One of the most eagerly anticipated movies of the year is “The Hunger Games,” based on the international blockbuster trilogy about a dystopian world in which teenagers compete in a deadly reality show. The stars of the movie are going to meet with fans in mallsin Los Angeles, Atlanta, Seattle, Phoenix, Dallas, Miami, Chicago, and Minneapolis on a tour sponsored by the Microsoft Store, China Glaze, and h2O Spring Water. Each stop will include a Q&A event where fans will have a chance to ask questions of their favorite cast members and participate in giveaways, with a chance to win a limited-edition Hunger Games HP Folio PC from the Microsoft Store or additional Hunger Games gear. You can RSVP to the Mall Tour Events on Facebook to set a reminder.
Saturday, March 3rd – LOS ANGELES
Director Gary Ross and stars Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth will appear at the Westfield Century City.
Tuesday, March 6th– ATLANTA
Stars Liam Hemsworth, Leven Rambin, Dayo Okeniyi, Amandla Stenberg and Jack Quaid will appear at the JW Marriott Atlanta Buckhead.
Wednesday, March 7th
PHOENIX
Stars Liam Hemsworth, Leven Rambin, Dayo Okeniyi and Jack Quaid will appear at the Scottsdale Fashion Square
CHICAGO
Stars Josh Hutcherson, Isabelle Fuhrman and Jacqueline Emerson will appear at the Westfield Fox Valley
Thursday, March 8th
MIAMI
Stars Jennifer Lawrence, Alexander Ludwig and Amandla Stenberg will appear at the Westfield Broward
DALLAS
Stars Josh Hutcherson, Isabelle Fuhrman and Jacqueline Emerson will appear at the Galleria Dallas
Friday, March 9th – MINNEAPOLIS
Stars Jennifer Lawrence, Alexander Ludwig, Amandla Stenberg, Josh Hutcherson, Isabelle Fuhrman and Jacqueline Emerson will appear at the Mall of America
Saturday, March 10th – SEATTLE
Stars Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson will appear at the University Village
I spoke to Martin Sheen when The Way opened in theaters last year. So it was a special treat to speak to the writer and director of the film about its DVD release — Emilio Estevez, Sheen’s son, who also appears briefly in the film.
I interviewed your father and, he spoke about you as a director so wonderfully that I’ve really been looking forward to talking to you about it.
All lies and half-truths, no doubt.
Your father impressed me tremendously because as he walked into the room in the hotel, before he said hello to me, he first said hello to the staff of the hotel, and was so warm and wonderful to them. I just think he’s a very special guy.
He is indeed. He is indeed. He is one of a kind.
What is the challenge of working with him as a director? He said that you were tougher on him than any other director.
Well I didn’t get him get away with his crap. You know, my dad really hasn’t had a lead in a film for quite a while, and when that happens you oftentimes think “Well, as an actor I’m only going to get this moment and I’m only going to get that moment so I better give it my all.” But I had to keep reminding him that we had an entire film to track his character. He didn’t have to give it all up in the first act. We had a long long way to go. And we needed to dole out this emotion judiciously. So, for my part, I just had to keep reminding him: “We’re not there yet, we’re not there yet, we’re not there yet.” And it it took him a while to get it. But I think it’s a it’s a really well-paced, very quietly nuanced performance that could very easily could’ve been scenery chewing. I had to keep reminding him that you’re playing a guy that is not a citizen of the world. He’ll become that. Let’s just remind ourselves that this is a guy that has two hours to evolve. And you have to trust me that, I’ll get you there.
As you were writing The Way, were there elements of your father’s ability as an actor or his personality that you wanted to bring out that you thought had not been shown in some of his previous performances?
No, not necessarily. It was a role that was so unlike who he is. This is a guy who was a curmudgeon. My dad is certainly not that. He shakes everyone’s hand. He got a nickname while we were on on tour this last year. We call him the fanstalker, which is a nickname my son came up with. If a fan didn’t get a photo he made sure that, they were acknowledged and did. So he’d go out of his way to make sure, everyone was accommodated. Meanwhile, you know of course the tour’s falling hours and days behind schedule.
Talk to me a little bit about some of the other casting. I thought you chose the other performers very well.
Deborah Kara Unger was a friend of the producer David Alexanian. I met her while I was writing the screenplay. She asked what I was working on, and just sort through a series of conversations with her, I began to to tailor the role for her, for who she is. By the time we got around to getting ready to shoot, she was available and willing to play that part. Jimmy Nesbit, uh the character of Jack, came through more conventional channels. He was somebody that an agent had pitched to the casting director in LA. I saw a film that he did called “Five Minutes of Heaven” with Liam Neesson, and I thought, “Wow, this guy’s terrific.” He and I had a couple of conversations on the phone and I said, “Listen, he’s, he’s written as a Brit but let’s play him as an Irishman. So you don’t have to affect an accent.” He said great. The role of Yorick, or the role of Joost really, played by Yorick, was a bit different. We were about eight days out from starting the film. And David. our producer. actually found five guys on the internet and said, “You’ve gotta pick one.” So we, set up a meeting to have Yorick fly in to Madrid to meet us. And, he was given the wrong information and flew to Barcelona instead. so that. It further delayed us, but he ended up sorting it out and he showed up in Madrid the first thing he said he said “Man, I’m so sorry but for what it’s worth, it wasn’t a total loss. I had the most amazing landing in Barcelona.” And I said, “I think we have our Joost.”
What have you learned from some of the directors you worked with as an actor, that helped you as a director?
I’ve been fortunate to work with some great directors and some not great directors as well. I think you learn just as much from the bad ones as you do from, from the good ones. Robert Wise was the director of “Sound of Music” and “West Side Story.” He was a friend of mine. He has a real understanding of film and film history, so he was my executive producer and my mentor in the first film that I, directed and I learned a lot from him. He was just a very generous man. And he taught me about preparation. And anticipation, and communication. Those were the three most important words that a director could ever know. Really is it is all in the prep. We spent a couple of months on the Camino, every day just preparing the hell out of this movie. And by the time we got back to shoot in late September, I knew the Camino better than most painters.
Why, is it, in in 2012 so many centuries that these journeys are still so important to us? That these old-fashioned, walk one step at a time journeys are still so important?
Aren’t they really a metaphor for life? The path to Camino — are you walking in integrity? Are you walking in truth? Isn’t it really our first instinct, after breathing, and and eating, isn’t one of our primary instincts is to, to get up on two legs? And move forward? And take that step? That’s a natural yearning, that we all have. The fact that, that people,continue to go out, and continue to do, whether it’s this pilgrimage or Mecca or any of the other pilgrimages around the globe, they are an intense mediation. An intense period of time where you are forced to look inward and we are currently living in a world that doesn’t really celebrate that. You have to fight for that. You have to fight for that time.
In the world of this film, American spies work in stylish and luxurious L.A. offices and live in cool apartments that look like the ads in Maxim with people toasting each other with expensive vodka. One of the apartments is underneath a swimming pool, so the occupant can look up at the way the light plays through the clear blue water as luscious lovelies swim by. And that’s the believable part.
Chris Pine plays FDR and Tom Hardy plays Tuck, quip-spouting spies, who are always going to elegant parties for glamorous undercover missions and exchanging purportedly witty barbs as they chase the bad guys. FDR (really?) is the playa and Tuck is the sensitive divorced dad. It’s a big-time bro-mance with such blurred boundaries that they seem to have the same mother, even though Tuck is British. At a family party, Rosemary Harris (“Spider-Man’s” Aunt May) gently chides them both for not producing grandchildren – and then strangely dismisses the fact that Tuck already has a son, who does not count any more, presumably because of the divorce or maybe because no one cared enough to check back to the other pages of the script.
Lauren (Reese Witherspoon) is a consumer products tester who has not dated for a while. She meets Tuck via an online match-up site and – another example of how completely out of date this movie is – she meets FDR in a DVD rental store. All of a sudden, she has gone from not dating anyone to dating two guys at once. And her specialty is product testing, even though she is a good girl who gets the flutters at the idea, egged on by her friend (Chelsea Handler), she decides to date them both. When they find out, they become intensely competitive in a way that is supposed to be charming and funny but in reality is just extremely stalker-ish and strongly suggests that she is just the hapless proxy for their intense attachment to one another, they use all of their training and resources to subvert and spy on each other. One is getting too close to having sex with Lauren? Bring out the tranquilizer darts. Sure, why not spend the billion dollar technology that is supposed to be trained on terrorists to eavesdrop on each other’s dates? We are supposed to find it endearing, but I was horrified.
Parents should know that this film includes action violence and peril with guns, chases, and explosions, sexual humor — some crude — and non-explicit situations, and strong language.
Family discussion: How did Lauren’s professional background affect the way she evaluated FDR and Tuck? Which man was more honest with her?
A spirited young heroine and an enchantingly beautiful setting make a story of friendship and courage beguiling in Studio Ghibli’s adaptation of Mary Norton’s popular series of “Borrower” books. First published in the mid-1950’s, the stories are on based on a fanciful but entirely plausible explanation for the disappearance of small household items. Norton says are taken by “Borrowers,” tiny people who live inside the walls and beneath the floorboards. We never see them because they are terrified of what they call “human beans.”
The story begins as two big changes are taking place in a charming country cottage. A four-inch 14-year-old named Arrietty (Bridgit Mendler) is finally old enough to embark on her first borrowing expedition, in search of sugar and facial tissue. She is the only daughter of stalwart provider Pod and anxious homemaker Homily (real-life sitcom star spouses Will Arnett and Amy Poehler), who fear they may be the last Borrowers left in the world. And a frail “bean” boy named Shawn (David Henrie) arrives at the cottage, where he will be cared for until he has surgery.
Both the human and the Borrower children will ignore the warnings of the adults around them to learn about each other’s worlds and then to become friends.
It seems only fair that a story about borrowing should itself borrow so seamlessly across borders of time, geography, and culture. Norton’s British mid-century story, Ghibli’s Japanese animation, and American distributor Disney-selected voice talent all complement settings that are not so much regionless as an idyllic pan-global amalgamation. Less universally appealing is the script. It is more linear than many Studio Ghibli films but the dialog is stiff and the jokes are clunky, even delivered by reliable comic actors Arnett, Poehler, and Carol Burnett as the housekeeper who brings in exterminators to capture the Borrowers.
Studio Ghibli and screenwriter/producer Hayao Miyazaki are justly famous as masters of gorgeous hand-painted watercolor backgrounds invoking an enticing vision of lush gardens and inviting living spaces. Instead of the hyper-reality of digitally-created CGI images in most of today’s animated films, the hand-painted world of Arrietty is dreamy but tactile, with ladybugs shaking fat dew drops from velvety leaves and an exquisitely furnished dollhouse that is of interest to both the large and small residents of the cottage. But the backgrounds are so gorgeously painted that by comparison the characters can look under-drawn, like paper dolls with large but unexpressive, Keane-like eyes.
The animators have a lot of fun with scale, as we go back and forth between the “bean”-sized world and the tiny replica inhabited by the Borrowers. Each image is filled with captivating detail as we see items from one world re-contextualized in another. In their own little quarters, “borrowed” items are cleverly repurposed by Pod and Homily with detail that makes us wish for a pause button. One sugar cube seems small in a bowl on the “bean’s” table. But for Arrietty, it is nearly as wide as her shoulders, as a grub is the size of an armadillo, a rat is the size of a lion, and a pin becomes a sword. The angles are superbly used to establish the perspective of the tiny Borrowers. Scaling the “bean” kitchen table looks vertiginous.
What is most effective is the way the sense of peaceful shelter and retreat in the country setting contrasts with the precariousness of the situations faced by Shawn and Arrietty. He soberly faces the possibility that he might not survive his surgery and she risks her life whenever she leaves her home. The drama is deepened, too, by the contrast between Shawn’s physical fragility and Arrietty’s robust energy. He can hardly walk across the garden without stopping to catch his breath while she rappels the household furniture as though she is scaling Everest. But both learn from each other and their tentative steps toward friendship are sweetly expressed.
Parents should know that this G-rated film includes a seriously ill child who discusses the possibility that he might not survive surgery and some moments of peril.
Family discussion: What do Shawn and Arrietty learn from one another? How is “borrowing” different from stealing? How do Pod and Homily show their different ways of looking at the world?
If you like this, try: “The Indian in the Cupboard.” “My Neighbor Totoro,” and the Borrower books by Mary Norton
