Colin Firth Oscar Nominee Refines The King’s Speech by Brad Balfour To the hardcore Jane Austen fans, 50-year-old English actor Colin Firth will always be Mr. Darcy after he appeared in a wet shirt in the BBC mini-series of Pride and Prejudice. But he really landed at the top of the hot lists with his 2009 … Continue reading
Lisa Cholodenko Making It All Right by Jay S. Jacobs Lisa Cholodenko has been turning heads in Hollywood since her 1998 film High Art featuring Radha Mitchell and Ally Sheedy. One of those heads which was turned belonged to actress Julianne Moore, who made a point of talking to Cholodenko at a Women in Film celebration years ago … Continue reading
Maggie Gyllenhaal Owner of a Crazy Heart by Jay S. Jacobs It isn’t easy to just step away when a career that you have been working towards for years has built up serious momentum. Yet that is exactly what Maggie Gyllenhaal did. Soon after appearing in the blockbuster Batman sequel The Dark Knight, Gyllenhaal essentially took a … Continue reading
Ari Folman An Israeli Director Dances with the Dogs of War In Waltz with Bashir by Brad Balfour Of all the films nominated for a Foreign Language Oscar this year, director Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir reaped substantial press and stirred the most controversy. A documentary fashioned as an animated film, it is as much an imagined … Continue reading
Steph Green Living on the Short Circuit by Jay S. Jacobs It’s not like film directors just appear working feature films with no prior experience. Most great directors have gotten their feet wet working on short films: including Steven Spielberg (“Amblin’”), Martin Scorsese (“What’s A Nice Girl Like You Doing In A Place Like This?”), … Continue reading
ALEX GIBNEY RIDES THE TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE by Brad Balfour Having previously made The Trials of Henry Kissinger and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, documentary director Alex Gibney has become an expert on people corrupted by and abusing their power. A prize–winner at last spring’s Tribeca Film Festival, few films resonate like Taxi to the … Continue reading
Emile Hirsch Takes Some Severe Steps Into the Wild by Brad Balfour When youthful 22-year-old actor Emile Hirsch got cast for Into The Wild, it was great career move for him, not just because he got to work with the actor’s actor Sean Penn (in a directorial turn), but also because he was considerably challenged as … Continue reading
Christopher Hampton Adapting Atonement by Jay S. Jacobs When adapting a complex novel like Ian McEwan’s best-seller Atonement, it was important to find a screenwriter who could do justice to the epic scope and passions on the pages of the book. It made sense to give the job to a writer who has specialized in adaptations, … Continue reading
Once Around Dublin’s Streets with Glen Hansard & John Carney by Brad Balfour Fashioning a hybrid from two cinematic genres can either pay off or be a profound failure. In the case of John Carney’s debut feature, Once, he succeeds handily. Maybe that’s because he enlisted his longtime pal and former band member, Glen Hansard, lead … Continue reading
Paul Greengrass The Director Flies UNITED 93 by Brad Balfour If you have seen director Paul Greengrass’s earlier docu-fiction feature, Bloody Sunday – which captures that fateful day in Derry, Northern Ireland, when thirteen unarmed protestors were gunned down by British troops sparking “The Troubles” there – you would know that he can handle this assignment. So despite all the … Continue reading
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