Tim reviews the new road comedy “Tammy” with Bryan Piatt on KARE 11 TV (NBC) in Minneapolis. See the review of the film, starring Melissa McCarthy, Susan Sarandon, Kathy Bates, Allison Janney and Sandra Oh, below; and a review of the music dramedy “Begin Again,” starring Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo and Adam Levine. You can also read the print version of the reviews on BringMeTheNews.com.
Also, read Tim’s interview with Kathy Bates HERE.
Oscar winner Kathy Bates has done it all over the past three-plus decades, from comedy, drama and family films, to adventure, mystery and horror — so you can about imagine how unique a film role has to be before she signs the dotted line. But when it came to the new comedy “Tammy,” it didn’t take her long to commit to the project, mainly because it presented her with a first.
“The main reason for doing it was Melissa McCarthy. I had seen her in ‘Bridesmaids,’ and I wish I could be as clever, wonderful and physical in comedy as she is,” Bates told me in a recent interview. “I wanted to get to know her — I really wanted to understand her secret. I wondered, ‘How can she stay so real yet push the envelope the way she does, physically and comedically?'”
Bates said she still doesn’t have the answer to the mystery, but she at least has a better understanding of who McCarthy’s gifts mirror.
“I can see a comparison in her and Lucille Ball in the way Melissa fearlessly goes places that a lot of actresses wouldn’t go,” Bates said. “She’s nimble, quick and fearless. ”
Bates added that being around McCarthy encouraged her to up her comedic game — or at least try to up it.
“It was wonderful to pretend for a while that you can be as funny as she is,” Bates said, laughing. “When we were all doing our improv scenes for the film, we were just shameless trying to be as good as Melissa because she raises the bar — but of course, we fell short.”
Opening in theaters nationwide on Wednesday, “Tammy” stars McCarthy as the title character, a down-on-her-luck fast-food worker whose day starts off with a deer-car collision and quickly spirals out of control from there. There appears to beacon of hope, though, when her hard-drinking, foul-mouthed and sexually liberated grandmother, Pearl (Susan Sarandon), bankrolls a well-intended road trip that quickly detours into disaster.
Bates stars as Lenore, Pearl’s cousin who provides safe harbor to Tammy and her grandmother when Tammy runs into trouble with the law.
Apart from working with McCarthy, another first for Bates working on “Tammy” came with throwing a Molotov cocktail, which is featured in a scene where she’s helping conceal some evidence connected to one of Tammy’s many misgivings.
As Bates discovered, tossing the flammable firebomb was fun — and a bit dangerous.
“That was really a blast, I have to say,” Bates said with a chuckle. “I held one a little too long and it exploded in my hand. It was sugar glass, so you really had to throw it quickly once the end of the cloth was lit.”
Fortunately, Bates wasn’t hurt in the incident (“It caused a tiny nick from a sharp corner of the sugar glass,” she said), making her Molotov cocktail-throwing endeavors all the more enjoyable.
“It was fun to blow up shit or pretend that you were blowing up shit — and not be arrested,” Bates enthused.
In addition to playing opposite McCarthy, Bates said she was also excited to work under the direction of Ben Falcone, McCarthy’s husband and co-writer on the film. Falcone, of course, has also worked often with McCarthy as an actor, too, in such films as “Bridesmaids,” “The Heat” and at the beginning of “Tammy” — and Bates believes his experience as an actor was not only beneficial to his creative partner, but to the whole cast.
“Ben had been with the script for six years and he knew how he wanted to shoot the film and the story he wanted to tell,” Bates said. “Being an actor is really a major plus in his makeup as a filmmaker, because a lot of younger writer-directors haven’t a clue how to talk to actors. But because Ben knows acting so well, he knows when to say something and when to shut up. He also knows when he’s got a shot. He doesn’t have to play it over and over from the beginning until the actors are exhausted and don’t know what the directors want.”
Bates, who stars with Sandra Oh as a lesbian couple in the film, also appreciates the way Falcone presented the healthy relationship of the couple, which is revealed in a pivotal scene where Lenore in a tough love sort of way explains the hardships of life.
“In the scene, I wanted Lenore to talk about the difficulties 20 years ago of being in love with a woman, starting a business , trying to get to know people in the community and have a normal relationship with them,” Bates, 66, recalled. “Straight people in those days were probably ill at ease, of course, and others more accepting. So in the case of this film, to have two gay women build up this business and have the healthiest relationship of all of them, was inspiring. There were no caricatures. There was tremendous love.”
Another relationship examined in the film is the family dynamic between Lenore and Pearl — and Bates said she couldn’t have been more excited than to play cousins opposite Sarandon.
“I was very gracious to have scenes with her. The film really gave me my first chance to do scenes with Susan, even though we were both in a film with James Spader called ‘White Palace’ where I played Jimmy’s boss,” the “Misery” Best Actress Oscar-winner said. “I was very green as a film actor back then and was very much in awe of Susan. Still to this day for me, ‘Thelma and Louise’ is right up there as one of the most wonderful movies ever made. Susan’s and Geena Davis’ performances in that movie really get to the heart of women’s rage.”
Apart from Sarandon’s screen work, Bates said she loves how Sarandon “puts her money where her mouth is, politically, when it’s not fashionable to do.”
“She’s very well-versed about what’s going on in the world with global issues, so I’ve always admired that trait in her,” Bates said.
Bigger is the operative word for the latest film in director Michael Bay’s “Transformers” franchise, “Transformers: Age of Extinction,” but not always in the way you would expect.
Can we say once again that there’s more than meets the eye?
“It’s a lot bigger — the effects are on a different level than anything that we’ve seen before,” actor Jack Reynor told me, joined by co-star Nicola Peltz, in a recent interview. “A lot of the camera work is very dynamic and very new, and at the heart of the film is a really great human story more than anything else.”
Opening in 2D, 3D and on IMAX screens nationwide on Friday, “Transformers: Age of Extinction” stars Mark Wahlberg as Cade Yeager, an auto mechanic who makes a discovery that not only draws the Autobots and Decepticons to them, but some very determined CIA agents who have a sinister agenda to carry out. Peltz stars as Cade’s daughter, Tessa, and Reynor plays her boyfriend, Shane Dyson.
“When we start the film, the Autobots are in exile and are afraid of humans, and humans are afraid of them,” Reynor said. “Through the relationship between Mark’s, Nicola’s and my characters, we try to restore their faith in humanity. It’s at different scale. We really hope it’s going to be an enjoyable thing for the audience.”
The odd part about working on “Transformers: Age of the Extinction,” Reynor says, is while he comes from the independent film world, working on this franchise at times was much like work he was used to.
“It was still an intimate environment, because at the end of the day, it was still Mark, Nicola and myself,” Reynor said. “That makes it feel smaller than you would imagine. Even though the movie is incredibly big and the effects are on a different level of anything we’ve seen before, between the three of us, at least, it felt like it was a small environment to work in.”
Peltz, who has done green screen work before in big-screen adventure “The Last Airbender,” said she was surprised by the amount of practical effects and props used in the film, something that ultimately aided everybody’s performances.
“I actually thought there was going to be more green screen than there actually was working on the movie,” Peltz said. “Instead, Michael makes these beautiful, huge sets, which are all real, and the car chases and the explosions are real. So having the tools and being in situations where we could use them was really amazing. Of course, we had to use our imaginations when talking to the Autobots and talk to nothing in those cases.”
At the time of the interview, neither Peltz or Reynor had seen the completed film yet, but already had the thrill of seeing themselves among Autobots, Decepticons and Dinobots for the first time with an 11-minute presentation of footage at CinemaCon in Las Vegas earlier this year.
“Watching the footage, you go, ‘Oh, my God, when I was filming that scene, there was nothing there.’ But when then add the CGI, it’s truly mind-blowing,” Peltz described. “It’s so crazy to watch knowing you were part of the experience.”
To help his actors stay engaged without any Transformers visually present, Bay found a way to keep his everybody working on the film motivated, Reynor said.
“It’s a real cool thing Michael does about every three weeks, where he puts together a sizzle reel, which has about 10 minutes of footage of film from the last three weeks we shot,” Reynor recalled. “Even without any Autobots in it or any of the rendered effects, it still looks really, really impressive, and it’s really exciting and fun. That was a big confidence boost to us all. We felt like we were making a really cool film, even though we hadn’t seen any Autobots or Decepticons while making it. It’s a really clever thing that Michael does and it really boosts the morale of the cast and crew.”
On set, Peltz said, Bay is ball of energy.
“Michael told me even before we started filming, ‘I move very quickly and you’re not going to be sitting in your trailer. Whether it’s your scene or not, you’re going to be on set learning and studying.’ I love that,” Peltz enthused. “His energy is so contagious because he is so excited about this film, so to work on it with him and feel that is really wonderful.”
Although Reynor was born in Colorado, he moved with his family to his mother’s native Ireland at age 2. One thing Reynor discovered, though, is no matter where you grow up, the Transformers — which began as Hasbro toys and were featured in cartoon form before becoming big-screen characters – will eventually find you.
“Since it was a Japanese concept and was around about 25 or 30 years before they made the first film, and it expanded across Europe quite quickly,” said Reynor, 22. “The generation before me grew up watching ‘Transformers’ on TV in Ireland, so it was definitely something I was exposed to in a big way and I had a full line of toys. I’ve always known of ‘Transformers’ because I’ve always been a fan of it, so to eventually to become a part of the franchise myself was an incredible opportunity.”
In a way, Reynor said, Transformers toys prepared him to work on the film, because while playing with the figures, he was making movies in his mind.
“The cool thing is, it doesn’t change a lot when you’re standing there on the set of the franchise yourself,” Reynor said. “You can try to relate to what you’re doing the same way you did when you were a kid. It brings a level of authenticity to what you’re doing and it makes it tangible for you in your own head. It really helps your performance.”
Being around six brothers growing up, Peltz, 19, more than had her share being around Transformers toys in her youth.
“I definitely knew of Transformers growing up, but it wasn’t only a boys thing,” Peltz said with a laugh. “I didn’t play with any of the toys, but my oldest brother loved them and my two youngest brothers are obsessed with the movies. All of them are very, very excited for me because of the film.”
Tim reviews the sci-fi action adventure “Transformers: Age of Extinction” with Diana Pierce on KARE 11 TV (NBC) in Minneapolis. See the review of the film, starring Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Stanley Tucci and Kelsey Grammer, below. You can also read the print version of the reviews on BringMeTheNews.com.
Tim also reviewed the film on WOC Radio’s “The Morning Report with Steve and Dan.” Listen to his review below.
