Sure, New Moon’s vampires and werewolves may get all the attention, but it’s Bella’s gang of high school friends who keep the movie centered in reality. Anna Kendrick, Michael Welch, Justin Chon and Christian Serratos (who play Jessica, Mike, Eric and Angela, respectively) talk about providing the franchise’s comic relief and keeping it real as mortals amongst all the supernatural shenanigans.
November 3rd, 2009 
Angela 
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Bella’s father is going from Team Jacob to Team Save the McGregor Library. Following his reprisal of the character Charlie Swan in this fall’s “Twilight,” sequel “New Moon,” actor Billy Burke will appear in a little, charitable film titled “Highland Park,” according to a report in Variety. Shooting is already underway in Michigan, with Danny Glover and Parker Posey starring.
The movie will tell a fictional story about a group of high school faculty members who help save their community library after a teacher (Glover) wins the lottery and uses his winnings for the building’s preservation. Although the feature won’t be based on a true story, the library in the film is a real one, and it actually does need saving. In fact, proceeds from ticket sales for “Highland Park” will be going to its real-life renovations.
Andrew Meieran, who co-wrote the script and is now producing and directing, comes from a career in real estate and is renowned for his work in preserving historic buildings. He’s also reportedly simultaneously making a documentary about the McGregor Library and Highland Park’s history.
Oddly enough, the fictional film does not sound as serious as you might think. Co-written by Christopher Keyser (TV’s “Party of Five”), “Highland Park” has been labeled a black comedy. And unlike the real mayor of Highland Park, who is supportive of the film and its cause, the film’s mayor (Posey) sounds like she’ll be the story’s villain, according to her casting announcement in The Hollywood Reporter last week.
Burke’s role is not detailed in the casting report, but I assume he’ll be playing one of Glover’s coworkers and fellow community activists. According to the actor’s Twitter, it seems to be significant enough that he’s been filming since the beginning of October until the 24th. At first, he was apparently going back and forth between “Highland Park” and final shooting for the third “Twilight” film, “Eclipse.”
October 16th, 2009 Angela Article Comments (0)
Calling all Twilighters!
In PEOPLE’s special New Moon issue, which hits newsstands Friday, Robert Pattinson shares his baby photos, Taylor Lautner growls for fans and Kristen Stewart gets intense.
“Twilight is about first love; New Moon is about heartbreak,” says the film’s director Chris Weitz. “That requires the actors to go to some very dark places.”
But who was the most intense on set? “Kristen may be the most serious actor I’ve ever encountered,” Weitz reveals. “She took the job of portraying Bella’s depression very seriously.”
In the sequel, Bella (Stewart) turns to best bud Jacob (Lautner) after her vampire love Edward (Pattinson) flees Forks, Wash., in the hopes of giving her a normal life. But as Bella grapples with her not-so-platonic feelings for Jacob, he transforms into a werewolf.
“This is a severely emotional movie,” Stewart says.
But it’s not all about the drama. “It’s a pretty hot movie,” says Ashley Greene, who thinks Stewart and Lautner “have this undeniable chemistry.”
“I get nervous trying to represent Team Jacob in the right way,” Lautner admits. “This guy [Pattinson] is some pretty good competition.”
“Fans ask me to growl for them, and I really don’t enjoy doing that,” the 17-year-old star says. “Please just wait for the movie.” The supernatural romance unfolds on the big screen Nov. 20.
October 14th, 2009 Angela Article, Eclipse, Gallery Comments (0)
October 14th, 2009 Angela Article Comments (0)
Michael Sheen enjoyed unleashing his “inner white fluffy animal”.
The ‘Frost/Nixon’ star is playing the White Rabbit in Tim Burton’s adaptation of ‘Alice In Wonderland’ and says the role is a dream come true because he was such a fan of Lewis Carroll’s book when he was growing up.
He said: “I’m doing the White Rabbit in Tim Burton’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Everyone has an inner white fluffy animal, it’s just a question of finding it before it’s too late. The White Rabbit is such an iconic character that I didn’t feel like I should break the mould too much, so I just sort of went with it.
“‘Alice in Wonderland’ was one of the first stories I truly loved when I was growing up. It had a huge impact on me and it’s stayed with me ever since. So to be part of Tim Burton’s version is just like a dream come true.”
Michael has become known for playing public figures, including interviewer David Frost, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and soccer manager Brian Clough but believes it is going to become more difficult for him to do so, particularly with his forthcoming role in ‘The Twilight Saga: New Moon’, as he is getting recognised more and more.
He explained to Parade.com: “When audiences are not as aware of you personally, they just accept you as the character. I think it’s quite tough for people like Tom Cruise to get beyond that because he’s so familiar to people and they know so much about him. Funny enough, what attracted me to being an actor is that people don’t see you, they see the character. Now, I’m afraid it’s going to get progressively tougher for me, especially with ‘New Moon’ coming up.”
October 12th, 2009 Angela Article, Michael Sheen Comments (0)
Ask Robert Pattinson how he’s handling the global hysteria that now surrounds him and he says: “All right, I hope.” Then he runs his hand through that tousled mop of his (a sign that he’s anxious) and adds: “It’s still sort of new.”
It’s almost 12 months since the first Twilight film was unleashed on the world. Twelve months since we clapped eyes on the sensitive, tortured and fiercely handsome vampire named Edward Cullen from Stephenie Meyer’s massively popular novels. Twelve months since Pattinson, the 23-year-old British actor who plays the red-blooded teenage vamp, became an international heart-throb.
One minute he has a bit part in two Harry Potter films (he played Cedric Diggory in The Goblet of Fire and The Order of the Phoenix). The next he’s the object of every teenage girl’s affections. They’re screaming right now outside his hotel room. He’s in France to promote The Twilight Saga: New Moon , the follow-up to Twilight (there are four novels in all). Whenever he goes near the window to smoke, a crescendo of noise erupts from the street below.
“To be honest, I still don’t really understand what’s going on,” he says. “Like yesterday, I was having lunch down the road. We were in this place for a couple of hours and suddenly there was like 400 people outside on the street. It was just so nuts and it’s like that all the time now.”
If Pattinson hasn’t come to grips with the global hysteria by now, how will he cope when New Moon is released next month?
“When the second one comes out, then I’ll see how I am. Mostly I can ignore things to quite a big extent and kind of pretend they’re not really happening,” he says, sounding eerily calm.
“I just don’t take any of it seriously. It’s just a job and while it’s a job I love, girls scream out for Edward, not Robert. I still can’t get a date.”
Pattinson has been peddling this line for months. He won’t fess up to dating Twilight co-star Kristen Stewart, who plays Bella. Perhaps he’s under studio instructions to appear single? It probably boosts ticket sales.
The real reason Pattinson is so calm is simple: “I’m not the lead in the second film. Taylor [Lautner] is.” He grins idiotically. “I appear in Bella’s dreams. So I’m in it but the focus is not on me. I just have significant moments at the beginning … and the end. So I’m more of a supporting role in this one, which is why I felt so free. I didn’t have to deal with any of the bullshit of the first one. I don’t have to hold the movie or worry about the fans. I think I did it better without all those pressures.”
Pattinson is extraordinarily beautiful. He’s been called the Johnny Depp of his generation and been crowned Sexiest Man on the Planet by Glamour magazine, Top Hunk by Entertainment Tonight and Hottest Actor by Rolling Stone.
Like Depp, he has the same asymmetrical beauty, the same gorgeous man-boy face. He’s 185 centimetres tall, lean and he, too, exudes a masculine femininity. Depp also started out as a teenage idol before he began furiously deconstructing that image. Ditto for Pattinson.
“After Harry Potter I could have done a lot more teen movies,” he says.
Instead he starred as a young Salvador Dali who has a bromance with poet Federico Garcia Lorca in this year’s Little Ashes.
“I had to do all these hardcore gay sex scenes, when I haven’t even had a sex scene with a girl in a film yet,” he laughs.
“I’m lining up so many different films so it’ll be harder to just label me the vampire guy.”
Those include Remember Me, with Aussie beauty Emilie de Ravin from Lost, and Unbound Captives, a western set in 1859, which stars Hugh Jackman – but more on that later.
Before Twilight, Pattinson was on the verge of quitting the acting game in favour of music. “With acting, a lot of the time you’re doing scenes you don’t really relate to and you don’t really know why you’re being cast half the time,” he laughs. He “understood” music. He’s been playing the piano since he was five. He composes and sings. It’s second nature. Acting isn’t. He still feels “awkward in front of a camera”.
Pattinson has a lovely voice and performed two songs in Twilight – something he now regrets. “When the first film came out I felt like a complete tosser,” he says. “It looked like I was trying to be cool or something, like Eminem. You know, be in a movie and then do a song for the soundtrack. But I didn’t look cool, I just looked ridiculous.”
Pattinson’s lack of self-confidence is staggering yet endearing. Compliment his singing and he’ll change the subject. Compliment his performance and he’ll tell you you’re bonkers. But he’ll stick to acting for now only because he’d “starve to death” as a musician.
Pattinson has two older sisters – Lizzy, a musician, who’s in the band Aurora; and Victoria, who’s in advertising. His father imported classic cars and his mother worked for a modelling agency. It was his father who encouraged him to pursue acting (to meet girls). So he modelled, did some amateur theatre and British television.
But now he has to go. A plane is waiting. He yawns and looks tired. So how does he unwind?
“I don’t really need to do stuff to relax or get away because all my interests are part of my job,” he says. “Like I’ll watch movies to be inspired to do other movies. I read books to be inspired. I listen to music to be inspired to write music. Everything I do is to create something.”
Pattinson’s next film is Unbound Captives. He met Jackman in Japan recently for a little bonding ahead of the film. “We went karaoke singing,” he laughs. “We were singing Abba songs, it was pretty funny. It was sort of an Abba song sing-off, you know, last man standing.”
Who won? “I think he did, only because he can drink more than me and still sing in tune. He’s a cool guy and I’m really looking forward to that film.”
So are we. The Sexiest Man Alive meets the Sexiest Man on the Planet – now that should be interesting.
The Twilight Saga: New Moon opens on November 19.
NOTES
Pattinson chain-smokes during the interview. About halfway through, he runs out of cigarettes. He decides to pop out into the hallway to see whether he can “bum” one from a passing hotel guest. When the French hotel staff, who are normally cool, calm and collected, lay eyes on him, they turn into an adoring mass of autograph-seeking fans. Pattinson has to make a quick dash back to the safety of the room. He’s clearly unnerved by the run-in.
October 11th, 2009 Angela Article, Interviews, New Moon, Robert Pattinson (Edward Cullen) Comments (0)
The colorist who gave Robert Pattinson his signature bronze “Twilights” dishes on how recession-savvy ladies can get the look – and save some cash – using his hair highlighting technique.
Raise your hand if you stopped getting your hair highlighted once the economy tanked.
I know I did. In fact, you could track the length of the recession by measuring how much my color has grown out on my head.
What are color-happy recessionistas to do, then? Forgo Starbucks and save thousands, four dollars at a time, so you can keep your color each year? Doubtful.
The color chief and co-owner of the Gavert Atelier salon in Beverly Hills, Stuart Gavert, has a solution to make color grow out in an economic fashion: Twilights.
Twilights are like normal highlights; they’re just strategically placed to optimize grow-out time. Instead of hitting the salon again a month or so after the first color, you go once a quarter and no one is the wiser.
But, why the oh-so-clever moniker? It turns out the technique is the same one used on Robert Pattinson’s head in the Twilight movie. Gavert should know — he’s the man who gave the year’s most famous vampire his signature color for the first movie.
The Birth of Twilights
“They didn’t want [Robert] to look dead-dead. Just a little bit dead,” said Gavert on the day I visited his salon for my own Twilights session.
The lead hair stylist on the first movie, Mary Ann Valdes, told Gavert the vampire make-up was washing Pattinson out, in a bad way. Not in a sexy-vampire, Edward Cullen way.
“Mary Ann called me and asked me what I thought,” said Gavert. “I said, ‘Put some warmth in his hair. Don’t make him a redhead or anything. But the warmth will reflect on his skin.’”
Warmth meant bronze highlights. But that created a new problem. Highlights grow out too fast and affect the continuity on a movie shoot. In other words, the filmmakers may shoot the entrance to a scene one week and shoot the rest of the scene a month later. Hair starts looking grown out at that point and people start realizing they’re watching a movie and not hanging out with Edward Cullen.
(If you haven’t read the books and at this point are wondering why on Earth anyone would care so much about the color of a vampire’s hair, just trust us. Pattinson’s, er Edward Cullen’s bronze locks play a central role. Some even wondered if Pattinson’s coif was responsible for the movie’s success. It’s a girl thing.)
Gavert couldn’t be on the shoot highlighting the stars’ hair every day, so he developed a grow-out friendly technique and used it on Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and the rest of the stars. The color gets put in under the part in the hair, masking the demarcation line for weeks.
How Do I Get Twilights?
The easiest way to get Twilights is the same way I did: schedule an appointment with Stuart or one of the stylists at his salon. Sessions with Stuart are pricey, $250 a session – he did touch Robert Pattinson’s hair after all. But you can get a junior colorist to do it for less. They’ve even got training sessions for stylists; that’ll get you rock-bottom hair color for about $40.
If you can’t get to Los Angeles, the recession-friendly color can be explained to your own stylist. Gavert explained the key points for us:
• No putting highlights on the exterior of the hair. Keep one-quarter inch away from the part, so you won’t see the highlight right on the part.
• Pick a color (or two) that are close to the natural color. You want something that warms up the face and works with the natural color, not against it.
For the record, Pattinson got two colors. Gavert put four or five gold highlights up front, to bring out the would-be vamp’s amber contacts. I got one color. I already had some gold leftover from my old hair days, so Gavert picked a single mid-tone that worked well with my natural head and gold leftovers.
So, what do you think? Will my Twilights land me a role as Leah Clearwater in Breaking Dawn? Maybe, maybe not. But I know with the next Twilight movie, New Moon, coming out in November, I’ll be rocking my Twilights at the film — Gavert said they’d last that long!
September 30th, 2009 Angela Article, New Moon Comments (0)
Michael Sheen as Aro in ‘New Moon’
© Summit Entertainment
Michael Sheen (The Queen, Frost/Nixon) took part in the Los Angeles press day for Sony Pictures Classics The Damned United in September 2009, and when not answering questions about playing the 1974 Leeds United football team manager Brian Clough in that dramatic film, Sheen answered a few questions about another one of his movies: New Moon. The second film of the Twilight franchise finds Bella (Kristen Stewart) separated from her vampire boyfriend, Edward (Robert Pattinson), and hanging out on the reservation with Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). Edward left Bella because he believed being with her was just too dangerous for the pretty – and mortal – high school student, and his absence left time for her to seek out and develop a friendship with Jacob.The second film of the Twilight series also introduces the Volturi, the most powerful/influential vampires in existence. Sheen plays one of the leaders of the Volturi, Aro.
Michael Sheen on How He Approached the Role:
“I start at exactly the same place, which is it’s always the story. My first contact with anything I’m going to do is the script, whether it’s a script I’ve been offered or I’ve been sent it or whatever. I sit down and I read it. That first reading of the script is very special to me because I know it’s my first point of contact with the story, the world of the piece. I don’t read things in bits or I don’t read it whilst I’m doing something else. I have to have full concentration. I read it because that’s, if I end up doing this film, that first reading, the impressions I get and the connections I make, how it sparks my imagination will fuel everything I do for the whole rest of it. All the way through all this as well, the publicity and everything, it’s always that first contact with it. So that’s a very special moment for me and that doesn’t matter whether it’s based on real events or not, whether it’s New Moon or anything. That’s the world, that’s the beginning point.”
“And then it’s just about letting your imagination go. I look for clues. It’s like a whodunit, any script. The writer has certain intentions, whether they’re conscious or unconscious, and they come out. They’re expressed in the script. So for instance, when I was doing New Moon, it wasn’t just the script, it was the book as well. I used to have the book with me every day on the set all the time. I’d reread it and reread it and reread it. It’s not like I had to read the whole book because Aro’s bits are not as much. But, nevertheless, I try and immerse myself in the world of the piece, whatever the piece is. So if it’s Brian Clough’s life, then I immerse myself in Brian Clough’s life. If it’s New Moon, then I immerse myself in the world of Stephenie [Meyer's] world, but also the world of vampires, generally. With the Underworld films, watch everything that ever has been on werewolves, read everything, because you never know where the one little thing will come from that just sparks your imagination. It doesn’t happen all the time but the one thing that maybe people will say, ‘I watched that film and that one bit, that moment where that happened, I’ll never forget that.’ Or, ‘That made me think of this.’”
“You never know where that thing’s going to come from. It can come from the most unlikely of places, and usually does come from the most unlikely of places. It’s what Lord of the Rings is all about. The most important person in the whole Lord of the Rings is the one that is overlooked in Tolkien’s world. It’s the little hobbit; it’s the little unlooked for thing. I’ve always found that that’s the same with what I do. I might be reading, or a chance remark that someone makes about Brian Clough who I’m talking to about it and just something about it sticks with me. [...]When I find my core stuff of research, at the time I don’t know why that’s important to me but I just know there’s something about it. Eventually I’ll be doing a scene and maybe the director will say, ‘At this point, could you do something here? Could you say something…?’ and suddenly something will occur to me from the research. Which means you have to do loads of it, even though you might end up using just a tiny amount of it. You never know where that stuff will come from. That’s the same for New Moon. Weirdly, I found myself on the set and I suddenly heard the voice of the Blue Meanie in Yellow Submarine. There’s a thing that Stephenie writes in the book that his voice was like feathers, and just suddenly I heard, ‘The Blue Meaniiiiie.’ This voice that really kind of disturbed me when I was a kid. It was very gentle and soft, but there was something very scary about it. So little things like that, you never know where it’s going to come from.”
Michael Sheen on Italy and New Moon:
“I would love to share my favorite experiences about Italy. Unfortunately I can’t because I didn’t shoot any of it in Italy. That’s the problem with doing interiors is that interiors can be filmed anywhere. So the next time I’ll have it in my contract that I have to do at least one exterior in any film I do. So yeah, my favorite experience about Italy was getting a text from [director] Chris Weitz saying, ‘It’s lovely here, isn’t it?’”
Michael Sheen on Working with a Mostly Young Cast:
“I think it’s a good job that I was playing a sort of millennia old vampire because that’s exactly how it felt to be on a set with people as beautiful as Robert and Kristen and Ashley [Greene] and all that lot. I felt like the old, decrepit uncle who’s just hanging around trying to get in with the cool kids. But that kind of helped with the character so it was fun.”
September 30th, 2009 Angela Article, Michael Sheen Comments (0)
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