The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies
The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies |
| Posted: Andy Lau and Sammy Cheng, not only acted, but also sang the theme song for the movie Blind Detective. known as Hong Kong's golden box-office duo, Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng are best remembered for their collaborations in hit romantic comedies such as Needing You (2000), Love On A Diet (2001) and Yesterday Once More (2004). It has been eight years since they last worked on a film together; Blind Detective marks their seventh big-screen collaboration. The movie is also the duo's fourth collaboration with prominent Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To. Though labelled as a crime action flick, Blind Detective has been described by many as a "rom-com in disguise". Pop icons Lau, 51, and Cheng, 40, also sang the theme song for the movie in both Cantonese and Mandarin. In Blind Detective, Lau portrays the titular character, a highly-gifted detective named Chung who is compelled to leave the police force after losing his sight in an accident. Thereafter, Chung continues to employ his talents as a private investigator and makes a living by solving cold cases in exchange for monetary rewards. Cheng, in the meantime, plays an up-and-coming detective named Ho, who is harbouring a personal secret. Her best friend from school, Minnie, went missing after she declined to go out with her one night, and Ho has been troubled with a guilty conscience ever since that incident occurred more than 10 years ago. After witnessing Chong's prowess in solving a case, Ho enlists his help to find Minnie. Chong agrees to help her, while also making use of her to help him solve other cases. Their investigations lead them to a former taxi driver, whom they suspect is a serial killer responsible for a spate of cold cases involving women. Lau reportedly described his role in Blind Detective as one of the most challenging roles in his career simply because the director did not allow his blind character to wear dark glasses. To prepare for the time-consuming role, Lau attended classes at a training centre with visually-impaired students for six weeks. Cheng, on the other hand, was confronted with a more serious issue while shooting the movie – she was diagnosed with a disorder of the inner ear known as Ménière's disease. The movie which commenced filming in October 2011, had to stop in June 2012 so that she could recuperate. Blind Detective only resumed filming in August last year after Cheng fully recovered. |
| 'The Heat' sizzles at box office Posted: SANDRA Bullock and Melissa McCarthy's FBI-cop buddy movie The Heat fried Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx's cop-President buddy movie White House Down at the US box office this past weekend. Still, it was another pair of buddies – James P. Sullivan and Mike Wazowski – who held on to the top spot with Monsters University. MU scared its way to US$46.2mil (RM146.6mil) for a 10-day total of US$171mil (RM542.5mil). The Heat came in second with US$40mil (RM126.9mil) in its debut weekend, marking its stars' highest ever opening grosses, according to Box Office Mojo (www.boxofficemojo.com). In third place was the Brad Pitt action thriller World War Z, which earned US$29.8mil (RM94.5mil) in its second weekend for a US$123.7mil (RM392.4mil) haul to date. The year's second presidential-domicile-under-fire movie only managed US$25.7mil (RM81.5mil) to place fourth. It was considerably below the earnings for star Channing Tatum's previous hits The Vow, Magic Mike and 21 Jump Street. White House Down, preceded about three months ago by the similarly-themed Olympus Has Fallen, tried to differentiate itself from that violent R-rated Gerard Butler movie with more humour and a buddy-flick vibe between Tatum and Jamie Foxx as the president. Critics noted, however, that the similarities between the two were still significant, unlike previous instances of movies with the same theme opening within a few months of each other, like Deep Impact and Armageddon or Tombstone and Wyatt Earp. The PG-rated thriller also served up mayhem on a much less spectacular level than director Roland Emmerich's previous, er, spectacles like 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow, while the website noted that The Heat could have drawn some of Tatum's female fan base this weekend. The robust second weekend of World War Z continued to surprise observers and surpass industry expectations, with the film on track to possibly match its star's biggest-ever earner, Mr & Mrs Smith, which earned US$186.3mil (RM591mil) back in 2005. Zack Snyder's overblown Superman reboot Man Of Steel rounded out the top five with US$20.8mil (RM66mil) for a take to date of US$248.7mil (RM789mil). The website noted that it is on track to earn about US$310mil (RM983.4mil), considerably behind the US$405.4mil (RM1.29bil) of Iron Man 3. What do you know, iron does trump steel. This weekend's top performers will face a big challenge this weekend with Despicable Me 2 and the big-budget The Lone Ranger among the new releases. |
| Posted: Alfred Molina plays a professor in Monsters University. HAVING done his heavy share of drama, Alfred Molina found more laid-back voice work especially appealing in Monsters University. The Englishman, 60, is probably best known for star-turning roles in Prick Up Your Ears, The Perez Family, Chocolat and Frida. These days Molina is Professor Knight, a gruff figure with a grotesque underbite, dinosaur scales and threatening tail, who shows his young charges how to become better "scarers" in Disney Pixar's prequel to the (dare we write?) monstrous hit, Monsters, Inc. How did you first get involved with this project and how did you find the overall experience? I just got a call asking, 'Would I be interested?'. Then they showed me some visuals, and the guy looked conceivably like a family member (laughs). When you're recording in the studio a video camera catches little idiosyncrasies and facial expressions so the animators can incorporate the actual person into the character. I hadn't done much voice work, but I started thinking this could be a whole new thing for me. I had a wonderful time. And I've finally made a film that my grandchildren can see without it being awkward or uncomfortable. How is this kind of acting unique? One's priority here is to tell the story, and the beauty of animation is you've only got the voice to express yourself. You really kind of focus in on it, and it gives you a chance to be much more inventive. The only shame is you often tend to be on your own as we record separately, though the director (Dan Scanlon) was in the room with me giving me suggestions, telling me to put an emphasis on this word, give this a tweak or raise my voice a little. Nothing is arbitrary, which is interesting. Monsters is partly an observation of today's campuses. What was your time at university like? Americans tell me the way college life is depicted in this film is very accurate and that it caught all the subtleties. In Britain, it's a slightly different system. We had these little cliques: The sporty types, the ones who did their work. I didn't fit in. I was terrible at sport, I wasn't successful socially. The only crowd I could hang out with was the drama crowd. We were basically viewed by everyone else as the losers because we spent all our time pretending to be somebody else. We walked around with that slightly defensive snobbery, like we thought we were kind of special, but it was a front because we all knew we were kind of pathetic! – The Miami Herald/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
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