Separated at birth?

Oscar nominee Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road)...

and Richard "Jaws" Kiel from James Bond movies.

Just wondering.

Armand Assante wants to be seduced

Armand Assante laughed at my claim that he's the guy on screen who makes men want to cross the street to stay safe, and women want to take to bed.

"Well, I wish they would come out and tell me they want to go to bed with me," the 59-year-old actor said. "That's the problem; they keep it a big secret. And I find out from people like you."

I assured Assante that I would not go to bed with him. He appeared to take it well.

Assante is visiting Tampa this weekend - and other places when he's driving a rental car and misses his exit as he did Thursday, winding up somewhere in St. Petersburg. He's starring in The Steam Experiment, a Gasparilla International Film Festival entry, and will receive a career achievement award Sunday night.

"I suppose if you live long enough, eventually they throw you something," Assante said modestly. "I'm very grateful. The truth is that most of us out there are workaday people chasing paychecks.

"The bulk of an actor's life - certainly my life - is that 70 to 90 percent of the year is literally spent studying to see if there's anything worth doing. I was never an actor competing with the major stars. I was a working stiff, a journeyman. I don't care how big the star is; you don't do it alone.

"People ask me what was my favorite project. I don't think about projects, I think about the incredible people, all over the planet, whether it's people like Sidney Lumet (1990's Q&A with Nick Nolte) whose talent is renowned, or people who have been basically unrecognized, unobserved.

"On the plane today, I saw in the New York Times that one of the directors who first broke me out into large studio films just passed away. It was Howard Zieff, who did Private Benjamin and another film with Dudley Moore and me, Unfaithfully Yours. Howard and I were very close friends. That was a great relationship that manifested itself on the screen. He was like a big brother or a father to me.

"You only have a handful of those vital relationships that somehow propel things exponentially in your life. You manage to get a few opportunities in your life to have these immensely creative relationships. You ride the wave of those experiences, very unusual and unforgettable. Nothing is ever done alone."

Gasparilla fest opens with "Truth" and stars

Tampa Theatre was packed Thursday night when the third annual Gasparilla International Film Festival began its 10-day run. Attendance was announced at 1,200. At times it felt like all of them were crammed inside the Mediterranean-deco lobby, noshing sushi, ribs, Cuban sandwiches and cupcakes, washing it down with Stella Artois. If you've never visited this historic movie palace, you're missing half of the show.

Armand Assante, star of the festival entry The Steam Experiment, really is a nice guy with a great smile. For photos, he just prefers to put on the tough guy visage that has served him so well. Assante (Private Benjamin, The Mambo Kings, American Gangster) will receive a career achievement award Sunday.

Terry Moore (right) is a marvel of nature; 80 years young, still running 26.2-mile marathons and showing everyone what Hollywood class used to be. Her close friend Anne Jeffreys - whose credits could fill a season's lineup on TV Land - presented Moore with the festival's lifetime achievement award. When Moore learned I was the guy who wrote the Weekend story about her, she was so graciously appreciative that I felt a bit embarrassed.

You know I had to sneak a Princess Di photo in here. She and our great friend Marion Rich mug for the camera while stuffing a couple of the tastiest cupcakes you can imagine into their maws. Classy. The evening continued with a screening of Nothing But the Truth and a Q&A with writer-director Rod Lurie before the party shifted to Spain restaurant, where it spilled onto Tampa Street until early Friday. The festival moves to Channelside Cinemas today through March 7.

Welcome to Clear Lake WI, Population dwindling

Another good movie at the Gasparilla International Film Festival is Clear Lake, WI, a thriller more concerned with psychological trauma than gore, and that's a good thing. It also has Michael Madsen playing a man of the cloth, which seems odd at first. Then you realize he's Mr. Blonde all over again, just on a mission from God.

The Reverend, as he's known, went a little funny in the head 15 years ago, believing a toxic spill that caused several deaths was God's vengeance against sinners, especially horny teenagers. A few straight arrows agreed with him, setting off a Manson-style massacre of classmates. Needless to say, everyone cleared out of town after that.

Taking a cue from Stephen King's It, a group of survivors return to deserted Clear Lake to confront their dark memories, speaking exposition into a video camera a bit too much. Bodies start piling up, and it's obvious that the Reverend's work isn't done.

Clear Lake, WI is a solid flick, and Madsen is worth watching anytime (although his role is limited to flashbacks and a killer kiss-off). It's co-produced, written by and co-stars Morgan Simpson, a Plant High School graduate now living in L.A., and this is a nice calling card for future work. Simpson will join two other Plant grads -- executive producer Charlie Poe and musician Robert Cooper -- at Friday's 9:15 p.m. screening at Channelside Cinemas. Tickets are going fast.

Ye olde Renaissance Festival p.r. stunt

I've been wary of casting calls promising Hollywood stardom since I was 11 years old. Living in Alabama at the time, my parents learned that talent scouts were two hours away in Birmingham, looking for a kid to star alongside Steve McQueen in The Reivers.

Made the first day cut, returned for the second day (despite a flat tire that Dad feverishly fixed), and found out that producers were already set on a California kid named Mitch Vogel, who later co-starred on Bonanza. That, and the fact that McQueen wasn't at the auditions as the publicity intimated he would be, always stuck in my craw.

So, forgive my lack of excitement while passing along that the 31st annual Bay Area Renaissance Festival at Tampa's Museum of Science and Industry is offering visitors each weekend through April 5 the chance to "be the next Hollywood star" in "a major Hollywood film" toplined by Christina Ricci, Cedric the Entertainer and "Ann-Margaret."

Any news release that can't correctly spell Ann-Margret's name makes me suspicious.

The movie is called All's Faire in Love, and principal photography with those actors was completed at a renaissance festival in Michigan last October. They won't be here. The production is only filming B-roll shots in Tampa, showing people in costumes (that the production won't need to spend for) milling around the festival.

You won't get paid for your services. In fact, you have to pay regular prices ($16.95 for adults, $8.95 for children age 5 and older) for the opportunity to serve. Bring four cans of food to benefit Nature's Harvest and get a 50 percent discount.

Dress in your finest medieval wear, stand in line for a cursory "audition" interview and maybe you'll get a few seconds of screen time in a movie unlikely to reach a theater near you. Three production companies involved with All's Faire in Love have 16 movies to their credit, and only one - Material Girls starring Hilary and Haylie Duff - ever made it to Tampa Bay area theaters, for about five minutes. The only distribution rights for All's Faire in Love secured so far are in Turkey and Spain.

You have a better chance of seeing McQueen at the festival than becoming a star.

The day Capt. Kirk saved Oddjob's life in Tampa

Saturday night at the Gasparilla International Film Festival, I'll have the pleasure of joining drive-in moviemaker William Grefe for an 8:10 p.m. screening of his 1966 schlock-shocker Death Curse of Tartu, a worthy successor to the Blood Feast screening that went so well (except for the bungled throat-slashing gag) last year.

I promised Grefe (pronounced gre-FAY) yesterday that we won't try that stunt again, after the fake blood splattered on Herschell Gordon Lewis and the theater screen. As long as he doesn't surprise me with a rattlesnake from his 1972 hit Stanley, the heartwarming story of a boy and his venomous pet. We're on the same page, I think.

Grefe is now 79 years old, living in south Florida and 22 years past his last release, the motorcycles-and-psychos saga Whiskey Mountain. He's still revered by grindhouse cinema fans like Quentin Tarantino, whose Los Angeles theater housed a tribute to Grefe last year, showing Stanley and 1974's Impulse, filmed in Tampa at the long-gone Causeway Inn and starring none other than William Shatner as a homicidal ladies man.

As a sample of the stories Grefe will share Saturday night, here's his account of a day filming Impulse when a stunt involving Harold Sakata -- Goldfinger's "Oddjob" -- went terribly wrong, and Shatner's enduring friendship:

"There’s a scene where Shatner is supposed to hang him. We had this (stunt) rig on Sakata that slipped, so he was accidentally choking himself. Everybody thought he was acting except Shatner. He grabbed Sakata – who was a big guy, like a football player – and started yelling: ‘Cut the rope, cut the rope.’ They got him down and he was okay.

"Some crew member shot that from behind the scenes, and I found that footage about a month before I went to L.A. I called up Shatner and told him about it. He said: ‘My god, I’d love to see it. Come by my office and we’ll have lunch.’ He watches it and says: ‘It’s great but there’s no sound to it. Why don’t I narrate this?

"I called up a young filmmaker who's doing a documentary on my career and told him to get over there quick. And Shatner narrated it. He was so funny that we were gagging from laughing: ‘And here’s this big guy, 250 pounds, and I’ve got my hand on his ass and his legs on my shoulders..’ He goes on and on. The guy is really funny.

"He’s always coming up with something. He has a horse ranch in Kentucky, so I asked him one time how his horses were doing. Shatner looked at me and said: ‘Bill, let me tell you something. Never invest in anything that eats while you’re sleeping.'"

We'll also talk about Grefe's 1976 shark thriller Mako: The Jaws of Death, which he freely admits was riding the wake of Jaws: "I wrote Mako way before (Steven) Spielberg ever did Jaws but I couldn’t get arrested as far as getting money is concerned. All of a sudden, Jaws comes out and, oh, the publicity; Life magazine, Time magazine, everywhere it’s Jaws and sharks. My phone starts ringing off the hook from producers who read my storyline and knew I should get it out immediately.

"Before I finished editing the film I made a 7-minute promo for Europe, so we could ride Universal’s publicity machine. We had our money back out of Europe before Mako was even edited.

And, of course, Death Curse of Tartu: "That’s a movie that was just thrown together. I’d made a horror movie called Sting of Death and in those days, all horror movies – basically all drive-in movies – were released as double features. The distributor couldn’t find another horror movie, so he said if you guys can do one, I’ll put up the money. That was the magic word: money.

"In those days it was a nightmare to do a film, with the heavy equipment and editing took months and months to do. He told us we had to have it in theaters by April 15 because that’s when all the drive-ins up north would open up. This was probably the first of December. So, I wrote that script in 24 hours and shot it in seven days.

"I’ve made 20 features and of all the movies, that one has probably sold more DVDs than any movie I ever made. I have no idea why."

See if you can guess from this preview trailer:

Waltz with Bashir: A first in my book

Animated movies fill eyes, documentaries fill heads and foreign films show emotions are alike even when subtitled. Two of those impressions in one movie often comes along, from the foreign doc Triumph of the Will to the personal politics of Persepolis.

Combine all three -- smarts, heart and visual splendor -- and you have Waltz with Bashir, the movie robbed blindest at the recent Academy Awards.

Ari Folman's self-analysis of Lebanon War nightmares could have been nominated as best of three Oscar categories: foreign language film (which it was, losing to Japan's even more obscure Departures), documentary feature or, with blazing originality, animated feature. I've never seen an animated documentary in any language. The next one has a tough act to follow.

Folman is a Israeli army veteran of the 1982 war with Lebanon, plagued by nightmares jumbled with images that include snarling dogs, a beachfront battle and encountering an erotic sea nymph while laying injured on a ship's deck. When awake, Folman doesn't remember his wartime experiences, except they involve mass tragedy and deep guilt. He worked out his dreams and mental blocks by visiting former army buddies, and an amusingly straightforward psychologist friend.

The animation technique -- think A Scanner Darkly people and Watchmen mindscapes -- enlivens the nightmares better than a conventional documentary would, while talking heads become interest to watch when listening. Current events make Folman's crises of conscience 27 years ago seem topical today, regardless of nationality. Waltz with Bashir astonishes by combining three genres into a movie people will remember long after that Japanese flick. Grade: A.

Waltz with Bashir opens Friday, only at AMC Veterans 24 in Tampa and Burns Court Cinemas in Sarasota.   

"Kassim the Dream" is Gasparilla's K.O. punch

Just have a few minutes before getting on the phone with William Grefe, acclaimed 1970's drive-in filmmaker, who I'll join Saturday night at the Gasparilla International Film Festival for a screening of his Death Curse of Tartu and an after-show discussion.

Before that, I'd like to steer you toward another Gasparilla offering, Kassim the Dream, a terrific chronicle of the life of Kassim Ouma, a former junior middleweight boxing champ whose toughest fights have been outside the ring. Ouma was only 6 years old, living in Uganda, when rebel forces kidnapped him and forced him to participate in 12 years of civil war slaughter.

Ouma became a member of the Ugandan army's boxing team, which eventually led to his escape to the U.S. After several years, he wanted to return to his homeland but was considered a war criminal. Director Kief Davidson follows Ouma during his quest, getting more involved than an objective filmmaker should but many human beings couldn't avoid. Really good documentary here.

Kassim the Dream will be shown twice at Gasparilla (Feb. 28, 6:45 p.m. and March 1, 4:45 p.m.). Here's the preview trailer:

Jimmy Fallon may be quitting movies too soon

Well, maybe not entirely quitting but Jimmy Fallon's new gig hosting Late Night on NBC likely won't leave him much time to make movies. Too bad, since what may be his final starring gig on screen for a while - The Year of Getting to Know Us - shows this occasionally overbearing comedian has some understated dramatic chops.

I know that sounds strange, considering Fallon's strenuously cute turns in Fever Pitch and Taxi, and his voice work in two of the least successful animated movies ever, Doogal and Arthur and the Invisibles. Even Fallon admitted in a recent interview that movies "just weren't working" for him, making the return to TV an easier decision. (The NBC paycheck helps, I'm sure).

The Year of Getting to Know Us -- showing twice at the Gasparilla International Film Festival (Feb. 28, 5:45 p.m.; March 1, 5:15 p.m.) --is a then-and-now dysfunctional family dramedy that wisely doesn't entirely depend upon Fallon, playing Chris Rocket, a depressed, commitment-phobe writer returning home after his father suffers a stroke.

There's an appealing cast of actors along for the ride: Sharon Stone and Tom Arnold as Chris' estranged parents, Lucy Liu as his frustrated girlfriend, Illeana Douglas as the next-door neighbor of Chris' youth. There isn't much in Patrick Sisam's movie that you haven't seen before, usually better, in films like Garden State, Running with Scissors and the like. But there are a few choice lines ("It takes a special person to achieve limited fame," is part of neurotic Mom's advice) and solid performances throughout.

Not a bad choice, if you're making plans for the Gasparilla fest. Check out the preview trailer below:

Hey, Mickey... Eric Roberts is right here!

Hope you took the time to watch Mickey Rourke's hilariously profane speech at the Spirit Awards show, posted first and elsewhere on this blog. Earlier, a clip from The Wrestler was introduced by Rourke's longtime pal Eric Roberts, who co-starred with him in The Pope of Greenwich Village. Mickey returned the favor onstage, urging filmmakers to give Roberts the same comeback chance he's enjoying.

"I don't know why, for the last 15 years, ain't nobody give him the chance to show his s--- again, Rourke said. "Whatever he did 15, 20 years ago should be forgiven. I'm g------ serious about that. Eric Roberts is the f------- man."

Actually, more than a few filmmakers have provided Roberts that chance. One is Sylvester Stallone, who hired him for a role in the action flick The Expendables, expected to begin shooting next month. Roberts has no fewer than a dozen projects in the can, in pre- or post-production or currently filming.

Just because most will wind up going straight-to-DVD or overseas doesn't matter. Rourke needs to keep up with his buddy's career better.

I caught Roberts last night on DVD in The Steam Experiment, one of the centerpiece films of this year's Gasparilla International Film Festival, running Thursday through March 7. Roberts plays one of six people locked inside a steam room by a madman (Val Kilmer, who could also use a Rourke shout-out) to bring attention to his concerns about global warming. If the local newspaper won't print his manifesto, he'll let the prisoners die, with melted lungs and cauterized eyes.

Armand Assante co-stars as the detective prying information out of Kilmer.

Directed by Philippe Martinez, whose Bauer-Martinez Studios has offices in Largo, The Steam Experiment has some things going for it (Kilmer and Assante's shrewd cat-and-mouse exchanges) and some against it (the prisoners, except for Roberts, are given too much screen time, convincing us that their mouths should also be cauterized). But it's certainly worth a look.

Assante will attend the Gasparilla festival at Tampa's Channelside Cinemas, introducing the first public screening of The Steam Experiment at 7:10 p.m (tickets are $10) and collecting a career achievement award before that at a private reception ($35, including the movie ticket). I'll talk to Assante tomorrow, posting some of his comments asap.

I wish Roberts could be here, too. Just to ask what the heck he did 15 or 20 years ago that still needs forgiving. (Actually, you can find some info here.) Meanwhile, take a look at the preview trailer for The Steam Experiment: