Ruthe Stein writes: Toronto — In my experience, actors who become explosively famous while still in their 20s handle it in one of two ways. Some are extremely arrogant, probably out of insecurity. They frustrate publicists by showing up way late for interviews or disappearing altogether. A certain young star whose celebrity rests on spinning webs is notorious for such bad behavior. The other approach is to show humility, to marvel at how the gods of fame have favored them. Orlando Bloom is tap-dancing through this aw-shucks-why-me routine, sequestered in a hotel room away from his throng of fans, primarily teenage girls. [More]
Month: October 2005
Weta Digital has bought 250 more blade servers with a total list price of between $2 million and $3 million to complete post-production work on Peter Jackson’s King Kong, due out in January. The IBM Xeon blade servers, each with two 3.4 gigahertz processors and 8 gigabytes of memory, are housed at the New Zealand Supercomputing Centre in central Wellington. They have been added to the centre’s existing bank of 1144 Intel 2.8GHz processors, boosting its power by 50 per cent to create a supercomputer with the equivalent power of nearly 15,000 PCs. [More]
Kendra writes: The Greater (San Francisco) Bay Area Costumers Guild (GBACG) is pleased to invite you to spend an evening in Elrond’s hall at:
THE LORD OF THE RINGS FEAST
Saturday, 8 October 2005
7pm – Midnight
Sequoia Lodge, Oakland Hills
http://www.gbacg.org/lotr.htm
Elves, hobbits, dwarves, men, ents, wizards — and yes, even orcs — are invited to join us for an evening of feasting, music, dancing, and the magical words of Tolkien. Our location is a beautiful redwood hall surrounded by trees in the hills of Oakland (Rivendell for our purposes). [More]
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Landing a blockbuster is every actor’s dream. Especially when an actor hasn’t established himself as a marquee movie star. But like many things in Hollywood, one person’s opportunity is another’s downfall. Take the stars of the Oscar-winning global blockbuster trilogy “The Lord of the Rings,” several of whom boast new fall movies. Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) is earning critical raves for his role as a family man with a violent past in David Cronenberg’s smart-house draw, “A History of Violence.” Elijah Wood (Frodo) embraces his quirky side in Liev Schreiber’s Ukrainian odyssey, “Everything Is Illuminated.” Orlando Bloom (Legolas) goes mainstream as Kirsten Dunst’s love interest in Cameron Crowe’s darkly romantic comedy “Elizabethtown,” which opens October 14. And Andy Serkis (Gollum) squeezes back into his white-dotted blue body suit in order to perform the title role in Peter Jackson’s remake of “King Kong,” which hits screens worldwide December 14. [More]
Mafgrl writes: Last night at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Downtown Los Angeles a very unique and inspiring event took place. Entitled “Voices of a People’s History of the United States”, the event sampled speeches, letters and more by the likes of Susan B. Anthony, abolishionist John Brown, Mark Twain and Cindy Sheehan. These excerpts read by many of Hollywood’s great actors and political advocates, including Viggo Mortensen. [More]
Mafgrl writes: Last night at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Downtown Los Angeles a very unique and inspiring event took place. Entitled “Voices of a People’s History of the United States”, the event sampled speeches, letters and more by the likes of Susan B. Anthony, abolishionist John Brown, Mark Twain and Cindy Sheehan. These excerpts read by many of Hollywood’s great actors and political advocates, including Viggo Mortensen(History of Violence), Marisa Tomei (My Cousin Vinny), Sandra Oh (Grey’s Anatomy), Josh Brolin (Into the Blue), Kerry Washington (Ray) and Danny Glover(Lethal Weapon). The material was both moving and funny in turn. One reading by Oh was written by a Japanese American woman who was removed from her home in San Pedro in 1941 and sent to a concentration camp during the war. Another piece told of a factory worker in Chicago who was one of the first women to organize unions in that state for better conditions and rights. A very moving rendition of Cindy Sheehan’s speech about her son being killed in the Iraq war and her subsequent trip to try to talk to President Bush in Crawford, Tx was given by Tomei.
Each of the readers for the evening was clearly passionate about the material both Mortensen and Vanessa Martinez (Lone Star) read their passages both in Spanish and English to the delight of the mixed crowd. Danny Glover had flown in from Florida and arrived midway through right off of the plane to participate. Mortensen made one of his now famous antiwar/anti Bush shirts which stated “Impeach, Remove, Jail”. He was still sporting the red and blue paint on his hands!
The panel was moderated by Howard Zinn who wrote the book that this reading was based on “A People’s History of the United States” and Anthony Arnove who is the writer of “Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions”.
It was very interesting and enjoyable to hear these words of many people in history who are not as famous and often overlooked for their views. If you have an opportunity to pick up a copy of Zinn’s book, please check it out, I think you will find it fascinating. [More]