‘Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie’
Directors: Seth Miller, Daniel A. Miller and Jeremy Newberger
Genre: Documentary
Rating: R
4 (out of 5) Globes

It was almost too good (or bad) to be true: For a comically short time (i.e., less than two years), “The Morton Downey Jr. Show” burned bright as the most controversial program on late ‘80s television. Its host, a pursed-lip gargoyle who plowed through four packs a day, brought classy guests onto his skuzzy, low-rent show. There he stirred up chaos among his audience of rowdy, emasculated Jersey boys by hurling obscenities, invective and all-too-real-seeming outrage. Through his reign he drove the normally collected Ron Paul into a tizzy, recklessly inflamed the Tawana Brawley incident and swapped flirty put-downs with Gloria Allred.

Today, he’s almost forgotten — but he shouldn’t be. “Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie” holds his work up as a predecessor to both the trash talk show detritus of the ‘90s and the easily riled hysteria of Fox News and the Tea Party. Unlike the recent Andrew Breitbart documentary, “Evocateur” is no hagiography. It’s in awe of the man’s passion if not necessarily his message, and does some digging to find the person underneath the blowhard.

Born Sean, his father was, of course, Morton Downey, known as the Irish Nightingale, one of the biggest singers of the 1930s and ‘40s. His aunt was the great Hollywood actress Joan Bennett. MDJ hated his father, but borrowed his name anyway when he tried to become a singer himself. (Happily he had enough tiny success that footage exists of him crooning a torch song in an early music film.) If the image of MDJ as a pleasant pretty boy runs hilariously up against his traditional fire-breathing sociopath image wasn’t enough, the filmmakers also drum up photos of him hanging happily with Ted Kennedy in the 1960s, a future object of his ire.

No one can stay turned-up-to-11 pissed for very long, and “Evocateur” depicts his very brief mega-fame as a kind of possession: a mid-life crisis that made him finally more famous than his father, but took him back to where he started. Lung cancer ravaged his body, and finally, this outrage machine who yelled at anyone with the tiniest bit of authority and jetted around the world while pretending to be a working class hero was reduced to pleading with people not to be a miserable nicotine addict like him. Without taking his side, “Evocateur” makes us feel genuinely terrible for him.

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‘Epic’
Director: Chris Wedge
Voices: Amanda Seyfried, Colin Farrell
Rating: PG
2 (out of 5) Globes

Perpetual also-rans behind Pixar and DreamWorks Animation, Fox’s Blue Sky Studios previously brought us “Rio” and the absurdly profitable “Ice Age” series. Blue Sky movies have a strictly good-enough-for-government-work feel. Popular without penetrating the zeitgeist, these are marginally adequate entertainments destined to be forgotten on the drive home from the movie theater.

Blue Sky’s latest, the blandly titled “Epic,” is more of the same. Inspired by “The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs,” a 32-page children’s book from “Rise of the Guardians” author William Joyce, director Chris Wedge and a small platoon of screenwriters (including Joyce himself) have fashioned an overcrowded hodgepodge of familiar tropes and Xeroxed bits from other, better movies. It’s the kind of movie that even while watching for the first time you could swear you’ve seen before.

Amanda Seyfried voices Mary Katherine, a tweener who recently lost her mom and is sent to live with her estranged scientist Dad (Jason Sudeikis) in a dilapidated country estate. She wants to be called MK now, and has no patience for her bumbling father’s crackpot theory that there’s an army of insect-sized men flying around the forest shooting bows and arrows on birds affixed with saddles.

But of course he’s absolutely correct. There’s a war going on in the woods, where the brave and noble Leaf Men (led by an uptight Colin Farrell) do daily battle with the sinister Boggans, gargoyle-like creatures who soar around on bats spreading rot and decay.

After much convoluted business involving the queen of the forest (yes, that’s really Beyonce) MK finds herself shrunk down and placed in charge of protecting a pod that’s the mystical key to the survival of the woodlands, or something like that.

The universe of “Epic” is so needlessly overcomplicated that the majority of the movie is just characters standing around explaining the story to one another. But if you’ve seen “Lord of the Rings,” “Avatar” or even “Ferngully: The Last Rainforest,” you’ll already be way ahead of them. Wedge tries to distract from the deja vu with oddball celebrity cameos, including Steve Tyler as a singing caterpillar and Pitbull as a jive-talking frog. But the nicest thing you can say is that at least the movie practices the green environmental message that it preaches: The entire screenplay is recycled.

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‘Simon Killer’
Director: Antonio Campos
Stars: Brady Corbet, Mati Diop
Rating: NR
3 out of 5 globes

Title warning aside, Simon, the American in Paris played by Brady Corbet (“Funny Games,” “Melancholia”), seems like a nice kid. Reeling from a breakup, he strolls the streets of a foreign land with music piped into his ears. What little human contact he makes is awkward, so much so that he gets bullied into entering a sex shop in the red light district, where he’s too polite to turn down a handie from a prostitute (Mati Diop, “35 Shots of Rum”).

Director Antonio Campos previously made “Afterschool,” a clinical, superficially Antonio-esque study of a boarding school kid trying to make sense of senseless tragedy through new media. There are less heavy things on “Simon Killer”’s mind, but it scans best as a creeping study of modern male psychology. Simon may not be a killer, but his “nice guy” persona serves as a mask to obscure his self-serving and monstrous nature. Campos has cited gutter noirs by Georges Simenon and Jim Thompson as influences, where casually amoral leads don’t understand their true nature as they embrace it. But equally important are “Vertigo” and “Rear Window,” Alfred Hitchcock’s disturbingly revelatory portraits of sensitive men who put women through the wringer.

Campos and Corbet (who co-wrote) go a lot further than Hitchcock did into depravity, if not always insight. The more “Simon Killer” suggests Simon is even worse than he appears, the smaller it feels. Still, the way the film gradually reveals its (and Simon’s) true nature is more satisfying than its destination, but satisfying nonetheless. And while Corbet’s performance is magnificently cagey, suggesting dark undercurrents while never being less than absurdly mousy, Diop one-ups him. She bounces back and forth between a cold intelligence and a vulnerable gullibility, suggesting that, like Simon, she acts even when not aware of it. Their performances, and the film often, too, put a damper on what could be mere chic nihilism.

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Jane Levy wants to make one thing clear: “I’m not a horror fan,” she says. Well, for a non-fan she’s picked a doozy of a horror film to be in: “Evil Dead,” Fede Alvarez’s remake of Sam Raimi’s cult classic debut. In this update, we still have five kids going to a cabin in the woods and inadvertently unleashing a demonic spirit after reading from an evil, enchanted book. Only this time, instead of being on Spring Break the coeds are out in the woods to help Levy’s Mia withdraw from heroin. Thanks to updates in both practical and digital effects, the new film reaches a gruesomeness level that’s truly attention-grabbing.

Have you been finding this movie easy to talk about in interviews?
What’s good is we’re all excited about it actually, and I think we’re all really proud of it. So it’s nice to talk about stuff that you’re proud of. It’s so painful when both [the actor and the interviewer] are like, “We know it sucks, so why are we here?”

There are some differences between this one and the original. Did you watch it for research?
I watched the original, but only after I’d gotten the job. I’d never even heard of ” The Evil Dead” when I went out for this movie. I’d heard of Sam Raimi. I mean, “Spider-Man” was my generation. The first one came out when I was, like, 12 or something.

What did you think of some of the more horrific elements when you were reading the script?
When I was reading it I thought it would be so much fun! Little did I know that it’s torturous. But I remember reading it and being like, “Oh my God, this is the horror or all horrors. It’s just relentless, it never stops. And when you think it’s gotten to its peak it’s just going to keep going.” When I was reading it I thought it was almost funny. It just becomes so terrible that you have to laugh. But I wasn’t laughing when I was making it, that’s for sure.

What was the worst part? Wearing the contact lenses?
The contacts were OK. There were so many bad things that at a certain point you just get used to it, but I think being buried alive was probably the hardest. It takes a lot of power to get your mind to feel like you’re not going to die, you know? There’s a plastic bag tied around my head and I’m inhaling plastic — but I did have an oxygen tube behind my ear — and I was laying in a ditch until I was covered completely in dirt. It’s scary. It doesn’t make you feel good, either.

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Here are some pearls of wisdom from our latest chat with the “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Hunger Games” star.

On adjusting to stardom:

“I feel so bad for Emma Stone because she’s where I was a few months ago. When it first happens it’s horrible because your entire life flips upside down and the entire planet starts treating you differently, and it’s really hard to adjust and get used to, but then you get through it. People told me that it would come in waves, and they were right. I texted Emma yesterday and I was like, ‘I’m walking down Rodeo Drive. Nothing!’ And she was like, ‘The audacity!’ (laughs) But yeah, there are bad days and there are good days.”

On what she’s learned from Bradley Cooper:

“He was the one who told me I can’t go to Whole Foods [anymore], and I tested it and he was totally right. The paparazzi, they’re like at every Whole Foods, it’s insane. I had to say goodbye to Whole Foods. It’s fine, I can get friends to get my groceries. I dipped my foot in the water and I was like, ‘You know what, you buy me groceries. I don’t want Whole Foods to call the police again.’”

On trying to gain weight for “Silver Linings Playbook”:

“I was supposed to, but I was also dancing two hours a day. I kept trying to explain that to [director] David [O. Russell], because he was like, ‘You’re not getting fatter.’ I had a Philly cheesesteak I think every day. They’re on every street corner and they’re delicious. And then at the end when I finally slowed down the dancing, it was like, ‘Yeah, I’m looking pretty good, right? Look at this.’ And then David’s like, ‘Yeah, you’re going to be in a tube-top.’”

On trying to stay grounded:

“I still want the same life that I grew up with. I still want a family, a normal family. I will have to make a couple of adjustments [because of my career]. I’m at peace with myself because I think that maybe not having to deal with years of rejection at such a young age — I think that could definitely be damaging. I can’t imagine letting my young child go through something like that. There were times when I was doing a movie once that was really emotionally hard for me, and I was just praying that I wouldn’t have a daughter and praying that she wouldn’t want to be an actress because it’s hard.”

On avoiding her last will and testament:

“I’m supposed to have to do that. My business managers — my somebodies — are telling me to do that just in case I die. It’s a really morbid thought. I’m working on it. I haven’t signed anything. For some reason I’m really avoiding it, because I feel like as soon as I sign it I’m going to die, so I’m like, ‘I don’t know, let’s keep a couple of things open.’”

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After spending months on welfare to support her 14 children (and getting death threats because of it) Nadya Suleman, more commonly known as “Octomom,” turned to porn to set her free from financial burden, starring in a one-woman video that includes a series of scenes in which Octomom is, um, bonding with herself. “Octomom: Home Alone” will be available tomorrow on Wicked.com.

In an interview with Wicked posted on Egotastic, Octomom made no mention of her financial desperation, but instead said the porn flick helped her stop hiding what she’s been “running away from” her whole life — her own sexuality.

She also called the film the second-best experience of her life, after the birth of her children. She described Wicked as the “classiest and most respectable of all companies out there.”

And the classy handy work is well demonstrated in the SFW trailer below. Watch at your own risk. And that’s about all we have to say about that.

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Houston was playing the role of the main character’s single mom. The film is about the journey of music prodigy Sparkles as she overcomes adversity to rise to stardom. Houston starred alongside Jordin Sparks and Cee Lo Green.

The new trailer shows Houston in character as a proud, yet watchful mom, as Sparkles and her sisters try to make a name for themselves as Motown-style singing group.

It aired this morning on “Today” and was posted on toofab.com. Producers who worked on the film have said Houston was completely professional on set.

The Game Sets the Record Straight on ‘Gay’ Comments | TMZ.com
- Watch more 80shits Videos at Vodpod.

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There’s this whole back story which I was oblivious to as it was happening. You know, I didn’t really know anything until all of that went down. I was told more or less the history of what had happened and the condition of the movie and the problems that had occurred and, most importantly, Brad’s determination to get it made and his passion to stick with it, and we just understood it’s something he really wanted to do.

Step 2: Find your angle

It’s the dual track of this character, this story of a guy who’s trying to win baseball games, who’s just extremely competitive and desperate to do a very difficult thing, which is to win a championship with a third of the money as the rich teams. But more interesting to me was what was happening beneath that. It becomes a story about a guy who later in life chooses to be ruthlessly honest and questioning of everything in some kind of search for redemption.

Step 3: Meet Brad Pitt 
I flew to L.A. and met with Brad, and we sat and had a long conversation about how to make the movie and what it might be. At that point, I don’t think anybody ever looked back.

Step 4: Don’t worry too much about the book you’re basing it on 
 The book reports on [Pitt’s character’s back story] with a kind of detail that no movie could possibly cover just because it’s a book. So the way that we ultimately treated that stuff was invented very late and grew from a lot of improvisation.

Step 5: Know that some things won’t be easy
The line from the movie that comes to mind is, “It’s an unfair game.” And life’s unfair, and that’s the truth. It’s just unfair. And how do you deal with that information? How do you manage that? It just seems to always go that way, like you really have to bust some heads to get anywhere.

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“Dolphin Tale,” tells the story of Sawyer Nelson and his friendship with Winter, a dolphin who loses her tail when she gets caught in a crab trap. Freeman plays Dr. Cameron McCarthy, a Veterans Hospital physician who is enlisted to create a prosthetic tail to rehabilitate Winter.

After so many dramatic roles — Red in “The Shawshank Redemption,” Eddie in “Million Dollar Baby,” to just scratch the surface —what drew Freeman to a children’s film?

“Well, it’s not a kids’ movie — it’s a dolphin movie,” he says, adding that he’s always been impressed by reports of the mammals’ intelligence. “I am an appreciator of animals.”

Freeman and the real-life Winter aren’t the only stars of the film: Freeman shares the screen with Harry Connick, Jr., and he says he wasn’t in any position to start offering acting tips to the singer-actor.

“That’s not my place,” he says. “These singers, they’re performers, so they know what they’re doing.”
With a voice as iconic as his (although he’s coy when we mention this) and chops that have led him to play everyone from Nelson Mandela to the president to God, is there any role he’d love to take on that he hasn’t yet?

“Sure, a bunch,” he says. “Those parts just haven’t been written yet, so I don’t know what they are!”
And he’s got a list of actors he’s still hoping to work with — among them, George Clooney, Sandra Bullock, Meryl Streep and Leonardo DiCaprio, he told us.

“Whoever is on your A-list is on mine, too,” he says.

Follow Meredith Engel on Twitter @MeredithatMetro.
 

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How did this project come to you?

It was sent by [the production company] Imagine to my agent. Ron Howard had planned to direct it, and then I think he became unable to so they were looking for a director. I read it and thought about it and read it again and just thought, yeah this would be kind of amazing.

I’m sure “Harold and Maude” came up while you were making it.

Yeah, it came up quite soon. And Jason [Lew], the writer, had never seen it — according to him. I had seen it. I thought the similarities were really striking. I also tried to stay away from it until we were finished shooting it, because I didn’t want to have that become the mix of what we were up to.

You’ve set many of your films in Portland. Is it just the appeal of working near home?

It’s just a nice place. I like L.A., too, but there’s traffic, for one thing, and it’s a company town. It’s kind of like you’re living in a big Detroit, where everything that’s around you is related to your business. Everything just revolves around two or three industries, whereas Portland has none of that. There’s just a tiny bit of this sort of art — movies.

Portland might be the new La-La Land

A couple of years ago, Daniel Baldwin declared he would bring a film  industry to Portland. How did you take that?

Was that Stephen Baldwin? Daniel? God, there’s more Baldwins. No, many people have said that. There’s always been sort of Hollywood straying up to Portland. But the whole romance of having there be like a Paramount Pictures-style studio in Portland — it’s a pretty small city. Every now and then, some-body from Hollywood will proclaim that.

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While the live tour isn’t a new thing for the “Glee” cast — they did the same last summer — the experience of playing to 20,000 fans a night isn’t something they find easy to get used to. “It is different because on a set it’s closed off. I think crowds are a little more forgiving than your script supervisor,” says Darren Criss, who plays Chris Colfer’s private school-attending boyfriend Blaine. “There’s this huge fan presence that’s undeniable — but when it’s on social media, it isn’t as immediately tangible because it’s inherently disconnected via a computer screen,” he explains. “So to experience all these people in real time is a pretty cathartic moment.”

The concert film also features some cute backstage interviews with the cast, done in character — an acting exercise that proved more difficult for some, it turns out. “It’s hard. I definitely blew it a couple of times,” Criss says. “I was in San Francisco making shout-outs to my parents, and Blaine has probably never even been to San Francisco. I did an interview en route to the bathroom once. It was this very sort of surprised thing. I was supposed to be Blaine, but I think I was just Darren trying to get to the bathroom.”

In one especially humorous scene, Lea Michele’s Ra-chel character is told that her idol, Barbra Streisand, is in the audience, which renders her speechless. Mi-chele admits real life isn’t that far off. “I did get to meet her,” she says. “I held it together and cried when she walked away.”

Backstage interviews aside, Michele says keeping in character wasn’t a priority for her. “I feel like I did a nice blend of Rachel and of Lea while I was onstage performing. We are our characters; but when we walk offstage, we are definitely ourselves.”

And for Colfer, slipping into Kurt’s persona is something of a safety precaution. “I had to be in character, I had to be,” he insists. “You just have to leave yourself at the door sometimes, because there’s no way I could do ‘Single Ladies’ every night. I could not. That’s when you just leave yourself behind and he just takes over.”

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“For the first 10 years of ‘The Simpsons,’ I would develop a bunch of voices. And then about 10 years ago, I hit a point when I was tapped out,” Azaria explains. “Every noise I can make, I have made. Even characters like Gargamel, I’ve done. Even if it was only two or three lines, at some point I’ve done something similar on ‘The Simpsons,’ at least somewhere along the line.”

Azaria will be appearing as that famed curmudgeonly henchmen, Gargamel, in a remake of the classic 1980s cartoon, “The Smurfs,” which hits theaters this July. While Azaria was hoping to add a new dynamic to the crabby old man with the cat, there were some things about Gargamel that had to remain.

“I wanted him to be more sarcastic and not laid back, but more observational, if you will,” he explains. “He is that a lot, but I discovered that there’s no way to play Gargamel without screaming your head off at certain points — ramping him up and getting him very upset over Smurfs.”

As with any actor, Azaria had to dig into his character’s motivations and understand Gargamel’s untamed wrath for the little blue creatures. He found some rich material.

“The main thing is that he’s very lonely,” Azaria says. “His relationship with the cat is very odd. I wanted to make them a married couple. You can imagine how profoundly lonely it could be if your only companion was this cat. He hates the Smurfs because they’re such a happy family. He wants in really badly. I think he wants to be embraced as a Smurf.”

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