Movies

When Walt Disney was looking for someone to lend her voice to the animated heroine of "Alice in Wonderland," a young English girl who had recently come to America caught his ear. Kathryn Beaumont would become twice immortalized through the magic touch of Disney, once as Wendy Darling in "Peter Pan," but first and foremost as Lewis Carroll's plucky protagonist, Alice.

With the sixtieth anniversary of Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" upon us, we reminisced with Miss Beaumont about those days spent with Walt and his cadre of animation geniuses.

As I prepared to talk about your version of Alice, it occurred to me that most of the other leading Disney animated females fall into the Disney Princess pantheon. But Alice -- although the scene didn't happen in this particular adaptation -- is the only one of all of them to have been crowned a queen. So technically, I think you outrank the Disney Princesses.

It's a long way from the sunny meadows of the Hundred Acre Wood to the crime filled streets of gritty vigilantism, but plucky Chloe Grace Moretz has made the journey and become a sensation. Her mind-blowing performance in "Kick-Ass" (billed as Chloe Moretz) as the butt-kicking, potty-mouthed vigilante, Hit-Girl, made her the ostensible star of the film, stealing every scene in which she's featured. Then again, with roles in a string of suspense and horror films like "The Amityville Horror" and "The Eye," maybe it wasn't too much of a leap after all.

We caught up with the young star for a very quick conversation, and picked up on some of her exciting future plans.

This is a big departure for you from previous works, particularly voicing the very kid-friendly Darby on My Friends Tigger & Pooh. Was there any concern on your part, or of your parents, given the nature of the role of Hit-Girl?

In "The Haunting in Connecticut," Virginia Madsen plays the mother of a young man with cancer who stands as the nexus of supernatural activity when the family rents a former funeral home.

Carmen Reed (then Carmen Snedeker) is the real-life mother Madsen portrays, the woman who lived through the events of story that took place in a renovated funeral home in Southington, Connecticut. This is her story.

Almost everyone knows that when a movie uses the phrase "based on actual events," the actual similarities between life and art can be miles apart. How far is the film from what you experienced?

It's hard to give a percentage. A lot of things you saw -- for example, the shower curtain scene -- definitely happened to me (it didn't happen to my niece), and there were apparitions in the house. My son did have cancer.

As far as bodies in the wall, all of that is fictionalized.

Stephen Anderson has over ten years of experience working for Disney's animation department. Starting as a story artist on "Tarzan," Anderson continued with other successful Disney projects like "The Emperor's New Groove" and "Brother Bear."

Most recently, Anderson has graduated to directing for the Mouse House, and his latest venture, "Meet the Robinsons," is soon to appear on DVD. In advance of that release, we spoke with Anderson about animators directing animators, creating eccentric characters, and working with musicians and voice actors.

It's easy to be a Bruce Campbell fan. One gets the sense that he is what he appears to be: capable, hardworking, smart, with a keen sense of his strengths and limitations. The hard part is trying to figure out just how good he is at his craft, how good he could be, given the right role, the right script, the right director, with something bigger than a B-movie budget and a shooting schedule extending beyond two weeks.

Given that you had relatively minor roles in your friend Sam Raimi's mega-blockbuster Spiderman movies (the carny-like fight announcer in the first film, the boorishly obstinate theater usher in the second), did the inspiration for Make Love!* The Bruce Campbell Way spring from these 'small-role-big-movie' Spider-man experiences?

Yes and no. I've been in and out of studio films like "Congo" for years, so it's my overall experiences that became amalgamated into an original Hollywood tale.

Canadian director Vincenzo Natali's latest film "Nothing" will soon be released on DVD. Natali's first feature-length film, "Cube", about a group of amnesiac strangers trapped in a giant, lethal puzzle box, garnered high praise for its smart scripting, conceptual originality, and deft direction. Natali's second effort, "Cypher", a futuristic story of shifting identity and corporate espionage starring Lucy Liu and Jeremy Northam, demonstrated an increasing sophistication of means and greater command of pacing. And "Nothing?" Unlike Natali's previous films, "Nothing" can safely be considered a comedy, although the comedic elements are an aspect (albeit an important aspect), not the whole.

Stan Lee. If you want to talk about comic book creators with your non-comic friends, his name is one of a select few you can bring up with a good chance he'll be someone they've heard of. He's not the father of the modern comic book--that title goes to men who came before him. He's more the favorite uncle, the one your mother isn't crazy about, but who never forgets to bring you a surprise whenever he comes to visit and who always has a treasure trove of amazing, incredible, and uncanny stories to tell, some of which might even be fantastic enough to be true.

We spoke with Stan "The Man" Lee a little over a week after HULK--another one of his marvelous brainchildren--debuted on the big screen, and even snuck in a question or two about PUNISHER and STRIPPERELLA.