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2 articles from 2008

24 June 2008 9:01 AM, PDT | From ifc.com | See recent IFC news

By Michael Atkinson

To each fiery cinema individualist his own honorial DVD box set: here we have a reacquaintance . or initiation, for the babies of the Reagan/Thatcher era . with the unique howl of Derek Jarman, dead in 1994 from AIDS at the age of 52, a career attenuated by the very same fate that ended up giving it such amperage. You'd never know it, but there was a time when British filmmakers, emboldened by punk culture, fueled by hatred for Thatcherite conservatism, and funded by the BFI and the new Channel Four, made outrageous, experimental, high culture vs. low culture collision movies, doped on structuralism and gender-bending and period-picture mockery. Jarman was the moment's jester prince; he never made a film you'd mistake for the work of another, or a film that doesn't manifest on the screen as an unpredictably impish riff on serious matters, Art-making and Sex and Death. Not to mention,

Michael Atkinson

18 April 2008 10:37 AM, PDT | From wenn.com | See recent WENN news

Ewan McGregor was so desperate to land his second movie role, he agreed to pose naked and be covered in paint in 1996 film The Pillow Book.

McGregor allowed director Peter Greenaway to shoot him fully nude with Chinese writing covering every inch of his body, in the hope it would help him crack Hollywood.

He recalls Greenaway's requests: "He said, `Would you be prepared (to be) naked and for us to shoot any part of your naked body?' and I said, 'Yes'.

"He said, `Would you be prepared to simulate sex with a woman? Would you be prepared to simulate sex with a man?' and I said, 'Yes' so I got the job.

"I had to have all of this Chinese, beautiful calligraphy painted all over my body and I'd come in at four in the morning. So I'd lie down and fall asleep and they'd paint my front." McGregor reveals how the woman handed the job of attending to his naked form, handled the more delicate parts of his body: "I'm naked and there's a lovely little Japanese lady who was our calligrapher and she'd do my legs and my body and she'd always leave my `old chap' (penis).

"She'd then give me the phone and she'd get me to call my wife so I was slightly distracted - and then paint it. She was very caring in that respect."

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2 articles from 2008