The most important lesson we can learn from Christina Aguilera…is that Cyberbullying is effective. I don’t care what the fat chicks, the lesbians in their birkenstock’s eating vegan food, or the latch on losers who pretend to be nice say…the fact is that bullying people, is human nature, mocking people for getting fat, is effective in letting them know they are fat, and making them do something about it, you know doubting that second serving of donuts, leading to them getting healthy an fit and looking better than they have in years, but more importantly, feeling better than they have in years, and fucking better than they have in years, and living a longer life thanks to doing something about us. Bullying is a fucking social service, and that is why I will continue to make fun of fat girls until they start doing squats and runs, and not from sprinting the to buffet and running to the toilet to shit all of it out…but in fitness. Christina Aguilera looks hot, despite the fact that her personality is probably still shitty as fuck. To see the rest of the pics CLICK HERE
Whoooooo! Police are looking for the ex-wife of Charlotte wrestling legend Ric Flair. They said Jacqueline Beems threatened Flair’s new girlfriend and harassed her with several phone calls. Eyewitness News found the arrest warrant for Beems in Mecklenburg County was filed in June. Police have not said why it took so long to file a complain. Beems and Flair were married in 2009. She filed for divorce at the end of last year. Flair and his new girlfriend recently appeared on ABC’s “Celebrity Wife Swap.” WOSCTV
Free at last! Free at last! Kim Kardashian has finally started stepping out after a stir crazy month at home with newborn North. Via RadarOnline reports : Kim Kardashian has been in hiding since giving birth to daughter North West more than four weeks ago, but RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned the new mother was recently spotted for the first time on a public outing with the baby — and we have all the details. According to an onlooker, Kim was out and about in Southern California some time in the last few days, keeping a low profile and avoiding paparazzi by tooling around town in her nanny/helper’s car that looks anything but what Kim is accustomed to! “Kim looks amazing, she really does. She’s dropped a lot of the baby weight already…not to say she still doesn’t have a ways to go, but she looked slim and was glowing,” the onlooker revealed. “As for the baby, Kim and her helper kept a blanket over North’s car seat so nobody could catch a glimpse.” This sighting of Kim is the first since she gave birth to North on June 15 — quite possibly the longest Kim has ever gone without being photographed since becoming a public figure. As RadarOnline.com exclusively reported last week, Kim is sick of being in hiding and wants everyone to see her baby sooner rather than later. “Kim is excited to have the whole world see her baby,” a source told Radar. “She is saying that she knows that everyone will love her as much as she does and she wants people to see how beautiful she is.” During Kim’s most recent sighting, the onlooker tells Radar Kim looked fabulous. “She’s dropped quite a bit of the baby weight and it shows,” they said. “And she really looked like a doting mother, which was nice to see.” Awww… How sweet. It’s only been a month, how much weight do you think Kim could have lost already?
I am not anit-Adam Levine. I find his songs annoying, his personality annoying, and he’s kinda like a midget Jewish clown you’d expect to be dancing around at some Bar Mitzvah, who all the grandmothers like, rather than a superstar making hundreds of millions on TV and in music…but I can’t control popularity, or marketing, or what works…I mean so much shit that’s out there is shit…and he’s just another one of the puppets cashing in on it…hard to hate a hustler… I am just anti girls who fuck Adam Levine, like little groupie bitches, who use him as some sort of right of passage, like that they have finally made it as models, now that this pop star sticks his dick in them… I mean it is hard to hate him for fucking models, I would be doing the same thing as him if I was him, because models are fucking hot and probably fun to fuck… But these models, they are just opportunist, and whether it is ANNE V, Behati Prinsloo, or now Nina Agdal, they all might as well be hookers, and he’s their john, paying them in being able to be associated with him… I just hate seeing whores, even when I know they are all whores, it’s kinda nice when a hot bitch isn’t wallet fucking, especially when she’s got her own fucking wallet.. It’s a weird world we live in, but at least Adam Levine is taking full advantage of the top quality pussy he can, it’s a perk of the job, along with every other amazing thing that comes with being famous…like being in Mexico on Vacation when your life is a fucking vacation. TO SEE THE REST OF THE PICS FOLLOW THIS LINK
It’s CRAZY! I never thought in my life, that I ever would write my own Bieber experience. My name is Christina, I’m 16 years old and from Denmark. I’ve been a belieber since it all started. I remember being just a little kid watching this amazing boy on Youtube, and I couldn’t even understand English at that time. Justin has taught me so much! I fell in love with him immediately, his personality, his hair, his humor, his amazing charisma, yeah – everything about him. I love what he stands for: to BELIEVE. I’ve always been one of these girls who had never believed in myself. Sometimes I would actually cry because everything felt hopeless, like I no future. I feel like I know Justin, and to know that he didn’t even know I existed made me so depressed. But boys and girls, dreams DO come true. I’m from the little country of Denmark and I’ve been that person who could only dream about meeting Justin. The world seemed too damn big, and I would never meet him. On April 20 th my dream came true on the Believe tour. The concert took place in Denmark’s national stadium in Copenhagen. I was one of the lucky people who got a VIP ticket, out of 45,000 people! I can’t describe how lucky I felt, it was surreal. My parents were really sweet to drive me 5 hours to see his concert, since we live far from Copenhagen. We arrived at ‘Parken’ (where the concert took place) at 9 a.m and we were waiting for 8 hours before we were let in. All of us, who had VIP, were let in to a big room, where we got a lot of information. We were all really excited and time went by fast. Suddenly there was only about 5 minutes before we got to meet Justin. While we were standing there, I was thinking about how long I had been waiting for this moment, I couldn’t believe it. I was led to a black carpet. One of Justin’s bodyguards stood there and he asked me, “Are you ready?’’ I said, “I think so..” and then he said, “Take a deep breath,” and he pulled the black carpet to the side. There Justin stood. So perfect. He was so cute and so grown up. I went over to him and gave him a fast hug before we took a picture. It was so surreal, like I was flying, and watched my body standing beside Justins. We had no time with him, which was sad, but it was still amazing, a dream come true. And the concert – OMG it was beyond words! I will use the opportunity to write something more. I know that Justin has had a difficult time at the moment, and that was definitely something I could feel at the meet and greet. I don’t blame Justin. I just hope that he knows how much we love him, and that we will always support him. Paparazzi and people who hate on him without reason are disrespectful. They forget that Justin is also a human, a human with feelings like everyone else. I hope I get the opportunity to meet him again. Maybe I’m lucky. Never say Never. -@christinachd The rest is here: It’s CRAZY! I never thought in my life, that I ever would write…
Weezy and Nicki clown around in new footage from the set, shot days before Wayne was hospitalized. By Nadeska Alexis Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj in behind the scenes of “High School” Photo: GRIZZ LEE ARTS & Pink Personality LLC
Mila Kunis is alright….isn’t she? Who cares who’s dick she puts inside her unprotected…that she will likely marry…and have kids with…none of that matters….because she’s just pictures and videos to us….pictures and videos we should all collectively try to get pregnant by throwing our load at our computer screens…hoping for some technological glitch…like the movie Weird Science… Seriously…she’s pretty fucking good….in this allure photoshoot….despite all the flaws in her and her personality…and her sex life and public image….because none of that affects us…but her pictures do….and I want to impregnate them…..
Though a Paramount release, Flight did not take the trajectory of a typical studio concept plucked from an internal idea bin. Screenwriter John Gatins began working on what would become the feature starring Denzel Washington and directed by Robert Zemekis earlier last decade on his own. While still new to Hollywood, Gatins, who first hit the scene as a writer on sports pics including Summer Catch and Hard Ball , sobered up. He took that experience and his fear of flying, to quietly craft the story that would evolve into Flight . The film, which debuted at the New York Film Festival in the fall and debuted in theaters in early November has cashed in with nearly $91 million at the domestic box office on a relatively modest budget – at least for Hollywood with a big star – of $31 million. On the Awards Circuit the film has won some attention including a Golden Globe nomination for Denzel Washington for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama and he may well be on the road to a nomination for Best Actor next month when the Oscar nominations are revealed. Gatins has also received some attention including Best Original Screenplay by the Broadcast Film Critics Association and a nomination from the Image Awards. Flight ‘s plane crash makes for good imagery in a trailer, but it really serves as a set-up for one man’s personal struggle with addiction and denial, which forms the crux of Flight . Washington plays pilot Whip Whitaker, who successfully guides a plane that experiences a mid-air mishap to the ground, saving nearly everyone on board. He’s hailed for his heroism by the media, but what eventually percolates to the surface during the investigation is missing on-board alcohol and a cover-up that Captain Whitaker, was in fact, legally drunk. Whitaker is a master at concealing his insatiable drinking and cocaine use and as media attention continues to follow him, he deflects what is clearly a hastening descent in his personal life. M.L. caught up with screenwriter John Gatins about what prompted him to start writing Flight who shared the turbulence his script encountered on the way to the big screen. He shares how he segued his way into “the business” after graduating from Vassar and facing his own fears of flying while making the movie. When I first saw footage of Flight before seeing the film at the New York Film Festival, I wondered if it would be a straight-up plane crash story or if there was more to it. Obviously there is much much more to it and was curious how this came about. Was there a personal element to it? I got sober when I was 25 and that was part of it. I think I was 31 when I started writing [ Flight ] and I did it for me really, I didn’t have a boss. I wrote it on spec and I honestly didn’t think it was a movie that would ever get made. I’m a scared flyer, but was flying a lot for work and shooting in Europe. It’s a personal project I’d pick up and put down and then kept working in my normal life, trying to feed my family. It was after I wrote and directed Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story for DreamWorks that they then asked me what I wanted to do next and then I said, “Well, let me show you what I have been working on and I gave them the first 40 pages of this script and they went, ‘Woah.'” Around when was this? This was around 2004 – 2005. And they thought this was pretty heavy-duty considering I had just finished doing this PG-13 movie for them and has a very complicated central character. And it was also at a time in the business when these kinds of stories weren’t just jumping off shelves onto the screens. R-rated grown-up dramas just became anathema. People kept saying that audiences just don’t’ want to see these movies. But clearly you kept going… Yeah, it was a hard time for it and I was trying to also direct the movie. So Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald came on as producers with me and I continued to work on the script and I finally had a version that we could sneak to a few people in 2007. The script had some big agents respond to it and they said there was some great talent that may be interested in [the starring role], but then the writers strike came along. There were so many things happening to go against this movie, but then it all changed when Denzel Washington got his hand on the script and he wanted to meet me. He told me he wanted a bigger director than me to handle this, which was understandable I guess… Some big actors only have a few guys or gals they want to work with. Then Robert Zemeckis got a hold of the script around the same time and those two connected and then the three of us connected. For everything that had gone wrong for so many years there was a moment in time when everything went right. Bob wanted to be very collaborative with me when making the movie. He said to come to Atlanta and I got to really be there and have a creative voice in it and it really was the best of all possible worlds. Talk about how you three collaborated. Did the script evolve much while you were working with Washington and Zemekis? It was kind of great. Before this, I had only known Denzel as his characters, I had never met him. His characters have this intense presence and in life he also has this presence. He does his homework man – he really does his homework. He was really with the 2007 draft he first received, but with every new draft there was, we kept him in the loop. He’s a guy who definitely started to carry that pain around. He was putting on those shoes so to speak to play the part almost immediately. It was great because for a lot of people this is a small movie, it’s a $30 million movie that we shot over 45 days all on location. It was a bit like making the school play at times, we all rolled up our sleeves to get this done. It was a small ensemble of actors and a small filmmaking crew. So there’s something very intimate about it. Denzel has gone out of his way to give credit to the script. And it’s been really nice for me honestly since I did work so long on the movie and he recognized that. What’s on the screen isn’t much different than what’s in that ’07 draft. Bob did some really smart things making me focus on the point of view. Did that ’07 script portray Denzel’s character as so focused despite his dependencies? I’ll tell you what really struck me about the story was how functional he was at least on the outside. Of course things are going south on the inside, but after the crash he receives notoriety and credit for saving lives and despite being in various states of inebriation all the time, he is able to handle himself in such a remarkable way at least publicly. I’ll tell you a story. my guilty pleasure is the New York Post and one day while doing the domestic junket out here I was reading Page 2 and there was this whole article about this huge rock star Cardiologist in New York who was being sued by his two ex-wives and, among a lot of things, they both alleged that he was high on cocaine all the time and that he failed four drug tests at the hospital and was high 24/7. And you think this is the guy you put your life into and he’s blazing on drugs. I mean, it’s remarkable and there’s this parallel to [Denzel’s character] Whip Whitaker who is so high yet functioning and walks this tight rope. Instinctively he’s the best guy to fly that plane, impaired or not. That’s what helped to create that weird conflicted ambiguity in the plane because you’re thinking, ‘Am I rooting for this character or not?’ If I was on the plane and he saved me and I knew he was the only one who could do that, I’d think I wouldn’t care what his mind was all about at that moment. I think that functionality almost made it more difficult for his character to come to terms with the addictions he was facing… They say for most people to want to make a change they have to hit a bottom in their life. For a guy like that to be able to do heart surgeries successfully or a guy to successfully fly a jet, then people continue to skate along in life. People often don’t change unless they have to. That happens sometimes when people wake up in handcuffs, or in a hospital or in a psych ward and they say, ‘what happened?’ It’s like, well all that managing you were doing with all these issues – it ran out. Your ability to pull it off and manage it just quit on you. And he’s an amazing dude that Whip Whitaker, he can do almost anything. Was there a progression in his personality from the original scripts to the final version? Was that functionality fully there? That functionality was always there because I felt that’s the thing that makes us conflicted. I always watch war movies and I would always think that if I was in a war, I’d have to drink every day with that constant drum of anxiety because I don’t know how I’d get through that experience of knowing someone is constantly trying to kill me. The men and women overseas right now, I just don’t know how they deal with that. I think pills or booze would calm my brain… But I think it would have been so easy to go down that path of Whip just being crazed… Yeah, yeah yeah… There are so many people who function at such a high level of – work hard, play hard. You see them Monday through Friday and then you catch that person on the weekend and you’re like, “Whoa!” How did you work in the mechanics of the crash? You must’ve had to research past incidents… Oh man that was crazy, that was crazy because I’m a nervous flyer. Those NTSB records are public record and they’re pretty dense but also equally fascinating. I also spoke to a lot of pilots and they pointed me toward different incidents. That must’ve been encouraging experience helping you to overcome being nervous flyer [laughs]. It was miserable [laughs] but fascinating at the same time. Denzel said something really funny when we were on a panel and they asked him what he thought about Whip being a pilot as opposed to something else and he said, ‘It’s the most dramatic choice John could’ve made. If he worked at the post office, it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal. You wouldn’t have gotten your mail. That’s different from being in a plane at 30,000 feet that’s dropping. But the research was fascinating. You can read the black boxes and some of them are very dramatic. Zemeckis is also a pilot and flies so he has a complete understanding. He loves to fly, but I hate to fly. While we were flying to Atlanta and back he’d be like, ‘Let’s work.’ We’d literally be working on the script while on the flight talking about a plane crashing while we’re on the plane. That math is never good for me [laughs]. Was the crash in the film based on an actual accident? There are a couple of accidents that it was based on. But there was a crash off Oxnard, CA in 2000. A pilot told me to look at that and it was fascinating. Air traffic control asked them to take the plane out over [Santa Monica Bay] so as to limit collateral damage on the ground. And they did fly it inverted but they put the plane back over and lost control. It was an un-flyable plane, it wasn’t their fault. They did an amazing job. And this pilot said that had they known what was really wrong with the plane, they might have known their only recourse was to keep it inverted and descend. It was really rough. Is writing one of your first passions? You were a drama major and you mentioned that you did many things including acting when you first moved to California… I think I’ve always been a storyteller. I’m Irish and we like to tell stories and I come from a family of storytellers and in storytelling there’s an element of performance in it. Arguing for ‘air-time’ at big family events requires that performance. So being the youngest of four I felt I had to perform. My first instinct then was that I wanted to be an actor, but when I was at Vassar, it was great because it’s very academic. I read so many plays, which gave me a great foundation which I didn’t realize until I had to access that as a writer. Writing was ‘easier’ because you just write by yourself. It’s not easy, but you don’t need permission. The first script I wrote I wrote on a legal pad, I didn’t even have a computer. What was your big entrée when you first arrived in California that kept you going or encouraged you to maintain that path? I had friends from Vassar who were starting to work in the biz. We were in our mid 20s and we got together for a poker game and this guy said to me, “You’re so funny man you should write a script. I’ll pay you to write this script once you get broke enough.” So the next day I contacted him and said, “I think I’m broke enough.” And he paid me $1,000 – $500 to start and $500 to finish – to write this crazy script about a kid in high school who fakes his own suicide. And that script was sold to Disney and it started it all off. It started my whole career. It was Smells Like Teen Suicide . It was great, it got me into a lot of rooms. People wanted to meet that guy who wrote that dark, dark teen comedy. What other genres would you like to tackle that you haven’t yet? Great question… I want to do a big comedy. It’s funny when I started out, even though Smells Like Teen Suicide was a dark movie, it was a dark comedy reaching for a laugh. Then I got into doing sports movies and was on that road for awhile and there’s comedy in that too. And actually, there’s a good amount of comedy in Flight . Yeah, I’d like to go for a big comedy at some point. I’ve made a family movie, sports movies and perhaps a sort of sic-fi movie. Flight is mostly an adult like grown-up drama. Denzel said, “Look it’s an R-rated movie and there are no guns. It’s different. We don’t make these movies anymore.” But, I have an idea to write a high school movie because I’m about to have a teenager who is going into high school. I feel like I have one more young voice movie in me, so we’ll see…
Christopher Nolan ‘s Batman trilogy has amassed nearly $2.4 billion theatrically worldwide to date, but Wednesday night, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker ( Memento , Inception ) sat down at the Film Society of Lincoln Center giving insight on the nuts and bolts of the series, which ended this summer with The Dark Knight Rises , its classic Bond-esque treatment of terrorism, the late Heath Ledger, and the upcoming Man of Steel . Bat-Beginnings and Evolution Nolan recalled his foray into Batman via the ’60s Adam West television series growing up. He’d, of course, later take on the legendary comic superhero, but not without precedent. The DC Comics figure has taken on various manifestations on the big and small screens, including versions by Joel Schumacher and Tim Burton . But Nolan figured out he had a different take on Batman — something closer to the comics. “If you look at what Tim Burton did, it’s very specific world created with a Gothic vision that’s consistent with Batman,” Nolan said at the Walter Reade Theater in a conversation moderated by outgoing Film Society programmer/critic Scott Foundas. “But, what I felt I hadn’t seen was [what I observed] in the comics which was Gotham as an ordinary world — a place in which we could live. And so, when Gotham sees Batman he’s as extraordinary as he would be in our world. What Tim did is place an extraordinary character in an extraordinary world.” Nolan said he wanted to break down Batman and attempt to explain the trappings and elements that create the figure in his re-telling of the story. “Part of the fun making the film for me was explaining these elements in real terms. Why is he wearing this costume? What does it mean? How does he get the costume? Is it just him and Alfred and the Batcave…? So there was this terrific gap in pop culture history that we got to contribute to and it was great.” Though Nolan made reference to the original comic book version of Batman, he was quick to add that he didn’t consider himself a comic-book junkie, acknowledging that treading into that realm can cause a serious rebuke from die-hards. “It’s dangerous to pretend you’re a comic book fan among a certain crowd because they spot you very early,” he said. Terrorism And The Dark Knight Foundas likened 2005’s Batman Begins to the ’60s-era Bond films as a product of its age. The first in the trilogy came in the immediate post 9/11 period with terrorism at the forefront of the national — and even international — consciousness. Nolan snapped up the compliment being associated with something ‘Bond’ but then gave his interpretation of how the period affected his first installment of Batman . “The Bond films were very specific about the time and [reflected] the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis etc. It was very edgy for the time,” said Nolan. “I think that one of the things about taking on an action film set in a great American city [that’s also] set post-9/11 is that there was no way we weren’t going to [address terrorism] if we were going to be honest.” “It’s tricky to talk about terrorism. I felt a responsibility as a filmmaker to create something that is foremost as entertainment,” he said. “But after there’s some distance, I also feel a responsibility even as an entertainer to be honest about my feelings and honest about my [concerns]. Heath Ledger Tickets to the Christopher Nolan event, which included clips from all three films interspersed with the onstage conversation were snapped-up fast. The 270-seat Walter Reade Theater could have easily been filled two times or more. A waiting list numbered in the hundreds, noted an insider. Still, the atmosphere inside could probably be best described as riveted more than ecstatic. Nolan spoke in a subdued tone throughout the event, though some of the biggest emotional responses came when he spoke about Heath Ledger. In his second to last theatrical release, Ledger won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award posthumously for his portrayal of the Joker in Nolan’s follow-up The Dark Knight . Well before shooting and even before there was a script, Ledger was cast as the villain, though he had initial trepidation about being in Batman . “We casted him before the script was even written, so he had a very long time to obsess over what he was going to do. I sent him some materials like A Clockwork Orange and other touchstones like paintings from Francis Bacon.” After Ledger finally received the script, it was Nolan’s turn to feel fear. By the time he received it, Ledger had already spent a lot of time developing the personality behind what would be one of his finest performances, though “becoming the Joker” did not come instantly. Still, he aced it and Nolan likened the late actor to the likes of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. “When I finally sent him the script it was very scary, because by this time he was so committed and knew what a high wire act it would be, and if he hadn’t liked it I think it would have been extremely bad for us both,” said Nolan. “But he breathed a sigh of relief and I breathed a sigh of relief, and he really felt it delivered what we talked about.” “Like a lot of artists, he would sneak up on something. You couldn’t really sit him down and say, ‘OK, today you’re going to do the Joker.’ You’d have to say, ‘Let’s read this scene, and act it,’ and he’d read it with Christian [Bale] and there would be a line or two where you heard him doing something with his voice that was a little different, or he’d throw in a little bit of a laugh, but meanwhile never saying, ‘OK, this is it!'” Next: Nolan on his Tarantino-esque stable of actors and producing Man of Steel
Oscar-nominated actor Jude Law plays a pious aristocrat in director Joe Wright’s sumptuous big screen adaptation of Anna Karenina . Almost unrecognizable behind a steely exterior, Law’s Karenin is Anna’s spurned husband in the film, which begins its roll out Friday and is a possible awards season heavyweight. Law seamlessly pulls off playing the high-ranking nobleman whose position at the heights of Imperial Russian society is rocked when his wife embarks on an affair with a dashing young soldier. Speaking about his role, Law, who turns 40 next month, said that he doesn’t think he could have played the character when he was younger — but he certainly would have given it a go. “When I was 25 I would probably say I could have played Karenin,” said Law. “When I was 29 and I put together a production of Doctor Faustus in London, it was successful but it took me the length of the production to realize that I was too young to play it. And I think the same would apply to this situation. I would have given it a good shot, but I think it would not have been as successful.” [ Related: Oscars and Obsession: Keira Knightley Talks About ‘Jumping Off A Cliff’ For Joe Wright In Anna Karenina ] Law said that youth would have been a handicap portraying the staid Karenin, who exudes stability and rationality to a fault. He is the archetypal patriarch that is a complete contrast from the youthful soldier who seduces his wife. “I think you need to have a certain amount of experience to play certain roles,” noted Law. “You want the audience to see a certain amount of wounds and battle scars that are obviously flickering in the mind and the soul.” Set in the lavish upper crust societies of St. Petersburg and Moscow in 1874, Anna Karenina follows the vibrant and beautiful Anna (Keira Knightley) who is the envy of nearly everyone in her gilded circle. She is the beautiful, stylish and rich wife of Karenin who holds a high position in the government and is blindly devoted to his spouse. Their enviable partnership is dealt a blow when she travels to Moscow to help save the marriage of her philandering brother Oblonsky (Matthew Macfadyen) after a plea for help from his wife, Dolly (Kelly Macdonald). En route, she meets the dashing cavalry officer Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), which ignites passion; she returns to St. Petersburg, but she is followed by Vronsky and becomes consumed by him, and they go full-throttle into a ravenous love affair that stuns the establishment. Law said he believes some Anna Karenina readers have misunderstood his character. Though he is sullen compared to the dynamic Vronsky, there is complexity in his personality that many readers of the novel have failed to appreciate. “A lot of people I spoke to before I embarked on it said he was dull and cold, but I disagreed with them,” said Law. “I hadn’t read the novel before, but after reading it I was glad Joe [Wright] agreed with me, because I think it sort of belittles Tolstoy’s study of human complexity. People are complex and there’s a misunderstanding. But you do feel for him because he’s dragged into this arena of gossip and scandal. But ultimately for him, he has to question his belief in God because he believes his marriage is sanctioned by God.” Karenin’s position at the pinnacle of a narrow class of people who delighted in rarified privilege contrasted with the bleak existence that huge swaths of Russians were forced to live in during czarist times. Though Law said he was disturbed to see how extraordinarily the aristocracy lived while most people were barely living a life one notch above serfdom in Russia, he did see some parallels to today. “It’s shocking that they were that indulged and were able to follow their whims and fancies to such extraordinary lengths — and we look at that with jealousy and at times and with fascination. What intrigues me is that the heart of the piece is about love. But there are other aspects in the book that have also been highlighted in the film and that is the role of gossip and judgement. Today there is much of the same thing and we see that online and in papers all the time. We still do that — we call out people for ‘breaking the rules.'” Read more on Anna Karenina . Follow Brian Brooks on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
