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.
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.
Have you ever watched a cancer movie and thought, “You know what this needs? More dick jokes!” If so, 50/50 is the cancer movie for you. Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Adam, who seems to have his life together: he works for a public radio station in Seattle, he has a devoted (if obnoxious) best friend, Kyle (Seth Rogen), and a beautiful girlfriend, Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard). But when Adam is suddenly diagnosed with cancer, his life begins to fall apart. His relationship with Rachael becomes increasingly strained, he is assigned a counselor named Katherine (Anna Kendrick) who is barely out of diapers, his overbearing mother (Anjelica Huston) won’t leave him alone, and Kyle keeps using Adam’s cancer to get himself laid. And if that sounds like too irreverent of a storyline for a film about cancer, then take it up with screenwriter Will Reiser. Because it’s inspired by his life.
“This is challenging! This discourse is challenging! This is a campaign that is more rigorous than the Up in the Air Oscar campaign. Those questions were like, ‘What is it like to kiss George Clooney?'” But Vera Farmiga wouldn’t have it any other way. The Oscar-nominated actress, 38, is making her directorial debut with Higher Ground, adapted for the screen by Carolyn S. Briggs (and Tim Metcalfe) from her memoir, This Dark World. It is a finely observed, deeply felt spiritual character study about a woman named Corinne (Farmiga). Yes, this film dares to address religion, specifically evangelical Christianity. But it does so in a manner as completely disarming, sensitive, and uncompromising as Farmiga herself.
Miranda July is an anomaly in the film industry. Perhaps this is because, although she has experienced success within it, she understands there is much more to the creative world outside of it. A multimedia artist in the truest sense of the term, July has been celebrated as much for her performance art as for her filmmaking. Her multimedia pieces have been shown and performed in galleries around the world. Her debut collection of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You (2007), won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. And her debut film, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), which July wrote and directed as well as starred in, won four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, in addition to numerous critics awards and a Special Jury Prize at Sundance.
“Look at this city!” Lone Scherfig is staring out at the San Francisco skyline from a conference room at the Ritz Carlton, perched high atop Nob Hill. Despite being a celebrated international director with a penchant for filming in the world’s loveliest locations, the 52-year old Danish director is in San Francisco for the first time (the closest she’d come previously was an appearance at the Mill Valley Film Festival). “You have so much good architecture here,” she exclaimed, eyes scanning the cityscape before us.
Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis in THE HELP
Emma Stone has a lot on her mind this summer. After a star-making and critically acclaimed turn in Easy A transformed the now 22-year-old into one of Hollywood’s most in-demand young actresses, Stone filmed three consecutive high-profile projects: Friends With Benefits (for her Easy A director Will Gluck), Crazy, Stupid, Love., and The Help. And now, as these things sometime happen, all three films have been released within just one month of each other, with Stone doing press for the latter two. Add in her Comic-Con duties promoting her role as Gwen Stacy opposite Andrew Garfield in next summer’s highly anticipated The Amazing Spider-Man, and you’ve got one hell of a busy summer.
But right now Emma Stone only has one thing on her mind: cookies. Specifically, the giant chocolate chip cookies available at the Four Seasons.
When Mike Cahill and Zal Batmanglij were students at Georgetown, they co-directed a film and entered it in the campus film festival. The film won a prize, and they were invited onstage for a Q&A. From the stage, they noticed a “little waify blonde girl” jump up in the front row and start what became a full-audience standing ovation. “Who was that?” Batmanglij said to Cahill later. “There was something about her. Did you see her?” The young woman in question was Brit Marling, a fellow Georgetown student who was studying economics. She soon approached the student filmmakers and expressed her desire to collaborate with them. The trio began working on a series of shorts, and eventually moved to Los Angeles to live together while banging out scripts and hoping for the opportunity to show others their work.
Fast forward to January 2011: Cahill and Batmanglij have each directed a film, both co-written with and starring Marling, and both have been accepted to the Sundance Film Festival. Cahill’s film, Another Earth, premiered to a standing ovation, and went on to win the 2011 Alfred P. Sloan Prize for feature films focusing on science or technology. Another Earth and Batmanglij’s film, The Sound of My Voice, would both be picked up by Fox Searchlight. And now Cahill and Marling are touring the country speaking at their own Q&A’s to promote Another Earth, which opens on July 29. Spinning Platters recently jumped into this whirlwind of standing ovations and film festival prizes to speak individually with Marling and Cahill about the marvelous insanity of the last seven months.
Aimee Teegarden and Thomas McDonell are a bit of an odd couple. And I say “couple” figuratively, since the two aren’t actually reported to be dating (an increasing rarity in these promotional showmance times we live in). Teegarden is, at 21, already a consummate media professional. An actor in film and television from the age of 14, she recently spent five very big years of her young life living in Austin while filming the critically beloved NBC series Friday Night Lights, currently airing its fifth and final season. Talking with Teegarden feels like chatting with the button-cute president of the FBLA: she is bright, quick, and upbeat. But ironically, playing a teenager for five years meant she had to miss high school herself. “I was working,” she says ruefully.
McDonell, on the other hand, is new at this. The well-spoken NYU-trained actor, 24, got his first film role when he auditioned “as an experiment” for a small role in the Jackie Chan movie The Forbidden Kingdom while living in China to study contemporary art. This was followed by another small role in Joel Schumacher’s Twelve. And now, he suddenly finds himself playing the romantic bad-boy lead opposite Teegarden in Disney’s Prom, which the studio is hoping will take off like High School Musical. He has also been cast as the younger version of Johnny Depp’s character in Tim Burton’s upcoming Dark Shadows film. It seems like big things are in store for him. But for now, he is brooding through his exhaustion.
Joe Wright and Saiorse Ronan at the WonderCon panel for "Hanna" in San Francisco last weekend. Photo by Kendall Whitehouse.
“Does anyone have a terrible allergy to cigarette smoke?” Joe Wright, the director of Hanna, is hoping the answer is no. It’s a Friday afternoon, and he’s looking a bit rough. Perhaps it’s a combination of jetlag and the looming specter of WonderCon 2011, which will be kicking off in a few hours. While Wright is no stranger to publicity tours, this is the first time he’s working the geek festival circuit. His previous three feature-length directorial efforts — Pride and Prejudice (the 2005 version starring Keira Knightley in an Oscar-nominated lead performance), Atonement (the breakthrough film of Hanna star Saiorse Ronan, whose performance garnered her a Best Supporting Actress nomination at the age of 13), and The Soloist, a contemporary drama starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx — did not take him down this particular promotional path.
