The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz
The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz |
| Schwarzenegger takes a ‘Stand’ in new film, with cue from Eastwood Posted: 18 Jan 2013 06:10 AM PST  Cast member Arnold Schwarzenegger attends the premiere of the film "The Last Stand" in Los Angeles, California January 14, 2013. — Reuters pic In a departure from his typical superhuman roles, Schwarzenegger plays a retired Los Angeles policeman forced to protect a tiny border town from a notorious drug kingpin. The 65-year-old former bodybuilder looks every bit his age and admits in the film feeling "old" as h e takes a ribbing from some of his significantly younger deputies. As he embarks on a movie comeback in, which he will star in three films over the next 12 months, Schwarzenegger is embracing his age rather than trying to relive his glory days as an action star. He is taking his cue from the 82-year-old Eastwood - the gun-toting former macho "Dirty Harry" star who eased into more senior roles, winning plaudits for movies like last year's "The Trouble with the Curve," and "Million Dollar Baby" in 2004, for, which he was nominated for a best-actor Oscar and won for best director. Schwarzenegger said he was inspired by Eastwood in the 1993 film "In the Line of Fire," where Eastwood's character, a Secret Service agent, is short of breath after running alongside the president's limousine. "I thought that was so cool," Schwarzenegger told Reuters TV recently. "I remember how smart it was to acknowledge that because it took the curse off. No one was trying to say, 'Isn't he too old for this job?' That's what I tried to do in this film since (Eastwood) is a big idol of mine and I always like to learn from him." Schwarzenegger said he felt great physically, but that reality had set in. "I'm not a 30-year-old action hero anymore," he said. "I'm now 65 years old, but I'm still doing action movies. I acknowledge that it's a different ballgame now. I'm an older guy." In "Last Stand," Schwarzenegger said he agreed to play the part of Sheriff Ray Owens because "it was kind of a traditional Schwarzenegger action movie" with "big blow-ups, a great story, good drama, fight scenes and action from the beginning to the end." Schwarzenegger began his transformation to an aging action star in the 2010 film "The Expendables" and its 2012 sequel where he played an aging movie star in an ensemble cast that included Sylvester Stallone and other older stars. "I was very pleasantly surprised by the positive reaction," said Schwarzenegger, who was Republican governor of California from 2003 to 2011. 'I-DARE-YOU ATTITUDE' Critics have mostly embraced Schwarzenegger's return with "Last Stand," despite the film's modest budget. Film critic Marshall Fine called it "shamelessly entertaining," while The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy wrote that Schwarzenegger "still conveys the old self-confident, humorous I-dare-you attitude towards his adversaries." An older, wiser Schwarzenegger chose to play vintage roles in his other upcoming films as well. In September, he teams up again with Stallone in "The Tomb," where they play aging inmates who plot a prison escape. Next January, Schwarzenegger will star in "Ten," playing what the film's director, David Ayer, called "a broken old drug warrior." In an interview with Reuters, Ayer said his No. 1 goal in working with Schwarzenegger was "transformation." The director said he studied every frame of Schwarzenegger's films, noting that most of the actor's filmography had "a very specific tone, almost jocular in a sense, where it is not necessarily a psychologically realistic portrayal of a man or a character." "You look at all these performances, and the question is, have these characters been treated as something he can transform himself?" Ayer said. "I probably asked him to do things he wasn't asked before. I knew I could take him someplace new. Some of these scenes required real, heavy lifting." In the end, Ayer believes moviegoers will be "blindsided" by what they see of Schwarzenegger on screen. Yet even as Schwarzenegger attempts to widen his range as an actor, he is not leaving behind the genre films that made him famous. That means going back to some of his popular franchises of the past, including a new "Conan the Barbarian" film that is expected to go into production later this year and a sequel to the 1988 action comedy "Twins" to be called "Triplets." "It's important I pick projects that the fans, that the audiences like to see," he said. He already has another big fan in his friend Stallone, who talked him into acting in the two "Expendables" films. "What is the definition of a star? Someone who people will wait three hours in the rain to see," Stallone said. "And people still have their umbrellas out for him." — Reuters |
| Colorado movie theater where massacre occurred reopens Posted: 18 Jan 2013 06:01 AM PST  A man with a boy wearing a Batman jacket arrive at the movie theatre where 12 people were killed in a shooting rampage at a Batman film last July in Aurora, Colorado January 17, 2013. — Reuters pic The event, held just shy of six months after the massacre, was not heavily attended despite a personal welcome from Colorado's governor and offers of free movie passes and popcorn. The owners of the theatre, Cinemark USA, had invited some 2,000 guests, mostly moviegoers who lived through the shooting and relatives of those killed, along with police, fire fighters and other emergency personnel who responded to the crime scene. But a crowd numbering no more than several hundred people, including members of the media, turned out for the event, greeted by dignitaries including Governor John Hickenlooper, the mayor of Aurora, Steve Hogan, Cinemark USA's chief executive, Tim Warner, and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Denver, Samuel Aquila. Some of the attendees embraced one another as they arrived at the revamped multiplex, and vendors walked through the lobby offering guests free candy, buttered popcorn and soft drinks. But in a letter to Cinemark, families of nine murder victims took offense at the offer to tour "the very theatre where our loved ones lay dead on the floor for over 15 hours." "We would give anything to wipe the carnage of that night out of our minds' eye," the letter said. "Thank you for reminding us how your quest for profits has blinded your leadership and made you so callous as to be oblivious to our mental anguish." A spokeswoman for Cinemark declined to comment. Among the survivors who attended the event yesterday evening was Jansen Young, 21, whose boyfriend, Navy veteran Jonathan Blunk, died shielding her from harm. 'GUARDIAN ANGEL' Young, who was unhurt in the shooting, referred to Blunk as "my guardian angel." She recalled how he pushed her to the floor at the first sound of gunshots and covered her body with his. He was 26. "I heard his last few breaths," she said, adding that she was overcome by emotion as she sat again in the old Theater 9, which Cinemark has renamed "Auditorium I — Extreme Digital Cinema." "It was so hard. I didn't expect to go in there and cry," she said before "The Hobbit" was shown. The theatre will offer free movie passes to the public at large from today through Sunday. The 16-screen multiplex, rechristened the Century Aurora, will then close and reopen for good on January 25 It had been shuttered since July 20, when a gunman opened fire during a midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises," killing 12 and wounding dozens of others. Former graduate student James Holmes is charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder and attempted murder. Hickenlooper told attendees that reopening the theater was a sign of a return to normalcy in the city of 325,000. "We need to make sure we don't allow evil to triumph over good," he said. Hogan issued a video statement before the reopening, calling it "part of a healing process." He said three-quarters of Aurora citizens who responded to an online survey conducted by the city requesting input on the future of the multiplex site said they wanted the theater to reopen. Cinemark is the third-largest movie exhibitor in the United States, according to a company profile. The Texas-based theater chain reported a 1 per cent year-over-year dip in revenue to US$636.6 million (RM1.92 billion) in the third quarter of 2012, the time frame when the shooting occurred. Cinemark has refrained from commenting publicly about the massacre. Some victims have sued the chain over the rampage, charging that the theatre should have had more security because it was aware of previous crimes in or near the multiplex. In a court filing seeking dismissal of the lawsuits, Cinemark denied it was aware of other crimes at the theatre, but even if true, "such an event would be insufficient to make a madman's mass murder foreseeable." — Reuters |
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