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Showing posts with label ewan mcgreggor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ewan mcgreggor. Show all posts
Wednesday, 29 March 2017
Labels:
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Sunday, 26 March 2017
FILM 1632: BEAUTY AND THE
BEAST
TRIVIA: Ryan Gosling was
offered the role of the Beast, but turned it down to appear in La La Land (2016)
instead. Emma Watson
was offered the lead role in that film, but turned down that film to star in
this one.
Sir Ian McKellen
originally turned down the voice of Cogsworth in the original Beauty and the Beast
(1991).
According to Ewan McGregor, the
hardest part about playing Lumiere was getting the character's French accent
right, although his wife of twenty years is in fact French. He said his voice
ended up sounding Mexican instead of French, so he had to redo his dialogue
after filming had completed.
Alan Menken, who
scored Beauty and the
Beast (1991), returns to score this live-action adaptation, which
includes new recordings of the original songs in addition to new songs written
by Menken and Tim Rice.
Ewan McGregor
performed Lumiere's dances in motion-capture. However, he was embarrassed at
wearing the motion-capture suit, and couldn't dance properly, unless he was
completely alone with the filming crew.
During the ballroom scene, Emma Watson had a
hard time not looking at her feet, because Dan Stevens was
wearing steel toed shoes, and she was afraid he would step on her.
According to Disney, the first
teaser trailer was viewed 91.8 million times in its first 24 hours. This marks
the first teaser trailer of "Beauty and the Beast" to be the most
viewed teaser trailer in history. Beating the previous record by Star Wars: The
Force Awakens' (88 million views), followed by Captain America: Civil War (61
million views), each of them Disney films as well.
Bill Condon had
actors sing The Lion King (1994)'s "Hakuna Matata" at the
auditions to measure their singing voices. This was how he chose the final cast
for this film.
Luke Evans (Gaston)
had to wear fake teeth during filming due to having canines that are longer
than normal, which he said would have made Gaston look like a vampire.
Interestingly, he did in fact play a vampire in 2014's Dracula Untold as the
title character.
Hidden Mickey: The lock on the
stagecoach that Maurice and Belle are imprisoned in
In the 1991 classic the Beast's
castle is shown to be quite close to the village, close enough for an angry mob
to reach it in a few hours at most, yet nobody in the village know about it or
notices the absence of those who live there when they are cursed. The prologue
of the 2017 version elaborates on the story of the curse, stating part of the
curse involved the world forgetting about the castle and its inhabitants.
During Belle and Beast's waltz, the
letters WD can be seen in the coat of arms design on the floor. This is a nod
to Walt Disney.
Jean Dujardin was
strongly considered, and was the filmmakers' choice, for the role of Lumiere.
Bill Condon was
chosen to direct Beauty and the Beast (2017), based solely on his previous work
on Dreamgirls
(2006).
When Maurice first enters the
castle, he takes a second glance at the sconce holding up a lantern, as it resembles
a human arm. This is a nod to the Jean Cocteau 1946's French film version of La Belle et la BĂȘte
(1946), where the halls of the castle are lit by human arms covered in gold
holding up candelabras.
In the first half of the film, the
Beast wears raggedy clothes, symbolizing his initially savage persona. After
the song "Days in the Sun", the Beast's outfits become more refined
and princely. This mirrors him slowly regaining his humanity.
The fictional town of Villeneuve is
so named for the original author of "La Belle et la BĂȘte," and
Production Designer Sarah Greenwood used the real French village of Conques in
Southern France for the inspiration.
Labels:
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Saturday, 4 February 2017
FILM 1616: T2 TRAINSPOTTING
TRIVIA: This is the first time
since 1997 that Ewan McGregor and Danny Boyle have worked together (since A Life Less Ordinary
(1997)). The two had a falling out when McGregor was passed over for the lead
in The Beach
(2000) in favor of Leonardo DiCaprio. McGregor stated that they have since
reconciled, and that he considers the whole matter "water under the
bridge".
Danny Boyle has credited David
Bowie with helping to be able to use various hit songs in the original movie
inexpensively because he had ties with Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, and helped Boyle
out because he was a fan of Shallow Grave. For his own little personal tribute
to him following his death, Boyle decided to shoot a moment where Renton goes
through his record collection and finds a couple of Bowie's albums.
Labels:
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Monday, 10 December 2012
Film 849: Perfect Sense
Trivia: Denis Lawson (Boss) is the uncle of Ewan McGregor (Michael) in real life.
Thursday, 13 September 2012
Film
803: Velvet Goldmine
Trivia:
Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Ewan McGregor sang their own
songs in the movie. (Some of Rhys Meyers's songs were overdubbed by Radiohead
lead singer Thom Yorke.)
When
Brian first sees Mandy, he says "Do you jive?" That's what David Bowie is supposed to
have said when he first saw his first wife, Angela Bowie.
During
the Festival sequence where Brian sees Curt perform for the first time, Ewan McGregor was only due to
moon the disgruntled crowd. But inspired by the antics of Iggy Pop, he improvised,
and ended up gesticulating wildly while flashing the audience, leaping about
with his trousers around his ankles.
When
Christian Bale and Ewan McGregor were filming their
sex scene, the director cut without letting them know, so the two continued to
simulate the act until they realized the trick that had been played on them.
The
Curt Wild character is mainly inspired by David Bowie's relationship
with two American 1960's underground rockers whose careers Bowie resurrected,
'Iggy Pop(I)' and Lou Reed. Iggy Pop hailed
from Michigan and shared Wild's long blond locks, while Reed underwent shock
therapy for bisexuality as a teen and was rumored to have had an affair with
Bowie before their falling out after Bowie produced Reed's album Transformer.
Much central to the film is fictionalized such as the mythical, mysterious
decade-long disappearance of "Slade", although he reincarnated
himself as Tommy Stone, a blonde with a white suit (the 'thin white duke').
Bowie wasn't as huge of a star as Slade is depicted here and never withdrew for
so long from the public-eye as did the film's character.
Courtney Love considered
supplying music to the film's soundtrack, however after viewing a rough cut she
withdrew, claiming that the character of Curt Wild too closely resembled her
late husband Kurt Cobain both in character
and physicality. The Wild/Cobain parallel later became a much-discussed point
among critics, and while director Todd
Haynes and actor Ewan
McGregor have noted similarities between Cobain and Wild, both
claim the resemblance was unintended. Haynes, for his part, notes that Cobain
borrowed many style traits from Iggy
Pop, who served as partial basis for the Wild character.
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