The New York Times spoke to Heath Ledger about his role in The Dark Knight. Playing the iconic character seems to be taking its tole on the actor…
He is here in London filming the latest episode of the “Batman” franchise, “The Dark Knight.” It is a physically and mentally draining role — his Joker is a “psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy” he said cheerfully — and, as often happens when he throws himself into a part, he is not sleeping much.
“Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night,” he said. “I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.” One night he took an Ambien, which failed to work. He took a second one and fell into a stupor, only to wake up an hour later, his mind still racing.
Here too was his Joker diary, which he began compiling four months before filming began. It is filled with images and thoughts helpful to the Joker back story, like a list of things the Joker would find funny. (AIDS is one of them.) Mr. Ledger seemed almost embarrassed that the book had been spotted, as if he had been caught trying to get extra credit in school.
Meanwhile, a stunt had to be stopped because the water in Hong Kong’s harbour was too polluted.
[Spoilers]
A scene in which Batman was to drop from a plane into the harbor has been axed after the movie’s producers found the water quality could pose a potential health risk, the South China Morning post reported in its Sunday edition.”The plan was for Batman to be seen jumping into the water and then climbing up some bamboo, or something similar,” the Post quoted an unnamed production official as saying.“But when they checked a water sample, they found all sorts of things; salmonella and tuberculosis, so it was canceled. Now the action will cut to inside a building.”
Tagged as: Batman, Christian Bale, Christopher Nolan, Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
When the first Wolverine solo film was first talked about, I just thought FOX were getting cheap and wanted the same amount of profits with less input. They had a franchise that has brought in over half a billion dollars so why not try and get more for less? Then they gave it the name X-Men Origins: Wolverine which is probably for marketing purposes as people are familiar with the X-Men name. If ever Disney decided to do another Pirates of The Caribbean, but without most of the original cast, only Johnny Depp, I am sure they would call it ‘Pirates of The Caribbean: Jack Sparrow’s Cursed Monkey’ rather than simply ‘Jack Sparrow’s Cursed Monkey’.
So with future marketing planned and out of the way, how about the film? A source told XMF that,
“Going by the pre-vis work, it’s my belief that this tale will be just as big as the other films” says the source. “The general consensus is to make this the next chapter in a franchise, and with any continuing film in a franchise, you want to make things better.”
…and they better make it better! This whole spin-off idea was to get out of paying 14+ actors money for a possible X-Men 4. So if they make a crappy Wolverine instead of seeing more Beast, Angel and Gambit then I will be pissed!
However, I do believe the talent brought on board will give us a great movie. The only problem is we have to wait 2 years for it.
Wolverine will begin filming December 10th.
Tagged as: X-Men, X-Men Origins: Wolverine
The International Trailer for Iron Man has arrived online. It contains some different bits that weren’t in the previous trailer, and is less than a minute long, but it still look rather amazing.
Click Here to have a look!
Tagged as: Iron Man, Trailers
Filmonic has been up and running for just over a month now, so I thought I’d give everyone a little update on how the site is doing, and what the future of Filmonic holds.
I started the site because I enjoy reading movie news, and wanted an extra hobby that I enjoy. Within a month the site is getting around 200 visitors a day, apart from when an article gets popular on Digg, and the hits get above 6,000. Because of this I am changing hosts so that the site continues to run smoothly. This will happen sometime next week and there shouldn’t be any downtime, but if there is it wont be for long.
Since I started I have changed the layout a number of times, and have finally settled with this one, which I personally like. I haven’t heard about what people think so if you have an opinion about how the site looks or what could be done to improve please feel free to contact me with the ‘Contact’ tab at the top or by replying to this post.
One thing I have done is to place an option where people can change the background color to white if they wish, it is located in the right sidebar. It is Javascript and works well with FireFox, however I am not too sure about Internet Explorer.
The FeedBurner currently says that 6 people have subscribed, where as the other day it was around 24, so either people are un-subscribing or there is a problem with FeedBurner. Having investigated it is the latter, and some sites have been reporting lost subscribers in the thousands, so things should get sorted soon.
Filmonic can also be found on Myspace! Add us and be our friend! :]
Through random adding on Myspace, Jeff found us and showed interest in the site. He knows his stuff so he is now writing for Filmonic, which is great! Jeff is responsible for The WGA Strike And What It Means To Us article which became popular on Digg.
The more opinions and updates the better so if you think you could write for Filmonic then feel free to get in touch, send us a few samples and hopefully you’ll become a regular poster!
That’s about it for this update, apart from me reminding you to Register to the site. The ‘Register’ button can be found at the top of the site and it makes commenting easier.
That is all!
A new trailer for has appeared online for The Golden Compass, I’ve lost count how many there have been, but I’ll call it the sixth. The effects are practically finished so everything looks rather amazing, especially the armoured polar bears. I haven’t read the book so I am going to see it simply because polar bears, wearing armour, will be battling and one is voiced by Ian McKellen.
You can check the HD trailer here
Tagged as: Trailers
