The ever-talented Stephen Merchant (co-creator of The Office and Extras alongside Ricky Gervais) has a penchant for playing the unsuccessful romantic. In his first team-up with The Farrellys – the underrated Hall Pass – Merchant steps out of his marriage and attempts to woo a bevy of women… all unsuccessfully.  In Movie 43, Merchant is at it again – this time attempting to seduce Halle Berry in one of the film’s numerous sketches.

In the following interview with Merchant, the comedian discusses working with Peter Farrelly once again for Movie 43, the anxiety of memorizing lines, whether he longs to ever be the lead in a film and his in-the-works HBO series Hello Ladies.  For the full interview, hit the jump. 

Famke Janssen, the outspoken actress behind Jean Grey of the X-Men films and the leg crushing femme fatale Xenia of Goldeneye, returns to her villainous roots in this week’s Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.  It’s good to see Janssen seemingly relish every line as she menaces the brother-sister duo and threatens to bring about a ‘witch-apocalypse’… or something like that.  It’s a fun performance and a welcome return for Janssen who’s been absent from cinemas for far too long now (her brief appearances in the Taken franchise withstanding).

In the following interview with Janssen, she talks about her hiatus from acting (she was directing a picture – Bringing Up Bobby – during), the troubles of ‘witch’ prosthetics, and the joy of riding a broomstick.  Janssen also touched upon her role in the upcoming Netflix series Hemlock Grove and played coy on whether or not she’s been approached to reprise her role as Jean Grey in any of the upcoming X-Men sequels.  For the full interview, hit the jump.

Warm Bodies, a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, substitutes the Capulet’s Juliet for Julie – a gun toting survivor in a post-apocalyptic wasteland – and Romeo for an undead flesh-eating zombie. Teresa Palmer (I Am Number Four) stars as the Juliet substitute, whose ‘love’ slowly brings to life the undead ‘R’ (Nick Hoult). It’s hard to be surprised at such a development because if anyone can bring to life the undead, it would most certainly be someone as fetching as Teresa Palmer.

In the following interview with Palmer, she discusses recreating the famous ‘balcony sequence’ from the play albeit in a different context, having John Malkovich play her disapproving father and working opposite Terrence Malick in the upcoming Knight of Cups. For the full interview, hit the jump.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters has had a troubled journey getting to screens. Originally slated to arrive in cinemas last year, the film was delayed for a year and underwent substantial editing changes.  According to the film’s director, Tommy Wirkola – this was all due to a dispute over the level of violence in the film – which is surprising considering just how very red and wet the movie being released this Friday actually is.  The reimagining of the classic Brothers Grimm tale cast Hansel and Gretel (Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton) as adults who have made it their lives work to hunt and kill the broom riding, child eating witches that almost ate them as children.  Head squashing, bodies torn limb from limb, and just good ol’ fashioned decapitation ensue.  So how much more violent could the original cut have been?

In the following interview with Wirkola, he discusses just how violent the film used to be and the scene that was just too much for test audiences.  He also talks about his affinity for blending horror with comedy, shooting the picture in 3D and his just-finished-written sequel to Dead Snow. For the full interview, hit the jump.

Ever since Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, zombies have become synonymous with lifeless, dead-eyed beings, a void – existential nothingness in its simplest form. Zombies, as characterized, exhibit no human emotion, feeling, remembrance – and it’s been that way through Dawn of the Dead (1978) to Dawn of the Dead (2004) to The Walking Dead (2013). This Friday’s release Warm Bodies attempts to redefine the zombie not as death incarnate but merely as a lost and lonely soul… Sure the zombies still want to eat human brains but it has less to do with hunger than a need to connect. It should come as no surprise that the cure for all that brain munching, lethargic walking and indecipherable growling – as posed in Warm Bodies – is quite simple: love.

Comedian Rob Corddry (Hot Tub Time Machine) co-stars in the picture as the zombie ‘M’, best friend to lead and fellow zombie ‘R’ (Nick Hoult). When ‘R’ falls in love with the human Julie and suddenly begins to come back to life, it sparks ‘M’ on a similar mission to reconnect/regenerate. In the following interview with Corddry, he discusses imbuing the undead with personality, improving on set and his role in the upcoming film Hell Baby. For the full interview, hit the jump.

Ever since Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, zombies have become synonymous with lifeless, dead-eyed beings, a void – existential nothingness in its simplest form. Zombies, as characterized, exhibit no human emotion, feeling, remembrance – and it’s been that way through Dawn of the Dead (1978) to Dawn of the Dead (2004) to The Walking Dead (2013). This Friday’s release Warm Bodies attempts to redefine the zombie not as death incarnate but merely as a lost and lonely soul… Sure the zombies still want to eat human brains but it has less to do with hunger than a need to connect. It should come as no surprise that the cure for all that brain munching, lethargic walking and indecipherable growling – as posed in Warm Bodies – is quite simple: love.

Nick Hoult stars in the picture as R, a zombie who slowly comes back to life after he falls in love with the beautiful ex-girlfriend (Teresa Palmer) of the guy he’s just eaten. Complications obviously then ensue. In the following interview with Hoult, he discusses imbuing the living dead with personality, transitioning from being a child actor (he was the titular boy in About A Boy), and his bevy of future film projects (Jack The Giant Slayer, Mad Max: Fury Road and X Men: Days of Future Past). For the full interview, hit the jump.

Poor Dave Franco. The charming younger brother of James just can’t seem to catch a break in films. In Fright Night and 21 Jump Street, he’s the “other guy” – all the ladies choosing a different suitor, leaving ol’ Franco to either a.) get eaten by a vampire Colin Farrell or b.) go to prison. Not the greatest of options. I wish I could say things turn out differently for Franco in this week’s zombie rom-com Warm Bodies – but by the ten-minute mark, the poor kid’s zombie food and then somehow things get more tragic for his character. It’s a testament that even in a film as a light-hearted as Warm Bodies, Dave Franco still gets the short stick.

In the following interview with Franco, he discusses his character’s tragic arc, the plight of never getting the girl and whether or not he’ll be back for the 21 Jump Street sequel. For the full interview, hit the jump.

The prospect of working with Terrence Malick is too great an opportunity for any actor to pass up.  Malick is one of the greats – Badlands, Days of Heaven: classics in their own right.  Add to the fact – the elusive, press shy filmmaker notoriously takes quite awhile between films (although his output as of late puts to doubt such a deliberate reputation).  Thus not only is working with Malick a chance to star in one of greatest living director’s films but more so who knows when/if the guy will make another one… The ‘catch’ however: Malick is a fickle editor and prone to cutting his actors out from his films (see: Adrien Brody in The Thin Red Line, Sean Penn in Tree of Life).  You may act in a Malick flick but who knows if you’ll even end up in the finished cut?  At the recent press junket for Warm Bodies, Teresa Palmer discussed working with Malick on the recently wrapped Knight of Cups and addressed whether she fears her role will end up on the cutting room floor.  Hit the jump to watch.

21 Jump Street was one of the biggest surprises of 2012 both critically and commercially – so it should come as no surprise that a sequel has been in the works for awhile now (our previous coverage can be found here  and here).  At the press junket for Warm Bodies, I had the opportunity to speak briefly with co-star Dave Franco about coping with the film’s surprising popularity and his involvement in the inevitable sequel.  At the end of the film, Franco’s character Eric was in precarious waters having been caught and presumably sent away to prison — but Franco said that he’ll still have a presence in the upcoming sequel.  Per Franco:

“I’ve heard little things… They claim I’ll be around.  Who knows how much they can use me because I’m in jail at this point but I’m hoping they can find a creative way to have me be a pivotal part of the story.”

For Franco’s full thoughts on 21 Jump Street, hit the jump.  Look for the full interview soon.

Struck by Lightning, a film deeply indebted to the written word, advocates not so much for the quality of writing but for the action itself.  Writing in the film becomes an act of catharsis for its characters, regardless of literary talent. Chris Colfer (best known as Kurt on Glee) stars as Carson Philips, a know-it-all wannabe high school journalist.  To get into the college of his dreams (North Western) and to boost his resume, Philips blackmails his classmates into contributing articles for his newfound literary magazine.  The film is a passion project for Colfer, beginning life as a one-man high school play (Colfer played every single role), now transitioning into a fairly good film and to top it off – becoming it’s own tie-in novel (which is the second novel the New York Times Bestselling Colfer’s written).  It’s fitting that a film so in love with the power of writing covers such a gamut of literary fields.

In the following interview with Chris Colfer, he discusses the first thing he ever wrote, how he approaches writing a novel versus a film and what’s next for him on Glee. For the full interview, hit the jump.

Nicholas Hoult, one of the most in-demand young actors of the moment (most recognizable as a young Beast/Hank McCoy in X:Men First Class), has a bevy of projects coming out.  The former About A Boy child star spoke at the press junket for his most recent film Warm Bodies about a number of these upcoming films.  On Jack The Giant Slayer, Hoult revealed his thoughts on the select clips he’s seen and talked of the pressures of being the lead in a big budget studio tent-pole picture.  On the just-wrapped Mad Max: Fury Road, Hoult discussed working with the great George Miller and what character he plays in the the reboot/sequel.  And finally Hoult spoke about what he’s heard about the X-Men sequel (X-Men: Days of Future Past) and how far along the sequel is to production.  Hit the jump for what he had to say.

In this week’s limited release Struck by Lightning, Sarah Hyland (Modern Family) co-stars as Claire Mathews, the antagonist to Chris Colfer’s plucky wannabe journalist Carson Philips.  As members of the student council (and opposite spectrums of the high school hierarchy: Claire is cool, Carson very much not so), the two often come to a head over such trivial matters as the class prom theme or the structure of the yearbook or whose club – Chris’s newspaper or Claire’s cheerleading team – is more important. However when Carson catches Claire in an uncompromising position with the gym teacher, he has all the fuel he needs to blackmail her into writing for him and tilting the social hierarchy more in his favor.

In the following interview with Sarah Hyland, she discusses her earliest literary pursuits, what drew her to Struck by Lightning and what’s coming up for Haley on Modern Family.  Hit the jump to watch.

Last night at The Aero in Santa Monica, Robert Zemeckis hosted a screening of his newest film: the awards-bait Flight.  All weekend The Aero has been hosting a retrospective of Zemeckis and his classic films: Romancing the Stone, Used Cars, Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Castaway.  Last night – the final night of the retrospective – Zemeckis was on hand to discuss the Denzel Washington starring ‘adult’ picture.  Much has been made of Zemeckis’ return to live action and how this is his most serious film — perhaps in part due to the subject matter: alcoholism, drug abuse, sins of the father, etc… But Flight feels at one with the rest of Zemeckis’ filmography — in that all his films tend to focus on overconfident people (Marty Mcfly, Ellie Arroway, Whip Whitaker) whose resolves are challenged by extraordinary circumstances (an impromptu trip to the past, aliens, a plane crash).

The Q&A with Zemeckis veered from topic to topic – covering Zemeckis’ own love of aviation to how he approaches actors to why he hates being on set.  For highlights from the conversation, click through to the jump.

Oliver Stone, a remarkable wordsmith, can alternate from topic to topic with nary a breath in between.  A simple question on working with Salma Hayek can suddenly morph into Stone remarking on the nature of masculinity in the country to his first and only encounter with George W. Bush.  Add the equally outspoken Benicio Del Toro into the conversation – and it’s best just to shut up and let the two extraordinarily talented men talk.

The topic at hand was supposed to be the twosome’s collaborative effort: the unfairly maligned Savages (currently on DVD and Blu-ray); but the conversation veered from the film to thoughts on the drug war to a fourth cut of Alexander to Del Toro’s debut appearance in License to Kill to Stone’s current documentary series The Untold History of The United States, among many other topics of conversation.  For highlights from Stone and Del Toro, hit the jump.

Up-and-comer Matthias Schoenaerts (Bullhead) isn’t afraid to look ‘bad’.  He fully embraces the darker and completely unlikable sides of his characters. There is no ego to his performance as Ali in Rust and Bone.  Ali is a shitty father, an uncaring boyfriend to Marion Cotillard’s Stephanie and just a downright dirtbag to his family and acquaintances.  Of course, over the course of the film, Ali gradually sees the error of his ways and becomes a more compassionate and caring human being.  But it’s a testament to Schoenaerts that not only does he sell Ali’s good-natured transformation, but that he makes such an inevitability seem downright surprising.

In the following interview with Matthias Schoenaerts, he discusses playing the unflattering sides of the character, finding the motivations for Ali’s arc and transitioning to American films (Schoenaerts can next be seen in two US pictures: Blood Ties and The Loft).  For the full interview, hit the jump.