The ex-Beatle revealed two new music videos over the weekend at his daughter Stella’s West Hollywood fashion outpost, directed by none other than McCartney himself. Apparently it was easy! Read on for his working methods and the results. Per VF.com’s Julie Miller, who caught up with McCartney at the event: “I wasn’t sure that I wanted to do the big, million dollar music video thing,” McCartney explained about his hesitation to film a big-budget production. ”Stella suggested that I do something really simple. ‘You know Natalie,’ she said. ‘Ring Natalie up and just ask her if she will sign to your song.’ “I would talk to Natalie and Johnny before filming and we would just have a normal conversation. Then we would turn the camera on and there was just a complete transformation. It wasn’t surprising, because, you know, that they are both that good, but to see it happen in front of you is pretty remarkable. It was like seeing two different people completely—it was like they morphed into screen gods right in front of me.” Also: Depp does his own guitar stunts here, for the record: “The boy is good,” McCartney explained. Now you know. [ VF.com ]
The cast of Marvel’s The Avengers were a spirited bunch Thursday in Beverly Hills, where the familial vibe amongst the likes of Robert Downey Jr. , Samuel Jackson , Chris Hemsworth , Chris Evans , and Mark Ruffalo was evident and mutual admiration, inside jokes, and startling revelations abounded. (Scarlett Johansson, alas, was absent due to a scheduling conflict.) Among the highlights: Ruffalo’s youthful Hulk inspiration, Jeremy Renner ’s suggestive Hawkeye imagery (“[I] played with Thor’s hammer while he stroked my bow”), and one mysterious, maybe-still legit admission from Downey that the assembled Avengers would be filming a scene … that night. But, pray tell: Which Avenger possesses the best Dance Dance Revolution skills ? SPOILERS AHEAD. JEREMY RENNER SETS THE FIRES OF A THOUSAND SLASHFICS AFLAME: The erstwhile Hawkeye described his favorite memory from set. “Getting to play with Thor’s hammer while he stroked my bow. Oh, here we go. That’s gonna get me in trouble.” Hawkeye + Thor 4 eva? HOW MARK RUFFALO “GOT” THE HULK: Watching the Bill Bixby Incredible Hulk TV show with his 10-year-old son on Joss Whedon’s recommendation, Ruffalo found his way into the character. “After the third episode he turned to me and said, ‘Papa, he’s so misunderstood!’ I basically based my character entirely on my 10-year-old boy, who has all of the force of nature screaming out of his body while at the same time having everyone around him telling him to fucking control himself.” ANOTHER LESSON RUFFALO LEARNED EARLY ON: AVOID THE INTERNET. “It was terrifying. I knew what my responsibility was, or I felt it just by going online and reading some of the fanboy responses to the announcement that I was playing the next version of Bruce Banner. That was a mistake. I will never do it again. I’ve never had a role more scrutinized and criticized before I’d shot a single frame.” CODE NAME: GROUP HUG — AVENGERS LOVE ON AND OFF SET ” Tom [Hiddleston] loves hugs,” said Hemsworth. “I did a film with him and there were plenty of hugs in that film… Chris [Evans] sent texts that said ‘The Avengers assemble at such and such bar, 9 o’clock Saturday night.’ That was a good group effort. [Pause] We paid for it at work the next couple of days.” Ruffalo : “You should see that group hug.” Downey Jr. : “Ruffalo, weren’t you the one throwing the roof parties?” Ruffalo : “That was me.” Downey Jr. : “So you were the group instigator.” Ruffalo : “I was the group hugger.” And then: “I just remember coming into someone’s place with a group of half-naked stuntmen in a hot tub and Scarlett Johansson standing over them with a giant ladle…making boy soup.” CHRIS HEMSWORTH ON USING HIS REAL LIFE SIBLINGS TO TAP INTO THE THOR/LOKI RELATIONSHIP: “The last time either one of my brothers tried to take over the world or the universe, I had to think about how did I feel,” Hemsworth joked. To wit, Downey Jr.: “Don’t you feel that Liam is trying to take over your box office universe? Doesn’t he need to be corrected in some way?” WHY JOSS WHEDON WAS THE IDEAL DIRECTOR FOR THE AVENGERS : “The only fear I had was that the whole thing would collapse under its own weight,” admitted Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige . “My biggest interest in The Avengers is the interaction between these people, and looking at Joss’s body of work, the scripts that he’s written and TV shows, the characters never ever get lost. In fact those are the moments that shine. That was, to me, why he was the best person to mount this.” For Downey Jr., it was while watching one moment in Act Three when he felt the relief and elation of knowing Whedon’s vision worked. “I speak to Joss’s wit, whether the wit is funny or whether the wit is actually being able to hold the myriad of ideas and notions that you have to get right for Avengers not to be bunk. [That’s] what he accomplished.” SAM JACKSON SUMS UP THE AVENGERS : “He’s the rich, smart ass guy; he’s the little guy with the big words that might turn and fuck you up at any moment, you never know when that is – and he’s trying to make him do it, the bad little brother… it was a great time doing that and being able to be in that space and allowing an audience to see that these guys have superpowers but they have normal guy attitudes. They get pissed with each other and they argue about petty shit, you know. They can be smart asses and they can be heroes and they can just be jerks, but eventually they’re going to love each other.” WHEDON ON HIS BIGGEST CHALLENGE: “The hardest part is and always will be structure; how do you put that together? How do you make everybody shine? How do you let the audience’s identification drift from person to person without making them feel like you’re not involved. It’s a very complex structure – it’s not particularly ornate or original but it had to be right, it had to be earned from moment to moment, and that was exhausting.” “You see things like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen where they just throw out the comic, or Watchmen where they do it frame for frame, and neither of them work. You have to give the spirit of the thing and then step away from that and create something cinematic and new.” WHICH ALIEN RACE ARE THE BADDIES IN THE AVENGERS, EXACTLY? SPOILERS, obviously: Whedon set the record straight, since the film doesn’t explicitly explain just who is helping Loki in his attempt at world domination. “The alien race are the Chitauri — or a version of them — because they are not one of the key races and they don’t have a storied history. That wasn’t the point. I know this debate will go on long after I’m dead. I would say it was the Kree-Skrull race.” AGENT COULSON WEARS DOLCE & GABBANA His portrayer, Clark Gregg, was initially skeptical that an Avenger s movie could be pulled off. Then he got the script. “I felt like this was not an achievable task, as someone who writes sometimes and loves movies and watches a lot of them, I just didn’t think it was feasible to have this many characters and have them all get to move forward and have the story of them coming together really work. If it did work with that many amazing superheroes and movie stars, I felt it unlikely that Agent Coulson would do anything other than bring some super coffee to somebody. So when I read it and saw that it was my fanboy wet dream of an Avengers script and that Agent Coulson was a big part of it, that was the great day for me. I just drove around the streets with the script in the other seat kind of giggling.” AVENGERS VS. JUSTICE LEAGUE, DC COMICS VS. MARVEL: What would Whedon say to Warner Bros. regarding their attempts to make a similar multi-superhero franchise out of The Justice League? “Call me,” he joked, before astutely addressing WB/DC’s uphill battle. “It’s enormously difficult to take disparate characters and make them work – and DC has a harder time of it than Marvel because their characters are from a bygone era when their characters were bigger than we were, and they’ve amended that but Marvel really cracked the code in terms of [superheroes] are just like us. So a dose of that veracity that Marvel really started with Iron Man. I think you need to use that as your base.” YEP, THE AVENGERS PLAY DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION The Avengers cast was known to bust a few moves playing Dance Dance Revolution at Jeremy Renner’s house. “I don’t know the last video game I played apart from DDR at Jeremy’s house… Scarlett and I will always have “Billie Jean,” said Hiddleston. “Nobody lambadas like Loki,” quipped Gregg. “I have friends, so…” Whedon responded. You’ll find out which Avenger had the best DDR skills in Movieline’s upcoming interview with Ruffalo, but I’ll leave you with this hint: It was a tie. AND FINALLY, IS THE AVENGERS STILL BEING SHOT?? Downey Jr. closed his press conference with the stunning reveal that the Avengers cast was filming one last scene Thursday night. “Not to keep you guessing, but we’re actually not done shooting. We are shooting one more scene… tonight. Not kidding . [Pause] No more questions!” Speculation is that it would be a final bonus post-credits scene to be added to the end of the version that screened at the Avengers world premiere, just in time for release, in addition to an already existing credits scene that is indeed in the version press saw this week. Whedon, asked to clarify, insisted that Downey Jr. was just joking — “He’s Robert – of course he’s kidding,” he said — but Ruffalo confirmed as much, according to The Playlist . Word on the street is that RDJ was, in fact, not pulling our legs. We’ll find out soon enough who was telling the truth, as The Avengers flies into theaters May 4. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
This just in: Paramount and New Regency will release Darren Aronofsky’s Biblical tale Noah on March 28, 2014. No filming date has been announced just yet, but that gives the Black Swan helmer just about two years to get Russell Crowe in gear as the eponymous wino/boat-builder; Aronofsky will direct from a script credited to himself, Ari Handel, and John Logan. The date puts Noah opening right before Captain America 2 , which means… superhero season will start even earlier in ’14, kinda. I know, I know: But when will we see a big-screen adaptation of Fightin’ Around the World ? [ Deadline ]
The film : “Dogville” (2003) Why it’s an Inessential Essential : It’s admittedly a little strange to think of this fairly well-known film as needing endorsement of any kind. However, Lionsgate recently released a new Nicole Kidman box set, packaging the first film in Lars von Trier’s acerbic but still incomplete “America Trilogy” in the same collection as more high-profile and easy-to-swallow Kidman roles like Cold Mountain , Rabbit Hole and The Others . The juxtaposition is striking, and as the clear odd film out in the four-disc set, Dogville emerges as perhaps Kidman’s most inessential essential. As von Trier guardedly remarks on the film’s audio commentary, the making of Dogville hinged on Kidman’s involvement. The film’s only began shooting when Kidman was able to fit the gig into her busy work schedule, frustrating Von Trier, who says that he understood and there was no real way around it. He had to have Kidman play Grace, the fugitive gangster’s daughter who finds refuge in the titular small town. Kidman’s performance essentially fuels von Trier’s rabid vision of America as a pseudo-Smalltown, USA. Dogville’s self-interested residents orbit her character as if she were the Sun and the consequences of her actions almost always eclipses everyone else’s. She is good-natured and that’s why von Trier stir the conniving Dogvilleians’ shit. It’s why von Trier’s camera (he’s credited as a camera operator in the end credits) always seems to cling to Kidman’s face. He loves that face (“She’s a very good listener,” he remarks to director of photography Anthony Dod Mantle during the audio commentary). Which in turn is why, according to the skittish but always provocative Danish filmmaker says that Kidman was put off by how physically close he would get to her during shooting. Kidman gives an indelibly nuanced performance here, making the film a barbed satire first and a showcase for Kidman a close second. How the DVD Makes the Case For the Film : Lionsgate repackaged their old DVD release of Dogville but that’s all right given how inadvertently revealing von Trier and Mantle’s audio commentary is. The two filmmakers go silent for a number of scenes as von Trier clearly doesn’t know what to say. This conversation seems to have been recorded in one take and sometime between the film screened at the Cannes Film Festival and its original 2004 American theatrical release. When it comes to Kidman, von Trier seems deliberately shy. But he does bring up certain things that hint at why Kidman didn’t reprise her role as Grace in Manderlay, like how Kidman didn’t like the idea of Grace dragging around a heavy weight around her attached to a collar with a bell. Von Trier says he doesn’t really mind as that was “the job, not to like it.” But while LvT generally sounds like he just wants to put Dogville behind him, his silence regarding Kidman seems like it was his way of trying to be diplomatic. He complements Kidman’s performance but also readily admits that working with such a big star frustrated him, too. When talking about working around Kidman’s schedule, he remarks, “She has to do what she has to do but.” Then he exhales dramatically and continues: “It kind of suffocates you in your creative process.” Other Interesting Trivia : Von Trier says a number of funny (ie: funny-peculiar, not funny ha ha) off-the-cuff things that reveal just how uncomfortable he is talking about Kidman and the film after-the-fact, like when he jokes about how much Stellan Skarsgaard, “loves to be naked, like me,” during Grace’s rape scene. In fact, the only remark he makes about Kidman or Grace during this scene is that her head is over the chalk line demarcating the borders of the house she’s being raped in. He also half-snorts, half-laughs at the absurdity of Kidman complaining about “[feeling] trapped” by having to wear Grace’s degrading collar. Von Trier’s point couldn’t be more clear: Dogville wouldn’t be Dogville if it were less venomous. But it also wouldn’t be Dogville without Kidman, too, and that’s something he sounds reluctant to admit. PREVIOUS INESSENTIAL ESSENTIALS The Last Temptation of Christ The Sitter Citizen Ruth The Broken Tower Simon Abrams is a NY-based freelance film critic whose work has been featured in outlets like The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Vulture and Esquire. Additionally, some people like his writing, which he collects at Extended Cut .
Get ready to double-exhale, folks: It looks like both the Arrested Development movie and Sin City 2 are finally happening at long last — and both are reportedly set to film this summer. Hurrah! That said, Deadline admits that none of the Arrested Development cast have been inked just yet even as Will Arnett let slip on The Today Show that the long-awaited big screen adaptation was on track for a summer shoot. Meanwhile, Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City: A Dame To Kill For is set to film in Austin, with casting to begin next week. [ Today Show , Playlist ]
I’m not sure if Uma Thurman ‘s character Rebecca Duvall on NBC’s Smash is supposed to be all that convincing as Marilyn Monroe — the subject of the Broadway show-within-the-TV show, in case you’ve been living under a rock — but a sneak peek at next week’s episode offers a snippet of Thurman’s singing chops and, well… let’s just say, it’s good to know she’ll only be around for a five-episode arc. Watch Thurman in a musical scene from her upcoming guest turn, decked out in a platinum blonde wig and singing about Freud, after the jump. That’s not to say Thurman isn’t good here — she’s a decent singer and luminous as always, but the “Dig Deep” number is a far, far cry from the Monroe performance executive producers/songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman
As usual, South Park has looked into the abyss of self-serious cultural absurdity and spotted a gleaming beacon of common sense. That Trey Parker and Matt Stone applied it to Bully ‘s manufactured ratings ” controversy ” — and Harvey Weinstein’s blatant hucksterism — only makes the payoff sweeter. This whole bullying episode is worth watching, but leave it to Kyle Broflovski to be voice of reason. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Butterballs Get More: SOUTH PARK Leopold “Butters” Stotch , Mr. Mackey , more… [via First Showing ]
Though the internet sensation ” Texts from Hillary ” Tumblr has officially come to an end (creators Stacy Lambe and Adam Smith are going out while they’re on top of the meme world after receiving the ultimate submission from Hillary Clinton herself), they did get to meet the Secretary of State in the flesh when she invited them for a thank-you meeting. Between photo ops and LOLZ, Clinton let slip her favorite of the Texts from Hillary: the one with Ryan Gosling , of course. See how the Madame Secretary deals with the Baby Goose’s “Hey girl” after the jump and commemorate the best political pop cultural meme of April 2012. I mean, it’s the best. The meeting of two memes! So long, Texts from Hillary . Original photo by Diana Walker for Time . More hilarity from Hillz here .
The Farrelly Brothers’ Three Stooges flick is pratfalling into theaters Friday, so naturally stars Will Sasso, Sean Hayes, and Chris Diamantopolous bounced into the ring Monday night on WWE Raw to bring Stooge awareness to the world of wrestling. ENTV has all the choice details and footage from the historic meeting of WWE and Larry, Curly, and Moe — for which Sasso-as-Curly donned full Hulkamania gear before getting chokeslammed by Kane. ( Kane, my new hero !) Well, at least this stunt was at least marginally less painful (for me, not so much for Curly) than that ill-advised medical spoof video for Stoogesta. Actually, it’s the single most satisfying bit of Three Stooges marketing material I’ve seen so far. Agree/disagree? [via ENTV ]
Oh…my… GOD , Becky — look at Catwoman ‘s butt. Ahem . In a new promo image from The Dark Knight Rises , Anne Hathaway poses as Catwoman and shows, as many salivating fanboys have already suggested, just why the Batman sequel might’ve earned that PG-13 for “sensuality.” But wait! Why is everyone talking about Catwoman’s butt and not Batman ‘s meticulously sculpted-but-jaunty rubberized codpiece? Equal opportunity for costumed cosplay ogling after the jump, thanks to two new promo images for the July tentpole. First, we’ll start with this suggestively perky, full-length look at Hathaway as Catwoman, unearthed today on the internetz (hat tip ComingSoon ): A mask and cat-ear goggles? Leather gloves over a bodysuit also made of leather, with thigh-high boots to boot? This is one layered lady. I bet she makes that squeaking leather sound when she walks. Now, maybe Catwoman’s using her butt as yet another deadly weapon. Or maybe when you wear giant stiletto shit-kicking heels like that, one’s rear lifts naturally (welcome to the world of woman secrets, fellas). Ok, fine. Take a good gander. Now, can we move on to…Batman’s bat-junk? Behold, from the current issue of EW : I don’t know about you, but this kind of overly structured superhero outfit feels excessive and a little exhausting to look at. I can’t picture anyone toiling away somewhere in the Bat-sweatshop making every little molded rubber part of Batman’s faux six-pack, though it is funny to imagine the rationale for such a design: He needs protection… for each pack ! Do you think Bruce Wayne toiled very long over the agonizing decision to go with the muted bronze of his utility belt? How does one fit oneself for the perfectly proportioned superhero codpiece? The above image comes from EW’s Summer Movie Preview issue, which was accompanied by various Chris Nolan non-spoiler quotes and this very interesting tidbit concerning baddie Bane , played by Tom Hardy , and his unusual voice: “It’s a risk, because we could be laughed at — or it could be very fresh and exciting,” says Hardy, adding that the voice he developed was influenced by many factors, including a desire to honor the comic book character’s brains and Caribbean heritage. “The audience mustn’t be too concerned about the mumbly voice,” says Hardy. “As the film progresses, I think you’ll be able to tune to its setting.” Aha! And so we kind of get an answer in the great Bane ethnicity debate: Hardy is seemingly playing the villain true to his Caribbean/Latin heritage as written in the comics, which hardly closes the book on the issue. The fact that Bane’s being played by a white guy could conceivably still be explained away in the film; the character’s comic book origins cite a British mercenary father and a local rebel mother, which seems to make Bane half-Latino, half-Caucasian. But time will tell. For now, we have butts and junk to stare at. [ ComingSoon , EW ]
