By Geir Moulson
BERLIN (AP) --Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" already looks sure of one honor among the competitors at this year's Berlin International Film Festival: for the movie that took longest to make. The American director, who presented the film Thursday, started making it in 2002. It follows a boy (Ellar Coltrane) from first grade to college, watching him make his way to adulthood as his divorced parents — played by Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke — muddle their way through parenthood and a series of relationships.
Step by step
Linklater worked on the project about once a year while also making movies including "Before Sunset," ''Before Midnight" and "Fast Food Nation." The film evolved as the director and cast went along.
"I had the architecture of the whole piece in mind, but then every year we got this gestation period of a year to think about each segment," Linklater told reporters. The movie swept over a long period, but the director said his aim was largely to focus on "little moments" rather than major dramas. "I had faith that it would all add up … that it would have a cumulative effect," he said.
Look back, carefully
The cast didn't get to see any of the footage until recently. Coltrane said he was grateful for that because it kept it from being self-conscious — and it was still "a lot to deal with watching it two months ago."
The director's daughter, Lorelei Linklater, played the elder sister to Coltrane's character through the film's making. She said that watching the completed movie was "honestly quite painful at some times, watching yourselves go through all these awkward stages. It was hard — I was crying for a little while."
And what was it like for the adults? "Ethan and I just got old," Arquette said.
Father and daughter
There was one hiccup for the director: Lorelei Linklater recalled that "one year, I asked him if my character could die." The filmmaker said he talked his daughter out of the idea, telling her that "it's not that kind of movie."
Loach honored
The festival's jury will award Berlin's top Golden Bear prize on Saturday, choosing from a field of 20 movies.
Before that, British director Ken Loach was getting an honorary Golden Bear Thursday in recognition of his prolific work, dating back to the 1960s. He was being honored with a gala screening of "Raining Stones," a 1993 film about a poverty-stricken suburban family that Loach said is "still relevant" and, despite the subject, "quite a cheerful film."
Not giving up lightly
Asked if the upcoming "Jimmy's Hall" will be his last feature film, the 77-year-old Loach said he doesn't know.
"We'll have to see. I think it does need a physical stamina that you tend to lose when you get into the wrong end of the 70s," he said. All the same, "it's not a privilege that you give up lightly."
In NBC’s “Brilliant Minds,” Zachary Quinto Plays Doctor–In A Role Inspired By Physician/Author Oliver Sacks
There's a great moment in the first episode of the new NBC medical drama "Brilliant Minds" when it becomes very clear that we're not dealing with a typical TV doctor.
Zachary Quinto is behind the wheel of a car barreling down a New York City parkway, packed with hospital interns, abruptly weaving in and out of lanes, when one of them asks, "Does anyone want to share a Klonopin?" — a drug sometimes used to treat panic disorders.
"Oh, glory to God, yes, please," says Quinto, reaching an arm into the back seat. The intern then breaks the pill in half and gives a sliver to the driver, who swallows it, as the other interns share stunned looks.
Quinto, playing the character Dr. Oliver Wolf, is clearly not portraying any dour, by-the-rules doctor here — he's playing a character inspired by Dr. Oliver Sacks, the path-breaking researcher and author who rose to fame in the 1970s and was once called the "poet laureate of medicine."
"He was someone who was tirelessly committed to the dignity of the human experience. And so I feel really grateful to be able to tell his story and to continue his legacy in a way that I hope our show is able to do," says Quinto.
He's a fern-loving doctor
"Brilliant Minds" takes Sack's personality — a motorcycle-riding, fern-loving advocate for mental health who died in 2015 at 82 — and puts him in the present day, where the creators theorize he would have no idea who Taylor Swift is or own a cell phone. The series debuts Monday on NBC, right after "The Voice."
"It's almost as if we're imagining what it would have been like if Oliver Sacks had been born at a different time," says Quinto. "We use the real life person as our North Star through everything we're doing and all the... Read More