Zac Efron's High School boredom

Zac Efron doesn't like his own films. The 'High School Musical' heartthrob insists the early movies he starred don't measure up to his latest, more adult orientated work, 'Me and Orson Wells'.

Speaking about the new film, Zac said: "It's the first time I've ever watched a movie I'm in and at the end I'm like, 'OK! I didn't check my watch once!' "

The 21-year-old actor also revealed he annoyed his parents when he was growing up by singing all the time. He added to Nylon Guys magazine:

"I was constantly singing. I would hear things on the radio and just be about to spit them out instantly, with perfect memorisation and tone. My parents were like, 'Shut up. Please stop singing. It's annoying.' "

Zac admits he is too embarrassed to discuss his success as a Disney actor with any of his friends. He said: "I try not to look at all of it. You can't enjoy or celebrate it - it's not a real thing. The face on the lunchbox and sh*t - you can't share that with your friends."

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UP - British photographer inspiration for Disney Pixar movie

When Mr Warren made a documentary film about the rainforest mountains of Venezuela, he never imagined it would be turned into the Disney movie. Then, in 2005, he got a call from the movie's director Pete Docter, who had seen his documentary and wanted the mystical mountains he saw in it to be the setting for UP, a 3D epic about an old man named Carl, who ties thousands of balloons to his house and floats away to a mystical land of beauty and adventure.

Warren, 60, an Indiana Jones type character who has been back and forth to Venezuela since the sixties, had unwittingly found the real-life setting for Carl to land his balloon house. He took UP's production team on a ten-day adventure to the luxuriant rainforest of Venezuela to see the highest waterfall in the world, ride endless rapids and climb towering summits in a hidden world of cloud islands.

"Where I took them, more people had landed on the moon than had been to this place," Warren said, referring to a place on Kukenan, a remote 7421ft (2622m) high summit he took the film-makers to. "It's one of the last pristine unexplored areas of the world, in fact the plants and the animals are known no-where else. It's a real living laboratory as far as natural history is concerned."

Director Pete Docter was amazed by what he saw, first in Warren's film, 'The Lost World', and then first hand with Warren as his guide. This was the land where Conan Doyle set his 1912 novel about prehistoric animals, also called 'The Lost World'.

"As soon as I popped in the DVD [of Warren's film] my hair stood on end because I knew this was where we should set the movie," Docter said in the production notes.

"One of the biggest challenges on this film was to design a place that looked otherworldly and yet was still believable enough that audiences would feel like the characters are actually there. We knew we had to go there because there's something fundamentally different about experiencing a place versus just seeing pictures or film." The result of this 2006 adventure with Warren was the stunning landscapes in UP, the highest grossing 3D film of all time, based on the thousands of pictures, sketches and movies its creators took on their ten day expedition.

Their first major trip was to Mount Roraima, the highest and best known of the 115 plateaux, full of the kind of weird and wonderful sculptured rock formations that were the inspiration for two of the film's main characters: Dug, a loveable Dog with a special collar allowing him to talk to humans; and Kevin, a 13-foot tall flightless bird with bright feathers and a penchant for sweet things. Unlike the explorers of the 19h century, who took months to get to Roraima by canoe and foot, weighed down by heavy food packs and being bitten by poisonous snakes, the film makers went by helicopter from Santa Elena, a nearby town on the border of Venezuela and Brazil.

But rather than flying them straight to the top of the towering rock mountain, Warren dropped them at the bottom and made them trek all the way up.

"I wanted them to have the experience of climbing up these cliffs to reach the plateau to give them a true adventurous feeling and a sense of achievement." He admits this was not a popular decision at the time but says they thanked him for it later.

"It was like your worst nightmare," Bob Peterson, Co-director/screenwriter for the film, said, in the production notes. "It was about a six or seven hour climb to the top and I had on way too much gear...In the morning, when we awoke, literally 50ft from where we were camping was a drop one mile straight down."

After three days of trekking across the summit plateau to places like the rock filled Crystal Valley and Triple Point, where Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana meet, Warren took them to one of the most remote places on Earth, the towering summit of Kukenan, which very few people have ever stepped foot on. It is known as the 'place of the dead' by the local Pemon Indians.

"It was so pure, and had more aggressive shaped rocks," Ricky Nierva, UP's production designer, said, in the production notes. "It felt very eerie. You expected to turn a corner and see a dinosaur roaming around."

The team almost got stranded on this remote sky island, which is only reachable by helicopter or by experienced climbers.

"We were dropped there by the helicopter in this very remote spot and we very nearly didn't get off," said Warren. "A storm came in and the helicopter had a real struggle getting back to pick us up. I thought we were going to be faced with a very uncomfortable cold night." They were finally lifted off just before dark to fly back to the Amerindian village of Paraitepui, before making their way by jeep, boat and aircraft to Angel Falls, which plummets 3,212ft from the summit of Auyantepui.

Angel Falls is the real life inspiration for UP's 9,700ft Paradise Falls, which in the film is placed right next to a towering rock called Tewasen Pinnacle, also used in Conan Doyle's novel, but is in reality over 124 miles (200km) away.

Despite such intentional differences, the film remains remarkably close to reality, according to Warren, who is writing a book on the region called 'Islands in the Clouds', and is one of the world's authorities on the area.

"They captured not only the essence of the place but they got the rock shapes and they got the plants in wonderful detail," he said. "They got the atmospherics, the changing weather, the mists coming in. The whole thing was very much brought to life and very three dimensional thanks to that trip that they made."

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'Where The Wild Things Are' a less than magical world

On Tuesday night the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor hosted a special pre-release screening of “Where the Wild Things Are,” with all proceeds going to the non-profit writing and tutoring organization 826 Michigan. Before the screening there was a Q&A with the film’s screenwriter Dave Eggers, best known.

As the editor of “The Best American Nonrequired Reading” series. Eggers founded 826 National in San Francisco in 2002. Since then, the organization has expanded to six other chapters with a location on Liberty Street in Ann Arbor.

The group is “dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.”“The amount of stuff that 826 Michigan does here and in Ypsilanti is astonishing given they only have two paid staffers,” Eggers said.

The group has close to 900 volunteers, many of which work one-on-one with children both during and after school to help them with homework and their own writing. Several books written by 826 students were on sale in the lobby.

Before the lights went down Eggers briefly discussed his experience working on the film.
“I never had intended to write a screenplay, when Spike Jonze called and asked if I would co-write it with him,” Eggers said.

Jonze had been chosen to make the film by author Maurice Sendak, who wrote “Where the Wild Things Are” in 1965. According to Eggers, Sendak had turned down numerous ideas other directors had to turn the book into a film, but was confident in Jonze.

“[Spike Jonze] is the perfect guy to do this because he has a lot of kid in him still,” added Eggers.

At first, Jonze might seem like an odd choice to direct a kid’s movie, considering his last two films were Charlie Kaufman’s “Adaptation” and “Being John Malkovich.” But really, “Where the Wild Things Are” isn’t the kid-friendly film many people will be expecting.

The beginning of the movie sets the tone for the rest of the film, and it’s surprisingly emotional.
Jonze is not subtle with his depiction of main character Max’s tumultuous relationship with his family.

This is clearly a young boy who has receded into the depths of his imagination because reality is too difficult to deal with. Most kid’s movies would downplay this aspect or pad it with humor. Jonze puts it right upfront.

“Where the Wild Things Are” is really a film about innocence and the complexity of being a child in a world of grown-ups. After seeing the film I almost wish Jonze had written an original story instead of using such an iconic source.

Most book-to-film adaptations face the challenge of having to pick and choose which parts of the book to include in the film version. Jonze and Eggers had the unique problem of expanding a ten sentence book into a ninety-minute movie.

This ultimately proved to be the film’s biggest obstacle. Given how short the source material is, it’s understandable that Jonze and Eggers were more or less on their own to fill in most of the details, but what they add almost seems to overshadow the original book’s charms.

One of the main reasons people have fallen in love with Sendak’s book over the last four decades is because of the sense of wonderment and adventure captured in every page. It’s this crucial element the film is sorely lacking.

Once Max sails to the land of the Wild Things what he discovers feels surprisingly bland. The Wild Things themselves are more eccentric than wild, with the same emotional baggage and character flaws we have—the only difference is they are seven feet tall and have horns.

With help from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop the film-makers did a great job of bringing the Wild Things to life with animatronics and puppetry, but unfortunately the film only captures the aesthetic qualities of the monsters, not the heart and soul they were so clearly trying to depict.

Even the scenes of dancing and howling feel less than compelling, and despite some elaborate set-designs and exotic locales the Wild Thing’s world never felt magical.

It almost feels as if, in their attempts to make an emotionally-driven film, Jonze and Eggers forgot to make a movie that is actually fun. After the screening people weren’t flooding out of the theater with grins on their faces having watched an entertaining fantasy adventure. “Where the Wild Things Are” is actually kind of a downer.

But ultimately I have to give Jonze and Eggers credit for getting this film made at all, considering they adapted a classic children’s picture book into an emotional character-driven drama. It definitely wasn’t an easy sell to the studio, and you have to applaud Jonze for staying true to his vision even when the studio was forcing him to do re-cut after re-cut.

Despite all of the film’s problems I still managed to have a good time, but I just couldn’t help but think Jonze and Eggers had missed the point of the original story. My fondest memory of the book is spending hours absorbing every tiny detail of Sendak’s illustrations and dreaming that I was Max, living in the incredible world of the Wild Things—and I really hoped this film would give me that same feeling. Unfortunately, I never once had this reaction.

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Catching Up With... Zombieland's Jesse Eisenberg

Jesse Eisenberg: Oh, I did children’s theater when I was younger with my older sister, and then I basically continued, I guess to avoid school mostly.

And to have an excuse to not have to make friends at school, cause I’d always have to go somewhere or be somewhere, so it was mainly that.

Then I got into the first movie I did in my senior year of high school. I was going to a performance arts high school in New York and decided to pursue it more professionally after that.

Paste: You mentioned how your sister helped you get into that—is acting a large part of your family?
Eisenberg: Not really. My dad is a teacher; my mom was a professional birthday-party clown, just in the local New Jersey neighborhoods and stuff. So she was a performer, but not like, in movies or theater or anything.

Paste: Adventureland came out earlier this year and now your’re starring in Zombieland. You’re also rumored to have about a dozen other projects on the way from IMDb. I’m curious why this sudden burst in production, since before you’d be in a movie and then it’d be a couple years before we saw you again.
Eisenberg: Well that’s not my choice, but I also I think the website is a bit of a liar—I dunno who controls it, but I had to do interviews yesterday for something and people were listing movies I was not involved in. I did two movies that are coming out—one is the zombie movie and I did a movie about this Hasidic Jewish ecstasy mule, and yeah, I guess some of the other movies are not happening.

Paste: Ecstasy mule?
Eisenberg: Oh, yeah, that’s my role. It’s called Holy Rollers ‘cause they’re Hasidic Jews and …ecstasy. And that’s a smaller movie, I don’t know when it’ll come out.

Paste: In your past roles you’ve kinda played a similar sort of character— they’re comedic, like Adventureland, but not comedies per se. Zombieland looks like it’s more outright, broad comedy. Is that the sort of role you’re playing?
Eisenberg: The movie’s actually more dramatic than they’re presenting it. I think I have more dramatic scenes in that movie than in Adventureland. My sense is that they’ll cut the drama down because it’s a zombie comedy and I don’t think the movie can sustain that much heavy drama without boring the young kids who are seeing it. But the movie is primarily very funny and it’s a little more heightened than Adventureland, which was supposed to be much more naturalistic comedy, and subtle tone, like you don’t have to expect a laugh, and can go without something funny for ten minutes. But Zombieland is much more theatrical, I would say.

Paste: Do you have any ultimate aspirations for film that you haven’t reached yet?
Eisenberg: No, I’m so shocked that they put me in movies; every time I get a part in something I can’t believe it, and then afterwards I feel like I ruined the thing. I’m just so fortunate to be able to do the things I’ve already done. I can’t ask for more or even consider it.


Paste: You’ve also worked pretty heavily as an actor on the stage. Do you have a preference between that and film?
Eisenberg: Yeah, I ultimately want to write plays and not even act in them. I’ve written plays and a musical that’s starting to get off the ground right now. I would prefer to do that, but it’s so hard, and even when you’re successful as a playwright you don’t make any money—it’s such a hard part of the industry. I love [movie] acting, but the theater seems to produce more consistently creative works.



Paste: What’s the stuff you’ve written like?
Eisenberg: I wrote a musical that’s just starting to get to the early stages of production, which is called Me Time, about modern self-indulgence. It’s a musical satire. And then I have a play that’s actually being turned into a movie script, but that’s also in the early stages…maybe I shouldn’t say anything about it because not everything is dotted, I guess.

Paste: Has working so much in the theater affected the way that you act onscreen, or vice versa? A lot of actors stop doing theater when they start working in film. Eisenberg: I really don’t do that many plays, actually, mostly because they don’t cast me in them. But like you said, most people stop.

I think it’s harder to make a living just doing off-Broadway theater in New York. I mean it really is almost impossible, things close so quickly, often. Whereas with a movie, whatever they’re paying you is guaranteed, whereas some plays could close—I have some friends who get on Broadway finally or are having a consistent paycheck finally, then the New York Times doesn’t like it and it closes in a week and they’re out of work. Happens all the time. But nothing is better practice than being in a play eight times a week for acting, so then when you’re on a movie set and you have to act for fourteen hours a day and it’s really grueling, you have some kind of basis of experience.

Paste: How selective have you been able to be with either theater or film, now that you’re a bit more well-known? Eisenberg: I’ve been lucky to get into good movies, but I audition for really shitty movies all the time (not all the time but sometimes), and then I just got lucky to get in good ones, so then people assume you’re more selective. But really all the same people are trying for the same things and some people get in good movies, some people get in bad movies, and from an outsider it looks like those people are smarter or more selective or have higher taste, but really everybody knows what movies are really good and what movies are not so good, but you have to work, so you do both.

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Movie review: Whip It

Movies about teenagers who have been repressed by their fuddy duddy, conservative parents/guardians/authority figures are too numerous to list.

The formula is always the same – “good” kid latches on to some sort of activity that the parents would find objectionable, so he/she sneaks away to participate in said activity until the parents inevitably find out about it.

But in the end, the parents see that their kid has found something they love, something that’s not really that bad anyway, and the parents find a way to support the kid's new life.

Like any kind of formulaic film, Whip It, Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, shouldn’t be judged on originality (because it has next to none) but on how well it executes its well-worn story. Things are promising at first as the action centers around a relatively unfamiliar movie topic – roller derby.

Bliss (Ellen Page, continuing her quirky movie name tour), lives in the fictional Bodeen, Texas, which is supposedly just outside of Austin. She has a beauty pageant-obsessed mother (Marcia Gay Harden), a football-lovin’ father (Daniel Stern), and a crappy job at a low-rent BBQ joint alongside her best friend, Pash (Alia Shawkat of Arrested Development fame).

On a shopping trip to Austin, Bliss finds out about a forthcoming roller derby match and convinces Pash to sneak away with her. One glimpse of the violent girl-on-girl action and Bliss is hooked. Soon she’s finding ways to make the trek to the big city to try and compete against people like Smashley Simpson (Barrymore), Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig), and Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis), despite being a good four years younger than the required age of participation, 21. For the rest of the story, see the first paragraph.

Barrymore and screenwriter Shauna Cross (who also wrote the novel upon which the film is based) have an obvious affinity for roller derby, but their combined lack of behind-the-camera experience shows in a big way. Much of the film is poorly paced and edited – some scenes linger when they need to move on, while some are cut off before their natural conclusion. The film clocks in at a robust 115 minutes, which is about 20 minutes too long. Consequently, events that might be considered interesting become excruciating to watch.

The film is full of odd little filmmaking curiosities that more experienced people would have excised. For example, several times throughout the movie, a character says something while walking off screen, a fading audio technique that frustrates because what the character says is more often than not a punchline the scene could have used. Then there’s the casting of real-life singer Landon Pigg as Bliss’ indie rocker love interest, Oliver. While Pigg may be a talented musician, he is, to put it lightly, not a looker (the role needed someone more attractive to be believable), and his acting is even worse – his reaction to a slap is so off-the-mark, it’s comical, and not in a good way.

What should be the film’s selling point – the roller derby action – is also botched. With such a fast-paced game, it works better visually to shoot it mostly from a wide angle. But Barrymore often takes the camera right into the scrum, and what is obviously an attempt to give the film more intensity has more of a detrimental effect. There are a few good moments of collision, but most of the matches are staged in such a way as to make them feel like little more than an open skating session (although it should be said that all of the stars appear to be pretty good skaters). They take the time to overtly explain the rules of the game not once but twice, but since the matches are filmed so poorly, understanding how and why one team wins is like trying to catch air.

Page is nowhere near Juno-esque as Bliss, but not for a lack of trying (Bliss has an ironic love for a t-shirt of the ‘80s Christian metal band Stryper). There’s a temptation to blame her performance on Barrymore and Cross, but their respective directing and writing flubs can’t fully account for her seemingly phoning it in.

Harden and Stern are in Texas accent overdrive, which would be fine if they weren’t the only ones doing it. Wiig and Shawkat acquit themselves well, but they’re balanced out by the shockingly inept showings of Lewis and Barrymore herself.

And that's not to mention the inane ramblings of Jimmy Fallon as the MC for the matches – not one of his supposed jokes hits the mark, making his constant chatter all the more irritating. What should have been a fun movie about a girl discovering her true passion in life becomes bogged down in filmmaking ineptitude. Whip It? No good.

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Watch Toy Story series in 3D!

As Walt Disney Studios releases the 3D versions of its megahit films Toy Story and Toy Story 2 as a single show on October 2 in North America, Hollywood is sending yet another signal that the 3D movie phenomenon has long legs. The double package will show the trailer of Toy Story 3 as well, which will also have a 3D version.

The 3D version of another huge Disney hit, Beauty And The Beast, is going to be released on February 12, 2010, the studio announced recently. Meanwhile, Joe Dante's The Hole, which received good reviews at the Toronto International and Venice film festivals, is awaiting release.

The coming-of-age horror film is also a psychological thriller. Its box-office success could lead to more 3D versions of the films aimed at teenagers and adults. Coraline, a dark and psychological film, grossed over $125 million worldwide, a bigger success than expected. Nearly 25 percent of its grosses came from 3D theatres. Its success proves that 3D films are not the monopoly of children.

The 3D movies will get a huge boost when Avatar, from Titanic director James Cameron, releases in December. At least half a dozen 3D films including a horror movie, My Bloody Valentine, have been released in the last six months (along with 2D versions), and they have brought the studios quite some profits. The most successful among them are Fox's Ice Age 3 and Disney's Up.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, the number one film in America for two weeks grossing $70 million, is also in 3D. A comical film with a moral, Cloudy is about a scientist's attempt to solve world hunger going awry, leading hotdogs and spaghetti to pour from the sky. It has also opened well abroad.

'It's almost shocking to have a film hold that well after opening that big," said Paul Dergarabedian, a analyst, in an interview. The movie lost about 20 percent of its box office in its second week in North America; movies normally come down by about 40 percent in their second week. The power of the 3-D film cannot be overstated.

Although only about 2,700 screens (representing less than 6 percent of all screens in North America) show 3D movies, the business from them is great because they charge an extra $3 per ticket. In New York, for instance, a 3D ticket costs $15.

'Studios are producing more 3-D movies, which command higher ticket prices, as sales of DVDs decline. DVD sales dropped during the first half of 2009, according to the industry-sponsored Digital Entertainment Group,'.

'Year-to-date box office receipts total $7.82 billion, up 7.8 percent from a year earlier,'said, adding that 3D admissions boosted the total. Attendance is up 3.9 percent this year. The number of 3D screens is expected to grow by 4,000 by the end of 2009 in North America, according to the trade publication, Variety.

At least 50 films under production will be released in 3D versions in the next two years. One reason for the 3D surge is because the 3-D movies tend to sell more seats per showing, trade analysts say. If the Toy Story movies grab sizable millions on 3D screens, there will be an impetus for other studios to re-release some of their best family movies in 3D versions.

'This fantastic double feature will let moviegoers see two of their all-time favourite films from Pixar Animation Studios in a way that they've never seen them before, and all for the price of one movie ticket,' Zoradi said in a statement. 'John Lasseter and the animation team have truly created a spectacular 3D experience with Buzz, Woody, and all the toy characters in a whole new eye-popping dimension. We're also excited that audiences will soon see a whole new chapter when Toy Story 3 in 3D, directed by Lee Unkrich (co-director of Toy Story 2) comes to theatres.'

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