Entertainment In Brief
Breathing life back into Biggie Smalls. Plus, puppets with Canadian citizenship
GRAVY'S B.I.G. SHOT
Having been shot wasn’t a prerequisite for landing the role of murdered rapper The Notorious B.I.G. (above right) in the new bio-pic Notorious. It was just another uncanny similarity between the slain artist — born Christopher Wallace, but known to friends and family as Biggie Smalls — and Jamal “Gravy” Woolard (above left), who was cast to play him in the movie.
Like Biggie, the 33-year-old Woolard is a heavyset, black rapper who grew up in Brooklyn — actually just a few blocks from Biggie’s home. And while Biggie was murdered in a drive-by shooting in 1997, Woolard survived his shooting in April 2006 outside New York radio station Hot 97 — that’s the same station where 50 Cent and The Game’s posses traded gunfire, and where Lil’ Kim was involved in a shootout.
Woolard was tagged in the backside, but he managed to hide the fact and went into the studio where he performed live.
“[The bullet] spun me around,” he told MTV News. “My adrenaline was pumping. After all that, I went to the doctors, and they said the bullet hit [me] so hard, it went straight through the back of my a**, out my thigh.... Somebody was really trying to put a dent in me.”
—Ingrid Randoja
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ARTIFACT
This month’s objets de film
Edison & Leo
Edison & Leo, the first Canadian stop-motion feature, hits
theatres this month. But not very many theatres. Guess that’s the
problem when you marry cheery-looking foam latex puppets with a dark
— and unabashedly adult — story about an amoral womanizing genius (that
would be Edison, on the left) and his electrically charged son (Leo,
right). Your audience is…niche.
But that doesn’t take away from the film’s groundbreaking status. The
puppets’ metal skeletons were built in Hamilton, Ont., before being
shipped to Mission, B.C., where those gummy-looking latex bodies were
added. An entire wardrobe department then finished the look with tiny
period costumes.
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The painstaking eight-month shoot also took place in Mission, where
director Neil Burns oversaw the action on 13 separate stages (built to
1/6 scale), with filming often taking place on 11 of those sets simultaneously.
—Marni Weisz
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JOSH DUHAMEL’S POLAR EXPEDITION
He’s from North Dakota, so the cold wasn’t a complete shock for Transformers
star Josh Duhamel. But still, there’s nothing like the shores of Hudson
Bay to put a chill in a Hollywood celeb. Duhamel, also known for his
role on TV’s Las Vegas and his engagement to Black Eyed Peas
singer Fergie, was up near Churchill, Manitoba, to draw attention to
environmental woes, more specifically, the plight of the polar bear.
“I’m blown away by the beauty of seeing these awesome creatures
up close and personal,” said Duhamel. “I wanted to see the effects of
climate change and confront the contradictory claims about polar bears
firsthand.”
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Duhamel met with researcher Dr. Ian Stirling, who told him that
polar bear weight has dropped by 20 percent over the past 25 years,
which makes it harder for them to give birth. The actor also met with
Manitoba’s Culture Minister Eric Robinson, a member of the Cree Nation
who also goes by the name Ka-Kee-Nee Konee Pewonee Okimow, or Chief of
the Whirlwind Blizzard.
—Marni Weisz
IT’S OFFICIAL: CANADIANS “NICE FOLK”
When this month’s Vikings vs. aliens movie Outlander ran out of money, the production was moved from its intended location of New Zealand to Newfoundland.
Good stuff for Newfoundland and, apparently, the film’s executive producer and co-writer Dirk Blackman, who had a ball here. On his blog, outlanderthemovie.wordpress.com, Blackman records some of his memories of Canada.
First there was the encounter with some drunk locals after a party thrown by star Jim Caviezel: “Anyway, these guys go on to tell us that as it’s our first time in Newfoundland, we have to ‘kiss the cod.’ (Now, as they’re looking at [co-star] Sophia [Myles] as they say this, we’re beginning to worry that a fight’s brewing. I mean who knows what ‘cod’ actually means in these parts?). Turns out it means ‘cod.’ And evidently it’s a local tradition for first-timers that you literally ‘kiss a cod.’”
A quick peck on a fish filet got Blackman out of that one. In another entry Blackman recalls an exciting traffic story.
“I’m at a red light, stopped. Decide it’s a killer time to make a phone call. Yap-yap on the cell phone, then I look up. Light’s green. Probably been green for a minute or two. I look in my rear-view mirror and there’s a line of cars behind me…and NO ONE HAS HONKED. Like they didn’t want to interrupt my phone call. In Los Angeles, I’d’ve been dead and buried. You’ve got three seconds to hit the gas or you’re in a shallow grave out in Joshua Tree. So… Canadians. Not too impatient. Not too violent. Nice folk.”
Good thing he wasn’t in Toronto. Our shallow graves are in Brampton.
—Marni Weisz