What I Learned From Paul Rudd (& Other Cool People)

At the premiere of Avengers: Age of UltronThe Film Experience welcomes rising actor David Dastmalchian (Ant-Man, Animals, Prisoners) who has taken over the blog for a day! -Editor

-by David Dastmalchian

The following are some rad people that I had the chance to work with or work near or at least stand across the street from – and the cool stuff that I learned while watching them.    I’ve kind of fashioned my entire life that way: honing in on the people who are really good at what they do and, well, trying to copy-cat them.

PAUL RUDD.  
LESSON: ‘Keep the scene rolling until they yell ‘cut’.  And be nice to everyone. And always carry cash’. 

It’s very intimidating to work on scenes with an actor who can continue to improvise past the text until every single person within a hundred feet is laughing out loud.  I had the opportunity to work with Paul on his upcoming Ant-Man for Marvel Studios directed by Peyton Reed.  Paul had an extreme amount of physical work to do with his preparation, as well as re-writing the project and he was incredibly focused.  He came to work each day prepared to make the most out of the scripted text – while being simultaneously open to improvisation as soon as the director gave him the green light.  It was amazing.  He is an endless well of ideas and he’s also very generous, so he would turn to me sometimes when he was on a riff and toss me a golden line.  I dropped as few as possible.

More Paul and other cool people after the jump...

Click to read more ...

The New Best Actress Field. Who Will Be Nominated?

We saved the best for last. The complete April Foolish Oscar Predictions are up with the Best Actress chart finally complete. As is usual for this beleagured actress psychic, once I've thrown the first charts up in all categories I immediately feel a tidal wave of "no, no, that's all wrong!" though the years have proven me relatively adept at first wave guesswork. At least comparatively speaking.

Which next generation Oscar darling will rise?

After fixing up a chart that included 3 older women who happen to be 3 of the 4 most recent winners (Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, and Meryl Streep) I immediately realized that this surely could not come to pass and regretted hitting publish. But you have to get the first wave predictions up eventually, so published it stayed. And a truth: everyone is going to be wrong this year because it looks highly competitive with multiple promising leading roles for women.

THE WORLD IS ROUND, PEOPLE.

Recognizing the over 40s in Best Actress has never been AMPAS's strong suit so surely the tide will turn sharply this year or next after so many older winners and even a year with the oldest lineup of all time in terms of nominees in this category (2013). Perhaps this year's lineup will include none of those darlings and skew very young: Saoirse Ronan, Carey Mulligan, Ellen Page, Alicia Vikander (with 8 movies opening something is going to stick), and Jennifer Lawrence (again)... though I personally hold out hope that Lily Tomlin's bravura turn in Grandma can win some "career tribute" style press and make a play for her second nomination 40 years after her first for Nashville.

Or maybe they'll finally make room for my riskiest hunch, Emily Blunt and give her her first nomination at 32 years of age for playing a young FBI agent up against a swarm of dangerous men. Shades of Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs anyone?

Please do check out the chart and let's get busy discussing! 

Rooney: Do you think we'll be nominated again, Cate?

PREVIOUS DISCUSSIONS
Animated Films | Actor | Supporting Actress | Screenplays | Supporting Actor | Best Picture | Best Visuals  | Sound & FX

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Index of All Predictions, Oscar Dates for Your Calendar, Most Awaited Films of the Year, and all Oscar adjacent articles for 2015. 

Beauty vs Beast: Like Father Luke Son

Happy May the Fourth, everybody! Jason from MNPP here - it wasn't until this morning when Nathaniel reminded us of the annual Star Wars holiday-of-sorts that I looked back through our "Beauty vs Beast" archives and found it to be seriously Skywalker wanting, which is just unacceptable. I was maybe a little too young for the first round of Star Wars movies and definitely a little too old for the Prequels so I've never been as huge a fanatic about the series as some folks, but I enjoy the world enough that the Force Awakens trailer made me a little misty-eyed. I have my fingers and toes and lightsabers crossed that Abrams has made a good movie, one that does justice to what George Lucas accomplished and to what so many people love - the simple story of a boy and his dad, learning to find common ground.

Whose team are you on?

Team Luke Skywalker

Team Darth Vader

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PREVIOUSLY Elvira Hancock might've told Tony Montana they were losers not winners but it turns out he's the only loser in this town - Michelle Pfeiffer pretty handily trounced Al Pacino in last weeks Scarface-off. Said The Pretentious Know It All:

"Admit you didn't vote for Elvira on this blog at your own peril."

David What?

Please join us in welcoming the fine actor David Dastmalchian, a busy actor we've been loving since we first spotted him in The Dark Knight (2008) and who you'll soon see this summer in both Ant-Man (2015) and Animals (2015). He's the first of our special guest blogging actors this summer!
- Editor. 

David Dastmalchian © Caleb Condit

Hi!  I’m thrilled to be guest blogging for Nathaniel this week.  I'll take over tomorrow for a day. I’ve been following the the site for a long time and was thrilled when he asked me to Guest Star in anticipation of the upcoming release of Animals (2015) on May 15th.  (Guest Starring is SO much better than Co-starring FYI)   

Let’s see – you may or may not recognize me from my roles in some pretty cool films, some TV shows, a few hamburger commercials… on stage???  I’ve definitely played my fair share of what some may describe as “bad guys” (my sister calls them “psychos”) though I prefer to think of them all as misunderstood innocents trapped in circumstances beyond their control.  

In Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008)I was playing “Guard” and “Montano” in a production of ‘Othello’ at a wonderful regional theater in Chicago (Writer’s Theater) when I had a chance to audition for a bank-robbing clown in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.  By a stroke of miraculous luck, I was cast as The Joker’s schizophrenic henchman, Thomas, and my journey as an actor changed – my dream of working in film began to materialize and I hit the road.  I was in NYC long enough to meet the love of my life and then moved to Los Angeles where I’ve lived since 2011. 

Tomorrow I’m gonna really open up and pour my soul all over these digital pages – or at least hopefully do fun posts and tell you more about Animals.

And most importantly – teach you how to properly pronounce my name.  David (Day-vid) Dastmalchian (Dast-mol-chin).  The phonetic trick for my last name is to imagine you’re saying “This small chin” but really fast.  Go ahead, try it…

On the set of Prisoners (2013) © Wilson Webb

Until tomorrow...

Star Wars: The Marketing Awakens

Manuel (and Yoda!) here to talk more Star Wars! 

A photo posted by Manuel Betancourt (@bmanuel) on May 4, 2015 at 4:30am PDT

I have been an avid Star Wars fan since as far back as I can remember (blame my mom who was obsessed with Harrison Ford!) and so I couldn't let this celebration go by without throwing my two cents.

Nathaniel already wished you all a Happy May the Fourth, but as if intent on making sure the franchise isn't resting on nostalgia, Vanity Fair has just released a number of beautiful portraits of the new recruits of The Force Awakens and I couldn't not share three of them with you: 

Oscar Isaac: woofworthy since 2011 (and probably even before but I do love him in Drive)

The helmet is off and we get a first glimpse at bad guy Kylo Ren (Adam Driver)

And I saved the best for last:

Lupita: luminous even when doing motion capture (her character is apparently a pirate named Maz Kanata) 

Which of these pics will you be framing and swooning over until December when the film opens? Do these portraits give you hope, or do they just give you flashbacks to the equally glossy and gawk-worthy ones that greeted Episode One?