Category: Interviews

Spinning Platters Interview: Patton Oswalt on “Young Adult”

Patton Oswalt and Charlize Theron in YOUNG ADULT

It has been proven many times over the years that comedians can bring an unexpected and singular potency to their performances when given the opportunity to play a dramatic role. Actors from Tom Hanks to Robin Williams to Jim Carrey have graduated from broad comedy to dramatic leading-man status when finally given the chance to play the right character. And now Patton Oswalt, best-known for voicing the mouse protagonist in Ratatouille and his 122 episodes as Spence on The King of Queens (in addition to his decades of stand-up and countless cameo appearances), is poised to make a similar breakthrough with his poignant performance in the new Jason Reitman-Diablo Cody collaboration, Young Adult.

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Spinning Platters Interview: Steve McQueen on “Shame”

Michael Fassbender (actor) and Steve McQueen (writer/director) of SHAME at the BFI London Film Festival

In the several months since its premiere on the film festival circuit, Shame has quickly become one of the most talked-about films of the year. While this is certainly due in part to prurient interest in its more lurid aspects – its nudity and sexuality were deemed explicit enough to warrant the dreaded NC-17 rating from the MPAA – it is also because of universally ecstatic reviews for the brutally fearless performances of stars Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan, as well as the hauntingly artful direction of today’s exclusive interview subject, Steve McQueen.

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Spinning Platters Interview: Judy Greer on “The Descendants”

Judy Greer with Matthew Lillard in THE DESCENDANTS

The Descendants is a very strong contender for the best film of 2011. Directed by Alexander Payne (Sideways, Election) from a script he co-wrote with Jim Rash (Dean Pelton from Community) and Nat Faxon, it tells the story of Matt King (George Clooney), a Hawaii lawyer whose life is turned upside down after his wife is left comatose following a jet-skiing accident. He attempts to rally their daughters, troubled teen Alexandra (Shailene Woodley in a revelatory performance) and tween Scottie (Amara King), but is devastated when Alexandra spitefully informs him their mother was having an affair. As his wife’s condition continues to deteriorate, Matt and his daughters embark on a journey of emotional discovery that eventually leads to Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard, in a surprisingly potent dramatic performance), the other man. It also leads to his wife, Julie, who is played by Judy Greer.

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Spinning Platters Interview: Ashley Greene, Jackson Rathbone, Nikki Reed, and Charlie Bewley on “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1”

left to right: Charlie Bewley, Ashley Greene, Nikki Reed, and Jackson Rathbone promoting THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN - PART 1 at The Fillmore in San Francisco. Photo by Erika Everett.

On Thursday, November 10, the earth shook a bit more than usual in dear old San Francisco. And I’m not referring to that troubling rash of tremors we’ve been dealing with over the last few weeks. No, I’m talking about the kind of shaking that can only be attributed to a pack of stampeding Twi-hards barreling toward an opportunity to personally accost one of their big-screen idols in the flesh. And the Breaking Dawn Cast & Concert Tour, which came to the Fillmore last week, provided them with one such rare occasion. As a red carpet novice who recently tasted blood and was eager for more, I decided to subject myself to this spectacle in the name of…adventure? Journalism? Bragging rights around 12-year-old girls and the mothers who brazenly steal their Twilight books? Hard to say. But I did it. And it was an eye-opening and occasionally overwhelming glimpse into one of the most powerful and efficient machines in American culture.

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Spinning Platters Interview: Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones, and Drake Doremus on “Like Crazy”

Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones in LIKE CRAZY

Few films have nailed the invincible excitement of young love with the giddy, wrenching precision of Like Crazy. The third feature film in as many years from director Drake Doremus, the film stars Anton Yelchin (The Beaver) and Felicity Jones (The Tempest) as Jacob and Anna, a young couple that meet while attending college together in southern California. When they discover their mutual attraction, they immediately understand the obstacle in their path – Anna is British and only in the U.S. on a student visa – but as they fall deeper and deeper into the first throes of romance, Anna decides to throw caution to the wind and stay with Jacob a few months past the expiration of her visa. Despite the instant gratification this choice provides, it will lead to lasting, disastrous consequences. The film works as a romantic drama as well as a terrifying cautionary tale about the dangers of abusing a student visa.

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Spinning Platters Interview: John Cho on “A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas”

John Cho and Kal Penn in A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS

John Cho recently had a fairly perfect San Francisco day. The Berkeley graduate, 39, was in town with his family during fleet week, observing its many air shows. “It was very loud,” he says. “If I lived here, I would have been really annoyed. But I was visiting, so it was fun.” And if Cho lived here, there’s at least one place you’d have a good chance of finding him: “That Embarcadero thing – you guys don’t know how good you have it. The eating there is ridiculous. I found a three-hour parking spot, then we went to Yank Sing, had dim sum, walked to the Embarcadero, got more yummies, watched the planes, then came back. It was kinda perfect.”

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Spinning Platters Interview: Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek on “Puss in Boots” (and “The Skin I Live In”)

Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek at the San Francisco premiere of PUSS IN BOOTS. Photo by Eric Lawson.

Antonio Banderas is out on a very polarized and complicated press tour at the moment. While it is not uncommon for an actor to have several projects opening at the same time, there have perhaps never been two more diametrically opposed films opening together than Puss in Boots, a feature-length spinoff of Banderas’ scene-stealing feline fan favorite from the Shrek films, and The Skin I Live In, a shockingly perverse psychological drama that reunites Banderas, now 51, with the great Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar, who first introduced Banderas in such ’80s world cinema classics as Law of Desire and Women on the Verge of Nervous Breakdown. And so, when Banderas and his frequent collaborator/Puss in Boots co-star Salma Hayek came to San Francisco for a red carpet premiere of their film, we were supposed to be talking about the family-friendly Puss in Boots. But, inevitably, the conversation kept working its way back to his other, considerably more lurid project – whether he liked it or not.

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Spinning Platters Interview: Elizabeth Olsen and Sean Durkin on “Martha Marcy May Marlene”

John Hawkes, Elizabeth Olsen, Louisa Krause and Christopher Abbott in MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE

Every year at the Sundance Film Festival, there are inevitably a crop of star-is-born moments where little-known or unknown actors and filmmakers are suddenly catapulted to fame and acclaim thanks to a particularly well-received film. But surely one of the most surprising Sundance discoveries in recent memory is Elizabeth Olsen, 22, younger sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. After growing up on the sets of her sisters’ projects, Olsen studied acting at NYU (she recently graduated), and is now making her feature-film debut in Martha Marcy May Marlene, a tense character study that also marks the incredibly promising feature-length debut of writer/director Sean Durkin.

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Spinning Platters Interview: Julianne Hough and Kenny Wormald on “Footloose”

Kenny Wormald and Julianne Hough in FOOTLOOSE

“WHYYYYYYYYY??!?!??”

This was the universal reaction when it was announced several years ago that Paramount was mounting a remake of the much-beloved Kevin Bacon classic, Footloose. And however skeptical you remain about it, just know that the remake as originally conceived — which was going to reunite High School Musical director Kenny Ortega and star Zac Efron — would have been far more likely to offend your sense of ’80s cultural reverence. But then Ortega dropped out and was replaced by Craig Brewer, best known for decidedly adult films like Hustle & Flow and Black Snake Moan. Brewer, himself a Footloose devotée, set out to make the most authentic update imaginable, and a lot of that would depend upon the casting of the iconic roles of Ren (Bacon’s character) and Ariel (originally played by Lori Singer). Enter the unlikely duo of Kenny Wormald and Julianne Hough.

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Spinning Platters Interview: Lisa Hannigan

Lisa Hannigan is a wonderfully warm Irish Singer Songwriter who just released her second full length album Passenger which was written while she was on her last tour for her first release Sea Sew.  Prior to her solo work, she worked with Damien Rice, as part of his band.  When I called Lisa, she was in Southern California, having just played San Diego and Los Angeles, heading north to play in Santa Barbara the next night.

Leading into the first question, in her newest video for “Knots,” the entire time paint is thrown on Lisa while she is trying to sing the song.  And in 2009 Lisa did an ad for Fair Trade Chocolate where chocolate was poured onto her.

I have to ask, though I think I might know the answer, was it more fun having paint or chocolate splattered all over?

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