The Star eCentral: Movie Buzz
The Star eCentral: Movie Buzz |
| Posted: The Conjuring's Vera Farmiga talks about scary movies. GROWING up with strict immigrant parents in New Jersey, Vera Farmiga was not allowed to watch scary movies. Thanks to her best friend Missy, however, Farmiga was introduced to the horror films of Freddy Krueger. Thirty years after feasting on A Nightmare On Elm Street and its sequels at Missy's house, the 39-year-old actress said she is ready to scare a new generation of overprotected children with the terrifying new film The Conjuring. Farmiga, who was nominated for an Oscar opposite George Clooney in Up In The Air and is one of the stars of Bates Motel, portrays real-life paranormal investigator Lorraine Warren in the new film. Warren, a clairvoyant, and her husband Ed Warren, a demonologist played by Patrick Wilson, investigated thousands of hauntings, including those that inspired the films The Amityville Horror and The Haunting In Connecticut. What or who was the key in making The Conjuring work? It was Lorraine. She is an influential and fascinating person. That was the draw for me. And, of course, Patrick Wilson playing Ed was the cincher. I just worked with his wife (Dagmara Dominczyk) on Higher Ground and I adored her. I know Ed Warren has passed away, but did you get to meet with Lorraine? I did. I had just read their book The Demonologist. It was unlike any book I've ever read. It's about mystical phenomena. It just scared the daylights out of me. It details all their cases. There are things that go down in this book that are absolutely unfathomable, so far-fetched and so diabolical. Then they have their museum of the occult that is located near their house. That museum, which contains objects from their most celebrated cases, plays a significant role in the movie. Did you take a tour of it? I opted not to see it. I decided that I was only playing Lorraine Warren. I didn't need to be around the psychic energy of these things. It would have done nothing for me. Just knowing about the terror and dread these objects instilled was enough for me. Patrick wasn't afraid; he even posed with the Annabelle doll. Was Lorraine okay with you not going through the museum? She doesn't go through there much since Ed's passing. They have a priest who lives on the property and continues to bless the items and pray over the household every night. That's pretty creepy. That's what I'm telling you. Her nephew will tell you that there is an active energy to those objects, even though the priest prays over them. How much did she share about the demons she's met? She doesn't like to dwell on the past, and she's never told anyone, including Ed, what she saw in the house that night. I assume she saw death in the face, whether it was hers or her children, nobody knows. You can only imagine what she saw. She doesn't go there. And I think she maintains power over it by not talking about it. I mostly just watched her gestures and how she spoke. I absorbed whatever I could. Is it scary on the set when you're making a scary movie? Only if your co-workers are scary. We are responsible for the energy we create. Some strange things happened on the set, but we have decided not to discuss it because it gives that mysticism negative energy. Are your children too young to see this movie? Oh, yeah (laughs). They're two and four. When will you let them see it? After they turn 40. – The Orange County Register/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services The Conjuring's Vera Farmiga on scary movies.The Conjuring opens in cinemas nationwide on Aug 1. |
| 'Horror film' puts Internet privacy under spotlight Posted: Stalking isn't Cullen Hoback's style, but the chance to confront Mark Zuckerberg about the dark side of the Internet was just too good to pass on. "Mr Zuckerberg? I'm working on a documentary," the independent filmmaker asked the Facebook founder, strolling in a T-shirt and jeans on the leafy sidewalk outside his southern California home. "I was wondering if I could just ask you a couple of questions? Do you still think privacy is dead? What are your real thoughts on privacy?" "Are you guys recording?" Zuckerberg sheepishly replied. "Will you please not?" "I can stop," said Hoback, switching off his video camera, prompting Zuckerberg to loosen up, smile and invite Hoback to connect with Facebook's PR team – unaware that Hoback was still recording with a pair of spy glasses. It's a telling scene in Terms And Conditions May Apply, in which Hoback raises disturbing questions about the mountains of online data being collected, shared and stored by governments and Internet giants alike. The title derives from the rambling fine print most Internet users never bother to read when they sign on to a new online service or app – blissfully ignoring that they're entering into a legally binding contract. "I think the craziest thing about this whole experience is that I didn't realise I was making a horror film," the Los Angeles-based Hoback told AFP in a telephone interview. Two years in the making, Terms And Conditions was pretty much complete by the time Edward Snowden came forward with his revelation, leaving Hoback just enough time to tack a quick mention of the whistleblower onto the end of his film. "The story is constantly evolving, and it's hard sometimes to put the keyboard down and stop editing," he said. While it makes no blockbuster revelations, Terms And Conditions succeeds in weaving a series of Internet privacy issues over the years into a single narrative that's still playing itself out in real life. For a typical Internet user, it says, it would take 180 hours – the equivalent of one full month of work a year – to fully read all the terms and conditions attached to his or her favourite websites. "They're poorly written and they're exhaustive. They take into perpetuity everything you could ever imagine," said Hoback, for whom Internet privacy is "the biggest civil liberties issue of our time." Google's terms of service, for instance, clocks in at 1,711 words, according to an AFP count, not including a separate 2,382-word privacy policy that is still about 1,000 words shorter than the Google Chrome browser policy. Terms And Conditions also explains how Internet users, by clicking on a website's "agree" button, consent to their online lives being archived, shared with third parties or passed on to government agencies without notice. "I really think of the audience as the main character, because this has been happening to us for all of these years," said Hoback, whose 2007 documentary Monster Camp examined the cult world of action-figure enthusiasts. "The problem is, right now, you either get the service (you want to use on the Internet) or you don't," he said. "There's no one sitting at your side of the table negotiating these contracts." As for his sidewalk encounter with Zuckerberg, whose social media colossus has come under fire for modifying its user policies without notice, Hoback said he wanted to make a point. "I just wanted him to say, 'Look, I don't want you to record me,' and I wanted to say, 'Look, I don't want you to record us'," he said. "That was really the motive there." – AFP |
| Posted: [unable to retrieve full-text content]Peter Jackson celebrates the end of 'The Hobbit' filming with his cat, Mr Smudge. |
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