Bad Max Williams: an Actor Talks Bullets and Spirituality

October, 09, 2012 10:49 am | Comments On #culture

 

Max Williams has taken a risk -- a brash role full of whim, blood and head games that has left a distinct flavor on his resume.

Unlike Viola Davis or Maggie Gyllenhaal, Oscar-nominated actors whose bodies of work won't be defined by their leap of angst as relatable moms in "Won't Back Down," the recent Walden Media release that pulled in a disappointing $2.6 million in 2,500+ theaters in its opening weekend, Williams is still in the trenches with gashes, crawling his way to a wider audience, after his turn as a bullet-spraying nut job with zero remorse in IFC's "Bullet in the Face."

Known on the L.A. theater scene for crafting intense characters, Williams...

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A Movie Guide to Occupy Wall Street

October, 07, 2011 11:12 am | Comments On #Movies

Filmmakers Alex Gibney (“Enron”), Peter Joseph (“Zeitgeist”), Michael Moore (“Capitalism: A Love Story”) and Charles Ferguson (“Inside Job”) top the list of documentarians whose work scrutinizes the establishment and actually calls it what it is: damaged goods.  

As Occupy Wall Street spawns a number of offshoots including Occupy Los Angeles, Occupy Colleges and Occupy Seattle, its protestors defy boxes and squares, labels and tags and the status quo. Instead, these groups are a lightning rod for a dizzying array of America's ills, from gargantuan student loans to joblessness to vampiric bankers.

CRY BABIES IN DIRTY UNDERWEAR

While OWS may be perceived as a collective expression of jealousy and the lazy man's attempt at a money grab, it's about humanity and our course for...

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WikiRebels: From Sweden with Love

January, 21, 2011 12:10 pm | Comments On #Media, WikiLeaks

(WikiRebels — The Documentary. Producer: SVT; directed by investigative reporters Bosse Lindquist and Jesper Huor; featuring interviews withJulian Assange, Kristinn Hrafnsson, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Iain Overton)

Final cut locked: Dec. 9. Release date: Dec. 12. Location: Sweden. 

"WikiRebels" is that spontaneous documentary that has little time to gestate and churn. It's both a short and sweeping history of WikiLeaks, the organization, and a tight and telling portrait of a determined and daring man, Julian Assange.

Since airing on Sweden's public service broadcasting station, SVT, "WikiRebels" has been or is slated to be released in over fourteen countries around the world including Israel, Canada, Australia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Norway, Belgium, Germany, and...

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My Conversation with Michael Moore on Julian Assange, Part 2

December, 30, 2010 5:47 pm | Comments On #Julian Assange, Media, Michael Moore, WikiLeaks

The following is the second part of my interview with filmmaker Michael Moore.

We spoke on December 14, the day after he'd pledged $20,000 of Julian Assange's $316,000 bail, prior to his appearances on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Rachel Maddox Show. In this segment, we talked about the upcoming WikiLeaks documents from Bank of America, the massive fines against BofA for fraud and conspiracy, and how accused Private Bradley Manning slid down the pivotal crack between the Espionage Act and international law.

LW Let's talk about the material itself. What has WikiLeaks given us? The political equivalent of Gawker or People Magazine? Or is it another Pentagon Papers? Or is it another version of the Valerie Plame affair with some musical chairs going on — with ...

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My Conversation with Michael Moore on Julian Assange, Part 1

December, 23, 2010 3:55 pm | Comments On #Julian Assange, Media, Michael Moore, WikiLeaks

I had a chance to talk with filmmaker Michael Moore shortly after his personal decision to post $20,000 of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange's $316,000 bail. Joining the list of celebrities that included Bianca Jagger, Ken Loach, John Pilger and Jemima Khan, Moore and his cash had a flagrantly politicized feel.

After all, his films “Capitalism: A Love Story” and “Sicko” have provided outlets for whistleblowers, making his contribution to Assange seem like a simple footnote to a Hollywood career that's made its mark thrashing the power elite and knocking the American government.

But underlying any relish for making the U.S. look bad, Moore reveals an appreciation for the internet. And how it makes us look good.

LW: The rape charges against Julian Assange clearly have to be addressed. At the same time, I can separate...

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Wikileaks: My Unposted Interview with Michael Moore

December, 21, 2010 4:42 pm | Comments On #Julian Assange, Mark Zuckerberg, Media, Michael Moore, the New York Times, WikiLeaks

Earlier this month, I interviewed Oscar-winning filmmaker and political commentator Michael Moore about Wikileaks.

It was the day after he'd pledged $20,000 to help free the embattled Wikileaks chief, Julian Assange, on bail.

The resulting 3,000-word interview is a look at Wikileaks, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, national security, the definition of journalism, Bank of America, the housing crisis, the rape allegations against Assange, the Nuremberg trials and transparency in our government, among other things.

The unbridled ranting that has become synonymous with Moore's name is met with my own efforts to ask him questions that would provoke less of his trademark reactionary spew and more of his razor sharp perceptions. When it comes to interviews, Moore is a first-rate conversationalist. Taking none of his alleged "facts" at...

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Shhh! 4 Secret WikiLeaks Projects Under Way in Hollywood

December, 09, 2010 6:05 pm | Comments On #Julian Assange, Media, WikiLeaks

Today's key words: mess, assault, victory, defeat, capitulation, enslaught, censorship, brainwashing, subversion, espionage, theft, freedom, transparency, sex by surprise, New World Order

What about the secret list of films in development based on the current WikiLeaks debacle that has allegedly been floating around Hollywood? Apparently the list keeps growing and growing, and evidently indicates the Who, What, Where and How Much for each production's silver screen incarnation.

Mr. Julian Assange, the embattled WikiLeaks chief, who might do better with a slightly fictionalized treatment, is now destined to join the ranks of Mark Zuckerberg whose online preeminence has been brilliantly immortalized...

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Charted: The Venn Power of Jennifer Lopez

May, 03, 2010 3:09 pm | Comments On #Jennifer Lopez, the back-up plan

Jennifer Lopez, back with her new rom-com, "The Back-Up Plan," has been around the block, on the train, through the mill, at the mall and on the red carpet. She's been trashed, celebrated, spit out and embraced. She's charted and tanked, smiled and endured. She's put scents in a bottle and clothes on the rack. She's opened a restaurant, divorced husbands and mothered her children.

This kind of turbo-charged activity could put an Olympian on crutches, but in the hands, face, body and voice of Jennifer Lopez, it's turned a multi-hyphenate performer into that rare Hollywood hybrid who's held her own over the years (thumbs up and thumbs down) as an actress, singer, dancer ... et cetera and so on.

And she does it in bold strokes, loaded with phenomenal Venn Power (see below), the kind of glossy, starlit, frenetic roller ride of a career that has "...

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'American Idol': You Need Sarah Silverman

March, 10, 2010 12:25 pm | Comments On #Down Syndrome, Sarah Silverman, Television

It was a one-night, once in a lifetime, completely eclectic, fun-filled amalgam of creators, builders and performers who brought TwentyWonder, a benefit for Down syndrome, to Los Angeles over the weekend.

>Billed as a world's fair for supporters of the Down Syndrome Association of Los Angeles (DSALA), TwentyWonder packed a dazzling array of talent and information, seamlessly fusing, in an uncanny and unconventional sort of way, the arts with the sciences.

Just when the event could have turned into a dry, grown-up affair filled with long speeches and glazed eyes, Jim Hodgson and his team delivered the fluid, the bold and the unexpected.

Sarah Silverman
She's got pipes. Cranking...

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Memo to Brad Grey, Ron Meyer, Robert Iger ...

February, 23, 2010 5:46 pm | Comments On #Brad Grey, directors, Laurene Williams, Movies, Robert Iger, ron meyer

While 2009 was a groundbreaking year for filmmaking with the releases of "Avatar," "Precious" and "The Hurt Locker," the dire number of female-helmed studio films speak volumes.

We are nowhere close to equality. The sexist reasons that have managed to keep the number of studio films directed by women relatively flat for more than a decade need to be retired. 

Let's hope studio execs feel the same way some of you did about my list of reasons why. They are outrageous. 

I hope Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar nomination will do what Barbra Streisand's hit films should have done long ago -- make producers far more...

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