Articles

Subject: Articles Fri Feb 08, 2008 1:35 am

From DigitalSpy

Mortensen slams greedy blockbuster stars

Thursday, February 7 2008, 17:39 GMT

By Alex Fletcher, Entertainment Reporter

Lord of the Rings star Viggo Mortensen has attacked actors who choose blockbuster movies roles purely for the cash.

Mortensen, who played Aragorn in Peter Jackson's fantasy trilogy, claims he has enough money to have a pleasant life with his family and prefers taking challenging roles rather than opting for the movies with the biggest budgets.

When asked why had not taken more blockbuster roles, he told Empire: "Certainly I could have made some more money if I'd done what you're talking about, but I mean, how much money does a person need?

"I can help my family; I can give money to certain organisations, I can travel on my own. I don't need more than I have. I've been really fortunate."
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Guest

Unless I missed something in the translation I don't see Viggo 'slamming' anyone. Stating his own opinion about his preferences. Funny how the headline is misleading. scratch

Subject: Re: Articles Fri Feb 08, 2008 8:04 pm

TheStar.com

How we would save the Genies
February 08, 2008 Peter Howell

My rant last week about how the Genie Awards discriminate against Canadians brought beaucoup email.

Most agreed with me, some didn't and several hurled a challenge: "How would you fix the Genies, homeskillet, if you know so darned much?" (Actually, nobody called me "homeskillet." That's just my nod to Juno, a very Canadian film.)

To recap for those Canucks who were away tobogganing last week:

I was complaining how Juno, a hit comedy directed by a Canadian (Jason Reitman), starring two Canadians (Ellen Page and Michael Cera) and filmed in and around Vancouver isn't considered Canadian enough to qualify for Genies at the March 3 ceremony. Yet American star Viggo Mortensen, British star Julie Christie and the filmed-in-London Eastern Promises all get dunked in maple syrup.

The reason for this, as many officials and bureaucrats reminded me, essentially comes down to money: Juno was funded by an American studio and not Canadians (read: taxpayers).
Here's how I would save the Genies:

Recognize Canadian talent everywhere: It's ludicrous that we are celebrating the Canadian status of Best Actress nominee Page at the Feb. 24 Academy Awards, but her breakthrough Juno performance will go unrecognized at the Genies eight days later in Toronto. (The Halifax actress does have a Genie nod for The Tracey Fragments.) It's possible an American and a Briton will win the top Genie acting awards this year, simply because Mortensen and Christie appeared in movies that met Canadian funding rules.

Change the rules so Canadian actors can get nominated for whatever films they appear in, Canadian or otherwise. Allow Scarborough's Mike Myers to be nominated for an Austin Powers movie, say, or Vancouver's Carrie-Anne Moss to get some love for her key role in The Matrix franchise. And work on getting famous Canadians to show for the Genies ceremony.

Stop following the money: The old argument Canadian films need protection from big, bad Hollywood is the main reason why the Genie people slavishly insist on having at least a portion of Canadian funding for their film nominees. But we live in a global economy now where many films are funded by multiple countries and are also shot in various nations. Eastern Promises is a very fine film, but its Russian mobster story is as Canadian as the Kremlin, even if it was directed by Toronto's David Cronenberg. Eastern Promises is eligible for Genie consideration mainly because it had Canadian production money, and that's too narrow a definition for this day and age.

Untangle the red tape: Why is it harder to apply for a Genie than an Oscar? Potential Genie film nominees have to jump through more hoops than a circus seal, meeting an absurdly early Aug. 31 submission deadline and submitting dozens of copies of their films to Genies HQ. Potential Oscar nominees have until early December and they don't have to file a single print. The Genies also "recommend" English-language films be subtitled in French, and vice-versa. All this adds a lot of trouble and expense, which hurts the smaller Canadian productions that the Genies are supposedly trying to help. Make the process simpler.

Make it a party, not a show: Few people watch the Genies because even fewer have seen the films or recognize the actors. Why not skip the telecast and turn the Genies into a dinner party in an elegant space with loads of free booze, the way the Oscars were when they began? People and the media will show up and everyone will really have fun, instead of just pretending to for the camera.phowell@thestar.ca

Subject: Re: Articles Fri Feb 08, 2008 8:06 pm

Thurs., Feb. 7, 2008, 9:00pm PT

Oscar nominees learn to accentuate
Actors rely on dialect coaches for tough roles
By Variety Staff

From Marion Cotillard's finely tuned Edith Piaf impersonation to Javier Bardem's demonic monotone, actors tend to get all the credit for the way their characters sound. But when it comes time for the winning thesps to give thanks on Oscar night, you just might hear -- uttered somewhere between their agents, parents and God -- the names of an elite group of unsung heroes who helped them find their voice: the dialect coaches.

When the Coen brothers first approached Bardem about inhabiting the villainous role in "No Country for Old Men," the actor worried that his Spanish accent might get in the way. "There are Mexicans and (then there's) Chigurh, and you cannot mix one with the other," the actor recalls, "so we had to get rid of the Spanish accent as much as we could."

For that, Bardem turned to Howard Samuelsohn, scheduling an intensive two-week prep with the dialect coach.

"The goal is to find the things your North American audience would pick out right away as things that sound particularly Spanish," explains Samuelsohn. "We worked every day. Javier was very conscientious. Our first lesson took six hours. We filled up four CDs, and he would listen to the stuff when I wasn't there."

The resulting sound, still vaguely foreign, suggests that Chigurh has been beamed in from another dimension, making the ghostlike killing force all the more terrifying.

"The way we speak is such an amalgam for how we feel emotionally, psychologically, socially, environmentally," explains Neil Swain, dialect coach on both "Atonement" and "Sweeney Todd." "We have this blueprint of sounds, but they will be very different in the mouth of Cecilia than they would (coming from her mother or sister). I find that endlessly fascinating, how a character then inhabits those sounds, or how those sounds inhabit a character."

From traditional to esoteric, coaching strategies vary wildly depending on the actor, role and time constraints.

"One has to be prepared to modify their technique," explains Andrew Jack, who worked with Viggo Mortensen to develop the right accent for Russian mobster Nikolai in "Eastern Promises." Of Mortensen, Jack says, "He can hear subtleties that other actors don't hear at all," adding that the star went to Russia and "all sorts of devious places where he was able to meet ex-convicts."

Expanding upon the system he developed working with Mortensen for "The Lord of the Rings," Jack typically steered clear of the scripted text, coaching Mortensen in Russian sounds, then ad libbing conversation in the dialect.

"In the end, if the actor is able to speak from spontaneous thought, it doesn't matter what's in the script," he says.

But beyond the accent, "Eastern Promises" also required Mortensen to sound convincing when delivering lines in Russian. For that, the Oscar nominee worked with a second dialect coach, Olegar Fedoro, who brings his own acting instincts to bear on the process.

"Usually, I live through the character myself, in parallel with an actor as if I was his brother," says Fedoro. At times, his approach proved a bit too intense for director David Cronenberg. "Being on the set, I constantly watch (Viggo) doing his version of the character and compare it with my own version. ... I became very possessive towards the character."

Because the nuances of foreign-language performances can easily be lost on American audiences, the training spent mastering specific accents must not detract from that most important of acting tools: body language. In assisting Marion Cotillard with her transformation into French singing legend Edith Piaf, "La Vie en rose" acting coach Pascal Luneau focused on embodying Piaf completely, not just mastering her Parisian street accent. Finding Piaf's voice was a unique two-month process, beginning in Luneau's living room.

"For me, there is no role; there are two souls," he says. "If you accept this way of work, it is important to leave a little place for the other soul. I wanted to create a zone where Marion and Edith were able to fight together, work together, live together in the same person."
Swain favored a much stricter approach with "Atonement" and "Sweeney Todd," making historical accuracy the priority when molding the appropriate dialects.

"Johnny (Depp) tends to do his own thing -- wonderfully," says Swain, who coached the other actors. "He showed up on the set with a history of working with the cockney accent. He likes to take a voice or a person that is like the character and follow this example."
With "Atonement's" aristocratic Tallis family, "The vowels are very short, very clipped, the consonants very sharp and very articulated and muscular," he explains. "There was no sense at that time of people (in England's upper class) having to come out and meet others with their speech. They felt very comfortable in themselves, and they weren't used to being contradicted."

Before building the appropriate sounds, Swain had to disguise the actors' original accents: James McAvoy hails from Scotland and sports the distinctive brogue to prove it, while Oscar nominee Saiorse Ronan speaks with a thick Irish accent. The technique, termed "accent reduction" among dialect coaches, is similar to Samuelsohn's work with Bardem.

Swain was particularly impressed with 13-year-old Ronan's maturity. "I could sit down and work with her as if she was an actress in her 20s or 30s. We worked on placement, mouth shapes, specific sounds, and we talked about the history and the feel behind the accent," he says.

The coaches may help with the mechanics, but the actors ultimately bring the characters to life -- for that reason, the modest pros who do the coaching insist, it's fitting that their names remain unspoken.

"That's part of the deal," Samuelsohn says. "When you go into a job like this, if you do your job right, no one will notice."
Read the full article at:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117980479.html

Subject: Re: Articles Fri Feb 08, 2008 8:09 pm

From Digital Spy

Clooney tips Day-Lewis for Oscar

Friday, February 8 2008, 16:46 GMT
By Beth Hilton Entertainment Reporter

George Clooney has tipped Daniel Day-Lewis to walk away with the Best Actor Oscar later this month.

The pair face Viggo Mortensen, Tommy Lee Jones and Johnny Depp in the category, but Clooney is convinced that the result is a foregone conclusion.

The actor said: "If you want my honest opinion, I think it's going to be Daniel Day-Lewis."

He then joked: "He sort of irritates all of us because he's so good... I'll tell you right now, I don't like him!"

Clooney is nominated for his role in Michael Clayton, while Day-Lewis impressed the Academy with his portrayal of a Texan oil prospector in There Will Be Blood.

Oscars president Sid Ganis has pleaded with the Writers Guild of America to say whether it will back the full ceremony to go ahead on February 24.
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Subject: Re: Articles Sat Feb 09, 2008 8:19 pm

People News

Naomi Watts' fear thrill

Naomi Watts loves "playing scared".

The 39-year-old beauty - who crosses paths with Russian gangsters in her latest movie 'Eastern Promises' - enjoys portraying characters who are placed in terrifying situations.

She said: "I love playing scared. It's fun, and besides, no-one is that perfect. I love seeing a character put under pressure until they crack open to reveal the contradictions we all have in ourselves."

Watts' 'Eastern Promises' co-star Viggo Mortensen - who has been nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his role in the film - believes she deserved more recognition for her performance.

He told Esquire magazine: "Naomi did some very subtle, finely layered work in 'Eastern Promises'. Unfortunately it is not surprising that such well-grounded, generous and true-to-life acting has thus far hardly been recognised by the year-end taste makers in the movie business.

"She is simply too deft to be noticed in the rush towards bigger, brassier, bug-eyed performances. It was a personal pleasure and a creative privilege to work with her."

Naomi can be seen later this month in the brutally violent 'Funny Games U.S.', in which she is held hostage in her own home by two ruthless young men.

Subject: Re: Articles Sun Feb 10, 2008 9:32 pm

10 February 2008
WELCOME TO THE BAFTAS
Celebrities abound in Covent Garden

With Covent Garden awash with celebrities it was almost as if every premiere had come at once this evening. Once again at London’s Royal Opera House, the BAFTAs kicked off amid much fanfare and shimmering designer frocks as all of this year’s nominees and associated hangers on glided down a red carpet bordered by droves of highly enthusiastic and quite possibly dangerous fans.

First to arrive was Ricky Gervais, who was greeted by so many bellows of “Riiiiiiicky!” it felt like Mike Reid might have returned from the dead. The barrage of wailed adoration continued as the likes of Eddie Izzard and Andy Serkis joined Gervais in running the autograph gauntlet, although this reporter died a little inside when fans began screaming “show me the money!” to a bewildered Cuba Gooding Jr – come on people, Jerry Maguire was nearly 12 years ago.

The always awesome Amanda Peet arrived next (we loved you in Studio 60!) alongside with and one of the night’s nominees, her fiancée and The Kite Runner screenwriter David Benioff. “We’re completely freaking out,” she told a line-up of uncharacteristically dapper press, whose threadbare jeans and donkey jackets had been the first casualty of this year’s new journalist dress code. “We’re in the same hotel as Julie Christie and Daniel Day Lewis, we’re going to sneak around the halls later and see if we can find them – that sounded really creepy didn’t it?”

“You know, I used to be a street performer round the back there so it’s a bit weird to be here for the BAFTAs,” revealed a nostalgic Izzard. I’m presenting the animation award tonight so I’ll be giving that away… as long as people are nice to me. All creative people have egos as big as planets so it’s nice to come out on nights like this and pat each other on the back.”

Jeff Goldblum and Kevin Spacey arrived together – the pair are currently co-starring in David Mamet’s Speed The Plough at the Old Vic (tickets on sale now, in case you’re interested). “I’m the most excited that I can be - possibly the most excited I’ve ever been,” said Goldblum, holding his hand to head-height to indicate the sheer level of his enthusiasm. “How excited are you?” All said while wearing sunglasses. At night. This is a man so cool he could single-handedly reverse global warming.

Director Joe Wright arrived sporting similarly tinted eyewear but we’re sorry to say he couldn’t pull it off nearly as well as Goldblum. His stars, on the other hand were entirely spec-free. “Atonement’s got 14 nominations, which is great. Plus we’re in Britain and it’s a British film so it’s a very exciting night,” said Keira Knightley, up for Best actress for her part in the film. “I didn’t think I’d ever get nominated for a BAFTA - it’s so exciting. There’s some really amazing talent coming out of Britain at the moment and it’s important to have nights like this that recognise that.”

“What has been heartening this year is that films like Control and No Country For Old Men and Atonement have been viewed in great numbers by the public,” commented Knightley’s co-star James McAvoy. People haven’t just gone to see Transformers. It’s been a good year for intelligent films on both sides of the Atlantic.”.

The uber-glamorous BAFTA makeover wasn’t lost on Daniel Day Lewis, returning this year to make a bid for Best Actor for his part in There Will Be Blood “This whole event has been genetically modified since I was here last,” he marvelled. “It’s been pumped full of something, I don’t know if it’s legal.”

If the sheer number of famous faces was anything to go by, we’re saying it’s almost certainly not. Eva Green, Sienna Miller, Kate Hudson, Natascha McElhone, Thandie Newton and a blonde and beautiful Jessica Biel were just a few of the lovely ladies on display. Representing the Y Chromosome contingent, Orlando Bloom, Javier Bardem, Hugh Laurie, Jason Isaacs, Daniel Radcliffe and Viggo Mortensen were all in attendance.

As the hour drew near, the last of this year’s hopefuls disappeared into the auditorium, with spirits high. Some will end this night drinking from the cup of glory and basking in the adoration of their peers. Others, though, will spiral into a trough of rejection and degradation, their evening scarred by the cruel sting of televised humiliation. Be sure to check back at 9pm on the dot to find out who ended up with a dose of which.

James Dyer
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Subject: Re: Articles Thu Feb 28, 2008 3:14 am

From the Danish magazine "Kig Ind" autumn 2007.

Sorry I've first finished translating it now!

Big interviews!!

Viggo Mortensen enjoys the success and the single life.

Guest

Thanks Vigs for posting this and the translation. Much appreciated. wave

I like the part of the interview where he talks about the raping of the girl and how he says was most disturbing part of the movie. It must have made him shy to watch that with his family. Shocked

But what about the rest of the world? I am still trying to understand the need for that scene? Unless it has more to do with Kirill. scratch

Subject: Re: Articles Thu Feb 28, 2008 9:38 pm

You are welome, Kal!
I'm thinking about if my translated text is too small (the letters I mean). Do you want me to make it larger?
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Viggos wilderness girl!

You got it into yourself to be good at anything, you aim at. The fact is, that you must never give up. Accept what you are and be proud of it, be grateful for it. But never let it go to the head, always keep the feet on the ground. (From Bear Hearts wisdom). Add: Could have been Viggos, too!!!

Subject: Re: Articles Sat Mar 01, 2008 3:47 am

I can read it. Very Happy

I have good eyes. Thank you Vigs that you share this with us. You did a good translation. bounce

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Despair has no wings... ~ Paul Eluard

Subject: Re: Articles Mon Mar 03, 2008 11:55 pm

I have now made my translated text a little larger. I admit that to me, a narrow-sighted person using glass', the text was too small. Therefore I made it larger so everybody can read it.
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Viggos wilderness girl!

You got it into yourself to be good at anything, you aim at. The fact is, that you must never give up. Accept what you are and be proud of it, be grateful for it. But never let it go to the head, always keep the feet on the ground. (From Bear Hearts wisdom). Add: Could have been Viggos, too!!!

Subject: Re: Articles Thu Mar 06, 2008 9:06 am

That is a great artical. Thanks for the translation Vigs.
Sooo, you say Viggo is single again! You always see him with younger
women. Shocked

I wonder if he likes women his own age? aw love

I hadn't realized that Henry was with him and traveled around
with him to Denmark. That is really great. The best vacations I remember was
with my parents and brothers and sisters.(and the family dog.)
He's a great dad!

Subject: Re: Articles Thu Mar 06, 2008 2:48 pm

Lil Star! I don't say Viggo is a single. He says it himself. I have just translated his words from Danish to English. It can sometimes be difficult to translate because many times there are a lot of small "filling words" which are difficult to translate. Most of them mean nothing to the text so I "jump over" them where I can. And some sentences I can't translate directly. Then I have to write something which means the same (make a paraphrase).

That poor man can't say "hello" to a woman before everybody thinks she is his special girlfriend/fiancée. That must be very annoying for him.

Yes, it's nice to drive with your father and see some special things. I sometimes went with my father from our house in Zealand to our house in Northjutland in the summer holiday. My father was an accountant and he first started his summer holiday at the same time as the industry holiday. Then my mother and sister went first to our house in Northjutland 1 or 2 weeks ahead and then my father and I came later. My father sometimes asked me: "Would you like to visit .....?". And I said: "Yes, it could be very interesting". Among other things my father took me to to a chalk mine in Jutland. It was very exciting to walk around in the corridors there with a guide of course - else we would loose our way. I remember it was a warm summer day in the start of July but in the chalk mine it was a little cold. I brought a windjacket or something like that. The chalk mine could have been a location in a movie.

Guest

Here's a neat article from a Montreal newspaper about Viggo's celebrating the Montreal Canadians hockey team eliminating the Boston team in the hockey play-offs. This must be on his trailer. Love the accent egu on the 'e'. I'd love to see whats just above it though.

I will try to translate it a bit later and get back to everyone. bounce

From Cyberpresse.ca

Sur le plateau du film The Road, qu'il tourne présentement en Pensylvanie,
Viggo Mortensen n'a pas manqué l'occasion de célébrer la victoire du Canadien
sur les Bruins de Boston en première ronde des séries éliminatoires.

(Translation of photo caption: On the set of the movie 'The Road' currently filming
in Pennyslvania, Viggo Mortensen has not missed the opportunity to celebrate the
victory of the Canadiens over the Boston Bruins in the first round of the elimination series.)

PHOTO: Rocky Faulkner