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Monday, September 17, 2018

DISNEY’S MARY POPPINS RETURNS – OFFICIAL TRAILER 17 September 2018






DISNEY’S MARY POPPINS RETURNS – OFFICIAL TRAILER 17 September 2018

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3jsfXDZLIY



See Mary Poppins Returns in theatres December 19!

In Disney’s “Mary Poppins Returns,” an all new original musical and sequel, Mary Poppins is back to help the next generation of the Banks family find the joy and wonder missing in their lives following a personal loss.

LEAD CAST

Emily Blunt stars as the practically-perfect nanny with unique magical skills who can turn any ordinary task into an unforgettable, fantastic adventure and Lin-Manuel Miranda plays her friend Jack, an optimistic street lamplighter who helps bring light—and life—to the streets of London.


OTHER CAST

The film also stars Ben Whishaw as Michael Banks; Emily Mortimer as Jane Banks; Julie Walters as the Banks’ housekeeper Ellen; Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh and introducing Joel Dawson as the Banks’ children, with Colin Firth as Fidelity Fiduciary Bank’s William Weatherall Wilkins; and Meryl Streep as Mary’s eccentric cousin, Topsy. Angela Lansbury appears as the Balloon Lady, a treasured character from the PL Travers books
and

Dick Van Dyke is Mr. Dawes, Jr., the retired chairman of the bank now run by Firth’s character.

CREATIVES

Director: “Mary Poppins Returns” is directed by Rob Marshall.

The screenplay is by David Magee and the screen story is by Magee & Rob Marshall & John DeLuca based upon the Mary Poppins Stories by PL Travers.
The producers are John DeLuca, p.g.a., Rob Marshall, p.g.a. and Marc Platt, p.g.a. with Callum McDougall serving as executive producer.
The music score is by Marc Shaiman and the film features all new original songs with music by Shaiman and lyrics by Scott Wittman and Shaiman.














Meghan cooks for Grenfell: Duchess announces support for charity cookbook




Meghan cooks for Grenfell: Duchess announces support for charity cookbook


VIDEO: Meghan rolls up sleeves to help Grenfell victims




Purchase Book:
UK

USA

(CNN)In her first solo project as a member of the royal family, the Duchess of Sussex is supporting a new charity cookbook showcasing recipes from women whose community was affected by the Grenfell Tower fire, Kensington Palace said in a statement on Monday.
In January 2018, as she was settling into London, Meghan Markle met the group of women who gathered to cook twice a week in a communal kitchen at the Al Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre.

"I immediately felt connected to this community kitchen; it is a place for women to laugh, grieve, cry and cook together," Markle, who has continued to make regular private visits to the kitchen, said in a statement.
She championed the cookbook project as a way of ensuring the kitchen could operate more regularly, and it is hoped that profits from the sales will help keep the kitchen open up to seven days a week.

The kitchen originally provided a place for the women to cook fresh food for their families and neighbors, who were living out of hotel rooms after the fire, but more than a year later it has also become a support network. The women who gather there call it the Hubb Community Kitchen -- in Arabic "hubb" means "love."

"I immediately felt connected to this community kitchen; it is a place for women to laugh, grieve, cry and cook together," said the Duchess, who has written the foreword for the book.
Supported by The Royal Foundation, "Together: Our Community Cookbook" features over 50 recipes from across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean, and celebrates "the power of cooking to bring communities together."
"Melding cultural identities under a shared roof, it creates a space to feel a sense of normalcy -- in its simplest form, the universal need to connect, nurture, and commune through food, through crisis or joy -- something we can all relate to," she said.
The Duchess, who is quite a foodie herself, would often share recipes from her kitchen on her now defunct lifestyle blog The Tig.







Thursday, September 6, 2018

Burt Reynolds movie star known for Boogie Nights & Smokey and the Bandit, dies at 82



Burt Reynolds, Movie Star Who Played It for Grins, Dies at 82


Burt Reynolds Turned Down Boogie Nights, 7 times 


Lauren Bacall presents the award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture to Burty Reynolds for his role in Boogie Nights. 


The opening of the 46th Academy Awards in 1974, featuring performances by Liza Minnelli, an introduction by Academy President Walter Mirisch, welcoming remarks from host Burt Reynolds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3sM_Fn_Q90


Burt Reynolds and Dyan Cannon present the prestigious Oscars in 1974 for Musical Scores to Charles Chaplin, Raymond Rasch & Larry Russel for Limelight, Ralph Burns for Cabaret at the 45th Academy Awards 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmQJqxdLnMo


The ex-jock from Florida starred in 'Deliverance' and 'Boogie Nights' but preferred making such populist, fun fare as 'Smokey and the Bandit,' 'The Cannonball Run' and 'Starting Over.'
Burt Reynolds, the charismatic star of such films as DeliveranceThe Longest Yard and Smokey and the Bandit who set out to have as much fun as possible on and off the screen — and wildly succeeded — has died. He was 82.

Reynolds, who received an Oscar nomination when he portrayed porn director Jack Horner in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights (1997) and was the No. 1 box-office attraction for a five-year stretch starting in the late 1970s, died Thursday morning at Jupiter Medical Center in Florida, his manager, Erik Kritzer, told The Hollywood Reporter

Always with a wink, Reynolds shined in many action films (often doing his own stunts) and in such romantic comedies as Starting Over (1979) opposite Jill Clayburgh and Candice Bergen; The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) with Dolly Parton; Best Friends (1982) with Goldie Hawn; and, quite aptly, The Man Who Loved Women (1983) with Julie Andrews.
Though beloved by audiences for his brand of frivolous, good-ol'-boy fare, the playful Reynolds rarely was embraced by the critics. The first time he saw himself in Boogie Nights, he was so unhappy he fired his agent. (He went on to win a Golden Globe but lost out in the Oscar supporting actor race to Robin Williams for Good Will Hunting, a bitter disappointment for him.)

"I didn't open myself to new writers or risky parts because I wasn't interested in challenging myself as an actor. I was interested in having a good time," Reynolds recalled in his 2015 memoir, But Enough About Me. "As a result, I missed a lot of opportunities to show I could play serious roles. By the time I finally woke up and tried to get it right, nobody would give me a chance."

Still, Reynolds had nothing to apologize for. He was Hollywood's top-grossing star every year from 1978 through 1982, equaling the longest stretch the business had seen since the days of Bing Crosby in the 1940s. In 1978, he had four movies playing in theaters at the same time.

Reynolds' career also is marked by the movies he didn't make. Harrison Ford, Jack Nicholson and Bruce Willis surely were grateful after he turned down the roles of Han Solo, retired astronaut Garrett Breedlove and cop John McClane in Star WarsTerms of Endearment and Die Hard, respectively. He often said that passing on James L. Brooks' Endearment was one of his worst career mistakes. (Nicholson won an Oscar for playing Breedlove.)

Reynolds also indicated he was Milos Forman's first choice to play R.P. McMurphy (another Nicholson Oscar-winning turn) in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, "backed away" from playing Batman on TV in the 1960s and declined the part made famous by Richard Gere in Pretty Woman.

In John Boorman's Deliverance (1972), based on a book by James Dickey, Reynolds starred as macho survivalist Lewis Medlock, one of four guys from Atlanta who head to the wilderness for the weekend. Filmed by Vilmos Zsigmond along the Chattooga River near the Georgia-South Carolina border, it was an arduous production that Boorman shot in sequence.
"When I asked John why, he said, 'In case one of you drowns,'" Reynolds wrote.
He had good reason. When Reynolds saw test footage of a dummy in a canoe going over the falls in one scene, he told Boorman the scene looked fake. He climbed into the canoe, was sent crashing into the rocks and ended up in the hospital. "I asked [Boorman] how [the new footage] looked, and he said, 'Like a dummy going over the falls,'" Reynolds wrote.
Deliverance, infamous for its uncut 10-minute hillbilly male rape scene ("squeal like a pig"), was nominated for three Academy Awards but came away empty. It lost out to The Godfather in the best picture battle.

"If I had to put only one of my movies in a time capsule, it would be Deliverance," Reynolds wrote. "I don't know if it's the best acting I've done, but it's the best movie I've ever been in. It proved I could act, not only to the public but me."

Three months before the movie opened, Reynolds — once described by journalist Scott Tobias as the "standard of hirsute masculinity" — showed off his mustache and other assets when he posed nude on a bearskin rug for a Cosmopolitan centerfold in April 1972. (Seven years later, he would become the rare man to grace the cover of Playboy.)

The Cosmo issue sold an outlandish 1.5 million copies. "It's been called one of the greatest publicity stunts of all time, but it was one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made," he wrote, "and I'm convinced it cost Deliverance the recognition it deserved."

A running back in high school and college who talked with legendary coach Bear Bryant about attending Alabama, Reynolds put his gridiron skills to use in Robert Aldrich's The Longest Yard(1974), playing Paul "Wrecking" Crewe, who leads his rag-tag team of prison inmates in a game against the guards. He later starred in Semi-Tough (1977), another football film.

Smokey and the Bandit (1977), written and directed by his pal, the legendary stuntman Hal Needham, grossed $126 million (that's $508 million today, and only Star Wars took in more that year). Reynolds, who stars as Bo "Bandit" Darville, hired to transport 400 cases of Coors from Texas to Atlanta in 28 hours, noted that, unbelievable as it sounds, Smokey was Alfred Hitchcock's favorite movie.

Reynolds drives a sleek Pontiac Trans-Am in the film, and after the picture opened, sales of the model soared. (His black car is mentioned in Bruce Springsteen's "Cadillac Ranch," and the Tampa Bay Bandits, a U.S. Football League team in which he had an ownership stake, were named for the movie.)

Smokey spawned two sequels, and Reynolds went on to work again with Needham in The Cannonball Run (1981), another fun-filled action film that spawned another franchise. His other high-octane films included Sharky's Machine (1981) and two movies as ex-con Gator McClusky.

In Smokey, Reynolds starred alongside Sally Field, and the two were an item for some time. He also had relationships with the likes of Dinah Shore (20 years his senior), Inger Stevens and Chris Evert, and he talked about dating Hawn and Farrah Fawcett in his book.
Reynolds was married to British actress Judy Carne (famous for NBC's Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In) from 1963-66 and then to Loni Anderson, the voluptuous blonde best known for the CBS sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati, from 1988-93. Both marriages were tempestuous, and his divorce with Anderson was particularly messy.

After a string of big-screen failures and the cancellation of his ABC private detective series B.L. Stryker, Reynolds rejuvenated his career by starring in the 1990-94 CBS sitcom Evening Shade, created by Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason.
He won an Emmy Award in 1991 for best actor in a comedy series for playing Woodrow "Wood" Newton, a former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback who returns to his small-town home in Arkansas to coach a woeful high school team.

Burton Milo Reynolds Jr. was born on Feb. 11, 1936, in Waycross, Georgia, and raised in Florida's Palm Beach County. His father was an Army veteran who became the police chief in Riviera Beach, Florida, not too far from the Everglades.
"My dad was my hero, but he never acknowledged any of my achievements," he wrote in his memoir. "I always felt that no amount of success would make me a man in his eyes."
Then known as Buddy Reynolds, he played halfback at Palm Beach High School, where his teammate was future New York Yankees manager Dick Howser, then suited up at Florida State, where Lee Corso, later a college coach and ESPN analyst, played on both sides of the ball. But he suffered a knee injury as a sophomore, and that was it for football and Florida State.

Reynolds enrolled at Palm Beach Junior College and appeared in a production of Outward Bound, playing the part handled by John Garfield in the 1944 film adaptation, Between Two Worlds. That led to a scholarship and a summer-stock stint at the Hyde Park Playhouse in New York. He roomed with another aspiring actor, Rip Torn, and they studied at the Actors Studio.

After a few appearances on Broadway and on television, Reynolds was off to Hollywood, where he signed with Universal and manned the wheel as Ben Frazer on Riverboat, an NBC Western that starred Darren McGavin.

He met Needham on that show, and the stuntman would double for him on projects through the years. Reynolds is referenced in "The Unknown Stuntman," the theme song from the 1980s ABC series The Fall Guy, and he played an aging stuntman in Needham's second film, Hooper (1978).

Reynolds joined Gunsmoke for its eighth season in 1962 as Quint Asper, a half-Comanche who becomes the Dodge City blacksmith. He played the title warrior in the 1966 spaghetti Western Navajo Joe, was an Iroquois who worked as a New York City detective in the short-lived ABC series Hawk and portrayed a Mexican revolutionary in 100 Rifles (1969).

Reynolds got another shot at toplining his own ABC show, playing homicide detective Dan August in a 1970-71 Quinn Martin production, but the series was axed after a season.
Reynolds appeared often on NBC's The Tonight Show, and in 1972 he became the first non-comedian to sit in for Johnny Carson as guest host (Reynolds' first guest that night was his ex-wife, Carne; they hadn't spoken in six years, and she made a crack about his older girlfriend Shore). He and Carson once engaged in a wild and improvised whipped-cream fight during a taping, and he got to show a side of him the public never knew.

"Before I met Johnny, I'd played a bunch of angry guys in a series of forgettable action movies, and people didn't know I had a sense of humor," he wrote. "My appearances on The Tonight Showchanged that. My public image went from a constipated actor who never took a chance to a cocky, wisecracking character."

Reynolds showed that lighter side when he played a sperm in Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (1972), and he lampooned his lavish Hollywood lifestyle in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie (1976). He was not above making fun of himself and his toupee.
In 1979, he opened the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre in Jupiter and in the 1980s, he developed the syndicated game show Win, Lose or Draw with host Bert Convy. The set was modeled after his living room.
With his divorce from Anderson and bad restaurant investments contributing to more than $10 million in debts, Reynolds filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1996 and came out of it two years later. In recent years, he sold properties in Florida, including his fabled 160-acre ranch — The Allman Brothers recorded an album there in the 1990s — and auctioned off personal belongings.

Survivors include his son, Quinton; he and Anderson adopted him when he was 3 days old.
Despite the ups and downs of a Hollywood life, Reynolds seemed to have no regrets.
"I always wanted to experience everything and go down swinging," he wrote in the final paragraph of his memoir. "Well, so far, so good. I know I'm old, but I feel young. And there's one thing they can never take away: Nobody had more fun than I did."

Borys Kit contributed to this report.


Movies Burt Reynolds turned down from, Bond to Solo

https://variety.com/2018/film/news/burt-reynolds-turned-down-roles-bond-solo-1202930436/ 



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