A couple of years back, actress Melissa Leo was GUNNING for that Oscar for her performance in The Fighter. Real talk – she deserved it because she completely brought to life a scary beehived bitch from Lowell (I live in Massachusetts and I’ve known a few). But she got super cheesy in pursuing the gold-plated acting dildo. She took out full page ads in the trades inexplicably featuring herself in a polar bear skin by a pool (elegant?) and another one of her bending forward in an evening dress showing cleavage (sensual?) and they read simply “CONSIDER”. It was a little bizarre, kinda hammy,and way desperate. And now whenever Anne Hathaway does an interview about her hunger strike for Miserable Lesbians, all I can picture is a big “CONSIDER” floating over her shorn head in blinking lights.
Your mom, that last bill collector you had to speak to because you forget to use a foreign accent and say “wrong numbah”, and every gay you know have already marveled at you about Anne Hathaway dropping 25 lbs. to play a dying French hooker so she can snatch an Oscar. US (via the Los Angeles Times) notes that her director Tom Hooper felt that Anne subsisting on little more than oatmeal bark and insane ambition for her role was a little
…
Full Story »Oscar winner Melissa Leo has always been one to keep busy, and in Robert Zemeckis’s Flight she fills her dance card with yet another brief but potent supporting turn. “‘There are no small parts, only small actors,’” she quoted to Movieline as we sat to discuss her Ellen Block, the key investigator and the lone figure standing between alcoholic pilot-hero Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) and a prison sentence in the addiction drama. “Sometimes there are small parts, actually,” she laughed, “but this was no small part.”
Leo, one of the go-to character actresses working today, has made an art out of popping up to deliver crucial supporting roles when she’s not carrying her own indie movies. (She earned her first Oscar nod for her work in Frozen River and won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The Fighter, while Francine, an intimate study of a woman newly released from incarceration, is the rare film featuring Leo in the lead; it’s in select theaters now.) In Flight, she manages to do no one else in the film can, and what few have done in the movies, period: Intimidate Denzel Washington.
Movieline caught up with Leo in Los Angeles, where we spoke in-depth about Flight, what President Obama has in common with Washington’s Whip Whitaker, how she came to play Robin Williams’ wife twice in one month in The Angriest Man in Brooklyn and Lee Daniels‘ The Butler, and why mixed messaging is a clever way to get audiences to experience the terror in Flight more frightening than a plane crash: “There are all kinds of people in the world, but the way that addiction can grip a talented human being…
Full Story »The world premiere of Robert Zemeckis’s Flight will close the 50th anniversary edition of the New York Film Festival, organizers said Thursday. The action-packed thriller stars Oscar-winner Denzel Washington as Whip Whitaker, a veteran airline pilot who crash lands his plane following a mid-air catastrophe, saving nearly everyone on board.
Though he’s hailed as a hero immediately after the incident, the legal, oral and ethical areas of his behavior before and immediately after become more ambiguous that initially portrayed to the public. John Goodman, Don Cheadle, Melissa Leo, Bruce Greenwood and Kelly Reilly also star in Flight, which Paramount Pictures will release in theaters November 2nd.
“Robert Zemeckis has shown his diversity as a storyteller in comedies, dramas and has skillfully translated narratives into specific effect environments,” Rose Kuo, executive director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center said in a statement. “It is a pleasure to see him bring to life his complicated, tragic-comic portrait of a man in crisis, with an exceptional and poignant performance by Denzel Washington.”
NYFF’s selection committee includes Richard Peña, the event’s long-serving chair who will retire later this year. Also on the committee are Melissa Anderson, contributor to the Village Voice, Scott Foundas, Associate Program Director, Todd McCarthy, chief film critic at The Hollywood Reporter and Amy Taubin, contributor at Film Comment and Sight and Sound
The 17-day New York Film Festival annually spotlights the latest in world cinema from both celebrated auteurs and new talent. The Film Society of Lincoln Center hosts the annually anticipated New York film event, taking place this year September 28 – October 14.
Jesse Eisenberg landed an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network and most recently, he is a love-sick architect opposite Alec Baldwin in Woody Allen’s To Rome with Love. Next up, the young star plays a piano prodigy who tries to check his mother (played by Oscar-winner Melissa Leo) into rehab. Things, however, go awry when he is taken hostage by her drug dealer (hate when that happens) and he is suddenly off on a wild adventure.
The film was formerly titled Predisposed when it debuted at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Despite the obvious that’s revealed in the trailer – namely the aforementioned mother who is hooked on drugs and a kidnapping by a drug dealer, the film appears to have some laughs. Phil Dorling and Ron Nyswanner co-direct the film and wrote the screenplay. IFC Films will release the film August 17th.
After riding train after train and whatnot, Denzel Washington is back navigating giant hunks of careening metal in Robert Zemeckis’s Flight, which marks the director’s return to live-action filmmaking after a decade spent trying (in vain, IMO) to conquer the uncanny valley. So how well do director and star succeed in piquing your interest in a movie about an airline pilot (Washington) who saves a plane full of passengers only to have his heroism — and drinking habits — come under scrutiny in the aftermath?
Below, watch the first trailer for Flight, which boasts a stellar cast surrounding Washington that includes Bruce Greenwood, Don Cheadle, Kelly Reilly, John Goodman, and Melissa Leo. It’s not all that revealing, which is a good thing in this age of spoiler-happy marketing, though there’s potential for some big unknown twist to rock us to our core in the last act.
So what’s there to look forward to? Washington as a normal dude trying to figure it out, I suppose — or as a hero hiding some dark secret, which would be more interesting — and, of course, the sight of Denzel rolling a freaking airplane on top of some houses, or whatever. That should be enough for me. And yet… I’m just lukewarm on Flight. Is there any reason to see it besides the fact that it’s Denzel being Denzel and Zemeckis maybe-recapturing the knack for storytelling on display in his best live-action hits?
Head to Apple for the trailer premiere.
Then again, I am about to get on a flight tomorrow morning, so forgive me if I’m not too juiced for a movie about the one airplane that falls…
Full Story »Despite nabbing an Academy Award last year with her self-financed and controversial “Consider” campaign, Melissa Leo says that neither life, nor the frequency of juicy Hollywood offers coming her way, is much different now that she’s an Oscar-winner. “The projects you think have been offered to me have not, I guarantee you,” she told Movieline this week at SXSW in Austin, where she and directors Melanie Shatzky and Brian M. Cassidy screened their minimalist character study Francine to critical applause. Still, Leo perseveres. And as the intimate acting showcase demonstrates, there’s plenty of reward to be had in smaller and more daring projects.
Francine follows the quiet, often disorienting moments in the experience of a woman recently released from incarceration (Leo) who is now slowly and cautiously adjusting to life on the outside. Taking on a number of jobs and tentative friendships, Francine finds herself increasingly comforted by stray animals she adopts, only further alienating herself from the people around her. Filming in New York’s Hudson Valley region, co-directors Shatzky and Cassidy tapped their photography and documentary film backgrounds to capture Francine’s attempts and failures at human interaction with a sensitive observational style that allows Leo the space to fully, and courageously, inhabit the character.
Prior to Francine’s SXSW premiere (which garnered high praise for Leo’s performance and the directors’ minimalist use of visual and aural elements), Leo spoke with Movieline about why she sought and lobbied for the lead in Francine, how things haven’t changed all that much since winning her Oscar, the emotional scene in which a dog appears to be euthanized onscreen, and why it was important to show Hollywood that she could “show up.”
How did you come to meet these folks and…
Full Story »A day after collapsing at Sundance — prompting his swift hospitalization and his publicist’s even swifter refutation of alcohol and drug speculation — Tracy Morgan has just tweeted that he’s recovering nicely. It was just that, well… Here, he can explain.
For the record, “kryptonite” is clearly a euphemism for Melissa Leo, with whom Morgan was photographed (above, with screenwriter Ron Nyswaner) at a Creative Coalition event shortly before his incident. Must… retrieve… inhaler…
Superman ran into a little kryptonite. The high altitude in Utah shook up this kid from Brooklyn.Mon Jan 23 17:43:58 via TweetDeck
Tracy Morgan
RealTracyMorgan
Thank U 2 the hospital staff. Back at work 2morrow shooting 30 Rock. Holla at me!Mon Jan 23 17:45:34 via TweetDeckTracy Morgan
RealTracyMorgan
[Photo: Getty Images]
Full Story » 
It’s awards madness this week at Movieline, with the New York Film Critics Circle and Gotham Awards having weighed in on their best of 2011, the Independent Spirit Awards revealing their nominees, and the National Board of Review winners forthcoming on Thursday. But amid all the institutionalized laurels and accolades, one subject remains notably absent — a subject so beloved within his own celebrated film that the omission remains a cruel snub at best and a skulduggerous interspecial sham at worst.
To wit: Where is Uggie?
The Artist’s wonder dog — confidant, co-star and lifesaving sidekick of the film’s exiled silent-film icon George Valentin — delivers as nuanced a performance as either leading man Jean Dujardin or leading lady Bérénice Bejo, and all while adhering most strictly to the covenants of silent-cinema storytelling. Intertitles schmintertites! From his connection to his master to his lingering close-ups and beyond, Uggie is director Michel Hazanavicius’s purest model of physical expression. That he and his trainers have yet to receive so much as an honorary nod beyond the Palm Dog prize praising the year’s most noteworthy Cannes-ine (ahem) performance is an oversight worth correcting.
So! We all remember Melissa Leo’s campaign last year on her own behalf — not only because of its Glamour Shots production values depot and propensity for fur outerwear, but also because it worked. Leo won. An Oscar. Retrograde union and Academy rules may prohibit a similar showing for Uggie in categories historically reserved for humans,…
Full Story »Remember Oscar season 2010-11? Remember we had to keep caring about The Fighter? I can’t believe how long we had to care about The Fighter. For me it was the Cold Mountain of 2011. The louder you squawked, the better your Oscar chances. Did you wave your hands frantically a lot of the time? Did you steal your accent from an SNL table read? See you at the dais. Anyway, I’m still sore with Mark Wahlberg, and I’m approaching the international trailer for his new movie Contraband with that rancor. It comes out in January, so it has to be laughable. Let’s laugh.
Ugh, it’s too conventional to be laughable. We did get a glimpse of his good vibrations (abdominals), which is nice. But who can drop a chortle when we’re still dusting off debris from Melissa Leo’s dance with Kirk Douglas? Who can move on? We can’t. Kate Beckinsale, you seem like a nice person, and I’m sorry I’m not sorry.
Verdict: Contrabland
‘Contraband’ International Trailer [MovieWeb]
Full Story » 
Kevin Smith was tickled when his Red State star Melissa Leo won the Oscar last year, as he tells it in Movieline’s exclusive behind the scenes featurette from this week’s DVD and Blu-ray release of the provocative horror film. In the clip, meet Leo’s Sarah Cooper, the steely and devoted daughter of Red State’s fire and brimstone villain Pastor Abin Cooper, as described in Leo’s own words.
In the film, penned and directed by Smith, the religious zealots of the Five Points Church (led by Michael Parks as Abin Cooper) entrap a trio of horny teens, leading to a bloody standoff with the feds. Leo’s gun-toting Sarah Cooper, a standout performance, had been touted early on by Smith as one of a handful of potentially awards worthy performances in the film.
“I’m hoping common sense saves us a bunch of money for costly trade ads,” Smith told Movieline back in July. “When December 31st rolls around, if there aren’t five better supporting actor performances than the dramatic clinic Michael Parks operates in Red State, he should get a nod, no? Same with John Goodman. Same with Melissa Leo. Same with anybody in our cast. Why NOT them?”
Full Story »
