The release of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies brings Peter Jackson’s trilogy to a close, and marks the end of a life immersed in Middle Earth for the actors. For several of the cast it was a years-long journey, and like any trip it’s nice to pick up a souvenir as a keepsake.
According to director Peter Jackson the actor who played the exiled dwarf king Thorin stole “the most boring thing in the world to steal,” from the set of the penultimate film, The Desolation of Smaug, socks.
“I did steal every single pair of costume socks,” said Richard Armitage, “because we were given a brand new pair every day.”
As production on The Battle of the Five Armies wrapped Armitage was gifted with some more interesting props including the deadly goblin cleaver Orcrist, which he keeps in an umbrella stand, “cause I want to be able to pick it up.”
Martin Freeman, who plays head Hobbit Bilbo Baggins, says he doesn’t miss making the films—“I’m really proud to have done it,” he says, “and I’m really glad to have done it, but I rarely miss jobs.”—but kept his sword and prosthetic ears as mementos.
Unlike Freeman, Sir Ian McKellen does get sentimental when he reflects on making the movies because, “a lot of the audience seeing The Hobbit part three wouldn’t have been born when we started filming it.” After spending thirteen years playing wise wizard Gandalf the Grey he took two priceless props from the set, “Gandalf’s staff, which I keep with umbrellas and walking sticks, and Gandalf’s hat, which I keep in the basement.”
Many actors have pilfered props from their movies. Keira Knightley walked off with Elizabeth Bennet’s striped socks from Pride & Prejudice. Elijah Wood has the One Ring from Lord of the Rings and Daniel Radcliffe liberated two pairs of Harry Potter’s famous round glasses, even though there was a strict policy about taking props from the set.
‘The ones from the first film are absolutely tiny now,” he says, “but they are very sweet.”
Kristen Stewart kept the engagement ring Edward Cullen gave her at the end of Twilight: Eclipse and Zachary Quinto took the ears he wore as Spock in Star Trek: Into Darkness but the strangest cinematic souvenir may belong to Mark Wahlberg.
The Academy Award nominee kept the prosthetic penis he wore as Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights. “I used to keep it in my desk drawer,” he said, “and I’d take it out and slap my friends in the face with it. I don’t keep many things from my movies, but that just seemed to have personal significance.”
There are things about Daniel Radcliffe that you probably already know.
Thanks to the Harry Potter series he’s one of the most recognizable actors on earth. He is 5’5” tall, a published poet and is the youngest person, other than royalty, to be honoured with a portrait in the National Portrait Gallery.
Here’s what you don’t know. He’s also remarkably reliable. In 10 years of shooting the Potter pictures, he only missed two days — and he’s polite.
For this interview he turned up early (when was the last time an international superstar was on time?) and greets your reporter with a hearty, “What a lovely surprise.”
He offers to help with my crossword — “I’m one of those people in life who probably really annoys serious crossword doers. I’m one of those people who comes up behind and goes, ‘That one you’re about to get? I’ve got it’” — and apologizes when he almost lets a curse slip.
He is not your typical superstar and his new romance, The F Word, is not a typical rom-com.
The 25-year-old actor says the story of a young man hopelessly in love with his best friend (Zoe Kazan) “has things a lot of films want, that combination of being sarcastic and quick and funny without being negative or cynical.”
“Zoe says a great thing,” he says of co-star Kazan.
“She talks about how in most romantic comedies the people meet and then there’s a getting-to-know-you montage, then they do whatever they’re going to do for the rest of the film. Our movie is basically that montage expanded to feature length, and that is what is so joyous about it. Those moments when you are getting to know someone and flirting with them, making them laugh, are so intimate and so exciting and so charged that as an audience it is wonderful to be allowed in to watch that and live through it again.”
Playing the lovesick romantic lead is something different for Radcliffe, who says he wants “to try my hand at as many things as possible.”
Since the final Potter film in 2011, he has appeared in everything from the beatnik drama Kill Your Darlings to the fantasy film Horns and will soon be seen as Igor in a new version of Frankenstein.
“Having played one character for a very long time,” he says, “that builds up in you a desire to play a number of different characters and do as much different work as you can. I want to show as many different sides of my ability as I can. Also I like that you can’t predict what my next thing is going to be.”
A new young adult film based on a best selling series of books is set in a world where diversity is frowned upon; sort of like Arizona without the dry heat.
In “Divergent” a Big Brother style government has divided the post-apocalyptic Chicago into five factions: the altruistic Abnegation sect, the peace loving Amity, the “I cannot tell a lie” Candor group, the militaristic arm Dauntless and the smarty-pants Erudites.
At age sixteen all citizens must submit to a personality test that will help them decide which faction they will join. “The future belongs to those who know where they belong,” is the Orwellian motto.
Beatrice Prior (Shailene Woodley) is from an Abnegation family, but chooses to join Dauntless, the warrior faction charged with protecting the city. During the grueling training “Tris” meets future love interest Four (Theo James) who helps her disguise the fact that she is “divergent,” a person who cannot be pigeonholed into just one designation. “If you don’t fit into a category they can’t control you,” she is told.
“Divergent” feels like a greatest hits version of recent young adult stories. Mixing and matching “Hunger Games” with a taste of “Harry Potter” and a splash of “Twilight,” results in a new story that feels familiar, like a sequel to a movie that doesn’t exist.
The film does take pains in the first hour to establish a world, with a unique set of rules—like once you choose a faction you can’t go back—and then promptly proceeds to break their own guidelines. The disregard for the rubrics blunts the power of the story, changing it from a high concept sci fi idea to simply a shifting situation for the characters to exist in. It’s a state of affairs passing itself off as an idea.
That won’t matter to the film’s core audience, teens, who will be more interested in Tris’s grrrl power, the dynamic of the Dauntless recruits and Four, the movie’s heart throb. Director Neil Burger aptly juggles all these elements well, and despite the plot lapses and some bloodless action—a zip line aerial scene that should be visually spectacular doesn’t make the eyeballs dance like it could—but the film is a little darker and grittier than you’d expect from a blockbuster-to-be. It would have been interesting to see what a director with true futuristic vision, like Terry Gilliam, could have done with the material, but ultimately it’s not about dystopia.
The young adult story thrives off subtext and in this case it is more about family, being yourself and facing fears, all subjects that will resonate with the target audience louder than any sci fi premise.
“Divergent” is “Hunger Games” light, but Woodley and James bring some heat to the leads and it’s fun watching Kate Winslet sneering her way through a villainous role.
Hilly Kristal became known as the Grand Curator of Punk. As the owner of CBGB, the American birthplace of punk rock, he auditioned hundreds of bands and gave groups like The Ramones, Blondie and The Talking Heads their first big breaks. When he liked a band he’d say his now legendary catchphrase, “There’s something there…”
After watching “CBGB,” the Alan Rickman movie based on his life and club, I was reminded of Gertrude Stein’s famous catchphrase, “There is no there there.”
When we first met Hilly (Rickman) he’s a divorced father with two failed clubs to his credit. When he stumbles across a dive bar on New York City’s Bowery he sees an opportunity. Taking over the lease, he befriends the neighborhood’s junkies, bikers and musicians, even if his original idea of presenting country, blue grass and blues (hence the acronym CBGB) gets passed over in favor of underground music by bands like Television and The Ramones.
The club is a hit, but Kristal is a terrible businessman who never pays his rent or liquor distributors. That job falls to his daughter Lisa (“Twilight’s” Ashley Greene) who pays the bills as an endless parade of musicians with names like Iggy Pop (Taylor Hawkins), Joey Ramone (Joel David Moore), Cheetah Chrome (Rupert Grint) and Debbie Harry (Malin Akerman) create a new youth movement on the club’s rickety stage.
Punk rock was a glorious racket, a stripped-down music designed put a bullet in the head of the Flower Power generation. Loud, fast and snotty, the music was ripe with energy and rebellion.
In other words it was everything that “CBGB” is not.
Director Randall Miller gets period details mostly right—the film’s set features artifacts from the punk rock shrine, including the bar, the pay phone, the poster filled walls and the infamously funky toilets—but entirely misses the spirit of the times and the music.
A movie about punk rock should crackle with energy. Despite a rockin’ soundtrack, “CBGB” feels inert. The story focuses on Kristal but Rickman barely registers. The actor reduces the flamboyant character to a morose monotone; a man at the center of a hurricane but who doesn’t feel the breeze.
The impersonations of the musicians are mostly quite good. The surprising stand-out is Rupert Grint as Dead Boys bassist Cheetah Chrome. It’s as un-Harry Potter a performance as you could imagine and he enthusiastically embraces Daniel Radcliffe’s post-Potter habit of showing his bum as often as possible.
Others acquit themselves in suitable snotty fashion, but the recreations mostly made me wish “CBGB” was a documentary and not a feature film. It has interesting tidbits about the time. For instance when Hilly first meets the Ramones he asks if they have any original songs. They say they only have five tunes, four of which have “I Don’t Wanna” in the title while the fifth is called “I Wanna Sniff Some Glue.” It’s a funny story, whether true or not, it hints at the kind of details that may have fleshed out a film that spends far too much time focused on the club and not on the music.
Not that there is a shortage of music, but it feels more “Rock of Ages” than “Raw Power.”
“CBGB” takes an exciting story of an important time and shaves all the rough edges away, leaving behind smoothed over vision of a rough-and-ready time.
It’s a mistake many Harry Potter fans make. They look at Daniel Radcliffe and think “Wow, he’s so like Harry. He’s grown up before our eyes just like him.”
Yes and no, says 19-year-old Radcliffe.
“Everyone always says he’s grown up on screen. No, I haven’t. Harry has. I’ve been quietly doing my growing up away from the cameras,” Radcliffe told Canada AM movie critic Richard Crouse on Tuesday.
Starring in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” the sixth entry in Warner Bros.’ golden film franchise, Radcliffe, Emma Watson (Hermione), Rupert Grint (Ron) and Tom Felton (Malfoy) return to the big screen after a two-year absence.
Much has happened since audiences last watched these kids wield their wands in 2007’s “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”
Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters are terrorizing the Muggle and wizarding worlds. Teenage hormones are wreaking havoc at Hogwarts. It all makes for a wicked blend of laughter and drama in what critics have dubbed the scariest Potter movie yet.
“I have a laugh with the crew and the cast. But when it comes to work I’m very serious about it,” says Radcliffe, who turns 20 on July 23.
Speaking with clarity and confidence, Radcliffe calls working with Gary Oldman in “Order of the Phoenix” a pivotal experience in his career. It brought about an enormous shift in the young actor, both personally and professionally.
“It was the first time I ever went, ‘Oh, I’m good there. I’m proud of the work that I did there. I haven’t really felt that before or since. But I’ve felt it once. That was enough to sustain me,” he laughs.
Radcliffe owes one of his favourite set memories to Richard Harris. The late, great Irish actor portrayed Professor Dumbledore in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” (2001), the first film based on J.K. Rowling’s books.
Harris complained about being given the wrong scene to learn. Eleven-year-old Radcliffe bravely walked up to the disgruntled legend and said, “Excuse me, Mr. Harris. Would you mind running my lines with me?”
“It was a moment of what I will unashamedly call dramatic political genius,” says Radcliffe. “I am still very, very proud of that moment. I haven’t done anything nearly like it since.”
As for discovering joy on the job, Radcliffe points again to Oldman, whose brilliant career includes such films as “Sid and Nancy” (1986), “Dracula” (1992), “Batman Begins” (2005) and “The Dark Knight” (2008).
Oldman gave Radcliffe his first insight into “real” acting while working together on “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” (2004).
“It was the moment where I realized a kind of joyous and rewarding thing about acting,” says Radcliffe. “The more you give it, the harder you work, the more seriously you take it the more fun it becomes.”
As the maturing star says, “It gives something back to you. Yeah, it’s lovely.”
In 2005 when the fourth installment of the Harry Potter films hit screens, I wrote, ‘The Harry Potter phenomenon is so powerful that you could have called this Harry Potter Drinks a Goblet of Water and presented an Andy Warhol-style film of young Harry chugging a glass of H2O for two hours and Potterheads would still wear their wizard hats and line up to see it.’
Astonishingly, six years later, the same holds true for the final installment of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.
It’s not uncommon for movie franchises to span years and hang on to loyal fans. But to have the seven films in the series so far gross an average $909,906,449 each is astounding.
That kind of number speaks as much to the ferocity of the Potterheads as it does to the quality of the movies. The next highest grossing movie series is the James Bond franchise, which originated in 1962.
The super spy has shot and seduced his way through 22 official 007 releases for a worldwide box office total of $5,029,014,110.
Interestingly Harry Potter-player Daniel Radcliffe expressed interest in taking on the role of the teenaged James Bond in a planned film based on the Young Bond series of books.
Perhaps he can bring some of his magic to the part and create another successful franchise.
The Potter films are unique in the sense that the cast has stayed unchanged. Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint were all magically transformed into multi-millionaires playing Harry, Hermione and Ron.
Their presence in the films has provided a sense of continuity from one film to the next, but it’s not always necessary for actors to be yoked to characters in multiple sequels and spin-offs. There have been six James Bonds and Batman – the highest grossing superhero series – and they’ve seen everyone from Michael Keaton to Christian Bale wear the crusader’s cape.
Even though George Clooney’s installment, Batman and Robin, was a critical and financial disaster — Clooney himself called the film “a waste of money” and volunteered to personally refund money to audience members — it didn’t stop the franchise. Eight years later Batman was reinvented by Christopher Nolan as The Dark Knight, which grossed $1,001,842,429 at the box office.
Not sure if recasting and reimaging Harry Potter would work, but, who knows? Maybe 10 years from now Hollywood will have a Potter new cast and new stories for a new generation.
By Richard crouse – Metro In Focus
