In The Brass Teapot, John (Michael Angarano) and Alice (Juno Temple) are a small town couple in their ‘20s, who are very much in love, but also very broke.  Struggling to make ends meet while their friends enjoy the good life, a mysterious brass teapot in a roadside antique shop is seemingly the answer to all of their problems, when it starts spitting money out of its spout.  But, as its demands for appeasement become darker and darker, its existence is a reminder that you should always be careful what you wish for.

At the film’s press day, actress Juno Temple spoke to Collider for this exclusive interview about making a grown-up fairytale, finding the balance between fantasy and realism, how important it is to just go there for emotional scenes, how difficult it was to get through the S&M scene without laughing, and how she likes to be challenged by the characters that she plays.  She also talked about being a part of Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, how much fun it was to work with Ray Liotta for the 17 hours that she worked on the film, and how much more aware you are of your own physicality in front of a green screen.  Check out what she had to say after the jump.

I was with Killer Joe right up until the very end. For the first 95%, it held me tight in its grip: another brilliant collaboration between playwright Tracy Letts and director William Friedkin. The former brings the juicy hard-boiled dialogue, while the latter makes the story feel cinematic rather than canned theater. It’s a wild ride from the get-go… which makes its badly misplayed finale all the more disappointing. Hit the jump for my full review.

Is an Argo Best Picture win now inevitable?  The 2013 British Academy of Film and Television Awards (BAFTA Awards) were handed out this evening, and director Ben Affleck’s thriller continued its domination of awards season by landing the Best Film and Best Director prizes.  The BAFTAs have always been an important bellwether for predicting Oscar, but they may be even more in tune with the Academy this year as a rule change allowed the entire BAFTA voting body to vote on every award (like the Oscars), instead of writers only voting for screenplay, actors only voting for acting, etc.

Les Miserables won the most BAFTAs of the night, taking home four trophies including Best Supporting Actress for Anne Hathaway (duh) and Best Production Design (over Anna Karenina? Really?).  The winners actually lined up pretty closely with my current Oscar predictions, though most were surprised to see David O. Russell take home the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar over Lincoln and Argo.  Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence were also overtaken in Best Actress by Emmanuel Riva for Amour, who has emerged as a strong possibility in a tough category.  Hit the jump for the full list of winners.

One of the many films to premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was writer-director Jill Soloway’s Afternoon Delight.  Starring Kathryn Hahn, Juno Temple, Josh Radnor and Jane Lynch, the film’s about a L.A. housewife that “puts her idyllic hipster life in jeopardy when she tries to rescue a stripper by taking her in as a live-in nanny.”  Featuring great performances from the entire cast, the film was well received by audiences and critics and Soloway won the U.S. Dramatic Directing Award during the closing night festivities.

The day after the premiere, I landed an extended interview with Juno Temple.  We talked about how she got involved in Afternoon Delight, how much changed during production, how 2012 was an extraordinary year as she played a normal girl from the 70s, a schizophrenic, a stripper/prostitute, and a fairy, and more.  In addition, we also talked about making Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, Alexandre Aja’s Horns (which stars Daniel Radcliffe), and Robert Rodriguez’ Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.  Hit the jump to watch.

One of the many films to premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was writer-director Jill Soloway’s Afternoon Delight.  Starring Kathryn Hahn, Juno Temple, Josh Radnor and Jane Lynch, the film’s about a L.A. housewife that “puts her idyllic hipster life in jeopardy when she tries to rescue a stripper by taking her in as a live-in nanny.”  Featuring great performances from the entire cast, the film was well received by audiences and critics and Soloway won the U.S. Dramatic Directing Award during the closing night festivities.

The day after the premiere, I landed an extended interview with Juno Temple.  While I’ll be posting the full conversation soon, today I’m posting what she had to say about making Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, Alexandre Aja’s Horns (which stars Daniel Radcliffe), and Robert Rodriguez’ Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.  Hit the jump for more.

Kathryn Hahn is an amazing comic actress who has yet to receive the widespread recognition she deserves.  She’s mostly been stuck in supporting parts, but she’s a scene stealer, and she deserves to be in lead roles.  She finally gets that opportunity in Jill Soloway‘s Afternoon Delight.  Hahn proves that not only can she carry the picture, but she has the dramatic range to play a woman who is looking for a change of pace in order to fix her life.  Soloway puts a fascinating relationship at the center of the movie, and for two-thirds of the film it looks like she has made a confident feature debut.  But then a sequence comes along that drowns the movie in sorrow, and grinds it to a halt to where not even Hahn’s performance can save it.

When news broke a couple of weeks ago that Joseph Gordon-Levitt had joined Robert Rodriguez’s in-production sequel Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, the source report noted that other “tough guy actors” would be announced for the cast soon.  Indeed, just a day later Josh Brolin joined the pic in a lead role and Christopher Meloni signed on to portray a supporting character, and now The Playlist reports that Ray Liotta, Jeremy Piven, and the lovely Juno Temple (The Dark Knight Rises) have been added to the cast.

Details on their characters are unknown at the moment, but Rodriguez is filling out the follow-up with a pretty impressive lineup.  The current cast now also includes Mickey ROurke, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Jaime King, Dennis Haysbert, and Jamie Chung.  Sin City: A Dame to Kill For opens on October 14th.

The first trailer and poster for the dark comedy The Brass Teapot have been released online.  The film stars Juno Temple and Michael Angarano as a young married couple who come into possession of a mysterious teapot that dispenses money whenever the owners hurt themselves.  It’s an interesting premise that plays out in a strange fashion, and I’m not exactly sure of the film’s tone based off of this trailer.  It certainly looks like it has potential, but there’s a grating emo rock song that plays throughout the second half of the trailer that’s more than a little annoying/distracting.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer and poster.  Directed by Ramaa Mosley, the film also stars Alexis Bledel, Billy Magnussen, Alia Shawkat, Bobby Moynihan, Stephen Park, and Debra Monk.  The Brass Teapot opens on April 5th.

The 2013 Sundance Film Festival recently announced some new additions to their screening line-up, so we put together some images from the following films:

• Magic Magic – Written and directed by Sebastian Silva and starring Michael Cera, Juno Temple, Emily Browning, Catalina Sandino Moreno and Augustín Silva.
• Muscle Shoals – A musical documentary from Greg “Freddy” Camalier, featuring Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Gregg Allman, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Alicia Keys, Bono and others.
• El Mariachi (1993) – Directed by Robert Rodriguez and written by Rodriguez and Carlos Gallardo, El Mariachi stars Gallardo, Consuelo Gomez, Jaime De Hoyos, Peter Marquardt and Reinol Martinez.

Hit the jump to check out the images and synopses.  The 2013 Sundance Film Festival runs from January 17 – 27th.

The Sundance Film Festival recently announced the promising lineups for a few of the festival’s categories, and we’ve now got the first images from some films that will be playing in competition as part of the U.S. Dramatic category.  Briefly:

• Afternoon Delight – Written and directed by Jill Soloway, starring Kathryn Hahn, Juno Temple, Josh Radnor, and Jane Lynch.
• Ain’t Them Bodies Saints – Written and directed by David Lowery, starring Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Nate Parker, and Keith Carradine.
• C.O.G. – Written and directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez, starring Jonathan Groff, Denis O’Hare, Corey Stoll, Dean Stockwell, Casey Wilson, and Troian Bellisario.
• Concussion – Written and directed by Stacie Passon, starring Robin Weigert, Maggie Siff, Jonathan Tchaikovsky, Julie Fain Lawrence, Emily Kinney, and Laila Robins.

Hit the jump to check out the images and synopses.  The 2013 Sundance Film Festival runs January 17 – 27.

Daniel Radcliffe has traded in his Harry Potter scar for some more obvious prosthetics in Horns, a new film from director Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes).  Adapted by Keith Bunin from the Joe Hill novel of the same name, Horns centers on Ignatius “Ig” Perrish (Radcliffe), a young man who wakes up to find himself accused of the violent rape and murder of his girlfriend.  Oh, and he has horns growing out of his forehead that seem to come with the bonus powers of forcing people to confess their sins and getting them to give in to their darkest impulses.  Horns also stars Juno Temple, Max Minghella, James Remar and Kelli Garner.  Hit the jump to see the horns and to read what Radcliffe had to say about the much darker role.

Just yesterday we learned that The Social Network star Max Minghella was in talks to join Daniel Radcliffe in the supernatural fantasy thriller Horns.  Now three more names are looking to be added to the cast, as Variety reports that Juno Temple (Killer Joe), Joe Anderson (The Grey) and Kelli Garner (Lars and the Real Girl, Pan Am) are in talks to sign on.  To be directed by Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes), the film is based on the novel of the same name by Joe Hill and centers on Ig Perrish (Radcliffe), the main suspect in the rape and murder of his girlfriend.  He wakes one morning to find horns growing from his head, appendages that have the ability to force confessions from strangers, which aids him in his quest to find the real killer and exact his revenge.

Temple, who was seen this summer in The Dark Knight Rises, is in advanced negotiations to take on the girlfriend role in this fairly crazy-sounding pic.  No word on who Anderson or Garner would play, but production is set to get underway this fall.

Little Birds is an indie drama that follows 15-year-old Lily (Juno Temple) and her best friend Alison (Kay Panabaker), who live in a rundown trailer park on the shores of the Salton Sea. When they meet a trio of visiting street kids, Lily’s rebelliousness kicks in and she convinces Alison to follow the boys to Los Angeles, but once there, they quickly fall into the boys’ world of scams and petty crime. While Lily is determined to stay and make it work, her actions threaten to tear apart her friendship with Alison. Written and directed by Elgin James, the film also stars Leslie Mann, Kate Bosworth, Kyle Gallner and Neal McDonough.

At the film’s press day, actress Juno Temple spoke to Collider for this exclusive interview about what attracted her to the script and character, learning that the writer/director wanted her for either of the lead roles, how much she enjoyed working with co-star Kay Panabaker, what it was like to spend time in the Salton Sea, and why she’s more comfortable with sexuality in film than violence. She also talked about the appeal of big studio movies versus smaller indies, what attracted her to the role of a fairy named Thistletwit in Maleficent (starring Angelina Jolie in the title role), which she starts shooting soon, and the experience of working with director Christopher Nolan on The Dark Knight Rises. Check out what she had to say after the jump.

We’ve got a few casting notes to share with you.  Here they are in brief:

• Terrence Howard (Iron Man) will join A Girl and a Gun, a modern LA thriller from writer/director Filip Jan Rymsza that also stars Juno Temple, Luis Guzman and Christopher Walken.  
• Natalie Dormer (Game of Thrones) has been cast in The Counselor alongside Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt.  Ridley Scott directs from a Cormac McCarthy script.  
• Dylan McDermott (American Horror Story) joins The Freezer as a kidnapping victim who is more than he appears.  The story, written by Tom Doganoglu and Shane Weisfeld, will be directed by Mikael Salomon.

Hit the jump for more details on each casting assignment.

Now playing, in limited release, is director William Friedkin‘s controversial thriller Killer Joe.  Based on the play by Tracey Letts, the NC-17-rated film centers on a son (Emile Hirsch) and his father (Thomas Haden Church) who hire a cop moonlighting as a hitman (Matthew McConaughey) to murder their mother in order to get her insurance policy.  The film also stars Juno Temple as Hirsch’s sister and Gina Gershon.  Loaded with great performances and an insane third act, Killer Joe is definitely worth checking out.  For more on the film, here’s the trailer, a clip, and my interview with Hirsch , Friedkin and McConaughey.

The other day I sat down with Gershon and Temple here in Los Angeles. We talked about making Killer Joe, their initial reaction to the script, how they prepared for the role, favorite movies, and more. Hit the jump to watch.