TEN's Sarah McIntyre caught up with Colin Firth and Emma Stone to chat about their new film Magic in
Check out TEN's interview with the actors, where they chatted about being intimidated working with Woody Allen, stifling laughter while filming scenes with the hilarious Hamish Linklater and wanting to take home the incredible costumes.
Plus, we find out which famous actress Colin named his pet cat after!
After dealing with the emotional breakdown at the core of “Blue Jasmine,” a very contemporary tale of free-falling down the social ladder that won star Cate Blanchett the Best Actress Oscar, director / writer Woody Allen once again seeks refuge in the past. With “Magic in the Moonlight,” Allen turns out a well-wrought and clever but lightweight bauble set in late-1920s France that echoes the European daydream of his 2011 hit, “Midnight in Paris.”
What makes “Moonlight” most memorable is the performance from Colin Firth, who is in nearly every scene. Without him, “Moonlight” just might evaporate.
Firth is Stanley, the Penn Jillette of his day, a magician and a man of science and secularism whose specialty is to debunk those claiming to engage in the supernatural. An old magician friend of his, Howard (Simon McBurney), shows up after a performance to tell him of Sophie Baker (Emma Stone), a young American woman residing in the south of France who claims to have psychic powers and the ability to channel the dead.
Howard says he tried to prove she was really just a trickster but left her seance perplexed. She seemed to be the real deal.
Eager to discredit her, Stanley agrees to attend her next seance, where he will also meet her mother (Marcia Gay Harden) and fiance, Brice (Hamish Linklater), both of whom are convinced of her powers.
But things get complicated when Stanley, who is also engaged, finds himself attracted to Sophie and vice versa. He had never anticipated that he might have to choose love over logic.
SAULT STE. MARIE
Posted Aug. 1, 2014 @ 2:01 am
By Ed Symkus
Woody Allen has often spoken about his drawer full of movie ideas, some of them hastily written down, that he visits now and then when the prolific director feels that it’s time to write and direct another one. Though many of his most ardent fans were saying that his best days are behind him, that his last great film was “Husbands and Wives” two decades ago, it’s always such a great surprise when something the caliber of last year’s resoundingly acclaimed “Blue Jasmine” pops up. (Personal note: I’d also put 1999’s “Sweet and Lowdown” right up there with the strong stuff.)
And though “Magic in the Moonlight” mostly pales next to “Blue Jasmine” – except for Colin Firth’s terrific performance – I can still comfortably recommend it as good, if not great, Woody Allen.
It’s a period piece about the timeless subject of fraud. In 1928 Berlin, a Chinese magician named Wei Ling Soo astonishes audiences with his impossible stage illusions. Of course, all magicians are committing fraud, but it’s the sort of deception that audiences enjoy. Wei Ling Soo takes it a step further, in that he’s actually a Brit named Stanley (Colin Firth) posing, in heavy costuming and makeup, as a Chinese magician. When his magician pal Howard Burkan (Simon McBurney) asks him for a favor – to prove that an American woman claiming to be a psychic is a total fake – he agrees to take on the task, gallantly but tiredly saying, “OK, I’ll expose yet another fraudulent spiritualist.”
He also believes that Grace and Brice are perfect marks, and can see that Brice is smitten with Sophie. But though he can’t figure out how she does what she does, he remains a non-believer because, he says, “I’m rational.”
The Flea Theater will present a reading of Hamish Linklater’s The Vandal, April 3, at The Museum of Jewish Heritage starring Golden Globe winners Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, and Outer Critics Circle nominee Noah Robbins with direction by Flea’s Artistic Director Jim Simpson.
The Vandal is set on a frozen night in Kingston, New York, where a woman (Weaver) who's lost everything tags her name on Death's door.
Linklater, currently starring in Broadway’s Seminar, is excited to be presenting his this work with The Flea.
He explains, “the play is about how we live and the stories we tell ourselves when we’re haunted by the people we’ve loved and lost.”
All proceeds from this event will go to The Flea Theater, now entering its 17th year.
Seminar, Theresa Rebeck's new play about the creative and personal tensions of four young novelists who are taking a private writing class with a potentially damaging teacher, played by Alan Rickman — an actor often on the brink of a sneer — begins Broadway performances Oct. 27.
At the Golden Theatre on West 45th Street, the writers in the orbit of Rickman's novelist-editor are played by Tony Award nominee Lily Rabe (The Merchant of Venice) and Broadway newcomers Jerry O'Connell (Hollywood's "Stand By Me" and "Jerry Maguire" and TV's "Crossing Jordan" and "The Defenders"); Obie Award winner Hamish Linklater (the recent School for Lies Off-Broadway and TV's "The New Adventures of Old Christine"); and Hettienne Park (Tony Kushner's The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures).
Tony Award nominee Rickman has been celebrated for Broadway's Private Lives and Les Liaisons Dangereuses. He was Prof. Snape in the "Harry Potter" film franchise, and a particularly memorable screen villain in "Die Hard."
Sam Gold (Circle Mirror Transformation, The Aliens, We Live Here) directs, making his Broadway debut. Opening night is Nov. 20.
Hamish Linklater and Lily Rabe
photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN
In Seminar, according to the producers, "four aspiring young novelists sign up for private writing classes with Leonard, an international literary figure. Under his recklessly brilliant and unorthodox instruction, some thrive and others flounder, alliances are made and broken, sex is used as a weapon and hearts are unmoored. The wordplay is not the only thing that turns vicious as innocence collides with experience in this provocative new comedy."
Rebeck is the prolific Pulitzer Prize finalist and Peabody Award winner known for her plays Mauritius, Our House, The Scene, The Understudy, Omnium Gatherum, The Family of Mann, Spike Heels and Poor Behavior. She is the creator and showrunner of NBC's upcoming series about musical theatre people "Smash."
The production features set and costume design by Tony Award nominee and two-time Obie Award winner David Zinn, lighting design by Drama Desk Award nominee Ben Stanton and original music and sound design by two-time Drama Desk Award winner John Gromada.
The play's producers are Jeffrey Finn, Jill Furman, John N. Hart Jr., Patrick Milling Smith, Roy Furman, David Ian, David Mirvish, Amy Nauiokas and James Spry.
Tickets are $51.50-126.50, with Premium seating also available. Tickets are also on sale at www.telecharge.com or by calling (212) 239-6200.
Visit www.SeminarOnBroadway.com.
Obie winner Sam Gold directs Tony nominees Alan Rickman and Lily Rabe, Broadway newcomers Jerry O'Connell and Hettienne Park, and Drama Desk nominee Hamish Linklater in the world premiere of Theresa Rebeck's dark comedy Seminar. Rickman plays Leonard, a world famous literary figure who agrees to tutor several young writers struggling for success. As the course progresses and Leonard deems some students more worthy than others, sparks fly and tensions come to a head.
The television and film actor Jerry O’Connell (“Sliders,” “Jerry Maguire”) will make his Broadway debut this fall as a self-satisfied young writer in Theresa Rebeck’s new comedy, “Seminar,” which stars Alan Rickman as a no-holds-barred writing teacher.
The producers also announced on Friday that Hettienne Park would play another budding author, one who brings a charged-up libido to class; Ms. Park played a supporting role in Tony Kushner’s recent play at the Public Theater, “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures.” Mr. Rickman, along with Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater, had already been cast in the production, which Sam Gold (“Circle Mirror Transformation”) will direct. Preview performances are scheduled to begin Oct. 27 at the Golden Theater, with an opening night of Nov. 20.
Off Broadway, Alice Ripley will return to New York theater this fall for the first time since her Tony Award-winning performance in the 2009 Broadway musical “Next to Normal,” once more playing a mother in the Off Broadway production of “Wild Animals You Should Know,” MCC Theater announced on Friday. The play, by Thomas Higgins, centers on an erotically charged relationship between Boy Scouts played by Jay Armstrong Johnson (“Pool Boy” at Barrington Stage) and Gideon Glick (“Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” “Speech and Debate”), who go to a wilderness scout camp where their cat-and-mouse games intensify.
Patrick Breen (“The Normal Heart”) plays the father of one of the boys and the husband of Ms. Ripley’s character. Directed by Trip Cullman (“Bachelorette”), the play also includes John Behlmann and Daniel Stewart Sherman in the cast. The production, which is Mr. Higgins’s Off Broadway debut, begins previews at the Lucille Lortel Theater on Nov. 3 and also opens on Nov. 20.
