Curtains Open on Heath’s Hometown Honor
While excitable critics are abuzz about a possible posthumous Oscar nomination for Heath Ledger’s Joker, there’s a more immediate honor for the late star.
Ledger’s hometown of Perth, Australia, has named an $88 million playhouse after the actor.
West Australian Premier Alan Carpenter, accompanied by Ledger’s father Kim, this morning announced plans for the 575-seat Heath Ledger Theatre.
“Heath Ledger was an extremely talented actor, totally dedicated to his craft and internationally respected,” Carpenter said. “Honoring his memory in this way will ensure his acting achievements will continue to inspire young [Australian] artists.”
Kim Ledger was on hand for the tribute announcement, and said the Ledger family not only supported the naming decision but was quite touched by it:
“We feel so honored and intensely proud to know the government and people of West Australia are prepared to attach Heath’s name to this new theater project, which will provide Perth with an outstanding venue for years to come.
“Heath was deeply committed to his personal life within the arts environment the world over and an extraordinary giver of his time, kindness and money to aspiring or struggling artists from Australia and overseas. I have no doubt he would be pleased we are accepting the attachment of his name to such a worthy theater project.”
Hollywood Wizard Stan Winston Dies
From The Terminator movies to Iron Man, Stan Winston made the magic that make movies magic.
The Oscar-winning visual-effects and makeup guru died Sunday of multiple myeloma at his Malibu home. He was 62, and had been battling the plasma cancer for seven years.
“The entertainment industry has lost a genius, and I lost one of my bestfriends,” said California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom Winston helped make an iconic killing machine of in The Terminator and its two sequels.
Long Hollywood’s go-to creator of creatures great and occasionally frightning, Winston won four Oscars for his wizardry on Jurassic Park, Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which earned him two statuettes, one for makeup and one for visual effects. He was nominated a total of 10 times.
His handiwork can be seen in the current summer hits Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan and Iron Man, for which Winston’s namesake studio built the hero’s high-tech armored suits.
Stan Winston Studio is also set to work on the upcoming Terminator 4, the big-screen, live-action G.I. Joe and James Cameron’s Avatar.
Although Winston tended to work on films that were heavy on special effects, he maintained his life’s work was about building characters, not gadgets.
“I don’t do special effects. I create characters, and I use the tools of special effects necessary to do it,” Winston told the BBC in 2003.
Winston’s career began in 1969 when, according to his company’s website, the aspiring actor took a would-be day job as an apprentice to a Disney makeup artist. Just a few years later, he scored his first major awardan Emmy for his makeup work on the 1972 TV movie Gargoyles.
Throughout the 1970s, Winston created makeup looks for everything from low-budget horror films to a Diana Ross TV special. In the 1981, he earned his first Oscar nomination for using makeup to make a robot of Andy Kaufman in the 1981 comedy, Heartbeeps.
In 1984, he began a storied association with Cameron and the T-series cyborgs of The Terminator movies.
Moving beyond makeup, Winston was responsible for creating the futuristic effects for the relatively low-budget sci-fi thriller. While he didn’t rate an Oscar nomination for the film, he established himself as a special-effects specialist. He and Cameron would later go on to help found Digital Domain, the special-effects house.
After Terminator, Winston seemingly had a creative hand in every popcorn movie to pop out of Hollywood, including: Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park movies, for which he created the large-as-life dinosaurs; Cameron’s Aliens; Spielberg’s Artificial Intelligence: A.I.; Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands; Predator; Interview With a Vampire, even Tank Girl.
In 2001, Winston received an honor usually reserved for faces in front of the camera: A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 2003, Winston told the Los Angeles Times that he’d become so associated with creating creatures that the calendar date Oct. 31 drove him underground.
“There’s no way I could do anything on Halloween that would live up to what anyone would expect of me. If I were going to a costume party, what would I do? It would just be disappointing,” Winston said with apparent humor. “Halloween has become the tragic day of the year for Stan.”
Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna Movie Trailer
Spike Lee’s big screen adaptation of James McBride’s Miracle at St. Anna chronicles the story of four black American soldiers of the 92nd Infantry Division who get trapped in a small Tuscan village on the Gothic Line during the Italian Campaign of World War II. The film deals with the Sant’Anna di Stazzema massacre, but is structured with a Titanic/Saving Private Ryan flashback plot device involving a priceless Italian artifact, which is discovered in a murderer’s closet. The sculpted head from Ponte Santa Trinita, valued at $5 million, is a clue to a mystery that began 39 years earlier, when the soldiers found themselves trapped behind enemy lines and separated from their unit after one of them risks his life to save an Italian boy.
Miracle at St. Anna stars Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller, Matteo Sciabordi, John Leguizamo, and Joseph Gordon Levitt. Judging from the trailer, Spike Lee might be heading for an Oscar nomination with this one. Tell me what you think in the comments below.
You can watch the trailer in High Definition on Yahoo. Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna will hit theaters on September 26th 2008.
Cate Blanchett Charms Rome Film Festival
Cate Blanchett Charms Rome Film Festival
Her first appearance as Queen Elizabeth, King Henry VIII’s daughter, won her an Oscar nomination. And Cate Blanchett is hoping for a similar outcome as her new film “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” (released last week Stateside) made its European premiere.
Yesterday at the Rome Film Festival, “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” captivated audiences in it’s out-of-competition viewing. And Blanchett told press that taking the gig was a no-brainer.
“It would have been perverse (to refuse to play in the sequel). It’s undeniable that Elizabeth I is an extraordinary woman in history.”
Cate also made the connection between the time period of the film and modern society. “On a prosaic level you’ve got a popular film of a holy war, and then you have a kernel within it of a modern dilemma, a woman facing the aging process and feeling isolated.”