A Star Is Born filming pushed back after Beyoncé announces pregnancy

Filming on Beyoncé's new movie A Star Is Born has had to be pushed back after the singer revealed she is expecting her first child.
Clint Eastwood's musical remake had been due to start shooting in February 2012, but insiders on the film told Deadline Hollywood that Warner Bros 'could push' the start date on the film.
It is also claimed the delay to the start of shooting will give them longer to find a suitable leading man after Eastwood failed to convince Leonardo DiCaprio to sign on.

Delay: Filming of A Star Is Born could be pushed back after Beyoncé announced she is expecting her first child with husband Jay-Z

Single Ladies hitmaker Beyoncé will take on the role previously held by Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland in the 1976 and 1954 adaptations, and Janet Gaynor in the 1937 original.
She will play up and coming starlet Esther Blodgett, later Vicki Lester, who falls for a has-been rockstar.
Beyoncé proved her acting chops in Oscar-winning musical Dreamgirls in 2006, as well as portraying Etta James in Cadillac Records.
The 29-year-old singer announced at last night's MTV VMA Awards that she and husband Jay-Z are expecting their first child together.

Congratulations: Kelly Rowland, who was in Destiny's Child with Beyonce and Michelle Williams, came forward to publicly offer her friend congratulations

And today her former Destiny's Child bandmate Kelly Rowland came forward to publicly congratulate her friend.
She told America's People magazine: 'I have known for quite a while, and she's happy, and Jay is happy, and that's all that counts.

'I think she'll be an incredible mother, because she's always been motherly. I think that she takes after so many traits from her mother. And I just think it's going to be so natural for her. Its natural for her now!'
Last night Beyoncé debuted her baby bump in an orange Lanvin gown and told the assembled press: 'I have a surprise!'
And the singer didn't let her pregnancy prevent her from bringing the house down with an energetic performance.
She cheered on Jay-Z, who performed new single Otis with Kanye West, before taking to the stage herself.
Arriving onstage in a purple glittery blazer and black trousers by Dolce & Gabbana, the mother-to-be said: 'I want you to feel the love that's growing inside of me.'

Content: The singer glowed with happiness as she clutched her baby bump

aternity chic: The 29-year-old chose a bright draped gown by Lanvin for her debut maternity dress

After a fabulous performance of Love On Top that attracted a standing ovation from the audience, Beyoncé ripped open her jacket and proudly rubbed her baby bump.
The cameras panned to the audience where Jay-Z was beaming, as his friend Kanye jumped up and down, smacking the father-to-be on the back and shaking him.
Beyoncé performed at the Roseland Ballroom in New York on August 14, and covered up her stomach with a sheath of fabric that draped lightly across her protruding bump.

Proud mama: After her performance Beyoncé ripped open her blazer and rubbed her baby bump

The announcement comes after a stellar summer for the Grammy-winner in which she headlined Glastonbury and released another hit album, 4.
Beyoncé, who has won 16 Grammy awards, said in a recent  interview that she feels she has achieved enough in her career to settle down and make family a priority.
'When you're young - 18 or 19 - you have the energy and drive. That's the time to work as hard as you can,' she told the September issue of In Style.

Congratulations! Jay-Z beamed from the audience while Kanye West thumped his friend on the back

'Now I'm a woman, and because I gave it my all, I can focus on my marriage.

'I can decide I want to have kids. I can be the mother I want to be and dedicate myself to my children.'
Beyoncé married rapper Jay-Z on September 4, 2008 in New York.

Cover up: Beyoncé covered her stomach with a sheath of material during a performance at the Roseland Ballroom on August 14

Speaking to Piers Morgan in June, she hinted: 'I always said I was going to have a baby at 30. I'm 29 now.
'But I also said I was going to retire at 30. So I don't know,' she said, adding: 'I am not retiring, I tell you.'
Pressed by Morgan she said: 'Only God knows, only God knows.'

Parents-to-be: Beyoncé and Jay-Z married in an intimate ceremony in New York on September 4, 2008

An Eastwood Chainsaw Massacre

Clint Eastwood is heading to the cinema and popping on those 3D glasses to watch his son, Scott Eastwood, as he gets set to star in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D. Set for release next year, the film is the latest in the most peculiar of horror franchise - no two films are much alike in that cinematic canon - and from the plot description, this one sounds no different. The story, yet again everything that came after the 1974 original (although in a contemporary setting, apparently), and involves Leatherface's cousin (!) and a scheming town mayor leading a lynch mob on the Sawyer residence and then there's a carnival? I dunno, the entire plot sounds rather ridiculous, but I guess by the 7th film in a franchise you have got to start adding something a little bit different to the mix. And, you know, 3D chainsaws! VVRRRRMMMMM!

The cast, alongside this Eastwood fella are all pretty much no names to me, but I'll always be excited about a new Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie no matter what. It's a sickness, I tellsya!

Scott is a good looking man - much like his father was - so, umm, we've got that to look forward to! Although, I think Clint's going to have to face facts that he'll be watching his son get sliced and diced by Leatherface's favourite weapon since the men in these movies don't tend to make it out alive. Let's face it though, this news is only particularly interesting if you do indeed imagine Clint Eastwood, of all people, popping on down to his local cinema and paying to see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D. Can you imagine? Oh gosh! Maybe he'll show up at the premiere in support! That'd be incredible and highly unlikely. I get a big ol' grin picturing Julia Roberts watching her niece, Emma, in Scream 4 and laughing wildly at the jokes. Tony Curtis though? Don't you just think he'd be stonefaced throughout all of his daughter Jamie Lee's horror pictures of the late 1970s and '80s? You know Janet Leigh was on board though!

What other respectable famous actors do you think have had to sit through slasher movies they otherwise wouldn't have bothered with simply because of family ties?

Review: Hereafter

Hereafter
Dir. Clint Eastwood
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 130mins

If one must pinpoint a pivotal moment in Clint Eastwood’s septuagenarian career it would have to be the moment his character performs a morally questionable act of mercy upon a young boxer in Million Dollar Baby, who lies crippled in a hospital bed with little motivation for survival. That Eastwood has always been intrigued – or, even, outright fascinated – by death is not anything you couldn’t surmise with a quick glance of the man’s oft enviable resume, but since his character walked out of that hospital, euthanasia kit in hand, Eastwood’s film’s have progressed to even more morbid territory with more than a hint of acknowledgment that, yes, he is quite an old man and that death is nearer than far. Like, ya know, whatever.

Invictus feels like an anomaly amongst a roster of films that includes Letters from Iwo Jima, Gran Torino and even Space Cowboys. Now comes Hereafter, which finds Eastwood discussing the possibilities of life after death in his most obvious fashion yet. It’s such a shame then that the film feel as if it has being directed by an actual corpse, the finished product ending up as not only one of the worst films of this or any other year, but surely the nadir of Eastwood’s career.

Eastwood’s film follows three individuals who have all been affected by death; Cécile De France’s disaster survivor Marie Lelay, Matt Damon’s likeomgforreals psychic George Lonegan, and Marcus – played by twins Frankie and George McLaren – whose twin brother has died in a traffic accident. That they’re based in three separate countries doesn’t stop Eastwood and screenwriter Peter Morgan from contriving them into the same location by film’s end for group hug therapy at a book fair (A BOOK FAIR!!) that is so perfunctory that even Derek Jacobi can’t seem to muster up excitement to play himself.


Beginning with a scene set during the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that killed 230,000 people, during which de France’s sexy, rich, talented TV host Marie survives – but the 8-year-old girl she separates from her mother, presumably, does not – Hereafter then continues for two hours to follow her as she takes paid leave from her French television news anchor position to write a book about her experiences with the “hereafter”. De France certainly plays Marie like a woman on the brink of complete and utter meekness and the angriest she gets is when the marketing posters of her spruiking Blackberry telephones are taken down all over Paris and nobody told her. It’s a good thing she could take a quick trip into the French mountains to visit a doctor at a chalet and sip tea in the courtyard or else she might have a mental breakdown at the mere unfortunatenesses of it all.

Over the other side of the ocean is Damon’s George, a man who actually really is a psychic. We know this because he sits in rooms lit only by lamps with low-watt bulbs. His brother is Jay Mohr and he wants to spin George into a get rich quick scheme, but upon meeting the bouncy Melanie (the severely-coiffed Bryce Dallas Howard) – in an Italian cooking class that runs the gamut from how to chop tomatoes to how to chop more tomatoes – he realises he’s just had enough of this life and takes his six month severance package and takes a holiday to England. As one tends to do when they’ve been laid off from their only source of income, naturally.

And lastly, in England, is Marcus, who is in desperate need of contacting his twin brother on “the other side” that he steals money from his foster parents and attends psychic readings that are omgsofunny because we all know psychics are fake, but, oh wait, George isn’t! Naturally they cross paths, not too long after the young boy survives the London tube bombings that killed 56 people and injured 700 others. And to think, I haven’t even mentioned the deadbeat counsel estate mother, a laughable representation of the book publishing industry and the strings-laden fantasy romance sequence that would be laughed off the screen if it were anyone but Clint Eastwood.


Hereafter’s five-hour running time is so glacially paced it’s maddening. Roughly nine hours into Eastwood’s subtle-to-the-point-of-non-existence film I actually found myself throwing my hands in the air in defeat as Eastwood donates several minutes to Marie reading a letter. That’s it! She reads. She stands and she reads. Not out loud, but to herself. Or how about the long sequence in which George is given a guided tour around Charles Dickens’ London house for, quite literally, no reason at all other than a sloppy excuse to get his character in yet another drab, poorly lit location.

12 hours of this could be acceptable if the characters spoke about anything worth speaking about, but they don’t. When George reveals one character’s past, they cry some tears and are then vanquished from the picture. Because treating childhood abuse victims with such abrupt nonchalance is what I expect from a gloomy and morose film such as this. All these characters talk such endless waffle that it’s hard not to imagine Eastwood’s editor Joel Cox and Gary Roach slumping over the control panels in the editing booth; why spout gooey mumbo jumbo for 15 hours when you can do it for 18 hours instead?

Hereafter is nothing more than 23 hours of wasted opportunity. Even if the opening scene – one scene that somehow garnered it an Academy Award nomination over the likes of TRON: Legacy, Scott Pilgrim vs The World and Monsters, which uses minor effects sequences to greater potential – is admittedly quite impressive, what is it actually good for? Five minutes of dazzling visual effects, albeit with the stench of tackiness, in service of a story that didn’t deserve the dust it was surely covered with.


There isn’t an exciting moment to be found within its 37 hour running time. Perhaps Eastwood and Morgan just chose the wrong characters to focus on? Surely not everyone who survived the tsunami had the same boring monochromatic vision. Surely not all psychics – legitimate or not – are this wet. Surely not all British twins are this inert and look like characters from Angela’s Ashes. There’s nothing tangible to get an audience’s mind running as to the possibilities of the hereafter that Clint so desperately wants us to feel. Eastwood offers nothing close to a spiritual experience with his nonplussed direction and his actors are nothing more than sounding boards, ironically lifeless ones at that, for Morgan’s preposterous nonsense.

Laugh out loud moments are dotted about in between the tired, rubbish philosophical gobbledygook. Noodles for brains and a cold, empty space where it’s heart should be, Hereafter uses disasters for its narrative thrust, but merely ends up being a disaster itself. For a film about finding solace in death, Hereafter proves to be even more of a lifeless shell than its shockingly obvious Blackberry and Virgin Air product placement would suggest. F

Five Shots: Hats