BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE - COMEDY OR MUSICAL
Javier Bardem - Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Colin Farrell - In Bruges
James Franco - Pineapple Express
Brendan Gleeson - In Bruges
Dustin Hoffman - Last Chance Harvey

Congrats to Javier once more!

Penlope Cruz, Rebecca Hall and the film itself also got some nominations.

Spanish-language urban thriller, which Gonzalez Inarritu wrote, shoots on location in Barcelona next week.

Rodrigo Prieto boards pic as director of photography while two-time Oscar winner Gustavo Santaolalla will compose soundtrack. Argentina’s Maricel Alvarez and Spanish thesp Ruben Ochandiano play opposite Bardem.

Pic is about a man embroiled in shady dealings who is confronted by a childhood friend, now a policeman.

Arriaga and Gonzalez Inarritu were Mexico’s most successful filmmaking duo, starting with their breakout hit “Amores perros” in 2000 and the subsequent leap into Hollywood with English-language pics “21 Grams” and “Babel” that formed a trilogy.

Quibbles over writing credits on the three films came to a head with “Babel” when Arriaga was reportedly shut out from attending its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006.

“Biutiful will be co-produced by Fernando Bovaira’s Mod shingle and Cha Cha Cha, Gonzalez Inarritu’s three-way partnership with Alfonso Cuaron and Guillermo del Toro.

Cha Cha Cha is a $100 million, five-feature production partnership with financing, distribution and international sales handled by Universal Pictures and Focus Features Intl.

Arriaga recently helmed “The Burning Plain,” based on his own screenplay, starring Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival.

Source: Variety

The team that made Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Woody Allen, Javier Bardem and Rebecca Hall, will also be at the opening gala.

Source: eitb24

Mr. Bardem will join a panel discussion on one of the film’s subjects: extreme violence against women in the Congo. The Enough Project will also unveil its forthcoming campaign, RAISE Hope for Congo: Protect and Empower Congo’s Women.

Featured Speakers:
Javier Bardem, Academy Award-Winning Actor (”No Country for Old Men,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”) and Producer of “Invisibles”
Rebecca Feeley, Enough Project Field Researcher
Dayle Haddon, Author and UNICEF Ambassador
Candice Knezevic, Enough Project Congo Campaign Manager
Dr. Roger Luhiriri, Panzi Hospital
John Prendergast, Enough Project Co-chair

Reception 6:15 pm; Panel discussion 7 pm; Film Screening 7:45 pm

SPACE IS EXTREMELY LIMITED
RSVP required. First come, first served.

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For more information, call 202-682-1611

Source: American Progress

Woody Allen’s latest outing, the sensually sun-drenched Vicky Cristina Barcelona, charmed critics at Cannes with its return to what Woody does best — typically neurotic, upwardly mobile protagonists caught between what they want and what they think they want.

Vicky (Rebecca Hall) has her life all mapped out, down to her impending nuptials with the nebbishy Doug (Chris Messina). Her best friend Cristina, on the other hand, is a restless and nubile wanna-be boho only certain of what she doesn’t want. When the two jet off to Barcelona for their last summer of freedom, they expect to spend a few months resting and enjoying the art of Barcelona. But when the dashing painted Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) makes them an offer they can’t refuse (no matter how much Vicky might want to), their lives become much more complicated indeed. When Juan’s ex-wife, Maria Elena (Penélope Cruz), shows up on his doorstep fresh from a suicide attempt, things get even more confusing, volatile, and sexy.

Fresh off his Oscar-winning turn in No Country For Old Men, Javier Bardem chats exclusively with Premiere.com about working with Woody, why he is nothing like his sexually direct playboy character, and why you won’t see him as Pablo Escobar any time soon. British stage and TV actress Rebecca Hall, who recently had heads turning for her role opposite Christian Bale in The Prestige, talks about acting opposite Hollywood’s sexiest leading man, why her character fears unleashing her passion, and her upcoming role in Ron Howard’s Oscar-bait Frost/Nixon.

JAVIER BARDEM

At the Cannes press conference, Woody Allen talked about the tragicomic aspects of Vicky Cristina Barcelona, noting that, while he hopes there are funny moments, by the end of the film the focus is on the tragic elements. Given Allen’s famous lack of specific direction, what were the challenges in nailing the balance between comedy, tragedy, and sex in relation to Juan Antonio?
I think that is the one of the aspects of the genius of Woody Allen’s dialogue. It is very difficult for an actor to receive really brilliant dialogue that really tells you the direction to go. It is true that when you are working with Woody Allen, he doesn’t give too much direction, but I guess he relies on, first, the actors he chooses, and second, the dialogue he wrote, because as a good classic writer, when you have that material, you know exactly where to go. He leads you exactly in the right direction, and then you start reading and you see how the arc of the behavior of the character starts and what he goes through at the very end. So that, plus, in talking to us — because he talks! — and telling us, “Yeah, this may be a comedy, and this may be fun or not, but this is really a drama.” This is a movie about people trying to find answers about something that doesn’t have any answer, which is: how to approach love? What is the best way to approach love? Who knows? At the very end, the whole story gets another kind of bitter taste, because there are people harmed by the experience that they had in these couple of months. And I think that once you read that in the story, understand that, and know that the director wants you to go in that direction, you do it.

Although Woody Allen is a notoriously hands-off director, he requests that actors stick to the script. Yet, correct me if I am wrong, watching the fireworks between you and Penélope, it seems that a lot of the dialogue was improvised. Was that the case?
Well, [Woody Allen] likes to not take credit for that, but it is not true. What we said in Spanish, it was a literal translation of what he wrote. But it is true, that when I am working in Spanish — because it is my mother tongue —’ I know it is better to use that word rather than the other so you add that or you take out that word. But the thought, the idea, the pace, the whole thing is something that he wrote. And he likes to say that it is not, but it is true. Who would dare to change any Woody Allen dialogue? I wouldn’t.

Compared to say Ramón Sampedro [The Sea Inside] or Anton Chigurh [No Country for Old Men], one might assume that Juan Antonio is perhaps the closest to your own personality. Not so much in that he’s a Don Juan, but his ability to speak with complete candor and absolute directness. There’s no ambivalence about him. Is that more your personality?
Not at all. When I was reading the script, when I saw the first scene with me approaching that [restaurant] table with Scarlett [Johansson] and Rebecca [Hall], I was like, “How in the world do you do that scene? How in the world do you say those words?” I guess it is not as strange as some of the characters that I have played, and that is what makes it more logical [to think] that it is closer to the actor who portrays that character. But, I think, with anything you give it your all. I am not them. They are not me. But at the same time, I have all of them inside of me, so you had better pull the trigger in order to hit [the target].

You’ve described Juan Antonio as being someone with a “wound to be healed.” We know that Maria Elena has stabbed him once before, emotionally as well as physically. How would you describe their relationship? Dysfunctional and co-dependent or passionate and intensely meaningful in a strange way?
I think Woody Allen, first of all, does something really smart and wise, which is to put all these stereotypes and clichés in front of us, and then little by little, not only does he make fun of it and destroys them, but at the very end he ends up taking us to see what is behind those labels and clichés, which is people. People who share the same fears, needs, impotence, and dependence. No matter where they are coming from or what they are pretending to be. And that is a great thing. And the insanity that is shared by all of them is [a fear of] not finding what they are looking for. And the extreme of that is the relation between Maria Elena and Juan Antonio, which is a place that doesn’t move forward because it is stuck in interdependence and this insanity thing of “I need you as much as I need you be far away from me” — which is something that we can see all around us in the world. And, I guess, the confrontation between these two characters is what makes Scarlett and Rebecca’s characters to really realize what they had been [involved with] over the last two months.

Woody Allen talked about how he feels that Juan Antonio is an inherently decent character who simply wants to have a good time with these two lovely young ladies, but when he finds himself attracted to Vicky more than just sexually, decides to back away rather than creating a more complicated situation. Is Juan Antonio afraid of getting hurt if he pursues Vicky only to find that she’s unwilling to break off her engagement for him?
I always saw Juan Antonio as a projection of an image that not only women could put on men as in this kind of easy[going] man [who is] careful, protective, secure, but also a tender, free artist. But [he's] also an image that men put on some other men, as in, “I would like to have the courage to be Juan Antonio.” But I think that, in the end, that is a character that he creates in order to hide the truth of it, which is fear, which is the childish need of being protected by a woman. We could go to Juan Antonio’s past and see what happened when he was five with his mother. But he can’t stay more than five minutes alone. And that is a curse. Because of that, he needs to be the way which he is, which is direct and fast. [laughs]

I read in June that you and Joe Carnahan were still in talks about the script for Pablo Escobar. Joe said something like you’re a marked man but that he’d get you! Is this still moving forward?
Not that I know of. I have talked to him. This project has been in and out for quite a long time, and I know that this material is spectacular, and I know him, and he is great director, but I don’t think it is going to happen, as far as I know, with me in it. It has been something that has been in and out. But I am sure he is going to do it, and it is going to be fantastic, because the role is pretty is amazing.

You were in talks with Rob Marshall about Nine, and pulled out due to exhaustion. Will we ever see you in a musical?
No, that is something that is kind of… I read the script, and the work of Anthony Minghella is truly impressive, and I had the chance of working with Rob Marshall, and he is a multi-talented director and the nicest person. He is truly a nice human being. And it is going to be something unique and beautiful — that is why actors and actresses of such high quality are [involved]. But in my case, it was about timing.

REBECCA HALL

What can you tell us about developing the character of Vicky under Woody Allen’s direction?
I think what makes [Woody Allen] brilliant is that he writes quite truthful scenarios about human conflicts. He doesn’t plow in with answers. He just presents situations, which are quite human. I thought it was interesting to deal with that as an actor, and I am always attracted to parts that are one thing and its antithesis all at the same time, and Vicky very much is that. And it is not just that she is more repressed and sensible, but she is enormously passionate and sexy and warm and romantic underneath and vulnerable. And that is a tricky thing to balance, but it was there in the writing, and I just sort of trusted that. And, yes, he doesn’t say a lot. And actually, in not saying anything, he says everything, if you know what I mean. He just trusted [us] to do it. And that trust does give you a lot of confidence.

So he gives few cues but asks for actors to stick to the script… Was this a very different experience for you from, say, Christopher Nolan on The Prestige?
We did stick to the script, but one of the first things that Woody said to me when I got on set was, “Okay, here we are. Stand there. Say what you want.” And he would say that every time I arrived. He would say, “I have written this, but put it in your own words.” So he wasn’t [dogmatic] and every word has to be there, and most of it was rehashing of what he had written [anyway]. I mean, the sense is there. And the great thing is he shoots so much in one set-up so there is a sense of continuity, so you can try it several ways and you can sort of muck around with that until you find what feels truthful.

Being the only Brit in a cast of mainly Spaniards and Americans must have been an unusual experience. On the big screen, you have never done an American accent. How much work did you do with a voice coach to create a regional accent, and did you build a back story for her? We know she’s studying Catalan history and Woody Allen has said that she’s conventionally middle-class. How did you interpret her background and accent?
I interpreted her as conventionally middle class too. I didn’t work with a voice coach at all. I did it all myself. Not to boast, because it does sound a bit boasty, but it was important to me to make it specific, and I wanted to find a voice that did suit that type of American that is educated, slightly WASPY, Upper East Side. It is a distinctive voice. It has to have that elegance and that slight pretense but at the same time quite hard and strong. So I did spend a lot of time working on it. But I have to fess up and say that I am not totally alien. My mother is American, but she has a very different kind of voice! [laughs] Nonetheless, I do have a foot on the other side of the pond.

How do you interpret Juan Antonio? Do you think he backs away from Vicky because she is about to be married?
Yeah, I do. I think that is his conflict. I think everyone in this film is faced with the conflict of thinking they are one thing and acting out their life accordingly [but] in their instinctive internal life behaving differently, and trying to control that. Just as much Vicky controls what she is scared of in life by mapping it out and behaving in ways that she has mapped out, I think Juan Antonio does [the same].

Can you talk about working with Javier Bardem? In person, he seems extremely outgoing and fun to be around. Does that translate when he is on set working?
Yes. A hundred percent. He is really charming and a lot of fun, and he is very good at playing very serious brooding, intense characters, and I supposed I had a certain type of terrible expectation that he would be that. And he is not at all! He is very fun and spirited and funny, actually.

Woody Allen has said that for the role of Vicky, he looked for someone that would be contrasting to Scarlett and Penélope’s characters. Did the three of you and maybe Patricia Clarkson hang out and get to know each other to develop a sort of bond and to spot the differences between your characters?
I think we all got on, which was a bonus. I don’t think we made an attempt to get on for the sake of creating that dynamic between all four of us. It happened quite naturally. I think it happened in the casting, and it happened mostly in the way that they were written. In many senses, it was also in the fact that Maria Elena, Vicky, and Cristina are stereotypes of different types of women: rigid and together or indecisive or plain all-out crazy, fiery temperament. They are all sort of stereotypes, but I do think it is interesting that over the course of the film, you can see elements of each one of us in the other one.

Had you been to Barcelona before?
No. I hadn’t. Not at all.

And this was your first experience shooting on continental Europe as well, right? It must have been a bonus that you were shooting in and around nearly every major tourist site.
Yeah. Absolutely. I know — it sort of took the pressure off having to go out and do it on weekends.

Woody Allen said in connection with this film that once love is fulfilled it is never romantic again. You can have other qualities of love but never the romance. Without giving away too much about the ending, what do you think the message of the film was?
Well, I think when he makes those comments, I think it is more in the sense of romantic tradition. I am loath to say that romance is dead when it is fulfilled. I know what he means. It is that really interesting and age-old thing of worshipping something from afar and thinking it is going to be everything and putting everything into it, and then getting close up and realizing that your object might have bad breath or something. I don’t think that Vicky allows herself romance at all. I think she would prefer not to deal with it, because it is too scary. Because if she lets herself off the leash, she is not quite sure what she would be capable of or how much she might [lose] herself. And, I suppose, what she learns is that you can’t really control it because it is unpredictable, and you either ignore it and don’t necessarily live a passionate or fulfilled life or you follow it up and deal with all the risks that it entails, which in many ways is just as impractical. It is quite pessimistic, I suppose. Well, maybe just realistic.

Your upcoming projects look amazing. Can you tell us about Frost/Nixon? With a Peter Morgan [The Queen; The Last King of Scotland] script and Ron Howard [The Da Vinci Code] directing, it sounds great.
No, it’s fantastic. I play someone called Caroline Cushing, who is a real person, still alive and well and living in Los Angeles, but she is English. And she was David Frost’s girlfriend at the time. She is very upper class. Well, Peter Morgan has written her — and the reality may be slightly different — as a bit of a well-to-do, glamorous English divorcee who is very fun-loving and flirtatious and full of life and couldn’t be more different to Vicky if she tried.

And then you have the Nicole Holofcener project, the director of Lovely and Amazing. Is this a pure, straight-up comedy?
I loved doing that! Like a lot of her things, it has elements of both. It is about two apartment buildings in New York. Me and Amanda Peet are sisters, and I play a rather sad character who works in a hospital and has given up a lot of her life to be a provider and [care-giver] for her dying grandmother. And in the apartment next door to the dying grandmother, Catherine Keener lives with Oliver Platt. It is about how all the characters are trapped. It is a very different kind of role and quite sad, actually. But it has got funny parts as well. I loved doing it and think that Nicole Holofcener is absolutely brilliant.

And finally, are you going to be Emily Brontë?
I don’t know if that is actually happening. I don’t know if they can make it happen with my scheduling, which is a real tragedy. But at the moment I am doing a film of [Oscar Wilde's] Dorian Gray, with Colin Firth and Ben Barnes, and then I am doing a trilogy of independent films with Channel Four, although I am only in one of them, based on these novels by a writer called David Peace set in the ’70s about these rather horrible murders that happened in Yorkshire. Very dark and very different.

“I was playing make-believe like any other kid,” the 39-year-old actor recalled in a phone conversation from his Madrid home. “And there was a moment when something clicked inside that made me aware of myself, that allowed me to watch myself playing from the outside. Up to then play had been unconscious.

“The difference between an actor and anyone else is that awareness of the playing.”

He has been playing ever since, immersing himself in roles so disparate that a casual observer might not realise they’re all done by the same man.

“One of the great pleasures of my work is to impersonate others, to hide myself behind those guys,” Bardem said. “To fill myself with someone else.”

Bardem is pretty good at that. He has the Oscar to prove it.

For several years a favourite of the art-house crowd for his work in films like Before Night Falls and The Sea Inside, Bardem roared into the mainstream with last year’s Coen brothers hit No Country for Old Men. As the eerie killer Anton Chigurh he mesmerised audiences and walked off with the statuette for best supporting actor.

He has portrayed murderers, a paraplegic, a gay Cuban poet, a crazed monk during the Spanish Inquisition, a burly out-of-work shipbuilder … and in many of his performances he has transformed himself physically, gaining or losing weight, shaving his head, growing a beard.

Now, in Woody Allen’s new comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Bardem finally plays the sort of role you’d think would be most obvious for him.

In the comedy he’s Jose Antonio, a Latin lover and sensuous painter who finds himself flitting among three women: a couple of Americans visiting Barcelona (Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall) and his mercurial ex-wife (Penelope Cruz).

“It’s one of his more subtle roles,” Boston Globe critic Ty Burr said of Bardem. “He’s not doing anything funny with his hair, he’s not paralysed … he’s playing an almost generic European stud. But because it’s Bardem, he’s doing it with a lot more shadings than we’ve ever seen before.”

With his bedroom eyes and broken nose (the result, he says, of a barroom sucker punch a decade ago), Bardem would seem a natural to portray sensual men. Yet he has steered away from those roles ever since his first big taste of success - playing a stud in the 1992 Spanish film Jamon, Jamon. After that international hit, stud roles were the only ones offered him.

Bardem vowed to hold out for meaty character roles that would challenge him and his audience.

So why play the Latin lover now?

“Well, it’s Woody Allen.”

Bardem described the Allen set as one of the most efficient he’d ever encountered.

“On Woody’s set there is no time to waste. For actors who have been in American films, where there is a lot of down time, it’s a challenge to be alert, to do the work without the luxury of too much thinking. That might make some actors nervous, but Woody gives you extremely well-constructed dialogue to work with.

“You don’t have to rewrite it to fit your conception of the character, which is often the case.

“And feeling safe with the words gives you extra time just to concentrate on the performance.”

Playing a painter wasn’t difficult. At one time Bardem hoped for a career as an artist (he also has worked odd jobs like construction worker and nightclub bouncer).

“What’s different is that Jose Antonio is an abstract artist who pours and throws paint. My own art is much more realistic. But I must say that after doing the movie I’ve gone back and picked up my brush again.”

One of the main characters in Vicky Cristina Barcelona is the city of Barcelona. According to Bardem, Allen zeroed in on some of the cliches associated with the city - “flamenco music, wine, sunshine” - and deconstructed them.

“Woody makes us go through the stereotypes to see the people behind those stereotypes. No matter how exotic the setting may seem, we’re really all the same - same issues, soul and common sense. Everyone is struggling.”

One of the central struggles in the film is between Jose Antonio and his ex-wife, Maria Elena (Cruz). A manic depressive who once stabbed Jose Antonio in a fit of rage, Maria Elena is a painter as well. In the film she washes up at her ex’s apartment after an absence of several years - homeless, penniless and on the verge of a breakdown.

Despite the other women in his life, Jose Antonio takes her in, feeling responsible to the woman he still loves, even though he realises they can never again be romantically linked.

It’s a relationship that is equal parts humour and tragedy, with Cruz giving what may be her finest performance as the fiery, tormented Maria Elena.

“Woody really paid attention to those scenes,” Bardem said. “He wanted us to experiment, to push as hard as we could into extreme behaviour and then, if he thought it was necessary, to bring it down a bit. He wanted those two characters to represent the instability in relationships.”

Apparently something else happened during the filming. Bardem and Cruz had been friends ever since they co-starred in Jamon, Jamon. But on Allen’s set, that friendship turned to love.

That at least is the story being told by the Spanish media. One source even quoted Bardem as saying that he was going to propose to Cruz.

Bardem isn’t commenting. Before this interview a publicist for the Weinstein company, distributor of the movie, said Bardem wouldn’t answer questions about his personal life.

It would have been odd if Bardem hadn’t become an actor. He was born in the Canary Islands to a family of actors that has been active in the Spanish film industry almost from its inception. His mother, Pilar Bardem, has appeared in more than 100 films in more than 40 years, and his siblings, Carlos and Monica, are actors as well.

That acting is the family business may explain Bardem’s matter-of-fact approach to his profession. The biggest fallout after winning the Oscar, he said, was not in how he viewed himself but in how he was viewed by others.

“I try not to let it affect me. But you discover that some people around you have changed. Some people place too much importance on it.

“Five months later things are back to normal. But the first two months were crazy and not always crazy good.

“The thing is, you have to let it go. Sure, you celebrate, enjoy the celebrity, drink a bit - but then let it go. It’s not real.

“The real thing is to get a job and do the best you can.

“The real thing is to go to the market, buy a fish and have dinner with your friends.”

Source: The Age

Opening in just under 700 theaters, Woody Allen’s romantic comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona (MGM/Weinstein), starring Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, rounded out the Top 10 with $3.7 million, becoming Allen’s biggest opening movie since 2000’s Small Time Crooks as well as the second-biggest opening of his 35-year career.

1. Tropic Thunder
2. The Dark Knight
3. Star Wars: The Clone Wars
4. Mirrors
5. Pineapple Express
6. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
7. Mamma Mia!
8. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
9. Step Brothers
10. Vicky Cristina Barcelona

The film is now up to $4,699,842 in it’s entire days of release.

Source: ComingSoon.net

“Thank you, though I don’t know what you mean by unique. It could be a unique horrible voice or a unique beautiful voice. My voice comes from my big neck. No, I don’t sing. I was close to singing in this movie, but I’m a nice boy, and I didn’t want people to suffer.”

Was it exciting or frightening to work with Woody Allen? Pranav Prasad, HONG KONG

Both. There’s excitement because I think he’s a genius, but there’s also the fear of making his work look bad. The excitement also comes from knowing that you have brilliant dialogue coming out of your mouth like jewels.

Are there any actors you’re dying to work with? Kathryn Coulter ALEXANDRIA, VA.

I always say, “I don’t believe in God, I believe in Al Pacino”–and that’s true. If I ever get a phone call saying “Would you like to work with Pacino?” I would go crazy.

Are you ever worried about being typecast? Dan Ostrowski NEW YORK CITY

I’m not worried. I always try different things. My dream would be, when I’m old, to put all of my characters in a room and realize that they can’t talk to each other because they don’t have anything to share.

Growing up in a family of actors and artists, did you feel compelled to become a performer? Jenny Posen, LOS ANGELES

No. Growing up, I studied painting. I started working as an extra to get some money so that I could keep painting. But I guess it was in my blood. I went to my mother, who is an actress, and said, “I think I’m an actor whether I like it or not.”

Is it more fun to play a villain or a romantic lead? Randy Arnold CHATTANOOGA, TENN.

I try to taste both of them with the same intensity. If you’re playing a bad guy whose mind is broken, you have to get in there and find out what triggers those feelings. And once you’re on the other side, you have to take that and throw it away. Somebody said, “The difference between an artist and a person that’s crazy is that the artist has a two-way ticket and the crazy person only has a one-way.”

As film-marketing and -financing become more international, do you believe that opportunities for non-American actors have kept pace? Walter F. Kawalec III TURNERSVILLE, N.J.

I think so. Last year’s Oscars [in which all four acting awards went to Europeans] spoke so well of the American film industry. At the end of the day, it’s about opening up your arms and receiving the world rather than putting up walls. That’s what makes this job so great and so unique. You are obliged to share these experiences with people from all over the world.

Is rehearsing for an English-speaking role any different from rehearsing for a Spanish-speaking role? Leslie Allan Lugo, MONTREAL

Totally. It needs more work. I’m much more comfortable with English now than I was four or five years ago. But I still need to work hard in order to own the language, own the words. It’s a matter of sitting down with a great dialect coach and learning little by little. And it takes time, but I love the work. I’m not lazy. I can be everything, but I’m not lazy.

Do you still play rugby? James Cho BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF.

I’m a huge rugby fan, but I’m old. I started playing it when I was 9 years old, and I played until I was 23. Rugby nowadays is so different. When I was playing, it was like a little thin man holding the ball and going down the field. Now they run like gazelles. They are machines. It’s spectacular.

You have a unique voice. Do you sing? Wasan Suttikasem, BANGKOK

Thank you, though I don’t know what you mean by unique. It could be a unique horrible voice or a unique beautiful voice. My voice comes from my big neck. No, I don’t sing. I was close to singing in this movie, but I’m a nice boy, and I didn’t want people to suffer.

Have you learned to drive yet? Lucy Dagostino POINT PLEASANT, N.J.

If you see this movie, you’ll see me driving one of the nicest cars I’ve ever seen. It took me hours just to learn to drive one little trip from here to there, but I finally did it. I don’t have a driver’s license. I don’t like cars. I’ve never had an accident, but I think cars are speeding bullets. I learned to drive for the movies.

Source: Time.com

Javier Bardem is in talks for a supporting role.

Brazilian helmer Andrucha Waddington (”Me You Them”) will direct.

Carter wrote the book about the period of time when he lived and worked as an aid worker in Sarajevo during the bitter Balkans war siege that lasted 43 months.

Elliott Lewitt (”At Close Range”) and Julie Kirkham are slated to produce. Bloom will also co-produce.

“I read the script, and the very human story and the very core of this film spoke to me very clearly,” Bloom told reporters in Sarajevo. “This is a departure from the very big Hollywood productions.”

Aim is to lense in Sarajevo at the end of the year, with the mayor of Sarajevo backing the project.

Carter previously helmed “Miss Sarajevo”, a 1995 doc produced by U2 singer Bono and late Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti.

Source: Variety