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We have one week left before The Avengers begins its box office domination (which we're already seeing overseas), but until then let's breathe and focus and not freak out over just how awesome this summer's crop of movies looks. We can do that by sliding into the last of what the month of April is offering up, including a fun romantic comedy, an action flick, a quirky misadventure from those Aardman Animation folks and a dark trip back through the mind of Edgar Allan Poe. Let's take a closer look ... The Five-Year Engagement What's the Scoop: Director Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) reteams with Jason Segel on this romantic comedy that follows the trials and tribulations of an engaged couple (played by Segel and Emily Blunt) planning their...

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I first fell in love with Aardman Animations when Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit arrived in 2005. Since then they’ve had some ups and downs but their latest is a gem. Co-founder Peter Lord is back in the director’s chair for The Pirates! Band of Misfits, which also marks their first foray into 3D. While that technology is still lacking effectiveness since the post-Avatar market, the film is still a delight. Last month I had the great pleasure of sitting down with Peter Lord for a roundtable interview. We touched on how he got a song from Flight of the Conchords into the film, using CG to populate the crowds, casting Hugh Grant as Pirate Captain, and much more.

The Film Stage: The first thing that jumps out at you about the movie is that it is such a complicated claymation thing. There is CGI elements and...

Danny Glover's new documentary, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-75, profiles the Black Panthers. 'I'm a child of the civil rights movement,' he says

"I think we have to be really observant as consumers," says Danny Glover. "The people we want to be can be reflected in our cultural art, and we can give value to that. We can do that. It can be entertainment – there's nothing wrong with that – but it can be enlightening as well. There is a choice."

He pauses: "Just look at what kind of films are being produced now, and what the film industry is attempting to do, and it seems like it's reverted back to some kind of past vision of the status quo. Look at the films. You see what movies get made, and what movies don't get made. You see what technology has done, and how they're using it in the...

HollywoodNews.com: Showtime is airing a documentary on Paul McCartney’s experience in New York on 9/11 and his preparations for The Concert in New York. On behalf of “The Love We Make,” McCartney appeared before the Television Critics Association via satellite to share his wisdom on the healing power of music.

“I’ve thought of that a lot because that’s my game,” McCartney said. “I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s magical. More than words, more than speeches, more than comedy which are all important, music has some property that can really be very healing that people find it to be that way. I’m very interested in that whole idea. It can bring you to tears, it can make you smile, it can make you flashback to a memory. People say, ‘Thank you for the music, it’s the soundtrack to my life.’ It’s one...

Over the weekend I got the chance to sit down and talk with Captain America: The First Avenger screenwriters Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus and talk about the process of collaborating with Marvel, adapting Captain America to the big screen, the importance of the period story, the absence of Hitler, having Joss Whedon come in and polish their screenplay, working on Captain America 2 and if plot threads will be continued/concluded in The Avengers or the sequel, working with Michael Bay on Pain & Gain which they call "Michael Bay's Fargo", and much more. Hit the jump to read the interview. Question: I loved the film by the way Stephen McFeely: Thanks. Christopher Markus: Thank you. Stephen McFeely: If you didn’t though, how would you have opened this? (Laughs) Question: I wouldn’t have said anything. Stephen McFeely:You would’ve said, “Thanks for sitting down with me…...

The presidential flirts met in Times Square for a family dinner under a phalanx of cellphone cameras, as Palin's bus tour hit New York. Shushannah Walshe reports on the nascent 2012 campaign's most surreal moment yet. Plus, Andrew Sullivan on Palin's evolving populism.

Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, two of the country's most famous reality-tv stars and presidential flirts, shared a pepperoni pie in Times Square Tuesday evening. It was a family dinner and a made-for-media spectacle that had New Yorkers gawking, in a city that doesn't gawk at much.

Related story on The Daily Beast: How Palin's Winning the Media War

Day 3 of the former Alaska governor's bus tour went from the sublime to the ridiculous-from the Civil War battlefields of Gettysburg to Trump Tower. And, even weirder, to Famous Famiglia Pizza, far from New York City's most acclaimed pizza joint, but one that did feature prominently in this season's premiere of Trump's Celebrity Apprentice.

Answer: directors Terrence Malick and Rob Reiner played roles in shaping the script of Good Will Hunting?

Matt Damon revealed in a recent interview how he and eventual Oscar-winning writing partner Ben Affleck were able to land a dinner with Malick while they were penning the script for Good Will Hunting. Affleck’s godfather was friends with Malick and the director agreed to dinner. Damon and Affleck gave him a breakdown of the story and in return Malick gave a piece of advice that made the ending.

Here is the interview with journalist Tom Shone thanks to Vulture.

We just asked if we could have a meeting with him. We went to Boston to see him. And we had it in the script that my character and Minnie’s left together at the end of the movie. Terry didn’t ready the script but we explained the whole story to him,...

Not only has Terrence Malick make a few damn good movies, he can make a damn good trailer [1] and if you have dinner with him, he might give you a damn good ending to your movie. In an recent interview, Matt Damon told a story of how he and eventual Oscar-winning writing partner Ben Affleck requested a dinner with Malick when they were working on the script for Good Will Hunting. Malick, who was good friends with Affleck's godfather, granted the request but didn't read the script. Instead, Damon and Affleck told him the story and Malick gave a piece of advice that made the ending. Read the full quote after the jump as well as how Rob Reiner contributed to the story and how the death of a major character was written into the script. Damon told the Malick story in an interview with journalist Tom Shone [2] (with...

 

Cinema Lounge Roundtable: An Interview with the Filmmakers - October 2010 

In many ways a short film can be a greater challenge than a feature simply due to the fact that, in a short, every moment counts.  Each month we are committed to bringing you collection of diverse, impactful, and entertaining shorts and this month's line up is no different.  This month's stories from an old man's daily pilgrimage, a middle-aged man's foray into the "viral video" craze, and the discovery of what happens after love, to a modern re-telling of Jean Paul Sartre's short story, an encounter with an important stranger, and charismatic drag queen's unfortunate one-night stand. This month filmmakers Jonathan Ade, J.J. Adler, Kent Hayward, Ben Garchar, Brandon Auman, Pierre Ferriere, and Lena Waithe discuss their films and the process of getting them made. 

   By Folayo Lasaki

 Image from Meditations: Man in Water

 

Introductions first...names and projects,...

"What typeface do you want?" "Oh, I don't care, whatever you've got, as long as it doesn't say comedy, or anything else about the movie." "Done. And the images?" "Again, don't care. This thing's a dead loss. You got any pictures of Jennifer Aniston, but sort of busy and uninteresting, like a screen grab, so people will know this is one of those in-between Anistons with like Woody Harrelson, that goes straight to video?" "We can do that. Who's the guy?" "Some guy from TV. Whatever picture you've got is fine. Just so long as their eyelines don't match." "Got it. Hey, What's he doing?" "That's a cup of his own spooge." "Wow, that's really unappealing. Why's he smelling it?" "I don't know. Maybe he thinks if it smells bad he's got cancer. Who gives a shit. Just paste it in." "You...

Christa Campbell The Milk Maiden returns when this cult smash arrives on DVD July 20th

Every great horror movie needs an iconic harbinger of doom, and in the case of 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams, which arrives in stores on DVD July 20th in both an Unrated and Rated edition, Christa Campbell serves as our buxom, bawdy bad girl escort into the torrid, gruesomely hilarious world that director Tim Sullivan has created.

A sequel to 2006's 2001 Maniacs, Christa once again reprises her sexy Milk Maiden role for a whole new generation of gore-hungry fans. We recently caught up with the lovely Miss Campbell, and here is what she had to say:

Tim Sullivan tells me that it was your idea to get completely splattered in blood, and that you started a chain reaction on set where everyone wanted to join in the gruesome, naked mayhem that was going on. Is that true?...

Breck Eisner Warns What to Do When The Crazies Attack!

Breck Eisner's The Crazies is one of the most well-received horror remakes in recent years, and the truly terrifying film finally hits DVD and Blu-ray this coming Tuesday, June 29th. The story finds the citizens of Ogden Marsh infected with a man-made virus unleashed by the military, and only Sheriff Dutton (the amazing Timothy Olyphant) and his pregnant wife (Radha Mitchell) can stop the madness from breaking past county walls. It's an intense two hour ride that will leave you sweating through the couch in this summer heat. We caught up with director Breck Eisner to chat with him (for the umpteenth time) about his awesome little horror flick that continues to surprise horror aficionados and critics alike. Here's our conversation:

Why, in your opinion, do you think The Crazies is the perfect film to watch at home this summer?...

Timothy Olyphant is Snake Plissken? Director Breck Eisner succeeded in making a great little horror film with this past spring's George A. Romero reimagining of The Crazies, which comes to DVD and Blu-ray on Tuesday, June 29th. Next up for Eisner is a remake of John Carpenter's seminal action classic Escape from New York, a project that seems to be in quite capable hands. One of the key elements in making a new version of this 1981 film work is casting the perfect Snake Plissken, which was played to perfection the first time around by living icon and Hollywood legend Kurt Russell. We caught up with Eisner earlier in the day, and he stated that Timothy Olyphant is one of the very few people in the running who could play Snake. Especially as far as the performance being a collaborative effort between the actor and the director. Which Breck...

Ashley Banjo has said that the craze for street dancing in the UK has not yet reached its peak. The Diversity leader told Digital Spy that he was happy to have influenced others with his group's success in last year's Britain's Got Talent final. Banjo said: "I hope people look and think, 'We can do that' or 'We were inspired by that, we're going to do our version'. That's how things move forward." He added: "I think it's definitely going to get bigger (more)...