Christian Bale visits Colorado shooting victims

July 24, 2012: Actor Christian Bale, second right, and his wife Sibi Blazic, right, place flowers on a memorial to the victims of Friday's mass shooting in Aurora, Colo. (AP)

Batman star Christian Bale visited survivors of the Colorado theater shooting Tuesday, and thanked medical staff and police officers who responded to the attack that killed 12 people and injured 58 others.

Bale visited with little advance warning and also stopped by a makeshift memorial to victims near the movie theater that was showing "The Dark Knight Rises" when the gunfire erupted.

Carey Rottman, one of those injured in Friday's shooting, posted two photos of himself with Bale on his Facebook page.

Janie Bowman-Hayes, assistant vice president of surgical services at sister hospital Swedish Medical Center, said she and co-workers were attending a luncheon at The Medical Center of Aurora to thank staff who tended to victims. "When we got there, then we found out he was there," she said.

Bale, humble and dressed casually in a black T-shirt and jeans, thanked the staff, shook hands and agreed to have his photo taken with employees, Bowman-Hayes said.

"He just said he wanted to come to thank all of us because he has been thinking about this. He knows the whole world has been thinking about this," she said. "He took it upon himself to come and thank us."

An online campaign had urged Bale to visit survivors of the shooting.

Bale, joined by his wife Sibi Blazic, also stopped by a growing memorial near the theater and walked among the 12 crosses erected for each of the slain victims. Many people there didn't realize who he was or chose to leave him alone.

A Warner Bros. spokeswoman told The Denver Post that Bale was representing himself, not the movie studio.

Bale, who stars as Batman in "The Dark Knight Rises," previously issued a written statement saying: "Words cannot express the horror that I feel. I cannot begin to truly understand the pain and grief of the victims and their loved ones, but my heart goes out to them."

President Barack Obama and members of the Denver Broncos also have made hospital visits to some of the survivors.

Bowman-Hayes and her staff cared for patients at both Swedish Medical Center and The Medical Center of Aurora after the shootings, whether it was in the operating room or intensive care unit, or by washing medical instruments.

She said the staff appreciated Bale's visit.

"He did this out of his heart, and you could really tell. It was so sincere," she said. "It was just, `Thank you."'

SOURCE: FOXNEWS.COM

Dark Knight Shooting: Suspect James Holmes Bought 6,000 Rounds of Ammunition

As night fell on Aurora, Colo., following a shooting rampage at a movie theater that left 12 people dead, police continue to investigate suspect James Holmes and provide assistance to the victims and their loved ones.

After reducing the number of casualties by one, from 71 to 70 (58 instead of 59 injured), Aurora Police Chief Daniel Oates announced at a press conference tonight that the bodies of the 10 people who died at the Century 16 multiplex have been removed from the scene. Two others died at area hospitals earlier today.

Holmes was taken into custody roughly 10 minutes after allegedly opening fire with an assault rifle at around 12:30 a.m. Mountain Time, 25 minutes into a packed 12:05 a.m. screening of The Dark Knight Rises.

Oates then shed light on how Holmes came to be in possession of the rifle, shotgun and two handguns, one of which was found in his vehicle after the shooting.

The 24-year-old, originally from Riverside, Calif., legally purchased four guns during the past 60 days from local shops, as well as multiple magazines—each one holding up to 100 rounds, for a total of 6,000 rounds of ammunition—off the Internet.

Neighbors say he lived alone and kept to himself, Oates said. Holmes, who had been a graduate student in the neurosciences department at the University of Colorado since June 2011, recently left the school via "voluntary separation."

Meanwhile, according to Oates, authorities are still trying to defuse a complicated incendiary device they discovered in Holmes' apartment, the likes of which, the police chief told reporters, he had never seen.

The bomb squad has suspended efforts for the night but will redouble their efforts tomorrow. Holmes' apartment building and four others have been evacuated in the meantime.

Holmes has obtained a lawyer and is due in court Monday at 8:30 a.m. Until then, Oates said, he remains locked up in Arapahoe County Jail and his mug shot is not being released at this time for investigative purposes.

The chief said that his department and other government agencies met with 70 people who have not yet accounted for loved ones who have been missing since the shooting; therefore, they are not releasing a full list of fatalities until after the families have been notified.

It turns out a few injuries were suffered in the chaos following the shooting, though most were gunshot wounds, Oates said. One person in an adjacent theater was also shot.

As of 3:30 p.m., 30 people remained hospitalized, 11 in critical condition.

Four theaters in Aurora are showing The Dark Knight Rises and there is an increased security presence at all of them, Oates concluded. A prayer vigil is planned for Sunday at 6:30 p.m. at the Aurora Municipal Center.

As the shows go on, Warner Bros. also announced tonight that it will hold off on releasing data regarding The Dark Knight Rises' weekend box office, numbers that in a normal situation the studio—as well as analysts, the media and rival studios—would have been itching to process.

"Out of respect for the victims and their families, Warner Bros. Pictures will not be reporting box office numbers for The Dark Knight Rises throughout the weekend. Box office numbers will be released on Monday," the studio said in a statement to E! News.

Source: eonline.com

Fantasy, masks, and James Holmes, the ‘Dark Knight Rises’ killer

Don’t blame the movie.

Don’t blame director Christopher Nolan or star Christian Bale.

But maybe it’s worth having a discussion about an entertainment culture that excels at selling violent power fantasies to people who feel powerless.

Initially, little was known about the Aurora, Colo., gunman who killed 12 at a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises.” We knew his age (24) and his name (James Holmes); the latter fact is irrelevant, the former maybe less so. The audience that has been the most breathless in its anticipation of the third and final film in the “Dark Knight” series — the audience for whom it’s not just a movie but the pop culmination of their lives — is young. But motive is as yet unknown, despite unconfirmed reports at press time that Holmes told police he was “the Joker.” He could indeed be a fan who lost touch with reality. He could be political. Or maybe he just saw the release of “The Dark Knight Rises” as his best potential stage. Where was all of America (or all of America that mattered to him) at midnight on Thursday? At this movie. Where was the place for him to finally be seen, be heard, make an impact? Nowhere else.

The gunman planned his attack for the first local public screening of the film, and it is almost certain he had not seen it himself. Let’s be clear about this: James Holmes is not the poster child for anything but the sickness in his head. Yet it’s difficult, at this point, to fully separate the act of a single deranged man from the all-encompassing mania this series engenders in a surprising number of people. For millions, “The Dark Knight Rises” is just a movie (and, to this critic, a very good one). For a vocal contingent on the fringes, it’s much more — a film that has to be perfect for the world to make any sense at all.

Earlier in the week, the popular movie review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes suspended user comments for “The Dark Knight Rises” because fans were directing multiple death threats and rape threats at critics who had dared to give the film less than a perfect grade. Reviewers like the Associated Press’s Christy Lemire and movie blogger Marshall Fine were promised physical extinction for daring to not like a movie that those posting the threats hadn’t even seen.

There is something truly awful going on here: an entitled fanboy mentality, enabled by the anonymity of screen names, that moves and thinks as a mob and that reacts to any deviation from unanimous praise with the fury of a spoiled child. Of course there were plenty of level-headed responses on the Rotten Tomatoes boards and elsewhere; of course not all fanboys (and girls) are immature dolts. But enough of them are to dominate the discourse, and their assumptions are frightening to contemplate: If someone does not like this movie, he or she deserves to die. Oh, wait, you were kidding? They’re just words, pixels on a screen? How does that absolve you? When you threaten real human beings with violence while hiding behind the wall of DrkKnghtFan, what consequences does that have for the intended victim, for society, for your soul?

More pressingly, it needs to be asked, why does fantasy in general and this fantasy in particular mean so much to so many people? Why does a negative review for a movie strike some as an attack on their own identity? When the second film in Nolan’s “Batman” trilogy, “The Dark Knight,” came out in 2008, it was remarkable to see so many members of a generation that had no cultural focal point discovering theirs in this, the way previous generations had rallied around the Beatles or “Nevermind” or “Titanic.” Even more so; I recall (and wrote about at the time) a young man I met who likened the impact of “Dark Knight” to the Kennedy assassination and the Challenger disaster as events that unified young people and gave them their defining moment.

Really? A movie? (And I say this as someone who has devoted a lifetime to seeing, writing about, and thinking about movies.) That’s a sign of several things, one of which is that Nolan is extremely skilled at making films that seem to matter — that move with a beautiful bigness and that ask big questions about where the world is going while knocking us silly with action and explosions and agonized superhero drama. His movies don’t explain our confused world, but they mirror that confusion with cathartic skill, in a way that can feel absolutely right if you don’t know how to find the words for yourself. They’re hardly political, but they reflect a helplessness we feel about politics and society — about our lives — that resonates with force. Unsurprisingly, then, the online fan-mob seems more viciously protective of Nolan’s superhero films than “The Avengers” or “The Amazing Spider-Man” (although they can be loutish about them, too). And is it a coincidence that the Aurora gunman showed up at this movie rather than a different summer blockbuster? Maybe he wanted to mean as much to us as “The Dark Knight” means to him.

Or maybe not. He may be just another nutcase, with no ax to grind regarding this or any movie. But I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he was responding, in his psychosis, to the tortured fantasy of power that this movie — and so much of the popular culture aimed at young men in particular — trades in. That fantasy is now everywhere. It is possible for any of us, of any age or gender, to avoid reality all day in America by keeping our eyes fixed on our screens. They’re on our walls at home and in restaurants, in our living rooms and bedrooms, toted around in our knapsacks, fitting neatly into our hands. The screens sell us many things: video games both benign and ultra-violent, empty “news” about celebrities, Facebook posts from our most intimate 2,864 friends, trailers for the latest Hollywood blockbuster in which men fly through the air and blow up everything bad in their lives. The screens tell us that we matter, each and every one of us. To look away from the screens is to confront a world that says, in most cases, no, you really don’t.

That’s hard, especially if you’re still figuring out who you are and a beautiful, conflicted superhero (or supervillain) mirrors your self-image. Our entertainment culture’s dreams of power are a drug that keeps us rapt in a cloud of promises: that we can win and that winning is everything; that we’ll be seen and heard for who we are if we’re thin enough or strong enough or have the coolest toys or the biggest guns. The fantasies lie, because the people who make the fantasies know we’re desperate to be lied to and willing to pay for it. And every so often, when we’re sold a fantasy that is so well made, that seems to tap so deeply into our very real sense of imminent catastrophe, and that seems so self-aware about the fantasy itself, certain people respond to it as if it’s the Truth. “The Dark Knight” movies are such a fantasy, and if they matter to you as anything more than extremely well-made and provocative entertainment, you really need to interrogate yourself (and maybe your friends) as to why.

A final thought: The idea of the mask matters quite a bit in this. The superhero movies that dominate our box offices are all about mild-mannered secret identities and the power that comes with donning a facial covering. We live each day through digital masks: screen names, online personas, Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, and on and on, each an attempt to show the world the face we want to be, rather than the face we fear we have. The gunman in Aurora wore a mask, too, to protect himself from his own tear gas, or to avoid being seen, or to play to the pathetic fantasy in his head that he was Doom personified instead of an angry 24-year-old.

In reality — real reality, maybe you’ve forgotten? — no one wears a mask. Someday a lot of people are going to have to face up to that.


Source: BOSTON.COM

Anne Hathaway on her iconic Catwoman and Fantine roles

LOS ANGELES – 2012 is shaping up to be such a big year for Anne Hathaway that she said she has not even really made big plans for her wedding next year. In addition to playing the iconic Catwoman in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises,” Anne is also generating excitement over her portrayal of another popular figure, Fantine, in Tom Hooper’s adaptation of the hit stage musical, “Les Miserables.”

Still wearing her short haircut for “Les Miz,” and looking radiant and younger-looking (she turns 30 in November), Anne was visibly jazzed up as she talked about her two major roles this year.

In the much-anticipated musical based on Victor Hugo’s classic novel, Anne is in terrific company: Hugh Jackman (Jean Valjean), Russell Crowe (Javert), Amanda Seyfried (Cosette), Helena Bonham Carter (Madame Thenardier), Samantha Barks (Eponine) and Sacha Baron Cohen (Thenardier).

In an unusual move, Hooper decided that the cast should sing live on-set, not lip-synch to prerecorded tracks.

“Hugh is going to blow people’s minds in the movie,” Anne predicted. “There’s something so deep and almost spiritual about his performance. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Russell also blew my mind,” said the actress, pixie-ish in her short do and little black dress. “I’ve never seen an actor work as hard as he did to become Javert and to increase his vocal range. When Russell sang ‘Stars’ to me, I cried. It was so full of emotion and nuance, and his voice was so strong! It was like heaven every day to be with two beautiful men with such goodness inside of them.”

Laughing, she quipped, “It made me want to make all my projects musicals.”

Anne choked a bit as she answered our question on her experience singing “I Dreamed A Dream,” the musical’s haunting anthem. “The way we approached ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ is very different than it is on the show,” she began. “We put it at a different spot in the movie. In the show, it happens after she loses her job at the factory. In our version, it’s after her first experience as a prostitute, so I was really in a raw place when I did it. It was painful.”

Confidence

Anne pointed out, “My version is very different. I performed it first for Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg.” Anne said that once she got the composers’ approval, she gained some confidence, but she was still daunted when it was time to shoot the scene.

She recalled, “On the first take, I definitely felt the weight of the song’s fame and its iconic nature. Tom Hooper came up to me. I said, ‘I’m scared, Tom.’ He said, ‘It’s not an iconic song. This is a woman’s soul that you are expressing. Just focus on that.’ I did, and the next take was the one he went with.”

In a serendipitous twist, Anne first heard “I Dreamed” as a young girl when her mother, Kate McCauley, sang it as Fantine in the first US national tour of “Les Miz.”

“I don’t know if I was born to play the role, but I definitely had a leg up,” Anne said with a smile. “The first time I saw ‘Les Miz’ was with my mom in it, playing the part that I wound up playing, too. So, to say that I carry this music inside of me is an understatement.”

Looking ahead, she said, “I think the next 10 years will be about trying to find challenges within my career, making sure that my life remains fulfilling. I’m getting married, so it will be really exciting.” Anne’s fiancé is Adam Shulman, an actor and jewelry designer. He designed the ring he gave her when they were engaged late last year.

The wedding has been set for next year. “Not this year,” Anne confirmed. “This year’s too big. We want to have a little more time to plan.”

She expressed gratitude for the challenging roles that landed on her lap. After getting an Oscar Best Actress nod for her performance in “Rachel Getting Married,” Anne said she almost could not believe the next breaks that came her way. “Here comes along Chris Nolan, with an offer that was so enticing and seemingly impossible,” she enthused about her Catwoman role. “Then, there’s ‘Les Miz,’ and I had to sing live for 12 hours a day. You never know when you’re going to be challenged next. I’m looking forward to scaring myself more.”

“‘Dark Knight’ was a big challenge,” she stressed. “‘Les Miz’ was a huge challenge. I feel that I did grow as a result of them. I’ve never been happier. To say that while you’re turning 30 is a cool thing.”

Anne lost weight for “Les Miz,” but she stressed, there was no pressure for her to drop pounds for “Dark Knight.” “I didn’t have to lose weight for the cat suit,” she declared.

She volunteered, “What I was told was I needed to be strong enough to do all my own fighting. The attitude was to let me spend a few months getting strong, and whatever the result was, physically, that was going to be what Catwoman was going to look like.”

“For ‘Les Miz,’ since I play a tubercular, impoverished prostitute, my weight-loss regimen was to make me look incredibly sick and near death. I lost 25 pounds. It was very hard.”

In addition to hoping that her dream to play Judy Garland in a biopic comes true, Anne wants to have kids: “I hope to be a mother,” she enthused. “The next few years will be about trying to continue finding the balance between having a happy home life and a fulfilling career!”

source: INQUIRER.NET

Tom Hardy packed on 30 pounds to become villain Bane in 'The Dark Knight Rises'

The actor also fainted in the summer swelter while he filmed 

a key scene of the Christopher Nolan Batman flick

IT WASN’T all bang! bam! pow! for actor Tom Hardy while playing the hulking villain Bane in 

“The Dark Knight Rises.”

One scene still sticks in his mind.

Hardy as Bane climbed atop the Batmobile to rally a throng of escaped prisoners — and then 

promptly crumpled.

The actor, who packed on 30 pounds of muscle for the film, had fainted in the sweltering summer heat.

“I was wearing that big long gray coat and my body armor,” he told The News at Monday’s 

similarly wilting world premiere of the epic finale of Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy.

“Not that dissimilar to today’s weather. Anyway, I passed out. I was unconscious for most of the 

afternoon.”

Other than that brief setback, however, not much has stood in Hardy’s way.

Not the physically grueling training.

Not the tight mask that was molded for his face, which Bane uses to continually pump gas to 

alleviate otherwise crippling pain.

And not the shadow of the late Heath Ledger’s Academy Award-winning performance as 

Batman’s last arch-nemesis, the Joker, in 2008’s “The Dark Knight.”

Nolan and his screenwriters, Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer, deliberately chose Bane as the 

villain because he was so strikingly different from the Joker.

While Goyer told Empire magazine that some studio execs suggested the Riddler early on, the 

filmmakers had no interest in being derivative.

Where the Joker wanted to mess with Batman’s head, Bane is trying to tear it from the 

superhero’s shoulders.

This is a villain, created by Chuck Dixon, Doug Moench and artist Graham Nolan, who rocked 

comic book fans’ worlds in his 1993 debut by breaking Batman’s back during a fight.

“Bane is the first adversary who you recognize could physically destroy Batman,” says the Dark 

Knight himself, actor Christian Bale.

Although he’s soon to be a name on the lips of millions of moviegoers, it turns out the creators 

of the comic book character originally were planning on calling him Venom — until an editor 

phoned back with some bad news.

“We were embarrassed to find out Spider-Man already had a high-profile villain named 

Venom,” says Moench. “We didn’t know. Chuck pulled thesaurus and found “Bane” was one of 

the synonyms for poison and it’s a great sounding name.”

A great sounding name for a muscular intimidator who seemed right out a Mexican wrestling 

ring. Which is unfortunately a look that doesn’t translate well onto the big screen. (Exhibit A is 

the cartoonish Bane played by Jeep Swenson, and mercifully with little screen time, in 1997’s 

“Batman & Robin.”)

Hardy’s version would be much, much different.

“The Lucha Libre mask? Nolan said ignore that, I have an idea,” says Hardy, laughing. “His 

idea was a lateral take on it, and I didn’t wear the Lucha mask and I didn’t wear the Lycra 

pants.”

With or without Lycra pants, Hardy trained relentlessly for four months to fill his costume before 

cameras started rolling on “The Dark Knight Rises.”

“Tom is one of those actors who’s a transformative actor,” says producer Emma Thomas. 

“When we were doing costume fittings for Bane, for example, he’d come in — and this is 

before he had put on much of the bulk — he would walk in and he’d look quite slim and 

slender… then he would hold his body in a different way and sort of stick his gut out, do 

something with his shoulders and suddenly you’d see exactly what it is he’s going to do.”




Source: nydailynews.com