Movie gives Malkovich chance to blow off steam

Movie gives Malkovich chance to blow off steam

TORONTO — The Coen brothers’ new movie gave John Malkovich a chance to blow off some steam.

Malkovich’s seething character in “Burn After Reading” bursts out in perpetual tantrums, a nice exercise in anger management, according to the actor.

“I couldn’t recommend it more highly,” Malkovich said in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, where “Burn After Reading” played in advance of its theatrical release Friday.

In “Burn After Reading,” Malkovich’s Osborne Cox feels rage all the time. After a demotion, he quits his job as a CIA analyst in a huff, begins a hapless attempt to write his memoirs, is cuckolded by his wife (Tilda Swinton) and her lover (George Clooney), then winds up blackmailed by a couple of fitness club dimwits (Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand).

So he has plenty to be angry about, and Malkovich indulges the fury, bellowing profanity and lashing out in occasional violence — drawing some big laughs while he’s at it.

Malkovich, 54, stars in two other films playing the Toronto festival, which runs through Saturday. In “Disgrace,” Malkovich plays a professor who ruins his career through an affair with a student and encounters turmoil in post-apartheid South Africa.

In the thriller “Afterwards,” he’s cast as a doom-saying doctor who claims he can foretell when people are going to die.

In October, Malkovich joins Angelina Jolie in Clint Eastwood’s missing-child drama “Changeling,” about a woman trying to discover what happened to her young son when police bring back another boy in his place.

Police: Coleman’s truck hit, injured man’s foot

PAYSON, Utah — Authorities in Utah say a truck driven by actor Gary Coleman hit a man on his foot after the two argued in a bowling alley.

Police Lt. Bill Wright says Coleman and Colt Rushton argued over pictures Rushton was taking inside the bowling alley in the town of Payson, Utah.

Wright says Coleman was backing out of a parking spot after midnight Saturday when he hit Rushton.

Rushton was treated for minor injuries.

Payson is about 50 miles south of Salt Lake City. Coleman lives in nearby Santaquin.

Today’s birthdays

Comedian Sid Caesar is 86. Ventriloquist Willie Tyler (with Lester) is 68. Actor Alan Feinstein is 67. Singer Sal Valentino of The Beau Brummels is 66. Actress Heather Thomas is 51. Singer Aimee Mann is 48. Bassist David Steele of Fine Young Cannibals is 48. Singer Marc Gordon of Levert is 44. Singer Neko Case is 38. Actor David Arquette is 37. Actor Henry Thomas (“E.T.”) is 37. Actor Martin Freeman (BBC’s “The Office,” “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”) is 37. Drummer Richard Hughes of Keane is 33. Actor Larenz Tate is 33. Singer Pink is 29. Actor Jonathan Taylor Thomas (“Home Improvement”) is 27.