ashley scott Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Poor New Orleans! As if the real-life horrors of Hurricane Katrina and the broken levees weren't bad enough, now the beautiful city must suffer from the devastation wrought by Danny Fisher, played by former * WWE wrestler / entertainer John Cena in 12 Rounds, the latest train wreck from director Renny Harlin. "Damn the property damage! I'm going to save my girlfriend, whatever the cost!" is a noble sentiment, especially when you don't have to pay the bills.

Danny isn't really responsible for the carnage he causes, of course, even though he politely apologizes whenever he crashes into other people's vehicles or accidentally kills people. (Cena furrows his brow and turns his smile upside down, just so you know he's not happy with himself.) The real blame lies with Miles Jackson, who is seeking revenge on Danny for the death of his girlfriend. Jackson is described as an international arms dealer, but he spends much more time blowing things up and changing SIM cards in cell phones than any actual dealing of arms.

Aidan Gillen, who was superb as a cagey, ambitious, well-intentioned politician in The Wire, has much less to play with here, but it's fun to watch him try to juice up the role of an exceptionally-nasty master criminal with absolutely no scruples or second thoughts. He provides one of the few true pleasures in 12 Rounds, which should be a lot more fun than it is. Instead of embracing its loonier plot elements -- a fire engine crashing across town, a ticking time bomb on a public bus, an out-of-control street car -- 12 Rounds insists on playing it straight as a sober drama, ending up as Speed without the flirtations or thrills.

Strange Wilderness is a new comedy starring Steve Zahn as the host of a wilderness television show with plummeting ratings. To increase viewership, he assembles a motley crew and sets out on an expedition to find Bigfoot. The cast includes Jonah Hill, Justin Long, Ashley Scott, Peter Dante, Jeff Garlin, and -- believe it or not -- Ernest Borgnine! The red band trailer for Wilderness just hit the internet. (Need a little incentive to check it out? There's nudity. You're welcome.) Cinematical spoke with two of the film's stars -- Kevin Heffernan (of Broken Lizard fame) and Allen Covert (pretty much every Adam Sandler movie, Grandma's Boy) -- about this film and their careers. First up is Kevin Heffernan...

Cinematical: Who do you play in the film?

Kevin Heffernan: I play a character named Whitaker. When they go out on this trip, they need to hire an animal wrangler. I'm a car mechanic and I have no animal wrangling experience. Basically, I'm just looking for a job. So I go and interview with them and I win the job but I have no knowledge of animals. I don't even like them that much really! It's got this great ensemble cast and some great cameos...

Cinematical: It does have such a great comedy cast, was improvisation encouraged on the set?

KH: Yeah man. The script was so good, I mean it was written by Fred Wolf and Peter Gaulke who have a lot of comedy writing experience, but it was just one of those kind of movies where there's always like six or seven people on the screen. And they left it free for us to do the improv stuff that we all love to do. So there were a lot of people going off, and they had to kind of pull you back to the script a little bit.