Anna Kendrick In You Magazine!

Anna Kendrick (aka Jessica Stanley) is the featured cover story in the June issue of You magazine!  Here’s the article on Anna, plus photos and scans from the magazine.  Anna talked about the Twilight popularity, Robert Pattinson, George Clooney and her many nominations from a Bafta to an Oscar for her role in Up in the Air.

Anna Kendrick slips without fanfare into the lobby of the West Hollywood hotel where we are scheduled to meet: some achievement given that she’s part of the teen-idolised Twilight cast, whose every move is usually accompanied by ear-splitting shrieks from adolescent fans. But Anna insists: ‘I’m one of the few who gets to leave home and not be followed around. Actually, when I do get children coming up to me, it makes me slightly nervous because I feel like I have to be on my best behaviour. I have a habit of cursing, so I have to keep it reined in. It feels like I’m visiting my grandmother!’
The Twilight films, based on the bestselling novels of Stephenie Meyer, centre on the love story between Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and the vampiric Edward Cullen (played by our own Robert Pattinson), who vies for her affections with Bella’s childhood friend – and werewolf – Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). Anna, as Bella’s best friend Jessica Stanley, has one of the more fun parts in the film, unleashing all manner of teenage cattiness as she struggles with her envy of Bella’s popularity.

In truth, relations between Anna and Kristen are much warmer. ‘When I met Kristen, I knew her from some of her other films,’ says Anna, ‘and it’s so strange because she turned into my friend, and then just as quickly turned into one of the biggest stars on the planet. I’m on the outside and I really don’t know what to make of it even now. I can’t imagine what she and Rob are going through.’ Particularly as Kristen and Rob have themselves been dating since last year.
Fresh-faced and dressed casually in a striped blue top, jeans and canvas flats, Anna easily looks younger than her 24 years and is both chattier and more self-effacing than one would expect of someone tipped for great things. Because although it’s the Twilight films that have brought her wide recognition, Anna was Oscar-nominated and won Best Breakout Star at the 2010 MTV Movie Awards for her role opposite George Clooney in this year’s hit comedy Up in the Air. With the Twilight and Oscar madness of the past 12 months, she admits that, ‘This year has been crazy’, and it looks set to get even crazier with the release of the third of the Twilight films, Eclipse.
Bella and Edward were reunited at the close of the saga’s second instalment, New Moon, but Eclipse sees the chaste lovers facing new obstacles, with a series of unexplained murders and a malicious vampire threatening revenge on Bella. What’s more, she once again has to decide between the pale, brooding charms of Edward, and Jacob’s more muscular appeal.
‘It’s a film about growing up and making decisions,’ says Anna. ‘It’s a difficult time for Bella because at that age not only is she going through romantic confusion, but also she’s questioning what path she’s going to choose for her future.’
Of course, going through a romantic quandary with chaps who look like Messrs Pattinson and Lautner isn’t a bad problem to have, as the predominantly female fans of Twilight, or ‘Twihards’, will attest. ‘But seeing how much in love these girls are with Rob or Taylor, it’s kind of hard to understand,’ says Anna. ‘I mean, they’re like siblings to me now, and if I had to choose between them, it would feel really creepy. I’d have to think of them in terms of [their characters] Ed and Jacob – and in that sense, I’d root for Jacob because he never leaves Bella’s side. But having to pick one?’ She is momentarily flummoxed. ‘Well, I don’t think either of them is my type. I’d like a guy who looks a little more goofy and who is less intimidating – they’re both lovely, but almost too perfect-looking.’
Even without Anna’s vote, Robert Pattinson has no shortage of admirers (the ‘ROBsessed’) – teenage or otherwise. Mothers of R-Patz fans have proved themselves as enamoured of the London-born actor as their daughters: ‘Oh, the Twilight mums,’ says Anna, a touch nervously.
‘They’re a big thing now – and it’s not just in the UK, but everywhere. It seems like a harmless hobby, although it is a little strange,’ she admits. ‘Maybe the mums are finding a way to connect with their daughters, which would be sweet. But all it takes is one crazy mum to infiltrate that sweet circle of women and you never know what they might do! I think Rob is just as shy and freaked out by the attention as he seems to be – it’s not an act. He’s definitely not hard on the eyes, and I get why girls go crazy for him, but it makes me feel like saying: “Guys, really, he’s just a dude!”’
Anna witnessed plenty more female light-headedness when filming scenes with George Clooney for Up in the Air, the Bafta award-winning film by Jason Reitman. ‘We were shooting in a hotel lobby one time and every woman who passed by was just drooling over George and collapsing at his feet – it was crazy,’ she says. ‘It’s actually quite upsetting to see grown women turn into monkeys around him. I wanted to say: “Ladies, get it together – you’re embarrassing yourselves and our gender!”’
In Up in the Air, Anna plays a junior colleague to Clooney’s Ryan Bingham, a freelance management consultant who crisscrosses the US firing employees in order to cut their companies’ costs. In one brilliant scene, Anna’s character Natalie reassures her boyfriend that he needn’t be jealous of the time she’s spending with Bingham, because ‘I don’t think of him that way – he’s old!’
‘We actually filmed that scene on the same day everyone was drooling over George in the hotel lobby,’ says Anna, ‘which makes that line even funnier. If I’d been saying it about anyone else, I’d have felt really uncomfortable. But George had already made fun of me so much, I didn’t mind. He would call me “short”, so I’d ask him how his hip replacement was going. He’s so goofy, but a real gentleman as well. He’d be on set playing football with the crew, but he was also sensitive to the fact that I needed people to be quiet for my scenes.’
‘All the women were drooling over George and collapsing at his feet. I wanted to say, “Ladies, get it together – you’re embarrassing yourselves!”’
Probably because Clooney knew that he was in the presence of something special. Anna’s performance in the movie earned her Best Supporting Actress nominations in virtually every award ceremony from the Baftas to the Oscars, with Anna consistently losing to Mo’Nique’s show-stopper of a performance in Precious. ‘There’s no way of saying this that doesn’t make it sound like I’m just trying to be polite,’ says Anna, ‘but Mo’Nique gave such a humbling performance, that to see her win again and again didn’t make me feel bad at all. In a way, it took a lot of the pressure off because I didn’t feel that I was losing to a performance I didn’t admire. And I know it sounds cheesy, but it really was a dream come true to be at the Oscars – I never thought I’d get to be there.’
Born in Portland, Maine, in the US, Anna started acting at the age of six when she became involved in community theatre (her older brother Mike is also an actor). By 12, she had won the role of Dinah Lord, younger sister to the female lead Tracy Lord, in a Broadway production of High Society. She garnered a Tony nomination for her performance, making her the second youngest nominee in the awards’ history. ‘It was amazing to be nominated and pretty similar to how I felt on Oscar night. I have an idea in my head of what a Tony or Oscar nominee is like, and it’s not as if I’ve turned into Penélope Cruz overnight. When I got the Tony nomination I thought: “Wow, they’re letting me play in the cool kids’ club for a few hours.”’
During her Broadway run, Anna lived in New York with her father, William, then a supply teacher (her mother Janice works as an accountant). ‘It was great to have my father there,’ says Anna. ‘I hope they don’t mind me saying this but a lot of theatre children can be intense, and some of their mothers can be too: they would be there listing their child’s accomplishments and my dad and I would just look at each other.
Read more of the article here!

New Photo Shoots With Ashley Greene!

Three new unnamed photo shoots with Eclipse Vampire Ashley Greene (aka Alice Cullen), looking absolutely stunning!  You can view all the photos over at Ashley-Greene.us!

Eclipse Director David Slade, Ashley Greene and Xavier Samuel In Madrid!

Director David Slade, Ashley Greene (Alice Cullen) and Xavier Samuel (Riley) posed for the photographers at the photo call while promoting The Twilight Saga Eclipse in Madrid, Spain on June 28th.
[Source: Celebrity Gossip, Brandherion]

Elizabeth Reaser Talks Eclipse With New York Daily News!

The New York Daily News has a new interview with Eclipse Vampire Elizabeth Reaser (aka Esme Cullen).
In the interview Elizabeth discusses how we see a different, more fierce, side of Esme in Eclipse -

On being a vamp: “With Esme, most of the time we see these great, loving, motherly, warm qualities in her. But that’s just because her life’s going really well for the most part. In this movie, her family is in danger, so suddenly she has to kick into vampire mode. She’s fast and murderous and powerful and can kill people if she has to. Now that Bella’s in danger, which endangers our whole family, she has to kick some ass.”
On playing a mom: “It’s funny to me that I do play a lot of mothers. And it’s interesting that people see me as that. I’m curious if I have some sort of warmth or something that I’m communicating. I’m not a mother, and I don’t think in that way, so it’s been a challenge.”

LA Times Interview With Eclipse Fight Coordinator

Jonathon Eusebio, the fight coordinator on Eclipse who also worked on Iron Man 2,  gave an interview to the LA Times  where he talks about how ‘Vampires present their own set of challenges’—

Majoring in biology at UC Irvine may not have been the most obvious preparation for a career as a fight coordinator for films, including “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.” Still, Jonathan Eusebio sees value in his studies of mitochondria and cytoskeletons.
“Biology doesn’t relate to film but school teaches you how to interact with different types of people, be disciplined and turn things in on a deadline,” he said. “School gives you those necessary skills to get things done.”
The Canadian-born son of two nurses, Eusebio moved to California as a third-grader and took up taekwondo, boxing, judo and several other martial arts a few years later.
“When I was growing up, I used to watch a lot of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung,” Eusebio said. “Hung is one of Jackie’s seniors, and he’s a famous martial artist in Hong Kong and China. The way I see choreography is influenced by those guys.”
After college, he followed friends who were stuntmen into the film business, and worked on the “Bourne” trilogy, 2006′s “300″ and this year’s “Iron Man 2.”

“Every movie we approach in the same way,” Eusebio said. “The director tells us what he wants and then we just try and make his vision come true.”
Lively up yourself: While the previous “Twilight” installments may have been more focused on emotions, the third movie packs a real punch. “It wasn’t a fight-intensive series to begin with, but the third one is starting to get a lot of battles,” Eusebio said “There’s a big sequence when the Cullens have to train for fighting [another group of] vampires. There’s a big charge at the end where the Cullens have to fight all the newborn vampires. And then there’s a big scene where Edward has to fend off Victoria and her new lover Riley. So this movie has a lot of action going on in there.”
Art versus life: Eusebio calls film fighting “an entirely differently monster than actual, real fighting. It’s the same basics, but the movement and the philosophy of the movement are different. In film fighting, it looks like there’s contact, but there’s no contact. You want to hide your movements in real fighting. In movie fighting, you have to make everything long so the camera can see it as well as the audience. It’s like choreography, like a dance between the two combatants.”
Getting the picture: Eusebio is a big fan of show-and-tell. “After I choreograph the scene, I usually do a previs, or a video conceptual of it,” he said. “We shoot it on our own video cameras, and we edit it on our own computer and software. We have stuntmen do everything in terms of the action part, not so much the acting part. And I show it to the director. He says yes or no. We change this; we change that. So they already have their base skeleton by the time we get to set.”
Supersize it: Vampires present their own set of challenges. “You want to keep everything kind of realistic in tone to avoid making it look too superhero-ish, but the thing is they are superhuman,” Eusebio said. “Everything is exaggerated. So when they throw someone, the impacts are huge. When they chase somebody, they’re super fast. When they jump, they jump a little higher. We try to do creative camera work; we try to do wires; and we might have to use visual and special effects to help us out.”
Zoom zip: Since the undead aren’t usually formally trained martial artists, Eusebio went for a more general sense of athleticism. “We tried to incorporate a lot of parkour and free running,” he said. “They’re mixes of gymnastics, street acrobatics, running and precision jumping. There’s a lot of stuff going on in there. It’s not a martial art, but we tried to incorporate its physicality. It’s a worldwide thing. I know there’s a team in L.A. called Team Tempest. For this movie, I used a team called Fast Motion. They’re based out of Montreal. I used a lot of them as the newborns on [the film] and they did a lot of running and jumping in the woods. It’s very cool.”

[Source: LA Times.

Eclipse Review: Hollywood Reporter Says Twilight Saga “Finally Hits Its Stride”

 
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse reviews have started to come in now and I don’t think any of us fans will be disappointed.  This is what the Hollywood Reporter had to say about the third installment:

Bottom Line: The teen vampire series finally hits its stride with an entertaining mix of romance and action fantasy.

It took three films, but “The Twilight Saga” finally nails just the right tone in “Eclipse,” a film that neatly balances the teenage operatic passions from Stephenie Meyer’s novels with the movies’ supernatural trappings.

Where the first film leaned heavily on camp and the second faltered through caution and slickness, “Eclipse” moves confidently into the heart of the matter — a love triangle that causes a young woman to realize choices lead to consequences that cannot be reversed.

With the momentum of a movie series that sees installments arriving like clockwork every year, “Eclipse” looks primed to be the most successful film yet in Summit Entertainment’s franchise. The action is pretty much relegated to the climax, but it’s nifty enough that young men may get into the series too even if “Eclipse” isn’t their first choice on a Friday night. (Read about the fan frenzy surrounding the premiere here and here, and check out photos of the Thursday night event at L.A. Live here.)

The film starts a little slowly with its classic reintroduction of its main characters, heroine Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), more determined than ever to go vampire for her undead boyfriend; the gloomy dreamboat Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), an ancient being who still hasn’t graduated high school; and Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), a perennially bare-chested Native American who shape-shifts into a wolf at a moment’s notice.

Even here the film doesn’t mind kidding itself. Edward takes one look at Jacob and complains to Bella, “Doesn’t he own a shirt?” The script by Melissa Rosenberg offers a few more opportunities like this that wink at its own silliness.

Things pick up rapidly once intros are done, with the ramifications of the girl/vampire/werewolf triangle becoming increasingly intense for all parties while an outside threat looms over them all.
A crime wave has hit Seattle, a few leagues from the bucolic Washington town that shelters so many supernatural creatures apparently without any townspeople catching on. A series of vicious killings and disappearances tip off the Cullen clan that a vampire is creating an army of newborns — newly turned vampires whose ravenous thirst makes them stronger and more deadly than “old” vampires.
This army recruiter is red-headed Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard, the epitome of sensual, feline cunning), who, in seeking revenge against the Cullens and Edward in particular, means to destroy Bella. Which causes Edward and Jacob to contemplate the unthinkable, a temporary alliance to protect the girl they both love.
It’s like the uneasy partnership between lawman Wyatt Earp and outlaw Doc Holliday against the Clanton clan at the O.K. Corral in “My Darling Clementine.” Well, why not a Western? “The Twilight Saga” already mixes together high school melodrama, outsider fiction and teen romance into a mishmash of sci-fi and horror genres. (Check out video of the “Eclipse” stars talking to THR on the red carpet of the film’s premiere here.)
Since Rosenberg’s writing has never been the problem in the series, much of the credit for the success of “Eclipse” probably belongs to the series’ third director, David Slade (“Hard Candy,” “30 Days of Night”). He quickly establishes a rapid yet unhurried pace, a willingness to let tongue perch in cheek and an unapologetic indulgence in this basic fantasy of every teenage girl — that two high school hunks are in love with her and willing to die for her, except, of course, that one is already undead.

The three leads shine under his direction. Stewart anchors everything with a finely tuned if not slightly underplayed performance that catches her character in moments of doubt about the course and the man she has chosen. Pattinson makes you forget the white makeup and weird eye contact lenses to concentrate on a person torn over his love for a woman and the sacrifice he knows she will have to make to stay with him.But it’s Lautner who nearly steals the movie with his ripped muscle and steely acting. He definitely has the “it” factor Hollywood always looks for. (The “Twilight” cast invaded “Jimmy Kimmel Live” last week; check out photos here.)
The high school scenes and those between Bella and her police chief dad (Billy Burke) are quick and light and doubly effective for not dawdling. The series’ more peripheral characters are coming into better focus as well. The film delivers backstories for both Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) and Rosalie (Nikki Reed) of the Cullen family as well as the origins of Jacob’s family, the wolf pack, without any of these flashbacks seeming like intrusions.
Speaking of the wolf pack, the CG wolves, huge creatures whose ferocity fails to mask their tenderness, are very cool, and the fight at the climax among wolves, vampires and one poor human is no letdown. It delivers the goods without overstaying its welcome, which is more than can be said about most CG movie fights.
Production values are aces with DP Javier Aguirresarobe and production designer Paul Denham Austerberry very much taking advantage of the dark, woodsy and utterly beguiling beauty of British Columbia.

[Source: Hollywood Reporter.

Eclipse Review: Variety Says “The Most Cinematic of the Series So Far”

Variety has reviewed The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and has great things to say about David Slade’s directing work–

It goes without saying that the faithful will devour “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” the third movie in Stephenie Meyer’s immensely popular supernatural love-triangle saga, and also the one in which Bella must finally choose between her two beastly suitors. The pleasant surprise this time around is that the result finally feels more like the blockbuster this top-earning franchise deserves. Employing a bigger budget, better effects and an edgier director (“Hard Candy’s” David Slade), “Eclipse” focuses on what works — the stars — even as the series’ parent-friendly abstinence message begins to unravel. Summer release should reap Summit’s biggest yield yet.Taking a cue from the “Harry Potter” series, which maintains continuity on the writing and casting fronts while introducing a different feel with each change of director, the “Twilight” producers have embraced a variety of different visions behind the camera. Capitalizing on her indie sensibility and keenly observed teen insights, Catherine Hardwicke set the tone with the low-budget first film, with Chris Weitz expanding (and flattening) the world with his broader, daytime soap-opera style in “New Moon.” Now, the task falls to Slade, who clearly understands how to work with actors while also demonstrating a welcome competence in the action and melodrama departments.

It’s no easy task taking a piece of material auds already know inside-out and spinning it in such a way that individual scenes still generate tension and suspense. Slade sets us on edge from the outset with an atmospheric vignette merely alluded to in the book, as small-town boy Riley (Xavier Samuel) is ambushed and bitten by an unseen vampire in shadowy Seattle (looking every bit as ominous as Tim Burton’s Gotham City).
Not much happens for the first 300 pages of Meyer’s novel, during which vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) vie for the affections of Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), with our increasingly impatient heroine determined to surrender both her virginity and her humanity to the brooding bloodsucker (to his credit, Bella’s 109-year-old boyfriend wants to marry her first).
Slade and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg wisely intercut these puppy-love scenes with uneasy horror-movie jolts. After all, “Eclipse” builds not to a showdown between Edward and Jacob (no matter how often he takes off his shirt, the poor wolfboy will never be Bella’s first choice), but to an uneasy alliance between the Cullen clan and Jacob’s tribe of shape-shifters, united to protect Bella from the vengeance-seeking Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard, taking over the role from Rachelle Lefevre) and her army of “newborns,” undisciplined but super-strong new vampires.
Rather than attempting to elevate Meyer’s swoony prose to the level of literature (the poor scribe exhausts herself trying to find synonyms for “perfection”), Rosenberg’s task is to faithfully adapt the material for fans in such a way that works onscreen; that means having the freedom to remove, reorder or completely rewrite certain passages. She also has to contend with “Eclipse’s” muddled message — Bella’s in a hurry to be bitten, while everyone else is telling her to slow down — and devises a nice graduation speech for best friend Jessica (Anna Kendrick) on the merits of not rushing into things.
Despite the somewhat simple-minded source, the producers plot everything as if it were a strategic game of chess, paying off earlier gambles — Jacob played third wheel in the past, but gets the sexier kiss here — while seeding future films. Of particular interest is a wide-eyed young newborn (played by Jodelle Ferland), subject of Meyer’s spinoff novella “The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner,” who serves as an effective tool in setting up the powerful Volturi’s villainy for the two-part “Breaking Dawn” finale.
“Eclipse” feels the most cinematic of the series so far, taking scenes out of the lunchroom and Swan house as much as possible. Slade shares Hardwicke’s aesthetic of using dramatic aerial photography to give the otherwise intimate tale a more epic sweep, and expands on it by repeatedly lining up the various clans like the subjects of a Vanity Fair cover shoot, their iconic group poses helping to make the movie seem as big as its following. Though Slade inherits “New Moon” d.p. Javier Aguirresarobe, his choice of lenses and shooting style (including a fair amount of handheld camerawork) gives things a more dynamic energy.
Visual effects have improved considerably, with no fewer than 11 companies working on everything from Edward’s sparkling skin to CG wolves that realistically blend with live-action characters. A scene of Bella side-by-side with canine Jacob feels perfectly plausible, but nothing beats the sight of vampires and werewolves going at it in the climactic battle. If anything, the digital work outshines the other departments, with bad makeup, lifeless wigs and creepy contacts being the elements that disrupt the fantasy.

[Source: Variety.

Jackson Rathbone Throws First Pitch At Phillies Game!

New picture of Eclipse Vampire Jackson Rathbone (aka Jasper Hale) throwing the first pitch at the Philadelphia Phillies game yesterday (June 27)!

Stephenie Meyer's 'Bree Tanner' reaches one million in unit sales and donations to the Red Cross

'Bree Tanner' by Stephenie Meyer - Little, Brown Books

At last count, sales for Stephenie Meyer's The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella were up to 700,000 plus units sold, and now Little, Brown Books (of Hachette Book Group) has announced that the novella has sold over one million copies - resulting in more than a million dollars in donations from the company to the American Red Cross.
"The novella, released on June 5th, has already become the biggest selling new book of the year so far," according to a recent press release. "The novella, the first new work from Meyer in nearly two years, debuted at #1 on the USA Today, Wall Street Journal and IndieBound bestseller lists as well as bestseller lists in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and the UK."
Ever since the announcement that Bree Tanner would be hitting shelves, we've known that the American Red Cross' International Response Fund would receive one dollar from every physical copy of the book sold, and the organization's Senior Vice President, David Meltzer, issued his thanks to Little, Brown Books, Stephenie Meyer, and, of course, the fans for the aid that this "awe inspiring and humbling" "generosity" has done to "help the American Red Cross respond to international crises, prevent life-threatening diseases, prepare for disasters overseas and provide support to help those in need around the world."
This is such great news. As you know, Bree Tanner was (and still is, until July 5th of this year) available for full reading online at BreeTanner.com (and so far, a reported 75,000 readers have obliged this offer), but it seems that owning a physical copy is important to Twilight fans, so involving such a wonderful cause as the Red Cross' fund here was a fabulous idea that is clearly working out well and making a difference for those in need.

Source : Twilight Lexicon

Taylor Lautner promotes 'The Twilight Saga: Eclipse' on 'Regis and Kelly'

Taylor Lautner - AP Photo

Right after his early morning appearance on The Today Show, Taylor Lautner headed to Live With Regis And Kelly (except this time it was Mark Consuelos and Kelly Ripa) to talk about The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.
In the interview, Lautner walked down memory lane to re-live some of the past year's biggest highlights, including his presentation (alongside Kristen Stewart) at the Academy Awards, his stint as host of Saturday Night Live, his meeting with Tom Cruise as "Les Grossman" for MTV Movie Awards promotions, and his trip to Stockholm, Sweden to promote Eclipse.
Two fan stories that Lautner shared were of a young lady tattooing his signature upon her arm and another of a little boy "bawling" at the Eclipse premiere last Thursday.
Lautner is scheduled, according to Gossip Cop, to appear on The Late Show With David Letterman on July 1st, and Kristen Stewart will be following up with Regis And Kelly tomorrow. Kristen Stewart will also be appearing on The Late Show With David Letterman this evening and Lopez Tonight on June 30th.