A small selection of award-winning features and movie reviews, including interviews with household names at key moments in history.

‘Blade Runner 2049’: Gosling, Ford prepare for the future

It takes one question — one simple, unassuming, innocuous question — to launch the infamously stoic Hollywood handsomes Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford into a five-minute round of animated banter. The question being: Was it intimidating for Gosling to work with Ford on Blade Runner 2049?

“He does a lot of his off-camera in Ugg boots with a cashmere wrap, so it took away the intimidation,” Gosling says, startling Ford into a belly laugh.

Ugg boots and a cashmere wrap? Surely that’s a rumour.

“Now it’s a rumour! No, of course not,” Ford says.

“I think he did that for me, not for his own comfort,” Gosling powers through, unperturbed by the denials. “Although I did find it very uncomfortable, too.”

“The crew was comfortable with nudity. But for you, I knew it would be distracting,” Ford concedes.

Gosling, marginally more serious for half-a-second, says the whole cast and crew — particularly director Denis Villeneuve and himself — were concerned with what Ford would think of their day-to-day shoots: “Denis and I often daily would say, ‘Is Harrison going to like this?’ [He has] a bull[expletive] meter, and a great one at that, and it helped us navigate some of our course.”

“Nobody ever asked me anything,” Ford disputes.

“Well, your face said it all,” Gosling says.

“That’s acting,” Ford retorts. Then, more earnestly: “Listen, [Ryan] arrives as a fully accredited — uh, what do they call ‘em? Actor. With a substantial career, with an agile intelligence, and a full member of the fraternity of storytellers. We’re all equal.”

“And a contract where I agree to a smaller trailer, which helps,” Gosling adds, always after the last word.

30 YEARS LATER

From the outside, Blade Runner 2049 seems like an impossible undertaking. It picks off thirty years after Ridley Scott’s cult classic Blade Runner, hurtling forward from the film’s 2019 setting. Gosling is Officer K, a chiselled operative who much like Rick Deckard (Ford) before him is hunting down replicants, i.e. genetically engineered human facsimiles.

One of the leftover questions from the 1982 film is whether Deckard himself has been a replicant all along. Part of the fun, Ford says, is that audiences could choose either.

“Replicants are indistinguishable from human beings except for the conditions under which they are made. Replicants are made industrially, if you will, and human beings are made in the fun way,” he quips, speaking to Gulf News tabloid! in Berlin.

The upcoming Blade Runner is shrouded in a bigger mystery, with Jared Leto as the blind, sinister mastermind Niander Wallace, who births these advanced Nexus models and delivers Shakespearean monologues in the process. Dutch actress Sylvia Hoeks is his conflicted right-hand, Luv (kind of a Harley Quinn to his Joker), while Cuban actress Ana de Armas plays Gosling’s love interest, Joi (who may or may not be human).

Meanwhile, the climate has gone berserk and Los Angeles looks more like a refugee camp, says Villeneuve; its outskirts are ruined, and a battle between hot and cold has left people crumbling in the centre of the city. There’s also an information blackout.

“An event that would have happened between both movies erased all the digital world in a split second, so it means that they lost everything. They came back to an analogue world, so my character needs to travel and meet people instead of sitting behind a computer,” says Villeneuve.

It’s ambitious enough that the movie nearly didn’t get made. The budget has been reported as anything between $150 and $200 million dollars. Large, looming, non-CGI sets provide breathtaking backdrop to the tense story. Original director Ridley Scott switched gears into executive producer, allowing Arrival director Villeneuve to take the reins. Visually, it retains with what made Blade Runner so striking: lights and shadows, and a colour palette that oscillates between overwhelming yellows and blues.

“Every decision I was making, I was thinking about [Ridley]. I felt a relationship with his aestheticism. I didn’t want to know when he will watch the movie — I would have died of a heart attack. I just wanted him to feel respected and that I didn’t [expletive] it up,” says Villeneuve.

The sequel is an understandably tough sell — perhaps even tougher than the first. (“I needed to be at peace with the fact that I could be, in the future, hated by everybody,” as Villeneuve puts it.) Advances in cybernetics and technology have put sci-fi in the unenviable position of needing to consistently out-do reality; shows like Black Mirror and Westworld have given it their best shot, while Villeneuve had to “kill off some elements of modernity, of science, in order to be able to go back to [making] an adventure movie.”

DOLLAR SIGN

Gosling was 12 years old when he watched Blade Runner, ten years after its initial release. He had rented it for a dollar as part of a four-for-four summer special and calls it four bucks well spent.

“It was unlike anything I had experienced before. It was transportive, very complicated emotionally. It felt very grounded and possible, and at the same time, it felt like this romantic nightmare. It created its own genre, really. Future noir,” he says.

But for all the accolades it has received, the film wasn’t a box office success. It took a while for it to bring money back into the studio and it received a thrashing from American critics.

“It may have been, by some assays, a failure,” admits Ford. “For me, it couldn’t have been a failure because it was a very useful experience. It wasn’t my money, so I wasn’t concerned about that aspect of it.”

Ford points towards the countless filmmakers who have cited Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner as the reason they became filmmakers — Villeneuve being one of them — as an indicator of ultimate triumph.

TOUGH SHOOT

For Ford, any doubts about returning to this franchise decades later — like Star Wars, like Indiana Jones — were assuaged by the script. The cast and crew had been shooting for months in Budapest before the 75-year-old actor arrived on set; it was different from the first film: “There was a little less rain, a little less strain, [plus] 30, 35 years to think about it. And it was fun. It was really fun.”

As for Gosling, who celebrates his 37th birthday in November — could this be the beginning of more Blade Runner films?

“You know, we’ll see,” says the Canadian actor. “It’s a very rich and complicated universe, and there are certainly more stories to be told. Whether they’ll have me back remains to be seen.”

There is, of course, still one little issue that needs to be dealt with: the trailers.

“It wasn’t in the contract, but when I saw that [Ryan] had the bigger trailer, I did say that... I won’t say what I said at the time, but ‘WTF’,” recalls Ford.

“I lived in the literal shadow of his trailer for three to four months,” says Gosling.

“If it was the shadow, what was the reason for the lawn furniture that suddenly grew up outside of your door?”

“You gotta laugh to keep from crying, I guess.”

Trevor Noah talks first month on ‘The Daily Show’

When Trevor Noah takes our call at 12.30am in New York, he’s understandably tired.

He’s not nearly as chatty or charming as his Daily Show persona would lead us to believe, and he has no issue telling us he doesn’t typically stay up this late — he’s just up for the call. But the calm is a welcome change. Charm can be overrated, anyway, and at half-past midnight, it’s downright cruel.

Returning to Dubai on Saturday night, the South African comedian will be in town for another stand-up show. He’s part of the inaugural Dubai Comedy Festival at Skydive Dubai, headlined by none other than Dave Chappelle . (When asked, Noah says his stand-up inspiration has “always, always” been Chappelle.)

For those who saw Noah last March, they can expect this gig to be different.

“I always switch up my shows,” Noah says. “And I never know what I’m going to be talking about until I get to the place.”

But it’s hard to believe that this year’s visit could begin to live up to last year’s. In the back of a Dubai taxi, Noah got a call from his manager with the biggest news of his career — he would be replacing Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.

“It was the craziest thing ever. I got the news, and it was one of those experiences that you can’t really explain. You find out something or you hear something that changes your life forever,” he says.

With Noah behind the steering wheel, the latest incarnation of The Daily Show has been running for just under a month. The reviews have been generally favourable. It’s true that, at times, Noah still looks uncomfortable with the shoes he’s filling, but the 31 year old is nothing if not tenacious.

“It’s a lot of hard work, and it takes a lot of time to get used to it — for me to get used to the show, for the audience to get used to me. But every day, we learn something new, and every day, you learn to enjoy it more, and then you get to a point where you find your groove,” he says.

In the first episode of the season, correspondent Jordan Klepper jokes that he keeps hearing words like ‘global’, ‘youth’ and ‘viral’. He’s not far off the mark. Speaking of what he brings to the table, Noah says, “I’m from a different country, I’m from a different ethnic background, I’m younger. There’s so many things that make me different to Jon. But at the same time, we have so many views that we share.”

What was Stewart’s advice to him before he left, then? “He told me to trust my discomfort, and go in the direction that didn’t seem the easiest for me to handle in my mind, so that’s what I’ve been trying to do.”

America’s sweetheart

I admit to him that before our interview, I was both excited and nervous to chat. I’ve always enjoyed his stand-up shows and how accessible his material seems. A constant smile and a dimple go a far way, after all.

But now he’s a big shot on a massive American television show. For the first time during our call, he chuckles.

“Yeah, definitely, you feel that,” he says. “But at the end of the day, I just feel the pressure of putting on a good show in general, so it doesn’t matter if I’m putting on the show on South African TV, or British TV, or American TV, it’s still the same pressure, trying to put on a great show that people will enjoy.”

“I don’t read reviews,” he says, plain and simple. “You have a good idea of what you’re trying to do, and you know that you’re doing things well, and you also know if you’re not doing them as well as you want to. So a review often will only make you feel worse than you feel, or it’ll make you feel better than you should feel.”

But some critics are impossible to ignore. When the news first emerged that Noah would be taking on the Daily Show gig, his old tweets were dug up to showcase some anti-Semitic and misogynist material, which he apologised for. In his first episode, Noah made two jokes that publications predicted would cause offence — an AIDs joke and a joke about crack-cocaine bragging to meth about killing Whitney Houston.

“I don’t set out to offend people, but people can always be offended by anything — you don’t have control over that, doing comedy, or doing any form of art, really,” Noah says. “Whether it’s music, whether it’s acting, whatever it is — people can choose to interpret it their way. At the end of the day, you just have to do what you do and know what your intention is, and then you go from there.”

A strange world

Tough skin or not, Noah, like anyone else, has had his share of hardships behind the scenes. He was born to a mother of mixed Xhosa and Jewish heritage and a white Swiss German father in apartheid South Africa. Later, his mother suffered domestic abuse at the hands of another partner who shot her, then threatened to kill Noah.

In 2002, at the age of 18, Noah began forging his own journey in the entertainment industry as star of South Africa series, Isidingo. Between then and 2011, the year he moved to America, he hosted a whole variety of South African television shows, ranging from sports to game-show dating. It’s something he tells me was “bizarre”. “Just a bunch of random weird jobs, including being a guy in a soap opera, which is a very strange world for me to be in.”

When it comes to the people who have inspired him to chase his dreams as far as they would take him, there are too many for him to cover.

“Everyone from my mum, all the way through to famous comedians like Eddie Murphy,” he says. “There’s so many people out there that I wouldn’t know where to start the list and end it.”

Part of why he remains so in touch with who he is these days is the fact that things haven’t “changed tremendously” in his world. Sure, he’s a big-time host of one of the most popular fake news shows in the world, but his loved ones aren’t rushing to reduce him to that role.

“I don’t think good friends and family define you by what you’re doing. It’s just another aspect of who you are. That’s something that always appreciated, is having a real group of people around me, who always just give me a constant grounding in my world,” he says.

‘I exist in each moment’

Back in the world of celebrity, Noah has welcomed a slew of famous guests on the show so far, from actors Kevin Hart and Tom Hiddleston to ethologist Richard Dawkins and Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie. As for who he dreams of getting in that interview chair, off the top of his head — Oprah Winfrey.

“I guess when I’m ready — when I think I’ve gotten to a place where I think I’d do the interview justice,” he says. “She’s just fantastic. Everything about her. She’s one of the most amazing broadcasters and people, I think, we’ve come across and I’ve seen, so she’s someone who I’ve always just wanted to talk to.”

With the way things are going, it doesn’t seem like Noah’s Winfrey dream will have to wait much longer. It must be surreal to be in arm’s reach of some of his wildest whims. Does he ever deal with impostor syndrome — an inability to internalise his own accomplishments?

“Oh, no,” he says. “I think I exist in each moment. And with the amount of work I do, sometimes I don’t even have the time to dwell in that. I’m hardly ever happy with what I’ve done in terms of the work — I’m always trying to improve it and improve myself, so I don’t have much time to sit back and [dwell].”

At the end of the day, Noah’s mission statement hasn’t changed much over the years. His politics will be at the forefront of his work now, whether he likes it or not, but it’s always going to be the comedy that fuels him.

“My personal fulfilment is to make people laugh,” he says. “To bring a bit of light into an often dark day. That’s all I do. That’s all I try and do, because sometimes that’s all I need, is just a space where I can absorb the news in the world that I am in, but in a way that doesn’t depress me completely, and that’s all I’m trying to do with The Daily Show.”

J-Lo talks disaster relief in Dubai: “If anything, it’s gotten worse”

When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September, it left catastrophic devastation in its wake. Phone lines went down and most Puerto Ricans outside the island couldn’t reach their loved ones to verify their safety.

Jennifer Lopez — born to Puerto Rican parents in New York and raised in the Bronx — was one of them. It took six days for the singer to re-establish contact with her aunt and uncle, the last two members of her family to be MIA.

“Now the rebuilding begins,” she announced on Instagram. The 48-year-old and her Dominican-American boyfriend, former New York Yankees star Alexander Rodriguez, have raised millions in disaster relief since. But they’re not done.

“For me, when the hurricane happened, it hit very close to home,” Lopez said, speaking to Gulf News tabloid! ahead of her Dubai concert at Autism Rocks Arena on November 17. “Alex and I are still working on raising more money and trying to get down to Puerto Rico soon to make sure that all the money that we have raised — which is, like, $30 million [about Dh110 million] — will get down there and really help them.”

The situation has become more dire in the last two months, and aid isn’t reaching fast enough. Total losses — estimated to have reached up to $95 billion — continue to impact the physical and mental health of Puerto Ricans.

“If anything, it’s gotten worse,” said Lopez. “There’s more people getting sick. There’s more need for infrastructure to distribute the goods and the money down there. Hopefully, we’ll be able to help some more.”

NOT A MOMENT; A MOVEMENT

Lopez is part of a legion of Puerto Rican artists who have made waves in the entertainment industry.

2017 was a particularly big year for names like Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of Broadway musical Hamilton, and singer Luis Fonsi, both of whom are in the business of making history.

Miranda, 11 years Lopez’s junior, posted a video of himself on Saturday in ‘J Lo drag’ from a college talent show, signalling a longstanding admiration for Lopez. These days, the pair operate side-by-side.

“I know Lin Manuel so well. We’ve worked together a couple of times. I worked with him on this song that he did for the hurricane, [Almost Like Praying]. And Luis Fonsi I’ve known for so many years. He’s always been an amazing artist,” she said.

Fonsi had been popular in Spanish-speaking circles when his smash hit Despacito (ft. Daddy Yankee), remixed by Justin Bieber, broke the internet. In it, Fonsi croons, “This is how we do it down in Puerto Rico.” It became the first primarily Spanish song to top the Billboard 100 since Macarena in 1996, the most viewed music video on YouTube with more than three billion views, and the most streamed song ever with over four billion listens.

Lopez said it was fun to watch the song detonate. “It’s not like we haven’t had Spanish songs on English radio ever, in history. We have. But this one really hit on a pop level, in a cooler way, where everybody just wanted to be singing in Spanish, which to me, was so amazing and great.”

Does she feel that people have a bigger appetite for Spanish music now?

“Absolutely,” Lopez said. “I think people go, ‘Oh, I love these rhythms. I love this. Just because I don’t understand it, doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it.’”

‘LIKE MICHAEL JACKSON’

That might explain why Lopez herself is in the process of putting finishing touches on her first Spanish album in 10 years, titled Por Primera Vez (For the First Time). Her previous Spanish album, Como Ama una Mujer, received mixed reviews in 2007.

“I love singing in Spanish and I love Spanish music, and I just felt like, ‘You know what? I’m going to make a Spanish album.’ That’s what I feel like I want to do right now. I don’t want to do any English, I just want to do something in Spanish,” she said.

A sensual music video for Amor Amor Amor (ft. Wisin), the album’s second single, dropped on Friday. People have since viewed Lopez dancing freely in the underground more than 10 million times.

It harks back to her first big gig on TV, as part of the Fly Girls dancing troupe on sketch show In Living Color. It’s also a nod to her days of riding the 6 train in New York.

“The director really wanted to go back and shoot something in the subways,” she said. He told her: “‘I want to see you dance, I want to see you in the subways, you know, like Michael Jackson [in Bad]’, and I was like, ‘Okay,’” she explained, laughing.

“A lot of people, I realise now, are like, ‘Oh, look, she’s like this video, or that video’, and I’m like, ‘Oh, wow, I didn’t even realise that.’ We were just trying to do our own thing.”

 REEL TIME

Lopez is now in the midst of a two-year Las Vegas residency. In 2018, she’ll be back in film and on TV, with her movie Second Act, co-starring Milo Ventimiglia and Leah Remini, and an HBO TV feature where she plays the infamous drug lord Griseldo Blanco.

“It’s coming together quickly,” she confirmed.

Her breakout movie role as Selena Quintanilla-Perez came 20 years ago, in the 1997 biopic Selena. It chronicled the Mexican-American singer’s life and her murder in 1995, when she was only 23.

Lopez was nominated for a Golden Globe and became the first Latin actress to earn more than $1 million for a film.

She led an emotional tribute to the revered Selena in 2015, at the Latin Billboard Awards, two decades after her death.

“Even the tribute that I did went to No 1 on iTunes the next day. The fact that we lost her so young was such a tragedy, and it’s still so felt in our community. I was just happy to be part of her in some way. To be able to be part of her legacy is awesome,” she mused.

JENNY FROM THE BLOCK

Though Lopez is already gearing up for a busy 2018, don’t ask her about her New Year’s resolutions yet: she hasn’t even begun planning out Thanksgiving.

She’s come a long way since If You Had My Love, Love Don’t Cost a Thing and I’m Real, but so has the entire world. The entertainment industry is borderline unrecognisable to what it used to be, what with the rise of social media.

Lopez has 70 million followers on Instagram. At time of print, her latest post is a video teaser of rehearsals for her upcoming Dubai performance. Everything happens in real time on the internet.

“It’s a different animal now for sure,” Lopez said, laughing. “But it’s great, because we can connect with the fans on a different level. We can really interact in a way that we never could before.”

Does she think her career would have been wildly different, had it always been around?

“Ummm,” Lopez said, pausing. “I don’t know about wildly different, but it would have been different, you know? It would have been different.”

Robert De Niro talks Trump in Dubai

Robert De Niro, who features in a video saying he would like to punch Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in the face, has now responded to actor Jon Voight who says he is “ashamed” of De Niro’s “ugly rant”.

“I think that Jon Voight, he’s a nice guy, but he’s delusional,” De Niro told Gulf News on Sunday.

The actor, 73, is in Dubai to promote the twin-island country of Antigua and Barbuda as a tourist destination. As a frequent visitor to the Caribbean islands — and an investor of $250million (Dh918.2million) in local tourism — he was invited to speak at a Destination Antigua and Barbuda conference as a ‘special economic envoy’.

Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, also attended and spoke a ballroomful of investors; he said he would like the islands to become the Dubai of the Caribbean.

But De Niro, who sat for a fifteen minute Q&A about his career, politics and business, followed by an intimate media roundtable, spoke sparsely of tourism. He instead fielded questions on the American election and addressed the widely-circulated video of himself, released on Friday, in which he calls Trump a pig, a dog and a mutt.

A NATIONAL DISGRACE

“And another thing — this guy’s a New Yorker, and he’s an embarrassment. I misquoted Colin Powell by saying he’s a national disaster in this video I did. I meant to say, which is what Colin Powell had said, he’s a national disgrace,” he said.

The video went viral at the same time that a leaked audio clip from 2005 of Trump advocating for groping women and “grabbing them by the [expletive]”. Voight said De Niro’s words were more damaging than Trump’s.

“Can you imagine if any Republican said words like Robert DeNiro [sic] used — against Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama? All hell would break loose. I am calling for all Trump supporters to express their outrage and anger against DeNiro,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, De Niro put his weight behind Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

“Hillary — she’s a capable, sane human being … who will run the government, run the country, as well as anybody,” he said. “Hillary is a person who certainly has been through it and deserves to be president and will do a very good job.”

He also said: “You might feel that you don’t trust Hillary about certain things, but she’s a veteran, she’s a grown-up, and she’s very capable of being president.”

De Niro said he was worried about people who assumed that Trump could not be elected president.

“I’m very concerned with him. It’s like, they didn’t think — the same with Brexit. It’s a different climate in the world now. It ain’t over until it’s over. Everybody has to be vigilant to make sure that this guy doesn’t become president. Anyone who’s eligible to vote — get out there. Let’s not win by a margin, let’s make sure that he’s crushed,” he said.

He also said it was shameful that “the Republican Party has rationalised that this guy is sane. That this guy should be president. It’s awful. They’re going to self-destruct. And now I just read in the [New York] Times this morning that 150 Republicans are pulling out. It’s on the front page. How could you align yourself with him?”

De Niro was asked what question he might have for Trump at the latest town hall in America.

“I don’t even know what kind of question to ask him, because he’s so stupid. There’s nothing to talk about,” he said, before reiterating: “I’d love to punch him in the face.”

He urged young voters to visit the polls on November 8 and vote, regardless of whether they felt apathetic about the election.

“I have children who are in their early 20s, and they have to vote. They must vote. Fine, have apathy, but you have to vote. This is a very serious situation,” he said.

He said that the current climate in America, which allowed for Trump to get this far, “shows that people are upset, and they should be, about how they’ve been overlooked. But at the same time, he’s not the answer. Trump is definitely not the answer.”

What’s next for Robert De Niro?

In more lighthearted movie news, De Niro confirmed that he will be reuniting with Christopher Walken on the upcoming film The War with Grandpa. The project will be the pair’s first since the 1978 war drama The Deer Hunter.

“Yeah, I’m very happy about that. We’re friends,” said De Niro of the project.

The family comedy, set for an April release, will based on the 1984 eponymous book, by Robert Kimmel Smith. It’s about a young boy who, upset that he has to share his room with his aging grandfather, decides to wage war to win it back.

De Niro will also appear in The Comedian — a passion project of his that’s been in the pipeline for years — as an insult comic. The film was recently acquired by Sony Pictures Classic, and will be released early next year in order to qualify for the Oscars.

Asked whether he’s excited for people to see it, De Niro said, “Yeah. Let’s see.”

Exclusive: On set with Marvel’s ‘The Defenders’ in New York City

It’s end-of-January freezing around midnight in Chinatown, New York City, and Luke Cage is dancing to Taylor Swift.

Okay, that’s misleading.

It’s actually actor Mike Colter, who plays the titular superhero in Marvel’s Luke Cage on Netflix, who’s shimmying his rear-end while performing an off-key rendition of Swifty’s Shake It Off.

It’s his way of staving off the cold. (Co-star Krysten Ritter, for her part, has virtually crammed “14 pairs of pants under my jeans” and put five coats on, comparing herself to the Michelin Man.)

A bunch of us journalists are watching from the side lines, endeared; we’ve been invited onto the totally secretive set of The Defenders, Netflix’s latest Marvel miniseries, an 8-episode ensemble epic arriving on the streaming service on August 18.

In the scene we get to watch, Colter and his fellow Defenders — Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones, Charlie Cox as Daredevil, and Finn Jones as Iron Fist (all of whom have their own shows) — are dashing in and out of Chikara Dojo onto the street outside to examine a bullet-ridden van, where a baddie lays unconscious. They check their surroundings, paranoid, until the director calls cut.

“That was a really boring scene,” Jones quips, when asked what had just happened.

“Yeah, not much there for you guys,” Colter says.

“Basically, Cage has just been missing for a little bit, and he’s been in some peril, and he just returns with his prey,” Jones adds, with all the practised ambiguity that’s become part and parcel of working for Marvel.

The hyped-up series will centre around these weathered warriors: Jessica Jones, a former superhero with PTSD who now pays bills as a private investigator in Hell’s Kitchen; Matt Murdock, a blind lawyer who moonlights as a masked vigilante named Daredevil; Luke Cage, a former convict turned superhero with unbreakable skin; and Danny Rand, a bratty billionaire and martial artist who calls upon the mystical powers of the Iron Fist to defeat evil.

The one thing they have in common is that they’re social outcasts. Through The Defenders, they’re forced to give up solitude and trust one another to overthrow The Hand, an evil entity led by the greed-driven Alexandra Reid (hello, Sigourney Weaver).

Halfway through the show’s filming schedule, Gulf News tabloid! sat down with the actors one-by-one in New York — except for Finn Jones and Mike Colter, who are as inseparable as their characters (Iron Fist and Luke Cage are partners in the comic books) — to talk about what’s in store for fans.

What has the mood been like on set?
Krysten Ritter: Honestly, it’s the [expletive] best. I think it’s the most fun onset experience I’ve had, ever. I know Mike Colter well, because we worked together on Jessica Jones. We’re total BFFs. Charlie is heaven, just a good guy. We’re always texting each other before work, like, ‘Do you want me to pick up a green juice? Do you need a coffee?’ Finn is just heaven in human form — he’s always got a boombox in his pocket, filling the room with music.

Why do The Defenders have to get together on the show?
Charlie Cox: It feels like they’re forced together. I think Matt [Daredevil] has to learn that this fight is too big for him alone. I had a lot of questions earlier. I was like, ‘Why don’t I walk out the door then? Why don’t I walk out the door then? Why don’t-‘ There was always a reason. There’s always a reason that they were able to pitch me.

What can viewers learn from The Defenders?
Finn Jones: The enemy we’re dealing with isn’t too [dissimilar] to the danger we’re seeing in America right now. The corruption and confusion we’re seeing happen in the world right now with our politics. [The enemy] is a power-hungry entity that has seeped their way into every aspect of human life — through the financial, through the politics. We’re there to try and dismantle that and expose it.

Who would you call in a real-life emergency out of the other three cast members?
Ritter: Probably Charlie. Because he’s very pragmatic, and he doesn’t fly off the handle. He’s a very steady and sturdy guy. If you were freaking out, you’d want to call him. If you want someone to freak out with you, [though], I’d call Mike.

Charlie, do you think you would be good in an emergency?
Cox: I’m one of those weird people who, if crisis happens, I’m very calm. I’m a good person to call. But I’m also the same person where, if it’s not really a crisis, if it’s just kind of a minor drama, I’m the worst person to call. If there are actual people in danger, I’ll probably be very level-headed, but if [it’s a minor inconvenience like] I can’t get cell reception and I need to call someone, I lose my [expletive].

Do you compare the success of your shows with your fellow actors?
Ritter: We’re all so stoked. We’re like, high five, we’ve got hit shows! We went to dinner the other night, the four of us, and people started to realise and freak out a little bit. It’s like we’re in a band.

Locations like Hell’s Kitchen and Harlem take up huge parts in the series. Do you feel more connected to those places now?
Mike Colter: When I was in Harlem, it was becoming gentrified... I read an article about it. These wonderful people that were in Harlem a hundred years ago, Malcom X, Marcus Garvey, Louis Armstrong, all these people that are synonymous with Harlem, what people are afraid of [now] is when you go to Harlem you won’t see any black people again. So this series of Luke Cage kind of helps [celebrate that].

Is it strange to be the only woman in the boy’s crew?
Ritter: I don’t feel that way. What I do love about Jessica is she’s never defined as gender first. She’s very androgynous. I’m faster in hair and make-up than the boys are. I’m in dirty, filthy jeans that I can sit on the ground in — I never have pressure to look beautiful or be perky.

How was it like working with Sigourney?
Jones: Sigourney’s amazing. She’s a team player through and through.

Colter: There are times where I want her to be a diva, so we can go home early. But she never is. She’s with us at four, five in the morning.

Jones: If anyone is a diva, it’s Mike. Luke Cage.

Colter: Yeah, Luke Cage comes out at about 4am.

Jones: We’ve actually got a drag act — it’s Luke Cage and Glitter Fist. It’s going to be a spin-off series that we’re going to be doing.

If the four of you were to fight each other, who would win?
Ritter: Jessica Jones. In terms of powers, there’s a bit of a hierarchy, right? Because Luke Cage is stronger than Jessica Jones, but Jessica Jones is stronger than Daredevil, but he’s a great fighter. Jessica is more of a bar brawler. She’d rather spit on you or kick you. Then, you know, Iron Fist has an Iron Fist. But I can also fly away. So, I don’t know.

Do you think The Defenders is just a one season thing?
Ritter: I honestly don’t know. I would do another one. I think everyone would. Logistically, it would probably be difficult to do because we have our own shows. I think maybe if it’s a big hit, we’ll do another.

Liam Neeson on Charlie Hebdo, gun control in US

This interview was picked up by major news outlets in America, including Washington Post and the New York Times.

Dubai: Liam Neeson might be brandishing a gun on posters for Taken 3 all around town, but in light of the recent Charlie Hebdo attacks in France, and ongoing protests against police brutality in America, the actor told tabloid! he’s still firmly in favour of gun control.

“First off, my thoughts and prayers and my heart are with the deceased, and certainly with all of France, yesterday. I’ve got a lot of dear friends in Paris,” the 62-year-old said.

“There’s too many [expletive] guns out there,” he continued. “Especially in America. I think the population is like, 320 million? There’s over 300 million guns. Privately owned, in America. I think it’s a [expletive] disgrace. Every week now we’re picking up a newspaper and seeing, ‘Yet another few kids have been killed in schools.’”

Asked whether or not he thinks this issue extends to police responsibility, he said: “Let’s not get into it. Let’s put it this way: I think a light has been shone on the justice system in America, and it’s a justifiable light.”

The actor starred in the first instalment of Taken in 2008, and claims that Taken 3 will be the last in the series. He spoke of his role as trigger-happy Bryan Mills and why it doesn’t necessarily encourage people to go out and buy a gun themselves.

“I grew up watching cowboy movies, loved doing that [gun gesture] with my fingers, ‘Bang, bang, you’re dead!’ I didn’t end up a killer. I think that’s something the power of cinema can be,” he said.

“A character like Bryan Mills going out with guns and taking revenge: it’s fantasy. It’s in the movies, you know? I think it can give people a great release from stresses in life and all the rest of it, you know what I mean? It doesn’t mean they’re all going to go out and go, ‘Yeah, let’s get a gun!’,” he added.

What hap­pens when your mom is dy­ing, the kids at school are bul­ly­ing you, and a pesky mon­ster made out of bark — think Groot, only big­ger and voiced by the warm, war­bling tim­bre of Liam Nee­son — keeps forc­ing you to lis­ten to his weird sto­ries?

A Monster Calls is your sur­pris­ingly touching an­swer.

A dark, deeply vis­ual fam­ily drama based on the book of the same name, it takes the gut-wrench­ingly or­di­nary — cancer, mor­tal­ity, death — and douses it in the kind of fan­tas­ti­cal sto­ry­telling that makes both kids and adults want to be­lieve in magic.

Thir­teen-year-old Conor is hang­ing onto hope that his ter­mi­nally ill mother (Felic­ity Jones) may get bet­ter. A lone wolf, he has no friends, a fa­ther who lives on an­other con­ti­nent, and a grand­mother (Sigour­ney Weaver) who badgers him to move in with her, much to his teenaged dis­may.

He also has a night­mare. A re­cur­ring one. One where his mom is hang­ing off a cliff and he’s help­less to save her.

Then he has a mon­ster. Erupt­ing im­pos­si­bly from a tree out­side Conor’s win­dow, the loom­ing crea­ture has three sto­ries to tell him, and when he’s done, he ex­pects a com­bat­ive Conor to tell him the fourth.

The story of how A Mon­ster Calls came to be is just as sig­nif­i­cant as the story it tells. It orig­i­nated in the mind of late au­thor Siob­han Dowd, who died of ter­mi­nal cancer be­fore she could write it. Pa­trick Ness took over, pen­ning the novel in her mem­ory. Il­lus­tra­tor Jim Kay ren­dered it with stun­ning, gloomy im­agery. (The film keeps this il­lus­tra­tive qual­ity alive as the mon­ster tells his sto­ries through vivid an­i­mated se­quences, serv­ing as an ode to chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture.)

The ac­tors do a com­mend­able job of bring­ing Ness’s screen­play to life, right down to Nee­son’s voice (we’ll stay spoiler-free, but keep an eye out for some framed fam­ily pho­tos.) New­comer Lewis MacDougall gets the most screen time as tor­tured Conor, though Jones strikes a chord as a young mum strug­gling to do her best. Weaver’s English ac­cent feels forced and awk­ward, but we can’t help but love her.

The film it­self daw­dles at times and shines in its more ac­tion-packed mo­ments. It at­tempts to speak to both the jad­ed­ness of its adult view­ers and the naivety of its younger au­di­ences. Tasked with the un­lucky job of con­dens­ing an emo­tional beast into a fea­ture-length film, di­rec­tor J.A. Bay­ona paints a cap­ti­vat­ing pic­ture.

Death is in­evitable, he shows us, but so is heal­ing.

Thank the Earth, the Heavens and all of Asgard: Marvel is finally taking Thor seriously. It was about time.

Outshining the franchise’s first two (fun, forgettable) films, Thor: Ragnarok — in all its high-octane, adrenalin-pumping glory — is the cantankerous, ambitious and thunderously witty film that fans have been waiting for. At the risk of being divisive: it might even be Marvel’s best yet.

All arrows point to director Taika Waititi, an underutilised genius of the industry who, given the largest playing field of his career and told to run, damn near sprinted.

Waititi, a New Zealander popular for indie films like Boy and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, has shown the true extent of his vision here, ushering in a new era of Thor. The 42-year-old churns out sprawling landscapes, exquisite visuals and perfectly timed cameos like candy. Above all, he infuses his wry humour into every frame of Ragnarok without sacrificing the film’s integrity nor veering into silliness — a pitfall that, sadly, befell Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 earlier this year.

ASGARDIAN TALE

The story picks up two years after the Battle of Sokovia. A loyal protector of Asgard, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) must stop the end of the world — i.e. Ragnarok itself — and go up against a ruinous adversary, Hela (Cate Blanchett).

But first, he has the unfortunate luck to be kidnapped by drunken bounty hunter Valkyrie, played by Tessa Thompson; Thompson embodies everything we want in a conflicted female character — ferocity, flaws and a swagger that gives Thor a run for his money.

She throws our hero to the wolves, where he meets his captor: the flamboyantly wicked Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum), who seems like your weird, fun uncle until you remember he owns a melting stick that can literally turn prisoners into goo.

Caged in this Hunger Games-style arena, Thor runs into younger brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and a friendly neighbourhood captive, Korg (voiced, hilariously, by Waititi himself). This ragtag team of ‘Revengers’ has to hatch an escape plan, while Heimdall (Idris Elba) works overtime in the background to keep Asgard from falling apart.

MEET THE PLAYERS

Despite all these big personalities stuffed into a two-hour film, Thor: Ragnarok is an airtight affair that skilfully plays to each actor’s strength.

Hemsworth, all 6’3 of him, excels at puffing out his substantial chest, cracking a smile and convincing you that the planet will be safe in his capable hands. (He’s also great at being shirtless and exuding a childlike naivety that makes his cockiness more bearable.)

Elba, with his amber eyes and shoulder-length dreads, provides discreet support as the film’s more measured, less celebrated hero. Ruffalo, with his noticeably smaller stature, is meanwhile gripped with paranoia over who Thor prefers, Hulk or Banner, resulting in emotional revelations and some obligatory mudslinging.

Hiddleston’s Loki is particularly fantastic as the textbook younger brother: jealous, conniving and begrudgingly in need of validation. He has more screen-time in Ragnarok than in previous films, which means more brotherly banter, which means more greatness overall.

Finally, Blanchett as Hela will win over fans with her impeccable performance, despite the pure evil radiating off her. She’s a worthy villain, slithering around screen like a reptile on legs.

The film is blissfully free of any lazy romantic subplots (was anyone actually invested in Thor/Jane?), but unresolved tensions between characters are a welcome addition. In the meantime, some seriously cool battle scenes feature from start to finish, and the use of Led Zeppelin’s militant Immigrant Song will have even the most unenthused of audience members rooting for the God of Thunder and his motley crew of unlikely heroes.