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Friday, September 30, 2016

... page 279 of "Core maths" is so, so, so important...

Donna Troy is an exponent.... Donna Troy is the exponent of a number which multiplies by itself into a larger number... or God forbid, and it does often, she is the exponent of a number which multiplies into itself into a smaller number.. than itself.. than itself.. which is imperssoinible...

When Hanno Raudsepp teaches math at Aisp Hanno will explain that a logarithm is a means to finding the exponent of a number.. taht is, the answer to a logarithm is .. an exponent.. an exponent.. an exponent...

... Was the likable, amiable, semi-rogue of Ancient Roman theatre, who was called by the stage name "parasite" .. the celebrity?...

Hanno Raudsepp will study enough calculus so he can teach Calculus Grade 9 at Aisp...

Hanno Raudsepp will teach a course in Ada, teh computer software programming language Ada.. in Ada Grade 9 and Ada Grade 11... the Grade 10 designation for a computer course is somehow.. disquieting... for students...

Carl and I will both teach Economics at Aisp thru Grades 9 to OAC....

..... Each Economics class will have both Carl and I sharing the role of teacher for the class...

Hanno Raudsepp will teach Kluwer Academics Publishing's .... "Advances in Molecular Genetics in Plant-Microbe Interactions" vol. 3... in Biochemistry Grade 11....

... at Aisp...

Ray will teach Douglas Hofstadter's "Godel Escher Bach" in Science 9 at Aisp...

When I, Hanno Raudsepp, teach Russian Grade 10 at Aisp.... I will teach the original Cyrllic Russian lettering in terms of teaching the seperate syllables of Russian words mostly before I teach the full Russian words themselves....

Hanno Raudsepp will be involved in teaching "Ulysses by James Joyce", Grade 9, Grade 10 and Grade 11 of this course at Aisp....

At all three Grades we will be learning Ulysses by James Joyce in the English original, and in its French and German translations...

I'll severely, seriously emphasize MEDIEVAL latin when I teach latin at Aisp....

Hanno Raudsepp is going to teach Shakespeare Grade 9 and Shakespeare Grade 10 at Aisp...

French teacher Hanno Raudsepp....

French teacher Hanno Raudsepp:..."... Joan's incorporating an idea I had about the teaching of French.... and she's making a whole regime out of ot.... she's Joan's teaching OAC French.. she's teaching exploratory French... Joan is teaching the TEACHING of French.... Joan's teaching the pedagogy of French... she's teaching the teaching of French... and that's a compelling, truly exhaustive subject...."....

Hanno Raudsepp French teacher at Aisp...

French teacher Hanno Raudsepp: .."... okay we've got four or five french workbooks here per student... and I'm going to help you as a class collectively us anylize how each of these French school workbooks teach French.. so we can contrast and compare how each of these French workbooks approach in each their unique styles the teaching of French to .. wel... us.."...

Hanno Raudsepp as a French teacher at Aisp...

French teacher Hanno Raudsepp: ..".. French is a language of lists..."...

"The Wonder Woman" issue #1 - issue #24... written by Meredith Finch and Gail Simone.. with art by David Finch Flautrec.. and inks by Dan Green...

Giganta: .. so you'll be my not so mini-me paduan Diana.. as a mini-skyscraper of grand construction I will be the E. P. Taylor of Argus Diana... I will be your architect Diana and I will build you ... I will build you into the grand architecture of Olympus Diana... You will be grand, Diana, you will be Grand.. you will be a grandiloquent Diana ready for her prime bustier of jungle-bikini cast... we will make a Giganta of you yet.. Diana... you are such a savage inner wildfire Diana of inner wildness and eternal childlike temper a temperature inside you of child fires Diana.... juss' like me when I was a witween sixteen year old teenie-girl... who rode horses endlessly like any amazon princess.... I rode and befriended elks when I was a teenie sixteen year old girl Diana much as you are teenie and sixteen of age in many ways right now Diana-sisteen.... my sisteree Diana my sisi Diana mini-me.. we will make a jungle-bikini caravan dame bustier happiness girly-girlerieen girl of you yet Diana my green-girl enternal autumn winter...

Diana: .. eep.. I am ready for my testimonial for Giganta-greatness in breasts autumn enormous Giganta great bear-woman...

Giganta: .. Here is a book by Tamas Vicsek, called "Fractal Growth Phenomena".. study it will little bear-Diana... it will help you mini-Diana with your growth and coming-of-age....

script for "The Wonder Woman".. for the first 24 issue storyline of the comic book, "The Wonder Woman" written by Meredith Finch...

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Hanno Raudsepp: ...".. Their is a war against mothers that is so horrific, so horrifying... that no one can see it... except me..."...

... it is a war against who the mother's were when they were very young, nubile women...

MEREDITH FINCH'S GIGANTA....!!!!!....

Giganta:... ..”.. I am a primordial soup of sensations wellessyday.... and these sensations are swrods.. swords.. warrior's swords... and they soup cash can a winnings for the swords of cavewomen of which I am the premivel louoy loupy woman nude of sweatsome hasday … I am a has-been womn dish done scrawny... and I am an hourglass nude... and I fight in the scrimmage of time's weasal.. for I am a wasel done donnit of time's cuff merry my lute I am a lute merry done song...”..

Diana: ...”... where did we come off wrong.. poor Giganta sweatsom hash done somday...”..

Giganta: ...”... it was not done in the bell's scrawny dawning mit mist of mitt cushions in which I done donnit a donut hash wednesday.. this is the scremmage cabbage of time.. and the time of a cabbage's sunday... I live in the brain nervous centre deepwounded searing of my breasts .. and they are bare sumday with autumn breeze...”

Diana: ..”.. you are not no daughter of mine... and I am no daughter of nightingale... a mist done done sunday mst.. myst..”..

Giganta: ...”.. and this hash weelesady .. it is gone fro for morrow like done a dime dusk...”


dialogue for a wonder woman comic book written by meredith finch... a wonder woman comic book named... “The Wonder Woman”...

Hanno Raudsepp spent one or two years... talking to James Marsden 1... James Marsden of Sacramento... simply another man who has acted under the name James Marsden... Hanno spent one or two years... one year?.. just one year?... the year of 2009 - 2010... from the January?... the January of 2009 to the winter of 2009, early winter of 2010.. talking to the first James Marsden.. the other James Marsden who also played Cyclops in the very first X-men movie...

.. edit spool speel zoom medusa inkenstink medusa silk zu Holly Madison....

... does "Sacramento" mean "Aisp"... ?.... '"sacramento" means "Aisp"....

.... Who is Hanno Cates... is Hanno Cates... Hanno Kate Croy?....

.... Is Hanno Cates the same man as Hanno Ridal.. the man of literature... of Dostoevsky, Henry James, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf.... Bernard Shaw?... Did Hanno Cates begin his life at twenty-two years old.. his very last year in high school.... his twenty-second year.... or did Hanno Cates begin his life at twenty-one years old.. his second-last year of high school...

Hanno Raudsepp: ..".. I was twenty-three years old when winona ryder's "The Crucible" came out.... when I first saw winona ryder play abigail wiliams in the movie "The Crucible".. I was twenty-three years old..."...

... the movie "The Crucible" came out in 1996.....

... a man named "ridal" might spend eight or ten years no older than twenty-four years old...

... on a lighter note... does teh word "aphrodite" mean "jesuit"?... perhaps on a more serious note... does teh word "jesuit" .. is "jesuit" the definition of the word "aphrodite"?...

... does the word "ridal" mean "literature"?.... is "literature" the definition of the word "ridal"...?....

.. the nude goddess ishtar and the male god Apollo are often.. are usually.. found together... where nude ishtar arrives and becomes a man or a woman, Apollo comes hearkens after this visitation this inhabitance.. this tranformation of a man or a woman into ishtar.. Apollo comes soon after and becomes the consciousness of this man or woman.. and brings great understanding.. and great, great compassion....

.. a secret message to harry Knowles...

Another GREAT interview from / by Capone in Chicago for Harry Knowles.. this time with Doctor Strange movie director, Scott Derrickson... Scott seems like a really, really cool guy.. like one of the more intellectual Marvel movie directors, by far, by far...

Capone works a little magic in this on-set talk with DOCTOR STRANGE director/co-writer Scott Derrickson!!!

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

One of my favorite things about stepping foot onto a movie set of a fairly sizable, high-profile production is finding out the code name for the film that’s often used on all the signage and certain documents during filming. For Marvel’s DOCTOR STRANGE, due November 4 in the U.S., the code name was CHECKMATE, and the fictional production company was Supreme Productions.

I stepped onto the set of CHECKMATE in early February, Day 54 of an 87-day shoot at Longcross Studios in Surrey, England, about 25 miles west of London. A group of online journalists were taken through the machinations of the world of DOCTOR STRANGE, looking at costumes, props, sets and talking to actors (all in costume), production people, head of Marvel Studios Kevin Feige, and director and co-writer (along with former Ain’t It Cool News correspondent C. Robert Cargill, who sadly was not around when we were) Scott Derrickson (SINISTER, THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE).

I’ll have a lot of reports for all of you, so let’s begin with Derrickson, who we talked to between takes of a scene that seems to be set on the roof of the Ancient One’s domain, Kamar-Taj, said to be situated in the Himalayas, home to many Sorcerer Supremes over the years. The sequence involves Swinton’s The Ancient One, Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Baron Karl Mordo, Benedict Wong’s Wong, and Benedict Cumberbatch’s Dr. Stephen Strange, who appears to be just grasping what this place and these people are all about. There’s a circle of light in the middle of the compound that is clearly a stand-in light source for a portal that Strange is coming through from somewhere else.

Many of those in attendance have interviewed Derrickson over the years, and he’s always very knowledgeable and forthcoming about his work, which made it all the more enjoyable to watch him dodge a few of the more pointed questions. Please enjoy this talk with Scott Derrickson…





Question: I have a super-specific question. Are there any Bob Dylan songs in this movie?

Scott Derrickson: Are there any what?

Question: Bob Dylan songs.

SD: Oh God, I hope so. That's my answer to everything. I hope there are Bob Dylan songs in every movie. So yeah. No, we are looking at specific songs and some of them classic songs. We'll see which ones we'll get, which ones we can afford, and which ones we can get the rights to.

Question: When you come onto a movie like DOCTOR STRANGE, where Marvel obviously has an idea of what they want it to be, how much development are you doing from the start? How much are you building this movie from the ground up compared to a movie that you're doing outside of this kind of sphere?

SD: In terms of adapted material, which I've done before a couple of times, the development process was even more from the ground up in this case. Yeah, because you have a large body of stories and material from the comics. And when I first met with them, they had certain thematic ideas they liked, and not a lot of story ideas, which was great. And I think it was my connection and interest in the thematic ideas that got me the job. The whole process was starting with all ideas on the table, and so I was involved in it from the very get go.

Question: How has it been so far? Has it surprised you?

SD: It's been incredible. It's been the most incredible filmmaking experience for me, by far, for a variety of reasons. The experience with Marvel—I can only speak for myself. I know every director has their own stories. But my experience with Marvel has been really good. And I really enjoy the intimacy of the collaboration because it's all been just myself and Kevin [Feige] and my producer Stephen [Broussard]. There are no middle men. It's that and my crew, and there's that's it. There's no one else working on the movie. That's new for me and unique for me.



And the ambition of the movie, I'm surprised that I'm getting to make it, because I keep feeling like these set pieces…someone’s gonna say, “It's too bizarre. It's too weird. We're going too far.” I feel as though we crossed a line at some point in the process—which the comics I think were the inspiration to try to go past certain boundaries—but we crossed a line and after crossing that line, we just kept going. It all kept getting stranger and stranger—I didn't mean that as a pun, but it all just kept getting more bizarre, in a good way, in a way that, as a viewer, I think I would be satisfied by.


Question: Kevin said that one of the hardest nuts to crack with the movie was to figure out how to make the action believable and different because you're just conjuring spells and things of this nature. Can you talk about what the action's gonna look like and how you cracked that?

SD: Yeah, preserving the idea of magic was really important to me, that we didn't try to explain it away or root it all in something scientific that, by definition, is not magic to me. There's also the burden of popular magic movies, the HARRY POTTER series, THE LORD OF THE RINGS, which appropriate magic in a very familiar, traditional way. And the comics had a few ideas in them that were, to this day, still very original. Those ideas we're using. And the rest of it was also was very traditional in the use of spells and even some of the imagery. So for me, the starting point was, what kind of things have we not seen in cinema? It was almost working backwards. What kind of imagery, what kind of action could be created in cinema that we haven't seen? And I started from that place and looked for a way to tie that into magic. And some of those ideas didn't tie in well, and some of those ideas tied in surprisingly well. The ones that tied in really well, those became the major set pieces for the movie.

Question: This morning we asked Kevin what sort of sub-genre this movie falls into. And he said “supernatural,” which feels very vague. But just from what we've been able to see, it looks like a martial arts movie in a way. Is there like a heavy martial arts movie influence here?

SD: Yeah. There's definitely a martial arts influence on the movie, because that is the action that I like for starters. Martial arts is the kind of action that does tie in well to the supernatural. That is a whole sub-genre within martial arts cinema. The supernatural martial arts movie, particularly within Asian cinema. And I felt like when it came to fighting in the movie, that just made sense, to certainly to go in that direction and stay away from gunfire and things like that. And to avoid having fighting be the casting of bolts of light.

I really feel like we've been drawing on the Emperor in Star Wars for over 30 years, and so we’ve got to start doing this some other way—the utilization of magic power. There's some good fighting in it. But that fighting is, again, always within a context of something I think is more fantastical and more surreal and more mind trippy than just the supernatural action of combat. It's always supernatural action, combat fighting within a larger surreal canvas. That was the thing I always wanted to preserve, so that we're never just watching fighting. Yeah.


Question: I've seen on your Twitter feed lots of great art, like Ditko art and a lot of stuff. When you're adapting a story like this, with so much lore and so much visual cues from the comics, what is the most important thing for you personally? What did you really want to make sure was in this film, whether it's a caution piece or a set piece, design or something like that?

SD: That's a great question. That's a really incisive question. My love for the comics I think is probably… I'll start by saying this. I think that because I love the comics so much, and I grew up reading Marvel Comics. And Doctor Strange is my favorite comic book character, probably I think honestly the only comic book [movie] I would feel personally suited to work on. And for me, my long-standing love for Doctor Strange comes from, first of all, the fantastical visual imagery of all the comics, particularly the early Ditko stuff, “Into Shamballa,” “The Oath,” a lot of the images that I have picked are from those three sources, and then individual issues.



Thematically, the loneliness of that character, I always really liked the idea of a character who had gone through so much trauma and was placed into a position between our world and other worlds, other dimensions literally. That's a lonely position. I like that. But I think my that as I've gotten older, my continuing love for Doctor Strange has been that he is a character who transforms through suffering. He goes through this gauntlet, and for me that's kind of the most powerful thing, of trauma and suffering, going all the way back to his childhood in the comics. But then he appropriates that suffering in a certain way that limits him. And then he goes through the loss of everything in a really painful, unbearable way. And eventually finds self-transcendence in something mystical. That's Doctor Strange, and I love that.

Again, in getting to why I think I got the job, I think it's my genuine love for that that was somehow connected to what, I didn't know it at the time, Marvel wanted the movie to be. And when I came in, I talked about Doctor Strange in those terms, and for me that's the only way I could make the movie. That and I had set-piece ideas already about how to make the movie as visually weird in this day and age as the Ditko comics were at their time.


Question: Is there a sense of humor to it as well?

SD: Yeah. It's Benedict, how can it not be funny?

Question: By playing it straight it's funny, or is he--?

SD: Yeah, I mean, he is a funny guy. And there's funny lines in the script. There's comedy in it. But it's not GUARDIANS. It's not that tone, by any means. It's closer to WINTER SOLDIER, which has comedy in it and has some really funny moments in it. I just named my two favorite Marvel movies by the way. And part of my love for WINTER SOLDIER is the high-impact, grounded nature of the action in that movie, and the subversive grounded ideas of that movie within what is just one of the great kickass action movies. That's what I love about WINTER SOLDIER in a nutshell. So we have a lot of humor spread throughout, but it is a very grounded, realistic movie about a guy who suffers a lot and transforms. So it's also very dramatic. Yeah.

Question: We heard a little bit about some of the weapons and artifacts and how deeply connected they are because they work in certain dimensions, and that's about all we heard. So what can you tell us about that, and how much of those are being pulled right out of the comics? Because obviously, the Eye of Agamotto is there.

SD: Yeah. There was a lot of discussion about how much to use, because you can obviously get into an overload of those things. But I think the HARRY POTTER movies are proof that audiences love that stuff. They love the idea of magical objects and they like learning the rules of those objects and what they do. I think everything that we do—all the names of everything and all the things that we use in the movie are drawn from the comics. I can't think of one at least offhand that's not drawn from the comics.

Question: [Someone mentions the object attached to the belts of most of the sorcerers that clasps to their fingers and aides them in forming gateways]

SD: That okay, there's that yeah. Well done. But the forming of the gateways that are used for that, that's straight out of the comics. Yeah. I just needed an object for them to carry it on.

Question: You're sitting in a room full of people who are like professional nerds.

SD: Yes.

Question: And a number of us had to look up your main antagonist, Kaecilius, in this movie.

SD: I love that.

Question: He is a not-very-well-known character. Can you talk about the decision to use that character, and why you guys ended up there and what to expect from?

SD: Yes. I don't know how much I can't give away about this, so what I'll say is that I'm going to answer with a tease. Is that fair? What we wanted was a character that was rooted in the real. This is certainly what I was pitching from the beginning, an antagonist who was rooted in the real world so that there could be an intimate relate-ability between Strange and his adversary, but who was empowered by something else, by something otherworldly. And connected to something else otherworldly, which comes straight from the comics. And I'll say this, it’s another character straight from the comics.



That became interesting to me. I always loved the Sauron-Saruman idea in LORD OF THE RINGS, even though you never see Sauron, except I think in the prologue. I think that's the only time you ever see him in that trilogy, but what a presence and what a power. And we do more than that with this other-dimensional power. I like that idea. So that Strange wasn’t combating something huge and fantastical all the way through the movie that had no human relate-ability. Every version of that that we would visit felt strained and felt like too high of a bar. That we wouldn't clear that bar given everything else that we had to establish in the movie. Does that make sense? And I think it's working really well.

And the thing I'll say about Kaecilius, my favorite thing about him is that he is a man of ideas. And that's what’s always is compelling about villains. I am much more interested in how they think than in what they even do. My favorite villain being John Doe in SEVEN, who does this extraordinary things and is so scary, but the scariest scene is the ride into the desert when he articulates why. I got terrified, I felt nauseous watching that movie, because I was like “Oh my God, he makes sense. Oh my God, how can this be?” It was that watertight logic of what he says. Same thing with The Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT. The watertight logic of his anarchistic philosophy in that hospital bedside scene with Harvey Dent. It’s awesome. I'm not saying our villain is as great as John Doe or as Heath Ledger's Joker, but he is a man of ideas, and to me that's what makes villains compelling.


Question: You mentioned your passion for the character and his history, but you guys all seem to be making some interesting evolutions in storytelling in terms of the characters of Wong and Baron Mordo. Can you talk a little about the decision there to have them not playing their typical comic book roles?

SD: Yeah, in the case of Mordo, in the comic books, that character was just really arch, and he's in the origin issue, and even in reading through—and I've read the entire body of Doctor Strange now—it was a very difficult character to adapt, because of the very basic archness that he plays all the way through there. So we wanted to keep what were the interesting aspects of him, his relationship with The Ancient One, but the only way that Mordo, who needs to be a presence in the universe of Doctor Strange and God willing in sequels, I felt that we had to start by establishing who he was before he got into that arch villainy in the comics.

And that's a lot of what we're doing in this movie, building a foundational understanding of who he was before the guy that you met in that comic, so that that turn isn't an arch turn. Wong is another thing altogether, because it's a racial stereotype. Let's be blunt about it. As is The Ancient One. But Wong even more than The Ancient One was a character that there just wasn't a lot that was fundamental about his character that was usable. So instead of being a sidekick, he's a master of the mystic arts. Instead of being a manservant, he oversees the library at Kamar-Taj and is an intellectual mentor to Strange. So we kind of flipped everything that he was.

And that's where it's related to the comics in that we took the things that were, in retrospect, insulting and elevated them in the same way. And that became suddenly “Ah, this is a great character.” And that seemed to work and has relate-ability only in that we basically inversed what his character was and then kept the name, kept him Chinese. Other than that, that's about it I think, to be honest. All right, thanks so much.


Question: Thank you.

SD: Good to see you guys. Thank you, nerds.



-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Capone bows down before DOCTOR STRANGE's The Ancient One, Tilda Swinton!!!

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

Tilda Swinton has spend the entirely of her career doing the unexpected, so it should come as no surprise that she didn’t hesitate in taking the role of The Ancient One in the upcoming DOCTOR STRANGE (due November 4). The Marvel comic book iteration of the character had always been a elderly Asian man, which is about the only persona Swinton hasn’t attempted. The Marvel powers that be decided that The Ancient One wasn’t necessary a person but a title that could be given to anyone—male or female—of any race, including a bald female of Celtic origin.

The fact that Swinton is typically the strongest element of any film she’s in, only makes me that much more hopeful for DOCTOR STRANGE. A group of unworthy online writers (myself included) got to spend a bit of time with her earlier this year on the set outside of London, and it’s clear she’s give the film and this character a great deal of thought. I’ve interviewed Swinton a few times over the years, but I’ve never seen her actually work, shooting scenes, trying out line readings and moving around the set in a sorcerer’s costume as a teacher instructing a new student in the ways of inter-dimensional magic.

At one point during the set visit, we left the confines of our interview tent and got to walk around the immense set that was The Ancient One’s compound, where Swinton, Chiwetel Ejiofor (as Mordo) and Benedict Cumberbatch (Dr. Stephen Strange) were shooting a sequence in which Strange comes through a portal that brings him back from the side of a wind-swept, frigid mountainside. We stood only a few yards from the action, and you can’t help but feel you’re in the presence of acting royalty with all three of these artists. Alright, enough gushing. Please enjoy our talk with the great Tilda Swinton…





Question: Could you start by telling us about your approach to the character, and maybe the relationship that you have with Strange?

Tilda Swinton: I have to think what I can tell you. What it would be fun to tell you and what it wouldn’t be fun to tell you, because of course you’re all going to not say what I look like [she’s fully bald]. Let me think. Well, this is the launch of the DOCTOR STRANGE film interpretation, in my view a classic, which has been interpreted many times by other graphic artists, and this is just our graphic interpretation of The Ancient One. I would say the whole approach is about a kind of fluidity. There are many graphic artists who have interpreted The Ancient One as a Tibetan Buddhist Lama; we’re shifting that a bit. We’re trying not to be fixed, to any one thing, any one gender, any one spiritual discipline, and any one race even. We’re just trying to wing it beyond that. So it’s a new gesture really, just another interpretation.

Question: There’s obviously a physical transformation for you to get into this character.

TS: [Sarcastically] Well, how did you know? How do you know what I look like in the morning?

[Everybody laughs]

TS: Wait until you see my costume!

Question: How does that physical transformation help you find your take on The Ancient One?



TS: It certainly centers everything, because we’re making shapes, and these shapes are pretty rocking, they’re all pretty graphic. We’re filling a big universe, and so the look and the plasticity of us is really important when we’re striking poses here. It’s very important, it’s really great. It’s such fun to work on; I was really lucky that Jeremy Woodhead, who’s the hair and makeup designer on this, is someone I know very well, I worked with him very closely on a Bong Joon-ho film called SNOWPIERCER, and we worked on making that look. So we worked again on this, and that’s been really fun. And it took it’s time, that’s part of the fun, the development of all of it is a ride.

Question: We got to see a few snippets of what you were filming today…

TS: Did you?

Question: I’m assuming that both of you are looking at Stephen Strange as he’s trying to do something…

TS: Something, yeah. And you saw what Chiwetel [Ejiofor] and I were doing just now?

Question: Yes.

TS: Alright, yeah.

Question: So what is Strange’s relationship with The Ancient One, and how does that progress as he’s becoming involved?



TS: Well, The Ancient One, as you know, is the master, is the Sorcerer Supreme, and Strange comes to learn how to heal himself, and The Ancient One has got the knowledge. And so what you’re seeing today is a part of the whole training section, when he’s learning the moves and digging deep. So it’s all about that, it’s all about trying to push him to get there. What you’re seeing today or what we’re doing today is a section when he’s getting to touch and go whether he’s going to makes the grade, but as we know, he does. And how it progresses is, again, the story, it’s really important to The Ancient One that Doctor Strange does cut it because The Ancient One needs a successor, or certainly needs—you could say—a son. So The Ancient One is really invested in Doctor Strange, it’s a very primal relationship.

Question: In the conceptual art, we saw some pretty interesting things with The Ancient One with fans and in one of them, you’re flying. Can you talk about the physical and maybe even the action aspect of the film?

TS: It’s great, we’re all really at it all the time, and it’s great fun. But The Ancient One has got special powers, what can I tell you? And they’re called the stunt department [Laughs]. And the CG department. Yeah, very, very special powers and a weapon of choice, which is very fun to work with. The last time I did anything like this was with the Narnia film [THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE] with two swords, the same but different.

Question: It’s not the first time you’ve played a timeless character, Narnia is an example, but also in ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE. Is there a link there between these characters?

TS: I’m just really old [Laughs]. Just really, really old. There is, I suppose, a theme, which I’m really interested in. I’m really interested in the idea of long, long life and transformation and immortality. So yeah, I’m very much drawn to these stories. This is a huge, great story about the possibility of living beyond everything, living beyond mortality, living beyond all the immortal confines, living beyond the planet as we know it. It’s mind-blowingly no limits, and I think this is going to be something else. I mean, even in terms of the Marvel universe, this is going on a side street into a major piazza that Marvel hasn’t even been to before, because it’s all about creation and not so much about destruction and forestalling destruction; it’s about your mind. So it’s a big, big trip, and that just is up my alley, I’m really into that stuff. Yeah, there is a link, I think.

Question: When I’ve talked to you before, you’ve said that you very often enjoy the conversations leading up to the filming as much as the filming itself. What are some of those conversations that you had with Scott [Derrickson, director and co-writer] about the bigger picture of this world?

TS: I’ve been really happy to be in that conversation with Scott for a few months now. We started chewing this cud a while ago. He is, as you probably know, an extremely erudite thinker in terms of religious philosophy and just thinking about a modern take on something really, really ancient, about how to imagine living beyond any physical bounds, which we’re on the verge of now.



I was just talking to Benedict [Cumberbatch] who’s got a little baby who knows his father lives in his phone. We as humans are evolving really fast, so everyday we’re hit with that. This film takes that everyday boring reality and really bursts it wide [open]. So we talked a lot about that. In many ways, there’s something very practical about this world, the Kamar-Taj. We all look like samurai warriors, but actually there are iPads everywhere, and there’s a feeling that it’s a practical possibility for this modern world that the DOCTOR STRANGE universe is functioning, and that we know it and it’s around the corner for all of us. So we talked about that. We talked about making it muscular and practical. Yeah it’s a fantasy, but what’s the difference between fantasy and reality really?


Question: Does it mean you almost don’t need the comics as much, because you’re changing the adaptation or evolving?

TS: No! The comics are the root, that’s the source. No, we will always… as I said, it’s just another interpretation. One of the wonderful things that I’ve always loved as an art student, what I’ve always loved about comics, was that they are interpreted differently by different graphic artists all the time. So now, film is doing that thanks to Marvel Studios. I’m a huge Marvel fan, and the fact that they take the liberties that they do in filmmaking I think, it dignifies the comics and it says, “Yeah. This is a strong enough, robust enough source. We can bend it, it’s elastic. It’s bouncy.”

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter

Cumberbatch: Stephen Strange Will Be Joining Iron Man, The Vision, Scarlet Witch And Thor In AVENGERS III!!


I am – Hercules!!
While promoting “Doctor Strange,” Benedict Cumberbatch told Empire Magazine of the “logistical challenge of aligning his schedule with those of Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany.”
“To get us all together will be quite something,” allowed Cumberbatch. “That’s why this character is being introduced, to open up the next chapter.”
“Doctor Strange” hits cinemas Nov. 4. “Avengers: Infinity War,” said to bring together Star-Lord with The Winter Soldier, arrives May 8, 2018.
Find the Express’ story on Empire’s story here.

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Is Kylo Ren the Headless Horseman from Disney's animation short of the 50's or 60's.. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"...

Disney Has 2020 Vision For
Third STAR WARS STORY!!


I am – Hercules!!
'Member Chewbacca?
Disney is determined not to let you forget. Gone are the multi-year (or decade-long) waits between “Star Wars” movies.
No word on what the third “Star Wars Story” movie will focus -- but persistent rumors always point to either master Force-wielder Yoda or bounty hunter Boba Fett.
Disney’s Star Wars schedule:
2015 Episode VII (J.J. Abrams)
2016 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Gareth Edwards)
2017 Episode VIII (Rian Johnson)
2018 Solo: A Star Wars Story (Chris Miller/Phil Lord)
2019 Episode IX (Colin Trevorrow)
2020 Mysterious Third Star Wars Story
Disney chief Bob Iger also told the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference that he had just heard a pitch for Episode IX from Trevorrow. No time like the present I guess!
Find Rolling Stone’s story on the matter here.


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Nearly half of Calgarians disapprove of police force: poll 1/30

062116-cops_mission_CAL0303_tjCP3-police-W.jpg© Ted Jacob 062116-cops_mission_CAL0303_tjCP3-police-W.jpg
Video of violent arrests and investigations into allegations of officer corruption and misconduct may be at the root of troubling new poll numbers showing nearly half of Calgarians disapprove of how the Calgary police force is operating.
The Postmedia-commissioned survey by Mainstreet Research found 48 per cent of the 823 respondents lacked confidence in the Calgary Police Service, compared to 39 per cent who approved of the performance of the 2,000-officer force.
Quito Maggi, president of Mainstreet, said the dismal numbers should serve as a wake-up call to police brass, who’ve endured a difficult 18 months marked by criticism over officer-involved shootings, arrests and suspensions for several officers, and social media backlash after videos of police takedowns emerged.
“These approval numbers are just awful,” said Maggi, noting it’s the lowest approval he’s seen in several similar surveys that looked at police forces in other Canadian cities.
“The Calgary Police Service has a bit of a perception problem, a bit of a PR problem.
“It could be temporary, but it could also take a very long time to climb out of it.”
Maggi noted perception is often influenced by media coverage, and in the case of Calgary police, with several high-profile incidents prompting public criticism, the numbers aren’t necessarily surprising. Recent polls conducted by Mainstreet in Toronto and Saskatoon found approval levels for police in those cities at 69 per cent and 55 per cent, respectively.
Had Calgarians been asked a year ago, their opinions may have been even lower. The poll found 39 per cent of respondents say their opinions of the force improved over the last  year, compared with 25 per cent that saw it diminish. Another 23 per cent said their opinion hadn’t changed.
While the approval numbers are a red flag for Maggi, respondents showed more confidence in the force when it came to the belief they’d be treated fairly if they were part of a police investigation, with 58 per cent suggesting they felt secure in how they would be treated. However, a full one-third expressed concerns they wouldn’t be treated fairly.
Just over half (51 per cent) felt police officers facing misconduct would be held accountable for their actions, with 29 per cent expressing doubt they would face repercussions and another 20 per cent unsure.
That number becomes particularly salient given the number of high-profile incidents that seemingly erupted a month after former chief Rick Hanson left his post last February. Since then, five officers have been charged for various offences — from corruption and breach of trust allegations to implications of stealing drugs bound for an evidence locker — and others have faced disciplinary action.
Current chief, Roger Chaffin, was promoted to the role last October.
According to Maggi, the onus now falls on police to re-establish public trust, noting as more incidents arise it can cause lasting damage.
“Certainly, these types of things are often media driven,” he said.
“Whenever there are a lot of stories like these, the public’s perception changes — and it can have a lasting effect.”
Most recently, four officers came under the microscope in August, after police brass announced it had called in the province’s law enforcement watchdog, ASIRT, to probe an arrest caught on a police cruiser’s dash cam that left a suspect with serious injuries. Two of the officers involved have been relieved of duty pending the investigation and the other two have been assigned to desk duty.
Earlier this month, ASIRT was called out to investigate two officer-involved shootings. One saw a wounded officer open fire and hit a machete-wielding suspect at Marlborough Mall. About an hour before that, an officer opened fire on a fleeing vehicle after spotting a rifle inside, resulting in it crashing into a gas meter and causing a gas leak.
One tool that could help police are body-worn cameras, something poll respondents were eager to see.
Some 72 per cent of those surveyed approved of the personal surveillance gear, with only 19 per cent disapproving.
A majority of those polled also support better training for police to deal with high stress situations. The survey found 49 per cent in favour of augmented training, with only 11 per cent opposed to the idea. Some 42 per cent said they were uncertain.
The bleak numbers in the Mainstreet poll are in stark contrast to those reported by the Calgary Police Commission’s annual citizen survey, with confidence in the local force typically in the high 90s.
In 2015, the civilian-run commission found 97 per cent said they were confident in the Calgary Police Service. That poll surveyed 1,002 residents and was considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
The Sept. 7 Mainstreet poll, a combination of both cellphone and land-line users, is considered accurate within 3.41 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
slogan@postmedia.com
On Twitter: @ShawnLogan403
Recent incidents involving Calgary police:
— Compiled by Emma McIntosh

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Capone in Chicago does an interview with BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH for DOCTOR STRANGE..... Harry Knowles.. enjoy the interview...

Capone makes an on-set house call to talk with DOCTOR STRANGE himself, Benedict Cumberbatch!!!

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.



So often, when an actor is named to a role in a superhero film, there is an outrage cry that can be heard around the globe, and it inevitably turns out the masses are wrong, and the actor is perfectly suited to play the part. But when Benedict Cumberbatch was announced as Dr. Stephen Strange for Marvel’s DOCTOR STRANGE (set for release November 4), there was mostly universal approval, and with good reason. In the last 10 years of his film, television and stage work, Cumberbatch has managed to become one of the most in-demand actors on the planet, and the fact that’s he’s about to be the lead in a Marvel movie makes complete sense.

His versatility can be seen in such films as ATONEMENT, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY WAR HORSE, STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS, 12 YEARS A SLAVE, THE FIFTH ESTATE, AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, THE IMITATION GAME (for which he got an Oscar nomination), BLACK MASS, as well as series work on “Sherlock” and “The Hollow Crown” (in which he played Richard III, and recent on-stage turns in “Frankenstein” and “Hamlet.”

During my London set visit to DOCTOR STRANGE earlier this year, Cumberbatch was brought before a group of online writer looking rather ragged. He was dressed in rags, his beard was covered in frost, and his skin was deathly white. Apparently, in the scene we’ve been watching, he’s coming through a portal from the side of a mountain in the Himalayas, arriving in the secluded compound of The Ancient One (played by Tilda Swinton), who is waiting with Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor). And although you can’t hear the interview, you may find it amusing to know that Cumberbatch responds to all questions with the American accent he’s using for Strange. He also did most of the interview in a whisper, since another scene was being shot nearby as we briefly spoke to him. He was a real blast to converse with, and I can’t wait to see his take on this iconic character. With that, please enjoy Benedict Cumberbatch…


Benedict Cumberbatch: [Walking in pretending to be shivering] I suggest you keep moving, but if you wear a little bit more than I’m wearing, you’ll love it! [Everyone laughs] I can safely say that I’ve never looked like this in an interview. That alone is your scoop. It’s ridiculous. I bring greetings from Everest. Hello.

Question: So why do you appear this way right now?



BC: [looks at the publicist] I mean, I’ve got be able to tell them, right? I just stepped out of a refrigerator—no, I mean, almost. I’ve been stranded on the side of Mount Everest. I don’t know what I can say. It’s such a weird process; I’m still not used to it. Yeah, I’ve been literally exposed in what I’m wearing to some of the coldest temperatures on earth and I’m struggling to get back the way I came to this place. It’s a sure test of his abilities in this moment in time—I’m in an accent. It’s fine to be in an accent. I gotta stay in the accent, I gotta speak. So, he lives or dies by whether he can do this or not, so it’s an important moment to get back. That’s a long answer. I’m just coming back from Everest.

Question: We saw the concept art of the different costumes and the different levels of training—

BC: Yeah, aren’t they amazing? This is novice, this is at the very beginning. You’ve got the green slacks and your little loose top. I go through all the ranks. I think it’s fair to say that, yeah, since I’m playing Doctor Strange, I get there. That’s me just me hearing the inner voice of Marvel saying, “You cannot say that yet!” But I do. It’s one of the things that attracted me to the role is the fact that it’s a really wide origin story. I mean this is part of it, but of course there’s the whole chapter before where he’s the neurosurgeon who has the accident. It’s fantastic. It gives me an excuse as an actor to be learning with my character, which is something you can do authentically. I’m not a martial arts expert, I’m certainly no sorcerer, so all these things, the movement of the body, the physicality, the changes he goes through mentally and physically. Obviously we’re not shooting in sequence, but it’s a great part and it’s a great hook for the character that made me want to play him in the first place.

Yeah, this is him in his first day of school outfit. It seems to get not only cooler, as in it looks cool, but it gets warmer; it seems to get heavier and heavier, and the Cloak of Levitation, which is a dear friend, sometimes at certain takes it becomes the Cloak of Limitations, because I either trip on it or I’ll be like, “Oh God, was my entire body moving like this?” But what superhero or what actor playing a superhero doesn’t complain about the costume? It’s a blast. It’s a real blast. Alex [Alexandra Byrne], our costume designer, she’s just such a fucking genius, I mean, she’s up there.



People ask, Why did you want to do this part? I’ve never done a lead role in a film this big, in a franchise this big. One of the reasons was, I wanted to know what the toy box was like. And it’s just insane, the amount of facility that everyone gets, and the amount of artistry and craft that’s brought to every aspect of filmmaking. I mean, you go to your first costume fitting, and it’s one of 30. It’s a myriad, but it’s for a reason. There are so many incredible costumes in this. And you go through a process. My body shape changed with the training a little bit and then there’s movement, certain things brought into the choreography of the fights. “Well, I need to be able to do this in it,” and they adapt the costume to your movements, which is another riveting part of the process.

But to watch them do that craft, I mean, the real eye I had on him as a character, often the case with any film, but especially one like this, which is so visual and so based in illustrative language, was the artwork, the impressionistic artwork of him and his movement at every stage of the story. So when I first walked into Alex’s room here, I just went, “Wow, this is great!“ And then I saw what they were gonna make Tilda look like. I don’t know if Mads was on then or where Kaecilius was gonna go, to give you a real understanding of what the world would look like.


Question: Did you ever read the comics?

BC: No, not those. I had a very sparse comic upbringing, not because I was being whipped into reading Chekhov and Dickens, but I read Asterix on holidays when I was a kid, and Tintin was featured, I remember, for a few years. I was never geeky about anything. I never really got obsessed about one thing for long. I was a bit of a butterfly and a magpie. I’d shift disciplines, whether it was musical instruments or sports or whatever, and it’s the same with that. I really discovered him through hearing about this film and first meeting Scott and getting into it with Kevin [Feige, head of Marvel Studios] and just opening up and saying, “Okay, this is, like all comics, very much of its era,” and my first question was, ‘How do you make this film? Why do you make this film now?,’ and the answers were so enticing that I was like, “I’m completely in.”

Question: Is there additional weight to the character and to the role, knowing that this is opening a whole new corner of this Marvel Universe that’s already existed?

BC: Yeah, a little, but I think playing any iconic role when you’re stepping into big shoes, in the shadow of people who have come before you and you can’t process that on a movie-to-movie basis. I’m excited to see the Illuminati and whatever else might happen, how that works, and where it ends up. I’m aware of his place within the comic pantheon of it all, the Marvel-verse, but I don’t email Kevin saying, “What am I going to do in the next film?” I’m excited to see. And as you know, from all these previous incarnations, they play out in unexpected ways from the comic format and journey, so they manage to both fulfill that magical space of doing things that seem to please diehard fans and bringing something new as well. So, I guess that’ll be the centerpiece for this guy’s journey.

Question: It seems like fans have been naming you for the role for years, I’m curious when it actually became real to you as something that was out there that you were interested in.

BC: That’s very sweet of them. Really, when it was first talked about, I met with Kevin, I met with Scott and, timeline-wise, I can’t remember. I’ve been watching “Making a Murderer” and realizing how familiar that sounds; it’s really scary—but seriously, I can’t remember exactly when. I think it goes two ways. I think you can just throw yourself at the internet’s mercy and be part of social media and get into a room with people who wanna fuck you, kill you, maybe both at the same time, or you just take a little step back and do your own thing in your own world. And then stuff leaks through, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s interesting, that’s horrific, that’s libelous, but what can I do?” You let things run in order to have some sanity and be able to do your work and not feel pre-judged. That’s not even a word, but you know what I mean. I think of people have an opinion about it, so I guess I’m saying is that I was probably too scared to look into the fan-driving of it.



But I’m flattered that people thought I was a good fit, and maybe that resonated with the guys upstairs. It was hard at a point, because of the scheduling on this side of the Atlantic. It’s a massive compliment to me and then to empower me to work for that idea of the character that they adjusted the making and release of this to accommodate both my production of “Hamlet” and going into “Sherlock” season 4. It’s another reason to deliver every day, to fulfill that promise. But it’s a really rich character. It’s an easy thing to have a good old meal every day. It’s great.

Yeah, I’m excited. I was very nervous about doing the Entertainment Weekly cover, because I thought, “Okay, this is the first taste, this is the first visual moment.” By then, I obviously knew a lot of the more iconic moments in his comic history, but still it’s me. It’s not a drawing, it’s not an artist; it’s me and I’m kind of frightened, but it seemed to go down really well, and Kevin and everyone was happy and I just stepped back and I went, “Great” and settled into the job. That way you can try to own part of it as well as serving what’s already there.


Question: So much of what we learned today is how this movie is going be very different from what Marvel’s striving for. So I’m wondering if maybe there’s a touchstone that fans can maybe—

BC: You guys have seen the artwork, you’ve heard what people have said, you’ve seen the sets, you can watch a bit of the action. You make your own minds up. I don’t want to put things on fan sites because the minute you do that…you get pitches, as an actor, like “Think WHEN HARRY MET SALLY meets ROBOCOP 3,” so I understand how—

Question: When is that coming?

BC: Right? That sounds good. I’m trying to make up some dialogue for that one. It’s a shorthand that can be really misleading. This is not a get-out answer. I think, also, it’s just to let this breathe and be its own thing as well. You’ve seen some of the artwork and the visuals are way out there, but they’re very scientific as well as alternative, so there’s a bit of everything from the original, but really spiced up.

Question: We obviously know Strange’s story already, so how does his personality evolve from being the cocky neurosurgeon to a Sorcerer Supreme?



BC: He’s still quite cocky by the end of the film. No, I’d say the major curve for him is that he learns that it’s not all about him, that there’s not just a greater good, but what he thinks he was doing as a neurosurgeon, that was good because it benefitted people’s health but was really just a furtherment of his attempts to control death and control his own fate and other people’s, but that’s still driven by the ego. So he becomes more “ego-less.” He’s, I would say, more lonely maybe by the end of the film. I would say that he’s a kick-ass sorcerer by the end of the film, so that’s a major change.

But I mean, really, the guy goes through everything you could possibly imagine. He’s at the height of his profession, he’s completely in control of his life, yet there are things missing, which are quite obvious, but it’s a good life, and then he has this car crash and becomes obsessed with healing himself and not realizing that real healing is something beyond just becoming what he used to be, it’s something to foster something that he has within him. It’s all from the same drive.

The guy, like most of us, he’s uncorrupted flesh from the beginning of his life, he’s somebody who’s not marked with original sin or any crap like that. He’s somebody who’s come into this world and had experiences that have shaped him to the point that we first meet him. There’s always got to be leverage. I think there is some clear explanation, not within this film, but potentially further down the line, for more of that to come out as well. He’s difficult, he’s arrogant, but he’s kind of brilliant and charming and you’d think, “Yeah, I’d want him on my head if I needed brain surgery.” He’s good enough to warrant his arrogance and he respects other people but not when he thinks he’s right and he’ll just do what he deems needs to be done when he knows or feels that he’s right, and the problem from humility’s point of view is that he is right, he’s really really good at his job.

So, his brilliance feeds his ego, his defensive, unimpeachable perfected-ness. You get a guy, I mean, the broader arc is that he goes from someone who lives in New York, is a top neurosurgeon, top pay, more meritocratic maybe than someone with the skill and the hard work, junior doctor, junior surgeon, now a top neurosurgeon who has earned his way into the top pay of society, to having nothing. Nothing at all. No spiritual center, no hands, no money, nobody in his life he will let near him to care for him anymore, and then he has to build himself up again from the very bottom, and he’s a desperate man by the time he reaches Kathmandu. Hence he goes into this thing which is a million miles away from any worldview or belief system he’s ever entertained, so it’s desperation that leads him to the path of The Ancient One and spiritual enlightenment…and then all hell breaks loose [laughs].



-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter

Friday, September 23, 2016

THE INHUMANOIDS!!!


Will Circus: .. the leader os of our late tales... Will Circus makes slow into fast.. he is quick-lightning fast as a beetle.. He is a Gigantic Tortoise-Beetle Inhumanoid... Scary, scary, scary.... He is fast, he has cat-quick reflexes... FAST!!!... Johnny Depp, James Earl Jones.. is doing his voice... or many other volunteers.. Daneil Day Lewis?.... He is the powerful leader of the Inhumanoids, who are somehow.. their light nightmare creatures from the depths of Tartarus Hades a Christian Hell... from he molten core of the Earth come the INHUMANOIDS.... but their... see.. they were.. like .. actually.. the heroes of the cartoon.... they were like sort of like.. what if autobots were.. nice.. good.. decent.. compassionate heroes .. instead of the big bully-boy autobots they were on the show....

Crow: … Crisping Glover?.. Andy Serkis?.. Liv .. Tyler?... Crow... Crow is the most Beloved of the Inhumanoids.. truth be told, Crow is one of the most beloved characters in the history of cartoons.... Crow is a Cygnet grown to the size of a skyscraper.. whoa.. wait on Harley.. much, much smaller than a skyscraper crow is.. Crow is an Inhumanoid Cygnet... He is kind of like .. the ice-frost skeleton of a bird you might find on the street and pick up and bring home for.. wel.... safekeeping.. to keep the frost skeleton of the bird safe.... you say you're going to do something ceramic and glazed with ice-bird skeleton.. to preserve it.. that's Crow...

.Will Circus again: .. Will Circus will never hurt Crow.. Will Circus will never hurt Crow... what?.. what?.. Will Circus will NEVER hurt Crow... what?.. it's kind of like Will Circus and Crow are like what if Megatron and Starscream had been buddies.. had always.. got.. along.. that's the two leader and second in .. command?.. of the Inhumanoids...


The third Inhumanoid is mystery to me.. I can't remember his name... but I'll make one up instead.. how about .. Gorgon...

Monday, September 19, 2016

.. if amber heard is not playing mera in "Aquaman", how about emilia clark for the role... harry knowles...

The Gorgeous Balance of Emilia Clarke, Sexiest Woman Alive 2015

Friendly and fierce. Kid sister and killer. Movie star and girl next door.

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Years ago, when I was a grad student, I worked at an ice cream shop in Oxford called George & Davis'. Students from Teddies, one of the local private schools just up the road, used to come in all the time. One of them was Emilia Clarke.
She's twenty-eight now, one of the stars of Game of Thrones, the mother not just of dragons but of John Connor in the latest Terminator movie, and Esquire's Sexiest Woman Alive. It's Sunday lunchtime. I was supposed to be taking my kids to Legoland. But I'm not—I'm going to interview Emilia.
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My taxi pulls up at a house in Hampstead, an inner London suburb. Academics and writers used to live there. Now only bankers and lawyers and movie stars can afford it—you hear a lot of American accents on the street. Emilia's house is part of a beautiful Georgian "terrace" (English for a section of row houses) with long front lawns, pretty pastel-colored stucco walls, big windows you can step out of. It's just across the road from Hampstead Heath: eight hundred acres of hills, hedgerows, and countryside in the middle of London.
The weather is classic English summer's day. It rained the night before, it will rain later that evening, but at lunchtime there's a kind of chilly truce and the overcast sky has a certain brightness to it. Emilia comes out of the house to meet me—the buzzer isn't working, and she shouts instructions apologetically from the doorstep as I fumble with the garden gate. She's wearing dark jeans and low cowboy boots and a cloud-soft and cloud-colored cashmere top.
"I'm sorry if I'm shouting," she tells me. "I was at a Metallica concert last night."
The members of Metallica turn out to be huge fans of Game of Thrones, so they comped some of the cast a few tickets. If you're Emilia Clarke, these kinds of things keep happening to you. Last month she toured the DMZ between North and South Korea with Arnold Schwarzenegger to promote Terminator Genisys (out on DVD in November). Next week she's accepting the Woman of the Year award from GQ. And today she has to hang out with a middle-aged, slightly etiolated Texan she's never met, who is supposed to take her to Crystal Palace to play something called Game of Phones—a Thrones-flavored quiz and treasure hunt put on by a social-networking company called Thinking Bob. It's aimed at people who want to make new friends in a strange new city.
So far as I can tell, Emilia doesn't really need more friends. There's also the worry that she might get mobbed, which is why she's going in disguise. I'm supposed to provide the disguise. It's possible that I'm supposed to be the protection, too.
In England what you do, when you're nervous about something, is you make a cup of tea. Emilia offers me a cup of tea.
Everything about her house suggests someone older than her years—it's a family home for a single young woman. There's a fancy upstairs sitting room, which is partly for show and a little sparsely furnished. There's a chesterfield under the window, there are books on the mantelpiece (including the latest Colm Tóibín novel), and a funny/pretty and probably expensive large vase decorating the hearthstone. The real life in these houses is downstairs, in the basement kitchen, where the servants used to operate, and that's where she takes me.
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The kitchen looks cooked in. There's a big cast-iron oven where the chimney used to be and a cookbook lying on the counter, still sticky with ingredients. She makes her own granola, which sits half finished in a tall preserving jar.
It turns out she also has a lot of tea. She opens a cupboard, she pulls out a drawer, both of them overflowing with complicated varieties.
"How do you take it?" she says. "In my family we always argue about the order of pouring. I'm a milk-first kind of girl."
Emilia's father was a working-class kid from Wolverhampton, a depressed industrial city near Birmingham. He was desperate to do anything that would get him out of Wolverhampton and became a roadie, then began working as a sound designer for a number of big-budget musicals in London. Her mother went to secretarial college, and must have had drive by the bucketload, because she started her own business and ended up as a marketing VP. Whether they meant to or not, Emilia's parents were pulling their children up the class ladder of English life.
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"They didn't want me to go to boarding school," Emilia says. "I wanted to. My brother was already going [he's two years older], and I fancied his friends."
"Did you end up going out with them?"
"Of course."
There's a kind of change of tone or pace that Emilia Clarke's very good at. She uses it in her acting, too, and can go from sentimental or angry to comic at the drop of a hat. It all shows up in her face if she wants it to—she's got great mobility of expression. Accents play a part in these shifts. Her own accent is a nicely plainspoken kind of "well-brought-up," but she dips into others, northern English or American for jokes or to make a point. She can do Wolverhampton, too, even though her father doesn't speak it anymore—he sounds like her, she says.
There are stories she's told about being taken to see Show Boat (her dad was in the crew) when she was three and falling in love with the theater and deciding then and there that she would act. But she also liked attention, she says. She liked playing games. And she liked winning them.
"And your father was in the business?" But she shakes her head.
"He was crew, not cast; there's a big divide… He wanted me to be very realistic about the whole thing, about how nobody makes any money. The only line you'll ever need to learn, he told me, is Do you want fries with that?"
His realism turned out to be off the mark. Sometimes surrealism comes closer to the truth.
---
I brought along three disguises: a brown fedora I haven't worn since college; a glittery, vaguely ethnic shawl; and an Oklahoma City Thunder cap, bright blue, with the kind of brim that sticks up. (I live in London now, but I'm from Austin originally; Kevin Durant is the man.) She picks the cap and my wife's old sunglasses, tortoiseshell-rimmed and pointy at the edges. I don't know what she looks like. She looks great.
On the cab ride over, Emilia explains that she wasn't anyone's "favorite" at the Drama Centre, where she studied, but she worked hard—"I was a keen bean." After graduating, she did a couple of episodes of Doctors (a long-running British daytime soap) and starred in some movie for a sci-fi channel that she still hasn't seen. By this point she was living with friends and working three jobs, at a bar, at a call center, and—she didn't tell me the third one. But she did say that a friend of hers walked in once and saw her face, the face you make when you don't know people are watching. It had a scowl on it. She'd given herself a year to make it in acting and she hadn't.
"And then my agent calls me up and says, 'Did you ever go up for Game of Thrones?' " The original pilot for the show had already been shot but nobody was happy with it, so HBO was digging back into the casting pile to try and save it. This is where Emilia came in. "My agent told the casting director, 'I know that the breakdown for this character is tall and willowy and blonde. I know she's short and round and brown, but I'd like you to see her.' "
"I had two scenes which told me nothing and not very much time in which to read all those [George R. R. Martin] books," says Emilia. "So I did what every good actor does and Wikipedia'd the living crap out of it."
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"Do you have a sense now of what they wanted?"
"Yeah … someone who could grow before your eyes in one season, who could gather strength and show vulnerability, they wanted the arc…"
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And then the show itself took off—and Emilia had one of the few characters who couldn't be killed. She is the Mother of Dragons, after all.
She manages to bring together a number of opposites, to make them natural: sweetness and toughness, emotionalism with a kind of cold-blooded determination. Something in these contrasts explains her sex appeal, too. She can play queen and kid sister, dominatrix and pal.
Crystal Palace is not a palace, exactly, more of a quiet backstreet behind a London train station. There's a gaggle of slightly cold-looking people waiting at the entrance to a park when we arrive. Somebody holds a bouquet of flags on sticks. Coming closer, we can see the logo: GAME OF PHONES. Emilia puts on her disguise—the cap, the glasses, an American accent. We've decided to call her Lilly.
Everyone separates into teams. What follows turns out to be very silly, in an am-dram kind of way, and a surprising amount of fun. Someone dressed in shopping-bag "chain-mail" mesh, with a mask of some sort on his face, reads out in his best pantomime-villain voice from a screed that announces our quest: "The lands of the East are … ruled by Lord Anchovy, the famed Fishy King." We have to locate a ruined phone box to find the first clue—the name of some mythical animal, inscribed next to a phone number. We troop off dutifully, on a gray bank-holiday Sunday, through a mostly empty park in deep south London.
It slowly becomes clear that nobody on our team watches Game of Thrones. This doesn't stop them from being nice people. There's a marketing director for a Thames-river-cruise company. Maybe fifty years old, one of those men, I get the sense, who wears shorts and sandals on the weekend regardless of the weather. The other woman on our team is a vaudeville dancer, a Cambridge graduate who pays the bills by tutoring kids in everything under the sun—including beading.
And then there's Emilia Clarke, whose costume, as she herself has realized, isn't necessary. As Daenerys, with that magical blond wig and undercurrent of menace—the fun young queen who can also order you dead—Emilia is unmistakable. But here, out of wig, surrounded by middle-aged strangers, she's just a very attractive woman in an (extremely odd) crowd.
But she sticks to her disguise. Lilly's accent is perfect; she's a laid-back, friendly, slightly dead-inside Manhattanite. It's just not clear why she's wearing an Oklahoma City Thunder cap or tortoiseshell sunglasses on a rainy day. When Lilly, in her hard-soled cowboy boots, slips on the gritty path and comes up limping a little, I suddenly feel for her—because I know that the real Emilia has just recovered from a fractured hip (an injury incurred when she slipped and fell while out promoting Terminator). Part of me wants to call the whole thing off.
Except that Emilia (not Lilly) wants to win. She spots an old phone booth near the playground: an English classic, red as a post box, now (in this age of mobile phones) abandoned and graffitied and locked up. The vaudeville dancer tries to light up the dirty back wall by sticking her phone through a gap in the broken glass, but the clue inside refuses to reveal itself. Emilia has a go, too, with her phone. Unicorn! This is the password we must deliver to "Lord Anchovy" by "the great bell, a shrine to the God of drowned sorrows…"
I've got a theory that movie stars (some of them at least) make it big partly because they epitomize something. Tom Cruise is the classic poor American kid on the make. His shit-eating grin is both a seduction and a kind of fuck you—the guy who runs up a bar tab after the company softball championship that he never intends to pay.
Emilia has the very real charm of a certain type of English upbringing. "A pocket rocket," my friend calls her—small, sexy, lively, and lots of fun. But there's a whole set of virtues that goes with the fun. There's an attitude to life.
Everybody has to "muck in"—a phrase that means helping out and getting your hands dirty and smiling at the same time. But they also get "stuck in." Like if you're having a picnic on a summer's day, and the beach is more dirt than sand, and the dirt is mud because it's raining, and there's nowhere to sit apart from an outflow pipe, and everybody's cold, you open a bottle of bubbly and don't complain. And not just don't complain but actually have a good time, because you've got "a sense of humor."
Or if somebody drags you out to a treasure hunt in Crystal Palace, in a disguise you don't need, you stick with it and try to win. You don't take yourself too seriously—all of these are very likable qualities. Emilia has them in spades.
On the hunt for the Iron Phone, the marketing director starts to tell a story about Game of Thrones, something he read in the paper about a father who hears his daughter has just gotten a part on the show. He feels tremendously proud and excited until he sees the first few scripts and finds out what she has to do: full frontal nudity, lots of sex. Maybe even a rape scene.
"It's not porn, it's HBO," someone chips in.
I don't know what Emilia—Lilly—is thinking now. But I know the story, too. The early episodes were hard to film, she'd told me in the cab. There was a lot of nudity, a rape scene, she was twenty-three years old, exposing her body. Her character suffered and she suffered with her. "Once, I had to take a little time out. I said I needed a cup of tea, had a bit of a cry, and was ready for the next scene."
Now she waits a beat.
"That must be awkward," Lilly says.
She's funny. She mucks in.
---
When we leave, Emilia decides not to tell the rest of our team who she is—they wouldn't know her anyway, she says. And you get the sense that for now, she's just fine with that.
"I'm trying everything I can not to be freaky," she tells me later in a pub. By freaky she means letting the star treatment go to her head. She remembers the days at the call center. The warning of cooking fries from her father. Her life before she was supposed to be noticed.
Half pal, half dominatrix. Half kid sister, half sexy queen. The movie star who plays, in her real life, an anonymous, funny beauty. This is the gorgeous balance of Emilia Clarke.
Published in the November 2015 issue.