Jul 02, 2014 By Austin Trunick Keira Knightley

After his 2006 film Once turned into an international sensation, Irish filmmaker John Carney avoided musicials or the next eight years, afraid of being pigeonholded as “that music guy.” Here Carney and actors Mark Ruffalo and Keira Knightley discuss Begin Again, which is about a stage-shy songwriter who strikes out on a solo career with the help of a down-on-his-luck label executive and Ruffalo discusses how Wayne Coyne inspired his character. More

Jun 27, 2014 By Austin Trunick John Hurt

Since he made his silver screen debut more than fifty years ago, John Hurt has carved out a long and impressive filmography rivaled by few other actors. From Kane, the chest-burster victim in Ridley Scott’s Alien, to John “I Am Not An Animal” Merrick in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man, he’s been part of several of cinema’s most memorable and iconic scenes across his almost 200 roles.

Hurt starred in Midnight Express, A Man For All Seasons, and Nineteen Eighty-Four; in more recent years, he’s been part of the Harry Potter, Indiana Jones and Hellboy franchises as well as the Doctor Who TV series. Chances are even the mildest of film fans will recognize John Hurt from multiple roles he’s played over the decades.

John Hurt sat down to talk with us about his long career in acting and his latest role as the sage mastermind of a rebel uprising in Bong Joon-ho’s science fiction thriller, Snowpiercer. More

Jun 27, 2014 By Austin Trunick Bong Joon-ho

Snowpiercer, the English-language debut of South Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Mother), opens in U.S. theaters this week. The film takes place 17 years after a government-sanctioned effort to curtail global warming backfires and leaves the surface of the Earth a lifeless, ice-covered wasteland. The only humans who survived were the ones who sought refuge on the Snowpiercer, an immense train endlessly circling the globe at high speeds.

Bong Joon-ho has delivered one of the most strange and visually-arresting dystopias we’ve seen since Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, and easily one of the most imaginative sci-fi action flicks in years. The filmmaker sat down with us to talk about Snowpiercer’s journey to the screen. More

Jun 23, 2014 By Chris Tinkham Haley Lu Richardson

One of the breakout talents at this year’s LA Film Fest was 19-year-old actress Haley Lu Richardson, who starred in two films making their world premiere: the post-apocalyptic action thriller, The Well, and the collegiate romantic comedy, The Young Kieslowski, which earned the festival’s audience award for Best Narrative Feature. More

Jun 12, 2014 By Chris Tinkham Web Exclusive

After earning a biology degree from San Diego State University on a basketball scholarship, and then playing professionally in Germany for a year, filmmaker Deon Taylor established himself as a director in the horror genre, with titles such as Nite Tales (2008) and Chain Letter (2009). He was looking to transition into drama, in search of stories with complex themes and topical issues, when producer Vince Cirrincione brought Eric J. Adams’ screenplay for Supremacy to his attention. The story, about a white supremacist who takes a black family hostage in their own home, is based on true events. More

May 30, 2014 By Austin Trunick Issue #50 - June/July 2014 - Future Islands

Whether you associate him with the X-Men’s heroic leader, Professor X; the friendly faun, Mr. Tumnus, in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Dr. Garrigan in The Last King of Scotland; Robbie Turner in Atonement; or someone else entirely, one thing is almost for certain: you’ll rarely think of James McAvoy as the bad guy. More

May 22, 2014 By Austin Trunick Web Exclusive

The new X-Men: Days of Future Past—the blockbuster superhero sequel opening in theaters this week—takes place across two timelines. The film opens in a Hellish post-apocalyptic future where sentient robots have run amok and massacred or enslaved much of the Earth’s population. Most of the film, however, takes place in the early 1970s, as Wolverine is sent into the past to prevent this bleak future from coming to be.

“I think Wolverine never wanted to leave the 1970s,” says Hugh Jackman, who has appeared as the clawed superhero in all seven X-Men films. “The hair, the mutton chops, the clothes… I think the moment that Tears for Fears, A Flock of Seagulls, Wham!, Duran Duran came along Wolverine was like, I’m out.” More

May 09, 2014 By Austin Trunick Web Exclusive

Actor John Slattery—best known for his role as accounts executive Roger Sterling on TV’s Mad Men—is acclimatizing to a new, second career as a filmmaker. His debut feature as a director,God’s Pocket, is adapted from the Pete Dexter novel of the same name, and stars the late Philip Seymour Hoffman (in one of his last roles), John Turturro, Christina Hendricks, and Richard Jenkins. More

May 09, 2014 By Austin Trunick Web Exclusive

James Franco put his writing aspirations on hold when he dropped out of the English program at UCLA to become an actor. The gamble paid off when Franco was cast in the sitcom Freaks and Geeks; from there, it didn’t take long for the actor to cross over into film. Unsatisfied with the direction his career was taking, he re-enrolled at UCLA in 2006. It was there he first had the idea for a series of short stories based on his memories of growing up in Palo Alto, California. More