screen cap/pirates of the caribbean: on stranger tides trailer/disney
Minutes ago, the much-awaited Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides trailer was released online, offering not only the first proper look at the fourth instalment of Disney's swashbuckling pirate franchise, but a glimpse at Australian model-turned-actor Gemma Ward in her fourth film role, as a mermaid. In fact it offers two glimpses of Ward. And she looks a little cranky in one of them. We'll have to wait until May 20 2011 to see the rest. Amusingly, Yahoo's much-touted "world premier" of the clip was beaten by a mystery YouTube channel (possibly connected to Disney), after Yahoo's trailer failed to fire at 8.00am AEDT. Here is the trailer:
screen caps/pirates of the caribbean: on stranger tides trailer/disney
OK so as already mentioned, the Cycle 6 launch of Australia’s Next Top Model is tonight at 7.30pm on Fox 8. In what is shaping up to be a jam-packed model doco/film fortnight, 7.00pm tonight also sees a Sydney screening of the 2009 film Tiger, from the Sydney Beaufort collective that is (also as previously reported) headed up by Sydney actor/producer/comedian James McFay. Check the Facebook page for details - or watch this live stream, above. The film, a love story about two models in Tokyo, has had a number of screenings already, including one in LA, with a DVD launch in Sydney in March. This time it's being presented in collaboration with Anina Trepte’s 360 Fashion network. Then on the 23rd and 28th of July, the Melbourne International Film Festival will present two screenings of Picture Me (trailer below), made by model Sara Ziff and her partner Ole Schell.
Filmed on the road over five years, while Ziff was working the world’s runways, Picture Me takes a hard look at the modelling business – or as hard a look as you can without actually naming any names.
Launched last year - before the Terry Richardson controversy - the film recounts many troubling anecdotes about the modelling business.
Model Sena Cech reports that during one casting session she was asked by the photographer to undress and grab his genitals.
Another story, which was cut from the film prior to its release at the request of the model in question, concerns the alleged sexual assault of a 16 year-old by one of the world’s “top” photographers.
On Tuesday, Tom Ford’s directorial debut, A Single Man, was released on DVD. Although critically-acclaimed, the film made just US$9million at the domestic box office – and, seemed virtually impossible to find on download at the time of release, due to an apparent lack of geek interest. Miramax hopes it will now find its audience. To celebrate the DVD launch, yesterday NPR radio re-broadcast an interview Ford did with NPR’s Fresh Air host Terry Gross back on December 14 last year. Perhaps the original became subsumed by the deluge of publicity Ford did at the time of the film's theatrical release, because this iv does not appear to have travelled far afield. Below is an MP3 of the full 20 minute interview.
In Ford's own words:
* His critical fashion eye first manifested itself at age seven/eight when he started noticing his shoes were "the wrong shape".
* His earliest Gucci collections in 1995 and 1996 were the most influential, but his last few collections for Gucci and for Yves Saint Laurent, from 2003-2004, were more interesting, thanks in large part to his exposure to the ateliers at Gucci and YSL. “I had learned at that point how to make more complex clothes, both cerebrally as well as technically”
On the 1970s ambiance of the velvet hiphuggers etc in his breakthrough 1995 Gucci collection vs contemporary fashion:
“They were a throwback to a period in the 1970s when fashion was more touchable. Today, you know, fashion is not - our beauty standard today is harder. It's beautiful but it's off-putting. It's like, don't touch me, I'm hard”.
On beautiful women and ageing:
“If you're a beautiful woman, you're incredibly powerful within our culture. The world operates differently for you. Then, at a moment in time, and it has nothing to do with you, it's like the carpet is just ripped out from under you, and the way that you've operated in the world no longer works. So Julianne's character is struggling”.
Ford also spends quite some time discussing women’s breasts:
“Cars look like someone took an air pump and pumped them up. They look engorged. Lips pumped up, breasts pumped up, everything is pumped up. And it's also kind of off-putting. It's sexual but in such a hard way that it's, for me, not sexual at all, whereas the 1970s, breasts were smaller. People were not wearing bras. Farrah Fawcett's sexuality and sensuality was a very touchable sexuality. She was kissable. She was friendly. I don't understand all these breasts right now, and they don't look like breasts. They look like someone's taken a grapefruit half and inserted it under your skin. I mean it's - it doesn't even bear any resemblance to what a natural breast looks like. But we're starting to think that this is what women should like. And young girls are looking at these breasts and thinking, oh, I need to go have my breasts done because they've lost touch with what a real breast actually looks like. I find it fascinating. I find it disturbing. I mean, you could consider it more fascinating because we're becoming post-human”.
Judging by this interview with Ford, conducted by GQ magazine earlier this year - in which Ford volunteers “I could really improve breast implants” - he spent quite some time on A Single Man’s promo trail talking breasts. Which is interesting, because there are none in the film. Instead, lots of long, lingering, homoerotic slow-mos of semi-clad and naked men, as you might expect from a gay male love story (and indeed, much contemporary fashion imagery).
Of course, Ford is entitled to an opinion about breasts. But given criticism that Miramax deliberately “de-gayed” the marketing of A Single Man, by playing up the (strictly platonic) relationship between Colin Firth’s and Julianne Moore’s characters in the trailer and posters to give the film more mainstream appeal – with even the film's lead actor Colin Firth weighing into the brouhaha, calling it "deceptive" – a cynic might well ask if there was a deliberate strategy on Ford's part to pump up the breast talk and play down the cock?
Here's the trailer for anyone who missed it:
It’s not like Ford has never deliberately marketed to straight men before.
The following ads lensed by Terry ‘King of sleaze’ Richardson for the Tom Ford for Men fragrance campaign hardly seem to be pitching to the gays (although one other shot in the campaign, of the same bottle nestled in a man's buttocks, did).
Curiously, when it came to flogging his men's perfume, Ford appeared to overcome his personal distaste for the “post-human” breast shape which he believes looks “like someone's taken a grapefruit half and inserted it under your skin” and hired a model with the fruitiest boobs he could find.
Frockwriter must admit that we did a double take when we saw the shots rolling in of last night's Christian Dior Fall/Winter 2009/2010 haute couture show in Paris, which was staged in the grounds of the Rodin Museum. One model appeared to be a dead ringer for Australia's Tiah Eckhardt. The model in question was, in fact, Sweden's Frida Gustavsson (number 24 in this Style.com pic gallery of the show). As it turns out, Eckhardt was otherwise occupied yesterday, and coincidentally in her own garden of earthly delights: marrying her babydaddy Patrick Delaney in front of a small group of friends in the Rose Garden at Centennial Park. The bride wore? Not Dior haute couture, but a vintage strapless white leather minidress. The happy couple may soon be about to celebrate some other very exciting news. No, not another baby - Eckhardt revealed to frockwriter that she has just auditioned for one of (numerous) upcoming instalments of the X Men film franchise.
These include X Men: First Class, in which James McEvoy and Michael Fassbender have already been cast, with Twentieth Century Fox reportedly also interested inTwilight star Taylor Lautner.
This could be a very interesting career move for redhead bombshell who already has quite the cult following, following her appearances in French Playboy and a raft of other art titles, in addition to an advertising campaign for high profile British lingerie brand Agent Provocateur.
Eckhardt also confirmed that she did indeed shoot a campaign for iconic French lingerie and swimwear brand Eres earlier this year in Paris - as first reported by frockwriter. The shoot was with David Bellemere, with whom Eckhardt had previously worked for French Marie Claire. Currently fronted by Lara Stone, Eckhardt's campaign was shot a year in advance she reports.
Eckhardt was unable to provide any other details regarding X Men, beyond the fact that she auditioned in Sydney for the Christine King casting agency, which contacted her through her mother agency, Viviens (two other Viviens models also did the X Men audition). Coincidentally, Viviens also represents Gemma Ward.
Well after last week's news that Gemma Ward has signed to play a small role as a mermaid in Pirates of the Caribbean 4, comes word that she may have been in Sydney this week auditioning for another action quadrilogy: Mad Max 4: Fury Road, which is due to be filmed in Australia. Ward’s Sydney model agency, Viviens, confirmed to frockwriter that Ward did indeed fly to Sydney this week to do a Mad Max “workshop” for two days at Fox Studios. Has she already been cast? Viviens was not sure and Ward's other agents were unreachable. The film’s cast already includes Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer and Zoe Kravitz. Ward was of course an actress before she became the world’s number one ranked model on models.com, just 14 when she appeared in Elissa Down’s 2001 feature Pink Pyjamas. Ward then co-starred in Down’s critically-acclaimed 2008 feature, The Black Balloon, before moving on to the small role of ‘Dollface’ in Bryan Bertino’s 2008 thriller The Strangers.
Coincidentally, Ward lookalike Amanda Seyfried, now 25, was also 14 when she made her acting debut: playing Lucy Montgomery in the tv soap As The World Turns.
Seyfriend now has a ten year body of work behind her, including Mean Girls, Mama Mia!, Jennifer's Body and the tv series Big Love.
Ward hasn’t been twiddling her thumbs in the profile stakes – just not in Hollywood.
And a breakthrough role might well be just one casting call away.
Yesterday's lead story in The Sunday Telegraph's gossip pages reported that Gemma Ward is about to embark on her fourth film role, having scored a small speaking role as a mermaid in Pirates of The Caribbean 4. No source was cited beyond a “friend” – who was not actually quoted confirming the role, just stating that "Gemma's focus is definitely on acting. She's spent the past year studying the craft full time in New York." In spite of the fact that neither IMDB’s Pirates of the Caribbean 4 nor Gemma Ward pages had any reference, the story whipped across the net. Not that frockwriter would presume to cast aspersions on The Sunday Telegraph's sources (well, apart from perhaps those involved in the Pauline Hanson photo debacle), but we did want to make an effort to check things out before putting digit to keyboard. And an extremely well-placed business associate (who we can’t name either unfortunately) confirmed it's true - Ward has definitely signed on for a role in the film.
The comments were made in A Supermodel Betrayed , an extensive feature which recounted the story of Ward’s rise and fall in the fashion business, following weight gain (the latter of course being prominently documented by The Sunday Telegraph in a front page story last year).
Last night in Sydney, Romance Was Born's Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales unveiled City Limits, a short film directed by Kris Moyes. Shot over one day in Sydney and starring local model Tanja Gacic, it's a fantastic - and hilariously camp - little collaboration that was designed to showcase RWB's Autumn/Winter 2010 Nightmare on Wall Street collection (but which will now be shopped to the film festival circuit by production company Revolver Films). A little less Freddy Krueger than you might anticipate - and a little more Blade Runner-meets-Kill Bill-meets-The Rocky Horror Picture Show - City Limits portrays Gacic as a DayGlo Spandex-clad corporate assassin who goes postal at a cocktail party. Best moment: Gacic clubbing Guy Pearce-lookalike Matthew Charleston with a decapitated head. The impressive crew includes cinematographer Danny Ruhlmann (Little Fish) and 1st AD Deb Antoniou (Where The Wind Things Are). Below are a few screen caps. But click here to see frockwriter's Posterous pic gallery of location shots (images courtesy Kris Moyes/Revolver). And click here to watch the film itself.
Sarah Jessica Parker gave a boost to the early careers of sass & bide’s Heidi Middleton and Sarah Jane Clarke by sporting some of their clothing on Sex And The City. Her latest Australian fave is apparently Sydney eco label Bassike. Fashion kingmaker Parker would quite obviously have her pick of clothes to wear on and off the big and small screens, with designers throwing their collections at her. Parker is currently on the promo trail for Sex And The City 2 and did a press conference in New York yesterday. And here she is off duty in New York on Saturday in Bassike’s ‘Dot’ logo T. Bassike’s Sydney PR, Emma van Haandel, is very good at getting clothes on visiting celebrities downunder – remember Sienna Miller in another EVH stablemate, Scanlan & Theodore, last year? Just how did the clothes get to SJP? According to a Bassike spokeswoman, the T-shirt was gifted by a mystery “friend” of the brand in the US, where it had its official launch one month ago at Barneys.
But not only did Parker wear the T-shirt, she personally called the Bassike HQ at 4pm yesterday.
According to EVH, Parker rang to say how much she loved the clothes and ask could she "place an order"?
"Yes, it was a surprise" the Bassike staffer who took the call told frockwriter. The call was then passed onto sales manager Jono Alder – who apparently initially thought it was a joke.
En route to Parker now are two pairs of Bassike’s Slimrise jeans, some scoop Ts, one opal print T, the lightweight crew sweatshirt, a denim jacket, a jersey tank, the Galah print trench from the SS1011 collection and some swimwear. No credit card was needed according to EVH.
Launched by Deborah Sams and Mary Lou Ryan in 2006 as a capsule collection of organic cotton jersey T-shirts, pants and dresses, Bassike has grown into a cool little collection of basics, denim and tailoring. The SS1011 show included printed swimwear, some great jackets - two cases in point, the Galah trench and a funnel-necked utility parka – in addition to acid wash-look, high-waisted jeans and some striking striped knits and open-weave sweaters and tunics.
Here isfrockwriter’s Posterous pic gallery – only managed to get a few decent shots of that particular show. It’s one of several that I did not get a chance to blog during the week.
You can see the full collection on the Bassike website.
Just got off a conference call with The September Issue director RJ Cutler and 10 other bloggers. It was organised by Lionsgate, in connection with the release the DVD version on February 23. Over the course of the call - which I will add as an MP3 file once it's emailed - Cutler revealed a few interesting morsels of information. One of which was that over the next three days he will be shooting a behind-the-scenes of the New York Fashion Week preparations of Rag & Bone designers Marcus Wainright and David Neville. Another documentary perhaps? Kinda. Cutler is shooting "short vignettes" which will appear, he says, on Starbucks website and Facebook page. Ah the commercial realities of indie design - and filmmaking.
