After playing werewolf Jacob Black in “The Twilight Saga,” Taylor Lautner only has one regret. When fans first met Taylor as Jacob, the actor sported long hair, which was a wig he wore during the filming of “Twilight,” and something he wished he still had. “It#39;s my one regret,” he told Shaun Robinson at the junket for “Breaking Dawn – Part II.” “They offered me the wig,” he explained. “And I did turn it down. But I am definitely wishing now I would#39;ve taken it.”
A bit high-pitched and shrill, the few audiences that have seen Lincoln ahead of its World Premiere next month at AFI Fest may have been surprised by the voice of America’s 16th President as played by Daniel Day-Lewis . The two-time Oscar-winner made a rare public appearance speaking before a small audience presented by Time Magazine in New York Thursday. The actor, who appeared along with Steven Spielberg , spoke in his native British accent, which was in audible contrast to his latest on-screen character. Many assume Lincoln spoke in a blaring baritone, though Lewis explained that that myth is likely untrue. “Well you look for the clues, as with any aspect of the work,” he said of finding the voice. “You begin with the places that would have made a huge difference in his life. Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois, and the counties that he came from. There are some early recordings, but no contemporary recordings — lucky for me, so no one can say positively that it’s not what he sounded like,” said Lewis as quoted in THR . He surmised that the Civil War President’s pitch aided him and his oratory skills in reaching a higher number of people in an era well ahead anything resembling public address systems. “There are also a number of contemporary accounts about the quality of his voice,” Day-Lewis said. “And I’m inclined to think that having had a voice that was intended to be in the higher register, tended to be placed more in the head tones, that helped him reach a greater number of people in his public speaking. Stump speaking was such a huge part of their lives, they spoke sometimes for two hours or more without notes, at that time regularly. And beyond that, I suppose it really was just an act of imagination.” Lincoln centers on the period after Lincoln’s re-election in 1864 in the months leading up to his death in April of the following year, when he struggled to get the 13th Amendment passed by the House of Representatives. The Amendment abolished slavery once and for all in the United States. Though he had ordered the Emancipation Proclamation earlier, Lincoln feared the provision would only be held up as a “war power” and would become redundant after the war’s end — meaning, those legally freed would be immediately sent back into servitude. Lewis also said it took him a good year to get “comfortable with his character.” Spielberg said at the event he didn’t like the idea of waiting that long, but he is glad he did so. He also offered up his take on the Lincoln voice at a separate NYC screening event at the recent New York Film Festival. “Research talks about his high shrill voice,” Spielberg said. “I think we’d be criticized if we did it the way he’s heard by Disney’s Epcot Center with a low-tenored voice.” [ Source: THR ]
If human cloning has begun, I’d like to wager some money that Tom Hanks is an early adopter. The actor has been everywhere over the last week, making the media rounds to promote his latest picture, the ambitious Cloud Atlas , and his friend Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln as well. On Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report on Thursday night, the actor worked in a clever nod to the six roles he plays in Cloud Atlas (well, four of them, anyway) in a Halloween-themed skit that featured kids costumed as some of the more memorable characters that Hanks has portrayed over the years, including Woody from Toy Story , Chuck Noland from Cast Away , replete with a “Wilson” volley ball cut open to function as a candy bag, astronaut Jim Lovell from Apollo 13 — an “Oscar-denied hero” as Hanks pointed out — and Captain Miller from Saving Private Ryan . His co-star in that film, Matt Damon , even made a cameo dressed as a soldier to grouse about being in the skit and say that that he’d rather be drunk at a movie theater “heckling Argo,” his bud Ben Affleck’s picture. I particularly love Hanks having fun with his nice guy image — at one point, he grouses about “that punk Joseph Gordon Levitt nipping at my heels” — and the self-promotion chores of Hollywood. After telling Colbert: “Six characters in one movie, isn’t it great!”, one of the kids in Cloud Atlas costumes declares: “I smell Oscar buzz!” The segment ran almost 10 minutes, but the there was more of Hanks to be had on TV that night. If you had your DVR recording The Late Show with David Letterman , Hanks also appeared in what the talk-show host claimed was a clip from Spielberg’s Lincoln . Funny, I never knew that they served popcorn and trash-can sized cups of soda at the Ford Theater back in Lincoln’s day. Two more reasons why Hanks isn’t just aces as an actor, he’s one of the most entertaining talk-show guests out there. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Donald Trump may think Robert Pattinson can do better than Kristen Stewart, but the actor apparently disagrees. Rob was photographed leaving a Prince concert with Stewart in Los Angeles last night, as both stars tried to hide their faces in the back of a SVU. But paparazzi cameras were still able to snap a relatively clear picture of Robsten together again. Rumors of a reconciliation have been going strong for weeks now, of course. Both actors are jetting around the globe in promotion of Breaking Dawn 2 , but they found time for each other during the brief period between media appearances. That has to mean something, right?
In 1992 Jean-Claude Van Damme was sitting in a splits kick astride the world. The former body building champion and genuine full-contact karate knockout artist (19-1, with 18 KO’s) was riding a string of high-kicking lo-fi gems to his first big-budget affair: the unexpected Roland Emmerich sci-fi hit, Universal Soldier . The film’s $102-million worldwide haul caught the attention of major studios, and faster than a jumping wheel kick, a three-picture deal worth a reported $36 million was steadied in front of the Belgium-born ballerino like a pre-cut breakboard. A shower of cheap pine splinters and expensive champagne should have followed for the action star who was in command of more fighting ability than all of the muscled lunks lumbering through 90’s shoot-em-ups combined. But Van Damme turned out to be his own worst enemy. In an admitted haze of drugs, alcohol and manic self-regard, the ‘muscles from Brussels’ turned his cocaine-tinged nose up at the best offer he would ever see, striking a precision death blow to his promising career instead. In 2004, on the UK TV show, Jean-Claude Van Damme: Behind Closed Doors , he recalled: “After the movie Timecop , I received a huge offer for a three-picture deal and it was $12 million per picture. That’s $36 million. I was wasted. I said, ‘I want 20 million like Jim Carrey’ and they hung up on me. I was not myself.” JCVD may never really have recovered from that error in judgment that cost him a long, lucrative career on the big screen, but there is some consolation. His first foray into major box office success, Universal Soldier, has become a venerable franchise (with and without him) anyway. The fourth Van Damme helmed installation of the zombie-commando series, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, hits the Video on Demand market Thursday, with a small theatrical run set for November 30. In honor of this undead quadrilogy and its still-kicking lead, it’s high time to pay a little homage to four essential classics that set up Van Damme for a fall in the first place – and one newish film that will have you cursing the demons that stole from us more of the man’s best. 1. Kickboxer (1989): Half-baked JCVD fans who never really connected with the actor’s work on the emotional level it deserves will tell you that Bloodsport (1987) — the movie that unearthed the oiled majesty of Van Damme in the first place — is his greatest film, bar none. These people are heretics. Bloodsport is no doubt is a worthy martial arts tournament film, but its premise of fighting — possibly to the death — as sport, violates the warrior-code and undermines the righteous excitement of the inexorable flashback training montage where a punch drunk hero dream-trips his way to a final showdown comeback. Kickboxer has been dismissed as The Karate Kid in Thailand, and maybe it is, but like Daniel-son and Miyagi, there’s a worthy mentor-pupil relationship at heart of this irony-free, persistently charming cheese fest. It’s the kind of low-budget movie-making that doesn’t exist anymore, complete with an original synthy score. The track that plays over the opening credits, “Streets of Siam,” is a genuine jam and accompanies one of the most memorably tone-deaf on-screen jock performances of all time from real-life kickboxing superstar, Dennis “The Terminator” Alexio. Oh, and Van Damme drunkenly disco dances his way into a gratuitous barroom brawl. It’s B-movie perfection.
James Franco as Freddie Quell? It almost happened, the actor revealed during a panel at the Austin Film Festival, until The Master director Paul Thomas Anderson asked Franco one little question: “Do you feel like you can do this?” Franco’s confidence, he says, is what did him in as he and Anderson chatted about The Master ‘s troubled, potion-drinking veteran before Joaquin Phoenix came into the picture. “Paul Thomas Anderson was getting ready to make The Master and he called me and we met,” Franco said (as reported by EW ). “And we talked and we ended up meeting for coffee. We didn’t talk about The Master but I met him to chat. And then he kept calling me and he wanted to talk and talk but I didn’t know what he wanted to talk about because we’d always just kind of bulls— on the phone.” He continued: “So then when he started talking about the role he said, ‘Do you feel like you can do this?’ And I said ‘Yeah, totally. Look, I think you’re like the best American director. I feel confident. I know I can do this.’ And he said to me, ‘But I want this to scare you. I want this role, going on this journey to scare you.’ And I was like ‘Scare?! I know I can do it.” “And so, incredible movie, needless to say I didn’t get the part. I guess I wasn’t scared enough or something, or whatever reason I didn’t get it. And then when I saw Joaquin in that movie I realized ‘Oh, he wanted me to like lose my mind.'” Yes, James Franco! PTA wanted you to completely lose your shit , lick windows, and freak out inside of a prison cell like a caged animal in the name of art. It’s hard to envision anyone other than the feral, Ed Grimley-esque Phoenix as Freddie Quell but I imagine Franco’s version would’ve been a lot more smiley, and a lot less scary. That said: I would in a heartbeat watch two filmed hours of PTA and James Franco calling each other for phone dates. Concluding his Master story, Franco added a zinger at the Oscars, to which he famously contributed one of the more bizarre hosting performances in awards history. “The Oscars was challenging because the material they gave me was CRAP!” Guess Franco and Phoenix have one more thing in common . [via EW ] Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Michael Lohan wants to secure a conservatorship for his daughter, Lindsay Lohan. Popularized by Britney Spears , this arrangement would strip the troubled star of control regarding her own financial, legal and medical decisions indefinitely. MiLo told a lawyer that his daughter is a hardass druggie who hangs with the wrong crowd – including her own mother Dina Lohan – and must be saved . Now. Before you jump to the obvious conclusion, two interesting points: Michael does NOT want to be Lindsay’s conservator personally, to prove this is not a money grab on his part. He wants a judge to appoint a third party. Lindsay’s management team was in fact on board with the intervention Michael staged Friday. Mike says a conservatorship is the only way LiLo will get clean, and blames her downward spiral on the various hangers-on in her life who help fuel her addiction. His motives will always be suspect, but the fact that Michael did not act alone in trying to force Lindsay into rehab is telling. Everyone around her is apparently alarmed. Unlike Britney, who was saved by her father Jamie Spears taking over, LiLo doesn’t appear to have hit rock bottom, thought she could be worse than we know. She’s also going to be far from receptive, given that she’s indicated she will file for a restraining order against her dad. All bets are basically off in other words. Choose your side : Team Lindsay Team Michael View Poll »
Already unpopular on the Community set – he told The Huffington Post UK this year that signing on for the NBC sitcom was a “big mistake” – Chevy Chase really got himself in trouble during the filming of a recent episode. By dropping the N-word in the presence of African-American co-stars Donald Glover and Yvette Nicole Brown. Sources report that Chase did not refer to either actor by that epithet, but instead uttered it out of frustration over the dark path taken by his character. He angrily asked producers whether Pierce would next call Troy or Shirley a “n-gger.” Filming was temporarily halted in response to the incident and Chase later gathered the crew and cast together to apologize. Community Season 4 , meanwhile, was originally scheduled to premiere on October 19. However, NBC has delayed the return until some time in the future. This decision was made outside of Chase’s latest outburst.
Joaquin Phoenix has a collection of awards nominations and wins that many actors would look upon with envy, but he is calling, “bullshit.” The actor won applause at the Toronto International Film Festival for his role in Paul Thomas Anderson ‘s The Master and he even picked up a Best Actor prize at the Venice Film Festival last month (shared with Philip Seymour Hoffman ). But the actor said he thinks the whole process is the “stupidest thing in the whole world.” Speaking with Interview magazine in their latest issue about a wide-range of topics, the two-time Oscar nominee blasted the awards race, saying he’d like to stay clear of the machine, even as the current season – and industry – of awards goes into full throttle. “I’m just saying that I think it’s bullshit. I think it’s total, utter bullshit, and I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t believe in it. It’s a carrot, but it’s the worst-tasting carrot I’ve ever tasted in my whole life. I don’t want this carrot. It’s totally subjective. Pitting people against each other . . . It’s the stupidest thing in the whole world.” Phoenix received Oscar noms for Walk the Line (2005) and Gladiator (2000) and has been all but anointed with another one this year for The Master . He’s also received many festival nods throughout his lengthy acting stint and even a Golden Globe for Best Performance for an Actor in a Motion Picture Comedy or Musical for Walk the Line in which he played musician Johnny Cash. “It was one of the most uncomfortable periods of my life when Walk the Line was going through all the awards stuff and all that. I never want to have that experience again. I don’t know how to explain it – and it’s not like I’m in this place where I think I’m just above it -but I just don’t ever want to get comfortable with that part of things.” [ Sources: Interview via Huffington Post ]
For reasons known only to himself, Donald Trump has offered some advice to Robert Pattinson. Now that the actor is back together with Kristen Stewart (and planning a secret wedding ?!?), the Celebrity Apprentice boss has taken to Twitter and delivered the following words of wisdom: “Robert Pattinson should not take back Kristen Stewart. She cheated on him like a dog & will do it again — just watch. He can do much better!” This, of course, is a view shared by many others. But most of them are 14-year old Twihards. Where do you stand on Trump’s assessment? Can Robert Pattinson do better than Kristen Stewart? Yes, dump her! No, marry her! View Poll »
