tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82415964710643375102024-03-21T19:16:37.940-07:00After The WatershedPopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.comBlogger504125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-73381220747115229522013-04-05T10:59:00.002-07:002013-04-07T03:15:03.719-07:00Aphrodite Fry<blockquote>"You’re upset that bloke drained his spuds on you..."</blockquote>Aphrodite Fry is a muralist living in Brighton. You can’t miss her – she’s the girl whose uniform is a paint-spattered orange boiler suit, whether she’s daubing the side of a building or jiving at night in the clubs. More to the point, <a href="http://www.scotsman.com/scotland-on-sunday/scotland/sarah-solemani-on-quirky-new-comedy-aphrodite-fry-1-2868037">notes Scotland on Sunday's Lee Randall</a>, you mustn’t miss her, because this engaging segment of Sky Living’s Love Matters season is written by and features <b>Sarah Solemani</b>, the award-winning star of <b>Him & Her</b> and <b>Bad Education</b>. Solemani spins the brief – "write about love" – in a quirky direction. Ostensibly, it's about a woman who has an <a href="http://www.comedy.co.uk/guide/tv/love_matters/interview/aphrodite_fry_solemani/">unfortunate experience with an ejaculation</a>. She decides to get her own back on an unsuspecting estate agent, Bobby, and it's a story about love, comedy and sex. "The starting point was a friend of mine," Solemani explains. "She’d just broken up with someone and was feeling really shit. We were like, 'Get back on the horse! Go out. Have fun.' She did. And she called me the next day, crying." She faux-sobs: " 'I went out with this guy and he came on me and then he left!' I thought it was the most horrendous story I’d ever heard, and also one of the funniest."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSFfSJYmJc0ZhQlIZ10SVBs2M_TjnJrMRGm8KHE3dQbwtAFEnsaGzHuaSO-lLZWkLaj6_f3y7pJ8Ptsr9JD-yT6YlyXgl7YplIJTFkqr-EN2B-m5gIu4aS36tXOjE2n2x3oED03U5gyVU/s1600/SarahSolemani.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSFfSJYmJc0ZhQlIZ10SVBs2M_TjnJrMRGm8KHE3dQbwtAFEnsaGzHuaSO-lLZWkLaj6_f3y7pJ8Ptsr9JD-yT6YlyXgl7YplIJTFkqr-EN2B-m5gIu4aS36tXOjE2n2x3oED03U5gyVU/s400/SarahSolemani.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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Solemani was doing a play and retold that story [during rehearsals]. "All the actresses said, 'That is hideous. How degrading,'" she says. "And I saw a few of the actors being, like, 'Ahem' and I went, 'Oh my God, you’ve done it!' So it became this gender differentiation, and I wondered if that was because of the physical act of ejaculation." Ah yes. Many years ago, writes Randall, an earnest young man explained to me that sex was "different for girls" because something enters a woman’s body. "I’ve heard that a lot, and don’t like it, because it makes a woman so passive", says Solemani. "A friend writing about maternity told me that the metaphor of the passive woman and the active man, which is carried on in the narrative that the sperm swims and the egg sits still, and the strong sperm penetrates the egg . . . actually, she says, the egg is the selector. It has small suction valves that select the strongest sperm and reject the weaker ones. So we need to rework how we teach women and men these ways of looking at sex."<br />
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All this is spoken in a sweetly girlish voice, but Solemani is nothing like the layabout Becky from <b>Him & Her</b>. Instead, she is one smart cookie. The 30-year-old grew up in north London, the eldest daughter of a sociology-teacher mother and mathematician father. When she was 16, her mum Rachel died of ovarian cancer. Solemani was a raucous teenager, heavily invested in Britpop and a regular in the hotel bars, though she told one interviewer she timed her benders so they wouldn’t clash with her school work. That scheduling trick worked a treat: she earned an MA (Hons) in Social and Political Sciences at women's college New Hall, Cambridge, and in 2005 won third place in the New Statesman’s prize for New Political Writing, for her essay "Do women’s rights remain the privilege of the developed world?" As a teen she was also part of the National Youth Theatre. Her first gig was playing Elaine in the West End revival of The Graduate. At university she wrote and performed with The Footlights, where she became vice president and where she was "always, always the only girl" – so was never going to be content to just act in stories written by funny men. In time she came to the Fringe to perform in a double act with her writing partner, Thick Of It actress Olivia Poulet.<br />
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Now 30, she has been firing off sparky scripts for a decade. And at last, thanks to the hunt for a Lena Dunham of London, producers are taking notice. "Before <b>Girls </b>being a woman was niche. It was like we were writing about some indigenous peoples in Outer Mongolia", says Solemani. "They'd say, 'Oh, we've already got a female-skewed thing, so…' I got an email once saying 'I know I asked for female but this seems a bit too female.' Lena Dunham was allowed to write what she knew. It proves that once you let the voice breathe, you're in a different territory."<br />
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Aphrodite Fry is the first of Solemani's scripts to make it to the screen. She stars as the eponymous heroine, a daydreamer who seeks happiness in one-night stands. It's a modern seaside fairytale with plenty of spunk – in every sense. "I think I'm probably a bit of a smutty person", says Solemani. "But hopefully there's a broader, nicer, more interesting narrative about not aping your oppressors and being true to yourself." There is quite a lot of nudity, too. Does stripping off on screen bother her? "Obviously not", she snorts. Her film debut was playing a nude chorus girl in Mrs Henderson Presents while still at university. She was studying for her finals at the time and spent a term getting up early to remove her body hair and reading feminist tracts between takes. People are <a href="http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/celebrity-interview-sarah-solemani-1-5540437">fascinated by the nudity</a>, she says. "They always play it at Christmas and I get these texts saying, 'I’m with my entire family watching you completely naked, Merry Christmas!'" she giggles, admitting that it was "weird" to be writing political essays one day, and standing next to Judi Dench on stage – nude – the next.<br />
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"So much sexuality that we see is this aggressive, forced, tits and teeth. Why should that own the naked form?" she asks. That said, working with a female director – Vanessa Caswill – on Aphrodite made shedding her clothes easier. "There was no way I could have done that with a man. I didn't want their desire or their objectification of me to be an issue." Unsurprisingly, it is not hard to see the feminist message at the heart of Aphrodite Fry; addressing that, in her flatmate Toe's words, men can "cum and go" much more readily than women. "I think that because I am feminist my work is going to subliminally have that kind of content to it, but it's not an overt feminist piece," she reasons. "It's taking stereotypes about sex: we're told that men are these hunters, and these sexual predators, and we as women have to protect ourselves and not give it up too easily and all that, but what Aphrodite hopefully does is break down those archetypes. So you have the character (Bobby) who can't act like that, and Aphrodite who can't act like the typical female, so hopefully - well, I think feminism is about men and women, not giving them roles to play, but allowing them to be individuals and connect with their human-ness. So yes, I think there is a feminist message of sorts, but I hope it's a lot more subliminal than in your face!"<br />
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Things cannot get much more in your face than with a final scene of non-sexual nude bonding between Aphrodite and Bobby. It’s a sweet moment where Aphrodite realises that not all men are sexually selfish. "Yeah, um, because the script is about the perception of sex, I honestly just had my writer hat on, and I wrote: 'She takes off her clothes, not in a sexual way, but as an olive branch. And he takes his clothes off. And they stand, and then they run naked, like John and Yoko, free, into the sea.' Then I came to act it," she hoots, "and was like, 'For fuck’s sake Sarah, what have you done that for?' I could have taken it out and I didn’t, because I feel that it works, and that I was controlling my nudity and making the rules. There’s nothing inherently moral or immoral or degrading or uplifting about nudity. It’s a state. But what is vulnerable-making about it is that the context in which nudity is seen is often not owned by women. In this situation I owned the context. And the other thing is, like Lena Dunham says, 'If you’ve got great tits, just write them in!'"<br />
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The scene in question takes place in a <a href="http://skyliving.sky.com/love-matters/love-matters-aphrodite-fry">surprisingly public place</a> as Solemani found to her acute cost. "There happened to be a concert that was finishing very near to where I was doing it," she cringes. "As I took my bra off I could hear the sound of a thousand men walking towards me and I just carried on because I didn't want to look unprofessional and look round. Then after I was naked, I looked round and there was a whole football pitch worth of people just walking and heading for the beach and security guards were trying to stop them." After subsequently scampering across the stony Brighton beach barefoot and braving first the crowds and then the frigid sea, Solemani was understandably in need of a stiff drink. "When we came to do it and it was fucking freezing and the director had bottle of brandy for me when I came out - which I definitely needed because it was at night in winter!" she laughs. "But yeah, I think it just works for the piece; because I'm controlling it as the writer and it's my context of nudity, I thought 'I don't mind doing it'."<br />
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With such traumas in mind, how peculiar is it writing and acting in a piece that someone else is directing? "It’s pretty specific what you want because you’ve written it," she explains. "For Aphrodite Fry I needed someone I trusted, so it was so wonderful that Ruby Films and Sky Living let me pick my director, Vanessa Caswill, who has made fantastic short films but had never done TV before." So might she ever choose writing over performing? "I am an extrovert who likes time on her own, which is a polite way of saying that I am an anti-social show-off," she replies. "I can do lengthy periods of solitude, but then I love breaking that and being on a set, which is really collaborative. Also, writing is so hard. You’re asking for loads of money and people’s time, and if it’s not good enough you feel like an idiot. Whereas with acting, it’s also very hard but you’re helped a lot by the director, lighting and so on. There’s nowhere to hide when you’re a writer. So I do like both."<br />
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Surprisingly, Solemani has only just learned to appreciate her worth. "I used to be so terrified and embarrassed and hate everything I ever made. I would never watch it and never invite anyone to see it. But I am really proud of Aphrodite Fry. Watch it. And let me write some more. I’ve got this energy for making things, and being given the opportunity is such a lucky position. I’m grateful, but I’m also ready." Ultimately, she continues, "people should watch if they enjoy good comedy with a strong story running through and strong female characters who get up to lots of sexual mischief and who are very liberated and want to know what happens next!"<br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="360" scrolling="no" src="http://www.putlocker.com/embed/D7F11B0CCFBDB5E3" width="460"></iframe><br />
<br />
http://www.putlocker.com/file/D7F11B0CCFBDB5E3#<br />
<br />
Television Series: Love Matters: Aphrodite Fry<br />
Release Date: April 2013<br />
Actress: Sarah Solemani<br />
Video Clip Credit: Wimsey, Fango<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQhQ_zf4cfeTzfY-5A6iiWEJSbUZvnqTu1Y3Je6YzOvBlQVOguF_m-BxVX_vZXjcaTwJoHNqBSpbGe-fcH4Svf8HHfWoDQ4b8D4Vh3M_5yKwhLVdAzkYWC96iLzVvT64eJ-q-5Dq1MAEM/s1600/SarahSolemani1.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQhQ_zf4cfeTzfY-5A6iiWEJSbUZvnqTu1Y3Je6YzOvBlQVOguF_m-BxVX_vZXjcaTwJoHNqBSpbGe-fcH4Svf8HHfWoDQ4b8D4Vh3M_5yKwhLVdAzkYWC96iLzVvT64eJ-q-5Dq1MAEM/s320/SarahSolemani1.jpg" /></a><br />
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http://uploaded.net/file/8fjwlb2n<br />
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</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-34323814858747731292013-04-04T02:43:00.000-07:002013-04-07T02:46:04.377-07:00Rogue S01E01-02The creators behind <b>Rogue</b>, DirecTV’s first foray into the original scripted series realm which aired last night on the satellite’s Audience Network, are <a href="http://variety.com/2013/biz/features/thandie-newton-rogue-directv-1200330557/">confident they have a premium offering</a> right up there with HBO’s <b>Boardwalk Empire</b> and Netflix’s <b>House of Cards</b>. "There are no more <b>Damages</b> and <b>Friday Night Lights</b> out there," says Chris Long, senior VP of DirecTV, which has a 50% stake in the series. "You can’t live on that the rest of your life, waiting for someone else to stop enjoying a piece of content and then to sell it to you. So here’s an opportunity for us to put our foot in the water, but not too much financially, and share the cost to differentiate (our) content so customers feel like, 'OK, here’s another reason why I should stay on DirecTV.'"<br />
<br />
<b>Rogue</b>, is a U.K.- Canadian co-production, which not unlike AMC’s <b>The Killing</b> or FX’s <b>Justified</b>, features a single story arc throughout the 10 episodes of its first season — in this case solving the mystery of who killed the son of an undercover agent named Grace (<b>Thandie Newton</b>). Grace’s single-minded quest causes her to become unlikely allies with the mob chief whose waterfront syndicate she was trying to crack, ensnaring her in a conflicting web of loyalties between the Oakland police, mobster kingpin Jimmy (Marton Csokas) and her family. <br />
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Rogue is not only a stretch for Newton, who’s never carried a series on her shoulders, but it also pushes the envelope in terms of adult content. Graphic violence and full-frontal nudity — both male and female — are not uncommon in the series’ first three hour-long episodes. Sex, which seems to come in violent fits, is often transactional, cathartic or manipulative, especially as it applies to Cathy (<b>Leah Gibson</b>), a latter-day Lady Macbeth who has goaded her husband (Joshua Sasse) into standing up to Jimmy, his father. Series creator Matthew Parkhill, who describes the sex as "European," says he "always wanted to explore the dark side of the American dream," and views the U.S. pay-TV landscape as the last outpost for the kind of creative latitude that was once the hallmark of indie cinema.<br />
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So how exactly how tough was it for the 40-year-old Newton to negotiate those raw sex scenes? "Well, it serves the story and it was necessary," the London-born actress explained to Hitflix. "In terms of the pragmatic, of how do we deal with it, you cast people who are sensitive, kind and professional." In that regard, Newton says she was incredibly fortunate with the actors she worked with. "The guy who plays my husband is just a really good, up-front person and we've both got families and children," said the mother of two. "When it comes to those scenes it's just about sitting together, talking with the director, being really clear on how it's going to be shot and being really clear about what's necessary." The ultimate goal is to ensure "you don't have to do any more than you need to do" and just to keep everything as clear and as straight forward as you can. "Just try and cover it in as few shots and takes as is necessary," admits Newton, "and so when you do it you give it all you've got and then it's done!" <br />
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Newton says it is about "having a really firm hold on the characters" and thus "allowing them to experience whether it is sex, an argument or an intimate loving situation so that it can move the narrative forward and give the audience a stronger sense of what's pinning these people together." All of that stuff, she thinks, is necessary in rooting the characters in their relationships. "It's not gratuitous and I don't not what pleasure an audience could honestly get from seeing two people desperately trying to heal their relationship," admits Newton. "It's not pretty but what they're going through in their lives isn't pretty so I was really proud of our ability to work on explicit material in such a way that really does inform the storyline and allow the characters to be richer and have more dimension to them."<br />
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Television Series: Rogue (S01 E01-02)<br />
Release Date: April 2013<br />
Actress: Thandie Newton & Kira Clavell<br />
Video Clip Credit: Recapped, Drazerfta<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi01YHRH0bA3F-oV2NYNYByahzgOnOrfd_m5bNApaYcgLcKQHR8seJ5XOm4vuq0zV0vS0g_G9OwQ3B3qeJ_J730JS1cPYs2CJdwXfgtUyKRY11RHaKUDUd-oh0atabGgcMO9EGQ0YRr3Cs/s1600/ThandieNewton.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi01YHRH0bA3F-oV2NYNYByahzgOnOrfd_m5bNApaYcgLcKQHR8seJ5XOm4vuq0zV0vS0g_G9OwQ3B3qeJ_J730JS1cPYs2CJdwXfgtUyKRY11RHaKUDUd-oh0atabGgcMO9EGQ0YRr3Cs/s320/ThandieNewton.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-51265417544498502842013-04-03T05:20:00.003-07:002013-04-03T05:20:48.643-07:00Best Sex On TV<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieOSFFkPHTZ6ylP4sjBbwhGVGB0r7f0rYzmp3HCle9yFxNDYsMZFjfqmTEBaDHNDdVffc5EhuApyCqW85AbaBXpfvLvX1_rkhwRVxNkNcuArDa9r6EK8xU_fgrJJPemzMJFepLxQECMmw/s1600/ZooeyDeschanel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieOSFFkPHTZ6ylP4sjBbwhGVGB0r7f0rYzmp3HCle9yFxNDYsMZFjfqmTEBaDHNDdVffc5EhuApyCqW85AbaBXpfvLvX1_rkhwRVxNkNcuArDa9r6EK8xU_fgrJJPemzMJFepLxQECMmw/s400/ZooeyDeschanel.jpg" width="322" /></a>There are awards for bad erotic writing (the Literary Review's annual gong, for instance) so it seems only fair that we also recognise those rare occasions when the arts provide us with a <a href="http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-04-03/zooey-deschanels-new-girl-the-funniest-comedy---and-the-best-sex---on-tv">description of sex as satisfying as the experience it describes</a>, says Paul Jones. Writing in the Radio Times, he transcribes how last night's New Girl on E4 saw the usually hapless Jess (Zooey Deschanel) telling her flatmate Nick about a recent mindblowing hook-up (with someone else's blind date).<br />
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Jess: "I had the best sex of my life last night. He brewed me like a fine chamomile."<br />
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Nick: "Oh, so that was you. I thought that was a couple bums fighting."<br />
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Jess: "It wasn't. It was me, having sex. I left my body, went up to heaven, saw my grandparents, thought it was weird that I saw my grandparents, came back down, I became a werewolf, I scared some teenagers. I came back into my body. Only thing is, he thinks my name is Katie. And that I'm a dancer and/or something involving puppets."<br />
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Just like Jess, New Girl is on fire at the moment. A couple of episodes into the new second series, it's one of the funniest things on TV, combining dysfunctional yet loveable central characters, flights of fancy – which avoid becoming too self-consciously "kooky" like so many US comedies – and a whole bunch of brilliant one-liners, delivered with beautiful comic timing by a talented cast (and, hey, if they happen to be easy on the eye too, who's complaining?).<br />
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Last night's episode also included the following scene, in which Jess's friend Cece attempts to help the newly empowered Jess conduct a "dirty" text message conversation with a(nother) guy she met in a bar. <br />
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Jess: "He says, 'Can't stop thinking about what you're gonna wear tonight.' How do I respond?"<br />
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Cece: "With a simple... 'Or not wear.'"<br />
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Jess: "Okay."<br />
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Cece: "Okay?"<br />
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Jess: "'Or not wear because sex happens naked.' Send."<br />
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Cece: "Okay, let me help you with that... 'Just kidding. Get ready for a night you will never forget.' Okay?"<br />
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Jess: "'Because once you see my body, you will go brain-dead and have memory loss.' Send. Oh no! Autocorrect changed 'body' to 'meat bar'."<br />
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Meat bar. Now that's a phrase even a Bad Sex award winner would think twice about using in a sentence...<br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-15546982783649670602013-03-31T04:20:00.000-07:002013-04-03T04:33:17.973-07:00Stones, Bone And Sexual InequalityLike thousands of <b>Game of Thrones</b> fans across the nation, on Monday night Neela Debnath will be sitting down to watch the third season of the show. She is looking forward to seeing how the story develops, which characters get killed off and who will get a step closer to taking the Iron Throne. What she won’t be looking forward to, she writes in today's Independent, is having a pair of <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/as-the-third-season-of-game-of-thrones-begins-lets-hope-the-nudity-is-more-equal-8554545.html">breasts thrust into her face every week</a> for the next two-and-a-half months...<br />
<br />
For those who've never seen Game of Thrones, the series is about the power struggle between several families to win the throne and rule over the fictional land of Westeros. The series has been adapted from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels, and along with the uncompromising violence the show is characterised by its sexual content. On the whole the sex scenes in Game of Thrones have been taken directly from the books and serve a purpose, compared to shows such as <b>Rome</b> and <b>Spartacus: Blood and Sand</b> where the sex only really adds to the aesthetic. <br />
<br />
Indeed I would argue that the majority of the sex scenes are integral to the plot of Game of Thrones and are important because they define the characters. Sex is part of the human condition and by showing the wants and desires of these characters they become more believable and rounded as literary creations. For instance, Theon Greyjoy uses sex to demonstrate his power and nobility to others. Whether it involves sleeping with the daughter of a sea captain or unwittingly fondling his sister (it’s a long story), the overall impression is that he constantly needs to prove himself.<br />
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Saying this, I've also found that at times the series has featured sexual scenes that are unnecessary and add very little to the plot. In the first season a brothel owner instructs two prostitutes on the art of making love and orders them to give him a demonstration. The whole sequence played out like a piece of girl-on-girl action for the fan boys and came out of the blue in the overriding scheme of things. Unsurprisingly, this scene was not in the book and in my opinion added very little to the plot, apart from shoehorning in what was essentially some softcore porn. It might not surprise viewers to learn that some of the scenes were so raunchy that a number of actresses turned down parts on the show. Porn stars were even drafted in to play the more risqué roles.<br />
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Game of Thrones is a wonderfully rich and complex story with the depth and detail of <b>The Wire</b>, and production values on par with <b>Boardwalk Empire</b>. The makers simply do not need to stray into softcore territory with superfluous sex scenes to hold their audience’s attention. I think it’s safe to say the makers won viewers over the moment Bran Stark was thrown out of a tower in the first episode. Some of the adult content works, but the additional sex scenes feel unnecessary and comes across as the thinking man’s porn of choice – man being the key word.<br />
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My main gripe is not with the sex itself but with the disparity between male and female nudity. Nine times out of 10 it is a woman who is seen disrobed while her male counterpart remains clothed. It is something that is inherent across the film and television industry and needs to be rectified starting with Game of Thrones. If there are going to be sex scenes then surely both male and female characters should both bare their flesh rather than just one party? Interestingly, I posed the question of the inequality in nudity in Game of Thrones to several of the show’s stars last year and got a particularly strong response from one actress. Natalia Tena, who played the Osha and filmed a scene involving full frontal nudity said: "I think it’s really unfair, every actor, any actress has had her tits out. Every single actress I know. Blokes it’s like, let’s see some cock. Do you know what I mean? Let’s make it more even."<br />
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It shows that something needs to change in the industry. Why shouldn’t the male form be celebrated as much as the female form? After all we are living in an ever more sexualised society where the lines between art and porn in the mainstream are blurring. As a female fan I find myself seeing a lot of women of Game of Thrones in the buff and it feels rather disconcerting. Surely the makers should be catering for female viewers as well as male viewers? Women make up a good chunk of the audience, so perhaps next year they can feature a scene in a brothel where we are shown the rent boys of Westeros or the bed slaves of Essos? Just bring some parity to the nudity for the fan girls. Or, in the words of wildling temptress Ygritte, show us the stones and bone.<br />
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Crucially, the argument laid out by Debnath is a direct criticism of the show itself and not of the source material. As Jezebel's Tracie Egan Morrissey points out, despite how boob-y its small screen adaptation has become, those who've read the five books in Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series know that the <a href="http://jezebel.com/5993176/game-of-thrones-george-rr-martin-is-feminist-at-heart">real meat isn't on the female characters' chests, but in their stories</a>. HBO sex scenes be damned, she writes, the women of Westeros are more than sex objects — they're subjects of their own narratives. And it's something that Martin, as a "feminist at heart," did deliberately.<br />
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There's a reason that half of the fantasy series' avid fan base is made up of women. While the realm that he has created isn't exactly woman-friendly, the hardships and limitations it creates for its female inhabitants lends itself well to the rich development of their characters. Women like Cersei Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, Brienne of Tarth, and even Sansa Stark, are not only multi-layered, but emblematic of the different ways that women respond to being designated as second-class citizens. What makes their stories interesting — certainly more so than someone like Robb Stark — is how they manoeuver in a realm that values power as its highest commodity when they were born with very little of it, strictly by nature of being women.<br />
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In an interview with the Telegraph, Martin credits his "humanizing" of his female characters with his feminism, even though <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/9959063/Game-of-Throness-George-RR-Martin-Im-a-feminist.html">he's not sure if he's allowed to be one</a>. It is those richly imagined female characters in particular, thinks The Telegraph's Jessica Salter, that set Martin apart from other fantasy writers, and have won him a legion of female fans; women readers make up slightly more than half of his fanbase, he thinks. "It’s one of the things that please me most, the fact that women love my characters." says Martin. "I’m lucky that I’ve got such a big project; it means I can have lots of different types of female characters and so avoid stereotypes, which is what fantasy writers can end up doing." <br />
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Typically fantasy writers paint women either as angels or demons. But Martin’s women are more three dimensional - part of his creative appeal. They include the beautiful and manipulative Cersei Lannister, who would defend her children and family to the death; Lady Catelyn Stark, a strong mother, devoted wife and a shrewd political strategist not afraid of a 300 mile trek on a horse to join her son in battle; Ayra Stark, a nine-year-old tomboy who wants her own sword and Daenerys Targaryen, who wants to cross the narrow sea to win back her father’s throne. Oh and not forgetting the most awesome Brienne of Tarth, a female knight played by the 6’ 3’’ actress Gwendoline Christie. <br />
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So how does he get inside the head of, say, his teenage characters? "Yes, you're right I've never been an eight year old girl," he says, "but I've also never been an exiled princess, or a dwarf or bastard. What I have been is human. I just write human characters." He also gets plenty of feedback from his fans. "Some women hate the female characters," he says. "But importantly they hate them as people, because of things that they've done, not because the character is underdeveloped." The pitfalls of lots of other fantasy texts, he says is when writers stray into writing in sterotypes. But because Martin has a sprawling world with thousands of characters (and five books to do it in), he has the luxury of developing each one fully. "Male or female, I believe in painting in shades of grey," he says. "All of the characters should be flawed; they should all have good and bad, because that's what I see. Yes, it’s fantasy, but the characters still need to be real."<br />
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Martin should be used to female adoration by now. Although he has only hit mainstream consciousness in the last few years (his books have sold more than 20m worldwide), he has been a minor celebrity on the science fiction circuit for years. His wife’s first words to him, when she met him at a science fiction conference in 1975 were that his first novel, A Song for Lya, 'made her cry'. Now he is mobbed wherever he goes - his trademark fisherman's cap an instant giveaway that he is the man behind the globally successful franchise. His books feature sex pretty heavily (to say the least) but it is something that has been ramped up even further for the television show. Martin simply delights in describing sensory details, particularly sex and food; there is a lot of both. "Sex is an important part of life; it’s something that gives our lives meaning, for good or for ill, so I think it should be there and should be shown," he reasons. <br />
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Yet some critics have complained that there are too many sexual descriptions (HBO has, of course, ramped it up further still for television). Often crucial conversations between characters happen while one of them is having sex (not always mentioned in the book) - something that has the American academic Myles McNutt to term them 'sexposition'. "Is it simply because we couldn’t be trusted to pay attention otherwise?" McNutt asked on his blog. "It’s as though they think having a prostitute appear and only talking, without actually having sex, would be some sort of cop-out. In my view, at least, it’s the other way around: it just feels lazy." <br />
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Gina Bellafonte in The New York Times went further. Last year she wrote: "all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise." The truth was, she sniffed, "Game of Thrones is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half." Female GOT fans lept to Martin's defence, including Emily Nussbaum from the New Yorker who wrote that the strength of the series was "its insight into what it means to be excluded from power: to be a woman, or a bastard, or a ‘half man’."<br />
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But Bellafonte's comments still rankle with Martin a year later because he is, at heart, a feminist, despite being cautious about admitting it. "There was a period in my life when I would have called myself a feminist, back in the seventies, when the feminist movement was really getting going and growing out of the counter culture of the sixties," he says. "But the feminist movement has changed. Sometime in the 80s and 90s I read some pieces by women saying that no man can ever be a feminist and you shouldn't call yourself that because it's hypocritical, so I backed off. I thought if the current crop of feminists believes that no man can be a feminist, then I guess I’m not one." He then chuckles behind his candyfloss beard. "To me being a feminist is about treating men and women the same," he said. "I regard men and women as all human - yes there are differences, but many of those differences are created by the culture that we live in, whether it's the medieval culture of Westeros, or 21st century western culture." <br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-43522373824027315452013-03-28T12:37:00.001-07:002013-04-03T02:32:47.567-07:00Where's The Sausage?<b>Game of Thrones</b>? That’s the show with the boobies, right? Well, yes; like so many HBO dramas (including <b>True Blood</b> and <b>Boardwalk Empire</b>), Thrones serves up female flesh in situations both dramatically integral and superfluous. Some viewers apparently have a problem with that. Since its 2011 debut, Thrones has been attacked for "gratuitous" nudity and labeled sexist for stripping its women more often than its men. <a href="http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/game-of-thrones-producers-say-season-3-as-big-as-were-going-to-get">Speaking at a press conference call</a> to preview the HBO fantasy epic's return on Sunday night, frustrated co-showrunner D.B. Weiss insisted the sexposition talk (defined as "the clever technique of jazzing up boring plot exposition by pairing it with sex,") is overblown. Responding to a question about the amount of sex and nudity on the show, and the commentary about it, he said: "We put in the show what we think belongs in the show. There are going to be people who think there's too much of something, or not enough. If you create a show with a committee of a million people, you're not going to make a very good show. We do what's right to us."<br />
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Weiss and his partner Benioff don't just have to adapt thousands of pages of George R.R. Martin's novels to translate Game of Thrones to television. They have to film an entire world, one that included seven kingdoms, more than a thousand characters, old gods, new gods, dragons and constant political plotting. Even Martin has said he sometimes loses track of life in Westeros, confessing to The New Yorker that fans once caught him switching the sex of a horse from one book to another. Lost among the accolades for their show -- for the brilliant, multi-tiered dialogue, the sweep of the battle scenes, the complexity of the characters -- is how easily we accept it all. Using storytelling techniques like sexposition, they've placed us deeply in another world without resorting to flashbacks, voiceovers, or long "Star Wars"-like crawls of information. <br />
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"The only thing that bothers me," adds Weiss, "is when people say, 'Oh, you've made it so much more sexual than the books,' which is patently untrue. When you're seeing a person's naked body on screen, it's much more in your face than in the page." He went on to describe a scene Martin wrote for book 5, "A Dance with Dragons," involving eight very naked dancers of both genders having sex with each other as part of the performance, which is something they could never show, "And then there are graphic sexual scenes in the books with 14-year-old girls, which would have us all thrown in prison if we showed them that way." Benioff nods agreement. "If we’d shown all of the sex in the book we’d be behind bars right now," he says. In <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/game-of-thrones/9195683/Game-of-Thrones-interview-DB-Weiss-and-David-Benioff.html">an interview last year</a>, Weiss admitted: "There’s a lot of sexual content in the books. Some of it involves children, and we couldn’t film it for legal and moral reasons. But the sex is one of the things that we like about the books – the characters really think about it." Or has he <a href="http://www.westeros.org/GoT/Features/Entry/6276">eloquently explained</a> it to Westeros.org, "I don’t think Bilbo Baggins ever got a boner, but in these books the characters think about sex, and that seems real for us."<br />
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Weiss insists their goal has <a href="http://www.thewrap.com/tv/column-post/game-thrones-how-david-benioff-and-db-weiss-brought-westeros-life-36468?page=0,2">always been to adapt George's whole story</a>, not just this book or that book to the screen. "Sometimes in the service of that adaptation we've found that the best way to present a fully rounded vision of his world is to introduce elements or characters that aren't actually in the books," he explains. "There's things we can't explore the way the book explores them. The book uses exposition or it uses flashbacks or it uses all kinds of things we try to avoid. So far George has proven understanding." Benioff adds: "We don't have the luxury of going into characters' minds since we never have voiceovers. For us to get the backstory it's got to come out through dramatic dialogue, or what we hope is dramatic dialogue."<br />
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The Littlefinger sexposition scene from season one that some people objected to was some of the best exposition since the monkey with the date in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.' "We enjoyed it," says Weiss. "In the episode following that episode, Khal Drogo rips someone's tongue out through the hole he just made in their throat. And I never really heard any complaints about that scene. It is objectively worse to get your tongue torn out through a hole in your throat than it is to witness or experience what happened in the sexposition scene. If someone had a dramatic issue with it, that's one thing. But if the issue is the content of it I'm just sort of a bit confused by it." In fact the pair once joked they would address the sexposition criticism with '<a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/29/david-benioff-d-b-weiss-discuss-game-of-thrones-season-2-more.html">a 20-minute brothel scene involving a dozen whores, Mord the Jailer, a jackass, and a large honeycomb.</a>' "There will always be those who want to see less sex, and those who want to see more sex, and those who want to see sex in big tubs of pudding," noted Weiss. "You just can’t please everyone. We’re going to focus on the pudding people."<br />
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In a <a href="http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/game-of-thrones-interview-writers-david-benioff-and-d-b-weiss/">discussion with Heyuguys</a>, the pair said they didn't know whether more people be watching or would less people be watching if the sex quotient changed. "We prefer explicit sex to implicit sex," said Weiss. "We do what we feel the story merits, what we feel is necessary and maybe this is naive but I assume that everyone in the world has an internet connection and we’re not showing anything people haven’t seen far more of, far more explicitly than we would ever want to show. I’m, in a way, surprised that the violence doesn’t register more than the sex because violence is objectively worse than sex! HBO have never made us cut a scene, there were a couple of times…in season two when they said ‘Really…?’ and we said ‘Yeah, really! It was something that we thought served a real purpose and we thought belonged in the show. We’re very committed to the physical and mental well-being of the people on the show, not putting them into situations which are going to be psychologically damaging to them. That’s a line we won’t cross. If we psychologically damage the prudes of America then we’re happy!"<br />
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In an <a href="http://collider.com/david-benioff-db-weiss-interview-game-of-thrones/">interview with Collider</a>, Benioff riffed further on the subject. "We didn’t want to have something where it was the equivalent of a shower scene, basically just showing someone naked, for the sake of having a little bit more nudity in the show," he said. "It is a very sexual world. We want to see Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) with a prostitute in a brothel, and not cover it up daintily with sheets, the way you would have to on network television or in a PG-13 movie. It’s equal opportunity nudity. Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) comes in and does what he does, quite brutally with his young wife, and it should feel brutal. It’s supposed to be terrifying for her. Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) is a young girl. Even though she is not as young in the show as she is in the book, she is still quite young, and she was virginal. We wanted that scene to have the power that felt right for her, and that meant not being coy about it and really seeing what you had to see. Luckily, we had actors who embraced that. I think it was much more terrifying for them than for us because they were the ones doing it. They’re the ones that have to reveal everything."<br />
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One of the those set to reveal everything next season is <b>Rose Leslie</b> as flamed-haired temptress Ygritte. The actress will "bare" the responsibility of one of the book's most iconic love scenes and <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/strombo/mobile-video/show-segment/rose-leslie-on-auditioning-for-game-of-thrones.html">revealed in conversation</a> with George Stroumboulopoulos that she was completely in the dark about her character and what the role might eventually require. "I shouldn't really be saying this, but I kind of went into the first audition unprepared," she said. "I was unaware of the show, I hadn't watched the first season, and I'd kind of just heard from guy friends who'd been watching it that it was amazing. So it was all kind of word of mouth. And I didn't realize the pressure. And had I realized the pressure, I don't think I would have landed the job in the first place." Although the question of nudity was never a consideration for her, Leslie said: "I feel, especially with Game of Thrones, that [nudity] is necessary. There are times that it calls for that to happen, and whether it is gratuitous or not, it works with the scene, and helps push the scene forward."<br />
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For what it is worth, Weiss thinks the levels of nudity and sex in season one and two were about the same and there's every reason to expect similar levels going forward. "There’s not a checklist," he <a href="http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/03/30/game-of-thrones-showrunners-season-2/">explained to Entertainment Weekly</a>. "You just have to do what feels right to you and not worry too much about it. [You don't] start counting how many breasts per episode or how many full‑frontal male nudity shots. There are always going to be people who think there’s too much. There will be some who want to see less. One of the benefits of HBO that we can give a more well‑rounded representation of life. And that sex is a part of it and darkness is a part of it, and so is the humor."<br />
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Ultimately, there are two different complaints, though; <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2013/03/plea-for-more-male-nudity-on-game-of-thrones.html">intertwining them muddies each</a>, thinks Vulture's Matt Zoller Seitz. The first concerns the appropriateness of graphic sex and/or nudity; the second is about the show’s "gaze," which is undeniably heterosexual and male. But it’s possible to enjoy sex and nudity without guilt or bluenosed justifications while simultaneously pointing out that the scales of spectatorship are out of whack. Seitz would like Game of Thrones to enlarge the scope of its fantasy — to show more same-sex couplings and male nudity — as Starz’s <b>Spartacus</b> series has done with such panache. For all its tough, complicated women characters, Thrones is perceived as too much of a sausagefest. The producers could change that perception, concludes Seitz, by adding more sausage.<br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-89142065785004417112013-03-25T19:19:00.001-07:002013-03-25T19:19:29.480-07:00Pints, Burgers And Sex Scenes<b>Jessica Brown-Findlay</b>, the <b>Downton Abbey</b> actress, has revealed that when shooting nude scenes she <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9953477/Downton-Abbey-star-refuses-to-slim-down-for-nude-scenes.html">drank pints and ate junk food</a>, refusing to bow to the pressure of slimming down and spending hours in the gym. The 23-year-old, who played Lady Sybil in the ITV drama, said it was "awful" that women were criticised for their bodies and insisted that she would never succumb to the Hollywood pressures of being a size zero. "I did find it very odd being naked in front of lots of people and I think it’s awful that women get so criticised about their bodies," she told Radio Times. "Otherwise I’d be starving myself for ever, which I just couldn’t do. The idea that actresses would work out at the gym for a thousand hours beforehand … I was drinking pints and eating burgers. I think if you’re going to do a nude scene, be honest and natural. But actually, it’s not something I would do again."<br />
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The actress sheds her clothes in <b>Labyrinth</b>, the forthcoming Channel 4 adaptation of Kate Mosse's bestselling novel. She said she was inspired by strong women and that playing Alaïs, a 13th century healer, had been liberating and had helped her to perform to her best when it came to returning to Downton to film her final scenes. Brown-Findlay, whose character died after giving birth in the last series of Downton, left the hit ITV show because she did not want to fall into her "comfort zone". However, she admitted that she had been "naive" to agree to a topless scene in the 2011 film Albatross and said she had not known at the time that she could say no. The actress, who has just filmed Winter's Tale opposite Will Smith and Russell Crowe, said her ambition was to write while owning 'a little tea and sandwich shop'. "Hollywood is not for me. I love acting, but I also love London," she said.<br />
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Joining Brown-Findlay for the two-part adaptation of Kate Mosse's best-selling novel- which is coming to Channel 4 this weekend- are a host of famous faces including acting veteran John Hurt, Merlin's <b>Katie McGrath</b>, The Paradise's Emun Elliott, Harry Potter's Tom Felton, <b>Vanessa Kirby</b>, Sebastian Stan and John Lynch. Set in France during both 1209 and 2005, the tale interweaves the stories of two women, Alais (Brown Findlay) and Alice (Kirby). In the present day, archeologist Alice uncovers two shattered skeltons and a labyrinth-engraved ring in a long-undisturbed cave while 800 years ago in medieval France young herbalist Alais is entrusted with hiding the secrets contained within three sacred books. Labyrinth was adapted by Adrian Hodges, co-creator of ITV's Primeval and the screenwriter for My Week with Marilyn.<br />
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<br /> Just as Brown-Findlay shows little patience for the demands of Hollywood, co-star Vanessa Kirby reveals she decided to become an actor after <a href="http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/tv-and-radio/interview-vanessa-kirby-labyrinth-star-1-2852896">seeing her namesake Vanessa Redgrave on stage</a>. She was 12 when she saw Corin and Redgrave in Trevor Nunn’s production of The Cherry Orchard at the National Theatre. And there’s the audition for the Bristol Old Vic when she was 17; she was turned down, mainly for being too young. So then there was the six months in Africa and four months in Asia (she studied conflict resolution at Stellenbosch University) followed by an English degree at Exeter University, where she performed in as many plays as she could. Then there were a couple of chance meetings and some fantastic luck, an award and another couple of nominations, some very good reviews and, well, here we are. <br />
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You might have already seen her as Estella, adopted daughter of the icy-hearted Miss Havisham played by Gillian Anderson, in a recent TV adaptation of Great Expectations. Or maybe you clocked her in <b>The Hour</b> with Dominic West and <b>Romola Garai</b>. Prior to that you would have caught her mainly on stage in London or in Bolton, as she cut her teeth on Miller, Ibsen and Shakespeare, picking up awards and fine reviews with every production. But it doesn’t matter if you have never seen her before in your life, as it seems Kirby’s star is on a steep upwards trajectory, and with a slew of projects on the go, it won’t be long before you see her everywhere. There is a Ridley Scott-produced TV adaptation of Kate Mosse’s novel, the impending Labyrinth, and then a small part in The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman alongside Shia LaBeouf and a role in Richard Curtis’s new film, About Time. There are other film projects about which she’s been sworn to secrecy and an already planned return to the stage in Marlowe’s Edward II at the end of the year.<br />
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"I sometimes get a bit embarrassed when I tell people I’m an actor," she says. "The perception of the job has changed a lot." She says that she’s been viewing flats and estate agents first ask her if she’s got a guarantor – everyone knows that it’s a tough industry to crack, it seems – and then ask her what she’s been in. When she tells them about some stage roles they commiserate with her – it’s only the commercial stuff that they’re impressed by. For Kirby, though, it’s not nearly so clear cut. "On screen you have to worry about what you look like," she says. "You’ve got ten people doing your hair and make-up right before you go for a take, just to remind you that you’ve got a dodgy eye so they need to make it look a bit bigger. Then when you see it," she shakes her head. "No one sees themselves like that – from that many angles, that close up, wearing different clothes that you wouldn’t usually wear, your hair all weird. You don’t look how you think you look. It’s not the same as looking in a mirror. For a while I cared and I was all tense and nervous but you know what I’m not a model, I’m not ever going to be a model, I don’t look like a model and do you know what I don’t give a fuck."<br />
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The irony, of course, is that Kirby is very pretty. And tall. And slim. Still, that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t mean it when she says that she wants to be a character actress. And by that she means "someone who plays real people who at some point in their career tries to move someone in the same way that people have moved me. If that happens then I don’t have to worry about who thinks I’m pretty and who thinks I’m ugly. I’m trying to care less and less. But it is hard." She says she’s philosophical about rejection too, although there can’t have been very much of that in her career so far.<br />
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"Well, there are a lot of things that you don’t get," she says. "But now that I’m feeling more relaxed and comfortable I think I can get the jobs that I want. And when I don’t I always lose out to people who have more profile. My mum always tells me about reading an interview with Carey Mulligan who always used to lose out to Emily Blunt.' She smiles. "I’ve only been working for the last three years. It feels like a lifetime to me but in relative terms it’s nothing. I honestly feel like the luckiest person in the world.'<br />
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<b>Labyrinth is on Saturday 30 and Sunday 31 March at 9:00pm on Channel 4.</b><br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-19486032108095668982013-03-25T18:30:00.002-07:002013-03-25T18:30:43.230-07:00TV’s Stealthiest Sex Symbol<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdBzTOA7kX68nNy9SyXM1M2246lqrWh7V-NMscfwGdi3OMFiThXOG6ML3KJHr8CADwzMKVv7P4qgIVuFMjmcjsV6yAqB2087Cxo6aUXcfrC1N5Y1Tfp5f0GDMJX5ryrrhG2vMyNoPtgtE/s1600/KeriRussell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdBzTOA7kX68nNy9SyXM1M2246lqrWh7V-NMscfwGdi3OMFiThXOG6ML3KJHr8CADwzMKVv7P4qgIVuFMjmcjsV6yAqB2087Cxo6aUXcfrC1N5Y1Tfp5f0GDMJX5ryrrhG2vMyNoPtgtE/s400/KeriRussell.jpg" width="261" /></a><b>The Americans</b> is the best new show on TV, says Warming Glow's Josh Kurp. This would be true even if the 2012-2013 season hadn’t produced dud after dud, Animal Practice after Guys with Kids; few series in recent memory have come out of the red-ribboned box as confident and thrilling as The Americans has. Even its FX counterpart Justified took a season to figure out what kind of show it wanted to be. But the saga of everyone’s favorite undercover Russian couple who want to cure the world of the American way of life came instantly packaged for instant entertainment, largely because of the stellar work done by future-Emmy winner <b>Keri Russell</b>, who celebrates her 37th birthday today. So here's how Russell's career went from pink bikinis to black wigs to become <a href="http://www.uproxx.com/tv/2013/03/how-keri-russell-became-tvs-stealthiest-sex-symbol/">TV’s Stealthiest Sex Symbol</a> in a dozen easy moves...<br />
<br />
1. Her first film role was in 1992′s Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, where she played Robert Oliveri’s love interest, Mandy. She left little to the imagination, which was the style at the time.<br />
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2. A year later, she made her non-Mickey Mouse Club TV debut in the Boy Meets World episode, "Grandma Was a Rolling Stone," as Mr. Feeny’s niece who Eric falls for.<br />
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3. It was an unwritten rule, I think, that every Married…with Children guest star had to wear something revealing, so during her one-episode appearance, in season nine’s "Radio Free Trumaine," Keri obliged.<br />
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4. Playing the "other woman" in Bon Jovi’s “Always” music video? <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BMwcO6_hyA">Not one of her finest moments</a>.<br />
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5. In 1995, Disney produced a televised spin-off of Kevin Smith’s Clerks, starring no one from the film and making no mention of Silent Bob. Jim Breuer was cast as Randal, while Keri played a strip mall tanning saloon employee named Sandra. The pilot never aired.<br />
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6. In 1996, a starring role in Aaron Spelling’s short-lived Malibu Shores.<br />
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7. Despite its Beatles-referencing title, Eight Days a Week is apparently most notable for featuring Dishwalla’s 1996 hit "Counting Blue Cars," at least according to Wikipedia.<br />
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8. Then came Felicity, which, yeah. Fun fact: the theme song basically explains the plot of The Americans.<br />
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9. After Felicity ended in 2002, Keri went from one forgettable part to another, with the exception of roles in Mission: Impossible III and especially the Sundance-hit Waitress.<br />
<br />
10. She made two memorable appearances on Scrubs in 2007, as Elliot’s sorority sister.<br />
<br />
11. It would be another three years before her next TV role, in Mitch Hurwitz’s disappointing Running Wilde.<br />
<br />
12. And finally, The Americans. According to Keri, “Originally, I didn’t know that I wanted to do it. I always say no to everything. I never want to do anything. But I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. I read it…and I kept trying to figure it out, because it’s so not clear.” She’s given a stunning performance so far — it’s gotten to the point where after only eight episodes, I think of her as Elizabeth, not Felicity, a once-unthinkable comment. On the surface, Elizabeth, a part-time mom, full-time bad ass spy who goes through revealing costumes the way Russians do cans of caviar, is a “sex symbol,” but to reduce her to merely that is to let your guard down, at which point she’ll shoot you in the head or, if you’re lucky, just kick your ass. There’s no one quite like her on TV right now, something the Emmys should keep in mind.<br />
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<span class="fullpost"><br />
Film: Eight Days a Week<br />
Release Date: 1997<br />
Actress: Keri Russell<br />
Video Clip Credit: Scott<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNzGMoHOG8lLsjmDSbVjjhuBQYG-0FRcMzNcOeqyM5WG3CaPvrRJksW3N3nFMso0U-myRs6lVMLCwPJFfzZ2N_KJZc25bBAYYsMdJKGbJeD2zEA-PeD2ZuUNQI_n4BDvCVTVxexa1-b-k/s1600/KeriRussell1.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNzGMoHOG8lLsjmDSbVjjhuBQYG-0FRcMzNcOeqyM5WG3CaPvrRJksW3N3nFMso0U-myRs6lVMLCwPJFfzZ2N_KJZc25bBAYYsMdJKGbJeD2zEA-PeD2ZuUNQI_n4BDvCVTVxexa1-b-k/s320/KeriRussell1.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
http://www9.zippyshare.com/v/93725910/file.html<br />
or<br />
http://mir.cr/1NBEYEG2<br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-67381697924559875792013-03-25T03:30:00.000-07:002013-03-25T03:31:57.583-07:00A Game Of HistoryAs epic fantasy Game of Thrones returns to TV, historian Tom Holland explains <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2013/mar/24/game-of-thrones-realistic-history">how it plunders real events</a> from the ancient world to the middle ages to make it more brutally realistic than most historical novels...<br />
<br />
Although Hilary Mantel is apparently yet to begin the third volume of her trilogy of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jan/29/hilary-mantel-bring-bodies-costa-prize">novels about Thomas Cromwell</a>, we can be confident of several plot twists that it will not feature. Cromwell will not precipitate a civil war. He will not betray the husband of his foster-sister, with whom he is in love. He will not escape the executioner's block. His downfall is scripted. The history books cannot be cheated. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/07/bookclub-hilary-mantel-wolf-hall">Mantel's Cromwell</a> is as bound to the inevitability of his doom as any prisoner to a rack.<br />
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In the hands of a great writer, of course, the fact that we already know a character's fate can serve to heighten rather than diminish tension. For all that, though, the pleasure to be had in following a narrative and not knowing what will happen is a primal one. Next week sees the return to our television screens of a series that, like Mantel's two Tudor Booker prize winners, charts the pleasures and perils of political ambition. In a trailer for Game of Thrones, the voice of the actor Aiden Gillen can be heard defining chaos as a ladder: "The climb is all there is."<br />
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Gillen's character, Petyr Baelish, certainly knows whereof he speaks. The world he inhabits is one that will seem perfectly familiar to readers of Wolf Hall: courtly, treacherous and full of people having their heads chopped off with axes. Politics is portrayed as a game, in which only the most skilful can hope to win. Baelish himself has risen from humble beginnings to a position of understated influence and power. In the first series of Game of Thrones, he is shown serving a warrior king gone to seed and oppressed by serious marital problems. Baelish's talent is for keeping his spendthrift master in cash. "Within three years of coming to court he had been made master of coin and a member of the small council, and today the crown's revenues were 10 times what they had been under his predecessor."<br />
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If Baelish sounds more than a little like Thomas Cromwell, then perhaps that is not entirely a coincidence. He may inhabit a world, Westeros, which features dragons, walking corpses and a 700ft wall of ice – yet it is far from wholly fantastical. George RR Martin, whose series of novels inspired the HBO drama, has woven a tapestry of extraordinary size and richness; and most of the threads he has used derive from the history of our own world.<br />
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Gillen's look in the TV series, complete with black doublet and pointed beard, serves the viewer as convenient shorthand for the role he is playing in the drama: that of a Tudor Machiavel. Cromwell and Walsingham are not the only models for this. Baelish's character is inspired as well by the traditions of revenge tragedy: he has a taste for poison and nurtures a semi-incestuous passion for his foster-sister. What neither the history nor the literature of the Tudor period can reveal to us, though, is the full depth and nature of Baelish's schemings – nor, because there are still two books of the series to be written, what his fate will be.<br />
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<iframe width="460" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1iTg20x7w2s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
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Adding to the impossibility of deciding where Martin may be taking the fabulously complex strands of his plot is that the world of Westeros does not draw for its inspiration on a single period of history. Baelish may seem a figure conjured from Tudor mythography, but the king who rules in the first book in fact resembles Henry VIII less than he does his grandfather: the founder of the Yorkist dynasty, Edward IV. The back story of the series certainly <a href="http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/wars-of-the-roses.htm">derives from the wars of the roses</a>. Just as the house of Lancaster was toppled by the house of York, so, at the beginning of Game of Thrones, has the ruling dynasty of the Targaryens been toppled by a usurper, Robert Baratheon.<br />
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Again, though, it would be a mistake to imagine that Martin's purposes can be divined simply by transplanting the history of 15th-century England on to the convulsions that devastate Westeros. He is far too subtle for that. When Robert succumbs to a plot hatched by his beautiful queen, Cersei, who then rules the kingdom on behalf of her son, it is hard not to be reminded of Isabella, the wonderfully nicknamed "she-wolf of France", who similarly dealt with her own husband, Edward II. When a fleet attacks her capital only to be annihilated by liquid explosives, the obvious parallel is with the "Greek fire" deployed by the Byzantines in their defence of Constantinople against the Arabs. Different events – and different periods – elide to consistently potent and surprising effect. In Game of Thrones, episodes from the history of our own world lie in wait for the characters like booby traps.<br />
<br />
In this, the obvious contrast is with the only work of fantasy to compare in terms of ambition and achievement to Martin's own: The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien's Middle-earth, unlike Westeros, is the creation of a dauntingly learned scholar: his ambition was to fashion from the languages, literature and history of the early middle ages an invented mythology that would nevertheless retain the stamp of the period that had inspired it. Martin's approach is infinitely more slapdash. Just as the characters and plot twists of his novels derive from a whole range of different periods, so too do their settings. The default mode is high medieval, but alongside all the tournaments and castles there are echoes as well of earlier periods. Offshore, a recognisably Viking kingdom boasts a fleet of longships; Westeros itself, like dark ages England, was once a heptarchy, a realm of seven kingdoms; the massive rampart of ice which guards its northernmost frontier is recognisably inspired by Hadrian's wall. Beyond Westeros, in a continent traversed by a Targaryen would-be queen, the echoes of our own world's history are just as clear – if more exotic. An army of horsemen sweeps across endless grasslands, much as Genghis Khan's Mongols did; memories of a vanished empire conflate Rome with the legend of Atlantis.<br />
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The result might easily have been a hideous mess. Instead, Game of Thrones is fantasy's equivalent of a perfect cocktail. Elements drawn from the hundred years war and the Italian Renaissance, from Chrétien de Troyes and Icelandic epic, fuse to seamless effect. The measure of how credible – on its own terms – people find Martin's alternative history is precisely the phenomenal scale of its popularity. The appeal of Westeros is less that it is fantastical than that it seems so richly, so vividly, so brutally real. The supernatural has no starring role: it is merely as present in the lives of its characters as a trust in the reality of angels, or a dread of demons, would have been in the minds of medieval men and women. People take their pleasures and endure their sufferings with a plausibility that puts to shame a good deal of self-proclaimed literary fiction.<br />
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The result, paradoxically, is that there are sequences where the invented world of Westeros can seem more realistic than the evocations of the past to be found in many a historical novel. No fiction set in the 14th century, for instance, has ever rivalled the portrayal in Game of Thrones of what, for a hapless peasantry, the ambitions of rival kings were liable to mean in practice: the depredations of écorcheurs; rape and torture; the long, slow agonies of famine. The pleasures of historical fiction and of authentic, adrenaline-charged suspense, of not knowing who will triumph and who will perish, have never before been so brilliantly combined. Imagine watching a drama set in the wars of the roses, or at the court of Henry VIII, and having absolutely no idea what is due to happen. No wonder Game of Thrones has been such a success – and that historians can relish it as much as anyone.<br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-39436296748904383452013-03-24T06:07:00.000-07:002013-03-25T07:48:51.997-07:00Sailing Into Scandal<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrmLMiqqr_OvyO_XAgpMLNLjbhMeoeCc4IMXq3RabebmWcm63nfMMU8jCqAFYDZ9NdvJ_mPPTcH30TpTmJzALvh0GhjVPKTN7TNb2KORXtBT_o1OyVQ5KPXromZr-N7ibVBJyJDalzdtI/s1600/LouiseBarnes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrmLMiqqr_OvyO_XAgpMLNLjbhMeoeCc4IMXq3RabebmWcm63nfMMU8jCqAFYDZ9NdvJ_mPPTcH30TpTmJzALvh0GhjVPKTN7TNb2KORXtBT_o1OyVQ5KPXromZr-N7ibVBJyJDalzdtI/s400/LouiseBarnes.jpg" width="298" /></a>Sultry TV actress and soap queen <b>Louise Barnes</b> <a href="http://www.sundayworld.co.za/news/2013/03/24/sa-tv-star-goes-nude">will bare all</a> in a new international television series - <b>Black Sails</b>, reveals Sunday World's Bongiwe Sithole. But local men will have to hold back their drooling for a while as the series will only hit our shores next year. About going nude in front of the cameras, Barnes says: "When I auditioned for the series I had to be prepared to be totally naked on screen. I remember thinking to myself, 'Louise, take your clothes off' and there I was shooting a naked scene in front of six people."<br />
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Barnes goes nude in some of the scenes - currently being shot in Cape Town - of <b>Black Sails</b>, a prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson's classic Treasure Island, which tells of the exploits of Captain Flint and his band of pirates in the 18th century. She says her 20 years' experience as an actress helped her handle the challenges of playing "Miranda Barlow", the mysterious character who forms a romantic relationship with Captain Flint. Barnes says the project is a breakthrough for her as an actress. "I have been in international films before but this is a big one for me. The fact that I play a meaty role makes it thrilling. I feel incredibly blessed to be part of it."<br />
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<span class="fullpost"><br />
Natal-born Barnes landed her first professional role in an SABC mini series, "Where Angels Tread". After graduation she went to on to work in theatre and both local and international television and film. While taking a break from the industry in 2002 she went to the USA to train as an instructor of Bikram yoga and opened a studio in Illovo, Johannesburg on her return. She was lured back to the acting world by a role in a South African/Canadian co-production, "Jozi H", and has continued to land exciting roles most recently in a feature film with Billy Zane, "Surviving Evil", and <b>The Sinking of the Laconia</b>, a BBC miniseries starring, amongst others, Franka Potente and Brian Cox. Now 38, Barnes was last week crowned Best Actress in a TV Soap at the South African Film and Television Awards for her role as Donna Harding in Scandal!, before revealing that she has quit the e.tv drama series. Her last episode will be on April 15. In her five years on Scandal!, Barnes played a ruthless and heartless woman who strove for success by stepping on people's toes. "I took a hard decision, considering I had security there. But I have other things such as voice overs to keep me going," she says. "I will absolutely miss the cast. We made friendships I will never forget."<br />
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In addition to Barnes, English models-actresses <b>Hannah New</b>, <b>Clara Paget</b> and <b>Laura Higgins</b> will also feature, as well as Canadian <b>Jessica Parker Kennedy </b>and Belgium-born <b>Axelle Carolyn</b>. As befits the channel that shamelessly mined the natural female resources of Australia and New Zealand for <b>Spartacus</b>, casting ads have also gone out for all-natural models/actresses in the Pretoria and Johannesburg region willing to flesh out the nudity in the show. The racy series is produced by Michael Bay, who directed the movie Transformers, and will be flighted on the US channel Starz who will retain all domestic and international rights to the dramatic series – including television, home video, and digital – similar to their hit series <b>Spartacus</b> and <b>Magic City</b>. It will then probably be shipped to one of South Africa's pay TV channels.<br />
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So keen was Starz to become the home of Bay's new project, it by-passed the pilot stage to commission eight episodes of the "gritty" pirate adventure series, due to air in 2014, straight off the bat. Black Sails tells the story of Captain Flint- the most brilliant and feared pirate captain of his day- and his crew twenty years before their appearance in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, back when John Silver was younger, leggier, and presumably, less Long. Flint takes on the fast-talking young addition to his crew, Silver, who has stolen a map to a Spanish Treasure galleon that Flint is after. Threatened with extinction on all sides, they fight against the British Royal Navy for the survival of New Providence Island, the most notorious criminal haven of its day – a place defined by both its enlightened ideals and its stunning brutality.<br />
<br />
Luke Arnold (McLeod’s Daughters, Rush, Broken Hill) will star as the classic character, "John Silver", in the years before his well-known feats. Toby Stephens will be featured as the rival pirate captain to "Captain Charles Vane", played by Zach McGowan (Shameless). Hannah New (El Tiempo Entre Costuras, Fuga De Cerebros 2, Maleficent) will be stepping into the role of "Eleanor Guthrie", a beautiful and determined young woman who runs the smuggling operation on New Providence. Jessica Parker Kennedy (Max, The Secret Circle, 50/50, In Time) has been cast in the role of "Max," a tortured young prostitute who sees the dark side of her surroundings. Elsewhere, Hakeem Kae Kazim (Strike Back, Hotel Rwanda) will play "Mr. Scott", Toby Schmitz (Crownies, Three Blind Mice) will play "Rackham" and Clara Paget (One Day, Fast Six) will star as a member of Captain Vane's crew, <br />
<br />
Said Starz CEO Chris Albrecht, in a press release: "Starz is excited to be working with a visionary like Michael. Along with the high-octane action that is a hallmark of a Michael Bay production, it has the elements that Starz originals are striving to bring to the premium landscape: epic, larger than life, cinematic storytelling. The series is also a property we believe will appeal to the global content marketplace with broadcasters around the world." Bay added: "I’m excited to branch out into television, especially doing a long-form series for STARZ, a network known for supporting cutting-edge programming."<br />
<br />
<b>Black Sails</b> will be executive produced by Michael Bay (Transformers, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor) and his Platinum Dunes partners Brad Fuller and Andrew Form (producers on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) and Nightmare on Elm Street (2009)). The series is created by showrunner and executive producer Jon Steinberg (creator Jericho, Human Target) and co-executive producer Robert Levine (Touch). Neil Marshall (The Descent, Game of Thrones) is on board to direct the first episode. Filming has just commenced in Cape Town, which is standing in for the Bahamas' New Providence Island, described in the show's bumpf as "a debauched paradise teeming with pirates, prostitutes, thieves and fortune seekers." Explosions and nudity come as standard.<br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-10108554316249766222013-03-23T05:16:00.000-07:002013-03-25T05:21:24.534-07:00The Porning Of Pop Culture<blockquote>
"Vagina's everywhere..."</blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrpwpQrhm4s3kL0er4s94Dofkf7UhIEcxibuVBarJQy7J9aecqWYrQA11uyP6yFbp4hUr620Vy0TkLdpgQbPo9g09qVlt0YX1BKjQz2_JLop51xT-67TkDQWefmNHiUuzHje8r4_oFZUE/s1600/TheClientList.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrpwpQrhm4s3kL0er4s94Dofkf7UhIEcxibuVBarJQy7J9aecqWYrQA11uyP6yFbp4hUr620Vy0TkLdpgQbPo9g09qVlt0YX1BKjQz2_JLop51xT-67TkDQWefmNHiUuzHje8r4_oFZUE/s400/TheClientList.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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Discretion used to be the better part of TV sex scenes. Even as portrayals of love and lust got steamier, the anatomical particulars were left to the imagination, off camera or under covers. Hollywood's old visual pun, the camera panning from a couple romancing in the foreground to fireworks exploding in the background, was updated over the years. Now the precise style, duration and heat register of sexual fireworks are enacted onscreen, <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/television/ci_22842924/cable-and-broadcast-tv-dramas-sex-scenes-are">notes Denver Post's Joanne Ostrow</a>, and in cable and broadcast TV dramas, the sex scenes are gymnastic...<br />
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The first evolution in TV's approach to sex involved the quantity of the sex on screen. The next evolution, the one going on now, seems to be in the manner of the sex portrayed. No position is too acrobatic, no amount of skin too graphic to depict on television. The potential awkwardness of the act seems to fascinate TV directors. It's not just television: from the popularity of E.L. James' "Fifty Shades of Grey" to the ubiquity of kink on the Internet, from a recent New York Times story on the proliferation of S&M clubs to the nightly prime-time disclaimers (TV-MA, L, S, V), the porning of pop culture is upon us.<br />
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Thank cable for ushering more graphic depictions of sex, violence and sexual violence from the World Wide Web into the living room with a wealth of literate (and award-winning) adult dramas. Depictions of sex and sexuality of every flavor are on view, not least in otherworldly settings ( <b>Battlestar Galactica</b>) and fantastical comedic settings (<b>Sex and the City</b>). <b>True Blood</b> and <b>Mad Men</b> raised the stakes. Increasingly, athleticism is the hallmark of small-screen sexual encounters. A bed is often the last place you'd find a sex scene. The unlimited varieties of the act were explored by cable, where customers pay for the privilege of seeing sadistic sexual acts (<b>Game of Thrones</b>), humiliating sexual encounters (<b>Girls</b>), bodice-ripping sex (<b>Spartacus</b>), paid and disabled sex (<b>Legit</b>), beach-chair sex (<b>Magic City</b>), fee-based sex play (<b>The Client List</b>) and more.<br />
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<span class="fullpost"><br />
Meanwhile broadcast TV showcased more and younger sex, especially on shows about high schoolers played by older actors. <b>Parenthood</b>, <b>Bunheads</b> and <b>Glee</b> toyed with adolescent sexual exploits. The tragi-sex-com <b>Girls</b> on HBO brings the current state of affairs into cringe-worthy focus. This season's penultimate episode "On All Fours," as graphic as its title, explicitly referenced porn imagery in the interaction of Adam and Natalia. First they had fun sex, then they had quasi-rape sex. The dynamics of the positions, the meaning of the physical relationships, the emotions that result from the encounter are meant to be pondered on this increasingly dark post-post-feminist comedy.<br />
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Now that graphic style is edging into mainstream commercial TV. Desperate to win audiences back from cable, the broadcast networks do what they can to mimic, imply and suggest. Even a political drama about the White House sneaks off for a quickie in the computer tech closet (<b>Scandal</b>), as parents in the audience scramble to clear the kids from the room. The raunchiest network comedies talk endlessly about "doing it" but don't show much. Jess (<b>Zooey Deschanel</b>) of <b>New Girl</b> on Fox is not nearly as sexually exhibitionistic or self-sabotaging as Hannah (<b>Lena Dunham</b>) of <b>Girls</b> on HBO. <b>Two and a Half Men</b> amounts to a decade's worth of sexual innuendo but actual sex is only implied.<br />
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Here's how we know we've arrived at a newly sexualized time in mainstream America, an awkward age of transition on matters of sex: The waitress Max (Kat Dennings) on the CBS half-hour <b>Two Broke Girls</b> recently complained that the word "vagina" has lost its power to shock. "Vagina's everywhere," she said. Cue the leering short-order cook Oleg: "Where!?!" Clearly, the writers share Max's lament about the difficulty of getting a laugh now that the word is commonplace, but they hope for some residual shock value. Ironically, TV's reality shows are the least graphic when it comes to sexual interactions. Series like <b>Big Brother</b> and <b>Jersey Shore</b> offer bad, obnoxious and unethical behavior on display, but the sex is usually blurred, in the dark or beneath the sheets. The TV genre that purports to be most authentic and uncensored turns out to be the least revealing in sexual situations.<br />
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The easy inclusion of graphic sex scenes in TV dramas in particular has challenged writers to play with the nature of intimacy in novel ways. This creative rethinking turns out to be good for dramatic character development. The power dynamic involved in sex is now a focus beyond the physical event.<br />
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* The husband and wife power-mongers in <b>House of Cards</b> on NetFlix like to share a cigarette in a window late at night, their version of intimacy. We never see them in a sexual encounter with each other; that's reserved for others, their inferiors in terms of rank and power. The result is subtle: The lack of sex between the leading characters (played by Kevin Spacey and <b>Robin Wright</b>) makes the viewer think harder about their intriguing intimate moments, as they borrow a page from "Macbeth."<br />
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* In the superior FX drama <b>The Americans</b>, the very idea of sex is fraught since the couple, played by <b>Keri Russell</b> and Matthew Rhys, are actually an arranged covert spy team who have yet to develop a real romantic relationship. Can their work blur into a romance? Will things heat up in the bedroom while they pursue the Cold War? Meanwhile, views of Russell's character enduring demeaning, sadistic sex as a trade for information are intensely graphic. (As a lethal spy, she gets her comeuppance.)<br />
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* It's not spoiling anything to note that the only really romantic, loving expression of sex in recent TV memory occurred on ABC's <b>Red Widow</b>, just before the central character was widowed. Now that true love seems to be out of the way, the doors are open to more dramatic, aggressive or conflicted expressions of sex.<br />
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* FX's <b>Bates Motel</b> finds its starting point as a contemporary prequel to "Psycho" with a <b>Twin Peaks</b> vibe. The sexual tension here is novel for television: mother and son, played by <b>Vera Farmiga</b> and Freddie Highmore, are intertwined in unhealthy, incestuous ways. The sexual hints are subtle at first as the audience witnesses the psychological implosion of teenager Norman Bates.<br />
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We can only hope the sexual tension in that case remains more subtle than gymnastic.<br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-27995934988022537762013-03-17T09:15:00.000-07:002013-03-18T10:39:45.621-07:00Tales Of The Unexpected<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8YnbLU_b05bbTYVj5iZcWS5uKvRx9AJLS9i_BxhRM-xrDTM0o6Md0Jz4uXZT-S4Dg1scIpYqoBwCSctfcMrunpjU4IWAmOxN90BNlcjfzVyS-_nkElOi-6HYq3pdpJivUJbNFUaM03rc/s1600/ElisabethMoss1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8YnbLU_b05bbTYVj5iZcWS5uKvRx9AJLS9i_BxhRM-xrDTM0o6Md0Jz4uXZT-S4Dg1scIpYqoBwCSctfcMrunpjU4IWAmOxN90BNlcjfzVyS-_nkElOi-6HYq3pdpJivUJbNFUaM03rc/s320/ElisabethMoss1.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>Top of the Lake star Elisabeth Moss says we should savour every nuance of her latest project. The actress, who plays a detective in Jane Campion's drama on Sundance Channel, relishes the detail of a story that reveals itself, much like her character, in very unexpected ways...<br />
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It's a sun-soaked afternoon in Los Angeles, but <b>Elisabeth Moss</b> is shivering. Sitting in the back room at the Pikey on Sunset Boulevard, Moss recalls how cold the water was in New Zealand, where she filmed <b>Top of the Lake</b>, the hotly-anticipated miniseries created by Jane Campion that premieres Monday on the Sundance Channel. "The lake is the same temperature all year round: freezing," says Moss, wearing a loose white cotton dress, her short brown hair tucked neatly behind one ear. "My makeup artist had this black plastic bucket and they would fill it with hot water and I would go sit in it fully clothed to warm up."<br />
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It's an odd detail, but it's in keeping with the making of the moody crime drama, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-top-of-the-lake-20130318,0,5398011.story?track=rss&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=89281">writes Jessica Gelt</a> in the Los Angeles Times. Filmed over a five-month period against a staggeringly beautiful natural backdrop of soaring mountains, rugged bush and the omnipresent lake, the setting plays a natural foil to the darkness of the plot, driven by the disappearance of a pregnant 12-year-old named Tui. Moss plays a confused and hardened Sydney, Australia, cop who gets wrapped up in the case during a visit to her cancer-stricken mother.<br />
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The mystery reveals itself in unexpected ways during seven hour-long episodes. The length of the series allows delicate subplots to push to the surface, including the story of Paradise, a desolate refugee camp for lost, mostly menopausal women, silently lorded over by an enigmatic visionary named GJ, played by Holly Hunter. Then there's the taut drama surrounding Tui's father, a criminal named Matt Mitcham (Peter Mullan) who rules the town and its police through the sheer, rabid force of his violent will. "I think this is Jane's best work. She really thrived in the miniseries genre," says Moss. "It's in the details for Jane. It's all about the secondary characters, the locations and all the weird moments — all the extra things that make Jane a genius. If you cut it down to two hours you'd make an awesome detective story, but you'd lose all that great stuff."<br />
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Making a miniseries did, indeed, give her room to play, agrees Campion. "My favorite form is the novel," she says, "which I think adds up to six or seven hours of something beautiful. That's what I was trying to create." Campion recalls how watching the salty HBO drama <b>Deadwood</b> made her realize that modern television was the place for her. "I thought, 'My God, this is so brilliant, I can't believe someone in television is financing this,'" she says. "How wild, what a revelation!"<br />
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In contrast, another of the chief draws of the "terrific" Top of the Lake is <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maureen-ryan/mad-men-elisabeth-moss_b_2877884.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003">knowing that it will actually end</a>, thinks Maureen Ryan. Writing in the Huffington Post, she notes that it's not that you're likely to get sick of this atmospheric mystery tale, it's just that it isn't padded in contrived ways to fill out a 10- or 13-episode season. The story dictates the length, not the other way around. "There's a lot of talk these days about the future of television, and that's certainly something we need more of: Creators who figure out what they want to do and then find a format, a venue and a running time that make sense for the specific story they're telling," writes Ryan.<br />
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The premise of Top of the Lake is not terribly original, but Campion, who also wrote many of the episodes, puts her distinctive stamp on the miniseries' core ingredients. There's the missing child, a community full of secrets and a driven detective with a fiance she's largely forsaken, but the similarities to AMC's version of <b>The Killing</b> (thank the gods) more or less end there. "Actually, the pilot of the U.S. version of "The Killing" did a fine job of establishing a melancholy tone, an intriguing mystery and pleasingly ambiguous characters," admits Ryan. "The show ran off the rails soon after that, but Top of the Lake, which has a similarly moody start, only becomes more fascinating over time. That's not to say Top of the Lake is free of idiosyncratic digressions and the occasionally odd segue, but it does a critically important thing very well: It draws you into a specific world and it quickly makes that world's textures, relationships and stakes matter." <br />
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Moss plays Robin Griffin, who returns temporarily to her hometown, nestled in some of New Zealand's most gorgeous scenery. The workaholic Griffin does some consulting for the local police department between visits to her mother, and you get the impression that Griffin would rather be working a local missing persons case than dealing with family issues or her past. In this beautiful backwater, one clan seems to have cornered the market on thuggery and black-market activities, and as "Lake" unfolds, we learn about Griffin's connections to the rough Mitcham family and about the secrets that have kept her psychologically tethered to the close-knit town. As she gets more involved in a case involving a child, it doesn't take long for Griffin to meet G.J., the American guru who has set up a new commune for women on the edge of the town's lake.<br />
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Reactions to G.J. will likely be polarized, thinks Ryan, but Hunter's performance was one of the main draws for her. Her stillness in this role is impressive: G.J. mainly sits in a trailer and drinks coffee, and she occasionally issues blunt advice to her ragged flock in a clipped, distracted manner. Is Campion amused by or affectionate toward G.J. and her gaggle of strange, contradictory women? There's no concrete answer, but the ambiguous treatment of the lakeside encampment - puckishly or accurately called "Paradise" - is one of "Lake's" chief pleasures. Many of the women are fleeing difficult relationships. Griffin, meanwhile, is treated with casual condescension by fellow officers and has her own painful secrets, with a thick skin as a result. As Top of the Lake progresses, however, those barriers start to fall. <br />
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Television often tells stories involving oppression and violence, especially violence toward women and children, but it most often uses them to juice up a procedural formula or to launch a melodramatic cliffhanger. "It's rare for a television show to let the consequences of violence and assault play out in complex, nuanced (there's that word again) ways for both male and female characters," states Ryan. "Despite its relatively short running time, Top of the Lake does that. In fact, examining the effects of brutality on those who employ it and those who experience it appears to be one of the reasons for the miniseries' existence." <br />
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Campion's feeling that anything goes on the small screen translated to some genuinely brave directorial choices, particularly when it comes to the world of Paradise, the camp by the lake. Here the women live in empty shipping containers and there is a sense of weird, wind-swept desolation that easily conjures <b>Twin Peaks</b> comparisons. "TV is being written, directed and acted for adults," says Holly Hunter, addressing the strange world of the camp. "It's bringing complexity to a lot of different stories, characters and landscapes."<br />
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In the case of Paradise, that sense of richness and possibility plays out among women that Campion says are "probably the most unattractive group of women in the world": menopausal and post-menopausal. "But I'm one of them," she says. "And there's a lot of freedom to it. You skip out of all the conventional points of success. You're not hot, you don't have a hot body." Through Paradise we see the vulnerability and power of women, and Tui's disappearance becomes that much more upsetting. The evil embodied in the show, however, is as amorphous as the constantly shifting weather. "Even though there are people who do very bad things in Top of the Lake, those people still get a lot of humanity shined on them through Jane and Gerard Lee, her co-writer," says Hunter. "I think they both love people and they love all their characters."<br />
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It had been a long time since Campion had written with Lee, who she says was living on an island off Brisbane in Australia when she called on him to collaborate. His voice was vital because he could awaken the male point of view alongside her female point of view. Sexuality and sex roles are a bit murky, along with just about everything else in <b>Top of the Lake</b>. That's certainly true when it comes to Moss' Robin, who has held onto bleak secrets that have twisted her to hardened extremes. Thanks to her role as Peggy Olson on <b>Mad Men</b>, Moss knows a thing or two about infiltrating male-dominated worlds. <br />
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Although Griffin is quite different from Peggy - she's tougher and more physically brave - she shares that character's resilience and intelligence. As is often the case on <b>Mad Men</b>, Moss' role in <b>Top of the Lake</b> frequently requires her to react to others and to experience pain and regret in silence, and we know from five seasons of the AMC show that the actress is a master of those skills. She and the subtle David Wenham, who plays a local detective, are well paired; each actor innately understands the slightly hushed, realistic atmosphere Campion is trying to create. Griffin doesn't particularly want to be liked, but given who's playing her, it's impossible not to care about the toll this case begins to take on the detective.<br />
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Campion says Moss wasn't who she had in mind when she was writing the role but that it quickly became apparent during casting that she was the correct choice. "I always want to know more about her," says Campion of Moss. "She's a bit like the Mona Lisa, she shows you something, but there's so much more." For her part, Moss says she was both thrilled and terrified to carry the show. But it wasn't until filming was over that she realized the full scope of what they had made. "They showed this clip they edited together at the end of filming, and by the end tears were just streaming down my face," says Moss. "It was like watching my life for the past five months being played back at me."<br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-19514234412831042002013-03-16T08:55:00.000-07:002013-03-18T09:03:29.413-07:00Lost Treasure Discovered<blockquote>"I do NOT see anything attractive in the agonies and ecstasies of a pervert, especially in close-up in my sitting room..."</blockquote>Possibly the earliest surviving British gay television drama, a powerful and compelling tale of intense emotions between soldiers serving in the American Civil War, has just been unearthed, <a href="http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/festival-gem-south">reports the BFI</a>. Broadcast live on 24 November 1959, in ITV’s Play of the Week slot, period drama <b>South</b> centres on exiled Polish officer Lt Jan Wicziewsky (Peter Wyngarde), staying on a wealthy family’s Deep South plantation prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War. As war clouds gather, Wicziewsky’s initial arrogance gives way to emotional disintegration when the arrival of Eric MacClure (Graydon Gould) forces him to face up to his darkest secret: his love for another man.<br />
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The lost treasure was directed by Mario Prizek, who died last year. He enjoyed an illustrious career with the CBC in Canada, was openly gay and championed equal rights. He worked on several television plays in the UK, directing Roger Livesey in Governor Wall and Maggie Smith in Penelope for Granada (both 1960); and also produced and directed an entry in the BBC’s Wednesday Play strand, First Love (1964). Large swathes of TV output from the 1950s and early 60s no longer exist, as it was often broadcast live and not recorded for posterity, or was later wiped. Prizek’s British work was among the casualties, but fortunately South is preserved in the BFI National Archive.<br />
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Film historian Stephen Bourne identifies South as the earliest surviving gay-themed British television drama. In 1957 the Wolfenden Report recommended that "homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence", but the law would not see concrete change for another decade. In 1959 the subject was still all but verboten on the small screen, though British cinema would take a leap of faith with Victim in 1961.<br />
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Wyngarde’s performance as the tortured Jan is extraordinary, by turns theatrical and reflective. Though producers were unable to mention homosexuality explicitly, the bravery involved in accepting such a role cannot be overstated. The wonderful supporting cast includes Hollywood veteran Bessie Love as a worldly Southern matriarch, and pioneering black British actor Johnny Sekka (South has much to say on race as well as sexuality).<br />
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Writing in 1959, a reporter for the Daily Sketch wrote: "I do NOT see anything attractive in the agonies and ecstasies of a pervert, especially in close-up in my sitting room. This is not prudishness. There are some indecencies in life that are best left covered up."<br />
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It will be available in BFI Mediatheques around the UK from April 2013.<br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-71597870794026391912013-03-14T10:02:00.000-07:002013-03-15T10:04:24.186-07:00The Americans S01E07The rise of the antihero in American dramatic television has been nearly fifteen years in the making. Since Tony Soprano revealed a gangster as touching as he was menacing in 1999 (those ducks!), television has introduced programming with a level of thematic and ethical complexity at a consistency never before achieved in the medium. A glimpse at the major award circuit in the past half-decade reveals not only a critical interest in this turn, but a popular one, as well. <b>Mad Men</b>, <b>Breaking Bad</b>, and most recently, <b>Homeland</b> are just three shows that have achieved widespread recognition for their presentation of morally compromised protagonists. <br />
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FX, known for its "There is no Box" brand, is no stranger to this breed of conflicted character. Its breakthrough program, <b>The Shield</b>, was a benchmark in the era of the antihero, considered by many to be an answer to HBO’s oft-discussed flagship. But where Tony Soprano was already a ringleader in an entrenched system of corruption, Vic Mackey was a crime-fighter, one of the good guys. Yet, in his Machiavellian lust to thwart baddies, we witness him torture, blackmail, plant evidence, and murder. In that sense, The Shield can be seen to usher in what has become the current antihero paradigm: where moral ambiguity abounds in spaces beyond the expected arenas of gangsters and thugs— among doctors and high school teachers, ordinary people.<br />
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It’s fitting, then, that FX is the first network to attempt a redirection of this trend in its newest drama, <b>The Americans</b>. The show, argues Indiewire's Jesse Damiani, could just feature the <a href="http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/paranoid-love-in-the-antihero-era-why-fxs-the-americans-may-feature-the-most-compelling-romance-on-tv">most compelling romance on TV</a>. Though it is as flush with moral ambiguity as its predecessors, Joe Weisberg’s creation offers an altogether different breed of protagonist. Some antihero dramas attempt to portray the slow degradation of character (Breaking Bad), others show us how obsession deepens madness (Dexter, Homeland), and others still allow the vicarious experience of power and its consequences (Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire). What separates The Americans is its foregrounding of the simplest device in the history of narrative: love. In effect, The Americans is an extended remarriage plot. Sure, it’s replete with the trappings of espionage, but all the mad chases, brutality, and political intrigue function in service of its romantic core. What leaves viewers clinging to their armrests in these moments of pulpy thrill is the underlying terror that, at any moment, the fledgling relationship between protagonists Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (played by Matthew Rhys and <b>Keri Russell</b>), will suffer a blow—whether physically, emotionally, or both—that it cannot survive.<br />
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Discussion of <b>The Americans</b>, thus far, has been largely centered around its relation to Showtime’s <b>Homeland</b>. However, the shows bear little resemblance to each other beyond their basic conversation about what it means to be a double agent, or, in a broader sense, to lead a double life. Homeland is sparked and sustained by a central terrorist plot. The romance that springs up between <b>Claire Danes’s</b> Carrie Mathison and Damian Lewis’s Nicholas Brody is, if a bit predictable, a delectable garnish. Specific motives correlate to known and desired effects (how will sniffing out a new piece of information help Carrie & Co. develop more effective counterterrorist responses?), and these propel the show. But neither Elizabeth nor Philip has a specific agenda— in typical Cold War style, there is no clear, overarching object— so the long-form conflict that emerges is largely character-driven, supplemented by action.<br />
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In this way, The Americans bears a closer likeness to HBO’s <b>Deadwood</b>, a show more interested in how communities are constructed than in marinating in its own conceits. But where Deadwood’s magic lay in its expansive cast, The Americans’ charm is in its limited focus; there’s something intoxicating about its tight ecosystem of quiet moments, its emphasis on the accumulation of gestures in meaning-making. If anything, a discussion of lineage is important here in a global sense; there’s a certain degree of predictability to any show, but after over a decade’s worth of writers willing to put their darlings through the ringer, we know better than to let ourselves get comfortable when things appear to go well for Mr. and Mrs. Jennings. In the episodes following the emotional high of the pilot’s climax, we see the two confront past and present infidelities (Philip’s sexual manipulation of the assistant to the undersecretary of Defense to ascertain information, Elizabeth dealing with her years-long love affair with a "co-worker"), professional dilemmas that generate disputes that feel more personal than political (the Reagan assassination attempt is used to great effect here in underscoring their differing loyalties), as well as a new boss (played by Margo Martindale) who informs them that work is about to become even more life-threatening than it already was.<br />
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A romance is only as good as its obstacles, and, as aforementioned, we find no shortage of obstacles in The Americans. If anything, the degree of coincidence incorporated in creating these barriers has been, for some viewers, the show’s primary shortcoming. But when coincidence deepens conflict instead of helping to resolve it—imbuing a certain degree of inevitability rather than deus ex machina—most are quick to forgive. So, when CIA agent Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich’s savvier analog to Breaking Bad’s Hank) moves down the street from the Jenningses, we’re more interested in the “loaded gun” stress this generates than decrying its improbability. In the end, we don’t want Philip and Elizabeth to have an easy go until they’ve really earned it, and we’re rewarded amply for our masochism.<br />
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Repression and the unspoken form the dramatic fulcrum of The Americans. Much in the way that 1960s gender roles cast character conflict in <b>Mad Men</b>, the Jenningses’ employment as spies operates as a sort of de facto silencer. Like all effective period dramas, this speaks both to the ethos of the 1980s— the carefully constructed veneer of safety in spite of deep-rooted anxieties— and to the current post-9/11 zeitgeist. So, when Philip approaches Elizabeth about defecting to America in the pilot, we realize that multiple layers of psychological maneuvering are afoot. Though they’ve duped everyone around them— their children included— they’ve always known that their marriage is just a vehicle for their true marriage to the KGB; it’s their cover in American suburbia. The moment it gets in the way of a mission is the moment it loses efficacy. As such, when Philip pushes for defection, Elizabeth is not only confronted with deciphering his intentions— he could be on a private mission from headquarters intended to test her loyalty— but navigating the undercurrent of his now apparent feelings for her (particularly in light of the emotional distance she’s cultivated with anything related to her American life), how to respond to his eroding patriotism (her training would dictate she report him to headquarters), what this dichotomy will mean for them, and lastly, having been pitted between the two most important things in her life, negotiating her own feelings for Philip.<br />
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Moments like this are hardly isolated. In some way or another, paranoia looms behind every action taken, every choice made. Unlike the usual tropes of romance, Philip and Elizabeth already have all the physical manifestations of domestic bliss: the house, the car, the kids. They’re older. They’ve lived past the age of youthful naivety and impulse, and, because of their work, they understand the fragility of life. At the same time, these are also two people who made the decision to dedicate their lives to country as teenagers—not to mention the fact that they’ve spent years kidnapping and murdering—and their emotional self-awareness suffers commensurately. Their silence isn’t just professional. Love necessitates vulnerability, and, particularly for Elizabeth, whose loyalty to “the cause” has been unflinching, this is an unbearable idea.<br />
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Which maybe helps explain why the romantic moments we see unfold here are more touching than just about anything else on television. The premium channels seem to have adopted a per-episode sex quota, and meanwhile, The Americans encapsulates passion in handholding, meaningful looks, and veiled apologies. And the moments of spillover, whether pronounced or Victorian, are downright gut-wrenching. We know what’s at risk, what makes it so difficult for them. Once we understand the kind of traumas (emotional, physical, self-inflicted) Elizabeth has suffered, for instance, no amount of nudity, one night stands, or marital harmony elsewhere can better capture our affections than when, in spite of a seeming incapacity for tenderness, she reaches out and puts her hands on Philip’s shoulders. Sometimes, these romantic moments converge with violence, as in the pilot’s climax, and the effect is so powerful that it manages to transform Phil Collins’s "In the Air Tonight" into something anthemic, hard-hitting, and steamy.<br />
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If, under the lens of perspective, we suspend the remnants of latent anti-Communism, we come to realize that Philip and Elizabeth may in fact be the worst antiheroes ever written insofar as being antithetical to heroism. That may sound semantic, but the pair is principled, in some respects similar to Vic Mackey. But unlike Mackey, it is absolutely clear that neither relishes in harming others; even if their capacities for love and violence can seem disturbing at times, we also see an underlying desire to do good. In a sense, this show lets us eat our proverbial cake: we get the grime and complex ethical scenarios, but we can root for our heroes the way we might those in classical epics.<br />
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As we’ve witnessed over the past fourteen years, television is an incredible medium for portraying slow deterioration. But <b>The Americans</b> reveals that television is equally capable of showing the opposite: the precarious steps we take to build community, how we maintain in the face of obstruction, and how we teach ourselves to love and be made vulnerable in a world that knows exactly how to exploit and destroy us. In the course of Breaking Bad, Walter White becomes the self he is apparently always capable of being, and we watch how his obsessive pursuit of power brings his whole life—and with it, any true sense of fulfillment—crumbling around him. In The Americans, though, Philip and Elizabeth begin from a place of alienation and move toward redemption, just as their world becomes an even more dangerous place.<br />
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The best art is that which both imitates life and helps us to escape it. Within exotic, exciting, and fantastical contexts, we still crave reflections of ourselves and the worlds we inhabit. The Americans is a show about dealing with the consequences of the choices made in youth, about trusting intuition and loving in spite of fear, about accepting that what we love most in each other is also what we can come to most hate or fear. Even for those of us not steeped in a paranoid existence, the world can at times feel like a hard, lonely place. With the inescapability of our mortality, the best we can hope for is true human connection while we still have time for it. That kind of redemption, which The Americans seeks to offer, is a rare beacon—something, without realizing it, that we’ve been desperately waiting to see.<br />
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Television Series: The Americans (S01E07)<br />
Release Date: March 2013<br />
Actress: Annet Mahendru<br />
Video Clip Credit: Wimsey<br />
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</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-82752248593688050582013-03-13T06:16:00.000-07:002013-03-15T10:04:38.945-07:00Strike Back Goes Extreme Fishing<blockquote>"Oh my god please help me, knee deep in the river trying to get clean..."</blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3MxysUNI-oBcHPzVj7br7HunFw7HNxiY9NbZvh3uq9KJ6kxt-dB-H2nyCrWqok-FV8I1lIqA4DH-64Siu1hkyv9MYjlfolNaIlec8sB-FgrZ-fPMPg2zLUzpgRNCsIPSSLjTPcco3Gn8/s1600/StrikeBack.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3MxysUNI-oBcHPzVj7br7HunFw7HNxiY9NbZvh3uq9KJ6kxt-dB-H2nyCrWqok-FV8I1lIqA4DH-64Siu1hkyv9MYjlfolNaIlec8sB-FgrZ-fPMPg2zLUzpgRNCsIPSSLjTPcco3Gn8/s400/StrikeBack.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
Dougray Scott, <b>Milauna Jackson</b> and Martin Clunes are the latest names to have joined the cast of the Sky1/Cinemax action series <b>Strike Back</b> as series regulars for its upcoming season (the fourth for Sky1 and the third for Cinemax), it has been announced. Scott, whose most recent series <b>Hemlock Grove</b> will be debuting in April on Netflix, will play rogue operative James Leatherby. While Jackson (Blood Done Sign My Name) has been cast as a key player who crosses paths with Section 20 and Clunes will also appear as former MI6 agent Sebastian Gray, now an intelligence officer operating out of Beirut. In addition, Sky1 & Cinemax have also confirmed that Robson Green has already been cast as new series regular, Lt Colonel Phillip Lock; the in-coming commanding officer in chief of Section 20. Green’s previous credits include <b>Wire In The Blood</b>, <b>Being Human</b> and <b>Mount Pleasant</b>. <br />
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Based on the novel of the same name by Chris Ryan, Strike Back follows the exploits of Section 20, an elite counterterrorism unit as it spans the globe to stop potential threats, often behind enemy lines. The drama series is produced by Left Bank Pictures in association with BSkyB & HBO/Cinemax and stars Phillip Winchester (Michael Stonebridge), Sullivan Stapleton (Damian Scott) and <b>Rhona Mitra</b> (Rachel Dalton), who all return along with supporting players <b>Michelle Lukes</b> (Julia Richmond) and Liam Garrigan (Liam Baxter). Interestingly, Mitra remains involved despite her character resigning as head of Section 20 at the end of last season. In the show’s new season, which is currently in production, counterterrorism unit Section 20 pursues a deadly terrorist network from Colombia to Beirut to Europe, uncovering deadly plots that reach to the West.<br />
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As in previous seasons, the production utilizes consultants who work in the field of counterterrorism to add to the authenticity of the series, providing essential background on stories, characters, training and settings. The previous season of the show made its world premiere at Comic-Con in July 2012 and featured the world premiere of two new Bob Dylan songs. The series also received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Main Title Design for its first rebooted season, which launched in 2011. Strike Back was the first original primetime series on Cinemax in more than 15 years. The Los Angeles Times described the show as "a buddy movie, a simmering life-or-death bromance between its two male leads," while AOL TV observed, "The heart of the show is the relationship between Scott and Stonebridge," calling them "two peas in a badass pod," and the Huffington Post hailed Stapleton and Winchester as a "dynamic team."<br />
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The new ten-part run of Strike Back is being written by a team of returning writers which includes Simon Burke (Persuasion), James Dormer (MI5), John Simpson and Richard Zajdlic (EastEnders). As previously reported, Tony Saint will not be returning as showrunner on the new season as he is developing a new drama series titled The Interceptor for BBC One. Production on the new season is currently underway location in South Africa and Hungary and is being handled by returning directors Michael J. Bassett (who also serves as co-executive producer), Julian Holmes and Paul Wilmshurst. Left Bank’s Andy Harries and Michael Casey are returning to executive produce, whilst James Dormer and Tim Vaughan co-executive produce.<br />
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"It is great to be working alongside Section 20 and being part of an 'Elite Team' for Sky," said Green. "Strike Back is a quality drama with incredibly high production values." Sky's commissioning editor Huw-Kennair Jones added: "There really is nothing else like Strike Back on British TV, it's a fantastic series full of explosive action that delivers a mini-movie each week. Working with HBO and [producers] Leftbank we've really upped the ante this year with a truly ambitious, global plot that I hope our customers will relish. I am thrilled Robson, Martin and Dougray have joined the cast for a very special fourth series."<br />
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<b>Strike Back</b> is expected to return to US screens in the summer and to the UK late 2013.<br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-78169999251136404362013-03-12T05:38:00.000-07:002013-03-12T05:38:21.042-07:00TV Cracks Da Vinci Code<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzPSz9lsgIs1DSm81FJEMXOXvhWeCT5OrQLK3jCSZ59-YPD24BLjm9jNHpi2YlNNYHwda1fWYUwa5tVJ-US1lTPZXMikoyH8LpEWJyLlY0qBFX3AQ3kJevrpKOq34lJOgKtYmeK5u3ruw/s1600/DaVinci.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzPSz9lsgIs1DSm81FJEMXOXvhWeCT5OrQLK3jCSZ59-YPD24BLjm9jNHpi2YlNNYHwda1fWYUwa5tVJ-US1lTPZXMikoyH8LpEWJyLlY0qBFX3AQ3kJevrpKOq34lJOgKtYmeK5u3ruw/s400/DaVinci.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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We know that whenever someone says the name Leonardo Da Vinci, rounds of doves and explosions burst forth from the aether, and women everywhere feel an insurmountable urge to drop their tops, but what if we want a deeper exploration of the man behind the action? Leonardo's story was wrapped up in secret societies and sexual intrigue and soon two new TV shows take a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/tv-cracks-the-da-vinci-code-two-new-shows-present-contrasting-views-8530098.html">contrasting look at the artist</a>, writes The Independent's Sarah Hughes...<br />
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He is the most famous artist of all time, an inventor, mathematician, painter and engineer. Now two very different programmes hope to present a different side to Leonardo da Vinci, the man behind the myths. Later this month, Sky Arts' innovative documentary Inside the Mind of Leonardo, featuring Peter Capaldi, will use Leonardo's surviving notebooks to lay bare his thoughts on everything from hair dye to war weaponry. And in April, <b>Da Vinci's Demons</b>, an epic historical fantasy featuring a young and dashing Leonardo and written by David S Goyer, the writer behind the new Superman film, comes to Starz and FOX UK.<br />
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After successfully making ancient history come alive then get all <a href="http://www.avclub.com/articles/starz-to-explore-the-secret-sexy-history-of-leonar,64029/">greased up and sexxxy</a> with shows like Spartacus and Camelot, the US cable channel hopes to do the same for the Renaissance with the forthcoming series. Like those other shows it will be part history lesson and part smutty-yet-entertaining bullshit, exploring the "untold story" of Leonardo's "raucous youth" as he gallivants around Florence, a 25-year-old artist, dreamer, thinker, and frequent casual sex-haver.<br />
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In a press release announcing the eight-episode series, Starz representative Carmi Zlotnik said, "If modern day has Tony Stark, the Renaissance has Da Vinci" — and if that sounds like a dumbed-down analogy that just caused a thousand history professors to spew chamomile all over their tweed, it’s at least apropos, considering the man shepherding the project is Goyer, who also wrote Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, as well as the upcoming Man Of Steel. Goyer even compared da Vinci’s "near-mythic" legend to that of Batman and Superman, and expressed excitement over the opportunity to explore his origin story—and if there’s one thing we know about David Goyer, it’s that he really, really loves origin stories. Goyer also said the show would be about "secret histories, genius, madness, and all things profane," and on that last point he also expressed gratitude for being allowed to do it on Starz, "where the story can be as dark and challenging and irreverent as it deserves to be," and also show boobs sometimes. <br />
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Goyer's Leonardo is, he admits, very different from the white-bearded man many of us picture. "Obviously we deal with his art but we also present him as a bit of a prototypical investigator, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/06/da-vincis-demons-behind-the-scenes_n_2823989.html">a little bit Sherlock Holmes, a little bit Indiana Jones, a little bit Iron Man's Tony Stark</a>… He's a man of action and the whole story is wrapped up in a lot of history, secret societies and sexual intrigue," he says, admitting that when he was first approached: "I said if you want a dry, historical biopic I'm not your guy… but if you want something that kind of reinvents history and presents it with a broad canvas and broad strokes filled with dashing characters and darkness I'm that guy. They said, 'Yeah we want that'."<br />
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The finished product has been kept tightly under wraps until its April premiere but extended trailers suggest a lavishly detailed take which falls just on the right side of enjoyable hokum, anchored by a sardonic performance from British star Tom Riley, who appears to spend a fair amount of time with his (suitably chiselled) chest on display uttering such glorious lines as "Perhaps you've heard of me… I am an artist, an inventor and an engineer."<br />
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Adding to the intrigue, this Leonardo is entangled in different ways with two women, both of whom are equally out of bounds: his patron Lorenzo de Medici's wife Clarice Orsini (<b>Lara Pulver</b>) and Lucrezia Donati (<b>Laura Haddock</b>), who just happens to be Lorenzo's mistress, while Riley admitted in a recent television interview that the show will tackle Leonardo's relationships with and feelings for men. "I can't reveal too much because it's a major plot point but we were never going to ignore that side of his life," he said.<br />
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"There are all sorts of controversies regarding his sexuality, most people think he was bisexual," says Goyer. "If people want to come for the history they'll get that but if they're fans of <b>Lost</b> or <b>Spartacus</b> or <b>Game of Thrones</b> then they'll like it as well. We've taken liberties, this is a historical fantasy, we're not saying it's the truth – in fact one of the tag lines for the show is 'history is a lie', which is us being deliberately cheeky."<br />
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If <b>Da Vinci's Demons</b> gives us a Leonardo who is all swords and smouldering, Inside the Mind of Leonardo takes a more pared-back approach in the hope of showing the audience the inner workings of an incredible mind. "I think there's an enduring fascination with the beauty of his mind," says James Hunt, Sky Arts' director of programming. "Genius is a laboured and over-used word, but it truly applies here."<br />
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Ignoring the traditional documentary approach, the show does away with re-enactments, voiceovers and even expert talking heads. Instead, Capaldi reads from the notebooks while a variety of effects, from animation to 3D, bring those words to life. There are no costumes, no sense that Capaldi is Leonardo no matter how beautifully he reads the words, but rather a stripped-down approach that presents the mind behind the drawings in an intriguingly fresh way. "Every single word is the voice of Leonardo," says Hunt. "It doesn't seek to answer everything just lets his works stand for themselves and allows you to see them a fresh way."<br />
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Both shows tap into our ongoing fascination with Leonardo, who continues to inspire almost 500 years after his death in 1519. In The Beginning Was the End, the latest production from the innovative theatre company dreamthinkspeak currently showing at Somerset House, was inspired by the apocalyptic Leonardo sketch A Cloudburst of Material Possessions and uses the artist's ideas about hydraulics as part of a hallucinatory piece about the nature of change in a fast-paced world. In 2011, the National Gallery's Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan was the fastest-selling show in the gallery's history. In part, the frenzy was fuelled by the fact that so few of Leonardo's paintings survive – a notoriously slow worker, only 15 paintings are attributed entirely by him.<br />
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One review of the National Gallery exhibition described him as "a visual thinker who painted part time". His appeal lies in the fact he is all things to everybody: to doctors he is an anatomist; to scientists an inventor and engineer; to fans of conspiracy theories and Dan Brown novels, a code creator or breaker and possible spy.<br />
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"He is extraordinary, there is no other cultural figure with his reach," says Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of history of art at the University of Oxford, who served as a consultant on the Sky Arts documentary. "That's partially down to the inherent complexity and suggestiveness of his work which offers an enormously complex set of possibilities, the idea that you can find your own image in them as it were. But the major thing is that he crosses all these territories: he is a doctor, an engineer, a geologist, an artist, and a scientist. There's nobody else thinking in this way until the late 18th century. He captures a very wide range of interests and that's what people find fascinating."<br />
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Every generation has re-created Leonardo in their own image, refracting his accomplishments through their eyes. "These days we see him as a celebrity," says Kemp. "Once you see the drawings and the paintings it's impossible to remain unaffected," says Kemp. "It doesn't matter how much background knowledge you have, or how little, those works have something else, a sheer living intensity. It's uncanny, I wouldn't like to be in a dark room alone with them, there's a sense of presence that goes beyond mere pigment."<br />
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Most interestingly Leonardo always stood apart. "There was an infinite grace in all his actions; and so great was his genius, and such its growth, that to whatever difficulties he turned his mind, he solved them with ease," wrote Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists first published in 1550. "The fame of his name so increased, that not only in his lifetime was he held in esteem, but his reputation became even greater among posterity after his death".<br />
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It helps that Leonardo remains at best half-known. "He led a pretty mysterious life," says Hunt. "It was strange and not altogether straightforward and so much about it is disputed. You can't help but play detective because every painting is almost a detective story and nobody is ever absolutely certain. There's an enigma which adds to the allure."<br />
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Goyer agrees: "Intriguingly for someone like me there are a lot of gaps in his history," he says. "There's about a four or five year gap from the time he was 27 or 28 until the time he was 32 where there's almost no record of what he was doing, yet this is a person whose life up to that point and after that point was incredibly well-documented. As a creator those gaps in history are gold…"<br />
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It's the same sense of mystery that permeates the artist's most famous painting, the half-smiling Mona Lisa, about whom the 19th-century critic Walter Pater aptly wrote: "She is older than the rocks among which she sits… the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea." The mysterious Leonardo resists easy characterisation. He too remains both old and new, a symbol of Renaissance glory, of a wideness of vision that, as Kemp says, "provides a counterpart to the manic narrowing of our minds today" and yet also a thoroughly modern figure, a dabbler in many trades, who could create both the helicopter and the automated bobbin winder.<br />
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<b>Inside the Mind of Leonardo</b> airs on 24 March at 9pm on Sky Arts 2 HD and Sky 3D; <b>Da Vinci's Demons</b> starts on 12 April on Starz. <b>In the Beginning Was the End</b>, Somerset House, London WC2 (somersethouse.org.uk) to 30 March<br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-42924994733576643552013-03-11T09:19:00.000-07:002013-03-12T09:21:26.317-07:00Girls S02E09<blockquote>"No, not on my dress!"</blockquote>This week’s episode of <b>Girls</b> graphically depicted the results of a male character’s climax. Why the scene has outraged some, The Daily Beast's Jace Lacob explains <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/12/girls-graphic-content-objectification-and-that-scene.html">why it’s a watershed moment</a> for the HBO comedy...<br />
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HBO’s Girls has always been a lightning rod for critical reaction, whether it be allegations of nepotism, privilege, or racism. It’s impossible to imagine a week going by without someone, somewhere, having an adverse reaction to the <b>Lena Dunham</b>-created comedy. And that’s okay: art is meant to trigger emotional responses. I’d far rather watch a television show that stirred up feelings within its viewers — that challenged them to watch something complicated and often uncomfortable — than a show whose main goal was simply to please the most people, across all demographic swaths, week after week.<br />
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Girls is the most definitely the former rather than the latter. It’s a show that revels in its own complexity, in the often-unlikable natures of its characters, in the comedy of the awkward that follows. This week’s episode (On All Fours)— written by Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner and directed by Dunham — expectedly led to all sorts of responses from its viewers, many of which was of the outraged variety. Joe Flint at the Los Angeles Times yesterday penned <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-hbo-girls-climax-shocker-20130311,0,1214953.story">a reaction to this week’s episode</a> of Girls, focusing in particular on the graphic sex scene between Adam (Adam Driver) and his new girlfriend, Natalia (<b>Shiri Appleby</b>), which was challenging to watch: after making her crawl to his bedroom on all fours, he proceeded to engage in some disconnected, rough sex with her and then finished himself off on her chest.<br />
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This whole sex scene was some existential realness as far as <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/girls-recap-my-life-on-my-back-20130311">Halle Kiefer is concerned</a>, an honest depiction of the moment when someone you're sleeping with decides to act out a sexual scenario that has absolutely nothing to do with you. Despite the fact that you're the one crawling down the hallway littered with pieces of plywood and sweat-soaked towels, your partner is miles away mentally, desperate to prove something to himself or to another party not in attendance. "Not on my dress," Natalia says, cringing as Adam comes on her chest. "I really didn't like that," she informs him blankly. After apologizing for a hot second, Adam switches immediately into defensive mode. "Is this is it? Are you done with me?" he demands.<br />
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Yet Sunday's episode was "graphic even for those fans used to seeing creator and star Lena Dunham's no-holds-barred approach to story-telling," wrote Flint. "This was not a first for cable TV, or the movies. An episode of HBO's Sex and the City showed fluid but played it for laughs, as did a well-known scene featuring Cameron Diaz in the comedy There's Something About Mary. However, this time it was a jarring end to a violent and hard-to-watch scene. Even theatrical movies with sexually explicit material and adult pay-per-view channels typically steer clear of such displays, especially if it's not for comic relief."<br />
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Flint is right in saying that this was not "a first' for cable television. But he (and an HBO spokeswoman quoted in the story) seem to have a short memory, as HBO’s short-lived drama <b>Tell Me You Love Me</b> featured an even more graphic scene involving "fluids" that was most definitely not played for comic relief. While Tell Me You Love Me has been quickly relegated to the forgotten bargain bin of HBO dramas, the scene in question there has not and Adam "It was a prosthetic penis!" Scott has not lived down the scene in which his baby-crazed wife, played by Lost’s <b>Sonya Walger</b>, manually pleasures him to the point of climax. It’s not played for anything remotely related to laughs, and is instead a somber scene about how her hopes for a child are quite literally slipping through her fingers.<br />
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But putting that aside, <b>Girls</b> likewise doesn’t use the climax scene — and its physical memento — for comedy. It’s a clear reaction to now standardized porn aesthetics, a money shot that is both empty and valueless for both Adam and Natalia. His pleasure, at objectifying her and transforming her into a physical canvas on which to paint his physical release, is at odds with her horror at what unfolds, a moment between the two characters that is entirely depressing.<br />
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Was it difficult to watch? Yes. Was that the point? Absolutely.<br />
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Natalia’s debasement here fulfills two trajectories within the narrative. First, it pays off comments made to Hannah (Dunham) by her publisher (John Cameron Mitchell) who asks her, after reading a draft of her e-book, "Where's the sexual failure? Where's the pudgy face flecked with semen and sadness?" Here, it’s made real, a moment that combines the fluids and feelings that are lacking in Hannah’s novel<br />
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Additionally, it makes the psychological disconnect between Natalia and Adam physical. Earlier in the episode, she told Adam that she wanted him to pull out during sex and he thanked her for being so "direct," but his brusqueness works against him, as he forces Natalia into a fantasy that is clearly not her own. What worked with Hannah, what connected them — despite their dysfunction — was her willingness to go along with anything, sexually. What he realizes in his moment of climax is both that he and Hannah did connect, and that he and Natalia are over.<br />
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The semen that Adam deposits on Natalia’s chest is not meant to titillate or arouse. It’s meant to shock the viewer into opening their eyes, to see the damage that Adam perpetuates here, one based upon countless male fantasies enacted in porn. But while other cable shows might use sex and female nudity as window dressing, <b>Girls</b> strives for something both deeper and darker here, a revelation that there are repercussions to physical intimacy, that Natalia’s humiliation and debasement are not sexy, but painful. As I said on Twitter yesterday, "Elsewhere, it’s sanitized objectification. Here, it dares paint itself for what it is: messy."<br />
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That messiness might be rarely seen on television — or perhaps rarely seen at all, outside of the comedic — but that doesn’t make the scene any less vital or important. If anything, it serves to remind the viewer that male expectations don’t encompass the full domain of desire. However, Adam — like many of the characters in this particular episode — can’t help himself. His self-destructive behavior is no different from Hannah inserting the Q-tip into her other ear, or Marnie (<b>Allison Williams</b>) tragically singing her ex-boyfriend a song at his work party and then sleeping with him.<br />
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This season, all of Girls’s characters are in a state of freefall, and each is so desperate to hold on to something, or someone, that they’re willing to mess up themselves and their lovers in the process.<br />
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Television Series: Girls (S02E09)<br />
Release Date: March 2013<br />
Actress: Shiri Appleby<br />
Video Clip Credit: DeepAtSea<br />
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</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-78085600226770906452013-03-10T03:33:00.000-07:002013-03-11T03:49:43.620-07:00Sex Scenes And TV<blockquote>"Can I be the woman who screams 'I'm squirting!'?..."</blockquote>Any discussion entitled "Changing Rules for Women and Sex on TV" was bound to include mentions of a certain HBO comedy series, notes Alison Willmore. <a href="http://www.indiewire.com/article/television/sex-scenes-girls-and-tv-at-sxsw">Reporting in Indiewire</a>, she states the always provocative <b>Girls</b> was certainly a central topic at Saturday's SXSW panel, which was moderated by ThinkProgress' Alyssa Rosenberg and populated by fellow journalists Noreen Malone (of The New Republic) and David Haglund (of Slate), as well as Sarah Shapiro, the writer/director of "Sequin Raze," a short making its world premiere at the festival, and <b>Anna Camp</b> (The Mindy Project, <b>True Blood</b>), the film's lead. The group dug into Lena Dunham's young career and the portrayals of sex, relationships and nudity in her show, along with the power dynamics of the intimacies of <b>House of Cards</b> and what constitutes a good sex scene. While the panel covered a lot of interesting ground, some familiar to anyone who follows the work of the writers on it, the most interesting viewpoint may have been that of Camp, who as an actor has participated in her fair share of sex scenes and who has to navigate them as part of potential roles.<br />
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Camp spoke about scenes in <b>Mad Men</b> ("I feel like competing to prove myself worthy of him sexually," she said of the blow job her character Bethany Van Nuys gave Don Draper in a cab) and in <b>House of Lies</b> (she auditioned for the role that ultimately went to <b>Kristen Bell</b>, leading her to ask if instead "Can I be the woman who screams 'I'm squirting!'?"). Actors have to give their trust to the directors, writers and producers in charge of the project, which she noted can be frustrating or frightening. "I want to be picky for when I do that," she said of sex scenes, noting that many of them were just the "same male fantasy" and that it was often taken for granted in films and TV that attractive characters would have great sex, but that she was interested in getting beyond the usual depictions.<br />
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The scenes that dominated the conversation included Dunham's several with Patrick Wilson in that much-debated recent episode of Girls (he was an "idealized male figure instead of an idealized female figure," noted Haglund, who was actually not a fan of the installment); and the Melissa Leo segment from the past season of <b>Louie</b> thanks to his depiction of sex and desire, particularly a scene that treads the line between consensual interaction and forced reciprocation. Camp cited as noteworthy the scene in <b>Mad Men</b> involving <b>Jessica Paré's</b> Megan Draper and the white carpet. Shapiro brought up the scene in the pilot of <b>Girls</b> in which Hannah (Dunham) refuses Adam (Adam Driver) when he goes off to get lube ("to be grounded in your own body enough to say 'I don't want that'" was striking to her).<br />
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Cable is, for obvious reason, the home for most of the shows that were discussed, but the freedom to be explicit wasn't always, for the panelists, a good thing. Haglund spoke of how quickly <b>Homeland</b> managed to show a nude <b>Morena Baccarin</b>, saying that the cable-style rush to that made him distrust the series at times, Malone noted that it's often the lead-up to sex that's more interesting ("I want a good buildup") and Shapiro said that for her, "the sexiest thing in the world is the closed door."<br />
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Network TV has generated discussions of its own in how it's dealt with one of the consequences of sex -- pregnancy, including how some characters have dealt with fertility crises. Rosenberg pointed out Robin Scherbatsky's (<b>Cobie Smulders</b>) learning that she can't have children in the past season of <b>How I Met Your Mother</b> and Cece's (<b>Hannah Simone</b>) finding that she only has a limited window in which to conceive on <b>New Girl</b>. Watching the latter development, Malone said that at first "I was angry that one of my favorite TV shows was inciting this personal panic in me," but then realized that it was a natural part of the conversation. As these characters approach or begin their 30s, it's something they would think about, because "sex is not divorced from childbirth." It may not be as audacious as Hannah Horvath's hookups, but shows "would be leaving rich territory unexplored if they didn't" go there.<br />
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Writing in The Horn, Emily Kausalik agreed that one of the most contested and fascinating developments in television over the past few years has been the changing scope of female representation and sex on TV, but <a href="http://www.readthehorn.com/lifestyle/sxsw_2013/75542/sex_and_twitter_and_television_oh_my">admitted disappointment</a> that this very frank dialogue about shows challenging age old questions of double standards and female desire existed entirely within the male/female, heterosexual binary and didn't explore same-sex and LGBTQ relationships and desires. Though that may be a telling reflection on American television in general.<br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-65541806845102963372013-03-07T18:47:00.001-08:002013-03-11T03:11:39.188-07:00Holly Goes Lightly On Clothing<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZIp9kouJBs3l4Vn3HZPUbXea82waNiZKHE6AwCJSOcV1IQb7_2SdbPFtVX_Wxlkk-uHlEPHC8lpbUdE2pchl0kKeP-XbI1esEYpNY4ZMwdnrGxiCMgpbk03uy_24pJfMEAzGlrx2X6ks/s1600/EmiliaClarke2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZIp9kouJBs3l4Vn3HZPUbXea82waNiZKHE6AwCJSOcV1IQb7_2SdbPFtVX_Wxlkk-uHlEPHC8lpbUdE2pchl0kKeP-XbI1esEYpNY4ZMwdnrGxiCMgpbk03uy_24pJfMEAzGlrx2X6ks/s400/EmiliaClarke2.jpg" width="273" /></a>The Broadway debut of <b>Game Of Thrones</b> star <b>Emilia Clarke</b> caused <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/doff_broadway_8R1KFFft9y0I89zyi5pgUL">something of a security headache</a> earlier this week, after the show was disrupted by patrons who have <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8241596471064337510#editor/target=post;postID=6554180684510296337">no access to television or the Internet</a>, hence their spending the night watching live theatre. Their Luddite existence was exposed during a preview run for Breakfast At Tiffany’s on the Great White Way, in which Clarke stars as Holly Golightly in a far more faithful adaptation of Truman Capote’s book than the 1961 film—meaning she’s called upon to disrobe, specifically for a scene involving a bathtub and "strategically placed" bubbles.<br />
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The sight of a semi-naked Clarke set off such a frenzy among the people whose unfamiliarity with cable television and their inability to "googrull" (or whatever that strange word is) 'Emilia Clarke Nude', the Cort Theatre exploded with a rush of audience members taking photographs, the sulfurous bursts of their flash-lamps and cries of "Madam, pray stand still for 60 seconds while the tintype sets!" irrevocably disrupting the show. That defiance of the theatre’s "no photos" policy and the subsequent magnesium burns has now led the theatre to double its security forces in an attempt to keep the flash mob from sneaking further shots at the show, which opens March 20. It leaves those theatregoers who wish to preserve the image of a naked Emilia Clarke reduced to purchasing crude sketches, or risking having their souls stolen by the demon-box. <br />
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"On Monday, it was a packed house including a huge contingent of fans of 'Game of Thrones,'" said a source who was in the theatre. "What titillated the audience... was a full nude scene between Emilia and [male lead] Cory Michael Smith." The bath scene occurs after Clarke brings Smith home to her apartment to recuperate after he’s injured riding horses in Central Park. "She undresses him and he gets in the tub," a source said. "She then goes offstage and comes back in a towel. She takes it off and gets in with him. So you don’t see everything. There are bubbles strategically placed." Helpfully, another smirking source added: "If you’re sitting in the balcony you can see a lot more!" Photos taken at the show don’t appear to have made it to social-media sites yet, but one fan did tweet: "I would drink Emilia Clarke’s bath water." A rep for the show declined comment.<br />
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British-born Clarke, 26 — who plays platinum-maned warrior princess Daenerys Targaryen on HBO’s hit Game of Thrones — is no stranger to baring her assets in public. The medieval fantasy is known for its randy characters and rampant nudity and sexual romps. Clarke herself became an Internet video sensation after one particularly steamy scene on the show in which she slips out of a dress and walks naked into a hot bath.<br />
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Back in 1998, actress Nicole Kidman — also in her Broadway debut — caused a sensation, and sold a slew of tickets, when she appeared nude onstage at the Cort in "The Blue Room." Security was heightened for that show, too, but resourceful audience members got their fix by bringing binoculars to get a better view. <br />
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Release Date: March 2013<br />
Actress: Emilia Clarke<br />
Video Clips Credit: KidBrother<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzX7obJNX-u2Oo0gYrI-veLq8Px25j7i4sVQ-YVUT8LeKpY6cOCW9cu3fYgFOUhkBW-3vv4h8LBrhVnmUEB6J-MhPcPNnsy8A3Bxw4tirfU9tHMnIun-xVcZ7FPGL9hD4pcN7bpYQOlGY/s1600/EmiliaClarke3.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzX7obJNX-u2Oo0gYrI-veLq8Px25j7i4sVQ-YVUT8LeKpY6cOCW9cu3fYgFOUhkBW-3vv4h8LBrhVnmUEB6J-MhPcPNnsy8A3Bxw4tirfU9tHMnIun-xVcZ7FPGL9hD4pcN7bpYQOlGY/s320/EmiliaClarke3.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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http://www.mediafire.com/?j2m77bke7je7qo3<br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-77471116772931063842013-03-05T18:58:00.001-08:002013-03-05T19:00:19.187-08:00Rose In Bloom<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8E3gU-BN0vSZ4kUV5ZS2Xe8iAhK2JAY64knueWkPu2j2EMrym-CQGye9BscSAUCOzxfXFQGD0z3naOpm8LezIODBy-zI292DwA9ODBYS2zQk9ENLmNpk2fHiqUoq6J-9rw0vPf1XGIKo/s1600/RoseLeslie1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8E3gU-BN0vSZ4kUV5ZS2Xe8iAhK2JAY64knueWkPu2j2EMrym-CQGye9BscSAUCOzxfXFQGD0z3naOpm8LezIODBy-zI292DwA9ODBYS2zQk9ENLmNpk2fHiqUoq6J-9rw0vPf1XGIKo/s400/RoseLeslie1.jpg" width="296" /></a> <b>Rose Leslie</b> made a big impression as the fiery Wildling Ygritte in Season 2 of <b>Game of Thrones</b>. Strong, proud and perceptive, Rose’s Ygritte went from being captured by the men of the Night’s Watch in her debut episode ("The Old Gods and the New"), to turning the tables on the young man ordered to execute her – Jon Snow (Kit Harington). No shrinking violet, Rose’s character didn’t cry and plead for her life when her head was literally on the chopping block. Instead, she tried to persuade Jon to join Mance Rayder (the turncloak Night’s Watch member who became King Beyond the Wall) and the Wildlings. And, when that didn’t work, she encouraged Ned Stark’s son to get it over with. He didn’t, and after a chase, filmed across an Icelandic glacier, Rose got to bring a flirty playfulness to the drama. Captured again by Jon, tied up and told to bed down for the night, Ygritte scooted her little frame towards his body, confusing the honorable young man, as her character nodded off with a sweet little smile.<br />
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Before Season 2 was done though, the tables had turned, and after Jon became the prisoner of her group of people, she actually saved Jon’s life, when her harsh Wildling pals (like the Lord of Bones) wanted to take his head off. (Ygritte said Mance would want to meet Ned Stark’s illegitimate son). Rose is, of course, back for Season 3 of the drama, which kicks off on March 31 at 9 PM on HBO. In <a href="http://www.accesshollywood.com/game-of-thrones-access-countdown-to-season-3-qanda-rose-leslie-talks-ygritte_article_76457">an interview with Access Hollywood</a>, the delightful redhead talks about the drama ahead in the Wildling camp, the debut of Mance Rayder, and whether she gets asked by fans to say her character’s most famous line, "You know nothing Jon Snow!" (Hint: Yes.)<br />
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<b>You may not have seen the trailer, but in one of the flashes, you’ve got a bow and arrow.</b><br />
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I do. I was so happy to be holding a bow and arrow. I was so happy about it because I just thought it embodied Ygritte, as to who she is, being such a fiercely independent character. She’s powerful and strong and I felt that a bow and arrow fitted her beautifully… I was able to kind of do some archery lessons before just so I didn’t look like a right numpty [Editor’s note: British slang for fool] when I was drawing back the bow… just so that I looked a little bit authentic. But it is really cool. Oh, I loved it!<br />
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<b>The other thing of yours people might have hit pause on in the trailer — it looks like Ygritte and Jon Snow have a little chemistry. What can we expect?</b><br />
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You can expect a chemistry between the two characters and Season 3 you see these two characters — their journey develops and you see how their relationship develops.<br />
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<b>Former Rome and Political Animals actor Ciaran Hinds joined the series in Season 3 as the much-talked about, but not yet seen – at least until the trailer – Mance Rayder. What can we expect from him?</b><br />
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In Season 2, Mance Rayder — the name at least was certainly built up, wasn’t it — to an extent where you were looking forward to finally meeting this character. And he is dominant and he is a leader, and especially from Ygritte’s perspective… She has put all her eggs in one basket so to speak, when it comes to Mance Rayder.<br />
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<b>What is it about Mance that makes her want to follow him, that she’s so devoted to? Is it just because he chose the life of a free person, is he just so charismatic and strong, does he respect her?</b><br />
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I think it’s an amalgamation of all those things that you mentioned, actually. He is strong and I feel that the kind of wildling community, because they are harsh and brutal, and of course, that is the environment that they have all been brought up in, you, as a wildling look up to that. And I think with Mance Rayder, because he is a turncloak and because he no longer wants to bend the knee, she has a huge amount of respect for him because she feels that he is now 100 percent on their side.<br />
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<b>Another new character we get in your storyline – because you have a gang now…</b><br />
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Yeah! We’ve got a crew. We’ve got a crew, definitely.<br />
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<b>You have Mackenzie Crook from the original ‘The Office,’ and he was in ‘Pirates’… Can you tell us anything about his character, Orell, because I imagine he’s very delightful to watch.</b><br />
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Yes! He is absolutely incredible. He’s such a lovely, lovely man. But, his character is incredibly different to who he is, obviously, which is a huge accolade to him. But Orell, oh, he’s a nasty piece of work. He’s vicious and he does not trust Jon Snow and not wanting to give too much away, he’s incredibly loyal to who he is and his love of his people… and yeah, he’s nasty!<br />
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<b>As an actor, this has to be an easy show to watch, because even if you hate watching yourself, which many actors do, there are so many other storylines that have absolutely nothing to do with your own, that could allow you enjoy it.</b><br />
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Totally! Absolutely and that is the most wonderful thing and I feel that every other character is so vibrant and so colorful in that respect, as are their storylines because the show is just so vast and [when] it does come to characters, there are so many — I think there’s like 200 plus — you get incredibly impressed by what’s going to be happening around the other locations that they’re shooting in. I know that they shot again Dubrovnik, they also went to Morocco for Dany’s storyline and I’m so excited about seeing how it’s going to develop and expand – because it’s such a multi-layered, vibrant and [imaginative] show that you get gripped by every other storyline. Even when we’re doing the read-throughs we’re kind of like, ‘Oh my God! What’s going to be happening?’ and you’re flipping through and it’s not really your storyline… you’re like, ‘What’s going to happen to Tyrion! Oh my God, what’s going to happen to Sansa, what’s going to happen to Arya, what’s going to happen to Robb?’ You get incredibly attached and I think that is a testimony to the writing and also to George R.R. Martin, for his imagination and how original his world is.<br />
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<b>Ygritte is such a strong character, despite a lot of adversity. Do you get younger people coming up to you telling you they find your character inspiring?</b><br />
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I certainly relate to Ygritte in the fact that she is so strong and also ruthless as well and I feel that especially within ‘Game of Thrones,’ I think that as a show, it is one of the frontrunners for showing dominant female characters and making sure that men answer to women rather than the other way around… Nobody’s actually come up to me saying that she inspires them, but she certainly inspires me to be tougher. I’m a bit of a wimp when it comes to the cold. My God, knowing that Ygritte is Wilding to the bone, it was fun to kind of give that a go and to portray that.<br />
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<b>Do people ask you to say, ‘You know nothing Jon Snow!’ — because that is a huge line for superfans of this drama?</b><br />
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You know, they have. They have. And it’s come at random times.<br />
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<b>What are some of the odd places this has happened?</b><br />
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You know what? It doesn’t happen often and the fans… they’ve been so lovely and passionate about the show that it’s only ever been positive. But it’s either on the bus or it’s in a restaurant where my mind is totally elsewhere and straight away I say, ‘You know nothing Jon Snow,’ but it’s in my voice, and it doesn’t sound right in my voice and then I’ve got to think of the accent (laughs), and say it again in the accent. And it’s all a bit of a like whirlwind in my head for those split seconds.<br />
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<b>Wow… you have given command performances!</b><br />
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Well I have just because I feel so bad, because you don’t want to be like, ‘No.’ I feel so privileged to be a part of the show, so privileged to be portraying Ygritte.<br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-77987631924110527502013-03-05T05:00:00.003-08:002013-03-05T05:01:20.572-08:00Heeeeere’s NapoleonWhile another collaboration between Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg would seem to require a time machine, a Ouija board or some sort of interdimensional extraterrestrial monolith, The New York Times is reporting <a href="http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/heeeeeres-napoleon-spielberg-developing-kubrick-script-as-tv-miniseries/">plans are nonetheless underway</a> for these two celebrated filmmakers to work together again. Speaking to Canal+ Television in France, Mr. Spielberg said that he intended to turn an unproduced screenplay by Mr. Kubrick about the life of Napoleon into a television miniseries. "I’ve been developing Stanley Kubrick’s screenplay for a miniseries, not for a motion picture, about the life of Napoleon," Spielberg said in the interview. "Kubrick wrote the script in 1961, long time ago, and the Kubrick family — because we made ‘A.I.’ together — the Kubrick family and I, and the next project we’re working on is a miniseries, is going to be 'Napoleon.'"<br />
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Kubrick, who died in 1999, spent years researching Napoleon, reviewing more than 18,000 documents and books while assembling a card file that cataloged every significant moment in the French leader’s life. As well as the meticulous research for his planned film, Oskar Werner and Audrey Hepburn are said to have been offered the leading roles. It was announced in 1968 that he would direct 'Napoleon' for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; then in 1970 it was reported that he had put that project on the back burner in favor of A Clockwork Orange. A year later Kubrick is said to have abandoned his long-gestating screenplay about the French revolutionary hero turned conqueror of Europe after Hollywood studios refused to fund it. "It's impossible to tell you what I'm going to do except to say that I expect to make the best movie ever made," he wrote to studio executives in 1971.<br />
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Three years later Kubrick (who had not yet made Barry Lyndon at the time) told Sight & Sound magazine that "there has never been a great historical film" and that he still intended to make 'Napoleon'. But the project was never realized. <br />
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There is further evidence to suggest Kubrick actually toyed with the idea of doing 'Napoleon' as a miniseries because there was much more material than could fit comfortably in a standard feature-length film. In an interview with Michel Ciment, Kubrick explained: "His entire life is the story, and it works perfectly well in the order it happened. It would also be nice to do it as a twenty hour TV series, but there is, as yet, not enough money available in TV to properly budget such a venture."<br />
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Spielberg has previously adapted an unrealised Kubrick project in the form of the science fiction drama AI, starring Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law. The two filmmakers worked closely together on the 2001 project, which Spielberg was producing for Kubrick, and which he directed two years after Kubrick's death. The Schindler's List director also has form on the small screen with the critically acclaimed HBO TV miniseries Band of Brothers and is planning a third wartime series with Tom Hanks for the US channel after the recently well-recieved Pacific. It is not clear how far down the line Spielberg is with his version of the Napoleon story but one could argue that the Kubrick influence hovers over Spielberg films like Minority Report, and its world of oppressively ubiquitous technology. Both directors also appreciated space aliens as well as Tom Cruise.<br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-68227652441403940812013-03-04T12:03:00.002-08:002013-03-04T12:03:35.630-08:00Entering the Void<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<blockquote>
"In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void..."</blockquote>
Sundance Channel’s first <a href="http://www.sundancechannel.com/rectify/">wholly-owned scripted production</a>, <b>Rectify</b>, will premiere on April 22 in the U.S. The show, from AMC Networks and Breaking Bad producers Gran Via, has been also been secured by AMC/Sundance Channel Global for an exclusive first window rollout in Asia, Latin America and select European territories including France, Spain, Portugal and Benelux. ITV Studios Global Entertainment is handling international sales on the six-episode serial created and written by Oscar-winning moviemaker Ray McKinnon (The Accountant; That Evening Sun). It stars Killer Elite‘s Aden Young as Daniel Holden, a man released from prison after 19 years when DNA evidence casts doubt on his conviction for the rape and murder of a young girl. He returns to his home where he must readjust to a new life, including unfamiliar family members and surroundings as a mystery that defined a small town is gradually reopened. J. Smith Cameron (True Blood) will play Daniel’s mother, <b>Abigail Spencer</b> (Mad Men) will play his sister, Clayne Crawford will play his step-brother Ted and <b>Adelaide Clements</b> (Parade's End) will play Ted’s wife. In addition, Jonah Lotan will also feature as Daniel’s lawyer, who works for the non-profit Justice Row, and also making an appearence is the legendary Hal Holbrook.<br />
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Rectify was recently screened at the Sundance Film Festival in anticipation of its release on the Sundance Channel this April, and it looks promising from <a href="http://www.rightentertainment.com/?p=8944">reports of those in attendance</a>. The first two episodes were shown and the audience was left wondering if Holden actually did the crime or not. The show is presented in such a way that the truth is not apparent. The question of whether he is guilty or not is present during these first episodes and consequently, if he’s not guilty then, who was the killer. The series doesn’t focus on the legal aspects of the case, but instead focuses on Daniel’s difficulties adjusting to life outside prison and also on the horrible experience of being behind bars, made clear to the audience in his frequent flashback scenes. <br />
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McKinnon got the idea for the series a few years ago while watching news reports on inmates being released based on DNA evidence. He decided to study these cases and add the family life aspects of it in his series. "The story begins with a man being released from death row after 19 years and I wanted to explore what that moment would be like for him," he said. "That moment of being in a literal box and then suddenly thrust out into the world." Sarah Barnett of the Sundance Channel revealed they jumped in on production because they had never read a script like this. "What we are trying to do is tell daring stories and this is a really brave story," she explained.<br />
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In a <a href="http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682237/the-trailblazer-meet-the-brit-behind-sundance-channel-s-push-into-scripted-series">recent interview with Co.Create</a>, Barnett admitted she is hopelessly biased when it comes to Rectify. "It’s hard for me to talk objectively about this show, but I think that there’s a breathtaking lyricism to the way story is told," she stated. "There’s this amazing narrative event at the beginning, which is this guy that’s been on death row is released after 19 years, and there’s something extraordinarily dramatic about that. Then what I love is there’s a truthfulness to the experience of how somebody would adjust, how somebody would actually re-engage with life after all that time. And who is this guy? There’s the question of whether he did it or didn’t. It’s not answered in the first season. But more than that, there’s also the question of just who is Daniel Holden? Who is this person? Even if he didn’t do it, he’s been death row for 19 years, what does that do to a person? How do they come out and learn to re-engage in a world where your family is triumphantly relieved but underneath that also confused and anxious and unknowing about how to accommodate this lost son/stranger into their midst? And then there are the other ripples of Daniel’s return in terms of the politics of a small town and a community. I think it’s an incredibly rich scenario. There’s so much story to explore. Ray has painted such psychologically believable and layered characters this show could go anywhere really."<br />
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Speaking about his central character, Aden Young revealed: "He's been greatly affected by his time in prison with 23 hours of solitary confinement and five stays of execution. The story follows his first seven days of release and through him we begin to explore how his family has related to each other since his incarceration and there's a lot of wounds." Spencer plays the sister who from the age of twelve has dedicated her life to her brother's freedom. "The effect on her life is about what is she going to do now that he is out and how to do you make that twist to become your own person," she said. "It's like a rebirth with every character," agrees Young. "With this reintroduction of Daniel into their world their roles have to be completely redefined and people are left with this extraordinary void and have to figure out how to fill it up."<br />
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When asked about the process of how Rectify got on the air, Barnett explained: "Actually, the show was pitched to AMC and developed at AMC several years ago. So Ray wrote the initial pilot script a long time ago, and AMC didn’t go forward with it. But it was known within this company. Quite early on, when I actually first got this job, Ed Carroll, my boss [the chief operating officer of AMC Networks], said, "Read this script. What do you think?" I read it, and I was like, "Wow. This is absolutely amazing." But at that time we weren’t at a position to know how to make it. We didn’t have a scripted strategy. We were doing these co-productions, but as time went by and we put into a place a plan and a budget for scripted, it actually felt in a way quite easy to decide to do Rectify."<br />
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Having known this amazing script was just sitting there waiting to be made, she must have been thrilled to finally be able to get to work on the project. "Totally," agrees Barnett. "We worked with Ray to reconfigure it somewhat because he had written it awhile previously, and our model is to actually not pilot but to go straight to a six-episode season order. So Ray had structured the format for the first season to be 10 or 13 episodes. Ray very quickly realized that the six episodes was a really interesting creative opportunity for him, and he shifted it quite significantly and decided to make the whole first season just the first seven days of Daniel Holden’s release. So it allowed him to really tell a textured, emotional, immediate, visceral story about that first week of Daniel’s release. I think as an artist Ray was actually freed up and excited about the way in which the format for the first season shifted for him."<br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-70416661148771975882013-03-04T08:07:00.001-08:002013-03-04T10:31:51.319-08:00Shameless US S03E07Jimmy’s got a lot of things on his mind on this season of Shameless and one of them is Estefania, his wife and the daughter of a drug lord. Estefania may even starting to fall in love with Jimmy— or at least, in lust. In a <a href="http://www.starpulse.com/news/Alan_Danzis/2013/03/02/is_estefania_in_love_with_jimmy_on_sha">recent interview with Star Pulse</a>, Brazilian actress <b>Stephanie Vanessa Fantauzzi</b> describes, among other things, how her character will continue to become a distraction in Jimmy’s life...<br />
<br />
<b>You've been in the new season of Shameless quite a bit already... how many more episodes can we expect to see you in this season?</b><br />
<br />
Yes! Este’s back in full swing this season. She will be in a few more episodes leading up to the big finale. And I mean big.<br />
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<b>When you first signed up for the show last season, did you know that your role would continue to grow?</b><br />
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I had no idea. I was originally cast for 2 episodes and Estefania was not as developed at first but the writers have been giving me gems like "I’m holding a crack baby" since the beginning.<br />
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Este’s world has evolved seamlessly because she is just as unapologetically shameless as the others—she fits right in.<br />
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<b>Do you think Estefania, in some ways, actually loves Jimmy?</b><br />
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I think Estefania is relentlessly trying to fill a void and men seem to do that for her, it’s the only aspect of her life she feels she can control. At first Jimmy/Steve is a safe bet for her because she’s not emotionally involved and her father approves for once. But the more time she spends playing house with him, the more she realizes she’s in love with him.<br />
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<b>Why does Estefanie put up with her father? Is she afraid of him? Does she truly love him?</b><br />
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Estefania has a love/hate relationship with her father. She seeks his love and so lashes out in attempt to get it; she confuses attention with love. But she also absolutely hates how controlling he is, and she’s at the same time a very sheltered teenage girl who’s just trying to figure out who she is.<br />
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<b>What teases can you tell us about how Estefanie fits into the rest of the season's plotlines?</b><br />
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She’ll tease all right haha. I’m not allowed to say, at this point in the season a teaser would reveal a lot. <br />
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Television Series: Shameless US (S03E07)<br />
Release Date: March 2013<br />
Actress: Stephanie Fantauzzi<br />
Video Clips Credit: Deep at Sea<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwvGK4Dx-2-nm6i89I2mHveN0D6XvVUuIyv3WPtdn2x7XvqrExZ0MqxsW8_0RX9WfxMupejfQWUIryzvI2rLWEWtLRTnBbz8_pe5kt7BJnRVGUYQdIixccAAvRsVK9dk0BmgatZ4TEkSQ/s1600/StephanieFantauzzi2.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwvGK4Dx-2-nm6i89I2mHveN0D6XvVUuIyv3WPtdn2x7XvqrExZ0MqxsW8_0RX9WfxMupejfQWUIryzvI2rLWEWtLRTnBbz8_pe5kt7BJnRVGUYQdIixccAAvRsVK9dk0BmgatZ4TEkSQ/s320/StephanieFantauzzi2.jpg" /></a><br />
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</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-50303184250851093842013-03-03T11:34:00.001-08:002013-03-03T11:37:10.716-08:00The Gathering Storm<blockquote>There's a beast in every man and it stirs when you put a sword in his hand...</blockquote>March has arrived which means it's finally less than a month until <b>Game of Thrones</b> returns for its highly anticipated third season. Audiences have been dying to see more of the hugely popular and critically acclaimed HBO series pretty much from the second the second finished but have been forced to wait over nine months. Babies have been born who have never even known the winter, however, winter is... you know, soon. The <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzI9v_B4sxw">first trailer</a> for Game of Thrones Season 3 debuted in front of last Friday's Jimmy Kimmel Live! and quickly reminded us that "death is coming for everyone and everything." Just in case you were looking for things to get better and/or a happy ending. Readers of George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Fire and Ice" series are well aware of the shocking events that (could be) coming this season and the trailer did a great job of hinting at a few such moments without revealing anything to those who only watch GoT. <br />
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Continuing to ramp up promotion for the soon to air third season, HBO just released a <a href="http://www.cinemablend.com/television/game-thrones-season-3-character-posters-showcase-returning-favorites-joffrey-53193.html">dozen character posters</a> followed by this extended version of the aforementioned "Bones" preview. There are only 20 seconds or so of extra footage but the added bits are pretty great and definitely worth watching. We got our first glimpse of Thoros of Myr (Paul Kaye), the Red Priest of R'hllor, with the new character saying the now iconic words ("the night is dark and full of terror") to Melisandre as well as the Brotherhood Without Banners sat around a campfire. It is followed by Cersei and Tyrion Lannister having the following sibling exchange: "You're not half as clever as you think you are" / "Still makes me more clever than you." Touché. Then there's Bran awakening in a forest and being approached by an unidentified figure; and Joffrey reclining with his crossbow before a shot of Cersei accompanied by Catelyn Stark's words to Robb, "Show them how it feels to lose what they love".<br />
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Elsewhere Yara Greyjoy, sister to Theon, walks through a group of armed soldiers; Brienne of Tarth is having a bite-y looking fight and Jaime Lannister warms himself near a fire. An unidentified woman at Littlefinger's brothel moves playfully on all fours towards the camera and Joffrey looks worried on the Iron Throne, as well he might. There's a shot of Robb Stark, then one of Jaime Lannister being threatened by someone with a knife, accompanied by Jon Snow's words to Mance Rayder, "I want to fight for the side that fights for the living. Did I come to the right place?" We also glimpse Ser Jorah Mormont swordfighting, Robb Stark and wife Talisa Maegyr (Oona Chaplin) getting it on, Brienne and Jaime swordfighting, Tyrion looking through a metal grill and then spinning an axe; Jon Snow at Queenscrown and more of Stannis and Melisandre (Carice van Houten). Oh, and there is also John being a badass and Lady Brienne in the bear pit! Calm down. Still four weeks to go.<br />
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The keen-eyed amongst you will have noticed I neglected to mention the flash of Ygritte (Rose Leslie) in the cave. I suspect for the readers of this blog that could be the most tantalising morsel of things to come; as well as the clearest hint yet that we will be seeing one of the most iconic sex scenes of the book played out on our screens...<br />
<br />
"I know I want you," he heard himself say, all his vows and his honor all forgotten. She stood before him naked as her name day, and he was as hard as the rock around them. He had been in her half a hundred times by now, but always beneath furs, with others all around them. He had never seeen how beautiful she was. Her legs were skinny and well muscled, the hair at the juncture of her thighs a brighter red than that on her head. Does that make it even luckier? He pulled her close.<br />
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"I love the smell of you," he said. "I love your red hair. I love your mouth, and the way you kiss me. I love your smile. I love your teats." He kissed them, one and then the other. "I love your skinny legs, and what's between them." He knelt to kiss her there, lightly on her mound at first, but Ygritte moved her legs apart a little, and he saw the pink inside and kissed that as well, and tasted her.<br />
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She gave a little gasp. "If you love me all so much, why are you still dressed?" she whispered. "You know nothing, Jon Snow. Noth---oh. Oh. OHHH."<br />
<br />
Afterward, she was almost shy, or as shy as Ygritte ever got. "The thing you did," she said, when they lay together on their piled clothes. "With your...mouth." She hesistated. "Is that...is it what lords do to their ladies, down in the south?"<br />
<br />
"I don't think so." No one had ever told Jon just what lords did with their ladies. "I only...wanted to kiss you there, that's all. You seemed to like it."<br />
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"Aye. I...I liked it some. No one taught you such?"<br />
<br />
"There's been no one," he confessed. "Only you."<br />
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<br />
The network also released a short promo for Game Of Thrones: A Gathering Storm, a recap show airing on Friday, March 8th at 9:45 p.m. ET. See if you need and/or want to catch-up before the new seasons goes down. Game of Thrones Season 3 premieres on Sunday, March 31 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO. <br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-10399209409288125172013-03-01T13:16:00.000-08:002013-03-03T13:17:22.291-08:00White Smoke For Vatican Casting"We’ve all got tits. I’ve also got balls – I just don’t show them very often..."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQzu8dYykYeV7O4tbTrb0QThoUPXEIVW3QI9a6Je1ZnEKIBaTYbr7bXqHXLadDP_hDpJBZ_gu27_ClQ2apVq8PuZztkYXMwfQMSgZzQ19r24n81A1C3QRX2x-brhK0l6lCNiBd4uwNabc/s1600/AnnaFriel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQzu8dYykYeV7O4tbTrb0QThoUPXEIVW3QI9a6Je1ZnEKIBaTYbr7bXqHXLadDP_hDpJBZ_gu27_ClQ2apVq8PuZztkYXMwfQMSgZzQ19r24n81A1C3QRX2x-brhK0l6lCNiBd4uwNabc/s400/AnnaFriel.jpg" width="238" /></a></div>
Rochdale's finest <b>Anna Friel</b> has been cast to star in the Showtime drama pilot <b>The Vatican</b>. The Pushing Daisies star will play the younger sister of a cardinal in what is described as a provocative contemporary genre thriller about spirituality, power and politics – set against the modern-day political machinations within the Catholic church. Said to evoke The Sopranos and Upstairs, Downstairs, the series would explore the relationships and rivalries in addition to the mysteries and miracles behind the institution. Friel will play the darkly witty Kayla Duffy, a sexually active, hard-partying New Yorker who is openly rebellious against all norms and institutions, including the church. Friday Night Lights’ Kyle Chandler plays her opposite as the "charismatic yet enigmatic archbishop of New York, whose progressive leanings excite some and alarm others within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church," Showtime said. While Kayla and Duffy are close, honest and loving siblings, she is always a complication and, at times, a liability for a man of the cloth who is one of the public leaders of the Catholic Church.<br />
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Repped by UTA and Ken McReddie Associates, Friel is best known as Charlotte "Chuck" Charles on ABC's Pushing Daisies. Her feature film credits include You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Limitless, Land of the Lost, Timeline and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Breaking up the testosterone-heavy cast of The Vatican, Friel would seem a perfect fit for both her fast-living character and the slightly more adult sensibilities of Showtime. In a new an <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2287064/Screen-nudity--accidental-email-shocked-liberal-dad-ANNA-FRIEL.html">exclusive interview with Easy Living</a>, the girl known for taking on some controversial – and revealing – acting roles admitted she has managed to shock her parents only once – by emailing her father some pornographic images. The 36-year-old, who plays Jean Raymond, the wife of porn baron Paul Raymond, in a new film called The Look Of Love, made the embarrassing slip-up while she was researching her role. "I sent an email to my dad with some pictures of Jean Raymond," she said. "He called me afterwards and said, 'I think you’re going a bit far on this one.' I wondered what he meant and then I realised I’d sent him an email attachment of an actual porn shoot that Jean did – I mean, everything. I was mortified."<br />
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Friel, who first hit the headlines aged 16 for filming a lesbian kiss scene in Brookside, admitted her parents were not usually surprised by anything she did. "I was brought up in a very open household – I’m very close to my papa and he’s not easily shocked." And the actress, who also appeared naked in BBC drama The Tribe in 1998 and on stage in Breakfast At Tiffany’s four years ago, revealed that she has no problems baring all. "I didn’t mind being naked," she said. "I’ve always been OK with my body. We’ve all got tits. I’ve also got balls – I just don’t show them very often."<br />
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Ever since Pushing Daisies was cancelled by ABC, Friel has been pursued for various American TV pilots. And while she appeared in Syfy’s Neverland miniseries, her official return to series television is almost in place. Friel joins a cast that also includes Matthew Goode as Papal Secretary Bernd Koch and Sebastian Koch as Cardinal Marco Malerba. Friel's casting comes one day after Pope Benedict XVI officially left office. Paul Attanasio (House, Donnie Brasco) wrote the script, with Scott (Prometheus, Gladiator) making his TV directing debut on the pilot. Attanasio, Scott and David Zucker (The Good Wife) will serve as executive producers on the Sony TV project. Production will begin this year.<br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8241596471064337510.post-84579892457632167482013-02-27T05:11:00.002-08:002013-02-27T05:13:08.162-08:00Strike A Lightfields<blockquote>
Something's happened here, something that's been buried for a long time...</blockquote>
Gather ye rosebuds and clench ye bumcheeks, for here we be on the 1940s Suffolk coast, where there be dark rumblings in the cornfield. "Where's thaart Lucy gone?" gurgles Mrs Felwood (<b>Jill Halfpenny</b>), ruddy-cheeked matriarch of Lightfields Farm. It's a cheery place, populated by turnip-faced yokels, well-meaning dray horses and tittering mimsies in diaphanous tea dresses doing their bit for the war effort by letting rectangle-skulled US servicemen air-bum them in the woods. Answer, pivotally, comes there none, snarks <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2013/feb/23/tvod-lightfields-reviewed">The Guardian's Sarah Dempster</a>...<br />
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A primetime supernatural drama, <b>Lightfields</b> (tonight, 9pm, ITV) is a five-part follow-up to 2011 primetime supernatural drama <b>Marchlands</b>, in which the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchlands">residents of a house in rural Yorkshire</a> were haunted by the ghost of <a href="http://aftwatershed.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/marchlands-s01e01.html">Alex Kingston's dungarees</a>. If you recall, that story neatly wrapped up all the loose ends when it concluded, thus inconveniently presenting something of a dilemma in terms of continuing the action. However, the producers have found a clever way to carry on the series; copy the format, but use different characters, setting and time periods. This time, the supernatural hokum emanates from the mysterious death of poor naive Lucy (<b>Antonia Clarke</b>), the fallout from which weaves itself through the lives of the farm's future residents. <br />
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Like its predecessor, the drama flits between three different families in three different eras, each of which is stuffed with instantly recognisable period details: 1940s (aforementioned tea dresses, yokelry), 1970s (cheesecloth blouses and the words "JETHRO TULL" written on a poster), and modern day (digital radio and Kris Marshall swearing in a leather blouson). In 1944 the harvest is looming and the Felwood family are hard at work on the farm when 19 year-old Eve (Dakota Blue Richards) arrives. She has been evacuated from London and wants to help out and do her bit for the war effort. A friendship blossoms between her new family’s daughter and Eve but this is put in jeopardy when Dwight (Neil Jackson), a dashing American airman, comes into their lives. It is Eve who meets him first but then a chance meeting between him and Lucy triggers lies and deceptions between the two girls. Then, one fateful night, the hay barn catches alight. The fire rages and it is too late when they realise that there is someone in the barn. As the family and local community struggle to come to terms with thaart Lucy’s death, Eve believes it wasn’t just a tragic accident. She knows Lucy must have been meeting someone at the hay barn and having established it wasn’t Harry she knows who it must have been. Motivated by this niggling suspicion she searches in the smoldering wreckage of the barn and finds Dwight’s petrol lighter. With this proof she confronts Dwight but outsmarted by him she is left once again with nothing but her own suspicion.<br />
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By 1975 Lightfields has stood empty for many years when Vivien (Lucy Cohu) and her teenage daughter Clare (Karla Crome) arrive from London to stay for the summer. Vivien stayed in the area when she was evacuated there during the war but struggles to remember anything about that time. As they settle into their holiday Vivien’s distant behaviour starts to concern her daughter. Unbeknown to Clare something has started to stir in Vivien’s repressed memory since their arrival at the farm, something unsettling. But that is not all; their arrival has triggered something else, something has woken in the house. The two women are not alone. Clare remains worried about Vivien and is relieved when her dad arrives for the weekend. He believes Vivien is on the verge of a breakdown, something that has happened before, and wants her to go home and get treatment. But Clare wants her mother to be given a chance to work things out her way so he returns to London alone. A discovery that Vivien visited Lightfields as a girl unsettles her. Her memory remains just out of reach but as information drips in and the ghostly presence becomes more prevalent she starts to fear that her memory holds a terrible secret.<br />
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In 2012 a new generation of Felwoods have recently bought Lightfields. Barry and Lorna live there with their grandson, Luke, and Barry’s elderly and infirm father, Pip, has just moved in. Pip lived at Lightfields when he was a boy and this is the first time he has returned. He is disturbed to be back after all these years and won’t talk about his childhood on the farm. Pip knows his return has awakened something in the house but he refuses to acknowledge it. What he doesn’t know is that there is someone else who is only too willing to see and communicate with this ghostly presence. A moment when Luke goes missing and is found sitting by a grave in the churchyard makes Pip realise that the ghost is communicating with his great grandson. The grave belonged to Lucy Felwood and it is getting harder and harder for Pip to keep up his pretense that she never existed. They are then distracted when Paul turns up with shocking news; he is going to fight for custody of Luke. Barry and Lorna have looked after Luke since he was a baby and the thought of losing him now is unimaginable.<br />
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This is not, it is safe to say, demanding stuff notes Dempster. Doors slam, mysteriously. Lights go out, inexplicably. There is the line, "You look worried. Have you been here before?" over the sound of a lorry backing into the living room and dumping another pile of exposition next to the 1975 sofa. Meanwhile, characters arriving at Lightfields Farm for the first time stand at the front gate and, looking up, say "Lightfields Farm" in the firm but slightly wistful tone one might adopt when introducing a deaf labrador to a clergyman. "Odd," you might think. "We've already seen Lightfields Farm and thus are fully aware that this is Lightfields Farm and not, say, a granary loaf or the Tardis." So why do people keep telling us it's Lightfields Farm? Could it be that the producers are unsure we've been paying attention? Possibly. Or could it be that they think we're a bit thick? (Cue ghostly children's laughter, and a crash zoom on AN Viewer going "boh"…) Yes. But then, this is the problem with approximately 93% of all modern "horror" fare: it assumes the viewer is a spanner. All the dots have already been joined. There's nothing for us to do other than sit back and wince at the cheesecloth and the glare of the daylight in which most of the drama is shot. In fact, never has such a creeping sense of unease been so effectively communicated in bright sunlight, thinks The Guardian's Julia Raeside.<br />
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The recent revival of the TV ghost story gathered pace with <b>The Secret of Crickley Hall</b> last year, but oh for a genuine chill in these days of intrusive underscores and suppurating prosthetic torsos and whatnot. Something like the 1968 MR James adaptation <b>Whistle And I'll Come To You</b>, say, in which Michael Hordern is terrorised by a flapping bed sheet making slowed-down cow noises. Or the 1986 Bergerac Christmas Special (yes, the 1986 Bergerac Christmas Special) where the final shot of a hooded monk standing motionless in a graveyard was accompanied by the sound of eight million belts being unbuckled as the nation darted, screaming, to the nearest bog, its buttocks clapping like castanets. This was properly terrifying, unshowy stuff that relied on atmosphere and brainwork, not panicky strings and half of this generation's answer to the Gold Blend couple swearing in a leather blouson.<br />
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Here, though, the only real jolt that viewers are ever likely to experience is the realisation, circa the bit where a massive barn goes on mysterious CGI fire, that they haven't tuned into a conceptual edition of A Place In The Country. Now, nobody turns up to ITV on a Wednesday evening expecting Cannibal Holocaust. But, really, is it too much to ask for a supernatural drama that doesn't treat viewers like gurgling yokel dunderskulls? Our bumcheeks can 'andle it, honest.<br />
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Lightfields was written by Simon Tyrrell and, like Marchlands, is based on a US pilot The Oaks by David Schulner for Twentieth Century Fox Television. Cherry Gould was the producer and ITV Studios’ Kate Lewis was the executive producer. The five hour-long episodes were directed by Damon Thomas and were filmed in August in Hertfordshire and West Sussex. Lightfields was commissioned for ITV by drama commissioning team Laura Mackie and Sally Haynes. "We’re delighted to build on the success of Marchlands with another highly original take on the format," said Haynes in an ITV press release. "It’s a very distinctive addition to our slate."<br />
</span>PopVenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14116031084484781919noreply@blogger.com0