Tag Archive for 'Drama'

How to Watch: “Eat Pray Love”

Published on August 13, 2010 in Movies and Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: Drama.

Step 1: Yawn. While Eat Pray Love has some enlightening, touching, visually breathtaking moments, you still end up praying it would end.

Step 2: Eat. The film is based on the hugely popular real-life travel diary by Elizabeth Gilbert, a divorced, depressed writer/journalist who took a year off to travel around the globe in hopes of finding some kind of meaning to her life. Yeah, not the most exciting subject for a movie, but casting Julia Roberts in the role at least adds some weight. We start with the Eat part. In the first leg of the trip, Roberts as Gilbert jets to Rome to live, breath and yes, eat, the Italian culture. And eat. And eat some more. It’s definitely the best part of the movie, only because it’s great to see a woman consume such great looking food with abandon. But at some point, you realize you’ve been watching the movie for over an hour and yet, she’s still in Italy. There’s two more countries to go, for chrissakes. That’s when the boredom starts to set in.

Step 3: Pray. Gilbert visits an ashram in India to find peace and tranquility – except she can’t quit fidgeting and thinking about all manner of things. Plus, it’s really hot and the food isn’t all that good. If I were her, at some point I’d say screw it and go back to Rome. Alas, she sticks it out, meeting a fellow troubled American (Richard Jenkins), who helps her to become enlightened. Ho hum.

Step 4: Love. And what a beautiful place to fall into it. The scenes in Bali are spectacular, as you can imagine, and so is gazing at the hunky, if slightly miscast, Javier Bardem, who plays Gilbert’s new love interest Felipe. Problem is, the two of them have zero chemistry, which sort of dampens things. Gilbert had more zing with that gorgeous plate of spaghetti. Like I said, GO BACK TO ITALY.

Step 5: Act. Roberts could possibly be nominated for an Oscar, depending on how well the film does at the box office (that’s a gamble) and whether they’ll be more than five more great performances by women in the next five months (kinda doubtful). In other words, Roberts could get a nod by default, which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. You can’t really blame Eat Pray Love‘s tedium on her performance. She does her very best to carry the movie on her capable shoulders, but her character is, well, kind of irritating. You’re never quite sure why she’s so unhappy, just that she is, or why she whines so much, just that she does. Jenkins might be the only other performance worthy of a nod, as the former alcoholic from Texas who finds his inner whatever it is and whips Gilbert into shape.

Step 6: Read. You can’t entirely blame co-writer/director Ryan Murphy, of Nip/Tuck and Glee fame, either. I’m pretty sure the source material was difficult to translate, especially when you want to please the fans of the book while still making a compelling movie. But maybe Eat Pray Love should have just stayed on the page, so readers can put the book down, maybe fly to Naples for a slice of pizza, maybe ride an elephant in India and then pick it up to read a little later. Maybe on a beach in Bali.

Level of difficulty in watching Eat Pray Love: Kinda hard — to keep your eyes open.

How to Watch: “The White Ribbon”

Published on January 31, 2010 in Movies and Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: Drama, Foreign, Period Film.

Step 1: Chalk up The White Ribbon as one of those German art films, in which the images are stark and minimalistic, the action languid and slow – and little to nothing is either revealed nor resolved. Coming from German auteur Michael Haneke (Funny Games, The Piano Teacher), it’s all very intellectual and thought-provoking and makes a statement about oppression and feudalism in a pre-WWI German village. But the film is also often maddeningly dull and puzzling for no apparent reason besides being self-indulgent art for art’s sake.

Step 2: Set the mood. The White Ribbon takes place in a small, rural village, in which a wealthy land Baron (Ulrich Tukur) employs over half the town to harvest his crops. There’s the hard-headed Steward (Josef Bierbichler), who tends to the grounds; the desperate Farmer (Branko Samarovski), who depends on the Baron for work; and then the other villagers who compose the other half, including the stern Pastor (Burghart Klaußner) and the lascivious Doctor (Rainer Bock). Each of these village men all have rather large families, with many children, and the film’s sadistic, central core comes from what happens to those children behind closed doors.

Step 3: Suffer the children. As narrated to us by the only seemingly kindhearted man in the village, the Schoolteacher (Christian Friedel), he describes a series of incidents one summer that set things in motion: The Doctor falls off his horse and breaks his collarbone after the animal is tripped by a thin wire; the Farmer’s wife dies when she falls through rotten floor boards on the Baron’s estate; the Baron’s only child is found beaten by a cane. Then, as Haneke peels back the layers, we begin to see what life is really like in this village, witnessing the abuse and the oppression, and watching how these creepy, Children of the Corn-looking kids may or may not be acting out.

Step 4: Wonder why nothing’s happening. Of course, writer/director Michael Haneke’s masterful craftsmanship is something to appreciate and admire, especially in his black-and-white vision with Ribbon. The imagery is both stunning and startling. Haneke also obviously gets a kick out of exploring humanity’s cruel nature, as evident in his other films, including Funny Games (maybe he has some issues to work out). There are moments in the film in which you feel something truly dreadful is going to happen, something will be resolved, but then nothing. Finally, at the end, the Schoolteacher tells us WWI has begun and bang, we’re out. Huh? Still, The White Ribbon is the type of film that picks up awards, so its recent Golden Globe win wasn’t surprising and neither would an Oscar win for Best Foreign Language.

Level of difficulty in watching The White Ribbon: Really hard. I’m just not the kind of movie watcher who enjoys being wrapped in existentialistic ennui – or in this case, existentialistic sadism – just for the sake of watching an art film. I left the theater, shaking my head, mumbling, “I sat through over two hours of this for nothing. I need to go take a nap.”

How to Go Back to “Wall Street”

Published on January 29, 2010 in Movies and Trailers. 0 Comments Tags: Drama.

Will Oliver Stone’s Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleep be more relevant in this age of big banks failing and whatnot? Does the credo “Greed is good” still apply? Can Michael Douglas really pull off the Gordon Gekko act again? Can you take Shia LaBeouf seriously as a Wall Street whiz kid? Actually, from this teaser trailer of the sequel, LaBeouf comes off looking fairly dapper, as does Douglas with his cigar. Check it out:

How to Watch: “Edge of Darkness”

Published on January 29, 2010 in Movies and Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: Drama, Thriller.

Step 1: Leap off the Edge. On the surface, Edge of Darkness might seem like your typical violent revenge thriller, but it actually has some intriguing layers and surprising twists that get your full attention.

Step 2: Get revenge. Of course, one of those layers is the film’s star, Mel Gibson, who returns to the big screen after an eight year absence, looking a little worse for wear but still very commanding. He plays Tom Craven, a veteran Boston cop, who tragically watches his beloved 24-year-old daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) get blasted by a shotgun right in front of him. Everyone thinks HE was supposed to be the intended target, being a detective and all, but Craven doesn’t buy it and soon begins investigating the how and the why. What he uncovers shows him aspects about his only daughter’s life he never knew: She had a boyfriend; She worked for a top-secret nuclear facility; and most importantly, she was trying to expose something potentially damaging on a national level.

Step 3: Think outside the box. This last layer, as it were, sets Edge of Darkness apart from the usual grieving-ticked-off dad-looking-to-kill-all-those-involved-in-daughter’s-death scenario because the film is actually an adaptation of a 1985 award-winning BBC miniseries of the same name. Helmed by Martin Campbell, the miniseries’ original director, you get the sense they tried to cram as much of the six-part miniseries into a two-hour movie as they could. But award-winning screenwriters William Monahan (The Departed) and Andrew Bovell still manage to create a cohesive storyline. There’s plenty of revengeful acts and bloodshed to be had, but the story becomes as much a murder mystery with political and conspiratorial undertones as anything else. As Craven starts to dig, he turns up some ugly stones, including the nuclear facility’s Machiavellian chief Bennett (played with relish by Danny Huston, one of the go-to actors to play villains), as well as a British assassin named Jedburgh (portrayed brilliantly by the always good Ray Winstone) – a mysterious, if slightly menacing, piece to the whole puzzle. Listen carefully when he’s on screen, though; I’m sure I missed something, due to his soft tones and accent.

Step 4: Act what you know. Speaking of accents, Gibson does a fair job with the whole Boston cadence but does lapse here and there. It doesn’t really matter, though. Gibson knew Edge of Darkness was the right kind of project to make his big-screen comeback with and eases into familiar territory, shooting guns, running bad guys down and delivering lines like “I’m the guy with nothing to lose.” It’s all vintage Mel – and honestly, it’s not that bad to have him back. He also has a nice rapport with Serbian actress Novakovic, for the brief time they have together as father and daughter. They are convincing, which, in turn, makes what Craven does understandable. Unlike say Taken (which coincidentally was released this time last year), another father-daughter relationship that isn’t nearly as believable, even though Liam Neeson kicks even harder ass than Gibson.

Level of difficulty in watching Edge of Darkness: Pretty easy. It’s definitely a compelling thriller, but don’t count on Mel Gibson to regain his A-list stardom right away. He’ll need to earn it again.

How to Look First at “The Ghost Writer”

Published on January 28, 2010 in Movie Stills and Movies. 0 Comments Tags: Drama, Political.

Before Roman Polanski was put on house arrest in Switzerland, he was finishing up his latest flick The Ghost Writer, starring Ewan MacGregor and Pierce Brosnan. It’s about a writer who helps a former Prime Minister finish his memoirs and ends up uncovering some nasty secrets that puts his life in danger. Here’s the movie’s poster:

Sounds somewhat intriguing, but what makes it more so is that it’s from Polanski. He’s the draw, for me anyway.

How to Watch: “The Lovely Bones”

Published on January 11, 2010 in Movies and Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: Drama, Fantasy.

Step 1: Try to adapt. While some book-to-screen adaptations hit the mark, others miss it. Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones sort of falls into the latter category. Yes, it’s a beautiful, thoughtful film, full of dark mystery and life affirmations, yet somehow it’s lacking a certain inner strength.

Step 2: Admit it ain’t easy. Jackson himself said that there can never be a perfect adaptation of a book. He says, “Alice Sebold’s novel IS The Lovely Bones – that is the work that has everything in it, every character, every subplot and that’s the way you should experience the story in its most pure form. A film adaptation of ANY book, especially The Lovely Bones, is only ever going to be a souvenir, an impression of aspects of the book.” Fair enough. Alice Sebold’s novel truly does transcend and is nothing less than spectacular, in my opinion. Yet, it is also a very cerebral novel, which makes it even more difficult to translate to screen. Basically, the entire story is told by from the mind of a young 14-year-old girl, Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), who, after being brutally raped and murdered, looks down from her heaven and tries to help her family catch her killer (Stanley Tucci), as well as try to stop them from falling apart. Her father (Mark Wahlberg) obsesses over solving her murder, while her mother (Rachel Weisz) simply wants to escape – and her younger sister Lindsay (Rose McIver) ends up living the life Susie wishes she could have had. While Jackson, along with longtime writing partners Fran Walsh and Phillip Boyens, gather as many “impressions” as they can to fit into a two-hour movie, the result comes off a tad superficial.

Step 3: Realize part of the problem also stems from the some of the performances. Wahlberg, for example, doesn’t dig nearly deep enough to aptly portray the grieving father. To be fair, this role really isn’t suited for him; he’s much better kicking ass. I wonder, though, what Ryan Gosling, who was originally cast as Mr. Salmon, would have done with the part. Switch it up, I’d imagine. The usually wonderful Weisz also sort of phones this one in. Thankfully, the lovely Ronan, who was soooo good in her Oscar-nominated performance in Atonement, does a nice job bringing Susie to life, as it were. She captures Susie’s wonderment on her new environs and sadness in having to watch her family struggle, while Susan Sarandon provides the comic relief as the boozy, chain-smoking Grandma Lynn, who comes in to take care of the family when Mom checks out. But the real plus in The Lovely Bones is Tucci’s take on the terrifying Mr. Harvey, who is so much more menacing in all the things he doesn’t say. If anyone were to get an Oscar nod, it would be him – and rightly so. With this and his terrific turn in Julie & Julia earlier this summer, Tucci may finally have one of those years.

Step 4: Stick with what you do best. There’s no doubt Jackson knows what he’s doing tackling the technical aspects, especially when it comes to creating Susie’s “in-between” world, in which things from her subconscious spring to life, either by the actions of those still alive connected to her or from her own hopes and dreams. Creating fantastical tableaus is what Jackson lives for, so I wouldn’t expect anything less. My favorite image is of giant glass bottles, with sailing ships inside, crashing on a beach, just as Susie’s father is destroying all the very same miniature models he built with his daughter. Overall, Jackson does his best in adapting The Lovely Bones, a task that would be difficult for any director, seriously. If he isn’t able to quite capture the book’s magical qualities, at least you know going in it’ll be a worthwhile cinematic experience.

Level of difficulty in watching The Lovely Bones: Easy, but just not as good as the book.

How to Watch: “Crazy Heart”

Published on December 23, 2009 in Movies and Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: Drama.

Step 1: Great role, so-so movie. While it showcases Jeff Bridges’ extraordinary talents and delivers a couple of decent country music tunes, Crazy Heart is basically a retread that doesn’t leave much of a lasting impression.

Step 2: Don’t drink too hard. Bridges plays Bad Blake, a once-great country music star whose career and relationships have gone sour due to his hard-drinking, alienating life. He’s now on the road, playing at local piano bars and bowling alleys in order to make some cash – and throwing up in the alley between sets. His agent begs him to write some new music for an album, but Blake’s creativity well has run dry. That is, until he meets and woos Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a journalist and single mom who captures Blake’crazy heart. Suddenly, things start to look up, including getting an opening act gig for country superstar Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), an up and comer Blake once mentored when he was first starting out. All of Blake’s bad habits prove too hard to kick, however, and soon his relationship with Jean starts to slide downhill. This becomes a blessing in disguise because Blake begins to pour his heart out through song – and rebuild his life.

Step 3: Sound all too familiar? It should. There have been so many movies about grizzled, alcoholic artists who either bounce back or die trying. One that comes to mind similar to Crazy Heart is the 1983 Tender Mercies, which starred Robert Duvall in his Oscar-winning performance as a, you guessed it, former country singing star who hits rock bottom only to come back through the love of a woman. Ironically, Duvall produced Crazy Heart and has a small role as Blake’s one and only friend, an old coot who runs a bar. I actually double checked Duvall’s character name in Heart to see if it was the same guy from Mercies. They aren’t the same, but it would have been kinda cool if they were, don’t you think? It’s obvious Duvall loves this type of story and has an affinity for country music. And even if Crazy Heart is based on a novel, first-time writer/director Scott Cooper must have had the same nostalgic feelings for Tender Mercies as Duvall – which is fine, really. The plot devices work, even if they feel overdone.

Step 4: Get to the real point of doing this kind of movie: a) come up with some good music and b) hand over a choice role to a veteran actor able to portray it. I wouldn’t say this is the best performance Bridges has ever given (it might be a toss up between The Fabulous Baker Boys or Fearless for me), but I’m thinking career Oscar at this point. He totally nails Bad Blake – all at once quiet, sad, drunk, fat, sweaty AND sings all his own songs. The other stand-outs are: Farrell as Tommy, who isn’t the cliché diva type but genuinely respects his mentor and really only wants to see him back in top form; and Ryan Bingham, a young 28-year-old country songwriter who, along with T-Bone Burnett, composes Crazy Heart‘s music, including the great song “The Weary Kind.” It could easily end up winning the Oscar for Best Song (if they include the category). I met Bingham at the Crazy Heart press junket, and he seems to have packed about 60 years into his short life, most evident in his voice when he himself sings “The Weary Kind” at the end credits.

Level of difficulty in watching Crazy Heart: Not too hard. The one thing you might take home after you see the film is Bingham’s gravelly pipes singing a really sad song.

How to Interview: Jeff Bridges

Published on December 16, 2009 in Interviews and Movies. 0 Comments Tags: Drama.

crazy_heart_01 As an old school, hard-living country singer named Bad Blake in Crazy Heart, Jeff Bridges gives yet another solid performance, playing a man who was once successful but who has almost blown all his chances to get back on top. It also stars Maggie Gyllenhaal, Colin Farrell and Robert Duvall.

But Crazy Heart is really all Bridges – from top to bottom. He just received a Golden Globe nomination for the performance, and many pundits – including myself – are predicting this could be the actor’s year to bask in the award season’s light; that he may finally snag the Oscar he’s been poised to win ever since he was nominated for his turn in The Last Picture Show (he’s been nominated three other times for Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Starman and The Contender).

We journalists had a brief but meaningful conversation with Bridges about singing in a movie for the first time, similarities between country singers and actors – and who his mentors have been in his career.

Step 1: Sing your heart out
Jeff Bridges: “When I first got the script, there wasn’t any music attached to it. So I kind of took a pass on it. Then when I found out from my good buddy T-Bone [Burnett] that he was going to do it if I was going to do it, then that filled in that empty missing piece. So when he got involved, I knew the music was going to be top-notch. That got me to the party real quick.”

Step 2: Being on the road ain’t easy
Bridges: “Yeah, my wife told me, ‘You know we’ve been apart 11 months this year.’ 11 months, man! That’s tough, that’s the hardest part for me. But we’ve been married 33 years, so we’ve done this a lot together. We know the routine and how tough it is; we depend on each other. It’s great to have a partner like that.”

Step 3: Success ain’t so easy, either
Bridges: “One of the things appealing about country music is dealing with human emotions that people can relate to. I think we can all relate to not only the fear of failure, but the fear of success, too. What we do to ourselves when we get kind of successful and when you get to the top of the mountain, there’s only one place to go. You roll down. So how do you deal with that? A lot of us deal with that by numbing ourselves and that’s our strategy to slow ourselves down. So, I can relate to that just as a human being. Not only as an actor, but just being alive.”

Step 4: Admire those who taught you
Bridges: “Do fathers count as mentors? I guess they do. So my dad [Lloyd Bridges] was my mentor. He really encouraged all of his kids to go into show business, he loved it so much. I remember as a little kid, he’d come up to me and say, ‘Hey, do you want to be in Sea Hunt? There’s a little part” – this TV show he did in the ’60s. And I’d say, ‘Ehhh … ‘ and he’d cajole, ‘You get to get out of school. Make some money to buy some toys.’ [Laughter] So, I’d say OK. And I remember him sitting me on the bed, giving me the basics of acting, teaching me how to do it. Of course, my brother [Beau Bridges] was also my mentor, took up where my dad left off. Worked on scenes to get my agent. I remember a big turning point in my career was doing a movie version of the play The Iceman Cometh. And I got to work with all these masters: Robert Ryan, Frederic March, Lee Marvin. Most of my scenes were with Robert Ryan, who I learned a lot from. About fear and insecurity. I remember doing a scene with him across a table, and we were waiting for the scene to start. He took his hands off the table and there were too puddles of sweat on the table. I was like, ‘Wow, after all these years, you’re still frightened. You’re still nervous and scared.’ He said, ‘Oh yeah, I’d be really scared if I wasn’t scared.’ That thing about fear, it’s always going to be with you, that’s how you deal with that. It’s hopeless to think you can get rid of that.”

How to Watch: “A Single Man”

Published on December 12, 2009 in Movies and Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: Drama.

Step 1: Create art. First-time director Tom Ford paints his own portrait of A Single Man almost as if it were a piece of art – beautiful to look at, solitary and still, but with many layers of emotions hidden underneath. It’s a pure gem and showcases some stellar work by Colin Firth.

Step 2: Remember the small things. Based on the novel by Christopher Isherwood, the film, set in the early ’60s, focuses on a day in the life of George (Firth), a gay college English lit professor who only just became “single.” His longtime partner and love of his life, Jim (Matthew Goode), has died tragically in a car crash, and George is understandably having a rough time of it. So, on this one fine day, he decides he’ll join Jim in the next world. But being the fastidious person that he is, George first has to make sure all his affairs are in order, including saying goodbye to his old friend Charley (Julianne Moore). What George doesn’t expect to find on this day, however, is some solace with one of his students, Kenny (Nicholas Hoult). Through Kenny’s adoration and the possibilities he sees in his mentor, George discovers a sense of purpose he didn’t know still existed and eventually George realizes the importance of living in the present.

Step 3: Shine when given the opportunity. As I said before, Firth deserves this moment in the sun. I love it when an actor, who has been around for a long while and has done some pretty silly movies, gets to show off his mad skills and portray someone with such depth of character. His George is a quiet study in the simplicity of the human soul– an ordinary man who is a kind and caring friend, who excels in his profession – and who has loved and lost deeply. His name will certainly be on the Best Actor’s list, and he has a very good shot at winning the gold. Also in the clear running for Best Supporting Actress is Moore as George’s slightly off-kilter divorced friend Charley. She’s just as lonely as George but hasn’t had the advantage of experiencing the same great love as George. She obviously would have liked to, at one point, with George himself, but that ship has passed – in fact, had never really been docked at all. Moore’s brief time onscreen is a marvel; if she doesn’t finally win the career Oscar she justly deserves, I don’t know what. And rounding out the cast, Hoult – who we might remember as the chubby “boy” in About a Boy – has grown up and filled out quite nicely, while Goode (Watchmen) does a fine job giving us a warm feeling about Jim and his relationship with George.

Step 4: Fashion sense + cool sytle = new auteur! The other genuine talent in A Single Man is writer/director Tom Ford, whose own mad skills as a fashion designer has lent itself to an easy jump to filmmaking. A Single Man is all at once languid, sexy, poignant, sad and very stylistic – all runway staples (except maybe the poignant and sad). Of course, Ford isn’t at all interested in making an average film. Oh no, he’s got to add flair. Scenes in which George goes about his seemingly ordinary day are shot in a stark, harsh light, but when George views something of beauty – be it a sunset or some variation of the male form – the shots are lush and gorgeous. And he loves Firth’s face, which he shoots in close up after close up. It is an extremely smart move for Ford to make his directorial debut with something so tailored made for him. You shine best when you fully understand the material. As for a longstanding career in filmmaking, however, that remains to be seen. It might be hard for Ford to top A Single Man.

Level of difficulty in watching A Single Man: Quite easy. Here come the Oscars!

How to Interview: “The Lovely Bones” Crew

Published on December 11, 2009 in Interviews and Movies. 0 Comments Tags: Drama, Fantasy.

lovelybones_saoirseronan31-500x282 Seriously, how can director Peter Jackson ever top The Lord of the Rings trilogy? I don’t think it’s possible, but he definitely finds projects that challenge him, yet also speak to those fantastical sensibilities he so very fond of tapping into. King Kong and now his latest effort is to adapt Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones, a cerebral yet mystical tale of a murdered girl’s running dialogue in heaven, trying to heal her family and expose her killer. In an hour-long press conference, Jackson – along with his cast, including Saoirse Ronan (Susie Salmon), Rachel Weisz (Abigail Salmon), Susan Sarandon (Grandma Lynn), Stanley Tucci (Mr. Harvey), Mark Wahlberg (Jack Salmon) and Rose McIver (Lindsay Salmon) – talks about the process of bringing this transcendent novel to the screen.

Step 1: How to adapt a book. Hey, it’s is hard to do!
Peter Jackson: “In my mind, there’s no such thing as a perfect adaptation of a book. The master work is the book. Alice Sebold’s novel is The Lovely Bones – that is the work that has everything in it, every character, every subplot and that’s the way you should experience the story in its most pure form. A film adaptation of ANY book, especially The Lovely Bones, is only ever going to be a souvenir, an impression of aspects of the book. So to me to adapt a book isn’t to produce a carbon copy, would be impossible. To include everything, the film would be five to six hours long. It’s a personal impression that Phillips Boyens, Fran Walsh and myself, the three of us wrote the screenplay and we responded to aspects of the book, especially emotional themes and the comforting value of the book and the things it had to say about the afterlife, which is personal to anybody. It’s what we responded to and our adaptation is just elements of the book restructured following our instincts and tastes. No adaptation is perfect, it’s impossible. You don’t make a movie for the fans of the book, you can’t do that.”

Step 2: How to personify evil – and leave it behind when you are done
Stanley Tucci: “It was hard in every respect. Pete knew I was very reticent to take the part. I can’t read or watch anything about kids getting harmed or anything about serial killers. And there’s so much serial killer information out there, documentaries and whatnot. A lot of it is just gratuitous, almost pornographic really, what’s being shown. But this was not that. This was a beautiful story about an exploration of loss. Phillpa, Fran, Pete and I had long conversations about it, and I felt safe with them that this wouldn’t be gratuitous and that we were going to create a person together. That Mr. Harvey was a real person. The more real he is, the more subtle and banal he is, the more terrifying he is. At the beginning, it was very hard to leave it at the end of the day, to drop it especially after being fresh off the research. It was repulsive. But once you understand who he is and you find him for me, then I could drop him at the end of the day. And no doubt, it was the most difficult thing I have ever done as an actor. I looked forward to going into the make-up trailer and taking everything off and having a martini at the end of the day. And at the beginning of every day, too, for that matter. ” [Laughter]

Step 3: How to tap into a parent’s worst nightmare – and leave it behind when you are done
Rachel Weisz: “As an actor, you have to imagine all sorts of things. I imagined I was a young woman in the 1970s, I imagined I was American – neither of those bad things. You imagine beautiful things, you imagine ugly things, that’s my job. I just don’t think that way, that something’s too dark or problematic to go to. I don’t know why but I just don’t think that way. I immerse myself in something but I’ve learned to come out of it. I’m a mother in real life, so I can’t go home to my kid in a state of despair and tears. It’s a skill you learn, like one might learn to juggle, that you learn to turn things on and off. But bad things happen in story since the beginning of time. So it isn’t a new thing to be a storyteller and be in a film where there are bad things. There are also beautiful and uplifting things about this film and the book, and I knew that going into it. You know what? I guess the uplifting theme of book to me is that life is a treasure, and precious and a miracle, which did make me want to hug my son tighter. It’s hard to remember life is a miracle. Often we’re just living it and forget that. It gave me a positive feeling rather then a depressed one.”

Mark Wahlberg: “Because of the way I approach work, I wasn’t that thrilled with the subject matter because I have one beautiful little girl and two beautiful boys. I don’t have the God-given talent like Rachel has and just snap into it. Have these floods of emotion coming out and then just turn them off. I’m still learning to juggle … I would just go home and grab my daughter and hold her and I would start crying. She’s like, ‘Daddy what’s wrong with you?’ She just wanted to play. And I would try to talk to her about taking care of herself and to not talk to strangers. She was 3 at the time. But thankfully, I had another movie to go into right after, so I was able to shake it after awhile.”

Step 4: How not to show a rape
Jackson: “There are artistic, moral, impractical reasons, a variety of them, really [for not showing the rape and murder]. The film is about a teenager and her experiences of what happens: she’s murdered, she goes into an after-life and we wanted to make a film that teenagers could watch. Fran and I have a daughter around Susie’s age, and we wanted Katie to be able to see this film. So it was important to us not to go into an R-rated territory at all. Also, I never regarded the movie as being a film about a susie_salmon murder. And if we shot any aspect of that particular sequence … to show a 14-year-old girl murdered in any way, no matter how briefly, it would completely swing the balance of the movie. And frankly, make it a film that I wouldn’t want to watch. I would have no interest in seeing that depicted on film. Every movie that I make is a film that I want to see. It’s very important. I make movies that I know I’d enjoy seeing at the cinema … I’ve shot some pretty extreme things in my time, with Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles and Braindead, and there’s a certain style and sense of humor that I believe you can do to get away with that. But to do anything that depicted violence, especially towards a young person in a way that was serious, to me I’d have no interest in filming it. It would be repulsive.”

Tucci: “To that, we talked a lot about that and how far it should go when we were getting to know each other. And in our conversations, I ask, ‘We don’t really need to see this, do we?’ and we all agreed that no, not at all, we don’t need to see it. But then I had a conversation with a journalist this morning who said people were upset that the rape WASN’T shown and the killing. And I just don’t get that.”

Jackson: “I mean how much murder and killing do you need to see to be satisfied? How much to make someone happy?”

Tucci: “I don’t know. Obviously, a lot because there’s a lot out there. I think anyone who’s disappointed in that regard should go onto the Internet, they’ll find a lot of stuff like that. It’s so much more interesting what Peter did to me. To leave it to the audiences’ imagination, because our imagination of rape and murder are much greater than what anyone could ever put on film.”

Susan Sarandon: “Also [Susie's] the narrator and she disassociates herself at that point. So to watch it happen, you’ll lose that element of her confusion and her displacement.”

Jackson: “One things we did that’s different from the novel in restructuring the screenplay is we had [Susie] fleeing from the murder … At the point her spirit becomes disconnected from her body, she’s running, across the field, into the streets, running home. Susie doesn’t know what has happened to her. She’s literally confused and finds herself in the in-between, essentially the world of dreams and the subconscious and she has to start to put the pieces of the puzzle together like a mystery. So showing the murder would have changed all that.”

Step 5: How to add some comic relief, like the boozy, chain-smoking Grandma Lynn
Sarandon: “The fun part was figuring out how to clean the house with a cigarette and a drink. That was a new area for me. Obviously, she’s been self-medicating for years in anticipation of some grief. Maybe she mourns in another movie but not this one. That’s not my job [as the character]. My job was to keep things moving forward. It’s really a great choice to have someone inept try to keep the house going. Cause if I was a seemingly solid, knitting granny you’d expect to come forward, it would be really boring. But the fact she’s throwing ashes everywhere she’s cleaning, it allows the audience to laugh in the appropriate places. I love that this is just the way life is. When something horrible happens, you do find yourself laughing in weird places in the midst of grief and crying in the supermarket when you see a cereal that somebody used to eat. There’s just no way of guarding yourself one way or another. Everyone griefs differently, there’s no right or wrong way. And my function in the film was to be hilarious. I’ve been there and have lost many a child on celluloid, so I was happy I was once removed.”

Step 6: How to play in the “in-between”
Saoirse Ronan: “There were quite a lot of scenes on my own in the in-between. We actually did go on location in New Zealand, which was beautiful, a great experience. But when we used blue screen, there were different things that they figured out would help me. Of course, how well written the script was. Really, most of what I needed was in the script already. We would also play music during the day, during the shots. Music that would reflect the mood of the scene, which would help so much. Pete would talk to during takes as well, describing what was around me. I never really felt like I was alone, because I had my guardian angel there [looks at Peter Jackson] … and I loved New Zealand, very similar to Ireland. One of my favorite places to shoot and visit. I’d move there.”

“For me, there was always one scene that stuck out I got very emotional with, where I was drowned in the scene for quite a long time: It was the barley field scene towards the end in which Mr. Harvey’s victims come to take Susie to heaven. One of my favorite scenes in the film and definitely my favorite to shoot. It was so emotional and touching.”

Step 7: How to believe in the afterlife
Jackson: “I think everyone has their own points of view about it. We didn’t want to make a film that cast judgment on people’s religious beliefs because that wasn’t at all the motivation for making the movie … all religion aside, I do think that there is some energy we do have inside us. I have experienced a couple of people that have been close to me dying, and I held their hand and there is a feeling that when someone passes on, that they leave. There’s a sense of departure that’s very, very strong. And it’s been so strong that it leads me to believe there’s a form of energy inside us that continues to survive. Physics tells us that the energy cannot be destroyed, it has to go somewhere. It doesn’t evaporate.”