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Interviu su Ralph Finnes
Benedict Cumberbatch
Hayao Miyazaki
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Oblivion
Anna Kendrick
Godzilla
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Kanų festivalis
2014 metų vasaros sezono filmai
Žvaigždžių Karai 7
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Genijus, kurį filmų industrija pamiršo
Jennifer Lawrence
Emma Stone
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Interviu su Ralph Finnes: Wes Anderson klubas Ralph Fiennes plays concierge Monsieur Gustave in Wes Anderson’s new film “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” and says its a character unlike any he’s done before. Interviewer talked to Fiennes about being part of Anderson’s go-to players (if there’s a secret handshake), and grand hotel stays of his own. Interviewer: How do you describe “The Grand Budapest Hotel”? Ralph Fiennes: I think people have come to identify Wes’ films with a certain kind of low-key, bittersweet comedy allied to a given visual style, a quite self-conscious visual style in the framing of shots and the movement of the camera is very precise. What it’s not is hand-held, jittery, high-speed cutting. I think it’s quite pictorially considered, but with a sort of eye to visual humor. So you have a sense of visual humor and a kind of understated delivery of performance which is a sort of odd blend. He doesn’t want, I mean this is a generalization, but I feel that Wes is into very simple performances, and he believes if the script is right and the relationships between two people, then this odd simplicity has its own kind of allure. Interviewer: Is it great to be part of the Wes Anderson club? Fiennes: Yeah, there are some great actors that have been working for Wes for some time and actors I really admire. And some of them I know, and I’ve worked with them before on other movies. But Wes, he’s a very gentle man, and he’s unforced, so he’s not corralling us or maneuvering us in any kind of heavy-handed way to be a part of quote “his club.” I think he’s a gentleman and invites you to come and realize his next story. There’s an ease and a lightness of touch. So sometimes the word club suggests something quite fortified and you know a “are we going to let this person in or not?” kind of attitude, and that’s not the case at all. Interviewer: So there’s no secret handshake? Fiennes: Well if there is no one’s introduced me to it. Interviewer: A lot of people are familiar with your dramatic side, but you get to be funny here.
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Iš filmo “The Grand Budapest Hotel”
Fiennes: It was fun at times, sometimes, because I think we both, Wes and I identify the sort of precise nature of things, and also there are moments where it’s sort of bittersweet. Gustave is quite real and felt, yet it still had to have this sort of lightness. So sometimes it was quite, you know, we did lots of takes, often. He likes to do many of takes and so do I, because I think there’s a point where you have to sort of, by repetition an actor’s preparation get healthily loosened. Interviewer: Have you ever had a grand hotel stay yourself? Fiennes: Yeah, I’ve been incredibly lucky in all my travels as an actor and just in life, I’ve stayed in some great, fancy schmancy places. Sometimes it can be a bit claustrophobic, and you find hotels working so hard to be grand and impressive that they’re actually off-putting. So again it’s sort of a Gustave-ian skill to run a hotel so the feeling of effortless luxury and service is not rammed down your throat, and it’s again a lightness of touch I think. Interviewer: Anticipate the needs… what was it? Fiennes: Anticipate the needs before the needs are needed.
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Benedict Cumberbatch “The further you get away from yourself, the more challenging it is. Not to be in your comfort zone is great fun.� 6
Dideli planai 2014-iems metams PASADENA, Calif. – Benedict Cumberbatch has had a memorable year, including roles in five major films, but he’s trying to look forward. “You can’t get too nostalgic. You can look back and go, ‘That was a great year, a great moment,’ but I want 2014 to be better for different reasons. I’ve got personal goals and all sorts of things that I want to evolve. I always have been about building a career of longevity,” he says during an interview to discuss PBS’ Sherlock (third-season finale, Sunday, 10 p.m. ET/PT, times may vary). Cumberbatch’s contemporary take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic character became more personal this year, as Holmes’ parents were portrayed by his mother and father — actors Wanda Ventham and Timothy Carlton. In one scene, Sherlock unceremoniously shoos them from the room when Watson arrives. Working with his parents was “terrific. Sort of like home, really. Alarmingly so, for those who know our relationship off screen,” he jokes. “It was a beautiful thing. ... It was the first day of shooting and I was nervous for them. And then I realized, now I really have to take control of this, and I just started to kind of make sure that they felt all right. And they ended up having a really good day.” He credits his parents and actors they introduced him to for his desire to pursue the same career, but there “wasn’t one Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment of inspiration. It was just an accumulation, really.” That has led to an accumulation of significant roles, too, for the London-born actor. Cumberbatch, 37, finished work in December on The Imitation Game, an upcoming film in which he plays real-life British mathematician and World War II code breaker Alan Turing. He plans to take on another real Brit, the explorer Percy Fawcett, in The Lost City of Z, a film about “this rather brilliant, rather lovely Victorian man who just became obsessed with this discovery he made in the Amazon jungle” in the early 20th Century. The melancholy Dane, Hamlet, is on the actor’s schedule for fall on the London stage. And Sunny March, the production company he started with friends just produced a short film that he appears in, Little Favour. All of this comes on the heels of a remarkable year. Since May, he has appeared on the big screen in five major films, including an Oscar best-picture nominee,12 Years a Slave; an ensemble piece earning praise for its cast, August: Osage County; a lead
role as Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate; and two blockbuster sequels, Star Trek Into Darkness and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. It can be difficult, even for a man of Cumberbatch’s quick intelligence, to remember every detail. “Five films come out and they’re so different. From Khan (Trek) to Smaug to Julian Assange to Ford (Slave) to …,” he says, pausing. “You see, this is the problem. I actually then start forgetting what the other role was. (Another pause.) To Little Charles in August: Osage County. And that’s when it is literally an embarrassment of riches.” He credits Sherlock, which premiered in 2010, with providing a big career boost, but says he was landing roles for 2011 productions — War Horse and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on film and Frankenstein at the Royal National Theater in England — at about the same time with major directors who hadn’t seen him play the iconic sleuth. Sherlock has “done a lot. I won’t say it’s changed my life, because I had a huge break at the same time as this role first came to fruition,” says Cumberbatch, substituting a sleek blue suit for Sherlock’s layered look on this warm winter day. “It was a sort of perfect storm of all mediums coming together at the same time, television, film and theater, even some radio.” Cumberbatch has a rare star quality that makes viewers root for the often difficult Holmes, Sherlock co-creator Steven Moffat says. “I think he’s capable of being aloof and dangerous and (being able to) do, with complete honesty, every beat of unlikable behavior, and yet you still like him,” he says. “The other thing you have to say is he’s one of the best actors alive. He’s absolutely supreme.” During an interview earlier in the day with a gathering of TV critics, Cumberbatch expresses appreciation for the accompanying fame, as exhibited by a group of fans outside the hotel who had waited for hours to see him. Asked an open-ended question about his reaction to the rise in public interest in the later interview, he responds, “Detached amusement,” and focuses on press criticism. Stories have focused on matters as varied as his blue-chip schooling to a photograph in which he held a sign directing paparazzi to cover more important events in Egypt. “Sometimes, they go after you and they really try to make you hurt, and that’s when you’ve got to have a thick skin and just let it brush off you. I’ve spoken to people in more exalted positions than mine and they’re like, ‘Dude, it’s just Champagne problems,’ “ he says.
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Star Trek: Into Darkness
He talks expansively and thoughtfully about his career and fame, but draws the line on certain topics. He declines to answer a question about rumors he will reunite with Trek director J.J. Abrams for the next Star Wars film, which is scheduled to begin shooting in May, and he won’t elaborate on the “personal goals” he mentions for 2014. “They’re personal. Not for publication.” The actor, who is single, also brushes off a question about whether he’s dating anyone in particular, but politely cushions his response. “I know you have to ask.” He responds to questions with equanimity, although he thinks a query about whether he’s excited to play Hamlet, the central character in what is arguably Shakespeare’s greatest play is a bit obvious. (“Very excited. I don’t know what other answer there would be to that question,” he says, then feigns a lack of interest. “No, I’m really not that bothered.”) He expresses displeasure only when an interviewer mentions that the late Turing received a royal pardon recently for 1950s criminal charges of gross indecency related to homosexuality. “The only person that should be pardoning anybody is him. Hopefully, the film will bring to the fore what an extraordinary human being he was and how appalling (his treatment by the government was). It’s a really shameful, disgraceful part of our history,” he says of his Imitation Game character. Although a fourth season of Sherlock has not been officially approved, Cumberbatch has verbally committed to it and says he sees room for character growth. “I’ll keep doing it as long as that’s the case, as long as I
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feel he’s developing and there’s stuff we’re all being challenged by and that it’s being loyal to the original stories as well.” When the third season opens, Cumberbatch says Sherlock has regressed socially and emotionally after having been off neutralizing archnemesis Moriarty’s network of evildoers in the two years since his staged suicide at the end of Season 2. His return draws the ire of sidekick John Watson (Martin Freeman), who had thought his friend was dead. (The Season 3 opener drew 4 million viewers, up 25% from the second-season premiere, and Sunday’s second episode attracted 2.9 million viewers.) Freeman “raised my game. That’s all important when you’re doing a piece that’s about a relationship as well as this particularly brilliant mind,” he says, before going off on a humorous detour. “He’s got good taste in clothes and music, which helps. He’s got good hygiene. That always helps. He can be quite grumpy, which doesn’t always help. I can be quite grumpy, which always helps.” Sherlock evolves this season, Cumberbatch says, serving as best man at John’s wedding to Mary (Amanda Abbington) in last week’s episode and facing off Sunday against malicious, data-hoarding publisher Charles Augustus Magnussen. “He’s this media mogul who wields his leverage by using information — as people do, as newspapers do, as all media does — to control a message, to control a perception of the world.” The series explores the effects of childhood on the adult Sherlock, partly through his competition with his brother Mycroft (Mark Gatiss).
“He wasn’t born to be an antisocial, difficult boy,” he says. “I think he’s trying to keep up with Mycroft’s intelligence and it skewed the normal trajectory of childhood play and friendships in order to try and perfect this brain, this ability to retain information.” Cumberbatch says he wanted a Sherlock backstory so he could understand and convey how this man came to be. “It will just be hollow gestures and running around speaking very fast — which, while some of our harshest critics have said that’s what I do, I beg to differ, especially after ... this season. They can see there’s some acting going on, some craft going on. That’s important to me,” says Cumberbatch, veering off before returning to his main point. “You can’t just be brilliant in a vacuum. ... It would be like, ‘Wow! This guy is really on it,’ but then you’d want to know something about him.”
With so many film, TV and stage roles done in such a short time, Cumberbatch has had to do more than just speak quickly. “I found it difficult to get the sort of hyperarticulacy of Sherlock back having played Assange, and I found it sort of weirdly difficult to let go of Sherlock before starting Alan Turing,” he says. “I practice very hard to sort of cleanse myself of every role after I’ve done it.” For all the recent high-profile film roles, an earlier miniseries character, 1920s Englishman Christopher Tietjens of Parade’s End, inspires him the most. “He’s just sort of unfathomably generous and patient and yet really quietly courageous. He doesn’t suffer hypocrisy or fools gladly. He doesn’t betray himself or his ideals for any quick fixes. He’s just a good human being,” he says. “I’ve got a very big affection for that man. If I can live a life half as good as his, I will know I have done alright.”
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Hayao Miyazaki išleidžia savo paskutinį filmą: “The Wind Rises” In many ways, The Wind Rises is very different from Miyazaki’s other work, both in its story and in the controversy it has generated throughout Japan. Based on a real figure in Japanese history, aircraft engineer Jiro Horikoshi, The Wind Rises is a story of personal triumph and tragedy, both a fatal love story as well as a glimpse into Japanese society in the years leading up to World War II.
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The Wind Rises Artistically soaring work tells stor y of World War II fighter plane designer Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, the last master of hand-drawn feature animation, has referred to his latest film, The Wind Rises, as his last. The 73-year-old director exits the stage with the least typical but, perhaps, most personal title of his career. Unlike the fantasy-fueled fables of plucky heroes and bizarre creatures (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle) that earned Miyazaki an Oscar and worldwide acclaim, The Wind Rises offers the relatively grounded biography of a Japanese aviation pioneer. Jiro Horikoshi won fame as the designer of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter. The superb small planes took off from aircraft carriers, bombed Pearl Harbor and were later used in kamikaze attacks during World War II to sink Allied ships. Miyazaki’s father was reportedly involved in supplying components for the plane, perhaps inspiring his son and instilling the dream of celebrating the engineer on film. In the Miyazaki version, young Jiro is obsessed with flight but cursed by bad eyesight, preventing him from becoming a pilot. Instead, he applies himself to aircraft design, overcoming problems to perfect an efficient plane for the navy, which will use it for invasion and conquest. There should be irony in that, but Miyazaki spends much of the film’s middle drawing the adult Jiro (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) into a passionate love for Nahoko (Emily Blunt), a young woman plagued by tuberculosis.
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The courtship is played for slow, gentle humor, which gives way to sacrifice and tragedy. Voicing other roles are Werner Herzog, John Krasinski, William H. Macy, Mandy Patinkin, Martin Short and Stanley Tucci. The Zero’s role in widespread carnage — and its production by forced labor — presented Miyazaki with an artistic challenge he seems to have met by largely ignoring it. Jiro comments that he hopes that his plane will be used peacefully, and his mentors express concern that the military will lead Japan into catastrophe. But Miyazaki embraces romantic longing over geopolitical commentary and seems indifferent to the overall context, as if he were making a reverent biography of the Wright brothers. The decision to ignore disturbing issues is a blemish on the film, but Miyazaki almost makes up for it with the spectacular images that have always elevated his work. A 1923 earthquake that devastates Tokyo is imagined like violent ocean waves. Jiro’s dreams of encounters with a famous Italian designer include elaborate airships. Typical of Miyazaki’s style, the movie — nominated for an Academy Award for animated feature — is painted in pastels, and the characters, most of whom resemble Western teenagers more than Japanese adults, move woodenly. The elements suit a gentle fable more than a realistic tale about the invention of a tool of war.
The title comes from a line by poet Paul Valéry: “The wind is rising, we must try to live.” The wind carries off the parasol of a fragile girl, Nahoko, voiced by Emily Blunt, into the hands of Jiro - who’ll fall in love with her. Their love is idealized, but what an ideal. Though she’s obviously dying of TB, she’s plucky. She faces into the wind. The movie’s central contradiction is between the purity of Jiro’s dreams and the deadly uses to which his plane - the legendary Zero fighter - is put. It’s the underplaying and the evenness of tone that are the key to his greatness, the way he transforms mundane sensations from real to surreal in barely perceptible puffs. And he puts so much individuality and soul into these anime characters with their standard button eyes and tiny noses that it’s uncanny. He makes the human spirit seem as fleeting, yet as eternal as the wind itself. Nominated for an Oscar, The Wind Rises begins its main U.S. theatrical run at the end of February. Last week, I had the honor to speak with the director, who shared his feelings about why he was drawn to this particular story, if he expected the controversy it
generated in his country and what were the biggest challenges he faced making the film. Much has been written over the years about Hayao Miyazaki. Fans of his work speak of him in reverential tones. The richness of his characters, the beauty of his designs, the underlying themes of his stories merely hint at the complexity of his films, which consistently break Japanese box office records and, in the case of Spirited Away, have won an Academy Award. Add to this last year’s revelation that he was retiring, it’s understandable the commotion around his latest, and purportedly last feature, The Wind Rises, would be intense.
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Ankstesni Hayao Miyazaki filmai
My Neighbor Totoro When two girls move to the country to be near their ailing mother, they have adventures with the wonderous forest spirits who live nearby.
Spirited Away Ten-year-old Chihiro Ogino and her parents are traveling to their new home when her father takes a wrong turn. They unknowingly enter a magical world that Chihiro’s father insists on exploring.
Howl’s Moving Castle When an unconfident young woman is cursed with an old body by a spiteful witch, her only chance of breaking the spell lies with a self-indulgent yet insecure young wizard and his companions in his legged, walking home.
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Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind Warrior/pacifist Princess Nausicaä desperately struggles to prevent two warring nations from destroying themselves and their dying planet.
Princess Mononoke On a journey to find the cure for a Tatarigami’s curse, Ashitaka finds himself in the middle of a war between the forest gods and Tatara, a mining colony. In this quest he also meets San, the Mononoke Hime.
Trumpai apie Hayao Hayao Miyazaki is a retired Japanese film director, animator, mangaka, illustrator, producer, and screenwriter. Through a career that has spanned six decades, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a masterful storyteller and as a maker of anime feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli, a film and animation studio. The success of Miyazaki’s films has invited comparisons with American animator Walt Disney, British animator Nick Park, and American director Steven Spielberg. He is also considered as one of the most popular and influential animators in the history of cinema. Born in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Miyazaki began his animation career in 1963, when he joined Toei Animation. From there, Miyazaki worked as an in-between artist for Gulliver’s Travels Beyond the Moon where he pitched his own ideas that eventually became the movie’s ending. He continued to work in various roles in the animation industry over the decade until he was able to direct his first feature film Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro which was released in 1979. After the success of his next film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, he co-founded Studio Ghibli, where he continued to produce many feature films besides during a ‘temporary retirement’ in 1997 following Princess Mononoke. While Miyazaki’s films have long enjoyed both commercial and critical success in Japan, he remained largely unknown to the West until Miramax Films
released Princess Mononoke. Princess Mononoke was the highest-grossing film in Japan—until it was eclipsed by another 1997 film, Titanic—and the first animated film to win Picture of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards. Miyazaki returned to animation with Spirited Away. The film topped Titanic’s sales at the Japanese box office, also won Picture of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards and was the first anime film to win an American Academy Award. Miyazaki’s films often contain recurrent themes, like humanity’s relationship with nature and technology, pro-feminism, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic. The protagonists of his films are often strong, independent girls or young women. While two of his films, The Castle of Cagliostro and Castle in the Sky, involve traditional villains, his other films like Nausicaä and Princess Mononoke present morally ambiguous antagonists with redeeming qualities. He co-wrote films The Secret World of Arrietty, released in July 2010 in Japan and February 2012 in the United States; and From Up on Poppy Hill release in July 2011 in Japan and March 2013 in the United States. Miyazaki’s newest film The Wind Rises was released on July 20, 2013 and is planned for an international release. Miyazaki announced on September 1, 2013 that this would be his final feature-length film. In addition to his acclaimed film work, Miyazaki has created manga that have reached worldwide audiences.
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Forget about tabloid gossip, couch jumping and religious obsessions—Tom Cruise is the real deal. This guy is a true movie star in the old school, classic meaning of the term. Cruise also has a knack of picking great projects with strong material helmed by bold, innovative, creative, and often legendary directors. This is an actor who has worked and collaborated with Martin Scorcese, the late Tony Scott, Cameron Crowe, Paul Thomas Anderson, Oliver Stone, Steven Spielberg, and even the ultimate cinematic perfectionist (and not exactly actor friendly director) Stanley Kubrick. If Tom Cruise puts his name on a movie, it means quality. Even when he misfires such as in 2011’s “Knight and Day”, he does it with an engaging flair that still entertains. This time the under-appreciated and notoriously hard working actor brings his classic star wattage to “Oblivion”, a throwback project designed to pay homage to classic 1970s old school science fiction films such as “Silent Running” (1972), “Logan’s Run” (1976) and “Alien” (1979). “Oblivion” is helmed by “Tron Legacy” (2010) director Joseph Kosinski and shares many of the characteristics and thematic obsessions of that underrated film. Put simply, “Oblivion” is a gorgeous piece of cinematic visual art. Every detail of every design is crafted with an artistic and yet functional sensibility—from the costumes and outfits, to the super cool futuristic helicopter/space fighter jet that Cruises character flies, to the cloud city uber-slick futuristic pad where Cruises character lives with his partner (sort of an arranged girlfriend), played by Andrea Riseborough with a wonderful, icy sexuality. “Oblivion” is based on an unpublished graphic novel by the director and in keeping true to the spirit of the 1970s films it wants to emulate, the first hour of the film has a very deliberate and careful pacing. The plot lines begin to slowly unwind and the mystery deepens leading up to an second act that ends in a knockout exhilarating special effects sequence, and a third act in which several revelations catapult the movie toward a moving and emotionally satisfying climax.
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Cruise shines in visually stunning ‘Oblivion’
“Oblivion” also benefits from the supporting presence of the sensational Olga Kurylenko from Showtime’s “Magic City” and the great “Morgan Freeman” as the leader of an underground revolution. Another solid asset of “Oblivion” is the film’s musical score by M83, composed by Anthony Gonzalez and Joseph Trapanese. It is a hypnotic, melodic, and at times exciting soundtrack that does for “Oblivion” what Daft Punk’s music did for “Tron Legacy”. Bottom line, “Oblivion” is and entertaining and visually stunning throw back science fiction film anchored by the performance of an A-list movie star at the top of his game.
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Anna Kendrick: 2014 Sundance Filmų Festivalio karalienė She parties like crazy with Lena Dunham in ‘Happy Christmas,’ dates serial killer Ryan Reynolds in ‘The Voices,’ and avoids a zombie uprising in ‘Life After Beth.’ It may not be over yet, but make no mistake about it: Anna Kendrick is queen of Sundance ’14. Last year’s edition of the Sundance Film Festival, the premier celebration of independent cinema, was all about the men. There was Michael B. Jordan’s heartrending turn as the wrongfully slain Oscar Grant in Fruitvale Station; Miles Teller’s nuanced portrayal of a self-destructive class clown in The Spectacular Now; Sam Rockwell’s scene-stealing performance as a wacky water park operator in The Way, Way Back; and Daniel Radcliffe, who magically transformed into beat poet Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings. But this year is all about the ladies. Kristen Stewart wows as a rookie guard at Guantanamo Bay who suffers a crisis of conscience in Camp X-Ray, Keira Knightley impresses as a woman going through a quarter-life crisis in Laggies, Aubrey Plaza had audiences cracking up as a clingy zombie girlfriend in Life After Beth, and Shailene Woodley grows up before our very eyes as a tortured, rebellious teen in White Bird in a Blizzard. But, with three wildly disparate performances, one petite actress managed to leave her mark on Sundance ’14 like no other. I’m talking about Anna Kendrick. On Sunday afternoon, I was standing outside of the Library Center Theatre in Park City, Utah, having just
taken in the premiere screening of Life After Beth, an oftentimes hilarious zom-com about a young man, played by Dane DeHaan, whose dead girlfriend (Plaza) comes back as a zombie. It also featured Kendrick as the cheery foil to Plaza’s zombie. Earlier that day, at noon, The Voices premiered—a dark, dark comedy about a small town loner (Ryan Reynolds) whose talking cat convinces him to kill. It also featured Kendrick as the apple of Reynolds’ eye. And after Beth, playing at the very same theater, the Joe Swanberg dramedy Happy Christmas bowed, starring Kendrick as a hell-raising younger sister. Yes, that day, Kendrick had three films premiere back-to-back-to-back at Sundance. That has to be unprecedented. “They should call it ‘Anna Kendrick Day,’” a high-level film exec said to me.It’s not just the sheer volume, though, so much as the breadth of acting on display. The 28-year-old actress had been known primarily for playing fiery type-A scenery-chewing motor mouths, e.g. her no-nonsense high school debate stud in Rocket Science, Kristen Stewart’s cheery BFF in the Twilight films, and George Clooney’s preppy gal Friday in Up in the Air, which earned her a well-deserved Oscar nomination.
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Over the past few years, however, Kendrick’s been evolving into a more versatile—and daring—actress. Her turn as the clumsy therapist to a young man (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) dying of cancer in 50/50 could have been a throwaway part in the hands of a less capable actress, but Kendrick, with her innate charm and infectious, teethy smile, made her a deeply sympathetic and eminently likable character. She rapped along to Cam’ron in the cop drama End of Watch, and showed off her considerable pipes as a Goth girl-cum-a cappella star in the addictive Pitch Perfect, which also proved she could carry a film as the lead. And her eclectic roles at Sundance prove she’s only getting stronger. In Jeff Baena’s zom-com Life After Beth, she plays Erica Wexler, the virtuous family friend of Zach Orfman’s (DeHaan). Zach’s dead girlfriend, Beth (Plaza), has recently returned from the grave as the zombie girlfriend from hell. If Zach leaves her line of sight for a moment, she flies into a rage—smashing car windows with her fists, burning down beach huts and, in one scene, forcing her warm-blooded paramour to have sex with her. Erica is the foil to the unstable, decaying Beth—a kind, virtuous, smooth-skinned girl next door. And Kendrick, oozing charm, turns a prolonged cameo into a very agreeable supporting turn. In one of the film’s finest moments, she’s confronted by a jealous Beth in the parking lot of a diner and nails her character’s simultaneous sense of shock and annoyance. That the two actresses are off-screen BFFs only sweetens the deal. She shows a different side in The Voices, filmmaker Marjane Satrapi’s (Persepolis) impressive dark, dark comedy. The movie centers on Jerry (Ryan Reynolds), a mentally disturbed loner who, when he’s not working a menial job at a bathtub factory, speaks with his genial dog and evil cat (the animals talk back). Jerry seems like a just another troubled, lonely soul—that is, until he murders his crush (Gemma Arterton), the self-proclaimed “office hottie” from accounting. Kendrick plays Jenny, another gal who works in accounting
and harbors a secret crush on the “mysterious” Jerry, who ignores her. Eventually, the timid Jenny works up the courage to ask Jerry out, and what’s meant to be another kill transforms into a surprisingly touching trip to the weirdo’s childhood home. It’s a tough tone to nail but Kendrick does, helping the film achieve the right balance of horror and romance. Later, when she pops by Jerry’s place to surprise him, Kendrick does something extraordinary, shifting from excited, smitten girlfriend to horrified witness to desperate prey in the blink of an eye. The most impressive performance of the bunch is in Happy Christmas. It reunites Kendrick with filmmaker Joe Swanberg, who directed her in last year’s underrated comedy Drinking Buddies. Here, instead of the prim and proper lightweight, she plays Jenny, the selfish—and self-destructive—younger sister of Jeff (Swanberg). It’s as if her character in Up in the Air quit her job and started hitting the bottle—hard. After a rough break up, Jenny crashes at Jeff’s house, and her hard-partying ways soon draw the ire of Jeff’s wife, Kelly (Melanie Lynskey). One night, she visits a house party with her partner in crime, Carson (Lena Dunham), and drinks so much she ends up passing out first on the hostess’s bed, and then on the floor. Later, when her new flame (Mark Webber) refuses to go home with her, she drinks an entire bottle of booze, smokes a bunch of pot, and almost burns the house down. Jenny is, like Jeff says, “a piece of shit.” She’s a largely vacuous, 27-year-old gal who abuses booze and drugs to numb herself, and doesn’t give a damn about anyone but herself. It’s a pretty reprehensible character, but Kendrick somehow makes us root for her. Despite her myriad faults and generally terrible behavior, we want her to get her act together, find love, and be a person of substance—as opposed to someone who abuses them. It’s the finest turn of the young actress’s career, and deserves awards consideration down the line. So, if you have to single one actor out from this year’s Sundance, it’s Kendrick.
Kendrick does something extraordinary, shifting from excited, smitten girlfriend to horrified witness to desperate prey in the blink of an eye. 20
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GODZILLA 1954-2014
Godzilla, one of the most famous movie monsters of all time, is returning to theaters next year and the first full trailer finally emerged Tuesday. Godzilla is back and bigger than ever — literally. This iteration of Godzilla is directed by Gareth Edwards, who was the man behind the solid low-budget Monsters back in 2010. While he created all the visual effects for that movie himself, he has a much larger toolbox to play with this time around. And money talks, or in this case, money walks and destroys cities. Of course, Godzilla’s larger size is also symptomatic of changing skylines. As time has passed, buildings have grown ever taller too. If Godzilla had stayed the same height throughout its entire existence, it would be much less imposing on a modern cityscape. If blockbusters are all about the spectacular, a Godzilla dwarfed by steel and concrete constructs would make a far less evocative image in a disaster flick.
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Godzilla, which stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, and Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston, will be released on May 16. The trailer gives a sense of the movie’s tone, if not much detail on the plot. The skydiving opening is a great way to catch a glimpse at the scale of the monster, but we need to keep an eye out for future trailers to get much more about the movie itself.
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Kanų 2014: Pilna programa Visi filmai, kurie bus rodomi 67 - ame Kanų filmų festivalyje, Gegužės mėnesį Cannes 2014 official selection
COMPETITION
Adieu au Langage (Goodbye to Language) dir: Jean-Luc Godard The Captive dir: Atom Egoyan Clouds of Sils Maria dir: Olivier Assayas Deux Jours, One Night (Two Days, One Night) dir: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne Foxcatcher dir: Bennett Miller Futatsume no Mado (Still the Water) dir: Naomi Kawase The Homesman dir: Tommy Lee Jones Jimmy’s Hall dir: Ken Loach Kış Uykusu (Winter Sleep) dir: Nuri Bilge Ceylan Le Meraviglie (The Wonders) dir: Alice Rohrwacher Leviafan dir: Andrey Zvyagintsev Maps to the Stars dir: David Cronenberg Mommy dir: Xavier Dolan Mr Turner dir: Mike Leigh Relatos Salvajes (Wild Stories) dir: Damian Szifron Saint Laurent dir: Bertrand Bonello The Search dir: Michel Hazanavicius Timbuktu dir: Abderrahmane Sissako
OUT OF COMPETITION
MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Grace of Monaco dir: Olivier Dahan (opening film) Coming Home (Gui Lai) dir: Zhang Yimou How to Train Your Dragon 2 dir: Dean DeBlois L’Homme Qu’on Aimait Trop (The Man Who Loved Too Much) dir: André Téchiné The Rover dir: David Michôd The Salvation dir: Kristian Levring The Target dir: Yoon Hong-seung
Bridges of Sarajevo dirs: Aida Begić, Isild Le Besco, Leonardo di Constanzo et al Caricaturistes: Fantassins de la democratie dir: Stéphanie Valloatto Maidan dir: Sergei Loznitsa Red Army dir: Gabe Polsky Eau Argentée dir: Mohammed Ossana People of the World dir: Yves Jeuland El Ardor dir: Pablo Fendrik Of Men and War dir: Laurent Bécue-Renard The Owners dir: Adilkhan Yerzhanov Geronimo dir: Tony Gatlif
UN CERTAIN REGARD
Party Girl dirs: Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger, Samuel Theis (opening film) Mad Love (Amour Fou) dir: Jessica Hausner Bird People dir: Pascale Ferran The Blue Room (La Chambre Bleue) dir: Mathieu Amalric Charlie’s Country dir: Rolf de Heer A Girl at My Door dir: July Jung
The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby dir: Ned Benson Fantasia dir: Wang Chao Force Majeure (Turist) dir: Ruben Östlund Away From His Absence dir: Keren Yedaya Beautiful Youth (Hermosa Juventud) dir: Jaime Rosales Misunderstood (Incompresa) dir: Asia Argento Jauja dir: Lisandro Alonso Lost River dir: Ryan Gosling Run dir: Philippe Lacôte The Salt of the Earth dirs: Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado Snow in Paradise dir: Andrew Hulme Butterfly dir: Kanu Behl Xenia dir: Panos H Koutras Fehér Isten dir: Kornél Mundruczó
Directors’ fortnight Bande de Files dir: Céline Sciamma (opening film) Pride dir: Matthew Warchus (closing film) Alleluia dir: Fabrice Du Welz Catch Me Daddy dir: Daniel Wolfe Next to Her dir: Asaf Korman Cold in July dir: Jim Mickle Fighters dir: Thomas Cailley Gett — The Trial of Viviane Amsalem dir: Ronit & Shlomi Elkabetz Kaguya-Hime No Monogatari dir: Isao Takahata Eat Your Bones dir: Jean-Charles Hue A Hard Day dir: Seong-Hun Kim National Gallery dir: Frederick Wiseman Queen and Country dir: John Boorman Refugiado dir: Diego Lerman These Final Hours dir: Zach Hilditch Tu Dors Nicole dir: Stéphane Lafleur Whiplash dir: Damien Chazelle SPECIAL SCREENINGS Li’l Quinquin dir: Bruno Dumont The Texas Chainsaw Massacre dir: Tobe Hooper
International critics’ week Darker Than Midnight dir: Sebastiano Riso The Tribe dir: Miroslav Slaboshpytskkiy It Follows dir: David Robert Mitchell Gente de Bien dir: Franco Lolli When Animals Dream dir: Jonas Alexander Amby Hope dir: Boris Lojkine Self Made dir: Shira Geffen SPECIAL SCREENINGS Making Love (Faire: L’amour) dir: Djinn Carrénard (opening film) Breathe dir: Mélanie Laurent The Kindergarten Teacher dir: Nadav Lapid Hippocrate dir: Thomas Lilti (closing film)
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2014 metĹł vasaros sezono filmai
X-Men: Days of Future Past The X-Men send Wolverine to the past in a desperate effort to change history and prevent an event that results in doom for both humans and mutants.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes A growing nation of genetically evolved apes led by Caesar is threatened by a band of human survivors of the devastating virus unleashed a decade earlier. They reach a fragile peace, but it proves short-lived, as both sides are brought to the brink of a war that will determine who will emerge as Earth’s dominant species.
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Guardians of the Galaxy In the far reaches of space, an American pilot named Peter Quill finds himself the object of a manhunt after stealing an orb coveted by the villainous Ronan.
Transformers: Age of Extinction An automobile mechanic and his daughter make a discovery that brings down the Autobots and Decepticons - and a paranoid government official - on them.
Godzilla The world’s most famous monster is pitted against malevolent creatures who, bolstered by humanity’s scientific arrogance, threaten our very existence.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Peter Parker runs the gauntlet as the mysterious company Oscorp sends up a slew of supervillains against him, impacting on his life.
Maleficent A vindictive fairy is driven to curse an infant princess only to realize the child may be the only one who can restore peace.
How to Train Your Dragon 2 It’s been five years since Hiccup and Toothless successfully united dragons and vikings on the island of Berk. Now, Hiccup and Toothless must unite to stand up for what they believe while recognizing that only together do they have the power to change the future of both men and dragons.
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Darkness has settled over New York City as Shredder and his evil Foot Clan have an iron grip on everything from the police to the politicians. The future is grim until four unlikely outcast brothers rise from the sewers and discover their destiny as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
22 Jump Street After making their way through high school (twice), big changes are in store for officers Schmidt and Jenko when they go deep undercover at a local college.
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Edge of Tomorrow A soldier fighting in a war with aliens finds himself caught in a time loop of his last day in the battle, though he becomes better skilled along the way.
Tammy After losing her job and learning that her husband has been unfaithful, a woman hits the road with her profane, hard-drinking grandmother.
Lucy
Winter’s Tale A woman, accidentally caught in a dark deal, turns the tables on her captors and transforms into a merciless warrior evolved beyond human logic.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier Steve Rogers struggles to embrace his role in the modern world and battles a new threat from old history: the Soviet agent known as the Winter Soldier.
A burglar falls for an heiress as she dies in his arms. When he learns that he has the gift of reincarnation, he sets out to save her.
A Million Ways to Die in the West As a cowardly farmer begins to fall for the mysterious new woman in town, he must put his new-found courage to the test when her husband, a notorious gun-slinger, announces his arrival.
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The film stars Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Max von Sydow, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and Kenny Baker. Star Wars: Episode VII arrives in theaters on December 18, 2015.
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Žvaigždžių Karai: EPISODAS VII bus pradėtas filmuoti gegužės mėnesį
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Ką mes jau žinome In 2005 it looked like the Star Wars saga was officially over. Lucasfilm and Twentieth Century Fox released Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, which completed the prequels trilogy and tied the story back to the first film in the series. It was done, finished, kaput, and ended. But then along came Disney. In October 2012 the studio brokered a $4.05 billion deal to buy Lucasfilm, and with the deal came the announcement that they would be starting production on a whole new trilogy of Star Wars films that would keep the epic story going for years and years to come. Naturally, fanboys started to foam at the mouth with anticipation. What would the new movies be about? Would they bring back classic characters or merely focus on new ones? Would there be new stories set outside of the trilogy? Thanks to all of these questions, we here at Cinema Blend have been sorting through all of the rumors trying to sort out exactly what we know about the upcoming Star Wars Episode VII, and we’ve constructed a handy guide to help sort out all of the facts and fictions. Read on below for the latest info!
Kada prasideda filmavimas On May 16, 2014, principal photography on Star Wars: Episode VII began, making it the first live-action Star Wars movie to go in front of cameras since Revenge of the Sith. While it hasn’t been officially stated what is being shot first or where, some strategically placed sand on the production’s first clapper board suggests that the cast and crew are kicking things off in the Abu Dhabi desert, where it’s been rumored they have been building a new Tatooine. Most of the production, however, will be taking place at England’s Pinewood Studios.
Režisierius Though he initially declined the job, J.J. Abrams is not only going to be the director of Star Wars: Episode VII, but also one of the co-writers. The filmmaker has had plenty of experience working in science-fiction, directing both the last two Star Trek movies as well as the Spielberg-esque Super 8, and has long said that he is a lifelong Star Wars fan. Will that experience and fanhood lead to a great sequel? We’ll just have to wait and find out.
Režisierius J.J. Abrams 32
Kokiu laiku vyks siužetas It has been confirmed that the Star Wars: Episode VII storyline will take place 30 years after the Battle of Endor and the events portrayed in Return of the Jedi. This makes complete sense, given that it’s been rumored that Abrams wants the plot of the film to revolve around Luke, Leia and Han from George Lucas’ original trilogy. In order to do this Episode VII, would need to factor in the age of the actual actors, and it appears that’s exactly what’s being done.
Scenarijus Oscar winning screenwriter Michael Arndt was one of the first people to be hired to work on Star Wars: Episode VII, signing a deal to pen the script for the film only about a week after the film was first announced. But not only is he now gone, it would appear that his script in the hands of Abrams and Empire Strikes Back screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan has changed quite a bit. According to reports, Arndt’s original Star Wars: Episode VII screenplay largely followed the adventures of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo’s offspring, but since Abrams and Kasdan have taken over they have reportedly changed the focus of the story to be more on the original trilogy characters. Whether or not this story is accurate is unknown, but what has been confirmed is that the screenplay is finished.
Aktoriai, kurie vaidins naujajame žvaigždžių karų filme 33
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Genijus, kurį filmų industrija pamiršo 2014: is this Jean-Luc Godard’s year? Cult director Jean-Luc Godard has never won at the Cannes Film Festival. Can he lift the Palme d’Or this year – and will he even turn up? In May 1959, a 28-year-old film critic called Jean-Luc Godard ran into a friend on the Champs-Elysées and grumbled, “Everyone’s at Cannes. What the f... am I doing here?” So he “borrowed” money from the Cahiers du Cinéma cashbox and caught the train to the Côte d’Azur, where Godard’s friend and fellow critic, François Truffaut, was about to win a Best Director award for his debut feature, The 400 Blows. Godard asked Truffaut if he could use a story about a car thief on which they’d worked together, pitched the idea to a producer at the festival, and Breathless was born. Truffaut’s debut and Le Beau Serge (by another Cahiers critic, Claude Chabrol) might have been the first films of the French New Wave, but it was the commercial success of Breathless that would kick the movement into gear.
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It’s no wonder Godard has always been the critics’ darling. He was living proof that a nerdy film critic could be transformed into a hip film director. All it took were dark glasses, a Boyard cigarette, and - most vitally - a knack for deconstructing Hollywood genre and reshaping it, seemingly off the cuff, into jazzy cocktails of cracking action, po-faced polemic and creative spontaneity. It also helped if you could cast effortlessly cool mecs like Jean-Paul Belmondo and heart-breakingly beautiful actresses like Anna Karina or Brigitte Bardot. With their handheld camerawork, jump cuts, voiceovers and intertitles, films like Breathless, Contempt, Bande à part, Pierrot le Fou and Alphaville seem as fizzy and exhilarating now as they must have done when they were first released, amateur in the best sense of the word, displaying a delight in the very process of film-making. Godard’s 1960s work has had an indelible effect on independent, low-budget and art house cinema around the world. His influence can be seen in the work of everyone from Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman to Léos Carax, David Lynch and Steven Soderbergh. Quentin Tarantino’s production company is named “A Band Apart”, and both he and Jim Jarmusch have “quoted” the Madison dance sequence from Bande à part in their movies. The director also had a talent for the memorable bon mot, both in film dialogue and in interviews; “All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl”; “Photography is truth, and the cinema is truth 24 times a second”; “Cinema, like painting, shows the invisible”; “Film is like a battleground... Love, hate, action, violence, death. In
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one word, emotions.” And, perhaps most famously, “A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end – though not necessarily in that order.” Godard’s first creative flowering lasted until Week End (1967), an early highlight of which is an astonishing eight minute tracking shot alongside the mother of all traffic jams, representing the stasis of the bourgeoisie, and obligatory viewing for aficionados of old Citroëns and Facel Véga Faciellas. The film ends with the legend, “End of Cinema”. And so it seemed for a while – at least as far as Godard was concerned. My first encounter with his work was very nearly also my last, because it coincided with his second period, the political one, which lasted a decade from the late 1960s. My intrepid young self gamely struggled through indigestible snoozefests such as One Plus One, in which the Rolling Stones rehearse Sympathy for the Devil so boringly it made you want to kill yourself, and Numéro Deux, featuring murky video footage and dialogue like “Once there was a landscape, once there was a factory. Is mummy a factory or a landscape?” Little wonder I spent the rest of the 1970s avoiding his work like the plague. I preferred the Monty Python version – Jean-Kenneth Longueur’s Le Fromage Grand, starring Terry Jones and Carol Cleveland on a rubbish dump with an exploding lettuce. But in 1980, Godard made a creative comeback, of sorts, with Slow Motion, which was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Belatedly granted a place in the official pantheon of great French film-makers, he would go on to be nominated four more times before this year (five if you count his contribution to the portmanteau opera movie Aria) – for Passion, Détective,
Nouvelle Vague, Éloge de l’amour – though in each case he would leave empty-handed. In the 54 years since Breathless, the director’s relationship with the festival has sometimes been fraught. During the riots of 1968 he was one of the film-makers who called, successfully, for the festival to be abandoned; “We’re talking about solidarity with the workers and students; you assholes are talking about tracking shots and close-ups.” And in 1985, it was in Cannes that he got a custard pie in the face from a man who had failed to appreciate his Hail Mary, a controversial retelling of the story of the Virgin Birth in which the mother of Jesus is a petrol station attendant; the director reacted with surprising good humour, licking his lips and later saying the incident made him think of silent movies. Godard’s recent films can sometimes be hard work for the casual viewer, but they display a flair and invention that seemed lacking from his 1970s work. There are moments of breathtaking beauty and some inspired musical choices, both classical and modern. And their director shows a willingness to experiment and
embrace new technology that belies his old codger status. This year, at the age of 83, he’s competing for the Palme d’Or with a film in 3D – Adieu au langage, the story of a couple who communicate via their dog. Will 2014 turn out to be Jean-Luc Godard’s year at Cannes? Will he even show up on the Croisette? (He cried off at the last minute in 2010, when his Film Socialisme was selected for the Un Certain Regard section.) His career was – and still is – spectacular; in both attitude and technique, he is surely the godfather of no-budget film-making, generation Tarantino and YouTube, and his early films have inspired a love of French cinema in generations of anglophone filmgoers. This is an artist who has reinvented himself as often as Madonna, and to rather more invigorating effect, and he continues to do his thing, with a rigorous lack of compromise and no concessions to the mainstream. You might accuse him of being incomprehensible or pretentious, but you could never accuse him of selling out or playing it safe. In cinema there is no God, there is only Godard.
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“I’m pregnant,” Jennifer Lawrence tells me with deadpan solemnity, swirling a goblet of red wine. Then, seeing my eyes widen, she shakes her head vigorously. “Not really! Quite the opposite, actually...”
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Jennifer Lawrence Just Can’t Help It Master of the red-carpet photo-bomb, reliable source of the uncensored comment, and consummate guy’s girl, Jennifer lawrence is the furthest thing from the carefully constructed Hollywood actress who sticks to the script. She may play shape-shifter Mystique in X-Men: Days of Future Past, but offscreen, what you see is what you get. And we wouldn’t want it any other way. We’re sitting in an empty bar at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Atlanta, not far from where Lawrence, in her role as the longbow-wielding Katniss Everdeen, is filming the third and fourth installments of The Hunger Games franchise, Mockingjay-Part 1, due out in November, and Mockingjay-Part 2, a November 2015 release. Our allotted time is just about up, and I’ve demanded a juicy piece of gossip in exchange for promising to keep out of print whatever career-ending comments she may have already uttered. (Nobody ever said celebrity journalism was pretty.) By “quite the opposite,” the actress means it’s that time of the month, which may seem quite the overshare, even coming from the girl who introduced the world to the perils of “armpit vagina” while wearing Dior Haute Couture at this year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards. But it is crucial to bear in mind when you hear her fulminate about various annoyances, from fans who interrupt her during meals to Anne Hathaway’s online haters to, yes, the paparazzi.
On suffering from abdominal pains and panic attacks during the press tour for The Hunger Games:
On maintaining a long-distance relationship with Nicholas Hoult:
On her candor:
“When we’re busy, we agree to mutually ignore each other. Not completely, but neither of us gets mad when the other doesn’t text back or call. Life’s super-busy. Obviously you know what they’re doing, and you trust them. We’re so young that it would almost be like if we lived in the same city, what would happen? We’d be living together. At least this way he’s in the same boat as I am: We can go out and have our own lives and know that we have each other.” On a conspiracy theory suggesting that her tendency to trip over her own feet at the Academy Awards is part of a devious plot to appear authentic: “I’m trying to do the right thing, waving to fans, trying to be nice, and there’s a traffic cone. The second I hit it, I was laughing, but on the inside I was like, ‘You’re fucked. They’re totally going to think this is an act...’ But trust me if I was going to plan it, I would have done it at the Golden Globes or the SAGs. I would have never done it at two Oscars in a row. I watch Homeland—I’m craftier than that!”
Catching Fire: “I was so freaked out, I called my publicist crying. I had to cancel Chelsea Handler. I was terrified to get on a plane to New York because I was convinced I had an ulcer that was bleeding. I went to the hospital. There was a bit of blood in my stomach, but they said it was nothing to worry about. I was like, ‘Really? Because I’m pretty worried!’” On fame making it hard for her to be the person she was raised to be: “I’m a lot more closed off and frankly probably rude. I mean, I’m from Kentucky. I used to be very personable and make eye contact and smile at people, and now all I do is look down. When I’m at dinner and one person after another keeps interrupting to take pictures, it’s like, ‘I can’t live like this.’”
“I’m not like, ‘I’m a rebel; I’m out of control.’ I just don’t think about things before I say them or do them.” On friendship: “I don’t trust a girl who doesn’t have any girlfriends. I have really close girlfriends, but they are guys like me—girls who eat and don’t know anything about fashion.” On rumors that she’s jealous of Kristen Stewart, Nicholas Hoult’s costar in the upcoming sci-fi romance Equals: “There was something in a magazine, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s hilarious,’ because Kristen and I are friends. I actually texted her a picture of it and was like, ‘Just so you know, this is absolutely true.’” On being up against Lupita Nyong’o for the 2014 Best Supporting Actress Oscar: “I was very happy I voted for Lupita. It’s beautiful when you watch something good happen to somebody when it’s well deserved.”
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Emma Stone is flying high—major movie roles, a Spider-Man beau, fashion-world heat—but, as Jason Gay discovers, she’s just as down-toearth and devilish as ever.
It is a quiet Tuesday afternoon in Los Angeles, and Emma Stone and I are at a mall, eating hot dogs on a stick from Hot Dog on a Stick, sitting with our teddy bears from Build-a-Bear Workshop.
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Emma Stone I can explain all of this. Let me back up a bit. It’s the night before, at a restaurant called the Hungry Cat in Santa Monica. Maybe around 8:30 p.m. There have been oysters. There has been wine. Don’t get the wrong idea: not a lot of wine. One glass each. There has been polite and expected conversation about Stone’s career and Stone’s childhood and Stone’s newest movie, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which is in 3-D and comes out in early May. Stone is dressed in a plaid red-and-black A.P.C. shirt and Rag & Bone jeans, and she is being funny and gracious, even if sitting for long interviews with magazines occasionally freaks her out. It’s “a self-editing thing,” she says. Invariably, she gets home and thinks about something she said, and wonders if she could have put it differently, and the anxiety just gets exhausting. “The permanence of it is what’s nerve-racking to me,” she says. “And the intimacy of it.” Then there’s the matter of the activity: the ruse that happens in many magazine stories, in which the writer and the subject agree to join up in a shared diversion. Sometimes the activity is a walk or a trip to the museum or an amusement-park ride. Activities can be helpful, but they’re a bit of a contrivance, a device to create motion in a story, so it’s not just chatter in hotel lobbies and forks picking at salads. Weeks before, Stone had suggested a trip to Griffith Observatory, but here at dinner, that activity starts to sound like, you know, a trip to an observatory. No disrespect to observatories, which are fantastic. It’s just that it might not be representative of who Stone is, which is a little devilish and unpredictable. Then Emma Stone has an idea: “Can we go to Build-aBear?” And this is how I find myself, the next day at 1:00 p.m., meeting one of the most successful young actresses in Hollywood on the second floor of the Westside Pavilion in Rancho Park. An eager Stone gets there before me and texts: I’m sitting outside Forever 21. They’re playing “Love Shack.” We are going to build a bear. For the uninitiated: Build-a-Bear is a store in which customers can . . . build bears. I guess the name says
it all. Bears are stuffed, hearts are inserted (not as creepy as it sounds), and then the fun really starts: dressing the bear. This is the sine qua non of the Build-a-Bear experience, during which Stone, star of The Help and Superbad and Easy A, is overheard saying, earnestly, “I want to give my bear skinny jeans.” There are rigorous conversations about bear accessories, and then there are bons mots from Stone like “exhi-bear-tionism” and “bear-ing all.” “This is bear-nanas,” she says. “I can’t stop making bear jokes!” See Emma Stone in an exclusive video for Vogue.com. To think that Stone and I could be at an observatory, pondering the essential questions of the universe. But this is the unpretentious madness that happens when you leave the activity to Emma Stone, whose movie-star life appears to be based on a likable philosophy of taking her profession seriously, and herself not at all. We will get to the 25-year-old’s rise to fame, the twists in the career of the actress whom Jonah Hill calls “probably the funniest person in the room . . . and so much more than that” and Bradley Cooper claims “has a lot of magic in her” and Oscar winner Octavia Spencer says will be able to work for as long as she likes “because she has the goods.” We will get to all that. But right now, Emma Stone is going to pick out some bear sneakers, because bear sneakers rule. The essential (and now-legendary) moment in the Emma Stone Origin Story occurs when Stone is still Emily Stone of Scottsdale, Arizona, an anxious child who combats her anxiety by jumping headlong into theater (she makes her regional-theater debut playing Otter in The Wind in the Willows). At fifteen, she requests a home audience with her parents, where, via PowerPoint, she presents the case that she should be allowed to move to Hollywood. This sounds like a plot turn in a movie Emma Stone might have once starred in, but it actually happened. Stone says she offered examples of successful entertainers who had started young. “Sarah Jessica Parker,” she recalls. “And I think the singer Michelle Branch.”
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KUR?
KAS? Trijų dienų muzikos ir pramogų fiesta, skirtas žmonėms, kuriems kokybiška muzika, įspūdinga gamta ir idiliška aplinka yra privalomi tikro festivalio atributai. Kuriame šį festivalį todėl, kad gyvename ir kvėpuojame muzika bei žinome, kad svarbūs ir gražūs dalykai dažniausiai nutinka tada, kai susitinka ir gerai laiką leidžia nuostabūs žmonės.
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