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TOP 50 HOTTEST YOUNG ACTORS

The updated Top 50 Hottest Young Actors list now launched! There has been a lot of shake ups and surprises, with so many out of the rankings and new ones coming in! Here's the breakdown: Top 50 | Top 40 | Top 30 | Top 20 | Top 10

LOOKING BACK AT 2007
While we're preparing the list of the best performances by young actors for 2008, take a look back at last year's top performers- "2007 was a good year for young talents. While the Oscars (and the BAFTA) favor the more matured... [ read more ]

2008 Fall/Winter Movie Preview
It all started with Harry Potter. As soon as Warner Bros. announced they were moving their tentpole holiday release to next summer, rival studios scrambled to take advantage of the hole left in the remaining 2008 release schedule. [ read more ]

HOME arrow tMF Exclusives arrow QUID PRO QUO: Stahl, Farmiga shine!
QUID PRO QUO: Stahl, Farmiga shine! Print E-mail
Written by Jed Medina   
Saturday, 31 May 2008
Nick Stahl is back in the limelight! Not that he ever left the industry - he just seemed rather elusive for a while, becoming quite selective regarding the roles he played. After taking the lead in The Terminator way back in 2003, Nick only made one film a year for the next four years. But 2008 will be a banner year for Stahl - he has four movies on offer and one of them is Quid Pro Quo.

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What's the Movie About:
“I told the actors in rehearsal to think of the story as unfolding entirely within that moment that transpires between deep sleep and wakefulness. So from the earliest rehearsals and creative discussions, all the way through scoring and final sound design, we approached the film within that framework -- that the film itself should be experienced as a kind of dream. Even to the extent that we avoided the usual overtly "dreamy" filmmaking and editing tricks -- in favor of a straightforward style that would, like an actual dream, invite you to perceive it as real.”
Thus commented first-time director Carlos Brooks on his feature film Quid Pro Quo. The movie received a generous amount of good reviews at the recent Sundance Film Fest, with Nick Stahl and Vera Farmiga garnering much praise for their respective performances.

Vera Farmiga is of course Madolyn, in the award-winning film, The Departed. She  is also part of the cast of 2009's The Vintner's Luck.

Looking back, Nick Stahl is that young kid who starred with Mel Gibson in The Man Without a Face. Stahl is also known as John Connor in the Terminator series and he's known on television as Ben Hawkins in HBO's Carnivale. In this movie, he plays the lead, Isaac, a semi-paralyzed radio reporter.
 Film Synopsis: "I don't remember any of what I am about to tell you."

ISAAC KNOTT is a Public Radio reporter in New York City who begins to recount a story about himself on the air. When he was eight, his mother and father died in an automobile accident that left him in a wheelchair.

Continuing his story, Isaac recounts how he recently received an anonymous tip from someone identified only as "Ancient Chinese Girl." She tells him a perfectly able-bodied man walked into an emergency ward downtown, and attempted to bribe a doctor into amputating his leg.

In the course of his investigation, he meets FIONA, the aforementioned Ancient Chinese Girl. Though she is neither ancient nor Chinese, she is nevertheless supremely attractive, and highly intelligent. For reasons she keeps to herself, Fiona guides Isaac to a netherworld of people afflicted with a perverse desire to be disabled.

Seduced by her beauty and intelligence, Isaac is quick to suspect that Fiona herself may be a "wannabe." When he confronts her, she protests: "I don't want to be paralyzed, I already am paralyzed. “Isaac realizes he must decipher the puzzle of her fantasy motivations before they manifest into an all-too-real, if not fatal, reality. Along the way, he navigates a semi-surreal world of talismanic items like an antique Milwaukee brace, a pair of shoes called "spectators," and a paralyzing chemical called "Ginger Jake." Events become increasingly extraordinary as Isaac discovers that Fiona does indeed have a terrible agenda - one that resonates in long-buried memories of his own past.

When he finally wakes from this strange dream that is Fiona, she is nowhere to be found. It is clear to Isaac, as he concludes his on-air story, that Fiona has left him with some disturbing questions about what it means to be injured, and what it means to be healed. More importantly she has shown him that perceptions and illusions are sometimes one and the same.

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More Film Notes: Many of the best detective stories evolve in such a way that the story ends up that the detective has actually been investigating himself. QUID PRO QUO’s modern day detective is a Public Radio investigative reporter Isaac Knott (Nick Stahl) who just happens to be confined to a wheel chair. In the course of doing a story about disability wannabes, Isaac traverses a surreal world of fetishism and transgressive eroticism that recalls the unique perspectives of Luis Bunuel and Alfred Hitchcock.

In many ways, Isaac’s “story” is really a journey into his psyche and personal fears. And the totemic clues he discovers during his investigation: a wheel chair, a Milwaukee brace, a pair of shoes – are always more than their literal reality. In the context of the film, these items are objects of fetishistic worship. And as such, they become transcendental. A wheelchair is a wheelchair, until it is viewed as a device that possesses the power to delineate someone as “special,” in other words, “handicapped.” It’s not so much a conventional transport as a machine that creates pity and empathy.

Granted, all this presupposes a perverse perspective into the way we look at things. But in the course of Isaac’s investigation, he finds Fiona (Vera Farmiga) – or she finds him - and she offers him a window into a dark place that exists somewhere between reality and dreams. Her life’s aspiration is to be crippled, or at least to be perceived as such. She’s beautiful and successful, yet she longs to be physically destroyed to regain some spiritual transcendence in her life. Her complexity, along with her erotic compulsions, prove irresistible to Isaac.

This quixotic entanglement between reality and its reinterpretation through desire is the heart and soul of QUID PRO QUO. Isaac is drawn to Fiona’s dark side because somewhere in the strata of her perversion lies an underlying truth about himself. He is confined to a wheelchair because of an accident. What can he possibly learn about himself from Fiona’s desire to be like him? The answer of course is everything.

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[ Sundance film profile ] [ Nick Stahl fansite ] [ IMDb movie details ]

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THE VINTNER'S LUCK

Two of today's most talented young actors, rising French stars Gaspard Ulliel and Jérémie Renier, will play pivotal roles in the new Niki Caro film called The Vintner's Luck. The film is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by New Zealand author Elizabeth Knox. Here are tMF's exclusive article about the forthcoming movie:

Of Love, Wine and Angels, tMF begins series with an introduction to the book, plus a detailed look at some of Elizabeth Knox's most acclaimed works apart from the upcoming.

A Tale of Two Actors, tMF puts the spotlight on the movie's two main characters - Xas the angel and Sobran the French vintner, and the actors chosen for the roles

Up next! Niki Caro, the acclaimed filmmaker and the adaptation of The Vintner's Luck.

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