by a moderated Q&A with Friedkin that quickly turned into a rowdy one-man show. Refusing to be seated, Friedkin stood in front of the jam-packed theater for nearly an hour and pontificated at length about his career, the controversy over Killer Joe, and anything the audience wanted to talk about. He even volunteered questions he figured we were too sheepish to ask (“Who wants to hear how I discovered Linda Blair?”). When he was informed that the theater needed him to wrap up, he was unfazed. “Why, what are they gonna play? Isn’t it too late to start a movie?”

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Spinning Platters Interview: Cillian Murphy and Rodrigo Cortés on “Red Lights”

Cillian Murphy in RED LIGHTS

In the dramatic thriller Red Lights, Cillian Murphy and Sigourney Weaver star as the world’s foremost investigators of paranormal phenomena. Professional skeptics, they have debunked dozens of fraudulent mind readers, ghost hunters, and faith healers by detecting “red lights”, subtle clues to the trickery behind each of these “supernatural” occurrences. But when a world-renowned psychic (Robert De Niro) suddenly resurfaces after a lengthy exile — and the death of his biggest critic — they begin to investigate him, despite increasingly bizarre and dangerous incidents the closer they get. Co-starring Elizabeth Olsen and Joely Richardson, Red Lights is the second English-language film by Spanish writer/director Rodrigo Cortés, who previously created the acclaimed Ryan Reynolds thriller Buried. Below, Spinning Platters talks with Murphy and Cortés about manipulating the human brain, Murphy’s reflections on 28 Days Later and Inception, and how profoundly unamused he is by my phone’s autocorrect.

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Spinning Platters Interview: Todd Solondz on “Dark Horse”

Jordan Gelber and Selma Blair in DARK HORSE

Ever since his 1995 breakout Welcome to the Dollhouse, writer/director Todd Solondz, 52, has continued to plumb the depths of soul-sick suburban alienation with equal parts open-hearted compassion and satirical ruthlessness. While he is prone to subjecting his characters to the most profoundly unsettling social and psychological horrors imaginable (this arguably reached its nadir with his notorious 1998 epic Happiness and its wrenching pedophile protagonist), it is always clear that he loves and embraces them in all their sad, desperate flailing for love and validation. And while Solondz’s protagonists have always been underdogs, his latest film both deconstructs and transcends that familiar archetype. It is titled, appropriately, Dark Horse.

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Film Review: “The Dark Knight Rises”

Christian Bale in THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

starring: Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Matthew Modine, Juno Temple

written by: Jonathan and Christopher Nolan

directed by: Christopher Nolan

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some sensuality and language

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Spinning Platters Interview: Benh Zeitlin on “Beasts of the Southern Wild”

Writer/director Benh Zeitlin with his BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD stars Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry at the Cannes Film Festival.

After chatting with Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry, the stars of the massively acclaimed Sundance breakout Beasts of the Southern Wild, we sat down with its writer/director: Benh Zeitlin, a 29-year-old Queens native and Wesleyan graduate who has lived in New Orleans since 2008. Beasts is Zeitlin’s first feature film; it wrapped post-production just two days before its Sundance premiere catapulted Zeitlin and his cast into the spotlight, leading immediately to months of myriad promotional duties that are unlikely to cease until the end of awards season next year. When I asked Zeitlin what day he’d arrived in San Francisco, he said he did not remember. “I stick my credit card into the machine and a new city pops up and that’s where I go,” he said wearily. Although he says he’s gotten used to his press duties, which were initially “like getting hit in the face,” his flagging energy received a Bay Area boost when he visited the ILM headquarters. “Walking down those halls was incredible,” he said reverently. “I hadn’t realized all the stuff they’d done. Like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? That was my entire childhood! Just watching that three thousand times. It’s a temple. These movies are why you do what you do.”

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Spinning Platters Interview: Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry on “Beasts of the Southern Wild”

Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry in BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

There was once a time when we looked to the Sundance Film Festival to present us with groundbreaking independent films that challenged and changed what we understood about contemporary cinema. But as the festival became increasingly infiltrated by major studios and A-list stars over the course of the ’90s, it lost its sense of revelatory edge; at its best, Sundance now gives well-known actors the opportunity to gain prestige and acclaim by doing smaller character-based films, and can usually be depended upon to introduce us to buzzy new ingenues and precocious young auteurs. But this year, a massively ambitious yet micro-budgeted film made by a principled collective in southern Louisiana hit the festival with enough impact to shake off decades of cynical atrophy. That film is Beasts of the Southern Wild, the feature-length directorial debut of 29-year-old Benh Zeitlin, and it is the full and total realization of the Sundance dream: not only does it introduce us to the staggering talents of new actors and filmmakers, but it majestically opens the gate to an entirely new and fantastical world. It is truly unlike anything you have ever seen.

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Film Review: “Magic Mike”

Joe Manganiello, Matthew McConaughey, Channing Tatum, Matt Bomer and Alex Pettyfer in MAGIC MIKE

starring: Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Cody Horn, Matthew McConaughey, Matt Bomer, Adam Rodriguez, Olivia Munn, Joe Manganiello, Kevin Nash, Gabriel Iglesias, Betsy Brandt, Riley Keough

written by: Reid Carolin

directed by: Steven Soderbergh

MPAA: Rated R for pervasive sexual content, brief graphic nudity, language and some drug use

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