Recent Stories with tag michael shannon

That's the subject line of an email I received yesterday, promoting a tweetup this Monday morning with the monumental German director/intellectual madman himself. Ostensibly, it's an event to drum up interest in First Look Studios' upcoming DVD release of My Son My Son What Have Ye Done, Herzog's collaboration with David Lynch, which played at the Northwest Film Forum this spring.  But really, this is an opportunity to throw your thoughts at Werner and get one of his trademark dry-witted replies.  Animal-related questions encouraged, for sure.

Herzog will respond in real-time to questions tweeted to the First Look Studios' Twitter account, @1stlookstudios, with his responses posted on the First Look Studios' YouTube channel. Though Herzog himself is not a member of Twitter, his persona is quite popular on the social network, as seen through the popular trending topic #WernerHerzogvsChuckNorris, where users weigh in on who is tougher, Werner Herzog or action star Chuck Norris.

Tweeting to Werner commences Monday morning, so send your questions @1stlookstudios by August 23rd at 9:45 a.m. PDT.  Full press release after the jump.... (more)

It's a warm and wonderful summer day, so let's stay inside.  Whether you are avoiding those oppressive rays of sunshine or the unmitigated hellscape known as Capitol Hill Block Party, today's a good day to hole up and watch some movies.  So let's take a look at the new DVD releases this week, care of our good friends at Scarecrow Video.

This week is actually light on new releases, which you can tell by the big studio films out this week.  There's The Losers, which even comic book nerds/action fans didn't like, and Cop Out, Kevin Smith's latest, which nobody liked.  Rock chick fan pic The Runaways fared better.  Yes, it ostensibly stars Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett (and Dakota Fanning as Cherrie Curie), but come on now--it's Michael Shannon as manager-svengali Kim Fowley who really steals the show.

In foreign films, there's Mother, Bong Joon-Ho's (The Host) latest thriller about a mom desperate to track down a killer in order to free her framed son.  There's also A Town Called Panic, which follows the adventures of a group of ragtag toys. WARNING: This is a French stop-motion comedy.... (more)

Either you're interested in a movie directed by Werner Herzog and produced by David Lynch, or you're not. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is the first collaboration between the two weirdo auteurs, and it shows.  For the Lynch fans, yes, there is a midget; for the Herzog fans, yes, there are odd interactions with animals (in this case, flamingos and ostriches) and a long tracking shot of a can of oatmeal rolling into the street. 

The film is loosely based on Mark Yavorksy's murder of his mother with a three-foot-long antique saber, which seems to have been inspired by the Greek tragedy of Orestes.  But Herzog and Lynch are less concerned with the murder itself--here the protagonist is called Brad McCullum, played by the nearly-ubiquitous, talented dog-faced actor Michael Shannon--than with the why of the killing.  As such, most of the film is told in flashback, as San Diego detectives (played by Willem Dafoe and Michael Pena) interview McCullum's friends and loved ones (Chloe Sevigny and Udo Kier) to get some insight into what would make a man commit such a psychotic act.  As it's a Herzog-Lynch film, there's no clear answers (though hanging out with hippies in Peru plays a part), but the journey is a wack-a-doodle, lovely, lonely one.

 

• My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done plays at the Northwest Film Forum today through next Thursday at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.  Tix are $9 GA/$6 members, $4.50 GA/$3 members on Monday.

The Runaways, the big-screen biopic about the famed chick band, opens this Friday.  Locally, it'll be playing at the Meridian and the Guild 45th.  If somehow you don't know, the film stars Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie (not to mention Michael Shannon as the band's svengali/manager Kim Fowley) and brags an R rating, which warns of "language, drug use, and sexual content--all involving teens."  Mothers, hide your children.  (Mothers, also please note that Joan Jett will be performing at Little Creek Casino on March 27th.)

To celebrate The Runaways' release, The SunBreak has a couple prizes to give away to lucky readers. We already gave away a pass to a preview screening of the film, taking place at 7 p.m. this Thursday night at Pacific Place--congrats Angela!  But we've still got a super bad-ass prize pack, which includes a t-shirt, a poster from the film, a copy of Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway by Cherie Currie and Tony O'Neill (the book that the film is based on), a copy of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts' Greatest Hits CD, The Runaways' soundtrack, and Joan Jett's upcoming photobook with Todd Oldham.

We'll be drawing the winner of the prize pack from all entries received this Friday at noon.  Enter below for your chance to win.... (more)

Russell Hodgkinson, John Aylward, MJ Sieber, R. Hamilton Wright, Charles Leggett, the cast of Seattle Rep's "Glengarry Glen Ross." Photo by Derek Sparks

Six and a half feet tall, with long hair, rough-hewn features, and a penchant for black leather jackets, Wilson Milam manages at once to stand out and to disappear in plain sight. Have him pointed out to you in a crowd and you can't help but notice him towering over the rest; pass him on the street and you probably wouldn't look up. It's an effect that's well suited to his personality: friendly but somewhat taciturn, in an interview he would sometimes stop mid-sentence to ponder something, an odd flicker of a happy memory crossing his face, only to ultimately defer the question.

Milam's also one of the most successful theatre directors you've likely never heard of, and certainly one of the most successful theatre artists to emerge from Seattle in last few decades. His career began in collaboration with playwright and actor Tracy Letts in Chicago in the early Nineties, with Milam directing Letts' first two plays, years before the he wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning August: Osage County. From Chicago, Milam made his way to London where he's been based for more than a decade, making a name for himself as a director of new plays, perhaps most notoriously with the premiere Martin McDonagh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore, a darkly comic bloodbath of infamous proportions that's being staged at ACT Theatre in October.

Last year, Milam made his Seattle debut as a director with a widely praised production of Conor McPherson's The Seafarer at the Rep (itself a bit of bloodbath of booze), and now, he's returned to direct one of the plays that's been a life-long dream of his: Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet's 1982 masterpiece about an office of desperate real estate salesman, starring a who's who cast of Seattle's best actors, including R. Hamilton Wright, MJ Sieber, and Charles Leggett. The show opens tonight, Feb. 10, and runs through the 28th; tickets $15-$59.

I met with Milam a couple weeks ago to discuss the play and his career over coffee at Caffe Zingaro in Lower Queen Anne, near the theatre. Asked what part of town he grew up in, he chuckled and responded: "Bellevue. Back when QFC was still a pasture land, and there was no bridge. I still say the 'new' bridge."... (more)