MAR-VELL-OUS! |
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| Move aside, Avengers ... It’s been a long wait - it's Marvel's 21st feature - but Captain Marvel is doing for women what Black Panther did so stupendously for African-Americans. To underline the point, the film opened (hugely) on March 8. International Women's Day. Who could best portray the super USAF pilot? There were rumours galore, mainly about Emily Blunt, Natalie Dormer, Rebecca Ferguson, Bryce Dallas Howard, wrestler Ronda Rousey, Battlestar Galactica's memorable Katee Sackoff, the Handmaid's Tale's Yvonne Strahovski, Olivia Wilde, The Vikings' Katheryn Winnick. Then, Brie Larson made a film called Room and won an award called Oscar. That settled it. She was, said Marvel chief Kevin Feige, "someone human and relatable enough to counterbalance Captain Marvel’s massive powers." Besides, Feige loves Oscar winners, signing up 18 so far - Cate Blanchett, Michael Douglas, Anthony Hopkins, Natalie Portman, among them. Also considered : Tilda Swinton, Doctor Strange's Ancient One, and part of Avengers 4 in April. Captain Marvel knocks them into a frazzle! She’s Marvel’s most powerful hero since arriving in the Marvel Super-Heroes comic #12 December 1967 … as a man! Well, a Kree alien warrior called Mar-Vell, hiding out in the identity of dead scientist Walter Lawson. (Jude Law has the double rôle, after Keanu Reeves passed). He works with Captain Carol Danvers. An explosion fuses her with his extraordinary powers (time travel included, as revealed by a slip of Sam Jackson’s tongue). Her mission? To stop Earth’s invasion by the shape shifting Skrulls. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is now The Marvel Cinematic Unidiverse. Kevin Feig is not only making an enviable run of mighty winners but following the Disney rule of checking all the diversity boxes. Next up is the Asian Shang-Chi (his enemy is ... Dad! Aka The Devil’s Doctor) ... and "definitely, sort of, in the works" (Feige told the BBC) Ms Marvel, a Muslim teen Kamala Khan, inspired, of course, by Carol Danvers. |
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MACAULAY'S FOLKS |
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 Remember how Macaulay Culkin was left Home Alone in 1990 - when his folks forgot to take him on their Paris holiday? For this pair of zeroes (in a script written for and duly stolen by Mac), an astonishing 66 stars were considered! Including 32 later seen for the hot lovers in Basic Instinct! Kim Basinger, Kevin Costner, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Douglas, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, Linda Hamilton, Daryl Hannah, Jessica Lange, Christopher Lloyd, Jack Nicholson, Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Meg Ryan, Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, John Travolta, etc. Among other potential parents were Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Tom Hanks, Bill Murray, even Arnold Schwarzenegger - to be wed to Kelly McGillis, Bette Midler, Ally Sheedy or Debra Winger … So who’d make the best couple for you? |
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SAM THE WHAM JUNIOR |
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| Sam Jackson has never looked better. Or, not since 1997 … He (obviously) pops up in Captain Marvel because it’s a great prequel tale for his alter ego, Nick Fury. (Idem for Phil Coulson, Korath the Pursuer and Ronan the Accuser). Captain Marvel is Fury’s first superpowered entity. And the inspiration, in fact, for The Avengers and SHIELD to come. The wondrous action is set in 1995, so Jackson had to look 20 years younger. Like his own son! This was achieved by Lola VFX combine, based on how he looked in the '97 Kevin Spacey film, The Negotiator. (Clark Gregg’s Coulson is also “aged down”) - as has previously happened to Robert Downey Jr, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell in the Marvelverse. This should have ended Sam’s nine picture Marvel gig ... except he just ain't leaving. He's back again in July in Spider-Man: Far From Home. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
HEY JUDE |
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 Early art on the new Judy Garland movie - Judy, what else? - from the BBC among other combines. The script takes place during her London concerts in the winter of 1968, when she fell for disc jockey Mickey Deans. Never knew why (maybe I knew her publicist) but I received an invite to their wedding in March '69. I passed (didn’t know either of them) and made some tasteless comment about being there for the divorce. She was dead three months later… Rufus Sewell plays her ex-husband, Sid Luft, and Finn Wittrock is Deans. Judy’s daughters, Liza and Lorna, are also portrayed - as is, of all people, skiffle star Lonnie Donegan! It’s all as big a shock as the first picture I ran here of Gary Oldman as Churchill … as Judy is none other than Bridget Jones - Renée Zellweger. Astonishing |
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GONZO HUNTER |
GOOD BOOKS |
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Twenty years before Benicio Del Toro and Johnny Depp and made Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1997, it had been a done deal for Marlon Brando as Dr Gonzo and Jack Nicholson as Hunter S Thompson. "Tell you what," said Depp, "I'd have watched that movie. I'd still be watching it. Nonstop. God, that would have been amazing!" He was forgetting their lamentable Missouri Breaks, 1976. About as rotten as Depp’s Thompson take. Brando once asked Depp how many movies he made in a year? "Last year, I think I did three." Said Brando: "Don’t do too many ... We only have so many faces in our pockets." |
Still working my way through all my Yuletide books, The surprise is Frank Langella’s Dropped Names - "famous men and women as I knew them." All 67 of them. From Roger Vadim’s "devotion to physical pleasure" to Liz Taylor’s - "Come on up, baby, and put me to sleep." His name dropping is quadrupled, if not more so, by Eric Idle’s spiffing ”sortabiography,” called, what else but Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. Lovely tales of the Pythons, Robin Williams and Idle’s great friendship with George Harrison. At one point they compare their respective Johns. Make of what you will. (Not finished it yet. Never rush pleasure). |
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NOT TO BE MISSED |
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| Steve Coogan and John C Reilly re-enacting the finale of Stan & Ollie. Which naturally reminds me that when Stanley Tucci and Oliver Platt’s comedy, The Imposters, turned up at the 1998 Cannes festival, I achieved a lifetime's ambition by standing up at their Press conference and declaring: "I have a question for… Stan and Ollie!" | ||||||||||||||||||||||
