Jackman dances on to awards shortlist

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WOLVERINE might be bemused but Hugh Jackman has been nominated for an Australian Dance Award for his star turn as Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz.

The shortlist of nominees for the 2008 awards was announced yesterday.

The Melbourne dance company Lucy Guerin Inc tops the list with four nominations from the nine categories.

Honour Bound, about David Hicks's detention in Guantanamo Bay, is up for two awards: outstanding achievement in choreography for Garry Stewart and outstanding performance by a male dancer for Paul White.

Jackman was put forward for outstanding performance in a stage musical, alongside Tony Sheldon for Priscilla Queen Of The Desert, and Silvia Entcheva and Tobias Cole for This Show Is About People, which was performed in Sydney in January as part of the Sydney Festival.

Jackman played Allen from 2003 to 2004 in the United States, and again in 2006 in Australia.

He has won a Tony Award for best lead actor in a musical for his performance.

The 2008 awards recognise excellence across all dance forms, presented between July 1, 2006, and December 31, 2007.

The nominees for outstanding performance by a female dancer include Kirstie McCracken, Lisa Griffiths, Lucinda Dunn and Sarah Jayne Howard.

Antony Hamilton, Byron Perry and Reed Luplau are the other nominations for outstanding performance by a male dancer.

The winners will be announced on June 15.

AAP

New Wolverine and the X-Men Trailer

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Marvel.com has posted a brand new trailer for the animated series, "Wolverine and the X-Men."

In the series, coming to Nicktoons Network in the first quarter of 2009, the story begins as an explosive event shatters the lives of the X-Men and takes away their mentor, Professor X. The beaten heroes, including Beast, Storm, Cyclops and Nightcrawler, walk away from it all but then they are given a rare glimpse into the future, where they see a world in utter ruin ... ruled by giant destructive robots. They discover the world has spiraled out of control because the X-Men have given up. So now the most legendary of all X-Men, Wolverine, must take the lead on the ultimate mission -- to prevent the world's destruction -- while fending off enemies Magneto and The Brotherhood.

You can watch the trailer here!

Scott Summers Appearing in Wolverine?

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Scooper 'Retroman' posted on the Superhero Hype! message boards a discovery that an agency has Australian actor Tim Pocock listed as playing Scott Summers (Cyclops) in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

'A1ant' then followed-up with the agency who confirmed the casting. "Yes, that information is correct. He was cast as the younger Scott Summers," they said.

Directed by Gavin Hood, the May 1, 2009 Fox release stars Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Ryan Reynolds, Taylor Kitsch, Will.i.am, Danny Huston, Dominic Monaghan, Daniel Henney and Lynn Collins.

Cumming: 'Hollywood is homophobic'

From: DigitalSpy.
By Simon Reynolds.

X-Men 2 star Alan Cumming has admitted that media scrutiny keeps gay actors from coming out.

Speaking to the BBC, Cumming said: "I don't think the people that go see films care that much - the media make it more of a deal and it's made into controversy.”

The 43-year-old, who married his partner Grant Shaffer last year, expressed concern about Hollywood's homophobia.

He added: "There is a lot of homophobia in the world - but in Hollywood definitely."

The Scottish actor responded to claims from Stephen Fry and Rupert Everett that gay actors were typecast, saying: "Some of them do [get typecast], but lots of straight actors get pigeonholed in various roles.

"I don't think that I only play gay characters, or I wouldn't be as convincing if I had a wife or a girlfriend in a movie.

"Derek Munn, director of public affairs for Stonewall which promotes equality for gay people, said: "The pitifully low number of openly lesbian or gay actors suggests that there is a problem. The film industry needs to think about why it is that gay actors choose not to come out."

Jackman back to the Big Apple

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Hugh Jackman and Deborra-lee Furness are planning to move the family to New York after X-Men Origins: Wolverine wraps in June.

We've loved having the A-listers home and their class and down-to-earth attitude will be sorely missed. Australia's loss is America's gain.

Last week Furness jumped on a plane with seven-year-old Oscar to spend two weeks in the Big Apple looking for schools.

She told S that it is a difficult process over there, with IQ tests for her son and gruelling rounds of interviews for the parents.

Somewhat unlike Sydney, where Oscar chose his school because it had a great art department and the chicks were cute (sounds like Oscar is developing his dad's way with the ladies).

Furness said that, though she will miss Sydney, a big part of her heart is in New York and she's excited about going back to see her girlfriends and visiting her old stomping grounds.

Jackman is halfway through shooting the latest Wolverine flick and is really enjoying his fourth time putting the claws on.

But even superheroes can't beat a dodgy prawn: Jackman got a mild case of food poisoning which halted film production for a day. The film is due to wrap in June but Jackman might stay a little longer for Australian publicity commitments.

We'll take every day we can get!

Rebecca Romijn's reinvention

From:
BY JOHN CLARK

Rebecca Romijn has played her share of fantasy figures - notably the changeling Mystique in the "X-Men" series - but they pale in comparison to her role in Hunter Hill and Perry Moore's new film, "Lake City," which is showing at the Tribeca Film Festival (Friday, 9:30 p.m., BMC Tribeca PAC, 199 Chambers St.). Romijn plays Jennifer, a small-town cop.

What's fantastic is that anyone who looks like a Victoria's Secret/Sports Illustrated swimsuit model would settle for ticketing speeders and savoring the poky pleasures of little-town life. Recognizing this, the filmmakers did their best to dress Romijn down. It almost - but not quite - worked. No matter how hard they tried, it's hard to hide the fact that she's almost 6 feet tall.

"Hunter and Perry requested an ill-fitting uniform for me," Romijn, 35, says. "They wanted the pants a little too short. They wanted everything to be badly fitting. I didn't have to do any hair and makeup. In fact, I made my hair brown with mousse, and our budget was so tight that they asked me not to wash my hair every day so they could stretch the amount of mousse they were using in my hair."

This is a far cry from "X-Men's" Mystique, who required eight hours of makeup every day. More to the point, Jennifer, while she may be a knockout, is recognizable as a real person. She's a reformed alcoholic who attends AA meetings. She seems sweet on a troubled young man (played by Troy Garity) who returns to town with a boy in tow to visit his mother (Sissy Spacek).

But there was never any doubt in Romijn's mind that she could pull this role off.

"I come from a small city [Berkeley, Calif.]," Romijn says. "I don't normally wear makeup. I'm kind of a girl next door. I'm a real wholesome person. I'm a home-body. I hang out with my dogs. I have a pretty quiet, normal life. It wasn't that much of a stretch for me."

The way she was cast was a bit down-home, too. She met the directors on the beach in Montauk and became "beach buddies" over the course of several summers. They told her about the project, and her first response was, " 'Okay, good luck with that,' with a hint of sarcasm." But the script and the cast put an end to the sarcasm. She signed on.

"Ugly Betty" fans are far more used to Romijn in another changeling guise, that of male-to-female transsexual Alexis Meade. As Alexis, her character falls somewhere between Mystique and Jennifer on the reality scale. Romijn has just wrapped the show's second season, and announced this week that there are even more changes in her future. She revealed she will probably not be a regular cast member for the upcoming third season of the hit ABC series.

"They've made a lot of changes with the writing staff," she says of "Ugly Betty." "I know I'm coming back at the beginning of next season, but I'm not sure that they are able to take care of my character as much as they were. So it may be time for me to move on to other things and see what else is going on."

Young X-Men Get Gossip Girl Scribe?

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In some odd Friday evening news, BlackBook magazine talked to Josh Schwartz, the writer and executive producer of shows like "The O.C.," "Gossip Girl" and "Chuck" (soon to be getting his own comic book!) and found out that he'd taken over the job of writing a screenplay for a Young X-Men movie (that title still hasn't been confirmed) which originally was to be written by Zack Penn. What's even odder than that juicy news is that BlackBook then took the story down, even though you can still see the original post at the link below. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, we were able to grab some of the original text which had Schwartz saying some rather unflattering remarks about his superhero peers and predecessors:

Something he can talk about, however, is news that he will pen the screenplay for the next installment of X-Men, a prequel of sorts. "I'm very well aware that I'll be bludgeoned by purists, but I love its mythology, and it comes with a pretty hefty paycheck." Of the project, he beams with excitement about the opportunity to involve lesser known X-Men characters who haven't yet been portrayed on film. It will center on teenage characters at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. "It's not like I'm adding new characters like Toaster Head, or anything like that." Despite his enthusiam, he's cautious, given the double-edged sword inherent in the seemingly inexhaustible renaissance of the genre. "The Hulk looks like it's going to be terrible. And why does he look like he's fighting against the monster from Cloverfield? I mean, with Transformers, it's not like fans were going to come back saying, 'You used the wrong car.' This, however, is a different story." Of his predecessors and their successes (or failures), he says, "Brett Ratner didn't have a lot of credibility going in to the third X-Men movie, but I think Bryan Singer [who directed the first two installments] got a free pass on Superman Returns because of his work on X-Men."

McKellen on the Magneto Spin-Off

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Empire Online talked to Sir Ian McKellen about the Magneto spin-off (or should we say, "X-Men Origins: Magneto"?) in the works.

"They are making a Magneto spin-off but I don't think it will involve me because it's about the younger Magneto, it's a back-story," McKellen said.

And what about the anti-aging special effects employed in the third "X-Men" movie? "Would I be willing to return to play a young Magneto? A cameo in my own movie? I don't think so," he said. "I don't think I could get away with playing a 19-year-old."