Emma Watson: ‘Harry Potter’ Actress Turns 25 – Happy Birthday

Emma Watson: ‘Harry Potter’ Actress Turns 25 – Happy Birthday

Emma Watson Birthday

We don’t know the spell to summon a cake, so let us just play it safe and say Happy Birthday! Emma Watson turns 25-years-old on April 15, 2015. In just a quarter of-a-century, Emma has accomplished more than most get done in a lifetime. Let’s help honor Emma’s special day by taking a look back at her amazing year!

Emma Watson’s Birthday: ‘Harry Potter’ Star & Activist Turns 25

Wow! Over the last twelve months, Emma has done a lot of good while looking good!

She kicked off her fashionable year with a stunning appearance on the cover of the April 2014 Elle Australia issue. Emma sported a sleek retro look, invoking 1950’s glamour on this modern day starlet.

While Emma isn’t technically royalty, she’s came pretty close  — literally! — when she joined Prince William and Kate Middleton for dinner at Windsor Castle in May 2014.

If there’s one thing that could top dinner with the British Monarchy, it had to be this: graduating from Brown University! Emma completed her degree in English Literature on May 25, 2014. Congratulations to Emma!

While at the July 2014 Dior fashion show in Paris, Emma looked fierce, as usual. Suddenly, her friend Jennifer Lawrence came up and face-palmed her! Was it good fun or bad taste? Either way, these two seemed to get a laugh out of it.

Arguably Emma’s biggest moment of 2014 came in September. Emma was appointed a U.N. Women Goodwill Ambassador. She then delivered an intense speech on ending gender inequality throughout the world. Along with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Emma helped launch the HeForShe campaign with the goal of including more boys and men in the fight for equality.

Emma also campaigned for HeForShe at the 2015 World Economic Forum on January 23, 2015. Emma reported the positive initial response to the program, before stressing the need for additional efforts to end gender inequality, once and for all.

Emma’s HeForShe work reportedly led to an interesting event in her love-life. While she was being honored for her humanitarian efforts at the British Fashion Awards in December 2014, Emma seemed a bit star-struck by the award’s presenter, Harry Styles. Fans nearly exploded at the thought of these two adorable Brits dating. Their wish was granted, because Emma and Harry allegedly went on a secret date later that month.

While Emma and Harry ultimately didn’t work out, she reportedly went from British Music Royalty to actual British Royalty, as she and Prince Harry were reportedly dating. Emma went on to dispel these reports, saying that she doesn’t need a Prince in order to be a Princess.

2015 holds a lot of potential for Emma. In addition to her ongoing humanitarian work, she’s starring in two movies set for release this year: Colonia and Regression. Emma’s role in Regression is a drastic step away from the Harry Potter world, as she plays a girl who has been sexually abused by her father.

Still, there’s some fantasy in Emma’s professional life. She will play the role of Belle in the live-action remake of Disney’s Beauty & The Beast!

Join us in wishing Emma Watson a Happy Birthday, HollywoodLifers! Leave your birthday wishes below!

— Jason Brow

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BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE Teaser

BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE Teaser

Director Zack Snyder released a teaser for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice through his Twitter, and simultaneously confirmed earlier reports that special IMAX screenings of the full trailer are being held on April 20th. The video is 21-seconds long, the majority of which are logos, and features Superman and Batman’s suits without actors Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck in them.

While the teaser is the first official footage of Batman’s suit (and presumably the Batcave), the shot of Superman’s suit is merely a recycled shot from the scene in Man of Steel where Clark meets Jor-El. I rewatched that scene to confirm that, but another dead giveaway is the fact that the “S” emblem on the chest doesn’t have the extra lines in the middle that the new version of the suit does — which coincides with the more textured Batman v Superman logo — or the extra blue layer/border underneath the House of El emblem. Below the tweet, I’ve included a side-by-side comparison of the old suit featured in the teaser and the new suit so you can see those differences for yourself. Below that we’ve included screencaps from the teaser.

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‘Grand Theft Auto’ Movie: ‘Harry Potter’ Star Daniel Radcliffe Said To Be Negotiating For A Role

‘Grand Theft Auto’ Movie: ‘Harry Potter’ Star Daniel Radcliffe Said To Be Negotiating For A Role

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IN PHOTO: Actor Daniel Radcliffe attends a news conference for the film “The F Word” at the 38th Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto, September 8, 2013. REUTERS/Fred Thornhill Reuters/Fred Thornhill

Daniel Radcliffe, the actor famous for playing the protagonist in the “Harry Potter” movies, is reportedly negotiating to play a role in the upcoming movie “Grand Theft Auto.” The movie is said to be based on the life of the creator of the video game series and his fight against a Miami lawyer, who wanted to ban violence in games.

“Grand Theft Auto” movie is slated to be released in 2016. According to HollywoodReporter Daniel Radcliffe is negotiating with the producers to be a cast member in the movie. The actor is said to be looking to play the role of Sam Houser, the president of Rockstar Games.

Rockstar Games is the company that developed the “Grand Theft Auto” game series. The company has also developed other popular games such as “Max Payne,” “L.A. Noire,” “Red Dead Redemption” and “Midnight Club Los Angeles.”

Sam Houser is said to be the man who helped make “Grand Theft Auto” one of the most popular names in the gaming industry. The report points out that although the franchise is considered one of the world’ biggest, it had done so while increasing the “violence quotient” in the games.

Opposing the violence in the gaming industry is the Florida based activist attorney Jack Thompson, who according to the report was disbarred in 2008 for “inappropriate behaviour.”  On his website, Thompson asks pertinent questions like how much adult content is there in video games these days and whether the current system of rating prevents children from playing such games.

The role of Jack Thompson has apparently not been cast yet. Daniel Radcliffe may be the first cast member of the movie, if the news is confirmed. The actor has been taking on varied roles since his “Harry Potter” movies. He has been a part of movies like “Robot Chicken,” “Horns” and will be seen next in the 2015 movie “Victor Frankenstein.”

Filming of “Grand Theft Auto” movie will begin on April 20, according to the report. The movie will be directed by Owen Harris, who has directed TV shows like “Secret Diary of a Call Girl” and “Misfits.” He has also directed the 2015 movie “Kill Your Friends.” This may be the first time that the director could get to work with Daniel Radcliffe.

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J.K. Rowling Shuts Down Another Harry Potter Rumor

J.K. Rowling Shuts Down Another Harry Potter Rumor

This time it’s about a supposed sex scene

J.K. Rowling shut down a rumor on Monday that she wanted Harry Potter to lose his virginity in the book, The Goblet of Fire.

A Twitter user posted a suggestion that Rowling had planned on adding in a sex scene in the second part of the book, but left it out after an editor complained it would bother parents. Rowling responded that she never wrote the scene, calling it “a load of cobblers.”

It’s not the first time Rowling has responded to rumors from readers. Rowling is very active on social media, frequently answering her fans questions and making announcements about her future work.

She made TIME’s 30 Most Influential People on the Internet list for 2015.

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The Homer Games: Mockingjay director to tackle The Odyssey

The Homer Games: Mockingjay director to tackle The Odyssey

The director, the writer and the producer of the latest in the The Hunger Games franchise have been hired to bring the Greek epic to the screen

Go hard or go Homer.
Go hard or go Homer. Photograph: Universal Images Group/Getty Images

The project has been fast-tracked, with Lionsgate hoping to continue the blockbuster success they’ve had with The Hunger Games by focusing on further large-scale films. The project reportedly began when Erik Feig, the co-president of Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, pitched the idea to Lawrence in Paris while they worked on Mockingjay.

As well as directing three Hunger Games films, Lawrence also directed I Am Legend and Constantine; Peter Craig also wrote the script for The Town and is working on upcoming sequels Top Gun 2 and Bad Boys 3; and Nina Jacobson also produced One Day and Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

The Homeric epic, which follows Odysseus on his journey home after the fall of Troy, has influenced the plots of films including Big Fish and O Brother, Where Art Thou?

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25 FUN Facts about BACK TO THE FUTURE!

25 FUN Facts about BACK TO THE FUTURE!

 

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Robert Zemeckis’ time travel classic Back to the Future. This is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I can’t believe it has been thirty years since it was released in theaters. I still have memories of my parents taking me to see it. Over the years I’ve watched this movie countless time, and every time I see it, I enjoy the hell out of it. This film has never lost its flavor.

You might think you know all there is to know about this movie. I thought that before I started looking into it, and in the process I came to find out that there was a ton of stuff that I didn’t know. I have put together a list of 25 Fun Facts here for you to go through as a way to celebrate 30 years of Back to the Future greatness.

  • President Ronald Reagan was amused by Doc Brown’s disbelief that an actor like him could become president. Apparently he found it so funny that he had the projectionist stop the movie and replay the scene. The President also enjoyed the movie so much that he made a direct reference of the film in his 1986 State of the Union address saying, “As they said in the film Back to the Future, ‘Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.'”
  • The script was rejected 40 times before it finally got the greenlight.
  • Apparently producer studio head Sid Sheinberg did not like the title Back to the Future, insisting that nobody would see a movie with “future” in the title. He sent a memo to Zemeckis saying that the title should be changed to “Spaceman From Pluto”, so it would tie in with the Marty-as-alien jokes in the film. He also suggested other stupid changes like replacing the “I’m Darth Vader from planet Vulcan” line with “I am a spaceman from Pluto!” Sheinberg changed his mind after he got a response memo from Steven Spielberg, which thanked him for sending a wonderful “joke memo”, and that everyone got a kick out of it.
  • Most people know that Eric Stoltz was originally cast in the role of Marty before Michael J. Fox. They filmed for five weeks before everyone agreed that he wasn’t working out for the part. They ended up casting Fox, and he shot both Back to the Future and Family Ties at the same time. Every day during production, the actor drove straight to the movie set after he was done with Family Ties. The bulk of the production was filmed from 6pm to 6am to fit his schedule, with all the daylight scenes filmed on the weekends. Reshooting all of Stoltz’s scenes added $3 million dollars to the budget.
  • Thomas F. Wilson, who played Biff, almost had his collarbone broken in the scene where Marty and Biff are about to fight in the cafeteria. Apparently Stoltz roughed up Tom for real on every take, even after repeated requests from Tom to tone it down. Tom planned on getting back at him during the car park scene outside the dance, but Stoltz was fired before that confrontation could take place.
  • Claudia Wells, who played Jennifer Parker in Back to the Future, gave her role up to Elisabeth Shue for Back to the Future Part II and Back to the Future Part III because her mother was diagnosed with cancer.
  • Biff’s popular catchphrases “make like a tree and get outta here” and “butthead” were improvised by Wilson.
  • The film crew played a prank on Fox while filming the “parking” scene with Marty and Lorraine in the car. The scene called for Fox to drink from a prop liquor bottle filled with water and do a spit take when he sees Lorraine with a cigarette. during a specific take, the prop liquor bottle was switched with one that contained real alcohol. Fox, unaware of this, performed the scene and drank from the bottle, only to discover the switch after-the-fact. The full gag is featured on the “Outtakes.”
  • Ralph Macchio turned down the role of Marty McFly, thinking the movie was about “A kid, a car and plutonium pills.”
  • The inspiration for the film comes from producer Bob Gale finding his father’s high school yearbook and wondering if he would have been friends with his dad as a teenager.
  • Both Marty and Jennifer credit Doc as the originator of the saying “If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.” The thing is, Doc never says the line once in any of the Back to the Future movies.
  • Doc’s hunched-over look in the movie was developed when the filmmakers realized the big difference in height between Lloyd and Fox; Fox is 5′ 4½” while Lloyd is 6′ 1″. To compensate for the height difference, Zemeckis used specific blocking where the two often stood far apart at different camera depths. For close ups, Lloyd would have to hunch over to appear in frame with Fox. The same approach was used in the two sequels.
  • When Doc Brown first sends Einstein “one minute” into the future, the time elapsed between when the DeLorean disappears and reappears is actually 1 minute 21 seconds, just as the reappearance occurred at 1:21am, and the flux capacitor required 1.21 gigawatts of electricity.
  • The 1985 version of Doc’s home is the same garage that Marty and Doc hide the DeLorean in 1955. In the opening scene an article shows that the mansion burned down years before, either for insurance money or due to an explosive experiment. The presence of the commercial development also implies that Doc sold the land surrounding the house for more money to fund his project. After all, he does state later that it took “many years and his entire family fortune” to build the time machine.
  • Billy Zane makes his first on-screen appearance in the movie as a character named Match, one of Biff’s cronies.
  • The time machine went through several variations. The first draft of the script featured the time machine as a laser device that was housed in a room. At the end of the first draft the device was attached to a refrigerator and taken to an atomic bomb test. Zemeckis said in an interview that the idea was scrapped because he and Steven Spielberg did not want children to start climbing into refrigerators and getting trapped inside.
  • Apparently in one of the original script drafts, Doc and Marty sell bootleg videos so they could make money to fund the time machine. This plot point was removed at Universal’s request, as they did not want to be seen as promoting movie piracy.
  • “A brief scene was cut in-between the scenes of the McFly family dinner and Marty being woken up by Doc’s phone call. It involved Marty preparing to send his demo tape to a record company. Marty decides not to do it, and leaves the empty manila envelope on his desk. In a scene that remains in the film, he goes to breakfast with the manila envelope sealed, suggesting he decided to send it in.”
  • John Lithgow, James Woods, Dudley Moore, and Jeff Goldblum were all considered for the role of Doc Brown.
  • Just in case you’ve never bothered to read the two red labels on the flux capacitor, they say “Disconnect Capacitor Drive Before Opening” and “Shield Eyes From Light.”
  • The backlot used as the town of Hill Valley is also seen in the first episode of Twilight Zone.
  • In the opening sequence, when Marty is turning on the electrical equipment to play guitar, the first switch has a label which says “CRM 114,” which is a reference to the radio equipment in Dr. Strangelove.
  • The “To be Continued” phrase wasn’t in the theatrical cut of the film. It was inserted into the end of the VHS release of Back to the Future, and was later omitted from the 2002 DVD release. “The cliff-hanger ending of the film was not originally intended to set up a sequel, but rather just as one last joke. It was admitted by the writer that had they originally intended the following two sequels, the ending would not have had Jennifer get into the car with Doc and Marty. This is why Jennifer was almost immediately knocked unconscious at the beginning of Back to the Future Part II.”
  • After the film was released, body kits were actually made so that people could make their DeLoreans look like the time machine.
  • “In the original script, Marty’s playing rock and roll at the dance caused a riot which had to be broken up by police. This, combined with Marty accidentally tipping Doc off to the ‘secret ingredient’ that made the time machine work (Coca-Cola) caused history to change. When Marty got back to the 1980s, he found that it was now the 1950s conception of that decade, with air-cars and what-not (all invented by Doc Brown and running on Coca-Cola). Marty also discovers that rock and roll was never invented, and he dedicates himself to starting the delayed cultural revolution. Meanwhile, his dad digs out the newspaper from the day after the dance and sees his son in the picture of the riot.”
  • I’ve included the original theatrical trailer below along with several deleted scenes that have found their way online.

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