20 October, 2005
19 October, 2005
GQ (US) - November, 2005
[for all the pretty piccies check GQ]
Orlando Bloom sits chewing banana and peanut butter on toast, having his morning tea on what could be the patio of a modest little house anywhere in the world—watching his coal black mutt ramble around on the grass, chew twigs, and relieve himself. But little things everywhere hint that this is a partly ?ctional realm. Bloom is swathed in one of the long scarves he favors, covered in trinkets, and wearing combat-weight black boots, but because he has become so extraordinarily well-known for playing epic roles, the overall effect is of a man who is not quite modern but in modern dress. And this is no man’s house but a lavish bungalow at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. It’s not even one of the A-list bungalows down on the main level, where John Belushi breathed his last. This one is far more grand—seemingly ?oating above the hotel, insulated from the world by heavy gray wooden doors. It even has a private exit so that Bloom can come and go without fear of paparazzi.
The moment he speaks—despite outward appearances—it’s clear that the only thing that isn’t tinged with unreality is Bloom himself, who comes across as impossibly levelheaded. He is ?nishing his ?rst role as a contemporary American man, a character in the ?ctional real world, in Cameron Crowe’s new romantic comedy, Elizabethtown. “Being a Brit, I’ve spent most of my time here either in New York or L.A.,” Bloom says, unselfconsciously smacking peanut butter as he speaks. “But during the Elizabethtown shoot, we were staying in the Brown Hotel, a classic, old-school place in Louisville. Going to Kentucky was a whole different side of America I never knew about. It was America. The hats, the suits—they’re not letting go of their traditions. Which is great. I love traditions. I mean, cultural ones.”
In contrast to his sensible demeanor, Bloom is abnormally good-looking. And it’s often hard to bear in mind how young he is—how much work and fame he has gathered up in a scant four years. He is routinely on all the lists: People’s Most Beautiful, the Internet’s Most Downloaded, you name it. But some fairly grim experience has made him play against type in real life. Laconically staring out over the fronds and high hibiscus of the Chateau and eating unripe blueberries, he doesn’t hint at being aware of his Old Hollywood appeal—and he certainly doesn’t come off as ethereal.
There’s nothing otherworldly about the inside of the house, either. It’s a mess, scattered with health food, research, and mementos, much of which is still in boxes, since Bloom has been living here a month during one of his downtimes with Kate Bosworth. In the bedroom is residue from old work: There’s a DVD about the Crusades, ancient homework for Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven. Bloom grins and admits that while it’s ideal to read entire books, DVDs have the appeal of being condensed and visual. “Knowledge is power,” he says—“but having too much can actually get in the way. You simply want to know what world you’re in, and immerse yourself.” He’s taken time to hang a Cool Hand Luke poster, since he reveres Paul Newman. The kitchen is an aftermath of some kind of organic-food explosion. Everywhere you turn, there are protein shakes, containers of carrot and mango juice, oranges, tomatoes, and Lord-knows-what made out of tofu.
“I haven’t gone back to being vegetarian,” Bloom says, surveying the chaos. “I’ve gone back to the process of seeing what foods give me energy. When you’re working and you’re required to switch it on, you need to know what fuels you.”
Even Sidi, the wild black dog, has a prized possession or two in the wilderness of boxes and CDs and photos. Cameron Crowe has awarded the pup with a small framed Elizabethtown poster and signed it, “Try to eat smaller portions.”
Walking out the door, one sees the least artful object in the house: a sign, in ?erce block lettering, that reads DO NOT LET THE DOG INSIDE! Sidi is explicitly banished from the house, given his taste for apocalypse. “When I’m not here, he really tears up the place,” Bloom says, as the lone crease in his forehead deepens slightly. “He can be pretty devastating.”
It was the same during the Elizabethtown shoots. Kirsten Dunst marveled at what a tearaway that dog could be, and says Orlando’s trailer had to be “Sidi-proofed.”
“They had to put a sheet of plastic on the ?oor!” she says, laughing. “That dog just doesn’t care. And Orlando’s way of unstressing between takes is to jump around like a 5-year-old or ride on a pint-size scooter, whereas I’m more self-critical. He was always playing with Sidi between takes, and Sidi is still in many ways a street dog.” Then again, in many ways, so is Orlando.
Elizabethtown is vintage Cameron Crowe: dead center in the crosshatch between comedy and drama. It opens with Bloom’s character experiencing a professional failure—more accurately, as his character narrates, a ?asco—of staggering proportions. A shoe he has designed for an Oregon-based company (clearly modeled after Nike) is such a disaster that it’s being recalled, losing the company $972 million, all of it Bloom’s fault. To magnify Bloom’s self-loathing, the head of the company (played to the hilt by Alec Baldwin) leads him on a daunting walk through the corporate complex, explaining the sheer magnitude of this disaster. At one point, the two gaze onto a vast, NASA-scale ecological laboratory; Baldwin’s character pauses and ruefully observes, “We could have saved the planet.” At another point, laughing out his grief, Baldwin remarks that he has read that Bloom’s shoe “may actually cause an entire generation to return to bare feet.”
Bloom’s character responds by creating an elaborate suicide machine and is on the brink of using it when he learns that his father has died: He must travel to Kentucky to retrieve the body. So begins a chain of events that, as is so often untrue in Hollywood movies, is impossible to predict. Crowe doesn’t deal in cinematic formulas. The ?lm is strangely both intimate and sprawling, hitting a lot of giant themes— fathers and sons, life and death, hope and regret—through small, subtle encounters.
It’s striking how easily Bloom ?ts into regular clothing and the twenty-?rst century after having spent most of his career in chain mail, on horseback, or shouting things like “The Ring must be destroyed!” No ?lm actor in memory has been so furiously attached to the epic and fantasy genres as Orlando Bloom. After making his debut as a rent boy in a 1997 ?lm about Oscar Wilde, he spent three years at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama—then, right out of the gate, landed the Legolas role in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Since then, he has rarely been seen without a sword or an arrow in reach: in Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven; in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy; in the gritty Australian legend Ned Kelly; and, of course, in the still blossoming Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. (If he were a few years older, he’d have been in Braveheart. That’s a guarantee.) The only exception was a very small role in Black Hawk Down, in which his character breaks his back—but Bloom was cast partly because in real life he actually has broken his back.
Liam Neeson, who starred as Bloom’s father in the somewhat controversial Kingdom, is well attuned to the notion that an epic quality is not a card that every ?lm actor has in his deck. “Some actors suit period costumes,” Neeson says, “and others don’t. I always think of Errol Flynn. He looked uncomfortable in a suit—but put him in a ridiculous pair of tights, and he looked to the manor born! John Wayne playing Genghis Khan was quite the other thing. Clint Eastwood in a kilt would look ludicrous. I don’t know what it is. Orlando simply looks the part.”
From their experience in Kingdom, Neeson and Bloom know that this particular talent can double as a curse, for Ridley Scott is an especially meticulous director. “Even our underwear was period,” Neeson recalls, laughing. “It was the full bollocks, you know?”
And the epic quality is sufficiently rare that, once you’ve proved yourself in the genre, you are sought out again and again—another impulse well understood (and, for that matter, experienced) by Liam Neeson. “If I were Jack Warner, I’d get a team of writers, get ’em writing period pieces, and sign him,” Neeson says. “Orlando is like a classic ’40s movie star.”
None of this is to say that Neeson con?nes himself to speaking of Bloom’s costumes; he seems a little amazed by how sharply focused the man is, especially for a young actor. “When I was that age—Jesus!—it was the Dark Ages of my emotional growth,” Neeson says. “I knew ****-all about anythin’! Orlando is with it, but not in a hip way. He knows what it takes to make a ?lm, so he treats every department equally: the key grip, the gaffer, everyone. He’s right to. Without them, we’re nothing.”
The fact that Orlando Bloom is unusually grounded for a man of 28, sadly, has a lot to do with the actual ground. His career (and inextricably linked with that, his ability to take the long view) was entirely transformed by a potentially fatal fall he took in 1998. Late one night, messing around, he leapt onto a drainpipe while trying to get onto a roof terrace; the pipe gave way, and Bloom fell three stories, shattering his vertebrae. “Until then, I didn’t have a healthy appreciation for life and death—that we’re not invincible,” he says. “And for four days, I faced the idea of living in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. I went to some dark places in my mind. I realized, I’m either going to walk again or I’m not.
“The doctor said he wasn’t sure how severe the spinal-cord damage was,” he says, as an oddly unattractive look of distaste, even horror, crosses his features. “I remember him telling me that, and staring at the ceiling, thinking, I never stared at ceilings before! And I wonder if I’m going to be looking at ceilings for the rest of my life.
“But there’s something interesting,” he adds very quickly. “I knew I wouldn’t. I knew I wouldn’t, I knew…” He repeats the sentence ?ve times—quick like a stammer, as though he’s still trying to convince himself against hope that this will not be his fate.
The upshot of the accident was nothing short of miraculous. He was in the hospital only a few weeks and walked out on his own power. And the minute he escaped, still constrained by a back brace, he reverted to testing the limits of body and soul. When the time came to remove the titanium pins from his spine, to the doctors’ alarm, they were all fractured. They came out in shards. One of the pins had been driven too deep to remove, by dint of Orlando’s physical overexertion. “I’d been doing stuff right away,” he recalls, shaking his head. “I went straight back into it, man.”
The calming of Orlando Bloom, in the paradoxical underage dotage he now conveys, wasn’t instantaneous. “When I came out of the hospital, I started partying straight away—with the back brace on. It took me a couple of months to realize this was my life, and I didn’t want to mess it up.
“But that accident has informed everything in my life,” he says. “Until you’re close to losing it, you don’t realize. I used to ride motorbikes and drive cars like everything was a racetrack; it was ridiculous. It wasn’t because I thought it was cool; it was just because I loved living on the edge. But I’ve chilled.”
Cameron Crowe, too, sees all of this as key to Bloom’s swift maturation as an actor. “That broken back—that’s his Rosebud,” Crowe says. “It’s the key to him. He’s got pain going on in there. That’s why his silent mode is so interesting. Where other actors feel they have to constantly do something, Orlando doesn’t. Which is great. He’s a real guy with real stuff. Under that puppy-dog energy, there’s darkness.”
Perhaps it was Bloom’s upbringing that made him capable of eventually slowing off of the racetrack. Growing up in Canterbury, and beyond that, the county Kent, exposes you to one of the world’s cradles of sanity—a meadowed realm of constancy—even though some of its denizens look wild when viewed from afar.
“My generation in England was exposed to a huge antidrug campaign,” Bloom recalls. “I was one of the kids in school saying, ‘That ****’s not good.’ I’ve still gotten kicks; don’t get me wrong.”
At this point in the conversation, without a single word of transition, Bloom moves from the romance of drugs to the intoxication of women. “I remember asking my biology teacher, ‘How is HIV and AIDS gonna come to an end?’ ” he says, still popping the sour blueberries. “And the guy said, ‘When people stop having sex.’ I replied, ‘Dude, that’s harsh. That ain’t gonna happen anytime soon.’ I had plenty of vices growing up. But when you’re 21, you wake up and realize that your body is not something you want to **** with.”
To this end, Bloom has even surrendered caffeine—which, for many Englishmen, would be as bitter a defeat as Gallipoli or Yorktown. “I was doing night shoots for Elizabethtown,” he says, “and drinking green tea, which has caffeine. Not an awful lot. Just enough to get me through the shoot. By the end of the night, my back was killing me. It dehydrates your spine. And my back—that’s still my alarm. That’s my canary in the mine shaft.”
Bloom talks endlessly about how lucky he is; after seven years, the worst of his many reckless accidents hasn’t faded from memory. “When you experience the sort of physical pain I went through, you realize you’re not a god,” he says—“that there are limits to what you can do. It keeps you real. I mean, I can walk. I can enjoy a swim in the ocean and a beautiful day. And I was very close to not having that.
“I’m trying now to maintain a sense of balance. I was very extreme in my youth—everything in extremes, man! I’m at a very interesting time right now: a lot of change, growth…a lot of pennies dropping. I’ve a lot to be grateful for.”
This is all odd talk from an actor who, since that accident and many others, has buckled so much swash in the movies. (To say nothing of the fact that, for The Lord of the Rings, he spent vast amounts of time in New Zealand, the adrenaline-sport capital of the world, resisting most of those temptations.) Yet when it comes to doing stunts, he doesn’t hesitate. “I have one of those doctors who tell me, ‘Go for it, man!’ ” he says. “Does he encourage me? No. But I’ve tried to put myself in a physical condition where I’m able to do that stuff.”
“And, of course, for sex,” I toss out, just to lighten things up.
“Yeah, all those mercy lays I got,” he says, mock-wistfully. “Because I was the kid with the broken back!”
“Oh—you need mercy ****s,” I repeat, nearly spitting up my tea. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in my life. You probably had to beg for it.”
Bloom won’t let go of the joke: “I was the kid with the broken back!”
By all evidence, Orlando Bloom has chilled. But the adrenaline chip in his brain is still switched on. He seems to have transferred its capacity from bone-breaking feats to potentially soul-crushing risks on a more emotional plane. “I like to feel alive, man,” he says. “Part of it is danger, part of it is love. Although I’m trying not to have those two realms cross too much. I’ve had a few dangerous women. My cousin once told me, ‘You’re tall, you’re handsome—and you’re gonna have to apologize for it the rest of your life.’ He imparted that information to me.”
“So…you’re still looking for mercy ****s.”
“That’s right!” he says, clinging to modesty with both hands. “I still am. Exactly!”
If, as he claims, Bloom is a bit accident-prone, he is among the most graceful clods ever born. He moves slowly but always seems to be out ahead of you; he gestures rarely, but when he does, every joint of every ?nger seems to be underscoring a different, subtle part of his idea.
Despite all the old injuries (broken bones all over his body—here from a motorbike spill, there from something strange that happened with a rope), his athletic prowess is not lost on those with whom he’s worked. Liam Neeson marveled at Bloom’s ?ght scenes in Kingdom of Heaven. “Some actors are utterly lost if you put a sword in their hands,” he says. “Orlando is all physical grace—and there’s Errol Flynn again!”
Cameron Crowe, for his part, actually directed Bloom in the only television ad Crowe has ever shot, a quasi parody of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, shot in black and white, for Gap clothing. All we saw was Orlando Bloom and Kate Beckinsale running through shadowy streets. “He has this Hard Day’s Night physicality,” Crowe says. “Watching what we’d shot in the Gap commercial, there was Kate Beckinsale—who’s hot!—and we couldn’t stop looking at him. He’s exploding with life.”
The whole blend of modesty and the movie-star looks can only have contributed to Orlando Bloom’s celebrity. In an average week, even with no ?lm release in sight, he’s in a hundred articles worldwide—the more so when anything kindles (or is stanched) with the dazzling Kate Bosworth.
That said, he’s not entirely allergic to Hollywood tricks. For instance, when celebrities stay at hotels, as most people know, they check in under false names, like Fred Flintstone or Jay Gatsby. Billy Bob Thornton, for instance, sometimes uses the name of a certain writer. For her part, Kirsten Dunst uses a musical reference.
“I’m not exactly sure what name Orlando goes by,” Dunst says, “but I bet it’s something sexual. He’s very ?irty. And that’s easy to understand. You should have seen them in Kentucky: Girls lined up holding signs with his name on them. He was very gracious.”
Typically, Bloom regards most attention as a ?eeting thing. And he’s not interested in spending precious time on ?eeting things. Especially tabloid attention.
“That stuff is not a part of my daily life,” he says. “Most of it is bullshit. It even becomes hard to have a casual friendship, because suddenly you’re ‘linked to’ that person.… I guess there’s got to be a cost. You can’t live the spoils without having the ?ip side of that coin. So you learn to live with it.”
Curiously, Bloom is so famous in costume that until recently he was able to blend in when he moved around in public. Cameron Crowe recalls that when the cast of Elizabethtown was shooting and living in Kentucky, girls were lining the streets just to catch a glimpse of Orly Bloom. (Though no one except the tabloids actually calls him Orly.)
“He was incredibly famous, but no one really knew what he looked like,” Crowe says, still amazed. “In Lexington, there was a girls’ national soccer championship team in the hotel. These girls were actually walking the halls—they were roaming in packs—looking for him. I heard them saying things like, ‘He’s on the seventh ?oor!’ And he was standing right there. Right there. He just disappeared into the culture.”
That air of mystery is attractive to ?lm directors. Crowe recalls reading something Warren Beatty once said—that 75 percent of what people bring to a movie is their perception of the actor. “In that sense, it’s great to have a fresh guy to put in the center of a movie,” Crowe says. “We don’t really know who he is. Orlando is a clean slate. Since Tom Cruise in Risky Business, very few guys that age have been able to do a comedy or drama and be that interesting to look at—and to really hold the center of a movie.”
These days, Bloom’s mother more than compensates for his aversion to his tabloid press. (And of course, when it comes to propriety and accuracy, British tabloids make their American cousins look like Huxley’s Illustrated History of Gardening.) She clips it all, keeps track of his status as “the most downloaded human on earth,” and shuffles through the bags of fan letters he receives. Bloom recoils. “I keep saying, ‘Mom, I don’t want to know,’ ” he says. “I don’t want to see whether I’m on some chart. There will be a time when I won’t be. That doesn’t mean I’m not grateful. But I keep telling her, ‘They keep building me up, so they’re going to tear me down!’
“I keep getting asked what it’s like to be a heartthrob,” he adds, much amused by the unspoken joke: Tempus fugit. “There’s that next kid, believe me, who’s right there on my tail—and if he’s not right now, he’s gonna be!”
Bloom is convincing when he says things like this: offhand remarks a modest person would say so as not to seem like a preening, self-absorbed *** in a magazine article. And when he says he has too much self-doubt to believe the hype, there’s not a trace of posturing. A casting agent once told him that a little self-doubt will get you a long way: It makes you work harder, keeps you sharp. “If you think you can do it all,” Bloom says, suddenly showing some heat, “you’re just gonna sit back. Whereas I’m constantly working at it: doing more sword training for Pirates, getting coached on dialect to make sure it’s as good as it can be for Elizabethtown. I’m always working, because the one time I don’t, I guarantee, is when I’ll end up saying ‘D’oh!’ ”
He looks at his enormous wristwatch somewhat worriedly, for he actually has a dialect session in an hour or so, and more than once he has registered that it’s a real concern for him. (It was also the sole doubt Cameron Crowe had in casting him, though that one doubt was quickly put to rest, Crowe says.)
“Look, I just want to stay normal,” Bloom says, very normally. “That’s the biggest challenge: being able to sit in a café and watch the world go by.”
Granted, wide is the road to temptation and—at least until that next kid catches Orlando J. B. C. Bloom—his world is a sea of temptations. But he prides himself on learning lessons, even other people’s life lessons. “My dad once told me that one of his dreams was coming to Los Angeles, getting a Mustang, and driving it down Sunset Boulevard,” he says, beaming at the memory. “One day, it came true. And he got pulled over by the police. Know why they stopped him? Know why? He was driving too slowly! That’s a great story for me. He was soaking up the environment and he got done! ‘Sir, you got done!’ ”
In more than one sense, Bloom isn’t ?nished. Even at the outset of his career, he’s ever ?ickering with a Buddhist tendency here or there. He chokes at the fact that he’s in an industry where it’s a virtue to label its products (including actors). Yet he has no idea what his label should read. “I’m still trying to formulate the idea of who I am—and part of the problem of having these ideas and images projected on you is that it’s hard enough really ?guring that **** out!”
Even in the Shangri-la con?nes of Bloom’s temporary home, time does not stop, and the hour is running late. At a dialogue coach’s office across town, there’s a new identity to burnish: some “R” sounds to harden, a few “A” sounds to ?atten out. Orlando Bloom shakes his head and eats one last bad blueberry. “There’s only a story in success so far,” he says, refusing to descend from the philosophical level before he ?ees the hotel out his private exit. “That’s why Cameron made a movie about failure—about ?asco. Because we all meet in the dirt. That’s where we meet.”
Marshall Sella wrote last month about Cameron Diaz.
Orlando Bloom sits chewing banana and peanut butter on toast, having his morning tea on what could be the patio of a modest little house anywhere in the world—watching his coal black mutt ramble around on the grass, chew twigs, and relieve himself. But little things everywhere hint that this is a partly ?ctional realm. Bloom is swathed in one of the long scarves he favors, covered in trinkets, and wearing combat-weight black boots, but because he has become so extraordinarily well-known for playing epic roles, the overall effect is of a man who is not quite modern but in modern dress. And this is no man’s house but a lavish bungalow at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. It’s not even one of the A-list bungalows down on the main level, where John Belushi breathed his last. This one is far more grand—seemingly ?oating above the hotel, insulated from the world by heavy gray wooden doors. It even has a private exit so that Bloom can come and go without fear of paparazzi.
The moment he speaks—despite outward appearances—it’s clear that the only thing that isn’t tinged with unreality is Bloom himself, who comes across as impossibly levelheaded. He is ?nishing his ?rst role as a contemporary American man, a character in the ?ctional real world, in Cameron Crowe’s new romantic comedy, Elizabethtown. “Being a Brit, I’ve spent most of my time here either in New York or L.A.,” Bloom says, unselfconsciously smacking peanut butter as he speaks. “But during the Elizabethtown shoot, we were staying in the Brown Hotel, a classic, old-school place in Louisville. Going to Kentucky was a whole different side of America I never knew about. It was America. The hats, the suits—they’re not letting go of their traditions. Which is great. I love traditions. I mean, cultural ones.”
In contrast to his sensible demeanor, Bloom is abnormally good-looking. And it’s often hard to bear in mind how young he is—how much work and fame he has gathered up in a scant four years. He is routinely on all the lists: People’s Most Beautiful, the Internet’s Most Downloaded, you name it. But some fairly grim experience has made him play against type in real life. Laconically staring out over the fronds and high hibiscus of the Chateau and eating unripe blueberries, he doesn’t hint at being aware of his Old Hollywood appeal—and he certainly doesn’t come off as ethereal.
There’s nothing otherworldly about the inside of the house, either. It’s a mess, scattered with health food, research, and mementos, much of which is still in boxes, since Bloom has been living here a month during one of his downtimes with Kate Bosworth. In the bedroom is residue from old work: There’s a DVD about the Crusades, ancient homework for Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven. Bloom grins and admits that while it’s ideal to read entire books, DVDs have the appeal of being condensed and visual. “Knowledge is power,” he says—“but having too much can actually get in the way. You simply want to know what world you’re in, and immerse yourself.” He’s taken time to hang a Cool Hand Luke poster, since he reveres Paul Newman. The kitchen is an aftermath of some kind of organic-food explosion. Everywhere you turn, there are protein shakes, containers of carrot and mango juice, oranges, tomatoes, and Lord-knows-what made out of tofu.
“I haven’t gone back to being vegetarian,” Bloom says, surveying the chaos. “I’ve gone back to the process of seeing what foods give me energy. When you’re working and you’re required to switch it on, you need to know what fuels you.”
Even Sidi, the wild black dog, has a prized possession or two in the wilderness of boxes and CDs and photos. Cameron Crowe has awarded the pup with a small framed Elizabethtown poster and signed it, “Try to eat smaller portions.”
Walking out the door, one sees the least artful object in the house: a sign, in ?erce block lettering, that reads DO NOT LET THE DOG INSIDE! Sidi is explicitly banished from the house, given his taste for apocalypse. “When I’m not here, he really tears up the place,” Bloom says, as the lone crease in his forehead deepens slightly. “He can be pretty devastating.”
It was the same during the Elizabethtown shoots. Kirsten Dunst marveled at what a tearaway that dog could be, and says Orlando’s trailer had to be “Sidi-proofed.”
“They had to put a sheet of plastic on the ?oor!” she says, laughing. “That dog just doesn’t care. And Orlando’s way of unstressing between takes is to jump around like a 5-year-old or ride on a pint-size scooter, whereas I’m more self-critical. He was always playing with Sidi between takes, and Sidi is still in many ways a street dog.” Then again, in many ways, so is Orlando.
Elizabethtown is vintage Cameron Crowe: dead center in the crosshatch between comedy and drama. It opens with Bloom’s character experiencing a professional failure—more accurately, as his character narrates, a ?asco—of staggering proportions. A shoe he has designed for an Oregon-based company (clearly modeled after Nike) is such a disaster that it’s being recalled, losing the company $972 million, all of it Bloom’s fault. To magnify Bloom’s self-loathing, the head of the company (played to the hilt by Alec Baldwin) leads him on a daunting walk through the corporate complex, explaining the sheer magnitude of this disaster. At one point, the two gaze onto a vast, NASA-scale ecological laboratory; Baldwin’s character pauses and ruefully observes, “We could have saved the planet.” At another point, laughing out his grief, Baldwin remarks that he has read that Bloom’s shoe “may actually cause an entire generation to return to bare feet.”
Bloom’s character responds by creating an elaborate suicide machine and is on the brink of using it when he learns that his father has died: He must travel to Kentucky to retrieve the body. So begins a chain of events that, as is so often untrue in Hollywood movies, is impossible to predict. Crowe doesn’t deal in cinematic formulas. The ?lm is strangely both intimate and sprawling, hitting a lot of giant themes— fathers and sons, life and death, hope and regret—through small, subtle encounters.
It’s striking how easily Bloom ?ts into regular clothing and the twenty-?rst century after having spent most of his career in chain mail, on horseback, or shouting things like “The Ring must be destroyed!” No ?lm actor in memory has been so furiously attached to the epic and fantasy genres as Orlando Bloom. After making his debut as a rent boy in a 1997 ?lm about Oscar Wilde, he spent three years at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama—then, right out of the gate, landed the Legolas role in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Since then, he has rarely been seen without a sword or an arrow in reach: in Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven; in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy; in the gritty Australian legend Ned Kelly; and, of course, in the still blossoming Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. (If he were a few years older, he’d have been in Braveheart. That’s a guarantee.) The only exception was a very small role in Black Hawk Down, in which his character breaks his back—but Bloom was cast partly because in real life he actually has broken his back.
Liam Neeson, who starred as Bloom’s father in the somewhat controversial Kingdom, is well attuned to the notion that an epic quality is not a card that every ?lm actor has in his deck. “Some actors suit period costumes,” Neeson says, “and others don’t. I always think of Errol Flynn. He looked uncomfortable in a suit—but put him in a ridiculous pair of tights, and he looked to the manor born! John Wayne playing Genghis Khan was quite the other thing. Clint Eastwood in a kilt would look ludicrous. I don’t know what it is. Orlando simply looks the part.”
From their experience in Kingdom, Neeson and Bloom know that this particular talent can double as a curse, for Ridley Scott is an especially meticulous director. “Even our underwear was period,” Neeson recalls, laughing. “It was the full bollocks, you know?”
And the epic quality is sufficiently rare that, once you’ve proved yourself in the genre, you are sought out again and again—another impulse well understood (and, for that matter, experienced) by Liam Neeson. “If I were Jack Warner, I’d get a team of writers, get ’em writing period pieces, and sign him,” Neeson says. “Orlando is like a classic ’40s movie star.”
None of this is to say that Neeson con?nes himself to speaking of Bloom’s costumes; he seems a little amazed by how sharply focused the man is, especially for a young actor. “When I was that age—Jesus!—it was the Dark Ages of my emotional growth,” Neeson says. “I knew ****-all about anythin’! Orlando is with it, but not in a hip way. He knows what it takes to make a ?lm, so he treats every department equally: the key grip, the gaffer, everyone. He’s right to. Without them, we’re nothing.”
The fact that Orlando Bloom is unusually grounded for a man of 28, sadly, has a lot to do with the actual ground. His career (and inextricably linked with that, his ability to take the long view) was entirely transformed by a potentially fatal fall he took in 1998. Late one night, messing around, he leapt onto a drainpipe while trying to get onto a roof terrace; the pipe gave way, and Bloom fell three stories, shattering his vertebrae. “Until then, I didn’t have a healthy appreciation for life and death—that we’re not invincible,” he says. “And for four days, I faced the idea of living in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. I went to some dark places in my mind. I realized, I’m either going to walk again or I’m not.
“The doctor said he wasn’t sure how severe the spinal-cord damage was,” he says, as an oddly unattractive look of distaste, even horror, crosses his features. “I remember him telling me that, and staring at the ceiling, thinking, I never stared at ceilings before! And I wonder if I’m going to be looking at ceilings for the rest of my life.
“But there’s something interesting,” he adds very quickly. “I knew I wouldn’t. I knew I wouldn’t, I knew…” He repeats the sentence ?ve times—quick like a stammer, as though he’s still trying to convince himself against hope that this will not be his fate.
The upshot of the accident was nothing short of miraculous. He was in the hospital only a few weeks and walked out on his own power. And the minute he escaped, still constrained by a back brace, he reverted to testing the limits of body and soul. When the time came to remove the titanium pins from his spine, to the doctors’ alarm, they were all fractured. They came out in shards. One of the pins had been driven too deep to remove, by dint of Orlando’s physical overexertion. “I’d been doing stuff right away,” he recalls, shaking his head. “I went straight back into it, man.”
The calming of Orlando Bloom, in the paradoxical underage dotage he now conveys, wasn’t instantaneous. “When I came out of the hospital, I started partying straight away—with the back brace on. It took me a couple of months to realize this was my life, and I didn’t want to mess it up.
“But that accident has informed everything in my life,” he says. “Until you’re close to losing it, you don’t realize. I used to ride motorbikes and drive cars like everything was a racetrack; it was ridiculous. It wasn’t because I thought it was cool; it was just because I loved living on the edge. But I’ve chilled.”
Cameron Crowe, too, sees all of this as key to Bloom’s swift maturation as an actor. “That broken back—that’s his Rosebud,” Crowe says. “It’s the key to him. He’s got pain going on in there. That’s why his silent mode is so interesting. Where other actors feel they have to constantly do something, Orlando doesn’t. Which is great. He’s a real guy with real stuff. Under that puppy-dog energy, there’s darkness.”
Perhaps it was Bloom’s upbringing that made him capable of eventually slowing off of the racetrack. Growing up in Canterbury, and beyond that, the county Kent, exposes you to one of the world’s cradles of sanity—a meadowed realm of constancy—even though some of its denizens look wild when viewed from afar.
“My generation in England was exposed to a huge antidrug campaign,” Bloom recalls. “I was one of the kids in school saying, ‘That ****’s not good.’ I’ve still gotten kicks; don’t get me wrong.”
At this point in the conversation, without a single word of transition, Bloom moves from the romance of drugs to the intoxication of women. “I remember asking my biology teacher, ‘How is HIV and AIDS gonna come to an end?’ ” he says, still popping the sour blueberries. “And the guy said, ‘When people stop having sex.’ I replied, ‘Dude, that’s harsh. That ain’t gonna happen anytime soon.’ I had plenty of vices growing up. But when you’re 21, you wake up and realize that your body is not something you want to **** with.”
To this end, Bloom has even surrendered caffeine—which, for many Englishmen, would be as bitter a defeat as Gallipoli or Yorktown. “I was doing night shoots for Elizabethtown,” he says, “and drinking green tea, which has caffeine. Not an awful lot. Just enough to get me through the shoot. By the end of the night, my back was killing me. It dehydrates your spine. And my back—that’s still my alarm. That’s my canary in the mine shaft.”
Bloom talks endlessly about how lucky he is; after seven years, the worst of his many reckless accidents hasn’t faded from memory. “When you experience the sort of physical pain I went through, you realize you’re not a god,” he says—“that there are limits to what you can do. It keeps you real. I mean, I can walk. I can enjoy a swim in the ocean and a beautiful day. And I was very close to not having that.
“I’m trying now to maintain a sense of balance. I was very extreme in my youth—everything in extremes, man! I’m at a very interesting time right now: a lot of change, growth…a lot of pennies dropping. I’ve a lot to be grateful for.”
This is all odd talk from an actor who, since that accident and many others, has buckled so much swash in the movies. (To say nothing of the fact that, for The Lord of the Rings, he spent vast amounts of time in New Zealand, the adrenaline-sport capital of the world, resisting most of those temptations.) Yet when it comes to doing stunts, he doesn’t hesitate. “I have one of those doctors who tell me, ‘Go for it, man!’ ” he says. “Does he encourage me? No. But I’ve tried to put myself in a physical condition where I’m able to do that stuff.”
“And, of course, for sex,” I toss out, just to lighten things up.
“Yeah, all those mercy lays I got,” he says, mock-wistfully. “Because I was the kid with the broken back!”
“Oh—you need mercy ****s,” I repeat, nearly spitting up my tea. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in my life. You probably had to beg for it.”
Bloom won’t let go of the joke: “I was the kid with the broken back!”
By all evidence, Orlando Bloom has chilled. But the adrenaline chip in his brain is still switched on. He seems to have transferred its capacity from bone-breaking feats to potentially soul-crushing risks on a more emotional plane. “I like to feel alive, man,” he says. “Part of it is danger, part of it is love. Although I’m trying not to have those two realms cross too much. I’ve had a few dangerous women. My cousin once told me, ‘You’re tall, you’re handsome—and you’re gonna have to apologize for it the rest of your life.’ He imparted that information to me.”
“So…you’re still looking for mercy ****s.”
“That’s right!” he says, clinging to modesty with both hands. “I still am. Exactly!”
If, as he claims, Bloom is a bit accident-prone, he is among the most graceful clods ever born. He moves slowly but always seems to be out ahead of you; he gestures rarely, but when he does, every joint of every ?nger seems to be underscoring a different, subtle part of his idea.
Despite all the old injuries (broken bones all over his body—here from a motorbike spill, there from something strange that happened with a rope), his athletic prowess is not lost on those with whom he’s worked. Liam Neeson marveled at Bloom’s ?ght scenes in Kingdom of Heaven. “Some actors are utterly lost if you put a sword in their hands,” he says. “Orlando is all physical grace—and there’s Errol Flynn again!”
Cameron Crowe, for his part, actually directed Bloom in the only television ad Crowe has ever shot, a quasi parody of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, shot in black and white, for Gap clothing. All we saw was Orlando Bloom and Kate Beckinsale running through shadowy streets. “He has this Hard Day’s Night physicality,” Crowe says. “Watching what we’d shot in the Gap commercial, there was Kate Beckinsale—who’s hot!—and we couldn’t stop looking at him. He’s exploding with life.”
The whole blend of modesty and the movie-star looks can only have contributed to Orlando Bloom’s celebrity. In an average week, even with no ?lm release in sight, he’s in a hundred articles worldwide—the more so when anything kindles (or is stanched) with the dazzling Kate Bosworth.
That said, he’s not entirely allergic to Hollywood tricks. For instance, when celebrities stay at hotels, as most people know, they check in under false names, like Fred Flintstone or Jay Gatsby. Billy Bob Thornton, for instance, sometimes uses the name of a certain writer. For her part, Kirsten Dunst uses a musical reference.
“I’m not exactly sure what name Orlando goes by,” Dunst says, “but I bet it’s something sexual. He’s very ?irty. And that’s easy to understand. You should have seen them in Kentucky: Girls lined up holding signs with his name on them. He was very gracious.”
Typically, Bloom regards most attention as a ?eeting thing. And he’s not interested in spending precious time on ?eeting things. Especially tabloid attention.
“That stuff is not a part of my daily life,” he says. “Most of it is bullshit. It even becomes hard to have a casual friendship, because suddenly you’re ‘linked to’ that person.… I guess there’s got to be a cost. You can’t live the spoils without having the ?ip side of that coin. So you learn to live with it.”
Curiously, Bloom is so famous in costume that until recently he was able to blend in when he moved around in public. Cameron Crowe recalls that when the cast of Elizabethtown was shooting and living in Kentucky, girls were lining the streets just to catch a glimpse of Orly Bloom. (Though no one except the tabloids actually calls him Orly.)
“He was incredibly famous, but no one really knew what he looked like,” Crowe says, still amazed. “In Lexington, there was a girls’ national soccer championship team in the hotel. These girls were actually walking the halls—they were roaming in packs—looking for him. I heard them saying things like, ‘He’s on the seventh ?oor!’ And he was standing right there. Right there. He just disappeared into the culture.”
That air of mystery is attractive to ?lm directors. Crowe recalls reading something Warren Beatty once said—that 75 percent of what people bring to a movie is their perception of the actor. “In that sense, it’s great to have a fresh guy to put in the center of a movie,” Crowe says. “We don’t really know who he is. Orlando is a clean slate. Since Tom Cruise in Risky Business, very few guys that age have been able to do a comedy or drama and be that interesting to look at—and to really hold the center of a movie.”
These days, Bloom’s mother more than compensates for his aversion to his tabloid press. (And of course, when it comes to propriety and accuracy, British tabloids make their American cousins look like Huxley’s Illustrated History of Gardening.) She clips it all, keeps track of his status as “the most downloaded human on earth,” and shuffles through the bags of fan letters he receives. Bloom recoils. “I keep saying, ‘Mom, I don’t want to know,’ ” he says. “I don’t want to see whether I’m on some chart. There will be a time when I won’t be. That doesn’t mean I’m not grateful. But I keep telling her, ‘They keep building me up, so they’re going to tear me down!’
“I keep getting asked what it’s like to be a heartthrob,” he adds, much amused by the unspoken joke: Tempus fugit. “There’s that next kid, believe me, who’s right there on my tail—and if he’s not right now, he’s gonna be!”
Bloom is convincing when he says things like this: offhand remarks a modest person would say so as not to seem like a preening, self-absorbed *** in a magazine article. And when he says he has too much self-doubt to believe the hype, there’s not a trace of posturing. A casting agent once told him that a little self-doubt will get you a long way: It makes you work harder, keeps you sharp. “If you think you can do it all,” Bloom says, suddenly showing some heat, “you’re just gonna sit back. Whereas I’m constantly working at it: doing more sword training for Pirates, getting coached on dialect to make sure it’s as good as it can be for Elizabethtown. I’m always working, because the one time I don’t, I guarantee, is when I’ll end up saying ‘D’oh!’ ”
He looks at his enormous wristwatch somewhat worriedly, for he actually has a dialect session in an hour or so, and more than once he has registered that it’s a real concern for him. (It was also the sole doubt Cameron Crowe had in casting him, though that one doubt was quickly put to rest, Crowe says.)
“Look, I just want to stay normal,” Bloom says, very normally. “That’s the biggest challenge: being able to sit in a café and watch the world go by.”
Granted, wide is the road to temptation and—at least until that next kid catches Orlando J. B. C. Bloom—his world is a sea of temptations. But he prides himself on learning lessons, even other people’s life lessons. “My dad once told me that one of his dreams was coming to Los Angeles, getting a Mustang, and driving it down Sunset Boulevard,” he says, beaming at the memory. “One day, it came true. And he got pulled over by the police. Know why they stopped him? Know why? He was driving too slowly! That’s a great story for me. He was soaking up the environment and he got done! ‘Sir, you got done!’ ”
In more than one sense, Bloom isn’t ?nished. Even at the outset of his career, he’s ever ?ickering with a Buddhist tendency here or there. He chokes at the fact that he’s in an industry where it’s a virtue to label its products (including actors). Yet he has no idea what his label should read. “I’m still trying to formulate the idea of who I am—and part of the problem of having these ideas and images projected on you is that it’s hard enough really ?guring that **** out!”
Even in the Shangri-la con?nes of Bloom’s temporary home, time does not stop, and the hour is running late. At a dialogue coach’s office across town, there’s a new identity to burnish: some “R” sounds to harden, a few “A” sounds to ?atten out. Orlando Bloom shakes his head and eats one last bad blueberry. “There’s only a story in success so far,” he says, refusing to descend from the philosophical level before he ?ees the hotel out his private exit. “That’s why Cameron made a movie about failure—about ?asco. Because we all meet in the dirt. That’s where we meet.”
Marshall Sella wrote last month about Cameron Diaz.
The death of a blog
I dunno how many of the readers here frequent my Obsessions blog, but I thought I would let everyone know that I am killing that particular blog. See, the purpose for it was for info on my obsessions, stars, TV shows, anime, etc., but at this point I don't see a reason for having a separate blog for these things & am simply combining the two blogs into this one... No biggie....
So if there's anything there you wanted, best to get it. I will eventually get round to deleting the account....
So if there's anything there you wanted, best to get it. I will eventually get round to deleting the account....
Wizard News: Harry Potter gets ready to cast a spell on doll collectors
Hurley, NY (PRWEB) October 17, 2005 -- Just in time for the launch of Warner Bros. Pictures' upcoming feature film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, due in U.S. theaters November 18, 2005, the Tonner Doll Company, Inc., internationally-recognized for its life-like and truly authentic, high-end collector dolls, is primed to cast its own spell on collectors worldwide with the release of its Harry Potter Collector Dolls, featuring the much-loved characters of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
"I wanted to bring something magical and a little mysterious to these dolls," notes Robert Tonner, CEO and head designer of the award-winning Tonner Doll Company. "Knowing the joy these characters have brought to so many all over the world was an inspiration. By creating the dolls in limited editions, fans will know they’ve acquired something truly unique and special."
The Harry Potter doll, the first in the series, is truly amazing. Each and every nuance and detail is captured, right down to Harry Potter's infamous lightning-shaped scar, inflicted by Lord Voldemort.
"I felt that fans would want Harry Potter to look as true to the character in the movie as possible," said Tonner. "The prototype took months to perfect - it was definitely a labor of love. I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out, and I think true Harry Potter fans will share my excitement."
At 17" tall, the doll features remarkably engineered jointing with 14 points of articulation, offering the collector unlimited posing and play possibilities. Crafted of hard plastic and high-quality vinyl, with hand-painted face detail, this is a doll to be played with and enjoyed. The costuming, taken directly from movie reference, reflects Tonner’s attention to detail and use of high-quality fabrics. From the sweater Harry Potter wears at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, to his flowing school robe, the authenticity is near perfect and makes this a true collector doll in every sense of the word.
The full article and a photo of the Harry At the Yule Ball doll can be found here.
"I wanted to bring something magical and a little mysterious to these dolls," notes Robert Tonner, CEO and head designer of the award-winning Tonner Doll Company. "Knowing the joy these characters have brought to so many all over the world was an inspiration. By creating the dolls in limited editions, fans will know they’ve acquired something truly unique and special."
The Harry Potter doll, the first in the series, is truly amazing. Each and every nuance and detail is captured, right down to Harry Potter's infamous lightning-shaped scar, inflicted by Lord Voldemort.
"I felt that fans would want Harry Potter to look as true to the character in the movie as possible," said Tonner. "The prototype took months to perfect - it was definitely a labor of love. I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out, and I think true Harry Potter fans will share my excitement."
At 17" tall, the doll features remarkably engineered jointing with 14 points of articulation, offering the collector unlimited posing and play possibilities. Crafted of hard plastic and high-quality vinyl, with hand-painted face detail, this is a doll to be played with and enjoyed. The costuming, taken directly from movie reference, reflects Tonner’s attention to detail and use of high-quality fabrics. From the sweater Harry Potter wears at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, to his flowing school robe, the authenticity is near perfect and makes this a true collector doll in every sense of the word.
The full article and a photo of the Harry At the Yule Ball doll can be found here.
05 May, 2005
04 May, 2005
Rant! Whine! Squee!
WTF were they thinking!??!??!?! How the hell did they vote off Constantine when Carrie the Karoake Barbie is still there (as well as Scott aka the Turd that just won't flush) >_<. Ok, so his Nickelback wasn't that great, but that had to be the only bad performance he's ever done. He's Constantine!!! He's super-sexy-hottie-Greek-rocker-sex-on-a-stik guy.... He does things that make you fantasize about being a microphone!!!!!
ANYWAY
Watched AI tonite (coz you fuckers got me addicted to it now- and you know who you are!) and they were just super-fab... Now, Anthony's 1st song didn't do much for me, but the Backstreet Boys woulda shit themselves to hear how much better his version of "Incomplete" was... They're probably crying somewhere bcoz you know at least the gay one was watching. Vonzel was great! Man that girl blew me away... I may not throw things at the TV if at least Vonz could win... Bo was just..... guh.... *THUD*
And then there was Carrie.. now, I almost didn't completely hate her 1st song... but who told that useless twit she could sing "Bless the Broken Road"?!?!??!??!! I changed the channel bcoz the mute button was arguing... Wretched. Horrendous. Rascal Flatts should sue her sorry ass for slander!
Then there was House. (Yes I watched it damn you! Just shut up.) I still hate the bitchy boss in her behold-my-cleavage shirts ("fun bags" I think House called them- LMAO)... Sorry to see they're really working this Cameron loves House thing... but whatever... It was a good show & House is great... especially watching him outsmart & outthink Cutty...
ANYWAY
Watched AI tonite (coz you fuckers got me addicted to it now- and you know who you are!) and they were just super-fab... Now, Anthony's 1st song didn't do much for me, but the Backstreet Boys woulda shit themselves to hear how much better his version of "Incomplete" was... They're probably crying somewhere bcoz you know at least the gay one was watching. Vonzel was great! Man that girl blew me away... I may not throw things at the TV if at least Vonz could win... Bo was just..... guh.... *THUD*
And then there was Carrie.. now, I almost didn't completely hate her 1st song... but who told that useless twit she could sing "Bless the Broken Road"?!?!??!??!! I changed the channel bcoz the mute button was arguing... Wretched. Horrendous. Rascal Flatts should sue her sorry ass for slander!
Then there was House. (Yes I watched it damn you! Just shut up.) I still hate the bitchy boss in her behold-my-cleavage shirts ("fun bags" I think House called them- LMAO)... Sorry to see they're really working this Cameron loves House thing... but whatever... It was a good show & House is great... especially watching him outsmart & outthink Cutty...
28 April, 2005
Screen God
My friends have expressed concern that Kingdom of Heaven (which I'm hoping to watch just for Orlando Bloom's hotness ^_^) will be a booster flick for the Christian faith vs. the Muslims & portray the destruction of the Muslim faith as right... This concern comes from the trailers we've seen thus far for the movie. If this article is a good review of the movie, it may be worth seeing for more than the eye candy.
Ridley Scott's dazzling epic of the Crusades has attracted flak from historians and Islamic scholars, but will its combination of spiritual devotion and gore draw audiences into the fold?
Peter Stanford
Sunday April 24, 2005
The Observer
Religion and mainstream cinema tend not to mix, unless it's one debunking the other. And that's usually one-way traffic - Life of Brian, Dogma, The Pope Must Die, Amen. But then two things happened to change the relationship.
Ridley Scott's dazzling epic of the Crusades has attracted flak from historians and Islamic scholars, but will its combination of spiritual devotion and gore draw audiences into the fold?
Peter Stanford
Sunday April 24, 2005
The Observer
Religion and mainstream cinema tend not to mix, unless it's one debunking the other. And that's usually one-way traffic - Life of Brian, Dogma, The Pope Must Die, Amen. But then two things happened to change the relationship.
First, 9/11 focused attention as never before on the hostility between some parts of Islam and the West. Religion overnight became a matter not for a dwindling bunch of sad souls who needed to get out more, but a terrifying force reshaping our planet.
Then Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ broke box office records around the globe, despite being cold-shouldered as an uneconomic vanity project by the Hollywood studios on the grounds of its heavy Catholic content. They had assumed religion only sold if you were laughing at it and were proved spectacularly wrong.
Both events form the backdrop to Ridley Scott's controversial release, Kingdom of Heaven. The £75 million epic from Oscar-nominated Scott takes as its subject the Crusades, the 200-year collision between Europe and the East, Christianity and Islam, over the fate of the Holy Land.
Set in 1185, it follows Balian (Orlando Bloom looking at his most Christ-like), a blacksmith in rural France, who is claimed as his illegitimate son by a Crusader knight, Godfrey of Ibelin (Liam Neeson) and taken to Jerusalem. Balian has lost his faith after the suicide of his wife, but slowly regains it at the court of saintly Baldwin IV (Edward Norton), the King of Jerusalem, who practises and preaches tolerance between Christians and Muslims. However, zealots on both sides destroy Baldwin's 'kingdom of heaven' and when his power-hungry son-in-law Guy de Lusignan (Marton Csokas) succeeds him, the scene is set for a confrontation with the Saracen General Saladin (Ghassan Massound) which leads to Balian's heroic leadership of the siege of Jerusalem.
Kingdom of Heaven is, however, no run-of-the-mill variation on the popular theme of the historical thriller - all battle scenes, manly knees and banquets. Instead, Scott has directed a complex modern morality play, its dialogue dominated by high-minded talk of God, redemption, sin and punishment.
In a post-9/11 world, with British and American troops still in Iraq, the subject matter is inevitably sensitive. The film has already generated headlines. In the New York Times last autumn a series of Islamic scholars lined up to denounce Kingdom of Heaven as 'anti-Islamic', pandering to stereotypes and likely to offend Muslims.
Meanwhile, Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, a Cambridge academic and expert on the Crusades, has labelled it 'Osama bin Laden's version of history'. He questioned its historical accuracy, saying its basis lies in the romantic thrillers of Walter Scott, though screenwriter William Monahan has the support of academic experts in pointing to real-life figures and events as the basis for the major characters and events in the film.
What is true, however, is that the film gives religion - both Christian and Muslim, in their purest, most tolerant forms - the best and most respectful press it has got since The Song of Bernadette. And it manages, moreover, to tell its story without the usually de rigueur dollop of on-screen eroticism. The most you glimpse is the delicate shoulder of Baldwin's sister, Princess Sibylla (Eva Green) as she falls for Balian.
Such restraint is no accident. Scott is attempting to lure back to the big screen the hitherto non-cinema-going audiences from God-fearing middle America who turned out in such impressive numbers to watch Gibson's chaste epic. They need have no fears of being corrupted by sexual depravity in Kingdom of Heaven and may feel uplifted by the depth of its search for the hand of God at work. An essential part of the Gibson package was its gore with every physical indignity Jesus suffered on his Via Crucis recreated in extraordinary and lingering detail. Christian audiences, the zealous Australian actor-cum-director had realised, have no problem with blood and guts - it's just sex they're saving till they're married. Kingdom of Heaven is also not for the squeamish as heads are chopped off, guts torn out and the severed head of arch-Crusader, Reynald de Chatillon (Brendan Gleeson) displayed on a pole - a historical inaccuracy, according to one expert.
Yet it is less Kingdom of Heaven's very specific sexual restraint than its occasionally laboured parallels between the 1180s and the post-9/11 world that will probably be most debated by audiences. Five years ago there would have been no question that the Saracens should be portrayed as baddies, all treachery and turbans. Yet Saladin is shown as dedicated to peace and understanding between the great religious faiths as Bloom's Balian and his protector and patron, Baldwin. Saladin is even gracious in his final victory and pauses to right a fallen crucifix as he enters Jerusalem. Dramatic licence, arguably, but it has led to accusations that Scott is too indulgent of the Muslim side. He may just, of course, have felt the need to redress the balance after centuries of remorseless anti-Saracen bias in most Western accounts.
The film chooses unambiguously to place the blame for the Crusader-Saracen conflict, which causes the eventual downfall of Baldwin's kingdom, squarely at the door of fundamentalists in both camps, but overall it is the Christian fundamentalists who come off worst of all. At a time when the Catholic church has just elected as its leader a cardinal who has previously described other faiths as 'gravely deficient', Kingdom of Heaven presents a deeply unappealing picture of all those who feel their religious belief is superior to any other. Lusignan, the new king of Jerusalem, is egged on to battle by the Knights Templar, brandishing their crosses and talking of 'killing a Muslim to get to heaven'.
Balian hammers home the point about the supremacy of religious tolerance when he hands over the Holy City to Saladin. God, he tells his followers, is in your head and your heart, not in any particular place.
It is in its loud and repeated plea for religious tolerance and understanding rather than its precise historical accuracy that Kingdom of Heaven risks most. Evangelical Christians went to see The Passion of the Christ because it buttressed their own faith position. They may not welcome being told that Jesus, Mohammed and Jehovah are all much of a muchness.
And, in a broader political context, the careful, even-handed, pacific approach of Baldwin and Balian to reconciling East and West stands in stark, and no doubt intentional, counterpoint to the efforts of George W. Bush on his own self-avowed 'crusade' in today's Middle East.
But Scott's central theme is one of faith lost and reborn in Balian. Though it is not a new one for him - Maximus in Gladiator went through the same process - in Kingdom of Heaven he invokes religion more pointedly. Even though he does so with great respect for the principle, if not the institutions, that may not be enough to save him from criticism, as other directors such as Pasolini (The Gospel According to St Matthew), Godard (Hail Mary) and Scorsese (The Last Temptation of Christ) can readily testify. For if cinema traditionally looks on religion as a suitable target, then many believers have come, despite Gibson's efforts, to regard film as a secular, godless medium that is not for them.
26 April, 2005
Wizard News: Update: New Pope on record as critical of Harry Potter
Wizard News: Update: New Pope on record as critical of Harry Potter: "Update: New Pope on record as critical of Harry Potter
by David Haber, Wizard News Editor
According to the Contact Music web site, new Pope Benedict XVI has criticized J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books for 'undermining the soul of Christianity'.
This claim apparently stems from a statement the Pope made more than two years ago when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger. He was praising Gabriele Kuby, author of the book 'Harry Potter - Good Or Bad', for revealing the hidden agendas behind the world's most popular children's books.
The then Cardinal Ratzinger is quoted as having said, 'It is good that you explain the facts of Harry Potter, because this is a subtle seduction, which has deeply unnoticed and direct effects in undermining the soul of Christianity before it can really grow properly.'
"
by David Haber, Wizard News Editor
According to the Contact Music web site, new Pope Benedict XVI has criticized J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books for 'undermining the soul of Christianity'.
This claim apparently stems from a statement the Pope made more than two years ago when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger. He was praising Gabriele Kuby, author of the book 'Harry Potter - Good Or Bad', for revealing the hidden agendas behind the world's most popular children's books.
The then Cardinal Ratzinger is quoted as having said, 'It is good that you explain the facts of Harry Potter, because this is a subtle seduction, which has deeply unnoticed and direct effects in undermining the soul of Christianity before it can really grow properly.'
"
19 April, 2005
OMG!! *SQUEE* Finally got to watch the American Idol performances & not just the results show for once! *thud* How amazing was Constantine?!?!? Sex on a stik!! Anwar was great doing "September", but that performance leaves no doubt this boy is soo way gay! He was fab, tho, just like a one-man party all over the stage- love it! God, Anthony... could that song have BEEN more perfect for him.. and just watching him shake his li'l booty all over the stage... *dies* FOR THE LOVE OF GODDDD!! BO! OMG! "Vehicle" has never been so sexy... *passes out thinking about AI boys* Really, everybody was great.. except maybe Carrie. What look was she going for exactly?!!?! That hair was so 80s... poor Oklahoma girl, it's not her fauly.. I don't imagine they get alotta 70s dance exposure in OK.. 
18 April, 2005
Birthday Spam!!
Posted birthday spams for Sean Bean & Watari (from Yami no Matsuei) on Obsessions! I love my Picasa & my Hello!!
06 April, 2005
*SQUASH*
It figures. I finally get up the courage to make the biggest move of my life (even if for most people it's not that far) and it falls out from under me. They just got Mike's taxes figured up & it turns out he owes over $300... plus like 300 from last year that they may start garnishing his wages for... I don't understand everything perfectly, but I get the general idea. All their spare money is gonna go to paying his fucking debt to the IRS off & there's no chance of moving in any time soon.. Plus, apparently, they couldn't find any decent houses for us to all rent anyway that weren't in the ghetto. Fuck it. WHy did I think anything would work for me?!?!? Not like anything ever does... Fine. I'll start trying to save my & Brian's $$$ & we'll find some place here in town to move, then I'll find another job before I go postal at Fountainview & start picking off CNAs with the laundry cart.
Brian's napping right now. I just got the e from Dani trying to explain all of this.... I really don't wanna tell him. He was really looking forward to getting out of here, out of LP.. we both were... And he was so excited about living by Larry... Dammit. There goes my day.
Brian's napping right now. I just got the e from Dani trying to explain all of this.... I really don't wanna tell him. He was really looking forward to getting out of here, out of LP.. we both were... And he was so excited about living by Larry... Dammit. There goes my day.
02 April, 2005
The Beast
 | You scored as The Beast. Your alter ego is The Beast! But that is only a name... you are kind hearted and sweet, people just misunderstand you.
Which Disney Character is your Alter Ego? created with QuizFarm.com |
01 April, 2005
Jeff Foxworthy's Take On Indiana
If you consider it a sport to gather your food by drilling through 18 inches of ice and sitting there all day hoping that the food will swim by, you might live in Indiana.
If you're proud that your region makes the national news 96 nights each year because it's the coldest spot in the nation, you might live in Indiana.
If your local Dairy Queen is closed from November through March, you might live in Indiana.
If you instinctively walk like a penguin for five months out of the year, you might live in Indiana.
If someone in a store offers you assistance, and they don't work there, you might live in Indiana.
If your dad's suntan stops at a line curving around the middle of his forehead, you might live in Indiana.
If you have worn shorts and a parka at the same time, you might live in Indiana.
If your town has an equal number of bars and churches, you might live in Indiana.
If you have had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed a wrong number, you might live in Indiana.
YOU KNOW YOU ARE A TRUE INDIANA RESIDENT WHEN:
1. "Vacation" means going east or west on I-74 (or I-70) for the weekend.
If you're proud that your region makes the national news 96 nights each year because it's the coldest spot in the nation, you might live in Indiana.
If your local Dairy Queen is closed from November through March, you might live in Indiana.
If you instinctively walk like a penguin for five months out of the year, you might live in Indiana.
If someone in a store offers you assistance, and they don't work there, you might live in Indiana.
If your dad's suntan stops at a line curving around the middle of his forehead, you might live in Indiana.
If you have worn shorts and a parka at the same time, you might live in Indiana.
If your town has an equal number of bars and churches, you might live in Indiana.
If you have had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed a wrong number, you might live in Indiana.
YOU KNOW YOU ARE A TRUE INDIANA RESIDENT WHEN:
1. "Vacation" means going east or west on I-74 (or I-70) for the weekend.
2. You measure distance in hours.
3. You know several people who have hit a deer more than once. (Or a deer hit them)
4. You often switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day and back again.
5. You can drive 65 mph through 2 feet of snow during a raging blizzard, without flinching.
6. You see people wearing camouflage at social events- including weddings.
7. You install security lights on your house and garage and then leave both of them unlocked.
8. You carry jumper cables in your car and your girlfriend knows how to use them.
9. You design your kid's Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit.
10. Driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow.
11. You know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter and road construction.
12. Your idea of creative landscaping is a statue of a deer next to your blue spruce.
13. You were unaware that there is a legal drinking age.
14. Down South to you means Kentucky.
15. A brat is something you eat.
16. Your neighbor throws a party to celebrate his new pole shed.
17. You go out to a tail gate party every Friday.
18. Your 4th of July picnic was moved indoors due to frost.
19. You have more miles on your snow blower than your car.
20. You find 0 degrees "a little chilly."
21. You actually understand these jokes, and you forward them to all your Indiana friends.
27 March, 2005
I am a new soul...
You Are a Newborn Soul |
 You are tolerant, accepting, and willing to give anyone a chance. On the flip side, you're easy to read and easily influenced by others. You have a fresh perspective on life, and you can be very creative. Noconformist and nontraditional, you've never met anyone who's like you. Inventive and artistic, you like to be a trendsetter. You have an upbeat spirit and you like almost everything. You make friends easily and often have long standing friendships. Implusive and trusting, you fall in love a little too easily. Souls you are most compatible with: Bright Star Soul and Dreaming Soul |
I got the rest... but I'm not sure about the "tough" part...
| TABITHA | ||
|---|---|---|
| T | is for | Tough |
| A | is for | Articulate |
| B | is for | Brilliant |
| I | is for | Innocent |
| T | is for | Thoughtful |
| H | is for | Honest |
| A | is for | Amorous |
Type A Personality
You Have A Type A- Personality |
A- You are one of the most balanced people around Motivated and focused, you are good at getting what you want You rule at success, but success doesn't rule you. When it's playtime, you really know how to kick back Whether it's hanging out with friends or doing something you love! You live life to the fullest - encorporating the best of both worlds |
23 March, 2005
21 March, 2005
Major life-changing decisions...
This is my scared face =_=
I've made a very significant decision today, and I'm hoping it's the right one.. for me.. and Brian. My two (and only remaining) friends have been talking at me for years now to move to Mishawaka where they live &, specifically, trying to get me to move in with them. Well, they brought it up today at just the right moment.. and I agreed. We talked excitedly and made plans for what kinda house & all the things we can do... then they hadda go back home & they dropped me off at my mother's. No, of course I didn't tell her my plans.. are you mental ?!?!? O_o She'd have kittens! See, all afternoon now I've been stressing (had an awful night at "family night" anyhow, but that's norm anymore) about the decision... Was I right? Should I have thought about it? Will our houses really work well together in one house? Why am I stressing?!?!??!
See, we've all co-habitated twice before at an apt. I used to have.. and both times it ended badly. But we were all also very dif't people at the time & I had a bf at the time who wasn't who I thought he was & didn't really get along with them... but Brian's here now & he likes them & they adore him so everything should be ok, right....? Plus, our friendships with each other are much closer than I think they were back then... But I'm still stressing out *wigs & runs around flailing arms wildly* I'm not positive what I'm afraid of... well, that's kind of a lie.. I'm kind of afraid of one person or another insisting on control of things.. things going badly.. horrible ruination of friendships for all of eternity... but really there's no reason to fear all that stuff... *believes she is being very Tohru-esque just now*
So, I guess I just need some manner of confirmation.. on this issue... some assurance that everything will turn out ok in the end.. all live happily ever after, etc.. What I can't get is why was I so sure this afternoon and now I'm worrying my fluffy li'l damn head off....
M0m's having a "psychic party" on Friday at her house.. maybe I'll scrape the $30 up & see if this lady has any advice.. maybe I'll just stop fucking worrying over what seemed like a great idea earlier.. I've always been a very spontaneous and instinctual person.. but lately I'm out-thinking and over-thinking and over-disecting everything.... This is part of where the suggestion came from. I've been very un-happy with myself lately - usually I'm a very happy, optimistic, upbeat person and recently I've become this irritated, pessimistic, sarcastic creature I don't really recognise & can't stand. And Yuki & Kyou thought it might really help me, and my chibi, if we moved away to a fresh atmosphere and me a new and better (happier) job. It just all sounded so simple & such the perfect solution this afternoon... happy little "nakama" commune artist home family fantastic thingy & it will be wonderfull... so why am I suddenly freakin' out?
That's right.. because I'm Tohru. I think I'll go make rice balls.
I've made a very significant decision today, and I'm hoping it's the right one.. for me.. and Brian. My two (and only remaining) friends have been talking at me for years now to move to Mishawaka where they live &, specifically, trying to get me to move in with them. Well, they brought it up today at just the right moment.. and I agreed. We talked excitedly and made plans for what kinda house & all the things we can do... then they hadda go back home & they dropped me off at my mother's. No, of course I didn't tell her my plans.. are you mental ?!?!? O_o She'd have kittens! See, all afternoon now I've been stressing (had an awful night at "family night" anyhow, but that's norm anymore) about the decision... Was I right? Should I have thought about it? Will our houses really work well together in one house? Why am I stressing?!?!??!
See, we've all co-habitated twice before at an apt. I used to have.. and both times it ended badly. But we were all also very dif't people at the time & I had a bf at the time who wasn't who I thought he was & didn't really get along with them... but Brian's here now & he likes them & they adore him so everything should be ok, right....? Plus, our friendships with each other are much closer than I think they were back then... But I'm still stressing out *wigs & runs around flailing arms wildly* I'm not positive what I'm afraid of... well, that's kind of a lie.. I'm kind of afraid of one person or another insisting on control of things.. things going badly.. horrible ruination of friendships for all of eternity... but really there's no reason to fear all that stuff... *believes she is being very Tohru-esque just now*
So, I guess I just need some manner of confirmation.. on this issue... some assurance that everything will turn out ok in the end.. all live happily ever after, etc.. What I can't get is why was I so sure this afternoon and now I'm worrying my fluffy li'l damn head off....
M0m's having a "psychic party" on Friday at her house.. maybe I'll scrape the $30 up & see if this lady has any advice.. maybe I'll just stop fucking worrying over what seemed like a great idea earlier.. I've always been a very spontaneous and instinctual person.. but lately I'm out-thinking and over-thinking and over-disecting everything.... This is part of where the suggestion came from. I've been very un-happy with myself lately - usually I'm a very happy, optimistic, upbeat person and recently I've become this irritated, pessimistic, sarcastic creature I don't really recognise & can't stand. And Yuki & Kyou thought it might really help me, and my chibi, if we moved away to a fresh atmosphere and me a new and better (happier) job. It just all sounded so simple & such the perfect solution this afternoon... happy little "nakama" commune artist home family fantastic thingy & it will be wonderfull... so why am I suddenly freakin' out?
That's right.. because I'm Tohru. I think I'll go make rice balls.
15 March, 2005
Slaving away at "The Embracing"
... which would be the name of the novel I'm writing, for those who dunno. I've started this book at least three other times & everytime I had a great start then it went dead. When I started it this last time again (thanks to encouragement from Tal x Thorn *bows*) I started into a new part of it & realised it was the same story I'd been writing before.. the other 2 I'd begun with got stuck because they were different parts of the same story *DOH!* So, I've been working it at a couple weeks now & have ripped the pages out & started from another direction at least 4 times ;_; but I think I've got the right starting point now.. unfortunately I'm stuck at this one spot & I've been here for a few days now... it's making me nuts..... ack!!
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