Interview: Alex Wolff of “HairBrained” and The Naked Brothers

Posted on February 28, 2014 at 9:00 am

Alex Wolff plays a child prodigy who goes to college at age 13 in the new comedy “HairBrained.”  He and his brother Nat formed the Naked Brothers band when he was 10, and they starred in a movie and television series based loosely on their lives as kid musicians.  Now 16, he talked to me about working with his brother and his mother and what he learned from his “HairBrained” co-star Brendan Fraser.  But of course we had to begin by talking about the enormous puff of hair that gives the movie its title.

Come on, how much of that hair was yours?

I’m sorry to rain on the parade.  I did let my hair grow for an entire year.  My classmates kept asking why I had a village on my head.  I had giant, giant hair.  It was pretty crazy.  But they did add extensions.  So it was a lot of real and a lot of extensions.  The most hilarious part about shooting the movie was I kept forgetting that I had it.  I didn’t feel it after a while.  I would go into the bathroom and wash my hands and look up at the mirror and start dying laughing because I forgot I had it.  If I had noticed it, I would have been attracted.  I think the movie works because it doesn’t draw too much attention to the hair.  About halfway through, you just accept it and forget about it.HairBrained

You’re a musician and an actor.  What is the difference between preparing for a musical performance and an acting performance?

In a music performance, it’s my brother and me, we’re ourselves.  No matter where we are, what songs we’re doing, what the set looks like, we have the same rituals backstage.  We put our thumbs together and say “One heart.”  We have all these little ritual we do before the gig, and that’s going to happen forever.  But in acting, it’s a different character every time, so every preparation is different.  Because it’s a specific character, I have to prepare in a specific way.

Your mother, Polly Draper, appeared as an actor on “Thirtysomething” and created your Naked Brothers movie and television series.  Have you learned a lot from her?

The cool part of watching my mom as director, writer, and producer gave me all the training I needed for producing, writing, directing, and acting the short films I have done.  She comes on the sets of the movies I do and gives me notes and I honestly don’t know what I would do without her.  And I have learned a bunch from my brother, Nat.  I watch him all the time because I think he is one of the best actors around.  If you’ve seen “Stuck in Love” or “Admission,” you know what I’m talking about.  I’m not biased!  I honestly think that when I see him in movies, he’s a movie star.  I always look to see what he’s doing.  And people like Ben Kingsley, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Katie Chang , and Parker Posey and Brendan Fraser — that’s the cool part of being an actor.  You get to experience all these other actors around you, see what their processes are and help me cultivate my own.

In this film, you play a kid who acts much older than his age and your character bonds with a character who acts much younger than his age, played by Brendan Fraser.  What did you learn from him?

Yes, the tables are kind of turned for those characters.  That’s what’s fun about the movie.  He’s so funny and energetic and nice to everyone, even everyone on the crew.  That’s something you don’t see with many movie stars.  He was extremely nice to every single person.  That’s something I admire so much and it really reaffirmed my doing that as well.  He showed us that to be a real artist you have to treat every single person like they’re the star of the movie.  That was awesome.

Your character keeps a lot inside.  Is that a challenge for an actor?

I related to the anger that he carried around.  There’s a certain sarcasm and he always has some remark that can outsmart anyone and he uses it as a defense.  But I am very external, so sometimes it would get to be too much when there was a lot going on around me to stay in character and I would have to just go in a room and be by myself for a second.  I couldn’t be as 100 percent social as I would normally have been on the set because I was in that character.  I had to be quiet and angry but also make myself vulnerable.  I was trying to do a lot of different stuff — I hope it comes across.

Your character is a trivia champion — how are you at trivia? 

At movie trivia I’d be pretty good, but I would not have known any of those questions.  They were one of the most hilarious parts of the movie.

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Actors Interview

Gimme Shelter

Posted on January 23, 2014 at 6:00 pm

B+
Lowest Recommended Age: Middle School
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material involving mistreatment, some drug content, violence, and language, all concerning teens
Profanity: Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drugs
Violence/ Scariness: Abuse including attack by a parent
Diversity Issues: Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters: January 24, 2014
Date Released to DVD: April 28, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN: B00HW3EJQE

vanessa hudgens gimme shelterVanessa Hudgens gives a touching and sensitive performance in this fact-based story of a pregnant, homeless teenager. Both Hudgens and writer/director Ron Krauss moved into a shelter so that they could do justice to the stories of these young women.  That dedication and integrity lifts this above the Afterschool Special formula for an affecting drama that shows us the resilience and courage of girls who have to learn very quickly to be the loving parents they never had.

Hudgens plays Agnes, who insists on being called “Apple,” for reasons we do not learn until the end of the story.  We first see her hacking off her hair, whispering reassurance to herself as she gets in a cab to run away from her shrieking, strung-out mother (a feral Rosario Dawson).  She is going to find her wealthy father (Brendan Fraser), who has never seen her before.  She briefly stays with him, but it is clear that she does not fit in with his elegant wife and pampered children.  They do not trust her and she is not ready to trust anyone.  When they find out that she is pregnant, they pressure her to have an abortion.  She runs away again.

In a hospital, recovering from an accident, she meets a kind priest (James Earl Jones), who brings her to a shelter based on Several Sources, established by Kathy DiFiore, who, as she explains in one scene, was once homeless herself and as soon as she was able to take care of herself devoted her life to taking care of young women in need of support.  DiFiore is played by the always-outstanding Ann Dowd (“Compliance,” “Garden State”), with enormous compassion and strength.  Apple has a lot to overcome, including the fury of her mother, who wants her back so she can get the welfare money Apple and her baby will receive, but most of all, she has to learn how to be a part of a family, how to trust others, and how to trust herself.  Somewhere inside her, all along, there is the hope of a different life, almost overshadowed by the fear that she does not deserve it.  Hudgens shows us Apple’s ferocity, her vulnerability, all the ways she has been beaten down and all of the strength she has to keep coming back.  The result is a story that is touching and inspiring, with photos in the closing credits to show us that happy endings are not just for fairy tales.

Parents should know that this movie’s themes include homelessness, drug abuse, child abuse, teen pregnancy, abandonment, and homelessness.  There are portrayals of a brutal attack by a parent, a car crash, and tense and angry confrontations.

Family discussion:  Why did Agnes decide to be called Apple?  What did the girls learn from reading their files?  What did she find in the shelter that she could not find anywhere else?

If you like this, try: “Riding in Cars with Boys,” “Juno,” and “Homeless to Harvard”

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Based on a true story DVD/Blu-Ray Pick of the Week Family Issues Stories about Teens

Escape from Planet Earth

Posted on February 15, 2013 at 11:15 pm

A new animation studio called Rainmaker has produced its first film, “Escape from Planet Earth,” a story of sibling rivalry and aliens.  It almost works as an amiable, if derivative time-waster for kids with a few jokes for the grown-ups, but too much is unsettlingly off-base.

On the planet Baab, where the inhabitants are blue and nearly bald, Scorch Supernova (Brendan Fraser) is a big, brash, brave, impulsive hero.  His Buzz-Lightyear knock-off spacesuit is festooned with NASCAR-style sponsor patches.  In between missions, he promotes his cereal brand, Scorchies.

His brother Gary Supernova (Rob Corddry) is the brilliant but careful, brilliant mission control specialist who makes sure Scorch knows what he has to do, where he has to be, and how to get back home.  His coffee mug says, “I (HEART) Safety.”  Gary tells Scorch to proceed with extreme caution and Scorch responds that he will proceed with style.

Scorch always calls Gary his “little brother” and Gary irritably reminds Scorch that he may be smaller but he is actually older.  Each feels unappreciated by the other.  And each secretly thinks his contribution is the more important one.

They complete a successful mission rescuing kidnapped Baab-ian babies from a planet inhabited by creatures with big teeth who thought of the babies as a delicacy.  But it put such a strain on their working relationship that they split up, just as Scorch is about to undertake his most dangerous mission of all — a trip to “the dark planet” of earth, “the only world in which evolution goes in reverse.”  More than 100 aliens have landed there and none has made it home.  Scorch, insisting he can do it on his own, arrives on earth and is immediately captured.  Gary goes after him, and he gets captured, too.  And of course they are taken to Area 51.

They are held there by General Shanker (William Shatner), where they are forced to give up their inventions — like social networking, cell phones, computer animation, and search engines — so that the general can finance some big contraption he says is to help preserve peace.  The brothers will have to learn to work together and to appreciate each other if they are to get back home.  And they will need the help of Gary’s wife Kira (Sarah Jessica Parker) and son.

There are a couple of good jokes and some of the characters are well-designed and voiced, especially Jane Lynch as a one-eyed alien who appears to be made out of lobster shells.  The prison-like setting where Scorch, Gary, and the other aliens are kept and much of the humor is reminiscent of films like “Paul,” “Monsters, Inc.” and “Monsters vs. Aliens.”  But the movie slides from the unimaginative to the weirdly creepy when the aliens are told that if they work they will be set free in a chillingly insensitive echo of the infamous Auschwitz gate.  When Gary’s boss (Jessica Alba) repeatedly insults Kira for being a stay-at-home mother, it falls flat.  So do the jokes about Gary’s being a nerd, making fun of him for being smart.  It’s one thing to have all the aliens breathe air and speak English, but having them travel back and forth between planets in less time than it takes to fly from New York to Chicago and have characters show up on Baab when they were left behind on earth three days earlier feels less like sci-fi than laziness.

Parents should know that this movie includes extended peril and action and some scary-looking aliens, some potty humor, and a parent getting crushed by a UFO.  There are some oddly insensitive jokes about nerds not having any friends and stay-at-home mothers not being capable.

Family discussion: Why was it so hard for Gary And Scorch to be nice to each other?

If you like this, try: “Monsters vs. Aliens” and “Monsters, Inc.”

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3D Action/Adventure Animation Comedy Family Issues

Furry Vengeance

Posted on August 17, 2010 at 8:06 am

Some movies are content to settle for the lowest common denominator, combining trashy ethnic stereotypes, bathroom humor and cheesy slapstick jokes in the hope of luring audiences for a cheap laugh.
But some movies aspire to go even lower. “Furry Vengeance” is that movie.
Keep your children far away from this odious film about an unscrupulous developer who is bulldozing a forest to make room for houses and ultimately, “a shopping mall with a forest theme.” Brendan Fraser plays the local manager for the developer. He has moved his
wife Tammy (played by Brooke Shields) and his son Tyler (played by Matt Prokop) from Chicago to the small town of Rocky Springs to supervise the construction of a few homes, not realizing that the master plan is to demolish the entire forest. The woodland creatures
(led by a wily raccoon) have figured out the sinister plot and launch an insurrection against Frazer and his company to protect their forest.
The movie “Idiocracy” imagines a future day when our society will be so dumbed down that we will be entertained by TV shows consisting of nothing but jokes about a man being hit in the crotch. Well, gentle readers, that day is here. Brendan Fraser not only suffers the predictable “I-landed- on the peak of a roof and it went right into my crotch” pratfall, but also the “a raccoon is biting me the crotch and won’t let go” and even some new ones: after he has been submerged in the pond Fraser announces, “I need to remove a leech from my no-no zone.” Then there’s the time his woodland foes adjust his lawn sprinkler to spray him in the crotch and the embarrassed Frazer announces ” look at Mr. Pee-Pee pants.”
It’s hard to think of who might not be offended by this wretched movie. Frazer’s ruthless Asian boss from the home office talks in a screechy sing-song voice, relies on calculators, electronic gadgets and hand sanitizers. The equally unscrupulous money men from India fare no better (“If my Indian investors wanted to be reminded of pollution they would stay home in Calcutta. Stinko!”) And of course, the movie doesn’t miss the opportunity to make fun of the difference between American Indians and citizens of India (“Wigwam? Teepee? Squaw?”) Then there’s the stereotyped Mexican laborer at the construction site, or the elderly teacher who is senile and annoys everybody with her slow pace and long lapses.
The entire movie is speckled with excrement, both literally and figuratively. Brendan Fraser gets trapped in a port-a-potty which rolls over and over and gets turned upside down. Birds with extreme digestive problems dive-bomb their enemies and spatter them with bird poop. When the Indian financier is about to sign the contract, a big wad of excrement spatters on the document and a discussion ensues about who is going to clean it off. And when it seems the prop department might have run out of excrement, skunks spew thick clouds of noxious fumes and animals spray other bodily fluids on their beleaguered foes.
Gender is treated in an equally appalling way. Fraser, with soap in his eyes, reaches out for a towel and ends up drying his face with his wife’s bra, which then unaccountably slips onto his arms so that it looks like he has been wearing it. At this moment, the woodland creatures raise the curtains so that the construction workers outside believe Frazer is a cross-dresser. The animals further cement this idea when they trick Fraser into wearing his wife’s pink exercise outfit (with the words “yum yum” written on the butt) out in public.
Normally, I try to find something good to say about each movie I review. Dear readers, I am speechless.

(more…)

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Comedy Fantasy

Extraordinary Measures

Posted on May 11, 2010 at 8:00 am

Harrison Ford has his best role in years as a testy scientist who listens to classic rock as he works all night in the lab and who may just have the key to a crucial medicine for a disease that kills children. Brendan Fraser plays John Crowley, the father of two children with a rare genetic disorder called Pompe disease that weakens muscles, enlarges organs, and had a life expectancy of less than eight years. Crowley quit his job as an executive in a pharmaceutical company to start a biotechnology firm to support the most promising research into a treatment for the disease.

That research was being done by Dr. Robert Stonehill (Ford), a twice-divorced, sardonic, and very stubborn professor. Crowley offers him the chance to get the resources he needs to test his theories. He raises the money for a start-up and handles the business side while Stonehill cranks up the Grateful Dead and insults people.

Ford, who bought the rights to the story when he read about it in the newspaper, produced the film and his long-time Hollywood experience and sure sense of story-telling shows. Screenwriter Robert Nelson Jacobs (“Chocolat,” “The Shipping News”) gently streamlined the story to shape the narrative. The Stonehill character is based on several different scientists who worked on the research and some of the most dramatic moments are shorthand summaries of real-life developments. But all of this is in aid of a powerful story that is pro-life in the broadest and most profound sense. Crowley has to ask himself what is best for his children — to be with them as much as possible while they are alive or to leave them for 20-hour days in the hopes of finding treatment that could keep them alive longer.

Ford inhabits the role the way his character inhabits his well-worn jeans and t-shirt. He knows this guy. He has no illusions but he likes him and he makes us like him, too. Fraser, too often underrated as an actor, manages to make Crowley inspiring without making him unbelievable, especially in the scenes with the children and with Keri Russell as his wife. Jacobs’ script skirts the usual tensions. The Crowleys have some agonizing moments, but they never question their commitment to their children and each other. The children are played by Meredith Droeger, who has a nice dry humor, and Diego Velazquez, who has beautifully expressive eyes. Their healthy brother John Jr. (Sam M. Hall) has a lovely moment when he shows how devoted he is to helping his siblings. And Courtney B. Vance is as always most welcome as the father of two other children with Pompe, making a strong impression in his brief time on screen.

Because the tension is between the Crowleys and the disease and between Crowley and Stonehill and Crowley and the bureaucrats and money people, the story can present the family as functional in the face of the greatest possible tensions and terrors. In the past, we’ve seen Ford fight the Empire and the Nazis and Fraser take on mummies, but in this story they take on something even more scary and the result is touching and inspiring.

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Based on a true story Drama Family Issues
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