ParaNorman: Anna Kendrick

Posted on August 14, 2012 at 9:00 am

Anna Kendrick (“Camp,” “Up in the Air”) plays Norman’s teenage sister in “ParaNorman.” She ends up going along with him on a wild zombie-hunting adventure. At Comic-Con, she talked about making the film, and when asked about her favorite prop, she pulled out her cell phone to show us a picture of it.  Norman’s friend Neil is mourning the loss of his dog, and in his locker there is a memorial note with a paw print.  It says, “Bub is great, understands me, barks at bullies.”  She says it still makes her tear up to look at it.

She visited the set after the movie was completed and was amazed by “All the details you don’t really see in the movie,” how meticulous and careful every part of every scene was designed to be.   She loved playing the exasperated teenager.  “I can tap into my inner obnoxious person and it is so fun to play somebody so annoying and do that voice.  I liked all the vocalization and exasperated sighs.”  Like Kodi, she enjoyed the chance to be very exaggeratedly physical in the voice recording sessions without worrying about how she looked.  “It was really freeing to not be worried about how idiotic you look.”  She and Casey Affleck were together on what was the first voice acting experience for both of them.  She appreciated the chance to learn with him, “and by the end of the day we were in a competition to see who could make a greater fool of themselves.”  But she joked that working with Kodi “made me feel worse about being Courtney” because it was harder to be mean to him.

 

Related Tags:

 

Actors

Justin Theroux: Who Is Jennifer Aniston’s Fiance?

Posted on August 13, 2012 at 6:22 pm

Jennifer Aniston is engaged!  I am a big fan of her fiancé, Justin Theroux.  Theroux is a talented actor who has appeared in the mystifying art-house melodrama, Mulholland Drive (as an arrogant director), in the underrated indie romantic comedy The Baxter (as the too-good-to-be-true-but-he-is romantic rival for the affections of the lead character’s girlfriend), and in serious historical drama (as John Hancock in the HBO series, John Adams), and an animated movie for kids (he provided the voice of Megamind‘s father).

He comes from a family of writers (his uncle is the distinguished travel writer, Paul Theroux), and he co-wrote the outrageous Ben Stiller film, Tropic Thunder and he wrote the screenplay for Iron Man 2.  I didn’t like the film he and Aniston made together, Wanderlust, but I liked both of their performances.  Here’s hoping for a happy ever after for them both, on and off the screen.

Related Tags:

 

Actors Writers

Opening This Week: ParaNorman, Odd Life of Timothy Green, Expendables 2, and Sparkle

Posted on August 13, 2012 at 4:08 pm

We don’t get many PG movies, so it is really unusual to see two in the same week, especially welcome as they are directed at the audience most overlooked by Hollywood, 8-14 year olds and their families.  “ParaNorman” is from”Coraline’s’ LAIKA  studios, and they have mastered the art and craft of stop-motion animation, perfectly suited to this story of a little boy who can talk to ghosts.  That talent may make him an outcast at home and school but it comes in handy when zombies attack the town.  “The Odd Life of Timothy Green” is a fable about a couple who cannot have children and so bury a list of the qualities and talents they would wish for in a child in their garden as a way of saying goodbye to their hope of being parents.  A 10 year old who seems to have grown out of the garden shows up bearing an uncanny resemblance to the child they wished for, but he has some unexpected extras, including green leaves growing from his ankles.

Also this week we have Whitney Houston’s last film, the remake of the Irene Cara musical “Sparkle.”  And the 80’s and 90’s action heroes are back in “The Expendables 2.”  Stallone, Willis, Lundgren, Couture, Li, Schwarzenegger, Statham, and Norris — and a lot of explosives.  That one is not screening for critics, but I plan to buy a ticket when it opens so I can tell you all about it.  Stay tuned!

Related Tags:

 

Opening This Week

ParaNorman: Kodi Smit-McPhee

Posted on August 13, 2012 at 3:36 pm

Kodi Smit-McPhee (“The Road,” “Let Me In”) provides the voice for Norman, the kid who can see ghosts, in the new stop-motion animated film “ParaNorman.” At Comic-Con, he sat behind a figure of his character from the movie.  One of the biggest challenges for the film-makers was puberty — Kodi’s voice changed while they were making the movie.  “We just had to record as much as we could, all the grunts and stuff, and by the last session, the Norman voice was gone.  It’s stuck with that character forever.”

I asked him which of the props from the movie he would like to have in real life.  “The car,” he said.  “They are so cool because everything they made in that world, the Norman world, there are no straight lines.  It’s all off.  Even when he takes off the mask, the eyes, there’s one big and one small.  It’s all very weird and different.”  He visited the set and said it was “mind-blowing,” a warehouse with people working on 50 scenes being shot, with almost imperceptibly tiny movements between each shot, while he was “chilling in the studio.”  “You have to get your emotions out through your voice,” he said.  “So you do crazier things while recording than you would on set.  You don’t worry about what your face looks like.  And they have a camera on you all the time so they can take your facial expression back to the character.”  He especially appreciated the chance to do recording sessions with the other actors, which does not happen on many animated films.

Related Tags:

 

Actors
THE MOVIE MOM® is a registered trademark of Nell Minow. Use of the mark without express consent from Nell Minow constitutes trademark infringement and unfair competition in violation of federal and state laws. All material © Nell Minow 1995-2024, all rights reserved, and no use or republication is permitted without explicit permission. This site hosts Nell Minow’s Movie Mom® archive, with material that originally appeared on Yahoo! Movies, Beliefnet, and other sources. Much of her new material can be found at Rogerebert.com, Huffington Post, and WheretoWatch. Her books include The Movie Mom’s Guide to Family Movies and 101 Must-See Movie Moments, and she can be heard each week on radio stations across the country.

Website Designed by Max LaZebnik