The Last Song - Usstream Live Chat

Nicholas Sparks about the story of The Last Song:

The Last Song Cast:

Miley Cyrus - Performance - These Four Walls & The Driveway:

Miley Cyrus - Performance - When I Look At You:

Hollywood Reporter: "The Last Song" Review

Hollywood Reporter: The 17-year-old starlet runs through a gamut of emotions from anger and love to sorrow and joy. She romps on a beach, has a mud fight, saves baby sea-turtles, smooches with a guy and models any number of gowns, even adjusting her breasts in one outfit to emphasize how grown-up she has become.

The movie so deftly mixes sentimentality, romance and bathos in just the right measures that her fans and maybe new ones will enjoy the new Miley.

If publicity notes are to be believed, best-selling author Nicholas Sparks even wrote his novel and screenplay with Cyrus in mind. What more can a girl ask for? Overseeing the production is first-time feature director Julie Anne Robinson, who has worked in British and American television. She can't do much about the contrivances in the script Sparks wrote with an old friend, Jeff Van Wie. But she gives Cyrus room to display a winning personality and charm.

Sparks' shameless formula is to introduce illness, death or social differences to punch emotional buttons and jerk tears. This is a writer who never trusts his characters to move you without these artificial stimulants -- witness such books-to-movies as "Message in a Bottle," "A Walk to Remember," "The Notebook" and only last month "Dear John."

Cyrus' Ronnie Miller is a teen from a broken home who has internalized her bitterness over her parents' divorce and closed off her emotions. Most of her blame, however, is reserved for her father, Steve (Greg Kinnear). Now she and her kid brother (Bobby Coleman) must spend a summer at his Georgia beachfront house, so she's not happy. She pouts and ignores Dad for awhile, but a romance with a beach hunk named Will (Liam Hemsworth, nicely hiding his Australian accent) pulls her out of her funk; she even settles down for a heart-to-heart with Dad.

So where's the story going to go if all conflicts and issues are resolved before the midpoint? Ah, that's where Sparks' special formula comes in. First, Will tells Ronnie about the death of his brother the previous year that shattered his family despite their unimaginable wealth. Then someone -- no spoilers here -- gets sick.

Disney has gone all out to bring its star into her comfort zone. The studio surrounds Cyrus with seasoned pros in Kinnear and Kelly Preston (as her mom), gives her a handsome, almost-too-nice leading man, brings her real mother aboard as executive producer and fills the soundtrack with songs by popular artists, including two songs performed by Cyrus.

The script makes her a gifted pianist, so she doesn't lose that music connection even if she only sings on camera for a few moments. And a message about music and familial love bringing joy to one's life strays not one bit off the Disney reservation. Nor does the hokey story and chaste romance.

Miley Cyrus & Nicholas Sparks - Good Morning America Interview - March 29

Miley and Liam - Take 40 - Interview

Interview: "I Never See Movies"

Miley Cyrus is growing up, and she wants the world to know.

In her latest film, she plays a rebellious teenager who falls in love for the first time.

Off screen, she fell in love with the same boy - Australian actor Liam Hemsworth. He's back home for the premiere, but his girl reckons she'll never see The Last Song.

Cyrus is probably the world's most famous and influential teen actress, but she is no longer just the singing, dancing Hannah Montana. She's growing up. And in her latest film, she plays an angry, troubled teen, a petty criminal, sent to live with her estranged father, who is dying.

It is based on the novel The Last Song, written by Nicolas Sparks of The Notebook fame.

"It was kinda written for me," says Cyrus. "I had said that I would love to work with Nicolas Sparks, and that got taken down the line to him.

And he started working on this. And said he would love, if it was ever made into a screenplay, he'd love for me to play the role, so I got to name the character, and a lot of things that were put in there are a lot like myself."

She named her character Ronnie after her real-life grandfather Ronald. Her love interest is played by Hemsworth, who then became her real life boyfriend.

"We met for the first time when we first read and had great chemistry then," says Hemsworth, who is struggling to get used to being in the paparazzi spotlight.

"I'm still trying to deal with it. It's one of the hardest things. It's the hardest part of this job. It's a downfall. It's really difficult to have a private life, people photographing you all day and following you.

"We've had times when we've come outside and there has been, seriously, like 30 or more photographers and cameramen and people yelling and screaming.

"It's a far cry from his days as an actor on Neighbours. He scored this role just five weeks after leaving Australia for LA. He lied, telling producers he could play volleyball - a game he hates - and put his health on the line to learn how to scuba dive.

"I found it really hard because I've got really bad sinus across my eyebrows, and I think I popped a blood vessel or something because I was coughing up blood, and migraines and stuff.

"So is it a must see movie ? Well, not for the girlfriend.

"Honestly, it's really weird," says Cyrus. "Liam says I'm the weirdest person in the world. I don't like movies. I don't ever see movies. I've never seen Hannah Montana

Kelly Preston About Playing Miley's Mom In "The Last Song"

Just six months after losing her 16-year-old son Jett last January, Kelly Preston quietly decided to return to work by starring in The Last Song.

She made the decision "because Miley [Cyrus] asked me herself to play her mom," Preston, 47, tells PEOPLE. "I was really moved. It was the perfect movie to sort of get my feet wet."

As they filmed the Nicholas Sparks drama in Tybee Island, Ga., last summer, "Julie Anne [Robinson, the director], Adam [Shankman, the producer] and Miley took such great care of me," says Preston, who brought her daughter Ella Bleu, 9, along for the trip. "They were wonderful with my schedule. I just worked a little bit."

But she spent a lot of time bonding with Cyrus off screen. "We've been friends for awhile," Cyrus told PEOPLE in January. "We got even closer on this movie so it was cool to spend the summer with people you really like.
“I love her so much,” Preston says of her costar. “She’s such a good girl.”

The Last Song Cast - Webcast

This is a webcast with the cast from the movie where they talk about the movie, what happened behind the scenes and they take questions from the fans.

Miley & Nicholas Sparks Share A "The Last Song" Love Story

Nicholas Sparks has no love for people who call his stories “romances.”
The mega-best-selling author of The Notebook, A Walk to Remember, Nights in Rodanthe, Dear John and Message in a Bottle stands in the aisle of Book Soup, literally and figuratively defending his turf.

“If you look for me, I’m in the fiction section. Romance has its own section,” he says toward the end of a long conversation. Sunshine streams in from Sunset Boulevard. He’s smiling. Hard.

“I don’t write romance novels.” His preferred terminology: “Love stories — it’s a very different genre. I would be rejected if I submitted any of my novels as romance novels.”

Rejection isn’t something he has had to deal with lately. Sparks holds the No. 1 and No. 2 positions on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list with The Last Song, a novel turned movie vehicle for Miley Cyrus, and Dear John, recently released as a movie with Amanda Seyfried and Channing Tatum.

The Last Song movie, opening March 31, features Cyrus as a morose piano prodigy, reluctantly spending the summer with her estranged, dying father (Greg Kinnear). Cyrus’ real-life boyfriend, Aussie actor Liam Hemsworth, 20, plays a kid who falls for her.

They met on the shoot, which means Sparks is a matchmaker of sorts. When Cyrus joins Sparks in the stacks at Book Soup, he asks about her weekend: “What’d you do for fun? Out with Liam?”

Cyrus smiles widely. “At first, he was working, so I was cute,” she says. “I went and got him coffee, bought him an Elvis CD and went and gave it to him at the photo shoot.”

Last Song novel on #1 on the USA Today Best-Seller List!

The Last Song novel is currently #1 on the USA Today best-seller list! Congrats Nicholas Sparks! Have you all read the book yet?

Miley Cyrus & Liam Hemsworth are Summer Lovers

Liam Hemsworth gives Miley Cyrus a sweet kiss in this new featurette for their upcoming movie, The Last Song.

Miley, 17, gave us a little background info on who Ronnie and Will really are, saying, “Ronnie and Will are very different. She’s a little more independent with not a lot of money; he’s very wealthy, very taken care of by his parents. He has it a bit easier…on the surface.”

The Last Song hits theaters on Wednesday, March 31.

The Last Song - New Featurette

The Last Song - Behind The Scenes

The Last Song - Release Date

According to Nicholas Sparks' official WEBSITE, The Last Song release date has been CHANGED again to MARCH 25, 2010. Why do YOU think it keeps changing, do you think their are some major production issues?