Exclusive: Joseph Baena and Ludovica Frasca have joined the cast of Josh Webber’s family holiday film Athena Saves Christmas, which is currently shooting in California’s Lake Arrowhead area for a late 2023 release.
Having started out in real estate and bodybuilding, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s son Baena is following in the footsteps of his father onto the big screen. Further upcoming credits include American Spark and Called To Duty.
Baena is repped by Penzi and Italian-born actress Frasca is with 3sixty.
They join previously announced cast members Cuba Gooding Jr, Paxton Kubitz, Kylie Marshall, Santiago Ramirez, Richard Portnow, Mars Callahan, Glenn Plummer and Kaitlyn Raymond.
The film follows Samuel (Kubitz) and his friends Vanessa (Marshall) and Alphonso (Ramirez) as well as his trusted dog Athena, who find themselves on the adventure of a lifetime as they take on a mob boss to save Christmas for their town.
Webber is directing...
Having started out in real estate and bodybuilding, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s son Baena is following in the footsteps of his father onto the big screen. Further upcoming credits include American Spark and Called To Duty.
Baena is repped by Penzi and Italian-born actress Frasca is with 3sixty.
They join previously announced cast members Cuba Gooding Jr, Paxton Kubitz, Kylie Marshall, Santiago Ramirez, Richard Portnow, Mars Callahan, Glenn Plummer and Kaitlyn Raymond.
The film follows Samuel (Kubitz) and his friends Vanessa (Marshall) and Alphonso (Ramirez) as well as his trusted dog Athena, who find themselves on the adventure of a lifetime as they take on a mob boss to save Christmas for their town.
Webber is directing...
- 3/31/2023
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
Exclusive: Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding Jr. (Jerry Maguire) has joined the cast of director Josh Webber’s holiday pic Athena Saves Christmas, with Christina Cooper coming aboard as producer.
The film follows Samuel (Paxton Kubitz) and his friends, along with Sam’s trusted dog Athena, on an adventure of a lifetime, as they match wits with a mob boss and look to solve a series of riddles, in order to save Christmas for their town.
Webber is also producing for Webber Films, alongside Michael Girgenti, Henry Penzi and Cooper. Tony Mercedes and Tamara Johnson are serving as EPs, with Robert Miano (Fast & Furious), Richard Portnow (Hitchcock), Mars Callahan, Glenn Plummer, Kaitlyn Raymond and more rounding out the cast. Gooding Jr. is repped by manager and attorney Peter Toumbekis.
***
Liam O’Donnell, Chad Law
Exclusive: Liam O’Donnell (XYZ Films’ Skyline franchise) has been tapped to direct the action-thriller Triggermen...
The film follows Samuel (Paxton Kubitz) and his friends, along with Sam’s trusted dog Athena, on an adventure of a lifetime, as they match wits with a mob boss and look to solve a series of riddles, in order to save Christmas for their town.
Webber is also producing for Webber Films, alongside Michael Girgenti, Henry Penzi and Cooper. Tony Mercedes and Tamara Johnson are serving as EPs, with Robert Miano (Fast & Furious), Richard Portnow (Hitchcock), Mars Callahan, Glenn Plummer, Kaitlyn Raymond and more rounding out the cast. Gooding Jr. is repped by manager and attorney Peter Toumbekis.
***
Liam O’Donnell, Chad Law
Exclusive: Liam O’Donnell (XYZ Films’ Skyline franchise) has been tapped to direct the action-thriller Triggermen...
- 3/3/2023
- by Matt Grobar
- Deadline Film + TV
(Christopher Walken, above.)
[We continue with our postings of some of the best interviews from the previous decade that have thus far only appeared in print, but not on our site. This interview was conducted by our good friend in New York, filmmaker Michael Wechsler. It originally appeared in Venice Magazine in 2003. Walken was just coming off a terrific performance in Catch Me If You Can. This is one of the better talks Walken has ever given. He speaks a lot about his process, in very entertaining fashion, making this a must-read for any aspiring actors.]
Christopher Walken: Dancer in the Dark
by Michael Wechsler
He dances. He can carry a tune. He has become a regular host on "Saturday Night Live." He loves Jerry Lewis, cats, Bugs Bunny, cooking and painting.
Oh, wait, I'm forgetting a few small details. He also won an Academy Award in 1978 for playing a suicidal soldier in Vietnam, gave audiences a lifetime of nightmares and sadistic chuckles playing a heavy in King of New York and a thug amongst thugs in True Romance, and to this day has one of the most recognizable hairstyles of anybody gracing the Silver Screen.
Frankly, I was more than a little nervous about interviewing Mr. Walken, based purely on his resume of psychologically unstable characters. My initial thought was ‘I hope he's nothing like the folks he's played.' Looking through Walken's roles of the past three decades, it feels...
[We continue with our postings of some of the best interviews from the previous decade that have thus far only appeared in print, but not on our site. This interview was conducted by our good friend in New York, filmmaker Michael Wechsler. It originally appeared in Venice Magazine in 2003. Walken was just coming off a terrific performance in Catch Me If You Can. This is one of the better talks Walken has ever given. He speaks a lot about his process, in very entertaining fashion, making this a must-read for any aspiring actors.]
Christopher Walken: Dancer in the Dark
by Michael Wechsler
He dances. He can carry a tune. He has become a regular host on "Saturday Night Live." He loves Jerry Lewis, cats, Bugs Bunny, cooking and painting.
Oh, wait, I'm forgetting a few small details. He also won an Academy Award in 1978 for playing a suicidal soldier in Vietnam, gave audiences a lifetime of nightmares and sadistic chuckles playing a heavy in King of New York and a thug amongst thugs in True Romance, and to this day has one of the most recognizable hairstyles of anybody gracing the Silver Screen.
Frankly, I was more than a little nervous about interviewing Mr. Walken, based purely on his resume of psychologically unstable characters. My initial thought was ‘I hope he's nothing like the folks he's played.' Looking through Walken's roles of the past three decades, it feels...
- 1/13/2010
- by The Hollywood Interview.com
- The Hollywood Interview
This review was written for the theatrical release of "What Love Is".If you're searching for "What Love Is", you won't find answers in this self-proclaimed "romantic comedy for men. You'll get locker/powder room chatter about fornication and all the strategies and methodologies of those anxious to go belly-to-belly with the nearest potential candidate. But this produces only heat, no light.
This is a discouragingly bad indie film. The discouragement comes from the fact that an Outside of Hollywood filmmaker, Mars Callahan, had the balls to take a huge gamble: raise enough coin to hire such name actors as Cuba Gooding Jr., Sean Astin, Gina Gershon, Anne Heche and Matthew Lillard for one week. Then slam-bang through a mostly one-set, 87-minute screenplay with multiple cameras covering the action so that no moment is wasted. You want such a movie to succeed.
The problem is that if Callahan spent even a week writing this script, he wasted four good days. The dialogue, characters and situations are distressingly bad. So despite its name actors, the film's theatrical prospects are dimmer than the intelligence of most of his characters. The film may play marginally better on cable and DVD.
It's Valentine's Day, and Tom (Gooding) means to pop the question to his lady of three years. He drops into a neighborhood bar for a shot of liquid courage, then invites his pals back to his place in a half-hour to help him celebrate his girlfriend's expected answer.
Now stop right there. If you plan to spend a night proposing and getting cozy with your girl, would you invite a bunch of drunks back to your house? No wonder when he arrives home, Sarah has left her packed bags by the door and a note saying adios.
One by one, his buddies drop in. Anyway, each guy represents a different point of view on matters sexual. Womanizing Sal (Lillard), who packs a gun and coincidentally got dumped this day too, is a virulent sexist. Upstairs neighbor Ken (Callahan) is happily married. George (Astin) is a "tree hugger," whatever that implies in terms of romance. And Wayne (Andrew Daly) is flamboyantly gay, which gives him the outsider's view.
Everyone voices his views, often in monologues delivered at breakneck speed. (When you've only got a week, time is money.) Points of view are extreme and usually chauvinistic.
Then the doorbell rings. Sarah? No, someone invited five striking young women from the bar to a Valentine's party. After a divertissement, in which the five males simultaneously fantasize that five girls strip and pole dance in Tom's living room, the actual women enter and head straight into very large and surprisingly feminine bathroom.
Now it's the girls' turn to gossip and talk dirty about sex and guys. Is it a compliment or a rebuke to say they are as crude as the men?
Finally, in Act III as it were, the boys and girls regroup in the living room. They drink, flirt and flaunt their cynicism about sex and love. By the time Sarah does ring the bell, you will not care what happens to her and Tom.
With all that footage rolling out of four cameras, screenwriter/director/co-star Callahan chooses to jump from one angle to another every three to six seconds, creating a jarring rhythm that yanks you right out of the movie. Concentration on what is being said is further stymied by the rat-a-tat-tat delivery of the lines.
The actors who fare the worst are Lillard, who has an impossibly nasty and cranky character to play, and Gooding, who looks simply lost. Then again, he's been looking that way for years.
WHAT LOVE IS
Big Sky Motion Pictures
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Mars Callahan
Producers: George Bours, John Hermansen, Mars Callahan
Executive producer: Rand Chortkoff
Director of photography: David Stump
Production designer: Jaymes Hinkle
Co-producers: Joy Czerwonky, David Pritchard
Costume designer: Roger Forker
Editors: Andrew Dickler, Joe Plenys
Cast:
George: Sean Astin
Ken: Mars Callahan
Rachel: Gina Gershon
Tom: Cuba Gooding Jr.
Laura: Anne Heche
Katherine: Tamala Jones
Sal: Matthew Lillard
Amy: Judy Tylor
Debbie: Shiri Appleby
Wayne: Andrew Daly
Running time -- 87 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
This is a discouragingly bad indie film. The discouragement comes from the fact that an Outside of Hollywood filmmaker, Mars Callahan, had the balls to take a huge gamble: raise enough coin to hire such name actors as Cuba Gooding Jr., Sean Astin, Gina Gershon, Anne Heche and Matthew Lillard for one week. Then slam-bang through a mostly one-set, 87-minute screenplay with multiple cameras covering the action so that no moment is wasted. You want such a movie to succeed.
The problem is that if Callahan spent even a week writing this script, he wasted four good days. The dialogue, characters and situations are distressingly bad. So despite its name actors, the film's theatrical prospects are dimmer than the intelligence of most of his characters. The film may play marginally better on cable and DVD.
It's Valentine's Day, and Tom (Gooding) means to pop the question to his lady of three years. He drops into a neighborhood bar for a shot of liquid courage, then invites his pals back to his place in a half-hour to help him celebrate his girlfriend's expected answer.
Now stop right there. If you plan to spend a night proposing and getting cozy with your girl, would you invite a bunch of drunks back to your house? No wonder when he arrives home, Sarah has left her packed bags by the door and a note saying adios.
One by one, his buddies drop in. Anyway, each guy represents a different point of view on matters sexual. Womanizing Sal (Lillard), who packs a gun and coincidentally got dumped this day too, is a virulent sexist. Upstairs neighbor Ken (Callahan) is happily married. George (Astin) is a "tree hugger," whatever that implies in terms of romance. And Wayne (Andrew Daly) is flamboyantly gay, which gives him the outsider's view.
Everyone voices his views, often in monologues delivered at breakneck speed. (When you've only got a week, time is money.) Points of view are extreme and usually chauvinistic.
Then the doorbell rings. Sarah? No, someone invited five striking young women from the bar to a Valentine's party. After a divertissement, in which the five males simultaneously fantasize that five girls strip and pole dance in Tom's living room, the actual women enter and head straight into very large and surprisingly feminine bathroom.
Now it's the girls' turn to gossip and talk dirty about sex and guys. Is it a compliment or a rebuke to say they are as crude as the men?
Finally, in Act III as it were, the boys and girls regroup in the living room. They drink, flirt and flaunt their cynicism about sex and love. By the time Sarah does ring the bell, you will not care what happens to her and Tom.
With all that footage rolling out of four cameras, screenwriter/director/co-star Callahan chooses to jump from one angle to another every three to six seconds, creating a jarring rhythm that yanks you right out of the movie. Concentration on what is being said is further stymied by the rat-a-tat-tat delivery of the lines.
The actors who fare the worst are Lillard, who has an impossibly nasty and cranky character to play, and Gooding, who looks simply lost. Then again, he's been looking that way for years.
WHAT LOVE IS
Big Sky Motion Pictures
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Mars Callahan
Producers: George Bours, John Hermansen, Mars Callahan
Executive producer: Rand Chortkoff
Director of photography: David Stump
Production designer: Jaymes Hinkle
Co-producers: Joy Czerwonky, David Pritchard
Costume designer: Roger Forker
Editors: Andrew Dickler, Joe Plenys
Cast:
George: Sean Astin
Ken: Mars Callahan
Rachel: Gina Gershon
Tom: Cuba Gooding Jr.
Laura: Anne Heche
Katherine: Tamala Jones
Sal: Matthew Lillard
Amy: Judy Tylor
Debbie: Shiri Appleby
Wayne: Andrew Daly
Running time -- 87 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 3/23/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
CineVegas International Film Festival
Pool movie junkies and fans of its illustrious supporting cast will have a good time with "Poolhall Junkies", the creation of debuting director, co-writer and lead actor Mars Callahan. A big coming out for Callahan (nee Gregory "Mars" Martin) -- whose most notable credit as an actor before this project is Tom Hanks' "That Thing You Do!" -- this low-budget indie is entertaining and doesn't take itself too seriously, while drawing one into a fairly predictable but strongly executed guy flick.
With liberal use of voice-overs and the portrayal of the playing of pool as a fiercely physical sport that includes violent breaks and characters holding cues like weapons, "Poolhall" is another potential sleeper for Production Company Gold Circle Films ("My Big Fat Greek Wedding"). Johnny (Callahan) is so good at playing pool as a young man that his mentor Joe (Chazz Palminteri) dishonestly steers his career away from legitimate competitions and into the lucrative gambit of hustling lesser-talented players in games that can include thousands of bucks won and lost.
With a stop-gambling-or-lose-me girlfriend in Tara (Alison Eastwood) and a younger brother (Michael Rosenbaum) who wants to emulate him, Johnny tries to get a real job after an ugly falling out with Joe. In a fateful development, Joe is beat up by some of Johnny's friends and sets about getting revenge, which entails grooming another hungry shark (Rick Schroder) for the inevitable big-stakes game against Johnny.
In the process of giving it up and then rushing back to the tables to save his wayward brother, Johnny picks up Tara's uncle Mike (Christopher Walken) as a supporter with deep pockets and gets good advice from poolroom operator Nick (Rod Steiger). He also gets a little payback from Joe that makes the big finish a crowd-pleasing display of cuemanship.
Callahan as performer and director is unabashed about his fondness for pool, and the film has a seemingly endless bag of tricks for making the game cinematic. The performances are a plus, led by Callahan with wily charisma and table-jock energy to burn.
Walken and Palminteri's rich dudes' face-off in the climax is worth the wait, while less demanding roles are memorably played to their fullest by Eastwood, Rosenbaum and Schroder. Steiger evokes his feisty movie persona at just the right moment, making the kind of don't-be-a-loser-kid speech that heroes on the verge of blowing it always need to keep them in the game.
POOLHALL JUNKIES
Gold Circle Films
Cutting Edge Entertainment, Newman/Tooley Films
Credits:
Director: Mars Callahan
Screenwriters: Mars Callahan, Chris Corso
Producers: Tucker Tooley, Vincent Newman, Karen Beninati
Executive producers: Norm Waitt, Paul Brooks
Director of photography: Robert Morris
Editor: James Tooley
Costume designer: Kristen Persson
Music: Richard Glasser
Casting: Jeff Johnson
Cast:
Johnny: Mars Callahan
Tara: Alison Eastwood
Danny: Michael Rosenbaum
Joe: Chazz Palminteri
Brad: Rick Schroder
Mike: Christopher Walken
Nick: Rod Steiger
Running time -- 94 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Pool movie junkies and fans of its illustrious supporting cast will have a good time with "Poolhall Junkies", the creation of debuting director, co-writer and lead actor Mars Callahan. A big coming out for Callahan (nee Gregory "Mars" Martin) -- whose most notable credit as an actor before this project is Tom Hanks' "That Thing You Do!" -- this low-budget indie is entertaining and doesn't take itself too seriously, while drawing one into a fairly predictable but strongly executed guy flick.
With liberal use of voice-overs and the portrayal of the playing of pool as a fiercely physical sport that includes violent breaks and characters holding cues like weapons, "Poolhall" is another potential sleeper for Production Company Gold Circle Films ("My Big Fat Greek Wedding"). Johnny (Callahan) is so good at playing pool as a young man that his mentor Joe (Chazz Palminteri) dishonestly steers his career away from legitimate competitions and into the lucrative gambit of hustling lesser-talented players in games that can include thousands of bucks won and lost.
With a stop-gambling-or-lose-me girlfriend in Tara (Alison Eastwood) and a younger brother (Michael Rosenbaum) who wants to emulate him, Johnny tries to get a real job after an ugly falling out with Joe. In a fateful development, Joe is beat up by some of Johnny's friends and sets about getting revenge, which entails grooming another hungry shark (Rick Schroder) for the inevitable big-stakes game against Johnny.
In the process of giving it up and then rushing back to the tables to save his wayward brother, Johnny picks up Tara's uncle Mike (Christopher Walken) as a supporter with deep pockets and gets good advice from poolroom operator Nick (Rod Steiger). He also gets a little payback from Joe that makes the big finish a crowd-pleasing display of cuemanship.
Callahan as performer and director is unabashed about his fondness for pool, and the film has a seemingly endless bag of tricks for making the game cinematic. The performances are a plus, led by Callahan with wily charisma and table-jock energy to burn.
Walken and Palminteri's rich dudes' face-off in the climax is worth the wait, while less demanding roles are memorably played to their fullest by Eastwood, Rosenbaum and Schroder. Steiger evokes his feisty movie persona at just the right moment, making the kind of don't-be-a-loser-kid speech that heroes on the verge of blowing it always need to keep them in the game.
POOLHALL JUNKIES
Gold Circle Films
Cutting Edge Entertainment, Newman/Tooley Films
Credits:
Director: Mars Callahan
Screenwriters: Mars Callahan, Chris Corso
Producers: Tucker Tooley, Vincent Newman, Karen Beninati
Executive producers: Norm Waitt, Paul Brooks
Director of photography: Robert Morris
Editor: James Tooley
Costume designer: Kristen Persson
Music: Richard Glasser
Casting: Jeff Johnson
Cast:
Johnny: Mars Callahan
Tara: Alison Eastwood
Danny: Michael Rosenbaum
Joe: Chazz Palminteri
Brad: Rick Schroder
Mike: Christopher Walken
Nick: Rod Steiger
Running time -- 94 minutes
No MPAA rating...
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