movie interview Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I never saw the recent movie versions of The Cat in the Hat and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I mean, I'm sure they were funny and all, but Dr. Seuss' books, as well as the cartoon versions of his books (The Grinch, The Lorax), were just such the gospel to me when I was a kid -- still are, as a matter of fact -- that to interpret any of his work in live-action form seemed the height of sacrilege. (Except for the time Jesse Jackson read Green Eggs in Ham on Saturday Night Live. Whoever thought of that for a skit was either high, or a genius, or both.)

Well, it sounds like somebody's been listening to my inner nagging old lady, because Fox is remaking another Dr. Seuss book -- Horton Hears a Who! -- and this time, they're doing it ANIMATED. Hurrah! And, duh! Granted, they probably couldn't figure out a way to make the elephant look real, but I'll take my triumphs any way I can get 'em.

Teaming up for the second time (the first was Evan Bruce Almighty) are the comic dream team of Jim Carrey and Steve Carell: Carrey as Horton the elephant, who discovers an entire tiny city that exists on a speck of dust, and Carell as the Mayor of Whoville, the tiny said city that exists on said speck of dust. Oh, and a whole bunch of other people lend their voices to the movie, too ... like Carol Burnett, Will Arnett, Isla Fisher, Seth Rogen, and Amy Poehler, to name a few.

Now, a person's a person, no matter how small, but Carrey and Carell happen to be huge. And awesome. And side-splittingly funny. And it's not just because their last names are practically identical. We're delighted that they've agreed to sit for one of Moviefone's Unscripted interviews, in which they'll be interviewing each other using audience-submitted questions.

We need your questions to make it happen, though, and fast, because the interview's taping this Sunday (March 2). So submit a question by Friday for either Carrey or Carell below, and please be sure to include your name and the city where you live -- then check back here on March 10 to see if your question made it to air. Extra points if you write your question in anapestic tetrameter. Good luck!

Edited because Bruce Almighty was the one with Steve Carell in it; Evan Almighty was the one with the ark in it. D'oh!

Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale, a semi-autobiographical film about a Brooklyn family's experience with divorce, was the sleeper indie hit of 2005, and after its success Baumbach shot to prominence as a director to watch. His highly anticipated follow-up effort, Margot at the Wedding, returns to similar themes of family love and loathing; it stars Nicole Kidman as Margot, a high-strung writer who, along with her son Claude (Zane Pais), goes on a pilgrimage of sorts to her childhood home, where her estranged sister (Baumbach's wife Jennifer Jason Leigh) is marrying an unemployed painter (Jack Black) she just met. Baumbach -- who, it must be noted, bears an uncanny resemblance to Adrien Brody -- sat down with us in Toronto to talk about New York, family dynamics and just what's up with all those masturbation scenes.

Cinematical: After Squid and the Whale, a lot of people looked at you as a Brooklyn artist, the way they might look at someone like Jonathan Lethem. Did you have any temptation to make another movie set in Brooklyn, or did you deliberately move away from that?

Noah Baumbach: It wasn't deliberate or not deliberate -- I started writing this movie and it became what it was. It wasn't a response to anything in particular. I feel a real connection to Brooklyn, certainly, because I spent 20 years of my life there, but I don't think of myself as a Brooklyn artist any more than I think of myself as a male artist. I will say that when people would respond to Squid with a kind of Brooklyn-centric reaction I was pleased with that, because obviously Brooklyn means a lot to me.