Archive for August, 2010

July 23, 2010

LOS ANGELES—With the successful showing at the box office of Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest action-adventure sci-fi film, “Inception,” there is no doubt that the humble and talented actor is one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars.

Grossing $60.4 million in the opening weekend alone, the Chris Nolan-helmed movie that depicts a team led by Leonardo stealing dreams and implanting ideas in people while they sleep has got audiences wanting to see the movie again and again.

We interviewed the glamorous Leo in Beverly Hills and he told us how he chooses his roles, his directors, and the movies that he makes.

“I have always just taken a very simple approach which is can I provide service to that character?” he said. “Can I give something to this piece of material? Do I have an emotional connection to it? Can the director ultimately pull off this concept?”

He added, “It’s always been very director driven even more so than the script because oftentimes I’ve seen a piece of material totally elevated by the director. I can’t ever describe what moves me or what genre moves me. A lot of my friends have always told me, why don’t you try a comedy. Why don’t you do this, do a different genre, try something different. I can’t get myself to do something that I don’t care about and probably the biggest mistake in the world is saying I have to try a different genre or I have to do something just for the sake of doing it. Each film should be taken for its own individual attributes and taken for what it is.”

The 35-year-old actor, who is reportedly planning to visit the Philippines as part of his environmental campaign, explained to us what makes him feel satisfied.

“I am very competitive,” he said. “But I also love movies so much that I never felt like I’ve done that one or reached that goal or been able to say yes, I’m completely satisfied with everything I’ve attempted.”

The boyish-looking actor disclosed, “I used to go to school and do impersonations all the time. I would play tons of different characters, joke around with my friends, do insane things and feel like I have more to offer. I want to keep challenging myself. I want to play a wide variety of different characters in the future and do all kinds of stuff. Then, it’s fun for me. It’s like the greatest job in the world.”

We asked him if doing “Inception” was like doing a dissertation of philosophy.

The award-winning actor pointed out, “The reasons why I did this film is first because it is directed by Chris Nolan. Secondly, it is because of the concept of doing psychoanalysis of a person on this grand Hollywood scale and the interpretation of one coming to terms with who they really are.”

Ken Watanabe, who stars as Saito, the tourist, in the movie, revealed what surprised him about working with Leo.

“Before the shooting, I thought he was very sensitive but he’s really a tough guy,” he revealed. “He has so many faces. He is really gentle, smart and tough.”

He shared that Leo made him laugh one time when they were shooting the scene where they had low gravity. “The whole day, we were floating,” he narrated. “It was a tough scene. Finally, he probably reached his limit and he started singing. Yeah, I heard his song.”

The lovely award-winning actress Marion Cotillard, who portrays Mallorie “Mal” Cobb, the wife of Leo’s Dominic “Dom” Cobb, admitted to us that she did understand the complex story the first time she read the script of “Inception.”

“Yeah, I got almost all of it,” she said. “But I had to read it another time. It’s so complex. But even though there is a complexity about the movie, it is so emotional that you feel something. What is interesting in that is that things that you don’t really get, you keep thinking about them. You can have your own interpretation of those things. But the first time I read the script, I was blown away by the fact that it was so special. It was something that I had never read before.”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is Arthur, the point man in the movie, explained that he had to be spun around and that it was like being spun in something like a giant hamster wheel.

“One of the first meetings I ever had with director Chris Nolan, he brought me in in LA and showed me the model of this set that spun,” he narrated. “It was him and Tom Struthers, the stunt coordinator, and they said this is going to be very hard that you’re going to be really uncomfortable. This is going to be a really trying thing and I told Chris, I said, ‘I’m so happy to be doing this job. You will never hear me complain once I promise you that’ and he said, ‘Get it in writing’ (laughter). But I held to it and you could even ask him. I would not complain. Partially because it was actually really fun but also partially because I feel so lucky to get to do this.”

As for Ellen Page, who is Ariadne, the architect of the dreams in the movie, she confessed that she has a recurring dream.

“I’ve had a recurring dream where I’m skating on frozen lake in Nova Scotia where I’m from and it cracks,” she disclosed. “I fall through it and I’m looking up at the hole. Presumably, I’m dead. I think it means… hopelessness perhaps? Not that I’m a hopeless person by any means but I’m sure we all have those moments in our lives of absolute whatever. I really do not know how to interpret it or if it means anything. Or if it was just a panic dream.”

Source: femalenetwork.com

TITANIC II
2010 Action 90 min
On the 100th anniversary of the original voyage, a modern luxury liner christened “Titanic 2,” follows the path of its namesake. But when a tsunami hurls an ice berg into the new ship’s path, the passengers and crew must fight to avoid a similar fate.

Street Date: August 24, 2010 Prebook Date: July 27, 2010 Catalog #: 2475/2476 UPC Code: Rev Share: 686340-247536 Retail: 686340-247642

Source: theasylum.cc

Leo signed a card for a magician after he showed him his routine.

Read more at Cyril’s Website

http://www.cyrilmagic.com/2010/07/leonardo-dicaprio/

Leonardo Loves Kate Winslet?

Ever since Leo and Kate hooked up in Titanic, we’ve all been wondering if anything would ever happen in real life.

There was the gushing acceptance speech from Kate where she thanked Leo and left her husband out…slightly strange? She was divorced soon afterwards…and then what?

Kyle and Jackie O got the goss from Leonardo himself. Have they ever been more than just friends?

Watch Video on Site

Tell us who you’d like to see Leo hook up with, or maybe even marry!

Souce: 2dayfm

Shutter Island is no impenetrable art-house enigma: it’s an old-fashioned noirish thriller that ends with a massive plot twist. As such, you might have thought it would have been easy to understand. In fact, since the film was released in March, the blogosphere’s been awash with debate about what actually happens in the final scene.

Martin Scorsese’s film is based on a best-selling novel by Dennis Lehane. The book’s protagonist, Teddy Daniels, who’s apparently a US marshal, turns out to be Andrew Laeddis, a demented killer. He’s a patient in a mental hospital who’s been encouraged by his psychiatrist to act out his delusion in the hope that this will dispel it. The role play fails: after a brief recovery, Andrew relapses into insanity and is therefore taken off to be lobotomised.

The film’s been described as faithful to the book, and many cinemagoers seem to have assumed that it’s telling the same story. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Teddy does indeed turn out to be Andrew. However, before he falls into the clutches of the lobotomists, he utters a line that isn’t in the book. “This place makes me wonder,” he asks, “which would be worse – to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?”

For some, this is to be seen as no more than the rambling of a madman. Others, however, take it as meaning that Andrew’s only faking his relapse. His unusual treatment’s made him aware of the terrible thing he’s done: guilt has therefore engulfed him, and he’s deliberately getting himself lobotomised to escape it.

These two versions of what the film means could hardly be more at odds. Yet Scorsese hasn’t chosen to indicate which is the right one. Nor has DiCaprio. Perhaps the latter isn’t sure himself. He found his role traumatising, and told an interviewer: “I remember saying to Marty, ‘I have no idea where I am or what I’m doing.’”

Lehane is credited as one of the film’s executive producers, so you might think he at least would know what’s going on. Sadly, even he doesn’t seem wholly certain: he explains that he stayed out of the scripting process. When pushed, he tries to reconcile DiCaprio’s gnomic inquiry with his own original story. “Personally, I think he has a momentary flash,” he suggests. “To me that’s all it is. It’s just one moment of sanity mixed in the midst of all the other delusions.”

As it happens, just how to end the film was much debated by those more directly involved. One of these was Scorsese’s psychiatric adviser, Professor James Gilligan of New York University. On a visit to the location where most of the film was shot, the now-abandoned Medfield state hospital in Massachusetts, I asked the professor what was really supposed to be happening. His answer was clear cut.

Andrew does indeed choose his fate. According to Gilligan, those cryptic last words mean: “I feel too guilty to go on living. I’m not going to actually commit suicide, but I’m going to vicariously commit suicide by handing myself over to these people who’re going to lobotomise me.” Gilligan says that people who kill others in the way Andrew has don’t realise what they’re doing at the time. If treatment returns them to their senses, guilt may then overwhelm them.

For Gilligan, the correct reading is important. Shutter Island is set in the 1950s. During that era, severe mental disturbances were often dealt with physically. In America, more than 40,000 patients were lobotomised over a 30-year period. However, progressives were pushing for the replacement of such methods by less ruinous remedies. Andrew’s doctor (played by Ben Kingsley) is one of these. His role-play experiment is a test case. If it works, non-invasive treatment will have proved itself. If it fails, the lobotomists’ position will be reinforced.

This debate shows some signs of being rekindled: growing understanding of brain physiology is reawakening interest in tinkering with its workings. Gilligan, however, is firmly opposed to this trend, and keen to see psychosocial treatments defended. Shutter Island the book shows such a treatment failing. The film, according to Gilligan, shows it succeeding, at least in dispelling delusion.

A second look at the film suggests that Gilligan’s reading must be right. In his final murmurings, DiCaprio is clearly trying to act as if he’s acting. After uttering that last line, he leaps up and strides purposefully into the midst of the waiting lobotomists; they don’t have to jump him. So why all the mystery? Why weren’t things just made a little bit clearer?

Perhaps we can guess. According to Gilligan, “Martin Scorsese said this film will make double the income because people will have to see it a second time to understand what happened the first time.” So Marty at least may have known what he was doing. Shutter Island has already become his highest-grossing picture to date.

Source: Guardian

Over the last decade, Leonardo DiCaprio has established himself as one of the finest actors in Hollywood.

Talking about Denzel Washington, Julia Roberts once said, “I cannot absorb living in a world where I have an Oscar for Best Actress, and Denzel doesn’t have one for Best Actor.” Well the same can be said of Leonardo DiCaprio. He’s worked with great directors, stood out in films starring legendary actors, had blockbuster hits, won critical acclaim — it’s a wonder the 35-year-old actor has not got an Academy Award as yet.

DiCaprio, the son of an underground comic artist and producer of comic books, was apparently rejected by a casting agent when he was 11. Seven years later, he made his film debut with Critters 3, which did very well. Two years later, he delivered a stellar performances in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), where he completely stole the show from Johnny Depp. DiCaprio’s portrayal of the mentally challenged Arnie Grape landed him his first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He was only 19.

DiCaprio followed it up with The Basketball Diaries, playing Jim Carroll, a teenage basketball star who gets addicted to heroin. The movie didn’t do well but Dicaprio’s performance had everyone talking. In fact, it was this performance that propelled him into the league of young talented actors in the 1990s.

Of course, it was James Cameron’s Titanic that made Dicaprio a household name. The movie’s success did wonders for his career. Refusing to get typecast, his next outings at the box office had him playing a Scottish king in The Man in the Iron Mask, and an American backpacker Richard in Danny Boyle’s The Beach (2000) who comes to Thailand in search of an experience that was different from the ordinary — one of his most underrated performances.

Since 2002, when DiCaprio did Gangs of New York — the first of four movies with Martin Scorsese — his career trajectory has been on the up and up. In the past decade he has played diverse characters including that of Frank Abagnale, a conman of the 70s in Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can. He shed his boyish image with Scorsese’s The Aviator, where he played Howard Hughes, the aviation industry pioneer, and the critically acclaimed Blood Diamond, where he played a Rhodesian diamond smuggler.

Critics often dismiss Dicaprio saying he usually plays similar characters — angry, brooding men like Billy Costigan in The Departed, Teddy Daniels in Shutter Island, and Dom Cobb in the latest, Inception. He needs to do a comedy, some say. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that DiCaprio is, perhaps, the finest actor of his generation — and a very successful one at that.

Source: Business Standard