Bloggus Interruptus

SIGH. I have the hardest time finding an appropriately-themed blog template for this time of year that I like. If you've actually been checking in even though I don't post often enough to make it worth your while, you've noticed that this is, like, my third design in as many weeks. And still, me no likes. Stupid winter. It's a creative template wasteland!

Garfunkel's First Equine Encounter

I saw this video a couple of days ago and waffled on whether or not to share (it's not the most substantial thing, after all) but I was inspired to post it after taking Funk on his walk this morning... because he saw his first horse! We were walking the trail around Quarry Lakes and a man was just taking his horse out for a Sunday morning ride. Garfunkel went absolutely bonkers, whining and straining to get a closer look. So the man was very kind and turned his horse around so Funk could check him out a bit better. I was proud that Garfunkel didn't completely freak out and run toward the horse but I do wish he'd been a little calmer - he basically whined like a maniac while taking a few sniffs and then flopped down on the ground to whine some more. I wish he'd been as mellow as this little guy:

Danielpalooza!!!

UPDATE: I watched the show this morning and it was a typical episode of SNL: awful. I did laugh twice so it wasn't a complete and utter waste of time (I guess) but I felt bad for poor Dan. He did the best he could, he really did - he was a trooper! But the writing is just so atrocious there isn't a host out there that could make it funny. Honestly. (It's because of this that I'm slightly tempted to tape the February 4th episode featuring Channing Tatum. Dude is a piece of wood with abs and the show is going to be a train wreck!!!! I'm morbidly curious.) Even EW.com agrees with me. About Dan, not the Chan man.


Okay, so the first part of this post is current but the second half is a week late. (Sorry.) I just kept finding more and more awesome Daniel things to post and I couldn't squish it all in on time!!! What is important for you to know now is that DanRad is hosting Saturday Night Live this week! Not much can get me to watch SNL these days but for Dan I'll TiVo it. :o) He is SO adorable and always game for anything so my hopes are high that he will knock it out of the park. Oh, how I hope he does. He's already the funniest thing about the promos:


I have no idea who Lana Del Rey is. I feel old.

Dan also did another interview with MTV's Josh Horowitz the other day (to promote The Woman in Black) and it was just as fabulous as his last one. I know I gush about his interviews every time I post one but I can't help myself! He's always such a good interview, I just adore him. Adore him! Slightly embarrassing. But not enough to stop me from making it public.

Get More: Movie Trailers, Movies Blog

And now here's the old part of the post...

One of my favorites is in the upcoming issue of Parade magazine!!! Wheeee! I have to say, I am sad that his stint in How to Succeed is over because I'm digging his current haircut. He looks great! When left to his own devices, he looks more like this. Or this. Which... eh. I really hope he tries to keep it attractive a little longer.

Photo by Jake Chessum

Daniel Radcliffe opens up about life after Potter, falling in love, and fame in this weekend's issue of PARADE. And with his first post-Harry Potter film — the psychological thriller The Woman in Black — out next month, the actor admits he doesn't do well without fear.

In the highlights below, the 22-year-old actor discusses entering the second stage of his career and what it means to really be in love.

Be sure to check out this weekend's issue of PARADE magazine in your local newspaper for the full interview with Daniel Radcliffe.

Are you a romantic?
"Yes. I don’t know where my romanticism comes from. My mom and dad would read to me a lot.Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, tales of chivalry and knights, things like that. Those are the stories I loved growing up. I still see something very romantic in the world that perhaps isn’t there. I suppose I want it to be the place of knights and that kind of stuff.”

Knights marry princesses. Do you want to get married?
"Yes, absolutely. When growing up, I thought of marriage as being very official, drawing up a contract. It seemed slightly clinical to me. But then you meet somebody that you really love and you think, 'Actually, I wouldn’t mind standing up in front of my friends and family and telling them how much I love you and that I want to be with you forever.'

Are you in love with girlfriend Rosie Coker? [Radcliffe met Coker, a production assistant, on the set of the last Potter film.]
"Yes, absolutely. When Rosie’s here, every day seems better….I’m not an easy person to love. There are lots of times when I’m a very good boyfriend, but there are times when I’m useless. I mean, I’m a mess around the house. I talk nonstop. I become obsessed with things. This year it’s fantasy football, which means Rosie has to listen to me talking 24 hours a day about this team. 'Should I take this player out, do you think, darling?' And she listens to it, and she loves me for my oddness, my awkwardness, all of those things that I hate about myself. She finds them cute. I guess that’s love."

Why was that?
"I hated dating because I’m crap at it! [laughs] With Rosie, I didn’t know what was appropriate, like on which date you’re supposed to try and kiss her. At the end of the second date I pulled a move out of the Bela Lugosi Book of Woo—I went to kiss Rosie and at the last minute lost my nerve and ended up kissing her neck, which is such a weirdly intimate place to kiss somebody on a second date. Afterward, I texted her, saying, 'I’m sorry, what I just did probably seems very odd to you.' Fortunately, she just found it really funny, so she kept coming back."

Last year you gave up alcohol. Why? 
"My inner life was being drowned. I’ve worked with Richard Harris, Gary Oldman, all those actors who went crazy when they were young, and I always wanted that. The idea of that kind of life and chaos was always so appealing to me. Unfortunately, the way I do it, there is no romance to it! [laughs] There is nothing glorious or triumphant about it—it was pathetic, boring, and unhappy."

Your dad is a Protestant from Ulster and your mom is English and Jewish. Were you raised in a particular religion?
"There was never [religious] faith in the house. I think of myself as being Jewish and Irish, despite the fact that I’m English. My dad believes in God, I think. I’m not sure if my mom does. I don’t. I have a problem with religion or anything that says, 'We have all the answers,' because there’s no such thing as 'the answers.' We’re complex. We change our minds on issues all the time. Religion leaves no room for human complexity." 

You’ve had enormous success for someone so young. Do you fear that it won’t last?
"Yes. But it’s reality, not fear. It will happen, and I have accepted that. In a way it’s a great relief that I will never, ever do a film as successful as the Harry Potter series. But neither will anybody else. [laughs] Or it will take them a long time.”

Photo by Jake Chessum

In the exclusive extras below, the 22-year-old star talks about the cause he wants to put his Potter fortune behind, his new film, The Woman in Black, his love of poetry, and more.


On giving back. 
“I got involved in The Trevor Project [a charity which works to prevent young gay people from committing suicide] in late 2008 when I was in New York doing Equus. A few of my friends had made me aware of it. It sounded like such a fantastic thing. People need it. The suicide rate for gay teens is four times that of straight kids. I couldn't believe that nothing like this had existed before. I think that any free-thinking person who becomes very wealthy and has strong opinions on things would get involved with something like The Trevor Project or scholarships for schools or whatever. Fame is very useful in directing attention toward those things.
 
“I got paid so well for doing the Harry Potter films, it's ridiculous. If somebody asked me, 'Did you think you deserve that money?' No, of course I didn't. 'But would you have taken it anyway?' Of course. I happened to have found this industry where people get paid stupid amounts of money. That's the reality. I feel almost guilty for having done so well out of Potter. But there’s a moral imperative to help others. You know, the fact that I wake up in my lovely apartment in New York and get to stroll down here and do a couple of shows, and there is somebody in some country waking up wondering where he's going to live that week—it's a horrendous feeling. There is a sense that you have to do something. I feel Brad Pitt would agree that the way to help is to really get behind things that you're passionate about, like The Trevor Project. You have to give back.”

On homophobia. 
“Realizing that other people have a problem with [homosexuality] was the weirdest thing for me. As a kid it wasn't even something that was mentioned. It was never something that was even explained to me. It was just, “That's Mark and he's gay.” Mark was just another friend of my dad's who would talk about his boyfriend instead of his girlfriend. I was 5. I didn't care. It seemed perfectly normal, and still does....It just drives me crazy...that people can make such sweeping, ignorant statements and bring religion into it....Why would you want a god that’s up there picking and choosing who he lets in?...That doesn't make any sense." 

On marriage.
“I've got a great example to look at in my parents, because they've been married for at least 25 years and, I think, they were together for about five more before that. So they've been together a long time. I wouldn't recommend anybody marrying an actor, really. [laughs] Of course, there are cases where it works, but I’m an actor and I know what I’m like. Actors and actresses are generally pretty neurotic.”
 
On work — worrying about it, achieving the most. 
“I do worry about things like I'm not going to be good enough or my next film is not going to do well enough and that eventually people will go, ‘Oh well, why don't you move on and do something else?’ … Of course I worry about all of those things, but it comes out of a place of pride, in my knowing that I'm smart enough, good enough, hard-working enough to achieve. I now want to make as big a mix of everything as I can, from stage acting to film, and just keep working. What's lovely is that [my fame] will really help get a small independent film made, because my name carries bankability at the moment, and it will do for a few more years. If you look at somebody like Brad Pitt or George Clooney, those are guys who have immense fame and do some very successful commercial films, but they balance it by doing stuff they love, that interests them. Both could have gone down just playing romantic leads for the rest of their careers and made a very nice living. But they wanted to do different stuff. The majority of Clooney's career, acting and directing, is what I look at. If I can achieve half of what he has achieved, I'll be happy.”

On his love of poetry. 
“I think true poetry is a color—it's as fundamental as that. It can provoke a profound, basic human reaction. Understanding what the poet is saying comes from something fundamental in us that is moved by the musicality of language. I love T. S. Eliot’s 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.' I was so obsessed by it. That poem is how I see myself. It’s how people feel who have an inner life they struggle to express. That’s what's so powerful about that poem. To me it's about somebody who wants the world to be the world in his imagination and is constantly disappointed that it is not. Poetry once was not an elitist thing. Somewhere along the line, writing poetry became viewed as a kind of girlish thing to do, not something that real men should be concerning themselves with. English writer Tony Harrison is a modern poet and my hero. It's tough, muscular, brutish, angry language, and it's exciting to read.”

On his new film, The Woman in Black. 
“On the surface it's about a young lawyer, a widower, who is given a task to collect the paperwork of a recently deceased woman in her house in rural England. He goes and is terrorized by the ghost of a different dead woman. Every character that you meet in the film has been touched by bereavement at some point. It’s character-driven. Stanley Kubrick said that any film about the supernatural is inherently consoling because it implies an afterlife. That's what our film is about, really. On the surface it's about being terrified, but actually it's about love.”

And you can see a little slideshow of Dan through the years here. He's adorable! Cause they didn't include too many of his scary hair photos.

Dragon Tattoo Review by MOVIEBOB

For our annual NYE movie night, Robert and I went to go see The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. We would have gone to the movies anyway, because who are we to break such a hard-partying tradition?, but I wound up getting $1 movie tickets through a Groupon deal so celebrating at the movies seemed like an more awesome idea! (In fact, Robert was so stoked about our massive savings that he splurged on a soda a box of Reese's Pieces for me. $9.75 later we still made out in the black so woohoo!) And it was a good movie so it was a good choice. I had both seen the original Swedish version as well as read the book so I was able to view the movie with more critical eyes, I think (and a more understanding brain for sure), than the average moviegoer. Robert had, of course, seen the first movie, too, but hasn't yet read the book so even he and I looked at it a little differently. I didn't know anything about the books or the movie when we saw the original Dragon Tattoo so after watching it I was very taken with it. So it's hard for me to say which version I prefer; it's hard to parse out my initial "Wow! That was great!" feeling and look at the first movie objectively for a straight apples-to-apples comparison. I think both films have pros and cons in their own right. I did hop on the IMDb boards the next day, though, and came across this review which I think actually does a pretty good (if somewhat harsh) job of sizing up the films against one another. If you've seen them both, take a look a this and tell me what you think.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Movie Morsels 76: Trailers! Trailers! Trailers!

I was chatting with Wade and Robert about the new The Dark Knight Rises trailer and neither had actually seen it. It was then that I realized my reduced blogging schedule is beginning to hurt the people I love. So I must take a quick moment and post some much buzzed about trailers before it gets too late!

(Make sure you click the little red bubble in the lower right-hand corner of some of the videos to remove the annoying annotations.)

The Dark Knight Rises:



Assessment: Looks awesome! Of course. Though I could've used more hot Christian. And I hope I can understand Bane without subtitles...


The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey:



Assessment: I love that Martin Freeman has a job! He's adorable. And Robert and I started our 'movies on New Year's Eve' tradition with the first LOTR movie so it'll be nice to have another to watch at that time of year.


Prometheus:



Assessment: I've never seen Alien (I know... sorry) so this doesn't really mean much to me but I like Michael Fassbender and Noomi Rapace so I would be willing to give it a whirl. If it isn't to scary/stressful.


Wrath of the Titans:



Assessment: I like Sam Worthington and all but Clash of the Titans was Stupid (note the capital S). A sequel seems completely and utterly unnecessary. And that song is horrid and adds nothing to the trailer. At all. Plus, was Perseus Australian in Clash? Preeeeetty sure he was supposed to sound British. I'm all for actors getting to use their natural accents but let's have a little consistency, please! But I'll probably still rent it because I'm a sheep and will want to see if it's any good, even though I already know it isn't.

Merry Christmas!

A Box of Babies

My friend Amy sent me this photo last week and I had to share. It was on her clinic's doorstep where the box of his litter was left and this is the very first picture of little Gweenz on his first day in the clinic. I think I've said before that I'm glad whoever did this opted to dump the kittens at a place that would try and help them rather than just dispose of them in a less savory way but still... How can people DO things like this? That is a box of adorableness right there! And even though Gweenie has turned out to be somewhat of a dick less than cuddly/friendly guy, I'm glad he had the good fortune to land at Princeton and then our home.

Movie Morsels 75: Dragon Tattoo Soundtrack

I downloaded the free 6-track sampler of TGWtDT soundtrack the other day but, of course, it's all instrumentals. Which I expected and I'm down with instrumentals (I do have a movie soundtrack instrumental playlist on my iPod), I would've liked at least one rockin' song like this one. I think it's a great cover:

I WANT TO GO TO THERE!!!

I first heard this rumor last week on my satellite radio but now it's confirmed and I WANT TO GO!!!!!!!!! Ohmygosh. I want a wand, I want some Butterbeer and even though I'll be in my mid-thirties by the time it opens I will still want a wand and some Butterbeer. And if we have kids by then, they're gettin' wands, too. I totally think there are enough of us Potter geeks to support two parks even if the franchise has 'officially' ended. It's like Star Wars - a very detailed universe unto itself that fans (new and old) will want to see in the flesh.

Image Credit: Jason Redmond/AP Images

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando opened its doors just a year and a half ago, but executives are already planning to build a similar Potter-themed wonderland in Los Angeles. Earlier today, Universal officially announced its intention to bring Potter to Universal Studios Hollywood, while also announcing a planned expansion of the Orlando Potter exhibit. The announcement comes at an interesting moment for the franchise since, for the first time in its history, there are no new books or films on the horizon — which is to say, there are no more real Potter events left to celebrate. The big new Potter product — the interactive game/social media website/potential publishing venture Pottermore — remains trapped in beta.

Potter has been a a lucrative mega-franchise for a long time, and since the planned Hollywood park won’t open for at least three years, it’s worth asking: Is the Potter franchise big enough to support to separate parks? And can a franchise with a fundamental endpoint ever be as big as the Disney theme park global empire?

Universal is plotting this major construction project at a particularly fraught time in California’s economic history. As noted by the Associated Press, Governor Jerry Brown appeared at the announcement just a day after he suggested raising taxes. The park will reportedly generate 1000 jobs, and there is certainly a potential for a wand-induced halo. If the park does help the California economy, it might be a helpful roadmap for some of our troubled brethren in the eurozone. (Elevator pitch: What if Greece rebranded itself as “Harry Potter Land,” and everyone there carried a wand and pretended to speak with an English accent, or they could pretend to be Bulgarian and wear “I HEART VIKTOR KRUM” T-shirts? Instant bull market.)

More importantly, fellow Potter fans: Are there any rides you’d like to see in the new park? Or corners of the Potterverse that Wizarding World hasn’t explored yet? I’d like to see one corner of the park dedicated to the thrilling climactic Hunt for the Horcruxes. You’d start off visiting the Horcrux Cave from Half-Blood Prince, which would be a freaky kiddie pool with scary zombie puppets lurking in the water, where you’d find a locket. Then you’d realize that you have the wrong locket, and infiltrate the Ministry of Magic to remove the actual locket from a life-size puppet of Dolores Umbridge. Then for some reason you’d also have to find three Deathly Hallows, and there’s a snake involved, and something something the Elder Wand something something. Just like being in a movie!

All I Want for Christmas Is to Not Be Sick

First post of December and this is it: I. Am. Sick. I have one week left of instruction before finals and my head feels like it's about 60 pounds and wants to roll right off my body with my next coughing fit. Why oh WHY must I be The Germ? And today's the only day I had to decorate my house for Christmas before becoming buried under studying, too. Mew.