"Batman landed in Hong Kong but that doesn't mean "The Dark Knight" will open all over China.
The movie opened in Hong Kong theaters. But Warner Bros. decided not to release the film in mainland China _ or even submit it for censors' approval _ because of "prerelease conditions" and "cultural sensitivities", the studio said Tuesday.
Warner Bros. officials may have been concerned the film _ particularly scenes shot in Hong Kong, where Batman nabs a gangster _ would offend censors. Hong Kong is a Chinese-ruled former British colony that maintains separate political and economic systems.
Another possible sticking point is a brief appearance by Hong Kong actor-singer Edison Chen, who appeared in lurid photos with several women this year.
"Glenn Close, Ricky Gervais and Jake Gyllenhaal have signed up to be presenters at "The 66th annual Golden Globe Awards" in Los Angeles, organizers said.
The prize presentation honoring the best in film and television in 2008 is to be telecast live on NBC Jan. 11 from The Beverly Hilton.
Close, Gervais and Gyllenhaal join previously announced presenters Simon Baker, Drew Barrymore, Sacha Baron Cohen, Salma Hayek, Jennifer Lopez, Amy Poehler and Seth Rogen.
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which holds the Globes, said it plans to present director Steven Spielberg with the Cecil B. DeMille Award for his "outstanding contribution to the entertainment field" at the event".Source: www.timesoftheinternet.comRocker chic Drew Barrymore wears her support for British heavy metal band Iron Maiden on her t-shirt while out and about on Wednesday (December 24), Christmas Eve, in Brentwood, Calif.
The 33-year-old actress was seen getting a little pampering done at Kinara Spa in Beverly Hills.
In just a few weeks, Drew will be presenting at 66th Annual Golden Globes ceremony. Also on hand to present on January 11 on NBC: Glenn Close, Ricky Gervais. Jake Gyllenhaal, Jennifer Lopez, Sacha Baron Cohen, Salma Hayek, Amy Poehler, Simon Baker, and Seth Rogen. Source: justjared.buzznet.com
"In the game, heroic Ben X can take revenge on his enemies, and he enjoys the company of a sympathetic female character named Scarlite. Interspersed with Ben's story are interview sequences in which his sorrowful mother (Marijke Pinoy), his teachers and other significant figures talk about the boy in a way that suggests that some unspecified tragedy has occurred.
Ben's chief tormentors are two savages (Titus De Voogdt and Maarten Claeyssens) who step up the abuse until it peaks in a humiliating incident filmed by numerous students on their cell phones and posted on the Internet. The victim's sole consolation is the distant friendship of a fellow game player (Laura Verlinden), the girl who adopts the Scarlite guise. Ben's mother tries to help, but she's worn down by Ben's recurring troubles.
The ending undoes all the intense feelings built up by first-time director Nic Balthazar. It's an abrupt change that deflates the whole piece. Working from his own novel, the director wields a pretty blunt instrument, and, excluding the scenes set in the Overlord world, you may find yourself wondering whether a character or event is real or imagined. Lead actor Timmermans does a good job. At times, his Ben is reminiscent of Jake Gyllenhaal's "Donnie Darko" character, but unlike Gyllenhaal, Timmermans seems a bit long in the tooth for a high schooler". Source: www.sfgate.com
A musical video featuring some stills from "Into the wild" starring Emile Hirsch, directed by Sean Penn. Songs "All apologies" and "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam" by Nirvana. This video has got a temporary honor in youtube, it's the #85 - Most Viewed (Today) - Film & Animation - Spain (take a look in youtube while it lasts).
Michelle Williams at the "Wendy and Lucy" premiere.
"Williams was already known for making her own choices — she worked with Wim Wenders on Land of Plenty, and she’s far from the only Hollywood actor who crosses the line between studio and independent films more or less at will. But it’s a rare bankable star who lends her name to a tiny project budgeted at $300,000 and shot over 18 days with a mostly volunteer crew by a director whose name, had Williams bothered to ask permission from her agents, would doubtless have inspired the response “Who?”
Wendy and Lucy, which opened last week, has already earned rapturous notices and shown up on several early 10 Best lists. Williams’ wattage has surely helped, but the poetically minimalist film, which sets the young woman’s plight against the polluted beauty of the Pacific Northwest landscape, is unnervingly timely in its evocation of an American Dream of self-improvement that quickly sours into a struggle for material and spiritual survival. The story, co-written by Reichardt and Jon Raymond from Raymond’s short story Train Choir, was inspired by tales of post–Hurricane Katrina displacement. But the direction it took was shaped by Reichardt’s encounter, while scouting for a location in Texas, with a middle-aged Mexican woman whose car had blown a tire and landed in a ditch. The woman was in her socks, her cell phone minutes had expired, she had $20 to her name, and the blown tire was her only spare. Reichardt drove her to the next exit, paid for the tow truck, came back with her and marveled as a policeman worried more about her safety than the woman’s. “I was really impressed with how unhysterical she was, and how she expected nothing from authority,” says Reichardt. Michelle Williams was spotted reading a magazine during her stroll around Brooklyn on 9th December.
Barely recognizable in a lusterless brown pudding-basin haircut and a faded sweatshirt over cutoff jeans and flannel shirt, Williams plays Wendy Carroll, an Indiana native stranded in a decaying former mill town in Oregon when her ancient car breaks down and she loses her beloved dog. Her delicate features set in the determined mask of one who’s resolutely avoiding looking at the big picture of her life because she has to focus on the next fire she has to put out to stay afloat, Wendy pilfers food from a supermarket, fumes silently under inept fingerprinting by a policeman, scours the pound for her pet, sleeps rough in a park (where she is screamed at by a wild-eyed Larry Fessenden) and reluctantly accepts help from a kindly drugstore security guard. Wendy says little, but her lonely desperation shows in a flicker of the eyes and the tension gathering in her wiry body. “Michelle was the one actress I couldn’t totally picture in the role of Wendy”, says Reichardt. “To have someone with some mystery to them is very intriguing to me. I also didn’t know completely what a physical actress Michelle is, and when I saw how she uses her body, that was pretty exciting. She can be really, really still.” Williams’ performance is so inward it can’t even be called gestural, yet it’s a devastating portrait of a lonely woman trying to keep her already tenuous life from sliding off a cliff. For all her early independence and her current success, Williams can come across tentative and self-questioning. “When you saw the completed film, what did you think?” Reichardt asks. “It went down the easiest of any film that I see myself in,” says Williams. She’s disarmingly frank about her own insecurities, denies being a big star, and there’s a touch of wistfulness in her insistence that “this is always the way I wanted to work, through friends, to build up a thing that doesn’t disappear after a year. You set up so many little lives in movies and you say you’ll keep in touch and you don’t. So I was really pleased when Todd said, ‘What about Kelly?’ There’s a connectedness and a stability or something.” For now, though, she’s taking time off work to be a full-time single parent to her equally feisty daughter, a difficult but satisfying task. “And I have my coffee-shop parents and my single-mom parents,” she says gratefully. “That’s one of the best things about becoming a mom. There’s suddenly this uprising of women who say, ‘We’re here to help you!’ And Matilda’s in school so I have time during the day to do the things I need to do and get ready for dinner, so it’s not 24/7,” she says. “I’m not quite ready to give up working, but I don’t know how to do the good balance of it. That’s the challenge, to live in the chaos. I’m a Virgo, very ‘clean space, clean mind,’ so after she goes to bed every night I pick the house up. I do think that domestic work can actually be creative and relaxing, freeing your mind. I’ve given myself the grace period". Source: www.laweely.com
This video is dedicated to Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal for giving us performances that show love transcending social norms and roles. Despite the tragic sentiment of the original movie, I wanted to show a version where Ennis and Jack could have ended up growing old together regardless of "who" is "who" in the relationship. The beauty sometimes lies in the complexity of our relationships and the struggle to define ourselves.
I hope you all find your Romeo and/or Juliet in yourselves and the ones you love.
P.S. Heath...May you live forever in our hearts!! ...& I love you Jake!!
Music: "Love Story" by Taylor Swift
Emile Hirsch (You're the one that I want): A musical video featuring images and stills of the talented and gorgeous actor Emile Hirsch.
Songs "Walk of life" by Dire Straits and "You're the one that I want" ("Grease" soundtrack).
Jena Malone & Lou Taylor Pucci (sexy scene) in "The Go-Getter" (2007), directed by Martin Hynes. "Sparks" trailer by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, starring Carla Gugino, based on a story written by Elmore Leonard.
"Batman landed in Hong Kong but that doesn't mean "The Dark Knight" will open all over China.
