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The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio

Posted: 06 Apr 2013 02:01 AM PDT

The new Sundance Channel miniseries Rectify tells the story of a man who returns home after 19 years on death row.

Abigail Spencer was in high spirits. She was in London, busy promoting her new movie, Oz The Great And Powerful, in which she plays May, Oscar the magician's assistant. The Mad Men actress was also spending her time talking to the press about the new Sundance Channel miniseries, Rectify.

She seemed genuinely excited, even asking what the time was in Kuala Lumpur during our phone conversation. It's easy to see why she was chosen to play Amantha Holden in Rectify, the woman who is determined to do anything to fight for her brother Daniel.

Daniel has spent the last 19 years on death row for the rape and murder of his teenage girlfriend. But Amantha is convinced of his innocence and has spent all her life fighting for his release. The day finally comes when Daniel is allowed back into society due to a technicality. But life out there is a little different now, and Daniel has to try and cope with a world he no longer understands.

The show has been getting good reviews, and part of it is due to its ensemble cast which includes Australian actor Aden Young (who plays Daniel), Adelaide Clemens, Hal Holbrook and Deadwood actor Sean Bridgers. The story itself keeps viewers guessing as to what really happened in the past and what is going to happen in the future as those who were involved in the investigation of the case still think Daniel is guilty.

Rectify also takes advantage of its small town setting to weave an intriguing web of connections and relationships within the tight community, and how that community copes with the return of a man who had been put away for nearly two decades.

Incidentally, Young, who was to play the lead character upon which the entire series is hinged, was the last to be cast. Spencer, on the other hand, was the first to be signed.

"I had worked with Mark Johnson, who produces Breaking Bad and also our show Rectify, on a movie called Chasing Mavericks," said Spencer. "And we were reminiscing about how this all came together in our lives. And he was like, 'I think you were the first person cast!' And I was like, 'Really?!' I discovered that it was me, and then the whole family, and the only one who wasn't cast was Daniel."

Even when she was already flying out to Georgia to start shooting for the show, the producers had still not found the actor for Daniel. But she said she had full trust in the series' creator Ray McKinnon.

"I believed that he wouldn't settle for anyone until the right person comes to the part," said Spencer. "I felt that the script and the material called for it. If you're signing up for really good material and really good people, they will find the right people. You don't have to worry and you can trust their process."

She revealed that Young was in Bangkok, Thailand shooting a movie and he had to literally film himself on his computer reading the lines before he finally flew back to the United States to read for the part.

"When I saw him," said Spencer, "I just knew, like, 'Oh, that's Daniel. That's him, that's the guy, that's my brother, let's do this'."

Amantha and Daniel are close siblings, and even after 19 years of his incarceration, she doesn't seem to feel the temporal divide between them. Asked how she and Young had managed to pull off that chemistry between two people who have grown up together, Spencer said it just came naturally to them both.

"I think we just have it," she said. "I don't even know how to describe it. I don't know how to put words around the magic that Aden and I ... we have similar work ethics, so I think that helps. We feel that brotherly, sisterly connection. We have a very similar sense of humour. What was required was an unspoken connection, and I think that's what we had. And if we were to define it, try and work on it, I think it would actually go against what was already there. You just had to let it be."

The series was shot in Griffin, Georgia which became the show's fictional town of Paulie, Georgia. McKinnon himself was also born in a small town in Georgia named Adel. Spencer grew up in a small town in northwest Florida which was a stone's throw away from Georgia.

She said the show deliberately looked for a contemporary representation of the American south, something that has not yet been seen before on TV or cinematically. What usually ends up on the big or small screen when it involves the south is normally something of a gothic nature and of the past, she said, but Rectify consciously stayed away from those kinds of images.

"This is really the present," said Spencer. "It feels really right. The house that we shot in is a real house in Griffin. I remember when I walked in, I was, like, oh my gosh, it smells just like my grandmother's house! It even had the same wall panelling and wallpaper."

On whether small-town America is really like what the movies and TV shows normally depict, a powder keg of small-mindedness and caustic relationships, Spencer said it's all about points-of-view.

"This show is about private lives, about family and the intricacies of people who love each other and people who've gone through some things that define them," she explained. "And once that order is disrupted and chaos breaks out, how do people react? I think it's not confined to just small-town America. Anybody can relate to the show, who have families and who've loved and lost."

She said while she thinks the show can be about many things to many people, she feels the central theme is rebirth.

"Daniel is being reborn, and in a certain way it's the man who fell to Earth," she said. "All the characters are having a shift, there's a reawakening. Also the title of the show, to rectify is to make right. What does that mean to everyone? What is broken, what is the wrong that has to be made right in everyone's lives?"

While the story may keep viewers guessing as to whether Daniel is really guilty or not, Spencer feels the more important aspect is that the producers have created characters that viewers will care about.

"You're going to go on a journey with them," said Spencer. "I think that's the most important thing. It's not necessarily about what happened. You care about the people and wonder what's going to happen."

Rectify is the first wholly-owned Sundance Channel scripted miniseries. It airs every Thursday, 10pm, on the Sundance Channel (Astro Ch 438).

Korean actor Song Seung-heon sheds “pretty boy” image

Posted: 06 Apr 2013 02:06 AM PDT

Korean actor toughens up to play a reformed thug in his new drama.

It is hard to believe over a decade has passed since veteran actor Song Seung-heon earned his place in the Korean Wave firmament with the now-iconic Autumn In My Heart.

After Song melted many a female heart as the singularly devoted and sweet not-quite-brother to Song Hye-kyo's ill-fated heroine, he went on to star in five more television dramas, most of which fell into the same genre that propelled him to international fame – the heart-searing melodrama.

Song's latest work is no exception, but, according to the 36-year-old actor, MBC's upcoming A Man In Love is his roughest role to date.

Though he played a gangster in his popular small screen comeback East Of Eden, Song said, "This character has it tougher than other characters I've played and that might be why I was drawn to this role."

Confessing that he wanted to shed his "pretty boy" image, during a press conference in Seoul, South Korea, recently, Song put it quite simply that as a man well into his 30s, he felt playing a man's man was the right fit.

In this case, his man's man is a cold-hearted loan shark, a thug who survives his boss' betrayal and steps up from right-hand man to head of the gang, only to leave it all behind in the name of love and morph into a successful businessman.

The twist comes when his sweetheart, played by High Kick 2 actress Shin Se-gyeong, betrays him for another man, leaving him bent on revenge, and suddenly it all becomes quite clear that A Man In Love is no picnic. It is a bona fide melodrama with all the requisite trappings – unrequited love, betrayal and revenge.

While none of this is new to Song, the actor revealed that he had been gnawing over his role, worrying about it because it presented something of a challenge to him.

"What I am most concerned about is how to go about playing a thug who has never been in love and yet suddenly finds himself in love, having to express it in his own awkward way," Song explained.

Indeed, portraying a man whose day-to-day life is steeped in high-stakes violence and yet who is in the dark when it comes to true boy-meets-girl love requires a certain complex duality that cannot be taken lightly.

Pulled off right, it would be a poignant role of the kind that could up Song's star power, and judging from co-star Shin's description of his character as a "Daddy-Long-Legs" of sorts, it appears as though Song's hero will display a sweetness that might just have viewers rooting for him to the end. – The Korea Herald/Asia News Network

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Jumaat, 5 April 2013