Many improvements went into the positive reception that Captain America: The First Avenger enjoyed this summer — a 79% fresh-certified rating on Rotten Tomatoes, compared to the risible 11% rating that its predecessor, from 1992, pulled — including some fairly persuasive body-mapping technology on the pre-transformation character of Steve Rogers, played by Chris Evans. But surely a big portion of credit also rests with the characterization of Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), Captain America’s frightening and forthrightly named nemesis. That challenge — of crafting a practical makeup fix that was scary but, more importantly, visually iconic — fell upon prosthetics makeup designer David White. I recently had a chance to submit a few questions to White via email. The responses are excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.

Topher Grace came of age on the small screen, in the hit sitcom That ’70s Show. Acting was never necessarily part of the grand plan when he was younger, however, so he’s leveraged the success of that experience into a more diverse portfolio on the big screen, dabbling in everything from action movies (Predators) and big-budget comic book adventures (Spider-Man 3) to political dramas (Too Big To Fail) and more offbeat dramedies (In Good Company). His new film is The Double, an espionage thriller in which he stars with Richard Gere, as an old-and-new pair of government operatives trying to track down a long-dormant but newly resurfaced Russian assassin. I recently had the opportunity to participate in a small press day with Grace, and ask him about his new movie, his affinity for filmic ensembles, and why he thinks babies hate him. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.

She’s played opposite a wide and diverse range of leading men, from Ralph Fiennes and Daniel Day-Lewis to Geoffrey Rush and Adam Sandler, and is equally at home in wrenching dramas or comedies of manners. It’s perhaps a testament to her talents, though, that Emily Watson remains just to the left of indistinctive for most mainstream audiences — not unexceptional or anonymous, but unable to be immediately placed. In her latest film, Watson again gives voice to another remarkable yet “ordinary” woman, starring in Oranges and Sunshine as Margaret Humphreys, a Nottingham social worker who in the 1980s uncovered a decades-long program of forced deportation/immigration which sent tens of thousands of children from England to Australia. I recently had a chance to speak to the Oscar-nominated actress, about her work on that film, Steven Spielberg’s upcoming War Horse, and the difficulties of juggling work and family. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.

For his narrative feature film debut, Oranges and Sunshine, director Jim Loach chose to tackle a sprawling tale of warped governmental policy, spanning three decades and involving the forced deportation of British kids to Australia. Almost as shocking as its narrative — which tells the story of literally tens of thousands of children, and the terrible abuses they suffered after in many cases being told that their parents were dead — is the fact that it is hardly known in the United States, where tales of adolescent mistreatment and murder are typically seized upon with a white-hot tabloid fervor, grist for the mill of the 24-hour cable news channels. I had the chance recently to speak to Loach one-on-one, about his movie, his leading lady Emily Watson and, yes, his famous filmmaker father. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the interview.

Comedy is unshakably in the blood of writer-director Trent Cooper, whose latest film, the rangy ensemble farce Father of Invention, centers on a disgraced infomercial wizard, Robert Axle (Kevin Spacey), who gets out of prison and tries to start putting his life back together. Robert shacks up with his semi-estranged daughter (Camilla Belle) and her roommates, and gets a job working at a retail superstore, but finds his ex-wife (Virginia Madsen) remarried, and various attempts to secure start-up financing for a new idea stymied at every turn. I recently had a chance to talk one-on-one with Cooper, about his new movie, his feelings of warmth and affinity for Larry the Cable Guy, the debt of gratitude he owes Samuel L. Jackson, and, well, first names. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the quick, fun read.

Having one of the defining events of your life adapted into a major motion picture while you’re still alive (and working on those same issues) is weird, discombobulating stuff. Such is the case, though, for Nottingham social worker Margaret Humphreys, whose work in uncovering the forced deportation of thousands of British children is the basis for the new film Oranges and Sunshine, starring Emily Watson and directed by Jim Loach. Almost single-handedly, Humphreys brought authorities to account and drew worldwide attention to an extraordinary (and extraordinarily recent) miscarriage of justice, in which disadvantaged children as young as four years old were told that their parents were dead, and then sent to children’s homes in Australia, where many suffered appalling abuse. I recently had the chance to speak with Humphreys one-on-one, and the conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa.

A big talent in a little package, singer and actress Mya has made her name in a variety of fields, from platinum albums to placing second on the ninth season of the hit show Dancing With the Stars. I recently had a chance to talk one-on-one to the 32-year-old multi-hyphenate, about the new-to-DVD romantic comedy The Heart Specialist, her thoughts on sex tapes (celebrity and otherwise), her view of changes to the music industry over the past decade, and what she’s doing with her free time. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.

If babies need more sleep for their developing brains, as studies have confirmed, then do our ever-increasing reliance on email and text messaging have some unforeseen consequences for human evolution? Filmmaker Tiffany Shlain tackles these and other questions at the intersection of technology and humanity in Connected, a sort of investigative documentary and canted memoir which bowed at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and stands poised to release both in theaters and across various multimedia platforms. This isn’t a new topic of interest for Shlain, who years ago launched the honorific Webby Awards, casting a spotlight on some of the best creativity on the Internet. Recently, I had a chance to speak one-on-one to her, about her movie, her legacy with the Webby Awards, and more. The Q&A chat is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here, and maybe I’ll post some more tidbits next week. For even more about the film, meanwhile, click here.

Rachel Nichols is an actress, a former model, a sports fan, a foodie, a frequent traveler and an avid Twitterer. She is not, however, a reporter for ESPN given to undue amounts of hand gesticulations while talking. Well… that’s Rachel Nichols, too, actually. But a different one. The real Rachel Nichols, though — genuinely easygoing, and possessing of the developed personality of someone much uglier — is more apt to have names for her hands, actually.

Her latest project is the independent-minded A Bird of the Air, in which she plays a free-spirited librarian, Fiona, who upends the life of a solitary loner, Lyman (Jackson Hurst), when she takes it upon herself to help him track down the past owners of a parrot that randomly flies into his trailer. Recently, I had the chance to speak with Nichols one-on-one, about the movie, the work she put in to get her role, changing hair colors, and exactly why she calls her car Darth. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the entirely pleasant read.

A Good Old Fashioned Orgy and Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil costar Tyler Labine has the physicality, wit and jester’s eyes that mark him as the latest garrulous inheritor to the comedy scepter wielded previously by the likes of John Belushi, Chris Farley, Jack Black and Dan Fogler — which is to say a big guy with a bigger personality. In person, however, the thoughtful, soft-spoken Labine hardly seems a performer, let alone the likes of one who’s already carved out an impressive comedic presence in a relatively short period of time. I recently had the opportunity to chat one-on-one with the actor and burgeoning producer, about Orgy, sexual swinging spanning the last several decades, the correct quotable line from his Zack and Miri Make a Porno cameo (notice an emerging theme here?), why Ben Roethlisberger apparently doesn’t like him, and also his new TV pilot with Ryan Reynolds. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the full read.

Of all the major cast members for the new ensemble comedy A Good Old Fashioned Orgy, about a mixed-gender group of longtime friends who settle upon going out with a bang (literally) when the beach home that’s served as the setting for their legendary summer parties for more than a decade is forcibly put up for sale, Michelle Borth might have been the most comfortable with the subject matter. Or at least the filming of the movie’s titular third act, which spanned at least a week and required all sorts of pasties to go along with its nudity.

After all, Borth is probably best known for the short-lived HBO series Tell Me You Love Me, which revolved around three couples in therapy experiencing different types of intimacy problems, and drew notice for depictions of sex so realistic that rumors the scenes were real had to be shot down. I had the chance recently to sit down and chat with the engaging 33-year-old actress, about Orgy, speeding tickets, themed parties, college regrets and more. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here to check it out.

It’s another sweltering late summer day in Los Angeles, and Angela Sarafyan, our interview having just wrapped, has had enough. Her professional obligations for the afternoon apparently complete, Sarafyan strolls over to the rooftop pool at the swanky hotel at which we have gathered, and climbs in for a quick dip. In her dress.

It’s a bit nervy, sure, but actually not that thematically or behaviorally detached when one considers the occasion for our gathering: to discuss A Good Old Fashioned Orgy, a new ensemble comedy about a tight-knit group of friends who, when faced with the prospect of losing the summer getaway house that’s served as the crash-pad for years’ worth of great parties, decide to go out with a bang — literally. Shooting on location in Wilmington, North Carolina, gave Sarafyan the opportunity to re-enact many of her favorite Dawson’s Creek moments of yesteryear, but, alas, there was no Dawson or Pacey to sweep her off her feet. I had the opportunity to recently chat one-on-one with Sarafyan, about Orgy, what people might most recognize her from right now, and what people might most recognize her from in the very near future. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here.

Vera Farmiga is a wonderfully talented actress, but with her self-effacing laugh, easy disposition and comfortable slouch, she has a lot of work to do before she perfects the character of a swaggering director. She swears life behind the camera wasn’t a burning professional goal of hers, but Farmiga spent several years work-shopping a screenplay based on Carolyn Briggs’ The Dark World with Briggs and fellow writer Tim Metcalfe. The result is her wonderfully subtle directorial debut, Higher Ground, and it’s as full-bodied, honest and moving a portrait of a young, fundamentally religious family, and all the struggles they experience, as has ever been put to screen — perhaps no small coincidence given that Farmiga cites another labor of love, Robert Duvall’s The Apostle, as a case study for her work. At a recent press day at a Beverly Hills hotel, I had the opportunity to take part in a roundtable interview session with the Oscar-nominated multi-hyphenate, who also stars opposite Joshua Leonard in the movie. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.

Few actors get to star in a monster commercial smash that is also a zeitgeist hit, but that was Joshua Leonard’s experience with The Blair Witch Project, which turned a meager $60,000 production budget into almost $250 million in worldwide theatrical receipts, and owned the summer of 1999 (and beyond, in the form of countless spoofs, homages and far less inspired rip-offs) like no other indie movie of its time. Leonard continued to act over the years, and achieved a second peak of artistic acclaim two years back in Lynn Shelton’s Humpday, in which he and a fellow heterosexual friend (Mark Duplass) find themselves locked in a pact/dare to make a gay porn flick together, as an entry for an avant-garde art festival.

Leonard’s latest film is Vera Farmiga‘s directorial debut, Higher Ground. In it, Leonard plays Ethan Miller, a would-be rock star turned family man who comes to relate to his wife Corinne (Farmiga) chiefly through the orthodoxy of their church’s teachings. I recently had a chance to talk to Leonard one-on-one about religion, sex tapes for Christians, the film’s relaxed rhythms, and his own directorial debut, The Lie, which debuted alongside Higher Ground at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and sees releases via Screen Media later this fall, in November. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.

At 84 years old, Jerry Stiller is still going strong. Married for more than 56 years to fellow performer Anne Meara, he’s entered the twilight of a long and varied show business career with a uniquely entertaining sort of feisty grace. In his latest movie, the London-set comedy Swinging With the Finkels, he plays grandfather to Mandy Moore, whose marriage with architect Martin Freeman is suffering from a sort of sexual drift. I had the pleasure of talking with the elder Stiller recently, about swinging, longevity in relationships in general, the entertainment industry, and the possibility of dispensing any sexual advice to his son, Ben. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the enjoyable read.

Director Craig Gillespie has had an interesting career. After making his debut with the indie film Lars and the Real Girl, episodic television work ensued, followed by a contretemps over the studio comedy Mr. Woodcock, starring Seann William Scott, Susan Sarandon and Billy Bob Thornton that saw him removed from the project. His latest film is the adaptation/reboot of 1985’s horror-comedy Fright Night, starring Anton Yelchin as a Las Vegas high school kid who finds out his new neighbor (Colin Farrell) is actually a vampire. I recently had the chance to talk to Gillespie one-on-one about what attracted him to Fright Night, what he thought about shooting the movie in 3-D, and his next film, the genre mash-up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Again, it’s all over at ShockYa, so click here for the full, fun read.

Jason Momoa has the biceps, vocal timbre and alpha-male attitude to seemingly carve out a successful career as an action movie hero. But before his commercial audition with the public in Conan the Barbarian, his leading man debut, there comes something even more potentially nervousness-inducing — the requisite pre-release juggernaut of press commitments. Momoa recently made his debut on The Tonight Show, chatting cars with host Jay Leno (he favors an old Cadillac) and suffering the characteristic new-guest embarrassment of having an old clip from early in his career (in this case, from Baywatch) pulled out and showcased. Amidst a packed itinerary that necessitated some rescheduling, he recently graced me with some one-on-one time, to chat about Conan, his family, how he now feels without dreadlocks, and the project he hopes to (someday) make his directorial debut. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the fun read.

As part of a busy press day schedule (but nowhere close to her personal record, which would be the 96 five-minute one-on-one interviews she did for Grindhouse in a single day, after roundtable interviews), I recently had a chance to chat one-on-one with a dazzlingly made-up Rose McGowan, about portraying strong women, upcoming projects, a personality that hasn’t changed much since childhood, and why her crazily wardrobed and malevolent Conan the Barbarian character is, in her words, “much cooler” than Freddy Krueger. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the fun, quick read.

If one constructed in their mind a picture of German-born director Marcus Nispel based solely on his filmography — which includes grisly reboots of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th franchises, plus the R-rated Pathfinder — it could not possibly be more different from the reality of the man, who abhors shoes, probably owns no black clothes at all, and in person favors pastel cargo pants and billowing, open-necked cotton painter’s shirts. Looking more like a Venice Beach artist than a brooding purveyor of brutal horror and head-hacking action, Nispel has a gregarious personality seemingly at odds with his knack for wringing catharsis out of grim places. With his latest big screen effort, a new version of Conan the Barbarian, Nispel again makes sure that genre fans get their money’s worth out of his movie’s R rating. I recently had a chance to chat one-on-one with the talkative filmmaker, about his childhood Star Wars bed sheets, his experience and difficulties with reimagining popular big screen properties, and why he would likely never direct a sequel to any of his works. It’s over at ShockYa, so click here for the full read.

Since his inception almost eight decades ago, the character of Conan the Barbarian has inspired countless different stories spanning across all manner of media, so it’s not really a surprise that the new Lionsgate big screen re-boot of the Conan film series would involve more than one writer. While Sean Hood polished up the production draft and worked with director Marcus Nispel, Joshua Oppenheimer, along with his writing partner Thomas Dean Donnelly, crafted the original framework of the story, and retains screenplay credit. Recently, I had a chance to speak to the screenwriter one-on-one, about the enduring appeal of the character of Conan, the absolute necessity of thick skin when working as a Hollywood screenwriter, and the state of one of his next big projects, the script for the movie adaptation of Voltron. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the full, fun read.

You can often chart the rise of a young actor or actress by the on-screen company they keep, in which case British-born Imogen Poots is doing more than fine. Having come off a film with Catherine Keener, Christopher Walken and Philip Seymour Hoffman, she now stars alongside Colin Farrell and Anton Yelchin in Fright Night, playing the latter’s sweet girlfriend, and an unwitting object of temptation for the former. In films like the striking and austere schoolhouse drama Cracks (the directorial debut of Jordan Scott, daughter of Ridley Scott), meanwhile, and last year’s Solitary Man, in which she hooked up with Michael Douglas, Poots is showing a range that obviously endears her to casting directors and filmmakers alike.

With Fright Night, though, the 22-year-old actress has a potentially huge commercial hit-in-waiting, which makes it an exciting but nerve-racking time. I recently had a chance to chat one-on-one with Poots — an avowed music fan, of Leonard Cohen, The Smiths and doo-wop tunes, among other genres — about crafting (and keeping) an American accent, the proper pronunciation of her name, what academic disciplines she hopes to one day study, and how she’ll be delving even further into music in her next project. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the full read.

The character of Conan the Barbarian has, since two big screen offerings in the 1980s that helped launch the acting career of Arnold Schwarzenegger, been something of a dormant volcano. Periodically, there would be rumblings as to a big new movie (especially before Schwarzenegger became “The Governator” of California) or franchise reimagining, but as with so many would-be projects in Hollywood, the elements never quite completely aligned in a manner that turned possibility into a reality. That all changes this week, of course, with the debut of Lionsgate’s Conan the Barbarian, starring Games of Thrones‘ Jason Momoa in the title role.

Recently, I had the chance to sit down in person and speak one-on-one with some of the cast and crew about their takes on the material, and the long shadow of its legacy. And what better place to start than with one of the writers who was charged with shepherding the character back to the screen — even if screenwriter Sean Hood (above), who also currently teaches at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, jokingly couldn’t quite understand why I wanted to chat with him. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click on over for the engaging Q&A read, which includes intriguing information about Hood’s new project, which he compares to The Black Swan.

Dublin-born and based, Brendan Gleeson is, like many of the finest character actors, many things to many people. To some he is forevermore Professor “Mad-Eye” Moody from the Harry Potter films. Others will recall his standout turn opposite Mel Gibson in Braveheart, or the wickedly under-appreciated In Bruges, opposite a headstrong Colin Farrell. Others still might think he looks familiar from Robert Zemeckis’ motion-capture Beowulf. Most recently, Gleeson won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie for his portrayal of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in HBO’s Into the Storm. In real life, of course, Gleeson is all of these characters, and still so much more — a voluble, friendly and exceedingly insightful and intelligent guy.

In his latest film, writer-director John Michael McDonagh’s dryly comedic mismatched-buddy-cop dramedy The Guard, Gleeson plays Gerry Boyle, a longtime police sergeant in Ireland’s rural Galway who yawningly meets only the basest professional obligations, and lives by his own loose moral code. Friction ensues when an American FBI agent, Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle), arrives to oversee the investigation into an international drug trafficking operation that may be planning on using Galway as a port. I had a chance recently to chat one-on-one with Gleeson, about both his prickly and provocative character in The Guard and his desire to take a great American road trip. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa.

If the Beatles and the Rolling Stones spawned their own dueling fan bases, connoisseurs of late 1980s and early ’90s action flicks often have their own disagreements about the merits and appeal of Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme. While the former generally smashed heads and cracked skulls with the disposition of a sullen ox, the latter had a more compact frame, and a kind of balletic karate skill set to match a slightly more engaging personality. Known as “The Muscles From Brussels,” the Belgian-born Van Damme would put his stamp on the action genre with a string of increasingly profitable hits like Death Warrant, Double Impact, Universal Soldier and Timecop, the latter two of which were $100 worldwide smashes.

Changing tastes and struggles with drug addiction would combine to derail the genre actor, but Van Damme turned heads with 2008’s JCVD, in which he played a sad-sack version of himself, and he’s been acting again (and even directing) with regularity. In his new movie, Assassination Games, Van Damme portrays a contract killer who reluctantly teams up with a man (Scott Adkins) driven by vengeance after his most recent hit goes sideways. I had a chance to recently submit some questions by email to Van Damme, about Assassination Games, the arc of his career, the upcoming sequel to The Expendables and more. The intriguing answers, inclusive of his Facebook updates and love of dogs, are available over at ShockYa.