Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone were once asked to portray men who morphed into animals in a movie.
The two action heroes teamed up for The Expendables franchise and can both be seen in new film Escape Plan. Although they enjoy working with each other, they are astounded by some of the woeful scripts they have been offered over the years.
“The interesting thing really, is that for decades, they’ve tried to put us together in a movie and the scripts were horrible,” Arnold, 66, laughed to Access Hollywood.
“It was like dreadful. We could not have accepted any of that. One movie wanted us to be undercover agents in drag, and another movie wanted us to change from human beings to animals. So he was the dog and I was the cat and we were fighting each other. It was some comedy. It was all this ludicrous stuff.”
After reading such questionable scripts, the guys were thrilled to be offered Escape Plan. Sylvester, 67, portrays a man who is an expert at escaping from prisons, but gets framed and ends up behind bars. While incarcerated he meets Arnold’s character and the two engage in a battle.
“It was just a wild, wild fight scene, really well-choreographed the whole thing, but also [there were] some things that went a little bit out of control, which always is good because the camera picks up all those things, so it was really terrific working with him on this film,” Arnold gushed.
The two men were then quizzed on who would win a real-life fight. Sylvester joked fans might not have to wait too long to find out.
“We’re going to do a movie called Grumpy Old Hags, and we’re gonna battle it out,” he joked.
Arnold interjected: “He would be on top of me punching me, I‘d say, ‘Get off me, let’s go get a schnitzel.'”
Rebel Wilson confused her American agents with her sarcasm.
The Australian actress is a comedy favourite, having had hilarious roles in films such as Bridesmaids and Pitch Perfect.
When Rebel moved to the US from Down Under, she had to reign in her sarcastic sense of humour.
“When I first came to America I learnt that lesson the hard way,” she responded to Australian radio hosts Kyle and Jackie O when discussing whether Americans understand sarcasm.
“I was with my agents and they said, ‘What kind of roles do you want to play?’ And just very drily I said, ‘Mermaids and ninjas.’ They were getting on the phone to see if there were any mermaid movies available!”
In Pitch Perfect, 27-year-old Rebel introduced the infamous ‘mermaid dance’.
The actress has since had an opportunity to dress as the mythical creature – but it didn’t quite go to plan.
“I did the mermaid in one photo shoot and they filmed it in this massive mansion in Bel Air and they filled the pool with 20 wheelbarrows of dry ice, which I think is toxic!” she laughed.
“The whole pool was bubbling up and they said, ‘OK Rebel, fall back into the water and we’ll get these amazing shots.’ So I fell back and it was freezing and I couldn’t swim because my legs were in the mermaid tail, so my publicist took off his shirt and rescued me.”
Recent rumours suggested Rebel could become the face of a weight loss brand.
The star denied the gossip and isn’t sure she would ever put her name to a product.
“I have had big companies offer me lots of money for one day to film a commercial,” she revealed.
“I’ve been so busy; when I’m not filming the show, I’m filming movies. I’m doing alright now, I don’t know if I need to sell out.”
Danny Boyle is to make a TV show about the Telemark operations of the Second World War
14 October 2013
Danny Boyle is to make a US TV show about the World War II mission to stop Hitler producing a nuclear bomb.
The Oscar-winning director announced his plans to create a 10-part series produced by the US cable channel FX, based on the efforts by allied forces to prevent Hitler making a nuclear bomb during the Second World War.
Danny told Variety: “This is one of the world’s greatest stories and we want to tell it on an epic scale.”
The drama will follow the Norwegian saboteurs who, with the support of Churchill’s covert Special Operations Executive (SOE), gained access to a heavy water production plant at Vemork, where the Nazis were working to create nuclear weapons. The efforts, combined with a sustained Allied bombing campaign, led to the destruction of the plant in 1943.
Pearl Harbour director Michael Bay recently announced plans to make a film about the events, and the story has previously been told in The Heroes of Telemark, a 1965 movie directed by Anthony Mann and starring Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris.
Benedict Cumberbatch is Hollywood’s most ubiquitous Brit. Even he can’t remember all the new movies he has coming out, he tells James Mottram.
Benedict Cumberbatch
13 October 2013
Even the brightest stars can have their off days. Take Benedict Cumberbatch and his time on the set of the recent Star Trek Into Darkness, playing the villainous Khan. One scene took place at California’s National Ignition Facility, a real-life laboratory practising nuclear fusion. His co-star Simon Pegg told him it was a dangerous location and that he would need protection from special “neutron cream”.
“I was convinced that I had to put dots of this cream on my face,” says Cumberbatch, smiling. With others in on the prank, every morning the cast would all “shake off” the potentially poisonous neutrons. “There was also a disclaimer I had to sign, basically saying, ‘I’m aware of the physical dangers of working in this environment’. I didn’t even read it; I just put it against the wall and signed it … God knows what else I’ve signed in my life that I might have got into trouble for.”
It’s a delicious image: the quicksilver Cumberbatch covered in cream, as he readies himself for his close-up. This, after all, is an actor who has so far traded on playing intellectually robust characters: Sherlock Holmes (in the Golden Globe and Bafta-nominated hit re-invention of the character), physicist Stephen Hawking (in TV movie Hawking), abolitionist Prime Minister William Pitt (in Amazing Grace) and, in his current job, The Imitation Game, Second World War Enigma code-cracker Alan Turing.
When I meet Cumberbatch, in a basement room of a Covent Garden hotel, he arrives with a canvas bag full of books, like a student heading to lectures. Inside was a treasure trove of required reading for his roles – notably an account of The First World War, The Great War, there to inspire further thinking about Christopher Tietjens, in the BBC’s Ford Madox Ford adaptation Parade’s End. Also in the bag were Cultivation and Culture and We Lived in a Little Cabin in the Yard, two very different books on slavery.
Both were preparation for playing a “very paternal slave owner” in Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years a Slave, one of four major movies Cumberbatch has on the way in the next three months. Even he can’t keep count. He has to be reminded that the second part of Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit will be in cinemas in December, 10 days before the arrival of the all-star familial drama August: Osage County with Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts.
“I had a really busy year last year, and the beginning of this year, and all of them are coming home to roost in the same year, which is quite extraordinary,” he says.
Such is the variety of his work to date, there’s something restless about his mind. At one point, he stops to listen to an almost inaudible noise in the room. “Is that getting louder or is it just me? It’s a bulb that’s going to blow.” Then he sees me scribble a note. Peering towards my notebook, he asks “What did you write down?” I have to confess that I’ve managed the less-than-stellar description “white T-shirt” – to go with the baggy shorts and flip-flops he’s currently sporting. “White T-shirt! Oh, right! Is that the impression I’ve made so far? It’s like your readers are in the room with you.”
He is, of course, joking, but that’s not to say he can’t be dismissive when he wants to be. Take the sex-symbol status that’s grown around him, with many entranced by his high-cut cheekbones, brown curls and watchful blue eyes. This week a poll for the movie magazine Empire voted him the World’s Sexiest Film Star, ahead of Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, a result he declared “hysterically funny” (“I’ve punched well above my weight this year …”). How does he feel about being lusted after? “Oh, read the press cuttings. Various responses to that one.” Look in those cuttings and you can find what he thinks about his female fanbase – the so-called Cumberb***hes. “I was a little disturbed,” he said. “I think they set feminism back a few years.”
He is currently single, after ending a relationship with the fashion designer Anna Jones in 2012. A year before that, he and actress Olivia Poulet (The Thick of It) called time on their 12-year relationship, one that began when they both studied drama at Manchester University. So all this fuss must be a little discombobulating; particularly given he seems rather ill at ease with his own looks. “I think I’ve got a long face,” he says. “I look a bit weird.”
This is true of his next, and arguably most intriguing big-screen outing – playing the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Bill Condon‘s The Fifth Estate. “I’m thrilled with it,” he admits, quite unreservedly. “I’d seen it in the States and I was terrified. I cannot watch myself for the first time, especially playing someone who is so removed from me – because of everything, the appearance, the accent. Everything about him is different.”
Crowned with white hair and giving a decent rendition of Assange‘s soft Australian drawl, the 37-year-old Cumberbatch is certainly far removed from his comfort zone (Variety praised him for capturing “Assange’s slightly other-worldly air as well as numerous creepier qualities”). And while he nails the messiah complex of a man who begins to believe his own press, Cumberbatch is swift to point out the film is not a character assassination of Assange.
“I think Bill has made a beautiful film; it’s incredibly balanced. It’s entertaining as well as intriguing. And what it should do is ignite a debate – that’s exactly what should happen. And hopefully it will do that.” Indeed, whatever the flaws of the film, it’s certainly timely, given the recent 35-year prison sentence handed out to Bradley Manning, the US soldier who mailed 250,000 diplomatic US cables to WikiLeaks (an act that drives the second half of The Fifth Estate).
The film skirts over the issues that have led Assange to currently be holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London – after he fled there to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces allegations of sex offences against two women. Yet even amid his self-inflicted exile, Assange secured an early draft of the script, criticising it when he gave an address via video-link to the Oxford Union, calling it “a mass propaganda against WikiLeaks, the organisation and the character of my staff and our activities”.
He added that it “fans the flames to start a war with Iran“, a comment made in reaction to the original opening scene – which was set in a military complex in Tehran, with a close-up on a file detailing plans for making a nuclear bomb. That scene no longer exists in the finished film, doubtless excised after Assange’s criticism. He and Cumberbatch also exchanged emails, briefly, after he pleaded with the actor to withdraw from the project. Cumberbatch wrote back, telling Assange that it wouldn’t be a negative portrayal.
Talk to Cumberbatch’s fellow cast members and it sounds as if the actor did soften the script’s more hard-line approach. “I think he’s turned the film around,” says David Thewlis, who plays Nick Davies, one of the journalists central to the publication of Manning’s leaked cables. “I think he became more sympathetic towards Julian as the film went on, as opposed to the script [which] changed.” For Cumberbatch, he simply wanted to portray a three-dimensional character “and not get into a slagging match about whether Assange was good or bad”.
While The Fifth Estate drew mixed responses at its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival last month, there was more love for his other two films there. August: Osage County is an adaptation of Tracy Letts‘s Broadway hit about a dysfunctional Oklahoma family. As part of the sprawling Weston clan with Sam Shepard, Streep and Roberts, Cumberbatch makes an impression as the clumsy, unemployed ‘Little’ Charles.
It was his third film premiere at Toronto, 12 Years a Slave, that really generated rave reviews. Directed by Steve McQueen, and co-starring Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt, Cumberbatch calls it an “extraordinary” story. “It’s all based on the truth of this guy called Solomon Northup, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor. It’s his film, and there’s several of us principals supporting him through this terrible journey he goes on, living as a free man, being drugged and waking up in bondage and being taken down to the plantations in Virginia,” he explains.
With a third season of Sherlock due at Christmas, he will also be seen in The Hobbit – hopefully in full this time, after we glimpsed just his digitally enhanced eye at the end of the first instalment of Jackson’s three-part Tolkien adaptation. “You’ll get the rest of me in the second (part),” he smiles. For the uninitiated, he plays Smaug, the fearsome dragon that Bilbo Baggins (played by Cumberbatch’s Sherlock co-star, Martin Freeman) is journeying to confront.
Using the same motion-capture procedure that Andy Serkis made famous when he played Gollum – sensors cover the body, capturing performance – it meant Cumberbatch did all of his work in LA, away from the New Zealand set. It wasn’t easy to get his head around. “A serpent with cold blood and a backbone – who is twice the size of the Empire State Building, breathes fire, is 400 years old and lives on a pile of gold in the middle of a mountain, is a little bit difficult to bring any reality to,” he says.
Not that such a thing is likely to faze someone born into the profession. Raised in Chelsea, his parents were both actors with long careers in film and television. His father is Timothy Carlton and his mother Wanda Ventham (they appeared together in the 1973 BBC series, The Lotus Eaters). His family wasn’t “particularly moneyed” and Cumberbatch believes that has rubbed off.
“I don’t live beyond my means. I enjoy luxury and I enjoy the privilege of it, when I can afford it, and I’m in the situation where it’s been given to me, but I’m very conscious of what is wasteful.”
While he did attend Harrow, it was via an arts scholarship. There he began reading plays and acting on stage (something he has continued with great success, from his Olivier-nominated role in Hedda Gabler to Danny Boyle‘s Frankenstein, where he and Jonny Lee Miller alternated parts every night, to a proposed West End outing as Hamlet next year). At the time, his parents wanted him to be a barrister, something safe and “grown-up”, but relented when they realised how much potential he had.
They weren’t wrong, with Cumberbatch swiftly graduating from television bit-parts (Silent Witness, Nathan Barley) to film. He made an impression as the University Challenge team leader in Starter For 10, and small roles in Joe Wright’s Atonement and the Charles Darwin tale Creation followed. But it wasn’t until 2011 that he really exploded. “I had a perfect storm in that year,” he says, as the first season of Sherlock and the Frankenstein production combined with noticeable parts in Steven Spielberg‘s War Horse and the celebrated adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
He has just signed to play 1920s Amazon explorer Percy Fawcett – a role once mooted for Brad Pitt. There’s chatter too that he’ll reunite with Star Trek director JJ Abrams, for the new Star Wars movie. The need for more neutron cream aside, is he worried this hot streak might fizzle? He says not. “I’ve always had an eye on longevity; I’ve got loads more goals to achieve. It’s not like I’ve completely conquered the whole thing. That’s a lifetime’s objective, not an overnight thing.”
The Fifth Estate is in cinemas now. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and August: Osage County are released in December. 12 Years a Slave opens in January
The Sherlock star admitted the cautionary email he received from the exiled WikiLeaks founder, which he portrays in Bill Condon‘s movie, made him question his involvement, before “galvanising” him into realising why he signed up.
“To have the man you are about to portray ask you intelligently and politely not to do it gave me real cause for concern. However, it galvanised me into addressing why I was doing this movie,” the British actor wrote during a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) session.
Julian snubbed Benedict’s request for a meeting, and warned him that he would be “used as a hired gun” in his email.
The 37-year-old Star Trek Into Darkness actor continued: “He accuses me of being a ‘hired gun’ as if I am an easily bought cypher for right wing propaganda. Not only do I NOT operate in a moral vacuum but this was not a pay day for me at all.
“I’ve worked far less hard for more financial reward. This project was important to me because of the integrity I wanted to bring to provocative, difficult but ultimately timely and a truly important figure of our modern times.”
Benedict added: “There is only personal truth in my opinion, and the film should provoke debate and not consensus. It should be enjoyable and ultimately empowering to realise that Julian has spearheaded a movement that is the foundation stone of The Fifth Estate, people journalism and what that is capable of, including finding out the ‘truth’ for yourself.”
Meanwhile, Julian told the Hollywood Foreign Press Association that the Fifth Estate is “destined to be a box-office failure”, because audiences prefer “combative underdog” stories.
Justin Long‘s friends have apparently expressed concerns about his relationship.
The Lovelace star and the 35-year-old actor are thought to have started dating in August.
However, reports say Justin’s pals are worried about Amanda’s relationship history, which includes romances with stars such as Dominic Cooper, Ryan Phillippe and Josh Hartnett.
“Justin wants to settle down and get married, but his friends don’t think Amanda is the right girl for him,” an insider told US magazine Star.
“He tells his friends that he’s a big boy and they shouldn’t worry about him. But only time will tell.”
The pair are often spotted in public together, walking Amanda’s dogs or grabbing coffee.
While Justin’s nearest and dearest might be questioning their future, the blonde actress seems to have her heart set on keeping their relationship going.
“[He’s] someone separate from my industry life – I’ve known him since he was 16. I picture him as the father of my children all the time. But it is a fantasy right now,” she recently revealed.
However, Amanda is adamant she wants to maintain good relationships with her exes too.
She grew close to former flame Dominic when they appeared in 2008 movie Mamma Mia! together.
“We love each other. He’ll always be in my life regardless of what his girlfriends or future wife think. I’m never going to be with a guy that can’t deal with my friendship with him,” she added.
Justin is also no stranger to high-profile relationships.
He dated Drew Barrymore on and off, but they split up for good in 2010.
Aubrey Plaza is fully supportive of Miley Cyrus and thinks the star’s critics need to “move forward”.
Former Disney star Miley put on a highly sexualised performance at the MTV Video Music Awards in August and has since been captured in several racy photo and video shoots, leaving critics in dismay.
But Aubrey believes people should accept the Wrecking Ball singer’s new persona because she’s such a huge talent.
“I think Miley is awesome and her song is such a good song,” the comedienne gushed to British newspaper The Independent.
“Maybe people just don’t like change – but too bad! People grow up! It’s OK, we must move forward and have fun!”
The 29-year-old Parks and Recreation star also spoke about growing up in the small US state of Delaware.
Aubrey appreciates her quiet upbringing and credits her childhood home with helping her grow as an artist.
“Here are a few facts about Delaware: second smallest state in the country. And it’s tax-free, so people like to come to Delaware to buy booze and cigarettes,” she shared.
“There’s a very witchy vibe to it, too, there are a lot of forests. There’s not much to do there so I think it had an influence on me growing up, because I had to be a creative person and come up with my own ways to entertain myself.”
Aubrey has been involved in multiple movie projects recently.
Last month she and co-star Anna Kendrick wrapped filming on their zombie comedy Life After Beth, due for release in January.
The actors participated in media events in New York on Saturday marking the 20th anniversary of the TV premiere of The X-Files.
Duchovny said “all the principals are on board” for another movie, including Anderson and X-Files creator Chris Carter. He said “it’s really up to Twentieth Century Fox at this point”.
Anderson said if fans want another film they should let their voices be heard.
An ad featuring Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines has been ruled too sexual to be broadcast before 7.30pm
09 October 2013
A television advert featuring singer Robin Thicke performing his controversial single Blurred Lines has been given a screening restriction following 97 complaints about its sexually suggestive scenes.
The ad for Beats Pill speakers showed Thicke and three female models dancing and interacting with the product, including scenes showing the women dressed in see-through nurses‘ uniforms over their hot pants and crop tops and one woman kneeling on her hands and knees with a Beats Pill laid on her back.
The soundtrack featured the song’s refrain: “I know you want it, you’re a good girl, can’t let it get past me, you’re far from plastic, talk about getting blasted, I hate these blurred lines.”
Complainants said the ad was offensive because it was sexist, objectified women and was degrading to women, while others said it was inappropriate to be broadcast at a time when children would be watching because they believed it was overtly sexual.
Beats Electronics International said the ad was not intended to be offensive or to encourage any inappropriate stereotypes, adding that the women were confident, self-assured individuals who were “not subservient to the male character”.
It said the dominant images were of the product being used as dumbbells, a hotdog, binoculars and medicine, which were “strong, playful images that most viewers would not see as having any sexual connotation”.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said: “While we accepted that some viewers might find elements of the ad distasteful, particularly the shots of the women’s bodies with their heads obscured and the shot of the woman on all fours, we considered that those shots were brief, and when taken as a whole, the ad did not show sustained, overtly sexual or provocative behaviour. ”
However, the ASA ruled that the overall tone of the ad was sexual, and concluded that it was not suitable for broadcast before 7.30pm.
Lauryn Hill pleaded guilty to failing to pay taxes on more than 1.8 million US dollars earned from 2005 to 2007
09 October 2013
Grammy-winning singer Lauryn Hill is being allowed to participate in a concert tour before completing her sentence in a tax case, her lawyer has said.
Hill will be permitted to work during the last six weeks of the year before finishing the balance of a three-month home detention, Nathan Hochman said.
Hill pleaded guilty last year to failing to pay taxes on more than 1.8 million US dollars earned from 2005 to 2007. The former member of the Fugees was sentenced in July to three months in prison and three months of home detention as part of a year of court-ordered supervised release.
She lives in South Orange, New Jersey, and was sentenced in federal court in Newark. Her sentence also took into account unpaid state and federal taxes in 2008 and 2009 that brought the total earnings to about 2.3 million dollars.
Hill was released on Friday from a federal facility in Danbury, Connecticut, several days early from her three-month sentence, based on a number of factors including good behaviour, according to Mr Hochman.
Magistrate Madeline Cox Arleo signed an order on October 1 modifying conditions of Hill’s supervised release, court filings showed. She allowed Hill to leave home detention from November 15 to December 31 to tour.
Hill was ordered to resume home detention on January 1 for the remainder of her sentence.
The court filing also said Hill must provide her probation officer “a detailed itinerary, including the dates, cities and hotels where she will be staying” while on tour. It is not clear if Hill will be announcing her own concert dates or joining another artist’s tour.
Hill started singing with the Fugees as a teenager in the 1990s before releasing her multiplatinum-selling 1998 album The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill.
