Spinning Platters Interview: Joe Wright on “Anna Karenina”

Joe Wright and Keira Knightley on the set of ANNA KARENINA

“I cannot believe that I am less important than Tyra Banks!” Joe Wright exclaims with mock-indignation. He has every reason to be nonplussed. Through a bizarre chain of last-minute developments, I have found myself with a direct conflict to our scheduled interview time: the opportunity to ask Tyra Banks a question over the phone for a rare pre-taped episode of Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live. The call had originally been scheduled over an hour prior to my interview with Wright, but TyTy took her sweet-ass time arriving to the taping; so now here I am, sitting at the Ritz-Carlton with my iPhone flattened against my ear, waiting anxiously for my Tyra cue while Wright, the British director of such Oscar-nominated dramas as Pride and Prejudice and Atonement, paces in front of me with an unlit cigarette. I am fully aware that I am showing questionable judgment and hope that Wright’s next interviewer will show up so that we might reshuffle our schedule, but the next interviewer is nowhere to be found, and I am now personally responsible for keeping Joe Wright waiting.

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Spinning Platters Interview: Saiorse Ronan and Joe Wright on “Hanna”

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.

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Wondercon: The 2011 Film Panels

 

Geoff Johns (love his Flash stuff with Kolins) asks Ryan Reynolds why he's so awesome. (Photo from Nicole Abalde on Flickr. Thanks for sharing!)

The 2011 Wondercon film panel lineup was the worst in recent memory. It was more notable for what was missing (Captain America, Thor, Super 8, Pirates of the Caribbean) than what was there (Immortals, Priest, The Three Musketeers). Jon Favreau noticed that movies weren’t prioritizing Wondercon for their promotion, and I can’t say I understand why. Was it the relative commercial failure of such ComicCon-loved properties such as Kick Ass and Scott Pilgrim? Or was it really all just about scheduling? But we did have film panels on Saturday (and one on Friday), so I was there. And this is what I saw. Continue reading “Wondercon: The 2011 Film Panels”