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This Week...
We hope you're all still standing, saluting the flag and singing God Save The Queen following this week's Oscars triumph for The King's Speech and, by extension, Blighty as a whole. But do take some time out of your busy patriotism schedule to register for Empire's fantastic Big Screen event, where you can put down a deposit of £10 on your ticket to what promises to be a heck of a weekend this summer at the O2. Once you've done that, do you want to know more about Philip K. Dick, hear from the makers of Rango or learn about medieval warfare with James Purefoy? It's all happening over on Empire. Oh, and keep a close eye on the site next week: it looks like we're going to have webchats next Thursday and Friday. While we can't announce who's involved yet (clue: they're smokin' hot) you're going to want to come along and join both events. Helen O'Hara
Deputy Online Editor, Empire | | |
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|  | | | Oh my God, the man from prison has written back to me!
Lucy has some interesting penpals | | |  | | |
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Oscars 2011: The Highs, The Lows And The James Francos
Another Oscars came and went with its share of 'Eh?' moments, many of them provided by co-host James Franco who seemed determined to spend the evening acting out some kind of weird Wes Anderson cheese dream. This, while something we'd pay to watch, probably wasn't entirely what the Academy had in mind. Alongside him, Anne Hathaway was a predictably safe pair of hands – charming, funny, jaunty and musical in equal measure – and, for a few eccentric minutes, Kirk Douglas appeared to leave his stamp on things. Fittingly for a man who did much of his greatest work with Stanley Kubrick, Douglas's cameo defied any attempt at instant analysis. It was an appearance that may, in due course, need its own Warren Commission, but, weird or wonderful, it was great to see him back in the bright lights. | | | |
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|  | | Jameson Empire Awards 2011
Done In 60 Seconds Finalists Drum roll, please, ladies and gentlemen... For we can finally reveal the identities of the five lucky people who have been chosen as finalists at this year's Jameson Empire Done In 60 Seconds competition! View finalists' videos Vote For The Award Nominees Have you voted for your favourite films of 2010 in the Empire Awards poll yet? Well why on Earth not? After all, you're the good people who will decide whether Inception can beat The King's Speech and The Social Network, or whether Toy Story 3 was a better comedy than Four Lions. Head on over to our nominations page and get deliberating, cogitating and digesting on this year's shortlists... Vote now |
|  | | Video: Helen Mirren On The Tempest
The Tempest, one of the great bard's last plays, isn't the kind of movie you'd normally associate with Disney. It's all sharp edges, punchy themes like gender politics and colonialism, and it's substantially swearier than The Aristocats. In this version by Frida director Julie Taymor, Prospero becomes Prospera. It's a role played with typical fire by Dame Helen Mirren. She flew back from the Oscars especially to tell us all about it - well, we like to think she did - and share some fascinating insights into her approach to acting, Roland Emmerich's Shakespeare-knocking thriller Anonymous and following in Gielgud's footsteps. Shakespeare did write those plays, Roland. So there. |
|  | | Video: Unknown Interviews
There's a small but distinct trend for films with deliberately vague titles - movies called things like 'Somewhere' and 'Anonymous' and 'Tch, Whateva' (*we may have made one of these up). Unknown, though, relates to the predicament of Liam Neeson's car-crash victim, who wakes from his accident in Berlin to discover that his wife doesn't know him and a whole lot of Europeans want him dead. Do those Europeans never learn? That was one of the questions we didn't ask Neeson when we met up with him to discuss his character's very particular set of problems. We also chatted to his lovely co-stars Diane Kruger and January Jones, as well as director Jeune Collet-Serra and producer/titan Joel Silver. |
|  | | Philip K. Dick: The Man And His Movies
Philip K. Dick was born in 1928 and died this week in 1982. What's more, the latest film based on one of his stories is out tomorrow: The Adjustment Bureau stars Matt Damon and Emily Blunt as star-cross'd lovers ordered apart by mysterious men in hats of the titular Bureau. All in all, it seemed like the perfect time to take another look at the career of a man who has inspired legions of filmmakers (even if hardly any have bothered adapting his works faithfully) and who lived a very strange life… |
|  | | Rango's Animation In Progress
Gore Verbinski's animated extravaganza Rango is a rather unusual piece of work. For a start, it's not the most obvious story ever: a chameleon with an identity crisis (Depp) tries his best to save the inhabitants of a small Western town from the drought that threatens their community. Oh, and nasty beasties who want to eat them. But it's all beautifully animated and generally spectacular looking, so when we came across these step-by-step illustrations of the film's animation process, we thought we'd share them. |
|  | | Video: Abigail Breslin And Gore Verbinski on Rango
A crazy chameleon in a Hawaiian shirt, blind bank-robbing moles, killer pistol-crazy snakes and over-protective eagles are the menagerie of crazy critters in Rango. Johnny Depp voices Rango, a wannabe actor chameleon who accidentally winds up in the town of Dirt and becomes an unlikely hero. We caught up with one of the film's stars, Abigail Breslin, who plays Priscilla the mouse-child, as well as director Gore Verbinski to find out more... |
|  | | Video: James Purefoy Talks Ironclad
It's the 13th century and tyrannical blood-thirsty King John is wreaking havoc on England and any of those mischievous b%$tards who forced him to sign the Magna Carta. Only a group of Knights Templar can defend Britain, and especially stronghold Rochester Castle against him. We caught up with one of them, James Purefoy, the Templar king Marshall, to talk about freezing on set, his close relationship with his huge sword and what it felt like chopping a man in half. We asked the last one from a safe distance. |
|  | | How To Make A Great Documentary
"On the face of it, the fall of Eliot Spitzer was just another sex scandal", says director Alex Gibney at the start of his new film Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced one-time "Sheriff of Wall Street". Whether it's the US military, the behemoths of corporate fraud, New York politics or Wikileaks (his next project), Gibney never bends his knee. Client 9 follows the mould. A sultry and slick movie that revels in the myths of America's largest city, it follows the metronomic rise and disgraced fall of Spitzer. Gibney sat down with Empire to talk through the five essential elements that constitute his movies. |
|  | | Name That Shakespeare Movie Picture Quiz
Shakespeare, eh? Apparently he was some kind of Elizabethan whiz kid with words what wrote loads of plays and sonnets and graffiti and limericks and haikus and so on. Anyway, he was a definitely a very big deal. Such a big deal, in fact, that movie-film types are still dead keen on taking Shakespearean tales and putting them on the big screen, be they transported into high schools, faraway planets or back gardens full of gnomes. So as our Helen Mirren has brought together another troupe of actors and actresses to make a new version of The Tempest we thought we'd make a little picture quiz – some are more traditional Shakespearean adaptations, some are, um, looser interpretations of the folio. Think cartoons. Anyway, good luck, go well, and remember… this above all: to thine own self be true. Or something like that. |
|  | | Video: Archipelago Interview
Set around a family holiday going slowly and painfully wrong, Archipelago pairs up director/auteur Joanna Hogg with her muse Tom Hiddleston, a British cinematic double-up we're likely to see much more of in years to come. Since their first collaboration on 2007's Unrelated, Hiddleston's career has gone from strength to strength, with Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen and Terence Davies all picking him for movies this year. The pair told us about their rapport and Edward, Archipelago's troubled central character, in a film Hiddleston describes as "Lost meets Lars von Trier". |
|  | | Video: George Nolfi On The Adjustment Bureau
Set around a family holiday going slowly and painfully wrong, Archipelago pairs up director/auteur Joanna Hogg with her muse Tom Hiddleston, a British cinematic double-up we're likely to see much more of in years to come. Since their first collaboration on 2007's Unrelated, Hiddleston's career has gone from strength to strength, with Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen and Terence Davies all picking him for movies this year. The pair told us about their rapport and Edward, Archipelago's troubled central character, in a film Hiddleston describes as "Lost meets Lars von Trier". |
|  | | Patagonia Director Marc Evans On His Road Movie
A haunting road movie, Patagonia entwines the story of two separate couples trying to rediscover their sense of identity in the arid flatlands of Argentina and lush valleys of North Wales. If you married the tender sensibility of Harold & Maude with the sweeping landscapes of Walter Salles' Motorcycle Diaries, translated it into Welsh and Spanish and had Matthew Rhys riding across it on horseback, you wouldn't be too far off. For director Marc Evans, native of North Wales, it was a personal journey too. Empire caught up with him for an interesting chat about his new film, the UKFC and Sigourney Weaver. | | | |
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A cake in the shape of an actual heart, to promote the DVD release of Saw: The Final Cut on March 7. Mmm, tasty tasty anatomy. | | | |
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|  | | | |  | |  | |  | |  | | | Sam Rockwell, Dance Machine. | | Lava, anyone? | | Dune meets bedtime story classic Goodnight Moon. | | Baby likes paper tearing. |
If you have any timewasters to share, then e-mail them in to me. | | | |
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The Adjustment Bureau 
It's Inception for romantics, a love story told through the medium of science-fiction — or maybe not; it's hard to peg this by genre. By keeping the pace quick, the explanation light and the characters strong, Nolfi achieves the near-impossible: a film puzzle you won't mind leaving unexplained. | | | |
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This Week's Video Trailers And Clips
Every week, our video player will update to show trailers and clips from the week's movie releases listed above. | | |
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Another Year 
Measured in pace, yet thoroughly gripping and completely accessible. The title soft-sells the picture, but it's among the best of this or any year. And Manville should clear some shelf space for well-deserved awards. | | | |
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