Git ready for the “backcountry feud that became a legend!”
Beginning on Memorial Day, the History Channel will debut the original series Hatfields & McCoys, a three-parter starring Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton. Lots of good-ol-boy garb in this here clip, but them thar men are used to playing rough and ready dudes. (Remember how Costner portrayed the title role in Wyatt Earp and Paxton played an Earp brother in Tombstone?).
Image Credit: Michael Courtney/The CWIt’s girls’ night on The Secret Circle, and they’re ready for some fun. Read: Trouble.
“It’s your average young girl slumber party except for the fact that we’re witches, so it’s not average at all,” jokes Jessica Parker Kennedy, who plays Melissa on the CW drama. “We get some pretty exciting visitors, and we conjure up this extremely attractive pizza boy to deliver us some pizza and Diana (Shelley Hennig) gets a little frisky…we get into a lot of trouble but good trouble.”
But it hasn’t been all fun and games for Melissa in recent weeks. The loss of Nick, a member of the Circle with whom Melissa shared a romantic connection, earlier this season continues to weigh on her teenage shoulders, and she’s recently taken a liking to the effects of Devil’s Spirit — that’s CW/Witch talk for drugs — which Callum (Michael Graziadei) supplied for her, touting it as an all-natural, mellow substance. “In reality, it’s not necessarily that,” says Kennedy. “It’s a drug and it’s serious business. Unfortunately, Melissa doesn’t know that now. But it’s like anything, it has the potential to cause some serious [effects].”
Be sketchy as he may be, Kennedy says Callum, as displayed in one of the last scenes of last week’s episode, doesn’t necessarily have bad intentions when it comes to Melissa. And fans will see that as the two begin spending more time together. “They obviously have a connection and the connection they have is really real. I always say he’s almost like a ‘good drug dealer’ — that’s how Melissa is [approaching] it,” she says. “[He] comes from a really genuine place.”
But as the two continue to cross paths, Kennedy is quick to point out that Melissa is far from over the loss of Nick. “That’s why she’s doing the drugs,” says Kennedy. “That’s why she reaches out to Callum. I think Melissa is very much drawn to the bad boys — like Fey as well….There’s a comfort there and a connection that’s undeniable.”
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‘Secret Circle’ understatement of the day: ‘Something feels completely wrong’ — EXCLUSIVE VIDEO
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Image Credit: Steffan HillOn March 17, Hallmark Channel will premiere the original film Chasing Leprechauns starring Adrian Pasdar and Amy Huberman. With that title, it’s already legendary, but now read the synopsis:
Michael Garrett (Pasdar), a New York corporate troubleshooter, is ready for a well-deserved vacation from his stressful job. But his demanding boss has other ideas and sends Michael on an unusual assignment — to travel to a small town in Ireland to close a deal on a smelting plant construction site that is believed to be inhabited by leprechauns. Needing to find a way around the antiquated law considered legend in the town, Michael sets out to get the approval of the town’s resident leprechaun expert, local pub owner Sarah Cavanaugh (Huberman), and soon finds that is easier said than done. Sarah believes the land is inhabited by leprechauns, and won’t sign Michael’s building permit. With a little help from the locals, Michael tries to win over Sarah by acquainting himself with the town’s customs, but when he unexpectedly falls in love, he must get luck on his side and his boss off his back. Can Michael find a way to win Sarah’s heart and still close the deal, or will the local leprechaun legend leave him with nothing?
Obviously, I’m watching this. Who’s with me?
P.S. It does get points for casting a man, instead of the stereotypical workaholic woman, who travels from the city to the country to find balance and love and leprechauns.
Image Credit: Merrick MortonYou’ve never met a character quite like the one Demián Bichir plays in his Oscar-nominated turn in A Better Life, a little-seen but must-watch film for anyone who wants to have a real conversation about immigration in America. Playing a Mexican gardener caring for his American-born teenage son, Bichir illuminates a largely invisible, if not downright untouchable, character in contemporary American life: an undocumented immigrant.
I should know. Born in the Philippines and sent by my mother to America at age 12 — “I wanted to give you a better life,” she told me a few years later — I arrived here wrapped in everything Filipino, including a thick Tagalog accent.
The quickest and most efficient way to assimilate and speak “American,” as any newcomer to America will tell you, is to watch movies and television. To that end, my American education was largely courtesy of the films I borrowed from the local library (Do the Right Thing, Working Girl, GoodFellas) and old and new TV shows, from Frasier to The Golden Girls. Most everything I learned about my new home, I learned from pop culture. And with the help of American citizens who mentored me even though I don’t have the right papers, I managed to remain visible and invisible at the same time, writing for The Washington Post and the Huffington Post while hiding my secret as an undocumented worker. But after years of lying and living in fear, I decided to tell my own story in an essay for TheNew York Times Magazine last summer. That was around the same time A Better Life hit theaters, building buzz in the growing immigrant-rights movement. On email, Facebook, and Twitter, undocumented people and their allies — especially young people who’ve been educated in America but are not legally allowed to work — have taken ownership of the film. They’ve asked me, “Hey, have you seen our movie?”
There are moments in A Better Life of such heartbreaking truth — the conversations between father and son, the fear, anguish, and shame on Bichir’s face as he encounters a cop on the street — that the film transcends language and race. Here’s a film from a mainstream Hollywood director (Chris Weitz) tackling a controversial issue our officials in Washington don’t know quite how to address. In its quietly affecting way, it’s a groundbreaking piece of cinema.
Indeed, it’s rare to watch an undocumented immigrant portrayed with such complexity. It’s rarer still to experience a film about an undocumented immigrant told from the immigrant’s perspective. In an awards season that has lauded The Help, about black maids and the white families they serve in 1960s Mississippi, Bichir represents the help — gardeners, farmhands, and other undocumented workers — at the mercy of present-day laws in Georgia and Alabama. But A Better Life is not a political movie in the same way that illegal immigration is not a political issue. It’s a nuanced human story.
I’ve seen Bichir before, as Fidel Castro in Steven Soderbergh’s Che and as a drug-running mayor in Showtime’s Weeds. To call his performance in A Better Life a “transformation,” as critics have done, does not do him justice. His performance gives dignity and voice to the 11 million undocumented human beings—gardeners and babysitters, would-be engineers, doctors, and writers — whom he inevitably represents. He is doing something more than acting. At a time when undocumented people are referred to as “illegals” — when common sense and empathy escape many of our politicians — his performance is an act of salvation.
Bichir, an American citizen, has dedicated his surprise Oscar nod to people like me. In our eyes, he’s already won Best Actor.
Vargas is a journalist and the founder of Define American, a multimedia campaign for immigration reform.
Read more:
EW Special Coverage: Oscars 2012
Photo Gallery: Oscars: How EW Critics Rated the 2012 Nominees
Photo Gallery: 25 Movies You Need to See Before Oscar Night
Tomorrow, audiences can head to theaters to see the re-release of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace in 3-D. Regardless of how you feel about the much-maligned prequel, there’s no denying the Star Wars franchise made more than an impression on millions of moviegoers who experienced the magic of the first three films in theaters or on their TV screens. This week, EW‘s writers will be celebrating their complicated relationship with George Lucas’ beloved, yet contested, franchise with a series we call “How Star Wars changed my life.” And for those of you headed to the theaters this Friday… may the force be with you.
There are those who are content to be merely delighted and dazzled by an entertaining magic trick, and there are those who become obsessed with needing to know how they were so persuasively, thrillingly fooled. When it comes to the sort of magic that we routinely see on movie screens, I have long been the second kind of fan, and the film that got me hooked on such enchantment – and put the “How did they do that?!” bug into me – was Star Wars. Like a lot of people my age, George Lucas’ hyper-kinetic space opera was a cultural event that seized my imagination and seeded a desire for transporting escapism that has never left me; in some ways, I think my interest in the movies is all about chasing after the same ecstatic WOW! that I felt when I first saw Star Wars at the grand (and now demolished) UA 150 in downtown Seattle in the summer of ’77, and then over and over and over again when it reached the more modest (and still in business) neighborhood movie palace, the Admiral Twin. It wasn’t enough to have the memory of that far-out yarn running on a constant loop in my mind, or to reenact the story each night with my brother for parents, or to recall and recite (sometimes with peculiar competitive intensity) favorite scenes and memorable lines with my Star Wars-loving friends during recess. And during class. And during the dawdling walk home…
No, I also had to have the action figures, the comics, the novelizations, the soundtrack album, the posters, the Wonder Bread and Topps trading cards, the Burger King collectible glasses, plus a yellow plastic toy lightsaber, a lunchbox, and a T-shirt or two. I also had to consume every shred of media – all the movie magazines, any kind of Art of Star Wars book, anything like The Making of Star Wars documentary that aired on Sept. 16, 1977 on ABC that I totally remember watching — that explained (or purported to explain) the secrets of the movie’s creation. How George Lucas synthesized a wide swath of mythological and pop culture influences into an epic franchise vision. How he developed the story and wrote the script, fought the naysayers, and secured the financing. How he cast the parts and chose the locations and all that behind-the-scenes jazz. But more than anything, I wanted to know how George did his tricks – how he produced all those incredible yet oh-so-credible special effects. The ‘droids and the blasters, the land speeders and the Imperial Star Destroyers, the Cantina bar aliens and the holographic board game, the light saber battle between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader and the fighter ship dog fights above and through the canyons of The Death Star – everything. Thanks to Star Wars, I learned a whole new language. I’m not talking jargon like “jedi” and “wookie” and “Koona t’chuta, Solo?” I’m talking terms like “miniatures” and “blue screen” and “matte painting” – the conjuring words of a certain class of Hollywood wizardry, one whose ancient spellbinding art had just taken a major leap forward, and more, was about to transform the medium.
NEXT: “I became a harsh, snooty judge, and worse, I enjoyed being so severe.”
