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Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.This theme is Bloggerized by Lasantha Bandara - Premiumbloggertemplates.com.
Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.This theme is Bloggerized by Lasantha Bandara - Premiumbloggertemplates.com.
Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.This theme is Bloggerized by Lasantha Bandara - Premiumbloggertemplates.com.
Those familiar with the work of Jason Statham know that he doesn’t
really do “fluffy” films or romantic comedies. He is a man of action and
general butt-kicking/badass-ery: see “The Transporter,” “The Bank Job,”
“Crank” and “The Expendables,” to name a few.
Statham’s new film, “The Mechanic,”
in which he plays a trained assassin who takes the son of his former
mentor (Ben Foster) under his wing, is no different. There is a lot of
action and a lot of ass-kicking, just the way his fans like it.
When MTV News caught up with Statham, we asked him if he felt at all
typecast, and whether he’d take on a nice-guy role in a romantic comedy
someday.
“You know, it’s tough, because people will always keep saying to me,
’Do you only see yourself doing action movies?’ and, I don’t know,”
Statham said. “It’s very difficult because one day I might be asked to
do something that is of quality in a different genre, but the films that
come from different genres aren’t that great,” he argued. “So I end up
not doing them because once you make a mistake in that area, you can’t
go back. So, if I do go into something else, it will be because it is
good.”
But Foster told us his co-star doesn’t just play a tough guy
onscreen, but rather makes each performance unique by infusing them with
“vulnerability.”
“If you’re a tough guy, and Jason is, the hardest part is showing
vulnerability,” Foster explained.
“And it’s working in ’The Bank Job’
and in ’The Mechanic’ here, and other films. He brings a lot of quiet
heart to it. And it’s difficult stuff because movie viewers aren’t
looking for that necessarily,” he said. “But Jason is always being a
humanity to [something] behind the bullets.”
Jason Statham surprised us all with his comedy chops in Spy, and now he’s about to branch out in an even more unexpected direction. Viva La Madness, the Layer Cake
follow-up that’s been cooking for a couple of years now, is now being
reworked as a TV series with Statham still attached to star. It’ll be
his first-ever small-screen gig.
Get all the details on the Jason Statham Viva La Madness TV show after the jump.
Gaumont International Television has announced it’s developing Viva La Madness as an hourlong television series. It’s based on the book by J.J. Connolly, who also wrote the novel that inspired Layer Cake. Although Connolly’s Viva La Madness is a direct sequel to Layer Cake, the television series is not billed as a direct sequel to the 2005 film starring Daniel Craig. Nor is Craig involved with the new project.
Statham
will play the anonymous lead “who is stranded in the Caribbean itching
for the criminal life he left behind — even though he’s still a wanted
man back home. Soon he joins forces with two robust London gangsters:
the menacing Sonny King and his paranoid partner Roy ‘Twitchy’ Burns.”
In a statement, Statham explained why they’d decided to rework Viva La Madness
as a show. “The way J.J. writes is so on the ball and authentic its
hard to let any of it go,” he said. “Trying to lose characters or shave
down scenes every other page didn’t work, we wanted it all. The best
place was a 10 hour plus show that lets you fully disappear into
Connolly’s world.”
“Viva La Madness, with its riveting
characters and twisting storyline, is a volatile cocktail of action and
comedy that only J.J. Connolly can create,” added Gaumont International
Television CEO Katie O’Connell Marsh. “Jason
Statham […] brings such strength and credibility to his characters but
also has an effortless shade of vulnerability that gives him so much
dimension on screen.”
Connolly is writing the scripts. He’ll additionally serve as executive producer along with Statham and Steve Chasman, who own the rights. Viva La Madness does not yet have a network home, and no other actors or directors are attached at this time.
Melissa McCarthy and her international cohorts landed in London’s Leicester Square Wednesday for the world premiere of “Spy.” The crowd seemed most lively for local heroes Jason Statham and Jude Law, who got top billing with McCarthy on the posters plastered around the square. “It’s good to be home,” Statham said.
McCarthy told the crowd and the Yahoo livestream
that audiences were going to see the action star “in a whole different
light,” tackling comedy as a surly agent named Rick Ford. “You never
know what you’re getting into with a comedy,” Statham said. But it helps
to have a great director. “Paul Feig is the Scorsese of comedy films,”
he proclaimed.
Statham also approved his leading lady’s action chops. “(Melissa)
does one of the best fight sequences I’ve ever seen,” he said of a scene in a kitchen. “You never know what you could do with a bread roll.”
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“It would be a pretty tough argument to say that Melissa isn’t the
funniest actor in films right now,” said the film’s Jessica Chaffin. “A
lot has been made about Paul doing a lot for women in comedy.
But I
think Paul is a fan of comedy in general. But it’s just nice to see that
women can hang the same as the boys.”
This is the third collaboration between McCarthy and Feig, with the
all-female-cast “Ghostbusters” next. “We just can’t stop. Hopefully,
we’ll do another one of these,” he said.
Also in attendance at the premiere were Allison Janney, Miranda Hart, Peter Serafinowicz and Nargis Fakhri, as well as producers Peter Chernin and Jenno Topping.
The Hummingbird star laughs like an oversexed goose and happily spills
the beans on his private life, whatever the protestations of his
publicity people
Jason Statham. Photograph: James Dimmock/ James Dimmock/Corbis Outline
I've bought Jason Statham
a present. It's an unofficial 2013 Jason Statham calendar. It's
hideous: cheaply made and impossible to annotate, with each month
containing a different but equally dreadful paparazzi close-up of his
own giant head. And I don't realise what a stupid present it is until
it's halfway out of my bag.
I mean, this is Jason Statham. You don't mess with Jason Statham. For
more than a decade, a consistent theme has run through the man's work:
You Don't Mess With Jason Statham. Jason Statham doesn't do fun. You've
never seen him laugh. You've barely seen him smile. What you have seen,
however, is Jason Statham
punching people in the face. Or kicking them in the face. Or shooting
them in the face. Or all three at once, during a car chase where
everything's on fire. This calendar was a mistake. I start to worry
about how my face will end up.
But then something weird happens. As soon as he sees what I'm doing,
Jason Statham shrieks. He actually shrieks, so loudly that I recoil.
This is apparently how Jason Statham laughs. It's a giddy, high-pitched,
strangulated thing that comes out of nowhere and tears a vacuum in the
atmosphere. It's the sort of noise a goose might make if caught in the
throes of autoerotic asphyxiation. There's a good reason why Jason
Statham doesn't laugh much in his films: his laugh is the single least
Statham-ish noise that exists on the entire face of this planet.
"What's that?!" he squeals as he yanks the calendar out of my hands.
"Where did you get this? That's the worst fucking picture of me I've
ever seen. Who's making money off that? Seven ninety fucking nine? Fuck!
I should try and claim back the nine pence!"
I'd got Jason Statham wrong. Maybe we all had. Far from being the
taciturn meathead that his films generally make him out to be, he barely
lets up for the 45 minutes I spend with him. He laughs, he reminisces,
he flings himself about on the sofa. At one point, he rolls out a
dead-on impression of Steptoe's Harry H Corbett. Jason Statham's primary off-screen mode, it would appear, is "chatty".
We're
here to talk about his new film, Hummingbird, the story of a homeless
alcoholic who uses a rare stroke of good luck to clean up the
crime-ridden streets of London. Despite its relatively small scale, and
the fact that Statham is almost unrecognisable as a down-and-out (to
start with, at least), it's absolutely a Jason Statham film, full of
grit and action and absurd mid-fight one-liners ("You've got a knife,
I've got a spoon" in particular looks set to become a classic). But
given that it's also the directorial debut of Eastern Promises
screenwriter Steven Knight, the film gives Statham a chance to flex his
dramatic chops in a way that he's deliberately avoided since Guy Ritchie's disastrous Revolver in 2005. And it's undeniably clear that Statham is proud of the results.
"This is one of the most rewarding experiences that I've had," he
enthuses. "Most of the scripts that land on my desk are stuff you read
and go, 'Is someone really gonna make this?' It's been a revelation.
It's fabulous to have something that fits me in so many ways. There's
not another one of those coming next month."
If there's a sense that Hummingbird has opened Statham's eyes
up to new possibilities, it's backed up by the language he uses to
describe some of his older films. He's fond of a good food metaphor, and
often compares his work to hamburgers. He'd like to make more dramatic
films, he says, but is reluctant because he knows what sells.
"You can't have a sushi restaurant and then put cheese on toast on
the menu, because they'd go 'Why did you do that? We came here to eat
sushi.' The dilemma is that you have to do something that people want to
see. So if you've got a story about a depressed doctor whose estranged
wife doesn't wanna be with him no more, and you put me in it, people
aren't gonna put money on the table.
Whereas if you go, 'All he does is
get in the car, hit someone on the head, shoot someone in the fucking
feet,' then, yep, they'll give you $20m. You can't fault these people
for wanting to make money. It's showbusiness. Ugh, I hate that word.
In an age when the public demands more and more access to the inner
lives of its stars, Statham is refreshingly old-school. He rarely does
press, and certainly not in the usual self-serving fashion. He doesn't
have a mystique-destroying Twitter account. In the days before meeting
him, his people bombard me with calls and emails reminding me that under
no circumstance should I ask him about anything even remotely private.
Nobody knows anything about you, I suggest. What's the essence of Statham?
"Haaa!" he shrieks back. "The essence? Really?"
And with that, he's off. Over the course of the next 10 minutes,
Jason Statham reels off his uninterrupted life story. Init
Hummingbird. Photograph: Dan Smith
"I wanted to throw myself off a fucking cliff and parachute away like
The Spy Who Loved Me," he recalls. "I remember being on holiday in
Florida and seeing a chap do a high dive in the hotel pool at noon every
day. He'd done this sort of reverse layout and I was like, 'Fuck! I'd
love to do that!'"
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So
he did, becoming the world's 12th-best diver in the process. However,
he retired before he could represent the UK at the Olympics. "I thought,
'Fuck it, I've got to waste another four years training?
You know what?
Nah.'" Soon afterwards, with his options severely narrowed, Statham
found himself hawking dodgy jewellery on the streets of London. This is
the bit where a young director called Guy Richie spotted him and gave
him a part in his debut feature Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels.
"It was just one of those chance things," he says. "I stopped diving,
sat down, didn't do much for a while, and then I got a part in a film. I
was like, 'Fucking how the hell did this happen?'"
It all sounds remarkably fortuitous. "You don't usually meet
directors on the streets," he agrees. "They don't come and stand in the
crowd and go, 'Oh, thanks for the fucking 10-quid bag of shite, would
you mind being in my film?'"
Statham's chummy geniality is so disarming that towards the end of
the interview I forget who I'm talking to and off-handedly challenge him
to an arm wrestle. "Nah, you don't want an arm wrestle," he suggests,
amicably at first. "Actually, I don't want an arm wrestle. You know why I
don't want a fucking arm wrestle? Because I've never lost, and if you
beat me I'd be very upset."
Jason Statham's voice drops. He narrows his eyes. He glowers the same
glower that we've seen on the movie posters and growls his final word
on the subject: "You don't want an arm wrestle."
I take the hint. Shriek or no shriek, this is still Jason Statham. I'm not stupid.
Will it rock? Unquestionably...
Jason Statham is one of the more consistent and prolific action stars
working in Hollywood today, with many entries in the genre under his
belt. As such, it makes sense that he's now been cast to play the lead
in a Hong Kong action movie, written by Kurt Wimmer, which is as yet
untitled.
Hong Kong action movies tend to be quite stunt-intensive, with a
general inclination to do things practically (though to a lesser extent
in recent years). Jason Statham is a very logical choice for this kind
of filmmaking, since he has Mixed Martial Arts training, and a lot of
action experience, preferring to do as many stunts as possible himself.
Obviously, some are going to be too difficult or too dangerous for the
star to do them all himself, so he's worked with numerous stuntmen over
his career, who he has tremendous respect for.
The Wrap
describes the story as follows: “Statham will play an ex-pat Brit
living in Hong Kong who goes on the run with a high-level female Chinese
agent to solve a kidnapping with global implications.”
(Who will play the female lead? Obviously, Ming-Na Wen (Mulan, Marvel's Agents of SHIELD) would be a great choice. Or even her Marvel's Agents of SHIELD co-star, Chloe Bennet. But only if it doesn't take them away from SHIELD too much.)
This sounds like a standard type of storyline for these kinds of
films, leaving plenty of room for the story to play out through action.
However, the phrase “global implications” hints at big twists, raising
the stakes of the film.
Writer Kurt Wimmer has experience with writing great twists, notably in the likes of Equilibrium (which he directed) and Salt. He's also a brilliant writer of gripping action, from the dystopian sci-fi films Equilibrium, Ultraviolet (which he also directed), and the Total Recall remake (or re-adaptation), to the more real-world (but still dystopian-influenced) action-thrillers The Thomas Crown Affair (remake), The Recruit, Street Kings, and Salt.
Producer Steve Chasman says: “Jason and I have both been wanting to
work with Kurt for a long time. He has such an incredible vision for
this film that this collaboration is particularly exciting for us. The
narrative Kurt creates is incredibly rich and while our story is rooted
in adventure, it is also very much character driven...”
Jason Statham's career so far includes many action movies, from early supporting roles in the likes of The One and The Italian Job remake, to the (original) Transporter trilogy and the Expendables films.
He's also shown his versatility in his starring role in Guy Ritchie's underrated psychological thriller Revolver, his terrifying villainous role in Cellular, and even a cameo at the beginning of the first Steve Martin The Pink Panther film.
Kurt Wimmer's next film is the remake of Point Break,
directed by the awesomely-named Ericson Core, set for release on
Christmas Day – 25 December 2015 – in the US, and on 12 February 2016 in
the UK.
