Margaret is Kenneth Lonergan’s raw and affecting character study of Lisa (Anna Paquin), a high school kid of privilege (and of divorce), grappling with guilt after an impulsive act contributes to a fatal accident.

As Lisa struggles to articulate her culpability, and atone for it, this tempestuous 17-year-old sucks her mother, friends, and teachers into and through a long teenage tunnel of hell. Is that a ray of light at the end?

Paquin is electrifying in this 21/2-hour film shot in 2005 and plagued by editing-room creative differences and lawsuits ever since. Like its central character, it is unfinished, a work-in-progress. Yet it is urgently alive with questions of conscience. Lisa sees morality in black and white while most of the adults around her see shades of gray, or are too involved in their own problems to help her work through hers.

Like a physicist precisely charting the dynamics of cause-and-effect, Lonergan (writer/director of You Can Count on Me) shows how Lisa’s one small action has multiple, huge consequences on others.

Lonergan, who wrote the screenplay in the wake of the 9/11 attack in New York, frames Lisa as a trauma victim struggling to put herself back together again. She represents the New Yorkers who struggled to do the same in the aftermath of the attacks.

In this version of the film, which has gone from editing room to courtroom and back again, the narrative jumps from heated confrontation to corrosive encounter. These are punctuated by lyrical panoramas of the New York skyline that provide breathing room between confrontations, but otherwise are vestigial.

Besides Paquin, who delivers a once-in-a-lifetime performance as the maddeningly inconsistent Lisa, also wrenchingly fine are Jeannie Berlin as the best friend of the deceased and J. Smith-Cameron as Lisa’s actress mother.

Margaret (which takes its title from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins about an adolescent grieving her loss of innocence) is not a film for everyone. But its hard look at a young, morally confused woman struggling for clarity is nothing short of riveting.

Source

With a few weeks left before True Blood begins filming again, Anna Paquin has signed on to star in Free Ride, along with Drea de Matteo, in Sarasota, FL.

The movie, which began filming this week, takes place in late 1970s Florida and focuses on a mother (played by Paquin) who, while fleeing an abusive relationship, turns to the marijuana trade to support her daughters.

According to a recent casting call they are still looking for extras too. Check out the details below:

Seeking Extras for a SAG FILM shooting in SARASOTA beginning late October thru late November. Looking for all types, all sizes, all ages, all ethnicities. Really unique faces a bonus! This is set in 1978– men with longer hair and facial hair a plus! Tough Biker types, clean cut types, kids, teens, families, and seniors. This will be a very fun project with well known industry professionals!

TO SUBMIT:
Please E-MAIL a current and clear photo of yourself.
Put in SUBJECT line: Name/ Male or Female/ Age
Put in BODY of E-mail: Your contact info & sizes.
Send all info to:
ICastingExtras@gmail.com

If you spot Free Ride filming in Florida, let us know about it at olv@onlocationvacations.com!

Source

Production on the comedy starts today in Shreveport, Louisiana under the direction of James Cox. Dave Cole wrote the script for the film, which is described as follows:

“Phillippe portrays a man who’s been in and out of rehab for 10 years and is haunted by the ghost of his dead mother pressing him to return home to the family he turned his back on years ago. Outfitted with nothing more than a bag of pills and a sack of weed, he trots back to Shreveport, only to be faced with his brother’s wife, who’s still pining for him, her first love.”

Holly Wiersma and Rene Besson are producing, with Avi Lerner, Danny Dimbort, Trevor Short, Boaz Davidson, John Thompson and Lati Grobman executive producing.

True Blood will make its fourth consecutive appearance at Comic-Con in San Diego with panel on Friday, July 22.
Confirmed panelists: Alan Ball, Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer, Sam Trammell, Ryan Kwanten, Rutina Wesley, Kevin Alejandro, Kristin Bauer van Straten, Nelsan Ellis, Joe Manganiello, Deborah Ann Woll. Moderated by @EW’s Tim Stack.

And this isn’t some small, independent production, either. This has a cast that includes Matt Damon, Anna Paquin, Mark Ruffalo, Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Allison Janney, Olivia Thirlby and Kieran Culkin. Take any of the names from that cast; if they weren’t known when it was shot, they’ve achieved a significantly larger amount of fame by this point. The problem (in a nutshell) is that the original cut of the movie was around three hours long, and Fox Searchlight only gave Lonergan final cut if it was around two hours. As he’s said to have a heavy desire to only make it his way…well, complications arose.

These “complications” have kept it out of sight in the time since. There’s been lawsuits, multiple attempts at editing a final cut, and various stops and starts on the fabled road to completion. Never mind that Martin Scorsese (who executive produced You Can Count on Me) called a cut of it that he saw a “masterpiece;” it’s had a tough fight over the past five-and-a-half years. I’ve always thought that it would see release at some point, as there’s too much opportunity for a studio to pass up by letting this movie sit on a shelf forever, but when it would see the light of day is something I can’t even try to answer.

There may be some hope, though, as our own Jack Giroux interviewed Mark Ruffalo a few days ago for FilmSchoolRejects, and the actor told him that we could see it in the near future, thanks to the help of one of its advocates, Mr. Scorsese.

When asked about being able to actually see the movie, Ruffalo said the following:

“Oh, it’s so… I don’t know. Marty Scorsese has come on now to do a pass on it with Kenneth. It was a movie that started at 186 pages. When he tried to cut it down, he had a very hard time. The studio was saying they wanted no more than two hours, and the rough cut I saw was a little bit over three hours long.

He couldn’t get it cut down. He had a really hard time. The studio, basically, said they weren’t going to release it. That’s where it’s been. It got tied up in lawsuits with Gary Gilbert, who tried to take the movie away and have someone else edit it behind Kenny’s back. Now Kenny has got it and Marty is kinda arbitrating his cut. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing it soon.”

He also praised the movie itself, calling it a masterpiece and saying that it’s “beautifully shot, beautifully acted, and the writing is incredible,” as well as a “love story to a post-9/11 America and New York City.”

Source: The Playlist

Congratulations to the couple! We wish them a long lifetime together filled with love, joy, happiness and health.

Edit: Following this site’s rules of not posting paparazzi pictures, I’ll just redirect you to Just Jared website, which has some Anna and Stephen’s pictures.

Anna has been nominated in Best Actress on Television and True Blood was nominated in Best Syndicated/Cable Television Series

Source: Saturn Awards

Created by Alan Ball, the series will begin production of new episodes early next year in Los Angeles, with debut set for summer 2011.

“The new season of True Blood is off to a terrific start, as enthusiasm for this unique show continues to build among both subscribers and critics,” noted Lombardo. “We’re looking forward to more chills from Alan Ball and his gifted team next year.”

In case you’re out of the loop, the series takes place in the not-too-distant future, when vampires have come out of the coffin, thanks to the invention of mass-produced synthetic blood that means they no longer need humans as a nutritional source. The show follows the romance between waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), who can hear people’s thoughts, and her boyfriend, 173-year-old vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), who went missing at the end of season two, and is now the object of a frantic search. Alan Ball (Six Feet Under) created and executive produces the show, which is based on the best-selling Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris.