The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies
The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies |
| Posted: 15 Sep 2011 03:56 AM PDT Brit actress Rosamund Pike takes aim and fires up a classy performance in Johnny English Reborn. WITH her classy, cut-glass vowels and regal elegance, London-born Brit actress Rosamund Pike certainly personifies the classic English rose. Talk about an exquisitely glamorous personality seemingly tailor made for the big screen – and in particular, the spy movie genre. Having scored her first big break in movies as Miranda Frost (the stunning Bond girl in Die Another Day), the 31-year-old former Oxford graduate returns to the clandestine world of spies and secret agents in Johnny English Reborn, the sequel to Rowan Atkinson's 2002 spy-comedy Johnny English, which opens today in cinemas nationwide. Spying, it would appear, has been very good to Rosamund Pike over the years. "Oh yes, spying has really helped my career tremendously," joked Pike, looking even more attractive and radiant in person than on film and blessed with a dry sense of humour, during a recent roundtable interview in Sydney, Australia. "I hoped that I would be recruited in Oxford because you always heard these stories while you're there that they recruit a lot (of spies) but sadly nobody came." Taking on the rather challenging task of being the love interest to MI7's most disaster prone but oddly effective agent in Johnny English Reborn was some experience. Pike plays Kate Sumner, British Military Intelligence Section 7's gorgeous behavioural psychologist who somehow falls for English's heroic, goofy charms. "When he jumps off the building and saves the day and goes after the bad guy with the parachute in the end ... yeah, I love a bit of James Bond in someone. But he's odd and he'd be a difficult man to love I think!" she said with a laugh. To prepare for her role as psychologist, Pike revealed that she read up on the subject and also talked to an expert in the field. "You never have to research but I think it's an added perk of the job as you get to explore another world," she reasoned. "So yeah I read books about body language and went to see a hypnotherapist but I didn't let him put me under. I think as actors, we'd be very susceptible. I think we are very easily suggestible." From Pierce Brosnan to Rowan Atkinson, one has to wonder as to how these two leading men compare. "Well, they are very similar actually," reckoned Pike. "I think they both wear a suit very well and they both drive a car very well, they are both very good in extreme circumstances. No, I couldn't tell the difference really when it came down to it." She pauses for thought before sizing up the man behind Johnny English. "With Rowan, it's always amazing to watch him close up. I've watched him since I was a child and then suddenly to be able to see him close up was quite something. I've always been a Mr Bean fan and found that hilarious. What was it like kissing him? Well it was my first time kissing a man wearing lipstick. Now I insist on it." As Johnny English's psychologist in the film, Pike's character had to discover the real man underneath the expensive suit and inept behaviour. "I think Johnny English a fascinating study because he's someone that can't really hide," she mused. "Everything is shown with him. He's tries to be arrogant and a bit vain but he doesn't really pull it off. He's like an open book for her, a perfect case study, and then she thinks how do you become a man like this? So guilelessand socially inept. Yet also endearing because he's also heroic and brave. "I think Rowan created a really rounded character in this film and I think it's a big step forward from the previous film. I think this is a much more sophisticated take. It's like he kept pace with the direction James Bond is going, darker and grittier," she added. For Pike, the decision to join the cast of Johnny English Reborn was a mission made easier once she had read the script and bought into the concept of the film coming across like a Bond film with jokes. The plot, felt Pike, was on an international scale and was worthy of a proper Bond film – albeit one with plenty of slapstick humour to it. "It's got intrigue, colour, scope and lots of different textures. I think the secret is that you have to play very straight. We had to behave like we were in a very serious Bond film in order to allow him to flourish and be silly." Johnny English Reborn opens in cinemas nationwide today. |
| Posted: 15 Sep 2011 12:35 AM PDT Documentaries and musicians feature prominently at the Toronto Film Festival. ROCK icons U2 descended onto the Toronto International Film Festival's recently for the premiere of new documentary From The Sky Down, admitting to nervousness over letting fans into their private world of making music. The movie, which is the first documentary to open the Toronto film festival in its 36-year history, looks at the creative process of making their 1991 album Achtung Baby, and tensions back then in the band. Singer Bono and guitarist The Edge took to the festival's opening night stage and confessed that even superstars get nervous when entering a new arena – from music to film. "We are very protective of our privacy, particularly the creative process, not just because we are precious, which we are," Bono told a laughing audience, before confiding that the fear was in letting audiences see them struggle to make music. "If you knew what went into the sausage, you wouldn't eat it." The Edge added that it was "shocking" to see a lot of the old film footage from 20 years ago and "to realise how close our band came to disintegrating at that particular moment." The appearance of Bono and The Edge made last week's opening night screening one of the hottest tickets in town at the 11-day festival where other rock documentaries about Pearl Jam and Neil Young are getting top billing. The festival, a widely-watched event often seen as a starting point in the movie industry's annual Oscar race, features a long list of Hollywood royalty, from Brad Pitt and George Clooney to Keira Knightley and Glenn Close. But the opening belonged to a nonfiction film for the first time in festival's history, and organisers noted both the event and U2 originated in 1976. The band soared to rock stardom in the 1980s, and Achtung Baby was seen as a daring reinvention following the huge success of 1987's Joshua Tree and 1988's somewhat less well-received Rattle And Hum. "This film isn't just about the biggest band in the world," director Davis Guggenheim told the audience. "It's really just about four musicians trying to make music." From the Sky Down opens as U2 is about to play the Glastonbury Festival for the first time this year and is looking to rework older songs. As Bono says: "There comes a time when it is dysfunctional not to look into the past." It then looks back at the rise of U2 through early film footage and leads up to the making of Achtung Baby, which was influenced by industrial and electronic music and featured the hits One and Mysterious Ways. "I had goose pimples witnessing how they did it," said Guggenheim, whose 2006 global warming film An Inconvenient Truth won the Academy Award for best feature documentary. "I don't think really it's a film about our band in as much as it's a film about the creative process. If you're interested in that, you're going to be interested in this film I think, but I find it excruciating," Bono said on the red carpet. From the Sky Down is just one of a number of high-profile documentaries at the festival. Others offer audiences a look into personalities like Sarah Palin, as well as a murderer on death row and comic book fanatics. There's also a 15-hour epic that chronicles the history of film. But documentaries will likely be overshadowed by stars such as George Clooney, who is in Toronto for The Ides of March, which he directed and stars in, as well as The Descendants, in which he portrays an indifferent husband and father forced to reexamine his life. Pitt stars in Moneyball, based on the true story of Billy Beane, a professional baseball manager who reinvents his team, while David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method, starring Viggo Mortensen and Keira Knightley, will be tested for audience reaction after runs at other festivals. Eyes will also be watching Glenn Close in Albert Nobbs, a drama the five-time Academy Award nominee co-wrote in which she plays a woman pretending to be a male butler set in 19th century Ireland. – Reuters |
| Posted: 15 Sep 2011 12:35 AM PDT BRAD Pitt has turned to the insular world of baseball economics for his latest movie and yet the Hollywood heavyweight is a relative rookie in terms of obsessing over one of America's great pastimes. The A-list actor was one of the top draws last week at the Toronto International Film Festival for the launch of his new drama, Moneyball. He plays Billy Beane, the real-life general manager of Major League Baseball's Oakland A's, who is famed for reinventing the game by running a competitive team in a cost-effective way. Pitt told Reuters that he learned to appreciate the nuances and complexities of the game while making the movie, helped by several meetings with 49-year-old Beane, but he is not your typical baseball fanatic. "It's shameful how little I know about baseball, but what I know about it, I got – it was a pop fly in the fourth grade – 18 stitches," he said, referring to getting hit by ball when he was just a kid, opening a flesh wound. "I find it really tranquil when it is on (TV) in the background now .... There is a reason why it has become our national pastime. It's a team sport yet at the same time it is an individual battle." The film's creators want movie audiences to see that Moneyball is not just another tale in the vein of The Natural, Major League or other baseball films that have become ubiquitous. They are banking on Pitt, 47, to transform Beane's use of bland statistics and mathematical tables into entertaining movie fare. And for that, they've tailored the story of the Oakland A's into a tale of beating the odds. "We are always looking for undercurrents in films, what is going on underneath it," Pitt said, adding that Moneyball is "much more than a baseball film" and more of "an underdog story. You have a justice story." The film with a budget of US$47mil (RM143mil) was adapted by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Social Network, from the Michael Lewis book Moneyball: The Art Of Winning An Unfair Game. It begins with Beane coming off a highly successful 2001 season where the small market A's lost baseball stars including Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon to big city teams with lots of money such as the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. Beane recruits an unathletic Yale graduate, Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill), and the unlikely duo push a novel approach of using statistics to scout players who will create a competitive team at far less cost. It may seem like inside baseball to some, but Pitt and Hill said the story of Beane and Brand should appeal broadly to moviegoers who aren't necessarily fans of the game. Hill said he showed it to friends "who couldn't care less about baseball and they all adored it .... It is really about values and underdogs and life choices." Pitt believes that, statistics aside, the spontaneity of the game which lures fans to ballparks isn't lost in the film. "These guys apply science to it and yet the magical happens when you least expect it, which was true for their season," he said. "It's a magical game, no question." Early reviews have been generally favourable. The Hollywood Reporter said the movie "looks good perhaps not for a home run but certainly a long double or even an exciting scoot around the bases for a head-first triple." Daily Variety compared it to Sorkin's Social Network, saying "the story isn't as electrifying. The Social Network was about a highly unusual alpha dog; Moneyball is the story of a highly unusual underdog. No one remakes the world here. But someone does remake the grand old American game of baseball." – Reuters |
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