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Entries in Cate Blanchett (225)

Friday
Aug192016

Jared Leto and the Art of Disavowing Your Film

by Kieran Scarlett

You may have read earlier this week Jared Leto’s claims that he was “tricked" into doing Suicide Squad. These claims of course came in the wake of the film’s poor critical reception and steep box office drop off after its opening weekend. In a nutshell, Leto alleges that he initially believed the film would be much a much more artistic outing than what was on the screen and he feels duped. Now, we could certainly sit here and speculate how (with whole plot details and often times entire scripts being leaked online to the lay public prior to a film’s release) the arguable star of a major motion picture could ever be tricked into thinking the film was X when it’s really Y. But rather than unpacking that dubious version of events and the spinning and "taken out of context" responses there’s something else that needs to be addressed here—the art of shifting the blame for your participation in a critically panned film.

There’s a way to do it tactfully and believably, without the claims seeming like sour grapes. It’s a one-step process. It’s incredibly easy to remember and it will help actors avoid the side-eyes that Jared Leto and his claims are surely receiving. Here it goes...

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Tuesday
Jul262016

Oscar Trivia, Indie Sensations, and Evita's Death

On this day in history as it relates to the movies...

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Monday
Jun062016

Cast This: "Ocean's Ocho"

Remember that time when everyone was excited about the prospect of a female Expendables even though that action series wasn't any good in the first place? We were guilty, too. But the prospect of an all female version of another Oceans 11, not THAT sounds worthy of premature fandom.

There's one in the works right now with Sandra Bullock & Cate Blanchett headlining a la Clooney & Pitt.

The film is currently being referred to as Oceans Ocho suggesting the team of thieves is only 8 women wide this time and maybe it's taking place in some Spanish-friendly locale? We wish it were using the working title of Oceans Veinticuatro because more actresses hollaaaaa.

There are already rumors zooming around about other possible co-stars like Jennifer Lawrence (because that one needs more franchise. smh) and Gillian Anderson (a far more intriguing proposition) but nothing is set in stone since we're still talking casting and pre-production. 

1960s Cast 2000s cast

We need six more actresses to work with Bullock and Blanchett. Who would you have them be and why?

Remember that the first two iterations of this franchise had a wide range of stardom-levels, ages, and personalities so follow suit with your suggestions. Let's make it extra enticing! 

Wednesday
May252016

Lukewarm Off the Presses: Beyond Ragnarok & Huppert Fever

Reheating some news we never got around to! But perhaps it's news to you...

Cate Blanchett will be playing Thor's next big bad "Hela". We assume she's the antlered one in this concept art so we cautiously look forward to that costume. But confession: I don't trust Blanchett in villainous mode (*dodges tomatoes*) since she overdid it in both Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Hanna and nearly so in Cinderella and I don't mean overdid it in a fun comic-book kind of way but just too much overall. Plus the Thor movies are easily the worst part of Marvel Studio's work to date. Other new players in Thor: Ragnarok will be Jeff Goldblum, Karl Urban, and Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie (a character I loved as a kid so yay, Tessa). And of course Mark Ruffalo as the not jolly green giant and Chris Hemsworth as the guy with the hammer. For some reason they are forcing Sir Anthony Hopkins' Odin back on us (I thought he died in the ssecond movie?) and Tom Hiddleston is back under Loki's horns which is a pity because he deserves to use his time on other things, now, come on. They've wrung that character dry, they've leaned on him so much. 

Apparently the villain in Star Trek Beyond looks like this. It's actually Idris Elba underneath all that makeup. LOUD SIGH. First Oscar Isaac gets buried in ugly latex for Apocalypse and now Idris? Idris Elba is, and I think the internet will back me up on this assertion, one of the most attractive people on the planet. So why won't Hollywood show us his face? It is really pissing me off. This year he's onscreen as a tiger (Jungle Book) a buffalo (Zootopia), a sea lion (Finding Dory), and this alien but not as a human man you can actually look at. As a pasty white boy I am fully aware that there are people who think I shouldn't talk about race... but as a human person stuff like this is really getting to me. I am not one to jump on every perceived racial slight and proclaim racism (As I said much to the internet's displeasure this past season, I think #OscarsSoWhite was oft-misguided because the actor's branch is not the correct target for such things given both Hollywood and Oscar history) but I can't look at Idris Elba's career, and Zoe Saldana's career (note how she's always blue or green in her movies... until she was a black woman doing blackface -yikes!) and Lupita Nyong'o's career post Oscar (a CGI alien and a CGI wolf so far, but not an actress you can gaze at despite her considerable beauty) and not KNOW that Hollywood's race problem is dire and also, I'd wager, subconcious.

This is not complicated, really, if casting directors, directors, agents, executives, managers, and maybe even the actors on occasion would just think decisions through a little more, especially in regards to the optics. FACT: People like to look at beautiful actors. They always have. Stop hiding them from us! 

Isabelle Huppert is having a good year. I missed a lot of articles on Elle and Isabelle Huppert's time in front of the press at Cannes. In a new interview at the Guardian about Elle and her latest stage performance in Phaedra there's a lot of fascinating tidbits including her repetitive unwillingness to talk about other famous actors but her chatterbox response to questions about directors. She also wants to do more comedies...

Viewers do tend to think of her on-screen persona as a full-on neurotic, steeped in psychosexual anguish.

“Yes, but you can be a comic neurotic too.” So does she feel underrated doing comedy? “I certainly do feel…” she hesitates a moment; I take that as a yes. “That’s why I’d love to work with Woody Allen or Noah Baumbach – to do comedy in that New York vein.” But her serious roles, she insists, often contain more humour than is apparent. “Even The Piano Teacher – although I wouldn’t try to persuade anyone that was an out and out comedy…”

Whew. I was worried for a second. That film is not a knee slapper. As for Huppert in comedy. Can you handle that? I liked her in I Heart Huckabees and especially in 8 Women but in both she was working with or riffing on that dramatic neurotic performance so her comedy was stemming from perceptions of her as an actor, just as much if not more than her actual performances.

 

Saturday
May142016

Happy Birthday Cate Blanchett

Murtada here to celebrate Cate Blanchett's birthday and the Cannes Film Festival simultaneously!

Cannes is all about tradition and protocol. Who walks the red carpet and how they do it, is a big part of its tradition. Only the film cast and crew walk together as their photos are taken. Turn left, turn right, hand in hand until they reach the steps. There they are allowed to walk up separately and that's when the magic happened last year at the Carol premiere with Cate Blanchett proving what a great movie star she is.

Multiple Cannes moments with Cate after the jump...

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