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2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/1569 | President Obama: “I Did Tear Up” Watching Lee Daniels’ The Butler, Oprah “Can Act”
Barack Obama The Butler
By Shari Weiss | 8:44 pm, August 27th, 2013
President Obama revealed he shed a few tears while watching Lee Daniels’ The Butler. The movie, which is based the life of late White House butler Eugene Allen, who served under eight presidents, has topped the box office for the last two weeks. Speaking on “Tom Joyner Morning Show” in a radio interview broadcast Tuesday, the President shared how the film moved him.
“I did tear up,” said Obama, explaining, “I teared up just thinking about not just the butlers who have worked here in the White House, but an entire generation of people who were talented and skilled, but because of Jim Crow (segregation laws), because of discrimination, there was only so far they could go.”
Obama also praised the acting in the movie, which has garnered early Oscar buzz. “All of the acting was terrific, and I thought Forest Whitaker was wonderful,” he said. “And Oprah, my girl, she can act.” Of his own White House staff, the President says, “I will tell you that the butlers who are now here in the White House, when we first arrived, when Michelle and the girls just — first arrived, they could not have been kinder to us and warmer to us.” He continues, “And part of it, I suspect, is they look at Malia and Sasha and they say, well, this looks like my grandbaby, or this looks like my daughter.” “And I think for them to have a sense that we’ve come that far was a powerful moment for them, and certainly a powerful moment for us,” says Obama, adding, “We love them to death. They look after us just wonderfully.” | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/1628 | Rosamund Pike to Star in David Fincher's 'Gone Girl' (Exclusive)
Tatiana Siegel FACEBOOK
The "Jack Reacher" actress will play the female lead opposite Ben Affleck in the adaptation of the hit novel, while Neil Patrick Harris and Tyler Perry are being eyed for supporting roles.
David Fincher has found his Girl.
Rosamund Pike has been offered and is expected to accept the starring role opposite Ben Affleck in the 20th Century Fox mystery thriller Gone Girl, which is being co-financed 50-50 with New Regency, sources said. Neil Patrick Harris and Tyler Perry are being eyed for supporting roles.
PHOTOS: 11 Biggest Book-to-Big Screen Adaptations of the Last 25 Years
Pike will play a wife who goes missing on her fifth wedding anniversary, as her husband (Affleck) becomes the prime suspect. Much of the story is told in flashbacks.
The British actress, who recently starred opposite Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher, landed the role that had Hollywood’s thirtysomething female set jockeying for the chance to work with Fincher. A number of actresses including Charlize Theron, Natalie Portman and Emily Blunt had been reported to be in the mix, but all were ruled out for various reasons including availability. Abbie Cornish and Olivia Wilde also had been considered.
Reese Witherspoon, who optioned the book last summer, is producing alongside Bruna Papandrea and Leslie Dixon.
PHOTOS: Gillian Flynn and Reese Witherspoon, Stephenie Meyer and 'The Host' Cast: Authors With Their Stars
The film is set to go into production in September.
Author Gillian Flynn adapted the screenplay from her novel, which became one of the biggest sellers of 2012.
Pike recently shot the dramedy A Long Way Down opposite Aaron Paul. The busy actress' upcoming films also include Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin's What We Did on Our Holiday, Fouad Mikati's Return to Sender and Peter Chelsom's Hector and the Search for Happiness.
She is repped by UTA, Magnolia Entertainment and United Agents in the U.K.
E-mail: [email protected]
Twitter: @TatianaSiegel27
Tatiana Siegel [email protected]
tatianasiegel27 | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/1631 | Valarie/Valarie's Family/Hogan Family
Discussion in 'TV on DVD and Blu-ray' started by John*Wells, Jun 15, 2005.
John*Wells
who owns the rights to this one? I might like to see it
JeffWld
Warner Bros. acquired it in the Lorimar buyout.
Jay_B!
would be nice if they DVD'd this one to capitalize on Jason Bateman
R. Kay
Would be nice if they released 'Three's a Crowd' to capitalize on Jeffrey 'Hey Now' Tambor.
I don't see why we won't see TAC after Three's Company winds up. Tambor was on TAC too? I know he was on The Ropers.
John*P
I'd buy all seasons of Valerie/The Hogan Family on DVD for sure. Its one of the most underrated of 80s sitcoms, IMO. I agree that now would be a good time to release it, what with Jason Bateman back on the scene and all.
Check out:The Hogan Family Online (watch the opening theme videos for a nostalgia rush)
Amy Mormino
It would probably have been better for this title if an independent company (like Anchor Bay or Shout!) had been able to acquire it than Warners. There have been so few 80s family sitcoms released (especially past the first season) that the odds of V/VF/HF being released are not great.
ChrisCook
Now with "Family Ties" finally coming to DVD, I wonder how close are we of seeing Warner Bros. release this? It just recently, once again, was pulled off ABC Family's schedule. I hope Warner Bros. is reading this, as I really would like to see this come to DVD. And if they're reading this particular thread, please restore the full, uncut opening and closing credits (with the correct title cards for their respective seasons) to Valerie/Valerie's Family/The Hogan Family, and that the episodes are uncut (as well as the music intact). Bonus material would be nice.
Roger_S
This series was being aired recently on ABC Family Channel but I hear they're pulling it, even though it's only been airing at 8am. There's a chance they could air it again at some point.
Yes, they were airing "Valerie's Family" (and they were almost done with Season 3) when they pulled it this week. This is the second time they've pulled it (and at the same point in the series too).
Considering that this show is another acquisition property, hoping for correct restoration doesn't look good after the "Mama's Family" fiasco. It's a situation ripe for Warner to sing the "we didn't know they were cut" song again.
Of course this could be an opportunity for Lion's Gate to jump on board with this Lorimar production (a la "ALF") and release the syndication versions...all the while telling you that the 6th generation syndication versions are better quality than the uncut master tapes.
ABC Family has pulled this show twice so far after airing it in 2 different time slots. That doesn't bode well at all. As much as I liked this show (and all it's incarnations) I have to say that it hasn't aged that well. Skimpy plots, strained jokes. But Edie McClurg is always a hoot !
Turning the Beat Around at Our Cool New Pad
Retro Remixes
I have very fond memories of this show through all incarnations but I haven't seen it in many years. I'll consider buying this series when it finally gets released on DVD, I'm just not sure I will still enjoy it.
No, he wasn't on Three's a Crowd. What reason would there be to have Jeffrey Tambor (who played Stanley & Helen's stuffy next door neighbor on "The Ropers") on both spinoffs from Three's Company? 15 of 21
Ethan Riley
Tambor guest-starred on several memorable episodes of Three's Company, in various roles. As for Hogan's...I dunno...I watched an episode a few weeks ago and didn't think much of it. I do remember it was one of my favorites when Valerie Harper was still on. It's just one of those shows like "Full House," "What's Happening" or "Family Ties" where it's popular in its own time, but doesn't seem to exist well outside of its time. The only shows that hold up over time have some kind of a classic feel to them--some hook that makes you remember the show fondly--not just the show's premise as a whole, but distinct episodes. Lots of sitcoms don't age so well, or seem corny or out of date not long after their airings, and I think it happens when all the episodes are too similar; when the plots are too light. Take for example, "One Day at a Time..." does anybody really remember a single plot from that show, other than the fact that they were always standing around the living room? I sure don't, and yet I saw almost the entire run of the show. Same with "Alice"...there were no plots, all they did was sit around the diner and swap wisecracks. It's not like with "The Brady Bunch" when you go, "oh yeah, I remember the episode where Jan wouldn't wear her glasses, or the episode where Greg became a pop star, or the episode where Peter saved the girl at the toy shop." That's just the way "classic" tv shows work--where you can later recall different episodes, not just the series as a whole. And I think that's what, unfortunately, "Hogan's" suffers from--too much sameness. I don't even remember the episode where Valerie died; they didn't make too much of it, if I recall; she died off-camera and she'd been in the ground for months before the new season started. I think this is what's keeping most of the 80s family sitcoms from dvd so far.
Since Warner told me tonight that they will continue to evaluate this, I just wanted to add that not only is this a childhood favorite (and an unreleased "holy grail" for me), but Valerie/Valerie's Family/The Hogan Family holds a very special place in my heart. To see it again as it was originally broadcast, you don't know how happy this would make me Warner.
younger1968
I was watching youtube the other night and the episode where Jason Batemen''s character on The Hogan Family had to deal with aids and his buddy Rich. That is one of the classic episode to touch on AIDS. I just hope this show is released on dvd. I have been collecting Mr Belvedere, Growing Pains, Family Ties and Silver Spoons and like the family sitcoms. TV today just does not reinforce the family values like the 1960-1980s accomplished.
i still hope they release this show, it was one of the better family sitcoms. I would rank it up there with the Cosby Show, Family Ties and Growing Pains. TV today does not really have any family sitcoms and we wonder why there are issues with the core family values now.
LizH
I thought it was OK (Nothing terribly special about it, though.)
Originally Posted by Ethan Riley )
Oracle Heaven
The good thing about these forums there is no right or wrong, but, opinion. Yes, the shows were good at the time, because they tough issues and some of them may or may not be relevant today. However, these shows emphasize family values and how you can jungle careers and family. If you look at the fabric of families today is significantly different because the computer and video games have become keys in the household. The internet has brought information in realtime, when in the past it was morning or evening news. | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/1682 | Women that Inspire Me
by CaitTheRaggDoll created 20 Mar 2011 | last updated - 20 Mar 2011
Actress, Irreversible
Monica Anna Maria Bellucci was born on September 30, 1964 in the Italian village of Città di Castello, Umbria, the only child of Brunella Briganti and Pasquale Bellucci. She originally pursued a career in the legal profession. While attending the University of Perugia, she modeled on the side to earn money for school...
Soundtrack, GoldenEye
After almost fifty years in the music business, Tina Turner has become one of the most commercially-successful international female rock stars to date. Her sultry, powerful voice, her incredible legs, her time-tested beauty and her unforgettable story all contribute to her legendary status. Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush...
Actress, Two Women
Sophia Loren was born as Sofia Scicolone at the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome, Italy, on September 20, 1934. Her father, Riccardo Scicolone, was married to another woman and refused to marry her mother, Romilda Villani, despite the fact that she was the mother of his two children (Sophia and her younger sister Maria Scicolone)...
Soundtrack, Mean Girls
Pink was born Alecia Beth Moore in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and was later raised in Philadelphia. Her parents, Judith Moore (née Kugel), a nurse, and Jim Moore, a Vietnam veteran, divorced when she was very young. Her mother is from an Ashkenazi Jewish family, while her father has Irish, German...
Producer, The Oprah Winfrey Show
Oprah Winfrey was born Orpah Gail Winfrey in Kosciusko, Mississippi, to Vernita Lee, a former maid, and Vernon Winfrey, a coal miner, barber, and city councilman. While Winfrey has been cited as the richest African American of the 20th century, she does not come from a rich, or even middle class, family...
Self, High Drama: Against All Oz
Actress, Sense and Sensibility
Emma Thompson was born in London on April 15, 1959, into a family of actors - her father was Eric Thompson, who has passed away, and her mother, Phyllida Law, has co-starred with Thompson in several films (her sister, Sophie Thompson, is an actor as well). Her father was English-born and her mother is Scottish-born...
Actress, Giant
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was considered one of the last, if not the last, major star to have come out of the old Hollywood studio system. She was known internationally for her beauty, especially for her violet eyes, with which she captured audiences early on in her youth and kept the world hooked on with since...
Actress, The King's Speech
Helena Bonham Carter is an actress of great versatility, one of the UK's finest and most successful. Bonham Carter was born May 26, 1966 in Golders Green, London, England, the youngest of three children of Elena (née Propper de Callejón), a psychotherapist, and Raymond Bonham Carter, a merchant banker...
Self, Fantasia 2000
Multi Grammy Award-winning singer/comedienne/author Bette Midler has also proven herself to be a very capable actress in a string of both dramatic and comedic roles. Midler was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on December 1, 1945. She is the daughter of Ruth (Schindel), a seamstress, and Fred Midler, a painter...
Cicely Tyson
Actress, The Help
Cicely Tyson was born in Harlem, New York City, where she was raised by her devoutly religious parents, from the Caribbean island of Nevis. Her mother, Theodosia, was a domestic, and her father, William Tyson, was a carpenter and painter. She was discovered by a fashion editor at Ebony magazine and...
Self, The Goonies
Cyndi was born at Boulevard Hospital, in Astoria, Queens. She spent her first four years in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Her family then moved to Ozone Park, Queens.
Producer, Lady Gaga Presents: The Monster Ball Tour at Madison Square Garden
Lady Gaga, born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, is an American songwriter, singer, actress, philanthropist, dancer and fashion designer. Gaga was born on March 28, 1986 in Manhattan, New York City, to Cynthia Louise (Bissett) and Joseph Anthony Germanotta, Jr., an internet entrepreneur. Her father is of Italian descent...
Producer, Ellen: The Ellen DeGeneres Show
Emmy-winning talk show host Ellen Lee DeGeneres was born in Metairie, Louisiana, a New Orleans suburb. She is the daughter of Betty DeGeneres (née Elizabeth Jane Pfeffer), a speech therapist, and Elliott Everett DeGeneres, an insurance agent. Her brother is musician and producer Vance DeGeneres. Her parents divorced when she was sixteen years old...
Actress, Mask
The beat goes on ... and on ... and as strong as ever for this superstar entertainer who has well surpassed the four-decade mark while improbably transforming herself from an artificial, glossy "flashionplate" singer into a serious, Oscar-worthy, dramatic actress ... and back again! With more ups and downs than the 2008 Dow Jones Industrial Average...
Self, The Porter Wagoner Show
Dolly Rebecca Parton was born on January 19, 1946, one of 12 children of Robert Lee Parton, a tobacco farmer, and Avie Lee Parton (née Owens). Dolly grew up on a run-down farm in Locust Ridge, Tennessee. At 12, she was appearing on Knoxville TV and, at 13, she was already recording on a small label and appearing at the Grand Ole Opry...
Rosanne Cash
Self, Johnny Cash Live: Remember Me the Man in Black
Self, Good Hair
Other Lists By CaitTheRaggDoll
See all lists by CaitTheRaggDoll » | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/1693 | Sandra Bullock at SBIFF 2010
An Evening with Sandra Bullock The Star Receives the American Riviera Award
By Michelle Drown
Friday night saw throngs of folks gathered on the rain glistening street in front of the Arlington waiting for a chance to glimpse mega movie star Sandra Bullock. Receiving the American Riviera Award — given to an American actor whose work has made an indelible mark in cinema — Bullock arrived solo and spent the next half-hour-plus graciously answering questions and posing for photographs on the red carpet.
As a result, the 8 p.m. start time was pushed back significantly, but the audience didn’t seem to mind the delay. After a brief intro by SBIFF Board of Directors President Jeffrey Barbakow and a turn at the podium for mega sponsor Chopin vodka’s CEO, Bullock was invited onstage by the evening’s moderator, film critic Pete Hammond.
SBIFF 2010 Sandra Bullock
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Looking gorgeous in a form-fitting black dress and sky-high heels, Bullock spent the next two-plus hours endearing the audience to her with her funny, self-effacing comments, openness, and sincerity.
Hammond guided us through the expanse of Bullock’s life and career. Raised by two working opera singers, Bullock spoke of being on stage at an early age as “the dirty gypsy child” in her mother’s productions. This experience, she said, taught her a valuable lesson about the business. During one opera performance, the young Bullock was carrying out her “gypsy” role by collecting money that was supposedly being thrown onto the stage. Rather than remaining in the shadows, however, she trotted in front of the tenor, thus breaking a sacred rule of performance—don’t upstage the star. She’s never forgotten that, she said.
Sandra Bullock with Forest Whitaker, who presented the Riviera award
Throughout the evening, montages from Bullock’s films throughout her career were shown. It was interesting—and her comments often hilarious—to get the inside scoop on each film. “This is painful to watch,” she said after clips from A Time to Kill and While You Were Sleeping. While she delighted in the movies themselves, she said she could only see what she could have done differently (i.e., better) with her role.
She spoke candidly about the poor decision-making involved in accepting the lead role in Speed 2. (“Obviously Keanu knew something that I didn’t,” she laughed.) In good humor she joked about asking, “When do we get a script?” not realizing, she said, “Apparently you don’t need one in an action film.” Still, Bullock has no regrets, claiming that she learned invaluable lessons from Speed 2 as well as the other flops she’s made. (Who’s seen Fire on the Amazon?)
The evening closed with snippets from Bullock’s 2009 hit films The Proposal and The Blind Side. She did mention with sarcasm that she was surprised her other 2009 film, All About Steve — which was panned by audiences and critics alike — hasn’t been nominated for anything except a Razzie. “It’s a film before it’s time,” she said, laughing, and expects it to achieve cult status á la The Wizard of Oz or Rocky Horror Picture Show in 10 years. Regarding this year of serious award nominations she confessed, “This has been a big year and in a way I haven’t processed it yet.”
Actor/director Forrest Whitaker then took the stage to present his friend with her award — he was her director in the 1998 film Hope Floats and she presented him an award at the festival a couple years ago — and gave a poetic speech about Bullock’s grace and depth to a rapt audience.
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Creepy Feelings
Forrest Whitaker was absolutely lovely. He kept stepping out of the lime light. Ushering himself very demurely around her with his hand always guiding the press back to Sandy while she slowly wound her way up the Red Carpet. His speech was the stuff of poetic legend. Describing her as a dancer...a perfect partner...a perfect follow..."landing gracefully into every performance." He was loving,gentle and kind. She held back the tears...but a few slipped through. Forrest expressed the dedication and support that one saves only for the dearest in their lives. It was a wonderful speech and the wonder was amplified by Forrest's engaging ability as an orator. Lovely and amazing. All eyes were on her and he made sure of it.
emenzies (Elizabeth Menzies)February 6, 2010 at 6:01 p.m. (Suggest removal) | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/1701 | Memento - Special Edition DVD (15)
Review: Jack Foley
DVD SPECIAL FEATURES: Disc One: Commentary with 3 alternative endings (109 minutes).
Disc Two: Interview with Christopher Nolan (24 mins). Interview with Guy Pearce (13 mins). Anatomy of a Scene (26 mins). Biographies. Reverse version of feature Easter egg.
Disc Three: Shooting Script split screen (109 mins). Memento Mori (34 mins). Galleries. Website. International trailer.
IT SEEMS ironic that a film about someone's battle against memory loss should be so memorable, but the fact remains that Memento is the type of movie you will remember long after the final reel. As clever as The Usual Suspects and as intricate after the event as The Sixth Sense, Memento, directed by Brit Christopher Nolan, should not be missed by anyone who enjoys challenging movie-making which dares to be different.
Guy (LA Confidential) Pearce stars as Leonard Shelby, a former insurance investigator, now searching for the man who raped and killed his wife. Only trouble is, he suffers from short term memory loss and cannot create new memories, an affliction caused by the head injury he sustained while trying to prevent the men from murdering his beloved. Leonard can remember his life before the attack but anything since then is impossible to hold on to for longer than 15 minutes. As such, he can often forget where he is, what he is doing and who he is with. But driven by instinct and rage, Leonard is determined to uncover the truth and pieces together the facts using polaroids (for the people and places he needs to remember) and tattoos on his body (for the facts).
Helping him is Joe Pantoliano's dubious Teddy, a man who may or may not be his friend, and Carrie-Anne Moss's Natalie, an equally untrustworthy bartender who may be using Leonard to solve her own problems. To complicate matters still further, Nolan's film is told backwards, so that the start is the end and matters unfold from there. So anyone expecting an easy couple of hours is best advised to steer clear, for this is demanding, even exhausting cinema which requires every ounce of attention just to keep up.
That isn't to say the film is impossible to follow, merely it requires attention, but it is constructed in such a way that it never fails to command your attention.
Interspersed with the main story is a vignette concerning Leonard's former life, about a case he investigated involving a man with a similar affliction, which is worth paying attention to for the answers it may hold. The proceedings also benefit from a great deal of humour (most of it dark), some well executed set pieces, and some blistering turns from all involved. Pearce, in particular, stands out as Leonard, a man clinging on to a former life in a bid to do the right thing. His frustrations, his anxieties and his utter confusion are brilliantly conveyed in a performance of quiet intensity, never more so than when he discusses the nature of memory. But Pantoliano and Moss (who last starred together in The Matrix) are no less impressive, revelling in shady roles which may hold vital pieces to the puzzle.
Nolan's screenplay is equally breathtaking, providing viewers with some thought-provoking material before allowing them to see the complete picture via a well concealed twist ending. The path to the truth may, at times, be mentally fatiguing but the payoff is more than worth it. I can guarantee, you will be talking about it for days. Review Archive | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/1721 | The actor has been busy since Bridesmaids, and it’s made him eager to return to his roots as an actor and Roscommoner.
From the beginning of our conversation, Chris O’Dowd is enthusiastic. I only have my first two words out before he says, “Yes!” My first two words, “Moone Boy,” are the title of O’Dowd’s autobiographical coming-of-age comedy that is back for a second season after a near two-year hiatus and O’Dowd is rightfully exclamatory. As he will explain in a few seconds, the second episode of the second season aired hours before in Ireland and the U.K. and he’s on Twitter checking the reaction. It’s good.Immensely personal and culturally aware, “Moone Boy” may be O’Dowd’s favorite project right now because it connects him to his childhood home. In fact, many of the scenes are filmed in places he knew as an adolescent, and most of the storylines are drawn straight from his own experience growing up in Boyle, Co. Roscommon. It is of course embellished with sharp one-liners and O’Dowd, now 34, playing the imaginary friend to Martin Moone, the fictionalized version of his 12-year-old self, which he claims he never had.
But “Moone Boy” is only the beginning of our conversation and O’Dowd’s burgeoning career. This year alone, he has four films making their U.S. premiers: The Double, an adaptation of a Dostoyevsky novella directed by Richard Ayoade, a former co-star in the U.K. hit sitcom “The IT Crowd” where O’Dowd had his first major break; St. Vincent de Van Nuys, a dark comedy in which he stars along with Bill Murray; Cuban Fury, which sees him partnered with both Rashida Jones (“Parks and Rec”) and Nick Frost (Shawn of the Dead, The World’s End) and promises a parking lot dance-off; and Calvary, the second feature by John Michael McDonagh (The Guard) and also starring Brendan Gleeson. Not only is O’Dowd appearing in these films, but beginning March 19, he will be on Broadway for a limited-engagement revival of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men as Lennie, a large but simple-minded migrant worker, opposite James Franco who plays George, Lennie’s short-tempered companion.Since his appearance in Bridesmaids in 2011 as the handsome and huggable Officer Rhodes who falls for Kristen Wiig, O’Dowd has been in demand. Mostly, he takes this in stride, but recognizes the impulse to read too much into his characters as a reflection of himself. The roles he’s taken since his catapult to American fame three years ago have been mostly comedic, if bordering on melancholy. In 2012’s Friends with Kids he portrays with biting realism a husband trying to find the balance between reconnecting with his wife and enjoying alone time after the births of their children. And his performance as a washed-out cruise ship entertainer-turned-aboriginal soul-group band manager in the Australian film The Sapphires allowed him to demonstrate the full emotional range of a man struggling with his own mediocrity, using comedy as a crutch (a very funny crutch), and envisioning greater responsibility for himself.But although he’s a funny man on screen, O’Dowd is deadly serious about his craft and the work that goes into it. In our conversation below, he talks about the genesis for “Moone Boy,” the importance of women in comedy, his ideal schedule, and why he stopped playing Gaelic football (which he’s only possibly joking about).What made you want to go back to that time in your life when “Moone Boy” is set, or that period of transition in Ireland, the late 80s and early 90s, when you started the show a few years ago?It was just after Bridesmaids came out and I felt like I needed to go back and do something that reconnected with home so that it didn’t get washed away in the madness.And you studied politics and sociology at UCD.I did!Did that education influence the writing at all for “Moone Boy”? It’s a show about individual characters surely, but they’re often banded together or separated by their reactions to the political and cultural events at the time.I guess so; I don’t know! I don’t know if there’s much influence from the politics side, but I am very interested in politics, and I did do an episode in the first season with the first female president being elected. And sociologically, I guess at that time in Ireland the biggest change I think is the nature of women’s roles politically and socially. I like the idea that the show has very strong female characters in it. Even though the main characters are male, the female characters are strong, independent women. So that I guess would be the only part of it.And that comes from your own childhood growing up with your sisters and your family dynamic.Yes, obviously it’s a very similar makeup in my family. My dad did the same thing as the dad in the show, my mum did the same thing, I had three sisters, so it is pretty autobiographical.There’s a scene in the first season where Martin becomes an altar boy because they’re the cool kids at Mass, but then it turns out they’re actually involved in some light embezzlement, shall we say. Were you similarly part of an altar boy mafia?[Laughs] I was an altar boy. And it did have kind of a cult-like quality to it. Because I think at that age it’s almost like your own language that you develop amongst your friends as a way to disassociate with the rest of the world. So I’m sure there was a lot of that and I’m sure that’s probably where that idea came from.Is this the story you’d be telling if you had unlimited resources?That’s a good question. I mean, I think we’re lucky in that we’re fairly well supported. TV’s tough to make at any stage, particularly back in Ireland because it’s expensive. But it’s the show I like doing above all else. It’s my favorite job, writing and directing the show.I saw in an interview you gave elsewhere you said you turned down a few projects to work on this show. Is this something you think you’re going to transition into more, the writing, producing, and directing side of entertainment?I’d definitely like to get behind the camera more as time goes on. I love acting, but I’m not particularly a fan of being famous. So I love the idea of being able to do acting in theater, and then maybe write and direct TV and movies. That would be a perfect world for me if I have the opportunity.Speaking of theater, you’re coming up in Of Mice and Men. Which is a pretty big departure from your previous work. First, it’s on stage. And it’s a dramatic role; you’re Lennie. How did that come about?Honestly, I just got the call asking if I’d be interested. And I said I very much would. And I got really excited about it and then it just went away. And then like three months later they said, “It’s happening. Like, soon.” So I jumped on board. There was no thinking time needed by me, I just love the play, and the opportunity to do something on Broadway was just something I’d been looking for anyway.You’ve got kind of big shoes to fill. James Earl Jones was the last one to play Lennie on Broadway. Are you nervous?I know! I am absolutely shitting it, yea. But I’m trying to keep it together. We’re just in Chicago at the moment. We’ve just done our first week of rehearsals. We come to New York next week, and it’s going to be terrifying. But yea, I’m really enjoying it. And it’s an equal measure excitement and hand-wetting right now, and I’m interested to see how that equilibrium balances out or takes over in the coming weeks.Can you tell us a little bit about your preparation for the role?You know, I don’t really know. I tried to find out exactly what to learn. And in many ways it’s kind of hard. There’s a lot of different thinking, a lot of people have different thoughts on it. But he is essentially a guy who is cognitively disabled so I’ve been watching all sorts of stuff and trying to nail down the physicality of it and the vocals. And also he is essentially kind of like a big baby; he’s constantly referred to as a bear and a baby, and I guess I’m just trying to measure all of that together and try not to over-think it.It seems like there’s a lot of pressure for comedic actors to transition to more dramatic roles once they’ve established themselves in the public eye as comedians. Were you conscious of that when you chose to take on the role of Lennie?You know not really. I do sometimes feel pressure to do dramas, but then I’ll read the drama in question and just have no interest in it. I think there’s such kind of mediocre dramas being bandied about, but I found it hard to get excited about it. But this piece of work is so beautiful that it was a no-brainer. But I do find it odd that in nearly every interview I would do I would get asked when am I going to do some dramatic acting. And I think comedic acting is very, very difficult, which is why so few people can do it well. And I doubt very much whether dramatic actors get asked when they are going to do comedic acting.Why do you think that is?Snobbery.That dramatic roles win the awards?I guess so. I don’t even know what that’s about. You know, it’s like who can cry the best. I don’t know, like. Sometimes it’s great. And comedy in a lot of ways is a lot more difficult because in many ways it’s less open to interpretation. Something is either funny or it’s not; if people aren’t laughing, guess what, it wasn’t good. It’s as simple as that. Whereas I think dramas can get away with a lot because the shot looks nice.Do you think in the films you’re doing you’re beginning to be perceived as being type cast? Or you’re being cast for a very specific supporting reason?Not really, considering what I’m doing right now, no. Definitely people think of you in certain ways and that’s absolutely fine, but the roles I’ve got coming up they’re all very different, so it hasn’t really been my experience. I’m often drawn to similar things, but no, I feel like I’ve been given plenty of opportunities to do other stuff. You know you have to be careful not to do the same thing over and over again. Right after Bridesmaids and all that, I tried to avoid doing another romcom, and then tried to avoid another kind of sitcom like “The IT Crowd.” You know, try to get behind the camera and then go on stage. You have to actively diverge from what you’ve done before; it won’t just happen.After The Sapphires came out, Jack Coyle at The Huffington Post compared you to Bill Murray, in the 70s for enlivening the film “with your winning charisma.” And I wondered how you felt about that comparison. I read that Murray is one of your icons of comedy and that you just worked with him this last summer on St. Vincent de Van Nuys.Wow. I’ll take that! Yea he is, he’s one of my heroes. And I did. I briefly worked with him this summer and he was just the most charming and lovely man. So that just solidified him in my books as a cool dude. It’s a lovely comparison, of course I’ll take that all day, but I don’t know necessarily if it’s true. I’ve got a long, long way to go yet.Who are some of your other inspirations for acting and how did you get started in the industry?In terms of other people that I really enjoy watching, one of my heroes would be John C. Reilly. I feel like I could just watch him do anything. Philip Seymour Hoffman was a big hero of mine. Those guys were pretty great, and then you know someone like Will Ferrell who’s so consistently funny.I went to university and while I was studying I joined the drama society and started doing plays there. Essentially, I stopped being part of the “yearly facility,” as it were, [and only] did maybe two or three plays there a month. It was a great way to just get used to it. You did dozens of plays and they’re not necessarily the greatest quality, but you really get so much stage time and you get your confidence. Then I went to drama school in London. I went to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts and that was more of a traditional, almost like Shakespearian teaching. And I guess I thought of myself as a dramatic actor then, so the fact that I went into comedy was a surprise. I had three or four jobs that were dramatic and I just didn’t see comedy as a realistic thing that I could achieve or an option. But I’m glad that it was. What was the catalyst for the shift from perceiving yourself as a dramatic actor to a comedian?I played a comedian in a film called Festival. And it was a comedy but it was a relatively dramatic role; there was a lot going on. He was an alcoholic comedian who wins an award at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival and I ended up winning a BAFTA in Scotland for it and then I got a lot more comedy roles from that. “The IT Crowd” came from that, and sitcom is the purest kind of comedy you can do. It’s such a set-up-and-joke scenario. There’s no room for interpretation – what you’re doing is trying to make people laugh. That’s the raison d’ être of the sitcom and I love that in it’s own way because it’s its own little art form. From then on it was a lot more comedy I would get offered, and once I got into the mechanics of how comedy worked I was fascinated by it. And then I got to work with Judd [Apatow] (This Is 40), Kristen Wiig (Bridesmaids), Lena Dunham (“Girls”), and all of those people over the last two years, which has been great.What’s it like coming from a traditional acting school and going to people like Lena Dunham and Judd Apatow and Christopher Guest who really encourage improvisation? Especially for something like Guest’s “Family Tree” where the dialogue is completely improvised. Was that new to you, or did improv come naturally?I guess it did to an extent. I hadn’t done improv on stage or anything before. I’d always done a little bit of it in some work I’d done, but not to the extent that we did in “Family Tree.” And that is quite a scary experience. But working with Lena and Judd, their scripts are already really strong so there’s definitely room to improv and those guys are so open to it, but there isn’t a huge need to do it, so the pressure isn’t as much, so you only do it if you feel like you’re going to add something to it. It’s a great scenario to do improv when it’s not totally necessary, where you’re hoping that you’ll add something to it but you’re not getting in the way. You often do it at the end of scenes and stuff so people can cut it out if it’s shit.My last question for you: You played Gaelic football. Can you tell us a little about the athlete Chris O’Dowd?Oh wow [laughs] yea! It’s a great sport and I still follow it. I played minor for Roscommon, actually all the ages – under 14, 16, 18, 21. And then I played in the Connaught finals and all that kind of stuff and, er, I guess I stopped playing once I really started enjoying Jamesons.“Moone Boy” premiers April 24 in the U.S. on Hulu. Previews for Of Mice and Men begin March 19. Opening night is April 16 and the limited engagement runs through July 27 at the Longacre Theater in New York.For more visit Irish America magazine here. MostPopular
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2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/1951 | A Palestinian filmmaker who is nominated for an Oscar was detained at Los Angeles International Airport after arriving in the country for the awards show. Emad Burnat - who made a documentary called "5 Broken Cameras” - his wife and their 8-year-old son were detained by authorities after officials questioned the reason for Burnat’s visit to the U.S. Burnat was able to contact fellow filmmaker Michael Moore during the ordeal, and after about an hour and a half delay, the family was allowed to leave. The Oscars are Sunday. In the news | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/1952 | “The Hangover” actor Zach Galifianakis has been helping out a formerly homeless 87-year-old woman, it was reported today. Galifianakis met the woman in 1994 and when he found out two years ago that she was homeless, he arranged to have her live in an apartment building - and he pays the rent. Galifianakis also has taken the woman with him to premieres of his films.
The Eleanor Mustang that was used in “Gone in Sixty Seconds” sold at auction recently for $1 million. The 1967 Ford starred in the film along with Nicholas Cage and Angelina Jolie.
Hot video: Robert Pattinson moves out
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2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/1987 | Musical Theater Center Company presents Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast, Jr.'
Cast of “Beauty and the Beast, Jr.” includes (from left) Sydney Kindsvater, Eliza Turner and Piper Reinwald.
The Musical Theater Center Company (MTCC) is proud to present Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Jr on May 4 and 5 at The Woolfe Street Playhouse, 34 Woolfe St. Experience the magic of professional theater for kids by kids. Tickets are available for three performances: Saturday, May 4 at 3 and 7 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. with a run time of one hour. Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for children and can be purchased at www.once-upon-a-ballet.com.
Adapted from the popular Disney movie and the 1994 Broadway hit, “Beauty and the Beast, Jr.” features a talented all-children's cast performing classic songs such as “Be Our Guest” and “Tale as Old as Time.” The story centers around a prince who is transformed into a Beast and a young woman named Belle whom he imprisons in his castle. To become a prince again, the Beast must love Belle and win her love in return, or he will remain a Beast forever.Musical Theater Center Company is the non-profit division of Once Upon a Ballet. Allyson Lewis is co-founder of The Musical Theater Center Company, along with director Courtney Sarre, and producer of “Beauty and the Beast, Jr.” The MTCC shares the joy of children's theater through free public performances, including visits to nursing homes and participation in community events and fairs. MTCC also works with the Charleston County school system by bringing performances to individual schools and after-school programs, thereby allowing all children to experience the joy of theater, regardless of financial capability. MTCC inspires the community through powerful and exceptional stage productions made up entirely of child actors including enhanced design backgrounds, costuming, makeup, and strong leadership.“Our show is pure family entertainment.” said Courtney Sarre, director of “Beauty and the Beast, Jr.” “What makes The Musical Theater Center Company unique is the professionally trained cast, and their effect on children in the audience. A performance cast made up entirely of children has proven to connect with families and other children in a way that is powerful and effective that adult theater cannot.”The cast is composed of children from the ages of 5-12, who commit to a rigorous schedule of ballet, jazz, vocals and acting to achieve the polished shows that the Musical Theater Center Company has gained a reputation for. MTCC also has an upcoming production of “Peter Pan” at the Wando High School Performing Arts Center on June 8 and 9. Details for both shows and ticket information can be found at http://www.once-upon-a-ballet.com , on The Musical Theater Center Facebook page, or by calling the studio at 216-6671. You can also check out their summer camps. Latest Videos | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/1996 | Fascinating Stories from 'Zero Dark Thirty' Reveal Its Origins and Which Actor Tried Waterboarding
Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty is already wowing critics and generating serious awards buzz ahead of its official December 19 opening date, and if you’re curious as to how the Hurt Locker director and her partner Mark Boal managed to get this project off the ground, Vulture has a fascinating behind-the-scenes profile that you’ll want to check out.
The feature covers a wide range of topics relating to the film – including how plans Boal and Bigelow had to make a film about the failed attempt to capture bin Laden at Tora Bora fell apart in the aftermath of his death in 2011. While some filmmakers would have been crushed by the news that their project (one they’d been working for years) was now irrelevant, Bigelow and Boal simply shifted gears and found a better story in the process.
The piece goes in depth in regards to how they made the transition – and Bigelow’s fanatical devotion to realism. That realism wasn’t lost on her cast, either.
Actor Jason Clarke plays a U.S. agent in the early stages of the film – and one scene calls for him to interrogate a prisoner using the controversial method of waterboarding. Clarke subjected himself to a real-life waterboarding to gain insight into what was going on.
Website Showbiz 411 reports that the actor told fellow star Jessica Chastain that he tried it out “and I can tell you, it’s not something you ever want to do. But I wanted to understand the experience.”
That’s some pretty crazy method acting. Would you be willing to endure these kinds of things for a role? How excited are you to see Zero Dark Thirty? Let us know below. Categories:
Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Jason Clarke
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2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/2172 | Goose Creek tattoo artist competes on Spike TV’s Ink Master’
Monica Kreber/Gazette
Emily Elegado works on the intricate roots of a tree on customer Matt Felton's leg.
Emily Elegado and Aaron �Is� Michalowski are rivals on the upcoming fifth season of �Ink Masters.� Goose Creek resident Emily Elegado has been �on vacation� for much of the summer ...
She did not announce where exactly she was going, however, and simply told friends she would be back home around August.Elegado�s actual reason for leaving was to shoot the upcoming season of �Ink Master� in New York.Elegado was one of 18 contestants vying for a $100,000 cash prize, an editorial feature in �Inked� magazine and the bragging rights title of �Ink Master.� The show, now in its fifth season, airs on Spike TV. The upcoming season starts Sept. 2 at 10 p.m.The format of the show is like �Top Chef,� except for some of the country�s top and up and coming tattoo artists. However, season five of �Ink Master� comes with a twist: each contestant is coming into the competition with a personal tattoo rival.For Elegado, that rival is Aaron �Is� Michalowski, a tattoo artist from Tampa, Fla. He did guest spots at a tattoo shop she worked at in Panama City, Fla.�He always just kind of rubbed me the wrong way, and I didn�t really appreciate the way he treated the industry,� Elegado said. �He kind of made a joke out of a lot of things.�In April Elegado received a phone call from the producers of �Ink Master,� who said Michalowski had called her out as a rival of his, and the producers asked if she would be up for the challenge on the show.�I consider myself a very talented tattoo artist, so I was very willing to prove that on a national competition,� she said.Elegado has been a tattoo artist for six years. She works as a tattoo artist at Roses & Ruins Tattoo in Summerville, where she has been for 18 months. She previously worked at a tattoo shop in Charleston, and before that she was in Florida.Because the show hasn�t aired, Elegado is not allowed to reveal too much about the competition, but said the experience was intense.�No doubt about it � the most stress, the most insanity,� she said. �It was 18 people including myself living in a two-bedroom loft with two and a half bathrooms. We all had beds and everything but it was like living in a hostel, for sure.�On the show contestants go head-to-head with their rivals, but the goal is to be the last tattoo artist standing so all the contestants are essentially pitted against each other � thus there is a lot of fighting.�Competition makes you crazy,� Elegado said. �I�m a very nice person, I think you can ask anybody; I�m very easy to get along with, but when it comes down to $100,000 I can fight like an angry bear, and I fought as hard as I could on that competition, and I think people are going to definitely see that.�Contestants participated in challenges that tested the artists� technical skills as well as their creativity. They faced a panel of judges that consisted of Dave Navarro from �Jane�s Addiction,� tattoo artist Chris Nunez from �Miami Ink� and tattoo artist Oliver Peck from Elm Street Tattoo in Dallas, TX.All Elegado has seen of the footage is what has been posted online.�I look pretty mean,� she said with a laugh. �There weren�t a whole lot of friendships to be made � that�s not what I was there for, I was there to win a competition. I went in there, guns blazing, ready to rattle.�I guess when you get into people�s faces and tell them things they are not used to hearing you don�t make a whole lot of friends. No one was really safe.�A contestant will be eliminated on every episode. There are a total of 16 episodes including the live finale that takes place in December.�I was fighting for my career, for $100 grand that I could probably use,� she said.Regardless of the outcome Elegado feels she grew from the experience. Looking back, if Elegado had a chance she would do the show all over again.�I definitely learned a lot about tattooing,� she said. �Tattooing is one of those industries where if you don�t learn something new every day, you�re not putting the effort into it that you should be.�I learned a lot about people, and who you can trust and who you can�t,� she said. �I learned a lot about what I was capable of as a person � because, five years ago, I never would have thought I would be able to go through that stressful of a situation. It definitely made me grow as a person.�Elegado sports a lot of tattoos, including a sleeve on her left arm and more art on her right arm, neck, feet and knuckles.�When I first started tattooing I was really excited that I could turn people into walking private museums of my work,� she said. �The further I get in my career, it�s more making people happy. So many people come in with heartache stories or tattoos that they absolutely hate and want gone. Being able to cover something, or to memorialize something, or just to make someone feel good about themselves � that�s way more rewarding than people knowing I�m a tattoo artist.� Latest Videos | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/2198 | Bob Hoskins, Veteran Actor Who Starred in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Dies at 71
Terry O'Neill/Getty
British actor Bob Hoskins, whose varied career ranged from Mona Lisa to Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, has died at the age of 71.
A family statement released Wednesday by agent Clair Dobbs said Hoskins died in a hospital after a bout of pneumonia.
His wife, Linda, and children – Alex, Sarah, Rosa and Jack – said: "We are devastated by the loss of our beloved Bob."
A versatile character actor capable of menace, poignancy and Cockney charm, Hoskins appeared in some of the most acclaimed British films of the past few decades, including gangster classic The Long Good Friday.
In 2012 Hoskins announced that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and was retiring from acting.
PHOTOS: Tributes: The Stars We've Lost The Latest | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/2300 | TV News TV Listings TV On Demand Soaps Watchlist Magazine Win Follow us on
Doctor Who: Ice Warriors confirmed to return in a new story by Mark Gatiss
Executive producer Caro Skinner reveals that the classic monsters will make their TV comeback later this year
Classic monsters The Ice Warriors will make their return to Doctor Who this year in a new episode of the BBC sci-fi drama written by Mark Gatiss.
Since first battling Patrick Troughton in 1967, the Warriors have appeared in six serials but haven’t been seen since 1974’s The Monster of Peladon.
But now, after almost 40 years, Doctor Who’s executive producer Caro Skinner has revealed that they’ll be making their comeback in a new story set inside a submarine.
“We've got the most fantastic episode by Mark Gatiss where we are bringing back the Ice Warriors on a submarine," she told SFX.
"We wanted to bring them back because they're wonderful. In the mix of stories that we were planning for this year it felt as if doing something very bold with a monster that hadn't been seen for a while would be really cool.
"Mark is an enormous fan of the Ice Warrior stories and came up with the idea. The sense of a monster of that scale and that size trapped in a really small, contained environment such as a submarine was a really brilliant story to be able to tell. "They were such a beautiful original design, and are genuinely really scary in terms of what they look like as they're coming towards you in that armour."
The Ice Warriors will make their comeback in the third episode of the new series of Doctor Who after the show returns to TV on Saturday 30 March.
Unlike the Daleks or Cybermen, the Martian Ice Warriors haven’t always been villains in Doctor Who and were featured as neutral characters in the two 1970s Jon Pertwee serials The Curse of Peladon and The Monster of Peladon.
If you’d like to learn more about the Ice Warriors’ past appearances in Doctor Who, read our guides to the stories in which they appeared: The Ice Warriors (1967), The Seeds of Death (1969), The War Games (1969) , The Mind of Evil (1971), The Curse of Peladon (1972) and The Monster of Peladon (1974).
Here’s a clip of The Ice Warriors in action in their eponymous debut story from 1967:
| Jon Pertwee
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2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/2345 | Roger Ebert has attended international film festivals and events for almost half a century, from the Kolkata International Film Festival to the Academy Awards. In addition to his coverage, our contributors report the latest from Cannes, Telluride, Toronto, Sundance and other movie showcases world-wide.
No pain for "Hurt Locker," Bigelow
HOLLYWOOD — "The Hurt Locker," a film that was made with little cash but limitless willpower, defeated the highest-grossing film in history and won the best picture Oscar here Sunday night. The director of the spine-chilling war drama, Kathryn Bigelow, became the first woman to ever win the best director Oscar. James Cameron, director of "Avatar" — and her former husband — cried all the way to the bank.
In what was expected to be a close race, "The Hurt Locker" took an early 4-3 lead and then pounded home with the best director and picture Oscars for a total of six. Its best film editing award correctly predicted the best picture winner, as it historically does.
The three wins for "Avatar" came in the technical categories, as expected, including cinematography — not expected, since so much of the film was created inside computers. The final totals included two apiece for "Precious," "Crazy Heart" and "Up."
In presenting the historic award to Bigelow, actress Barbra Streisand, never Oscar-nominated for direction herself, said, "Well, the time has come," after opening the envelope.
Bigelow did it, I believe, because she quite simply made the best film: The tension generated by the film was extraordinary. Yes, situations involving defusing bombs are common enough, but somehow Bigelow made the bomb scenes human, not technical. Perhaps that was the woman in her?
Bigelow thanked writer Mark Boal "for risking his life" in researching the script. Only 29 when she started, Bigelow has been a masterful action director from the get-go, with "The Loveless," "Near Dark," "Blue Steel" and "Point Break" between 1982 and 1991. Ever since, her career has been a triumph over preconceptions.
Sandra Bullock, an A-list star recently found in B-list roles, won the best actress Oscar for "The Blind Side." She teared up in thanking her late mother "for not letting me ride in cars with boys until I was 18 because she was right. I would've done what she said I was gonna do."
It was a busy weekend for Bullock, who Saturday night accepted the Razzie Award as the year's worst actress for "All About Steve."
Jeff Bridges raised a yell from the audience when he won as best actor for "Crazy Heart." Thirty-eight years ago, he was nominated for his first major feature role for "The Last Picture Show" (1972). Sunday night, he collected on the fifth. He saluted to his parents, especially father Lloyd, "who taught me the basics of acting. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for turning me on to such a groovy profession."
The movie came out of nowhere in December to pick up all the major critics groups' awards and then steamrolled over early favorite George Clooney ("Up in the Air") to win. Somehow this was the time for Bridges, once described in a New York Times cover story as "the best unknown star in Hollywood."
A mighty roar went up when Mo'Nique was named best supporting actress. She played the crude, abusive mother in "Precious." She thanked the academy for proving "it can be about the performance and not about the politics." And she also thanked Hattie McDaniel, the first black Oscar winner (for "Gone With the Wind"), "for enduring all she had to, so that I would not have to." At that time, the Oscars were announced at an academy dinner, and McDaniel was required to sit at a table by herself.
Mo'Nique's win was almost universally expected, but popular because this was her first major role and she stunned audiences with her power. Portrayed throughout as a vile monster, she has a monologue in which she haltingly explains herself, and we realize we are looking at a victim of exactly the abuse she was passing on to her daughter.
Christoph Waltz was gobsmacked when he won best actor at Cannes in May 2009, and he was still astonished here when he won the supporting actor Oscar. It is his performance, more than any other, that distinguishes Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds," and in effect, he's the leading man.
"Quentin with his unorthodox methods of navigation, this fearless explorer, took this ship across and brought it in with flying colors, and that's why I'm here," Waltz said. "This is your welcoming embrace, and there's no way I can ever thank you enough."
"The Hurt Locker" began its successful evening with its Oscar for Boal's original script. Its construction was indeed original, depending as much on external suspense as on our tension about what the hero, the bomb disposal expert James, was capable of.
The adapted script Oscar went to Geoffrey Fletcher for "Precious," in an upset, since Jason Reitman's "Up in the Air" was thought to be the front runner. In a highly emotional speech, Fletcher dedicated the Oscar, as the film was also dedicated, to "precious girls and boys everywhere."
"Up," a film so good it was also nominated for best picture, won for best animated film. Director Pete Docter of Pixar spread the credit in his acceptance speech, but he led the charge to change perceptions of animated films, and "Up" transcended categories to reach adults without kids as escorts.
"The Cove," produced by actor and Chicago native Fisher Stevens, won the best documentary Oscar. A thriller in the documentary format, it was about a dangerous attempt to film Japanese fishermen as they lured, entrapped and murdered dolphins.
From their opening monologue, co-hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were surprisingly unfunny. Their opening lines would have been funny delivered by one emcee, but having them do alternate reads from the prompter was a mistake. Nor did either one seem to really be speaking in the first person. One major drawback of having 10 BP nominees is that 10 film intros robbed us of five best song performances. There was an impressive live-and-film tribute to musical scores, on the big silver Art Deco stage of the Kodak Theatre.
Director John Hughes was too great a legend to be simply included in the traditional "In Memoriam" tribute. The special clip package of his work stirred desires to see his films again. They seemed good at the time, and in these dreary days, they seem miraculous. As the stars he made — his "children" —strode forward, it became one of the greatest moments in Academy Award history.
The traditional memorial montage was well accompanied by pop-music veteran James Taylor. Every year they forget someone. This year it was a very big someone: Farrah Fawcett.
"Crazy Heart" won for best song, to nobody's surprise. It's a rare song written for a movie that actually sounds as if it could have been a big hit years ago in the hero's career. T Bone Burnett, a tall drink of water in dark shades, strode on stage with co-writer Ryan Bingham, but to general disappointment, I suspect, didn't say anything. A guy named T Bone wins an Oscar, you wanna hear him talk.
In the craft categories, "Avatar" won for its art direction and production design, which was only right, since its designers essentially designed a new world and everything in it. "James Cameron," co-winner Rick Carter said, "this Oscar sees you." Cameron oversaw the exhaustive detail work on the creation and even the biology of that world.
"Avatar" also won for visual effects — a foregone conclusion —over "District 9" and "Star Trek." The category also encompassed the film's 3-D presentation, which was central to its success.
Lastly, "Avatar" won for cinematography, a choice I'm conflicted about. Wasn't much of the image creation done inside computers with CGI? Yes, the cinematographer had to fill needless scenes of actors before green screens, but the cinematography in "Inglourious Basterds" and "The White Ribbon" was so much more impressive.
"Star Trek" won for makeup, in a category that also included only "The Young Victoria" and "Il Divo" — the latter a film in which you weren't supposed to notice the actor's makeup.
Sandy Powell won her third costume design Oscar, after "The Aviator" and "Shakespeare in Love," for "The Young Victoria." She dedicated it to the costume designers of contemporary or low-budget films that are "not about monarchs."
At the evening's end, there was joy that "The Hurt Locker" won, but it was sort of a letdown because the ceremony lacked excitement. The choice of hosts Baldwin and Martin, which struck me as inspired, turned out to be a miscalculation. In years past, did co-hosts alternate lines? Comic timing depends on one person's delivery, unless we're talking about a seasoned comedy team. The two never felt like a team, and apparently didn't have their lines memorized, which led to tiny but fatal delays.
So much went as predicted. I correctly chose 15 of the top 17 winners, was wrong in both script categories and can hardly be faulted for thinking "Coco Before Chanel" would win for costume design. I have a feeling Vegas cleaned up from people believing this year couldn't be that easy to predict.
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Since he started as film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1967, and began covering movies locally and at international film festivals, Roger Ebert has met and interviewed countless movie idols, artists and unknowns -- some of them even before they became famous. There's hardly a major figure in the history of movies, from the last part of the 20th century into the 21st, that he hasn't encountered.
"Life Itself," based on Roger Ebert's memoir and directed by Steve James, will open in theaters and be available On Demand on July 4, 2014. The Cannes International Film Festival is the most talked-about film festival of the year, where directors from around the world showcase their newest work, from the most challenging art cinema to the big blockbusters. For many years, Roger Ebert and a team of contributors have covered Cannes, and we are continuing that tradition with start-to-finish coverage from around the festival.
A collection of tributes to Roger from various sources.
The opening shot of a movie can tell us a lot about how to view and interpret what follows. It can even represent the whole movie in miniature. The Opening Shots Project collects illustrated analyses of some of Jim Emerson's favorites, and contributions from Scanners readers. | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/2374 | | 11:32 p.m. June 17, 2012
Nicole Parker as Elphaba -- the Wicked Witch of the West -- in Wicked
Share Photo✉-✉⎙Toto, we’re definitely not in Kansas anymore. Detour off the yellow brick road and dare to explore a different side of America’s favorite fairytale.Long before Dorothy’s coming-of-age adventures with Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion, two other young girls meet in the magical Land of Oz. Elphaba, a smart, fiery outcast born with emerald-green skin finds an unlikely friend in her college roommate Galinda, later Glinda -- the beautiful, popular blonde. One of Broadway’s biggest blockbuster musicals, Wicked explores the untold story of the witches of Oz. The Emmy Award-winning actress and comedian Nicole Parker brings the complicated character of Elphaba to life in the Broadway production of Wicked, which opens at the San Diego Civic Theatre on Wednesday. Known best for her work on MADtv, Parker fine tunes her funny woman ways on stage as the sardonic, misunderstood Wicked Witch of the West. Nicole Parker gives us a glimpse into her wicked role.Q: How do you prepare for the role of Elphaba?A: There is definitely a routine for surviving the role! Mentally I like to do some yoga and/or meditation, or walk on the treadmill. That takes care of you mentally AND physically. It quiets my brain and warms me up at the same time. Then I vocally exercise which is a slow process. I give myself plenty of time because every day is different, sometimes it takes your body longer to get on board. Last thing is to remind myself to tell the story. Right before I run out for my first entrance it's just a reminder to stay focused. And after that you just go on the ride!Nicole Parker+Read Caption
Nicole Parker
Share Photo✉Q: How is your personality off stage similar to or different from your character on stage?A: Well, at least with the younger act 1 Elphaba, I relate because I was kind of bookish and nerdy, and didn't always feel like I fit in. I was also very talkative and opinionated. I wore glasses, had a bad perm, etc... I was NOT a Glinda. So I definitely identify with Elphaba when it comes to being different, not mainstream, kind of an oddball. I used humor all the time to get through awkward moments or to survive amongst the cliques, much like Elphie uses humor to deflect her pain or anger. Nowadays, I think I still share her qualities of sometimes not letting people get a word in edgewise (ask my husband), a side effect of her/us being very passionate and sensitive. I do wish I had more of her courage and tenacity. But I certainly have got the nerd/outcast back story going for me. Q: What is your favorite scene in Wicked?A: It seems like a cheat, but this answer changes from time to time. One moment I always look forward to is the scene with Popular in it. It is the first scene for me in the show where things really slow down for a moment and we get to really see these two girls become friends. I love when Alli sings Popular, she is so funny and keeps it fresh every time. It's just a very enjoyable and special part of the show for me.Q: Memories of growing up watching Wizard of Oz?A: Absolutely. I remember it was such an event because the Wizard of Oz was only televised once a year. My sister and I were always so excited and it was always a family event. We made fresh popped popcorn every time and I was so happy when the opening credits would begin. It was so special, so that makes Wicked all the more special as well.Q: What are your back stage rituals?A: Oh, so many. The last time I did Wicked when I was in New York/Broadway, my husband got sent to the local grocery store for the same specific things so often that the checkout girls would ask,"When is she due?" I have all sorts of supplements and elixirs that I superstitiously believe keep me well: Wellness Formula, Entertainer's Secret, a spray I use, vitamins etc. I eat a steak on a two show day for the protein. There are certain cast or crew members I check in with at the same time every show, and that keeps me going!Q: Walk us through the makeup and wardrobe transformation.A: It is a surprisingly quick process. It takes about twenty-five minutes. It takes three people to do make-up, hair, and wardrobe, respectively. The green is applied with what looks like a paintbrush, we do my face and hands, and there is lots of powder involved so I don't make everybody that I touch green! My hair is pinned up under a nylon wig cap, then I wear two small body mics right on my forehead, and the Elphaba wig is fitted over those. After that we put the rest of the costume on and Elphie is ready to make her entrance!Q: In your opinion, why has Wicked become such a successful pop culture phenomenon?A: It's storytelling at its best. It's an accessible story that has a humanity that anyone can relate to, everyone can in invest in, and above all, the audience cares about these characters. There will always be someone out there in the audience who identifies with Elphaba, feels like the outcast, feels bullied, misunderstood. On the flip side, there will always be people who identify with Glinda, being popular, and misunderstood in their own way. People really respond to these women, their journey, their friendship, and it just resonates with audiences in a special way. Wicked's other incredible strength is that it is building on an iconic story, The Wizard of Oz. It is so embedded in our culture that most people come into the theater already having that backstory to build on, and there is already a nostalgia that touches an emotional core with them. It's visually and musically epic as well, which contributes to making Wicked a totally unique event.Q: When you’re not working, where can we find you?A: If I could choose to do anything would be going for a walk with my dachsund and my husband. In the summer his family spends a lot of time on the lake, wakeboarding and wakesurfing. So we do that. We love going to Hawaii to surf! I also perform improv at the Groundlings or UCB when I am in LA. I travel so much for work, that being home is unique!Q: What new acting projects are you working on this year?A: Some things are up in the air as of now so I can't say! I am always auditioning and it can take months for people to make decisions! I will be performing with Alli Mauzey (Glinda on tour) in several symphony concerts across the country starting in the fall. And I am always writing and developing new ideas! I would love to go back to Broadway!Q: The moment you knew you wanted to pursue acting?A: I grew up in Southern California in Irvine, and began taking acting classes for fun just like my older sister at South Coast Repertory's program for children. I was seven, and remember my first recital; I was singing a song, and I remember the audience's response, and I remember when I made them laugh. I was absolutely certain at that moment I wanted to do that forever. So I did several Young Conservatory Player's productions as well as main stage plays at SCR. I grew up in the theater. It is home to me. I continued performing throughout high school, and went to Indiana University for theater and voice. There I joined an improv comedy group, so my interests were varied. I did musicals, but also went to Chicago to learn how to write sketches and improvise. When I graduated, I got hired at a theater in Amsterdam called Boom Chicago, an all American theater in Holland that features a nightly sketch/improv show, much like Second City. I lived in Europe for two years, and learned so much. From that job, I had so many connections in the comedy world that even though I moved to New York to pursue musical theater, MADtv auditioned me and I got hired. That began another chapter in my life on Fox's sketch show that was so invaluable. Eventually I made it to Broadway with Martin SHort's one man show. I have been very lucky to have gained so much experience in two areas of entertainment that I equally love and enjoy.Q: Do you watch “Smash”? How is life on Broadway similar to / different from the characters and drama we see on TV?A: Of course I do! It's about a musical!! I also have so many friends on it, which is why it is so fun to watch. I would say the real drama behind the scenes of theater is sometimes even BETTER and crazier than anything on Smash! So yes, there are similarities. Of course they have dramatized certain aspects as you have to with any show because it needs to appeal to a mainstream audience, not just people who do theater for a living! There is most definitely competition in our industry, but it's not so in your face as it is on the show. When I show up to an audition and I see the usual girls I'm up against, everyone is always very friendly and respectful with each other, but inside everyone is thinking, "Oh crap, she's here? She's so good!!! There's no way I'll get it!" At least that's what I think sometimes! It's more under the surface, because it's not made for tv, people are more subtle in real life, although that's just my personal experience. But Smash portrays so many very real aspects of the business--the sacrifices, the disappointments, the rejection and the doubt, all of that is very real.Q: Do you visit San Diego often? What do you love about Southern California lifestyle?A: Of course! My sister went to UCSD and I used to visit her all the time. My family always used to go to the Hotel Del Coronado at Christmas time, and my husband was a Marine stationed at Coronado the first year we dated. So I have made the drive from LA to San Diego many, many times. I have so many great memories here. My husband proposed to me on the beach in front of the Hotel! I just love the laid back and relaxed, but active lifestyle of Southern California. It's so easy to live a healthy life here. The weather is so great, there is so much to do outdoors. Everyone is out, but the pace is easy. I also just love beach fashion. I don't know how many items I have from Roxy and Quicksilver but the number is high. I grew up on the beach, so for me, you can't beat a Pacific Ocean sunset.Wicked runs June 20 - July 15 at the San Diego Civic Theatre. For tickets and more information, visit broadwaysd.comMichelle Guerin✉More from Michelle GuerinSkrillex, Diplo to debut new projectSan Diego: This Weekend videoReady for a Yogathlon? | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/2393 | Digital delivery: linking Europe
13 May, 2013 | By Neal Romanek
A digital delivery network from Deluxe Digital Cinema and Hewlett-Packard aims to connect some 8,000 European cinemas. Neal Romanek reports.
The UK’s Deluxe Digital Cinema, in partnership with Hewlett-Packard, is aiming to change European film distribution with a terrestrial delivery network that plans to connect more than 8,000 sites in the UK and Europe. The network will allow Deluxe to distribute on behalf of its clients — which include Fox, Sony, Paramount, Universal and others — directly to cinemas.“The real end goal was for electronic distribution that was terrestrial, as opposed to physical, ie, hard drives,” says Richard Fish, commercial director at Deluxe, “and it couldn’t cost any more than current delivery mechanisms. At the end of the day, getting a hard drive to site has proven to be cost effective and efficient, so to bring a new solution to market means we have to work within the boundaries of what it currently costs the distributor and the size of the file they can move by satellite or by hard drive.”The new network will be able to deliver a 500GB digital cinema package (DCP), with average connectivity of 50MBS. “We can deliver a terabyte too,” Fish says, “but that will just take a little bit longer.”Deluxe managing director Ken Biggins and digital cinema managing director Peter Wright had championed the idea of a digital distribution network for some years, but the technology was too expensive and too slow. When the right combination of fast speed and low cost arrived, Deluxe approached Hewlett-Packard. “We had quite a detailed cost model when we went into negotiations with Hewlett-Packard,” says Laurence Claydon, technical director at Deluxe. “They came back to us and that opened a few more doors than we expected. It made something that was a near-possibility into a reality.”Deluxe is being aggressive in rolling out the network. With the help of Hewlett-Packard’s field engineering and support teams, the company aims to be connected to 6,000 sites over the next 24 months, beginning with the UK and France then spreading to other European territories. Deluxe admits it is asking a lot of European telecommunications companies. Claydon says: “We need this network to be what the internet will be in about 10 years’ time, but we need it now.”Hewlett-Packard has a long track record of involvement with telecoms and content delivery network providers and was a natural partner choice for Deluxe. With the company’s help, Deluxe is riding on the next generation of broadband roll-out across Europe, choosing the sites where they can get the best connectivity and piggy-backing on these new deployments as they happen.Claydon says the Deluxe-Hewlett-Packard network will be far greener than current hard-drive distribution: “At the moment, we’re still shipping hard drives in vans and ships and planes. Ultimately, it will reduce the carbon footprint of feature film distribution, which will be welcomed by everyone. Electronic distribution via a network will only get cheaper and faster, whereas fuel prices are going to keep rising.”Tailored to local markets With hard drives and satellite, distributors need to deliver to a minimum number of sites to make the unit cost viable. The point-to-point nature of the Deluxe network will allow for greater localisation and flexibility without the number of screens on which a film runs being any financial barrier.Claydon thinks the network will lower the cost of entry to many independent and local films. “Because we’re putting together a European network, a lot of it will be based on local content for each territory, so we’ve partnered with vendors in territories, like Eclair in France, to increase volumes, making the network financially viable. In a lot of territories we distribute in, local content is a significant portion of the market.”Fish agrees the network will allow exhibitors to target local audiences more successfully. “If your cinema is in a seaside town, for example, over certain seasons you could target certain demographics coming in. A cinema could run different themes — films from the ’60s or ’80s or an animation season during school holidays. It will certainly allow exhibitors more flexibility, but our main aim is to distribute more efficiently on behalf of content owners.”
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2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/2434 | Wasabi is on-air
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Summer Movies Need To Come Sooner
There are a couple of movies coming up soonish that I am vaguely interested in seeing. Honestly, the sequels and rehashes just have me feeling pretty blah about the whole movie industry in general at the moment. But let's not kid ourselves, the good stuff comes out during the summer, and that's what I am taking a look at to ignore the slop that's out at the moment. Screw you March and April movies. You do not exist.
Iron Man 3 - May 3I love Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark. Just seeing him on the screen makes me grin. This movie shows Iron Man floundering after the events of The Avengers. It also is the introduction of The Mandarin, one of the big bads from the comic series. The one thing I have seen so far in these ads that has sat wrong with me is Rhodes in the "Iron Patriot" suit. I don't particularly like the character much, and frankly him in one of those suits just bothers me. Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to see this, but I am prepared to be irked. Oh, and a new trailer is coming out on March 5, 2013.Star Trek Into Darkness - May 17I'm not going to lie to you, I am fangirl squee factor 10 excited for a new Star Trek movie. It looks dark, gritty, and completely different, which the franchise has needed for a bit. Something a little off center to bring you back around in the end to what the core ideals of that universe are about. Benedict Cumberbatch is the villain of the film, John Harrison. People have been wildly speculating that he was Khan, or some kind of rebooted Khan for a while now. There was also a lot of internet speculation about Carol Marcus being in this film, and if she and Kirk will hook up again. Needless to say, I will be there.
The trailer, if you've somehow managed to miss this:
After Earth - June 7I freely admit to having a Will Smith problem. He is not what I would call a typical action hero type, but he just rocks it somehow. This movie is set a thousand years after humanity had to escape Earth after a disaster to a planet called Nova Prime. Will Smith plays a general who is away from home frequently, coming back to his son, played by his own son, of course. They end up being whacked by an asteroid storm and crashing down on the now dangerous Earth. This is where the "unfortunately" starts coming into play, because Will Smith is dying and the story will follow Jaden's character. It's also directed by M. Night Shyamalan. This might be one Smith project I pass on with the mostly miss nature of most of Shyamalan's recent projects.Man of Steel - June 14
The trailer:
The world needs another Superman reboot movie like it needs an infestation of termites. Personally, I don't particularly like the character of Superman. I find him to be an uptight Boy Scout who needs to realize that the world is shades of gray, and not black and white. The trailers I've seen so far don't really seem to indicate this movie will really be anything other than more of the same.
The first thing I thought when I saw the Superman suit was, "Hey isn't that Thor's outfit?"
Pacific Rim - July 12The story line posted for this movie directed by Guillermo del Toro details a group of creatures rising from the sea to start a war that consumes humanity's resources. They construct giant robots called Jaegers that are controlled by two pilots mind locked in a neural bridge. They don't seem to help unfortunately, and with humanity losing badly, two scrubs will come forward to pick up a supposedly obsolete Jaeger to fight once more.I'm not going to lie here, I'd never even heard of this before researching for this article. There's just something fun about giant mecha movies.The Wolverine - July 26The Wolverine director James Mangold said the film is actually a sequel to the last ensemble X-Men film. As Mangold said, "Where this film sits in the universe of the films is after them all. Jean Grey is gone, most of the X-Men are disbanded or gone, so there's a tremendous sense of isolation for him." I'd link a trailer, but there doesn't appear to be one. This makes me mildly scared. Ok, the fact they're making another solo Wolverine movie makes me scared. The first one isn't exactly what I would call awesome, so I'm already skeptical going in on this one. Allegedly the trailer will start popping up at the end of March, but really, considering the other movies already pumping out media hype for summer movies, the lack of trailer is making people twitchy.The official synopsis is: Based on the celebrated comic book arc, this epic action-adventure takes Wolverine, the most iconic character of the X-Men universe, to modern day Japan. Out of his depth in an unknown world he faces his ultimate nemesis in a life-or-death battle that will leave him forever changed. Vulnerable for the first time and pushed to his physical and emotional limits, he confronts not only lethal samurai steel but also his inner struggle against his own immortality, emerging more powerful than we have ever seen him before. Elysium - August 9
Another movie I hadn't heard of, this one has Matt Damon and Jodie Foster in it. It's set in 2159 where the very rich live on a man made space station called Elysium and the rest live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth. Foster is a douchebag politician who tries to stop any poor people from getting in, and of course, they try. Damon is a sap that gets screwed into taking a no-win mission to bring some equality to the people. It's tagged as sci-fi, but that synopsis makes me think it's more of a human rights or equality story. To be honest, I am left with a feeling of "haven't I seen this movie before?" after reading about it. It's entirely possible I've just read too many books with this kind of a story line, who knows.
Nerd Fail...
Other potential movies of interest that are coming out this summer include World War Z based on the book, Kick-Ass 2, Riddick, and 300: Rise of An Empire. I haven't read World War Z, I didn't watch Kick-Ass, I haven't watched any of the other Riddick movies, and I didn't watch 300, so I don't feel particularly like I have enough information to say anything about these other than they're coming.
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Doctor Who Recap Season 7, Episode 1, "Asylum of the Daleks"
Steven Cooper
Opening a new season with the Daleks—pitting the Doctor against his oldest and most famous adversaries—has always been a temptation for the producers of Doctor Who. The audience-grabbing potential is so obvious that this is actually the fourth time it's been done in the show's history. “Asylum of the Daleks” also gives showrunner Steven Moffat his first chance to write a Dalek story, having deliberately rested the creatures last year—the first season since the show was revived in 2005 that the Daleks were not used (except for a one-scene cameo in the finale). Without the additional pressure of introducing a new Doctor or companion, or setting up a season-spanning arc plot, Moffat's season opener is a successful standalone adventure with several touches of horror that call to mind his earlier efforts during the Russell T Davies era.
A sombre mood is set from the outset as the episode opens on Skaro, the blasted, ruined homeworld of the Daleks. Inside a giant statue of a Dalek (“Hell of a choice of meeting place.” “They said I'd have to intrigue you”), the Doctor (Matt Smith) has come to meet a woman, Darla (Anamaria Marinca), who wants him to rescue her daughter from a Dalek prison camp. As we saw in last year's Christmas special, the Doctor is now determined to keep a low profile following his escape from the Silence's attempt to kill him, and so he is not pleased that this woman has somehow managed to get a message to him.
Darla: “They say you can help.”
The Doctor: “Do they? I wish they'd stop.”
But he soon discovers that the whole thing is a trap—the woman is a Dalek agent, sent to capture him. Her human personality vanishes as a Dalek eye-stalk erupts from her forehead and a Dalek gun from her hand. The idea of the Daleks employing controlled humans as slaves is certainly not new (it goes back as far as the 'Robomen' in 1964's “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”), but it's never before been shown in such a creepy and graphic fashion.
On board a huge Dalek ship, the Doctor is reunited with his erstwhile companions, Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill), who have been collected from their lives on Earth by other Dalek agents. They find themselves in the “Parliament of the Daleks”—a massive amphitheatre filled with hundreds of the creatures, all chanting the last thing the Doctor expected to hear—“Save us! Save the Daleks!”
It was rather amusing to see that, after the poor reception given to the “new paradigm” Daleks introduced in 2010's “Victory of the Daleks”, they are very much in the minority here. The Parliament chamber is populated almost exclusively with the older bronze models, although the few representatives of the new design we see appear to have been given a face-saving officer status. In any case, the setup for the main story follows, as we learn of the Daleks' legendary Asylum—a planet where the Daleks dump all their failures: “the battle-scarred, the insane…the ones even you can't control.”
The Daleks have gone to the trouble of kidnapping the Doctor because the supposedly impenetrable Asylum has been breached. In a deliberately disjointed scene (typical of Moffat) after the opening titles, we see a young woman named Oswin, apparently alone and under siege in the Asylum, who identifies herself as a crew member of a spaceship that crashed on this planet. She has been hacking into the Asylum's systems and disrupting them. Realizing that this could open a way for all of the inmates to escape, the Daleks intend to beam the Doctor, Amy and Rory down to the Asylum, where they will be trapped until the Doctor can turn off the planet's protective force field, allowing the Daleks to vaporize it.
I enjoyed the confrontation between the Doctor and the Dalek “prime minister”—a wizened creature in a glass tank very similar to the one seen as the “Emperor Dalek” in 2005's “The Parting of the Ways”—in particular, the designation of the Doctor as “the Predator of the Daleks,” and the following exchange:
The Doctor: “You think hatred is beautiful.”
Dalek Prime Minister: “Perhaps that is why we have never been able to kill you.”
It's also worth taking a moment to give credit to the contribution of Nicholas Briggs, who has single-handedly provided the voices for all of the Daleks (as well as the Cybermen, and various other aliens) since the series was revived in 2005. His ability to create different characters for the various different types of Daleks is, I think, a very significant factor in the success the creatures have had in the new series.
As they are beamed down to the planet, Rory gets separated from the others, falling down a deep hole into a large underground chamber, while Amy and the Doctor encounter Harvey (David Gyasi), apparently another survivor from the crashed spaceship. At this point Moffat rolls out an effective string of horror movie ideas, as Harvey takes the Doctor and Amy back to his escape pod, only for them to realize that his fellow crewmates are long dead…whereupon Harvey realizes that he's actually dead and has become “Dalek-ised” (just like the woman Darla) by the Asylum's “nano-cloud” which transforms all intruding organic matter into Dalek material. Then, no sooner have the Doctor and Amy fought Harvey off than his zombie crewmates rise up and threaten them in the same way.
Moffat could be accused of recycling his previous concepts here—the nano-cloud is basically the same as the nanogenes from “The Empty Child,” and the idea of the walking corpse, unaware of its own death, harks back to the skeletons in spacesuits from “Silence in the Library”. But it's certainly a nicely macabre idea that anyone attacking the Asylum gets absorbed into its own security system. In order to protect against the effects of the nano-cloud, the Doctor and his friends are given special protective wristbands. These represent a rare failure in the design department—they are so large and bulky that Amy is left looking incredibly stupid on two occasions, when she fails to immediately notice that the attacking zombies have taken her wristband off her arm, and again later when the Doctor sneaks his own wristband onto her.
The direction by Nick Hurran lives up to the high standard he showed on his debut last year with “The Girl Who Waited” and “The God Complex”. From the impressive CGI of the Parliament chamber, to the contrast between the vast snowy expanses of the planet exterior and the cramped, dingy underground tunnels infested with Daleks, the episode is full of memorable visuals. In particular, there's a lovely bit of dreamlike imagery when Amy, falling under the influence of the nano-cloud, sees a roomful of people, including a twirling ballerina, which then becomes a roomful of Daleks, with the ballerina replaced by a Dalek spinning serenely in place.
Once the Doctor and the others are all underground, they have the problem of finding each other in the maze of corridors and chambers while avoiding getting killed by the mostly dormant but still dangerous Daleks. It was lovely to see many of the older Dalek designs from the classic series in these chambers (although some of them were a little difficult to make out under the layers of grime). I also particularly enjoyed the neat trick the Doctor employed to use one Dalek's self-destruct impulse to take out the others.
Meanwhile, Rory is doing his best to keep out of the Daleks' way, although eventually he has to be rescued by the watching Oswin. Which brings me to the big surprise of the episode… It didn't take long before I realized that Oswin was being played by Jenna-Louise Coleman, who (as was announced months ago) will be portraying the Doctor's new companion Clara, starting from this year's Christmas special. I can only congratulate Moffat on managing to pull off this surprise, which required the co-operation of the press and preview audiences in several different countries. Particularly ingenious is that the trick succeeds regardless of whether the viewer is aware of Coleman's significance—for those who don't know that she is scheduled to become the next companion, the surprise will come at Christmas when the Doctor meets someone who reminds him so much of the woman he encountered in this episode.
It remains to be seen whether there is any real connection between Oswin and the new companion, or whether they are simply being played by the same actress (as happened with Karen Gillan, who played a soothsayer in “The Fires of Pompeii” two years before she appeared as Amy). It's worth noting that, unlike Gillan's case (and earlier, with Freema Agyeman), Coleman's role in this episode would only have come about after she was cast as the new companion. So despite Moffat's stated intention to move away from last season's complex arc plotting, there are clearly still some connections being established between episodes. As if to remove all doubt on this point, Coleman gives a coy little glance directly into the camera as she delivers her final line: “Run, you clever boy. And remember…”
As for her actual performance, I was very impressed. She's a natural at handling Moffat's comic dialogue, and her flirting with Rory and fast-talking banter with the Doctor was a delight. At the same time, she managed to project enough confidence and intelligence to make Oswin's labeling of herself as a “genius” believable. And when given the chance to emote more deeply, as Oswin's ultimate fate is revealed, she was well up to the task. I've never seen any of her work before, but based on this episode, I'm very much looking forward to her joining the show permanently later on.
But enough about the companion-in-waiting; the relationship between the Doctor's current companions is the second major focus of this episode. The first five episodes of this season, leading up to a hiatus before the Christmas special, will bring the story of Amy and Rory to a close. In fact they are already partly out of the Doctor's life—their days as permanent travelers aboard the TARDIS ended in last year's “The God Complex,” and each episode since has faced the challenge of finding a way to involve them in the story. Here, they are collected by the Daleks to accompany the Doctor on the frankly flimsy justification that “it is known that the Doctor requires companions.”
It's soon apparent that Amy and Rory's marriage is more than in trouble; when we first see them, they're actually signing divorce papers while exchanging barbed insults. Once on board the Dalek ship, Amy is annoyed at the realization that the Doctor will inevitably notice the distance between her and Rory and try to do something about it. In a stark contrast to her dreams of her magic Doctor when we first met her two years ago, she now dismisses his desire to help:
Amy: “Don't give me those big wet eyes, raggedy man. It's life. Just life. That thing that goes on when you're not there.”
When Rory realizes that Amy has lost her protective wristband and decides to give her his to buy her some time, they finally confront the cause of their split. We find out that thanks to her experiences on Demon's Run, Amy can't have the children that she knows Rory desires, which has led to her pushing him away. Both Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill are excellent throughout the episode—having played these characters for so long now, they really know how they tick—and this scene is very emotional, thanks in particular to Gillan giving it absolutely everything. Unfortunately, it loses some of its effectiveness simply because there has been no hint whatever of this plot thread before now.
I'll admit it was a nice touch to show nothing more than a quick, wordless shot of the Doctor simply straightening his bow tie when Amy discovers he has put his wristband on her—a callback to her earlier annoyance on board the Dalek ship; nothing more is needed to get across the point that he has maneuvered them into confronting the problem. I really hope that this isn't the last we hear of Amy and Rory's marital difficulties, though; such a quick solution to a dispute that went all the way to a formal divorce would be far too glib.
At any rate, while Amy and Rory are working through the repairs to their relationship, the Doctor continues making his way towards Oswin's refuge. Moffat's inventiveness continues with the idea of the “Intensive Care” area containing the Daleks which have personally survived previous battles with the Doctor, which allows him to have Oswin name-check various planets from the classic series (Spiridon, Kembel, Aridius, Vulcan, Exxilon) for the enjoyment of long-term fans.
In a lovely bit of plotting, the Doctor's repeated “Where do you get the milk?” question to Oswin's mentions of making soufflés turns out to be more than just a bit of whimsy—it signposts the solution to the mystery of Oswin's true nature. (On the other hand, I found the several “Eggs-terminate” puns to be painfully corny.) When the Doctor finally enters her chamber, he discovers not the woman we have been watching, but a chained up Dalek that still dreams of her human life. Matt Smith is especially good here, showing the pain in the Doctor's face as he gently explains to her what has happened.
The potent image of a Dalek breaking free from chains (first used in the memorable 2005 episode simply titled “Dalek”) is used as the story reaches its climax, with Oswin managing to help the Doctor achieve a victory despite her own fate. Earlier, she had saved the Doctor from the Daleks in the Intensive Care area by hacking into the Daleks' database and deleting their knowledge of him. Now, she drops the Asylum's forcefield and the Daleks above wipe out the planet as planned, but the Doctor and his friends are teleported back up to the ship, into the TARDIS. The Doctor emerges, and discovers to his delight that the Daleks no longer recognize him—Oswin's deletions have reached even here (and possibly to all Daleks everywhere).
Oswin-Dalek: “We have grown stronger, in fear of you.”
The Doctor: “I know—I tried to stop.”
Realizing that the endless conflict with the Doctor was actually helping the Daleks, Oswin has managed to break the cycle. It's an unexpectedly happy ending, in keeping with the now reconciled Amy and Rory cheerfully waving goodbye as the Doctor drops them off back on Earth—not only is the Doctor given the chance to extend his newly-desired anonymity, he doesn't have to keep re-fighting the great Time War which has loomed over him for so long. No doubt there will be more clashes with the Daleks in the future, but for the moment the Doctor no longer has to be “the Oncoming Storm,” the “Predator of the Daleks.” No wonder that the final shot is of him giddily dancing around the TARDIS console, on the way to all-new adventures.
Next Week: In keeping with Moffat's declared preference for stand-alone, “movie of the week” episodes this year, we have the Doctor Who version of Snakes on a Plane: it's time for “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.”
Classic Who DVD Recommendation of the Week: “Remembrance of the Daleks,” starring Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred, kicked off the twenty-fifth season of the classic series in 1988. The Special Weapons Dalek which made a very memorable impression in this story can actually be seen in “Asylum of the Daleks,” among the group of Daleks which wake up and attack Rory. It's a fast-paced, densely plotted story which shows the classic series attempting something different with the Daleks, and is well worth checking out.
For more Doctor Who recaps, click here.
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Aarchman07030 -
I'm a few days late in responding, but I couldn't let your lovely comment go by without a reply. Thank you very much for the compliments--it's very gratifying to learn that people are enjoying the recaps. Not to mention getting a kick out of finally putting all that repeated watching and obsessing over Doctor Who back in my misspent youth to some practical use... :)
Posted by Steven Cooper on 2012-09-25 15:59:12
I've been reading your reviews faithfully for the last several seasons of Doctor Who, and I want to add my voice to the legions who appreciate your thoughtful analyses, graceful writing and seemingly peerless knowledge of Who arcana. Reading your articles adds an entire dimension to the Doctor Who experience for those of us unfamiliar with Classic Who and all of it's myriad memes, story arcs etc. You are essential reading for anyone looking to fully appreciate and enjoy Doctor Who--thanks a million for all the good work!
Posted by Aarchman07030 on 2012-09-22 02:17:49
Yes, I think the law of diminishing returns has definitely set in with regard to seeing hordes of CGI creatures on screen. When a huge force of Daleks first appeared, in Christopher Eccleston's season finale, it was an amazing spectacle the show had never had the resources to accomplish before. (A bit different to the old days, when they sometimes had to resort to cardboard photographic blow-ups in the background to fill out their armies of Daleks!) Now, it's just old hat.
And suchanoodgirl (love that name, by the way)--thanks very much for your comments. It's great to know people are enjoying the recaps.
SAVE US, DOCTOR.
Me again. I was wondering what you guys had to say about how Darla's (Dalek-Darla now) daughter, Hannah's imprisonment went unresolved? I mean, yes that was the story used to lure in the Doctor, but it did seem that there was a Hannah and she was in the hands (stalks) of the Daleks.
Posted by suchanoodgirl on 2012-09-04 22:43:40
Maybe it's just me, but I find a single Dalek more frightening and threatening than a bazillion Daleks; they're all just sitting there not really doing anything except twitching and blinking. When the Doctor was trapped in the intensive care, in a confined space, then it felt menacing (and Smith really let the fear show). Although, I must say that the sound of a bazillion Daleks screaming *is* pretty creepy.
Posted by Anonymous on 2012-09-04 03:35:24
I am so glad you're back! Haven't even read this review yet, going to save it for lunch break at work tomorrow. But I'd been Googling to see if you were resuming your reviews for Series 7 since Saturday night after the premiere and panicked a bit when nothing new came up each time. But here you are! I actually started watching Doctor Who a few months ago, and halfway through, I discovered your reviews and found them absolutely delightful to read. It became kind of a routine, watching an episode, reading your review on it. You do a bloody well job of it! Anyway, so psyched you're back at it! x
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2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/2714 | Desperate Housewives Cast: Then & Now
As the series ends its eight-year run on May 13, 2012, see how the women of Wisteria Lane have changed
Harriet Sansom Harris - Now
To seek revenge on Paul, Felicia covered his walls with her own blood, then phoned the police, who discovered two of her fingers in the trunk of his car. When she was imprisoned years later, Paul admitted to murdering her sister. Felicia's daughter, Beth (Emily Bergl), later married Paul (though he was unaware of their relation); she eventually shot herself. Felicia then began to poison Paul's food by sabotaging Susan's pre-cooked meals, which led to a violent standoff.
Credit: Ron Tom/ABC via Getty Images | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/2750 | Courtney Robertson To Release "Juicy" Book
Thirty-year-old Courtney Robertson received the final rose on The Bachelor during season 16. However, she has now traded in that rose for a book deal with HarperCollins Publishers. The book aims to release intimate details about Courtney's behind-the-scenes involvement with the show. Her persona as a television vixen may have contributed to the title of the book, which will be called I Didn't Come Here to Make Friends: Confessions of a Reality Show Villain.
Her relationship with Ben Flajnik, the show's star, ended in October of 2012, after dating for less than a year. The following video shows a compilation of Courtney's time during the show's 2011 ABC season.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYTBAIg52PY
Courtney Robertson recently spoke with Us where she delved into her time on The Bachelor as well as her upcoming book.
Appearing on the popular television show might seem like a dream to most people; however, Courtney had to live through an unpleasant side of being so well-known. "Going on The Bachelor was the most amazing opportunity I've ever had but I did not have a fairy tale ending," Courtney said before adding, "The girls hated me, my modeling career was destroyed and Ben and I had a tumultuous 11-month relationship that ultimately imploded. There are two sides to every story."
So, why the sudden interest in reliving situations from the past? Courtney Robertson explained. "I wanted a chance to talk about what went down from my perspective, because I think there are a lot of misconceptions out there about me," she said.
Should anyone affiliated with the show during Courtney's stint with the program be concerned about potentially embarrassing details? Courtney has not been forthcoming about what type of specific details will definitely surface from the book, but she did give some indication."Writing the book has been very cathartic. I've definitely learned a lot about myself and love! I think fans of the show are going to love it, it's totally juicy and hilarious," she said.
The following video shows Courtney introducing Ben Flajnik to her family.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJHPrRLbGI0
[Image Via Courtney's Facebook and Videos Via YouTube]
Tags:ABC, Ben Flajnik, Book, Courtney Roberson, HarperCollins, season 16, tell-all, the bachelor Post navigation
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2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/2790 | William gives Queen Helen a Bafta
Helen Mirren is to be honoured by Bafta with its highest award
The queen of British cinema will get the royal seal of approval at this year's Baftas when the Duke of Cambridge presents Dame Helen Mirren with the Fellowship award.
Dame Helen - who has played the monarch on stage and screen and won the leading actress Oscar in 2007 for The Queen - joins other winners of the prestigious award including Martin Scorsese and Sir Christopher Lee. The event, at London's Royal Opera House in Covent Garden tomorrow, is hosted by Stephen Fry with big name guests including Leonardo DiCaprio, Uma Thurman and Tom Hanks. It i s widely seen as a dry run for next month's Oscars and Steve McQueen's 12 Years A Slave is tipped to continue its award season success. The film, which stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as a free man kidnapped and sold into slavery in America's deep south, has 10 nominations including for best film and best director. Ejiofor is nominated for the leading actor award while co-stars Lupita Nyong'o and Michael Fassbender are nominated for supporting actress and actor. London-born Ejiofor said there was " something particularly special about receiving a Bafta nomination from home". He faces competition for the leading actor award from veteran Bruce Dern for his role in Nebraska and Hollywood stars Christian Bale, DiCaprio and Hanks.
The other contenders for best film are Philomena, Captain Phillips, American Hustle and Gravity. Philomena also gets Dame Judi Dench a nomination f or the leading actress award for her role as the title character whose sea rch for the son she was forced to give up for adoption in 1950s Ireland inspired the film. She is in the running with American Hustle's Amy Adams, Cate Blanchett, Emma Thompson and Sandra Bullock for Gravity.
Film critic Mark Kermode said he expected the outer space drama to provide the main competition to 12 Years A Slave for prizes.
He said: "The nice surprise has been, in the case of 12 Years A Slave, not only has it been nominated for best film, best director, you've got a best supporting actor nomination for Lupita Nyong'o, who's terrific.
"Great to see Chiwetel Ejiofor nominated for best actor, his performance is absolutely outstanding, although he's up against Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips - that's going to be a pretty tough title fight.
"When it comes to wins, you're looking at 12 Years A Slave and Gravity. American Hustle has done well numerically in the nominations, I'd be surprised if it did as well when it comes to the awards themselves."
Other nominees for best supporting actor are Bradley Cooper and Matt Damon along with Captain Phillips star Barkhad Abdi and Daniel Bruhl who played Niki Lauda in Formula 1 film Rush. Also recognised is American chatshow host Oprah Winfrey who is nominated for best supporting actress for her role in The Butler.
That category sees Jennifer Lawrence and Julia Roberts nominated along with Sally Hawkins for her role in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine.
McQueen faces competition for the best director award from big names including Paul Greengrass and Martin Scorsese.
Comic and actor Steve Coogan is nominated for best adapted screenplay for his work with Jeff Pope on Philomena.
Kelly Marcel, who has written the script for the forthcoming 50 Shades Of Grey film, is among the nominees for the outstanding debut award for her work on Saving Mr Banks, about the making of Mary Poppins.
Also nominated in that category are Colin Carberry and Glenn Patterson who wrote Good Vibrations - the true story of Terri Hooley, who ran a record shop in Belfast at the height of the Troubles.
American filmmaker Alex Gibney is nominated twice in the best documentary category for his films about drug cheat cyclist Lance Armstrong and whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
Gravity leads the pack in number of nominations with 11, one ahead of both 12 Years A Slave and American Hustle.
The event, formally known as the EE British Academy Film Awards, is broadcast on BBC1. | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/3061 | Broadway Theater - Tony Award Nominations
Dresden Shumaker Early last week the American Theatre Wing announced the Tony Award Nominations for the 66th ceremony to be broadcast on June 9th.
This is a fantastic year for theatre on Broadway and many outstanding shows have been nominated. Many theatre critics are also clamouring that some great shows have been shut out or snubbed. Bette Midler’s performance in I’ll Eat You Last was considered a shoe in for a nomination for and yet it did not make the list.
There were some beautiful victories within the nominations. Cicely Tyson, who returned to Broadway for the first time in 30 years, earned her first ever Tony nomination for “Best Actress in a Play” for the revival of Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful. The Trip to Bountiful was produced by New York Knick All-Star center, Tyson Chandler and his wife Kimberly. Chandler is now the first NBA star to have received a Tony nomination.
Tom Hanks has also received his first ever Tony award nomination for his performance in Nora Ephram’s Lucky Guys. The LA Times is reporting that Lucky Guy has already turned a profit. This is a pretty amazing achievement considering the show opened just over a month ago on April 1st.
There are many familiar names within the list of nominees this year as Broadway continues to be a welcoming home for many film and tv stars to show off their acting chops. Here is the list of nominees for best actor and actress in a lead role in a play. You can read the complete list of Tony Award nominees on their website.
BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE IN A PLAY
Tom Hanks for Lucky Guy
Nathan Lane for The Nance
Tracy Letts for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
David Hyde Pierce for Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
Tom Sturridge for Orphans
BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE IN A PLAY
Laurie Metcalf for The Other Place
Amy Morton for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Kristine Nielsen for Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
Holland Taylor for Ann
Cicely Tyson for The Trip to Bountiful
If you are looking to take your family to a Tony Award nominated show there are many choices. I talked to Holly Fink, who runs Culture Mom Media in NYC, about which shows she suggests are best for families. Here is what she suggests:
“Kinky Boots, which has the most nominations of any show is a great show for older kids (12 and up). Matilda is good for kids of all ages. Direct from London, it’s an adaptation of the novel by Roald Dahl and has opened to rave reviews. Up for revival, Annie is also great for kids of all ages, Pippin is quintessential Fosse and I’m planning to take my kids for musical theater 101 and Cinderella is a full on Broadway extravaganza.”
No word yet on who will be the host for the ceremony this year. Who do you think should host the big show?
Image Credit: annie-mae design on sxc.hu
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2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/3226 | Around the World in Movie Names
Can you pick the correct location that is missing from the following movie titles? by trusting365
How to PlayClick the green button to start and enter the correct answers below Also try: Going My Way? Movie Titles (clickable) Challenge
Good Morning, _______Robin Williams, Forest WhitakerThe _____ SyndromeJane Fonda, Jack LemmonThe Last King of ________James MacAvoy, Forest WhitakerOut of ______Meryl Streep, Robert Redford__________Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid BergmanThe Pirates of the _________Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush___________Ben Affleck, Kate BeckinsaleSeven Years in _____Brad Pitt, David Thewlis___________ BurningGene Hackman, Willem DafoeThe Boys From ______Gregory Peck, Laurence OlivierFrom ______ with LoveSean Connery, Robert ShawRaid on _______Peter Finch, Charles BronsonOnce Upon a Time in ______Antonio Banderas, Selma Hayek_________Nicole Kidman, Hugh JackmanIf It's Tuesday, This Must Be _______Suzanne Pleshette, Ian McShaneThe Prince of _____voices of Val Kilmer, Ralph Fiennes____________Rossano Brazzi, Mitzi Gaynor________!Gordon MacRae, Gloria Grahame North to ______John Wayne, Stewart GrangerHere Comes Mr ______Robert Montgomery, Claude Rains__________voices of Chris Rock, Ben StillerThe Road to ________voices of Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh_____naGeorge Clooney, Matt DamonHotel ______Don Cheadle, Joaquin PhoenixThe Treasure of the ___________Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston______Humphrey Bogart, Bruce Bennett (or Matthew McConaughey, Penelope Cruz)Salmon Fishing in the _____Ewen McGregor, Emily BluntMidnight in _____Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdamsHotel ____________voices of Adam Sandler, Kevin JamesThis Is _______Thomas Turgoose, Stephen GrahamThe __________ LimitedOwen Wilson, Adrien BrodyIn ______Colin Farrell, Brendan GleesonLetters from _______Ken Watanabe, Kazunari NimoiyaThe Thief of ______Conrad Veidt, SabuAn American Werewolf in ______David Naughton, Jenny AgutterVicky Christina _________Rebecca Hall, Scarlett JohanssonOur Man in ______Alec Guiness, Maureen O'Hara________ NoonJackie Chan, Owen WilsonThe Hunchback of _________voices of Demi Moore, Jason AlexanderThe ______ FileJon Voight, Maximilian SchellNight Train to ______Jeremy Irons, Melanie LaurentNight Train to ______Margaret Lockwood, Rex HarrisonThe Prize Winner of Defiance, ____Julianne Moore, Woody Harrelson______ Tragedy: The Story of Jim JonesPowers Boothe, Ned BeattyThe Bridge on the _________William Holden, Alec GuinessThe Bridge at _______George Segal, Robert VaughnThe Purple Rose of _____Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels
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Click the Country: 'L' Cities15Spot the Difference VI71950s Match-Up4Ancient Wonders3 Top User Games in Movies | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/3237 | Hollywood pins hopes on Christmas filmgoers
Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Last modified on Friday 5 December 2008 19.54 EST
Is Jim Carrey recession-proof? Can Kate Winslet help to turn the economy around? Will consumers shell out for Brad Pitt or Will Smith? Is trusty Clint Eastwood counter-cyclical? If you are a Hollywood studio executive, the answer is yes, yes, yes and yes. As Hollywood struggles through the recession, studios are hoping that a full-scale cinematic onslaught over the Christmas season will bounce the movie industry out of the doldrums. Unlike much of the rest of the economy, the signs are cautiously optimistic. This year, a record number of big releases are scheduled for the crucial holiday season, with 11 major films packing major stars set for release between December 12 and Boxing Day. Carrey pops up in Yes Man, an affirmative tale about a loser who becomes a winner thanks to a self-help guide. Winslet caters to a different demographic playing a Nazi opposite Ralph Fiennes in Stephen Daldry's adaptation of The Reader. Winslet also rekindles her career-defining chemistry with Leonardo DiCaprio, this time in suburbia rather than on the high seas, in Revolutionary Road, due out in the US on December 26. Meanwhile Will Smith plays a man trying to make amends for his past in Seven Pounds. Eastwood, in Gran Torino, plays a Korean war veteran learning to get along with his Korean-American neighbours. With a mix of highbrow, lowbrow, middle-brow, comedy, romance, historical drama, politics, animal action, sci-fi, animation and musicals, Hollywood is throwing just about every trick in its book at cinemagoers in an attempt to draw them into the multiplex and the arthouse. Christmas has become the new summer for film executives. Last year, when 10 major films were released during the holiday period, $853.4m (£585m) was handed over at the US box office, including $63.2m on Christmas Day. In 2006, according to the industry magazine Variety, the figure was $58.5m.
For while box office takings in the US so far this year have been on a par with last year - thanks in part to inflation - much else in Hollywood is gloom. Every day film industry trade magazines warn of downturns and layoffs: this week alone Viacom/Paramount announced 850 redundancies and NBC Universal dropped 500 staff, 70 of which were from the company's film division, as it announced it was aiming to reduce spending by $500m next year Even the trade magazines reporting on these events are not immune. According to film industry website Deadline Hollywood Daily, Variety is shutting down its Washington bureau, while the Hollywood Reporter is losing up to half its staff. But never fear, filmgoers. The season to attend is upon you. So flock, starting on Friday, to Nothing Like the Holidays, a family Christmas story starring Alfred Molina. The same day sees the release of the remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still, featuring Keanu Reeves as an alien robot. If Reeves acting the part of a talking robot is not enough to save Hollywood, then we might as well all stay at home. | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/3484 | ABC Camberwell
262-274 Camberwell Road,
SE5 ODL
Associated British Cinemas
Leslie H. Kemp
Essoldo Camberwell
Bijou Picture Theatre
Camberwell Palace Theatre
Odeon Camberwell
Located in the southeast London inner-city district of Camberwell. The Regal Cinema opened on 17th June 1940 with little ceremony. It was already partially built when World War II broke out and was allowed to be completed. Initially it was project of D.J. James (planned in 1937 and to be called the Florida Cinema), but was sold to Associated British Cinemas prior to completion.
It was one of the largest suburban cinemas in London and had a splendid Art Deco style. The splay walls beside the proscenium opening have fluted columns, upon which are mounted slender glass light fittings and there is a decorative grille in the the centre of the columns.
Within weeks of opening, in September 1940, the Regal was closed by bomb damage (which killed some patrons) but it quickly re-opened on 6th October 1940.
From 17th December 1961 it was re-named ABC and continued as a successful single screen cinema until closing on 27th October 1973 with James Coburn in “Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid” and David Bailey in “Wicked, Wicked”.
It was converted into an Alpha Bingo Hall and has had several companies operating the building over the years including Jasmine Bingo. It operated as a Gala Bingo Club until late-February 2010, when it was closed suddenly, and the build was sold to a church. It is a Grade II Listed building.
Two photographs I took of the former Regal Cinema in December 2004:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kencta/340715857/
Two interior photographs of the Camberwell Regal/ABC taken in 1988, when it was operating as a bingo hall.
Proscenium:-
http://flickr.com/photos/12494104@N00/365981534/
Circle:-
haynesta
Just a small point but the marker on the map for this cinema is some distance from its actual location which is at the corner of Medlar Stree and Camberwell Road, SE5
CamberwellLove
Here is a current photo of this great building on the outside
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22584135@N06/8173372240/in/photostream | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/3485 | Audian Theatre
Old Post Office Theatre
Cordova Theatre
Pullman Drive-In
Pullman Village Center Cinemas
Big Sky Motor Movie Drive-In
Located at 315 E. Main Street in downtown Pullman, the historic Audian Theatre is a majestic example of the type of single-screen theatre that once dominated towns throughout the United States.
The original Audian Theatre was built in 1930. The New Audian theatre reopened in 1936 with its current L-shaped layout and the 600-seat auditorium facing east. The original Audian Theatre, with a much smaller auditorium, faced south. With the demolition of a section of the Martin Garage in the mid-1930’s, the present auditorium was constructed and the theatre reconfigured.
The Audian Theatre and its sister theatre the Cordova Theatre, have been the main options for Pullman moviegoers for more than 70 years. The Big Sky Motor Movie on Wawawai Road operated from the 1950’s until the early-1980’s, and The Old Post Office Theatre opened in the 1980’s but closed several years ago. The Pullman Drive-In Theatre was located near the present-day city playfields and pre-dated the Big Sky Motor Movie, but closed in the late-1950’s. The Varsity Drive-In was located on the Pullman-Moscow highway near the current site of Champion Electric. It closed in the early-1970’s.
The Audian Theatre was closed for a time in the mid-1990’s. Best Theatres Inc. reopened the Audian Theatre in December of 1997. The theatre was thoroughly cleaned, repainted and a completely new DTS digital sound system was installed. A redesigned concession stand and a modern popcorn machine were also added later.
The Audian Theatre has been given new life with record-breaking engagements of the new “Star Wars” and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogies. Its large auditorium and impressive sound system are its strengths.
Many current and former Pullman residents have thanked us for continuing to keep the Audian Theatre open despite the trend to close single-screen theatres. We thank all of our patrons for supporting this classic theatre that has been such an important part of downtown Pullman. It was closed in 2014.
Description courtesy of Pullman Movies (www.pullmanmovies.com)
Charles Van Bibber
Photo (“X” out of the print screen):
Here is a photo circa 2004 by Seth Gaines:
http://tinyurl.com/yau57qr
Pullman, by Robert Luedeking and the Whitman County Historical Society (Google Books preview) says that the Audian Theatre had previously been called the Grand Theatre. There’s a photo of the Grand from about 1920, and the building is quite recognizable from the terra cotta cornice and parapet trim it still sports.
The 1936 reconstruction of the Audian, which was nearing completion in late summer, according to the September 12 issue of The Film Daily that year, was apparently confined to the auditorium and the interior of the building. I haven’t found any early mentions of the Grand Theatre in trade publications, but it was being advertised in the Pullman Herald in 1916.
A 350-seat house for movies and live events called the Pullman Theatre opened in December, 1913. I haven’t found the Pullman Theatre mentioned in the Herald later than 1915, about a year before the earliest mentions of the Grand Theatre. It’s possible that the Pullman Theatre became the Grand Theatre.
Ben_Ritherdon
This brought back memories of happy times in Pullman. Between them the three single-screen theatres managed to provide something fresh for me and my wife to watch most weeks between 1998 and 2001 (with the occasion trip to the multi-screen in Moscow plus the WSU film society).
Sad to hear that the Old Post Office has closed, though I’m not hugely surprised. One diamond memory was going to a midnight showing of Terminator there with the adjoining gun shop putting on a display of the guns used in the film (potentially a classic cultural experience, not to be missed for two wide-eyed Brits). In reality the guns were less 1980s Terminator and more 1914 trench warfare and the theatre put the 4th reel on before the 3rd so we saw the end of the film part way through! Happys days though.
When we finally get round to our WA family vacation we’ll be sure to catch a movie at the Audian.
Trolleyguy
Appears to be closed. Phone is disconnected and not listed on pullmanmovies.com.
Shame. I guess there’s always the Cordova. Trolleyguy, please don’t tell me the Cordova’s closed too.
Sorry, Ben. Check the Cordova hyperlink for nearby theatres and it comes up closed. | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/3495 | Complex First We Feast Pigeons & Planes Sole Collector Green Label RIDE Channel John Krasinski Says the First Season of ‘Jack Ryan’ Will Tackle ISIS‘Gomorrah’: Italy’s Gritty Mafia Story Is Dark, Authentic‘Narcos’ Season 2 Trailer Teases The Inevitable Downfall of Pablo Escobar‘Halt and Catch Fire’ Season 3 Review: Mutiny Faces Growth, Earthquakes, and Joe MacMillan‘Stranger Things’: The Duffer Brothers Promise to Do Right by Barb in Season 2 Comic-Con: Producers Jennifer Levin and Sherri Cooper Talk BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, Their Bad Boy Beast, and Why the Story Still Resonates
by Sheila Roberts July 15, 2012
Executive Producers Jennifer Levin (Felicity) and Sherri Cooper (Brothers and Sisters) sat down with us today at a roundtable interview to talk about CBS Television Studios’ exciting new fall series, Beauty and the Beast, starring Kristin Kreuk as tough NYPD detective Catherine Chandler and Jay Ryan as Vincent Keller, a former Afghanistan veteran with a terrifying secret. The highly anticipated series is a modern-day reimagining of the 1980’s cult classic CBS television show and will premiere on the CW on October 11th.
The producing duo told us how they set about developing the series for a new generation inspired by an idea that came from new entertainment chief, Mark Pedowitz. They explained how they were drawn to the concept of a modern day Beast with a bad boy image, why Kreuk was always their first choice for the role of Catherine Chandler, and how Ryan’s character will only get ‘beastier’ as the story advances and more triggers are revealed. They also discussed the challenges of striking a balance with a female lead who is a very capable detective but struggles with accepting someone who wants to protect them and why they believe the classic story still resonates today because it’s timeless and deals with forbidden love and yearning. Check out our recap of the Beauty and the Beast panel and hit the jump for the interview.
Question: Since you’re introducing this series to a whole new generation and the CW has a very specific demographic, did you have any type of focus group or young people that you asked their opinion on who should be cast in this role?
Sherri Cooper: We did. We always wanted Kristin Kreuk. My sister-in-law is actually the casting director, and when we started writing it, she immediately said “Oh my God, I know who Catherine (character Catherine Chandler) is,” and we watched footage of her from the beginning. It was always Kristin Kreuk. When we were writing, we didn’t really picture somebody specific when we were developing it, did we?
Jennifer Levin: No, but we did use our assistant who’s a decade younger than us and is now a writer on the show. She was incredibly helpful and is a huge Comic-Con CW fan. So yes, we did.
People who have seen the pilot refer to the authenticity and how it feels like something that people of this generation can relate to.
Levin: We’re young at heart. The network that it’s on has a specific audience.
Cooper: When they first showed us the title, we looked at each other, because the idea came from our Mark Pedowitz to do a reboot of Beauty and the Beast. I didn’t really remember it at first. We looked at each other and we thought what would our new version be and we couldn’t picture it right away, but we could see the billboards like “Who doesn’t like a guy with some baggage?” or “Who doesn’t like a bad boy?” So, we sort of had our own idea of what’s a beast.
Levin: It was just a metaphorical, like what if you were dating a beast or someone like that? So that’s sort of how we came at it.
Cooper: And this was before Fifty Shades of Grey came on. It seems like there’s quite a lot of mystery in the show. Are there going to be advances as we go on?
Levin: Yes.
Cooper: Well there’s a case every week that will be closed and that you can watch and pick up any time and get your case to watch. And then, there will be these overarching mysteries about the mythology behind the beast and Catherine — his origin story, her mother.
Your beast is a war veteran. Are you trying to say something about the USA right now or people coming back from war or anything like that?
Levin: We’re not making a political statement, but it is from the character. We always think about the character and we came up with the idea because we had seen the Pat Tillman documentary (The Tillman Story). Pat Tillman was an NFL football player who enlisted after 9/11 and then was killed, and there was some controversy about his death. And so, that was our starting point. We really think about him as a person who is struggling to be more human. It’s not about politics really.
Cooper: No. It was more from a character place. Our generation has obviously been affected by 9/11 so that was where we went to in terms of what happened.
He’s not much of a beast.
Cooper: You know what. He’s going to become beastier. Levin: He’s going to get beastier. Yes, definitely.
Is he going to be more physically beastier or more emotionally?
Cooper: Both. It’s great to get into what defines a beast. Obviously, there’s so much you have to set up in a pilot, the rules.
Levin: Just figuring out what happens when he becomes more beastly. I can’t say I would have been running away from him.
Levin: That’s true and we do think about that. He can kill her so we have talked about that. And that is part of it. That’s why it’s relatable because we do think you could be with a guy who you’re in love with and yet he has this really dark side.
Cooper: And in the beginning, you don’t see it. So, it’s more from your perspective. It’s almost like Jekyll and Hyde. Have you thought about that at all?
Cooper: Yes, Jekyll and Hyde and like a bit of a time bomb. If you think about it, anybody with crazy anger, he’s a ticking time bomb and so he’s unpredictable. She’ll think “Oh, I can trust him. He doesn’t seem beasty to me.” And then, we’re going to get into…wait.
Are his triggers going to change?
Cooper: Yes. And what he thinks are the triggers versus what they really are which we’ll uncover. She’s going to think they’re one thing and we’ll get into what they really might be. But yes, his triggers will change. I think in the beginning the idea was that when he became adrenalized as a super-soldier, anything that gives him an adrenalin rush would trigger it.
Levin: Which she would do too. No one pisses you off more than someone you love or excites you more.
Apart from the name of the show, what’s left from the original story?
Cooper: From the 1980’s show?
From the book?
Cooper: That’s a really great question. We were brought the 80’s show.
And the show was inspired by the story?
Levin: Of course.
Cooper: But the next conversation we had besides bad boys was the idea that there’s a beauty and a beast within all of us. And in the series we’re going to be getting into why are some people perceived as beasts and some as beauties. The typical you can’t tell from what’s on the outside versus what’s on the inside and that we all have a beast inside each of us and that will be in a lot of stories.
Levin: That story resonates even today because it’s timeless – that feeling of forbidden love, yearning, all of that.
Cooper: And we’re exploring that. That’s really the heart of the show. Where the show really lives is in their relationship.
Levin: And there really isn’t a lot on TV that is about that, that really is about that yearning and not being able to … that’s at the core and also this graphic novel tone.
How do you balance a female lead who is a detective and very capable with this romantic yearning?
Levin: It’s hard. Cooper: They save each other. She’s going to struggle with “I don’t need protection.”
Levin: But everybody wants to be protected.
Cooper: It’s that weird thing that Twilight is tapping into. There’s that fantasy versus she’s very capable. I guess love is you can accept somebody protecting you and you protect them. But we’re very aware of giving her…
Levin: Well, we relate to it. It is about juggling that and how complicated everyone is. You have a job and you’re competent. And then, you go home and you feel incompetent. All that stuff.
Cooper: You want to feel like you can be girlie in some parts of your life and then you go to work and you’re [different].
Levin: When people saw the pilot, some people, particularly older men, thought “She’s so….really? She could be a cop? She’s so…” They didn’t buy it. We got really upset. I mean, look at us. We’re running a show.
Cooper: We’re little.
Levin: She’s littler. Do you know what I mean?
Cooper: But we’re addressing that. Levin: We are addressing it.
Cooper: Even in her precinct, we’re going to play the bias against female cops, but we actually have a consultant from the LAPD who’s working with us and she walked in and she’s tiny. She’s this petite little blonde and she’s been a detective for 20 years.
Catch up on all of our continuing Comic-Con coverage here.
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Comic-Con: Hasbro Studios Head Stephen Davis Talks the Brony Movement, TRANSFORMERS, STRETCH…
Tags • 2012 San Diego Comic-Con • Beauty and the Beast • Comic-Con • Comic-Con 2012 • Entertainment • Interview • Jennifer Levin • San Diego Comic-Con 2012 • Sherri Cooper Around The Web | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/3607 | Awards 2013 Oscar Nominations: Who Will Win?
The nominations are in, and we've got the dish on what it all means
prev6 of 8nextView AllBest DirectorBy Richard Corliss Jan. 10, 2013Marco Grob for TIMENominees: Michael Haneke, Amour
Ang Lee, Life of Pi
David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook
Steven Spielberg, Lincoln
Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild
The list of Best Picture nominees may include as many as 10 titles — this year there are nine — but the Best Director category still holds only five slots, so it’s a more exclusive club. All five nominees directed movies that are short-listed for Best Picture, but after that: Wow! and huh? At the risk of burying the lede, we’ll save the shocks for the Snubs section, at bottom.
Zeitlin was the biggest, happiest surprise, snagging a nomination for a hallucinogenic movie with no professional actors and a budget under $2 million. The Austrian auteur Haneke became the first non-English-language director (excluding Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) of a non-English-language film (excluding Alejandro González Iñárritu for Babel) to be nominated in this category since Pedro Almodóvar for Talk to Her a decade ago. The two predictable nominees: Lee, a winner for Brokeback Mountain, who brought to vivid life the improbable tale of an Indian boy and a Bengal tiger on a raft; and Russell, whose film about a troubled dad and his bipolar son mirrored the director’s fraught relationship with his own son.
The Best Director’s race, like that for Best Picture, was widely predicted to pit three acclaimed docudramas against one another. That may still happen for Best Picture, but in this category two of the three (Kathryn Bigelow and Ben Affleck) got killed in a vote-tabulating cage match. That leaves Spielberg, whose expert handling of a complex political drama helped make Lincoln a popular hit ($144 million domestic), as the indisputable front runner.
Snubs: There are a carload. It’s nice to see that the directors of TIME’s top 3 movies of 2012 each received a nomination, but Jeez Louise, look who’s missing! Bigelow, the first woman to win Best Director (The Hurt Locker), dominated the awards of critics’ groups for Zero Dark Thirty. But she got stiffed by the Academy, not because she lost her masterly storytelling skills and muscular visual style but, we’re guessing, because a campaign concocted by Washington liberals and conservatives charged that ZDT saw a link between the U.S. government’s torture of terrorist suspects and the discovery of Osama bin Laden. To Senator Feinstein and to the Academy directors who voted in this category, we say, It’s only a movie — and a brilliantly directed one.
Second among the critics’ choices for Best Director was the affable Affleck, whose Argo earned reviewers’ cheers and solid box-office returns ($110 million domestic). But the Academy, which hasn’t acknowledged Affleck since 1998, when he shared the Best Original Screenplay award with Matt Damon for Good Will Hunting, ignored him again. Maybe the voters never forgave him for Gigli.
Quentin Tarantino, previously nominated in the Best Director and Original Screenplay categories for Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds (both Best Picture nominees), got the sop of a writing nod to salve his rejection as Best Director for Django Unchained. Sam Mendes, an Oscar winner for American Beauty (which was also Best Picture), went big in a smart way with Skyfall but came up short on the short list; the movie was also ignored in the Best Picture and Supporting Actor categories. Tom Hooper’s big gamble in shooting much of Les Misérables with the actors singing “live” and in single-shot closeup, paid off in a nomination for Best Picture but not Best Director. And if your last name is Anderson — Paul Thomas (The Master) or Wes (Moonrise Kingdom) — you could have slept late on Thursday morning. Neither movie received a nomination for either Best Director or Picture.
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2013 Oscar NominationsBest Supporting ActorAnd the Oscar will go to …Best Supporting ActressBest ActorBest ActressBest DirectorBest Picture Email | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/3688 | The HOT Show
Jay-Z’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ Soundtrack: What Would F. Scott Fitzgerald Think?
Filed Under: Amy Winehouse, Andre 3000, Beyonce, bryan ferry, Florence And The Machine, Great Gatsby, Jay-Z, Lana Del Rey, Will.I.Am
Courtesy of Columbia Pictures
Music is a big part of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, with the 1922 novel showcasing the jazz-filled flapper parties Jay Gatsby throws at his house in the West Egg. The author coined the term the “Jazz Age” to talk about the renaissance of music and dance that was being ushered in during the ‘20s.
With the latest cinematic version of Fitzgerald’s classic—this one directed by Baz Luhrmann—hitting theaters today (May 10), Radio.com breaks down the Jay-Z-produced soundtrack through the eyes of Fitzgerald. Would the author have been a fan of the sound?
On the soundtrack, the rap mogul tries to combine the old and new, not unlike Luhrmann does in his films or even what Fitzgerald did with his writing. Jay-Z mixes Roaring Twenties-era horns with electronic beats, telling MTV he wanted the music to become another character in the film, just as it was in the book.
Jazz was dangerous, chaotic and exciting when it first hit the scene and the youth of America couldn’t get enough of it. Hip-hop had the same effect when the public heard it in the 1970s so it’s no coincidence the two styles have been melded together by Jay-Z in an effort to bring the Jazz Age into the 21st century.
The album starts off with Jay’s own contribution, “100$ Bills,” a straight-up hip-hop track that references Slick Rick, the 1929 Wall Street crash, 9/11 and Taylor Swift, sort of dissing her with the line, “Took that, Taylor Swift to a hundred f****** million, b****.” (Apparently, Team Kanye all the way.)
Beside the fact that poor Fitzgerald would have been confused about these future events Jay speaks of–not to mention the voice modulation going on (the talk box, the first voice changing equipment, wasn’t invented until the 1930s)–the song is straight from the 21st century. The closest thing they had to rap in the ’20s was the poetry of Langston Hughes, a studied poet who was still enrolled in New York’s Columbia University the year Fitzgerld’s book came out.
Other songs on the album do a better job of melding the two styles together like will.i.am on “Bang Bang.” Using Cecil Mack and James P. Johnson’s “Charleston” to keep the beat—a song, we’d like to point out, was actually released in 1923— will.i.am channels Louis Armstrong with his frog in the throat singing style to talk about making bootys drop. He would get Daisy and the rest of her friends dancing the Charleston, but would probably lose the flapper audience during the chorus- a little too EDM for the Roaring Twenties.
Read more about The Great Gatsby soundtrack on Radio.com
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2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/3698 | Mousa Kraish: Actor and Director
Palestinian-American Mousa Kraish, a Hollywood actor, refuses the numerous "terrorist" roles for which he is approached. Ironically enough, however, he began his career as a member of Black September in Steven Spielberg's Munich. "TheMunich role opened my eyes to how important it is for the film to show both sides of the story. Now I decide what to take based on that quality and not the type of role," Kraish explains. "I tell my agent now to not send me those scripts that seem thoughtless and unsubstantial. If they're just putting up somebody with a beard that's a villain and it's True Lies all over again, I don't want to be a part of that. In a way, I'm saying I'm not going to wear black face anymore to appease a side of an industry that knows nothing about what's happening in the world." Born in 1975 in Brooklyn to parents from the West Bank town of Jericho, Kraish is the oldest of nine children. He went to school to become a doctor, but ended up working at an internet start up. After 9/11, he decided to study theater and worked with David Mamet's Atlanta Theater Company for two and a half years.
"I love acting," Kraish says. "Everyone around me told me I couldn't do it. That's the one thing that nobody in the Arab community seeks out to do. I've always liked being the black sheep and pushing that envelope. It's the best way I can communicate and say things that I wouldn't be able to say in my daily life."
Kraish most recently appeared in Al Pacino's Salomaybe and Greg Mottola's Super Bad as well as King of California and Finishing the Game, both of which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Kraish has also appeared onstage in Precipice at the 2004 New York Fringe Festival and in Grenade at the 2004 Arab-American Comedy Festival.
In addition, Kraish writes and directs films. He has completed two short films, The Fourth Estate and A Brother's Love and is now working on his third film, How to Make a Dollar Bill in Brooklyn.
"I'm just a kid from Brooklyn living his dream," says Kraish. "It's a good time for Arab Americans to come out and have commercial success and then say, 'Here's my community, what can I do to help them?' Just don't forget where you came from."
Palestinian-American Profiles The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) is a non-profit organization that offers journalists facts, analysis, experts, and digital resources about Palestine and Palestinians. | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/3782 | August 25, 2016 home | celeb | music | movie | tv Home > News > Movie First Authorized Jimi Hendrix Biopic in the Works by His Estate
March 12, 2014 (2:34 am) GMT The movie is expected to feature songs like 'Foxey Lady', 'The Wind Cries Mary', 'Purple Haze', 'Voodoo Chile', and 'Crosstown Traffic'.
An official Jimi Hendrix biopic is in the horizon, Deadline reports. The movie is developed by his estate in conjunction with ICM Partners. It will be the first authorized film that focuses on the late rocker since previous attempts to tell his story on the big screen never came to fruition. A project once pitched in by Legendary Pictures fell apart, despite having a directing commitment from Oscar-nominated Paul Greengrass and a script written by Max Borenstein, due to disapproval from Experience Hendrix LLC. Anthony Mackie was initially poised to star in it. The Hendrix estate's lack of approval didn't deter John Ridley though. The "12 Years a Slave" scribe went on to direct "All Is by My Side" with OutKast's Andre Benjamin or Andre 3000 as the music icon. It didn't include any of Hendrix's signature tunes and instead focused on his early years as an aspiring musician trying to make it on the streets and in the clubs of London, England. The film is on the line-up of this year's SXSW. Now, the authorized project will feature Hendrix's songs like "Foxey Lady", "The Wind Cries Mary", "Purple Haze", "Voodoo Chile", and "Crosstown Traffic". His sister, Janie Hendrix, who's handling the annual all-star Experience Hendrix tribute tour, will be involved in the production. "We're delighted to be associated with ICM Partners on this project that's been a long time coming," she said. "Our concern has always been that any biography of Jimi that employs his music be held to the very highest standard of cinematic excellence. His musical legacy deserves no less." "Our partners at ICM are ideal insofar as they completely understand that the use of his music in such a film is a monumental responsibility that will resonate through generations to come as Jimi's artistry has since the 1960s." TODAY'S HEADLINES | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/3858 | Jen Yamato || May 19, 2011 11:50 AM EDT
Sam Claflin on Pirates of the Caribbean and the Possibility of Chemistry with Kristen Stewart
In this summer's swashbuckling sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, British newcomer Sam Claflin goes toe to toe with Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) and a much more fearsome pirate: Blackbeard (Ian McShane), the legendary captain of a zombie ship on a quest to find the Fountain of Youth. But while Claflin holds his own as idealistic young Philip Swift, the missionary who falls for a mermaid (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey) and defies Blackbeard on pain of death, in real life he owes a debt of gratitude to the erstwhile Al Swearengen.
Visibly nervous at his very first cast read-through for On Stranger Tides, Claflin got a much-needed reassurance from McShane, with whom he'd starred in the 2010 miniseries The Pillars of the Earth. "Ian just put his hand around me and went, 'You'll be fine,'" Claflin shared during an amiable chat with Movieline. "Honestly, that guy's really kind of kept me together."
At 24, Claflin is set to make his mark with Pirates, his first big screen feature credit; he'll next co-star with Chris Hemsworth and Kristen Stewart in Snow White and the Huntsman. In any case, he's building an solid resume within Hollywood -- and, having amassed about a thousand new Twitter followers since the time of our chat, it looks like the fans are taking note as well. How are you liking your first big movie press tour? I'm really enjoying it, because obviously I've never done this before. The first time is always the best, right? But I'm actually having a blast. Now that you're getting your big breakthrough, do you think you'll relocate from London or stay put? I think stay put. It's home, you know. My girlfriend is there, and my friends and family. My history is all back home and the thought of moving anywhere else at the moment isn't even in the cards. I definitely feel that in the future if work brought me out there then obviously I'd have to move, but right now I'm very settled and very comfortable. How much pressure did you feel when you first landed the Pirates of the Caribbean gig? There's not anything to describe the feeling I was going through! There was such a fine line between nerves and excitement and I was feeling both, so the adrenaline was doubly attacking my nervous system. No, but I definitely felt the pressure, especially to begin with to be consistently compared to sort of "the new Orlando Bloom." And he and Keira Knightley left very large shoes to fill and a high bar to match up to. I know that both me and Àstrid [Bergès-Frisbey] were kind of like, "OK, we've really got to pull something out of the bag that's special." And who knows if we've done that or not, but nevertheless it was an amazing experience and an opportunity for me to really knuckle down and get stuck in. I tried not to think about it too much, but it's hard, you know? [Laughs] I'm very anxious to hear what people say about it all. Do you watch your own performances on screen? I do, because I don't think I could learn if I didn't. And I feel that as much as I've learned about the process of filmmaking, I feel watching my performances, "Oh my God, I do that -- and I do this as well... I need to stop doing this. I look silly."
It seems like as a performer, that's just getting to know your own tools. Yeah. I feel there are a few habits that I've started picking up on after watching a few things that I've done. Like what? I have a gamey eye. [Laughs] No, occasionally I see, I don't know, little twitches and facial expressions. I go, "I do that way too much, and I'm going to try to avoid it in the future." Fair enough! What was the audition process like for Pirates? I imagine it was a huge ordeal and a long process, given the enormity of this franchise. The initial audition, the first ever audition -- firstly, I kind of walked into it expecting to hear nothing back. I've been on so many auditions in my time that I was expecting... it was an impossible feat. It was recently announced that you got the Snow White and the Huntsman role, so congratulations! Were you just going out for every big movie out there? Yeah -- I think people have heard of me now, as much as people haven't seen me so much. But a few people, especially in the industry, are kind of asking, "Who the hell is this weird kid who's just appeared on my Internet page?" It's exciting because people are talking. I'm thrilled that people are talking; they really didn't have to be, and I'm honored, really, that my name is on people's lips. But nothing's really changed. Even the initial audition was just an ordinary audition. It seemed impossible and somehow it's all worked out for the best. You were in Pillars of the Earth, with Ian McShane -- Yes! Was it total coincidence, or did that connection help you at all in getting the Pirates job?
I know for a fact now, today -- Rob Marshall told me today that when they were sort of thinking of offering me the part, he asked Ian's opinion of me. So I guess, thanks Ian, because I'm here! What was said, I have no idea. But nonetheless I owe a lot of my life to both of those two men, and I'm very thankful and lucky to be here. Ian has really sort of been there from the beginning for me. He was the first person I saw when I got off the plane in Hawaii. From the beginning he's really taken me under his wing and given me such support and help. How sweet! How so? The initial time when I met the big actors -- Penélope Cruz, Geoffrey Rush, Kevin McNally, Stephen Graham, Johnny Depp -- was during this read through. It was coming closer and closer to my line during this read-through, and I'd heard everyone do their first lines, it was my turn. You know, the nerves were building, my heart was pounding. Ian just put his hand around me and went, "You'll be fine." And I was able to relax. Honestly, that guy's really kind of kept me together. That's really adorable. Now to switch it up a bit -- you've got so many new fans on Twitter already. It's because... A famous actor told me once -- I don't want to name names, I hate that sort of thing -- but I was at his house and he said, "Are you on Twitter?" I said yes, I am. And he said, "There'll be one day when you'll have, like, five friends. And in the same day it'll go to five thousand." And, you know, I've not got five thousand followers, but this week I had two hundred followers to begin with. On Wednesday I had 210 followers. I'm checking -- he told me to keep checking every now and then and then see how quickly it sort of shoots up. Today, Friday, I have 850 or something. And you're just like, "How has that just happened?" [Ed. note: Claflin now has nearly 1,800 followers.]
So, for the record your Twitter account is...
@SamClaflin. Simple as! Hook me up, follow me!
Lastly, regarding Snow White and the Huntsman: Have you yet met with Kristen Stewart? No! So there was no chemistry read, you were cast separately for your roles? No, but from my understanding she seems like an absolute legend of a girl. I have a friend who worked with her, my friend Eddie Redmayne, and he says she's really down to earth, really talented. She's so talented, I'm a big fan of hers. So fingers crossed there'll be chemistry. But no, I didn't have the opportunity to meet her, which is a bit of a shame. Get more on Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, in theaters May 20.
Tags: Armie Hammer, Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey, ian mcshane, Johnny Depp, Kristen Stewart, penelope cruz, pillars of the earth, Pirates of the Caribbean, Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides, Sam Claflin, Snow White and the Huntsman, Twitter Subscribe to the new Movieline on YouTube | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/3873 | NR Podcasts
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November 30, 2012 James Martinez 0
The Dark Knight Legends Exhibit at LA Live Coverage: Costumes, Props, Art and Batmobiles, oh my!
The Dark Knight Rises will be out on Blu-ray combo pack, DVD, and digital download on December 4th. To celebrate the end of Christopher Nolan’s acclaimed trilogy, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has put together The Dark Knight Legends Exhibit located at L.A. Live’s Event Deck in Downtown Los Angeles. Did I mention it’s FREE to the general public? It’ll be open daily from Noon-9:00 p.m. through December 14th. You’ll get to see costumes and props from the Dark Knight trilogy, Batman art from the DC Comic art exhibit, and most importantly seven different Batmobiles!
You will see the Batmobile from the Batman television series (1966) with Adam West, the Batmobile from Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), Batman Forever (1995), Batman & Robin (1997), and the Tumblers and Bat-Pod from Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012).Aside from the great cars we also got to see numerous costumes from the Dark Knight trilogy, including the two Batman suits, Bane’s costume, the Joker’s suit and his nurse disguise, the suit for Two-Face, the Scarecrow costume, Catwoman suit, and props and costumes for The League of Shadows.
Walk around some of the costumes, you’ll also find great scale models from the Dark Knight Rises, like The Pit Prison, Bane’s underground layer, the Fusion Reactor chamber, and of course the Bat Cave.
The Batman art includes a centerpiece by legendary artist and DC Entertainment co-publisher Jim Lee. All of the artworks were so amazing that I wanted to take some of it home with me, especially several different prints with Harley Quinn. The artist ranged from comic book artists, illustrators, and designers. They had three months to create the pieces that ranged from digital prints, skate decks, and even a LEGO Catwoman, yes you heard right, a LEGO Catwoman with her signature whip.
The press event had a great panel with designers and a few lucky owners of some of these wonderful iconic cars. George Barris, the designer of the original Batmobile, gave out a great piece of information at the event. The number one Batmobile, his pride and joy, will be up for auction and is expected to sell at a price tag that may go over seven figures! I had a chance to talk to George Barris himself and asked why he would want to sell such a treasured car. George told me he wants to share the number one Batmobile with the world.
We also spoke to another proud owner, this time of a restored Michael Keaton Batmobile; Jeff Dunham, a great comedian, ventriloquist and overall nice guy. Jeff purchased the vehicle and had it restored. He was gracious enough to lend it to the exhibit. We asked Jeff a few questions, like which one of his puppets he would consider to be his Robin (see video above).
During the panel we got some great information about a one hour documentary about the Batmobiles that’s included in the Dark Knight Rises Blu-ray. All seven Batmobiles from the exhibit are shown off, and you’ll see interviews with the builders and designers, actors, and drivers from the Dark Knight Trilogy.
The first question that came up in the panel was, “What was in your head when you first designed these [Batmobiles]?”
George Barris, the designer of the first Batmobile for the Batman TV series answered, “I said, ‘If you’re going to create a car for a comic book, make it a people’s car. Make it a car that everybody would enjoy, kids, families and everything.” Not only did George achieve that goal, but all of the vehicles have found a place in our nerdy hearts. Later in the panel Tim Flattery, the designer of the Tumblers, said that in Batman Begins, they were going to destroy the Tumbler. However, after the first night of filming, where Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) and Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) were test driving it, everyone fell in love with it [the Tumbler] and became quite attached to it. By the second film they couldn’t resist and they had to blow it up to give birth to the Bat-Pod. All of these juicy details can be found in the documentary in The Dark Knight Rises.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a fan of the Batman franchise or not, this is worth seeing in person. If you want to go see the exhibit you can access L.A. LIVE’s Event Deck (directly behind Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE) from the stairways at the corner of Chick Hearn Ct. and Georgia St. or at the entrance at West Road and Georgia St. (1 block South of Olympic Blvd). Admission to the exhibit is free to the public. The exhibit hours are Monday through Sunday, 12:00PM – 9:00PM from November 30th to December 14th.
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2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/3877 | Adam Dunn to Star in Upcoming Matthew McConaughey Movie as Bartender
by Doug Kyed on Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 10:43AM
Typically when athletes move from the playing field to the silver screen, they take on roles in big-time action movies with explosions, gunfire and the like. Adam Dunn will be making his acting debut in an independent film starring Matthew McConaughey.
Dunn plays a bartender in Dallas Buyers Club, according to ESPN.com. IMDB describes the movie, which opens in Summer 2013, as “Loosely based on the true-life tale of Ron Woodroof, a drug taking, women loving, homophobic man who, in 1986 was diagnosed with full blown HIV/AIDS and given [30] days to live.”
Dunn got involved with the project through former minor league pitcher Joe Newcomb, who works with the film’s production company.
“My buddy started it,” Dunn said. “He’s ate up with it. He’s the kind of guy who’s not going to half-do anything. He’s going to do it right.
“It’s probably going to look pretty awesome. We took like 20-something takes each time. I haven’t seen the final product, so keep your fingers crossed. Hopefully, I made it.”
Dunn said he has speaking lines in the movie and that he spent two days in Louisiana shooting his scene. Like any budding actor, Dunn had his demands. The White Sox slugger wanted to make sure the bar he was working was fully stocked with a wide array of his favorite booze.
Photo via Facebook/Chicago White Sox from B/R | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/3887 | Page last updated at 02:35 GMT, Wednesday, 14 October 2009 03:35 UK
Killings given Bollywood flavour
The film has brought a taste of Bollywood to the English suburbs
By Emily Buchanan and Bhasker Solanki
Bollywood films are renowned for their fantastical romantic plots mixed with vibrant song and dance routines.Rarely do they look into controversial issues. Now, however, a British take on a Bollywood production is doing just that by tackling the practice of so-called honour killings in Britain. Production has already started in locations in and around the Berkshire town of Slough and brings together a multi-cultural cast and crew from India, Pakistan and Britain. Such killings involve the victims - usually young women - being murdered by relatives who judge them to have brought dishonour on the family, often because of their social contact with men. They have been perpetrated for centuries in the Middle East and South Asia but, as communities have migrated, the practice has spread to Europe, including the UK.
There can never be honour in such killing
Avtar Bhogal, director
The problem is particularly serious across Punjab state, on both sides of the border between India and Pakistan. Police estimate up to 12 people are murdered each year in the name of honour in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with a further 500 forced into marriage or attacked. There is a lack of data as the police record killings as murder rather than having a special classification. It is estimated that over 200 girls are taken out of Britain each year to be forcibly married. There is no way of finding out if some of these girls are killed abroad for refusing to do what the family wants - or if the family finds out they have already found a partner. On the set of Honour Killings, Indian director Avtar Bhogal says he has long wanted to make a film on the subject and was compelled to do so after discovering the problem existed in Britain. "There can never be honour in such killing," he said. His film spans three generations. Firstly, there is the story of an affluent Sikh businessman - played by the veteran of Hindi cinema Prem Chopra - who is jailed for murdering his daughter after she fell in love with a Muslim man. When his grandson then also begins a secret relationship with a Muslim woman, it leaves her father racked by indecision, as he weighs up whether he too must kill to protect his family's honour. Fizzing routinesThe tension builds with the prospect of history repeating itself as romance again crosses the religious divide. In spite of the heavy subject matter, no Bollywood-style film could go without fizzing song and dance routines to draw in the crowds. Gulshan Grover, who has performed in hundreds of films both in Bollywood and Hollywood, plays the jailed businessman's son. He feels it is important to highlight social issues in a way that still attracts the public. "No one wants a film with a message, whereas if the viewership is larger and more people are watching something and a message is slid into it then it's far more effective," says Mr Grover. The young lead actor is British born Sandeep Singh. He had to travel to Mumbai for specialist training in Bollywood techniques. Sandeep Singh travelled to India to train in Bollywood techniques
"A Bollywood hero always has to have all the elements... to sing, dance, move around and fight. He has to be very expressive and show emotions, which makes the role challenging." The Muslim woman he wants to marry is played by popular Pakistani actress Zara Sheikh, while her father is played by another veteran, the Pakistani actor Jawed Sheikh. Choreographer Longi Fernandes, riding high after the success of his work in Slumdog Millionaire, has been putting the cast through their paces in the grounds of a large house near Slough. Meanwhile, the part of an Englishman who is a close friend of the businessman's family is played by Tom Alter. The son of American missionaries, Mr Alter has lived in India all his life and speaks fluent Hindi and Urdu. He thinks Britain's multi-cultural society provides the best context for the plot. "Usually in our Hindi films we go to some other location and say it's India. This is a story of England, so it's the only place where we can shoot it." The cast are filming the emotional morality tale in Punjabi and Hindi, as well as English, and it is to be dubbed into several other languages for the international audience. Its Punjabi version is to be called Rabba Maph Kare (God forgive us). The film will be released next spring and there are plans for premieres in Mumbai, Lahore and London.
British Asians 'outsourcing murder'
28 Sep 09 | South Asia
Bollywood stars hit the high road
17 Apr 09 | Highlands and Islands
Bollywood to make debut at Proms
08 Apr 09 | Arts & Culture
Bollywood deal 'will aid UK film'
Bollywood's first family hits UK
Earth-sized planet orbits neighbouring star | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/4001 | feb 21, 2013 –
Artist Profile: Lance Wakeling
Save Share Twitter Facebook By Karen Archey
A Tour of the AC-1 Transatlantic Submarine Cable (2011)
Your videos seem to borrow aspects from narrative filmmaking, the documentary format, amateur travelogues, and even at times experimental cinema. What genre(s) of filmmaking do you see yourself following or challenging?
Well, I don’t really see my videos as being film. One time I tweeted that as an artist I would never let my video work get transferred to film because too much would be lost. It was a joke, but I’m also serious. I mean, it’s hard not to be suspicious of a discipline that has a genre called “experimental.”
From the perspective of how the work is displayed, I feel my videos are not for the cinema. The movie theater flattens space and immobilizes the viewer. I like that people have to stand in a gallery, that they enter and leave the video at random times.
This is quite hypothetical, however, because in practice, most of my work is viewed online, where the artist has even less control.
In your videos you pull images and clips from a variety of sources including Google Street View, web-based image searches, and your own self-shot footage. Your videos range from twenty to thirty minutes in length. How do you structure this footage with the essays that make up your screenplay? How long does it take you to finish a video?
For Christmas my sister gave me an image from a brain scan she took of a human hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for short- and long-term memory and spatial navigation. The hippocampus looks like a sea horse and its etymology reflects this. The functions of the hippocampus intrigue me.
During the making of A Tour of the AC-1 Transatlantic Submarine Cable I researched each location extensively. In many of the places, I felt I was not making new pictures, but reproducing ones that already existed. At the other end of the process, in the editing room, I could sometimes not differentiate between “original” and poached images. The internet has changed our relationships to space and memory. Thanks to the Borgesian online mapping projects, we can have memories of places we have never been. This is not new in itself, just more prevalent.
Each piece takes about a year. After that I forget everything.
From 2008-2010 you organized Private Circulation, a monthly PDF bulletin distributed via e-mail. Could you describe this project and how it relates to your artistic practice?
Private Circulation gave me a chance to work with a handful of great artists and editors. My current work would simply not be possible without it.
Similarly, you’ve long maintained a practice creating static objects, which may seem distinct from your videos that are heavily steeped in text. Are your objects equally influenced by topical research? How do your sculptural and documentary-based practices interrelate?
In 2010, I moved to Sunset Park and rented a studio on 36th Street. A couple blocks south at Bush Terminal there was an old apple orchard growing in toxic soil. I spent nine months sanding and painting store-bought apples as they rotted beneath the layers of One-Shot sign painter’s enamel, forming complex glossy folds.
The circumstances that lead up to a work are meaningful. I’ve found that sculpture is largely opaque to its circumstances of production. For instance, I have to tell you about the toxic orchard. If you want a periphery to be part of the work, it must come from outside (viz., a conversation, press release, or wall text). I want to make self-sufficient works—ones that do not require external descriptions. With video I feel I can branch out and include aural and visual images, even sculptures and architectural spaces. I think these recent pieces are sculpture-based documentaries.
Your new video, Field Visits for Bradley Manning, is the third in a series of videos exploring the physicality of the internet, following Views of a Former Verizon Building (2013) and A Tour of the AC-1 Transatlantic Submarine Cable (2011). Could you describe this new project, and how it builds upon your research in the preceding videos in this series? How many videos will complete this series?
I think this will be the last in the series. But one never knows.
Field Visits for Bradley Manning is currently a Kickstarter project and 1.16gb of research. The plan is to visit Kuwait, Virginia, Kansas, and Maryland and to make a travelogue based on the areas surrounding Manning’s geo-detention sites.
Building out from the associations developed in the previous videos, I’m focusing on the history of fingerprinting, concepts of citizenship, several archeological sites at the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the buffalo soldier, and the National Cryptographic Museum, among other things. I am hoping to also focus on pearl divers, as this was the foundation of Kuwait’s economy before oil. I was pleasantly surprised when I realized that all three videos have pearls in them.
The piece will culminate in a video and an e-book for Klaus Gallery.
How long have you been working creatively with technology? How did you start?
I bought my first computer in 2004. It was a white MacBook. The money came from an inheritance from my grandfather, a craftsman, who used to make some of his own tools.
Describe your experience with the tools you use. How did you start using them? Where did you go to school? What did you study?
I went to Cornish, a small art school on the West Coast where painters studied Abstract Expressionism. I remember on the first day, we were put into groups and asked questions such as, “Do you feel women are treated equally to men?” I was the only male in the group and the only one who believed men and women were not treated equally. This shocks me still.
What traditional media do you use, if any? Do you think your work with traditional media relates to your work with technology?
I think this is a false distinction. Rather, you have to ask if the medium fits the idea.
Are you involved in other creative or social activities (i.e. music, writing, activism, community organizing)?
No, my artistic practice is my main focus.
What do you do for a living or what occupations have you held previously? Do you think this work relates to your art practice in a significant way?
Manual labor and repetition held a significant place in my earlier works, such as Exodus (2004), a sculpture where I cast over 100,000 letters and punctuation marks in plaster. I often think of New York City as a labor camp, and am inspired by the oppressive conditions here. But normal day jobs have ceased to interest me. La perruque!
Who are your key artistic influences?
Lately: Harun Farocki, Agnes Varda, Chris Marker, W.G. Sebald, William Burroughs, William Carlos Williams, Georges Perec, Aby Warburg, Robert Smithson, Marcel Proust, Thomas Pynchon, Paul Virilio, Bertolt Brecht, Anna Lundh, Keren Cytter, Liz Marker, Trinh Minh-ha, among others.
Have you collaborated with anyone in the art community on a project? With whom, and on what?
Not really. Although I enjoy helping other people with their projects. My projects also require help from other people.
Do you actively study art history?
No. But I like the idea of actively studying art history.
Do you read art criticism, philosophy, or critical theory? If so, which authors inspire you?
Again, I like the idea of it. I read criticism and theory maybe once a month. But I can’t say that it inspires me.
Are there any issues around the production of, or the display/exhibition of new media art that you are concerned about?
I prefer not to. | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/4314 | More Grizzly Man
Keith Phipps
Rarely has the never-ending struggle between humanity and nature looked so much like a one-sided battle of wits as it does in Werner Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man, the story of self-styled naturalist Timothy Treadwell. Treadwell's passion for nature led him to spend long summers camping with bear packs in Alaska. It took 13 years for him to discover that the bears could, and would, eat him. Treadwell left behind friends and family, many of whom express grief (though not surprise) over his death. Treadwell also left behind more than 100 hours of movie footage taken over the course of his last five "expeditions." Herzog mostly lets Treadwell tell his own story, and while he probably couldn't have predicted the context in which he'd be playing that role, he's well-prepared for it. Delivering long monologues to the camera, Treadwell talks about his role as a "kind warrior" determined to "study and protect" his animal friends. On more than one occasion, he appears to suffer an on-camera nervous breakdown, and when he can think of nothing else to do, he trails after bears and foxes and tells them he loves them, as if repeating the sentiment enough times will drill it into their heads.
For much of the film, Treadwell could pass for a cracked kids' TV host, a persona that contributes to Grizzly Man's overall tone of real-life black comedy. Herzog goes deeper than gallows humor, however. In Treadwell, he's found a classic obsessive straight out of Aguirre: The Wrath Of God or Fitzcarraldo, and he clearly respects and understands his subject's commitment to filmmaking. But while Herzog occasionally protects his subject, he also honors his commitment to study him. Digging into Treadwell's past, Herzog reveals him as a failed actor with a past history of mental instability and substance abuse. Herzog doesn't seem as disturbed by these facts as he is by Treadwell's unshakable faith in his own sentimentalized view of nature. In spite of his years in the wild, he's driven to tears by his inability to understand, for instance, why a mean old wolf would kill a cute baby fox. That take on the world is far removed from Herzog's: Looking at footage of the bear that probably killed Treadwell, Herzog confesses that he sees no personality, only a "half-bored interest in food." But Herzog is still the only person who could have made Grizzly Man. His admiration for Treadwell has its limits, but he understands, better than most directors, what it means to follow dreams into the belly of the beast. Share
Pretty Persuasion | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/4408 | Seriously Quotes - Page 5
I take work very seriously and telling the truth in my job and professionalism.
'The Simpsons' appearances were great fun. But I don't take them too seriously. I think 'The Simpsons' have treated my disability responsibly.
I think a lot of people like hidden-camera shows where they think they're spying on somebody who doesn't know they're looking at them. And nobody takes it seriously - you either enjoy it and get a laugh out of the reactions or not.
It's a mystery. That's the first thing that interests me about the idea of God. If there is one, it's mysterious and powerful and awesome to even consider the concept, and you have to take it seriously.
It's something that I think I'm going to have to fight against for most of my career, for people to take me seriously as an actor as opposed to a good-looking guy. It's not what I want to be known as.
To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual qualities; that is not to be taken seriously in politics.
We are really living the American dream, to be a successful brand in the States and in Europe and to steep ourselves in our heritage. But we do it with a sense of humor. We don't take ourselves too seriously in fashion.
For anyone who feels they are overwhelmed by their job, or maybe they take their job too seriously or are working too hard, I say go to a safari, particularly the Okavango Delta, and just be humbled.
Humbled,
I take parenting incredibly seriously. I want to be there for my kids and help them navigate the world, and develop skills, emotional intelligence, to enjoy life, and I'm lucky to be able to do that and have two healthy, normal boys.
The United States was seriously defeated in Iraq by Iraqi nationalism - mostly by nonviolent resistance. The United States could kill the insurgents, but they couldn't deal with half a million people demonstrating in the streets.
Streets,
Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
Dance music is my love, is my passion, is my life. I live for my fans and take my art very seriously.
The rules are simple. Take your work, but never yourself, seriously. Pour in the love and whatever skill you have, and it will come out.
Even institutions of State, such as the judiciary, were seriously weakened, to the extent that the citizenry justifiably feared a breakdown in law and order. The business community was hit by a slump in sales and confidence, leading to reduced earnings and loss of jobs.
Kamisese Mara
I look young. I heard this said so often that it became irritating. I once worked as a babysitter for a woman who, the first time we met, said she didn't want somebody in high school. I was 22. Later, I realised that in certain places being female and looking 'young' meant it was more difficult to be taken seriously, so I turned to make-up.
In normal life people say, 'You're so different than on stage!' Offstage I'm down to earth, simple and a very goofy girl... I like to make goofy faces, be dorky and not take things too seriously. I just love to laugh.
If you want to be taken seriously, always check your fly.
Fly,
I especially don't want men coming up to me and asking if sexism still exists. It's like, I'm seriously gonna barf a McDonald's salad on the next person to do that.
McDonald,
I will say to all the fellas out there that, seriously, I am a setup. I'm just like rose petals. I'm like incense. I'm a background thing for you when you do your thing with your lady. I'm a friend, only assisting you in your lurve machinations. So have no fear of me, people.
Rose,
When you start talking about abortion and gay rights, people take that seriously and they're passionate about it - on both sides.
There is only one thing I want. I would like to be seriously ill, and to hear nothing more about him for at least a week. Why doesn't something happen to me? Why do I have to go through all this? If only I had never set eyes on him!
Seriously, I grew up a fan of Hulk Hogan, and I think I bring some of his best values to the ring... the values of a superhero. Always do your best. Never give up... I think kids want to believe in that, and they should believe in that.
A good lesson in keeping your perspective is: Take your job seriously but don't take yourself seriously.
Thomas P. O'Neill
Lesson,
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
Drop the idea that you are Atlas carrying the world on your shoulders. The world would go on even without you. Don't take yourself so seriously.
Shoulders,
My advice to people today is as follows: if you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out. | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/4414 | Les Misérables Earns Four BAFTA Awards Including a Win for Anne Hathaway
By Lindsay Champion
February 11, 2013 - 10:55AM
Anne Hathaway in 'Les Miserables'
'Les Misérables' star Anne Hathaway wins big at the BAFTA Awards.
The Les Misérables film didn’t exactly sweep the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards on Feburary 10, but it did pick up a few trophies, including a Best Supporting Actress win for Anne Hathaway. The movie musical, directed by Tom Hooper, also took home awards for Best Make-Up and Hair, Best Production Design and Best Sound.
Argo took the top prize for Best Film, and Amour star Emmanuelle Riva earned the trophy for Best Actress, beating out Zero Dark Thirty’s Jessica Chastain. Chastain ended her run in The Heiress on Broadway a day early to attend the awards. The Best Actor trophy went to Lincoln's Daniel Day Lewis, leaving Les Miz star Hugh Jackman going home empty-handed. In addition to Les Miz, Hathaway’s film and TV credits include Rachel Getting Married, The Dark Knight Rises, The Devil Wears Prada, Becoming Jane, Brokeback Mountain and The Princess Diaries.
Click below to watch Hathaway’s heartbreaking rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” in the Les Miz film trailer!
| Les Miserables Movie Musical
| Jessica Chastain
| Hugh Jackman | 影视 |
2016-36/0813/en_head.json.gz/4415 | The Fantasticks - Off-Broadway
The world's longest-running musical returns to New York!
Broadway Alum Max Crumm Will Join the Cast of Off-Broadway's The Fantasticks
Max Crumm
Max Crumm will begin performances on July 8.
Broadway alum Max Crumm will join the cast of The Fantasticks in the lead role of The Boy (Matt). He will begin performances in the classic off-Broadway musical beginning July 8 at the Snapple Theater Center. He will take over from Jim Schubin.
Crumm made his Broadway debut in the most recent revival of Grease, after winning the role on the TV show You’re the One That I Want!. Since then, he has been seen off-Broadway in Disaster! and F#%king Up Everything. He also appeared in the film Easy A.
Directed by Tom Jones, The Fantasticks has a book and lyrics by Jones and music by Harvey Schmidt. A modern twist on Romeo and Juliet, the musical tells the story of a boy and girl who fall in love and then quickly grow apart when they realize they want to experience the world. The Fantasticks features memorable songs “Try to Remember,” “Much More,” “They Were You” and “Soon It’s Gonna Rain.”
The current cast of The Fantasticks also features Jeremiah James as El Gallo (The Narrator), Samantha Bruce as Luisa (The Girl), Dan Sharkey as Hucklebee (The Boy’s Father), Kevin Free as Bellomy (The Girl’s Father), MacIntyre Dixon as Henry (The Old Actor), Michael Nostrand as Mortimer (The Man Who Dies) and Pierce Cravens as The Mute, as well as Scott Willis, Rita Markova and Tom Flagg.
| The Fantasticks Email Corrections to this article | Print | Send to a Friend | 影视 |
Industry models play a crucial role in driving enterprise intelligence transformation and innovative development. High-quality industry data is key to improving the performance of large models and realizing industry applications. However, datasets currently used for industry model training generally suffer from issues such as insufficient data volume, low quality, and lack of domain expertise.
To address these problems, we constructed and applied 22 industry data processing operators to clean and filter 3.4TB of high-quality multi-industry classified Chinese and English language pre-training datasets from over 100TB of open-source datasets including WuDaoCorpora, BAAI-CCI, redpajama, and SkyPile-150B. The filtered data consists of 1TB of Chinese data and 2.4TB of English data. To facilitate user utilization, we annotated the Chinese data with 12 types of labels including alphanumeric ratio, average line length, language confidence score, maximum line length, and perplexity.
Furthermore, to validate the dataset's performance, we conducted continued pre-training, SFT, and DPO training on a medical industry demonstration model. The results showed a 20% improvement in objective performance and a subjective win rate of 82%.
Industry categories: 18 categories including medical, education, literature, finance, travel, law, sports, automotive, news, etc. Rule-based filtering: Traditional Chinese conversion, email removal, IP address removal, link removal, Unicode repair, etc. Chinese data labels: Alphanumeric ratio, average line length, language confidence score, maximum line length, perplexity, toxicity character ratio, etc. Model-based filtering: Industry classification language model with 80% accuracy Data deduplication: MinHash document-level deduplication Data size: 1TB Chinese, 2.4TB English
Industry classification data size:
Industry Category | Data Size (GB) | Industry Category | Data Size (GB) |
---|---|---|---|
Programming | 4.1 | Politics | 326.4 |
Law | 274.6 | Mathematics | 5.9 |
Education | 458.1 | Sports | 442 |
Finance | 197.8 | Literature | 179.3 |
Computer Science | 46.9 | News | 564.1 |
Technology | 333.6 | Film & TV | 162.1 |
Travel | 82.5 | Medicine | 189.4 |
Agriculture | 41.6 | Automotive | 40.8 |
Emotion | 31.7 | Artificial Intelligence | 5.6 |
Total (GB) | 3386.5 |
For the convenience of users to download and use, we have split the large dataset into sub-datasets for 18 industries. The current one is the sub-dataset for the film industry.
Data processing workflow:
- Downloads last month
- 1,882