Debra Messing Starting Over Again by Jay S. Jacobs Debra Messing has a problem that most actresses would kill for. When you are known indelibly for a role which hits the pop-culture jackpot, sometimes it’s not easy to get the public to see you as anyone else. Messing spent eight years playing Grace Adler on Will … Continue reading
ALEX GIBNEY The Director Goes Gonzo on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, His Life and Work by Brad Balfour At a time when we need counter-culture heroes more than ever, Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney’s Gonzo-The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson explores in a relatively unvarnished fashion Rolling Stone magazine’s late wild man of journalism and a counter-culture … Continue reading
Emily Deschanel The Doctor Is In by Jay S. Jacobs In the second season finale of the popular series Bones, the main characters Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and FBI Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) ended a couple of years of flirtation standing together at a wedding altar in front of a clergyman and a … Continue reading
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR. TO THE FUTURE, DARKLY BY JAY S. JACOBS When director Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, School of Rock, Before Sunset) decided to film sci-fi novelist Philip K. Dick’s extremely autobiographical 1977 drug cautionary tale A Scanner Darkly, he knew he was taking a big chance artistically and commercially. He’s not the first – Dick’s pitch-black world … Continue reading
SALMA HAYEK TALKS TOUGH AND ACTS WITH VULNERABILITY By Brad Balfour Wow, can you believe it? Salma Hayek is turning 40 in September. Yet for her to do this interview while battling a cold, you would never believe she was hitting the big four zero, let alone be in her 30s. That’s why, when you see … Continue reading
DAVID CRONENBERG A DIRECTOR LOOKS AT VIOLENT AMERICA by Brad Balfour Now transformed from a horror genre master (Rabid, The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome) to a full-blown, critically acclaimed and analyzed auteur, Toronto-based director David Cronenberg finally has made A History of Violence – the film that may be the Oscar-garnering capper of his career. With Cronenberg having … Continue reading
ATOM EGOYAN FINDING THE TRUTH IN DIRECTING by Brad Balfour For Canadian director Atom Egoyan creating Where the Truth Lies offered a challenge of constructing something that was almost a genre film but not quite. Wrestling with musician/composer Rupert Holmes’ novel of the same name, Egoyan takes a story that plays on the conventions of the classic … Continue reading
Curtis HANSON The director steps into a WOMAN’S WORLD by Brad BALFOUR Veteran director Curtis Hanson loves to confound people. As the Oscar-winning director of L.A. Confidential, who would have thought he would take on a project like 8 Mile – the fictionalized telling of cross-over rapper Eminem’s rise to success in the Detroit ghetto. Yet now he again defies expectations of him by doing … Continue reading
George Dzundza Finding Grace in Hack By Jay S. Jacobs You know the face. It is a tough-but-fair mug that has dissolved selflessly into well over seventy roles in a film and television career that has lasted about thirty years. You know the characters. He was Gus Moran, the good–hearted but protective partner of Michael Douglas’ self-destructive cop in Basic Instinct. He was … Continue reading
SWIMFAN (2002) Starring Erika Christensen, Jesse Bradford, Shiri Appleby, Clayne Crawford, James DeBello, Nick Sandow, Jason Ritter, Kate Burton and Dan Hedaya. Screenplay by Charles F. Bohl and Phillip Schneider. Directed by John Polson. Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox Pictures. 86 minutes. Rated PG-13. Have you ever wondered what Fatal Attraction would have been like if Glenn … Continue reading
