Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2015 i Empire

BRYAN SINGER’S LAST X-Men movie, 2014’s Days Of Future Past, was an epic affair that combined characters from both the original X-Men trilogy and the 2011 reboot, X-Men: First Class, spanned dual timelines, and grossed $750 million, making it the biggest in the 15-year history of the franchise. The challenge thrown down to Singer, by Singer, is clear: top that . But with X-Men: Apocalypse, he’s confident of success. “It’s a big monster of a movie,” says the director, taking a break from pre-production in Montreal to talk exclusively to Empire and show us extraordinary concept art. “The stakes are so high and global and the villain is so mythic. It’s definitely an X-Men movie, but it really feels different.” This time, the action takes place in 1983 (“It’s very…

SARAH GADON V EMILY WATSON HAVE YOU EVER MET THE QUEEN? • No, I haven’t, but I would love to be in her presence, because she seems so stoic and intelligent. 0 points • No, but William and Kate came to the premiere of War Horse and were charming. 1 point EVER WATCHED A ROYAL WEDDING? • I got up early and had breakfast and watched part of Wills and Kate’s. It was a real event, even in Canada. People got up at four in the morning to watch it. 1 point • I watched the Diana wedding on telly. We took our kids into town on William and Kate’s wedding day, but all we managed to see was the back of someone’s head. 1 point DO YOU WATCH THE QUEEN’S SPEECH? • I do!…

The 68th Cannes Film Festival kicks off in May, so we asked our resident Cannes guru, Damon Wise, to pick the blockbusters and arthouse aces that could soon be rocking your world. THE OPENER Emmanuelle Bercot’s La Tête Haute marks only the second time in the Festival’s history that its opening film will be directed by a woman (the first, Un Homme Amoureux, came in 1987). Hopes are high that the French drama, starring Catherine Deneuve, will break a bad run of openers, including last year’s risible Grace Of Monaco. THE MIND-BENDER Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster stars Rachel Weisz, Colin Farrell and Léa Seydoux in what is described as “a love story set in the near future where single people… are obliged to find a matching mate in 45 days.…

Among all the big names and movie legends, one of the most charming moments of this year’s Jameson Empire Awards belonged to two guys just starting out: Rob Kenyon and Oliver Jones. The winners of this year’s Jameson Empire Done In 60 Seconds competition for their incredible one-minute remake of Ghostbusters, their speech to a star-studded room was warm, funny and affectionately received. The duo, based in Sutton Coldfield, pipped three other finalists to the post (see sidebar, right), and were chosen by this year’s judging panel, including directors Ben Wheatley and Jon S. Baird, producer Nira Park, Bauer Media CEO Paul Keenan and broadcaster Edith Bowman. We caught up with them for a chat... Have you come back down to earth yet? Oliver: Sadly, it was back to the…

RELEASED May TBC CERTIFICATE 18 DIRECTOR Joe Lynch CAST Salma Hayek, Hiroyuki Watanabe, Laura Cepeda, Jennifer Blanc RUNNING TIME 92 mins. PLOT Tattooed prostitute Everly (Hayek) has crossed her employer, Japanese crime lord Taiko (Watanabe). Hence she’s under siege in a deluxe apartment building, forced to fight off increasingly proficient underworld goons. That’s about it. ON PAPER (AND IT LIKELY took one side of a cocktail napkin to scribble down the whole yarn), Everly is a trashy treat. Santanico Pandemonium herself, Salma Hayek, as a gun-packing, gam-flashing one-woman army. A Die Hard-riffing location (tower block) and setting (Christmas). And an inexhaustible army of colourful foes, thanks to the never-not-fun-to-see-getting-slain yakuza. It’s hard to see how this wannabe cult classic could go wrong. Sadly, it did. The opening sequence is an…

RELEASED May 8 CERTIFICATE 15 DIRECTOR Bharat Nalluri CAST Kit Harington, Peter Firth, Jennifer Ehle, Tim McInnerny, Tuppence Middleton, Elyes Gabel RUNNING TIME 104 mins. PLOT British intelligence officer Sir Harry Pearce (Firth) finds himself blamed after terrorist Adem Qasim (Gabel) escapes from custody. Believing Qasim was helped by someone inside MI5, Pearce enlists ex-agent Will Holloway (Harington) to find the traitor and thwart a terror attack. FROM THE HAMMER Quatermass films of the 1950s through to macho spin-offs like the Callan and Sweeney movies of the 1970s, there was once a strong tradition of bringing British TV hits to the big screen. Outside of comedy, which has yielded everything from On The Buses and Dad’s Army to Mrs. Brown’s Boys D’Movie, the form has tailed off lately... so this…

RELEASED May 15 CERTIFICATE 15 DIRECTOR Olivier Assayas CAST Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloë Grace Moretz RUNNING TIME 124 mins. PLOT Along with her younger PA Val (Stewart), respected actor Maria Enders (Binoche) reluctantly agrees to revisit Maloja Snake, the play that brought her to attention back when she was 18. Only this time she is asked to take on the older, more embittered role that forces her to question acting and herself. ITS MISLEADING TITLE suggests a dull-ass film about life in a nunnery but Clouds Of Sils Maria is anything but. Olivier Assayas’ thoughtful drama takes on big themes (youth versus experience, art versus commerce) delivered in small terms, enlivened by two terrific performances from Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart, who became the first American actress to win…

RELEASED May 22 CERTIFICATE TBC DIRECTORS Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead CAST Lou Taylor Pucci, Nadia Hilker RUNNING TIME 109 mins. PLOT In Italy, Evan (Pucci), an American drifter, meets Louise (Hilker), a local girl with whom he becomes instantly entranced… However, she isn’t completely human and can be dangerous. HAVING BARGED IN ON his girlfriend at a particularly unfortunate moment when she is writhing on the kitchen floor half-transformed into a giant octopus, our astonished hero (Lou Taylor Pucci) takes the next quiet moment in their relationship to ask calmly, “Are you a vampire, werewolf, zombie, witch or alien?” Not least among the strengths of Spring is that she isn’t any of these, though there are moments when she seems to be a combination of them all. There’s a fully…

This is a classic day to be here on set...” Jurassic World producer Frank Marshall knows a thing or two about classic days on set. He was there when Harrison Ford shot the Arab swordsman. He was there when the DeLorean went back to 1955. He was even there when Roger Rabbit got framed. So when he leans across and whispers the above to Empire, we sit up straight and pay attention. It’s Wednesday, July 16, 2014. Cameras are being prepped for Scene 162 in the Hammond Creation Lab, a scientific workshop of ludicrous hightechness. There are giant coolant vats, animal spines in fizzing blue liquid, an egg hatchery, an entire wall of gleaming amber. But this morning’s action takes place in the smaller chamber next door. This is the…

SPINOSAURUS JURASSIC PARK N/A THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK N/A JURASSIC PARK III 3 kills (Cooper, M.B. Nash, T-Rex) 1 wound (Amanda Kirby) TOTAL KILLS: 3 TOTAL WOUNDS: 1 TYRANNOSAURUS REX JURASSIC PARK 5 kills (goat, Donald Gennaro, gallimimus, two velociraptors) 2 wounds (Dr. Ian Malcolm, Tim Murphy) THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK 18 kills, approx. (Eddie Carr, Carter, Dr. Robert Burke, entire crew of S.S. Venture (approx. 12), San Diego dog, San Diego civilian, Peter Ludlow) JURASSIC PARK III: N/A TOTAL KILLS: 23 TOTAL WOUNDS: 2 VELOCIRAPTOR JURASSIC PARK 4 kills (Gatekeeper, cow, Ray Arnold, Robert Muldoon) THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK 7 kills (all InGen goons) 2 wounds (Dr. Ian Malcolm, Dr. Sarah Harding) JURASSIC PARK III: 1 kill (Mr. Udesky) TOTAL KILLS: 12 TOTAL WOUNDS: 2 PROCOMPSOGNATHUS…

BRIEFING TOMORROWLAND: A WORLD BEYOND RELEASED: May 22 DIRECTOR: Brad Bird STARRING: George Clooney, Britt Robertson, Hugh Laurie, Judy Greer STORY: A curious teenager (Robertson) and a boy-genius grown up and gone to seed (Clooney) team up to discover — and perhaps even rescue — a mysterious Utopia that exists beyond this world. IS JUDITH HANN IN IT? That’s Tomorrow’s World, ya big idiot. This is based on the Disney theme-land. MY FAVOURITE RIDE BRITT ROBERTSON (CASEY NEWTON) “I love hills and I love water rides, so it’s Splash Mountain. It has all the elements I like: roller coasters, being splashed… what a ride!” “MY FUTURISM HAS ALWAYS GOT A RETRO EDGE TOIT.” BRAD BIRD MY FAVOURITE RIDE DAMON LINDELOF (PRODUCER,SCREENWRITER “The ride that I always have to do when…

1 How many films have you made with Colin Firth? Four. Fever Pitch, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Imitation Game and Kingsman. (Empire: Imitation Game?) Hang on a second… Let me rewind. Oh, Before I Go To Sleep! You have to give me that because I knew it was four. I’ve been in spy mode all day. Correct. 2 In Zero Dark Thirty, in your meltdown scene, what’s your last line before you walk out of the room? ( In perfect accent ) “Do your fuckin’ jobs and bring me people to kill.” Correct. 3 In Stardust, you play Septimus. Can you name the actors who played your six brothers? David Walliams. The guy from Adam & Joe whose name I don’t remember. Adam… Buxton! Jason Flemyng. Mark Heap.…

THERE’S NOT A CLOUD IN the sky in Reykjavík — not even an ash cloud. Volcano Bárðarbunga is rumbling and about to send Europe’s airways into panic, but there are no flight restrictions for Lana and Andy Wachowski today, as they zoom over the Harpa Concert Hall in a gleaming red helicopter. Even from a distance you can see a flash of Lana’s trademark pink dreads. “Their new toy,” chuckles a Sense8 crew member over the noise. Sense8 feels like familiar territory for the Wachowskis — anti-authority, pro-diversity, pro-kicking ass — but a partnership with Netflix affords them a sandbox unlike one any other studio can provide; their new series is pitched to Empire as “a ten-hour movie” more than once. This longform method of storytelling feels like a natural…

SETTING THE SCENE Before he dreamed up Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton wrote and directed this 1973 science-fiction Western, about a futuristic resort where you can live out The Good, The Bad And The Ugly without getting so much as a scratch. Until, that is, the robot gunmen (and rattlesnakes!) that the vacationers interact with go haywire. Watch out for the HBO reboot coming later this year. INT. WESTWORLD SALOON — DAY Tourists Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin) and John Blane (James Brolin) saunter up to the bar. Barkeep: What’ll it be? Blane: Whiskey. Barkeep: What about you? Martin: Um, vodka martini on the rocks with a twist of lemon. Very dry, please. Blane (shooting him a look): Just give him a whiskey. He’s new in town. (To Martin) You gotta get…

LAST YEAR MARKED THE first time that Pixar hadn’t had a movie in cinemas since 2005, after they pushed The Good Dinosaur (scheduled for May 30, 2014) back by 18 months. It was a move that had the naysayers naysaying, and the doom-mongers mongering doom. Was the San Francisco-based animation studio losing its golden touch? The early indications seem to suggest that the answer is a resounding ‘no’. In fact, we should probably think of 2014 as Pixar’s gap year — when the company took some time off, wove flowers into its hair and found itself. This year, it gets its Pixarse into gear with two movies — The Good Dinosaur, recalibrated after the departure of original director Bob Peterson, and Inside Out, which marks the return of Monsters, Inc.…

1 Yes, that is Tom Cruise, and not his stunt double Tom Crooze, in the last shot of the Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation trailer, clinging to the side of a giant cargo plane as it takes off. “Tom Cruise does things that almost no actor on earth would do,” says Rogue Nation’s writer/ director Christopher McQuarrie . “Tom and I don’t embrace realism as a working concept!” 2 At all times, Cruise was in mortal peril. “The concern was less about whether or not Tom was going to stay on the plane. The concern was any debris on that runway. At that speed, it would become a bullet. A bird strike would kill him.” 3 The plot sees the Impossible Missions Force threatened by The Syndicate, a rogue nation…

MOMENT Being discovered 21 years ago. If it wasn’t for Larry ( Clark, director of Kids ) and Harmony ( Korine, writer ) and my dad telling me to go downstairs and get discovered, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. One of the things I love about comics is how important that origin story tends to be. And I get to pinpoint a moment when my whole life took a complete detour. On MEN IN BLACK II the ending was meant to be on the World Trade Center, with both buildings flashing and making the city forget. We were supposed to film on the rooftop and they decided to do all of it in LA. After 9/11 they decided to erase the buildings because they had collapsed. Every…

RELEASED Out now CERTIFICATE 12A DIRECTOR Joss Whedon CAST Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, James Spader, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Samuel L. Jackson, Don Cheadle RUNNING TIME 141 mins. PLOT Having concluded that AI is the only way to protect the world, Tony Stark (Downey Jr.) creates Ultron (Spader). But Ultron becomes set on wiping out the Avengers and humanity. A FEW YEARS BACK, MAKING Avengers Assemble work looked daunting: bring together four franchise leads and two supporting characters, plus bad guy, and make it watchable for those without a PhD in Comic Book Backstories. Joss Whedon’s mistake was to make the job look so easy, and his reward was an exponentially harder task. Age Of Ultron makes its triumphant, giddily enjoyable…

RELEASED May 8 CERTIFICATE 15 DIRECTOR Jon Stewart CAST Gael García Bernal, Kim Bodnia, Nasser Faris, Claire Foy, Shohreh Agdashloo, Haluk Bilginer, Dimitri Leonidas RUNNING TIME 103 mins PLOT Iranian-born journalist Maziar Bahari (García Bernal) returns home to cover a general election. But when the Green Movement erupts and he extends his stay to cover the protests, he is imprisoned and interrogated. IT’S HARD TO MAKE A FILM about unjust imprisonment and torture without resorting to broad, black-and-white depiction of good and evil because, well, torture is bad. Here, by focusing on a single tale rather than sweeping condemnation, Jon Stewart introduces shades into the story of a journalist imprisoned as a spy. Before we go any further, full disclosure: Empire appears in Rosewater on three occasions, with our May…

RELEASED Out now CERTIFICATE 12A DIRECTOR James Wan STARRING Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham RUNNING TIME 137 mins. PLOT With his brother (Luke Evans) hospitalised, Deckard Shaw (Statham) vows revenge and sets out to send Dom (Diesel), Brian (Walker) et al to the big bodyshop in the sky. THE FAST & FURIOUS franchise has gone full Toon Town. What began six films ago as Point Break with pimped-out rims has since become the world’s most expensive Road Runner skit — essentially The Rock hitting Jason Statham over the head with an anvil while Vin Diesel sticks his finger in a light socket. Horror maestro James Wan (standing in for series stalwart Justin Lin) has embraced the saga’s unreserved silliness wholeheartedly, shaking the bottle, popping the cork and…

RELEASED May 22 CERTIFICATE 15 DIRECTOR Ana Lily Amirpour CAST Arash Marandi, Sheila Vand, Dominic Rains RUNNING TIME 99 mins. PLOT Arash (Marandi) loses his classic car to crook Saeed (Rains), collecting on a debt run up by Arash’s addict father, Hossein (Marshall Manesh). The Girl (Vand), a vampire, targets Saeed and Arash finds himself drawn to her. IT’S SLIGHTLY MISLEADING to bill this as “the first Iranian Vampire Western” because it’s actually an American film made by Iranian-American Ana Lily Amirpour in the Californian desert. Though the spoken language is Farsi and pumping oil-wells evoke the mid-East, it takes place in Bad Town, which has as much in common with Sin City as any real place in a real country. Of course, it wasn’t made under Islamic censorship, as…

As ranger Owen, you train velociraptors. Isn’t that a terrible idea? It’s amazing what you can get dangerous animals to do. I hung out with a guy called Randy Miller, who runs a company called Predators In Action. On his ranch he gets grizzly bears, lions, tigers and pumas to do simulated attacks. The training of a raptor would be closest to a bear, probably, because they can multi-task. It was really helpful — we didn’t want the raptor stuff to feel cartoony or stupid. There’s been a lot of buzz about that shot in the trailer, where they’re running alongside your motorbike… Yeah! I actually had a pretty major crash on that bike. I hit my front brakes while going through mud, went ass over teakettle and got thrown…

01 Jaws started shooting on Martha’s Vineyard on May 2, 1974. Jaws nerd extraordinaire Steven Soderbergh planned to start shooting sex, lies and videotape on May 2, 1988. Budget issues meant he couldn’t. 02 The very first scene to go before the cameras was Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) and Tom Cassidy (Jonathan Filley) discovering the remains of the nude bather Chrissie Watkins. To get crabs to move over the severed arm, prop master Frank Nifong poured hot coffee on them. 03 Mike Haydn played the guitarist at the opening bonfire. He had recently learned Otis Redding’s The Dock Of The Bay so played a similar chord progression with a more country twang. 04 For the early scenes in Amity, director Steven Spielberg shot footage of kids vandalising fences as…

1 HIGH-END SPECS It’s the directorial debut of Alex Garland, the razor-sharp-minded screenwriter behind Sunshine, Never Let Me Go and Dredd, meaning there are few finer purveyors of intelligent science-fiction working today. And he proves as smart a director as he does a writer. 2 PLAUDITS GALORE It received glowing reviews on its cinematic release in January, with Empire describing it as “stylish, elegant, tense, cerebral, satirical and creepy”. Alicia Vikander drew particular praise from critics for her role as Ava, the robot created by a reclusive genius (Oscar Isaac) and investigated by one of his employees (Domhnall Gleeson, right) to see if she has achieved true consciousness. It’s an astonishing performance you just have to see. 3 FOOD FOR THOUGHT It isn’t merely a thrill-ride — it’s also an…

GLUTTONY BOB MACK DEATH BY: Spaghetti hoops IN THE WORDS OF JOHN DOE: “An obese man… a disgusting man who could barely stand up.” “The most difficult part was the cockroaches. I just wanted to make sure they put some stuff in my ear and my nose so they didn’t climb into my head. They released seven crates of farm-raised cockroaches that had been cooled with dry ice so that they wouldn’t just run away, and they poured them on me. I had cockroaches in my underwear. Also, remember the spaghetti my face was in? It started off fresh, but went off after a few days, so the set started to smell pretty gross. “After Seven, I ended up working on the Austin Powers movies as a double for Fat…

1 HOMEWORLD REMASTERED COLLECTION PC Reboots, remakes, remasters; who really knows the difference anymore? So many of the last few years’ titles are being relaunched on new consoles that it’s easy to write them all off as a cynical cash-grab. But among the redundant reissues there is yet gold to be found, with some of the defining titles from decades ago given a fresh lick of paint and introduced to a new generation of gamers. A landmark strategy title, 1999’s Homeworld was the first real-time strategy to properly explore 3D space. It combined an emotionally charged story of refugees seeking to return home with a show-stopping score and large-scale space engagements between fighters, frigates and hulking ships-of-the-line. Snapped up in the firesale when former rights-holder THQ went under in 2013,…

1 AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON TITLE This is a harbinger of things to come. You have the dissonance and the melody of the Ultron theme, which is playing in the brass. The strings are really frenetic and rising and almost schizoid in nature. 2 BREAKING AND ENTERING There’s an introduction of a pretty important theme at the end, the Hulk and Black Widow theme, on that distant piano and strings. It’s establishing something that will recur throughout the movie. 3 BIRTH OF ULTRON If you notice, this starts as a very positive, hopeful cue, but then it takes a dark turn. The music isn’t just anger; there’s a vulnerability and sadness to the Hulk at times which is the back half of the cue. It has these two notes right…

IT’S TIME TO CELEBRATE Star Wars Celebration, the biennial event that, erm, celebrates all things Star Wars, took place in Anaheim, California, in mid-April, and J. J. Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy dropped by with some new info about The Force Awakens. Oh, and the second teaser for the film, which showcased some jaw-dropping imagery (starting with the vast hulk of an abandoned Star Destroyer sticking out of a sand dune) and revealed the hands (one robot) of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. It finished with a metaphorical bang, in the stirring shape of our first look at the returning Harrison Ford and Peter Mayhew as Han Solo and Chewbacca. “Chewie, we’re home,” says Han, to which his co-pilot growls a response. We don’t speak Wookiee, but we imagine he’s saying,…

RELEASED May 1 CERTIFICATE 12A DIRECTOR Thomas Vinterberg CAST Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge RUNNING TIME 119 mins. PLOT Farm girl-turned-heiress Bathsheba Everdene (Mulligan) is courted by three very different men: shepherd Gabriel Oak (Schoenaerts), wealthy farmer William Boldwood (Sheen) and dashing soldier Frank Troy (Sturridge). However, she is determined to make her own path. FAR AWAY FROM FRENZIED cities sounds an idyll: pretty baa lambs, rosy-cheeked milkmaids, tidy fields, rowdy harvest feasts. But Thomas Hardy (here pleasingly adapted by David Nicholls) was a country-boy realist with a bleak view of a rural society in decay. Far From The Madding Crowd is usually summarised as something like ‘a proud, passionate beauty arouses the ardour of three men’. But the thing is, proto-feminist heroine Bathsheba Everdene only has…

RELEASED May 8 CERTIFICATE 15 DIRECTOR Chris Rock CAST Chris Rock, Rosario Dawson, Gabrielle Union, Tracy Morgan RUNNING TIME 102 mins. PLOT Desperate to promote his lousy new movie, comic Andre Allen (Rock) spends a day with a newspaper reporter (Dawson). As secrets leech out and the encounter curdles, Allen, a recovering alcoholic, heads for the liquor store... SHOT ON THE STREETS of New York in loose, long takes, there’s a candid documentary charge to Top Five that suggests Rock’s found a hustling style to match his voice. Liberated by the film’s baggy, day-in-the-life structure, riffing on everything from Planet Of The Apes to wheelchair Presidents, he’s revived his free-range form. Rock directs himself here — or at least, a version of himself. The booze backstory is fiction, as is…

RELEASED May 29 CERTIFICATE 15 DIRECTOR Dan Fogelman CAST Al Pacino, Annette Bening, Jennifer Garner, Christopher Plummer, Bobby Cannavale RUNNING TIME 106 mins. PLOT Aged, cheesy rock star Danny (Pacino) belatedly receives a letter John Lennon wrote him 43 years ago and has an epiphany. He quits his tour and lavish wild-man lifestyle to rediscover his musical heart and connect with the son he’s never met. What could possibly go wrong? WE THOUGHT WE’D SEEN it all when it came to Al Pacino. And now he comes out singing. Danny Collins is far more comedic than most musician-searching-for-redemption tales and a vindication for Pacino, for so many years now given to eccentric and florid excess. Playing a rock star with fame and riches and the obligatory hot, young girlfriend may…

RELEASED May 8 CERTIFICATE 12A DIRECTOR Jalmari Helander CAST Samuel L. Jackson, Onni Tommila, Ray Stevenson, Jim Broadbent, Mehmet Kurtulus RUNNING TIME TBC. PLOT When terrorists down Air Force One in a Finnish forest, they hunt the President (Jackson) for sport. But they haven’t counted on the intervention of teenage hunter Oskari (Tommila), who has plenty of strings to his bow... OF ALL THE DIE HARD clones to walk into all the popcorn joints in all the world, Big Game looked different from the moment it was announced. It had a couple of quirks — a teenager as a hero, a glorious outdoor setting a world away from the usual boat/plane/ White House malarkey — that seemed to give it a chance at succeeding where others had failed. It even…

CHARLIZE THERON IS IMPERATOR FURIOSA Theron first saw Mad Max when she was eight. Well, some of it. “My mum and dad both loved it,” she says. “I was allowed to catch a glimpse, then I was told to go and make some tea.” In Mad Max: Fury Road, Theron plays Imperator Furiosa, buzz-cut badass who frees the five ‘Wives’, prized possessions of warlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), teams up with Max (Tom Hardy) and heads for the hills, kickstarting the hell-for-leather chase that furnishes the film’s relentless action. She did not, however, return to the source for inspiration. What she glimpsed between tea-making duties was enough. “What I think is powerful,” she says, “is to hold on to the things I vividly remember, rather than to re-see it, to…

During his later years, Orson Welles wryly quipped that, “I started at the top and have been working my way down ever since.” Though still in his early twenties, Welles was already a star when he arrived in Hollywood during the late 1930s. He had established a reputation as an actor-director of note on both the stage and radio, to such a degree that he was able to wrangle a contract that gave the first-time director total control over whatever he came up with. The result was 1941’s Citizen Kane, a masterpiece of intelligent, stylised filmmaking — one that also fatefully satirised powerful newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. As Hearst blustered and controversy raged, Welles started work on an adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s acclaimed novel The Magnificent Ambersons, which Welles…

1935. OUT: NOW. CERT. U “A cinematic benchmark… the film’s legacy is impossible to exaggerate.” DEDICATING HIS 1915 NOVEL THE THIRTY-NINE Steps to a friend, author John Buchan described it as his attempt at what he called “the ‘shocker’... the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and march just inside the borders of the possible”. Buchan’s words are accurate enough, but applied to the career of the man who would transform his story from ripping yarn to cinematic benchmark, they’re downright uncanny. Alfred Hitchcock would later tell François Truffaut, in their famous interviews, that he was drawn to The Thirty-Nine Steps by his “respect for a literary masterpiece”. However, Hitch also told Truffaut that he’d “read a story only once, and if I like the basic idea, I just…

AY, THERE’S THE STUB II I love your ‘Oldest Ticket Stub’ challenge, and I have something that should impress: an actual stub for Star Wars in 1977. No movie title — just the price and the cinema name (Ridge Cinema, now torn down). I really enjoyed hunting for it, so thanks! KATHERINE MADDOX, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA ****ING HELL In your most recent issue, you printed a rather amusing article about ‘23 Put-Downs’ in film, in which you rather coyly asterisked out the swear words, and yet a few pages later you have an interview with Carey Mulligan where her pull quote includes the printed word “fuck”. I have no objection to printed swear words, but do we have double standards or was it something to do with copyright? MIKE BRIDGEMAN, VIA…

OH, PHUKET Just wanted to share my Empire’s journey as the latest edition travelled the halfway across the world to Phuket, Thailand, last week. Here is the landmark Big Buddha along with Big Arnie — where else have readers taken their favourite movie mag to? MARK FELLOWES, PERTH, SCOTLAND Taking a leaf out of Q magazine’s ‘The World Of Q’ Letters regular, let’s kick off ‘The Empire On Which The Sun Never Sets’, where you guys send in snaps of your trips abroad with The World’s Biggest Movie Magazine. We may have to work on the title, admittedly. Still, for getting the ball rolling, Mark, please accept these Zavvi vouchers, and let us know where else the Terminator Genisys issue suddenly appears, naked, asking for your clothes, your boots and…