March 2007

Recently I met up with some of the cast and crew of 300.

Director Zack Synder discussed how he became involved in the project, why Warner Brothers may have been reluctant to make it after Troy and Alexander, plus the challenges of adapting Frank Miller’s graphic novel to the screen:

Gerard Butler plays King Leonidas, the leader of the 300 soldiers who take on the Persian army. We spoke about how he first heard about the project and his thoughts on the finished film:

Rodrigo Santoro plays Xerxes, the Persian King who leads his army of a million soldiers against the 300 Spartans. He is a Brazilian actor who you may remember seeing as Laura Linney’s object of affection in Love Actually. I spoke with him about his character and the difficulties of acting against blue screens whilst the effects were added in later:

And finally I spoke to Lena Headey, who plays Queen Gorgo, the Spartan queen who has to deal with the treacherous intrigue at home whilst her husband battles the Persians. We spoke about her role and the unexpected box office success of the film in the US:

You can also download the interviews as MP3 files via the following links:
- Director Zack Snyder on the making of 300
- Gerard Butler on his role as King Leonidas
- Rodrigo Santoro on playing Xerxes
- Lena Headey on playing Queen Gorgo

Also check out these links to find out more about 300:
> 300 at the IMDb
> Get showtimes for 300 at your local cinema via Google Movies
> Find out more about Frank Miller’s original graphic novel
> See how the actors got in to shape for the film with ‘The 300 Workout’

On the podcast this week we look at the five major releases out at UK cinemas and we also have our usual DVD and website picks.

300 is the big screen adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the Spartan soliders who fought off a much bigger Persian army at The Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. Director Zack Snyder speaks to us about the challenges of adapting the graphic novel and Gerard Butler gives us his thoughts on playing the Spartan King, Leonidas.

Amazing Grace is the story of 18th century anti-slavery pioneer William Wilberforce. Ioan Gruffud plays Wilberforce and is joined by an illustrious cast that includes Albert Finney, Michael Gambon and Toby Jones. Michael Apted directed the film and he tells us why the story appealed to him and how it got financed.

I Want Candy is a new British comedy with Carmen Electra as a porn star who is persuaded by two budding young filmmakers to star in their low budget film set in Leatherhead (!). We speak to Carmen about the delights of shooting a film in England and also chat with co-star Tom Riley about whether or not they actually filmed in leafy Surrey.

Catch a Fire is the story of 1980’s ANC freedom fighter Patrick Chamusso (played by Derek Luke). We spoke to director Philip Noyce about the film and why he has gone back to material with a more political edge.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sees the 80’s cartoon characters return although this time around it is in animated form as Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael return to do battle with new foes.

Our DVD pick is Happy Feet, director George Miller’s eco-friendly tale of dancing penguins proved a huge hit at the box office last autumn and even scooped the Oscar for Best Animated Film. It features an illustrious voice cast with the likes of Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman all doing their best as the penguins.

Our website pick is iLetYou.com, a social DVD and video game exchange. It allows you to create your own rental stores and earn money or credit on a revenue share basis. It’s a bit like having an eBay Store, but you rent your DVDs out, rather than sell your unused stuff.

> Download it for free from Creation Podcasts
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Just came across this interesting site via Digg - it is a comprehensive list of documentaries that can be viewed online.

Just use the menu to navigate to each film. (N.B. Some might take a while to load)

> Check it out the list of free documentaries
> Find out more about documentaries at Wikipedia

I’ve made some changes to the sidebar to make the site a little more user friendly.

You can now check out news feeds from Yahoo Movies and Digg, plus you can now see what films are coming at UK cinemas each week.

There is also a list of films I’ve recently enjoyed that are linked to my Flixster account and you can now click through to the latest trailers at Apple.

You can also now translate this site in to German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic and Russian.

Let me know what you think of the changes and if you have any suggestions just use the contact page or leave a comment below.

More bloggers are commenting on those videos from the set of I Heart Huckabees.

Dennis Cozzalio has a very detailed take on his site that is well worth a look. It has excerpts from a Playboy interview George Clooney gave after working with David O’Russell on Three Kings.

As Clooney put it at the time:

It was a dangerous time. I’d sent him this letter. I was trying to make things work, so I went over and put my arm around him. I said, ‘David, it’s a big day. But you can’t shove, push, or humiliate people who aren’t allowed to defend themselves.’ He turned on me and said, ‘Why don’t you just worry about your fucked-up act? You’re being a dick. You want to hit me? You want to hit me? Come on, pussy, hit me.’ I’m looking at him like he’s out of his mind. Then he started banging me on the head with his head. He goes, ‘Hit me, you pussy. Hit me.’ Then he got me by the throat and I went nuts. I had him by the throat. I was going to kill him. Kill him. Finally, he apologized, but I walked away. By then, the Warner Bros. guys were freaking out. David sort of pouted through the rest of the shoot and we finished the movie, but it was truly, without exception, the worst experience of my life.”  

Anne Thompson chips in on her Variety blog:

The internet is giving director David O. Russell a nasty spanking right now. Some of us at the office were looking at these YouTube clips that wouldn’t die–after years circulating on the web. Look at it this way. We all know George Clooney is a Very Good Guy. We wrote about what happened on Three Kings at Premiere and fact-checked the story to a faretheewell. Clooney stood up against Russell to protect the folks he thought he was abusing on the set. And Lily Tomlin is a Great Comedienne. In this video from the set of I Heart Huckabees, she protests the way she is being treated by her director, and he goes ballistic. And Russell? You fill in the blank.

Maybe Russell (who I still think is a very talented director) should post a video to YouTube explaining his behaviour?

> David O’Russell at the IMDb
> Sharon Waxman of the NYT reported from the I Heart Huckabees set in 2004

 

Techcrunch is reporting that Flixster (the site we told you about on the podcast last month) has now hit 10 million registered users:

You don’t see this every day. San Francisco based Flixster’s growth, which shot up late last year, shows no signs of slowing anytime soon.

Joe Greenstein, Flixster’s CEO, told me by email that they now have ten million registered users and up to two million movie ratings completed daily (380+ million movie ratings to date). That’s a lot of (very valuable) user generated data. Comscore continues to show a sharp rise in page view and unique monthly visitors as well. Compare the charts below (U.S. user data only), which show data through February 2007, to the December stats we published in February.

It is a very useful site and I can only see it getting bigger.

> The original story at Techcrunch
> Flixster
> Wired on Flixster

This is the new trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

It opens in the US and UK on May 25th

> Official website for the film
> Find out more about the film at Wikipedia