SUPERMAN: MAN OF STEEL | Amy Adams is Lois Lane

Amy Adams has been cast as Lois Lane in Zack Snyder‘s Superman: Man of Steel. The role in the 2012 Superman reboot has been the subject of many auditions and much conjecture. As far back as February, reports named Kristen Stewart, Rachel McAdams, Jessica Biel, Dianna Agron, Malin Akerman, Olivia Wilde, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kristen Bell, Lake Bell, and Lindsay Lohan as possible actresses auditioning, pursuing, or wanting the coveted fictional journalist role. In the end it went to three time Oscar nominee Amy Adams.

The 36-year-old star got the news on Sunday from director Zack Snyder, who phoned her from Paris, where he was promoting his just-opened film, “Sucker Punch.” There had been a crush of Hollywood interest in the lead female role in the Warner Bros. project but Snyder said that after meeting with Adams, she was the clear choice to take on a character that dates back to 1938 and has long represented the strong, professional woman who can hold her own against any man – even if he can leap tall buildings in a single bound.

“There was a big, giant search for Lois,” Snyder said. “For us it was a big thing and obviously a really important role. We did a lot of auditioning but we had this meeting with Amy Adams and after that I just felt she was perfect for it.”

Adams made her cinematic debut with 1999’s Drop Dead Gorgeous, but it was 2005’s June bug that really caught the public’s attention. Her turn as the chatty, naive wife to Benjamin McKenzie won over critics and earned her her first Oscar nod. Since then, appeared in a wide variety of films — some of her most notable films include Talladega Nights, Enchanted, Doubt (Oscar nomination #2), and last year’s The Fighter (Oscar nomination #3). She will next be seen in The Muppets as Jason Segel’s girlfriend, and On the Road as Viggo Mortensen’s wife.

Amy Adams joins the Superman: Man of Steel cast that already includes Henry Cavill, Kevin Costner, and Diane Keaton. I think this is an inspired casting decision, especially after seeing her performance in The Fighter. Henry Cavill has a serious supporting cast for his potential star-making role.

Source: Film Book

Immortals (Tarsem Singh, 2011)

Dressing up 300's presentation ancient Greek carnage with even more slow-motion, gore and fussy but meaningless art direction, Tarsem Singh's Immortals represents a significant step backward for the director whose long-gestating labor of love, The Fall, made him an instant cult icon. Immortals, sadly, resembles more the director's prior The Cell, a thin, borderline offensive premise made both more alluring and more repellent by Singh's grandiose, immaculate designs. Most of the shots in this film display an intricate control of mise-en-scène, but the florid colors, precise blocking and refreshing use of tactile objects where possible only make it more frustrating that no one apparently stopped to take stock of how awful all those obsessively arranged objects were.

Awkwardly inserting itself between a revisionist exposé of how great but mortal deeds become godlike and an endorsement of supernatural mythology, Immortals never properly finds its footing. Vaguely retelling the story of Theseus (Henry Cavill), the film depicts the mythological hero as a peasant who has honed his fighting skills from childhood under the tutelage of a kind old man (John Hurt) who just might be more than meets the eye. Theseus' village, a stacked network of homes etched into a sheer cliff face near Mount Tartarus, comes under fire by Hyperion (Mickey Rourke), the king of Crete, who seeks to free the Titans caged in the giant mountain to bring about the death of the gods he despises. We soon learn that gods do indeed exist in this world, but despite the threat of unleashing the Titans, they force the humans to fight their battle for them.

This is but the first and most prominent element of the film to make no sense. Zeus (Luke Evans) warns any other god who might think of helping Theseus and the tiny contingent of support the man amasses because "the law" forbids gods to interfere in the affairs of man. Heracles, one of a number of children he made with a human women, is literally standing there when he says this. His daughter, Athena (Isabel Lucas) also mentions Zeus being that old man who coached Theseus from childhood, which the supreme god defends by saying he was in human form, the supernatural equivalent to, "I smoked, but I didn't inhale." There is a point to be made here about the hypocrisy and egomania of the gods, a point the Greeks themselves made in some of their myths, but Singh presents this arbitrary restriction without comment, needing any excuse to ward off the audience asking, "Well why doesn't Zeus just put a lightning bolt up Hyperion's ass and end this now?"

Not much else in the film obeys any logic, internal or otherwise, either. Singh stages a number of swordfights without any grounding in drama, making the hacking and slashing feel more like a video game cutscene than a film. In fact, I kept thinking of the God of War games while I watched CGI bubbles of blood explode out of people slashed with rote button-mashing repetition. Those games not only have a more engaging mythological revisionism, they better capture and critique the unchecked arrogance of the gods. They also give some sense of scale as to the difficulty of killing an immortal, which here seems a matter only of getting the drop on a timeless being. The Titans themselves just look like charred people, and the gods can kill them nothing more than chains and the rod part of Poseidon's trident. If they were this easy to kill, why imprison them in the first place? And why, when the gods have to finally face their old foes, do only six of them show up? This is fate-of-the-world stuff, Hephaestus, maybe get off your ass.

Yes, yes, it's just an action film, and one more visually sophisticated than the usual tat. Singh said he set out to cross Fight Club with Caravaggio, and he largely succeeds. But that artiness privileges the tableaux of the master shots, not the eventual slide into incoherent action scored to what sounds like Hans Zimmer's "braaam" refrain from Inception crossed with an audio recording of a hurricane taken with a cellphone. The climactic battle betrays Singh's flaws when it comes to handling the variables of people, who cannot be so minutely controlled in large numbers and undo all that work he put into the lovely tunnels and caves. By founding his film on prettiness, not humanity, Singh not only prevents any kind of moral connection to the violence but perversely beatifies it. One could justify this as the director canonizing the all-too-real deeds of man into a great mythological event, but even the depictions of torture in this movie are so finely crafted as to revel in the blood.

Immortals does get a few things right, chiefly in that portrayal of ancient Greece not as some utopian place of peace and wisdom but a bloodthirsty place of horrific war and atrocity. Hyperion in particular is, despite the thin reasoning behind his quest to bring about the end of the world (between this and Star Trek, I'm so sick of people taking out the loss of a loved one on an entire planet), frightfully plausible. He plans his subjugation across generations, trying to leave as many descendants as possible not merely to perpetuate his own line but to leave genealogical scars of his conquest in order to gain victory even in death. But Immortals never capitalizes on these brief displays of clarity, soon dropping right back into the saber-rattling, blood-letting glory of war. Then again, its costumery and staging are so absurd that the fights here are more likely to be canonized by Aristophanes than Homer.

Box office update: 'IMMORTALS' slashes competition with $15 million!!!

Could it be? It looks like some Greek gods, a cross-dressing comedian, and a Spanish kitty cat are actually breathing life into the dismal box office!

Relativity’s Tarsem Singh-directed 3-swords-and-sandals action flick Immortals easily topped the box office on Friday, fighting its way to a better-than-expected $15 million. That puts the picture on pace for a $37 million weekend, about half of what 300 opened to in 2007. Still, considering the rut the box office has been in this fall, a $37 million debut is pretty impressive.

In second, Adam Sandler’s latest comedy Jack and Jill laughed up (actually, there probably wasn’t much laughing involved) $9.9 million on its first day. Sony’s Adam Sandler comedy could earn $27 million over the Friday-to-Sunday period, but considering his other films typically open in the $40 million range, Jack and Jill will have to work hard to join the $100 million club.

Puss in Boots finished in third with $9 million. The Shrek spin-off will lose some of its audience to the family-friendly Jack and Jill, but it still has a good shot at passing that picture and reaching second place. In all likelihood, it will earn a similar $27 million.

Brett Ratner’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad week gets just a slight bit better thanks to Tower Heist dropping by an alright 40 percent to $4.9 million on Friday. The Eddie Murphy/Ben Stiller comedy may fall by 35 percent for the weekend to $15 million, lifting Tower Heist’s total to $45.5 million.

Rounding out the top 5 is J. Edgar, which earned $4.3 million and looks like it’s headed for an opening right in the same range as Clint Eastwood’s last picture, Hereafter, which found $4.1 million on its first day of wide release and earned $12 million over the entire frame.

Check back tomorrow for the full box office report.

1. Immortals – $15 million

2. Jack and Jill – $9.9 mil

3. Puss in Boots – $9 mil

4. Tower Heist – $4.9 mil

5. J. Edgar – $4.3 mil

THE REVIEW (by Adam Markovitz)

The ''producers of 300'' have gotten high billing in ads for Immortals, another swords-and-sandals mini-epic in which men dressed like Hellenic gay pride paraders wrestle and preen and cross swords (in a perfectly hetero-virile way, of course).

But once you've spent two hours watching amber waves of abs ripple across the screen, you might think bigger credit really ought to go to the actors' personal trainers. After all, it's the size of his pecs — and certainly not his personality — that designates Theseus (Henry Cavill) as this story's hero. He's a stonemason from a small village, and his single definable character trait — a hot temper — only serves to move him from one bicep-flexing fight to another with minimal dialogue in between.

The focus of most of his anger is King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke, chewing the scenery like a four-course meal), a tyrant out to conquer both the earth and Olympus by dint of a magical bow. Helping Theseus fight him are a sensual oracle (Freida Pinto) and the Olympians themselves, including fiery, brawny Zeus (Luke Evans) and fierier, brawnier Poseidon (Kellan Lutz). The gods of Homer and Virgil these ain't; Immortals' shaved-chest-thumping mythology owes more to Men's Health than to Bulfinch's.

Plot machinations ensue, though you won't much care — or understand, since the dialogue is all muttered in a Babel of pan-U.K. accents to underscore its pointlessness. But what saves Immortals as a moviegoing experience is the exuberant, kid-in-a-candy-store virtuosity of its director, former music-video wunderkind Tarsem Singh (The Cell). He has no apparent love or patience for storytelling, but Singh is a visualist on par with Julie Taymor and Tim Burton. He makes images of such overblown, pop-baroque splendor that the eyes have no choice but to gorge. Every landscape is a canvas for cartoon-crazy architecture, every body a mannequin for inhuman costumes, every battle blow a candidate for slo-mo glory. Without any narrative heft, these sights don't last in the mind much longer than they linger on screen. And yet they thrill in short-lived bursts that Singh doles out carefully, keeping pace with the audience's appetite. It's his name that ought to be above the title. B

Source: Inside Movies | Grady Smith

HENRY CAVILL | Man of Steel behind-the-scenes! Need I say more?

Just when you thought there were enough hot photos of Henry Cavill out there.... Suddenly a new set surfaces and proves why he is predicted to be the next hottest leading man. See for yourself. :o)

 

HENRY CAVILL | Why HE IS the hottest IMMORTAL and SUPERMAN!!!

Henry Cavill shows off his fine figure in this shirtless new still from the upcoming 3-D movie, Immortals, out November 11.

The legends of the Greek Gods will come to life like never before in the Tarsem Singh-directed flick, which also stars Mickey Rourke, Stephen Dorff, Isabel Lucas, Freida Pinto, and Kellan Lutz.

Henry, who has been busy in Vancouver shooting Man of Steel, plays the Greek warrior Theseus, who battles against imprisoned titans.

ABOUT THE MOVIE 'IMMORTALS'

Visionary director Tarsem Singh (The Cell, The Fall) transports us to a mythical world of treachery, vengeance and destiny in Immortals, a stylish and visually spectacular 3D action adventure. As a power-hungry king razes ancient Greece in search of a legendary weapon, a heroic young villager rises up against him in a thrilling quest as timeless as it is powerful. 

The brutal and bloodthirsty King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) and his murderous Heraklion army rampage across Greece in search of the long lost Bow of Epirus. With the invincible Bow, the king will be able to overthrow the Gods of Olympus and become the undisputed master of his world. With ruthless efficiency, Hyperion and his legions destroy everything in their wake, and it seems nothing will stop the evil king's mission.

As village after village is obliterated, a stonemason named Theseus (Henry Cavill) vows to avenge his mother, who was killed in one of Hyperion's brutal raids. When Theseus meets the Sybelline Oracle, Phaedra (Freida Pinto), her disturbing visions of the young man's future convince her that he is the key to stopping the destruction. With her help, Theseus assembles a small band of followers and embraces his destiny in a final, desperate battle for the future of humanity. Immortals is produced by Gianni Nunnari (300), Mark Canton (300) and Ryan Kavanaugh (The Fighter).

 

  

 

‘The Immortals’ Trailer

 

 

 

 

Source: Just Jared

Man of Steel HENRY CAVILL | The Sky's The Limit

After battling Greek gods in Immortals and donning Superman's cape for the series reboot, Henry Cavill can teach you about career climbs.

The superhero began life a chubby little boy.

As a child in England, Henry Cavill was known as "Fat Cavill." "It's definitely a shitty nickname," Cavill says, seated in a Chicago sidewalk cafe. "But kids are kids. Kids are cruel. Whatever. I was fat."

It's hard to admit, but sometimes even cruel kids have a point. In time, Cavill, the lead actor in the current toga-abs epic Immortals and the forthcoming Superman reboot Man of Steel, became as tough on himself as his classmates had been on him. He accepted the harsh reality of his situation—he was "round," as he puts it, and needed to make a change. The rugby, field hockey, and cricket of his boarding-school days weren't enough.

He grew up and out of his pudgy body and then kept going. He became a model and an actor, running for four seasons as fun-loving bad boy Charles Brandon on Showtime's Henry VIII drama The Tudors, a role that required nude sex scenes. (Tough job!) But even that experience wasn't enough to give him confidence in his body. He still thought of himself as overweight until just a few years ago, when he trained for Immortals, the 300-style action flick due out this month. Cavill spent countless hours hoisting weights alongside the throngs of ripped warriors in the cast.

"There was a sense of team and camaraderie," he says. "We all sweated together, we all bled together, we all ate the same highly inefficient food and just kept on going and supported each other." When he felt weak, the group kept him going. "Because they were doing it—and if they could do it, so could I. It's not the end of the world that your feet hurt. Push yourself."

Playing Theseus, a Greek warrior chosen by the gods to save the homeland, Cavill was greased up, ripped, and 25 pounds lighter than he is now. He could have asked director Tarsem Singh to apply the film's extensive CGI to assist him with that eight-pack, but he opted instead to embrace a grueling training regimen designed to create a lean, carved physique. As a result, Theseus's abs are all real, with no digital enhancement. "It's very stressful," Cavill says, "waking up Monday morning and saying, 'Can I still see that vein in my abs?' "

Sometimes a little obsession is what it takes to excel. And the first step is rejecting the status quo. Henry Cavill's story is about nothing if not perseverance—the kind of intestinal fortitude that spurred him to chase an ultra-ripped body and steadied him when multiple celebrated roles slipped through his fingers.

Technically, Man of Steel isn't Cavill's first time wearing Superman's cape. About 7 years ago he was cast as Clark Kent (and alter ego) in the last update of the franchise, Superman Returns. But when the original director, McG, abruptly quit, Cavill was gone with him. As it turned out, that flaccid sequel to the Christopher Reeve series proved to be kryptonite for the career of its replacement star, Brandon Routh.

Now that Cavill has the S shield firmly emblazoned on his chest and the movie is due out in 2013, it all seems meant to be. Then again, maybe not. "That really bugs me," he bristles, mocking the phrase "meant to be." The 28-year-old lifts his coffee cup and places it firmly back down an inch away. "This was meant to end up there because I put it down."

Cavill prefers to believe in action and reaction, cause and effect. He rattles off any number of reasons why roles don't pan out, theorizing about his lack of performance, bad timing, even just a run-of-the-mill bad day for one or the other of the parties involved. "Who knows? But I don't think it's anything like 'It wasn't meant to happen.' "

His other high-profile letdown: losing the role of James Bond to Daniel Craig just a year after losing Superman Returns. "I obviously wasn't right for Bond," Cavill admits now, secure that he gave it his all. "I did, and I wasn't right. That's all." He also realizes that with The Tudors and memorable supporting turns in Tristan & Isolde, Stardust, and Woody Allen's Whatever Works now under his belt, he has more name recognition than he once did. That helped him land Man of Steel, and who knows what else is down the road?

"He's definitely more Superman now than he was 7 years ago, I think," saysMan of Steel director Zack Snyder. "He has been the rock that we can build this movie around." That rock didn't spend the past few years sitting around. "I want to be chosen, not wish I was part of something," Cavill says. "I didn't pine over the fact that I didn't get the last one. It was 'move on, carry on,' whatever!"

Cavill's perspective feels distinctly British, with its echoes of the old World War II poster "Keep Calm and Carry On." In fact, Cavill attributes his strength of character to his childhood as the second-youngest of four boys in Jersey, a British island off the coast of Normandy, France. "I think my parents brought me up that way—very much, 'Okay, well, there's no point in worrying about that now because that's gone. Take every learning experience you can and apply it to yourself and grow from it. You didn't get it. Tough. Now move on. Get the next one.' "

And the next one doesn't just happen on its own. "Putting in the hard work and losing is the tough bit," Cavill says. "That is what makes you special. That's what makes you a man: giving your all, losing, getting back up, and giving it your all again. Because otherwise it would be easy."

Source: Men's Health | Just Jared

Twilight hunk KELLAN LUTZ | “Girls think I’m gay”

Rex Features

Kellan Lutz has denied rumours that he is gay.

The Twilight star revealed that his female fans often question his sexuality, particularly when he rejects their advances.

"I don't Google myself, but I've heard that people think I'm gay. I've heard it all. See, I don't really go after girls. Most of the girlfriends I've had have come after me," Lutz told reporters.

"It's really funny when girls get offended because I don't hit on them. They'll transform their insecurity into, 'Oh, that makes sense, because I heard you're into guys and have a boyfriend'. I'm like, 'Seriously? That's your tactic to get me to like you?' There will always be rumours, but I know who I am."

Lutz went on to quip that he would love to live with gay roommates.

"They're the cleanest, and they just take care of stuff," the actor said. "Because I'm always away, coming home to a clean house means a lot to me. Trust me, I've lived with a lot of roommates, and straight guys are just kids who don't pick up after themselves."

Lutz was recently linked to former Home And Away actress Sharni Vinson after they were snapped out on Venice Beach together during the summer.

Name: Kellan Lutz

Birthday: 15 March

Kellan Lutz is an American model and actor who is most famous for playing the role of Emmett Cullen in the blockbuster Twilight series. He graduated from high school and was due to enrol at Chapman University in California to study chemical engineering, when he decided on a change of direction and went into acting. He has since starred in several TV series, playing small roles in The Bold and the Beautiful, CSI: NY, Six Feet Under and 90210. In 2004, he starred in an advert for Hillary Duff's fragrance With Love. He also starred in the teen queen's music video of the same name. However, Kellan's career turned around when he starred in the Twilight saga (2008-2010), quickly becoming a heart-throb and adorning the walls of teenage bedrooms everywhere. Sadly for them, Kellan is currently dating American actress Anna Lynne McCord.

Source: Glamour UK | By Jenn Selby

KELLAN LUTZ on being hit on by a gay guy. Plus! Photos of Henry Cavill and Stephen Dorff in IMMORTALS!

Kellan Lutz gives a great interview to Brandon Voss in The Advocate which reveals his comfort with gay men. Lutz talks about his roles in Twilight, The Comeback, and The Immortals.

Says Lutz of The Immortals:

I love that our director, Tarsem, saw the gods as youthful. If you were a god, wouldn’t you rather be in your 20s or 30s as opposed to old and gray with a beard down to your ankles?

Lutz also loves hugging gay fans:

Oh, they’re the best. I love them. When I meet gay fans out and about, they’re so great to talk to — and I’m big on hugging, because I’m from the Midwest. They’re just so energetic and loving. I’m proud to have those fans, and their support means a lot to me. I don’t want just girls coming to my movies; I want guys to come too.

And discusses the time one hit on him at a spa when he was naked in a hot tub:

We talked for about 15 minutes, and it clicked that he was probably hitting on me. By no means did I want to lead him on, so it was just kind of funny to me to realize that he was hitting on me — and doing a pretty good job.

He also describes the moment his 'gaydar' turned on:

Growing up, I could never tell who was gay. Even in high school, I had friends that I didn’t know were gay until years later. I’d find out on Facebook or something and be like, “Oh, that explains some things,” or “Wow, no wonder they were so cool.” I remember going to a buddy’s house right when I came to L.A. He was showing me his place, and I asked, “Where do you sleep?” He’s like, “Here, in this bed.” He had a roommate, so I was like, “Where does your roommate sleep?” He said, “He sleeps here too.” I was like, “Oh, OK.” I’ve slept in the same bed as my brothers, and I’ve crashed on a friend’s bed, so it did not even cross my mind that they were gay. He called me up after I left his house and said, “Kellan, you handled that so well. I haven’t told many people, so thanks for being such a good person.” Suddenly, all this stuff started clicking, and everything made sense: Some guys I thought were just friends aren’t just friends! That’s the day my gaydar finally kicked in. We’re still the best of friends to this day. Now I have some really close friends who are gay.

And says you can live out your housewife fantasies with him, if you're lucky:

I’d prefer to live with gay guys. They’re the cleanest, and they just take care of stuff. Because I’m always away, coming home to a clean house means a lot to me.

Turns out Kellan Lutz eats 16 eggs for breakfast to prepare for costumes like the one above. The folks at Relativity Media sent us over some fresh new shots of Lutz, Henry Cavill, Stephen Dorff, and Daniel Sharman from the upcoming film Immortals, which is in theaters November 11.

That's Lutz in his regalia (I believe he's Poseidon) in the top photo and a Cavill-in-bondage (Theseus) below.

 

 

Source: Towleroad