Movies
Toy Story 3 – MSN exclusive Lee Unkrich and Darla K. Anderson interview
by Andy Gibbons
As regular readers of this blog will know, I recently had the chance to pop over to Pixar in California and have a chat with some of the talented folks behind the really rather good Toy Story 3 and now’s the time to share. First up is director Lee Unkrich (LU) and his producing partner Darla K. Anderson (DKA) as they talk about the pressures involved in maintaining the Toy Story legacy, the evolution of technology and how the story came about.
But before you read on, be aware that there are a few mild spoilers lurking within…..
This is the third time back to Toy Story – how much pressure was there on you not to tarnish the Toy Story legacy?
LU – Well huge, as you can imagine. Imagine if any of you were asked to director Toy Story 3 and the pressure you would feel, I mean that’s what I had. I had kind of double pressure too actually ‘cos I was also being asked to direct a new Pixar movie and any director at Pixar who’s up at bat making the next film doesn’t want to make the one that’s a dud. We’ve had this fortunate and unprecedented string of ten hits so there’s a huge amount of pressure on each director but again I had double pressure because I had that pressure but I also had the pressure to make a sequel to two of the most beloved and critically acclaimed films of all time so it was a responsibility I didn’t take at all lightly.
You’ve added a lot of new characters in this film. Was there ever a question of limit to the new characters you could create or were you given free range as far as expanding the cast list?
LU – It was all completely driven by the story we were telling. When we kicked this off, no one ever said ‘You know we need to have a bunch of new characters in this movie. Let’s make ‘em good’. It was driven 100% by the story we had to tell. We knew the toys were going to end up at day care and we did a lot of research at day care centres and there are a ton of toys there and we wanted to be truthful to that and so that meant we had to invent a lot of new toys. And then we had these scenes at Bonnie’s house and we knew she would have to have toys herself so it ended up being one of the big challenges of the movie.
DKA – When you have so many characters and they have a limited amount of screen time, you have to really reduce their performance down to its very essence so you get them immediately.
LU – It’s tricky because when you have a lot of characters and a big ensemble cast you can fall into the trap where no-one gets enough attention and you don’t have a clear though line so we worked very hard and were very disciplined to remember that this is Woody’s story that we’re telling and Woody is the most important person in the film and everyone kind of tapers from there in importance. We want everybody to be engaging, entertaining and appealing but sometimes that means a character can only have five lines in the movie but that’s enough and it’s funny.
Who’s you favourite character?
LU – In Toy Story 3? Of the new characters I have an affinity for Big Baby myself. And of the old ones, I don’t know that I have a favourite. Seriously they are like family and I think of that big crazy collection of toys as my big crazy family.
In the story there seems that a lot of attention is paid to men’s roles and women’s roles being equal – how much time is given to that?
LU – Well this is the female police sitting right next to me (Darla laughs). Seriously there are a lot of men at Pixar and we’re very conscious of wanting to have very strong female parts in the movies and it hasn’t always happened on all of the films. But we worked at it and I’m glad to hear you say that because we worked really hard to find that balance in this film between male and female characters and not only female characters but strong female characters.
DKA – We really wanted Barbie to be strong and grow with the film and come out as really smart so it was fun to play with that.
Speaking of Barbie and Ken, do you as a producer have to deal with Mattel and do they look over your shoulder asking ‘What are you going to do with our characters?’
DKA – Well as you know Barbie was in Toy Story 2 and whenever you have a character who is so important in a film we develop a trusting relationship so we found out from Mattel what was important to them and worked within their parameters but they trusted us so went for a couple of years without showing it to them and when the film was all up reels then we showed it to them, they loved it.
LU – They were involved. They didn’t give us carte blanche to do whatever we wanted but they didn’t have script approval. We pitched them our concept of Ken and why we thought he was funny and how we thought we could use him in the film. And they trusted us that we weren’t going to do anything inappropriate with the character.
When did you first speak to them about using the Ken in the movie?
LU – Well when we’re thinking of taking a pre-existing toy and using them in the movie we start thinking ‘Well what kind of personality would this toy have?’ and we thought we this is a toy who’s a guy but he’s a girls toy. How’s that going to make a toy feel? And then on top of that we knew that Ken doesn’t have equal standing with Barbie – Ken really is an accessory and he’s no more important than a pair of shoes or a purse.
DKA – And that’s something we learned from Mattel. No matter how hard they tried they could never get his price point above $9.99 over all these years.
Where did you arrive at Michael Keaton as Ken’s voice?
LU – Well we thought this is probably going to be a really insecure toy and probably really vain. He’s getting dressed up in clothes a lot. Does he enjoy that? Maybe? There are different ways we could have gone with the character but we decided to make him this very vain, vapid, insecure, shallow character. Michael Keaton’s name came to the table really the first day we started talking about Ken. We were kicking around the names of some people who could maybe pull it off and we started talking about Michael. We’d worked with him previously on Cars – he played the character Chick Hicks – and John Lasseter had an amazing time working with him, he’s really funny, really inventive, very improvisational and so thankfully when we approached him to do Ken he was on board. I think he’s hilarious and a lot of the stuff that’s funny in the movie is stuff that he just kind of improvised in the moment in the recording studio.
The production notes that come with the film say that Toy Story 3 is all about change. How has Pixar changed since the last Toy Story and are there any parallels between the film and the studio?
DKA – Well we’ve all grown up. It’s been eleven years since the last Toy Story film and we’ve gotten married, had kids, we’ve lost some friends along the way and I think some of those parallels have naturally and unconsciously made their way into the film. And Pixar is constantly changing in the best way because we have a constant influx of new energy and new hires and new artists coming in.
LU – A lot of us were in our mid-twenties when we made Toy Story and now I’m 42, John’s even older.
DKA – I’m 21 (laughs)
LU – Are we more mature? I don’t think we take ourselves any more seriously but we think about life differently that we did when we were in our mid-twenties and I think that naturally, when an artist is creating a piece or making a movie, a lot of that ends up in the film so I think the Pixar films have got more mature as they’ve gone on.
How has the technology changed over the same period?
LU – Not a lot is the same as we used way back when. Everything is kind of done differently. You know we’re talking about 15 years of software development that’s gone on since then and now so the fundamentals are very much the same but the software has changed and the computers have got a lot faster too. Just to give you an example, on Toy Story 3 rendering a single, average frame takes hours and hours but when we resurrected the old files from Toy Story and Toy Story 2 and re-rendered them for the 3D versions on our modern computers, the computers are now so fast that the rendering happened almost in real time.
What was the philosophy going into the 3D on this film?
LU – We really didn’t think about it a lot. I didn’t want the fact that we were making a 3D film to inform my decisions as a filmmaker. I just wanted to make a good movie so no matter how people are watching it because people are going to see this in 3D but they are also going to see it in 2D and I just wanted to tell a good story. We learned a lot when we re-did Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3D. Those films weren’t designed to be released stereoscopically in 3D but they look fantastic and I just think that peaks for the fact that we were trying to make films that were highly cinematic and staged in depth and did things a lot differently than hand drawn animation was doing at the time.
DKA – And on both of those films Lee was the director of photography in essence.
LU – So since I had done all that on those films and they looked great in 3D I thought ‘Well I just need to make this like I would make any other film’ and trust the process. The 3D team that’s lead by Bob Whitehill is fantastic and he took my work and made it look really, really great and I didn’t really have to be too involved with the process.
Seeing as Toy Story is such a flagship brand for Pixar, will there more from the franchise or has Toy Story 3 bought things to an end?
LU – Well we did announce just last week that we’re making a short, a new short film using Toy Story characters so we want to keep the characters alive. But in the case of Toy Story 3, I very specifically wanted to end the story of these toys and their relationship with Andy. I wanted to tell a complete story, almost as if all three films were part of one grand story we were telling and I think we’ve wrapped it up really nicely. That being said, I think people love the characters and will want to see them doing something, whether it’s short films or another movie someday. We don’t know, we don’t have any plans for that.
DKA – We really just concentrated on this film in the context of a trilogy and also if you hadn’t seen the other two films, it would be a complete movie going experience in its own right.
Is there ever any chance of any characters from one Pixar film crossing over into another franchise?
DKA – Probably not. We just focus on the story and whatever serves the story so if there are elements that are similar in other stories, it just so happened to be that it served the current story as best it could. We have sneaks of other characters as a fun inside thing that we’ve done.
LU – Yeah, anyone’s whose watched our films will know that we have lots of little inside jokes and references to other movies. Lotso (Huggin’ Bear) appeared in Up and we’ve started a little tradition of giving a little sneak peak of a character in our next film in the current one so there is a character from Cars 2 that makes an appearance somewhere in Toy Story 3.
But you didn’t have any toys from the previous Pixar films in the junkyard scene? That would be bad…
LU – That would be really sad.
DKA – No, there are lots of pizza boxes.
LU – But Buzz has Buy And Large brand batteries in his back which is kind of a nod to where the world is heading with Buy And Large leading to the world of Wall-E so we like doing little fun things like that.
As a director, were you there at the beginning of the story? Did you decide that Andy was going to college and that the toys were going to day care?
LU – At the very beginning of this John (Lasseter) asked me to direct the movie and within a couple of weeks we went on an offsite, me and John and Andrew (Stanton) and Darla and Pete (Docter) and a few other folks who has come up with the original Toy Story. And we spent two days hashing out the beginnings of this movie and it was at that two day offsite we decided that Andy was going to be grown up and heading off to college and that the toys were going to end up at day care and a few other details from the movie – we started talking about Lotso at that meeting. So we got a lot of work done in those two and half days but after that it was two and half years of story development after that to flesh out all the details and really work out the story.
DKA – The place that we went to was the same place that we went to when we created Toy Story, it was out brainstorming place for Toy Story.
LU – It’s called Poet’s Loft in Tomales Bay.
Toy Story 3 is in cinemas from July 19th.
Splice – Exclusive Adrien Brody interview
by Andy Gibbons
Last week Splice star Sarah Polley gave us her thoughts on the upcoming movie and this week we track down her on-screen hubby (and Oscar-winning actor) Adrien Brody to get his take on the film….
Tell us a bit about Clive…
Well Clive is a very hip, young, successful scientist who’s at the cutting edge of genetic research. Basically when the story begins he and Elsa, who’s played by Sarah Polley, they lose their funding – they work for a private firm where they’re basically integrating different animal genes to create creatures to synthesize proteins for medical research – then she convinces him to go one step further since this is all about to be pulled from us and we integrate human DNA with animal DNA and create a new chimera. And then the s*** hits the fan….
Both Clive and Elsa make some rather questionable decisions during the course of the movie. Did you find it hard to have much sympathy or empathy for them?
No actually, I think people make mistakes all the time. I think it’s very realistic. People make mistakes that are shockingly foolish and probably often realise that in retrospect but you know, we get excited by things. If you asked any criminal in a penitentiary if they thought they’d get caught, I don’t think they’d say yes so I don’t think their intentions are to do something malicious in the film but they were ambitious and they were not thought out and not entirely scientific; there were emotions which got in the way that makes for an interesting story.
The world Clive and Elsa operate in is a very technical one. Can you tell me a bit about the research you did and how much of the technobabble you actually understood?
Well I had to have a basic understanding of it. I did a kind of a genetics research for dummies course – I got to spend time in a hospital with a great young geneticist who guided me through the process. I actually did a similar number of procedures that these characters were doing and I got to understand protocol and terminology. It’s a very complex process but when you understand what’s transpiring and the nature of it, cell structure and these things, it becomes much more personal. It was essential for The Pianist for me to learn to play the piano so that they could shoot it so I did that on a superficial level for the shot to work. But what it taught me and the insight that it gave me to the relationship between the pianist and the piece and the language and the story telling and the way that you play and the emotional connection to the place that the character was in and the music and all these things, enhanced my connection beyond anything I could have imagined. That’s the beauty of any research you have the opportunity to do.
Some people will call Splice a science fiction, some will call it a thriller while Delphine has described it as a love story. Where do you stand?
That’s interesting. I think it’s a family drama, a dysfunctional family drama (laughs).
Splice opens across the UK on July 23rd
Twilight: Eclipse – MSN exclusive Ashley Greene and Xavier Samuel interview
by Andy Gibbons
We’ve already heard from Nikki Reed and Kellan Lutz so now it’s the turn of Alice Cullen, actress Ashley Greene, and badboy vampire Riley, Aussie newcomer Xavier Samuel, to spill the beans on Twilight: Eclipse.
Ashley, can you tell me what Eclipse has in store for Alice?
Ashley – People will kind of get to see the vampire side of Alice in this film. In the previous two you are well aware that Alice is a vampire but she’s very positive and optimistic and she kind of has a heart of gold and you haven’t really seen her get dangerous or dark so in this film me and (director) David Slade worked to pull out some darker elements of Alice.
Xavier, how does Riley fit into the story?
Xavier – When you first meet Riley he’s just a young guy, full of promise but then he gets his humanity snatched away from him and gets kinda mixed up in this Lady Macbeth type relationship where he’s being manipulated to seek revenge. Then he’s busy trying to control this bloodthirsty newborn vampire army.
This is your first Twilight film – did you have any idea when you were letting yourself in for?
Xavier – (laughs) I kind of knew that it was severely popular and I’d seen it on the back of buses, that sort of stuff. But I was just kind of privileged to be involved in a story that reaches so any people. It’s been a really wonderful experience for me.
Is it more fun to play the bad guy?
Xavier – Absolutely, yeah. But also he’s kind of a complex bad guy which I really dig – that it’s not just this two dimensional kind of character, there’s a lot going on.
Ashley, we learn more about Alice in this film and she gets plenty of action – is this the book you’ve been waiting to make?
Ashley – I was certainly excited about it. There’s always certain things on each film that I get excited about; we have kind of this ability to take these characters and grow with them and add elements and layers onto these characters which is kinda nice. So yeah, it was definitely sort of amped up for Eclipse and then I heard David Slade was signed and I kind of knew instantly that it would be a different sort of film. If you’ve seen 30 Days Of Night or Hard Candy you know he has a niche for pulling out the darker side of things so yeah, it was super exciting.
This is the third Twilight film and you’ve had a different director each time – what did David bring to the movie?
Xavier – I think he brings a sort of fierce intelligence and maturity to the film. He’s got a really firm grip on the dark side of the film but he’s paying tribute to the love triangle and keeping that intact as well so I don’t think you could pick a better man for the job – he’s really phenomenal. And also Art Jones, who edited the film, did an amazing job. All these chase sequences are so exhilarating and it just sort of snaps along. I think they are a wonderful team.
The fans of Twilight are as hardcore as I’ve seen – can that level of fandemonium ever get in the way of the work?
Ashley – There are certainly precautions that you have to take but no, it doesn’t really interfere too much. The fans have been pretty great about keeping their distance. They stay the whole work day and camp out and when we get done with work we’ll go and say hello. It’s not a big issue.
Xavier, there’s a great sequence where we see Riley rising out of a lake with his newborn army – just how cold was that?
Xavier – (laughs) It was freezing actually and we had to reshoot it as well. But it was cool; I was attached to this wire that was kind of pulling me out ‘cos it’s hard to look graceful coming out of the water. But I didn’t drown or anything so I’m kinda thankful.
After Eclipse we have one more book to go – is it in the back of your minds that the end may be in sight?
Ashley – Yeah, people keep asking that but it’s certainly not coming to an end yet. We are filming the last book but it’s going to be split into two films, we’ll have Breaking Dawn Part 1 and Breaking Dawn Part 2, and they probably won’t be done for another two years. So I think until probably the last day of filming on Breaking Dawn Part 2 it won’t be too hard, it won’t be too emotional.
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse will be released across the UK on the 9th July.
Twilight: Eclipse – MSN exclusive Nikki Reed and Kellan Lutz interview
by Andy Gibbons
As I mentioned last week, I recently had the chance to sit down with some of the stars Twilight: Eclipse at a posh West End hotel to talk about the latest movie in the huge series. Here Nikki Reed (Rosalie Hale) and Kellan Lutz (Emmett Cullen) talk about the fans, yoga and the beginning of the end….
Can you tell me a little about what Eclipse has in store for Rosalie and Emmett?
Nikki – Eclipse is, I think, tonally much different from the other films in that it’s a bit edgier, a bit darker, there’s a lot more action and then of course there’s this love triangle that is think is sort of amplified and heighted. I think it has a bit of something for everyone, every demographic.
We certainly get to learn a lot more about Rosalie and her back story in this film – is this the book you’ve been waiting to film?
Nikki – Selfishly yes, I’ve been really excited and hopeful that we would make it to this movie because I really wanted to have the opportunity to defend Rosalie and justify her behaviour.
Kellan, there plenty of action in Eclipse so I guess you had to be ready. How competitive was it at the gym and I also hear you got into a little yoga?
Kellan – It wasn’t competitive at all, just very encouraging. Working out with Nikki and Elisabeth (Reaser, who plays Esme Cullen) was very fun for me because they’re very much encouraging. It may have got a little competitive from me because I get bored in the gym and seeing a girl as athletic as Nikki, it’s really cool to work out side by side with her and push myself; she’s such an all star at the gym. And then with yoga, Peter (Facinelli, who plays Dr. Carlisle Cullen) got me going and he is very encouraging on that level of activity as well.
I hear you managed a head stand – that’s not bad for a beginner…
Kellan – I did, I did. I was very proud of myself. It hurt but I was there.
Nikki – In the yoga studio or Peter’s room?
Kellan – Well I had a practise so I could show all the female yogaees…. (laughs)
As we mentioned, the action level is really ramped up in Eclipse. Kellan, did that give you that chance to put the all that yoga to good use?
Kellan – I really look forward to any physicality. I love action movies and I love Eclipse; I read the book and I was really hoping we’d get that far for my character ‘cos he’s not really there for the dialogue, he’s there for the presence so he has a lot of importance in the fight sequences.
The fans of Twilight are as hardcore as I’ve seen – can that level of fandemonium ever intimidate?
Nikki – For me there’s always this fear that you’re going to disappoint them because obviously the love of these films came from their love for the books so we always try to make good films, or we try to.
You had the UK premiere last night – how was that? Were you expecting that kind of reaction in London?
Kellan – No, not at all. It was really kinda cool. Just to have the fans come and camp out even without having Rob, Kristen or Taylor there; they still showed face and we really appreciate it because it is a family unit. We couldn’t make these movies without any of the cast members, big or small and it’s just really cool to see the support of the fans.
After Eclipse we have one more book to go – is it in the back of your minds that the end may be in sight?
Nikki – I think it’s quite traumatic as an actor and stepping into like different roles, knowing that you’re going to make these relationships with people and generally they don’t last. But the beauty of doing this series is that we all sort of knew we would see each other again so I think we all sort of put in a little extra effort to get to know other initially and really bond. Because of that we’ve created a true love and appreciation and respect for one another and it’s continued. It’s not like we come back to make these movies and we haven’t seen each other; we all hang out in our real lives so I don’t think about these movies coming to an end because I know we’ll be friends forever.
What’s been the highlight of the last few years?
Kellan – The friendships. Let alone that we all love our characters and that it’s a fun experience to be a part of, we have such a talented group and we’ve made a family.
Nikki – We’re all very different but we’ve found a way to connect.
Finally Kellan, is Emmett’s nickname ‘Monkey Man’ going to be a bit of an albatross around your neck…
Kellan – (laughs) I hope so. I love what Nikki did with that and I love how the fans are so gung ho about it. It’s a fun nickname.
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse will be released across the UK on the 9th July.
Splice – Exclusive Sarah Polley interview
by Andy Gibbons
When I was in the US recently I got the chance to speak to Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley and Delphine Chanéac, the stars of upoming sci-fi / thriller / horror Splice. I’ll post the rest of the interviews over the next couple of weeks but let’s kick things off with Sarah, who plays a scientist who makes a fateful decision…
Tell us a bit about Elsa…
Elsa and Clive, who she’s married to, are two geneticists who decide to make a creature that’s a hybrid out a human and animal DNA. They call her Dren and they raise her as a child but of course the experiment gets out of control.
They both make some rather questionable decisions during the films. Did you find it hard to have much sympathy or empathy for them?
Well she’s certainly one of the most ruthless, manipulative, complicated characters I’ve ever seen but I think she’s also someone who is full of life and had a real joie de vive. She’s passionate about her work but she’s also someone who’s incredibly damaged by her childhood – she’s running away from that so I tried to focus on that to remain empathetic to her in some way. When I see the movie there are definitely moments when you lose your capacity to empathy for her but I think, as an actor, it’s important to remain empathetic to the character you’re playing.
The world she operates in is a very technical one. Can you tell me a bit about the research you did to help get under her skin and how much of the technobabble you actually understood?
I spent some time in a lab with a geneticist named George who was really, really helpful and was a consultant on the film. I read a lot about it but there’s only so much you can absorb as an actor with no science background but I thought it was really important for us to at least understand the basic science behind what we’re saying dialogue-wise. We’ve all seen movies where the actor clearly doesn’t understand the corporate speak or the science speak so I kinda wanted to avoid that but I can’t pretend to fully understand the science that’s for sure.
From your perspective how much do you think we see on screen is science fiction and how much could be science fact?
I think its science fiction in that I don’t human beings would be allowed to do something like this – I think right now scientists and geneticists are so closely scrutinised, monitored and regulated. I think the science probably could take us there but I’m not sure that it would ever be allowed. I do think however that there’s an allusion here to Big Pharma (the company Elsa and Clive work for in the film) and the profit motive and I do think science like this should happen in a public system that is heavily regulated and monitored and where there is no profit motive. But even then I hesitate to claim that this could actually happen.
Biotechnology and genetics is an incredibly contentious field – has this film affected your perspective on the subject at all?
Well I think generally I’m someone who doesn’t have huge amounts of fear or scepticism about medical science research. I’m not a religious person so for me something like stem cell research is extremely important and could save millions of lives so I’m generally someone who doesn’t have a lot of scepticism about these things. Although I know some religious people who think stem cell research is really important too.
Can I ask you a bit about Delphine and how you and she worked on the relationship between Elsa and Dren?
She’s a magnificent actress and to get to work with someone so compelling and dynamic and so expressive without words, it helped me and Adrien so much in terms of being able to be in the scene and not working with a tennis ball which a lot of actors have to do when they make like this.
You mentioned Adrien. Can you tell me a bit about the relationship you formed playing Elsa and Clive?
We did spend some time together beforehand and the great thing about Adrien is that he has a great sense of humour so we were able to laugh through most of the film which is always a relief with a film like this which can get quite intense.
Splice is very much a pet project for writer / director Vincenzo Natali. Could you feel the passion in him day to day?
Yeah, absolutely. Vincenzo has been thinking about this movie for many years and so was so thrilled to be getting to make it. Visually he’s just one of the most staggering filmmakers out there so to get to watch him with this scale and this palette was amazing.
Some people will call Splice a science fiction, some will call it a thriller while Delphine has described it as a love story. Where do you stand?
I think it’s so many things. I think it’s a drama, I think at times it’s a black comedy, I think it’s science fiction, I think its horror. It’s not a film that easily categorised in many ways. I think the thing that really defines it for me is how shocking it gets. There are moments that shock audiences and cross boundaries I haven’t seen before.
Splice opens across the UK on July 23rd
HP7 poster is unveiled
by Andy Gibbons
The first poster for the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows double-header (which it would appear is now being known simply as HP7) has been unveiled and can be seen below.
It features a battle-worn Hogwarts and the rather appropriate tag line ‘It All Ends Here’ which, as anyone who has read the final book in JK Rowling’s blockbuster series – and let’s face it, who hasn’t? – knows to be true.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 opens in the UK on November 19th 2010 with Part 2 following on July 15th 2011.
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Twilight: Eclipse takes over Leicester Square
by Andy Gibbons
When I first heard that the UK premiere of the latest Twilight movie would be happening without any of the three main stars, I have to admit I was a little sceptical that it would get much attention. Boy was I wrong!
Two and half thousand frenzied fans packed into London’s Leicester Square last night (many having queued over night) while another few thousand waited outside to greet Ashley Greene (Alice Cullen), Kellan Lutz (Emmett Cullen) Paul Meraz (Paul), Nikki Reed (Rosalie Hale) and franchise newcomers Booboo Stewart (Seth), Xavier Samuel (Riley) and director David Slade, and greet them they did as central London was drowned in ear-piercing squeals.
Even though Slade admitted he felt rather “overwhelmed and terrified” by it all, the young stars took it in their stride and signed as many autographs and posed for as many pictures as possible. It’s obvious the cast and crew have a real affinity with the ‘Twihards’ and Nikki was quick to praise them, telling me “It’s incredible. I love them and I think I’m extremely lucky to be part of this and have these fans. It’s my first time here over in the UK and I’m blown away” while Kellan described all the attention as “fun”, adding “This is my first premiere here in London and I hope it’s not my last.”
Mind you, as nice as the fans can be, 16-year-old Booboo, who plays new werewolf Seth admitted that some can get a little too close, saying “One time I was doing a photo opp and this woman, she was like 40 years old, after she was like ‘Hey, do you want to make out?’ I was like ‘Whaaaat?’ It was kinda weird, you know what I mean.”
I’ve posted some pics from the night below but that’s not all – earlier today I spent some time chatting with the stars of the movie and I’ll post those interviews in full next week.
A very packed Leicester Square
Paul Meraz
Director David Slade
Ashley Greene
Nikki Reed
A relaxed Xavier Samuel
Booboo Stewart
Kellan Lutz
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse will be released across the UK on the 9th July, with advance screenings on the 3rd and 4th July.
Heartbreaker review
by Andy Gibbons
What is it?
A hugely successful romcom which has gone down a storm in its native France.
Alex (Romain Duris) has a way with women, a way which he has turned into a profession as he, with the help of his sister and brother-in-law, uses his charm, good looks and wit (and any other advantage he can gain) to break up couples for a living. But the team have a strict moral code; they will only interfere when it is obvious that the woman is unhappy (knowingly or unknowingly) in the relationship. However needs must and when an unpaid debt sees Alex in danger of losing some limbs, he takes on a job to wreck the upcoming wedding of Juliette (Vanessa Paradis) and all round good egg Brit Jonathan (Andrew Lincoln) but the closer Alex gets to his prey, the more complicated things become.
What’s good?
Duris is certainly a worthy leading man and makes Alex a likeable character. He and a well cast Paradis play off each other well and their Dirty Dancing routine may well make a few potential brides melt in the middle. Much of the action is based in Monaco which, let’s face it, is impossible to make look bad on screen so allow yourself to soak up the Principality in all its glory as Alex and Juliette explore.
What’s bad?
While I see why they can be conceived as necessary, the husband and wife combo who back Alex up on his jobs feel a bit forced – the husband especially is thrown in as the comic relief, comic relief which for me just wasn’t that funny. And the pacing is all over the place – the first hour whizzes by while the remaining 45 minutes drag on and on and on.
So basically…..
Heartbreaker starts really well; a little adventure in Morocco followed by a montage of some of Alex’s recent jobs sets the tone well and the whole idea is certainly a very fun concept. However once Alex starts to fall for Juliette and the ‘rom’ part of the ‘romcom’ kicks in, things lose some momentum and it all gets a bit predictable. Still it’s bright and breezy enough to raise a smile so, as a date movie, you could do a lot worse. And given its success, you probably won’t be surprised to hear that a US remake is already in the pipeline.
Heartbreaker is in UK cinemas from July 2nd
