Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart kept their distance on the Oscar red carpet, but there were new signs that the couple is moving closer to going public with their off-screen relationship.
The “Twilight” heartthrobs were spotted kissing and being very chummy at a pre-Oscars party in Hollywood, according to US Weekly.
Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart usually keep their PDA under wraps, but at a Feb. 25 dance party in Hollywood they were all over each other! The couple attended a pre-Oscar shindig at the Chateau Marmont, where they partied
Earlier reports indicated that Stewart was not expected at the Oscars due to work commitments, but they may have been a ruse to throw the spotlight off the couple in public.
The couple attended a pre-Oscar shindig at the Chateau Marmont, where they partied
deep into the night, Us Magazine reports. There were many other celebs spotted at the bash, including Hayden Panettiere , Miley Cyrus , Scarlett Johansson, Ryan Gosling and Natalie Portman.
“They definitely kissed a few times,” one witness said. Rob and Kristen also danced together. “They went nuts for ‘Empire State of Mind’!”, said the witness about the Alicia Keys, Jay-Z hit.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Only one Razzie for “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”
It was the most nominated film in the 2010 Golden Raspberry Awards competition, but the results are in and “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” is far from the worst. It was beat out in nearly every category for which it was nominated, leaving the stars and the film itself (mostly) unscathed. The only “win” went to Jackson Rathbone, who got Worst Supporting Actor for his work in both “Eclipse” and “The Last Airbender”.
Of the ten categories in which Razzies were awarded this year, “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” was nominated in eight. From Worst Picture, to Worst Actress (Kristen Stewart), to Worst Supporting Actor (Jackson Rathbone), to Worst Ensemble Cast, To Worst Screenplay (Melissa Rosenberg), to Worst Director (David Slade), to Worst Prequel/Rip-off/Sequel, “Eclipse” was in the race. It even saw itself nominated twice in the same category: Taylor Lautner and Robert Pattinson both got nods for Worst Actor.
Of the ten categories in which Razzies were awarded this year, “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” was nominated in eight. From Worst Picture, to Worst Actress (Kristen Stewart), to Worst Supporting Actor (Jackson Rathbone), to Worst Ensemble Cast, To Worst Screenplay (Melissa Rosenberg), to Worst Director (David Slade), to Worst Prequel/Rip-off/Sequel, “Eclipse” was in the race. It even saw itself nominated twice in the same category: Taylor Lautner and Robert Pattinson both got nods for Worst Actor.
Kristen Stewart jets out of LAX, returns to Vancouver
After spending her weekend in Los Angeles, Kristen Stewart was spotted heading back out of town at Los Angeles International Airport, and later seen at the airport in Vancouver.
More Vancouver photos here.
More Vancouver photos here.
Catherine Hardwicke, the fairy tale fixer
On a gloomy and wet California day, director Catherine Hardwicke curls up in her office
on the Warner Bros. lot with a book in her hand. This isn ’ t your average bedtime story. It’ s called Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale. She only recently discovered it, and she flips through the pages like a schoolgirl
hyped on caffeine. “ Maybe you like ‘ Red Riding Hood’ when you ’ re 5,” Hardwicke says. “ When you ’ re 10, you start latching on to it for another reason — why did she get in bed with the wolf ?” Hardwicke even compares the beast to a love interest. “ It represents a dark animal nature which is close to sexuality. In the traditional story, the wolf cross-
dresses and lures her into bed. That’ s pretty kinky right there! The wolf is the original tranny. What a kinky wolf !” Her entire face lights up. “ A granny tranny !” The kinky wolf is no match for Hardwicke herself, who wears sexy leather boots and
once gave a member of her crew a dominatrix costume as a present. Not to worry, Mom
and Dad. Hardwicke ’ s kinkiness is decidedly PG-13. “ It was a tasteful dominatrix, ” she says. Hardwicke has a knack for taking the traditional girl-in-peril tale and teasing out
sexual tension without crossing the line. She became the most commercially successful
female director in Hollywood with Twilight, a film that radiates heat even though
Edward and Bella never even get to second base. Now she ’ s heading to Grandmother’ s house with Red Riding Hood, an adaptation of the fairy tale with a bodiced Amanda
Seyfried. Julie Christie plays her bohemian grandmother. Like the late John Hughes, who discovered the teenage actors who became the Brat
Pack, Hardwicke has created many of this generation ’ s tween idols. Evan Rachel Wood (Thirteen), Emile Hirsch (Lords of Dogtown ), Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner (Twilight ) all got their big breaks in a Hardwicke film. She dishes about them like an older sister; how Hirsch was too lazy to do sit-ups and drew abs on his stomach
with mascara or why Pattinson had to pluck his eyebrows. “ They were a bit bushy, ” she says. “ We needed to see some eyes !” Seyfried says Hardwicke, 55, is “ a child herself. She’ s so connected to that youthful essence. She still walks around with a backpack and sneakers. ” But unlike Hughes ’ s films, her movies are very dark.Hardwicke ’ s childhood sounds like a chapter from Roald Dahl ’ s memoirs. She grew up in McAllen, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border, where her family lived on a giant farm off
the Rio Grande. She frequently saw illegal immigrants paddling across or drug dealers
creeping in the shadows. “ It was a wild life, ” she says. In high school, her principal was stabbed three times. A friend ’ s father was shot in the back, and another friend was murdered. And yet life could be wonderful at the same time. “ It was a Huck Finn life, too,” she says. “ We had rope swings and mud fights and we ’ d make rafts. ” She graduated from college with an architecture degree, and after her father bought a 20-
acre real-estate complex, she designed the property ’ s 120 townhouses. Above each front door, she molded a mask of each owner ’ s face, a way to make each of her creations stand apart. She still has the pictures. But the work she was offered began to feel too cookie-cutter, so she fled to Hollywood,
where she landed a job as a production designer. She did 20 films with directors such
as David O. Russell, Cameron Crowe, Lisa Cholodenko, and Richard Linklater. “ Of course, I tried to learn from everybody, ” she says. “ How did he pull that one off? I always knew that I wanted to make my own movies. ” She stumbled on that chance while trying to help a troubled teen. Nikki Reed, a friend ’ s daughter, had fallen in with a bad crowd at school. “ How do I get her to do something creative instead of destructive ?” Hardwicke wondered. “ She said, ‘ I want to act. ’ I thought, that’ s going to make your life worse. But if you take the model of actors who write their own material, that expands your
horizons.” They wrote the first draft of a screenplay together in six days, during Christmas break. Hardwicke directed the film herself and cast Reed as the bad-girl costar.
“ I saw the raw talent, and I helped, ” she says. Thirteen earned Hardwicke the directing award at Sundance in 2003, establishing her as Hollywood ’ s hot new filmmaker at 47. Reed says that Hardwicke is “ a great teacher,” and one of the reasons she draws young actors into her world is her sleepy, cool-chick demeanor. In high school, Hardwicke
taught overweight girls how to swim. As an adult, she taught herself how to surf.
“ When I was 5, ” Reed says, “ Catherine wanted to massage my innate desire to be an actress. She put this dog collar on me. I would crawl on my hands and knees, and she
would tell people I was a dog. ” For Twilight, Hardwicke had trouble finding an actor otherworldly enough to play
vampire Edward Cullen. Then she got a call about a guy in London. “ I looked at a couple pictures and was like, ‘ I’ m not sure,’?” Hardwicke says. “ He had been fired from his last job, he was unemployed, he was in debt. ” Pattinson flew to Los Angeles on his own dime to read with Stewart. “ I have footage of their first meeting at my dining-room table,” Hardwicke says. “ Kristen was like, ‘ It’ s got to be Rob!’ She felt connected to him from the first moment. That electricity, or love at first sight, or whatever it is. ” Hardwicke gave him the part, but he had to make a promise. “ You ’ ve got to realize that Kristen is 17 years old, ” she told him. “ She’ s underage. You ’ ve got to focus, dude, or you ’ re going to be arrested. I made him swear on a stack of Bibles. ” Despite Twilight ’ s $400 million global success, Hardwicke left the franchise when it came to the sequel. She said it was her decision, despite a blog report that she was fired.
“ I couldn’ t even be fired, that ’ s what ’ s so funny, ” she says. “ In my contract, I had the first right of refusal.” She turned down the second film, she says, because the studio wanted to rush it out. “ I do not regret it at all, thank the Lord, ” she says. “ The truth is I liked the first book the best. ” There is something of the vampire in Hardwicke herself. Just as Edward will never grew
old, Hardwicke refuses to abandon the mischievous joys of youth. There ’ s nothing formal about the way she does business. She frequently invites her protégés over to
audition or rehearse. Her home is “ right on the beach,” says Shiloh Fernandez, who plays the hunky Peter in Red Riding Hood. “ It’ s like a loft for a young surfer guy. ” It’ s not Grandma’ s house. But there is a bed. And she lures young actors onto it, though not in the traditional casting-couch way. When Hardwicke auditioned Evan Rachel Wood for
Thirteen, she had her get into her bed with Nikki Reed. That ’ s also where Pattinson kissed Stewart for the first time in his Twilight screen test. “ That bed made Pattinson who he is right now, ” says Reed. Asked about her lair, Hardwicke laughs. “ MTV came and did an episode in my house filming the bed. It ’ s legendary, ” she says, flashing a wide — dare we say wolfish — grin.
on the Warner Bros. lot with a book in her hand. This isn ’ t your average bedtime story. It’ s called Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale. She only recently discovered it, and she flips through the pages like a schoolgirl
hyped on caffeine. “ Maybe you like ‘ Red Riding Hood’ when you ’ re 5,” Hardwicke says. “ When you ’ re 10, you start latching on to it for another reason — why did she get in bed with the wolf ?” Hardwicke even compares the beast to a love interest. “ It represents a dark animal nature which is close to sexuality. In the traditional story, the wolf cross-
dresses and lures her into bed. That’ s pretty kinky right there! The wolf is the original tranny. What a kinky wolf !” Her entire face lights up. “ A granny tranny !” The kinky wolf is no match for Hardwicke herself, who wears sexy leather boots and
once gave a member of her crew a dominatrix costume as a present. Not to worry, Mom
and Dad. Hardwicke ’ s kinkiness is decidedly PG-13. “ It was a tasteful dominatrix, ” she says. Hardwicke has a knack for taking the traditional girl-in-peril tale and teasing out
sexual tension without crossing the line. She became the most commercially successful
female director in Hollywood with Twilight, a film that radiates heat even though
Edward and Bella never even get to second base. Now she ’ s heading to Grandmother’ s house with Red Riding Hood, an adaptation of the fairy tale with a bodiced Amanda
Seyfried. Julie Christie plays her bohemian grandmother. Like the late John Hughes, who discovered the teenage actors who became the Brat
Pack, Hardwicke has created many of this generation ’ s tween idols. Evan Rachel Wood (Thirteen), Emile Hirsch (Lords of Dogtown ), Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner (Twilight ) all got their big breaks in a Hardwicke film. She dishes about them like an older sister; how Hirsch was too lazy to do sit-ups and drew abs on his stomach
with mascara or why Pattinson had to pluck his eyebrows. “ They were a bit bushy, ” she says. “ We needed to see some eyes !” Seyfried says Hardwicke, 55, is “ a child herself. She’ s so connected to that youthful essence. She still walks around with a backpack and sneakers. ” But unlike Hughes ’ s films, her movies are very dark.Hardwicke ’ s childhood sounds like a chapter from Roald Dahl ’ s memoirs. She grew up in McAllen, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border, where her family lived on a giant farm off
the Rio Grande. She frequently saw illegal immigrants paddling across or drug dealers
creeping in the shadows. “ It was a wild life, ” she says. In high school, her principal was stabbed three times. A friend ’ s father was shot in the back, and another friend was murdered. And yet life could be wonderful at the same time. “ It was a Huck Finn life, too,” she says. “ We had rope swings and mud fights and we ’ d make rafts. ” She graduated from college with an architecture degree, and after her father bought a 20-
acre real-estate complex, she designed the property ’ s 120 townhouses. Above each front door, she molded a mask of each owner ’ s face, a way to make each of her creations stand apart. She still has the pictures. But the work she was offered began to feel too cookie-cutter, so she fled to Hollywood,
where she landed a job as a production designer. She did 20 films with directors such
as David O. Russell, Cameron Crowe, Lisa Cholodenko, and Richard Linklater. “ Of course, I tried to learn from everybody, ” she says. “ How did he pull that one off? I always knew that I wanted to make my own movies. ” She stumbled on that chance while trying to help a troubled teen. Nikki Reed, a friend ’ s daughter, had fallen in with a bad crowd at school. “ How do I get her to do something creative instead of destructive ?” Hardwicke wondered. “ She said, ‘ I want to act. ’ I thought, that’ s going to make your life worse. But if you take the model of actors who write their own material, that expands your
horizons.” They wrote the first draft of a screenplay together in six days, during Christmas break. Hardwicke directed the film herself and cast Reed as the bad-girl costar.
“ I saw the raw talent, and I helped, ” she says. Thirteen earned Hardwicke the directing award at Sundance in 2003, establishing her as Hollywood ’ s hot new filmmaker at 47. Reed says that Hardwicke is “ a great teacher,” and one of the reasons she draws young actors into her world is her sleepy, cool-chick demeanor. In high school, Hardwicke
taught overweight girls how to swim. As an adult, she taught herself how to surf.
“ When I was 5, ” Reed says, “ Catherine wanted to massage my innate desire to be an actress. She put this dog collar on me. I would crawl on my hands and knees, and she
would tell people I was a dog. ” For Twilight, Hardwicke had trouble finding an actor otherworldly enough to play
vampire Edward Cullen. Then she got a call about a guy in London. “ I looked at a couple pictures and was like, ‘ I’ m not sure,’?” Hardwicke says. “ He had been fired from his last job, he was unemployed, he was in debt. ” Pattinson flew to Los Angeles on his own dime to read with Stewart. “ I have footage of their first meeting at my dining-room table,” Hardwicke says. “ Kristen was like, ‘ It’ s got to be Rob!’ She felt connected to him from the first moment. That electricity, or love at first sight, or whatever it is. ” Hardwicke gave him the part, but he had to make a promise. “ You ’ ve got to realize that Kristen is 17 years old, ” she told him. “ She’ s underage. You ’ ve got to focus, dude, or you ’ re going to be arrested. I made him swear on a stack of Bibles. ” Despite Twilight ’ s $400 million global success, Hardwicke left the franchise when it came to the sequel. She said it was her decision, despite a blog report that she was fired.
“ I couldn’ t even be fired, that ’ s what ’ s so funny, ” she says. “ In my contract, I had the first right of refusal.” She turned down the second film, she says, because the studio wanted to rush it out. “ I do not regret it at all, thank the Lord, ” she says. “ The truth is I liked the first book the best. ” There is something of the vampire in Hardwicke herself. Just as Edward will never grew
old, Hardwicke refuses to abandon the mischievous joys of youth. There ’ s nothing formal about the way she does business. She frequently invites her protégés over to
audition or rehearse. Her home is “ right on the beach,” says Shiloh Fernandez, who plays the hunky Peter in Red Riding Hood. “ It’ s like a loft for a young surfer guy. ” It’ s not Grandma’ s house. But there is a bed. And she lures young actors onto it, though not in the traditional casting-couch way. When Hardwicke auditioned Evan Rachel Wood for
Thirteen, she had her get into her bed with Nikki Reed. That ’ s also where Pattinson kissed Stewart for the first time in his Twilight screen test. “ That bed made Pattinson who he is right now, ” says Reed. Asked about her lair, Hardwicke laughs. “ MTV came and did an episode in my house filming the bed. It ’ s legendary, ” she says, flashing a wide — dare we say wolfish — grin.
‘ Twilight ’ Oscar Surprise Finally Revealed — Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner & Kristen Stewart Sing!
Well, they kind of sing. Rather, their lines are auto-tuned to create a hilarious video!
The Twilight Academy Awards secret that had everyone sitting on the edge of their seat was finally revealed, and it was HYSTERICAL! In one of the funniest montages of the night, Robert Pattinson sang a new song, “ He Doesn’ t Own a Shirt, ” to Taylor Lautner . So Funny! They weren ’ t the only people singing either, with Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint getting a Harry Potter song, Justin Timberlake rapping on The Social Network and the good old toys of Toy Story 3 also joining the fun!
Harry Potter, Twilight, Toy Story 3, Social Network Autotune - Music : Academy Awards 2011 Oscars
2011 Oscars Music: Harry Potter, Toy Story 3, Twilight & The King's Speech
click here for video
The Twilight Academy Awards secret that had everyone sitting on the edge of their seat was finally revealed, and it was HYSTERICAL! In one of the funniest montages of the night, Robert Pattinson sang a new song, “ He Doesn’ t Own a Shirt, ” to Taylor Lautner . So Funny! They weren ’ t the only people singing either, with Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint getting a Harry Potter song, Justin Timberlake rapping on The Social Network and the good old toys of Toy Story 3 also joining the fun!
Harry Potter, Twilight, Toy Story 3, Social Network Autotune - Music : Academy Awards 2011 Oscars
2011 Oscars Music: Harry Potter, Toy Story 3, Twilight & The King's Speech
click here for video
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Cosmopolis Production Update
Production update on COSMOPOLIS: Feature Film
TORONTO ANTENNA LTD.
STATUS: May 24
LOCATION: Toronto – New York PRODUCER: Paulo Branco – Martin Katz – Renee Tab WRITER/DIRECTOR: David Cronenberg
PM: Joseph Boccia – Robin Reelis CAST: Robert Pattinson – Paul Giamatti – Juliette Binoche – Mathieu Amalric ALFAMA FILMS
KINOLOGY It is an April day in the year 2000 and an era
is about to end. The booming times of
market optimism — when the culture boiled with money and corporations seemed more
vital and influential than governments — are poised to crash. Eric Packer (Pattinson), a
billionaire asset manager at age twenty-
eight, emerges from his penthouse triplex
and settles into his lavishly customized
white stretch limousine. Today he is a man
with two missions: to pursue a cataclysmic bet against the yen and to get a haircut
across town. Stalled in traffic by a
presidential motorcade, a music idol’ s funeral, and a violent political demonstration,
Eric receives a string of visitors — experts on security, technology, currency, finance, and a
few sexual partners — as the limo sputters toward an increasingly uncertain future.
Based on the novel by Don DeLillo. (Giamatti
plays the dual role of Benno Levin/Richard
Steers. / Production office opens Mid-March.)
TORONTO ANTENNA LTD.
STATUS: May 24
LOCATION: Toronto – New York PRODUCER: Paulo Branco – Martin Katz – Renee Tab WRITER/DIRECTOR: David Cronenberg
PM: Joseph Boccia – Robin Reelis CAST: Robert Pattinson – Paul Giamatti – Juliette Binoche – Mathieu Amalric ALFAMA FILMS
KINOLOGY It is an April day in the year 2000 and an era
is about to end. The booming times of
market optimism — when the culture boiled with money and corporations seemed more
vital and influential than governments — are poised to crash. Eric Packer (Pattinson), a
billionaire asset manager at age twenty-
eight, emerges from his penthouse triplex
and settles into his lavishly customized
white stretch limousine. Today he is a man
with two missions: to pursue a cataclysmic bet against the yen and to get a haircut
across town. Stalled in traffic by a
presidential motorcade, a music idol’ s funeral, and a violent political demonstration,
Eric receives a string of visitors — experts on security, technology, currency, finance, and a
few sexual partners — as the limo sputters toward an increasingly uncertain future.
Based on the novel by Don DeLillo. (Giamatti
plays the dual role of Benno Levin/Richard
Steers. / Production office opens Mid-March.)
Jackson Rathbone talks about Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart sizzling bacon
"It's definitely sexy," Jackson Rathbone told us at Leeza Gibbons' Dare2Care Pre-Oscar Cocktail party of Edward and Bella's highly-anticipated onscreen love-making. "It
definitely qualifies as shmexaaay." How sexy? "It's a PG-13 movie, but also it is what it is and it's a union," Rathbone said. "They are
consummating their relationship and they don't just do it once, let's put it that way." Hear that! Robsten go at it more...than...once! Rathbone also assures us we'll be seeing lots of that signature Rob and Kristen
chemistry in the flick. "Oh yeah," he laughed. "It sizzles, man. It sizzles like bacon!"
definitely qualifies as shmexaaay." How sexy? "It's a PG-13 movie, but also it is what it is and it's a union," Rathbone said. "They are
consummating their relationship and they don't just do it once, let's put it that way." Hear that! Robsten go at it more...than...once! Rathbone also assures us we'll be seeing lots of that signature Rob and Kristen
chemistry in the flick. "Oh yeah," he laughed. "It sizzles, man. It sizzles like bacon!"
Robert Pattinson will not attend the Oscars
Oscars producer made a video mentioning Twilight fans and urging us to watch the Oscars on Sunday night. What could it be? The cast has presented before (Rob in 2009, Kristen and Taylor in 2010) and whatever they have planned for Twilight fans is said to be "mindblowing", so it's not just someone presenting. It's something bigger. Question is, what? Here are some tweets about it.
I find this interesting, especially since I believe the first person to tease us was MTV's Josh Horowitz:
He posted that on Twitter on February 18, weeks away from the Oscars. Is this what he was referring to? Maybe.
Now this is what I think it's NOT possible:
Cast presenting. Pretty cool? Yes. Mindblowing? Hardly. It's something better and very unexpected.
Footage of Breaking Dawn? This is not the MTV Movie Awards. The Oscars do not promote future productions. Never have, never will. This is not a stage for that.
This is what I think IS possible:
Twilight sketch featuring the cast. A cool little short film, something funny featuring the actual cast.
A performance with the cast. Rob sings. Kristen sings. Anne Hathaway and James Franco are the presenters and they sing. We've heard since Oscars promotion started that they want this show to be young and fun. Could it be a live musical/comedy opening about Twilight featuring the actual stars? Sounds crazy, but it's the only thing I would call "mindblowing".
A Twilight musical parody/song without the cast. Since they're filming Breaking Dawn, it might be impossible to also prepare for Oscar night. So maybe there will be a fun Twilight little number, but no cast members performing. Maybe Franco and Hathaway will be Edward and Bella?
Whatever it is, it better be good because now we're intrigued, excited and definitely waiting for it. Check back Sunday morning for links to livestreams and also check your local listings to watch the Oscars on TV. Follow us on Twitter for live updates and commentary: @TwilightPoison. We like to live tweet HQ screencaps, so it will be worth it!
Leave your thoughts in the comments.
UPDATE: Producer confirms no Rob, Kristen or Taylor: 83rd Annual Academy Award producer Bruce Cohen, who ’ s an Oscar winner himself, phoned in Friday morning to “ On Air with Ryan Seacrest ” to give us the inside scoop on the upcoming award show, hosts Anne Hathaway and James Franco, as well as revealed more on the surprise in store for the “ Twilight ” Twihard ’ s will “ blow people’ s minds” as well! Watch the video
I find this interesting, especially since I believe the first person to tease us was MTV's Josh Horowitz:
He posted that on Twitter on February 18, weeks away from the Oscars. Is this what he was referring to? Maybe.
Now this is what I think it's NOT possible:
Cast presenting. Pretty cool? Yes. Mindblowing? Hardly. It's something better and very unexpected.
Footage of Breaking Dawn? This is not the MTV Movie Awards. The Oscars do not promote future productions. Never have, never will. This is not a stage for that.
This is what I think IS possible:
Twilight sketch featuring the cast. A cool little short film, something funny featuring the actual cast.
A performance with the cast. Rob sings. Kristen sings. Anne Hathaway and James Franco are the presenters and they sing. We've heard since Oscars promotion started that they want this show to be young and fun. Could it be a live musical/comedy opening about Twilight featuring the actual stars? Sounds crazy, but it's the only thing I would call "mindblowing".
A Twilight musical parody/song without the cast. Since they're filming Breaking Dawn, it might be impossible to also prepare for Oscar night. So maybe there will be a fun Twilight little number, but no cast members performing. Maybe Franco and Hathaway will be Edward and Bella?
Whatever it is, it better be good because now we're intrigued, excited and definitely waiting for it. Check back Sunday morning for links to livestreams and also check your local listings to watch the Oscars on TV. Follow us on Twitter for live updates and commentary: @TwilightPoison. We like to live tweet HQ screencaps, so it will be worth it!
Leave your thoughts in the comments.
UPDATE: Producer confirms no Rob, Kristen or Taylor: 83rd Annual Academy Award producer Bruce Cohen, who ’ s an Oscar winner himself, phoned in Friday morning to “ On Air with Ryan Seacrest ” to give us the inside scoop on the upcoming award show, hosts Anne Hathaway and James Franco, as well as revealed more on the surprise in store for the “ Twilight ” Twihard ’ s will “ blow people’ s minds” as well! Watch the video
Twilight “ Eclipse” soundtrack goes Gold
According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the “ Twilight Saga: Eclipse ” Original Soundtrack has gone Gold. The album, featuring artists such as Muse, The Black Keys, and Vampire Weekend was originally
released in June of 2010 and won Gold certification in December. Though the soundtrack follows in the footsteps of its predecessors, the honor was
slower to arrive for “ The Twilight Saga: Eclipse ” . “ The Twilight Saga: New Moon ” soundtrack went Platinum just one month after its release. The “ Twilight ” soundtrack also went Platinum within a month of its release before going Double Platinum some
four months later. Still to come is a soundtrack for “ The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn ” , though it is unclear as to how or whether a soundtrack will be split into two in alignment with the movies.
“ The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn ” is set to release in the U.S. on November 18th, 2011.
released in June of 2010 and won Gold certification in December. Though the soundtrack follows in the footsteps of its predecessors, the honor was
slower to arrive for “ The Twilight Saga: Eclipse ” . “ The Twilight Saga: New Moon ” soundtrack went Platinum just one month after its release. The “ Twilight ” soundtrack also went Platinum within a month of its release before going Double Platinum some
four months later. Still to come is a soundtrack for “ The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn ” , though it is unclear as to how or whether a soundtrack will be split into two in alignment with the movies.
“ The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn ” is set to release in the U.S. on November 18th, 2011.
R-Pattz Adopted Puppy Because He Is "Lonely"
Robert Pattinson may have millions of girls all over the world lusting after him, but the Twilight hunk has admitted that he has adopted a puppy
because he is "lonely."Robert talks to daily record Daily Record : Speaking in Los Angeles, before heading to Vancouver in Canada to continue filming the new Twilight movie Breaking Dawn, he said: "I know it's sad. A lot of actors have a bunch of people who kind of just go up and stay with them for like two months, like an entourage. "But my friends, their egos are too big. They'd be like, 'I'm not part of your entourage. I'll stay in a free hotel for a bit if it's in New York or LA but I'm not going to come out to some random town in the sticks.' " But that's kind of why I adopted the puppy. It's from a shelter and he was going to be put down. I only got him two or three days ago and they only keep them for 10 days. "He's been freaked out. It's funny. I got a private plane here from Louisiana, where I was filming Twilight, so he came out of the shelter and the next day he's on a private plane. A bit like Lady And The Tramp. " The puppy doesn't have a name yet, although he joked: "I'm going to call him Robert." It's a reflection of his growing fame that Pattinson is rumoured to be presenting an award at the Oscars on Sunday. But he say s nothing has been confirmed and he doesn't think he's going to have to get dressed up. He said: "No. I'm working Sunday night. I've been working for six months in Baton Rouge and we're finishing off in Vancouver." As well as the new puppy, he will be travelling with his own TV set ("they always have rubbish TVs in hotels") and some of the 5000 DVDs he's bought but never finds time to watch. Robert, who wrote two songs for Twilight's soundtrack, will also bring his collection of guitars which always now travel with him. But he said: "It 's annoying when you can't sit around and just get really drunk and stay up until five in the morning. It's not much fun." Keanu Reeves is known for living out of hotels and when he leaves, giving what he's accumulated during the stay to the crew or hotel staff. He said: "I'm a hoarder. I gave away all my furniture from Baton Rouge but with books and things, I have storage spaces all over the world."It's ridiculous. Clothes - I cannot give away clothes. I don't know why." I wear the same thing everyday and I just have piles and piles and piles of clothes and then every two years, I'll go to the storage space and kind of see what I can give away."I give away like three things, search through everything and then pack it all back up and put it in the storage space."
because he is "lonely."Robert talks to daily record Daily Record : Speaking in Los Angeles, before heading to Vancouver in Canada to continue filming the new Twilight movie Breaking Dawn, he said: "I know it's sad. A lot of actors have a bunch of people who kind of just go up and stay with them for like two months, like an entourage. "But my friends, their egos are too big. They'd be like, 'I'm not part of your entourage. I'll stay in a free hotel for a bit if it's in New York or LA but I'm not going to come out to some random town in the sticks.' " But that's kind of why I adopted the puppy. It's from a shelter and he was going to be put down. I only got him two or three days ago and they only keep them for 10 days. "He's been freaked out. It's funny. I got a private plane here from Louisiana, where I was filming Twilight, so he came out of the shelter and the next day he's on a private plane. A bit like Lady And The Tramp. " The puppy doesn't have a name yet, although he joked: "I'm going to call him Robert." It's a reflection of his growing fame that Pattinson is rumoured to be presenting an award at the Oscars on Sunday. But he say s nothing has been confirmed and he doesn't think he's going to have to get dressed up. He said: "No. I'm working Sunday night. I've been working for six months in Baton Rouge and we're finishing off in Vancouver." As well as the new puppy, he will be travelling with his own TV set ("they always have rubbish TVs in hotels") and some of the 5000 DVDs he's bought but never finds time to watch. Robert, who wrote two songs for Twilight's soundtrack, will also bring his collection of guitars which always now travel with him. But he said: "It 's annoying when you can't sit around and just get really drunk and stay up until five in the morning. It's not much fun." Keanu Reeves is known for living out of hotels and when he leaves, giving what he's accumulated during the stay to the crew or hotel staff. He said: "I'm a hoarder. I gave away all my furniture from Baton Rouge but with books and things, I have storage spaces all over the world."It's ridiculous. Clothes - I cannot give away clothes. I don't know why." I wear the same thing everyday and I just have piles and piles and piles of clothes and then every two years, I'll go to the storage space and kind of see what I can give away."I give away like three things, search through everything and then pack it all back up and put it in the storage space."
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
An interview with 'Twilight Saga' cinematographer Guillermo Navarro
Your next two films are the final two chapters of The Twilight Saga known as Breaking Dawn. Since you were not involved in the first three movies, what is your mindset going into this one as the new guy? Do you want to create that parallel universe like you talked about from scratch or do you feel more limited by the work that came before you and by what fans of the series are expecting?
No, I don’t feel limited by that. The book itself allows for the story to be propelled and I’m pushing that. I can’t really talk about it much, but I saw a very big opportunity to have a strong contribution in it. Click here for rest of the interview
No, I don’t feel limited by that. The book itself allows for the story to be propelled and I’m pushing that. I can’t really talk about it much, but I saw a very big opportunity to have a strong contribution in it. Click here for rest of the interview
Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart arrive in Vancouver together
Rumored couple and Twilight stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart arrived in Vancouver, Canada on Monday to begin filming part one and two of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn. People Magazine is reporting that Pattinson, 24, and Stewart, 20, flew together on a private jet.
After arriving together at the Vancouver National Airport, Pattinson and Stewart took separate cars to Vancouver’s Sheraton Wall Center Hotel.
The two were not the first Breaking Dawn cast members to arrive in Canada. Co-stars MyAnna Buring, Mackenzie Foy, and Mia Maestro all arrived on Sunday night.
The rest of the cast including Taylor Lautner, Kellan Lutz, Ashley Greene and Peter Facinelli are scheduled to arrive throughout the week.
The cast has already filmed scenes in both Louisiana and Brazil.
Breaking Dawn: Part I is set to hit theaters on Nov. 18, 2011 and part II is scheduled for release on Nov. 16, 2012.
Sources
Kristen Stewart/Robert Pattinson/Eclipse Win iVillage Awards
Here is where Kristen, Rob and Eclipse took the iVillage Awards.
Man You’d Trade Your Husband For
Man You’d Trade Your Husband For
Of course, you love your man dearly — but 58% of you say that if you ever met the sexy Robert Pattinson in person, he’d be the biggest threat to your mate! As a brooding vampire, Twilight star R-Pattz has a dark, romantic intensity. But when he ditches the pale skin and loosens up a bit, the actor is even hotter.The British actor won with 58% of the votes.
Here’s how the other nominees measured up:
Johnny Depp: 24%
Jake Gyllenhaal: 14%
Denzel Washington: 3%
Sexiest Onscreen Chemistry
This sizzling star duo knows how to work a bedroom scene, and a whopping 69% of you agreed that Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson have the sexiest onscreen chemistry. Their Bella and Edward are red-hot in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse — and they don’t even have sex. We can’t wait for them to really heat things up in Breaking Dawn!
Kristen & Rob won with 69% of the votes.
Here’s how the other nominees measured up:
Anne Hathaway & Jake Gyllenhaal in Love and Other Drugs: 21%
Julia Roberts & Javier Bardem in Eat Pray Love: 6%
Julianne Moore & Mark Ruffalo in The Kids Are All Right: 4%
Hottest ‘Eclipse Hunk’
Whether you prefer werewolves or vampires, the latest Twilight flick provided plenty of otherworldly man candy. But 62% of you say that Robert Pattinson is the mythical guy that most caught your eye. Lovesick vampire Edward Cullen is known for his sexy, brooding stare — and we’re happy to stare right back!Pattinson won with 62% of the votes.
Here’s how the other nominees measured up:
Taylor Lautner: 26%
Kellan Lutz: 8%
Xavier Samuel: 4%
Source
Robert Pattinson with a crew member during Breaking Dawn Filming
He is awesome!! Sooo easy to talk to...I have an Cochlear ear implant and was explaining the operation and he was so concern. I told him to protect his hearing! he was amaze about the facts of hearing loss....I saw him again during the wrap party. I met kristen too. She is tiny and very shy..with a potty mouth..LOL!!!
via Robstenation: Fan Encounter lindannelewis
via Robstenation: Fan Encounter lindannelewis
Both of them are really cool people..both chain smoke like there's no tomorrow, but care for the cast and the crew. I will work around them both again...and Michael Aills is Robert's stand in..omg..he looks alike like Robert enough to be his twin!
Ive met and talk with him twice. I saw him almost everyday when we were both working..It''s wasnt an issue when we did talk, it's for the show peroid.. He's gald that the final Twilight is over, now he want to move to others roles.
Golden Globe winner regrets not kissing Robert Pattinson
When Danish director Susanne Bier delivered her acceptance speech at this year’s Golden Globe Awards, she left the audience speechless. Literally. Accepting her award for best foreign-language film from Twilight heartthrob Robert Pattinson, Bier nervously joked that her movie features “people who speak like they have potatoes shoved down their throats.” Dead silence. After several awkward seconds, the director hastily wrapped up her speech.
Weeks later, Bier still sounds chagrined. “I got a bit paralyzed,” she explains. “I’d very carefully written a speech, and I couldn’t even read it. What was worse, I did not kiss Robert Pattinson, and now my daughter is never going to speak to me again.”
From Source:
Weeks later, Bier still sounds chagrined. “I got a bit paralyzed,” she explains. “I’d very carefully written a speech, and I couldn’t even read it. What was worse, I did not kiss Robert Pattinson, and now my daughter is never going to speak to me again.”
From Source:
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Roger Ebert names the 'Best ArtFilms' of 2010
Roger Ebert for the win! I don't think
any other film critic has been as
gracious about Kristen's
performances as he has. He's praised
her acting time after time after time.
Here's a brief excerpt of why he
picked The Yellow Handkerchief as
one of 2010's 'Best Art' films:
The criteria
"These are films based on the close
observation of behavior. They are
not mechanical constructions of
infinitesimal thrills. They depend on
intelligence and empathy to be
appreciated. They also require acting
of a precision not necessary in many
mass entertainments. They require
directors with a clear idea of
complex purposes. They require
subtleties of lighting and sound that
create a self-contained world. Most of
all, they require sympathy"
Why The Yellow Handkerchief?
"We now have the makings of a
classic road picture. Three outsiders,
a fabled destination, Louisiana back
roads and a big old convertible.
William Hurt occupies the silent
center of the film. In many movies
we interpret his reticence as
masking intelligence. Here we
realize it's a blank slate, and could be
masking anything. Kristen Stewart
is a wonderful actress. I must not
hold the "Twilight" movies against
her. In recent film after film, she
shows a sure hand and an intrinsic
power. I last saw her in "Welcome to
the Rileys," where she played a
runaway working as a hooker in
New Orleans. In both films she had
many scenes with experienced older
actors (Hurt, James Gandolfini). In
both she was rock solid"
any other film critic has been as
gracious about Kristen's
performances as he has. He's praised
her acting time after time after time.
Here's a brief excerpt of why he
picked The Yellow Handkerchief as
one of 2010's 'Best Art' films:
The criteria
"These are films based on the close
observation of behavior. They are
not mechanical constructions of
infinitesimal thrills. They depend on
intelligence and empathy to be
appreciated. They also require acting
of a precision not necessary in many
mass entertainments. They require
directors with a clear idea of
complex purposes. They require
subtleties of lighting and sound that
create a self-contained world. Most of
all, they require sympathy"
Why The Yellow Handkerchief?
"We now have the makings of a
classic road picture. Three outsiders,
a fabled destination, Louisiana back
roads and a big old convertible.
William Hurt occupies the silent
center of the film. In many movies
we interpret his reticence as
masking intelligence. Here we
realize it's a blank slate, and could be
masking anything. Kristen Stewart
is a wonderful actress. I must not
hold the "Twilight" movies against
her. In recent film after film, she
shows a sure hand and an intrinsic
power. I last saw her in "Welcome to
the Rileys," where she played a
runaway working as a hooker in
New Orleans. In both films she had
many scenes with experienced older
actors (Hurt, James Gandolfini). In
both she was rock solid"
"Bel Ami ” Will be Ready for Cannes or Venice
Cineuropa, a site dedicated to European Cinema, is reporting : The Uma Thurman and Robert Pattinson vehicle Bel Ami, adapted from Guy de
Maupassant’ s short story, will be ready for Cannes or Venice. Rights have already been
sold to Studio Canal Plus for France and
Germany. Optimum has UK rights. According to the team at RobPattinsonlife : The International Film Festival in Venice runs
from August 31 to September 10 and the
selection announced in July. In case the film
would not be presented at Cannes, it is
legitimate to think that will be offered the
choice of Venice. Remains whether the conditions to be proposed for selection are
the same as for Cannes, ie no diffusion in a
country other than the original one. If so,
expect to see the film ’ s release date pushed back again. We will know more next April,
the month in which the films will be officially
announced for the selection at Cannes.
Maupassant’ s short story, will be ready for Cannes or Venice. Rights have already been
sold to Studio Canal Plus for France and
Germany. Optimum has UK rights. According to the team at RobPattinsonlife : The International Film Festival in Venice runs
from August 31 to September 10 and the
selection announced in July. In case the film
would not be presented at Cannes, it is
legitimate to think that will be offered the
choice of Venice. Remains whether the conditions to be proposed for selection are
the same as for Cannes, ie no diffusion in a
country other than the original one. If so,
expect to see the film ’ s release date pushed back again. We will know more next April,
the month in which the films will be officially
announced for the selection at Cannes.
Kristen Stewart spotted at LAX wearing arm splint
Kristen Stewart arrives at LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) surrounded by security
with her arm in a blue cast.Kristen Stewart has landed back in Los Angeles, as of today. Here are photos of her at LAX, wearing a splint on her left arm. So, what happened to Kristen Stewart ’ s arm? It is being reported that she broke her thumb on set!! Ouch! Poor girl.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Rob may attend the oscars with Reese
Robert Pattinson will allegedly attend The Oscars alone, following reports that rumoured girlfriend Kristen Stewart , is unable to attend.
According to E! Online, R-Pattz is likely to walk the red carpet at the 83rd Academy Award s on his lonesome, as Kristen's hectic work schedule is
said to be preventing her from joining Rob at the
bash. A source told the entertainment website that Stewart was "most likely" not going to be
attending the event, meaning the hunky actor
will have to go it alone. It has also been claimed that the 20-year old had wanted to be by her beau's side at the ceremony as she had been offered the chance to present one of the prestigious awards. Rob will now apparently attend the star-studded bash with his Water For Elephants co-star Reese Witherspoon, where they will be presenting a gong at the show on 27th February.
According to E! Online, R-Pattz is likely to walk the red carpet at the 83rd Academy Award s on his lonesome, as Kristen's hectic work schedule is
said to be preventing her from joining Rob at the
bash. A source told the entertainment website that Stewart was "most likely" not going to be
attending the event, meaning the hunky actor
will have to go it alone. It has also been claimed that the 20-year old had wanted to be by her beau's side at the ceremony as she had been offered the chance to present one of the prestigious awards. Rob will now apparently attend the star-studded bash with his Water For Elephants co-star Reese Witherspoon, where they will be presenting a gong at the show on 27th February.
'Twilight' news wrap: 'Breaking Dawn' star bids adieu
There are some really great Twilight-related news bits which haven't been discussed just yet, so to stay succinct, here's today's Twilight news wrap!
For starters, did you know there's another famous actress who looks a bit like Kristen Stewart and knows it, too? Well, according to MovieLine, I Am Number Four star Teresa Palmer not only resembles Stewart, but she also gets confused for her sometimes.
"I get mistaken [for her] all the time . . . I can definitely see the resemblance. We have a similar shaped chin and we’re both dark under our eyes with similar lips. I’ve been recognized for her before."
Evidently, though, she has an appreciation for Kristen Stewart's work, so she doesn't mind the mistake at all.
“I’m not sick of them. It’s all flattering. What I love about Kristen Stewart is she is so edgy and so plays it against the norm. It’s very refreshing to see an actress like that really get into the fact that she is different from everybody else and that’s just the way she is. I’ve never met her but I love watching her onscreen. I think there is something dark and sexy about her. I think she is fiercely talented as well.”
Check out the full interview, including a bit about one of her most memorable moments of being mistaken for Kristen Stewart, at MovieLine.
Staying on the subject of I Am Number Four stars, Alex Pettyfer has spoken up about the perceived similarities between that film and the Twilight series.
"There are things that are similar between the two films and then those that are different."
He was also asked about a suggestion that he may be a new Robert Pattinson, status-wise, and he gave a rather astute answer.
"All I can say is, he is a good looking guy!"
Both of these Four stars have been pretty humble about the comparisons, which is incredibly refreshing . . .
Moving on, and perhaps in the opposite direction, the band My Chemical Romance has reiterated their point as to why they turned down an opportunity to appear on one of the Twilight Saga's soundtracks (despite being featured on a number of Stephenie Meyer's own public playlists).
Via Beatweek:
We’re not fans of the work, and so for us that makes it pretty easy to decide if we want to be part of it or not. I guess some people might look at how it could benefit your career, it could help sell records, you’re doing this big movie. But we’re just not really fans of the movie or the books so that’s why we choose not to connect ourselves with it.
So be it, then. On a similar note, Paramore's Hayley Williams also talked about Twilight (they were featured on the album with "Decode" and "I Caught Myself") and finally admitted that it was a good boost for the band's popularity.
Via The Tennesseean:
"It took us to a different level . . . It was the first time we were acknowledged by a whole different group of people."
That's quite a different tune than "we don't want to be, like, the vampire house band." Oh, but wait, there's a reason for that. The person who said that quote, Zac Farro, is no longer a part of Paramore . . . Still, it is uncertain whether Paramore would want (or be wanted for, at this point) a spot on one of the Breaking Dawn soundtracks.
On a positive Twilight music note, Jackson Rathbone and the 100 Monkeys are heading back to Vancouver for a March 4th show, which means production for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn will be in full swing by then! As noted yesterday, the Vancouver "Swan House" set has been prepared with Christmas decorations and has been fully rebuilt for production.
Some actors from Breaking Dawn have expressed their excitement over heading to Canada for the movie, but a few others, particularly the Volturi, have said goodbye to their work on the Twilight set forever. You've already seen Jamie Campbell Bower's actor chair picture send-off. Now, add Daniel Cudmore's bittersweet tweet.
"And thats a wrap on Twilight for me...what a blast these films have been for me, I can't wait for everyone to see the last two! What's next?"
Source
For starters, did you know there's another famous actress who looks a bit like Kristen Stewart and knows it, too? Well, according to MovieLine, I Am Number Four star Teresa Palmer not only resembles Stewart, but she also gets confused for her sometimes.
"I get mistaken [for her] all the time . . . I can definitely see the resemblance. We have a similar shaped chin and we’re both dark under our eyes with similar lips. I’ve been recognized for her before."
Evidently, though, she has an appreciation for Kristen Stewart's work, so she doesn't mind the mistake at all.
“I’m not sick of them. It’s all flattering. What I love about Kristen Stewart is she is so edgy and so plays it against the norm. It’s very refreshing to see an actress like that really get into the fact that she is different from everybody else and that’s just the way she is. I’ve never met her but I love watching her onscreen. I think there is something dark and sexy about her. I think she is fiercely talented as well.”
Check out the full interview, including a bit about one of her most memorable moments of being mistaken for Kristen Stewart, at MovieLine.
Staying on the subject of I Am Number Four stars, Alex Pettyfer has spoken up about the perceived similarities between that film and the Twilight series.
"There are things that are similar between the two films and then those that are different."
He was also asked about a suggestion that he may be a new Robert Pattinson, status-wise, and he gave a rather astute answer.
"All I can say is, he is a good looking guy!"
Both of these Four stars have been pretty humble about the comparisons, which is incredibly refreshing . . .
Moving on, and perhaps in the opposite direction, the band My Chemical Romance has reiterated their point as to why they turned down an opportunity to appear on one of the Twilight Saga's soundtracks (despite being featured on a number of Stephenie Meyer's own public playlists).
Via Beatweek:
We’re not fans of the work, and so for us that makes it pretty easy to decide if we want to be part of it or not. I guess some people might look at how it could benefit your career, it could help sell records, you’re doing this big movie. But we’re just not really fans of the movie or the books so that’s why we choose not to connect ourselves with it.
So be it, then. On a similar note, Paramore's Hayley Williams also talked about Twilight (they were featured on the album with "Decode" and "I Caught Myself") and finally admitted that it was a good boost for the band's popularity.
Via The Tennesseean:
"It took us to a different level . . . It was the first time we were acknowledged by a whole different group of people."
That's quite a different tune than "we don't want to be, like, the vampire house band." Oh, but wait, there's a reason for that. The person who said that quote, Zac Farro, is no longer a part of Paramore . . . Still, it is uncertain whether Paramore would want (or be wanted for, at this point) a spot on one of the Breaking Dawn soundtracks.
On a positive Twilight music note, Jackson Rathbone and the 100 Monkeys are heading back to Vancouver for a March 4th show, which means production for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn will be in full swing by then! As noted yesterday, the Vancouver "Swan House" set has been prepared with Christmas decorations and has been fully rebuilt for production.
Some actors from Breaking Dawn have expressed their excitement over heading to Canada for the movie, but a few others, particularly the Volturi, have said goodbye to their work on the Twilight set forever. You've already seen Jamie Campbell Bower's actor chair picture send-off. Now, add Daniel Cudmore's bittersweet tweet.
"And thats a wrap on Twilight for me...what a blast these films have been for me, I can't wait for everyone to see the last two! What's next?"
Source
Juliette Binoche Joins Robert Pattinson In "Cosmopolis"
Cosmopolis producer, Paulo Branco, confirmed that Juliette Binoche will join Robert Pattinson In "Cosmopolis".
Screen Daily were reporting from the European Film Market in Berlin where Paulo Branco said:
"That there was now a confirmed shooting date for David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis (sold by Kinology but produced by Branco) of May 24. Paul Giamatti and Juliette Binoche have also joined the cast."
So what do you think of that?
Now the question is........ who is she playing??
Source
Taylor Lautner to Join Forces with Producer Michael Bay in 2012
Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood has the latest word about a new project that Taylor Lautner and Michael Bay are going to be joining forces on sometime in 2012. The project is not officially named yet, but sounds like it’s going to be of the big action movie type.
Back on January 11th, I reported that three top producers including Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes were circling Taylor Lautner to star in their movies for 2012 and beyond. Now Bay’s aggressive courting of tay-tay has paid off, and last night the two filmmakers sent out a script for auction to all the major studios. I’ve learned that already this morning studios have begun bidding on a Bay-Lautner project.
Like them or not, they’re individually successfully. But the duo didn’t do a dog-and-pony show to accompany the presentation as so many producers, directors, and stars are these days. Still, both Bay and Lautner (who’s on a brief break from shooting Breaking Dawn Part 2) are in town and available if any of the majors want a face-to-face.
Wow, Taylor is really starting to be quite the action guy! We haven’t even seen him in any of his action movies yet and everyone wants him. Michael Bay is quite the name to have looking for you.
What do you think of this news about Taylor? »
Back on January 11th, I reported that three top producers including Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes were circling Taylor Lautner to star in their movies for 2012 and beyond. Now Bay’s aggressive courting of tay-tay has paid off, and last night the two filmmakers sent out a script for auction to all the major studios. I’ve learned that already this morning studios have begun bidding on a Bay-Lautner project.
Like them or not, they’re individually successfully. But the duo didn’t do a dog-and-pony show to accompany the presentation as so many producers, directors, and stars are these days. Still, both Bay and Lautner (who’s on a brief break from shooting Breaking Dawn Part 2) are in town and available if any of the majors want a face-to-face.
Wow, Taylor is really starting to be quite the action guy! We haven’t even seen him in any of his action movies yet and everyone wants him. Michael Bay is quite the name to have looking for you.
What do you think of this news about Taylor? »
Robert Pattinson & Reese Witherspoon Entertainment Tonight Interview (Videos)
Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon On
Transcript :
Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson share a smooch and more in the upcoming 'Water for Elephants,' and the onscreen lovebirds are talking about their forbidden movie romance with ET! They also share a nugget of obscure movie trivia -- they were once cast in a film as mother and son!
In 'Water for Elephants,' Reese plays the married star performer in a circus who catches the attention of a bachelor animal caretaker, played by 'Twilight' star Rob. When ET visited the Los Angeles set during production on the film last summer, Reese rode atop an enormous elephant for a scene involving an elaborate 1930s parade.
Reese gushed about sharing love scenes with Rob, proclaiming, "I am so lucky. He's so amazing and wonderful and sweet and just the nicest guy too, so you can just add that to the soup. I mean, he's just so good looking and he's a really nice person."
Rob said the pair hadn't yet shot their love scenes, but shared, "Reese has only got two days [of work] left [on the film]. So … they must expect me to be very professional about it." He also gave a tidbit about one love scene -- he says it ends with his character getting beaten up!
Entertainment Tonight.
"We'll probably just laugh the whole time, because all we do is just laugh and joke around," Reese predicted of filming the scenes.
Although Reese and Rob are an onscreen couple in 'Water for Elephants,' they had a very different movie relationship when they filmed 2004's 'Vanity Fair' -- mother and son! Despite Reese being only ten years older then Rob, he was cast as her son, though his scenes later landed on the cutting room floor.
Reese recalls of meeting Rob back then, "He was walking down this corridor and I turned to the director, and I said, 'That's my son? He's so good looking!' I was like, 'He's so hot!'"
For his part, Rob remembers, "Even then, I realized on the set, I was like, I look too old to be playing her son. I mean, that's probably why I was cut."
Based on the best-selling novel by Sara Gruen, 'Water for Elephants' follows an elderly man (Hal Holbrook) reminiscing about his days working as an animal caretaker at a circus. A young veterinary school student (Robert) witnessing the beauty and brutality of life under the big top, he falls for Marlena (Reese), the captivating star performer, and suffers the wrath of her charismatic but dangerous husband, August ('Inglorious Bastards' Oscar winner Christoph Waltz).
'Water for Elephants' will debut in theaters on April 15, 2011
Source
Transcript :
Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson share a smooch and more in the upcoming 'Water for Elephants,' and the onscreen lovebirds are talking about their forbidden movie romance with ET! They also share a nugget of obscure movie trivia -- they were once cast in a film as mother and son!
In 'Water for Elephants,' Reese plays the married star performer in a circus who catches the attention of a bachelor animal caretaker, played by 'Twilight' star Rob. When ET visited the Los Angeles set during production on the film last summer, Reese rode atop an enormous elephant for a scene involving an elaborate 1930s parade.
Reese gushed about sharing love scenes with Rob, proclaiming, "I am so lucky. He's so amazing and wonderful and sweet and just the nicest guy too, so you can just add that to the soup. I mean, he's just so good looking and he's a really nice person."
Rob said the pair hadn't yet shot their love scenes, but shared, "Reese has only got two days [of work] left [on the film]. So … they must expect me to be very professional about it." He also gave a tidbit about one love scene -- he says it ends with his character getting beaten up!
Entertainment Tonight.
"We'll probably just laugh the whole time, because all we do is just laugh and joke around," Reese predicted of filming the scenes.
Although Reese and Rob are an onscreen couple in 'Water for Elephants,' they had a very different movie relationship when they filmed 2004's 'Vanity Fair' -- mother and son! Despite Reese being only ten years older then Rob, he was cast as her son, though his scenes later landed on the cutting room floor.
Reese recalls of meeting Rob back then, "He was walking down this corridor and I turned to the director, and I said, 'That's my son? He's so good looking!' I was like, 'He's so hot!'"
For his part, Rob remembers, "Even then, I realized on the set, I was like, I look too old to be playing her son. I mean, that's probably why I was cut."
Based on the best-selling novel by Sara Gruen, 'Water for Elephants' follows an elderly man (Hal Holbrook) reminiscing about his days working as an animal caretaker at a circus. A young veterinary school student (Robert) witnessing the beauty and brutality of life under the big top, he falls for Marlena (Reese), the captivating star performer, and suffers the wrath of her charismatic but dangerous husband, August ('Inglorious Bastards' Oscar winner Christoph Waltz).
'Water for Elephants' will debut in theaters on April 15, 2011
Source
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Spotted: Taylor Lautner Arriving at LAX with Lily Collins
Taylor Lautner was spotted arriving at LAX the other night, and he certainly wasn't alone!
The Twilight star has been hibernating in Baton Rouge, La., and flew home with girlfriend Lily Collins in tow earlier this week.
Taylor Lautner and Lily Collins were spotted after what seems like months of hiding when they were snapped getting off a late night flight at LAX Feb. 12. Even though they had been traveling for hours, the two of course looked picture perfect in matching leather jackets.
Taylor has of course been hard at work on Breaking Dawn in Baton Rouge and it appears his lady love has been spending a good deal of time with him while he is busy on set.
The two, who met on the set of Abduction, seem to be doing better than ever. Despite the age difference between 21-year-old Lily and 19-year-old Taylor, these two are definitely for real. It is nice to see, given the heartbreak Taylor experienced over his last relationship with singer Taylor Swift.
Taylor made a brief appearance at the People’s Choice Awards Jan. 5, but prior to that had not been seen out since early November!
Source
The Twilight star has been hibernating in Baton Rouge, La., and flew home with girlfriend Lily Collins in tow earlier this week.
Taylor Lautner and Lily Collins were spotted after what seems like months of hiding when they were snapped getting off a late night flight at LAX Feb. 12. Even though they had been traveling for hours, the two of course looked picture perfect in matching leather jackets.
Taylor has of course been hard at work on Breaking Dawn in Baton Rouge and it appears his lady love has been spending a good deal of time with him while he is busy on set.
The two, who met on the set of Abduction, seem to be doing better than ever. Despite the age difference between 21-year-old Lily and 19-year-old Taylor, these two are definitely for real. It is nice to see, given the heartbreak Taylor experienced over his last relationship with singer Taylor Swift.
Taylor made a brief appearance at the People’s Choice Awards Jan. 5, but prior to that had not been seen out since early November!
Source
Vancouver set for 'The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn' preps for Christmas
Back in December, this set photo from The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 or The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 (it seemed more like the second, thanks to number of stockings) was released as a holiday gift to Twilight fans, and in it, the "Swan House" living room was decorated up for Christmas.
That set shot was no doubt from the Baton Rouge location - this assessment based on timing and the fact that interiors were mostly done there.
Now, since pre-production has been readying the Vancouver set for the imminent return of the Twilight Saga, the Swan House exterior has been prepared.
According to Christine Kilpatrick, the house has also been ladened with Christmas decorations.
One thing is for certain, they will be filming a scene that takes place around Christmas at the Swan House. Fans of the Breaking Dawn will know that Bella brings Renesmee to visit with Charlie over the Christmas Holidays.The Swan house has been decorated with Christmas lights and a green garland decorates the door.
So, there you have it. First (or near to first) order of business in Vancouver? Christmas at the Swan House! That is all pretty straightforward. Meanwhile, the cast has been continuing their good-byes to Baton Rouge.
Patrick Brennan ("Liam"): Done here in Baton Rouge...off to Canada in a few weeks.
Guri Weinberg ("Stefan"): Almost finished in Baton Rouge and then on to Canada!
Amadou Ly: Farewell Baton Rouge, I had a wonderful time. I am sure I'll be here soon for other films. Peace out.
Cameron Bright ("Alec"): On set til 330 this morning. YUK. It was the last day for us here on Twilight Breaking Dawn, Baton Rouge. Home here we come.
So, while pre-production polishes up progress in Vancouver, the cast gets a break from filming, and soon enough things will be back in action in British Columbia.
Source
That set shot was no doubt from the Baton Rouge location - this assessment based on timing and the fact that interiors were mostly done there.
Now, since pre-production has been readying the Vancouver set for the imminent return of the Twilight Saga, the Swan House exterior has been prepared.
According to Christine Kilpatrick, the house has also been ladened with Christmas decorations.
One thing is for certain, they will be filming a scene that takes place around Christmas at the Swan House. Fans of the Breaking Dawn will know that Bella brings Renesmee to visit with Charlie over the Christmas Holidays.The Swan house has been decorated with Christmas lights and a green garland decorates the door.
So, there you have it. First (or near to first) order of business in Vancouver? Christmas at the Swan House! That is all pretty straightforward. Meanwhile, the cast has been continuing their good-byes to Baton Rouge.
Patrick Brennan ("Liam"): Done here in Baton Rouge...off to Canada in a few weeks.
Guri Weinberg ("Stefan"): Almost finished in Baton Rouge and then on to Canada!
Amadou Ly: Farewell Baton Rouge, I had a wonderful time. I am sure I'll be here soon for other films. Peace out.
Cameron Bright ("Alec"): On set til 330 this morning. YUK. It was the last day for us here on Twilight Breaking Dawn, Baton Rouge. Home here we come.
So, while pre-production polishes up progress in Vancouver, the cast gets a break from filming, and soon enough things will be back in action in British Columbia.
Source
The Tonner Doll Company released Jasper Hale Doll
The Tonner Doll Company released a new Twilight doll at the 2011 Toy Fair recently. The Toy Fair jumped on The Twilight Saga franchise over the past few years releasing what fans like to call "Twi-Dolls".
Edward Cullen, Bella Swan, Jacob Black, Alice Cullen, Victoria, James and Laurent have all been turned into Twi-Dolls in the past. This year the Tonner Doll Company unveiled the Jasper Hale doll, the other half of Alice Cullen.
Tonner Doll Company gave a description of the quite, well, obviously creepy doll:
"The love of Alice Cullen's life, Jasper Hale, joins the ranks of Tonner Character Figures! The newest member of the Cullen family comes dressed ina deep blue dress shirt and dark wash jeans and faux leather belt. Molden shoes and Cullen bracelet included."
The doll would cost $149.99.
Blast from past:New/Old picture of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart at an August 2010 wedding
Here's a new/old pic of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart at a wedding in August 2010
Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner become one person
Compliments of Cosmopolitan magazine, a poster of a morphed Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner has been released.
With this new poster fans no longer have to choose and can enjoy the best of both men, the only question is…what does Kristen Stewart think?
The poster is a mock advertisement for “Wolfspire”, a Harvey Dent style character who is a combination of the two “Twilight” rivals, Edward and Jacob.
Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), the vampire protagonist of the saga is in constant rivalry with Jake Black (Taylor Lautner), a werewolf. Throughout the story, the two male characters are in constant competition for Bella Swan’s (Kristen Stewart) love and affection.
As a result of the on-going tug of war for Bella’s affection, “Twilight” fans are normally ranked as either Team Edward or Team Jacob.
With this new poster fans no longer have to choose and can enjoy the best of both men, the only question is…what does Kristen Stewart think?
The poster is a mock advertisement for “Wolfspire”, a Harvey Dent style character who is a combination of the two “Twilight” rivals, Edward and Jacob.
Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), the vampire protagonist of the saga is in constant rivalry with Jake Black (Taylor Lautner), a werewolf. Throughout the story, the two male characters are in constant competition for Bella Swan’s (Kristen Stewart) love and affection.
As a result of the on-going tug of war for Bella’s affection, “Twilight” fans are normally ranked as either Team Edward or Team Jacob.
COSMOPOLIS MOVIE PREVIEW: CRONENBERG AND PATTINSON ROLL THE DICE – PART 1 & 2
Check out this "Cosmopolis" Movie Preview by Paul Martin over at Indiemovies.com
Just to warn you though, it does contain spoilers so for those of you that want to stay away from them don't click on the link!
It is, on the surface, the most improbable of creative collaborations. Teen idol Robert Pattinson linking up with David Cronenberg, regent of body horror cinema and the man who made Geena Davis give birth to a maggot in The Fly. Both men can be seen to be gambling, spying greater rewards ahead. But can an adaptation of Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis deliver the payoff each desires?
Pattinson and Cronenberg, Cronenberg and Pattinson – it is a combination which becomes scarcely less surprising each time you see it there before you. One is often cited as the greatest Canadian director of all-time and indeed one of the most important and influential in global terms too, with a Légion d’honneur and the Cannes Film Festival’s lifetime achievement award, the Carosse d’Or, amongst his galaxy of accolades.
To be fair, the much-younger other has accumulated his own fair share of trophies as well, although his, to date, have tended to be more of the MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss variety, as opposed to prestigious cultural honours from the French government. True also to say that he enjoys a far less unilaterally positive critical reputation than his new directorial mentor.
For while Cronenberg may have endured his fair share of barbs and brickbats down the years, it is difficult to believe he too often faces the kind of vituperative assaults on his professional competence that Pattinson is forced to endure pretty much any time a movie comes out with him in it. See, for example, The Playlist's review of Remember Me ('Pattinson has mastered an American accent, but he should focus on actually acting. Squinting does not count'), or Slash Film's review of Twilight ('Pattinson spends most of the movie with a look on his face that's a cross between Zoolander's “blue steel” and a person trying to stave off a diarrhoeal attack').
1. Cronenberg's new leading man
The seeming improbability of the union was emphasised by the wider reaction when news first came through, just over a month ago, that Pattinson would be stepping in for Colin Farrell as leading man in Cosmopolis, based on the 2003 novel of the same name by Don DeLillo, and the latest venture behind the camera for Cronenberg. The director's disciples were aghast at the development, spitting nails and feathers alike that their filmmaking deity would sully himself by associating with a guy best known for making adolescent girls feel a bit funny in the tummy.
This spew of vitriol was not matched by an equivalent stream from the worshippers of R-Patz, although there would surely have been no little bemusement elicited from any prompted to explore the back catalogue of the man their heartthrob of choice would be acting for. Forget about feeling a bit funny in the tummy, a Cronenberg movie is more likely to have venereal parasites slithering around down there (Shivers), or perhaps the opening of a vagina-like slit into which objects can be inserted (Videodrome).
So what then does Cronenberg hope to achieve by selecting as his latest leading man a pasty-skinned Brit whose innate charisma has been unfavourably compared with that of a squashed canapé? In turn, what does Pattinson seek to gain by enlisting for a tour of duty with a director whose previous protagonists have included murderers, lunatics and a woman with a mutant penis growing from her armpit (Rabid)?
And what are the worldwide network of Patt-olytes, united in their adoration of self-denying vampire Edward Cullen, going to make of their dreamboat in a role which, if it adheres to DeLillo's source book, will see him repeatedly cheating on his wife, shooting a man dead in cold blood, and delivering the line “I want to bottle-f**k you slowly with my sunglasses on”?
2. Cosmopolis cast takes shape
July 2009 was when it was announced that David Cronenberg would be handling a big screen version of Cosmopolis, first published in 2003 and one of the slender, slightly more reader-friendly volumes Don DeLillo has produced since his 1997 epic, Underworld. Having already 'filmed the unfilmable' in 1991, when he presided over a version of William Burroughs' Naked Lunch which proved divisive as far as fans of that book were concerned, Cronenberg was clearly not a man to be intimidated by the challenge of redeeming DeLillo in the eyes of Hollywood.
That the novelist should require redeeming was certainly not as the result of any questioning of his artistic powers – the septuagenarian can count upon more supporters than most should there ever be some kind of ballot to determine the identity of America's greatest living author. It was instead more down to an attitude exuded by the motion picture industry, the sense that it was unsure how best to wrangle DeLillo's often labyrinthine writings into vehicles with broad enough appeal to turn a profit, yet not so diluted as to sacrifice the essence of what made them worthwhile in the first place.
Cronenberg tasked himself with the first step in the process of converting DeLillo's prose into celluloid magic, as he adapted the latter's book into screenplay form and thereby ensured that Cosmopolis would be his first self-scripted outing since his 1999 career nadir, eXistenZ. And despite the director already being committed to A Dangerous Method, there was still significant progress on the Cosmopolis front within twelve months of the original announcement of Cronenberg's involvement, as a teaser poster was released, a shooting start date of March 2011 was set, and Colin Farrell and Marion Cotillard were named as the two leads.
Both of those casting choices appeared astute. If not quite having crashed out where the cocaine superhighway meets the shit-choice-of-roles roundabout, then Colin Farrell had certainly been doing some very reckless manoeuvring near both for several of the last few years, only for it to be generally agreed that In Bruges - and the Best Actor Golden Globe which his turn in that movie earned him – had set him firmly back on the right track.
Cotillard, meanwhile, had already secured an Oscar the year before her prospective co-star had got his gilded bauble, for La Vie en Rose, and since then she had made hay in the Hollywood sun, playing prominent roles in Michael Mann's Public Enemies, deluxe screen musical Nine, and the then-upcoming Inception. So, good actors both, and seemingly decent fits too for their proposed roles – he as Manhattan billionaire Eric Packer; she as Packer's wife, Elise Schifrin.
3. Exit Colin Farrell...
If all seemed in its right place for a spring 2011 shoot which will reportedly visit both New York (where Cosmopolis is set) and Cronenberg's home city of Toronto, then that veneer of order was fatally cracked within the first few days of this year. That was when Farrell felt an artistic calling far stronger than the one exerted by David and Don, as he bailed from Cosmopolis in favour of playing the lead in a remake of Total Recall for Columbia Pictures and director Len Wiseman (director of Underworld, a film very far removed from DeLillo's book of the same name).
Cronenberg could easily have been forgiven for grinding his teeth in frustration at this development, though he surely too must have been tempted to raise a wry smile. For not only had he himself spent an ultimately fruitless year in the mid-80s tinkering with the first incarnation of Total Recall for the late Dino DeLaurentiis (“I wanted it to work out so badly that I pretended it could” rued the director years later), but he had also gone through the nth-hour withdrawal of a key actor on A Dangerous Method, with that actor also having departed to partake in a bigger-budget production of seeming intellectual inferiority.
The frantically defenestrating actor back then was Christoph Waltz, who in the words of Cronenberg “copped out basically to do a Hollywood movie”. And it is hard to argue with that withering assessment when a performer departs an independent production based on a play about founding fathers of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, in favour of playing a circus trainer in a starry, lavishly-budgeted coming of age tale, directed by Francis 'I Am Legend' Lawrence.
But if the director had been miffed about Waltz's dumping of Freud for fluff, in the shape of Lawrence's Water for Elephants, then it was the Austrian Oscar-winner's young co-star in that latter movie to whom Cronenberg would immediately turn now that he faced a casting crisis on Cosmopolis – that co-star being none other than one Robert Pattinson.
4. ...pursued by Marion Cotillard
“I said yes as soon as he called,” said Pattinson to MTV when asked about his sudden drafting into the Cosmopolis actors company. Excited as he may have been though, he had joined a company that was, in truth, now in a state of flux, as Cotillard soon exited too (rumour has it in favour of playing a role in The Dark Knight Rises).
Keira Knightley, who plays Sabina Spielrein in A Dangerous Method and of whom Cronenberg has said “she's as good as anyone I've worked with” (he's also said “she's a heavy dude” but perhaps best not to dwell on that), was touted as a swift replacement. And at 25 she undoubtedly appeared a better age match for the boyish Pattinson than the 34-year-old Cotillard. Plus she is probably the one contemporary British screen star whose acting ability has been as regularly derided as that of Captain Jawline.
A match made in tabloid heaven, then? Could the gossip columnists begin sharpening their sharpest pencils in anticipation of the bitchy speculation they were going to get to write about Kristen Stewart getting her Incredible Hulk on in jealousy of Knightley and Pattinson's on-set bonding over their equally crappy notices?
Nope! Despite many outlets reporting Keira's casting as a done deal, her representatives last week confirmed that she was not involved, and the role of Elise remains unclaimed – at least as far as those outside the Cosmopolis camp are aware.
Amidst the Knightley hoo-ha, one genuinely encouraging bit of casting threatened to go almost unnoticed, with Paul Giamatti, fresh from soaking up the plaudits for his role in Sundance hit Win Win (including those issuing forth from our very own Kimberly Gadette), joining the production. The American Splendor star has revealed that his role will see him stalking Pattinson's Packer, meaning that he will almost certainly be playing the vengeful contradiction that is Benno Levin.
And, having teasingly invoked his name, it is with Benno whom we will leave things for today. But be sure to tune in tomorrow for the concluding part of our Cosmopolis movie preview.
Source
Click here for part2
Just to warn you though, it does contain spoilers so for those of you that want to stay away from them don't click on the link!
It is, on the surface, the most improbable of creative collaborations. Teen idol Robert Pattinson linking up with David Cronenberg, regent of body horror cinema and the man who made Geena Davis give birth to a maggot in The Fly. Both men can be seen to be gambling, spying greater rewards ahead. But can an adaptation of Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis deliver the payoff each desires?
Pattinson and Cronenberg, Cronenberg and Pattinson – it is a combination which becomes scarcely less surprising each time you see it there before you. One is often cited as the greatest Canadian director of all-time and indeed one of the most important and influential in global terms too, with a Légion d’honneur and the Cannes Film Festival’s lifetime achievement award, the Carosse d’Or, amongst his galaxy of accolades.
To be fair, the much-younger other has accumulated his own fair share of trophies as well, although his, to date, have tended to be more of the MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss variety, as opposed to prestigious cultural honours from the French government. True also to say that he enjoys a far less unilaterally positive critical reputation than his new directorial mentor.
For while Cronenberg may have endured his fair share of barbs and brickbats down the years, it is difficult to believe he too often faces the kind of vituperative assaults on his professional competence that Pattinson is forced to endure pretty much any time a movie comes out with him in it. See, for example, The Playlist's review of Remember Me ('Pattinson has mastered an American accent, but he should focus on actually acting. Squinting does not count'), or Slash Film's review of Twilight ('Pattinson spends most of the movie with a look on his face that's a cross between Zoolander's “blue steel” and a person trying to stave off a diarrhoeal attack').
1. Cronenberg's new leading man
The seeming improbability of the union was emphasised by the wider reaction when news first came through, just over a month ago, that Pattinson would be stepping in for Colin Farrell as leading man in Cosmopolis, based on the 2003 novel of the same name by Don DeLillo, and the latest venture behind the camera for Cronenberg. The director's disciples were aghast at the development, spitting nails and feathers alike that their filmmaking deity would sully himself by associating with a guy best known for making adolescent girls feel a bit funny in the tummy.
This spew of vitriol was not matched by an equivalent stream from the worshippers of R-Patz, although there would surely have been no little bemusement elicited from any prompted to explore the back catalogue of the man their heartthrob of choice would be acting for. Forget about feeling a bit funny in the tummy, a Cronenberg movie is more likely to have venereal parasites slithering around down there (Shivers), or perhaps the opening of a vagina-like slit into which objects can be inserted (Videodrome).
So what then does Cronenberg hope to achieve by selecting as his latest leading man a pasty-skinned Brit whose innate charisma has been unfavourably compared with that of a squashed canapé? In turn, what does Pattinson seek to gain by enlisting for a tour of duty with a director whose previous protagonists have included murderers, lunatics and a woman with a mutant penis growing from her armpit (Rabid)?
And what are the worldwide network of Patt-olytes, united in their adoration of self-denying vampire Edward Cullen, going to make of their dreamboat in a role which, if it adheres to DeLillo's source book, will see him repeatedly cheating on his wife, shooting a man dead in cold blood, and delivering the line “I want to bottle-f**k you slowly with my sunglasses on”?
2. Cosmopolis cast takes shape
July 2009 was when it was announced that David Cronenberg would be handling a big screen version of Cosmopolis, first published in 2003 and one of the slender, slightly more reader-friendly volumes Don DeLillo has produced since his 1997 epic, Underworld. Having already 'filmed the unfilmable' in 1991, when he presided over a version of William Burroughs' Naked Lunch which proved divisive as far as fans of that book were concerned, Cronenberg was clearly not a man to be intimidated by the challenge of redeeming DeLillo in the eyes of Hollywood.
That the novelist should require redeeming was certainly not as the result of any questioning of his artistic powers – the septuagenarian can count upon more supporters than most should there ever be some kind of ballot to determine the identity of America's greatest living author. It was instead more down to an attitude exuded by the motion picture industry, the sense that it was unsure how best to wrangle DeLillo's often labyrinthine writings into vehicles with broad enough appeal to turn a profit, yet not so diluted as to sacrifice the essence of what made them worthwhile in the first place.
Cronenberg tasked himself with the first step in the process of converting DeLillo's prose into celluloid magic, as he adapted the latter's book into screenplay form and thereby ensured that Cosmopolis would be his first self-scripted outing since his 1999 career nadir, eXistenZ. And despite the director already being committed to A Dangerous Method, there was still significant progress on the Cosmopolis front within twelve months of the original announcement of Cronenberg's involvement, as a teaser poster was released, a shooting start date of March 2011 was set, and Colin Farrell and Marion Cotillard were named as the two leads.
Both of those casting choices appeared astute. If not quite having crashed out where the cocaine superhighway meets the shit-choice-of-roles roundabout, then Colin Farrell had certainly been doing some very reckless manoeuvring near both for several of the last few years, only for it to be generally agreed that In Bruges - and the Best Actor Golden Globe which his turn in that movie earned him – had set him firmly back on the right track.
Cotillard, meanwhile, had already secured an Oscar the year before her prospective co-star had got his gilded bauble, for La Vie en Rose, and since then she had made hay in the Hollywood sun, playing prominent roles in Michael Mann's Public Enemies, deluxe screen musical Nine, and the then-upcoming Inception. So, good actors both, and seemingly decent fits too for their proposed roles – he as Manhattan billionaire Eric Packer; she as Packer's wife, Elise Schifrin.
3. Exit Colin Farrell...
If all seemed in its right place for a spring 2011 shoot which will reportedly visit both New York (where Cosmopolis is set) and Cronenberg's home city of Toronto, then that veneer of order was fatally cracked within the first few days of this year. That was when Farrell felt an artistic calling far stronger than the one exerted by David and Don, as he bailed from Cosmopolis in favour of playing the lead in a remake of Total Recall for Columbia Pictures and director Len Wiseman (director of Underworld, a film very far removed from DeLillo's book of the same name).
Cronenberg could easily have been forgiven for grinding his teeth in frustration at this development, though he surely too must have been tempted to raise a wry smile. For not only had he himself spent an ultimately fruitless year in the mid-80s tinkering with the first incarnation of Total Recall for the late Dino DeLaurentiis (“I wanted it to work out so badly that I pretended it could” rued the director years later), but he had also gone through the nth-hour withdrawal of a key actor on A Dangerous Method, with that actor also having departed to partake in a bigger-budget production of seeming intellectual inferiority.
The frantically defenestrating actor back then was Christoph Waltz, who in the words of Cronenberg “copped out basically to do a Hollywood movie”. And it is hard to argue with that withering assessment when a performer departs an independent production based on a play about founding fathers of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, in favour of playing a circus trainer in a starry, lavishly-budgeted coming of age tale, directed by Francis 'I Am Legend' Lawrence.
But if the director had been miffed about Waltz's dumping of Freud for fluff, in the shape of Lawrence's Water for Elephants, then it was the Austrian Oscar-winner's young co-star in that latter movie to whom Cronenberg would immediately turn now that he faced a casting crisis on Cosmopolis – that co-star being none other than one Robert Pattinson.
4. ...pursued by Marion Cotillard
“I said yes as soon as he called,” said Pattinson to MTV when asked about his sudden drafting into the Cosmopolis actors company. Excited as he may have been though, he had joined a company that was, in truth, now in a state of flux, as Cotillard soon exited too (rumour has it in favour of playing a role in The Dark Knight Rises).
Keira Knightley, who plays Sabina Spielrein in A Dangerous Method and of whom Cronenberg has said “she's as good as anyone I've worked with” (he's also said “she's a heavy dude” but perhaps best not to dwell on that), was touted as a swift replacement. And at 25 she undoubtedly appeared a better age match for the boyish Pattinson than the 34-year-old Cotillard. Plus she is probably the one contemporary British screen star whose acting ability has been as regularly derided as that of Captain Jawline.
A match made in tabloid heaven, then? Could the gossip columnists begin sharpening their sharpest pencils in anticipation of the bitchy speculation they were going to get to write about Kristen Stewart getting her Incredible Hulk on in jealousy of Knightley and Pattinson's on-set bonding over their equally crappy notices?
Nope! Despite many outlets reporting Keira's casting as a done deal, her representatives last week confirmed that she was not involved, and the role of Elise remains unclaimed – at least as far as those outside the Cosmopolis camp are aware.
Amidst the Knightley hoo-ha, one genuinely encouraging bit of casting threatened to go almost unnoticed, with Paul Giamatti, fresh from soaking up the plaudits for his role in Sundance hit Win Win (including those issuing forth from our very own Kimberly Gadette), joining the production. The American Splendor star has revealed that his role will see him stalking Pattinson's Packer, meaning that he will almost certainly be playing the vengeful contradiction that is Benno Levin.
And, having teasingly invoked his name, it is with Benno whom we will leave things for today. But be sure to tune in tomorrow for the concluding part of our Cosmopolis movie preview.
Source
Click here for part2
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Most Romantic Movies Ever..This Millenium!
Next Movie.com put together a list of the most romantic movies ever and no surprise Twilight made the list. Twilight came in at #18.Like you haven’t heard of this one. The global phenomenon that keeps on giving, “Twilight” was the film that launched Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart into the stratosphere as the hottest on-screen (and off?) couple to come along in quite some time. As the resident high school vampire Edward, Pattinson broods and poses his way through class, attracting the attention of Bella (Stewart), a shy teen who quickly takes a liking to the pale-skinned looker. Together, the two embark on a passionate (albeit chaste) romance. Edward doesn’t have blood running through his veins; Lucky for us, the same can’t be said of this hormonally-charged film.
Head over to Next Movie.com to see their complete list!
Mackenzie Loves Valentines’ Day!
This is so cute. Here is what NessieMackenzie is reporting!
Breaking Dawn actor, Ben Jeras tweeted:
“Between Taylor’s Birthday cake, the Rosemary- Blueberry Creme Gelato from the ice cream truck outside & my valentine from Mackenzie Foy, today was a GREAT Day!”
It seems like Valentines Day started a little bit earlier for the Breaking Dawn cast.
As some actors are leaving Baton Rouge today, our little Mackenzie decided to make sometime special for them: She gave the whole cast Valentines cards. How cute is that?!
Breaking Dawn actor, Ben Jeras tweeted:
“Between Taylor’s Birthday cake, the Rosemary- Blueberry Creme Gelato from the ice cream truck outside & my valentine from Mackenzie Foy, today was a GREAT Day!”
It seems like Valentines Day started a little bit earlier for the Breaking Dawn cast.
As some actors are leaving Baton Rouge today, our little Mackenzie decided to make sometime special for them: She gave the whole cast Valentines cards. How cute is that?!
Twilight Wins MTV ’ s Love Triangle Poll
MTV ’ s Hollywood Crush pitted several YA series against each other in the category of Best Love
Triangle. Here’ s how MTV described Twilight: “ Edward/Bella/Jacob “ The Twilight Saga ” by Stephenie Meyer Perhaps the most famous (infamous?) YA love triangle of all, Jacob never really stood a
chance (even with those abs) against Edward ’ s sparkling (hee hee!) personality. Bella only had eyes for one vampire and made the ultimate sacrifice to be with him forever.
But, of course, Stephenie couldn’ t leave Jacob all alone for eternity, so he imprinted on Bella’ s daughter. Yep, we ’ re still scratching our heads too.” Despite tough competition from series by Cassandra Clare, Suzanne Collins, and others
Twilight won.
Triangle. Here’ s how MTV described Twilight: “ Edward/Bella/Jacob “ The Twilight Saga ” by Stephenie Meyer Perhaps the most famous (infamous?) YA love triangle of all, Jacob never really stood a
chance (even with those abs) against Edward ’ s sparkling (hee hee!) personality. Bella only had eyes for one vampire and made the ultimate sacrifice to be with him forever.
But, of course, Stephenie couldn’ t leave Jacob all alone for eternity, so he imprinted on Bella’ s daughter. Yep, we ’ re still scratching our heads too.” Despite tough competition from series by Cassandra Clare, Suzanne Collins, and others
Twilight won.
Summit sends 'Twilight' fans to an isle for Valentine's Day
To fit with the theme of the day, Summit Entertainment has released a brand new photo
from the upcoming 'Twilight' sequel, 'The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1.' The photo shows Isle Esme, the place where Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and Edward
Cullen (Robert Pattinson) celebrate their marriage with a little honeymoon fun. To go along with the image, Summit tweeted, " Happy Valentine's Day from Isle Esme! " From the look of things, Valentine's Day on the isle is pretty tame, but that's probably
because some not-so-PG things are happening just out of shot. Directed by Bill Condon, (Dreamgirls) 'The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1' is set to
hit theatres on November 18, 2011.
from the upcoming 'Twilight' sequel, 'The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1.' The photo shows Isle Esme, the place where Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and Edward
Cullen (Robert Pattinson) celebrate their marriage with a little honeymoon fun. To go along with the image, Summit tweeted, " Happy Valentine's Day from Isle Esme! " From the look of things, Valentine's Day on the isle is pretty tame, but that's probably
because some not-so-PG things are happening just out of shot. Directed by Bill Condon, (Dreamgirls) 'The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1' is set to
hit theatres on November 18, 2011.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Muse wins Best Rock Album! at Grammys
Muse has been linked to the Twilight novels since back in 2005 when they were on
Stephenie Meyer ’ s playlists. They are also the only band to be on all three movie soundtracks, and we can only hope they ’ ll be on Breaking Dawn 1 and 2! The band has won for best rock album for '. The Resistance'.
The Twilight musicians were out in force last night for the Grammy Awards. Here are some highlights.
Paramore at Grammy Rehearsals
Florence Welch at Gucci and Rocnation Pre-GRAMMY Brunch
Water for Elephants Director Francis Lawrence Wins at the Grammys
Muse wins Best Rock Album!
Stephenie Meyer ’ s playlists. They are also the only band to be on all three movie soundtracks, and we can only hope they ’ ll be on Breaking Dawn 1 and 2! The band has won for best rock album for '. The Resistance'.
The Twilight musicians were out in force last night for the Grammy Awards. Here are some highlights.
Paramore at Grammy Rehearsals
Florence Welch at Gucci and Rocnation Pre-GRAMMY Brunch
Water for Elephants Director Francis Lawrence Wins at the Grammys
Muse wins Best Rock Album!
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Blast From Past:Robert Pattinson ‘Vanity Fair’ Interview
The Vanity Fair profile of RPatz, Twilight’s Hot Gleaming is a great read that gives fans a deep insight into the mind of Rob Pattinson. The interview and profile by Evgenia Peretz is a must read for all Twilight and Robert Pattinson fans.
Not since Titanic unleashed Leo-mania has an actor sparked the overnight adulation that greeted Robert Pattinson’s 2008 debut as Edward Cullen in Twilight. As the vampire saga’s next installment arrives, the author explores the frenzy, isolation, and sheer embarrassment of Pattinson’s past year, his instant connection with co-star Kristen Stewart, and the life he wants when this $10 million gig is over.
T
ime was, girls were in short supply at Comic-Con, San Diego’s annual comic-book/science-fiction/fantasy conference. Now they’re packed into Hall H (capacity 6,500), waiting super-patiently through all the dork stuff—the endless Tron Legacy preview and a panel where all the geeks in the audience got worked up about some weird, tricked-out, like, car. Then The Final Destination, in which a bunch of people get impaled, decapitated, and churned up by escalators and cars. Um, that’s mature. Now Astro Boy is zipping around the screen, chirping, “I’ve got machine guns … in my butt?” The girls are so not LOL. After all, they’ve been lined up since five this morning to catch a glimpse of Robert Pattinson, otherwise known as “The Pattz” or “Edward Cullen,” the really hot vampire he played in Twilight, and by now the super-cute outfits they picked out for him—short-shorts and Twilight T-shirts—have gotten sweaty, and their makeup needs to be re-applied.
At last, the moderator’s voice reverberates dramatically throughout the darkened hall, “And now … ” The shrieking begins—deafening, glass-breaking, amusing for about three seconds, until it becomes excruciating. The moderator continues with a joke: “What would you do if I said, ‘That’s it. Thanks for coming’?” Some of the guys, hostile to this new Comic-Con element, roar in approval, “Yeah!”
The moderator relents, however, and introduces the cast members of New Moon—the second installment in the Twilight saga, opening this month—as they take the stage to increasingly loud rounds of applause: Ashley Greene (Edward’s vampire sister, Alice), Kristen Stewart (Bella, Edward’s human girlfriend), and Taylor Lautner (Jacob, Bella’s hunky friend who’s sometimes a werewolf). “I think we have one more backstage … ” he says at last.
Pattinson, in jeans and a well-worn flannel shirt over a T-shirt, ambles onstage with a pleasant but befuddled smile and some friendly waving. The girls are no longer just shrieking. They are hyperventilating, tittering deliriously, grabbing one another by the arms so that they don’t pass out. “Omigod, omigod, Oh my God!!!!!”
Sitting on the panel, the rumpled, unshaven idol starts looking a little ill at ease. He seems to be in a fidget-off with Kristen Stewart, with whom everyone believes he is having a tortured offscreen romance. She’s hugging her knee, pulling at strands of her new, black, rock ‘n’ roll shag. He’s rubbing his neck, moving his malleable hair from left to right, and tugging at his eyebrows. But his every odd tic, his every self-effacing, British, fumbling answer to the questions thrown his way, is merely a new reason to be charmed.
Q: I love your music. Would you consider doing any more open-mike nights?
Pattinson: “Uh, um, yeah, I mean, I would. I’m just too, I’m kind of, uh, a pussy, I guess.”
Aaaahhh!
Not since Leo, circa Titanic, has a young actor been so aggressively beloved by 13-year-old girls worldwide. But rather than working his way through supermodels, Pattinson, who’s been living out of three suitcases for the past year, has been feeling overwhelmed, self-conscious, and guilty. “I’m trying not to drown,” he says in his hotel room at the San Diego Hard Rock Hotel, which is littered today with beer bottles, old scrambled eggs, a half-eaten Twix bar, and a dirty pair of jeans on the living-room floor. And he notices his unmade bed. “Oh, God. Sorry about that.”
It’s early August, and though he’s been in New York filming Remember Me, a romantic melodrama in which he plays a privileged N.Y.U. student coping with a family tragedy, he hasn’t really seen any of New York, he explains. His social life has been limited to the bland Waldorf Towers, in Midtown, and to the two people staying with him in his suite: his sister Lizzy, who’s been sleeping on the foldout sofa, and his best friend, actor Tom Sturridge, who’s got the cot. He has other friends, but they’re kind of broke, and Pattinson is too self-conscious to fly them in—“Then you feel like a dick.” He’s sure he’s driving people crazy by constantly talking about how he can’t leave his hotel room. And he sees his inability to relish his fans’ reverence as his own shortcoming. “I guess I’m not the type of guy cut out to do a franchise,” he says. “I’m not much of a crowd person.”
What makes the lavish attention more awkward is that he believes he hasn’t done anything to deserve it—or any praise at all, for that matter. He usually doesn’t feel like talking to anyone, but silence makes him so uncomfortable that he ends up filling the air with “a load of rubbish” or just laughing nervously. He is often apologizing—for being boring, for the “douchey” terrace that’s attached to his hotel room, for telling you a story you might have read somewhere else already. When talking about seminal moments in his life, the main emotion he recalls is embarrassment. He’ll dismiss his work in any way he can. When roles have been difficult, he’ll say, “I had no idea what I was doing.” When roles have been easy, he says he didn’t have to do anything. Despite the fact that he is an exquisite beauty—with perfectly formed red, red lips and a face that might have been dreamed by the Romantic poets—he thinks he resembles “a cartoon character.” One of his legs is longer than the other, which makes him look, he assures you, “like an idiot.”
“I’m unbearably self-conscious about stuff,” he admits. To the point where, while filming scenes before the army of New York paparazzi that has been following him around, he is terrified that his “ass crack is showing.”
And the new Leo, it turns out, is also a nerd. He is never without a book in his hand, say his colleagues, or a piece of music on his mind, or a movie he wants to share. He’s so obsessed about delivering a performance he feels happy with that he is constantly watching the dailies, says Remember Me director Allen Coulter. “He’s religious about it.”
“There’s every reason for a young actor to phone it in on a franchise where the first movie has done incredibly well,” says New Moon director Chris Weitz. “But he and Kristen take it really, really seriously and don’t want to phone it in. They want to find some way to make these characters believable, credible to themselves and to the audience.”
None of this would have happened to Pattinson had it not been for Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga, the young-adult blockbuster, the four books of which have sold 70 million copies and been translated into 45 languages. In case you’ve been living in a remote forest, the series tells the story of Bella Swan, a shy newcomer to the town of Forks, Washington, who falls in love with Edward Cullen, a vampire since 1918, when he was bitten, who will be 17 years old for eternity. Though they are hopelessly in love, if they were to really fool around, Edward would lose control and bite her, turning Bella into a vampire as well—all of which puts the two in a permanent state of unquenchable lust, not to mention abstinence. This doubtless plays well with parents and bluenoses, like the author’s fellow Mormons. In fact, the whole setup could be seen as a metaphor for hanging on to your virginity.
Still, no other writer in recent memory has quite tapped into female adolescent yearning and girlhood fantasies about being desired. Edward is the perfect hero: charming, cultured, dangerous, and “the most beautiful creature who has ever been born.” Girls fall so hard for him that even at Meyer’s readings—well before any Twilight movie had been made—they shrieked upon hearing the author simply utter his name: “That was the first night I dreamed of Edward Cullen.”
Aaaaah!
U
nlike Edward’s past, which is full of magic and mystery, Pattinson’s, the actor insists, was so unremarkable that he can barely remember a thing. He grew up in Barnes, in southwest London. His father had a car-importing business; his mother worked at a modeling agency. They weren’t stage parents, but they’ve since become way too into the minutiae of his fame, he says. His mother will frequently call to weigh in on pictures of him in the media: “‘I like that new shirt you’re wearing!’ ‘Uh, thanks.’” They couldn’t help but notice they had a good-looking kid on their hands, and briefly got him into modeling. “I was such a terrible model,” he says. “I was really tall but still looked like a six-year-old.”
If there was a creative streak in his family it was for music. Sister Lizzy, a singer, got a recording contract at age 17. Pattinson took up piano as a young boy and started playing guitar at age 15. He fell in love with the music of James Brown, Wilson Pickett, and Van Morrison. But he wasn’t one of those kids always performing for family members and visitors. “I think I liked being by myself quite a bit,” he says. He attended an all-boys school until age 12 and pretty much didn’t speak to any girls until he entered the exclusive (and expensive) Harrodian School, for high school. As his father pointed out, the really cute girls were going to this little local drama club called the Barnes Theatre Club.
It sparked in Pattinson some genuine excitement for acting, particularly when he got to play Alec—“who’s just a vile bastard,” he says—in a theatrical adaptation of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. The role was the first in a line of out-there characters—or “weirdos,” as Pattinson would say—that the actor has made something of a specialty. When you play a weirdo, he explains, “you can always have an excuse.…He’s a weirdo!” The play also got Pattinson an agent and landed him the role of Reese Witherspoon’s son in Mira Nair’s adaptation of Vanity Fair.
“[Tom Sturridge] and I … we had scenes right next to each other and it was both our first jobs.… We went to the screening, and we thought the whole thing was such a joke anyway, because we had no idea what we were doing. We were, like, ‘acting’ or whatever—we had no idea—and we watched [Tom’s] scene and were like, ‘Yeah, that’s pretty good, that’s all right.’” When it came to Pattinson’s scene, it was no longer there. “I’m sitting there going, ‘Ummm … really?’ No one had told me that I had been cut out.”
As Pattinson tells it, the casting director felt so guilty that she hadn’t informed him that she brought him in for another movie she was casting, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He met with director Mike Newell for 30 minutes and for no good reason, Pattinson says now, he was completely confident and went around telling everyone that he had gotten the part of Cedric Diggory, the golden boy of Hogwarts—which it turns out he had. With a tidy sum of money from Harry Potter, Pattinson eventually moved out of his parents’ house and was cast as a weirdo in a serious play, The Woman Before, in London’s West End. Forsaking college, he was now officially pursuing a career as an actor.
Unfortunately, he was replaced before opening night. “I thought I was doing something interesting, and I ended up getting fired for it,” Pattinson recalls with a sigh. “I think I just got confused, doing random mannerisms, as if that made an interesting performance. [I thought], It’s cool if you go like this,” he says, suddenly contorting his body into a nonsensical pose. Pattinson went through a period of denial after his failure. “I was going to all these auditions and telling everyone how I got fired because I stood up for my principles, and making up all this bullshit.… I kind of went nuts for a while.” He couldn’t land another job, stopped talking to his agent, and threw in the towel, opting to take his music seriously, as all of his friends were now doing. He began performing with a guitar in bars, either solo or with a couple of friends. It was a scene, he recalls a little ruefully, in which “no one gave a shit when you got up onstage.”
Y
et as soon as he decided to put acting behind him, another role came his way and changed his mind again: a BBC thriller called The Haunted Airman, in which Pattinson got to be in a wheelchair and act like, yes, “a weirdo. I just changed my whole opinion about everything.” He then played two more weirdos back-to-back—first, eccentric Surrealist painter Salvador Dalí in the rather arch Little Ashes, about the romance between Dalí and poet Federico García Lorca; next, in a winning little comedy called How to Be, about a direction-less, spastic musician so in need of assistance that he pays a self-help guru to move in with him. He was starting to take his eccentric characters a little more seriously in both cases, feeling his way, as he had no real dramatic training.
How to Be director Oliver Irving recalls that, in the casting of the film, Rob “had a uniqueness and unpretentiousness. A lot of people who had come from drama school … were trying to fit into a kind of dramatic mold. He was a lot more relaxed. Just kind of came and was willing to make a mistake and laugh at himself.” In one scene, in which his character is enraged at his parents and storms outside to kick trees and lampposts, Irving recalls, “he’d make his eyes water and get himself all worked up … slapping himself and doing everything he possibly could to make him feel ill,” while passersby wondered what the hell was the matter with this guy.
Neither film exactly catapulted Pattinson to stardom. In 2007 he learned that something called Twilight was being cast in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and London, and he made a tape with one of his apartment-mates to send to the casting directors. “It looked so ridiculous I didn’t even send it,” says Pattinson, who forgot all about it and returned to his music.
M
eanwhile, back in Hollywood, the search for Edward wasn’t going so well. Bella was easy—Stewart was at the top of the list and immediately accepted the role. But after auditioning thousands of actors for Edward, director Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen) still couldn’t find the one who met the right criteria: some work experience, otherworldly beauty, and enough depth to make it believable that this kid had been alive since 1901. “Tapes came in from all over, and a lot of guys looked really cute and handsome, but they almost looked like the dudes in my high school,” says Hardwicke. An executive at the studio, Summit Entertainment president of worldwide production Erik Feig, recalls saying to a colleague before going to lunch one day, “‘I know we’ve looked. I just feel there are a couple of rocks that we haven’t checked under.’ I said, ‘There have to be British actors that we don’t know about that are this guy, who can do a great American accent.’ I said, ‘Do me a favor. Go to IMDb and look at every young actor, from age 15 to 25, who was in Harry Potter or anything, even a tiny role, print out their headshots.’ I came back from lunch. She had all these pictures, and she said, as we were going through the pictures, ‘What about this guy?’ And I saw a picture of Cedric Diggory [the character Pattinson played in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire]. I said, ‘He’s great!’ … And the look that jumped out to me at that point, and I know it’s a silly adjective to use, he was Byronic.”
Hardwicke watched Pattinson’s few scenes in Harry Potter over and over and wasn’t entirely convinced. “I’m like, Maybe he could pull it off—who knows?” She called Pattinson’s agent, Stephanie Ritz, to arrange to see him in person. Ritz agreed to fly him out on his own dime and to have him sleep on her couch.
As for Pattinson, he had no idea what he was getting into. He had never read Twilight, and having been “getting drunk for a year,” he felt like a blob and dreaded having to take his shirt off, which the audition required of him. Given his sense that he had nothing to lose, Pattinson went into the audition, he says, “a little more brazen than I would have been in a normal audition.” Recalling one of the scenes he did with Stewart, on Hardwicke’s bed, in which he and Stewart have a passionate but aborted kiss, he says, “I was still in the mode thinking, I’ve got to make this really, really serious. This is not just a sexy thing.… I was slamming my head against the wall and kind of going nuts.” He was sure he had made a complete ass of himself. “I remember calling my parents [afterward] and saying, ‘That’s it. I’m not doing this anymore.’ And then hearing, ‘O.K., fine,’ which was not the answer I wanted to hear at all.”
H
e might not have felt it, but in those short minutes with Stewart, something had clicked. “When Kris did the scenes with the other three guys, it wasn’t happening,” recalls Hardwicke, who was filming on her digital camera. “But when we did it with Rob and Kristen, it wasn’t perfect, it was still raw and unformed … but you could see that they had this nervous attraction and this pull towards each other. You could see the chemistry, and Kristen was adamant, [saying], ‘I think he is by far the best.’”
But this being Hollywood, there were those at the studio who still had their doubts about Pattinson. “They called me up and they literally said, ‘Catherine, do you think you can make this guy look good?’” Hardwicke recalls. “So I said, ‘Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to get his hair back to a different color, do a different style. He would work with a trainer from now on. My cinematographer is great with lighting. He will study the cheekbones, and I promise you, we’ll make the guy look good.’”
Fans of Twilight—Twilighters, they’re called—were beside themselves with disappointment when they saw pictures of the future Edward Cullen, with unkempt hair and bushy eyebrows, dodging out of bars with his strange friends. “Disgusting!,” “Repulsive!” they pronounced on the Web sites. According to Hardwicke, Pattinson was rattled by the criticism. “I said to Rob, ‘Really, you shouldn’t be reading that stuff. Don’t even read it!’ He goes, ‘Well, my mother forwarded this one to me.’ The ‘Repulsive’ one.”
But the insults made Pattinson determined to bring something exceptional and surprising to Edward. He moved to Portland three months before the shoot and didn’t talk to anyone. Sometimes he wore yellow-brown contact lenses he had been given. “I was like, Yeah, I’m really going to get into it. And I went into this place to get a coffee, and the first thing this girl at the counter says is ‘Nice contacts,’ and I was just like, O.K., I’m not really feeling what I need to feel.”
The shoot got under way and had an impulsive, almost frenetic energy. Pattinson brought in books, films, and pieces of music that might spark some understanding of this character, who is 108 years old, has never found love, doesn’t want to harm people, and is therefore at war with his natural instincts. He and Stewart had endless conversations about what Bella and Edward meant to each other, to the point where they internalized those dynamics.
Shooting could get downright giddy. In the vampire fight scenes, for example, Pattinson would gamely sink his teeth into the grilled chicken or melted cheese that co-star Cam Gigandet had hidden under his collar, and sometimes he had to be restrained from re-using the food once it had fallen onto the floor and was covered in dirt or glass shards.
In the meantime, evenings were spent in Pattinson’s hotel room, with Pattinson “always drunk,” says Hardwicke, and playing the guitar while Stewart and the other cast members watched and sang along. Something personally intense was developing between the young co-stars. “What Rob and Kristen had is a multitude of feelings for each other. Complex feelings for each other,” says Hardwicke. “It was what we needed. Complex, intense fascination.” It’s very likely that their offscreen relationship mirrored their on-screen one: an intense attraction that couldn’t be realized. During the shoot, Stewart was with her long-term boyfriend, actor Michael Angarano.
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he movie, which opened in November 2008, hit all the blockbuster marks, earning $70 million in its first three days. (It has since grossed almost $400 million.) Pattinson signed on to do the rest of the franchise for a reported $10 million. The movie cleaned up at the MTV Movie Awards, where Pattinson was mobbed by fans. The once “repulsive” barfly was now the world’s biggest dreamboat.
By the time New Moon, the second in the series, began filming, the frenzy had multiplied. Director Chris Weitz recalls the shoot in Montepulciano, Italy. “Every teenager who could get there from any part of Europe was there, and it was like The Birds,” he says. “You turn the corner and there would be one, two, three, four hundred teenagers standing there. It got to the point where the stand-ins were signing autographs.”
Pattinson was protected from the fans by a throng of beefy Italian bodyguards who formed a perimeter around him—theoretically, at least. At one point, during the middle of shooting in the main square, someone pushed a young woman in a wheelchair through the barrier, right up to Pattinson. The bodyguards didn’t know what to do—tackling a handicapped woman just didn’t seem attractive. Everyone stood there gaping in silence. “It was almost a medieval moment,” says Weitz. “There were a thousand extras and about a thousand onlookers, and it was as though someone had [been] wheeled up to be healed by the King of France.” Thinking little of it, Pattinson spoke with the girl for a few moments and had his picture taken with her. Suddenly the crowd burst into applause.
“Everyone was like, ‘Ahhhh!’” recalls Pattinson, afraid that he might have appeared grandiose. “It was one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life.” Though Pattinson was and remains gracious to his fans, he has no choice but to spend most of his time in his hotel room. “He was forced into becoming a hermit,” says Weitz. “When he can’t go out to buy a soda, it’s kind of a drag.” Kristen Stewart says that the frenzy she’s witnessed over Pattinson “would terrify me. I would probably resent the hell out of it and would probably do something crazy.”
The outside world became even more intrusive when he moved to New York this spring to start shooting Remember Me, which happened to feature another beautiful co-star, Emilie de Ravin, with whom he became friendly.
he’s a cheat!, his messy love life!, rang out the headlines on the covers of the tabloids all summer, which his fans gleefully asked him to sign. The story line was that Pattinson had “gotten cozy” with de Ravin, and that Stewart, who’d been stringing The Pattz along for all this time, was suddenly crazed with jealousy (in addition to being pregnant with his baby). In the run-up to Comic-Con, where Pattinson and Stewart would be re-united after months apart, Stewart was said to be busily picking out “sexy sundresses” and other great outfits so that “he won’t be able to take his eyes off of her.” (As it happened, she wore jeans, red sneakers, and a Minor Threat T-shirt the whole time.)
“It doesn’t make any difference what you say,” Pattinson says about the tabloids. “I’ve literally been across the country [from Kristen], and it’s like ‘Oh, they were on secret dates!’ It’s like ‘Where? I can’t get out of my hotel room!’” Still, it’s hard to take it in stride when his parents tend to believe the tabloids more than they do him, and when random airport greeters ask him, with heartfelt sympathy, if he really feels up for being a father. (As for Stewart, she sounds significantly more fed up about the whole thing: “It’s so retarded. We’re characters in this comic book.”)
For the record, Pattinson insists that he and Stewart are really just “good friends” and that he deeply admires her. “I think she’s the best young actress around,” he says. (Given their ages, it’s very possible that their relationship status will have changed, and changed again, by the time you’re reading this.) Whatever the case, she’s clearly a kindred, low-key spirit. “She’s influenced how I’ve done all the Twilight stuff. It’s quite nice to have someone who is genuinely indifferent to the whole spectacle of everything.” Indeed, as they pose for picture after picture at Comic-Con, Stewart couldn’t look any cooler about the whole thing. She and Pattinson have mastered the not-touching thing. She even throws the crowd a few curveballs by over-flirting with muscle-bound Taylor Lautner.
With the third Twilight installment, Eclipse, now filming and the fourth to be filmed in the not so distant future—there’s only so long Pattinson, who is 23, can look 17—he is beginning to imagine life after the franchise. The idea of a huge-budget action movie—de rigueur for young actors today—holds zero appeal for him. “There’s no point. I mean, I don’t have any material desires at all. I wear the same clothes every single day. I don’t buy anything. And I don’t go out anymore, either!” All that he really wants is a home, so he can get a dog, since the West Highland white terrier he had since the age of five and “who was like my sister” died last Christmas. Instead, he’s choosing to do small-budget, slightly weirdo material: a Western directed by Madeleine Stowe, in which he will speak almost exclusively in Comanche, and an adaptation of a Guy de Maupassant novel, Bel-Ami, in which he plays a guy who “thinks like an animal” and “just rips off and screws over all of his friends.”
E
ven though Pattinson now has a Barbie action figure (one he thinks looks like Zac Efron), he’s starting to see the faintest hint that his teen-idol days may be on the wane—and that someone else might soon replace him. Since Twilight, when he played Gentle Indian Friend, 17-year-old Taylor Lautner has become markedly more carved and badass-looking. That’s because in New Moon he’s both a viable love option for Bella and a werewolf. By the end of Comic-Con, Taylor’s new physique is all that anyone can talk about, and girls are shouting from their seats, “Take off your shirt!” Lautner seems born for this role. With a dazzling-white smile, he delivers polished, borderline-canned lines to roaring applause. “I worked really hard to transform Jacob’s body so I could portray him correctly for you guys. I hope you guys are pleased when you see the results!”
And now Pattinson is hawking his co-star like a desperate agent. “I don’t know where he got it,” he gushes of Lautner’s charm and knack for connecting with the fans. “He’s much better at doing it [than I am].… He’s completely handling it. I’m just freaking out all the time. I’m going to end up hitting people and stuff and looking like an idiot.” Someone else can be Leo. Pattinson will be Hugh Grant.
Source
Not since Titanic unleashed Leo-mania has an actor sparked the overnight adulation that greeted Robert Pattinson’s 2008 debut as Edward Cullen in Twilight. As the vampire saga’s next installment arrives, the author explores the frenzy, isolation, and sheer embarrassment of Pattinson’s past year, his instant connection with co-star Kristen Stewart, and the life he wants when this $10 million gig is over.
T
ime was, girls were in short supply at Comic-Con, San Diego’s annual comic-book/science-fiction/fantasy conference. Now they’re packed into Hall H (capacity 6,500), waiting super-patiently through all the dork stuff—the endless Tron Legacy preview and a panel where all the geeks in the audience got worked up about some weird, tricked-out, like, car. Then The Final Destination, in which a bunch of people get impaled, decapitated, and churned up by escalators and cars. Um, that’s mature. Now Astro Boy is zipping around the screen, chirping, “I’ve got machine guns … in my butt?” The girls are so not LOL. After all, they’ve been lined up since five this morning to catch a glimpse of Robert Pattinson, otherwise known as “The Pattz” or “Edward Cullen,” the really hot vampire he played in Twilight, and by now the super-cute outfits they picked out for him—short-shorts and Twilight T-shirts—have gotten sweaty, and their makeup needs to be re-applied.
At last, the moderator’s voice reverberates dramatically throughout the darkened hall, “And now … ” The shrieking begins—deafening, glass-breaking, amusing for about three seconds, until it becomes excruciating. The moderator continues with a joke: “What would you do if I said, ‘That’s it. Thanks for coming’?” Some of the guys, hostile to this new Comic-Con element, roar in approval, “Yeah!”
The moderator relents, however, and introduces the cast members of New Moon—the second installment in the Twilight saga, opening this month—as they take the stage to increasingly loud rounds of applause: Ashley Greene (Edward’s vampire sister, Alice), Kristen Stewart (Bella, Edward’s human girlfriend), and Taylor Lautner (Jacob, Bella’s hunky friend who’s sometimes a werewolf). “I think we have one more backstage … ” he says at last.
Pattinson, in jeans and a well-worn flannel shirt over a T-shirt, ambles onstage with a pleasant but befuddled smile and some friendly waving. The girls are no longer just shrieking. They are hyperventilating, tittering deliriously, grabbing one another by the arms so that they don’t pass out. “Omigod, omigod, Oh my God!!!!!”
Sitting on the panel, the rumpled, unshaven idol starts looking a little ill at ease. He seems to be in a fidget-off with Kristen Stewart, with whom everyone believes he is having a tortured offscreen romance. She’s hugging her knee, pulling at strands of her new, black, rock ‘n’ roll shag. He’s rubbing his neck, moving his malleable hair from left to right, and tugging at his eyebrows. But his every odd tic, his every self-effacing, British, fumbling answer to the questions thrown his way, is merely a new reason to be charmed.
Q: I love your music. Would you consider doing any more open-mike nights?
Pattinson: “Uh, um, yeah, I mean, I would. I’m just too, I’m kind of, uh, a pussy, I guess.”
Aaaahhh!
Not since Leo, circa Titanic, has a young actor been so aggressively beloved by 13-year-old girls worldwide. But rather than working his way through supermodels, Pattinson, who’s been living out of three suitcases for the past year, has been feeling overwhelmed, self-conscious, and guilty. “I’m trying not to drown,” he says in his hotel room at the San Diego Hard Rock Hotel, which is littered today with beer bottles, old scrambled eggs, a half-eaten Twix bar, and a dirty pair of jeans on the living-room floor. And he notices his unmade bed. “Oh, God. Sorry about that.”
It’s early August, and though he’s been in New York filming Remember Me, a romantic melodrama in which he plays a privileged N.Y.U. student coping with a family tragedy, he hasn’t really seen any of New York, he explains. His social life has been limited to the bland Waldorf Towers, in Midtown, and to the two people staying with him in his suite: his sister Lizzy, who’s been sleeping on the foldout sofa, and his best friend, actor Tom Sturridge, who’s got the cot. He has other friends, but they’re kind of broke, and Pattinson is too self-conscious to fly them in—“Then you feel like a dick.” He’s sure he’s driving people crazy by constantly talking about how he can’t leave his hotel room. And he sees his inability to relish his fans’ reverence as his own shortcoming. “I guess I’m not the type of guy cut out to do a franchise,” he says. “I’m not much of a crowd person.”
What makes the lavish attention more awkward is that he believes he hasn’t done anything to deserve it—or any praise at all, for that matter. He usually doesn’t feel like talking to anyone, but silence makes him so uncomfortable that he ends up filling the air with “a load of rubbish” or just laughing nervously. He is often apologizing—for being boring, for the “douchey” terrace that’s attached to his hotel room, for telling you a story you might have read somewhere else already. When talking about seminal moments in his life, the main emotion he recalls is embarrassment. He’ll dismiss his work in any way he can. When roles have been difficult, he’ll say, “I had no idea what I was doing.” When roles have been easy, he says he didn’t have to do anything. Despite the fact that he is an exquisite beauty—with perfectly formed red, red lips and a face that might have been dreamed by the Romantic poets—he thinks he resembles “a cartoon character.” One of his legs is longer than the other, which makes him look, he assures you, “like an idiot.”
“I’m unbearably self-conscious about stuff,” he admits. To the point where, while filming scenes before the army of New York paparazzi that has been following him around, he is terrified that his “ass crack is showing.”
And the new Leo, it turns out, is also a nerd. He is never without a book in his hand, say his colleagues, or a piece of music on his mind, or a movie he wants to share. He’s so obsessed about delivering a performance he feels happy with that he is constantly watching the dailies, says Remember Me director Allen Coulter. “He’s religious about it.”
“There’s every reason for a young actor to phone it in on a franchise where the first movie has done incredibly well,” says New Moon director Chris Weitz. “But he and Kristen take it really, really seriously and don’t want to phone it in. They want to find some way to make these characters believable, credible to themselves and to the audience.”
None of this would have happened to Pattinson had it not been for Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga, the young-adult blockbuster, the four books of which have sold 70 million copies and been translated into 45 languages. In case you’ve been living in a remote forest, the series tells the story of Bella Swan, a shy newcomer to the town of Forks, Washington, who falls in love with Edward Cullen, a vampire since 1918, when he was bitten, who will be 17 years old for eternity. Though they are hopelessly in love, if they were to really fool around, Edward would lose control and bite her, turning Bella into a vampire as well—all of which puts the two in a permanent state of unquenchable lust, not to mention abstinence. This doubtless plays well with parents and bluenoses, like the author’s fellow Mormons. In fact, the whole setup could be seen as a metaphor for hanging on to your virginity.
Still, no other writer in recent memory has quite tapped into female adolescent yearning and girlhood fantasies about being desired. Edward is the perfect hero: charming, cultured, dangerous, and “the most beautiful creature who has ever been born.” Girls fall so hard for him that even at Meyer’s readings—well before any Twilight movie had been made—they shrieked upon hearing the author simply utter his name: “That was the first night I dreamed of Edward Cullen.”
Aaaaah!
U
nlike Edward’s past, which is full of magic and mystery, Pattinson’s, the actor insists, was so unremarkable that he can barely remember a thing. He grew up in Barnes, in southwest London. His father had a car-importing business; his mother worked at a modeling agency. They weren’t stage parents, but they’ve since become way too into the minutiae of his fame, he says. His mother will frequently call to weigh in on pictures of him in the media: “‘I like that new shirt you’re wearing!’ ‘Uh, thanks.’” They couldn’t help but notice they had a good-looking kid on their hands, and briefly got him into modeling. “I was such a terrible model,” he says. “I was really tall but still looked like a six-year-old.”
If there was a creative streak in his family it was for music. Sister Lizzy, a singer, got a recording contract at age 17. Pattinson took up piano as a young boy and started playing guitar at age 15. He fell in love with the music of James Brown, Wilson Pickett, and Van Morrison. But he wasn’t one of those kids always performing for family members and visitors. “I think I liked being by myself quite a bit,” he says. He attended an all-boys school until age 12 and pretty much didn’t speak to any girls until he entered the exclusive (and expensive) Harrodian School, for high school. As his father pointed out, the really cute girls were going to this little local drama club called the Barnes Theatre Club.
It sparked in Pattinson some genuine excitement for acting, particularly when he got to play Alec—“who’s just a vile bastard,” he says—in a theatrical adaptation of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. The role was the first in a line of out-there characters—or “weirdos,” as Pattinson would say—that the actor has made something of a specialty. When you play a weirdo, he explains, “you can always have an excuse.…He’s a weirdo!” The play also got Pattinson an agent and landed him the role of Reese Witherspoon’s son in Mira Nair’s adaptation of Vanity Fair.
“[Tom Sturridge] and I … we had scenes right next to each other and it was both our first jobs.… We went to the screening, and we thought the whole thing was such a joke anyway, because we had no idea what we were doing. We were, like, ‘acting’ or whatever—we had no idea—and we watched [Tom’s] scene and were like, ‘Yeah, that’s pretty good, that’s all right.’” When it came to Pattinson’s scene, it was no longer there. “I’m sitting there going, ‘Ummm … really?’ No one had told me that I had been cut out.”
As Pattinson tells it, the casting director felt so guilty that she hadn’t informed him that she brought him in for another movie she was casting, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He met with director Mike Newell for 30 minutes and for no good reason, Pattinson says now, he was completely confident and went around telling everyone that he had gotten the part of Cedric Diggory, the golden boy of Hogwarts—which it turns out he had. With a tidy sum of money from Harry Potter, Pattinson eventually moved out of his parents’ house and was cast as a weirdo in a serious play, The Woman Before, in London’s West End. Forsaking college, he was now officially pursuing a career as an actor.
Unfortunately, he was replaced before opening night. “I thought I was doing something interesting, and I ended up getting fired for it,” Pattinson recalls with a sigh. “I think I just got confused, doing random mannerisms, as if that made an interesting performance. [I thought], It’s cool if you go like this,” he says, suddenly contorting his body into a nonsensical pose. Pattinson went through a period of denial after his failure. “I was going to all these auditions and telling everyone how I got fired because I stood up for my principles, and making up all this bullshit.… I kind of went nuts for a while.” He couldn’t land another job, stopped talking to his agent, and threw in the towel, opting to take his music seriously, as all of his friends were now doing. He began performing with a guitar in bars, either solo or with a couple of friends. It was a scene, he recalls a little ruefully, in which “no one gave a shit when you got up onstage.”
Y
et as soon as he decided to put acting behind him, another role came his way and changed his mind again: a BBC thriller called The Haunted Airman, in which Pattinson got to be in a wheelchair and act like, yes, “a weirdo. I just changed my whole opinion about everything.” He then played two more weirdos back-to-back—first, eccentric Surrealist painter Salvador Dalí in the rather arch Little Ashes, about the romance between Dalí and poet Federico García Lorca; next, in a winning little comedy called How to Be, about a direction-less, spastic musician so in need of assistance that he pays a self-help guru to move in with him. He was starting to take his eccentric characters a little more seriously in both cases, feeling his way, as he had no real dramatic training.
How to Be director Oliver Irving recalls that, in the casting of the film, Rob “had a uniqueness and unpretentiousness. A lot of people who had come from drama school … were trying to fit into a kind of dramatic mold. He was a lot more relaxed. Just kind of came and was willing to make a mistake and laugh at himself.” In one scene, in which his character is enraged at his parents and storms outside to kick trees and lampposts, Irving recalls, “he’d make his eyes water and get himself all worked up … slapping himself and doing everything he possibly could to make him feel ill,” while passersby wondered what the hell was the matter with this guy.
Neither film exactly catapulted Pattinson to stardom. In 2007 he learned that something called Twilight was being cast in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and London, and he made a tape with one of his apartment-mates to send to the casting directors. “It looked so ridiculous I didn’t even send it,” says Pattinson, who forgot all about it and returned to his music.
M
eanwhile, back in Hollywood, the search for Edward wasn’t going so well. Bella was easy—Stewart was at the top of the list and immediately accepted the role. But after auditioning thousands of actors for Edward, director Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen) still couldn’t find the one who met the right criteria: some work experience, otherworldly beauty, and enough depth to make it believable that this kid had been alive since 1901. “Tapes came in from all over, and a lot of guys looked really cute and handsome, but they almost looked like the dudes in my high school,” says Hardwicke. An executive at the studio, Summit Entertainment president of worldwide production Erik Feig, recalls saying to a colleague before going to lunch one day, “‘I know we’ve looked. I just feel there are a couple of rocks that we haven’t checked under.’ I said, ‘There have to be British actors that we don’t know about that are this guy, who can do a great American accent.’ I said, ‘Do me a favor. Go to IMDb and look at every young actor, from age 15 to 25, who was in Harry Potter or anything, even a tiny role, print out their headshots.’ I came back from lunch. She had all these pictures, and she said, as we were going through the pictures, ‘What about this guy?’ And I saw a picture of Cedric Diggory [the character Pattinson played in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire]. I said, ‘He’s great!’ … And the look that jumped out to me at that point, and I know it’s a silly adjective to use, he was Byronic.”
Hardwicke watched Pattinson’s few scenes in Harry Potter over and over and wasn’t entirely convinced. “I’m like, Maybe he could pull it off—who knows?” She called Pattinson’s agent, Stephanie Ritz, to arrange to see him in person. Ritz agreed to fly him out on his own dime and to have him sleep on her couch.
As for Pattinson, he had no idea what he was getting into. He had never read Twilight, and having been “getting drunk for a year,” he felt like a blob and dreaded having to take his shirt off, which the audition required of him. Given his sense that he had nothing to lose, Pattinson went into the audition, he says, “a little more brazen than I would have been in a normal audition.” Recalling one of the scenes he did with Stewart, on Hardwicke’s bed, in which he and Stewart have a passionate but aborted kiss, he says, “I was still in the mode thinking, I’ve got to make this really, really serious. This is not just a sexy thing.… I was slamming my head against the wall and kind of going nuts.” He was sure he had made a complete ass of himself. “I remember calling my parents [afterward] and saying, ‘That’s it. I’m not doing this anymore.’ And then hearing, ‘O.K., fine,’ which was not the answer I wanted to hear at all.”
H
e might not have felt it, but in those short minutes with Stewart, something had clicked. “When Kris did the scenes with the other three guys, it wasn’t happening,” recalls Hardwicke, who was filming on her digital camera. “But when we did it with Rob and Kristen, it wasn’t perfect, it was still raw and unformed … but you could see that they had this nervous attraction and this pull towards each other. You could see the chemistry, and Kristen was adamant, [saying], ‘I think he is by far the best.’”
But this being Hollywood, there were those at the studio who still had their doubts about Pattinson. “They called me up and they literally said, ‘Catherine, do you think you can make this guy look good?’” Hardwicke recalls. “So I said, ‘Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to get his hair back to a different color, do a different style. He would work with a trainer from now on. My cinematographer is great with lighting. He will study the cheekbones, and I promise you, we’ll make the guy look good.’”
Fans of Twilight—Twilighters, they’re called—were beside themselves with disappointment when they saw pictures of the future Edward Cullen, with unkempt hair and bushy eyebrows, dodging out of bars with his strange friends. “Disgusting!,” “Repulsive!” they pronounced on the Web sites. According to Hardwicke, Pattinson was rattled by the criticism. “I said to Rob, ‘Really, you shouldn’t be reading that stuff. Don’t even read it!’ He goes, ‘Well, my mother forwarded this one to me.’ The ‘Repulsive’ one.”
But the insults made Pattinson determined to bring something exceptional and surprising to Edward. He moved to Portland three months before the shoot and didn’t talk to anyone. Sometimes he wore yellow-brown contact lenses he had been given. “I was like, Yeah, I’m really going to get into it. And I went into this place to get a coffee, and the first thing this girl at the counter says is ‘Nice contacts,’ and I was just like, O.K., I’m not really feeling what I need to feel.”
The shoot got under way and had an impulsive, almost frenetic energy. Pattinson brought in books, films, and pieces of music that might spark some understanding of this character, who is 108 years old, has never found love, doesn’t want to harm people, and is therefore at war with his natural instincts. He and Stewart had endless conversations about what Bella and Edward meant to each other, to the point where they internalized those dynamics.
Shooting could get downright giddy. In the vampire fight scenes, for example, Pattinson would gamely sink his teeth into the grilled chicken or melted cheese that co-star Cam Gigandet had hidden under his collar, and sometimes he had to be restrained from re-using the food once it had fallen onto the floor and was covered in dirt or glass shards.
In the meantime, evenings were spent in Pattinson’s hotel room, with Pattinson “always drunk,” says Hardwicke, and playing the guitar while Stewart and the other cast members watched and sang along. Something personally intense was developing between the young co-stars. “What Rob and Kristen had is a multitude of feelings for each other. Complex feelings for each other,” says Hardwicke. “It was what we needed. Complex, intense fascination.” It’s very likely that their offscreen relationship mirrored their on-screen one: an intense attraction that couldn’t be realized. During the shoot, Stewart was with her long-term boyfriend, actor Michael Angarano.
T
he movie, which opened in November 2008, hit all the blockbuster marks, earning $70 million in its first three days. (It has since grossed almost $400 million.) Pattinson signed on to do the rest of the franchise for a reported $10 million. The movie cleaned up at the MTV Movie Awards, where Pattinson was mobbed by fans. The once “repulsive” barfly was now the world’s biggest dreamboat.
By the time New Moon, the second in the series, began filming, the frenzy had multiplied. Director Chris Weitz recalls the shoot in Montepulciano, Italy. “Every teenager who could get there from any part of Europe was there, and it was like The Birds,” he says. “You turn the corner and there would be one, two, three, four hundred teenagers standing there. It got to the point where the stand-ins were signing autographs.”
Pattinson was protected from the fans by a throng of beefy Italian bodyguards who formed a perimeter around him—theoretically, at least. At one point, during the middle of shooting in the main square, someone pushed a young woman in a wheelchair through the barrier, right up to Pattinson. The bodyguards didn’t know what to do—tackling a handicapped woman just didn’t seem attractive. Everyone stood there gaping in silence. “It was almost a medieval moment,” says Weitz. “There were a thousand extras and about a thousand onlookers, and it was as though someone had [been] wheeled up to be healed by the King of France.” Thinking little of it, Pattinson spoke with the girl for a few moments and had his picture taken with her. Suddenly the crowd burst into applause.
“Everyone was like, ‘Ahhhh!’” recalls Pattinson, afraid that he might have appeared grandiose. “It was one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life.” Though Pattinson was and remains gracious to his fans, he has no choice but to spend most of his time in his hotel room. “He was forced into becoming a hermit,” says Weitz. “When he can’t go out to buy a soda, it’s kind of a drag.” Kristen Stewart says that the frenzy she’s witnessed over Pattinson “would terrify me. I would probably resent the hell out of it and would probably do something crazy.”
The outside world became even more intrusive when he moved to New York this spring to start shooting Remember Me, which happened to feature another beautiful co-star, Emilie de Ravin, with whom he became friendly.
he’s a cheat!, his messy love life!, rang out the headlines on the covers of the tabloids all summer, which his fans gleefully asked him to sign. The story line was that Pattinson had “gotten cozy” with de Ravin, and that Stewart, who’d been stringing The Pattz along for all this time, was suddenly crazed with jealousy (in addition to being pregnant with his baby). In the run-up to Comic-Con, where Pattinson and Stewart would be re-united after months apart, Stewart was said to be busily picking out “sexy sundresses” and other great outfits so that “he won’t be able to take his eyes off of her.” (As it happened, she wore jeans, red sneakers, and a Minor Threat T-shirt the whole time.)
“It doesn’t make any difference what you say,” Pattinson says about the tabloids. “I’ve literally been across the country [from Kristen], and it’s like ‘Oh, they were on secret dates!’ It’s like ‘Where? I can’t get out of my hotel room!’” Still, it’s hard to take it in stride when his parents tend to believe the tabloids more than they do him, and when random airport greeters ask him, with heartfelt sympathy, if he really feels up for being a father. (As for Stewart, she sounds significantly more fed up about the whole thing: “It’s so retarded. We’re characters in this comic book.”)
For the record, Pattinson insists that he and Stewart are really just “good friends” and that he deeply admires her. “I think she’s the best young actress around,” he says. (Given their ages, it’s very possible that their relationship status will have changed, and changed again, by the time you’re reading this.) Whatever the case, she’s clearly a kindred, low-key spirit. “She’s influenced how I’ve done all the Twilight stuff. It’s quite nice to have someone who is genuinely indifferent to the whole spectacle of everything.” Indeed, as they pose for picture after picture at Comic-Con, Stewart couldn’t look any cooler about the whole thing. She and Pattinson have mastered the not-touching thing. She even throws the crowd a few curveballs by over-flirting with muscle-bound Taylor Lautner.
With the third Twilight installment, Eclipse, now filming and the fourth to be filmed in the not so distant future—there’s only so long Pattinson, who is 23, can look 17—he is beginning to imagine life after the franchise. The idea of a huge-budget action movie—de rigueur for young actors today—holds zero appeal for him. “There’s no point. I mean, I don’t have any material desires at all. I wear the same clothes every single day. I don’t buy anything. And I don’t go out anymore, either!” All that he really wants is a home, so he can get a dog, since the West Highland white terrier he had since the age of five and “who was like my sister” died last Christmas. Instead, he’s choosing to do small-budget, slightly weirdo material: a Western directed by Madeleine Stowe, in which he will speak almost exclusively in Comanche, and an adaptation of a Guy de Maupassant novel, Bel-Ami, in which he plays a guy who “thinks like an animal” and “just rips off and screws over all of his friends.”
E
ven though Pattinson now has a Barbie action figure (one he thinks looks like Zac Efron), he’s starting to see the faintest hint that his teen-idol days may be on the wane—and that someone else might soon replace him. Since Twilight, when he played Gentle Indian Friend, 17-year-old Taylor Lautner has become markedly more carved and badass-looking. That’s because in New Moon he’s both a viable love option for Bella and a werewolf. By the end of Comic-Con, Taylor’s new physique is all that anyone can talk about, and girls are shouting from their seats, “Take off your shirt!” Lautner seems born for this role. With a dazzling-white smile, he delivers polished, borderline-canned lines to roaring applause. “I worked really hard to transform Jacob’s body so I could portray him correctly for you guys. I hope you guys are pleased when you see the results!”
And now Pattinson is hawking his co-star like a desperate agent. “I don’t know where he got it,” he gushes of Lautner’s charm and knack for connecting with the fans. “He’s much better at doing it [than I am].… He’s completely handling it. I’m just freaking out all the time. I’m going to end up hitting people and stuff and looking like an idiot.” Someone else can be Leo. Pattinson will be Hugh Grant.
Source
Kristen Stewart & Robert Pattinson Will Not Attend BAFTAs, But Will Rob Present At The Oscars?
In a bit of sad news today, we’ve gotten confirmation that neither Kristen Stewart nor Robert Pattinson will be attending this year’s BAFTA awards (which airs this Sunday, and which Kristen won the Rising Star award at last year) as guests or presenters. Sad, yes, but not very surprising considering the stars are knee deep in filming for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn currently.
But, on the bright side, rumors are flying today that Robert Pattinson will be a presenter at this year’s Oscars on February 27th. Rumors began when IMDb updated their Oscars page to include Robert as a presenter. Of course, IMDb has been known to be wrong in the past, but let’s cross our fingers and hope this one is true!
What do you think of this news? Are you sad Rob and Kristen won’t be attending the BAFTAs? Do you think it’s plausible that Rob will be a presenter at the Oscars?
via RobPattzNews »
Robert Pattinson News Interviews Paul Darnell, AKA Rob ’ s Stunt Double
The crew over at Robert Pattinson News has a fabulous interview with Paul Darnell
who first worked with Rob on the set of the original Twilight. Paul has now doubled
Rob in several other films. It ’ s a great read that talks about what being a stunt double is all about, and how it is working with Robert Pattinson.
“ How did you react when Robert Pattinson thanked you for his Twilight “ Best Fight” MTV Movie Award? Can you share your experience in filming that scene?
First let me say that Robert Pattinson is an amazingly humble person and a very hard
worker. He works very hard and shows up to every rehearsal. The last battle scene in
Twilight was very intense. Many of the stunts involved hard hits with wires and
crashes which are so much fun to do! Without risking personal injury to Rob, I ended
up doing the majority of stunts in the final battle which won the award. I was at a friend ’ s house and I started getting text messages and phone calls from friends saying “ I think Rob Pattinson just thanked you on national TV ” . I was really stoked and also a little confused by the “ I think” part. Immediately I went online and found a video of Rob ’ s speech where he gave me credit for the award but said the wrong last name. To his credit, someone had misspelled my name on a photo shoot for
LA Magazine and my wrong last name was plastered all over the internet. None the less,
I was so stoked that he would even think of me for a shot out. Actors rarely do that for
stuntmen. Rob is a very considerate individual and true gentleman. When I saw him on
the set of Remember Me he immediately apologized for the mishap.
How has the experience of being Robert Pattinson’s stunt double varied from Twilight to Remember Me to Water for Elephants for you?who first worked with Rob on the set of the original Twilight. Paul has now doubled
Rob in several other films. It ’ s a great read that talks about what being a stunt double is all about, and how it is working with Robert Pattinson.
“ How did you react when Robert Pattinson thanked you for his Twilight “ Best Fight” MTV Movie Award? Can you share your experience in filming that scene?
First let me say that Robert Pattinson is an amazingly humble person and a very hard
worker. He works very hard and shows up to every rehearsal. The last battle scene in
Twilight was very intense. Many of the stunts involved hard hits with wires and
crashes which are so much fun to do! Without risking personal injury to Rob, I ended
up doing the majority of stunts in the final battle which won the award. I was at a friend ’ s house and I started getting text messages and phone calls from friends saying “ I think Rob Pattinson just thanked you on national TV ” . I was really stoked and also a little confused by the “ I think” part. Immediately I went online and found a video of Rob ’ s speech where he gave me credit for the award but said the wrong last name. To his credit, someone had misspelled my name on a photo shoot for
LA Magazine and my wrong last name was plastered all over the internet. None the less,
I was so stoked that he would even think of me for a shot out. Actors rarely do that for
stuntmen. Rob is a very considerate individual and true gentleman. When I saw him on
the set of Remember Me he immediately apologized for the mishap.
It has been amazing to see Rob's fame grow and grow. His fan base is grown so much since the first Twilight and I am very happy for him. He also continues to stay the same humble guy each time I see him.
Can you share any of the experience of last summer’s filming of Water for Elephants?
A terrific book turned into an even greater film with 3 outstanding actors. The three, Reese, Rob and Christoph, worked together amazingly. Rob also did an amazing job learning and performing the fights and working with the animals. Rob has a scene feeding tigers, REAL tigers, that could eat you if they wanted. Rob played it cool and had no problems working with them at all. Probably better than I could.
What are you currently working on?
I'm lucky enough to be working again with Rob on Breaking Dawn which has even more action than any of the other Twilights. Can't say much other than it is going to be an amazing film!
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