Tag: Heath Ledger

The late Ted Demme once approached Terry Gilliam and asked for the secret of his cinema sorcery. Demme wanted to know how the director of “Brazil,” “Twelve Monkeys” and “The Fisher King” approached those magical transition moments in his movies where reality lurches and gives way to fantasy swirl and fever dream. The elder director, with a toothy grin, explained that he just wasn’t qualified to answer because, well, he wouldn’t know reality if he saw it. “I never quite understand what the real world is,” Gilliam said during a recent visit to Los Angeles. “I told Ted I shoot reality and fantasy the same way because it’s all the same to me. I don’t know how to distinguish between the two, they flow into each other all the time. That’s the autobiographical part in my movies…in Hollywood, everyone takes characters and puts them into action sequences ...

Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan, reporting from Cannes, has a wonderful piece about Terry Gilliam and his new film, “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,”  which Heath Ledger was still working on at the time of his death… Terry Gilliam went to the movies the other night, and this is what he saw: “Trailers from ‘Transformers,’ ‘ G.I. Joe,’ ‘ Harry Potter’; they all had the same explosions, the same sound mix, the same rhythms, it was all the same film,” the director says, still not quite believing it. “Hollywood’s been doing this for 20 years. When’s it going to end?” It ends right here and now at Cannes’ Festival du Film, where Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” a work as exceptional and unusual as its title, premieres out of competition today. A tale of good and evil battling for souls ...

Tom O’Neil over at Gold Derby, the blog devoted to tracking all of Hollywood’s trophy shows, has an update on the status of the Oscar statuette won posthumously by Heath Ledger for his searing performance in "The Dark Knight." Here’s an excerpt from the post that went up Thursday: [Heath's father] Kim Ledger told reporters at LAX that he had no plan to give Matilda the Oscar statuette anytime soon. "We’ll keep it for her forever!" he said. Will he ever give it to Matilda? "Oh, yeah, down the line," he replied. Had he forgotten the deal he made with the academy due to jet lag? Or was the Ledger family planning to chuck all that, keep the Oscar after the ceremony and head back to Perth, Australia, with it? The matter finally has been resolved — quite differently from ...

Michael Ordoña has a great piece today in the Los Angeles Times on Heath Ledger, who should (and, I think, will) win a posthumous Oscar for his searing performance as the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight.” Here’s an excerpt: It was far from the first time he had transformed himself for a role, whether drastically, as the scruffy skateboarding impresario in “Lords of Dogtown,” or subtly, as the repressed, gay cowboy in “Brokeback Mountain.” Here, the recollections of some who worked with the supporting actor nominee add detail to a picture of a complex man and challenging artist whose creative fire and generosity of spirit lifted those around him. “His energy and enthusiasm for life will never cease to inspire me,” said Ledger’s longtime friend and business partner Matt Amato. “A friend of mine said after Heath died ...

UPDATED: Here’s a story I have appearing in the Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times tomorrow: There are always a lot of emotions on Oscar nomination day, but there was an especially bittersweet surge on Thursday when the late Heath Ledger’s name was called out in the category of best supporting actor for his portrayal of the maniacal Joker in "The Dark Knight" — it was, after all, one year to the day after his death. Even as the team behind the Warner Bros. film embraced the posthumous honor for Ledger, they also dealt with the disappointment that the acclaimed blockbuster was left out of the best picture race. No superhero movie has come close to the marquee category in the past, but Warner Bros. had high hopes that "Dark Knight" could follow in the footsteps of "Star Wars," ...

There are always a lot of emotions on Oscar nomination day but there was an especially bittersweet surge in sentiment this morning when the late Heath Ledger’s name was called out in the category of best supporting actor — one year to the day after his death. The nomination for Ledger’s scorching performance as the scabby and diabolical Joker in "The Dark Knight"; had been considered a certainty in recent months but there was still a collective sigh when it was announced. Now the question is, ‘Can he win?‘ There has been a posthumous actor winner in the past — Peter Finch’s widow Eletha Finch memorably accepted his best-actor Oscar for the unforgettable 1976 film "Network" — but Finch died a month after he was nominated. Ledger’s accidental prescription-drug overdose hasn’t lost any of its tragedy, of course, but the ...

Welcome to today’s edition of Everyday Hero, your roundup of handpicked headlines from across the fanboy universe…. WHAT PRICE WILL BE PAID?: The nasty legal squabble over “Watchmen” is winding down but what’s the bottom line for Warner Bros.? Reporter John Horn gets into the nitty gritty and finds that Larry Gordon, the colorful producer who brought landmark action films such as “48 Hrs.,” “Die Hard” and “Predator” to the screen, may get stuck with part of the sizable bill in the property dispute: “The court fight over ‘Watchmen’ is costing Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, but the biggest bill of all could fall to the film’s producer, Larry Gordon, his lawyers and their insurers, who could be on the hook for substantially more money. Court documents in the nearly yearlong ...

HEATH LEDGER WINS A GOLDEN GLOBE: I went to the Golden Globes last night and contributed to the Los Angeles Times team coverage (we go all out for Hollywood trophy shows, too much in fact) and I got to say hello to Christopher Nolan as he crossed the banquet hall during one of the early commerical breaks. (The Globes are by far the best award show to cover; it’s dinner seating, all the stars are liquored up and you can walk over and talk to anyone, which is why I got to interview Bruce Springsteen and Tom Hanks in the span of 10 minutes last night.) Not long after I spoke to Nolan, the late Heath Ledger won for his performance in "The Dark Knight." Here’s what my colleague John Horn wrote about it, as well as the surprise victory ...

Mary Jane on Broadway: Gossip maven Elizabeth Snead has a somewhat breathless item about Evan Rachel Wood of "The Wrestler" and "Across the Universe" taking on the role of Spider-Man babe Mary Jane Watson for the Broadway play that is shaping up as the most expensive production in the history of the Great White Way: "Evan Rachel Wood will play Mary Jane in Julie Taymor’s ‘Spider-Man’ on Broadway! ‘I start rehearsals in June and will be on Broadway for a year,’ she said Wednesday at a press junket for ‘The Wrestler.’ She’s already learned the songs, written by Bono, and did a run-through for Marvel. But that’s not why she recently colored her hair red, like Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane movie character. ‘No, I didn’t even think about it,’ she insists. ‘After I got it done, I looked in the ...

A busy Monday edition of Everyday Hero, your roundup of handpicked headlines from the fanboy universe… A storybook ending for "Fables"?: Writer Bill Willingham has done a sparkling job these past six years on the Vertigo comic book series "Fables," which presents the Big Bad Wolf, Snow White, Jack Horner and other "legends in exile" being part of a sort of storybook diaspora — the secret community of magical peoples living in New York City. It’s got a dash of "Shrek" to it, I suppose, but really it reminds me more of Neil Gaiman’s tales of assorted gods from different cultures struggling to live with one another in the unmagically modern and secular world. Anyway, it’s a great series and now perhaps it will be a TV show. There’s an announcement story in the trades today by Nellie Andreeva and ...