Here my lovely Twilighters is the first OFFICIAL (unfortunately it was leaked) look at the clan of vampires that reside in Italy, that we LOVE to hate; the Volturi! Take a look and let us know what you think of their looks!
AHHHHHH! That’s all I have to say about this. Look at how awesome Jamie and Dakota look!
Amritraj right now is excited about his 100th production, Unbound Captives, which will be shot towards 2009-end and ready for release by early 2011. “It will be a big epic in the scale of Laurence of Arabia, and Stowe’s first effort at direction. John Toll of Braveheart and Last Samurai will be the cinematographer. It’s probably the biggest in scope and scale among all my films, and will have a budget of 80-90 million dollars,” he says.
A word of caution
The film will be shot “between” New Mexico and New Zealand as the subject demands shoots in different seasons. He is also worked up about the interest in Indian cinema thanks to the success of Slumdog Millionaire. But at the same time, he sounds a word of caution to Indian filmmakers wanting to break into the international market. Slumdog Millionaire is a wonderful film, but one must realise that it all starts with the screenwriter and the director both of who are British. And the movie has been made from very much a Western point of view even though location, stars are all Indian. “I think those kind of movies can certainly work internationally. The question is can an Indian writer write with the international audience in mind. If one wants to break into international market place, one has to learn it from the writers’ point of view. The good news is it has been done twice now, though 27 years apart, with Gandhi and Slumdog.
Filed under Mr. Robert Pattinson
As promised we have more Twilight coverage for you Twihards. This go around its an interview with Chris Weitz from Comic Con. He talks about the challenges and the fun in shooting the new sequel to Twilight…New Moon.
In Twilight New Moon Bella Swan is devastated by the abrupt departure of her vampire love, Edward Cullen, but her spirit is rekindled by her growing friendship withJacob Black. Suddenly she finds herself drawn into the world of the werewolves, ancestral enemies of the vampires, and finds her loyalties tested.
Q: Chris, what was challenging about taking over the helm for this film?
Chris: In fact, when I weigh it all, I had tremendous benefits. There was an established hit. There was a wonderful cast in place. There really weren’t many challenges. The people I was working with weren’t challenging. They were lovely. People want to go see it. The hardest thing, when you’re making a movie, is hoping that someone’s going to go see it.
There’s always the fear of letting down the fans, but the mantra for me was to be honest to the book. That’s not always the case when you’re making a film for a studio because sometimes they think that they know better what fans are going to like, than what’s in the book. But, Summit understands about this.
Q: Did you have to fight for that?
Chris: No. They understand that if you disappoint the fans of the book, you’re in big trouble. So, as long as you keep to that, you’re in great shape. That’s the only challenge, really.
Q: Were there any surprises in directing this?
Chris: I think the surprise for me was the tremendous infusion of oxygen that came when the cast showed up. You’ve got a script, and you’ve got that all squared away. You search for your locations, and that’s enormously tedious. I feel like I saw every tree in British Columbia. And then, these wonderful people show up, whose job it is to impersonate other people and creatures, and that brings this delightful element to it. That’s when I really, really started to enjoy the process.
Q: How hard was it to shoot, now that the cast is so much more popular? Did you have to have extra security?
Chris: It was with Rob and Kristen, and all of the cast. It’s not just Rob. It’s really anybody who embodies, for these fans, the characters that they love. In the very best way, they have a hard time distinguishing between the love that they feel for the characters and the love that they feel for people they don’t know, who are the actors. So, yeah, you need security and you need people to protect them from the love of the fans, which is different from being the bodyguard for someone that someone is trying to assassinate. It’s a good thing, but sometimes you do worry about people getting crushed.
Q: Did the fans try to sneak into a lot of the shooting locations?
Chris: Yeah, they tried to find their way to wherever they thought we were going to be. In a rather naughty way, we would sometimes give out fake information, as to where we were going to be shooting the next day.
But, it was just so that we could get our work done because otherwise we’d spend all our time saying, “Oh, that girl is in the back of the shot, please ask her to leave.” There was quite a bit of that.
Q: Did anything happen with this film that you weren’t expecting?
Chris: Yeah. It was in Italy, where each day, we gradually realized there were more and more Twilight fans showing up in this small town in Montepulciano. It became harder and hard to get to set, and it became harder and harder for me, and I’m used to going unnoticed, to get anywhere from the production office to the set, without heads looking up and people wanting to take photographs. Eventually, entire roads were jammed, so that we couldn’t get from one location to another.
Q: What did you do?
Chris: We decided to work around it. We decided that it was a good thing and, karmically, it was best to just thank them for being there, ask them to be quiet when we were shooting, and just try to find work-arounds to still get what we wanted to.
Q: Does it help that these films are being done pretty close together?
Chris: When David Slade came on as director of Eclipse, he came and visited me and I showed him everything I could to help get him acclimatized. I think that it’s great that Melissa Rosenberg is doing all of the scripts because there’s a coherence from one script to the next, and she knows all the characters so well, by now.
Q: Why do you think these books have succeeded so well as films?
Chris: I think it’s the feeling that, in some way, the vision presented on the screen was not so different from what they dreamed up in their head, when they were reading it, and that’s a very difficult thing to do because you’re presenting a contrary image to what any reader’s experience is. There’s something very sacred about the experience of reading a book. There’s something very extraordinary about a film, when you’re in a darkened room, seeing it. And, if those two things can blend, in some good way, then that’s great.
Filed under Chris Weitz, Comic Con 2009, New Moon the Movie
We were lucky enough to chat with New Moon director Chris Weitz, screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg and star Ashley Greene during New Moon‘s Comic-Con takeover. They had a lot to share about onscreen chemistry, creating the wolves, and Taylor Lautner‘s resemblance to a certain Greek god.
Chris, what were the challenges of adapting aTwilight book?
Weitz: In terms of the visuals, just sort of combining a sense of, I mean the last film I did [The Golden Compass] was set in a parallel universe, so we could reinvent the wheel. This one’s not only set in a very specific place, and in some ways a very workaday place, but also a place that had already been established in the previous film. And then to take it to flights of fantasy, the Volturi. Really, to be honest, its hiring someone like David Brisbin who is a genius production designer and Javier Aguirresarobe the D.P. who shot things in such a beautiful way. We were able to take a world that had already been established and put it in a setting that is just incredibly rich, and I think it’s quite beautiful.We know the characters are close to people’s hearts, but Kristen and Robert have become true superstars, what do you think is the secret of their appeal?
Rosenberg: Personally for me, it’s how genuine they both are. They’re both very authentic people; that comes across on the screen.Greene: They have great chemistry.
Rosenberg: They’re chemistry is incredible together, I mean visually as well. I think that sets them apart.
Ashley, you can Kellan, in this film you play siblings, but then you move on to the next film you’re doing together [Warrior]. Is it strange with the two different relationships you have to have with the same person?
Greene: No. Kellan and I know each other so well, it’s kind of a no brainer and again, we’ve already got this kind of chemistry. So no it wasn’t weird at all. I was kind of wondering about that in the beginning because he’s one of my very close friends and we definitely have a platonic relationship. Going and playing romantic, I was wondering if it was going to be harder or easier, but because we’re already so comfortable with each other it was actually less awkward than kissing someone I didn’t know.How many versions of the wolf did you have, and cg wise, how long did that take to come up with?
Weitz: Well, we knew very quickly that we wanted it to look like a wolf, just a very, very big one. Once you’ve made that crucial decision you don’t have to spend much time on look with R&D [Research and Development] and the concept and the renderings you usually have to do with monsters and those type of things. Getting very tedious details stuff like fur, the muscles, the fat over the muscles, the way the light is with the fur, that stuff takes months. We have a huge advantage in that it’s Phil Tippet’s studios. Phil Tippett is one of the greatest visual effects artists in the world…They’ve turned out much more quickly than we thought they were going to be.
How important was Taylor’s transformation to make this character work in this film?
Weitz: Well, probably less important to me than it was to fans, because I felt that he had the feeling of the character anyway. It’s a bonus that he happens to look like Adonis. He really looks like a cartoon character when he takes his shirt off, in a good way. I don’t think any steroids have been employed, he’s just incredibly fit. That’s great, and that’s lovely for the girls, but to me, he was the character.What do you think that you’re bringing to New Moon that’s different?
Weitz: I think I”m very old fashioned in terms of my films references and what appeals to me. In the way that shots are composed and the way the camera moves. The color I like to bring out of things, and so that influenced the people that I hired on the crew. I’m always more influenced by somebody like David Greene, not that I would put myself in the same breath as him, Kurosawa or somebody like that, than anything that feels at all contemporary. Because that’s already there. The characters are contemporary. The music is contemporary. The feelings are perennial.Ashley, how are you preparing for Eclipse, and what scenes are you looking forward to shooting?
Greene: I just got the script probably three days ago, so I haven’t gotten the time too much to dig into it. But I will and I work with my coach and kind of bounce ideas off of her, but it’s kind of nice because we’re playin ghte same characters and we’re building on to them and digging deeper into their layers and so I feel like the hard part of it is over, and now we’re just having fun with it. I’m excited about filming it Eclipse. I don’t want to give anything away, but I’m excited about the things that are going to happen.
How much of a cool toy box do you inherit with a sequel to aTwilight movie, with the previous film or from the source material?
Weitz: I inherited a wonderful cast. It was really the main appeal to me, because when I was offered the film I hadn’t read the book yet. And I read the book I realized there were these kind of deeper undercurrents, and longing and romance to it. I inherit a huge fanbase, which is incredible for a director, because you know people are going to go see your movie. That’s the whole thing you worry about when you’re making a film in the first place. It’s so expensive to make a film. You work so hard; you make other people work so hard. Knowing that people are going to go see it is tremendously refreshing.Ashley, has the phenomenon of Twilight bonded you with the other actors in a way that’s different from the way other actors bond on other projects?
Greene: Yeah, I obviously can’t speak on anyone else’s bond because I don’t know, but I think we’re all kind of looking at each other going ‘What is going on? What do you do? Have you experienced this?’ It’s very nice to have someone right there going through the same thing as you and being able to relate to it. It’s had a tremendous effect on how close we are now.Have you made any changes to the vampire makeup you saw in the first movie?
Weitz: There’s more consistency between shots, if I were to be just coldblooded about it.The Volturi have a slightly different look, because they’re a different breed of vampire altogether. The diamond skin we’re remaking. It’s gonna be groovy.
Filed under Chris Weitz, Miss Ashley Greene, New Moon the Movie
Here are two new interviews with Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner. Enjoy
We told you last week that NORDSTROM was planning on running a clothing line for New Moon well now you can check out their site for more info! CLICK HERE to visit their site
Filed under New Moon the Movie, Twi-Merchandise
Last week we told you Lee Safar’s ethereal tune “I’m Here” was beingconsidered for the “New Moon” soundtrack. (Listen to the song on Lee’s MySpace page). Well, now the Aussie artist has revealed exclusively to MTV that she has not one, but two songs (!!) in contention for a coveted spot on the album. We spoke with Lee about her second track, “Take Me Away,” how she got involved with the “Twilight” franchise and whether she’s prepared for all the attention she’ll no doubt receive if either song lands on the album. Check out our full interview…
HOLLYWOOD CRUSH: How did you get involved with “New Moon”? Did they approach you, or did you approach them?
LEE SAFAR: How I came to find “Twilight” is a beautiful memory for me. Stu Henshall, a recent PR grad, and I had a chance meeting in London early this year. I gave him a copy of my debut EP “Who I’ve Become” to listen to. He went into his room and woke up the next morning, after having listened to my CD obsessively all night, he said, “I’m going to take you to see something today. Have you seen ‘Twilight’?” I told him that I hadn’t even heard of it but was intrigued. We went that day and saw the movie and I was immediately obsessed.
The next day, Stu got in contact Emma Clark a very popular “Twilight” vlogger in the UK and told her about [me]. Stu was working very hard at getting the world out to the Twifans about my music. We posted a vlog telling everyone that we were really excited about having a chance at maybe getting on the soundtrack. Emma Clark saw the blog and posted it to her channel. In 24 hours it had about 4,000 hits. Stu started asking Twifans which song of mine they thought would fit “New Moon” the best. I had “I’m Here” in mind and it turns out that they did, too.
A few weeks later I headed to L.A. and met my now-L.A.-attorney, Michael Golland. While he has been working very hard to make this happen I owe so much to my fellow Twifans for their support.
HC: We already know a bit about “I’m Here,” but what can you tell us about the second song under consideration?
You are the first outside of my immediate team to know about the new song “Take Me Away.” On Twitter I told everyone that I had a secret. Within a few minutes I got a Tweet back from Stu asking what the secret was. That’s how secret this has been. Not even my publicist in the UK knew about it. This song has only been heard by a very select few as it is due for release on my next EP later this year. It’s a very dark, powerful rock song, but in a different way to “I’m Here.”
HC: How do you think these songs will fit into “New Moon”? Can you envision them in specific scenes?
There are two versions of “I’m Here.” The original full-band version is from the EP Who I’ve Become, which I think would be perfect for the scene when Bella is running towards Edward and pushes him out of the sun in Italy. There is also a newly recorded studio piano acoustic version of the song. This is a more emotionally haunting version of “I’m Here.” It’s up on my MySpace page and iTunes with the rest of my released songs for those who want to hear it .
The new song for consideration “Take Me Away” is more one that focuses on Jacob. It very much explores the pain that Jake feels from loving Bella while having to stand by and watch her pain and not be able to love her the way he want to love her … but he won’t let go! This song is not yet available on iTunes, but there might be a teaser going up on MySpace if enough people want to hear it!
HC: Are you a fan of the series? Which is your favorite book?
I am a massive fan. I’ve read the series twice and would go for a third if my schedule allowed it. My favorite book is “Breaking Dawn.”
Are you prepared for all the attention that you’ll no doubt receive if your songs are picked up for the soundtrack?Can anyone really ever be ready for that kind of attention? But, bring it on I say. This will be an opportunity for me to connect one on one with people who inspire me and who I hope I inspire — my fans. I wrote my first song five years ago and to be experiencing all this this soon is an incredible blessing.
Filed under Music, New Moon the Movie
Not too sure if this has been confirmed by Chris Weitz or S. Meyer . . . but I don’t remember them on the past lists mentioned before of who might be on the soundtrack, anyway take a look at what they said on Twitter.
Filed under Music, New Moon the Movie
rockydee
urbansophistication
