Exclusive Interview: A Serious Man Star Michael Stuhlbarg

In A Serious Man, Michael Stuhlbarg plays a very nice, very ordinary man forced to the end of his rope by a lot of awful but ordinary circumstances, like his brother's mental illness, his wife's affair with a neighbor, and a student's attempt to bribe him for a better grade. And while Stuhlbarg's life is looking nothing but up, snagging his first lead role in a Coen brothers movie, he shares Larry Gopnik's sense of decency and overwhelming niceness, not ...

How Does Matt Damon Become Ordinary?

It's not like snapping your fingers, and it can't all be attributed to hair and make-up. So how does a marquee beauty like Matt Damon transform himself into an ordinary-looking businessman in Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!?

Damon plays Matt Whitacre, the cinematic version of a real-life character, a scientist who became the vice-president of a chemical company and then turned informant for the government in the early 1990s. Damon doesn't perform a complete disappearing act, to the point that we don't recognize him. True, he gained 30 pounds for the role and his character wears a toupee. The extra pounds make him look "doughy" and soft, which is what Soderbergh wanted, according to USA Today. Yet he doesn't look excessively obese and he doesn't walk around with his shirt off; he just looks rather ... ordinary, a normal, thickening man from the middle of the country, with a wife and children and a house and a car (make that cars).

The actor has played pretty boys many times, which is kind of inevitable when you're a good-looking guy. Still, he has the deft ability to shift his charm downward, in service of the role, even in fluffy entertainment like Ocean's Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen. He doesn't turn all his lights off, just selected ones, just enough to dim the wattage of his stardom. All his skills as an actor are needed in The Informant!, which has an increasingly jaw-dropping story to tell. Scott Weinberg described it as a "quietly odd performance." It's also hilarious. Damon hits every note, blending into the story while retaining an innate goodness that makes you root for him even as you slowly realize you probably shouldn't. It's brilliant; I just don't know how he does it.

Filed under: Comedy, Drama, New Releases, Fandom

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Pete Docter Interview - UP Director

It isn't often that the old and young interact in family films in positive ways, but UP is no ordinary film, and Pixar is no ordinary group of filmmakers. The always innovative team pumps out hit after hit, never running out of new material...

Real life Watchmen

If you thought the Alan Moore imagined and Zack Snyder visualized dystopian world of ordinary folk becoming costumed heroes in WATCHMEN was relegated to comics and celluloid…you were wrong. It's real and gaining in popularity. Meet Shadowhare. He roams the streets of Cincinnati in his home made costume looking to right injustice and punish evil-doers. He may not always succeed, he may be ridiculed and he... Read More...

Dexter Marries His Sister

The weekend is usually a bit slow, that's why we're bringing you this meaningless news that's a bit out of the ordinary.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Posters

With David Fincher's adaptation of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button just around the corner it was only a matter of time before we received at least one poster for the film. Arriving as a batch, we now have three.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Posters
“I was born under unusual circumstances.” And so begins The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, adapted from the 1920s story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards: A man, like any of us, who is unable to stop time. We follow his story set in New Orleans from the end of World War I in 1918, into the 21st century, following his journey that is as unusual as any man’s life can be. Directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett with Taraji P. Henson, Tilda Swinton, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas and Julia Ormond, Benjamin Button, is a grand tale of a not so ordinary man and the people and places he discovers along the way, the loves he finds, the joys of life and the sadness of death, and what lasts beyond time.

"Revanche" gallery added!

"Revanche," the film by Goetz Spielmann which has just been picked up for North American theatrical and home video distribution by art film distributor Janus and the Criterion Collection. Pic will see theatres in March and move to DVD by the Criterion Collection later. AND we've just added images to the gallery! The story: Not far away, a newly built house inhabited by a couple: Robert (Andreas Lust) and Susanne (Ursula Strauss). They live an ordinary life like so many other people.

Trailer: Special

Michael Rapaport isn't your ordinary superhero.

Trailer: Special

Michael Rapaport isn't your ordinary superhero.