The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies
The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies |
- Director Abrams to helm new Star Wars, fans say force with him
- First Steve Jobs movie gets red carpet premiere
- Actress Miriam Margolyes becomes an Australian
| Director Abrams to helm new Star Wars, fans say force with him Posted: 26 Jan 2013 01:54 AM PST Sci-fi filmmaker J.J. Abrams will direct "Star Wars: Episode VII", Walt Disney Co said after days of speculation, giving hope to many long-suffering fans who were disappointed by the last three installments in the iconic franchise. The announcement was greeted with celebrations on online networks by the films' army of enthusiasts who have already watched Abrams rescue the aging "Star Trek" series with a high-grossing prequel in 2009. Disney said late on Friday Abrams would work under the leadership of producer Kathleen Kennedy, the former president of Lucasfilm, and the script would be penned by Oscar-winning writer Michael Arndt. "J.J. is the perfect director to helm this. Beyond having such great instincts as a filmmaker, he has an intuitive understanding of this franchise," Kennedy said in a statement on starwars.com. Fans were equally enthusiastic. "JJ Abrams to the rescue!!! Yes!! #starwarsVII," wrote Jonny Radtke on Twitter. "Great news about JJ Abrams directing Star Wars. Might just rescue the brand...," added Alastair Brookshaw. Rumours that Abrams, one of Hollywood's most successful directors and producers, would take stewardship of the films filled industry publications and online forums over the past week. The 46-year-old made his name with TV shows "Alias" and "Lost" and earned his stripes as a director of effects-laden blockbusters with "Super 8", "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" and another widely-expected Star Trek film "Star Trek Into Darkness", due out later this year. The Star Wars franchise, which was created by George Lucas' Lucasfilms Ltd, has grossed more than $4.4 billion at the global box office since the first film was released in 1977, making it the third most successful movie property after the "Harry Potter" and "James Bond" series. Star Wars characters such as Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker and the anti-hero Darth Vader have become a staple part of pop culture, along with the catch phrase "May the force be with you". The Star Wars films were acquired by Disney after they bought Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion in October 2012. They announced then that three new installments would be made, starting in 2015. Lucas, 68, gave Abrams his blessing on Starwars.com, saying the director was "an ideal choice to direct the new Star Wars film and the legacy couldn't be in better hands". Abrams said his new role was "an absolute honor". Disney had previously said Lucas would remain a creative consultant on the series. Lucas himself said in October he had story treatments for Episodes 7, 8 and 9, which he would hand over to Kennedy, who assured him that she would adhere to his ideas.-Reuters |
| First Steve Jobs movie gets red carpet premiere Posted: 25 Jan 2013 10:40 PM PST PARK CITY, Utah: The first movie about Apple's legendary co-founder got a warm reception at its world premiere on Friday, just 15 months after Steve Jobs' death. "jOBS," starring "Two and a Half Men" actor Ashton Kutcher as the tech and computer entrepreneur who revolutionized the way people listen to music and built Apple Inc into an international powerhouse, got a red carpet roll-out at the Sundance Film Festival ahead of hitting U.S. theaters on April 19. "jOBS' chronicles 30 defining years of the late Apple chairman, from an experimental youth to the man in charge of one of the world's most recognized brands. It is the first of two U.S. feature films about Jobs, who died in 2011 at age 56. "Everybody has their own opinion about Steve Jobs, and they have something invested in a different part of his story. So the challenge is to decide what part of his story to tell, and not disenfranchise anybody," director Josh Stern told Reuters ahead of the screening. "Hazarding a guess and venturing into too much speculation is always dangerous, especially with a character who is so well-known," Stern added. The film, co-starring Josh Gad and Dermot Mulroney, begins with Jobs the dreamer, the poet and the occasional drug user in college, and his initial ideas for Apple Computers, before his vision took on a life of its own. Much of the drama is based around the early 1980s, and Jobs' ideologies for the Apple Lisa and Macintosh computers, which ended up performing poorly for the company and led to Jobs being fired. Kutcher's Jobs is seen as the rock star of the tech world, admired but misunderstood in his early days as he constantly tried to think outside of the box and bring a notion of "cool" to his brand. The audience on Friday warmly applauded the film following the screening. In a question-and-answer session after the screening, Kutcher took to the stage to talk about his preparations of mastering Jobs' posture, hand gestures and eccentricities, saying his "painstaking research" included watching more than 100 hours of footage of the Apple innovator. Notably missing from the film are details about Jobs' personal life - his court settlement with the mother of his first child features only in the backdrop of the 1980s, a time when he struggled to gain support from the Apple board for his visions. Stern told the audience that he deliberately stayed away from the CEO's personal life, saying the film was "not about getting mired in some of the soap opera" of Jobs' life. Kutcher, 34, told Reuters on the red carpet before the screening that he was honored to play Jobs but also terrified because of the former Apple chairman's iconic status. "To be playing a guy who so freshly is in people's minds, where everywhere you go you can run into people who met him or knew him or had seen a video of him ... that's terrifying because everyone is an appropriate critic," Kutcher told Reuters. WRONG PERSONALITIES Hours before the screening, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said the movie appeared to misrepresent aspects of both his own and Jobs' personalities and their early vision for the company. Wozniak was commenting after seeing a brief clip of an early scene that was released online on Thursday. "Totally wrong. ... The ideas of computers affecting society did not come from Jobs," Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Jobs and Ronald Wayne in a California garage in 1976, told technology blog Gizmodo.com. "The lofty talk came much further down the line," Wozniak said in a series of emails. "Book of Mormon" star Gad, who plays Wozniak, told Reuters on Friday's red carpet that the filmmakers had tried to reach out to him to get his input on "jOBS," but that Wozniak was "participating in another project about Steve Jobs. " Wozniak is tied to a movie based on Walter Isaacson's official biography "Steve Jobs," being developed by screen writer Aaron Sorkin of "The West Wing" and "The Social Network" fame. No release date or casting has been announced. Kutcher said he hoped Wozniak would look more kindly on the movie when he had seen the whole two hours. "I hope that when he sees the film, he feels that he was portrayed accurately, that the film accurately represents who he was and how he was, and more importantly, inspires people to go and build things," he said.-AFP |
| Actress Miriam Margolyes becomes an Australian Posted: 25 Jan 2013 10:16 PM PST SYDNEY: British actress Miriam Margolyes, best known for her work in the Harry Potter films, became an Australian citizen on Saturday, saying she felt that the rest of her life would be "joyous". Margolyes was one of 100 people taking the pledge at a ceremony in Canberra attended by Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and one of a record 17,059 people from 145 countries to become citizens on Australia Day. "This is your new country, and you'll never want another," Gillard, who was born in Wales and who came to Australia as a small child, told the gathering. "Welcome to citizenship. Welcome to Australia. Welcome home." Margolyes, 71, who won the BAFTA for best supporting actress for the 1993 Martin Scorsese film "The Age of Innocence" and played Professor Sprout in two Harry Potter movies, joked it had taken her years to take the plunge. "Well, you have to be sure don't you," she said. "Now I am. I'm just very happy to be here and I will be with friends and the rest of my life will be joyous." Ahead of the ceremony, the character actress whose partner is an Australian said she had been visiting Down Under for decades and had always loved the place. The outspoken actress told The Sydney Morning Herald she had always felt an affinity with Australia and would be a loyal citizen but joked: "This sheila is not going to shut up." - AFP |
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