Academy Award Archives

Elizabeth Taylor’s designer clothes to be auctioned

Sep 212011

Designer clothes owned by Hollywood legend and fashion icon Elizabeth Taylor, including haute couture by Chanel, Yves St. Laurent and Dior, will be sold at auction in New York, Christie’s said today.

The silk chiffon dress that the Academy Award winning actress wore for her first wedding to actor Richard Burton will be among the nearly 400 times included in the four-day series of sales in December.

“One of the many great treasures within Elizabeth Taylor’s vast collection is her extraordinarily well-preserved wardrobe,” said Marc Porter, chairman and president of Christie’s Americas. “The stunning outfits she wore to galas, award ceremonies, AIDS benefits and even her own weddings to Richard Burton are all here, lovingly maintained along with the handbags, shoes, hats and other accessories that completed her superstar looks.”

via Reuters

Close Encounters sound-man Frank Warner dies at 85

cinema, obituary No Responses »

Sep 072011

Sound designer and sound effects editor Frank Edward Warner, who won an Oscar for his sound editing work on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” died of natural causes in Arizona, on August 31. He was 85.

Warner said that “sound is like music that gives us the emotion that the writer intended.”

In 1966, while working with Stanley Kubrick on the film “Spartacus,” he realized that film was truly an art form and that sound effects made a definite contribution. “One of my best notes within my compositions was the absence of sound, which was very dramatic,” he said. “I accomplished more with silence than with actual sound. The greatest compliment I received about my work was when someone, after viewing a film, asked me what I did.… [continue reading]

Kate Winslet in Venice: ‘TV is harder than film’

cinema No Responses »

Sep 022011

Kate Winslet told journalists that making television was much harder than making Hollywood films. She was speaking at a news conference at the Venice Film Festival ahead of the première of Mildred Pierce.

Currently an HBO mini-series, Mildred Pierce is now being released in a feature length format and is showing at the 68th edition of the Venice Film Festival.

The film, based on James M. Cain’s 1941 book, tells the story of a single mother struggling to raise her spoilt daughter in 1930s America. For her role in the 1945 film, Joan Crawford won an Academy Award as Best Actress.… [continue reading]

Roberto Bolle on why Natalie Portman should give back her Oscar… and more

ballet No Responses »

Jul 242011

The Bolle and Friends tour is in full swing, and one of the stops is Istanbul where Roberto Bolle went to be phởtographed last month. He talked to Giancarlo Dotto for Italy’s Gioia magazine:

Would you have given Natalie Portman the Oscar for Black Swan?

I would have, yes, until I found out that she was not doing the more complicated steps. She said that she’d been working hard for nine months before filming, and that she’d studied dance as a child. However, it was her head on another’s body. Therefore I would have taken her Oscar away. As an actress she can be wonderful, but to take credit for something you didn’t do…

The director of the film, Darren Aronofsky, hit hard with some disturbing images.… [continue reading]

Hollywood comes out to honour Sophia Loren

awards, cinema No Responses »

May 052011

John Travolta called her the “most delicious” thing to come out of Italy, Roberto Benigni serenaded her with the Neapolitan song “O Sole Mio” and Billy Crystal said she was his “first great love.”

Hollywood came out on Wednesday to honor Sophia Loren, 50 years after she become the first person to win an acting Oscar for a foreign-language role with the Italian movie “Two Women”, (“La ciociara”).

Loren, now 76 and with her famous hour-glass figure intact, did not attend that 1961 Academy Award ceremony. She told an audience of some 800 actors, directors, friends and family on Wednesday she never dreamed an Italian in an Italian-language film would earn the movie industry’s highest honor.

The Academy Award changed my life completely, it helped me to believe in myself and encouraged me to push my own artistic boundaries. … [continue reading]

Sarah Lane’s back, this time on ABC, talking about being Natalie Portman’s ‘Black Swan’ Dance Double

ballet No Responses »

Apr 172011

In her first television interview on ABC’s “20/20’s” with Elizabeth Vargas, Sarah Lane, the ballerina who was Natalie Portman’s dance double in “Black Swan,” accused film-makers of lying about how much she danced in the film, and trying to cover it up.

I’m not speaking because I feel I should be heralded, I’m just speaking because they’re completely lying about the amount of dancing that Natalie did in the movie.”

After she was interviewed by Glamour magazine for an article titled “The Real Black Swan,” before the Oscar ceremony Lane, a soloist for the American Ballet Theatre, said one of the film’s producers called and told her to keep quiet about the extent of her performance.

He asked if I would please not do any more interviews until after the Oscars because it was bad for Natalie’s image.… [continue reading]

‘Black Swan’ controversy: ‘Natalie herself did most of the dancing,’ insist filmmakers. Her double disagrees.

ballet 2 Responses »

Mar 272011

A claim by Natalie Portman’s ballet double from the movie Black Swan alleging that the Oscar–winning actress did not perform the majority of that film’s dance sequences has quickly been challenged. Sarah Lane, the American Ballet Theatre soloist who doubled for Portman during some of that film’s most difficult dance sequences, told Entertainment Weekly that the Oscar-winning actress did only 5 percent “of the full body shots” in the film. But the filmmakers insist that simply isn’t the case, saying in a joint statement released by Fox Searchlight, “We were fortunate to have Sarah there to cover the more complicated dance sequences and we have nothing but praise for the hard work she did. However, Natalie herself did most of the dancing featured in the final film.”

Lane decided to speak out after a recent story in the Los Angeles Times quoted Portman’s fiancé and Black Swan choreographer Benjamin Millipied saying “85 percent of that movie is Natalie.”

They wanted to create this idea in people’s minds that Natalie was some kind of prodigy or so gifted in dance and really worked so hard to make herself a ballerina in a year and a half for the movie, basically because of the Oscar.… [continue reading]

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Elizabeth Taylor’s designer clothes to be auctioned

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Close Encounters sound-man Frank Warner dies at 85

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Kate Winslet in Venice: ‘TV is harder than film’

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Roberto Bolle on why Natalie Portman should give back her Oscar… and more

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Hollywood comes out to honour Sophia Loren

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Sarah Lane’s back, this time on ABC, talking about being Natalie Portman’s ‘Black Swan’ Dance Double

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‘Black Swan’ controversy: ‘Natalie herself did most of the dancing,’ insist filmmakers. Her double disagrees.

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