Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2017 i Empire Australasia

SPIDER-MAN HAS NOTHING on Dylan O’Brien. Empire is watching O’Brien as American Assassin’s hero Mitch Rapp evade local heavies by nimbly scaling a vent like your friendly neighbourhood counter-terrorist operative. Occupying studio space at West London’s Art Deco Gillette building, the shoot is nearing its midway mark. Next up, O’Brien will mow down some bad guys in an Alfa Romeo. American Assassin, a 2010 globe-trotting thriller rooted firmly in real-world geopolitics, is the 11th Rapp novel by the late Vince Flynn. It’s an origin tale that portrays Rapp as a young spook for the first time. The counter-terrorist agent is also O’Brien’s first lead role since a vehicular stunt went awry on Maze Runner: The Death Cure in March 2016, leaving him seriously injured with concussion, facial fractures and lacerations.…

IN 1969, 14-year-old Ronny Howard made a two-minute movie called Cards, Cads, Guns, Gore And Death. It’s about a gambler who goes all in, then comes out firing, killing, among others, Howard’s brother Clint in a blood (well, ketchup) bath. Shooting first, it seems, is in Howard’s genes, which is just as well — the director of Frost/Nixon is now helming Solo/Greedo. Announced on 22 June, Ron Howard’s takeover of the so-far untitled Han Solo film, following Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s departure over “creative differences”, is rumoured to be built on producer Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm’s feeling that the tone was too flip, not Star Wars-y enough. Their choice of replacement comes with a long history with the Lucasverse. Learning of Lucas’ idea to combine Flash Gordon and 2001:…

THE SETTING FOR the final act of Adam Wingard’s take on Death Note looks disarmingly jolly. A funfair runs the length of the boardwalk pier jutting out into Vancouver’s Fraser River, its brightly lit rides looking inviting. But if the movies have taught us anything, it’s that funfairs are rarely as innocent as they appear. And, true to form, as night closes in, menace descends. Nat Wolff and Margaret Qualley thread their way through the throng of punters, their anxious glances making it clear that someone — or something — is on their tail. Behind them two figures, expressions steely, move purposefully through the crowd. In a moment, this quaint little tableau has edged inexorably into darkness. “The three movies I watched before we started shooting,” says Wingard, “were Seven,…

Do you have a nickname? I used to be known as Flying Shite. I was very quick over 10 yards. I don’t know if it was meant entirely as a compliment. When were you last naked outdoors? Very recently. It was in a pool in the garden of a house I was staying in. No, I wasn’t sneaking into someone’s pool naked. What one thing do you do better than anyone else you know? Obfuscate. What character were you in your first-ever school play? I was the Piper in The Pied Piper Of Hamelin. Everyone else played rats. From one to 10, how hairy is your arse? Well, I couldn’t say for sure, because I haven’t had enough of a close look, but I think only about a two-and-a-half. I…

★★★★★ OUT 10 AUGUST RATED MA15+ / 107 MINS DIRECTOR Taylor Sheridan CAST Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Jon Bernthal, Graham Greene, Gil Birmingham PLOT When wildlife officer Cory Lambert (Renner) discovers the body of a local girl (Kelsey Asbille) who has frozen to death within the snowy, isolated Wind River Reservation, rookie FBI agent Jane Banner (Olsen) is brought in to investigate, enlisting hunter Cory to assist her navigate the harsh terrain and hardened locals. YES, COMIC-BOOK FANS, here we have a movie where Jeremy ‘Hawkeye’ Renner and Elizabeth ‘Scarlet Witch’ Olsen are teamed-up, sans colourful costumes, side-by-side. And while it’s no doubt fun to watch the twosome display their special abilities in Marvel’s Avengers films, there’s one special ability they don’t get to flex all that often in the…

Ali’s Wedding co-writer and star Osamah Sami on the incredible real-life events that inspired the film… How much of the film is based on actual events from your life, and how much is embellished? It’s almost too out-there to believe in places… It’s mostly all true. Every event that you see in the film happened. The scene where I’m getting questioned at the airport with US immigration, Homeland Security actually had us for more than 20 hours — that’s one scene in the film, so in terms of embellishment, it actually went the other way for that [laughs]. There’s a few times where we had to shrink worlds and conflate characters, but in general it’s all true. Some of the lines in the film are word-for-word verbatim from…

★★★★★ OUT 24 AUGUST RATED M / 141 MINS DIRECTOR James Gray CAST Charlie Hunnam, Sienna Miller, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Angus Macfadyen PLOT While on a 1906 expedition, explorer Percy Harrison Fawcett (Hunnam) finds what he believes to be evidence of a lost civilisation. Unearthing this Amazonian El Dorado — ‘Z’ — becomes his obsession and, he believes, his destiny. HAVING SPENT MUCH of his career channelling the grit and glower of ’70s crime cinema (see: Little Odessa, The Yards and We Own The Night), it’s no surprise to find that James Gray’s latest movie just as faithfully echoes the same era — albeit in a very different way. In The Lost City Of Z he takes us far from the Scorsese-esque mean streets of the East Coast and…

“SOME OF THE DESIGNS GOT REALLY INSANE,” says Luc Besson. “A few times I wanted to call the police and say, ‘You should lock this guy up. He’s crazy!’” The French auteur is casting his mind back to the extraordinary pre-production period for his new movie, mad sci-fi epic Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets, a process which took five years, involved 1,000 Skype sessions, and yes, nearly saw a few of Besson’s underlings wheeled off in straitjackets. “We had a back-up team in place,” he continues, “because I figured after two years the first bunch would be cooked.” The movie, an adventure involving space-cops Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne), is based on the world created by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières over 29…

Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds made a film together in 2013, but didn’t cross paths once. That’s because the film was CG animation Turbo, a not-exactly-classic tale of a common garden snail (voiced by Reynolds) who dreams of being a racer, and is at one point given a pep talk by a mouthy mollusc named Whiplash (Jackson). “You can do 300 animated movies for DreamWorks and never once meet a co-star,” explains Reynolds. “Those are odd jobs.” The film that has finally got them together properly is The Hitman’s Bodyguard. An unashamed throwback to the buddy movies of the ’80s and ’90s, the action comedy sees Reynolds’ bodyguard-with-a-past Michael Bryce (who’s also a control freak) assigned to Jackson’s assassin Darius Kincaid (who could not be more laidback) to ensure…

“I GOT MY BUM FELT BY A LOT OF WOMEN. THEY WOULD ALWAYS BE TRYING TO MAKE YOU DROP THE GLASSES.” MATT DAMON SHOE SALESMAN “Oh boy, I had a summer job where I had to sell women’s dance shoes in Harvard Square [in Cambridge, Massachusetts]. And that was a lot of fun. It was one of those stores where they marked everything up 200 per cent and then had a sign in the window that said ‘50 per cent off’. So I would have to hand out these ‘50 per cent off’ flyers in front of the store. You know, I was 17 years old and selling women’s dance shoes on the corner — it’s not that cool. I got laughed at a lot by people walking by, like,…

BONDI BEACH HAS never seen anything like this. The world-famous Sydney institution, more accustomed to attracting bronzed Aussies hunting an early morning tube or sunburnt British tourists whose skin is sizzling more than a barbequed snag, has television royalty scrunching their toes in its golden sands today. Over the years the beach has witnessed cameras roll on Aussie classics like Wake In Fright and Two Hands, but today, as the cold winter weather is drawing in, passers-by are braving the chilly conditions to stand outside the cordoned off set and catch a glimpse of Peggy Olson and Brienne of Tarth shooting a scene from the much-anticipated Top Of The Lake: China Girl. Much to the rubberneckers delight, Elisabeth Moss and Gwendoline Christie, known to most for their wonderful characters in…

FIFTY YEARS OLD this year, The Graduate changed the face of modern cinema. The story of Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), a disillusioned college graduate who is seduced by older woman Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft), then falls for her daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross), its influence ran from redefining the notion of the Hollywood leading man to pushing back the boundaries of on-screen morality and crystallising the youthful cynicism of the ’60s. It also solidified a raft of new talent, from Hoffman to the already Oscar-nominated director Mike Nichols. Yet only one man was there from beginning to end. The Graduate was producer Lawrence Turman’s stylish, slightly ironic baby. Now 91, Turman talks Empire through the decisions that defined a masterpiece… THE DEAL On 30 October 1963, Turman, then 36, read a…

Michael Sheen: “This scene towards the end of Donnie Brasco really stays with me. Al Pacino has just found out that Johnny Depp’s character was an undercover agent. Here he’s in his apartment and he gets a phone call to set him up to be killed. The whole weight and emotion of the scene is in the mind of the audience and you as an actor have to decide, how much do you lean on that? How much do you play that? Al Pacino makes all the right choices. It’s one of the greatest pieces of acting I’ve ever seen, because of what he doesn’t do.” INT. LEFTY’S APARTMENT — NIGHT Close-up on the television. A wildlife documentary is playing. VOICEOVER: Hyenas kill many young cheetahs. Benjamin ‘Lefty’ Ruggiero (Al…

A BRUISING DRAMA set around 1967’s Algiers Motel incident, in which the police’s brutal response to reports of a shooting fed into the city’s bloody riots and led to a famous injustice, Detroit boasts a director making up for lost time. Five years on from Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow has delivered an urgent, timely comment on American policing and race relations inspired by more recent civil unrest. “I came across this story as I witnessed the aftermath of Ferguson and the fallout that spread across the country,” she tells Empire. “[This film] illustrated my frustration with what I saw as a cycle of injustice.” Bigelow has assembled a youthful, dynamic cast to do the job, spearheaded by a pair of talented Brits. John Boyega plays security guard Melvin Dismukes,…

1 All aboard for Wakanda! Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther solo film, courtesy of director Ryan Coogler (Creed), is the final standalone title before Avengers: Infinity War. Chances it will prove to be the calm before the storm? Slim to none. 2 The story sees King T’Challa (Boseman) returning to his reclusive, technologically advanced African nation of Wakanda to take his father’s place on the throne, following the events of Captain America: Civil War. However, he faces challengers for his crown and “two foes” threatening to drag Wakanda into a world war. T’Challa must don the Black Panther suit again to fight for his people. Never a day’s peace for a blue-blooded battler. 3 Two foes? The teaser shows that one is Andy Serkis’ Ulysses Klaue, who first appeared in Age…

Age __ 20 Plays __ Tommy, a young private in the British Expeditionary Force bidding to flee the German onslaught, in Christopher Nolan’s World War II drama Dunkirk. “He should represent the average, everyday young soldier at Dunkirk.”  Backstory __ “I remember playing Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at school and he was strange and quirky and that really interested me. I love characters that are a bit different. Early Roles __ “I didn’t get into drama school when I first applied and worked in a coffee shop — what a cliché — and on a ferry. I was going to reapply but then I got HIM, an ITV supernatural drama. My character’s powers would come out of him like in Carrie.” The Big Break __ “Dunkirk’s been amazing.…

★★★★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 140 MINS DIRECTOR Matt Reeves STARRING Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn, Karin Konoval PLOT Two years after the events of Dawn, the human military comes to kill Caesar (Serkis). The botched assassination leaves the ape’s wife and son dead and any hope of peaceful coexistence in tatters. Consumed by rage and grief, Caesar sends his apes to safety and sets out on a personal quest for vengeance. NOMENCLATURE HAS ALWAYS been an issue for the Planet Of The Apes reboot series. The Apes’ Rise confusingly preceded their Dawn, which ended with a war. Meanwhile, this War, which follows the one in Dawn, contains little actual warfare but a fair bit of uprising. Disappointed? Don’t be. After the last film’s ballistic finale, it would…

★★★★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 120 MINS DIRECTOR Michael Showalter CAST Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter PLOT Pakistan-born comedian Kumail (Nanjiani) and grad student Emily (Kazan) start a relationship that runs into roadblocks. When a serious illness puts Emily in hospital, Kumail’s handed an unlikely second chance. FACED WITH SOMETHING as seemingly mundane as the thumbprint identification system on a smartphone, not many big-screen comedies will find the potential for a dark visual gag. Actually, few would spot any comic potential whatsoever. Not The Big Sick. Full of sharp observations that acknowledge everything from the most respectful way to unlock a coma patient’s phone to the viral possibilities of a disastrous comedy gig, Kumail Nanjiani’s (Silicon Valley) Judd Apatowproduced star vehicle couldn’t be more deliciously 2017. From the…

★★★★★ OUT 31 AUGUST RATED M / 101 MINS DIRECTOR Marc Webb CAST Chris Evans, Mckenna Grace, Lindsay Duncan, Jenny Slate, Octavia Spencer PLOT Frank (Chris Evans) is a single man raising his seven-year-old niece Mary (Mckenna Grace) in a sleepy Florida town. Mary is a maths genius, though Frank tries to give her a normal, everyday life. When her talents come to the attention of Frank’s formidable mother Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan), however, their life is thrown into turmoil. CHRIS EVANS IS no stranger to superheroes. He was the Fantastic Four’s Human Torch, telekinetic ‘Mover’ Nick Grant in Push, and someone called Captain America (no, us neither) in a little-seen series of films. In Gifted he has no special powers — the title doesn’t even refer to him — but…

At Denis Villeneuve’s command, rain begins to fall. Waves crash against a vast sea wall that shields Los Angeles from an enraged ocean. It’s deep into the night, and only the sporadic searchlights that dance across the water provide any illumination. An effect one could happily describe as Blade Runner-y. “Action!” Out in the half-light, Ryan Gosling, wrapped in a hefty overcoat, finishes his push-ups and Sylvia Hoeks, head-to-toe in skin-tight artificial leather, concludes her lunges. At an unseen signal, they set to. No quarter is given: Gosling’s Officer K and Hoeks’ Luv come to expertly choreographed blows. Finally, with an ungentlemanly swivel of his hips, K launches Luv into the surf. Fictionally speaking, it is 2049 in a noir-soaked LA, 30 years after Blade Runner’s cop hero Rick Deckard…

CHARLIE COX DARE DEVIL The most established of the Defenders, Cox has filled Daredevil’s suit since 2015, and is the only cast member to have two full seasons under his utility belt. “It’s funny,” says the London-born actor. “When I was auditioning, I do vaguely remember my agents mentioning there was eventually going to be a team-up show. I remember thinking, ‘We’ll see…’” Where is Matt when we meet him in The Defenders? He’s been deeply affected by the end of Daredevil Season 2. People died and the place wasn’t safer. So he’s no longer putting on his suit and fighting crime. Perfect cue moment for a team-up. What does Matt bring to the team? Matt’s quite good on the investigative trail with Jessica Jones. Matt can hear people’s heartbeats…

Hollywood has been in the Stephen King business for just about as long as Stephen King has been in the Stephen King business. From the moment the great American horror novelist burst onto the scene in the mid-1970s, studios and big-name directors such as Kubrick, Carpenter, De Palma, Cronenberg and Romero have been queuing up to adapt his work. Even his vastly ambitious doorstop novels, such as The Stand and It, have been made into mini-series for the small screen, as Hollywood voraciously optioned virtually every word King wrote. If he’d written this paragraph, studios would be circling it even now. But one major King work has remained conspicuously unadapted. “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” Those words kick off 1982’s The Gunslinger, the…

 JUST A FEW DAYS AFTER WINNING A BEST ACTOR OSCAR FOR PLAYING A SUICIDAL ALCOHOLIC IN MIKE FIGGIS’ $3.5 MILLION-BUDGETED DRAMA LEAVING LAS VEGAS, NICOLAS CAGE WAS IN PRISON . He, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Simon West and writer Scott Rosenberg were visiting Folsom, a maximum-security facility in Sacramento, California — all part of their research for a $70 million action blockbuster they were making. After signing a no-hostage waiver (to ensure that, should a prisoner injure or kill them, their families wouldn’t sue), they walked into the yard. It was busy: 2,000 prisoners talking and exercising. “Gradually they started to recognise Nic,” says Rosenberg. “And bigger and bigger groups started to gather around asking questions.” One wanted to make a film with him. “And one guy came up to…

00:08:02 START YOUR ENGINES __ Picking up four days after the original, John Wick: Chapter 2 starts with a full-on fender bender as Keanu Reeves’ assassin indulges in a spot of car-fu. “We wanted to come up with something exciting and different,” says director Chad Stahelski. “John doesn’t, technically, kill anyone in the opening. Although that’s open to interpretation when you hit somebody with a car.” 00:21:48 MARKER OF THE DEVIL A visit from an old enemy, Santino (Riccardo Scamarcio), to whom Wick owes a vast debt, ends in an explosive attempt on John’s life. Stahelski believes that John is “fully expecting to be terminated. I think he’s more upset by being left alive. He’s a little pissy when you tell him how to die.” Alive and angry, Wick must…

COSTUME Anything Lucius Malfoy wore in Potter . They were just going to have me in business suits and I asked if we could try something more elaborate, which they ran with. I could have looked like Michael Gove. The green sequined dress in Sweet November , but only because I really hoped I was going to be fanciable. I put it on and I looked like some kind of Puerto Rican truck driver on a dare. It was not what I envisaged. AUDITION The Patriot. My agent said, “You won’t get it. Jude Law’s doing it.” I went in and it was clear they wanted to give me the job. I was sure I’d got it. Then nothing for two weeks. It turned…

“WE ALL GO a little mad sometimes,” goes the notorious Norman Bates quote. Well, after a nine-hour binge on the Psycho feature franchise, I am, indeed, feeling a little mad. Not crazy mad, but angry mad. Anthony Perkins’ brittle, stammering, nervy Norman is such a perversely sympathetic creation you can’t help feeling oddly protective of the homicidal, cross-dressing fruitcake. The abuse Bates gets from Mother? That’s nothing compared to the torture inflicted on Norman by the diminishing sequels. First stop: Hitchcock’s rule book-ripping Oedipal slasher. This is my wazillionth viewing of Psycho, and it never disappoints. Prime your cine-radar and fresh, dark details always ping up. Ever noticed that Norman wears black after each kill? That Janet Leigh’s night-drive through lashing rain doubles as a shower-death premonition? Or that knife…

CAPTAIN MARVEL __ A hotshot pilot whose DNA was fused with that of the alien Kree (think Ronan The Accuser), Carol Danvers has superhuman strength, speed, flight, you name it. She’s Superman with better hair. Of course, she’s already heading to screens in 2019 with Brie Larson in the lead and Mississippi Grind co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck set to direct — an emotionally intelligent combo that should fit Danvers’ steely charm. BATGIRL __ Batgirl/Barbara Gordon is a stalwart of the Teen Titans and Birds Of Prey super-groups, and proud owner of two hero personae: she was kicking ass as Batgirl, before spending years as wheelchair-bound, anti-crime mastermind Oracle (...it’s a long story). Get her right — cool, funny, fierce — and you clear a path to a Birds…

HAVING A STORY with just two characters should make a director’s job easy. No extras; fewer angles to shoot; very short queues for the catering truck. But Hany Abu-Assad, director of The Mountain Between Us, decided to put the kibosh on an easy life. How? By filming his tiny ensemble piece in the freezing conditions of Alberta, on Canada’s snowy peaks. Based on the novel of the same name by American writer Charles Martin, this is the saga of two strangers, a doctor, Ben Bass (Idris Elba), and Alex Martin, a soon-to-be-married photojournalist (Kate Winslet), chartering a plane home after their commercial flight is cancelled. Neither can afford to wait a day. Delays become the least of their worries when their plane crashes in the mountains, killing the pilot and…

THERE’S ALWAYS TALK of ‘Sundance breakouts’, but a whole lot less about the films that break in to Utah’s high-altitude indie haven. Geremy Jasper, the debut writer-director of Patti Cake$, wants to set that straight. He credits his time at Sundance’s Lab Program in 2014 with carving his hazy early ideas into the rap underdog tale that eventually sold at the festival for $9.5 million. “It makes you dig into yourself and tell your story,” he notes of the finishing school that also helped birth Beasts Of The Southern Wild, Hard Eight and Reservoir Dogs. “I’m not a film school guy, so this was all new to me.” Paying those benefits forward, Quentin Tarantino was one of the New Jersey filmmaker’s screenwriting tutors. “He was very enthusiastic about the first…

★★★★★ OUT NOW RATED M / 90 MINS DIRECTOR David Lowery CAST Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Will Oldham PLOT After musician C (Affleck) dies in a car crash, his ghost returns to haunt the home he shared with now grieving wife, M (Mara). A WARNING: THE first half of A Ghost Story is so lethargically paced that you’ll begin to wonder precisely where the ‘motion’ in ‘motion picture’ went. To wit: there’s a static scene where Rooney Mara’s M does nothing but eat a pie for what feels like 45 minutes straight, and another where the camera fixes on the body of the deceased C (Casey Affleck) in a hospital for an interminably long period of time. At times it feels like an endurance test, as if writer-director David Lowery…

★★★★★ OUT 31 AUGUST RATED TBC / 100 MINS DIRECTOR Jeffrey Walker CAST Osamah Sami, Don Hany, Helana Sawires, Rodney Afif, Robert Rabiah, Rodney Afif PLOT After faking his HSC results to impress father Mahdi (Hany), a Muslim cleric, Ali (Sami) sets off a chain of lies that includes studying medicine at uni and beginning a secret romance — despite an impending arranged marriage. AUSTRALIAN CINEMAGOERS, it’s time to check your prejudices at the door (possibly in more ways than one). Although our attitude over the years towards homegrown films has unfortunately steered toward wary scepticism — sometimes even open hostility — it’s no reason to dismiss every Aussie film that sees release. And Ali’s Wedding — hands down one of the greatest Australian films to come along in years…

twas Memorial Day, 2016, and somewhere under the shadow of the Charlotte Motor Speedway’s vast grandstand, Adam Driver and Daniel Craig were revving up for an unauthorised lap of the famous old NASCAR circuit. Behind the wheel of a souped-up Dodge Charger or Toyota Camry on site for NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600 race, they could thunder around the 2.4-kilometre track in just over 30 seconds. Sadly, they were in a golf kart. “There was a whole thing about taking a car, so I went rogue and grabbed a kart,” remembers Driver, the wheelman in this impromptu two-man heist. “For the first two minutes Dan and I were like, ‘Yeah! We’re doing this.’ Then we spent the next 15 minutes driving really slowly in a fucking circle.” As getaways go, it was,…

THIS WINTER’S RELEASE schedule is studded with the latest instalments of giant franchises. And then there’s Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets, a deliriously OTT space opera that’s as unconventional as its super-sized title. Based on a French comic book series that began in 1967, it follows the adventures of intergalactic PIs Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) as they navigate space station Alpha, encountering such far-out beings as shapeshifting cabaret dancer Bubble (Rihanna) and the charmingly named Jolly The Pimp (Ethan Hawke). Massively scaled, primary-coloured and unashamedly eccentric, it’s clearly the product of an imagination without fetters. The owner of that imagination: Luc Besson. The French director started relatively small, with 1983’s The Last Battle, a black-and-white post-apocalyptic drama. But he was never going to be…

ONE OF THE most vibrant, original and downright brilliant horror movies in years, Get Out was critically acclaimed, grossed a stunning $250 million (off a $5 million budget), and was a particular triumph for its writer-director, Jordan Peele. After making his name as a comedian alongside Keegan-Michael Key in the TV show Key & Peele and last year’s Keanu, Peele switched gears comprehensively with this tale of Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), a young African-American man who gets more than he bargained for when he visits his new girlfriend’s seemingly ultra-liberal white parents out in the sticks. Dealing directly with themes of race, isolation and oppression, it’s clearly a personal movie for Peele. Did the success of the movie take you by surprise, to some extent? Yeah. I wanted to make a…

THE STORY GOES like this: during The Dark Knight’s most explosive scene, in which clown-faced chaosmonger the Joker (Heath Ledger) blows up Gotham General Hospital — and director Christopher Nolan demolished an entire building for real — something went wrong. As Ledger walked out of the building with plumes of fire and debris bursting through windows behind him, everything unexpectedly fell quiet. The building, actually a derelict factory in Chicago, wasn’t collapsing as planned. Knowing it was a one-take deal, and figuring the SFX guys would fix it, Ledger improvised a ‘what’s up?’ gesture at the building before jabbing at his detonator. Suddenly, BOOM. The charges blew, surprising the actor, and the building came tumbling down. Good story. But it’s not true. “Yeah, I’ve heard that one many times,” says…

1960 / RATED M DAVID FINCHER ONCE said he built his career on the assumption “people are perverts”, but the same thought wrecked Michael Powell’s. Peeping Tom — his morbid, compelling depiction of a sensitive serial killer — was released on 16 May 1960 in the UK. Before then, Powell was Britain’s most respected filmmaker. After, he barely worked again. As the megaphone-wielding half of a partnership with screenwriter Emeric Pressburger, Powell had received audience and expert acclaim for a series of classics, from The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp to The Red Shoes. Peeping Tom, his second post-Pressburger pic, received the sort of critical reception that might now be reserved for a documentary in which Adam Sandler barbecues puppies. “It’s a long time since a film disgusted me…

LEADER BOARD Ben Kingsley 9.5 Christopher Lee 9.5 David O. Russell 9.5 Quentin Tarantino 9.5 Paul W.S. Anderson 9 Guillermo del Toro 9 Werner Herzog 9 Franco Nero 9 Robert Rodriguez 9 Bryan Singer 8.5 1 Who composed the soundtrack to your 1966 hit Django? It’s Luis Bacalov. He’s a great composer. He’s from Argentina, but has been living in Rome for years. Correct. 2 In 1968 you were nominated for a Golden Globe for Camelot. In which category? At that time, it was called Newcomer Of The Year. But then also, in Camelot, the song that I was singing won the Golden Globe — If Ever I Should Leave You. I was hoping they would be giving me the award, but it goes to the song. Correct. 3 On…

Write a brilliantly witty caption to the image above from new romantic drama Everything, Everything (based on the hit YA novel written by Nicola Yoon) and score big! To enter, email empiregiveaways@bauer-media.com.au EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IS IN CINEMAS FROM 24 AUGUST FIVE LUCKY WINNERS WILL SCORE A GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2PRIZE PACK CONTAINING A BLU-RAY, KEYCHAIN, PHONE CARD WALLET AND BABY GROOT MINI-DIORAMA. JUNE WINNER “This Uber driver is definitely not getting 5 stars.”…