Interview
Kevin Spacey – Interview
DarkHorizons.com interviewed Kevin Spacey about his new film titled “21” and during the interview asked him about returning as Lex Luthor in the next Superman movie.
Question: Was it this character, or this book that appealed to you?
Spacey: Well, it started with the story. I always thought that this story would be right for a film, and my business partner, Dana Brunetti, who, with a co-producer, we’d started hearing rumours about this, about a decade ago, and could never find any real evidence about it. It was sort of like an open secret in Boston, but we couldn’t get anybody on the record about it, and we even tried to write a treatment at one point, and that ended up in a drawer. And then about five years ago, Dana was walking down a New York City street, and he saw a Wired magazine with the cover story, “The MIT students who went to Vegas and made millions.” pulled it off the stands, and called me. Then, we ultimately tracked down Ben Mezrich, who’d written the article, and it was in connection with this book, which was going to come out about a month or two later, then at some point, made it to Los Angeles, and they optioned the book, and then we sold it to MGM, but didn’t know at that moment that, behind closed doors, MGM was being sold. So we went into a kind of holding pattern, until finally, Sony looked at the slate that MGM had, and decided to pull two movies out; one was James Bond, and the other was ours. And here we are, lo and behold, all these years later.
Interview with Olga Kurylenko
Tell us a little bit about Camille.
Olga Kurylenko: She is a strong, feisty, independent woman. She is out there on her mission, driven by revenge.
How deep is her relationship with Bond?
Kurylenko: Well in the beginning they come as opponents, but at a certain point they have to collaborate. They go through a lot of things together.
How did you get the role?
Kurylenko: First I went for general casting in Paris, then I got invited for an audition in London, then I did the final audition with Daniel [Craig]. I just worked very hard. I worked non-stop with an accent coach because I have to speak with a South American accent, as she’s from Bolivia.
Gemma Arterton Q&A
New Bond girl spills the beans on Quantum of Solace.
UK, January 29, 2008 – Gemma Arterton has only been acting for six months, but the 22-year-old has already won plum parts in Brit flicks St. Trinian’s, 3 and Out and Guy Ritchie’s forthcoming RocknRolla. If that wasn’t enough, she’s also playing a Secret Service agent in new Bond film Quantum of Solace, and IGN interviewed her on set last week to discuss landing one of cinema’s most sought after roles.
You’ve been a Bond girl for a little while now — is it still exciting or is the novelty starting to wear off a bit?
Gemma Arterton: No, every day there’s something exciting that happens, like I just got asked to present at the BAFTAs, which I can’t do because I’m filming this, but little things like that. I’ve only just left drama school and have been working professionally for six months, so all of this is out of this world. It doesn’t feel real still. That’s why I wasn’t too nervous on the first day because I just felt like it was a game. The size of it hasn’t hit me yet, but I’m sure that it will.
Source: IGN
Interview with Daniel Craig
IGN Movies was at the Quantum of Solace set last week.
Here’s what Bond himself had to say about the ‘Quantum of Solace’.
Who was the first person to suggest the title?
Daniel Craig: It’s been going around for a while, we’ve been discussing it quite a while. We could have found a nippy title – we had plenty of suggestions that would look good on the poster. But we made a lot of effort last time around to take the film to a new place, and we want to continue to do that. So this title is meant to confuse a little. It’s meant to make you wonder, and that’s what we want – we want people thinking as they come into the film. When we first came up with the title I wasn’t sure, but I’ve been re-reading the Fleming books, which I do when we start shooting because it passes the time. Fleming always has a very emotional line to his books, and that’s where we kind of left the last movie. It doesn’t mean that this movie is going to be some character-driven kitchen sink drama – we’re making a Bond movie – and ‘Quantum of Solace’ ties in with a very strong plot point, which I’m not going to give away at this point.
So given that should we expect an even more introspective Bond from this film?
Craig: No. There’s revenge. There’s a fight within him. There’s a need to do his job and to solve this riddle that’s been given to him, because basically everything he understood about the world has been turned upside down. All this points towards a bad organisation that’s trying to undermine the world’s economies by trying to control money around the world in a very secretive way; and he’s after them.
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Tom Hanks Video Interview
The Oscar-winner talks Charlie WIlson’s War
Charlie Wilson’s War is the improbable story of Texas senator Charlie Wilson.A womaniser, drinker and recreational drug-user, Charlie Wilson wasn’t the most likely member of the senate to emerge as the saviour of Afghanistan, let alone be instrumental in the fall of the entire Soviet Union.
Penned by West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin, Charlie Wilson’s War is essential viewing for a hundred reasons, not least of all being the image of squeaky clean Tom Hanks sharing a jacuzzi with two hookers and a large quantity of cocaine. We spoke to The Nicest Man In Hollywood™ to find out all about his most surprising role to date. Continue Reading…
‘My film flopped and Hollywood didn’t want to touch me’
Despite show-stealing turns in the Harry Potter films, Jason Isaacs found himself rejected by the film industry. He tells Emine Saner how winning a role in the gritty US drama Brotherhood salvaged his career.
Jason Isaacs has the kind of face that is hard to remember, and I mean that as a compliment. It’s not that he’s average-looking – he’s not (it’s those glinty pale blue eyes) – but somehow he manages to disappear into each role he plays. I don’t think he was too offended when I told him I had never heard of him (I know, I’m charming). What I remember instead are his characters. One of the most extraordinary, in 2006, was Chris in Scars, a low-budget one-off Channel 4 film in which Isaacs played a real-life violent offender. Or the villainous British colonel in The Patriot. Or the deliciously camp Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films. Or the ethically challenged British ambassador in the BBC drama The State Within, for which he has been nominated for a Golden Globe. The event has now been cancelled because of the ongoing writers’ strike, but like many of the stars, Isaacs says he wouldn’t have crossed the picket line. Continue Reading…
Javier Bardem – Interview
So far, this has been a decent year for Javier Bardem, who’s actually been out and about promoting a few new movies for the first time since 2004’s Oscar-winning The Sea Inside.
Bardem can be seen as the murderous Anton Chigurh in the Coen brothers’ adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, opening in limited cities today, but we had a chance to talk to him a few weeks back for his other new movie, Love in the Time of Cholera based on the Spanish romantic classic by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Bardem plays Florentino Ariza, a poet and telegraph clerk in 19th Century Columbia who falls for the beautiful Fermina Daza (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), but when she marries a doctor (Benjamin Bratt), Florentino promises to remain faithful and true to Fermina until she agrees to be his. Over the course of the movie, which spans over 50 years, we see Bardem as Florentino at all different ages, as he sleeps with over 600 other women before finally getting his wish.
You’ve said that you read Marquez’s book when you were 14 and that it made a big impression on you. How did those feelings carry over to yourself as an adult and getting to portray that character?
Javier Bardem: Well, the first time I read it, as you said, it was so big. It’s such a big novel. I mean, I followed the storyline, but I remember being thoroughly stuck in the reading of it. I was trying to get lost in the descriptions, for example when she goes to the market and the way that Garcia Marquez explains the flavors and the smells of the fruits and all of that. I remember reading that like six times in a row, going through the page. It just opened a whole world for you and there were many things that I missed. After that, I read it twice. When I knew the movie was going to happen, I felt like I had to talk to the director and say, “I have a big passion for this character.” Also, as an actor, it’s a challenge to try to do somebody that goes from 20 to 75, because when you do that you have to avoid acting age. You have to really try to act the character aging, which is different. That’s a challenge, especially when, for example, you’re shooting scenes in when you’re 20, when you’re 40 and when you’re 75 all in the same day, and you have to change years that fast. That’s a challenge, and I wanted to go to that challenge.
How do you feel about the movie being made in English and not in Spanish even though you have a lot of great Spanish actors in it?
Bardem: Once again, it’s the way it’s conceived and you have to get onboard or not. I would’ve preferred that it was in Spanish. There were many moments where I said, “F*ck. If this were in Spanish I could really make another thing.” There’s an understanding, a knowledge, of the language that you can play with in the novel. There are certain words that for you mean something deep because it belongs to your own memories and experiences, and you bring it with you and the character will go to another level, but when you’re working in a foreign language, you have to try and put that as a surgeon. You have to try to put those images and experiences into those words that don’t mean anything to you, which is extra work. It’s also a great experience, because you have to really focus and you have to really be able to let yourself go as an actor but without losing the conscience of the language that’s not your own. It’s a weird, kind of schizophrenic moment, but it’s good.
I thought Ron Harwood did an amazing job adapting this, so did the words in the script have the same effect on you in English than the book when you read it in Spanish?
Bardem: No, no, it’s impossible. I mean, I was always working with the book in Spanish. When I was shooting the movie I was always with the book in my bag and I was always coming back to it and reading and putting notes from it. From there, you’re in this universe of what you’re reading, the language of Garcia Marquez in Spanish, to go to set and say it in English was a weird situation. Sometimes, I’d get lost in the translation. It was obvious sometimes that I wasn’t bringing what I could.
Would you consider this a story about undying love or about persistence?
Bardem: I don’t know. I think it’s the ultimate love story of a person who really falls in love when he’s fourteen years old, and still, when he’s seventy-five, feels the same way like as if he’s seen her the day before. I mean, it’s fiction. It’s a novel. I don’t know if that exists in the real world, but we all want to think it exists, no? That’s why we’re always fighting for it.
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