And another teaser on MSN here.

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The East, written by Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling, is easily on of the best films you will see this year. Also directed by Batmanglij and starring Marling, this is the second offering from the innovative and intensely creative duo whose first feature Sound Of My Voice received critical acclaim after it’s release in 2011. If anything, The East highlights the importance of young creatives and in particular filmmakers who are willing to push the boundaries and explore highly sensitive and contentious issues. Drawing parallels from major recent events such as Wikileaks and the BP oil spill, The East is a very important and a relevant, modern commentary on the state of the world we live in. Inspired by the concept of Buy Nothing Day, an international day of protest against consumerism, Marling and Batmanglij spent a summer living by these ideals.
Portable spoke to two of the film’s stars the incomparable Ellen Page of Juno and Inception fame, and Alexander Skarsgard (True Blood), YEP OMG ERIC! The East follows the exploits of an anarchist collective of the same name which is infiltrated by Marling’s character Sarah Moss, an agent from a private intelligence firm. Headed by Benji (Skarsgard) and his most promising protege, Izzy (Page), The East attacks global conglomerates who have committed a range of environmental, medical and social injustices. However, it is not until Sarah begins to feel compassion for the group and suddenly questions her whole operation that the film really captures the viewers attention and makes them question who really is at fault.

Watch the trailer and check the new pictures of “The East”:

Portable: What drew you to the story, especially due to it’s timely and contentious nature?
Ellen Page: Firstly, I think it’s an incredible screenplay. So when something comes across that well written, you’re just fortunate to even read it. It’s such a beautiful piece of writing. Then a lot of the ideas in the film are a lot of ideas that I am already really interested in and think about and read about and then the opportunity to meet Zal and Brit, they’re just incredible people so I was desperately hoping they would want me to be in their movie. I just feel fortunate to be involved and the experience was fantastic.
Alexander Skarsgard: It starts with a script. You either respond to it or not. You don’t read a script like that very often.

P: You are part of an anarchist collective in the film, how did you prepare for your roles?
Ellen Page: It was worlds that I was already interested in and familiar with but on top of that I read anarchist manifestos and a lot of actually really interesting literature that’s on trial in some places for crimes, but a lot of really interesting things to read just to get in the headspace and the mentality of those communities.
Alexander Skarsgard: I read up on groups like The Weathermen and studied that and also talking a lot to Zal and Brit about their experiences of hanging out with freegans and anarchists. Just talking to them about the camaraderie and that lifestyle really influenced my character.

P: Because it is something you are particularly interested in in your personal life, had you been waiting for a film and role like this?
Ellen Page: Maybe without knowing it. It’s like the first film that I feel like is really tapping into the sort of current zeitgeist. I feel like a lot of people feel this way whether you’re Republican or a Democrat or an Athiest or a Buddhist, whatever. I think a lot of people are frustrated with a lot of blatant injustices in the world and unfairness and it seems like it’s getting worse and the gap is getting bigger and corporate greed is appauling and what we’re doing to the environment. Then when there is absolutely no accountability for it it becomes so frustrating, and then nothing is being done about it. I think a lot of people feel that discomfort and the rumble and the film started exploring a lot of these ideas and asking a lot of questions and doing it in a way that’s suspenseful and entertaining and heartfelt and what a great thing to be involved in. I was so excited to be able to play this character. It was just a bit of a dream. Anything where I can lie in the dirt in my wardrobe is like a dream for me.
Alexander Skarsgard: It felt very relevant and very important and it was a script that made me think and it wasn’t preachy at all. It wasn’t clear who the good guy or the bad guy was. It wasn’t black and white like that. It made me think about what they are struggling with internally as well. Like what’s ok, how far is it ok to go? How far are you willing to go for a cause that you really believe in. Is it ok to hurt someone, is it ok to kidnap someone, is it ok to kill someone? It wasn’t like Zal and Brit wrote it as if this is the answer, it just made me think a lot in a very intelligent way. That’s what I hope people will feel as well when they see the film, to think about it and talk to their friends about it without feeling like you have been force fed the opinion of me or Ellen or the filmmakers.

P: A really interesting and realistic element of the film was the use of social media, what is your opinion on social media and how it can ultimately influence people?
Alexander Skarsgard: Ellen is more active than I am on social media, I’m still learning. It’s amazing that you can take a picture with your phone and someone in Nebraska can see that? I made another film just before called The Disconnect and that’s about social media and about how that affects people with internet bullies and identity theft. This has a bit about that as well. I thought it was very interesting how people think they stay in touch with someone that they haven’t seen in years, like Doc has that fake Facebook page, so people think they are staying in touch because they see these ‘updates’ on his wall. So it’s interesting how you kind of replace this real relationship with social media. I also think of course this group use the internet because the corporations they attack have a lot of money, a lot of power, a lot of lobbyists that can shut them down and silence them, but what is great is that when they pull something that is as dramatic as they do, the videos are very dramatic, when you put something like that on YouTube, no matter how big these corporations are they can’t stop that because it will go viral within a couple of hours. It will have like millions of hits. So it’s a way for a group like The East, that live in the woods, in the middle of nowhere, that are hiding to connect with the world and to get their message out there.

Source: Portable TV

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Most Wanted: Alexander Skarsgård

It was late one night on Bourbon Street in New Orleans’s famed French Quarter and, as tends to happen there, things were getting out of control. HBO was on location filming an episode of True Blood, its hit series about a coven of Louisiana vampires. The director was trying to film a group of gorgeous blood-suckers as they cut a swath through the crowd, but far from being intimidated the revelers kept running out of dark and the crowd was getting rowdier. Would they get the shot?

Alexander Skarsgård, the imposing 6’4″ actor who portrays Eric Northman on the show addressed the crowd – told them how excited he was to have them be a part of the show, but that it would help if they could pretend to be a little scared.
“So, did it work?” I ask Skarsgård. He pauses before answering “The problem, of course, is that five minutes later it’s a whole new crowd of people.”

Its wasn’t easy selling the studio on an unknown Swede to play the All-American Marine-even though Skarsgård had himself served as a sergeant in the Swedish Army. His accent, though not all that noticeable, was a concern, as was his height. “We were a little worried about how he’d fit into a Humvee,” says Noble. After numerous call backs, he got the job, much to Fogel’s relief. “I remember thinking ‘if this doesn’t work out, I’m going to have to give up casting’… for me nobody else came close.”

These days Skarsgård doesn’t have to worry muchh about the casting mill. In addition to a sixth season of True Blood, he’s recently starred in Lars Von Trier’s moody Melancholia, as well as Peter Berg’s big-budget Battleship. Later this year he has the lead next to Julianne Moore in the big screen adaptaion of Henry James “What Maisie Knew,” and opposite Ellen Page in the thriller The East.

Skarsgård also garnered attention for this recent appearance in a ten-minute short film by Fabien Baron for Calvin Klein’s srping 2013 campaign. Skarsgård said he loved the project, but has no plans to do more modeling anytime soon. Not even to bring back Meekus in the rumored Zoolander sequel, I ask, forgetting for a minute the character’s fiery demise in the original. “But maybe,” Skarsgård allows, “his ghost can come back to haunt Zoolander, or better yet, a prequel!”

Two qualities that have marked thirty six year old actor Alexander Skarsgård’s rise to stardom are his stature and stage presence, as well as his uncanny ability to analyze situations, thus giving his career a direction that matches up to his talents.

The producers had considered – and discarded – a slew of actors before Fogel came across Skarsgård, who was still largely unknown in America (this despite a memorable turn in 2001 as the doomed model Meekus in Ben Stiller’s Zoolander). Fogel saw Skarsgård’s reel while in London at this British agent’s office. “A lot of it was in Swedish, but he was stills compelling,” she recalls. For Skarsgård, Fogel’s interest came at a low moment in his career. “I’d been out in L.A. for pilot season,” he says. “And I was not happy with what was going on. I really did not want to go out for another shitty part in a shitty show. I was happy to go back to Sweden and do a play.” When he read the script for Generation Kill, he recalls, “it was the first time in six or seven months that I got excited creatively. I thought, ‘I’ve got to get this.’”

The story embodies two qualities that have marked the 36-year-old Skarsgård’s rise as one of Hollywood’s most sought after leading men. He has enough presence to give stage directions to a drunken mob at three in the morning yet also has enough self-reflection to analyze why it didn’t work. “Alex is unbelievably interesting,” says Alexa Fogel, the casting agent who pushed Skarsgård for his breakout role in the HBO series Generation Kill. “But that’s just the beginning of it; he is also unusally articulate and educated.”

Those traits came to the fore in Skarsgård’s portrayal of Brad “Iceman” Colbert, the sergeant leading a unit of Recon Marines in Generation Kill. Based on Evan Wright’s book, Colbert is described as thinking man’s Marine. Finding an a actor who could capture Colberts’s charisma as a leader as well as his wonkish side proved difficult. “We auditioned a lot of people,” recalls Nina Noble, an executive producer on the series created by Ed Burns and David Simon – producers of The Wire and Treme. “Colbert had a kind of a regal bearing, sort of an intellectual compared to other Marines.”

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But Alexander Skarsgård, shy? Hardly. True Blood’s breakout opens up to Mickey Rapkin about life, love, and letting it all hang out (it runs in the family, apparently).

In the past year, Alexander Skarsgård has been linked to a racy film adaptation of 50 Shades of Grey, a Tarzan reboot, and the actress Charlize Theron. All appear to be rumors, but when you’re a 6’4″ Swede famous for playing the 1,000-year-old, slightly demented yet nurturing vampire Eric Northman on HBO’s hit series True Blood, people expect you to run around in a loincloth and have a sex dungeon. But Skarsgård, son of Mamma Mia!’s Stellan Skarsgård, has a simpler story: After a brush with fame as a child actor, he ran the other way, enlisting in Sweden’s Marine Corps and working in intelligence. Still, a leopard can’t change its spots—or whatever the equivalent Swedish expression is—and Skarsgård eventually invaded Hollywood, stealing scene after scene from under his costars’ fangs. (He became an attention magnet offscreen, too, thanks to his two-year romance with Kate Bosworth.) This month, Skarsgård, 36, reminds us he’s more than eye candy, with Disconnect, a serious—and seriously good—drama about the ways in which technology can make us feel even lonelier.

ELLE: Who was your childhood crush?
Alexander Skarsgård: I saw Tootsie with Jessica Lange when I was eight or nine. I remember feeling something in my stomach. [Laughs] I didn’t know what it was, but I wanted to watch that movie over and over again.

ELLE: I read that you were insecure as a kid. I find that hard to believe.
AS: I was very insecure—especially when it came to girls. When I was nine, there was this girl, Elin, in my class who I was in love with. I didn’t know how to approach her. We did this thing in Sweden, at least when I was a kid, where people write notes, like, “Do you want to be my girlfriend?” followed by three boxes: Yes, No, Maybe.

ELLE: So you wrote her a note?
AS: I would never write her a note! That would take some balls. But one day after school, I found a note from her in my pocket saying, “Do you want to be my boyfriend?” I was so happy. I couldn’t sleep all night. The next morning, my buddy started laughing, and I realized he wrote the note. That kind of messed up my confidence when it came to girls.

ELLE: You grew up in a very bohemian household, with your dad’s friends around all the time. I imagine you learned quite a lot about women.
AS: I was raised by this whole community of artists. It was pretty wild. Illegal substances floating around. People were drunk. I was born in the late ’70s. There was so much love there.

ELLE: I’m picturing thirtysomething women offering to take your virginity….
AS: [Laughs] No, no, it wasn’t like that. The problem was when I got a little older—when I was 12, 13, 14—and bringing girls over after school. Dad was always walking around naked with a glass of red wine in his hand.

ELLE: Wait, what?
AS: That was always the case. He didn’t care if there were people he didn’t know at the house. My buddies didn’t care. They’d seen him naked a million times. But it got a little uncomfortable when you brought a girl over, and dad showed up naked with a glass of wine and tried to give her a hug.

ELLE: I bet. There’s a lot of nudity on True Blood. Have you always been comfortable naked?
AS: Culturally, it’s a little different. There’s such a taboo here with nudity. In some people’s eyes, nudity is so much more dangerous than violence. I never really understood that. If a kid sees a nipple on television, how is that more damaging than watching someone bash someone else’s head in with a baseball bat?

ELLE: In Disconnect, you make a joke about watching a porn flick called Sperms of Endearment. Was that an ad-lib?
AS: [Laughs] Yeah, it was.

ELLE: Is that a real movie?
AS: I don’t know. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen it. But I’m very intrigued by it. I definitely want to see it. I’ve heard it’s very good.

ELLE: One of your favorite books is Lolita. What do you remember about the first time you read it?
AS: I was kind of terrified. It was scary and intriguing at the same time.

ELLE: What’s the hardest part about dating an actress?
AS: It’s tough with your schedule. The flip side is, it’s a weird job, and to have someone who knows what you’re going through…but it’s so much about the individual. It’s more complicated than saying, “This is what it’s like with an actress.”

ELLE: Do you believe there’s one person out there for you?
AS: No, I don’t think so. When you meet someone, of course you want it to last forever. It’d be very depressing if you didn’t feel that way. But things change, and you maybe grow apart. You have to accept that.

ELLE: Your parents divorced after 35 years, but they’ve remained close. What did you learn from the situation?
AS: Mom called me about six years ago, and she was very sad. She said, “I’ve been with this guy since I was 18. I had six kids with him. What am I gonna do?” Dad remarried and had another kid with his new wife. But I could see immediately that Mom—it just gave her so much strength, being on her own. She’s now taking risks and taking chances and is happier than ever. And Mom and Dad are great friends.

ELLE: Have you received any particularly valuable advice about women?
AS: When my sister Eija was maybe two and a half years old, she and my brother had an argument. Eija couldn’t write, so she said, “Dad, write this down: Girls are always right.” He taped that up on the kitchen wall. It’s still hanging there.

ELLE: Has that advice served you well?
AS: Well, I know better than to argue with Eija.

Source: ELLE.com

The 56th San Francisco International Film Festival — which will run April 25 to May 9, 2013 — has made its first programming announcements.

Bay Area natives Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s “What Maisie Knew” will be the fest’s opening film, Jacob Kornbluth’s “Inequality For All” will serve as the centerpiece and Richard Linklater’s critically lauded second sequel to “Before Sunrise,” “Before Midnight,” is the closing night film.

San Francisco, CA — The 56th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 25 – May 9) has announced the films forming its highly-anticipated Big Nights series. Things kick off with the Opening Night presentation of returning Bay Area duo Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s emotional drama What Maisie Knew (USA 2012) starring Julianne Moore, Steve Coogan and Alexander Skarsgård. The celebration continues on May 4 with the Centerpiece screening of Jacob Kornbluth’s insightful Inequality For All (USA 2013), featuring local economist Robert Reich. The festival then comes to a close with Richard Linklater’s (Bernie, SFIFF 2012) Before Midnight (USA 2013), the third film in the director’s acclaimed romantic trilogy starring Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. Special guests are expected and will participate in post-screening Q&A’s at each event, and all will be followed by exclusive parties.

Opening Night: What Maisie Knew
Thursday April 25, 7:00 pm, Castro Theatre

Codirectors Scott McGehee and David Siegel and actor Onata Aprile expected
In a loose adaptation of Henry James’ novel of the same name, Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s What Maisie Knew focuses on the effects of a marriage unraveling as viewed through the eyes of a couple’s six-year-old daughter (played by remarkable newcomer Onata Aprile). Shuffling between narcissistic parents-her rock star mother (Julianne Moore) and distracted art dealer father (Steve Coogan)-or foisted off on parental stand-ins (Alexander Skarsgård and Joanna Vanderham), young Maisie comes face to face with the mercurial world of grown-ups who are anything but.

The Opening Night celebration continues at the Temple Nightclub (540 Harrison Street) at 9:00 pm with a lavish party featuring hors d’oeuvres from local restaurants, sophisticated cocktails and, of course, dancing.

For more information visit sffs.org.

Source: IndieWire

You also can check the new production stills on our gallery:

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Ah, the internet/hacker/computer movie. “The Net,” “Hackers,” “Firewall,” “Swimfan,” “FearDotCom”…for every “The Social Network” there are about five of those kinds of movies that leadenly and obviously point out the perils of going online. And thus, “Disconnect.”
Boasting a helluva ensemble — Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Frank Grillo, Michael Nyqvist, Paula Patton, Andrea Riseborough, Alexander Skarsgård and Max Thieriot — with the Oscar-nominated director of “Murderball,” Henry Alex Rubin, directing, you would think this might have something new to say about life in the modern, connected world. But alas, your credit card info will be stolen, you’ll be bullied, and sexual encounters will go awry. So let’s get a shotgun. Sigh.

We saw the movie last year at the Venice Film Festival where we called it ” ‘Crash’ for the web era” and “a film that feels both old-fashioned and like old news, revealing nothing new that wasn’t already suggested by some half-assed op-ed half a decade ago.” So yeah, keep those expectations in check.

“Disconnect” will hack into theaters on April 12th.

Source: The Playlist

Check the trailer and the new production stills below:

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Kramer vs. Kramer continues to stand as one of the most memorable, heart-wrenching dramas about divorce and the battle for child custody. But way before the Dustin Hoffman/Meryl Streep-starrer, there was What Maisie Knew, a 1897 book by Henry James about a child shuffled back and forth between her two divorced parents every six months. That turn-of-the-century novel has now been updated for a modern retelling on the big screen, in a film starring Julianne Moore and Alexander Skarsgård.

EW has the exclusive poster for the movie that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. On the new one-sheet, Moore and Skarsgård peek in from the edges, while young actress Onata Aprile (Maisie) is front and center, boring her big eyes “Mona Lisa”-style into anyone who catches a glance of this striking poster — check it out below.

In What Maisie Knew, aging rock star Susanna (Moore) and art dealer Beale (Steve Coogan) are the negligent, self-involved divorced parents of young Maisie. Alexander Skarsgård plays the much younger bartender Susanna marries after Beale marries Maisie’s nanny (Scottish actress Joanna Vanderham). Maisie’s two new stepparents come to care for her more than her childish parents do.
What Maisie Knew is directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel (The Deep End, Uncertainty) and will be released by Millennium Entertainment this May.

Source: EW.com

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