The Playlist

Interview: Eddie Pepitone Talks Deconstructionist Comedy, The Seven Stages to Accepting Yourself Onscreen, & Saying Yes To 'The Bitter Buddha'

By Katie Walsh
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March 17, 2013 8:32 AM
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Interviews

Eddie Pepitone is a comic’s comic, a deconstructionist stand-up comic with a scream like no other, who’s willing to put everyone, most often himself, under the microscope. Pepitone gets that treatment in the documentary film "The Bitter Buddha," directed by Steven Feinartz. It’s an engaging portrait of this man and an instant classic film about comedy that will be fascinating to comedy nerds and mainstream audiences alike. In our review, we said the film is 'a portrait of an interesting and endearing misanthrope,' and we got a chance to talk to the man himself on the day of his film’s premiere at the Cinema Village in New York City.

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Interview: Emma Stone Talks Comedy, 'The Croods' And Cameron Crowe; Scores Off The Charts On Likability

By Jessica Kiang
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February 24, 2013 1:30 PM
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Festivals

Having enjoyed pretty much the definition of a meteoric rise to fame, you could maybe forgive Emma Stone for having lost the run of herself. But just as her big-screen persona is usually based on being the approachable, down-to-earth, girl-next-door type, in person she demonstrates many of those qualities too, along with an absolute refusal to take herself too seriously. It made for an entertaining interview at the Berlin Film Festival following the premiere of her animated film “The Croods” (our review here). And if some members of our small press group were not just eating out of her hand, but apparently longing to curl up in her lap and go to sleep there by the end of our time with her, in between the various "Why are you so awesome?"-style questions, Stone did fill us in quite a bit on her philosophy towards her career to date, her role models and what the future holds. And if she has been taught to be a little cagey in some areas, she admitted as much saying, “This is what ‘Spider-Man’ does to you I’m always like ‘I don’t know if I can tell you about that, you’ll have to wait and see.’ About everything. ‘Would you like some water?’ ‘I dunno, you’ll have to wait and see…’ ”

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Interview: Mélanie Laurent On Advice From Luc Besson, Gerard Depardieu, 'Night Train To Lisbon' & Her Singing Career

By Jessica Kiang
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February 23, 2013 4:37 PM
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Festivals

It can be hard to remember that Mélanie Laurent had actually been acting for a decade, albeit largely in French-language productions, before breaking out internationally by killing Hitler in “Inglourious Basterds.” Of course the one-two punch of the Quentin Tarantino movie and Mike Mills’ well-received “Beginners” is a relatively recent phenomenon for the actress, but in person, too, Laurent has an engaging freshness about her and a genuine excitement about where she is and what she’s is doing that makes her seem more like an ingenue than a seasoned pro. Or so we found when we got to meet her at the Berlin Film Festival where her latest film, Bille August’s “Night Train to Lisbon."

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Berlin Interview: Jeremy Irons Talks 'Night Train To Lisbon,' 'Beautiful Creatures' And The Rationale Behind His Roles

By Jessica Kiang
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February 22, 2013 10:58 AM
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Interviews

A quick look through his back catalogue or a few minutes in his company will tell you that Jeremy Irons, despite his Best Actor Oscar (for his creepy, ambiguous Claus von Bulow in 1990’s “Reversal of Fortune”) and despite the many auteurs he has worked with in the past (David Cronenberg, Steven Soderbergh, Louis Malle, Bernardo Bertolucci, David Lynch etc), regards himself, first and foremost, as a jobbing actor. It’s not every esteemed and awarded star, after all, who boasts a U.S. indie, two lavish TV dramas, a small role in a would-be YA blockbuster, a lead in a European co-production and the voice of a bar rag in an episode of the “The Simpsons” as his credits in just the last 14 months or so.

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Berlin Interview: Ken Loach Says Critics Missed "Bias" Of 'Zero Dark Thirty,' Talks 'Spirit Of 45,' Sexiness Of Socialism & More

By Jessica Kiang
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February 22, 2013 9:56 AM
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Festivals

One of the quieter debuts at the Berlin International Film Festival last week was of a small talking-heads-and-archive-footage documentary about postwar Britain’s socialist reconstruction called “The Spirit of ‘45” (you can read our review here). But while it feels destined for a life on the small screen, the name above the title alone meant a festival bow was appropriate; it's the latest from British director Ken Loach, recipient of the Palme D’or at Cannes in 2006 for “The Wind that Shakes the Barley,” and one of the most well-respected and consistent proponents of the school of social realist filmmaking.

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Berlin Interview: Richard Linklater Talks Making ‘Before Midnight’ & The 14-Minute-Long Shot

By Jessica Kiang
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February 21, 2013 1:01 PM
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Interviews

With “Before Midnight” being readily clasped to the bosoms of audiences and critics alike at the Berlin International Film Festival, and having missed the talent when on their promotional rounds at Sundance last month (where the film was similarly well-received, our review is here), we jumped at the chance to sit down with the film’s co-creators last week. We ran our Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy interview earlier, but up next we have director Richard Linklater -- a filmmaker we’re quite the fan of and of whom we ran a retrospective last year -- talking about bottling the lightning of the beloved “Before Sunrise” not once, not twice, but now three times over.

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Berlin Interview: Juliette Binoche On 'Camille Claudel' & Working With Haneke, Minghella, Carax & Kiarostami

By Jessica Kiang
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February 20, 2013 4:47 PM
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Interviews

Like most of director Bruno Dumont’s films, “Camille Claudel 1915” has proven divisive (you can read our take here), but one thing that critics on both sides of the fence are in unanimous agreement about is the quality of the central performance from Juliette Binoche. Economically contained and internalised, even when her Claudel is displaying some rare histrionics, Binoche invests the role with oceanic depths and undercurrents of conflicting emotion in a turn that in some ways can almost be seen as the stripped-away template for the kind of melancholic, tragic, tortured heroine with which she has made her name.

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Berlin Interview: Ethan Hawke & Julie Delpy On Jesse And Celine & The Making Of Linklater’s ‘Before’ Trilogy

By Jessica Kiang
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February 15, 2013 11:11 AM
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Interviews

It will surprise no one who followed the film’s extremely positive reception at Sundance earlier this year, that Richard Linklater's “Before Midnight” (our review here) has been creating quite a stir on the other side of the pond following its European premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. With many of the journalists we met citing the film as one of their favorite of the festival so far, we got to sit down in a small group with stars and co-writers Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke for what proved to be a fairly riotous interview, in which, while they both maintain repeatedly how unlike their onscreen counterparts they are, certainly the chemistry of old friends was there in spades.

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Göteborg Interview: Director Volker Schlöndorff On ‘Calm At Sea,’ His Greatest Cinematic Failure & 'The Master'

By Jessica Kiang
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February 9, 2013 12:55 PM
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Festivals

Presenting his new film “Calm at Sea” (reviewed here) in the Bio Roy Theater during the Göteborg International Film Festival last week, director Volker Schlöndorff said, in mock-pique, “It’s so great to be in this wonderful theatre, named after Sweden’s great filmmaker Roy Andersson. I‘m still waiting for my hometown to put up a theater in my name.” And perhaps given the level of esteem in which he is held, especially in his home country, the idea of one day catching a 2.30 showing at The Volker is not so farfetched. But of course Schlondorff’s career has hardly been plain sailing, with his towering achievement, the oddly compelling, uncanny adaptation of Günter Grass' “The Tin Drum” rather overshadowing the films that came before and after, especially having been crowned with an Oscar and the Palme d’Or.

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Göteborg Interview: Tobias Lindholm On 'A Hijacking,' 'The Hunt,' The Psychology Of European Cinema & More

By Jessica Kiang
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February 9, 2013 12:07 PM
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Interviews

Director of the hotly buzzed “A Hijacking” (our glowing review here) that has been doing the festival rounds since Venice last year, Tobias Lindholm is, in his own words, about to “close up the circus and start working on the next thing.” But with his two breakthrough film projects “The Hunt,” which he co-wrote with director Thomas Vinterberg, and “A Hijacking” still awaiting U.S. releases (the latter is slated for second-quarter 2013 bow through Magnolia Pictures), it is tempting to cast him as being only "on the cusp" of major international success.

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