The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies

Posted: 04 Dec 2011 02:01 AM PST

MYANMAR'S democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi gets a celluloid reincarnation now that a movie version of her life by Fifth Element and The Big Blue director Luc Besson has begun screening around the world including the United States and France.

Malaysian star Michelle Yeoh, a former "Bond girl", plays "The Lady" in a two-hour biopic that focuses on the private life of Suu Kyi, her British husband Michael Aris and their two sons.

Suu Kyi's struggle for her country came at a high personal cost. Her husband died in 1999 in Britain, and in the final stages of his battle with cancer the Myanmar junta denied him a visa to see his wife. Suu Kyi refused to leave Myanmar to see him, certain she would never have been allowed to return.

"It was the price she had to pay," said Luc Besson. "Thousands of people give their lives unquestioningly, simply because they believe it is a just cause."

"The love that united her with her husband gave her immense strength," said Michelle Yeoh.

The daughter of Myanmar's assassinated independence hero General Aung San, Suu Kyi began her own political career late after spending much of her life abroad.

She studied at Oxford University, had two sons after marrying Aris and looked like she was going to settle into life in Britain.

But when she returned to Yangon in 1988 to nurse her sick mother, protests erupted against the military, which ended with a brutal crackdown that left at least 3,000 dead. She took a leading role in the pro-democracy movement, delivering speeches to crowds of hundreds of thousands.

This is the point where Besson's film takes up her story.

Yeoh, who learned Burmese to help her play the part, said she finally got to meet Suu Kyi at her crumbling lakeside mansion in Yangon, where she was under house arrest, as filming was winding down in Thailand.

"She walked up to me to embrace me and take my hand," she said. "She looks fragile but she emanates great strength."

Besson also met the subject of his film after her release last November, when filming on the project had already finished.

He recalled finding himself outside the house which his team had scrupulously recreated "practically to the centimetre" in Thailand, where most of the film was shot.

The French filmmaker, whose recent movies also include the popular animated Arthur series, did manage to film some scenes in Myanmar itself, where he posed as a tourist and shot with a small camera.

"I filmed 17 hours of rushes, sometimes with a soldier three metres away," he recalled.

The film's actors were then super-imposed on the Myanmar scenes with the help of "green screen" technology.

Suu Kyi told Besson that she was not yet ready to watch the two-hour film which covers the deaths of her father and her husband.

"She told me 'I'll see it when I'm courageous enough,'" he said earlier this month.

But one of her sons has seen it and "was very moved," the director added. – AFP

n There is no scheduled screening date for The Lady in Malaysia yet.

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Streep, tipped for glory, says Oscars still matter

Posted: 02 Dec 2011 04:52 PM PST

LONDON (Reuters) - She has been nominated for an Academy Award 16 times, a record for any performer, and won twice, but to Meryl Streep, the golden statuette still matters.

The 62-year-old first attended the annual awards ceremony as a contender more than 30 years ago, when she was up for a supporting role honour in "The Deer Hunter".

The following year she won that honour for "Kramer vs. Kramer" and scooped the best actress prize with the 1982 Holocaust film "Sophie's Choice".

Since then Streep has been back as a nominee 12 times, each time leaving empty-handed.

Now the "Devil Wears Prada" star is a frontrunner again for her portrayal of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady".

Asked in an interview on Thursday if she still cared about the Oscars, she replied: "Sadly it still matters.

"It's so exciting, it really is. I remember the first time I went and (Laurence) Olivier was here and I was next to Gregory Peck and Bette Davis was behind me," Streep told BBC Radio.

"I mean, I've been going to that thing for many years but it's still the one."

She described The Iron Lady, in which she portrays Thatcher both at the height of her powers and as an old, forgetful woman looking back on her life, as a "Lear for girls", a reference to Shakespeare's tragedy "King Lear".

"I said it secretly, I said, 'you know what this is? This is Lear for girls'. It's concerned with the endgame and how power diminishes, how we let go of things, and that's the part that really interested me."

Streep added that tackling such a controversial figure in politics who still divides British public opinion was daunting.

"The policies that she put forward were shared by a number of people in the Conservative Party at that time, but it's how they're communicated.

"And was it (former French President Francois) Mitterrand that said she had the mouth of Marilyn Monroe and the eyes of Caligula."

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Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Sabtu, 3 Disember 2011

The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies

The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies

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