Usain Bolt 100 m - New World Record 9.54 s - Rio 2016
Usain Bolt turned the Olympic Stadium into his stage again for his first race at the Rio Games. With an easy win in his 100-meter heat, backed up by the trademark showmanship, he did not disappoint his crowd.
All of a sudden, the 60,000-capacity stadium was filled with noisy fans on a sunny Saturday, a stark contrast with the opening day.
The roar was immense as soon as the Jamaican turned up on the track. Bolt returned the favor, spreading his arms wide and then applauding the crowd for their welcome and shouts of "Bolt-Bolt-Bolt."
The crowd had been difficult to calm and silence ahead of the start of races so far, but when Bolt put his fingers to his lips for silence, all went quiet.
Bolt may have been slow out of the blocks, but once his tall majestic frame is in full flow, there is no stopping him in the heats at least.
"It wasn"t the best start, it felt kind of sluggish," Bolt said, adding that he never has been a morning person and preparations for his noon-time race felt unusual. "I"m not used to running this early in the morning in any championships.
"Hopefully tomorrow when I come out I"ll be feeling much better."
From lane six, he had time to look left four times to check out his opposition and then coasted across the line. He showed no ill effect from a hamstring injury ahead of the games. "My right leg is good."
His time of 10.07 seconds trailed that of his longtime rival Justin Gatlin by .06 seconds, but Bolt was running into a headwind while the American had the wind on his side.
In his heat, Gatlin showed just as much poise without the showmanship. He shot out of the blocks and only let up at the very end for the best time of all racers.
Gatlin, who won gold at the 2004 Olympics, has been caught using banned substances twice (the first was later ruled as taken for attention deficit disorder) but the second brought a four-year ban for excessive testosterone. He told AP that he"s not paying attention to what people are saying about him, and is not concerned with those who think he doesn"t belong here.
Others to go through to the 100-meter semifinalswere Nickel Ashmeade and Yohan Blake of Jamaica and American Trayvon Brommell.
On Saturday, medals will go to the fastest women in the world after their 100 finals at 9:37 p.m. ET. Semifinals start at 8 p.m. ET.
There are six sprinters to watch: Elaine Thompson of Jamaica, Murielle Ahoure of the Ivory Coast, Dafne Schippers of the Netherlands and Americans English Gardner, Tianna Bartoletta and Tori Bowie. Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the two-time defending Olympic champion, had the fastest time in qualifiers Friday night.
Also, at 8:27 p.m. ET, the men"s 10,000 kicks off, with Britain"s Mo Farrah the dominant athlete in the sport. He has not lost a major race since taking silver in the 10,000 at the 2011 worlds, but Ethiopia"s Yigrem Demelash is hoping to renew his nation"s ownership of the race.
Farah, heptathlete Jessica Ennis-Hill and long jumper Greg Rutherford won gold medals within an hour of each other at the 2012 London Games, creating one of the biggest roars in Olympic history. All three will be competing for gold during Saturday evening.
The men"s long jump finals will begin at 7:53 p.m. ET. Rutherford, American Jarrion Lawson and Australia"s Fabrice Lapierre are the ones to watch. The Olympic record is still held by Bob Beaman, who set it in 1968, though Mike Powell eclipsed it in 1991.
The final event of the heptathlon, the 800, starts at 10:18 p.m. ET.
On Saturday morning, women also begun their heats in the 400m.
Allyson Felix, who won"t get a chance to repeat for gold in the 200, won her heat in the 400m with 51.24 seconds. She won the U.S. trials over Phyllis Frances. Felix has been to three Olympics and picked up six medals.
Medals were awarded in the men"s discus late Saturday morning. Germany"sChristoph Harting took gold, Piotr Malachowski of Poland won silver and Daniel Jasinski of Germany was awarded bronze.
RIO DE JANEIRO Over to you, Usain Bolt, and the bar is even higher than usual.
Michael Phelps and Bolt have been an Olympic one-two punch since 2008 in Beijing, where Bolt emerged to tear up the track while Phelps was already an absolute ruler in the pool.
On Saturday they will overlap briefly once more, with Phelps, now 31, finishing up one of the most remarkable meets of his career, and with Bolt, fast approaching 30, launching his meet with the first round of the 100 meters.
Neither had anything left to prove when they arrived here. Phelps was already the greatest swimmer of all time. Bolt was already the greatest sprinter. But that has not stopped Phelps from pushing himself to more gold medals against new and familiar rivals. And it will not stop Bolt from doing his falsely nonchalant best to hold off old foes like Justin Gatlin and young threats like Trayvon Bromell, who are hungry to chase him down before he sprints into the sunset.
Slide Show A Day of Finals Won and Records Broken
CreditQuinn Rooney/Getty Images.
There are rumblings about the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 for Phelps, who came out of retirement in 2014. Bolt, who has said Rio will be his last Olympics, has been an unreliable source on his plans in the past.
But this certainly looks like last call, and the Games will not be the same without them. It takes a decade of succeeding under biggest-race pressure to become this level of must-watch Olympian.
Bolt dominates his field in a way that is unique in living memory and has achieved a global celebrity that is almost comparable to Pel and Muhammad Ali, said Tony Collins, a British sports historian. Phelpss achievement at the Olympics is unlikely ever to be matched. The sheer enormity of his medal haul, not to mention his non-Olympic record, makes him the greatest Olympian of all time.
But the Olympics have entered very turbulent waters. As with the FIFA World Cup, the Olympics are increasingly weighed down by scandal, hubris and existential doubt. Whether they can continue in their current form is open to question, and that means that we may never again witness athletes dominating global tournaments in the same way as Bolt and Phelps.
Sam Manchester will guide you through the 2016 summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Hey. Its Sam from the NYT Sports desk. Im at the Olympics in Rio (so you dont have to be :)). Grab a limited spot and Ill text you updates, answer your questions and share the behind-the-scenes stuff nobody else gets.
Thanks! Talk to you soon.
U.S. numbers only. Standard messaging rates may apply. Your information is used only to deliver messages about the Rio 2016 Olympics.
The glass-half-full crowd could argue quite rightly that the Olympics, warts and all, have proved resilient enough to overcome wars, boycotts and doping scandals every bit as big as the state-sponsored Russian affair that dominated the conversation in the run-up to the Rio Games.
Other dominant athletes will inevitably emerge: driven characters like the American swimmer Katie Ledecky, who at 19 is just getting started. But the odds do seem long on getting the two best of all time at the same time again in the major Olympic sports of track and swimming.
They are beneficiaries of their historical timing. Others might have approached their Olympic numbers if they had been able to keep competing, but Mark Spitz, who won seven gold medals in swimming in 1972, retired at 22. Jesse Owens, the track and field star, only took part in one Olympics in 1936.
With Phelps and Bolt continuing to work in different mediums, it is still not the most straightforward game of compare and contrast.
Photo There are rumblings about the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 for Phelps, who came out of retirement in 2014. Bolt, who has said Rio will be his last Olympics, has been an unreliable source on his plans in the past. Credit Jeffrey Furticella/The New York Times
Its hard to compare water and land, said John Smith, the veteran American track coach. But my view is for an athlete when you are dealing with gravity, its a little harder. When you are dealing with buoyancy, its a little easier.
Aquatic types can certainly disagree, but running a straightaway seems to hold more universal appeal than doing laps in a pool. There is no debate that Phelps has always had the edge in medals and Bolt the edge in charisma.
So it remains as Bolts inimitable pre-Olympic press event full of samba and shenanigans made clear. But Phelps, long viewed as something of an automaton internationally, has also narrowed the personality gap in Rio. He has not only continued to win, but has also opened up and connected more directly with his public in the wake of his personal struggles.
Unlike Phelps, Bolt has not lost an Olympic race since 2008, sweeping the 100 and the 200 and the 4x100 relay with Jamaica in Beijing and then in London in 2012.
Photo On Saturday, Bolt, fast approaching 30, launches his meet with the first round of the 100 meters as Phelps finishes his remarkable showing. Credit Dan Mullan/Getty Images
Nor has he been beaten at the world championships during that span, his only loss coming when he was disqualified after a false start in the 100 in 2011 in Daegu, South Korea.
But his mathematical edge has been shrinking and his world-record times from 2009 of 9.58 seconds in the 100 and 19.19 in the 200 are receding in the rearview mirror. His winning times in major championships in the 100 since 2009 are 9.63, 9.77 and 9.79.
This decline is reassuring in a sense in a track world understandably full of suspicion about doping and Jamaicas testing program. But it also makes him look beatable, and defeat could not have been closer than at the world championships in Beijing last year, when only Gatlins late stumble allowed Bolt to eke out a victory in the 100 by one-hundredth of a second.
In Rio, he again comes into a big meet having raced little and with lingering doubts about his health. But Ato Boldon, the NBC analyst and former sprinter who predicted Bolts demise in the 100 in Beijing, watched Bolt train and start this week and said he believed Bolt was fine physically and deserved to be the favorite in Rio.
Nothing has changed in my mind, Boldon said Friday. The rounds will reveal a lot, but no one can get away from Bolt far enough to escape his finish in the 100. In the 200, well, forget it.
And if Bolt ever finds himself short of inspiration in Rio, he need only to picture Phelps in Rio: reaching the wall first and setting the standard again for enduring excellence.
MOHENJO DARO TITLE SONG | Hrithik Roshan & Pooja Hegde | A.R. RAHMAN, ARIJIT SINGH | T-Series
The movie Mohenjo Daro is neither exceptional nor entirely bad. But you will have to leave your brain at home to return from the theatre without a headache.
Unfortunately, I went to watch the movie with a thinking cap on my head as I have a keen interest in the history of the Indus Valley Civilisation. I have read some 50 books on the subject, and written one myself.
Also Read: Turn the Indus Valley clock by 2,500 years. Now what does that mean
The biggest - rather horrific - flaw of Mohenjo Daro is that it presents not only a misleading but a totally contradictory image of the great civilisation. One of the salient features of the Indus Valley Civilisation was its adherence to peace; some 50,000 items have been excavated from the archaeological site of Mohenjo Daro, and not one of them is a weapon.
In stark contrast, Ashutosh Gowarikar"s creation is filled with violence, corpses hanging on bamboo sticks, and sinister conspiracies in the royal court. The film not only shows the use of swords, but their smuggling as well. It depicts cannibalism as part of Indus Valley culture despite the fact that it was the most liberal of the three major civilisations of the ancient world.
I have been to the Mohenjo Daro museum, and I can assure you that the movie doesn"t even have a shadow of the artefacts showcased there. There"s no evidence of sprawling mansions, forts, temples and imposing monuments in the Indus Valley Civilisation, unlike in the case of its other contemporary great civilisations - Egypt and Mesopotamia. Yet, the movie is set in the background of grandeur. It makes a mockery of history by showing a man-made water reservoir larger than even the modern day Bhakra Dam. In fact, in the move, this reservoir eventually brings about the destruction of the city of Mohenjo Daro. (G*d only knows how the rest of the civilisation perished then!)
Most historians are of the opinion that while the Indus Valley Civilisation might have lacked in scale and grandeur, it was truly accomplished in art. One does not get such an impression from the movie, though. Likewise, the peasants, a hallmark of the civilisation, are missing from it. Gowarikar could at least have shown a glimpse of the wells made with wedge-shaped bricks -- some of which still exist - and the sophisticated drainage system.
FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS - Official Full Trailer - In UK Cinemas 6th May. Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant Click photo to enlarge
This image released by Paramount Pictures shows Simon Helberg as Cosme McMoon in, "Florence Foster Jenkins." (Nick Wall/Paramount Pictures, Pathé and BBC Films via AP)
Give Meryl Streep her due: She"s mastered drama and comedy, musicals and various accents. In her latest film, the multiple Oscar-winner has even crushed an unexpected skill singing very poorly indeed.
As the title character in "Florence Foster Jenkins ," Streep has been asked to warble operettas like a duck being strangled by a garrote. What comes out of her mouth is well beyond an "American Idol" ""pitchy." It"s ludicrous and grotesque and very funny. (A soundtrack is available in case you need the worst ever possible holiday gift.)
Inspired by the true story of the tune-challenged American socialite, the film is almost as tone deaf as its heroine. It champions artificiality in an era of authenticity and seems sympathetic to the clueless bubble that vast amounts of money can create.
Jenkins is often celebrated as the worst opera singer ever, an unlikely musical star who emerged in the 1940s, despite her lack of talent. The film depicts her as willfully self-delusional to her own failings as her husband pays off critics and hires compliant audiences to clap politely while she screeches.
Streep, of course, fills her character with emotion, humanity and need, but director Stephen Frears and writer Nicholas Martin haven"t decided whether their movie is slapstick or tragedy. And they frustratingly haven"t answered the riddle of Jenkins did she really go to her grave blissfully unaware that she was truly terrible or was she somehow in on the joke? There are clues for both interpretations in the film.
With a cipher as its heroine, the script naturally turns to explore the people who helped create her illusion, led by a marvelous Hugh Grant as Jenkins" endearing husband. Grant is unshakable and charming in his wife"s defense but shows chinks in his armor when she insists on playing Carnegie Hall, perhaps a ruse too far.
The film also includes great turns by Simon Helberg of "The Big Bang Theory," who plays Jenkins" conflicted piano accompanist, and Nina Arianda, who initially recognizes that the empress has no clothes but inexplicably switches to be her biggest cheerleader.
Adding to the film"s lack of authenticity is the slight-of-hands in its settings, with London"s Hammersmith Apollo standing in for Carnegie Hall and the city"s Park Lane Hotel supposed to mimic Manhattan"s Ritz Carlton, where Jenkins lived. The filmmakers seem pretty pleased with how they made locations thousands of miles from New York into the backdrop for an American story.
"Florence Foster Jenkins" thrashes about for a central theme loyalty versus ambition, passion versus skill, truth versus happiness but never lands on one. Unlike the recent French film "Marguerite" that was drawn from Jenkins" story and satirized class privilege, this one wants to say simply that it"s OK if sheer desire and gobs of cash make your dreams come true, even without talent or sweat.
That it uses a wealthy heiress to make such a populist statement is somehow fitting in this election year when a real estate billionaire who has never held public office is running for president of the United States. Well, at least we don"t have to hear him sing.
"Florence Foster Jenkins," a Paramount Pictures, Pathe and BBC Films release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for "brief suggestive material." Running time: 110 minutes. Two stars out of four.
MPAA Definition of PG-13: Some material may be inappropriate for pre-teenagers.
Mark Kennedy can be reached at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits
It seems very strange to me that it took until 2016 for me to meet David Lowery face to face.
Not because I expect I should meet every single working filmmaker. Thats just silly. Ive met a staggering number of writers, directors, actors, and people working at every other level in film and television over the years, but there are are plenty of people Ive never run into, and Im fine with that. With David, though, I have a history. You see, he used to be a spy for me.
More accurately, he was a regular reviewer at Aint It Cool under the name ghostboy, and his beat was the festival circuit. I edited dozens and dozens of his pieces over the years, and I came to rely on him as a guy with a very strong sense of what he does or doesnt like, and a real fondness for quiet, thoughtful filmmaking.
But that entire time, I never actually met him. And in the time since he released his first feature, Aint Them Bodies Saints, we still hadnt crossed paths, which made my recent interview with him extra-strange as I walked into the room.
Hello, strange person I have never met or spoken to in any capacity, I said, prompting a very confused look from the publicist who walked in with me.
David laughed. Head closely shaved, his blue eyes piercing like he was part Husky, he stood up and shook my hand. Its so weird that its never happened.
Still not sure what was going on, the publicist said, This is so awkward, you guys.
That broke the tension, and laughing, we both sat down. First, I thought you pulled it off, and I mean, pulled it off completely in the sense that its your film and its going to stand on its own. I think people may walk in with one set of expectations, but they"ll forget them completely.
Hopefully that"s the case, yeah.
The movies beautiful, man.
Thank you. Thank you.
Lets talk about when you first found out this was even available or a possibility. What were your thoughts on it? What made you say, Yes, Petes Dragon. I know what the answer to that is?
My first reaction, when my agent sent me the email asking if I was interested, was to forget what Petes Dragon was. I thought he was talking about Puff, the Magic Dragon. So I responded with an LSD joke or something like that. Like, Yeah, I"d love to. We can introduce a new generation of kids to the wonders of marijuana. But then I remembered Petes Dragon is the Disney one. What really got me interested in it was when I was told that the studio had no interest in remaking the original. They wanted to use the title and tell a new story with it.
That amount of freedom and flexibility was what gave me the ... well, just made me interested in it. I felt that I could walk in and tell a pretty convincing version of a story of a kid with a dragon that would be something I"d want to see as an audience member. If there was no preciousness about the original, then I could also kind of set aside my general distaste for remakes, because I have no problem with remakes, but when they"re just rehashing something or providing an experience that"s not new
The audience sits waiting for their favorite things to show up
Exactly. Exactly.
That"s like going to a karaoke bar or like a cover bands version
Yeah. And if you"re a cover band, you"re constantly going to be reminded of something you liked that was better. Like, if you"re just rehashing it, its never going to be as good as the original. So when I heard that they were completely onboard with setting the original aside, I was far more interested in the idea of it. So then I met the producers, Jim Whitaker and Adam Borba, who were developing it, and just fell in love with them. They were just the most wonderful, nicest, supportive folks you could imagine working in a major studio. And they were what really got me there was they wanted to make an emotional film. Jim had made The Odd Life of Timothy Green, which I think is famous for the YouTube video, the child like crying profusely upon exiting the movie, and hes proud of that.
I hope so. When you make a movie, you hope it will punch a switch in somebody. I"m going to go ahead and tell you upfront that Petes got me like five times. There were five different little things, and it was Ebert who said that as you get older, its not acts of sadness that make you cry in a movie, its acts of kindness. There is something to that, because for me, its seeing the human things in the movie. Seeing Pete in the alley howling
Lowry smiled, just slightly, knowing which moment I meant. Yeah.
its enormously moving, and Im not sure how anyone wouldnt just relate to this child who cant express
Hes feeling so much distress, but doesn"t know how to put that in words. It just comes out in this sound.
Its terribly moving. It is ultimately the accumulation of all the character stuff between them and how convincing Elliott is. If I dont believe Elliott, none of your movie works.
Of course. Yeah.
And, man, Elliotts one hundred percent convincing as a character.
He was... you know, I think you read the script, and we would describe him as a human character in the script. We would describe what he was feeling and we would describe what he was going through emotionally because we wanted to make sure that we were never forgetting about him. Theres a huge portion of the movie where Pete and Elliott are separated, and that was a tricky one because you want those characters to get equal amount of screen time. So we really spent a lot of time figuring out, like, "Okay, what"s Elliott doing? When we see him, what"s going on? So we definitely are following his journey just as much as Petes.
Yet its a non-verbal journey and you communicate everything hes feeling.
Yes.
My eight-year-old understood exactly, to a nuance, what you were doing with each of the scenes dealing with Elliott, and it broke his heart that Elliott felt like he had been left and that Pete didn"t care as much or that Pete didn"t need him. For him to be able to pick that up, and for the film to clearly communicate what it was that Elliott was feeling, it reminds me of that first 30 minutes of The Black Stallion.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, that is one of the great nonverbal pieces of storytelling I"ve ever seen in the theater. I even notice that you have a red balloon at one point in your movie and I cant help but wonder, are you nodding to another of the great nonverbal pieces of childrens storytelling?
This time, it was a much wider smile, and David started to nod. Completely. Yeah. That was probably the biggest nod to anything in this movie. Yeah.
If you havent seen The Red Balloon, you really should. Its a French film from 1956, but it really doesnt matter where it was made. Anyone who sees it will understand it, because its pure cinema. All you have to speak to get it is film. Well, then, bravo. I love that you snuck a red balloon in because I think this is clearly in that tradition. Which raises a point, which is that we dont live in a gentle world anymore. And I think that there is a gentleness to your films that is uncommon. I feel like thats behind why people didn"t get The BFG this summer, which I felt was also beautifully gentle.
Its so gentle, yeah.
I really respect and value that, because we dont get a lot of it in our films.
That was really important to me. I like movies that are simple and that are about interactions between characters who are good. Even with Gavin [the Karl Urban character] in this movie, I didn"t want to have a bad guy who was like truly evil. I wanted to have him be like a bad guy, but at the end, I hope youre, like, Aw, shucks, I still like that guy.
I talked to [Urban] yesterday. I walked in and said, You bad man, why did you make me cry? David laughed at the idea of that. And hes like, What, what did I do?
Yeah, he hits some low points. But at the end of the day, he doesnt want to be evil. I really didn"t want to have guns in the movie because I just hate guns. There are tranquilizer darts because how else are you going to take down a dragon? Theres a point at the end where hes like, Get those guns out of here. I wanted this movie to sort of represent a ... a softer side of the world. And whether that"s because its a period piece and things were better back then, or just because that"s me I think it is. I think that"s me. That"s me as a filmmaker. I just dont want to hate things. I dont want to feel distress. I want to feel like the worlds going to be okay, as dark as it might get. I want that tenderness to come through. I want that delicacy of human interaction and the tenderness that humans can show each other to take a paramount place in the stories I tell. So that was a big deal for me. Every step of the way, it was like, Lets not go for a thunderous climax with lots of, uh You know, we wrote a version that had a bigger climax. We wrote a version where the military shows up. It was a little Iron Giant-ish. But also it just was the wrong feel for this movie. To keep it intimate, to keep it delicate, to keep it gentle, and to keep that sweetness and tenderness that is an intrinsic part of humanity front and center was really important to me. You read the news every day. Something terrible is happening. And its
Heres what struck me as Lowery searched for the right word. He was emotional. Not overly so, and not out of control, but what he was saying wasnt some rote answer he just fired off. He was trying to communicate something to me that is essential to who he is and why he told the story the way he told the story. He was being as open with me as he could, and it just underlined what he was saying to me. Its very hard to communicate all of that to your kids, I said.
Yeah. Right?
Look, you know that one of the things that I"ve become very avid about and adamant about is the idea that we use these things, films and television and art, to communicate with our kids, to help them understand the world. I think within the space of a movie theater, you can have a safer conversation knowing that its about the larger things.
Exactly, David said.
Lets shift gears a moment, I said to him, and he seemed relieved. My eight-year-old just had his first pet experience. I just moved in with my girlfriend. She has a cat. We"ve never had a pet before. He just spent his first week with her. Took over all the feeding, all the care. He wanted to. And then the last night of his first weekend bonding with her was when we went to Petes Dragon. At the end of the movie, he came out and he was like, That was me and Josie, that was me and Josie. And your movie really speaks to how that bond is important, and how it improves everybody in that equation.
It does and it also goes back to what you were saying earlier about being nonverbal. Like the relationship that I have... I have two cats now that I"m, um, obsessed with, but all through my life, I"ve been a pet person. And I think because you"re not cluttering that relationship with words, it has a profundity and a spiritual side to it that wouldn"t exist otherwise. And that is something I definitely wanted to capture, because I think Pete and Elliotts relationship is profound because they dont have to talk to each other. Pete does every now and then, but most of their relationship is silent. Like Pete doesn"t have much dialogue through this whole movie, which is important to me as well. That last scene between him and Elliott has two lines and its like a four minute scene and that"s probably the scene I"m proudest of in my entire career, because its two lines of dialogue. Its all just done through blocking and body language and and it gets me. It gets me, even as the person who wrote it and directed it. It still gets me every time. I think because they"re not being burdened by words, its that"s what makes it so effective. That"s part of what I respond to with my animals. Its like we have this theres a stillness to our communication that is so profound.
Okay, then, can we talk about watching that performance come into focus? First of all, theres a relationship that you had to develop with your young actor on the set
Yeah.
Can you discuss how you directed him and how you got him to the place where hes having this imaginary relationship with such conviction, and can you describe watching the dragon come into focus over the entire technical process, and how it felt to see the life start to come to it?
I want to give a huge amount of credit to Oakes [Fegley, who stars as Pete in the film] for both of those things, because he was able to envision that dragon from his very first audition. It was the ... one of those, you know, those moments you hear about all the time, where the kid walks through the door, does one thing, and you"re like, Oh, that"s our kid. It was one of those situations. He made us believe in the dragon. He didn"t need me to help him get there. If directing is 99 percent casting, then we cast him and the movie works. If we"d cast someone else, maybe it would have, maybe it wouldn"t have. But he made us on-set believe that he was relating to, interacting with, missing, loving a giant 20 foot tall furry creature. And I would help him a little bit, like on the emotional side of things, but it would be more like when I"d be talking to him, I would just change the volume of my voice. He got real quiet and leaned in towards me. Like if it was a sad scene, just to make sure we were in the zone. I would just start talking a lot slower, more quietly. Then he leaned back again and spoke loudly, arms crossed. Or if it was exciting, I"d be shouting at him from across the room. That would help him get in the right head space, but he really zeroed in on the dynamic between them and its something that I think kids have that adults cant. Because I can say, like, All right, theres a dragon back there. Lets tilt the camera a little higher to make sure we see him. But Oakes is the kind of actor and the kind of child who also knows that he needs to get a little bit closer and reach out this far to scratch the underside of the chin, because that"s where the dragon likes to get scratched. I could have tried to figure that out, but I didn"t have to.
He continued, What we did a lot of the time would just be like I learned within the first ten days of shooting that all I had to do was kind of describe he would come, he"d know the sides. He"d seen the scene. I"d sort of describe to him where the camera was and what I wanted to have happen and where I was going to start the scene and where I was going to call cut. That was important to say. I"m going to let this go to this point, but beyond that, you dont have any marks you have to hit. The cave was the first big scene I think he did with the dragon, where hes reading the bedtime story. I would tell him, Just start reading the story. Make it up as you go along. We shot a much longer version where he told this crazy, wonderful story. It was as simple as Do whatever feels natural with this dragon who is sitting right behind you. Elliott will walk around you and hes going to sit down. And from that point forward, hes sitting there and you just do whatever you want. That wasn"t always the case, but by and large, we tried to treat the scenes with him and Elliott like that so that he could sort of direct how they were interacting. And so I want to just give all the credit to him. When it comes to the animation, I also have to give all the credit to WETA. Obviously, you go to WETA because you want a creature that has soul, and that"s what they can do better than anyone else.
That"s exactly right. Soul is their signature at this point.
Yeah. And they know how to do it. You tell them, I want a creature that is going to elicit an emotional response, and they say, Great, how big do you want the eyes to be? You give them a ballpark and they go from there. The only learning curve we really had was, again, with the eye size, which changes from scene to scene depending on the emotion, but that was something where we wanted to get the surreality to come through a little bit. We didn"t want to be too realistic. We also didn"t want it to feel too cartoony. Also finding the line where his behavior might be too human or too animal, you want it to be right on that line, to where you believe that he is not an anthropomorphic creature, but also so that his emotional intelligence is slightly higher than a dog or a cat. That was amazing to watch that come into focus. And it came pretty quickly. At a certain point, you realize heres what works, heres what doesn"t. And then you just kind of go from there.
As the publicist peeked in to let me know our time was winding down, I said, So finally, Robert Redfords work in this movie is the best word for it is magic. He just comes in and kills
David got a big smile on his face. Yeah.
I continued, and kills and kills.
By now, David was laughing.
And its strange because not a lot of filmmakers have ever used him like this. Hes not really Mr. Warm and Cuddly, and its strange to see him use as this sort of warm human thing that anchors the movie. Yet it feels perfectly natural, like this is what hes been doing his whole career. Why him?
Well, I"d been working on this other film with him called The Old Man and the Gun, which hopefully we"re shooting this fall. Im going to see him later today and catch him up on where our location scouts are for that. But we wrote that character originally to be someone that you would imagine Bruce Dern playing, the crazy old codger who has kind of like lost his marbles. And as we were starting to cast the part, we"re going down the list of actors in a certain age range. And we knew we were shooting in New Zealand and there was going to be a lot of physicality to it. So there are certain actors you just take off the list, because you"re like, Oh, they just wouldn"t be up for it. Their health isn"t in great shape or whatever the case may be. Then all of a sudden, it occurred to me. Im already working with Redford on something. I bet he"d read this. And he did. And at first, he wasnt really as into it because it was still that crazy old coot. But I was like, Look, let me rewrite this for you. And so we did, and then he said yes, and then he got to New Zealand and walked on set with all these kids, and the kids have no idea who he is because they sort of recognize him from Captain America, so that"s all they know I think that was so fun and liberating for him, acting with all these children, whether its the opening scene or with Pete and Natalie, who just dont have that sense of heaviness about their interaction with him. Because they"re not walking around with a legend. I go up to Redford and I"m still a little nervous, because I"ve seen every movie hes done and just like know his history. But to them, hes just this cool guy who their parents knew who he was, but they had no clue. I think that brought something out in him that we"ve not seen, both just acting with children, but also the fact that it wasn"t beholden to the legend of Robert Redford. And so we leaned into that, like obviously we"re going to give Redford a monologue, because he can deliver a great monologue. We"re going to let him and Bryce lean into that in that scene, but the rest of the time, lets let him have some fun and let his eyes come alive. When he drove that truck through that wall, which he really did, you see it on his face. This is pretty fun.
That wrapped things up, and as I stood up to leave, David brought his shoulder bag out. Thank you so much, he said. It was such a pleasure.
Good to see you, I said, gathering my phone.
He brought something out of the bag and handed it to me. Also, I know your kids are probably too old for it, but I got them one of these, in case they like movie props.
I started laughing when I saw what it was, genuinely moved by the gesture. Oh, that"s awesome. Yeah. Thank you, man.
Youll really only understand what it means to the movie itself once you see it, but Allens been absolutely obsessed with this since we got it
and in particular, he flipped out when he saw the inscription that David made to the boys.
My review of the film will be up later today. I dont think anyone who has read this interview will be wildly surprised by my overall response.
Do yourself the favor. Petes Dragon flies into theaters this Friday, August 12.
There was no such concern for Ennis-Hill, although she failed to reach the heights she might have expected, throwing a best of 13.86m in a consistent series that could best be described as solid if unspectacular.
The second-fastest athlete in Britain over 200m this season, Johnson-Thompson somewhat redeemed herself by living up to her billing as the quickest heptathlete in the field to triumph in 23.27sec for a much-needed points boost to end the day.
Ennis-Hill was just metres behind her team-mate, crossing the line in 23.49sec as Thiam felt the full force of her lack of pace, slipping from top of the leaderboard with a pedestrian time of 25.10sec.
All of which meant that, once the complicated calculations had been made, Ennis-Hill was ensured that familiar viewpoint from first place overnight looking down at her rivals.
Top of the standings with a points tally of 4057, the reigning champion may be 101 points down on her score at the same stage during London 2012, but she will start the second day with a significant 72-point lead over second-placed Thiam.
Akela Jones, of Barbados, will resume in third, with Johnson-Thompson knowing she must overturn a 100-point margin on her British compatriot if she is to s****h the gold medal away from her.
Petes Dragon: Bryce Dallas Howard Reveals Gross Bug Fail Behind The Scenes! | MTV
BAD MOMS - THREE STARS - (R) Although it"s directed and written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, scripters of "The Hangover" trilogy, "Bad Moms" sidesteps visual grossouts for an endearingly unkempt tossing-together of verbal raunch and sincere sentiment. Paul Feig"s "Bridesmaids" executed the funny-feminist angles with more originality and depth of character, but "Bad Moms" delivers here and now with big laughs and a goofy, vibrant spirit. (101 min.)
FINDING DORY - THREE AND A HALF STARS - (PG) In a sequel to the 2003 hit "Finding Nemo," Nemo"s absent-minded friend Dory goes off on her own mission, to find the parents she was separated from years ago. (109 min.)
GHOSTBUSTERS - THREE STARS - (PG-13) The easy, electric chemistry of the four leads in Paul Feig"s "Ghostbusters" acts like a firewall against the supernatural in this spirited reboot of the 1984 original. The film boats the best comic actor of the decade, Melissa McCarthy, the klutzy wit of Kristen Wiig, "SNL" standout Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones, the film"s secret weapon. (116 min.)
ICE AGE: COLLISION COURSE - ONE STAR - (PG) The fifth installment in the 14-year-long saga of animated prehistoric animals, will, with any luck, also be the last. Lazy, scattershot and excruciatingly unfunny, the movie is a hazard to the very young, who might come away with the erroneous impression that movies don"t get any better than this. (94 min.)
JASON BOURNE - TWO STARS - (PG-13) Now fully recovered from his amnesia, a semi-retired Jason Bourne (Matt Damopn) is back in action in a simplistic, but acceptable action thriller. (123 min.)
NERVE - TWO STARS - (PG-13) High school senior, Vee Delmonico, has had it with living life on the sidelines. When pressured by friends to join the popular online game Nerve, Vee decides to sign up for just one dare in what seems like harmless fun. But as she finds herself caught up in the thrill of the adrenaline-fueled competition partnered with a mysterious stranger, the game begins to take a sinister turn. (96 min.)
PETE"S DRAGON - THREE STARS - (PG) State-of-the-art CGI replaces old school animation in this remake of the Disney favorite about an orphaned boy named Pete and his best friend Elliott, who just so happens to be a dragon.Starring Bryce Dallas Howard and Robert Redford. (90 min.)
SAUSAGE PARTY - TWO AND A HALF STARS - (R) Raunchy animated comedy from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg about food fighting back before it is eaten by humans. With sexual hunmor and drug use, it is definitely not a cartoon meant for youngsters. (89 min.)
THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS - THREE STARS - (PG) Louis C.K., Eric Stonestreet and Kevin Hart lend their voices to this animated comedy about the lives our pets lead after we leave for work or school each day. (90 min.)
STAR TREK BEYOND - THREE AND A HALF STARS - (PG-13) The film finds a bored Enterprise finishing up a five-year tour in deep space when the Enterprise, led by Captain Kirk (Chris Pine, looking more natural in the role), is lured through a nebula where a would-be rescue mission turns into a trap set by the villain Krall. (122 min.)
SUICIDE SQUAD - TWO AND A HALF STARS - (PG-13) Director David Ayer (Fury) takes the helm for this Warner Bros. production adapted from the DC Comics series about a group of super-villains who are given a shot at redemption by embarking on a heroic mission that will most likely mean the death of them all. Will Smith and Margot Robbie star. (101 min.)
(Star ratings based on The Washington Post, Rotten Tomatoes aggregation and Advance Digital reviews)
