see all »

Question du Jour: How Will YOU Remember Ben Gazzara? - The Hot Blog

Ferris Bueller’s Middle Aged Day Out - The Hot Blog

DP/30: The Descendants, editor Kevin Tent - The Hot Blog

DP/30 @ Sundance: Ai Wei Wei: Never Sorry, director Alison Klayman - The Hot Blog

Errol Morris’ “El Wingador” - The Hot Blog

Quote Unquotesee all »

“It’s curious that the director, Madonna, one of the most publicly independent women of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, would create a character with the spine and personality of a soggy noodle. It’s also unfortunate, because Wally doesn’t stand a chance against the strangely transfixing Mrs. Simpson. The same holds true of Ms. Cornish, a lovely blur of an actress who here melts into misty memory every time Ms. Riseborough enters—her Wallis slithering across the screen, all silk, satin and sex—to pierce the bosom of her hapless consort.”
~ Dargis on W. E.

“Ghost Rider was an entirely new experience, and he got me thinking about something I read in a book called ‘The Way Of Wyrd’ by Brian Bates, and he also wrote a book called ‘The Way Of The Actor.’ He put forth the concept that all actors, whether they know it or not, stem from thousands of years ago–pre-Christian times–when they were the medicine men or shamans of the village. And these shamans, who by today’s standards would be considered psychotic, were actually going into flights of the imagination and locating answers to problems within the village. They would use masks or rocks or some sort of magical object that had power to it. It occurred to me, because I was doing a character as far out of our reference point as the spirit of vengeance, I could use these techniques. I would paint my face with black and white make up to look like a Afro-Caribbean icon called Baron Samedi, or an Afro-New Orleans icon who is also called Baron Saturday. He is a spirit of death but he loves children; he’s very lustful, so he’s a conflict in forces. And I would put black contact lenses in my eyes so that you could see no white and no pupil, so I would look more like a skull or a white shark on attack. On my costume, my leather jacket, I would sew in ancient, thousands-of-years-old Egyptian relics, and gather bits of tourmaline and onyx and would stuff them in my pockets to gather these energies together and shock my imagination into believing that I was augmented in some way by them, or in contact with ancient ghosts. I would walk on the set looking like this, loaded with all these magical trinkets, and I wouldn’t say a word to my co-stars or crew or directors. I saw the fear in their eyes, and it was like oxygen to a forest fire. I believed I was the Ghost Rider.”
~ Nic Cage Gets His Ghost