Emma Stone honed dance skills to play tennis great Billie Jean King

LOS ANGELES | Emma Stone admits she’s never been a sports player, so when she was asked to play former world tennis No. 1 Billie Jean King in the movie “Battle of the Sexes,” the Oscar-winning actress approached it from a different direction — dancing.

King, by contrast, who pioneered the fight for equal pay in tennis more than 40 years ago, pictured herself in Stone’s position as she worked with the actress to portray her character.

“I tried to put myself in Emma’s shoes. That’s really taking a risk portraying someone who is still alive. I‘m like, ‘God, that’s a little pressure,” King said.

Stone, 28, and the 73-year-old tennis legend became good friends while making the movie that tells the story behind King’s 1973 exhibition match against former men’s champion Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) to fight sexism in the sport and society at large. It opens in U.S. movie theaters on Friday.

Stone, who won an Oscar in February for song and dance musical “La La Land,” had never played tennis so her early sessions with King focused on footwork and choreography.

“I danced, so footwork was good. (And) I had been on stage before and when Billie Jean went out onto the tennis court it felt like her stage, so she really keyed in on that,” Stone said.

Later came weeks of practice on serves and cross-court backhands, but for Stone, even the simplest things were tough.

”We went to the U.S. Open … and I was sitting next to Billie Jean, and Sloane Stephens was catching balls and tucking them in her skirt and bouncing them with the racquet.

“It’s just little in-between stuff but that took me months to learn!” Stone said.

Professional players were hired to reproduce the shots in the match against Riggs, which was watched by more than 50 million on television.

For her part, King worked for weeks with screenwriter Simon Beaufoy recalling her experience in the early 1970s, when she not only established the break-away Women’s Tennis Association and took on Riggs but also was wrestling with her own sexual identity. She came out as gay in 1981.

More than 40 years after beating Riggs, women are still fighting for equal pay and rights on and off the tennis court, not that it comes as any surprise to King.

”If you read history, you realize how slow progress is and that it’s each generation’s job to try and move the ball forward.

“We’ve come further, but we’ve a lot further to go,” King said.

source: interaksyon.com

Tweeting accountant in spotlight over Oscar best picture blunder

LOS ANGELES | An accountant for the Academy Awards was at the center of a probe on Monday over how a meticulous procedure for announcing the Oscar best picture went disastrously awry, handing victory to “La La Land” before declaring “Moonlight” the real winner.

In a gaffe on Sunday that stunned the Dolby Theatre crowd in Hollywood and a television audience worldwide, presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were handed the wrong envelope for the movie industry’s top award.

The Wall Street Journal and celebrity website TMZ.com reported on Monday that one of the PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants responsible for handing out the sealed envelopes on Sunday had posted a backstage photo of actress Emma Stone on Twitter minutes before the mix-up.

The photo, from the Twitter account of Brian Cullinan, was later deleted but was still viewable on Monday on a cached archive of the page.

PricewaterhouseCoopers U.S. chairman Tim Ryan told USA Today on Monday that Cullinan was the person who handed the envelope to Beatty.

PwC did not respond to requests for comment on Cullinan’s tweet, nor his role in the envelope fiasco. Cullinan could not immediately be reached for comment.

The mistake was not rectified until the “La La Land” cast and producers were on stage giving their acceptance speeches. It was left to the musical’s producer, Jordan Horowitz, to put things right.

“Guys, guys, I’m sorry. No. There’s a mistake,” Horowitz said. “‘Moonlight,’ you guys won best picture. This is not a joke.”

It took PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has been overseeing Academy Awards balloting for 83 years, three hours to issue a statement confirming that Beatty and Dunaway “had mistakenly been given the wrong category envelope.”

“We are currently investigating how this could have happened, and deeply regret that this occurred,” the accountants said in a statement on Monday. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which organizes the Oscars, has made no comment.

An embarrassed Beatty carried the envelope in his hand to the glitzy Governor’s Ball after the show, with the writing clearly saying “actress in a leading role.” “La La Land” star Stone had been awarded that Oscar moments before.

Brand management experts said it could take years for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to recover.

“This is not advanced math. PwC had to get the right name in the right envelope and get it to the right person,” said Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University, calling the blunder a “bit of a branding tragedy.”

DOUBLE PRECAUTIONS

Under a tried and tested PwC procedure, just two accountants know the names of the 24 winners after their names are placed in two sets of sealed envelopes. The two accountants also memorize the winning names.

Tradition has it that the envelopes are taken separately in two briefcases to the Academy Awards venue. The two accountants — in this case Cullinan and Martha Ruiz — are driven there separately in case an accident or traffic should befall them.

The pair then stand off stage at opposite sides and hand envelopes to the respective presenters as each category is announced.

Last week, Cullinan told the Huffington Post that the procedure for dealing with the hand-off of an incorrect envelope, other than signaling to a stage manager, was unclear.

“It’s so unlikely,” Cullinan told the Huffington Post.

Anthony Sabino, a law professor at St John’s University in New York, said that although precious minutes passed, the error was corrected quickly.

“It’s not as if we woke up this morning, or if it had been uncovered after the telecast was over. That would have really have been a black eye,” Sabino said.

Sabino said that compared to accounting fraud at other companies in the past, “this incident diminished vastly to a vanishing point.”

The “Moonlight” filmmakers were gracious about the error.

Director Barry Jenkins told reporters back stage that he was given no immediate explanation for the mix-up but that “it made a very special feeling even more special, but not in the way I expected.”

“Please write this down: The folks from ‘La La Land’ were so gracious,” Jenkins added.

source: interaksyon.com

Emotion-filled ‘La La Land,’ ‘Moonlight’ lead Golden Globe nominations

LOS ANGELES | “La La Land,” an ambitious musical about two dreamers falling in love in Hollywood, and the intimate coming of age drama “Moonlight” led nominations for the Golden Globes on Monday, underscoring their frontrunner status in the long road to the Oscars.

“La La Land” scored seven nominations in all, including for Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in the comedy/musical acting categories, while writer-director Damien Chazelle received nods for best director and best screenplay.

“Making ‘La La Land’ was a dream come true and we’re thrilled that Damien Chazelle’s vision has been recognized,” producers Fred Berger, Jordan Horowitz and Marc Platt said in a statement.

“Moonlight,” the tale of an impoverished black boy in Miami struggling with his sexuality, scored six nods, including Barry Jenkins in the directing and screenplay categories and Naomie Harris and Mahershala Ali in the best supporting acting races.

“La La Land” is up against “20th Century Women,” the story of a free-spirited mother; raunchy superhero action movie “Deadpool”; singing comedy “Florence Foster Jenkins”; and teen tale “Sing Street” for best comedy/musical film at the Golden Globes.

“Moonlight” will face war drama “Hacksaw Ridge,” Western crime story “Hell or High Water,” adoption tale “Lion” and “Manchester by the Sea,” which is about a working-class family dealing with tragedy, in the best drama film category.

“La La Land” and “Moonlight” are very different films. But Claudia Puig, film critic at National Public Radio’s FilmWeek and president of the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Association, said they had a key element in common.

“Both are very emotional movies. They move you, they’re poignant, they touch your emotions,” Puig told Reuters.

“One maybe has a much more intellectual, sociological component while the other is escapist, but both are also about love and finding your dreams,” she added.

“Manchester by the Sea” landed five nominations, including for actor Casey Affleck and screenplay and director nods for Kenneth Lonergan.

“It will actually be my first time attending the Golden Globes and I’ve been working for more than 20 years, so this moment isn’t lost on me,” Affleck said in a statement.

DIVERSITY FINDS SPOTLIGHT

After a furor that erupted earlier this year because all 20 acting Oscar nominees were white, the Golden Globes feature numerous actors of color, including Ruth Negga of “Loving,” Ali and Harris of “Moonlight,” and Dev Patel, who is of Indian descent, for “Lion.”

“It’s taken a long time to get to this point and for people who are producing content to really see the value of opening up a bit and being more inclusive,” Ali told Reuters.

Notable omissions from the best drama film field included “Jackie,” a character study of the widow of U.S. president John F. Kennedy in the week after his assassination. Lead Natalie Portman, however, received a best actress nomination.

Martin Scorsese’s “Silence,” the tale of missionaries in 17th-century Japan, and “Fences,” a tense African-American family drama set in the 1950s, were also snubbed in the best drama race. “Fences” did bring nods for actors Denzel Washington and Viola Davis.

More than 90 journalists in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association choose the Golden Globes. Winners will be announced on Jan. 8 at a televised ceremony hosted by Jimmy Fallon.

source: interaksyon.com

‘Birdman’ flying high as Hollywood prepares for Golden Globes

LOS ANGELES | The race to the Oscars begins in earnest Sunday when Hollywood’s A-listers gather for the Golden Globes, with dark comedy “Birdman” leading the pack in the quest for awards glory.

The film — starring onetime “Batman” star Michael Keaton as a washed-up film actor trying to revive his career on stage — earned seven nods for the Globes, the first major event in Tinseltown’s annual awards season.

Coming-of-age drama “Boyhood” and Nazi code-breaking thriller “The Imitation Game” starring Britain’s Benedict Cumberbatch are also in strong position with five nods apiece.

Cumberbatch and his co-star Keira Knightley are among a batch of Britons tipped for gold at the Globes.

Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones are in the running for their heartrending performances as British physicist Stephen Hawking and his wife Jane in “The Theory of Everything,” and Rosamund Pike has earned praise for her searing turn as a wronged wife in “Gone Girl.”

Comic actresses Tina Fey and Amy Poehler will be hosting the show for the third straight year.

Some critics have highlighted the lack of a clear frontrunner, in contrast to previous years like in 2012, when “The Artist” had a virtual lock on Best Picture prizes straight through to the Oscars.

“It seems like a real toss-up,” Tom Nunan of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television told AFP, adding that actors in this year’s race “are all giving career-best performances.”

TRUE STORIES

This year’s crop of hotly-tipped movies is heavy on true stories: four of the five Globes best drama nominees are based on real-life events.

Among the historical figures featured are Hawking, British mathematician Alan Turing and Martin Luther King Jr.

But “Birdman” will be the film to beat in the Best Musical or Comedy category at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where the 72nd Globes ceremony begins at 5:00 pm Sunday (0100 GMT Monday).

The movie also earned nods for best actor for Keaton, best supporting actor (Edward Norton), best supporting actress (Emma Stone) and best director (Mexico’s Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu).

Keaton is facing stiff competition from Ralph Fiennes (“The Grand Budapest Hotel”), Bill Murray (“St. Vincent”), Joaquin Phoenix (“Inherent Vice”) and Austrian Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz (“Big Eyes”).

Stone also has her work cut out against Amy Adams (“Big Eyes”), Britons Emily Blunt (“Into the Woods”) and Helen Mirren (“The 100-Foot Journey”), child prodigy Quvenzhane Wallis (“Annie”) and veteran Julianne Moore (“Maps to the Stars”).

On the drama side — unlike the Oscars, the Globes have separate categories for musical/comedies and for dramas — the best film shortlist is topped by “Boyhood,” Richard Linklater’s film about a boy growing up, shot over 12 years.

While “Boyhood” has been widely tipped, its four rivals – “Foxcatcher,” “The Imitation Game,” “Selma” and “The Theory of Everything” — are all strong contenders.

BRITISH GENIUSES

Comic Steve Carell has impressed with a rare serious performance in “Foxcatcher,” but is vying for the best actor prize against a pair of Britons paying math wizards — Cumberbatch as Turing and Redmayne as Hawking.

Britain’s David Oyelowo — who plays King in “Selma” — and Jake Gyllenhaal in lurid crime drama “Nightcrawler” round out the category.

On the small screen, “Fargo” took the most nominations with five.

In the television categories, critics see a free-for-all now that the widely acclaimed “Breaking Bad” is no longer on the air or in the running.

Victories for either “House of Cards” for best drama series and “Orange is the New Black” for best comedy would be sweet for Netflix as on-demand video streaming throws mainstream network television for a loop.

The Globes are handed out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) and, while less prestigious than the Academy Awards, they still have huge marketing impact for those nominated and the eventual winners.

Unlike the Oscars, which are voted on by some 6,000 industry members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Globes are selected by fewer than 100 journalists from the HFPA.

Traditionally, the Globes ceremony is more relaxed than the Oscars, notably due to the fact that alcohol is freely available to the audience.

“The Golden Globes is traditionally a much more amusing television program,” as opposed to the “stodgy” Oscars, Robert Thompson, a professor of pop culture at Syracuse University, told AFP.

This year’s Academy Awards will be held on February 22. Oscar nominations will be announced next week, on January 15.

source: interaksyon.com

Andrew Garfield & Emma Stone Caught in Sheriff's Web for Speeding

Spider-Man is only allowed to use his superhuman speed to fight crime, not when he's behind the wheel ... so when Andrew Garfield was speeding through Malibu with Emma Stone yesterday ... he got busted.

"The Amazing Spider-Man" co-stars (who are a couple in real life) got a surprise visit from a cargo-shorts-wearing LA County Sheriff (above) ... when Garfield was pulled over for having a lead foot.

We're told he was cited for speeding and then sent on his merry way. It's unclear how fast he was going or if he was on a mission to rescue someone.

Seems unlikely though.

source: tmz.com