TIFF12

Q&A: Mads Mikkelsen confronts child abuse in ‘The Hunt’

July 15, 2013 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Sexy Danish star Mads Mikkelson, 47, bit into international fame this year: he had the title role in NBC TV’s hit “Hannibal,” and literally lost his head in the Oscar-nominated historical romance “A Royal Affair.”

Mikkelsen saved the best for last with Thomas Vinterberg’s “The Hunt” (opening Friday), a devastating Danish drama for which he won best actor honors at Cannes in 2012. He plays a divorced schoolteacher who becomes a pariah in his small town when his best friend’s kindergartner accuses him of abuse.

Audiences exit the theater embroiled in debates about child abuse and society and divided in their reactions to what they saw on the screen: but no one is divided on Mikkelsen’s understated performance. He is a major star.

Did this trifecta of successes on big and small screen surprise you?

I never planned a career. I’ve tried to avoid it. I’ve just been meeting these fantastic directors who’ve offered me a variation of different parts and different films. And now it’s landed here.

In “The Hunt,” you play an ordinary man changed by extraordinary circumstances and local hysteria.

Lucas is a traditional average of a Scandinavian man, what Vinterberg called a “castrated man.” The man that believes in society will take care of the problems and that we are civilized people and we will behave civilized through any problems we might face.

And then Lucas finds himself accused of the unthinkable – and his social position crumbles.

Yes. In this crisis, it turns out to be so much more complicated than he thought it would be. He’s divorced. He used to work at a school and the school closed. Now he’s working in a kindergarten and he’s trying to get his feet back on the ground. And he has a teenage son. And he’s doing pretty well. He’s climbed up the ladder again.

And then there is that kiss in the kindergarten, where his best friend’s daughter plants her lips on his.

It’s not a grownup love. But it’s the girl’s fascination with this person, her father’s friend, her teacher. After she kisses him, he does the right thing. She should know that she shouldn’t kiss him on the mouth. But she didn’t. I mean we’re living in Scandinavia. [Read more…]

Yahoo! Movies: Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena Are True Blue in Cop Drama ‘End of Watch’ now on DVD

October 2, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Yahoo! Movies rides along with stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena as they discuss playing partners and being true to the men in blue of South Central Los Angeles in David Ayer’s bullet bromance “End of Watch.” In a lighter moment, Gyllenhaal joked: “You mix a little ‘Serpico’ and a little ‘Police Academy’ and you get ‘End of Watch.'”

Michael Pena (left) and Jake Gyllenhaal (right) in the new cop drama “End of Watch” (Photo: Open Road)

Thelma Adams: What was the scariest thing about making “End of Watch”?

Jake Gyllenhaal: Honestly, the scariest part of this movie was making sure that we connected as partners in a real way. We emulated the partners that we spent time with on the streets in South Central L.A. in an authentic way. You see actors in movies playing police officers often performing their idea of what a police officer is. And, I think, for us it was about creating something that was like a real ride-along with two police officers, as close as actors can become to being police officers.

Michael Pena: The first meeting I had with [writer-director] David Ayer, he said, ‘You guys have to act like brothers, and you guys have to spend a lot of time together to become brothers, and even then you have to spend more time, and then you’re going to shoot.” Sometimes it felt like I was really talking to [Jake] and not just a character, which I think adds to the reality of it. We wanted it to look like improvisation, like it was the first time we were saying it. And we had to rehearse for five months in order to get that feeling.

TA: Did you ever go off script?

JG: Everything was recorded all the time. We shot this movie for $7 million in 22 days. It was the shortest I’ve ever done in my entire career. I made a movie called “Donnie Darko” that we shot in 28 days. So that was the shortest one I had done until now. It took a lot for us to prepare. We spent five months on the street, two or three times a week on ride-alongs with police officers, sheriffs, LAPD.

TA: Toss me a detail.

JG: My very first ride-along was not with Michael. I was in Inglewood. There was a shooting, and we got there second car on the scene. There was someone murdered. That was my first experience of a ride-along!

MP: Together, we were with the LAPD and it was Code 3, literally sirens.

TA: What does Code 3 mean?

JG: Code 3 is the highest level, meaning usually there’s a murder, or domestic violence …

MP: All vehicles go to the location. And we went, and there was this guy shot in the mouth, and, like, you could see the bullet hole in his arm slowly dripping because the bullet was keeping it from bleeding too much. We saw a lot of that stuff. It gives you a reality check. It bursts your bubble that you can sometimes be in living in Hollywood or whatnot. This is the movie, this is the tone that we really want to set — like people are on a ride-along with us and they experience the movie with us.

JG: What I’ve heard from people who’ve seen the movie is that it feels like your heart is beating at the same rate as those two police officers’ are. If we’re out of breath from chasing a suspect, it’s almost as if the audience is the same way. That’s the thing that separates it from the genre of cop movies. The other thing is the relationship between these two guys. Again, you see a police officer on the street; they’re in a bat suit. They’re part of a community that we’ve all had history with one way or another, whether it’s a traffic ticket or being arrested for whatever.

TA: Ever been arrested?

JG: I haven’t been. I’ll speak for us both on this.

TA: You opened the door on that question. I’ll speak like a TV lawyer. You opened that door. I never would have asked that question

JG: No, no, no. It’s fine. I’m willing.

TA: Whether you’ve ever been arrested, or just pulled over for a traffic violation, it’s that feeling of driving on the highway and you see the lights behind you and you don’t know why …

JG: Oh, God, yeah, and you think, insurance, registration. It’s fascinating when you’re in a cop car and you drive up alongside other cars.

MP: [laughs]

JG: And the driver starts driving ten miles under the speed limit.

MP: That’s dangerous, actually. My favorite is this [he motions someone putting on their seatbelt while driving], trying to get the belt on.

JG: All the actions that people do, because Mike and I could really watch from the back of a cop car and see the behavior when a police car went by. Those people are actually the safe ones. It’s the ones that have no response and are almost defiant that are the ones that the police respond to. It’s an indecipherable quality that police know. That’s what we were trying to pick up, too, sort of understanding the criminal mind and criminal behavior that police know so well that is indecipherable to a civilian.

TA: What clues did you learn?

MP: The first one I learned was the shifty eyes, when they try to clock you and see if you’re looking at them. Or if somebody is really still, and there’s a little bit of movement here [moves his shoulder], there’s something going on. Usually if they’re pretty still it’s like they know they’ve done something.

JG: There are even different levels of that, because I think that most people are intimidated by police officers, and intimidation always brings out certain insecurities that might not have anything to do with criminal activity.

MP: We were on one ride-along, and these policemen told us to stay back. We were, like, ‘What’s going on?’ There was a lot of nonverbal communication going on between the officers. Me and Jake clocked it. And we were, like, whoa, this seems a little different. And they put all the guys in the backseat of the police car and they found guns in their car.

JG: Sometimes they’d be, like, ‘Tell us who you think we should pull over,’ and they would laugh at us over who we thought, and then the cars they would pull over, eventually there would be people I would never suspect. And they would all of a sudden pull out meth from a car you would never assume …

MP: Crazy …

JG: … and it actually is not even racial at a certain point. I’d be surprised at who the police would pull over. It’s behavioral.

TA: And how did the police react to you two? Was it fun for them?

JG: It was an added burden on them. You got to look after us and the crime. It’s double the fun. At first, I think they thought, as they do with many actors, are these guys for real and do they want to learn what it’s really like or do they just want to skirt the surface?

TA: Do they want to be lied to or can they handle the truth?

JG: And that was a long journey. That took months.

MP: And we kept going. I think we got their respect, and they were able to show us the real deal, and we were able to go to some good calls. And we did gain their trust a little bit by keeping our composure and not messing up a potential scene, not stepping on the evidence.

JG: We alternated between four or five different partners, but after a couple of months they knew that they could trust us. And we knew that we could trust them, and we were really there with them, and hopefully we became less of a burden. I think I speak for both of us when I say that the scariest part of making “End of Watch” was behaving in an authentic way that didn’t feel like a performance.

*This interview took place at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Yahoo! Movies: Adams on Reel Women: Five must-see leading ladies out of TIFF

October 2, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Keira Knightley (Left) in “Anna Karenina”, and Laura Linney and Bill Murray (Right) in “Hyde Park on Hudson”. (Photos: Focus Features)

This year’s Toronto International Film Festival was rife with strong and varied women’s roles. Here are just a few that will pop and will be buzzed about in the Oscar race and beyond.

Marion Cotillard, “Rust and Bone”: This is a movie about transformation. A woman who works at Marineland in France has a horrible accident with an orca. As a result, she loses her legs below the knees and hits the bottom she was heading for when she was physically whole but emotionally lost. The remainder of the movie shows her slow progress on a journey that doesn’t require legs: the journey to spiritual wellness. A scene in which she finally returns to Marineland, perched on steel prosthetics, and, well, dances with the whale is magical without being sentimental. The camera loves Cotillard, but her physical beauty does not make her lazy. She acts quietly, subtly, a musician who knows her range. In this role, she defies the audience to like her as she casts off the armature of her looks and dives deep. It doesn’t hurt that this is the type of role — the “My Left Foot” affect — that ensures Oscar nominations if not outright wins. Cotillard will be among the five final nominees for best actress.

Laura Linney, “Hyde Park on Hudson”: This is the performance I feel I have to rally behind because of its subtle beauty and deeply felt realization. As Margaret Suckley, a fifth cousin turned secret lover to President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Bill Murray), Linney plays a faded daisy. She shows every wrinkle in a face that would have been plainly pretty but has passed its marital sell-by date. She wears dresses that have seen wear in a limited wardrobe, hats that are unflattering, home-styled hair. Linney knows what she’s doing, and she doesn’t give this woman any more power than she would have had. She is like an Edith Wharton character, a Lily Bart; and as she enters the world of FDR, the president of the United States, she feels the weight of being a poor relation in the court of the Sun King. She is outmaneuvered at every point, and yet her love, her sensitivity, her sense of a spinster’s rebirth at an unexpected opportunity that takes her out of the musty cedar closet of her life and puts her in the center of the president’s household — all are real. While there is general acclaim for Bill Murray’s wily, wise FDR, there has been an underlying critique of Linney’s character and characterization. Hers is the more difficult role, and modern women may not have the patience for this passive spinster. However, her pain and relative powerlessness are real verging on tragic, and Linney draws her finely and with honor.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, “Smashed”: I have written about Winstead’s performance as a young married kindergarten teacher who reaches that post-college tipping point when she realizes that she’s not just hard-partying but an alcoholic. That she reaches this awareness ahead of her equally “fun loving” husband (well played by Aaron Paul) makes her climbing the first wrung of her 12 steps all the more difficult. The tall, brunette all-American beauty, the star of “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” imbues her teacher with an extraordinary ordinariness, quick to smile and slow to judge. She is our best friend, our next-door neighbor, the woman we laugh with at the supermarket checkout stand about the latest cover of the National Enquirer — and yet her pain is as deep as that of the denizens of “Leaving Las Vegas.”

Keira Knightley, “Anna Karenina”: Knightley dons the hats, veils, and upholstery silks of one of literature’s major heroines, a character played in the past by Greta Garbo and Vivien Leigh. Working with her “Atonement” and “Pride and Prejudice” director, Joe Wright, and a Tom Stoppard adaptation of the Leo Tolstoy novel, Knightley is part of a production that breathes fresh air into the tragedy of a virtuous wife and mother who falls into a spiral of passion with dashing Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Knightley wears the costumes and jewels — they do not wear her. The actress brings humanity, a warmth and intimacy, that make this historical character relatable to lonely wives who play with the fire of passion outside their marriages and burn with the consequences in any era. She gives Anna a contemporary urgency, and following on her overlooked turn in “A Dangerous Method,” she has become a top contender for the 2013 best-actress Oscar.

Jennifer Lawrence, “Silver Linings Playbook”: in the year’s strongest one-two punch, Oscar-nominee Lawrence proves that her “Hunger Games” box office muscle as Katniss Everdeen is not her only trick. In the latest movie from “The Fighter” director David O. Russell, Lawrence plays Tiffany, the mystery woman whom Bradley Cooper’s bipolar Pat Solitano befriends when he returns home after a stint at a mental institution. They meet cute and ultimately enter a dancing competition together. Sexy, crazy, and dancing? And uplift? How can Lawrence not compete? I would still love to see an Oscar nom for Lawrence’s “Hunger Games” performance, but this appealing role will surely land Lawrence a second best-actress nomination following “Winter’s Bone” and possibly a win.

More to love: Nina Hoss, “Barbara”; Greta Gerwig, “Frances Ha”; Emmanuelle Riva, “Amour”; Ana Moreira, “Tabu”; Macarena Garcia, “Blancanieves”; and Emayatzy Corinealdi, “Middle of Nowhere.”

Yahoo! Movies: Joaquin is crazy in Toronto – on screen in “The Master”

September 22, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Joaquin Phoenix in “The Master” (The Weinstein Company)

Is Joaquin Phoenix crazy? Since I don’t plan to dine with him here in Toronto, I think that question is beside the point. At the premiere of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” last night at the Princess of Wales Theater on King Street, Phoenix received adulation for a performance that was already getting buzz out of Telluride. Clean-shaven, formally dressed, eager to please, he held his right arm protectively around the waist of a young bottle-blond identified only as “Heather.”‘ Nearby, The Weinstein Company’s Harvey Weinstein held court with the expansion of personality that comes from having the gut feeling that “The Master” will be part of the awards conversation and is also “high art” in a Hollywood sense.

As for Phoenix, despite the fact that the screening was an hour late and it would be polite to say that the audience was testy, he was a man behaving Sunday-school best, bad boy issues shelved and beard shaved. He’s playing the off-screen role of penitent Oscar-nominee and Oscar-seeker — not crazy man on a vendetta to slay his own career. The screening began and Phoenix sat with Heather in the orchestra seats alongside co-star Amy Adams. If the screening of a 70mm print of “The Master” had begun on time, there’s no saying how much star power would have ascended to the stage before or after. However, the lateness of the night (delayed by the appearance of Canadian mega-star Ryan Gosling at the earlier premiere of “The Place Beyond the Pines” and adoring throngs) meant that director Anderson was very, very brief in his opening remarks and the stars never took the stage. [Read more…]

TIFF12 Countdown – 2 Days – Movie Trailer “Blancanieves” by Pablo Berger

September 4, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Oh, those black-and-white-and-silent films are so yesterday — Not! And yet another Snow White? Wasn’t “Mirror, Mirror” and “Snow White and the Huntsman” enough? No! Wait until you feast your eyes on Pablo Berger’s stirring torrero version. The tension between generations of beautiful women at the core of the “Snow White” fairy tale is palpable — and that’s no bull.