The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies
The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies |
| Posted: Filmmaker is impressed with action star's comedic chops. Making a movie with Jet Li was an unforgettable and exciting experience for Badges Of Fury director Wong Tsz Ming and co-star Michelle Chen. During a phone interview recently, Wong and Chen couldn't stop talking about Li's antics on the set of the movie. The action comedy revolves around a pair of bumbling police officers tasked to investigate three mysterious homicide cases. In the movie, Li, 50, plays veteran law enforcer Huang Fei Hong, who may appear to be a scatter-brain but is in fact a martial arts expert. The other cop is muddle-headed young detective Wang Bu Er, played by Chinese actor Wen Zhang, 28, who was last seen in Stephen Chow's 2013 lunar new year flick Journey To The West. Taiwan's sweetheart Chen, 30, plays Huang's tough-talking superior Angela. Chen admitted that she faced many challenges making the movie because she had never done an action comedy before. "I was new at comedy, so pacing and timing were of great concern to me. In addition to that, I had to do wire work for the first time. I discovered that it was really tough to act while being suspended in mid-air," revealed the pretty actress who shot to fame in the Taiwanese smash hit You Are The Apple Of My Eye. With Li's reputation as an action hero, Chen expected him to be a serious person. However, Li surprised everyone on the set with his effervescence. "Jet Li was so much fun to work with. I was really surprised at how lively and playful he could actually be. He would tell lots of jokes and make us laugh everyday. He really made an effort to ensure a light-hearted mood on the set as we were making a comedy after all," said Chen. Even director Wong was taken by surprise at how Li tackled the comic parts with ease. "I was really amazed that Jet Li does comedy so well. He was a riot in the movie. I do hope to work with him again as I'm sure there are other sides of him I've never seen before," said the filmmaker, who got his break shooting television series on Chinese kung fu heroes like Wong Fei Hung and Fong Sai Yuk. For Chen, her most memorable moment on the set of Badges Of Fury was when Li came to her rescue when she couldn't recite some lines during a scene. "The script was quite a mouthful and there were some lines that really bothered me. I couldn't bring myself to say the words. I felt that they didn't do justice to the character I was playing," she recalled. Luckily for her, Li was quick to notice her anxiety and dealt with it immediately. "He asked me about it and I voiced my concerns. To my surprise, he told me not to worry about it as he would say those lines himself. Now, I know why he is such a respected mentor in the industry," said the actress, who recently released her first album titled Me, Myself, And I. Now that he has made an action comedy, Wong hopes to tackle another genre for his next project. "I'm thinking of black comedy or a suspense thriller. And, I look forward to inviting Li for another project together," he mused. Badges Of Fury also boasts action choreography by Corey Yuen and showcases fighting scenes with action stars like Jacky Wu Jing and Collin Chou. The movie features a bevy of heartthrobs from Hong Kong and China making cameo appearances namely Kevin Cheng, Raymond Lam, Stephen Fung, Michael Tse, and Alex Fong, Huang Xiao Ming, Tian Liang and Tong Da Wei. Badges Of Fury is now showing in cinemas nationwide. |
| Posted: Lance Reddick talks about working his way up to White House Down. THOUGH he always felt something was pushing him towards acting, Lance Reddick ignored it. His dad was an attorney, and Reddick was on his way to becoming a classical music composer. Then something went awry. "I always knew I had a thing when it came to acting but never took it seriously. I just thought people who wanted to be actors were silly," he says in the sunny patio restaurant of a hotel in Pasadena, California. It may have been silly, but Reddick has managed to parlay that tom-foolery into a full blown career with memorable performances in TV shows like Oz, Fringe, Lost and The Wire and his new movie, White House Down. For a guy who was too shy to even consider performing, he somehow beat the odds. He studied music composition at the prestigious Eastman School of Music, the piano his instrument. "Because my parents wanted to give me what they didn't have, I grew up around a bunch of affluent white kids," says Reddick. "So everybody's parents were lawyers and doctors, bankers and architects. I didn't really get it. Now I do." He developed his first taste for music at an Episcopal elementary school when he started singing with the choir. "A lot of black people grow up singing gospel music. I grew up singing Gregorian chants and 16th century motets," he grins. Still, he left Eastman before he graduated. "I realised I was in denial and I really wanted to be a rock star," he says. "So, I got married straight out of school, moved to Boston because my wife at the time was from there. Two years later my daughter was born. And I found myself working three jobs, seven days a week." He still wasn't sure what he wanted to do. But an excruciating back injury changed all that. "I was lifting a big bundle of newspapers, but it wasn't the lifting itself, it was the exhaustion. I'd come from a double shift of waiting tables to a double shift of delivering newspapers and I delivered the Wall Street Journal in downtown Boston ... I just cranked it up for about 24 hours, and I was just exhausted and something went," he says. "At the time I was used to working on adrenaline and I worked out every day – even with all I had going on. So when I was in pain or exhausted I just ignored it and kept going." Two weeks later he awoke unable to get out of bed. Fourteen days of bed rest forced him to re-evaluate his life. "It sounds crazy but I thought, 'Well, I know the recording studio I'm working with is taking me for a ride. It's time for me to admit that to myself. So let me start from scratch. I can sing and I can act. So let me try to act ...' I went on a couple of musical theatre auditions and realised that wasn't me, so I started going on straight auditions and getting cast and getting cast and getting cast." Though at one time he was co-starring in three shows at once, it wasn't always so easy. Married with a daughter, 24, and a son, 19, he and his first wife split in 1997. (He has since remarried). "She made three times the money I did," he recalls. "God rest her soul, she passed away a couple years ago, but she was a brilliant artist, really talented. We didn't make it, but she was a great lady," he sighs. "Six months after she left, I got The Siege and I was ducking the landlord. And I had the kids every other week, so I was borrowing money to buy groceries. I got The Siege, then I got I Dreamed Of Africa, then went to the Guthrie and got to play Marc Antony (in Julius Caesar.) I came back home to New York and didn't work for six months. For somebody who's always doing a side job or has a trust fund or savings, it's one thing. But I didn't ... The only reason I didn't quit was I didn't have any alternatives. What was I going to do, wait tables? The only way to get out of the situation I was in was to make it." – McClatchy-Tribune Information Services White House Down, starring Channing Tatum and Lance Reddick, opens in cinemas nationwide today. Read Star2's interview with Tatum this Sunday. |
| Posted: Emma Watson is keen to step away from her past at Hogwarts – but not to jump on to the celebrity rollercoaster. IF the Harry Potter franchise was one of the most overwhelming cinematic phenomena of recent history, the films' plucky Hermione, Emma Watson, shows no sign of being swamped by her past. The actor's latest foray beyond Hogwarts sees her as part of a young ensemble cast for Sofia Coppola's latest work, The Bling Ring, which opened the Cannes Film Festival's Un Certain Regard section back in May. Speaking before the premiere, Watson said: "Harry Potter feels like such a long time ago; so much has happened in the last three or four years, but obviously it's still very present, it's still being played in people's living rooms. I'm not trying to run away from it ... but it's that I've had such an amazing three or four years having a chance to transform into new roles and work with new creative people." Watson, who also took a role in 2011's My Week With Marilyn and will appear in Darren Aronofsky's biblical epic Noah, added that she had relished the chance to work in a freer fashion: "I am used to really having to stick to my lines because people know them by heart, so it was lovely just to be able to ad lib or improvise." Coppola's film is based on the true story of a group of suburban Los Angeles teenagers, some from privileged backgrounds, who stole luxury goods from the houses of the rich and famous out of a desire to possess their wardrobes and lifestyles. Watson researched her role, she said, by watching reality TV shows such as Keeping Up With The Kardashians and The Hills. She said: "It wasn't so much about the stealing, it was more that they wanted to pretend for two hours that they were Paris Hilton. That they were living that lifestyle for real." Among their most prominent targets was Hilton – whose front door key they found under her doormat. Between October 2008 and November 2009, the group stole more than US$3mil (RM9.4mil) worth of items, including "a stash of Rolexes" from British actor Orlando Bloom, according to an account by one of the real "bling ring", Nick Prugo. The teenagers used Google Maps to identify escape and entry points and social media to know when the celebrities were away from home. They also boasted of their new possessions on Facebook. The real Hilton makes a brief appearance in a film that piles on the ironies: her home was used as a location, so we see her jewels and designer clothing; the Louis XIV-style armchairs heaped with cushions screenprinted with her face; and her "nightclub room" complete with its own poledancing pole. Having a film made about their exploits might be regarded as the final victory for the real-life "bling ring" – but according to Coppola, that was far from her intention. "I changed the names of the characters because I didn't want to make them more famous," she said, adding that it was "not a documentary" and she was "not too concerned with the reactions" of the people on whom the story is based. Coppola was born into celebrity as the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola; Watson had it thrust upon her as a child. But Watson distinguished herself from the celebrities touched on in the film. "There are celebrities that create a brand and create a business and a whole job, a whole life, out of other people's interest in their lives, and then there are celebrities or people who have a craft or a trade," she said. "As long as people understand the difference, then it's okay," she said. Coppola added that what had drawn her to the story was that "it could not have happened 10 years ago" and depended on the rise of social media and a celebrity-news cycle. "There's so much information, and a lack of privacy: these kids knew so much about the people that they felt they (really) knew them. They knew what they were having for breakfast." – Guardian News & Media |
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