Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2019 i Empire Australasia

TELLING THE NEAR-unprecedented story of Pope Benedict XVI quitting his job, The Two Popes had an immediate problem. The film, from City Of God director Fernando Meirelles and starring Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce, required long stretches of filming in the Sistine Chapel, where papal elections take place. The Vatican has never allowed film crews inside the 800-year-old church. The solution: build a fake one. Here, production designer Mark Tildesley explains how he did it. GOT TO KNOW THE REAL THING FIRST “We had an extraordinary tour by this typically Italian expert, Enrico Bruschini, who is one of the world’s leading Vatican experts. He gave us a wonderful insight into the various artists involved, and the Chapel’s tempestuous history — each Pope wanting it to be more glorious, or less…

ON ACTING ADVICE FROM GARY COOPER “On Easy Rider, I remembered something I heard when I was 14. I heard Gary Cooper say this. My father [Henry Fonda], Randolph Scott, Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper were in the backyard of Cooper’s place. Jane [Fonda, his sister] and I were playing with Cooper’s daughter, Maria. And I just heard this, not knowing how to apply it. ‘If I know what I’m doing, I don’t have to act.’ Whoa! Well, now I know what that means. If you work hard enough at that character, you know what to do. If something strange happens, we call that the accident. An accident is brilliant.” ON INSPIRING THE BEATLES SONG SHE SAID, SHE SAID “See, George [Harrison] and John [Lennon] had been dosed without being…

OUT OCTOBER 10 CERT TBC / 110 MINS DIRECTOR Lorene Scafaria CAST Constance Wu, Jennifer Lopez, Julia Stiles, Keke Palmer, Lily Reinhart, Lizzo, Cardi B PLOT Struggling to make ends meet, inexperienced New York stripper Destiny (Wu) strikes up a friendship and profitable partnership with star dancer Ramona (Lopez). When the recession hits, however, the pair concoct a decidedly more dangerous way to earn their money back at the expense of their clients. WHETHER YOU’RE A fan of her films or not, it’s undeniable that no-one commands a room quite like Jennifer Lopez. That self-made magnetism that has been finessed over years of performing still has the ability to seemingly slow down time, and writer-director Lorene Scafaria appreciates this more than anyone, rewarding such enigmatic energy with the role of…

IT ALL STARTED with a Jane Campion retrospective. The Lincoln Center in New York was entering night two of an in-depth celebration of the Kiwi filmmaker’s work when, during a sold-out screening of The Piano, one member of the audience received a text message. He then received another. And another. Hunched down in his seat towards the middle of the auditorium, screenwriter Chris Terrio glanced furtively at his mobile as yet another text pinged to life on his screen. It was from J.J. Abrams. Just like the last. And the dozen or so before that. It was 10 September 2017, and several hours earlier Terrio had received the first in what would become a torrent of communication. “I’ve just signed on to Episode IX,” it read. “We’re gonna write a…

THE AREA BETWEEN Quincy Street and Lexington Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, used to be known as Stuyvesant Avenue. Today, it’s simply, and officially, known as Do The Right Thing Way. Acknowledgement not just that it was the sole shooting location for Spike Lee’s propulsive, wildly entertaining, poignant and pointed third joint, but of the movie’s immense cultural footprint. A day in the life of a collection of wild and wonderful characters as they go about their business in the midst of a heatwave, Do The Right Thing is funny, profound, profane, and eerily prophetic, as it builds towards a violent confrontation between the Italian-American owners of a local pizzeria and exasperated members of the African-American community. Along the way it broke all kinds of cinematic rules, introduced characters as indelible…

Avengers: Endgame A LOT CAN change in seven years. In 2012, when the Avengers assembled back-to-back to face down an alien threat in New York, much was made of the 360° shot Joss Whedon deployed to show off Earth’s mightiest heroes in all their glory. All six of them. All half a dozen. Seven years later and again the Avengers have assembled to face down an alien threat in (out of state) New York. Only this time, they’re not standing back-to-back. There is no 360-degree shot. Mainly because that would take an awful amount of time, due to the fact that there are more than six Avengers now. A lot more, in fact. There are Avengers. Guardians Of The Galaxy. Asgardians. Wakandans. Ravagers. Valkyries on flying horses. All making mean…

The Marvel Cinematic Universe Chris: When did we first come to the Marvel Cinematic Universe? James: Well, I went to a screening of Iron Man and very much enjoyed it. Chris: It was good, wasn’t it? James: Yeah, it was. Helen: I liked Iron Man. I probably wasn’t sold on the whole concept of a universe. It didn’t really come into focus as a universe for a little while after that. It was Captain America or Thor where you began to sort of see the connections and see that feeling of it all coming together. Ben: I was 16 when Iron Man came out. I went to see it with my parents. It was at that stage where Iron Man obviously wasn’t a big-name character, but they did a great…

THUNDER ROAD OUT NOW / CERT M / 92 MINS Jim Cummings’ debut film as writer (and director, and actor, and composer and editor) is a pitch-black comedic study of grief that starts with his buttoned-up, Springsteen-loving cop, Jim Arnaud, having a meltdown while trying to deliver a eulogy at his mother’s funeral, and ratchets up the psychological tension, and surreal yucks, from there. What’s even more remarkable is that Cummings hadn’t written (or directed, or acted, or composed or edited) at all before he made the Sundancewinning short film from which this is expanded, back in 2016. He has a real knack for pacing and composition, and while this won’t be for everyone (it’s perhaps too mannered at times), there’s a real thrill that comes from watching a film…

ROOM FOR ‘THE ROOM’ I was a little dissapointed that you guys left The Room out of your ‘30 Films in 30 Years’ feature. I know most people think it’s just an unintentionally funny attempt at drama, but it’s actually a brilliant art flick. It took me a while to realise, but I think it’s one of the great movies of our time. It’s odd, but also very artistic. Tommy Wiseau is baffling but also brilliant in his own right, too. You just need to watch it a few more times. IAN, VIA EMAIL The film does have cult status for a reason. Perhaps we should check it out once more and reassess our views, Ian. Or should we call you Tommy? POSTER PROBLEMS! Hi Empire. I loved the last…

NAOMIE HARRIS GETS recognised a fair bit these days — she is Moneypenny, after all. But while filming tough new thriller Black And Blue in New Orleans, she found herself getting noticed for different reasons. “It was interesting just to see how people reacted when I was in police uniform — how afraid they were of me,” she recalls. “I became suddenly unapproachable, because of this uniform. The power of it was incredible.” It’s the power of that uniform that Black And Blue explores, reviving and evolving the template established in the ’70s and ’80s by one-honest-cop dramas like Serpico and Prince Of The City. Harris plays Alicia, a rookie police officer who witnesses a murder from her corrupt colleagues; the difference from the ’70s is that it’s all caught…

ANY SCREENWRITING STUDENT will tell you: films needs drama. Narrative needs conflict, and resolution. But how the hell do you find conflict in a film about someone as infallibly kind and gentle as Fred Rogers, the late presenter of US TV kids’ show Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood and all-round lovely human? “You can’t!” says director Marielle Heller. Which is a bold statement, given she’s just finished A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood, about Rogers. Isn’t he the hero? “You can’t make somebody like [Mister Rogers] the protagonist of your movie, because there’s no journey. What you can do is take someone like Mister Rogers, whose life mission is this radical kindness and an ability to pull the best out of people, and see that in action.” So Heller and screenwriters Micah…

MALEFICENT MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL The sequel to Disney’s 2014 anti-hero fantasy sees the horned, winged Angelina Jolie ruining a wedding and feuding with Michelle Pfeiffer. There’ll be drama, savage put-downs and gleeful misery. XANDRA THE GOLDFINCH Sarah Paulson’s stripper-slash-waitress is the step-matriarch in this adaptation of Donna Tartt’s novel, a neglectful parental figure to Theo with a chaotic home life in the Las Vegas desert — the polar opposite to his beloved mother. LADY CRAWLEY DOWNTON ABBEY: THE MOVIE Downton’s plot — ‘people considerably richer than you are coming for dinner’ — is woefully thin, so praise be for Maggie Smith’s acerbic Dowager, and a runtime of plotting, scowling and eye-rolling.…

I WAS BORN in London to Nigerian parents and was ‘farmed’ out at six weeks to a white working-class couple in Tilbury, a poverty-stricken docking town, and spawning ground for racist attitudes. The abuse levied towards African immigrants was made worse by high unemployment. Fuelled by the Enoch Powell rhetoric of “KEEP BRITAIN WHITE”, blacks and Africans were seen by many as the enemy taking their jobs. We lived in Poets Corner. It was poetic in name only, and the roughest part of Tilbury. Growing up was a painfully lonely experience. There were about eight other Nigerian children in the house, two of whom were my siblings. It was crowded and noisy, and hunger was the thing I remember most. I spent my childhood years seeking refuge behind our sofa…

1 MEET MARVIN SCHWARZ Quentin Tarantino: It was just thrilling, the idea of writing a part for Al Pacino and then hearing Al Pacino say my dialogue. Marvin isn’t necessarily based on anyone in particular. He’s the guy in the ’60s that worked at [Hollywood talent agency] William Morris. His job is putting name American talent in foreign productions — Toho monster movies, spaghetti Westerns and so on. Al is a great guy and we’ve been hanging out. Him and his girlfriend — I think they broke up — became good friends with my wife and so the four of us would go out and do things together. It was great. 2 RICK’S FILMOGRAPHY Nick de Semlyen: The film’s excellent marketing campaign has included one-sheets for the Italian phase of…

EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE (1977) LOCATION: TUNISIA • DOUBLING FOR: TATOOINE Star Wars’ very first location provided a baptism of twin suns fire. On 23 March 1976, the second day of filming was hit by rain, the first Tunisian winter storm in 50 years. After falling behind in the first week of schedule, George Lucas and co were hit by a freak sandstorm tearing the Sandcrawler set apart. The Tunisian sands also caused havoc, disturbing the signals directing the RD-D2 models and sending them out of control. EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE (1977) LOCATION: TIKAL, GUATEMALA • DOUBLING FOR: YAVIN IV A small crew from ILM ventured to Tikal, Guatemala in March 1977 to capture Rebel base exteriors. After 21 hours of travelling, the crew landed on a runway…

Nora wanted to see SNL because of Lucy Liu. She had become obsessed with the actor after watching Charlie’s Angels a couple of months prior, and was thrilled to hear that Liu would be guest-hosting the live comedy show, the first Asian-American in history to do so. She insisted on being there, to witness history. She lived with her grandmother (her mother had passed away when she was four), but spent weekends with her father, Wally. So she badgered him to take her from the neighbourhood of Forest Hill, Queens onto a subway train, and all the way to Manhattan and 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where the show was filmed. The only problem: Nora and Wally didn’t have tickets. “I didn’t see her, sadly,” says the now 31-year-old, in her low,…

Well, this is awkward. Not least because Empire has convened with McQuarrie, in a London studio on a rare day when the writer-director isn’t racking up the air miles scouting locations for the next two Mission: Impossible movies, to discuss his evolution as a director. And, primarily, his evolution as an action director. And not just any common-or-garden action director, but one of the very best in the business. “ I find it funny that we’re talking about me as an action director,”says Christopher McQuarrie.“I don’t consider myself one. I didn’t set out to be one. And if I don’t make another action movie, that will be okay.” Because, while McQuarrie might McQuibble slightly with the label, that’s what he’s become, across the course of the four films he’s made…

Modern Times IT’S A BOLD move to name your film Modern Times. It’s like naming your film ‘The Future’: sooner or later, by definition, it will eventually become ‘The Past’. And certainly to 21st-century eyes, there’s nothing obviously modern about Modern Times, a largely silent black-and-white slapstick film about the Great Depression. In fact, it might have seemed a bit old-fashioned to the eyes who first watched it on release in 1936, too. The advent of recorded sound in movies had arrived a decade or so earlier with Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer, and Hollywood’s abandonment of the silent status quo was swift. The Technicolor era was beckoning too, with The Wizard Of Oz’s explosion of colour just three years away. In 1936, black-and-white silent films would have been considered…

True Romance chosen by NOOMI RAPACE NOOMI RAPACE: “Patricia Arquette, with a corkscrew, jamming it in James Gandolfini’s foot in True Romance, is my favourite scene. She’s so badass — there’s blood and broken glass and she fights back with everything she’s got, even though there’s some big dude with a gun. That’s something I can relate to.” INT. HOTEL ROOM — DAY Alabama (Patricia Arquette) has been attacked by mobster Virgil (James Gandolfini) hunting for the stolen cocaine. Knocked out cold, she lies on the floor caked in blood. She coughs, awakens. The room is in disarray. Virgil is sitting in a chair. VIRGIL: Now the first time you kill somebody, that’s the hardest. I don’t give a shit if you’re fuckin’ Wyatt Earp or Jack The Ripper. He…

1 IT’S TRUE TO HISTORY Roland Emmerich has wanted to make a movie about Pearl Harbor and the pivotal 1942 Battle Of Midway for 20 years. When he first pitched it to Sony Pictures, its (Japanese) bosses weren’t keen. Besides, Michael Bay had his own Pearl Harbor thundering into production. And we all know how that turned out. But Emmerich, who’s now finally made Midway as a $95 million indie movie, dismisses comparisons. “They didn’t even use the right planes,” he laughs. “They had Spitfires flying around, which is nearly comical!” In contrast, Emmerich and his team buried themselves in research, even constructing all their ’40s war machines from scratch. “Nothing exists from ’42 anymore,” he says, “so we had to build everything.” 2 THERE’S NO BOLTED-ON ROMANCE One of…

IT’S A REALLY BLOODY WEIRD SATIRE Set in a world where everyone wears braces, women give birth to footballs, and children turn into dogs, Greener Grass is “a surreal comedy of manners satirising suburbia,” says director/writer/star Dawn Luebbe. “We were always drawn to the mundane,” adds fellow director/writer/star Jocelyn DeBoer. IT’S NOT WEIRD FOR WEIRD’S SAKE “That was very important,” says DeBoer. “We wanted to explore these themes, and then heighten them in a surreal way. Everything is grounded.” IT COULD HAVE BEEN EVEN WEIRDER Some ideas never survived the scripting stages: “In one draft, the divorcee cowboy had a girlfriend who was just floating hair.” GREENER GRASS IS IN CINEMAS IN 2020…

DIRECTOR DAVID MICHÔD knew one thing: Timothée Chalamet’s enviable, Byronic curls had to go. “Everyone freaked out about the haircut a little bit, but no matter what, it just had to happen. It’s a famous haircut and we couldn’t have that kid from Call Me By Your Name just waltzing into the 15th century.” So be warned: unlike Game Of Thrones, this story of England’s King Henry V doesn’t shy away from the less attractive parts of the Middle Ages. Michôd’s take on Prince Hal/King Henry (Chalamet) was influenced by Shakespeare but isn’t a direct adaptation of his Henriad (Henry IV Parts One and Two, and Henry V). His co-writer, Joel Edgerton, played Shakespeare’s version to great acclaim onstage, but to write the script they also drew from reality and…

SO, WHAT IS VALIANT COMICS? Valiant was founded in 1989 by Jim Shooter and Steve Massarsky. Shooter was a comic-book lifer and one-time editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics (overseeing the X-Men’s ‘Dark Phoenix Saga’ and Iron Man’s struggle with sobriety). Massarsky was the wild card: a music industry manager-cum-lawyer who helped launch the career of Cyndi Lauper, represented the Allman Brothers and decided to turn his Aerosmith money into superhero comic books. WHO’S IN ITS UNIVERSE? Valiant initially only started publishing Nintendo and WWE comics. But in 1991 the Valiant Universe began: a ‘shared universe’ built around Avengers-style crossover potential. This original universe was built on temporary licences, starting with previously established characters such as Magnus, a futuristic ‘robot fighter’, and Solar, a physicist exposed to radiation. But they also established…

MIDSOMMAR Ari Aster’s follow-up to Hereditary, about a Swedish cult that lures in gullible Americans, had the year’s biggest opening weekend for an indie film. It demonstrated an appetite for original horror, even if you might lose yours after that ending. US At the time of writing, Jordan Peele’s spooky doppelgänger horror-satire is the only entirely original film to make the American box-office top ten of 2019. In an era of sequels, franchises and films based on ‘existing intellectual property’, that’s a significant achievement. THE FAREWELL Lulu Wang’s second film, starring mononymous talent Awkwafina, saw the bittersweet family drama break the Top 10 at the US box office — and enjoyed the year’s best per-theatre opening weekend average, beating even Avengers: Endgame.…

ARNIE Before he returns to his Terminating, Arnie will be playing Captain James Hook, looking quite unlike anything Arnie has ever played. Isn’t Captain Hook a Peter Pan villain? Honestly, we can’t work out what the hell this film is about. JACKIE CHAN The Hong Kong legend has an impressive wig here, playing a mysterious character listed only as ‘Master’. To reiterate: we have no idea what this film is. RUTGER HAUER The late Rutger Hauer will be playing ‘Ambassador’ in one of his final film roles. But that’s about all we know. Seriously. The trailer’s in Russian. If anyone can help us, could they drop us a line?…

OUT 24 OCTOBER CERT PG / 117 MINS DIRECTOR Gurinder Chadha CAST Kulvinder Ghir, Viveik Kalra, Hayley Atwell, Rob Brydon PLOT Sensitive poetry-writing teen Javed (Viveik Kalra) faces racism in the streets and strictness in the home from his disciplinarian father (Kulvinder Ghir). Yet his life is transformed when he is introduced by new buddy Roops (Aaron Phagura) to the music of Bruce Springsteen. Soon after, a world of writing, love and optimism opens up for him. AT ONE POINT during the 1984/85 ‘Born In The USA’ tour, in-between ‘Follow The Dream’ and ‘Born To Run’, Bruce Springsteen would regularly tell the assembled head-banded throng hanging on his every word: “No-one wins unless everyone wins.” Based on Safraz Manzoor’s memoir Greetings From Bury Park, Blinded By The Light, Gurinder Chadha’s…

OUT NOW CERT MA15+ / 169 MINS DIRECTOR Andy Muschietti CAST James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader, Bill Skarsgård, Isaiah Mustafa PLOT In 2016, 27 years after terrorising the town of Derry, big-headed clown Pennywise (Skarsgård) is back, a bodycount rising in his wake. Having researched the monster’s history, Mike Hanlon (Mustafa) tracks down the estranged members of The Losers’ Club, getting them to make good on their promise to fight once more. IT CHAPTER ONE, or whatever we must call it since it made enough millions to birth a chapter two, had its crutches. This was an adaptation of (half of) a beloved book, following in the footsteps of a so-so yet affectionately remembered TV movie, leaning heavily into the never-ending wave of 1980s nostalgia. It all seemed a…

1 THE CAMEOS Chris Hewitt: David Leitch and Dwayne Johnson clearly didn’t have to look far beyond the Favourites section in their contacts to recruit Deadpool 2 stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob Delaney as CIA agents Locke and Loeb (something of a pun on lock and load), and Jumanji/Central Intelligence co-star Kevin Hart as pugnacious US marshal Dinkley. As cameos go, they’re fairly odd, opportunistic things, with Reynolds and Hart in essence playing variations on their well-worn personas, apparently in the hope/expectation that audiences will love them so much that they’ll show up in future instalments. They’re fun, of course — three naturally funny guys being given plenty of room to riff tends to bear at least some fruit — but it’s hard to know whether the big-name cameos in…

“I don’t give a fuck whose name it’s under,” he growled. “Are you stupid or what? Didn’t you hear what I said? Don’t buy anything, don’t get anything. Nothing big. Didn’t you hear what I said? What’s the matter with you?” It was August 2015 and, in a classified location in New York, the actor was recreating one of his many iconic sequences from Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas. Specifically, the one in which his Jimmy ‘The Gent’ Conway dresses down a hapless cohort at a Christmas party. This time, though, there was no Caddy, no tinsel and no scene partner — De Niro was talking to air. It didn’t look like much. But in this room, history was being made, and not just because it marked the first time the star…

WALKING AROUND THE Overlook Hotel is a trip. Empire enjoys the privilege of many incredible set visits, from greenscreen planets to vivid real-world locations. This, though, is something else. We’re really here. In that reception area. On that staircase. By that room numbered 237. And a day after we leave, it will all be gone. It’s November 2018 and we’re in Atlanta for Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep, an adaptation of Stephen King’s 2013 sequel to his 1977 book The Shining, but also a substantial nod to Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 masterpiece. Flanagan’s team have meticulously recreated Kubrick’s set. Every inch is as we last saw it in on screen, and there will be flashbacks: this temporary Overlook is new, but haunted by ghosts nevertheless. Room 237’s terrifying, cackling old lady gives…

Have you thought about doing a sequel to Do The Right Thing? CARRIE LEE No. No. No. Hell to the not. Ladies and gentlemen, I know I brought back my first film, She’s Gotta Have It, to Netflix, but there’s no way in no fucking hell — I’m gonna put it in my will — that there will be [a] play, TV show or film of Do The Right Thing. I plan to do a Broadway musical of School Daze. But Do The Right Thing? Hell to the nah! Not gonna happen! Where are you keeping your Oscar? PAUL LEACH At my home. It’s on a shelf, next to my honorary Oscar. It’s a pair. You used Public Enemy extensively in Do The Right Thing and have said you are…

A COUPLE DANCE cheek to cheek in the front room of their house, to the strains of It’s Been A Long, Long Time by Harry James & His Orchestra. As the music swells, they look at each other, share a kiss and we cut to black. This, rather than superheroes swooping, soaring or swinging through the skies, is the final image of Avengers: Endgame. The emphasis is on character, not spectacle, as at last — at long, long last — Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, gets to dance with the love of his life, Peggy Carter. It completes a journey for Rogers that began in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger. Since then, Chris Evans’ super-soldier has, along with Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark, become one of the pillars of…

Avengers: Endgame ACROSS 23 FILMS and 11 years, Kevin Feige — President of Marvel Studios and producer of every single MCU film — has been the architect of the Avengers’ rise, fall and rise again. So, who better to ask about Endgame’s key sequences? I LOVE YOU 3000 In an early scene, Tony and Pepper’s young daughter Morgan tells Tony, “I love you 3000.” And then, in his from-the-grave message to her and his loved ones, he repeats it. It’s become something of a signature phrase for the movie, and it all came from a personal place for Downey Jr. “He said, ‘That’s what my daughter said to me once,’” recalls Feige. “He was bringing that real part of him, part of his relationship with his real daughter, to Morgan.”…