Empire Online
Last year's decision by BAFTA organisers to place the ceremony squarely during the run-up season for the Oscars has clearly paid off with a truckload of stars heading for London for this weekend's celebrations.
In particular, Hollywood is very well represented this year, as LA-based actors hope to make the most of the three days' grace between the BAFTAs and close of voting on the Academy Awards. A win in London could, they hope, make the difference at next month's Oscars.
The list of stars expected in London for Sunday's show reads like an Elton John party list with stars such as Russell Crowe, Renee Zellweger, Nicole Kidman, Kevin Spacey, Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek, Harvey Keitel, Halle Berry and Don Cheadle all expected to make an appearance.
Flying the flag for the Brits will be Iris stars Judi Dench, Kate Winslet and Jim Broadbent, Helena Bonham Carter and Lord Attenborough and LOTR stars Sir Ian McKellen and Orlando Bloom.
Empire Online will be reporting live from the Awards on Sunday night and if you check back on Monday morning we'll have a full picture gallery and behind-the scenes coverage from this year's BAFTAs.
Being host of 'SNL' gives Ian McKellen the jitters
New York Post
'BOOKS ARE where things are explained to you, life is where things aren't and I'm not surprised that some people prefer books," said the critic Julian Barnes.
I'm always put in a literary frame of mind whenever I encounter my friend, the great British actor Sir Ian McKellen, who is nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for his Gandalf in "The Lord of the Rings."
Ian was relaxing in Northern England, enjoying some unseasonably balmy weather. But tonight in England, he'll unveil a painting of himself by Clive Smith, which will hang permanently in the National Portrait Gallery of London. I asked how he felt being nominated for playing a white-headed ancient in the heralded film, instead of getting to be his attractive self. He laughed, "I think it's always safest to have makeup and pretend to be something you're not." He relished doing "Dance of Death" on Broadway because every time he left the theater, people would call him "Gandalf" in the street. "I just loved that. In England, people are so much more reserved."
When I remarked that there are 12 British actors nominated for this year's Oscars, Ian said of Brits in U.S. cinema, "Yes, it all began years ago with Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy." He might be shooting some extra scenes for the sequels to "The Lord of the Rings" and won't mind going back to work in New Zealand, but he needs to be in Vancouver in May for "X-Men II." "I'm getting a lot of interesting scripts. But my biggest thrill is that I'll host 'Saturday Night Live' on March 16th. I've always dreamed of doing stand-up comedy. I confess I am a little scared." What, I asked, are his movie's chances to sweep the Oscars? Ian said, "Movie makers like to celebrate enterprises of quality, and this was certainly one!"
This Sunday in London, Ian will hand Britain's cherished BAFTA Fellowship Award to Warren Beatty. "It usually goes to a Brit, but Warren deserves it and I am so glad he asked me to be the presenter."
New Line founder Robert Shaye honored
Some of the pics from the Event
U.K. director Greenaway declares cinema dead
LONDON (Reuters) - Controversial British director Peter Greenaway, maker of films including "The Draughtman's Contract" and "Prospero's Books," said Friday that modern pictures were "cynical" and "formulaic" and declared cinema dead.
In an interview with the Times newspaper, he said film makers were failing audiences by churning out pictures that failed to stretch the imagination.
"Cinema is dead," he told the paper. "In the early 1950s and 1960s the whole family would go to the cinema every week of the year. Now you're hard-pressed to find someone who goes once a year."
He dismissed recent box office hits "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" and "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" as "cynical exercises...in making a quick buck," adding that films should be more than adjuncts to bookshops.
Greenaway is one of the most controversial directors of his era, creating dark films that drew a cult following but crossed into the mainstream.
One mullet to rule them all
Mullet Madness
A new controversy has exploded on Lord of the Rings fan sites. New publicity photos from "The Two Towers," New Line Cinema's follow-up to the fantasy blockbuster "Fellowship of the Ring," show the film's star, Elijah Wood, sporting a heinous mullet.
Because the films are based on Tolkien's fantasy series, within Tolkien fandom nothing is a greater sin than altering the author's original work. Ancalagon, the message board moderator for www.thelordoftherings.net, cited Frodo's new mullet as "an enormous abomination to the legacy of Middle-Earth." But the film's director, Peter Jackson, defends the artistic license taken in creating Frodo's character.
"Nowhere in Tolkien's novels does he specify the hairstyle of the hobbits." Jackson went on to explain that, like the "Star Wars" films, the mullet operates as a symbol of evil. "As a filmmaker, nothing is more difficult than visually conveying a character's internal struggle. The mullet seemed to be a wonderful symbol that could visually illustrate Frodo's struggle with the evil of The One Ring."
While Tolkien fans abhor the mullet, Jackson's decision seems to have won over some new fans; bumper stickers have been showing up in trailer parks across the nation reading: Welcome to Mullet-Earth!
Jackson talks about Two Towers trailer, Gollum
Cinescape
It looks like Peter Jackson had a few things to say about the upcoming film in the Lord OF The Rings series while talking to a bookstore crowd in New York recently.
According to Moriarty, an Ain’t It Cool news tipster who attended the event, Jackson said by mid-March the trailer for The Lord OF The Rings: Two Towers will be spliced onto the ends of the already released prints of The Fellowship Of The Ring. What’s more, the trailer will be almost twice as long as normal movie trailers, clocking in at three and a half minutes.
Jackson also said he’s heading back to New Zealand in June to shoot more scenes with Elijah Wood and Sean Astin and the creepy Gollum, played in semi-CGI form by Andy Serkis. According to an interview in the New York Post, Serkis said about his role, “I play him as if he's a junkie and his fix is the ring. I've tried to make him as human as possible in that way."
