Hot on the heels of the launch of four new action sports channels we’ve added more hard-hitting channels for all the YouTube sports fanatics out there. See the latest controversy in the world of soccer, watch insider interviews with basketball pros, or get smart with in-depth sports documentaries and analysis. Bleacher Report : From Linsanity to Tebowing, Bleacher Report has your sports fix covered…. Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Broadcasting Ourselves Discovery Date : 15/02/2012 09:39 Number of articles : 2
It’s been a while since I’ve spent a whole day at an observatory, slaving away to catch a few photons from some distant object. Maybe if it had been as awesomely cool as depicted in this video of the Keck observatory by Andrew Cooper (and dedicated to the summit day crew), I’d still be doing research instead of writing about it! How fun! All the action is documented on the Vimeo page for the video… Broadcasting platform : Vimeo Source : DiscoverMagazine Discovery Date : 15/02/2012 21:21 Number of articles : 2
Add Madonna to the list of those who thought M.I.A.’s actions during halftime of Super Bowl XVLI were stupid and childish. A few days after she anchored a mostly positively-reviewed show , The Material Girl called in to On Air with Ryan Seacrest and reacted to M.I.A’s action as follows: “I was really surprised. I didn’t know anything about it. I wasn’t happy about it. “I understand it’s punk rock and everything, but to me there was such a feeling of love and good energy, and positivity, it seemed negative. It’s such a teenager… irrelevant thing to do.. here was such a feeling of love and unity there. What was the point?” M.I.A. Gives the Finger In a separate interview, Madonna later told Carson Daly that M.I.A. did call her to apologize, but the iconic artist concluded of the action: “It was just out of place.”
Fox seems to think so: “Sean Hayes, Chris Diamantopoulos, and Will Sasso — starring as Larry, Moe & Curly — in the all new The Three Stooges movie from Twentieth Century Fox, will start the action by delivering the green flag at the Daytona 500, NASCAR’s most prestigious race, on Sunday, February 26th.” [Press release]
Lil Jon performed at the very exclusive Skull Candy Compound at the Sundance Film Festival and Hollywood.TV was there for all the action. Check back for more exclusive footage from the many hot spots in Park City.
One of the most fascinating and intimate moments in Frederick Wiseman’s Crazy Horse , a peek behind the shimmery veil of Paris’s legendary semi-nude cabaret, is the one in which the club’s no-nonsense manager, Andrée Deissenberg, tells a reporter that women find the performances just as compelling as men do, if not more so – that watching this highly orchestrated display of beauty on-stage speaks to them in a way that goes far beyond garden-variety titillation. “The key to eroticism is the woman,” she says flatly, a statement the reporter doesn’t seem to fully agree with, though he at least has the good sense to bow to her authority on the matter. She knows what she’s talking about, and Wiseman clearly does too. For all his intelligence and attention to craft, Wiseman is also among the warmest, the least clinical, of all documentary filmmakers; there’s never any pretense that he’s just turning the camera on and letting it capture reality. His eyes are open every minute, and his mind is awake. The lithe beauties of Crazy Horse may seem an unlikely subject for Wiseman, who’s revered – rightly – for pictures like his debut, the 1967 Titicut Follies, which documented human atrocities at Massachusetts Correctional Institution Bridgewater. More recently, he’s captured the ramshackle camaraderie of boxing enthusiasts in Boxing Gym . And in La Danse, his seemingly casual yet intense observation of the backstage workings at the Paris Opera Ballet, he traced the ways in which the human body, with all its earthbound limitations, can be trained to move in ways that come as close as possible to human perfection. Now, he’s looking at semi-naked women. And what women! Crazy Horse is neither prurient nor titillating, and it’s not out to make a bold statement. (If you’re looking for evidence that some/most/all women who work as erotic dancers are exploited, damaged or in some way compromised, you won’t find it here.) Instead, the picture is celebratory, in its own quiet way, as well as clear-eyed. The Crazy Horse, which has been operating since 1951, is known for dance routines that are lavish, flirtatious, possibly just a little bit tacky, though in an exquisitely French way. Wiseman’s camera is open to all of it, as it is to the grace and vulnerability of the dancers who perform these routines (many of whom have ballet training). It could be that Wiseman, who is now 81, is more attuned than ever to observing and marveling at the wonder of human movement. We already know there’s eroticism in ballet and boxing. The next natural step, maybe, is to find it in a chorus line of beautiful young women wearing modified – and extremely skimpy – Royal Guardsmen’s outfits. Wiseman’s camera, as always, captures the big moments and the small ones: Preparing to go on-stage, a dancer dots her lash line with glue before applying a lush, flirty faux fringe. Late in the picture, we watch an audition in process, and while the focus is on the hopeful young women angling for a job, Wiseman also clues us in to the practical-mindedness of the judges: They may note, among themselves, that one girl’s legs may not be quite as long as they’d like, but there’s always a degree of businesslike kindness at work, too – they try to make their decisions as swiftly as possible, not wanting to prolong a prospective dancer’s hopeful anxiety any longer than necessary. (It’s the exact opposite of what you see on so-called reality TV.) And, as always, Wiseman is acutely aware of the dollars-and-cents reality behind any illusion. He takes us behind the scenes as Deissenberg and the club’s director and choreographer, Philippe Decouflé, wrangle with the economic realities of running the Crazy Horse: At one point Decouflé begs to close the club for a short time, so he can come up with brand-new routines and even just clean the spotlights, which have become grimy and don’t highlight the contours of the women’s bodies as they should. Deissenberg shakes her head, asserting grimly that there’s no way the shareholders would go for it. Artistry, whether in ballet or burlesque, has to find ways to flourish despite economic restrictions. But mostly, Crazy Horse focuses on the dancing, the dancers, and the silly-wonderful nature of the Crazy Horse routines. Wiseman doesn’t focus on any single dancer – the word ensemble is key here – and yet the individual performers still emerge as distinctly human. At one point, as the dancers wait to go on-stage, they gather ‘round a TV to watch a Russian compilation tape of ballet flubs, laughing hysterically as presumably perfect dancers slip, stumble, and otherwise humiliate themselves. At another point, Decouflé discusses a routine, called Venus, that the performers dislike because it requires them to touch each other. “The girls often come out of it in tears,” he says. “They’re modest.” The moment is revealing, and more than a little touching: These women revel, publicly, in the beauty of their bodies, but feel awkward and strange when it comes to touching one another. It’s a boundary of privacy and intimacy that they’d rather not breach. When you see the Crazy Horse routines, this makes sense: We’re not talking about improvised bumping and grinding here (although, of course, in the right setting that can be perfectly OK too). These are meticulously orchestrated numbers in which the illusion of nakedness is more extreme than the actual fact of it. The women are both unsheathed and highly artificial. They might wear Rudi Gernreich-style unitards that consist of little more than a triangle of fabric held up, very helpfully, by two slender straps, leaving the breasts fully exposed. Slatted or polka-dotted lighting effects are often used to highlight specific womanly attributes. It’s worth noting, too, that there’s definitely a Crazy Horse type: We’re not talking about a celebration of all shapes and sizes here. At one point in the picture the dancers don headphones offstage to record a theme song, describing themselves, with marvelous tunelessness, as “the girls of the Crazy.” The girls of the Crazy typically have smallish breasts (not an implant in sight) and glorious, rounded bottoms, which they thrust out at every opportunity – at the Crazy, it’s all about the butt. But what about the dancing? There’s a great deal of physical discipline necessary to pull these routines together, as the rehearsal sequences show. The illusion of eroticism is a harsh taskmistress, and the shoes are killer, too. There’s nothing harder on feet than dancing en pointe , but it can’t be all that easy executing a Cirque du Soleil-style routine, as one dancer does, in a pair of shoes that consist of a Lucite spike heel attached to the bare foot with a few pieces of elastic. Like all dancers, the Crazy Horse performers are aware of the importance of elongating the body. And even if numbers like the one called “Baby Buns” are designed to celebrate certain parts of the anatomy, the reality is that there are a lot of hardworking muscles beneath all those comely attributes. Crazy Horse is a movie about process, about performance, about the exacting nature of producing an exquisite, entertaining sexual illusion. Yet Wiseman isn’t one of those documentarians who can’t see the forest through the trees: The girls of the Crazy are simply beautiful and delightful to look at. Even Wiseman, cerebral, perceptive, and a maestro in the editing room, can’t resist urging us, with images if not with words, “Just look at them!” And so we do. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Watching mixed martial artist Gina Carano fight on television, director Steven Soderbergh was struck by inspiration: Why not build an action movie around the lethal (and yes, gorgeous) athlete to show audiences what a real action heroine could look like? Forget Angelina Jolie in Salt , or any number of actresses who’ve unconvincingly flitted their way through the genre. Carano was the real deal, a woman who can dole out punches with bone-shattering believability, leap between buildings, and battle Hollywood’s best leading men with aplomb, as evidenced in this week’s Haywire . For Carano, Soderbergh’s offer of film stardom was an opportunity. Written around the first-time actress’s physical strengths, Haywire keeps its premise simple: A betrayed black ops agent (Carano) tries to uncover a plot against her as she battles a stream of spies, muscle, and former associates. Paired with actors like Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, and Channing Tatum, who keep the dramatic scenes charging alone, Carano explodes in her action scenes with a ferocity even her castmates can’t match. Movieline spoke with the MMA veteran and neophyte actress about the challenges of her work on Haywire, the encouragement she takes from female moviegoers, her future acting aspirations, the possibility of a sequel, and what she thought of 2010’s MMA drama Warrior . It’s such a pleasure to see you beat up men like Channing Tatum and Michael Fassbender on the big screen. How fun was it for you, doing it yourself? It was incredible, because they are such wonderful, genuine guys who brought no ego. There were no problems – they wanted to do everything themselves, they wanted to be as physical as possible, and I think we all walked away enjoying the bumps and bruises we walked away with on set. Instead of there being any competition it was more about creating something beautiful. And honestly, it’s just one of the coolest things to hear from a female’s mouth that they got excited about the fight scenes, you know? It’s like one of the best compliments I’ve gotten so far, hearing that females got excited and that they were rooting for me. Part of the appeal of Haywire for me was that most of the action heroines we’ve seen throughout film history have felt somewhat unrealistic, but your physicality was part of the reason Steven Soderbergh built this film around you. Look at Angelina Jolie; at AFI Fest Soderbergh described you as Angelina Jolie-meets-Steven Seagal , but I think there’s more of the badass Seagal in you. How important do you think realism is when it comes to action and female performers? Well you know, I have the utmost respect for people like Angelina Jolie and Zoe Saldana in Colombiana . But here you have beautiful women and they’re taking on these rougher roles that they don’t necessarily have to take, but have chosen to take. So I have the utmost respect for them. But what I’m bringing to it is hopefully…I know that the whole reason I got the job is that I’m bringing a physicality that maybe people haven’t seen yet. So anything I can do and could have done for Haywire to be believable in these fight scenes, of course I did. I like being a little bit different in that way, and I have a lot to learn from these women as far as everything else goes, but I’m definitely comfortable saying that I felt good bringing my form of physicality for my sport and for other females to see, because I know there’s a lot of them out there that know what it’s like, that get a rush. And a man came up to me the other day and said, “I had to drag my wife to the premiere, and she was like, ‘Oh, great – another action film.'” But after the premiere, she was so happy that she’d gone, she was so pumped! I think she was more enthusiastic than I was about this film! [Laughs] It was awesome. It was really cool for me to just offer up something people haven’t seen. So the physicality came naturally to you, but what about the dramatic work? You had appeared in film and TV before… Well, I hadn’t really done [film] – I consider Haywire my first acting experience. The other stuff that is listed was not acting. I have one fight scene in a movie called Blood and Bone , and it was kind of that thing where you just show up that day and it’s all improv. So Haywire was my first experience. Steven Soderbergh, first of all, he had the vision and he had in mind what he wanted to portray, and it’s always refreshing to me to meet a man who knows exactly what he wants – or a boss, or whoever. It’s nice when somebody wants to take on a project and they know exactly what they want out of it. Then he surrounded me with some beautiful people who opened up their arms, these genuinely talented human beings who had no egos and wanted to help. The actors were helping me with the dramatic side and I was helping them with the physicality of it, so it was really a beautiful trade-off with everybody being open-minded and wanting to make the most beautiful product we could. Which scene did you find most challenging to pull off? Well, I was extremely afraid of heights, and I had to jump from one building to the next and there were no wires. [Laughs] I had a serious mental block when it came to this one jump, and I was like, “Gina, this is the whole reason you got the job. Come on, suck it up!” And then I would think of my family, what if they hear I got killed on set? So I think that was one of the scarier moments of the film, but each day was new for me. Each acting experience was new, and every day I woke up just kind of blessed, but at the same time almost terrified of what that day held — just adrenaline pumping through my body. But because of all that, now a couple of years later looking back it’s nice to know I got through something like that, and that I was able to keep my head cool and really enjoy the experience of it. Are there many ways in which you see the worlds of fighting and acting overlap? I know you worked with Randy Couture as a fighter, and he’s someone who’s also made this transition over to acting. Did you ever compare notes with him, or with other athletes-turned-actors, about making that leap? No, actually! Randy is a man of very few words, and he was just like, “You’re going to do great, Gina. Just have fun.” [Laughs] Just like he said to me the first time I met him and asked him to be my coach: “Just go out there and have fun, be yourself.” I didn’t know that many people – Randy had done it, a couple of other people in the sport have done it, but really not very many of the people who were around me had done anything like this. It was just kind of an all-new first-time experience, and the people I worked with were the people that showed me the ropes. Are you having fun with all of this? I’ve seen you do interviews in which you say you’re looking forward to getting “on the other side” of January 20, and you’ve been described as a shy person. Yeah. [Laughs] Are you feeling more and more comfortable with having this media spotlight on you, the increased focus that acting adds to your already established MMA profile? I feel really, really positive right now. I feel like I got to experience something that nobody around me has gotten to experience, and the people and the reviews and the comments that I’m getting back from those who have seen the film are also incredibly positive. I’ve just had a really blessed life until now, and to be negative or fearful of what comes next would be a shame, because then I wouldn’t be enjoying this moment right now, sitting on patio in L.A. talking about this beautiful experience. I’m looking forward to getting on the other side of it because I absolutely want to go back to work, you know? I want to figure out what’s next. I’m eager to do this again, and I want to raise the bar and keep going forward, but a lot of people have been waiting for this film to come out – it took a while to come out, two years now – so I’m just really excited that it’s finally coming out and I’m going to be able to get on the other side of it and kind of close it, land somewhere. I’m super excited about that. In terms of your acting future, has there been any discussion of doing a sequel to Haywire with Steven? Well Ewan McGregor… It’s funny because we were doing the press conference the other day and he was like, [SPOILERS] ‘Gina, you know my character doesn’t die…’ [Laughs] He was like, it’s kind of blessed that you left me there stuck on the rocks and he doesn’t necessarily die. [END SPOILERS] He keeps on talking to Soderbergh, and he’s such a lovely person – he’s talking about what could happen. He’s really pumped to go into a training camp with me for two months to do a Haywire sequel. And of course it would be another dream come true for me because I absolutely adore the film and I adore Ewan and Soderbergh, so to have another opportunity would be incredible. But we’ll see. We’ll have to see after January 20 and see if people really do enjoy the film and consider me believable. Do you want to stay in this action niche, or perhaps take on roles that require no physicality, are more dramatic? It’s such a good question. Regarding the physicality, I would love to explore different characters and I feel like you can still do that, but I know that right now my niche is definitely bringing something physical to the table, and I enjoy that and welcome that completely. I’m not going to say that I would never want to do something different, but I feel like I would love to represent my sport and represent women, and that reaction was so positive off of the fight scenes that I’m like, “Really? I can do more!” Lastly, I was curious to hear your thoughts on Warrior , which was the most prominent MMA-themed film to hit screens. Did you see it, and if so how well do you think it represents what it’s like to be in that world? Well, it was interesting; the day that I was watching it I was watching with a guy friend of mine, and I was doing laundry and coming in and out so I can’t say I necessarily got the whole vibe of the film completely, but I did notice and was impressed that it’s extremely hard to make a fight film look realistic, and I think that film to date has done the best job doing that. I always wonder, because all of my friends just beat the hell out of each other in practice every day, and they should just put these guys in the film! It’s not like they’re not doing it anyways, they’re doing it every single day so you might as well film it to make it more realistic in these fight films, you know? But the guy I was watching it with, at one point I walked back in, and I remember looking over at him and he was just in tears. [Laughs] Then I just settled down and started watching it a little bit and I’m like, “Well, geez, this film really had an impact on this person!” There was a guy just crying and bawling on my bed after watching Warrior ! So I feel like I have to go back in the right mindframe when I’m not so busy, but I was impressed with how believable it was. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Make: Live ‘s Best of 2011 show looks back at our favorite episodes from the very first season. Go behind the scenes with us for some of our most memorable moments– from goofs and gaffes to last minute surprises and change ups. It’s the best of robots, blinky LEDs, fires & explosions, electronics and giant mobile contraptions. It’s a whole year of making condensed to the action-packed clip above… Broadcasting platform : Vimeo Source : MAKE: Blog Discovery Date : 29/12/2011 18:11 Number of articles : 2
The Walk of Shame is upon us! And if you can’t be in New York City to join me, Jen Yamato and our local friends of Movieline in visiting the watering holes featured in Michael Fassbender’s superb new film, you can always keep tabs on the action via Twitter — we’ll be livetweeting here all night!
