Multiple Oscar nominee Stephen Frears is a tough nut to crack. Amiable but terse, his excellent multilayered films do the talking for him, from his first collaboration with Christopher Hampton and Michelle Pfeiffer on 1998's Dangerous Liaisons to 2007's The Queen. In his latest film, Cheri (read Cinematical's review here), Frears turns his lens onto the cloistered and often duplicitous world of wealthy courtesans. Frears' films often focus on subversive outsiders who must make their own "family," as it were, such as Dirty Pretty Things, The Grifters, and My Beautiful Laundrette. But Cheri's delicious spin on sex, love, and aging is typical of its source material from author Colette, whose books Cheri and The Last of Cheri present a world of upside-down relationships and self-sufficient, frankly sexual women.

Michelle Pfeiffer leads the cast as the stunning Lea de Lonval, a famous courtesan whose friend Madame Peloux, played with busty abandon by Kathy Bates, encourages Lea to have an affair with Peloux's louche son Cheri, the pale and effeminate Rupert Friend. Neglected as a child while his mother was dealing with her affairs, Cheri is hardly likeable or loveable, but somehow their affair becomes less about sex and more about the love both he and Lea have lacked in their lives. Peloux throws a wrench into the whole thing when she plans a wedding for Cheri to another courtesan's child, Edmee, played by newcomer Felicity Jones. What happens after that surprises them all.

Cheri opens June 26th in limited cities. Visit the official website for more information.

Cinematical: What's the difference between releasing a movie like Cheri during Oscar season as opposed to the summer blockbuster season? Is it more or less stressful?

Stephen Frears: The problem with competing for the Oscars is it's very tough, so in a way it's quite a relief being [released] at another time of the year. You're all right if you've got the one that gets everybody's attention, but fighting for attention is quite difficult. I've released films in that season that have been just overlooked.

(By James Rocchi - reprinted from the Toronto International Film Festival, 9/10/08)

The Hurt Locker sees director Kathryn Bigelow craft a big, booming tale of tension based on journalist Mark Boal's experiences and interviews with bomb disposal experts in the streets of Iraq. Toronto didn't just see The Hurt Locker earn raves from many critics; it also saw the film get picked up by Summit Entertainment for distribution. Cinematical spoke with Bigelow and Boal in Toronto about breaking the audience's unconscious link between an actor's salary and a character's destiny, whether or not their film is really apolitical, the fun and excitement of blowing things up on-set, how making the movie yourself is the best way to be sure you make the movie you want to and much more.Cinematical's podcast content is now available through iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

If the summer movie season wasn't originally designed for guys, it's certainly been appropriated by them, both in theaters and behind the camera. Where the hottest months of the year once served as an even playing field for films of all kinds, they now operate with one edict in mind, bigger is always better, unless you're a shrewd enough filmmaker to find an opening and exploit it with a clever bit of counter-programming. Anne Fletcher hopes to be the exception that proves this rule with the release of The Proposal (which took the number one spot at the box office this past weekend with $34 million) a romantic comedy starring Sandra Bullock. And while there's only two action scenes, one involving falling off of a boat and another about surviving a face-to-crotch attack by an overeager amateur stripper, the film seems poised to capture at least as many female hearts as its competition does male ones.

Cinematical recently spoke to Fletcher via telephone to discuss her work on the film, which is her third directorial effort after the original Step Up and last year's 27 Dresses, in addition to talking about taking a film straight into summer's heart of darkness, she reflects on what if anything her gender means to the movies she makes, and speaks about an early '80s Spielberg movie that still proves inspirational (and it's none of the ones you might think).

Harold Ramis is the comedy writer and director everyone's cribbed from, from Sandler to Apatow. After leaving "Second City TV," Ramis went on to write, direct, and occasionally star in comedic touchstones like Animal House, Caddyshack, Stripes, Groundhog Day, and of course, Ghostbusters, which have starred a slew of loveable losers fighting to get their sh*t together in the army, on the golf course, or in the middle of a war with supernatural beings. After taking a few years off, Ramis is taking it back to the beginning with this summer's Year One, which stars Jack Black and Michael Cera as loveable loser cavemen who, when Black's Zed accidentally burns down the village, find themselves in the middle of a very familiar holy war. Read on and find out what the big daddy of buddy movies had to say about evolution and self-improvement, male full frontal nudity and the lack thereof, and what the heck is up with Ghostbusters 3.

Year One opens nationwide this Friday, June 19th.

Cinematical: How much more stressful is it to deal with marketing a summer blockbuster and competing with the other movies that are out?

Harold Ramis: You know, it's the same level of stress every time you make a movie, because you've pinned all your hopes and dreams on it and you've fantasized what success will be like, but at the time you can't escape fantasizing what failure will be like. [laughs]

I conceived this movie on a big scale, to do a Biblical epic comedy. I knew it was ambitious and when the studio said "Yes, we'll do it," and it became real, I thought, "Oh my God!" [laughs] It's one thing to fail small, but to make a big movie that doesn't work is so risky.

Duncan Jones cut his teeth on the sets of Labyrinth and The Hunger, but for his directorial debut, he opted for something that didn't star his dad (I'll let you guys and girls mull over the common thread).

Rather, Moon is a showcase for star Sam Rockwell, who gives what is surely one of the year's more uniquely layered performances. As the film opens today in NY and LA before rolling out in the weeks to come, Jones spoke with Cinematical about shooting sci-fi on a small budget, releasing an indie in a season of blockbusters, and cracking his skull out of pure giddiness for a movie.

Which one, you ask? We'll tell you after the jump...

It seems redundant and pointless to talk about how intimidating Mike Tyson is, but I admit that I was nervously excited when Cinematical was offered the opportunity to interview him in conjunction with the release of The Hangover. Having spoken to Tommy Lee Jones, the toughest of tough celebrity interviews, I'd survived gauntlets far more fearsome than dealing with a former heavyweight, especially since I'd recently seen Tyson, which offers a portrait of him at his most reflective, self-aware and lucidly articulate. But I did want to get a good, and more importantly real interview with him, not just lob softballs in his direction and be yet another guy who was too scared to ask a substantive question.

Tyson's cameo in The Hangover is just one great moment in a film with plenty of other ones, but it seems to mean more for him, if not also to him: while the film's $45 million opening-weekend haul means higher paychecks and better roles for co-stars Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis, its visibility and success gives Tyson a sense of humor, and moreover, a humanity that he's never quite achieved on such a significant scale. Cinematical spoke to Tyson on May 17 in Las Vegas, where the former prizefighter discussed what it meant to appear in the movie, looked back on the experience of making Toback's documentary, and talked about what the future holds for him following his recent adventures on the silver screen.

Because of the commercial pressures Hollywood places on filmmakers these days, many directors adopt a sort of "one for them, one for me" career strategy that allows them to exercise their creativity while maintaining a degree of viability at the box office. Brad Silberling, despite an array of films that really do run the gamut from intimate character studies to effects-laden opuses, seems to have effectively synthesized the two more and more effectively with each subsequent effort. Starting with straightforward studio fare like Casper, he quickly graduated to meatier projects, including the semi-autobiographical Moonlight Mile, before tackling an adaptation of the first book in Daniel Handler's Lemony Snicket series.

But he seems to have truly captured both his own creative idiosyncrasies and the demands of a summer blockbuster with Land of the Lost, a sprawling, bizarre big-screen reimagining of the Sid and Marty Krofft TV series from the 1970s. The film stars Will Ferrell as a disgraced scientist trying to rebuild his reputation while dodging aliens, dinosaurs, and oversized crabs, and Silberling brilliantly brings the film's fantastic world to life. Cinematical recently spoke to the director via telephone from the film's Los Angeles press day, where he discussed the prospect of making a madcap, foul-mouthed summer movie, explained how (and why) he managed to include an extended homage to "A Chorus Line," and talked about the summer movie that inspired him to become a filmmaker.

Sam Mendes started his feature directorial career with American Beauty, an incisive look at suburban malaise that in addition to netting multiple Oscar nominations, earned him a reputation for being a keen if not altogether optimistic observer of human nature. Ten years later he's virtually cemented that pessimistic point of view with films like Jarhead, Road to Perdition and Revolutionary Road, all chronicles of characters desperately in search of something, if not better, than at least different than what they already have. But while his latest film, Away We Go, uses a couple's road trip as yet another journey of self-discovery, Mendes looks at the central characters' future with one another with optimism and genuine hope, offering a reassuring rejoinder that the director does not in fact believe that all relationships are destined to fail.

Cinematical recently sat down with Mendes to discuss Away We Go, an intimate but broadly appealing comedy about two lovers, Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph), who embark on a road trip to figure out where they want to raise a family, if not also determine what kind of family they want that to be. In addition to talking about his own feelings – cinematically and otherwise – about the prospect of living happily ever after, Mendes discussed the process of helping his co-stars get comfortable with one another, and ruminated on making a movie for the first time that's unfettered to the expectations of an awards season.

Todd Phillips, by his own admission or at least acceptance, is the comedy world's A-list anti-Apatow: where the writer-director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up bathes his characters in sweetness and sentiment, Phillips wrings his dry, leaving only the odd, awkward and undeniable punch of their punch lines. His latest film, The Hangover, follows a group of guys who awaken from an all-night bachelor party in Vegas to discover that the groom is missing, there's a tiger in the bathroom of their suite, and they are now in possession of a baby. No lessons are learned, no constitutions tested and no hearts wrenched, and that's just the way Phillips – and the audience of his films, from Road Trip to Old School to Starsky and Hutch – prefers it.

Cinematical recently sat down with Phillips, in Vegas, no less, to discuss The Hangover. In addition to talking about his particular and preferred brand of comedy, Phillips talked about a few of the films that inspired him as a young man, and mused about the future of both The Hangover and Old School.

As encouraging as it must be for a filmmaker to be recognized or associated with just one iconic film or franchise, Sam Raimi is the creative force behind two of them. He launched his eclectic career almost 30 years ago with the original Evil Dead, a horror classic that spawned two sequels and countless imitators, and then established himself as an A-list adaptor of comic book material with Spider-Man, which also begat sequels, and perhaps more importantly, several billion dollars or so in worldwide grosses. His latest film, Drag Me to Hell, is a return to the genre material that helped make a name for himself, albeit with the sensibility of a guy who survived one of Hollywood's biggest franchises, and took a few lessons away from the experience to boot.

Cinematical recently sat down with Raimi to discuss his new film, and the director demonstrated that in addition to being a hit machine with the mind of a born moviemaker, he's also a smart, generous, and remarkably humble fellow. While discussing his work on the film, he took time to respond, and kindly, to folks who both love and hate his legacy, before deconstructing his acrobatic cinematic style, and finally, digging deep to find a few films that meant something special to him as a young cineaste. And while he managed to pick consummate summer movie experiences that, quite frankly, didn't actually happen during the summer, the convenience of a Google search and the forgiveness of a grateful nation lying in wait for his films more than makes up for his lack of seasonal accuracy.