5 Reasons to Watch How to Make It in America Season 2

Bryan Greenberg and Victor Rasuk When How to Make It In America returns, best friends Ben (Bryan Greenberg) and Cam (Victor Rasuk) will be back in NY hustling to become successful designers. With their business finally off the ground, Greenberg says viewers will see them move forward, albeit slowly, while growing personally as well. Check out the top reasons to watch Season 2 when it premieres Sunday at 10:30/9:30c on HBO. 1. The stakes are higherWhen the show picks up, Ben and Cam are back from Japan where they've had their first taste of success with their Crisp T-shirts and hoodies. Greenberg says that the pressure is on and the guys have some decisions to make. "They have the opportunity to make their business extremely profitable this season and that shakes up the foundation of who they are," he adds. Check out our fall preview for galleries, scoop, premiere calendars and more! 2. No more whiny BenLast season began with Ben a bit broken-hearted and unsure that his design skills were enough to make his fashion dreams a reality. But expect a whole new Ben, Greenberg says. "He's saying yes to everything, he's not beating himself up anymore, and he's sick of being broke so he's going to go swinging for the fences." 3. Cam gets a girlIt seemed that while Ben was juggling the ladies, Cam was striking out, but this season he's a bachelor no more. "Cam meets a lovely lady named Lulu played by Nicole LaLiberte who's also in the same business, but very successful. That motivates Cam even more to make sure Crisp becomes a success," Rasuk says. She also helps him to get in touch more with his artistic side, he says. How Bryan Greenberg made it to How to Make it in America 4. Ben and Rachel try to be friendsBen and his ex (Lake Bell) remain in the same circle of friends which means they're bound to have continual contact. Greenberg says the two try to make a go at a platonic friendship, but it's not without complications. "In Episode 4, they have their 'Ben and Rachel episode,' when they get invited to go to a wedding of a friend they set up. Since they're trying to do the friend thing, they end up going together," he says. Of course, weddings plus alcohol usually don't keep things platonic. 5. Guest starsGina Gershon will play a sales rep who "introduces Ben and Cam to the world they've always dreamed of," Greenberg says. There might also be a bit of flirtation involved, as well. Other celebs include Eriq La Salle, Pharrell (as himself), Pusha T, Joe Pantoliano and Rescue Me's Michael Zegen. Watch a clip of Sunday's premiere:

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Rome fest hosts better of British

ROME -- The Rome Film Festival has employed British helmers/scribes Terence Davies and David Hare, composer Michael Nyman and author Hanif Kureishi to keep onstage conversations throughout the approaching event's Focus United kingdom sidebar.British critic Jonathan Romney will moderate two public sections with one of these artists throughout the Eternal City Extravaganza.The U.K. showcase includes the Italo preems of two first features by Brit thesps, Paddy Considine's well-received "Tyrannosaur" and "Wild Bill" by Dexter Fletcher, which lately scooped the Youth Award at San Sebastian.As formerly introduced, a retro entitled Punks & Patriots will even unspool, featuring juxtaposed vintage game titles, one representing England's edgy side, another its reverence toward tradition.Punks & Patriots may also be the theme of both fest's opening event and it is eclectic red-colored carpet design, produced through the Royal Gardening Society's Simon Lycett.The sixth edition from the Rome fest will run March. 27-November. 4. Contact Nick Vivarelli at nvivarelli@gmail.com

Johnny Wright dies at 97

Johnny Wright, a country music pioneer who had hits as a singer in the duo Johnnie and Jack and guided the career of his wife, Kitty Wells, died of natural causes early Tuesday, Sept. 27, in Nashville. He was 97 and had been in failing health for some time.Wright remembered WSM going on the air in 1925 and heard the first broadcast of Uncle Jimmy Thompson, an event that would evolve into the Grand Ole Opry. Later he started his own career and married Wells, the first woman to break through as a star in country music, in 1937."With the passing of Johnny Wright, it really brings an end to an era," said Eddie Stubbs, a WSM radio host who came to town as a fiddler for Wright and Wells. "He saw it all happen right in front of his very eyes, then got to become an active participant in the music, too."Wright came to fame as a member of the country duo Johnnie and Jack, which recorded hits such as "Ashes of Love," "I Get So Lonely," "Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight" and "Poison Love" in the late 1940s and early 1950s.Wright changed the spelling of his name from Johnnie after it was misprinted on a record, then began a solo career with a No. 1 hit "Hello Vietnam," later featured in the 1987 movie "Full Metal Jacket."Wells and Wright had three children: two daughters and a son, Bobby, who also was a singer and actor. He played the part of Willie, a Tennessee moonshiner, on the TV series "McHale's Navy."Wells was known as "the queen of country music" after she became the first woman solo singer to have a No. 1 country record, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," in 1952. The couple's 74th anniversary would have been Oct. 30."He managed her career and put her career ahead of his own," Stubbs said. "All the women of country music owe this debt of gratitude to Kitty Wells. Had it not been for Johnny Wright guiding her, there would not have been a Kitty Wells." Contact the Variety newsroom at news@variety.com

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San Sebastian Opens with a brand new Director and Strategy

SAN SEBASTIAN, The country -- It's not only the night time erotic film tests or even the tent in the center of Oquendo Plaza with families swarming during the day, the re-instating from the official frequent lowering and raising evening parties or even the thematic feasts which will play from the recently produced Culinary Zinema section. Something will change this season in the 59th San Sebastian Worldwide Film Festival and also the event's new director is wishing his proper changes charge The country's A-list festival with restored "alegria"-- or pleasure.our editor recommends'Intouchables World Premiere to shut Spains San Sebastian Fest "Discerning judgment isn't anathema to fun," San Sebastian's new festival director Jose Luis Rebordinos told The Hollywood Reporter just in front of Friday's opening. "We now have attempted to recapture the pleasure from the festival and also have introduced an array of activities." San Sebastian, which always were built with a status like a warm, enjoyable film event that centered the whole The spanish language-speaking film industry in one location, saw its sparkle numbed previously couple of years because it remained to clean up the The spanish language leftovers from previous festivals within the season. But this season's selection shows no insufficient top-drawer The spanish language product making European or World premiere -- including Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's Burglars, Nacho Vigalondo's Extraterrestrial, Benito Zambrano's The Sleeping Voice and Arturo Ripstein's The Reason Why from the Heart. "San Sebastian should be a powerful support for that The spanish language film industry," Rebordinos stated. "Cannes will it for that French industry. Venice will it for that Italian industry. The planet must realize that San Sebastian is the house of The spanish language cinema, along with the gateway for Latin American films to initiate Europe." The festival this season boasts no less than 15 The spanish language game titles within the Official and also the Zabalteti sections -- additionally towards the Latin Horizons making in The country showcases that group this season's entire crop of The spanish language-language product. "It's great the festival is supporting the The spanish language film industry in by doing this," stated Apaches Entertainment's Jesus p la Vega, producer of Fresnadillo's Burglars, which opens the state competition. Apaches also involves San Sebastian using the world premiere of Eduardo Chapero-Jackson's Verbo. "Toronto is a vital market also it's unfortunate it's right before San Sebastian," P la Vega stated as explanation as why the producers didn't hold Burglars for any world premiere at San Sebastian. "But we're thrilled to become inaugurating San Sebastian's Official Section and delighted coordinators considered it vital that you include." Nevertheless, The spanish language associates the alternation in strategy isn't just welcome -- but very noticeable. "I truly think this will probably be the very best edition in a long time,Inch the leader of The country's producers federation FAPAE stated. "San Sebastian can maintain its worldwide status and prestige, while giving special consideration to The spanish language cinema. There's no incompatibility." But The spanish language premieres aren't the only real signature item San Sebastian is positively relationship. "Not just shall we be returning the parties during the night, but we're searching to boost the interaction with youthful movie-goers," Rebordinos stated, pointing to 50 % ticket discount rates for 18-29 year-olds, special kiddy training courses for 3-12 year-olds and forums for film studies students. Actress Frances McDormand will mind the jury for that official competition, which sees 16 films vie for that Golden Spend top prize. Among individuals competing: Terence Davies' The Dark Blue Ocean, Kim Ki-duk's Amen, Hirokazu Kore-eda's If Only, Wang Xiaoshuai's 11 Flowers and Bjorn Runge's Happy Finish. San Sebastian runs Sept. 16-24 in The country's northern Basque region. Related Subjects Worldwide San Sebastian Worldwide Film Festival

COLA finalists announced

Finalists for the 17th annual California on Location Awards were announced Wednesday by FilmL.A. and Film Liaisons in California Statewide. The awards honor industryites and public employees for excellence during on-location filming in the state of California. Honorees include location managers, assistant location managers, location teams, plus city, county, state and federal officials who facilitate filming. This year's nominees -- who qualify if they've worked on film, TV and commercials shot in California between July 1, 2010, and June 30, 2011 -- were selected by film commissioners and other industry pros. Finalists include location pros for such films as "Moneyball," "J. Edgar," "Horrible Bosses" and "Friends With Benefits"; TV shows like "House M.D." and "Wilfred"; and commercials for Chevrolet and Hyundai. Public employee noms include officials from the L.A. Parks Dept., L.A. Sheriff's Dept., Caltrans and the U.S. Coast Guard. Winners will be announced Oct. 16 at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. Film Liasions is a network of regional film offices and commissions that work with the California Film Commission to facilitate production in the Golden State. Nonprofit org FilmL.A. coordinates and processes permits for on-location shooting in the greater Los Angeles area. Contact Peter Caranicas at peter.caranicas@variety.com

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Gem Jam Twenty

An Abramorama discharge of a Vinyl Films production, in colaboration with Monkeywrench, Tremolo Prods. Created by Cameron Crowe, Kelly Curtis, Morgan Neville, Andy Fischer. Executive producer, Michele Anthony. Directed, compiled by Cameron Crowe.With: Eddie Vedder, Stone Gossard, Mike McCready, Shaun Ament, Matt Cameron, Chris Cornell, Boom Gaspar, David Lynch.The motion picture same as a concert T-shirt, XXL biodocu "Gem Jam Twenty" gives another awesome souvenir to die-hard fans from the chart-topping Dallas scenesters-switched-cult faves while departing others to require there is a thesis in former rock-journo Cameron Crowe's two-hour puff piece. Getting a pulse only within the band's late-reel performance of "Alive," a lusty passage that would have begun a pic set on creating a situation for that group's greatness, "Twenty" simply counts time from 1991 via sludgy backstage and onstage footage whose rarity can't forgive its inclusion. Crowe's critic mentor, the late Lester Bangs, would cringe. The pic's multiplatform release includes special-event tests on Sept. 20, adopted carefully by choose-market runs, VOD availability along with a PBS broadcast, means there is no time for Crowe to re-edit, were he like doing so. Because it is, charge-burying docu has got the director presenting themself like a fan-boy scribe who heard majesty within the din coming from Dallas circa 1985. Copious shots from the city's bridges neglect to set the scene, as the early PJ's likeness towards the parodically made headbangers of Crowe's semi-autobiographical feature "Almost Famous" hardly help.Camera (color, DV), Nicola B. Marsh editors, Chris Perkel, Kevin Klauber . Examined at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 10, 2011. Running time: 119 MIN. Contact the range newsroom at news@variety.com

A Gifted Man Books Eriq La Salle For Recurring Role

Eriq La Salle Eriq La Salle will reunite with his ER boss Neal Baer on A Gifted Man. The Hollywood Reporter says La Salle will play Evan Morrison, a neuropsychiatrist who focuses on human behavior. La Salle's arc on the upcoming series will include at least four episodes. Is A Gifted Man on your Watchlist? Add it and your other favorites now and never miss an episode A Gifted Man stars Patrick Wilson stars as a hotshot neurosurgeon whose dead ex-wife (Jennifer Ehle) suddenly appears, asking for his help at the free clinic she left in her wake. "Patrick reminded me of [Eriq] and Noah [Wyle] because they were so dedicated to learning how to suture and Patrick has learned how to tie surgical knots," Baer recently told TVGuide.com. CBS' A Gifted Man will explore the upstairs-downstairs, science vs. faith sides of medicine La Salle also directed and guest-starred on an episode of Baer's previous series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. A Gifted Man premieres Friday, Sept. 23 at 10/9c on CBS.

Josh Hartnett on the Samurai Western Mash-Up Bunraku and Life Outside of Hollywood

It’s no coincidence that Josh Hartnett has been off the grid, so to speak, in the years following his most recent string of mainstream turns (The Black Dahlia, Resurrecting the Champ, 30 Days of Night); after spending a decade in Hollywood, the 33-year-old tells Movieline, other interests and challenges called. “I’ve been trying out a lot of different things,” Hartnett explained during a chat about his latest art film endeavor, Guy Moshe’s hyper-stylized Bunraku. “I started this business so young, I kind of grew up in it… I’m just living a rather unique life, I think, and I enjoy it.” Hartnett yearned for edgier fare, and Bunraku certainly fits the bill. Named for an obscure form of Japanese theater traditionally performed by shadowy black-clad puppet masters, Bunraku unapologetically mashes genres through and through, from its tale of two drifters bent on shared revenge (Hartnett’s stoic cowboy and Japanese rock star Gackt as his samurai counterpart) to the visual flair of the world of Bunraku — part paper sculpture, part CG fantasy-Western, part Jerome Robbins musical. Ron Perlman’s contemplative warlord plays foil to both Hartnett and Gackt, while Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore, Kevin McKidd, and Shun Sugata fill out the cast of colorful figures on the periphery. Movieline spoke with the actor about the uncompromising vision of Bunraku, its long journey to theaters, and how his focus in his career and in life has evolved over the years. Bunraku is a pretty daring exercise in itself; how was the concept of it, with its theatricality and its genre-bending and visual style, initially pitched to you? Well, Guy [Moshe] came to me in New York and sat down with me before I even read the script to explain the visuals and explain what the fight sequences were going to entail, and it was clear to me that he had a real vision for the project and that he wasn’t going to compromise on it. He had turned down a studio who wanted to make a different version of this film that was a little less stagey, and he just couldn’t see it that way. He wanted to do it this way. And I respected that. I just ultimately put my faith in the fact that he was going to do something unique. I get sick of seeing the same few types of movies come out all the time, I really like to be involved with filmmakers who are trying to pull off something unique, something new. And guy definitely went for that in this case. I think he pulled it off. As a performer, you put in your time with this project and filmed this three years ago. You mentioned respecting Guy’s vision and unwillingness to compromise, but how do you then feel about the trade-off of the film then taking a bit longer to make its way to audiences? Well, that is the trade-off. If you’re only in the business to be seen in whatever’s coming out, you don’t really care about, I guess, the director’s unique vision, then you can do those kinds of movies all the time and you’ll be seen in exactly the time that the studios set out and allot for that release. A film like this takes a lot of, you know, inter-machinations for it to see release. He’s overcome a lot in the course of making this film and I’m proud that is actually is coming out. It’s been a struggle for him. And you know, I don’t really take that into consideration when I read something or when I meet someone. I would love for people to see it and love it, but more it’s about making something interesting and new and eventually people will see it and love it. When I first read about the project I was instantly intrigued by the title, because Japanese bunraku puppet theater is so rarely performed stateside. People here probably don’t have much of a concept of what it is. How do you think the inspiration pulled from traditional bunraku theater has been translated into the film? For me, my take on that is that Guy wanted the audience to be aware that it wasn’t taking place in a world that exists physically for us. What bunraku puppetry is, is puppets on a stage with the puppet operator dressed in black, performing these melodramas and these parables and comedies. It’s so far outside of the realm of reality that you know right off the bat that you’re safe. You don’t have to worry about whether or not it could be a possibility. You can turn off that mechanism in that part of your brain, it’s not going to happen. You just kind of sit back and watch the story for what it is, it clarifies the story a bit. And that’s what I think he’s doing here. He’s not pretending this is reality, he’s letting you see behind the curtain, for lack of a better metaphor. I think it also has the archetypes that we’re familiar with and it borrows a lot from different film genres that we have come to know and understand, so there are certain elements that you can really wrap your mind around. Speaking of those archetypes, you and Gackt play characters representative of this lone gunslinger kind of character that’s come up not only in Western mythology but in samurai lore, which makes it interesting to see where those two cultures meet within this storytelling sphere. How would you describe your character and what motivates him in particular? He was left on his own at a very young age; he loses his father, loses his mother, and doesn’t know much about either of them. We created a backstory for him - he’s raised by traveling gypsy circus folk, and when he finds out at a certain age what happened to his biological father, to his parents, he sets out on a course of revenge. I find that the guy was written purposefully opaque and I enjoy that. There’s nothing, you don’t get any backstory on him, and it’s more fun to kind of watch his reaction to this world and how he pummels his way through it. You don’t know anything about him. You know more about Yoshi, obviously, but my character is allowed to be a little more fluid and a little more goofy, if you don’t know anything about him. I got to play with it, because he didn’t really have any weaknesses in the original script. I got to figure out what could work. I made him afraid of heights, somebody who doesn’t like to reveal anything, and lives purposefully covered up, down to the gloves. We did a lot of work on the costume. He’s constantly pushing outward; he doesn’t want anybody close to him. For me it’s a lot of fun to just start from scratch with a character. There aren’t many cues into who he is, so let’s just make something up that’s more creative. You’ve said that at a certain point in your career you decided you wanted to go a more artistic route in your film choices, and I’m curious as to how, in the last few years, those choices have evolved in comparison to where you began in film. Did those choices refocus you in terms of your approach to your career? I’d always wanted to do films that were a bit more on the edge… with a couple of glaring exceptions. I read a lot of material but I also have been writing a lot of different shorts and things like that, little things here and there, and producing - I started a production company - and I also do a lot of things that aren’t involved in this business. So I just feel very lucky to be able to be a part of unique pieces of film that I think have legs and that I think people will respond to. And I don’t know, I guess my primary focus in life has shifted a bit. But in film it’s always been the same. I’m just trying to make something that I’m going to be interested in seeing, something that’s new. I don’t want to cheat the audience. I want them to think a little bit. You know, I like challenging films, so I guess that’s reflected in what I choose to work on. What would you say is the new focus of your life right now? [Laughs] Well, that’s the part I don’t have to do interviews about! No, I’ve been trying out a lot of different things. I started this business so young, I kind of grew up in it, ever since I was 18. I don’t know. I’m just living a rather unique life, I think, and I enjoy it. I have a lot of friends who aren’t in this industry and I live in New York. I’m more just involved in the arts and music than with film people, so my life is kind of structured in that way as opposed to people who are out in Hollywood taking meetings every day. I don’t know — it’s just a different approach, I guess. Bunraku is available now on VOD and hits select theaters on September 30.