Cinema News

When Cam Gigandet and Robert Pattinson filmed their big fight scene in Twilight, in which they literally tear strips off each other, they wanted to make it look as realistic as possible.

Cam plays evil vampire James, who attacks Robert’s Edward as part of his scheme to kill Edward’s girlfriend Bella (Kristen Stewart).

As vampires James and Edward don’t bleed, but they can and do bite each other. So how to simulate the scenes of them eating each other’s flesh? Cam has revealed the secret ingredients to MTV: They chomped on pieces of chicken and Swiss cheese, topped off with honey.

“We started off with chicken, and it was just getting everywhere,” says Cam. “We were running out of chicken, and eventually after that, we actually replaced the chicken with Swiss cheese. And Rob can’t have it in his mouth at first, so we had to stick it on my neck and push it in. So fans will see layer upon layer of Swiss cheese and honey upon more honey, all over my neck. Yuck.”

Cam, 26, whose precious claims to fame were starring in the movie Never Back Down and in one season of TV’s The O.C., always wanted to play James, although he only appears in the first Twilight novel.

“I am a bad, bad vampire,” he says. “Well, so everyone else thinks. I think I’m just misunderstood. My sole goal is to basically kill Bella and revel in Edward’s pain as he watches it. I see what Edward has with her. He has love. He is everything that I am not.”

The Twilight website has posted the first single from the soundtrack, Decode, by alt-emo-punk-pop outfit Paramore.

“The song is about the building tension, awkwardness, anger and confusion between Bella and Edward,” says Paramore’s Hayley Williams. “Bella’s is the only mind Edward can’t read and that’s a big part of the first book and one of the obstacles for them to overcome.”

MURS For President, the new album from Los Angeles rapper, MURS, is in-stores everywhere now! In addition, if you purchase a digital copy of MURS For President from his website, MursMusic.com, you’ll also get the MURS boxing game, “MURS Presidential Bout”.
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There’s going to be roadkill at US cinemas over the weekend as eight new films vie for attention.

It’s the most crowded weekend in recent years, and at least two or three of those films will suffer in the bottleneck.

Beverly Hills Chihuahua (pictured), the Disney family film featuring the voices of Drew Barrymore and Andy Garcia, and, in human roles, Piper Perabo and Jamie Lee Curtis, is tipped to be No. 1, earning about $25 million.

Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, a romantic comedy starring Michael Cera and Kat Dennings, will probably take second place with $15 million or so.

None of the other wide openers is expected to crack $10 million. They are:

Blindness, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles’ apocalyptic thriller about an epidemic that takes away victims’ sight, with Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, and Danny Glover.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, a comedy about a British journo who gets a rude introduction to the high society world of New York, featuring Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Megan Fox and Jeff Bridges.

Flash of Genius, featuring Greg Kinnear in the true story of the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper and his long battle with the automotive industry for recognition.

An American Carol, a comedy about a Michael Moore-style documentary maker who’s visited by three ghosts, written and directed by spoof maestro David Zucker.

Also debuting over the weekend is Religulous, comedian Bill Maher’s doc lambasting the world’s God squads, from Borat director Larry Charles; while Ed Harris’ critically admired Western Appaloosa expands nationwide.

After the bleak but brilliant No Country for Old Men, I doubt that even the Coen brothers’ most ardent admirers wanted them to follow that with a movie that was anywhere near as harrowing.

So, thankfully, the brothers smartly came up with a screwball comedy, Burn After Reading, which is light years away from their Oscar-winning drama.

They started out dreaming up a bizarre set of characters who would be played by a combination of their frequent collaborators George Clooney, Frances McDormand and Richard Jenkins, and two actors they’d long wanted to work with: Brad Pitt and John Malkovitch. Tilda Swinton was cast in the other main supporting role.

To utilize these diverse talents, the brothers concocted a tale about two Washington gym employees (Pitt and McDormand), an ousted CIA agent (Malkovitch), a sex-obsessed federal marshal (Clooney) and his mistress (Swinton).

Their brief to the cast was simple. “We asked the actors to embrace their inner knucklehead,? said Joel, who, like his brother, is a lot more eloquent in the film’s production notes than he is in interviews.

?The story is about middle-aged people, all of whom are undergoing professional, personal, and sexual crises touching on matters of national security. The plot concerns the CIA and the world of physical fitness, and what happens when those two worlds intersect and collide; Internet dating is also in the mix.?

In the US the movie gave the Coens the biggest opening of their 25-plus year career, and it’s grossed more than $47 million there so far.

The starting point for Iron Man 2 is Tony Stark’s revelation at the end of the first movie that he is the superhero.

And the sequel will feature a lot more of S.H.I.E.L.D. boss Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) as well as James Rhodes (Terrence Howard) morphing into the War Machine, and Mandarin.

We have all that on the good authority of director Jon Favreau. “The sequel is shaping up to incorporate Tony’s vision for the future,? Favreau said in a live, online chat with fans. ?What happens after he says ?I am Iron Man?’ He announced who he was and we have now officially departed from the standard secret ID superhero.”

He didn’t give any clues about who might play Mandarin, the scientific genius and skilled martial artist, but described him as an important figure in the Iron Man universe: ?We have an interesting take on him that allows us to incorporate the whole pantheon of villains.”

Jon appeared to rule out shooting part of the movie in Imax, noting the special effects become very expensive and may not look as good in higher resolution.

The director is confident he’ll finish the film in time for the scheduled release date of May 7 2010.

He didn’t mention Iron Man 3, but Marvel listed that title among the movies in a multi-pic distribution deal with Paramount.

Keira Knightley looks so regal and serene in wigs and long, flowing costumes, it’s no wonder she’s the go-to girl for period romances.

So it’s a surprise to discover that playing the lead role in The Duchess was physically tough for her.

For one thing, her dresses and corsets were so tight, she found it hard to breathe. “It’s quite obvious why we were called the weaker sex, because you can’t breathe, so a lack of oxygen to the brain was obviously quite a difficult thing,” she says.

For another, her towering wigs were so heavy she could barely lift her head.

Yet she relished playing Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, an 18th Century fashion icon who was trapped in a loveless marriage to the Duke (Ralph Fiennes), and unable to be with her real love, Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper).

?She’s a dreamer and an idealist who is suddenly stuck in a marriage with a husband who is the very opposite of that,” Keira says. “The Duke is someone who shows no emotions. Georgiana is an incredibly emotional, passionate woman, and it seems there’s no clear way out of this complicated relationship. But, for everything Georgiana goes through, she actually finds a way to eventually triumph over things and regain power in a time when women had so little.?

Strangely, the actress insists she doesn’t seek out period movies, despite her success in Atonement, Pride & Prejudice, and, in a very different vein, the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

But she admits, “I love the fact that you can escape into a completely different reality. Seeing these costumes, these weird societies, helps me to forget my life, and actually just dive into the story. It’s a way into a fantastic fantasy world.”

Can it really be only five years ago since the first Saw movie terrorized audiences around the world?

Yep, and since then the franchise has spawned one movie a year, so get set for Saw V.

I gave up after the first movie– too gruesome for my tastes–but I gather villain Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) is still wreaking havoc, overlooking the fact the character was decapitated in Saw III.

It appears the allegiance between Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) and Jigsaw is about to be exposed, so the cop sets out to eliminate a few loose ends.

“I get some really good, heavy scenes with Tobin,” says Costas. “That was good for me because I get into his head, to see how he began. All I did was learn from him. He would call me for little rehearsals. It’s more than knowing just the lines, it’s about getting into his brain.”

David Hackl, the production designer on editions 2-4, who makes his directing debut on Saw V, promises seven sadistic traps in this chapter, and all of them could be purchased at your local hardware store. Now that’s scary.

Scientists have perfected a technique which allows them to create digital doubles of actors which are so realistic that audiences will never notice the difference.

That’s a scary thought: I’d much rather watch a flesh-and-blood actor showing real emotion, than some computer-generated imitation.

Thank God the producers of Heath Ledger’s last film, The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, weren’t tempted to use this new technology to create the scenes which Heath hadn’t completed before he died.

The Aguru Dome, a futuristic-looking photo booth (pictured), has just been developed to scan a person’s face in extraordinary detail.

This captures data which is fed into a computer to manipulate the image, so film-makers can then create action sequences featuring the actor.

For now, the technology isn’t designed to replace human performers but to re-shoot scenes when an actor is no longer available.

But, in theory, this gizmo could be used in place of an actor. “There’s totally the possibility that you can create something that never existed, that becomes a popular star of motion picture,” Dr. Paul Debevec, a graphics researcher at the University of Southern California, told the BBC.

Let’s pray that never happens.

Some actors have all the luck. Take Simon Pegg, who got to work with two of the hottest-looking girls on the planet in the clever comedy How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.

Pegg plays Sidney Young, a brash but naive British journo who plunges into the world of celebrities when he lands a job at a Vanity Fair-type mag in New York.

Kirsten Dunst is Alison, a fellow writer who’s asked to mentor Sidney against her wishes. Megan Fox (pictured) is Sophie Maes, a ditzy starlet with whom Sidney is infatuated.

Simon was bowled over by Megan, gushing, “She walked on set and the air disappeared from the room. She is extraordinary and incredibly beautiful but she’s also pretty down to earth and a bit geeky.”

He was equally taken with Kirsten, saying, “She is so experienced, she’s been doing it since she was three. She has an enormous amount of wisdom and professionalism.”

Pegg, who starred in Hot Fuzz, Run, Fat Boy Run and Shaun of the Dead, relished playing Sidney, who’s quite a contradiction.

“He’s kind of contemptuous in some respects but he’s got a good heart and that’s what you learn about him in the movie,” he says. “Ultimately, he’s a good guy but he’s desperately trying not to be for some reason.”

The movie, which also stars Jeff Bridges, Gillian Anderson and Danny Huston, opens on October 23.

If you believe Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, not much has changed since they first teamed together in 1995 in Sam Raimi’s western The Quick and the Dead, billed below the topliners Gene Hackman and Sharon Stone.

Apart from the fame and the money, I assume. DiCaprio, who was 18, played Hackman’s son, The Kid, and Rusty, who’s 10 years older was Cort, a preacher.

The two stars reminisced about their experiences this week while they were promoting their new movie, Ridley Scott’s cat-and-mouse spy thriller Body of Lies.

“We were both very bright eyed and bushy tailed,” says Leo, who had previously starred in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape while Crowe had just done Romper Stomper.

Crowe says the older actors on The Quick and the Dead looked at him and DiCaprio as if to ask, “Who are these guys??

“That naturally kind of put us together in a way where we’d just hang out together because we didn’t care about status,” he says. “We just wanted to enjoy the experience. The two things that have changed about Leo since that time are he can drink legally and he’s no longer a virgin.”

Leo says of his co-star, “He’s the same guy, he really is. He couldn’t be more professional. He couldn’t be a more normal guy to hang out with.”

Body of Lies follows DiCaprio as Roger Ferris, a top CIA agent who’s sent to the Middle East by his boss Ed Hoffman (Crowe), to lure a terrorist leader out of hiding.

Hoffman, it seems, is willing to do anything to achieve his objective- even if it means sacrificing his best agent in the process.