We catch up with the W. and No Country For Old Men star ahead of the Blu-ray release of Milk, in which Brolin plays Dan White, co-worker and eventual assassin of the gay rights activist and politician, Harvey Milk.

High Definition Review: You played maligned politicians in your last two roles. How do you make them sympathetic?

Josh Brolin: You have to remember that’s everybody’s human. It starts to get very risky because you know you’re going to insult some people. With Oliver Stone on W, he and I wanted to really try to humanize Bush. You want to re-humanize him because there are more levels to play when you humanize somebody. And it was the same thing with Dan White. I really tried to do as much research as I could, but with an open mind. I was lucky enough to hear the confessional tape of Dan White, which was extremely informative

HDR: You must form your own opinions about the man?

JB: You do, although you need to be careful about ‘soap box’ acting. I go in and I try and look at this character and think, ‘Why did he do what he did?’ I do have my own theory. He had gone through 10 months of total frustration. I think he really didn’t belong there. I think that his department, the fire department, and the police department, really put a lot of pressure on him to try to get San Francisco back to what it was founded on, this Christian White mentality, without gays, without hippies. And I think he really started to fall apart. He didn’t realize that this is what was happening now. And then that will turn him into something else, and then he’ll have his time in the future. He was just saying, ‘Why not now, why not now?’ I think that he did the right thing when he resigned. And they didn’t let him resign. After ten long months, if you put a bullet in a gun, you cock the gun, you point it at somebody, you kill somebody. That’s tangible. Beginning, middle and end. So, I understand it. I don’t agree with it, but I understand it.

HDR: What changed Dan White’s mind and made him take his job back?

JB: I think he was so frustrated and vulnerable at that point. The police were saying, ‘Look, we have different city supervisors in each district, Castro being the biggest, and if you leave, we have nobody else. That’s it: you’re our guy. You have to hang in there.’ And he realized, ‘I can’t pay for my family. I’m getting $9,600 dollars a year’, or whatever it was. He had on Pier 39, I believe, a fries stand. He was trying to make extra money and he needed to. He was really over his head and I understand it. I get it.

HDR: So he was more driven by frustration than by homophobia?

JB: Personally, I think so, but who knows? Homophobia is such an elusive thing. Was he homophobic? The only scene that I let myself indulge in even a modicum of that homophobia idea was the scene that we made up with me and Sean during his birthday, when we meet in the lobby. That scene was written very differently from how we played it. I was supposed to give him a bottle of booze for a birthday present and I was thinking, ‘I don’t like the scene, I don’t like the way it’s going.’ I thought, ‘What if Dan’s been drinking the bottle of booze that was supposed to be his birthday present?’ It’s more interesting to me. We did it a lot of different ways. There was one point where I went into this whole karate thing. It was just weird. Diego came in at one point. It’s a dangerous scene, which I like.

HDR: Harvey suggests that Dan White is gay himself, and you seemed to play it like that. Maybe there’s something to it?

JB: Other than that one scene? No. No. You don’t need to at that point, because the minute he says it, the audience immediately puts it on to you. It’s like W. It’s the same thing. There are certain things we don’t have to play because the audience comes in with their own baggage.

HDR: Dan White got seven years in prison and served five, even though he murdered two people. Why was that?

JB: Because he had the cops behind him. I’m sure it was a corrupt situation. But the ‘Twinky Defence’ was a very little thing, diminished capacity, but that was the thing that the media holds on to. It sounds great, but it was a very small thing in the trial.

HDR: You’ve said that he was a difficult character to research. Why was that?

JB: There’s so much going on with him. There was never a straightforward scene. There’s all this turning and emotionality and behaviour and there’s always five different things going on at once. Even when he comes in and he says, ‘Hey, I invited some of the guys to the baptism, are you going to be there?’ These gay guys are all surrounding him and he knows it. He has his own feelings about it, so he’s trying to be happy. He’s trying, and then he comes off looking ridiculous.

HDR: What went through your head when you heard that Proposition 8 had passed?

JB: Confusion. I didn’t understand it. I’ve tried to go on the Internet and find out and what the mentality is, and the Mormon Church are sending all that money over here from Utah. I saw young people out in Westwood, holding up signs ‘Yes on 8’, which I couldn’t believe. But now, I’ve started to break it down and I’ve seen the breakdown in young people. I understand older people voting on it, because of this whole value thing. I get that. The thing that surprised me was the African-Americans. Seventy percent voted yes, the Latinos, massive amounts voted yes. That really stunned me. I was like, ‘Wow, these are people who understand discrimination better than anybody!’

HDR: To what do you attribute this up-swing in your career?

JB: I have my own mafia! No, I’m joking. I don’t know, man. I don’t feel like I wasn’t successful before. I don’t like it when people say that, actually, because I’ve had a really successful career. I’m able to feed my kids, put my kids through school, have a nice house. We live modestly, but I feel really good. In the past, I’d do a job and the money would last a long time. I could be home with the kids. Now my kids are older, the timing couldn’t be more perfect. Now, my kids are self-reliant. I can go out and do whatever and I don’t have to worry. Also, when I taught myself about day-trading and real estate, the business of buying apartments, it was great. I had got into a point where I started looking back on my resume and I didn’t like it. And I didn’t like the feeling of not liking it. I said, ‘I would rather not work and make money elsewhere than do some of the things that I’ve been doing and not feel good about them.’

HDR: And then things picked up pretty quickly…

JB: Literally, within three months, I started talking to Robert Rodriguez [about Grindhouse] and I had done the Woody Allen thing [Melinda and Melinda], which meant a lot, even though it was a couple of scenes. And then Robert and I started creating the character in Grindhouse together — I pulled out of a movie to do that — I was very happy. There’s a time for everything, and I’m not Dan White, so I don’t sit and go, ‘Why not me?’ I’ve never felt that. When I watch movies and I see a great performance, I’m happy for them, happy that people are giving great performances. I don’t sit there and go, ‘Why can’t that be me?’ I don’t understand that kind of thinking.

HDR: Was W. a role you really hunted down?

JB: No, Oliver [Stone] came to me. He came to me blindly. I had known him previously, but he said, ‘Listen I have this idea, you come to my office.’ And I heard his idea, I said, ‘There’s no way.’ I talked to him and he said it’s an epic, and he spoke of it is an epic tale, the Holy War, but when we did it together, what came out was a smaller, sort of intimate, personal portrayal. We shot a lot of stuff. So, when Oliver and I went into a room and started editing, we’d watch these versions together. And there’s one version with me on a magic carpet flying over Baghdad, just blowing up and I have pyjamas on and the cowboy hat! What we really liked was the fact that here was a dramatic movie with comedic overtones.

HDR: George W. Bush is like a caricature in real life. How do you approach a character like that?

JB: That is the case. I might de-caricature at a certain point. The only thing I know is that with the comedians I’ve seen a couple and it’s nice because you see the exaggerated effect of his gestures or of his voice or of his look. Honestly, it helps. But when you watch a comedian it’s funny for about 15 to 20 seconds and then it’s not sustainable. So how do you make it sustainable? If you do Bush you have the gestures, the squint, so I simply I leave to Oliver in editing, going either, ‘What the fuck is he doing?’ Or, hopefully, ‘It’ s fantastic and it works.’ There are ridiculous aspects of Bush that you simply cannot deny. I don’t know if I used too much or too little.

HDR: How did your opinion of the man change while making the film?

Before, I wasn’t a fan, not in the least. I’ll be honest about that. I wasn’t a fan at all and like a lot of other people I had a very myopic perception of him. Now, I don’t. My opinion of the administration didn’t change and neither did my thoughts on Republicanism. My opinion of him changed, though, because when you humanise someone and you really start to do a lot of research you see the bigger picture.

HDR: He’s no fool, right?

JB: It’s just not possible. There is no way. Remember that book Emotional Intelligence? Even if it’s just that he had the ability to corral 50 million people to vote for him. And forget the ballot manipulation or any of that. Forget it. He still had a 50 million-strong vote, and that probably says a lot more about us than it does about him.

HDR: What do you have lined up for 2009?

JB: I have nothing lined up. Some directing, for sure. I directed a short film and we’re writing it into a full-length piece. It’s an interesting relationship piece between father and daughter, which is something that’s always interested me, movies like Liola and 400 Blows, stuff like that. They’ve always been my favourite movies. And I just love father-daughter, mother-son relationships. Specifically, though, I don’t know what I’m going to do next.

Milk is available on Blu-ray and DVD from 8 June, courtesy of Momentum Pictures.

We chat to Kiefer Sutherland about horror movie Mirrors and his work as Jack Bauer on 24.

HDR: When did you film Mirrors?
Kiefer Sutherland: Between Season six and seven of 24, and we finished it on weekends when we started shooting Season seven.

HDR: Why were you interested in making this film?
KS: I really wanted to work with director Alexandre Aja and do a film in this genre. As an actor your desire is to illicit a response from an audience, and there is no better genre to do that in than this. I get very affected when I see films. I suspend my belief and let the film take me somewhere which makes me very vulnerable for a film like this, so it’s a lot easier for me to make the film than to watch it.

HDR: What’s the scariest scene in the film?
KS: Obviously the first time he looked in the mirror made me jump but the oddest thing is I know its coming, and I still jumped. Even just going through the building and waiting for something to happen is scary to me. Believe me, I’m the easiest person to make this movie for.

HDR: Tell us about the Mayflower department store. Where was that shot?
KS: We shot the film primarily in Bucharest, Romania. The former Communist leader Ceausescu had built this Academy of Sciences building that was never finished by the time he died in 1989. The building was really a testament to his ego so it hasn’t been used and there was a sense of abandonment you could really feel. It’s a cold war building and you could feel the weight of that and there was a musky quality to them. It was great to shoot in a real building rather than a set, because we could do 360 degree shooting.

HDR: What was the most demanding scene to film?
KS: The whole breakdown in front of the mirror, because it’s really easy to be really trite with something like that and the fact that I was looking straight into a mirror which really made the whole experience really weird.

HDR: How much did your father’s (Donald Sutherland) work influence you to make a film in this genre?
KS: I think he made one of the greatest pieces of cinema ever made with Don’t Look Now by Nicolas Roeg. That to me was an enlightened movie, and one of the scariest films I ever saw. I was way too young when I first saw that, about 16 or 17. But my father has done so many great films. I also thought the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers was fantastic. My interest in doing a film like this is when you have characters that you are invested in and then the horror elements come in. I felt Alexandre balanced that beautifully in the script for Mirrors.

HDR: You’ve seen the highs and lows in this business. What keeps you going?
KS: I love working. The only times I’ve had to stop is cause I couldn’t get a job. I wouldn’t call myself an artist; I feel more like a carpenter when I go to work. I love acting and creating a character is one of the most exciting things for me. 24 has been one of the greatest educations for me as an actor, because I really started to realize how much I didn’t know about the work. For the first time in my life I have gotten to work for seven years straight day in and day out. Acting is a muscle and to be able to train like that, making something that people are enjoying has been an unbelievable gift.

HDR: What else has the seven years on 24 taught you?
KS: I have an understanding with the camera, in a way I didn’t before, so there are some technical things that I didn’t know before, but more importantly there is the emotional quotient you just can’t put a price tag on…confidence. It’s hard to do anything right if your confidence is low or your self esteem is low. That was one of the things that attracted me to this character in Mirrors. He is at an all time low. He lost his wife and he can’t see his kids and takes a job he really doesn’t want to take but then he has to pull himself up by the bootstraps.

HDR: Do you ever go back and watch your movies on DVD?
KS: No. I have a hard time looking at myself. I have one mirror in my house. I remember seeing Stand By Me for the first time and thought my career was over. In my head I wanted the character to be different, so I was disappointed when I saw myself and then the movie was so successful, and people liked my character, so it became very clear to me that I’m the last person that should be watching my own work. I only watch 24 when we have to sort out a problem; otherwise I try to avoid it.

Mirrors is out now on DVD and Blu-ray.

The comic guru talks to High Definition Review about The Spirit, ahead of its Blu-ray release on 25 May.

High Definition Review: The movie seems like it had a fairly experimental production, and the cast seemed like they were encouraged to bring their own ideas to the table. Coming to directing comparatively late, were you more open-minded in your approach?
Frank Miller: Since everything was drawn, there was a structure there. My favourite part of directing is working with actors. The whole trick to directing – as I see it – is to surround yourself with people who are much better at their various crafts than you! So, working with talent like [Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson] - of course I’m going to want to hear what they have to say! The plan is to light the fuse, not plan the explosion.

HDR: You’ve assembled a hugely impressive cast by anyone’s standards. Were they literally queuing up to work with you?
FM: When I was talking to Scarlett I was enjoying her company, and I was getting her dry wit, and her comic timing. Those are aspects of Scarlett’s that I think have been under-used, to say the least. I looked at the character of Silken Floss and realised how funny that character could be – so I re-wrote it completely for Scarlett.

HDR: Gabriel Macht who plays the Spirit will be something of an unknown quantity for fans. Is that something you strived for?
FM:  It’s something I insisted on. I wanted the Spirit to be introduced as “the Spirit”, not as the latest Tom Cruise vehicle… In fact, he was the hardest piece of casting we had. We had dozens of actors read for it, and Gabriel really stood out as the most heroic of the bunch.

HDR: How did he cope with the role?
FM: It’s human nature. We rise to the challenge. He and I talked about it early on. I told him that we’re going to be partners in this, and we could end up having a really miserable three months. We worked together really hard, and I watched him day by day fill that trench-coat out… emotionally. He was very impressive as the Spirit.

HDR: He’s certainly got the whole look down. He looks like a matinee idol…
FM: That was the exact term that I used!

HDR: The Spirit is the most unashamedly film noir movie since Sin City. Are there any other contemporary film noir that you admire?
FM:  Modern film noir? Yeah, I enjoyed the Coen Brothers last one – No Country For Old Men – up until they skipped the climax…! But generally, I think, since way back in Body Heat people have gone for the superficial darkness of noir rather than the internal darkness. Tarantino’s got his own take on it – which works very well, but it’s an absurdist, wild take, and it’s based on the ‘70s more than the 1940s and 1950s – which are the years that I love the most.

HDR: There are an awful lot of costume changes in the movie…
FM: Right. In how many films do you get to swing from a Geisha to a Nazi?!

HDR: The difference between writing comic books and directing movies couldn’t be more pronounced. Are you looking forward to getting back to comics or are you enjoying yourself too much?
FM: I’m just an insufferably happy guy at both jobs. It’s all story-telling. As different as it seems, whilst cartooning is much more solitary, and film is much, much more collaborative, the same rules all apply. A good story is still a good story.

HDR: How far off is Sin City 2?
FM: The script is ready. I’ll be doing it with Robert [Rodriguez] and we’re just trying to work out how, where and when.

HDR: In the past you’ve mentioned a possible trilogy – is that still on the cards?
FM: Yeah, I’ve planned it as a trilogy.

HDR: You evidently had a great time working with Sam [Jackson] and Scarlett [Johansson] on The Spirit – what are the chances of those guys popping up in Sin City 2?
FM: [Smiles] I hope so.

HDR: You’re very well known for your Batman comic books. With so much uncertainty regarding Christopher Nolan’s future, would you be keen to get involved in the movie franchise if he decides not to continue as director?
FM: They’ve got my number. I’ve got my own version of the character, so who knows what could happen. I wrote the first draft for Batman: Year One, which became Batman Begins, so yeah, I’ve got an excellent relationship with Warner Brothers. The Batman franchise is such a big deal, and I’m known as a risk-taker, so we’ll have to see what happens. But first they’d have to call me up…

HDR: But never say never?
FM: No, I’m way too young for that!

Check out issue 19 of High Definition Review (on sale 07 May) to see what we made of The Spirit.

The co-star of Seven Pounds gives us the inside scoop on the film, working with Will Smith and the benefits of going Blu… 

HDR: In the movie Seven Pounds you play the brother of Will Smith’s character Ben Thomas. What else can you tell us about your role without spoiling the mystery for those who might not have seen the film yet?

Ealy: Not much! I’m his only surviving family member and I’m genuinely concerned throughout the film about what it is he’s doing because he’s distanced himself from me, so I’m just trying to figure out where his head’s at and help him any way I can.

HDR: The viewer is left unaware for most of the film as to what exactly has happened to Ben. How challenging was it for you to play your scenes knowing the audience would be oblivious to why you were so concerned throughout?

Ealy: It’s interesting because when we were shooting the movie it dawned on me the only person who knows what’s happening is Will Smith’s character, he’s like this master puppeteer. There are certain people he’s trying to avoid, like me, and certain people he’s trying to help, like Rosario Dawson’s character Emily. I like the way it all unveils at the end and at that point you get the rest of the story from me as to why this happened. To me that’s interesting filmmaking.

HDR: The marketing for the film did perhaps too good a job of disguising the secret behind Seven Pounds, so much so that it was hard to tell from the trailers exactly what kind of film it was. How would you define it?

Ealy: Often from the trailer you can tell exactly what’s going to happen in a movie, but those kind of films are often not very interesting. For me it’s more interesting to go to see a film like Seven Pounds where you don’t know what’s going to happen and hopefully the reward is the big payoff at the end. I’ve been saying this since I read the script, but I think it’s one of the most intriguing love stories I’ve ever seen on screen, it’s like a love story rooted in tragedy.

HDR: How did you get involved in the film?

Ealy: My manager reached out to Will personally, Will loved the idea right away and two weeks later I was in the movie. The first time I met Will was at rehearsal. He’d seen all my work and it was funny that he was a fan of mine because I grew up watching him mature into the actor he is now, the biggest movie star in the world, and for him to like my work was like, ‘wow, this is awesome’!

HDR: What was it like working with Will?

Ealy: He’s a class act through and through. He likes to keep everything organic, and improvise, it’s about making the scene right and he’s not afraid to do whatever it takes to get that. One of the things I learned from him was how to conduct yourself as a leading man on a film set. He’s like the perfect leading man because his energy sets the tone for the cast and crew. He talks to everybody, he’s not one of these people that’s so method they only talk to their director. He’s considerate of other people’s time and he just enjoys the filmmaking process, I’ve never met anybody who has that kind of enthusiasm. It’s refreshing to see that at this point in his career he’s not jaded at all by the business.

HDR: Have you had a chance to watch Seven Pounds or any of your other films on Blu-ray yet and if so what do you think Blu-ray adds to the experience of watching these films at home?

Ealy: I got my copy of Seven Pounds two days ago on Blu-ray so I haven’t watched it yet, but I’m very excited to. It will be my first time watching a movie like this on Blu-ray, usually I’d watch something old, or an action film, or a war film on Blu-ray to really get the detail out of the picture. But for something like this where the story supersedes the images I’d be curious to see the difference, whether it takes me out of the movie or intensifies the experience.

HDR: You worked with Spike Lee recently on Miracle At St. Anna, what was that like and how was it working with someone as highly regarded as him?

Ealy: It was one of my favourite film experiences and one of my favourite life experiences because we filmed in Italy for three months, not a bad gig! And on top of that to be able to shoot a movie that matters, that has social and historical impact was amazing. My grandfather was in the army at that time and almost went over to Italy so it had a lot of personal resonance for me as well.

HDR: What do you have lined up next?

Ealy: There’s another film I’ve done called Takers, which is a bank heist movie with a lot of action and I play one of the bank robbers. What I’ve seen so far is amazing, there’s a shoot-out scene in a hotel which I’d put up there with True Romance, now that’s a movie I want to see on Blu-ray.

High Definition Review recently had a chance to speak to Dick Jones, the voice and reference actor for Walt Disney’s Pinocchio, ahead of Monday’s Blu-ray release. The former child actor and veteran of numerous westerns talked to us about his memories of Walt himself as well as his time on the production, and how he initially got involved at the age of ten:

“Walt Disney Studios put out a call for auditions– they tell me there was close to 200 people auditioning for the part of Pinocchio,” Dick recalled. “Over several months of going back and forth and reading different dialogue and doing different aspects of the film, it narrowed down to two of us. And then the last time we auditioned, we parted ways, and bid Walt Disney ‘adios’ - until he called up, and invited my mother and I to have lunch with him in the old Hyperion studio. It was there that he asked me if I would like to do the part of Pinocchio. And I jumped up and went ‘Oh boy, you bet that’s what I really want to do!’”

Pinocchio 70th Anniversary Platinum Edition is released on Disney Blu-ray and DVD on 9 March - for the full interview check out issue 18 of High Definition Review, available from the start of April.