Entertainment In Brief
It takes a kennel to make a movie like Marley & Me. Plus, the Wrath of God on the auction block
HOW MANY DOGS DOES IT TAKE TO...
Imagine being a casting agent saddled with the job of finding dozens
of look-alike actors to play the same role in a movie. That was the
dilemma facing the producers of this month’s holiday flick Marley & Me,
except instead of searching for human performers, they needed to find
scores of yellow Labradors to play the film’s titular Marley.
The film (based on the best-selling book by John Grogan) stars
Jennifer Aniston (pictured above) and Owen Wilson as newlyweds who
adopt Marley and watch him grow into what they lovingly call “the worst
dog in the world.”
More than two dozen dogs play Marley in the film — from puppyhood to old age — and as Aniston told the L.A. Times, they were rewarded for misbehaving, which included ripping up her sweater on her first day shooting.
Most of the dogs were supplied by professional animal trainers.
However, one dog named Rudy (who plays a senior Marley), was a Lab
Rescue Dog who was living in a foster home in Florida when he was cast.
He is back living in the foster home, but he now has an agent.
—Ingrid Randoja
DANCING WITH THE STARS
The original Fame |
Call it the revenge of skinny jeans, white suits and leg warmers.
Hollywood is raiding its closet to cash in on the worldwide popularity of movie musicals, a trend that hit home in Tinseltown when Mamma Mia! passed Grease
as the highest-grossing movie musical of all-time earlier this year
(the ABBA-inspired musical has earned more than $560-million U.S.
worldwide).
So what oldies-but-goodies is Hollywood bringing back for a second turn on the dance floor? First up is the remake of Fame, due September 2009. Like the original 1980 version, this remake stars mostly lesser-known performers.
That won’t be the case when all-world heartthrob Zac Efron steps
into Kevin Bacon’s shoes as feisty teen Ren McCormack in the brand new Footloose, which is currently in pre-production.
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And perhaps the strangest musical second-take is the yet-to-be confirmed re-imagining of the disco classic Saturday Night Fever,
with Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley tapped to play the dancing
couple. Since they certainly aren’t from Brooklyn, the remake would be
set in a small English town.
—Ingrid Randoja
POLITICAL THEATRE
If actors Michael Sheen and Frank Langella seem to inhabit the skins of their Frost/Nixon
characters even more than most actors playing real-life roles there’s
good reason. The pair lived with their characters for more than a year
before filming even began.
Sheen (The Queen) and Langella (Superman Returns) originated their parts — interviewer David Frost and former President Richard Nixon respectively — on stage when Frost/Nixon
began its life as a theatrical production in August 2006. They
performed the play about 360 times over the next year, first on
London’s West End and then moving to Broadway in April 2007.
In the movie’s production notes, Sheen says he didn’t change his
performance drastically for the movie, which was largely shot at the
actual locations where events took place. “I suppose on stage you play
to the audience in the room, and on film you play to the camera,” he
says. “The big difference on stage is that you have to pretend you’re
on an airplane or pretend you’re at the Western White House, etc. For
the film, I only had to be there.”
—Marni Weisz
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ON HOME TURF
Films shooting across Canada this month
Halle Berry is in Vancouver until the middle of December, wrapping up her latest film, Frankie and Alice, which has been filming here since the end of October. The movie’s about a woman with a multiple-personality disorder and Berry plays both title characters (get it?). The story is complicated by the fact that, despite being African-American, one of Frankie/Alice’s personalities is a racist.
The indie is being directed by Geoffrey Sax, who has some experience working in Vancouver, having shot 2005’s White Noise here. And Berry gets a producer’s credit, her first on a feature film.
Berry’s been spending a lot of time on Canuck soil of late. A few months ago she bought a house in St. Hippolyte, Quebec, so that she, her baby daughter Nahla and boyfriend, Montreal-raised model Gabriel Aubrey, can be closer to his parents.
—Marni Weisz
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ARTIFACT
This month’s objet de film
Wrath of God
At this time of year our thoughts naturally turn to God in all of
His incarnations. Well, God and shopping. Here’s one of our favourite
versions of the Spirit in terms of movie lore. It’s the Wrath of God
ghost puppet that escapes from the Ark of the Covenant and melts the
faces of those greedy Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Made mostly of silk, the puppet was filmed while being swished around in a tank of water to get that ethereal effect.
So where does the shopping come in? The puppet will be sold this
month as part of Profiles in History’s big Winter Auction of Hollywood
Memorabilia (profilesinhistory.com), a five-day extravaganza that
starts December 10th, just in time for holiday shopping.
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The Wrath of God has belonged to visual effects model maker Steve
Gawley since he created it for the 1981 film and comes in a crate that
mimics those from the government warehouse at the end of the film. It’s
expected to bring in between $12,000 and $15,000 (U.S.).
—Marni Weisz