Cinematical

At the end of a long day of interviews promoting Twilight, it might be exhaustion -- or high spirits -- that makes Kristen Stewart so blunt; asked if she's thought about walking away from the series just to mess with people's heads, she laughs: " Oh, God, yeah. I've totally had the thought; it would be so easy for me to send so many hundreds of girls into such a frenzy. It took a long time for me to admit that I was too bogged down by the first book, to admit to these girls that I wasn't as ... I'm just as obsessed as they are; I read it from an entirely different perspective and had to live it for three months. I can't start the next book unless I have the job to do, or I'm just gonna drive myself insane -- and even this, they don't get that. They're like "What? How could you not read the book ...?" Yeah, I have thought, many times. "What could I do?" It'd be so easy. ..."

Stewart spoke about coming to grips with a dedicated group of fans, getting into character, changing Bella's wardrobe, how she kept the natural in Twilight's supernatural story and much more in Los Angeles.

Cinematical: There's this great moment in Twilight where Bella's driving by the diner as her friends are walking out, and she's running for her life from vampires, and her friends are happy and she's sad ... Was it hard building a naturalistic character in this film, or was it a good place to retreat to, from all the special effects and supernatural stuff?

Kristen Stewart: It's funny; when we were doing the film, it didn't feel like a big effects movie. They were never around; we didn't have the money to pull it off; everything was in-camera. It always felt like a character-driven movie; it always felt like I may as well just be doing an indie, except there's like fifteen thousand more people sitting behind the monitor with opinions. In this case it was ... I feel like it's a very real world; the only little minor detail is that (Edward's) a vampire. And that could be very representative of any problem that a guy you're with may have, any sort of hang-up he may have; this is just a really sort of glorified extreme version of that. So, it was always so rooted in reality that no, that doesn't really apply.

Asked what she would tell theatergoers who have no interest in vampires that might make them want to see Twilight, her new film adapting Stephenie Meyers' best-selling story of immortal longings and teen love, director Catherine Hardwicke laughs: "I would say that when you come out of the theater you might be in danger of whoever went with you ... just grab(bing) you and start making out with you. ..." The director of gritty urban fare like Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown, Hardwicke also explained how she truly identified with Twilight's teen heroine and got into the supernatural series: "When I read the book, I just got drawn in, and ... as I read the book I just started becoming Bella, and just breathing and hyperventilating, like her, and getting mezmerized by the whole experience. ..." Hardwicke spoke about undead romance, adapting a much-loved book, the classic vampire visions she avoided, and much more with Cinematical in Los Angeles. You can listen to the podcast here at Cinematical by clicking below:

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What does Daniel Craig get right in his new outing as James Bond? What does Quantum of Solace get wrong? Can Marc Forster really direct action? Is Olga Kurylenko really the "hottest Bond girl ever?" Which directors could and should take on Bond's 23rd outing? And above and beyond all these topics, what does this week's guest Kevin Kelly, of Joystiq and Spout, think needs to happen to save Bond from both his corporate overlords and world-destroying villains? You can listen to the podcast here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

Well my friends are gone
And my hair is gray
And I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on
I'm just paying my rent every day In the tower of song
-- Tower of Song, Leonard Cohen

Harvey Shines (Dustin Hoffman) is a New York jingle-writer who doesn't quite toil in the tower of song; maybe in a small office in a nearby strip mall. But the rest of it applies; he's older, tired, headed to London for his daughter's wedding and obsessing about getting back fast in time for a job-related meeting. Harvey's dreading the trip before he even takes it, which guarantees it will be dreadful, but then he meets Kate Walker (Emma Thompson), another single, singular person unwilling to confront the terrifying possibility of happiness. ...

Written and directed by Joel Hopkins (who previously gave us the younger-skewed Jump Tomorrow), Last Chance Harvey may be easily -- in fact, too easily -- dismissed as "Before Sunrise for the sunset years," as Harvey and Kate meet accidentally, mesh immediately, dare to hope, get brought together by chance and separated by accident. Younger audiences will ignore Last Chance Harvey like a an overdue bill notice in the post, but if you've been around the block of life a few times -- on the bus or under it -- you'll find that it wins you over, bit by bit, in no small part thanks to the mix of effortless charm and contemplated sincerity Hoffman and Thompson bring to their work; the whole film has an air of lightweight gravity to it, and Hopkins may not be swinging for the fences, but he knows just how to swing and hit for a solid double.

At this point, the most dangerous threat James Bond faces does not shoot from the barrel of a gun or glimmer from the lens of a laser but instead springs from the tightly-coiled engine of the audience's expectations. Any new Bond film has to not only compete with the films that have come before but also the other high-end entries in the action genre; any political or moral ideas in the film have to compete with the political and moral landscape of the world we live in. Quantum of Solace, the 22nd Bond film, is Daniel Craig's second outing as James Bond, and the blunt, brutal and brisk Casino Royale set the bar very high; if Casino Royale marked a return to greatness for the Bond franchise, Quantum of Solace represents a return to adequacy.

Directed by Mark Forster, Quantum of Solace has the basic bones of a Bond film -- globe-trotting settings, cars and chases, hair's-breadth escapes, nefarious plots. It does not, fortunately, have much of the fat that the worst Bond films have larded onto the series -- there's a minimum of high-tech gadgetry, no skiing sequences, no invisible cars, no henchmen with metal teeth. While Casino Royale brought Judi Dench's gruff spymaster M back to the series from the Brosnan era, it also brought Sir Isaac Newton's laws of motion back to the franchise; in the new Bond era, cars crash and buildings break with thundering, shuddering force as Daniel Craig's Bond smashes, crashes and grunts his way through a hard, painful world. In the film's opening car chase, on the winding coastal roads of Italy, there are a number of moments where the crunch and thud of the action catches you up in a two-fisted grip of exhilaration and terror. Part of that's the stunt work, but a big part of it is Craig's Bond -- who you believe as being capable of executing a perfect shift-and-skid turn while firing an automatic weapon out of what used to be his car window with shards of glass lacerating his face.

What does Zack and Miri Make a Porno get right, and wrong, about the world of adult films? What do adult films get right, and wrong, about sex? Why are most Hollywoood films so very, very un-sexy? What's the MPAA's problem with sex? And, with it being Halloween, what does this week's guest Violet Blue -- author, San Francisco Chronicle sex columnist and horror fan -- find scary about Ils, Dead and Breakfast and Daughters of Darkness? You can listen to the podcast here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

Can J.J. Abrams boldly go where many have gone before to relaunch Star Trek? Why is The Road being pushed back? How will Ridley Scott's planned adaptation of The Forever War be different from any sci-fi film in the history of the genre? And what Spanish film has sci-fi fans waiting with bated breath? Joining James this week to talk about all things sci-fi is Annalee Newitz, Editor-in-chief of the science fiction, fantasy and comics blog io9. Cinematical's podcast is now available through iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

After seeing Oliver Stone's W., I found myself wishing I had a little more time to think it over before writing a review; then again, I'm sure there are some involved with the film who found themselves wishing they had a little more time to think over the Bush administration before making it. Distance grants perspective, or so we're told; what could a film about the life and presidency of George W. Bush released while he's still in office really have to say about his life and times? If distance grants perspective, though, you could also argue that proximity grants immediacy, and argue that Stone's W. is not meant as a somber, serious look back but rather a cautious, nervy attempt to peer into the recent past, a film with, in the words another Presidential candidate recently borrowed, "the fierce urgency of now."

But W. has plenty of urgency; you could argue that what it lacks is a point of view, or rather a point of view other than Freudian family psychodrama, with George W. Bush (Josh Brolin) fighting for the presidency and fighting in Iraq as a way to earn the respect and love of his distant, driven father George H. W. Bush (James Cromwell). But to many, examining the inner life of George W. Bush is like asking yourself about the source of the lumber when you're being hit in the head with a baseball bat. We get a lot of dialogue in W. about the difference between the external and the internal, between ideology and identity; Laura Bush (Elizabeth Banks) offers that "I don't think politics should define a human being ..." while George H.W. notes that "I've always believed in leaving personal feelings out of politics." But in W., it feels like Stone doesn't even want to let politics define politics, and leaving the politics out of the personal feelings he's exploring.

I found myself asking one simple question during Ridley Scott's Body of Lies, a well-shot, big-name intelligence thriller that sees Leonardo DiCaprio's CIA man caught up in action in the Middle East -- namely, what is Body of Lies for? I don't mean that in the sense of asking what it supports or believes in -- although, with the film's mix of Hollywood heroics and sneering cynicism, you're certainly left with that question -- but rather in the sense of asking what it is that Body of Lies means to accomplish or communicate. Part of the film feels like an attempt at a sprawling, globe-trotting story of realpolitik and moral complexity, in the mold of Syriana or Scott's own Black Hawk Down; other parts feel like Dolby-pumped slam-bang action, in the mold of Tony Scott's Spy Game or the Bourne Films. And some of Body of Lies feels like a weird, surreal workplace satire, with DiCaprio's on-the-ground intelligence agent fighting, fussing and feuding with his D.C.-based superior Russell Crowe; if you hate having your boss hover over your shoulder second-guessing you, imagine how it feels to have your boss looking over your shoulder second-guessing you from orbit via satellite.

Adapted from David Ignatius' novel by The Departed screenwriter William Monahan, Body of Lies follows DiCaprio's Roger Ferris through a series of run-and-gun intelligence-gathering missions that start in Iraq and travel the globe in the name of penetrating, and breaking, a terror ring operating on a global level. Ferris works for Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe, beefy and drawling), who runs his section of the CIA with a true believer's fervor. Speaking to a group of political staff and elected officials, Hoffman tries to get everyone in line by getting everyone scared: "Our world as we know it is much simpler... to put to an end than you might think." Ed knows that in an age of asymmetrical warfare, America's seemingly unsophisticated opponents have big advantages; you can't tap someone's phone if they don't have one, can't crack their e-mail if it doesn't exist.

What were the breakout films at this year's Fantastic Fest? Which French horror film had audiences squirming and arguing at Fantastic Fest and Toronto's Midnight Madness? What question couldn't James shake during Zack and Miri Make a Porno -- and what, according to Scott, is that film's secret weapon? And which October films are waiting to be your new fave film of the fall? Joining James this week to talk about all of the above -- and more -- is Cinematical's Managing Editor Scott Weinberg. ... Cinematical's podcast is now available through iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.