Alex O’Loughlin is going to be at Pole Position Raceway in Corona, CA this morning at 9:30 a.m. to participate in the toy drive.  A bunch of CBS celebs will be racing Go Karts. With any luck, we’ll have some pics tomorrow night from either the wire services or from fans who are lucky enough to live in the area.  Yes, I hate them all!

There’s a new trailer out for Eric Bana’s upcoming movie, The Other Boleyn Sister. I’ll definitely be going to see this because of Eric, but having to suffer through Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman is going to be a chore. It’s like a double dose of bad acting!

The New York Post has a nice interview with Julian McMahon about this season of Nip/Tuck. I don’t know how new it is, but it just popped up in my inbox today.

Here’s a few of my favorite excerpts, but you should read the whole thing. It’s terrific.

HW: Do you feel there is more comedy to the show than there ever has been?

Julian McMahon: This is the funniest it’s been. I always thought it was going to be a funny show. I don’t know what the hell happened, to be honest. I wasn’t a really big fan. There you go. That’s what happens. And now, as far as I’m concerned, we’re where the show we should have been five years ago.

HW: Will Sean’s success with Hearts & Scalpels create a wedge between the two as the season goes on?

JM: They’ve always got their tit for tat stuff. One of them gets something and becomes good at something or becomes successful because of a surgery or a TV show. The other ones always tries to get back. He’s not quite as obvious as I am. It’s always about that competition between the two of them. I think that’s kind of what makes the show interesting, the way that they have these two people that can’t live without each other, but at the same time do stuff behind each other’s back and in front of each other. You just think, “”Oh, my God. How would you ever maintain a relationship with somebody like that?”" That’s the guise.

I love that Julian really gets this show and what it’s all about. I find it interesting that he never really care for it during the first season. I wonder how he feels about the later seasons. Hmmm.

A few days ago I posted an excerpt from an interview with Alex O’Loughlin at If Magazine. That interview was conducted by conference with a couple of other online media outlets and so there’s some follow-up stuff. Mostly the same material, but the If interview was a bit abbreviated. They didn’t include this question, and it’s probably one of my favorite answers from Alex:

What actors or actresses do you draw your inspiration from, or who are your favorites?

Alex O’Loughlin: There are so many wonderful actors. Sean Penn got up at the Academy Awards when he won his award and said “everyone knows there is no best in acting” and there is no best, there are lots of performances that have inspired me over the years. Sean Penn is certainly one of them. Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Daniel Day Lewis is a phenomenon. He’s like an enigma, I’ve watched his performances and I can’t for the life of me work out how he transforms as he does.

Marlon Brando. I love Marlon Brando, for all of his arrogance. I love actors that don’t make half decisions. Mel Gibson, I probably shouldn’t say that. I know he sort of fell off the wagon recently and said some stupid stuff. But growing up as a kid in Australia and seeing him do the movies he did, the “Mad Maxes” and stuff, and then move over to America and cross the bridge to producing and directing as well, and come up with films like “Braveheart.”

It’s hard for any young man who’s in the industry not to, I would imagine, not to find that inspiration. But then there’s other actors that the world doesn’t know about that I’ve grown up with, that I’ve seen on stage, that have breathed life into performances that have changed my life. They’re some of my best friends, so that’s as influential to me as those big stars that we all see in movies.

You can read the rest at Daemon’s TV

 
Moonlight-Detective has some scans of the TV Guide issue featuring Alex O’Loughlin in the make-up chair getting his vamp face done.  Vampface Alex  in the gallery.

Seriously, the Moonlight vamp make-up is the sexiest damn vampire special effects I’ve ever seen. Guh!

While I’m here, let’s just post up some other Alex goodies, yeah? I found these all through my good buds at Moonlightline.com

Click through to the full-size images. Make sure you are seated.

And then there’s this awesome video on Youtube which will make you swoon and thud.

Okay, I’ve only mentioned Alex’s tatts once on this blog and that is probably the biggest search query I get on this page, so I’ve put together some photo proof of all of Alex O’Loughlin’s tattoos.  Enjoy!

PS: the bluebird isn’t real, but the big shoulder tattoo is.

So the question of the day appears to be, “Will Russell Crowe replace Brad Pitt in State of Play?” Apparently, Universal and Russell are in “talks”, but just from, oh I dunno, being a Russell fan these many years, I’d say this whole thing is doubtful.

Brad Pitt walked off the movie because of script problems. If Universal thinks that Russell Crowe will be less demanding about the script than Brad, they clearly aren’t paying attention.  I think Pitt walked because the situation was untenable since with the writer’s strike there’s no one available to do rewrites. Somehow I don’t see Rusty thinking that it is workable.  Also, I just don’t see Russell wanting to do a remake of a BBC tv show.

I don’t understand why this is being made into movie in the first place, instead of just doing a typical US remake of a British tv show for either HBO or Showtime. Isn’t that usually how this stuff works?

HecklerSpray has some amusing commentary on this potential replacement as well:

Although, to be be fair, that isn’t because State Of Play is a world-class movie in the making; it’s because Brad Pitt stropped off production recently, right before it was due to start filming. But now, with Universal planning to sue Brad Pitt for the walk-out, State Of Play needs a new leading man, and fast. Step forward Russell Crowe, who Universal has been desperately wooing all weekend. Of course, Russell Crowe is a notoriously safe pair of hands, and won’t demand constant script changes like Brad Pitt reportedly did, apart from requesting that his character performs a 25-minute multi-stanza poem about the fickle nature of material success right in the middle of things.

Yup, I’d say that’s about right. *g*

This interview is from a few weeks ago, but I didn’t catch it then. Short interview with Heath while still in London working on Batman – from the New York Times.

An open bag with clothes spilling out lay on the floor of the master bedroom. “I’m kind of addicted to moving,” Mr. Ledger said, perhaps on account of having had to shuttle back and forth after his parents’ divorce, when he was 11. He carries his interests around with him, and his kitchen table was awash in objects: a chess set, assorted books, various empty glasses, items of clothing. Here too was his Joker diary, which he began compiling four months before filming began. It is filled with images and thoughts helpful to the Joker back story, like a list of things the Joker would find funny. (AIDS is one of them.) Mr. Ledger seemed almost embarrassed that the book had been spotted, as if he had been caught trying to get extra credit in school.

Mr Ledger. It’s amazing how stuffy and old-fashioned the New York Times comes across.  Pfft! Anyway, some nice insights.  Read the rest.

Oooh, lookie! Hot new photo of Guy Pearce from the movie he is currently filming, Traitor. It’s scheduled for release next year and it’s a spy pic. He hasn’t looked this hot in awhile, so I’m very pleased. Tasty!

You can read more about Traitor at the FilmStalker blog 

Here’s another juicy morsel from Heath Ledger about portraying both Bob Dylan and The Joker. I think this must be another bit from the press junket interviews, but I haven’t seen this bit shared yet, so it is new to me.

In a New York hotel room, he says that it’s never going to be easy to take on a role that comes with certain expectations from the audience. “When you are playing these kinds of parts, you can underprepare or you can overprepare, but it is all just to feed our superstitious needs and to comfort ourselves. I was a fan of Dylan, but he was someone who I had scheduled somewhere down the line to be obsessed with because I do get obsessed with musicians and artists. So I think [director] Todd Haynes prematurely invited me into this film.

The Joker was different in that I was definitely a fan of what Jack Nicholson had done and the world Tim [Burton] created. I think that if he [Burton] was directing The Dark Knight and asked me to play the Joker, I would say, ‘No, I couldn’t.’ The reason why I confidently stepped into his [the Joker's] shoes is that I had seen [ Dark Knight director Chris Nolan's] Batman Begins and I knew the world that he had created and I knew there was a different angle to be taken with the Joker.”

You can read the rest here

There’s also a negative review of the movie, I’m Not There, that’s worth a read. Both Heath and Cate Blanchett get some positive mention.

Though Cate Blanchett (Notes On A Scandal) and Heath Ledger (Candy) turn in able approximations as the Don’t Look Back and mid-’70s era Dylan sketches, respectively, the rest of the cast feels lost in Haynes’s feigned dream logic

Read Dylan Done All Wrong