Team USA London 2012 Olympics Interviews

Team USA held their official launch party last night at the prestigious Royal College of Arts in London ahead of tonight’s Opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympic Games. We spoke to nine time gold medal hero Carl Lewis, Team USA flag bearer Mariel Zagunis and decorated gymnastic hero Shannon Miller. We also spoke to inspiring medal hopefuls from the USA Women’s Basketball and Men’s Volleyball teams and America’s strongest woman Sarah Robles.  Watch all the exclusive interviews below to hear just what the Olympics means to these incredible stars and their advice for the next generation of young athletes.

Venice Film Festival Line Up 2012

This year’s Venice Film Festival 2012 runs from 29th August to 8th September and will open with the world premiere of Mira Nair’s  The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

Stars expected to attend include James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Zac Efron, Dennis Quaid, Rachel McAdams, Noomi Rapace, Heather Graham, Robert Redford, Shia LaBeouf, Winnona Ryder, Chris Evans, Rachel Weisz and Javier Bardem.

Check out the full current list of films below for this years festival below:

Opening Film (Out of Competition)

• The Reluctant Fundamentalist – Mira Nair (India, Pakistan, US)

Competition

• To The Wonder – Terrence Malick (US)
• The Master – Paul Thomas Anderson (US)
• Something in the Air – Olivier Assayas (France)
• Outrage: Beyond – Takeshi Kitano (Japan)
• Fill The Void – Rama Bursztyn & Yigal Bursztyn (Israel)
• Pieta – Kim Ki-duk (South Korea)
• Dormant Beauty – Marco Bellocchio (Italy)
• E’ stato il figlio – Daniele Cipri (Italy)
• At Any Price – Ramin Bahrani (US, UK)
• La Cinquieme Saison – Peter Brosens & Jessica Woodworth (Belgium, Netherlands, France)
• Un Giorno Speciale – Francesca Comencini (Italy)
• Passion – Brian De Palma (France, Germany)
• Superstar  – Xavier Giannoli (France, Belgium)
• Spring Breakers – Harmony Korine (US)
• Thy Womb – Brillante Mendoza (Philippines)
• Linhas de Wellington – Valeria Sarmiento (Portugal, France)
• Paradise: Faith – Ulrich Seidl (Austria, France, Germany)
• Betrayal – Kirill Serebrennikov (Russia)

Out of Competition

• L’homme qui rit – Jean-Pierre Ameris (France)
• Love Is All You Need – Susanne Bier (Denmark, Sweden)
• Cherchez Hortense – Pascal Bonitzer (France)
• Sur un fil – Simon Brook (France, Italy)
• Enzo Avitabile Music Life – Jonathan Demme (doc) (Italy, US)
• Tai Chi 0 – Stephen Fung (China)
• Lullaby to My Father – Amos Gitai (Israel, France)
• Shokuzai (Penance) – Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Japan)
• Bad 25 – Spike Lee (doc) (US)
• O Gebo e a Sombra – Manoel de Oliveira (Portugal, France)
• The Company You Keep – Robert Redford (US)
• Shark (Bait 3D) – Kimble Rendall (China)
• Disconnect – Henry-Alex Rubin (US)
• The Iceman – Ariel Vromen (US)

Out of Competition – Special Events

• Anton tut ryadom (Anton’s Right Here) – Lyubov Arkus (documentary) (Russia)
• Ya Man Aac (It Was Better Tomorrow) – Hinde Boujemaa (documentary) (Italy)
• Sfiorando il muro – Silvia Giralucci & Luca Ricciardi (documentary) (Italy)
• Carmel– Amos Gitai (Israel, France, Italy)
• El impenetrable – Daniele Incalcaterra & Fausta Quattrini (documentary) (Argentina, France)
• Witness: Libya– Michael Mann (documentary) (US)
• Medici con l’Africa – Carlo Mazzacurati (documentary) (Italy)
• La nave dolce – Daniele Vicari (documentary) (Italy, Albania)

Closing Film

• L’homme qui rit – Jean-Pierre Ameris (France)

Robert Pattinson To Star In The Rover

Twilight star Robert Pattinson has officially joined the cast of The Rover alongside Guy Pearce. Set in the Australian desert the film is set to be a dirty and dangerous near-future western. The Rover is going to be directed by David Michod, best known for his gritty Oscar nominated crime drama Animal Kingdom.

Next month sees the American debut of Pattinson’s most recent film Cosmopolis, directed by David Cronenberg. The dark philosophical thriller about a troubled billionaire Wall Street trader had its World Premiere at the Cannes Film Festival 2012 and opened in the UK to a generally positive critical response in June.

Later this year will see the last installment of the Twilight Saga  Breaking Dawn Part 2 finally hit cinemas. Robert Pattinson’s next project will see him team with director Jean-Stephane Sauvaire for Mission: Blacklist a psychological thriller that details the true, inside story of the search for Saddam Hussein. Pattinson will play Eric Maddox, the interrogator who spearheaded the capture of the fallen Iraq dictator.

Cloud Atlas New Six Minute Trailer

Cloud Atlas is the much anticipated sci-fi epic based on David Mitchell’s acclaimed2004 novel, co-written and co-directed by the  Wachowskis (The Matrix trilogy)  & Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run).

It’s a sprawling tale that spans time and genres; boasting an all-star cast that includes Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Susan Sarandon, Hugh Grant, Ben Whishaw, Keith David, Jim Broadbent, James D’Arcy, Doona Bae. 

Here’s Warner Bros Official Synopsis:

“Cloud Atlas” explores how the actions and consequences of individual lives impact one another throughout the past, the present and the future.  Action, mystery and romance weave dramatically through the story as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero and a single act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution in the distant future.

Check out the six minute long international trailer below which gives a first glimpse of what to expect:

Christopher Nolan’s Farewell Batman Letter

Director Christopher Nolan wrote a heartfelt farewell letter to his acclaimed Dark Knight Batman Saga, as a foreword to recently released The Art and Making of The Dark Knight Trilogy book. If you don’t already have a copy sitting proudly on your coffee table, you should. But till you rush to your local store to make a hasty purchase, here’s a transcript of Christopher Nolan’s message below courtesy of someone awesome on the  SuperheroHype forums :

Alfred. Gordon. Lucius. Bruce . . . Wayne. Names that have come to mean so much to me. Today, I’m three weeks from saying a final good-bye to these characters and their world. It’s my son’s ninth birthday. He was born as the Tumbler was being glued together in my garage from random parts of model kits. Much time, many changes. A shift from sets where some gunplay or a helicopter were extraordinary events to working days where crowds of extras, building demolitions, or mayhem thousands of feet in the air have become familiar.

People ask if we’d always planned a trilogy. This is like being asked whether you had planned on growing up, getting married, having kids. The answer is complicated. When David and I first started cracking open Bruce’s story, we flirted with what might come after, then backed away, not wanting to look too deep into the future. I didn’t want to know everything that Bruce couldn’t; I wanted to live it with him. I told David and Jonah to put everything they knew into each film as we made it. The entire cast and crew put all they had into the first film. Nothing held back. Nothing saved for next time. They built an entire city. Then Christian and Michael and Gary and Morgan and Liam and Cillian started living in it. Christian bit off a big chunk of Bruce Wayne’s life and made it utterly compelling. He took us into a pop icon’s mind and never let us notice for an instant the fanciful nature of Bruce’s methods.

I never thought we’d do a second–how many good sequels are there? Why roll those dice? But once I knew where it would take Bruce, and when I started to see glimpses of the antagonist, it became essential. We re-assembled the team and went back to Gotham. It had changed in three years. Bigger. More real. More modern. And a new force of chaos was coming to the fore. The ultimate scary clown, as brought to terrifying life by Heath. We’d held nothing back, but there were things we hadn’t been able to do the first time out–a Batsuit with a flexible neck, shooting on Imax. And things we’d chickened out on–destroying the Batmobile, burning up the villain’s blood money to show a complete disregard for conventional motivation. We took the supposed security of a sequel as license to throw caution to the wind and headed for the darkest corners of Gotham.

I never thought we’d do a third–are there any great second sequels? But I kept wondering about the end of Bruce’s journey, and once David and I discovered it, I had to see it for myself. We had come back to what we had barely dared whisper about in those first days in my garage. We had been making a trilogy. I called everyone back together for another tour of Gotham. Four years later, it was still there. It even seemed a little cleaner, a little more polished. Wayne Manor had been rebuilt. Familiar faces were back–a little older, a little wiser . . . but not all was as it seemed.

Gotham was rotting away at its foundations. A new evil bubbling up from beneath. Bruce had thought Batman was not needed anymore, but Bruce was wrong, just as I had been wrong. The Batman had to come back. I suppose he always will.

Michael, Morgan, Gary, Cillian, Liam, Heath, Christian . . . Bale. Names that have come to mean so much to me. My time in Gotham, looking after one of the greatest and most enduring figures in pop culture, has been the most challenging and rewarding experience a filmmaker could hope for. I will miss the Batman. I like to think that he’ll miss me, but he’s never been particularly sentimental.