Interview 37 results

Michael Joplin remembers a happy Janis

Interview: Michael Joplin Though Janis Joplin's surviving siblings don't occupy huge amounts of screen time, Michael and Laura Joplin's presence brings a new dimension to Amy Berg's new documentary, Janis: Little Girl Blue, premiering tonight on PBS

Father, motherland, Rossif Sutherland

People: Interview - Rossif Sutherland The Sutherland with the curious accent makes a dark turn in River before preparing for a new Catastrophe on French-Canadian television By Katherine Monk As far as Sutherlands go, he’s the tall one. You could see it when he appeared on stage next to his legendary father, Donald, at the recent Canadian Screen Awards. Rossif’s thick brown hair stood just a shade taller than his father’s flattening white pate. Career-wise, however, there’s still a ways to go before he reaches the same stature as the Sutherland who appeared in M*A*S*H and Ordinary People. Or even that of his half-brother Kiefer. Not that he really cares. “I don't care much about what people think about me. If they don’t like me, they don’t like me. You can be the nicest person in the room… it doesn’t matter…. And I’ve never been very strategic with my choices, and maybe my career has suffered for it,” says Vancouver-born Rossif Sutherland from ...

Robert Carlyle boards new train as director

People: Robert Carlyle Robert Carlyle gets back to his Glaswegian roots and takes a bit off the top as a barber with Barbicide on his mind, and a mother who loves a good game of bingo as much as a grisly murder in The Legend of Barney Thomson. By Katherine Monk VANCOUVER, BC – Everyone’s been asking him about Trainspotting 2, but Robert Carlyle has more on his plate than a plan to reprise the role of Begbie in an as-yet-to-be scripted sequel to Danny Boyle’s breakout film about heroin addicts. For the past few years, he’s been living in Vancouver playing Mr. Gold in the successful Disney TV series Once Upon a Time, and before that, he was Dr. Nicholas Rush in the B.C.-shot SGU: Stargate Universe. He says he loves Canada’s west coast. But after making his directorial debut with the Glasgow-shot black comedy Barney Thomson, released in theatres this week, Carlyle says he’s looking at a tough decision somewhere down the road. He may want to hang around town. Even ...

Luke Kirby takes another waltz with romance

People: Luke Kirby He played a problematic brand of Prince Charming in Sarah Polley's Take This Waltz and now Canadian-born Luke Kirby is walking a tightrope of sanity as a bipolar Romeo in Paul Dalio's Touched With Fire   By Katherine Monk He played a pedicab-driving Romeo opposite Michelle Williams in Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz, and now he plays a bipolar brand of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Paul Dalio’s Touched With Fire, but if you think Luke Kirby has a thing for playing the problematic prince charming, it’s just optics. The Guelph-raised Kirby is also a regular on the Sundance Channel crime drama Rectify, did several seasons of the Astronaut Wives Club and recently appeared in The Good Wife. And for those who weren’t paying attention to Canadian cinema at the turn of the present century, Kirby starred as the gay son of traditional Italian parents in Emile Gaudrealt’s Mambo Italiano. “Right now, I’d like to work on my tan if I could find the ...

Ryan Reynolds: swimming in Deadpool success

People: Ryan Reynolds Interview Ryan Reynolds wears his love of Vancouver on his fleshy sleeve with a tattoo of the Nine O'Clock Gun, but thanks to the skyrocketing success of Deadpool, the sexiest dad alive is making a big noise of his own. By Katherine Monk VANCOUVER, BC – He’s officially the hottest star in Hollywood now that Deadpool has racked up a quarter-billion $US in its first week of release and launched an on-line fan frenzy demanding he host SNL, get his own statue in the prairie province of Saskatchewan, and get on with spawning a series of Deadpool sequels. Vancouver’s Ryan Reynolds has come a long way since his so-called “breakout year” back in ’02-’03, when he made the leap from recurring roles on TV shows such as Fifteen, The Odyssey and The Outer Limits to being the star of features films. He played a party hound Van Wilder, and a master thief in Foolproof, Canada’s first full-size experiment with the action genre. The whole movie was geared ...

Ramin Bahrani forecloses on 99 Homes

People: Rahmin Bahrani The writer-director of Man Push Cart returns with 99 Homes, another story about social justice and an economic system that he says creates Donald Trumps, rewards greed and fails to protect families By Katherine Monk After directing Man Push Cart a decade ago, the late great Roger Ebert described director Ramin Bahrani as one of the most important new voices in cinema, hailing his ability to see the outsider and sympathize with those silently struggling to find their way. His low-budget dramatic debut focused on a former Pakistani rock star who ended up selling food on the streets of Manhattan, and his more recent At Any Price starring Zac Efron took on the reality of genetically modified crops and their effect on America’s family farms. He is unapologetic about his interest in themes concerning social justice, but Bahrani’s most recent feature, 99 Homes, may be the most trenchant piece of social commentary he’s made so far as it brings us ...

Listen to Me Marlon filmmakers found heart of darkness

Brando narrates his own story in new documentary Surviving a broken home with alcoholic parents, Marlon Brando found a way to heal using a tape recorder, isolation and a professional obsession with truth that made every performance vibrate with all the beauty, and ugliness, of the human condition By Katherine Monk PARK CITY, UT – When Marlon Brando was still alive, his face was scanned using what was, at the time, cutting-edge digital technology. Pulses of laser light crisscrossed his famous profile, swallowing each feature into an algorithm, resulting in an animated, glowing green grid: a Marlon matrix. The footage lingered for years. Then the producers behind Restrepo, Waiting for Sugar Man and James Marsh’s Project Nim got a call from Brando’s estate. “They approached us to do something and we said we’d be delighted, but only if we can make it in a way that is entirely original,” says John Battsek, one of the founders of London-based Passion Pictures – ...

Interview: Juliette Binoche laughs off fear of aging

The Clouds of Sils Maria features the French siren in the role of an aging actress agonizing over her latest job: playing the role of the older woman, instead of the ingenue, in a revival of the play that made her famous. Binoche says she wasn't afraid to tackle a reflection of herself, but she did push director Olivier Assayas to face what she calls a "fear of actors... particularly women."   By Katherine Monk In an age of ubiquitous celebrity, Juliette Binoche is an old-fashioned movie star. It’s more than the Prada blouse that seems to flow over her curves with loving deference, and more than the elegantly honed features that allow her to look both pretty and strong simultaneously. The French actress who emerged in the wake of The English Patient has a presence that moves through a room like precious perfume, a tingle mingled with an essence. Binoche brings her intoxicating powers to every role she’s ever had, from Lasse Halstrom’s Chocolat to Michael ...

The Look of Silence: Joshua Oppenheimer reflects on deflection

In The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer offered the dramatic testimony of mass murderers as they re-enacted their crimes. In the forthcoming sequel, The Look of Silence, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker brings the perpetrators face to face with the brother of the man they killed. By Katherine Monk Joshua Oppenheimer is a precise filmmaker, which is difficult to accomplish at the best of times, but something practically unheard of in documentary. It’s the reason why the Texas-born filmmaker was nominated for an Oscar for his first feature, The Act of Killing, a blend of research and febrile nightmare that related the story of Indonesia’s communist purge in which one million people were murdered. The movie caused a stir in Indonesia as it showed men who are still in power boasting about their acts of killing, and Oppenheimer suspected it would probably make any repeat visits to Indonesia impossible. Yet, this month will see the release of a sequel to The Act of Killing ...