By:y JIM SLOTEK and BRUCE KIRKLAND
Source: http://www.lfpress.com
Category: Film School Online
You miss a lot being a wunderkind -- namely all the classic films that are supposed to be the foundation of one's oeuvre.
To that end, Jason Reitman (Juno, Up In The Air, Young Adult) has opened his doors to fellow philistines.
"I have a movie night at my house every Sunday night and it really came out of my own embarrassment of the amount of films that I had not seen. And I presumed that my friends, perhaps, had not seen them either.
"So every night it's a classic movie you're supposed to have seen, and I say, 'Hey, here's a moment for us all to stop being embarrassed.
"And now I'm going to embarrass myself myself. (We've had) Cool Hand Luke, which I had never seen, Patton, I had never seen. Say Anything, that's always the shocker," he says with a laugh. "I had never seen Being There until two years ago. It's humiliating. I watched all of Michael Ritchie's films. I hadn't seen Downhill Racer or Smile or Prime Cut or The Candidate.
"It's a wonderful evening for me to share with my friends, and see those films for the first time as adults, and talk about them."
OLDMAN'S OLD GLASSES: Little things mean a lot. Case in point, the glasses worn by George Smiley in John le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
"He talks about them in the book," says Oldman, who plays Smiley in the current film version, directed by Tomas Alfredson (Let The Right One In).
"Smiley's glasses are as iconic as the Aston Martin to Bond. So I drove Tomas mad. I looked at 300 pairs of glasses until I found them in Pasadena. When in doubt, go to Old Focals in Pasadena. There's a guy called Russ, and he's got 30,000 pairs of vintage spectacles.
"It's funny how you make connections," Oldman says. "I'm driving up Sunset Blvd., and I see this poster for A Single Man. And I think it's Marcello Mastroianni, and I get closer and see it's Colin Firth.
"And I thought, 'I like those glasses!' because I wear glasses, and it becomes a thing. Then I read an article in an airport, and it was about those vintage retro glasses and it said 'like Colin Firth's in A Single Man' and it said where he got them. And I made a note of it.
"A year later, we were doing Smiley and I thought that place in Pasadena, and I went to them and said, 'They have to be period '70s glasses and they can't be earlier than '69 or later than '74.' And he had them! A really amazing place."
FOURTH TIME'S THE CHARM? British director Stephen Daldry has been Oscar-nominated three times. He may be again for Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.
"I'm always happy to be a bridesmaid," he tells QMI Agency.
Daldry was nominated but lost for directing Billy Elliot (2000), The Hours (2002) and The Reader (2008).
Don't expect him to campaign for his fourth.
"Honestly, it's a lot of work if you actually do it. And I don't think I can do it. It's turned into a circus. The idea of campaigning, it just seems wrong. If they want to give you a medal, they give you a medal. If they don't want to give you a medal, they don't give you a medal. That's fine. Let's not get too worked up about it."
Source: http://www.lfpress.com/entertainment/movies/2011/12/16/19132986.html
Source: http://www.lfpress.com
Category: Film School Online
You miss a lot being a wunderkind -- namely all the classic films that are supposed to be the foundation of one's oeuvre.
To that end, Jason Reitman (Juno, Up In The Air, Young Adult) has opened his doors to fellow philistines.
"I have a movie night at my house every Sunday night and it really came out of my own embarrassment of the amount of films that I had not seen. And I presumed that my friends, perhaps, had not seen them either.
"So every night it's a classic movie you're supposed to have seen, and I say, 'Hey, here's a moment for us all to stop being embarrassed.
"And now I'm going to embarrass myself myself. (We've had) Cool Hand Luke, which I had never seen, Patton, I had never seen. Say Anything, that's always the shocker," he says with a laugh. "I had never seen Being There until two years ago. It's humiliating. I watched all of Michael Ritchie's films. I hadn't seen Downhill Racer or Smile or Prime Cut or The Candidate.
"It's a wonderful evening for me to share with my friends, and see those films for the first time as adults, and talk about them."
OLDMAN'S OLD GLASSES: Little things mean a lot. Case in point, the glasses worn by George Smiley in John le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
"He talks about them in the book," says Oldman, who plays Smiley in the current film version, directed by Tomas Alfredson (Let The Right One In).
"Smiley's glasses are as iconic as the Aston Martin to Bond. So I drove Tomas mad. I looked at 300 pairs of glasses until I found them in Pasadena. When in doubt, go to Old Focals in Pasadena. There's a guy called Russ, and he's got 30,000 pairs of vintage spectacles.
"It's funny how you make connections," Oldman says. "I'm driving up Sunset Blvd., and I see this poster for A Single Man. And I think it's Marcello Mastroianni, and I get closer and see it's Colin Firth.
"And I thought, 'I like those glasses!' because I wear glasses, and it becomes a thing. Then I read an article in an airport, and it was about those vintage retro glasses and it said 'like Colin Firth's in A Single Man' and it said where he got them. And I made a note of it.
"A year later, we were doing Smiley and I thought that place in Pasadena, and I went to them and said, 'They have to be period '70s glasses and they can't be earlier than '69 or later than '74.' And he had them! A really amazing place."
FOURTH TIME'S THE CHARM? British director Stephen Daldry has been Oscar-nominated three times. He may be again for Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.
"I'm always happy to be a bridesmaid," he tells QMI Agency.
Daldry was nominated but lost for directing Billy Elliot (2000), The Hours (2002) and The Reader (2008).
Don't expect him to campaign for his fourth.
"Honestly, it's a lot of work if you actually do it. And I don't think I can do it. It's turned into a circus. The idea of campaigning, it just seems wrong. If they want to give you a medal, they give you a medal. If they don't want to give you a medal, they don't give you a medal. That's fine. Let's not get too worked up about it."
Source: http://www.lfpress.com/entertainment/movies/2011/12/16/19132986.html
