| Archives | Current News & Info | Alan Rickman Home page
|
Start reading at bottom of page.
Hi All, LFI have some PoA pics including a couple of Alan Rickman LFI PoA Pics
Sheena <dragon@amberdragon.freeserve.co.ukfoo>
Berkshire, UK - Monday, May 31, 2004
Rex Features has 5 pages of POA pix, but only one of AR with JKR and husband. There is one labelled Alan Rickman but is in fact Micheal Gambon!! There are a couple more if you search Alan Rickman
Thanks for all the StLM reports, sounds great.
Sue
- Monday, May 31, 2004
This is a quote form Alfonso Cuaron:
"What was fantastic was that everybody was so committed to the Harry Potter universe. They were really going there, and not just to do a gig. I mean, it's amazing how Alan Rickman knows his character [Professor Severus Snape], and how he loves his character. And it was the same with every single one of the other actors. Because even if they are playing wizards, the emotions are very human."
Oh, good. He may be a bit tired of SS, but he still loves him. LOL!
Aritcle from Philly.com.
martha
maine - Monday, May 31, 2004
Hey all
I don't know if anyone else has seen this, but here's a nice surprise for you all - click on the link: GodsAmongUs and take a look at the handsome face that occupies postion 19 Enjoy!
SARF
NZ - Monday, May 31, 2004
There are now 22!! pages of POA pix on Getty Images.
Here are a couple more nice ones:
POALondon5
POALondon6
Sue
- Monday, May 31, 2004
Copyright 2004 Newspaper Publishing PLC
The Independent (London)
May 29, 2004, Saturday
SECTION: Final Edition; FEATURES; Pg. 28
LENGTH: 642 words
HEADLINE: NEW FILMS
BYLINE: ROGER CLARKE
HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (PG)
Director: Alfonso Cuarn
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Robbie Coltrane
Warners hired Latin-American director Cuarn to direct the third instalment of their lucrative Harry Potter franchise, but there's little of his Y Yu Mama Tambien in the now by-numbers style of the boy-wizard saga (let's not forget he's capable of the limp Great Expectations). Harry's education continues on the theme of transformation when he hears that the magician who murdered his parents, Sirius Black (Oldman), has escaped from prison and is on his way to Hogwarts to kill Harry too.
But is this really the whole story? As ever with the Harry Potter books, nothing is ever quite what it seems, a theme that is perhaps J K Rowling's single greatest gift to children's literature. New faces include Thewlis, well-shaded towards the tragic as the new Professor for Defence Against the Dark Arts; Gambon, just right and faintly mischievous as the new Professor Dumbledore, and Thompson, rather over-enjoying the Gypsy Rose possibilities of her dippy Professor of Divination.
Oldman has surprisingly little material to work with: a great disappointment. However, there are plenty of quirky comic moments, although Harry endlessly droning on about his dead parents is now wearing a little thin. Prisoner of Azkaban is pretty much guaranteed to please children who liked the other films, and maintains a basic quality - a thing harder to do than most of us can imagine. HHH
Georgiana
Seattle - Sunday, May 30, 2004
Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston Globe
May 29, 2004, Saturday ,THIRD EDITION
SECTION: LIVING; Pg. C1
LENGTH: 485 words
HEADLINE: TAKING ON RACE, 'LORD' OPERATES WITH RESTRAINT
BYLINE: By Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff
HBO's "Something the Lord Made" takes a bit of medical history and turns it into a classy but predictable tale of strained race relations in the 1930s and '40s. Alan Rickman plays Alfred Blalock, a white doctor who revolutionized cardiovascular surgery by saving "blue babies" from circulatory failure. Mos Def plays Vivien Thomas, his brilliant black assistant, whose quiet research and support were largely responsible for Blalock's success. Together the two men from different backgrounds tug on one or two heartstrings as they open chests to cure a few ailing hearts.
The bitterness in the movie, which premieres tomorrow night at 9, comes from the fact that Thomas doesn't automatically get the credit he deserves, because he is black. Unable to go to medical school after losing his savings in a bank crash, he works his way up from Blalock's janitor to his lab technician and right-hand man. He doesn't get paid accordingly and he doesn't get the glory; he can't even enter their Johns Hopkins office building through the same door. But his love of medicine sustains him, for the most part, even when his wife (Gabrielle Union) urges him to be more ambitious. And he readily turns away from the faces - both black and white - that look askance at his white lab coat.
The sweetness in the based-in-fact movie comes from the quiet, flawed understanding between the two brainy men. Their intense connection is tacit, as they brainstorm and experiment on dogs as preparation for their surgical procedures on humans. (By the way, the movie's laboratory operating scenes can be trying for dog lovers.) In the safety of their lab, teasing out solutions to heart problems while Blalock drinks coffee and Thomas draws on his pipe, they are equals and friends.
The actors play out this gentle bond beautifully. Very little sappiness creeps into their scenes, as they ignore the limitations others are putting on their relationship; they just want to save lives. Mos Def is engaging as the introverted, focused man who is slowly learning to get what he deserves, and Rickman portrays the perfect mix of gruffness and dependency, egotism and respectfulness. Like much of the movie, their scenes together aren't lively and dramatic so much as dignified and restrained.
There's a history of race-themed movies that give us white heroes coming to the aid of blacks, including "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Mississippi Burning," "Ghosts of Mississippi" and "Amistad." "Something the Lord Made" adds a few layers to that formula, since it's clear that Blalock and Thomas are rescuing each other, and that Thomas is helping himself when he begins to ask for what is rightfully his. "Something the Lord Made" plays out exactly as expected, right up to the emotional finale, but along the way it offers some admirable flourishes.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.
Georgiana
Seattle - Sunday, May 30, 2004
Copyright 2004 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
May 29, 2004 Saturday Home Edition
SECTION: Features; Pg. 7D
LENGTH: 667 words
HEADLINE: Gabrielle Union keeps it rolling;
Actress co-stars in HBO drama
BYLINE: ADRIANNE MURCHISON
SOURCE: AJC
TV PREVIEW
"Something the Lord Made"
9 p.m. Sunday on HBO.
If it seems like Gabrielle Union is all over the place, it's only because the actress is. The 30-year-old --- who appeared in three high-profile films last year: "Bad Boys II," "Cradle 2 the Grave," and "Deliver Us from Eva" --- has a supporting part in the current Jamie Foxx feature "Breakin' All the Rules."
On Sunday, she co-stars in the HBO drama, "Something the Lord Made, the true story of a black laboratory technician and a white surgeon (Mos Def and Alan Rickman) who pioneered heart surgery through a technique developed in the 1940s.
The model-turned-actress got her start on series TV, doing guest roles on shows from "Saved by the Bell: The New Class" to "The West Wing" and a recurring part on "7th Heaven." In 1994, she played a rarity: an African-American love interest (of Joey and Ross) on "Friends."
Union visited Atlanta's Morehouse Medical School this week for a preview showing of "Something the Lord Made," in which she portrays the wife of Mos Def's lab tech.
Q: How was it to work on this project?
A: It is all that an actress can hope for. The experience was very organic. I was able to be creative. In comedies, you go for the joke, and embellish. Action films are about action. They're not about performances.
And if people didn't get it about Mos Def before, they'll get it now. He is amazing. Watching Mos and Alan [Rickman] was like watching a master class in acting.
Q: Any particularly memorable moments during filming?
A: There is a scene that I'm not in where Mos and another character are walking along the sidewalk, and because of the time [1930], they kept stepping off the curb to let white pedestrians pass.
Sometimes we forget what our ancestors and relatives had to endure. I watched take after take, and I became angry and then I just cried.
Q: Was this role one you sought out?
A: I was looking to do something different. It was one of those things where I hoped they like me, and they did. And the checks cleared!
Q: You have three more feature films in various states of production. Are you working almost nonstop?
A: Yes, I have the Samuel Jackson mentality, of working as much as possible. I think about Halle [Berry] and [Queen] Latifah, and they are the only two black actresses that work consistently. It scares me.
Q: Did Halle's Oscar win have an impact for you?
A: Halle's success has come more from blockbusters. But, yes, she is a source of inspiration. When she makes money, black actors make money.
Q: You seemed to gain a higher profile after starring as a tough-cookie cheerleader in "Bring It On" (2000). Was that a mold you then had to break out of? Or have their been other challenges in landing parts?
A: Well, it took time to get out of that aloof, ice princess mold. And they could look for a fresher face. It used to be there would be a call for "all ethnicities," and it meant "African-Americans." Now "all ethnicities" means, "black, Latin American, Indian, Asian, or Middle Eastern." There's a lot more competition.
Q: Are there any directors you aspire to work with?
A: I like Denzel [Washington] as a director. I like directors who have worked as actors. They know the experience.
Q: How does working on a small film compare with a bigger studio production?
A: It's more like a family [on a smaller film]. We call movies like "Eva" and "Brothers" FUBU films, "For us, by us." The filmmaking is a team effort. The black community in Hollywood is very small and close-knit. Everyone has a common goal: to make a two-hour movie in 30 days. We watch each others' scenes. There is a natural chemistry. You can't have a crazy diva walking around saying, "As long as I'm lit well . . ." Or, "I only care if I do well." [Whereas] there are people working in a production like "Bad Boys II" that you don't [even] meet. In [major studio] action movies, you have to [watch out for your own interests].
GRAPHIC: Photo: Gabrielle Union and Mos Def (1D teaser)
Georgiana
Seattle - Sunday, May 30, 2004
Copyright 2004 The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times
All Rights Reserved
Los Angeles Times
May 30, 2004 Sunday
Home Edition
SECTION: TV TIMES; Calendar Desk; Part TV; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 712 words
HEADLINE: Cover Story;
Recalling a friendship that led to greatness;
The bond between a white surgeon and a black lab technician is recounted in 'Something the Lord Made' on HBO.
BYLINE: John Crook, Special to The Times
Working together despite the strictures of Jim Crow racism, a white surgeon and a black lab technician make revolutionary strides in cardiac surgery techniques at Johns Hopkins Hospital in "Something the Lord Made," a moving historical drama premiering Sunday on HBO.
If viewers experience a sense of deja vu as the movie unfolds, that's probably because this extraordinary story also was explored in a PBS "American Experience" documentary called "Partners of the Heart" in February 2003.
As the HBO drama opens in Nashville, 19-year-old Vivien Thomas (actor/rapper Mos Def), a bright member of that city's thriving black middle class, sees his dreams of medical school dashed as his savings are wiped out by the Depression.
In a desperately tight economy, Thomas is forced to accept a low-paying janitorial job at Vanderbilt University's medical school, where his precocious medical insights and aptitude soon catch the attention of Dr. Alfred Blalock (Alan Rickman), an ambitious white surgeon not known for suffering fools gladly.
Over the next few years, Blalock becomes so impressed with Thomas' resourcefulness that the two men become an unofficial team, and in 1941, when Blalock is offered a coveted position at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins facility, he accepts only on the proviso that Thomas will move to Baltimore as well.
If Thomas and his wife, Clara (Gabrielle Union), had hoped a move farther north would decrease the racism they encountered, they were disappointed. If anything, Thomas faced an even more openly dismissive attitude within the hallowed halls of Johns Hopkins, where he was not allowed to enter through the same door as Blalock.
Somehow, however, the soft-spoken Thomas found the resolve and the courage to bear up under the bigotry, and he and Blalock wound up creating a surgical technique to save the lives of "blue babies," assisted by a colleague, Dr. Helen Taussig (Mary Stuart Masterson).
Thomas "struck me as someone who had a very defined idea of himself that couldn't be disturbed by his surroundings," Def, 30, says. "I believe he remained true to that. He had a great deal of integrity, a great deal of pride, and he was also a man of quiet resolve. He was just very attractive as a historical figure and as a character to portray."
As the other half of this exceptional team, Rickman manages a creditable Southern accent and a subtly multifaceted portrait of Blalock, a combination of genuine compassion, a self-confidence bordering on arrogance and a willingness to recognize excellence that crosses social, cultural and racial boundaries.
Even more strikingly, however, the British-born Rickman captures the more casual kind of racism practiced by many white American professionals in the mid-20th century, men who turned a blind eye to the segregated water fountains, restrooms, building entrances and passenger seating unless these restrictions crossed over into their own world.
"It's an amazingly complicated story and extraordinary relationship," Rickman says, "and it's like basic food to an actor to play something that rich, that complicated."
Rickman and Def spent time with technical advisor Alex Haller to learn how to believably simulate surgical techniques of the period.
"We had to know what we were doing in all of the operations, and there was this whole series of [them]," Rickman says. "You can't be holding a scalpel when you should be holding a clamp."
Likewise, director Joseph Sargent demonstrates a deft hand of his own in the way he films and paces this mostly low-key double character study. In addition to sterling work from his two stars, he also draws fine performances from Masterson as a third valued member of this experimental team, as well as Charles S. Dutton as Vivien's demanding father and Kyra Sedgwick, who brings substance and texture to the underwritten role of Mary Blalock, Alfred's wife.
There are no car chases, no explosions, no acts of extreme violence, but this engrossing tale of a special and very human friendship will hold an audience spellbound right through its poignant conclusion.
John Crook writes for Tribune Media Services.
"Something the Lord Made" airs at 9 p.m. on Sunday on HBO. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).
Cover photograph by Bob Greene.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: INNOVATORS: Alan Rickman, left, plays Dr. Alfred Blalock and Mos Def is Vivien Thomas. "It's an amazingly complicated story," Rickman says of the movie. PHOTOGRAPHER: Bob Greene PHOTO: (no caption) PHOTOGRAPHER: Cover photograph by Bob Greene
Georgiana (their second review, and cover story!)
Seattle - Sunday, May 30, 2004
Well I'm back safe and sound from the POA Premiere. I see you've all started looking at the pics on Wire, Getty etc. When I left the cinema, I left the guys wiring all their photos to their agencies. I've just finished sending some over to a NY agency who requested Emma Watson and JK Rowling.
Anyway I completely mucked up getting good pics of Alan, sorry. He appeared, then went walkabout, and when he came back it was all quite rushed (no it wasn't Keith you're making excuses). He was given a banner from Laynbchburg USA I believe which he was carrying with him and the guys got him to unfurl it. Oh yeah - at the other end of the Press pen with his back to us! And Mr Rickman I have a 'bone to pick with you' - in one of the pics on Getty, you have posed in the perfect position so I AM OBSCURED! There's Justin on one side of you, Ashley on the other side and me in between them - but YOU HEAD IS IN THE WAY. Ah well that my 15 mins of fame gone.
Anyway probably no more than around 15 pics of AR to choose from (told you - I mucked it up)and here's a quick taster while you are all in the mood. I might noy be GETTY, or WIRE, or EMPIRE, but I was in with them and gave a fairly good account of myself. The pics inside the cinema would have been better though - but its the A List snappers only who get in there. KEITH PICS
KEITH <screentwo_uk@hotmail.comfoo>
BEDFORD, UK - Sunday, May 30, 2004
I found more pics from the POA NY premiere. Not sure if any of you have already seen them, but here you go.
AR 7
Stephanie
California US - Sunday, May 30, 2004
More StLM reviews:
Alameda Times-Star and Palm Beach Post
Sue
- Sunday, May 30, 2004
HP-PoA UK premiere:
Empire Pic
Reuter's Pic
Sue
- Sunday, May 30, 2004
Getty Images have some of Alan Rickman from the PoA Premiere in London Getty Pics
Would love to know the story behind the banner ;-)
Sheena <dragon@amberdragon.freeserve.co.ukfoo>
Berkshire, UK - Sunday, May 30, 2004
Hi All, Here you go, wireimage.com photos from the London Premiere! PoA London Premiere pics
Sheena <dragon@amberdragon.freeserve.co.ukfoo>
Berkshire, UK - Sunday, May 30, 2004
So O'd on all things POA Premiere, I have no idea if this link has been posted yet. Hollywood.com (NY premiere) video with a smidge of AR in it.
Sue
- Sunday, May 30, 2004
Hi All,
Thought you may be interested in this link to the BBC Film News site. BBC Film News
They have links to stories about the Harry Potter Films, as well as a Harry Potter quiz. They will also have coverage of the PoA Premiere this afternoon, perhaps even a small bit of video news (streamed unfortunately).
Sheena <dragon@amberdragon.freeserve.co.ukfoo>
Berkshire, UK - Sunday, May 30, 2004
Hi All! Just finished listening to AR's Radio 4 Appeal. The site will have the Real Player version up for the next week at which time they will replace with the next appeal. If you want to listen to it through live broadcast you may do so here at 9:26pm EST or then again on Thursday at 3:27pm EST.
I have converted the file into an .mp3 and placed on the Audio page on the download site which won't go away (God willing!).
Ahhhh, what a great start to a truly madly wonderful Rickman day! YES!!
Claudia
GA - Sunday, May 30, 2004
Forgive me if someone has already posted this, but there is an excellent review of StLM in The Boston Globe.
Glad someone explained where the name Mos Def came from. All this time I have been thinking that the poor fellow was hard of hearing.
Ali-Pat
Dayton, OH USA - Saturday, May 29, 2004
Anotere review of StLM on MSN Slate
Sue
- Saturday, May 29, 2004
There's a bunch of HP-PoA clips at Yahoo Movies, including the one where Snape finds Harry with the Marauder's map and Snape teaching DADA class!
Thanks, Keith, for those Snape photos, AND for all the reviews, etc., everyone!
Suzanne <webmistress@alan-rickman.comfoo>
TX USA - Saturday, May 29, 2004
Hey Y'all, I just found this on the "What's on TV for..." on the links page: "The Magic Touch of Harry Potter" (60 minutes long) Gary Oldman and Daniel Radcliffe star in "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" On A&E Channel Wed June 2 @ 9:00pm (EST) and Thurs June 3 @ 01:00AM (EST) should be interesting. oops...I should use spell check.
Susan
Texas USA - Saturday, May 29, 2004
And as if you have not had enough good stuff from me - here's a treat, an exclusive and something strictly speaking I should not be showing you. Released by Warners Bros only this very afternoon - 3 BRAND NEW Portrait images of Professor Snape from HPPPOA
NEW SNAPE PICS
KEITH
Bedford, UK - Saturday, May 29, 2004
In case this hasn't been documented here already, in Canada you can watch STLM at 9pm ET on Sunday May 30 on the The Movie Network or Movie Central. I don't have either, but perhaps you do? I'll quote from the Nat'l Post article:
"The head of surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital and a gifted carpenter become an unlikely and crucial team in the fact-based HBO film Something the Lord Made, debuting 9 p.m. ET Sunday on Movie Central and The Movie Network.
Alan Rickman stars as Dr. Alfred Blalock, who finds a partner in Vivien Thomas (co-star Mos Def), a black workman whose college dreams were blocked by the Great Depression. Together, they fight prejudice to help so-called "blue babies," those born with a congenital heart defect that leads to suffocation. The result is a heart surgery breakthrough and a medical revolution."
[source: National Post, May 28, 2004]
slope
Canada - Saturday, May 29, 2004
A reminder to any UK GB'ers there is a Making of Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban being shown on ITV. Monday 31st May 2004 Time: 11:00 to 11:30 Duration: 30 minutes. A look behind the scenes at the making of the latest Harry Potter movie starring Daniel Radcliffe, Gary Oldman and Robbie Coltrane, plus footage from the premiere.
It is repeated on ITV2 several times for those who have access to that as well.
Sheena <dragon@amberdragon.freeserve.co.ukfoo>
Berkshire, UK - Friday, May 28, 2004
The Guaedian's POA review.
Independent POA review.
Sue
- Friday, May 28, 2004
As promised, here is the link to the NPR Morning Edition story on Something the Lord Made. Click on "Listen to Individual Stories", then scroll nearly to the bottom of the page.
Ali-Pat
Dayton, OH USA (thinking of building an ark) - Friday, May 28, 2004
This blast from the past will probably get lost among all the excitement over current AR projects, but it is worth noting that in the Sunday, May 23 New York Times there is a splendid half-page photo of Elyot and Amanda on their respective sides of the balcony. See the Arts and Leisure section, page 4, article titled "The Tony Effect (or Lack Thereof)".
BTW, the NPR Morning Edition stories, including this morning's StLM story, are not yet posted on their website, but will be later today. I will provide a link later (if this rain-soaked brain will remind me!!!).
Ali-Pat
Dayton, OH USA (thinking of building an ark) - Friday, May 28, 2004
I just heard a segment on NPR about Something the Lord Made. They interviewed the director, and didn't mention the stars until the end of the piece, but you can hear sound clips throughout. I just managed to tape it, but I believe you should be able to listen to and download it from the NPR site (www.npr.org). If you are a regular NPR listener, you might be able to catch it this morning--it comes at the "11 minutes before the hour" slot (it was the second hour broadcast here, but I think WYSO starts in the middle of the program).
Ali-Pat
Dayton, OH USA - Friday, May 28, 2004
Review of StLM on The Hollywood Reporter.com.
Sue
- Friday, May 28, 2004
Copyright 2004 Gannett Company, Inc.
USA TODAY
May 28, 2004, Friday, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: LIFE; Pg. 9E
LENGTH: 312 words
HEADLINE: 'Something' salutes unlikely medical duo
BYLINE: Ann Oldenburg
An ambitious, eccentric white surgeon and a gifted black carpenter turned lab technician: This unlikely pair made history with their pioneering heart surgery, a story that has always been known among cardiologists.
Now the Depression-era portrait of Alfred Blalock, the white, wealthy head of surgery at Johns Hopkins, and Vivien Thomas, the quiet, hardworking carpenter who dreamed of becoming a doctor, airs as a movie called Something the Lord Made on HBO (Sunday, 9 p.m. ET/PT), with Alan Rickman and Mos Def.
"It's a fantastic story and one that's true," says Koco Eaton, 43, the real-life nephew of Thomas and a consultant on the film. "Nothing really needed to be added or made up. It's about extraordinary times and two men who overcame a lot and accomplished a lot."
The two doctors not only had to defy racial prejudices of the time, but also broke rules by operating on "blue babies," infants suffering from a congenital heart defect that slowly suffocated them.
Eaton couldn't be happier with Die Hard and Harry Potter veteran Rickman, who "just draws you in," he says. "Dr. Blalock was a complicated man, and Rickman does a great job of showing the conflicts."
As for rap musician and actor Def, Eaton says his family "wanted to make sure that my uncle was portrayed in the dignified way in which he lived his life. Mos was an excellent guardian of my uncle's legacy."
Thomas' widow is a "very private person," Eaton says. "If she had her druthers, all of this would simply go away. None of this attention will bring (him) back."
But for Eaton, now an orthopedic surgeon in St. Petersburg, Fla., "I never knew how much influence he had over the course of modern medicine. It's sort of like finding out your uncle is Michael Jordan, but you never watched a basketball game and never had any idea of how great he was."
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, B/W, Bob Greene, HBO; Pioneers: Mos Def, left, and Alan Rickman.
Georgiana
Seattle - Friday, May 28, 2004
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
May 28, 2004 Friday
Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section E; PT1; Column 1; Movies, Performing Arts/Weekend Desk; TELEVISION REVIEW; Pg. 25
LENGTH: 623 words
HEADLINE: Agonies of a Great Surgeon Who Never Was
BYLINE: By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
"Something the Lord Made," which will have its premiere on HBO on Sunday, is supposed to be an uplifting tear-jerker about two men who defy racism to accomplish miracles. Fortunately, it's much, much better than that.
As Alan Rickman plays him, Dr. Alfred Blalock, who pioneered open-heart surgery, initially for the treatment of ''blue babies,'' is an ambiguous hero. And he's not just cosmetically ambiguous, as so many movie heroes are, their bad qualities (messiness, a taste for Champagne) being little more than charm.
He's simply not charming. Mr. Rickman's Blalock has a venal air, an oleaginous, even faintly lecherous manner and a cloying self-regard that appears to blind him at times to the very existence of other people. Mr. Rickman deserves praise for forfeiting the opportunity to play an attractive Southern gentleman; he does not muck up his performance with cuteness.
By contrast, his partner in surgery, Vivien Thomas (Mos Def), is cute: charming, kind and physically agile, with a knack for dignified deference of the kind that possibly characterized model black men during segregation days, when much of this movie is set.
But Thomas is also depressed, almost fatally. Blalock hires him in the Depression-era South, first as a janitor and then as a lab technician, for which Thomas is evidently supposed to be grateful. Grateful? He tirelessly earns every promotion with technical work and medical insights that go largely uncredited. He submits to Jim Crow, refraining from using the hospital's front door. And he's paid virtually nothing, ''$16 a week for 16 hours a day,'' as he says, working after hours at Blalock's whites-only cocktail parties to make ends meet.
It's grinding racism; it's unjust. But the movie underscores the real problem that torments Thomas: Why is he supposed to be grateful? Because Blalock doesn't run from him in horror? As Blalock's only interest is in rising to prominence as a surgeon, why imagine that anything but pure opportunism led him to exploit the intelligence and surgical talents of his teenage janitor?
We need not. That's it. Blalock wanted fame, and he took on a black man who helped him develop his most important procedures, a surgical assistant who gives him instructions in the operating room. For not going to ludicrous lengths to conceal Thomas's achievements -- though he didn't trumpet them, either -- he's not due gratitude.
All that would be clear if it weren't for one catch: Thomas loves the work. He loves -- and Mos Def pulls this off -- the euphoria of medical discovery. He loves, just as Blalock does, the surgeon's high. And, without a medical degree or the time or money to pursue one, he can get that high only by Blalock's side.
A cornier movie would twist this logic to let Thomas have both, somehow: his freedom from patronage and his accomplishments. But here he has to choose. Can he forfeit his pride, even his humanity, for the joy of good work?
"Something the Lord Made" is based on a true story, and it faithfully tracks the rise of both Blalock and Thomas. But along the way, the weepy movie raises true moral stakes, the ones in good fiction, and they make the tears the film works to inspire feel more real.
SOMETHING THE LORD MADE
HBO, Sunday night at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time.
Directed by Joseph Sargent; Robert W. Cort, David Madden and Eric Hetzel, executive producers; Michael Drake and Julian Krainin, producers; written by Peter Silverman; Andrea Kalin, Dr. Koco Eaton and Dr. J. Alex Haller Jr., consultants.
WITH: Alan Rickman (Dr. Blalock), Mos Def (Vivien Thomas), Kyra Sedgwick (Mary Blalock), Gabrielle Union (Clara Thomas), Charles S. Dutton (William Thomas) and Mary Stuart Masterson (Dr. Taussig).
GRAPHIC: Photo: Alan Rickman, left, as a pioneering doctor and Mos Def as his silent partner in ''Something the Lord Made.'' (Photo by Bob Greene/HBO)
Georgiana
Seattle - Friday, May 28, 2004
Copyright 2004 The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times
All Rights Reserved
Los Angeles Times
May 28, 2004 Friday
Home Edition
SECTION: CALENDAR; Calendar Desk; Part E; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 918 words
HEADLINE: TELEVISION REVIEW;
Honoring a match made in medicine;
HBO's 'Something the Lord Made' dramatizes the lives of two men who teamed, despite prejudice, to develop an important heart surgery.
BYLINE: Robert Lloyd, Times Staff Writer
"Something the Lord Made" is a splendid docudramatic retelling of the intertwined lives and careers of Dr. Alfred Blalock (Alan Rickman) and his longtime technician and research assistant, Vivien Thomas (Mos Def), and their pioneering work in heart surgery in the 1930s and '40s. The film pulls off an inspirational hat trick: It's at once the story of a medical breakthrough (celebrating its 60th anniversary this year), of honor belatedly bestowed and of a friendship that defied prejudicial convention. Sick babies are cured, overdue awards bestowed, deep feelings shyly expressed. You may weep.
It is one of the points of the film (premiering Sunday at 9 on HBO) that Thomas, as a black man in a segregated society, was only belatedly recognized for his contributions, but you have quite possibly not heard of Dr. Blalock, either, or of the tetralogy of Fallot, the condition whose groundbreaking treatment much of this film concerns. (You may know it by its nickname, "blue baby" syndrome -- a congenital deformation of the heart that robs the lungs of oxygen.) This is to the movie's advantage, it being a biopictorial rule of thumb that the less the viewer knows the better.
Thomas was a 19-year-old Nashville carpenter whose dreams of medical school disappeared into the black hole of the Depression; he found himself as an odd-jobs lab assistant at Vanderbilt University Hospital under Blalock, who quickly recognized his talent and initiative and trained him as a surgical technician. For more than 30 years, they remained professionally inseparable; when Blalock became head of surgery at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, it was on the condition that Thomas come with him. Thomas ran experiments, invented new surgical equipment and procedures, and, finally, in the "blue baby" operations, stood by Blalock's shoulder while he operated, giving him advice and guidance.
The film doesn't tell a story so much as paint a picture, but it is dramatic and even exciting, and the protagonists bump up against history in ways that illuminate both their characters and the society that made them (and which to a great, though not superhuman extent, they rose above or managed to ignore). It's a time that seems both near and far, not only in matters of race relations, but in medical practice -- heart surgery was thought impossible before the '40s. "We are going to challenge this ancient doctrinal myth," Blalock tells his colleagues.
And while the film doesn't specifically draw parallels between scientific and social progress, they are there for you to consider. (Thomas' achievements were acknowledged within his lifetime, fortunately, with an honorary doctorate from Johns Hopkins, where he became an instructor in surgery and where his portrait now hangs along with Blalock's.)
Directed with a light hand by Joseph Sargent, who also made HBO's "A Lesson Before Dying" and "Miss Evers' Boys" -- Sargent seems to be the network's go-to guy for African American period pieces -- the film is a lesson in modulated tone. Though it packs a lot into two hours, within each scene the pacing is quiet and slow, so that it's enough for a character to raise his voice or widen an eye or move a little faster to create drama. When Blalock says, "Helen, I want to see all your diagnostic notes," with the music gently swelling below, it feels like John Wayne strapping on the six guns.
There is no fancy camerawork, no pace-quickening edits; the score is mostly well-behaved. While the film is not entirely free of obvious "movie moments," they are relatively few, or executed with natural carelessness. The facts are compelling enough; they don't need help.
The facts, in fact, have already spoken for themselves: The script (by Peter Silverman, of "Hill Street Blues" and "Harlan County War") pretty much follows the lines of last year's PBS documentary "Partners of the Heart," whose director, Andrea Kalin, was a consultant on the present film. Though events have been telescoped or switched in time for dramatic effect and narrative arc, nothing of substance has been invented. (Though Dr. Helen Taussig, who first suggested a surgical response to the tetralogy of Fallot, and is here played by Mary Stuart Masterson with a funny haircut and a jumbo antique hearing aid, perhaps does not quite get as much credit as she should.)
Rickman plays Georgia native Blalock with a touch of the Southern aristocrat, balancing the doctor's hauteur and temper with passages of sympathy or delight. (There is a lovely throwaway moment when he takes the hose from a respirator Thomas has just built and blows air over his own face.) As Thomas, Mos Def -- best known as a recording artist, but an actor since his teens, including a regular stint on "The Cosby Mysteries" -- doesn't possess Rickman's expressive palette, but he has a quiet authority and more than holds his own.
Kyra Sedgwick and Gabrielle Union play Mrs. Blalock and Mrs. Thomas; Charles Dutton is hugely patriarchal as Vivien's father.
There are scenes involving experimentation on animals, sensitive viewers may want to know, and a little bit of blood.
*
'Something the Lord Made'
Where: HBO
When: Premieres 9-11 p.m. Sunday
Rating: The network has rated the film TV-PG (may not be suitable for young children)
Alan Rickman...Alfred Blalock
Mos Def...Vivien Thomas
Gabrielle Union...Clara Thomas
Kyra Sedgwick...Mary Blalock
Mary Stuart Masterson...Helen Taussig
Executive producers, Robert W. Cort, David Madden, Eric Hetzel. Director, Joseph Sargent. Writer, Peter Silverman.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: PIONEERS: Alan Rickman plays Dr. Alfred Blalock and Mos Def plays Vivien Thomas, who despite being unable to attend medical school was the doctor's partner in the early days of heart surgery. PHOTOGRAPHER: HBO
Georgiana
Seattle - Friday, May 28, 2004
Found another link on the MSM website (thanks, Claudia!) to the below fantastic article at PortlandPhoenix.com:
Gentlemen’s agreement
Alan Rickman takes Mos Def to school in Something the Lord Made
BY JOYCE MILLMAN
Issue Date: May 28 - June 3, 2004
In his best-known movie roles, Alan Rickman is often described as "the villain you love to hate." But the truth is, he plays villains you love to love.
Rickman redefined the modern movie bad guy in his spectacular film debut, Die Hard, which was released in 1988 when he was 42 and building a rich and varied theater career in his native England (he was the original Valmont in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s celebrated Les Liaisons Dangereuses). His Die Hard terrorist Hans Gruber, who leads a platoon of Eurotrash thugs through a hostage takeover/robbery of a Los Angeles skyscraper on Christmas Eve, is ruthless and icy. But Hans is also refined, witty, erudite, and, let’s not mince words here, damn sexy in his elegant business suit and fastidiously trimmed beard. It is Hans who is the protagonist of Die Hard; hero John McClane (Bruce Willis) is merely, as McClane admits, "the fly in the ointment" antagonizing Hans in his efforts to rob the Takagi company’s vault and then lie on a beach earning interest.
You may get ticked off at Hans for shooting Mr. Takagi in cold blood, but, hey, the only other civilian he kills in the movie is an obnoxious yuppie cokehead. It is difficult to see Hans as a monster; you keep catching yourself admiring his cunning and tenacity. And when hostage Holly McClane (John’s wife) insults Hans by calling him "a common thief" and he whirls on her and declares, "I am an exceptional thief!", Rickman tells you everything you need to know about the insecure person hiding behind the haughtiness and the big gun.
Of his approach to his characters, Rickman has said that he does not judge them, he just plays them. And because he does not judge, Hans Gruber emerges as a man, not a Hollywood blockbuster caricature of E-vil. When he makes that 30-story plunge at the movie’s climax, it’s hard not to feel a twinge of disappointment that Hans has left the building.
It’s the same way with Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham from Kevin Costner’s direly bloated 1991 epic Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. This bad guy is so entertainingly insane (look, he had a really bad childhood), he alone seems alive on the screen. Even though Costner edited the Sheriff’s part to the bare minimum, Rickman still stole the movie. And then there’s the role that has brought him a new generation of admirers, the inscrutable Professor Snape in the Harry Potter series. In interviews, Potter author J.K. Rowling has said that she based Snape on a teacher of hers that she detested and that she can’t quite fathom why Snape has become the hero of fan fiction (much of it erotic). Well, it’s like this: you take Rickman, who doesn’t look or sound like anybody else (that majestic nose, that creamy baritone), and you take his quirky blend of gracefulness and intense masculinity, and you take his skill at finding the humanness in his characters, whether that humanness is good, bad or ambiguous, and then you put all that in a long black wig and a frock coat, and what you have is a lot more interesting than just the scariest teacher at school.
COMPARED WITH HIS VILLAINS and his costume characters, Rickman’s latest role might sound mundane - he plays a heart surgeon in the excellent and illuminating new HBO movie Something the Lord Made (premiering at 9 p.m. this Sunday, May 30, and also airing at 8 p.m. on Wednesday June 2). But this is no ordinary heart surgeon - he plays Dr. Alfred Blalock, the American Southerner who invented the field. Blalock is about as far as you can get from Snape (no wand waving, no incantations). Yet he’s just as recognizable as a Rickman-type character. Rickman is drawn to the larger than life, the eccentric, and then he shows you what it costs these ambitious men to maintain their individuality and vision. His egotistical and disarmingly dreamy Blalock is no exception. Softening up his usually precise enunciation to a sleepy, honey-dipped Georgia drawl, he gives the impression of a God who considers matters of life and death from a hammock rather than from a pillar on high.
The story behind Something the Lord Made has been told twice before, in Katie McCabe’s 1998 Baltimore Magazine article and in the PBS documentary Partners of the Heart. But it bears retelling as a strange-but-true tale of race relations in the Jim Crow South. Something the Lord Made opens in Nashville in the 1930s, where the genial, if mercurial, Blalock is on the faculty of Vanderbilt Medical School. He hires Vivien Thomas (actor/rapper Mos Def), a black carpenter, to perform menial tasks around his lab. Blalock soon realizes that Thomas has a brilliant technical mind and agile fingers - indeed, Thomas is saving up for college in hopes of becoming a doctor - and he takes him on as his unofficial research assistant.
So integral to Blalock’s work does Thomas become that when Blalock is appointed chief of surgery at Johns Hopkins in 1941, he takes Thomas (whose dream of college vanished when he lost his savings in a bank failure) to Baltimore with him. At Johns Hopkins, Blalock is challenged by pediatrician Helen Taussig (Mary Stuart Masterson) to find a solution to the fatal "blue baby syndrome," a congenital heart defect that diminishes the supply of oxygen to the lungs. Experimenting on dogs in Blalock’s lab, Thomas re-creates the syndrome model, and the two men devise a bypass to deliver blood to the lungs by way of a shunt (built by Thomas). In defiance of the prevailing medical dogma against operating on the heart, Blalock declares that he is ready to try the procedure on a dying baby. In the operating room, Blalock shocks his assembled peers by insisting that Thomas stand by his side on a stepstool to observe and advise him through the groundbreaking surgery.
But Blalock and Thomas were men of their times, and their partnership in the lab and the operating room could not extend to the wider world. Because he was black, Thomas could not be classified or paid above the rank of custodial worker at Johns Hopkins (in fact, Blalock paid him extra to serve as a bartender at his family’s parties). And despite Blalock’s personal affection and respect for Thomas, he was willing only to bend the rules of a segregated society on his behalf, not to break them. On their first day at Johns Hopkins, a guard tells Thomas that he can’t come in through the front door, and Blalock makes one protest, but when the guard persists, he abruptly turns away and tells Thomas he’ll meet him inside. And when the "blue baby" operation is a success and Blalock is hailed as a hero, Thomas gets no credit, and Blalock does nothing to set the public record straight.
Written by Peter Silverman and Todd Phillips and directed by veteran Joseph Sargent (the Emmy-winning HBO movie Miss Evers’ Boys), Something the Lord Made is moving without being maudlin; it doesn’t over-inflate the inherent drama of the two men’s relationship or the era in which they lived. It’s a lovely little film, not least because of the easy rapport between Rickman and Mos Def. Blalock and Thomas are more alike than they can admit. They are proud, old-fashioned gentlemen with a shared curiosity about the inner workings of life. Thomas’s serene personality offsets Blalock’s hot temper, and as they grow comfortable with each other, they begin bantering like a long-married couple.
But when Thomas, who is no wave maker, finally confronts Blalock over the latter’s failure to give him due credit, he discovers the limits of Blalock’s brotherhood. Blalock chastises him for not showing more gratitude: "We made history together. We changed the world." Mos Def poignantly captures Thomas’s disappointment in his mentor when he softly and gravely answers, "I’m invisible to the world. I don’t mind that, I understand that. I thought it was different in here." Mos Def is impressively understated, but it’s no easy task playing a good man, particularly when the part as written makes him seem a bit too saintly - and when the not-quite-as-good man is played by Alan Rickman. Rickman offers up such a compellingly whole, fallible person that you can’t see Blalock as a bad guy. He offers an honest portrait of a maverick, and like many mavericks, Blalock was both insecure and hugely confident of his abilities.
Rickman has a pair of masterful moments that reveal the measure of Blalock’s weakness
and strength. In one, Blalock overhears colleagues laughing about how he needs Thomas
by his side in the operating room, and he freezes; at first, you think it’s the racial slur the
other doctor used to describe Thomas that stops Blalock in his tracks, but then you can
see it in his eyes - it’s his own pride that feels the blow. In the other, the dying Blalock
tries to make amends to Thomas while struggling to retain his dignity, and Rickman’s
emotional restraint is devastating. Rickman’s last moments on camera and Mos Def’s
beautifully timed reaction a beat later are almost mirror images of each other. The two
actors make you see how deeply Blalock and Thomas were connected by a partnership that
was more than what either could have imagined yet less than what it could have been.
Suzanne <webmistress@alan-rickman.comfoo>
TX USA - Thursday, May 27, 2004
From the LeakyCauldron, this POA video at Reuters has all the bits you've seen before, but also...part of the scene where Snape catches Harry with the Marauders' Map and it insults him. Over on the right side of the page, click on new HP movie.
Aurora
- Thursday, May 27, 2004
I also found THIS in the Standard's MetroLife listings mag by the same person, Antonia Quirke (an attractive young blonde woman, by her photo!!)
Sue
Perhaps we should invite here !!! - Thursday, May 27, 2004
Tonight's Evening Standard gives another great review for POA awarding it 4 stars. Unfortunately the ES is yet another site you have to pay for to get more than the headlines so I can't link to it, and my typing skills don't run to the whole article. However, I'll quote the *relevant* bit!!:
"Rickman's Professor Snape takes pride of place. Whenever he is on screen, the action picks up more energy, more resonance, and he says "die" and "pray" like no other actor, topping and tailing the words as though saying them to someone who is hard of hearing, using every part of his mouth. Rickman has extrordinary compression and a deeply romantic persona: he always seems to witholding a world of lost innocence.
Sue
Hmm, sounds like it's getting a bit oral again.......LOL - Thursday, May 27, 2004
Copyright 2004 Associated Press
All Rights Reserved
The Associated Press State & Local Wire
May 27, 2004, Thursday, BC cycle
1:27 PM Eastern Time
SECTION: State and Regional
LENGTH: 911 words
HEADLINE: HBO movie shines light on overlooked heart surgery innovator
BYLINE: By BEN NUCKOLS, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: BALTIMORE
It's hard to believe now, but as late as 1944, the idea of performing heart surgery was medical blasphemy. After the Hippocratic oath, surgeons followed another dictum: "Don't touch the heart."
Dr. Alfred Blalock, a brash, egotistical Georgia native who in 1943 was named head of surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, changed that. But he wasn't alone.
"Something the Lord Made," a polished and compelling movie that premieres Sunday on HBO, gives credit where it's due: to Blalock's lab assistant, Vivien Thomas, a quiet, introspective man with a fertile mind and incomparably skilled hands.
Why wasn't Thomas recognized at the time? Because he was black. Even now, his accomplishments haven't gotten wide attention.
"I did an informal survey at Hopkins," said the film's director, Joseph Sargent, "and I was shocked to find out how few workers at the hospital ever heard of Vivien Thomas, and how few doctors had heard of him."
"Something the Lord Made" - the title comes from Blalock's description of a shunt Thomas stitches into a dog's heart - sets out to change that. It opens in 1930, when Thomas (Mos Def) gets a job working for Blalock (Alan Rickman) at Vanderbilt University.
Thomas, a talented carpenter, is dismayed at first at taking a glorified janitorial position, but Blalock quickly recognizes the value in his employee's steady hands and sharp mind. Blalock puts Thomas to work performing experimental surgeries on dogs.
Jumping ahead 13 years, Blalock is hired at Hopkins, and Thomas goes with him. There, Dr. Helen Taussig (Mary Stuart Masterson) confronts Blalock with the dilemma of "blue babies" - infants born with a heart defect that keeps their bodies from getting enough oxygen, turning them blue. At the time, the condition was fatal.
Blalock recognizes his chance to make history, and once Thomas replicates the condition in a dog, they find a way to perform a heart bypass to save the animal. That leads to the first heart surgery performed on a human. It is a success - but only after Blalock, defying his colleagues, brings Thomas to the operating table with him.
It's the highlight of a working relationship that lasts for decades, despite disputes initiated by Thomas over his pay and Blalock's abrasive demeanor.
Thomas earns Blalock's respect in the lab, but the surgeon doesn't exactly treat his assistant as a colleague - he doesn't mention Thomas' contributions when the international medical community showers him with accolades.
"I think there was an inadvertent emotional need that Blalock had to go into some kind of unconscious denial," Sargent said. "I would imagine he was so protective of this adulation and acclaim that he suddenly found coming his way, that it was convenient emotionally to not give Vivien Thomas the credit he deserved."
Sargent adds: "I became conscious somewhere in the middle of shooting that we were actually doing a love story. There's anger, there's hate, there's disenchantment, and there's a certain amount of denial, which is what makes the whole thing very complex and challenging."
The movie boasts strong performances from a somewhat unlikely cast. Rickman is known for velvety-voiced British villains, and rapper Mos Def, who has received strong reviews for his work on stage, is best known to movie audiences for a comic supporting role in "The Italian Job."
"I had not heard of Mos Def, and I didn't know why he had that name. Then I discovered it was because his favorite phrase was 'most definitely,"' Sargent said. "It was such a pleasant surprise to find out the extent of his acting talent, as someone with no advance notice as to whether he could even act or not."
Executive producer Robert Cort describes the casting as "brilliant but not intuitive." Rickman had to master a Georgia accent, which he evidently had little trouble with.
"English actors often do very well with Southern accents," Cort said. "Alan would probably do well with any accent, but there's a lot of history of that."
Cort was equally struck by how easily Mos Def slipped into Thomas' shoes.
"I think Vivien Thomas was defined by his dignity and his intelligence, and I think Mos is (too)," Cort said. "He's not an out-there guy in the sense of a big, overwhelming personality or carrying himself with a big entourage. He's thoughtful and extraordinarily intelligent."
In keeping with Thomas' reserved demeanor, the movie dramatizes his conflicts with Blalock subtly - without a lot of confrontation or histrionics.
"They were both Southern gentlemen," Mos Def said. "I don't think Dr. Thomas was concerned with worldly recognition as much as just general respect from his colleague, Dr. Blalock. I think that hurt him more than not being on some sort of world stage."
Mos Def's use of "Dr." in front of Thomas' name is no accident. Late in his life, Thomas - who couldn't afford to go to medical school and wasn't allowed to use his work at Hopkins for credit at Morgan State University in Baltimore - was given an honorary degree by Hopkins.
Since the movie was shot in Baltimore, the filmmakers were able to use the auditorium where the ceremony took place.
"There's no question that it helps," Cort said. "No matter how good actors are or who good a director is, there is an environmental impact when you're standing in the place where it happened. ... That last piece of emotion comes out."
Georgiana (Suz, that's the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, or "The P.I." We'd never call it the Post...) (note from Suz: Indeed! Correction made.)
Seattle - Thursday, May 27, 2004
Found two reviews of Something the Lord Made at the MSM website (thanks, Claudia!):
Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Variety
Suzanne <webmistress@alan-rickman.comfoo>
TX USA - Thursday, May 27, 2004
POA SPOILERS
Great review of POA in today's TIMES> You can read it HERE today but it may disappear into their subscribers system later.
Quote:The portraits are more animated; the spooks more sardonic; the rivalries more poisonous. Yet the absurd humour of Michael Gambon’s headmaster, Dumbledore (a homage to Richard Harris) and Alan Rickman’s ever-marvellous Snape is a masterclass in oral joy.
Also some Interviews as well.
Sue
Who promises she is going to make absoutleyNO on oral joy......... - Thursday, May 27, 2004
Hey gang!
I have two new Something the Lord Made Videograms for you (and accompanying sound files), both from HBO. The first is a new interview/behind-the-scenes type clip, which sonoma mentioned earlier (thanks for the alert!), with comments from AR, Mos Def and Mary Stuart Masterson. The second one is the New York premiere. Comments from AR, Mos Def Mary Stuart Masterson and Joseph Sargent, among others.
StLM HBO Interview #2 (StLM-HBO-2nd-interview.exe, 6.2MB, 3 min, 35 secs) sound file (1.6MB)
StLM New York premiere (StLM-NY-premiere.exe, 5.6MB, 2 min, 30 secs) sound file (2.3MB)
(above files are NOT to be directly linked to (please link to this web page instead) or uploaded to other websites or used in any other way aside from your own personal use without my permission by e-mail, thank you!)
What an abundance of AR goodies lately. Thank you, everyone, for all the super links, photos, articles, etc.! And welcome to all the new folks! Missed you, Anne/Manhattan, welcome back!
Suzanne <webmistress@alan-rickman.comfoo>
TX USA - Thursday, May 27, 2004
So I go out to get the mail a bit ago, and the new TV Guide is here. I start walking into the house, when I DROP the thing, and magically (LOL!) it falls open to THIS (which I took as a sign from above to stop what I'd been doing, transcribe the article, and scan the pic to share with my fellow Rickmaniacs). It was Providence. ROFL!
Here's the text of the article:
"The Heart of the Matter"
Bruce Fretts
"A powerful new HBO drama chronicles the unlikely partnership that revolutionized medicine
For decades, it was a medical mantra: Don't touch the heart. Surgeons considered the organ too delicate to be operated on. That doctrine changed in 1944, when Dr. Alfred Blalock, a white Southerner, and Vivien Thomas, his untrained African-American lab technician, carved out a path in the new field of heart surgery. By incisively dramatizing this chapter of scientific history, HBO's Something the Lord Made accomplishes an apt feat: It, too, touches the heart.
The movie casts the unlikely duo of classicaly trained actor Alan Rickman as Blalock and hip-hop poet Mos Def as Thomas, a carpenter who became an equal partner in the groundbreaking, now-little-known experiments. "Christiaan Barnard looms so large in the world of heart surgery," says Rickman of the famed cardiac-transplant trailblazer, "you forget there were people who got there first in terms of having the guts to cut into the heart."
Despite his monumental achievements alongside Blalock, Thomas was forced by Jim Crow laws to use the rear entrance of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Shot on location at the med school's Baltimore campus, Something "accurately portrays a lot of the hardships he had to endure," says Dr. Koco Eaton, Thomas' real-life nephew and a consultant on the film.
After stealing scenes on the big screen ("The Italian Job") and Broadway ("Topdog/Underdog"), Def makes his name as a major acting talent with his expertly calibrated work as Thomas, who ages more than 30 years during the film. "Mos uses three separate character voices--one as a young man, one as a middle-aged man and one when he's elderly," raves director Joseph Sargent (Miss Evers' Boys). "For a rapper, that's pretty damned sophisticated."
Mastering Blalock's twang didn't prove Rickman's greatest challenge. "Southern and English accents have many of the same rhythms," says the Brit, who struggled more with the script's medical terminology. "I got 4 percent in physics. Me and science are not bedfellows."
Instead of history-book cutouts, Blalock and Thomas emerge as flesh-and-blood characters. Rickman embodies the doctor's description of himself as a "self-righteous bastard," and Def quietly captures Thomas' complexity. "I didn't want him to come off as an educated bourgeois caricature," he says. "He was an unusual man. He was a blue-collar scientist."
Neither actor praises the movie's preachy title ("I hate it," snaps Def), taken from Blalock's ironic description of the shunt Thomas built for bypass operations. Blessedly, the title doesn't reflect the film's tone, which shuns sentimentality. "That would have been a terrible road to go down," says Rickman. "These were courageous people, and courage has muscle."
The no-heartstring-tugging policy even extended to the score. "We left orders with [composer] Christopher Young that at no point do we want anything sentimentalized," says Sargent. "We were making what amounted to an inspirational film, but we didn't want to do it with inspirational touches." As a result, Something succeeds as a feel-good movie you don't have to feel bad about enjoying."
Can't WAIT to see this!
Oh, and here's a scan of the two-page article, with pics: StLM TV Guide scan
Jen
Cow Land, Maryland USA - Wednesday, May 26, 2004
June Sky mag has a big spread on Love Actually as it starts on pay-to-view in June. CBA to type THIS out so scanned it instead.
Sue
Welcome back Anne!, - Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Small mention in Cindy Adams' column about the premiere in Tuesday's NY Post:
After asking all the kids what they'd bought with their Potter paychecks, they asked the grownups: "Alan Rickman and Robbie Coltrane ... bought zippo.
Coltrane, schlepping a bottle of water, perspiring in the 90 degree heat and looking semi-rumpled, like an unmade bed: 'I bought nothing. I'm an actor. To me this was just another job. Do I look like I maybe bought myself something fancy like, maybe, jewelry?'
Rickman: 'I made this last June. Who remembers back then. I've since been on to another movie. I'm on, like, a mousewheel.'"
Anne/Manhattan
- Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Video of HP PoA red carpet interviews at the Leaky Cauldron! Haven't seen it all the way through, and am audio-challenged at work, but he *looks* good... Fantastic Dementor puppet behind or in the crowd too.
Karen's etc.
- Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Two more pics of Alan at the NY premiere of POA.
AR arriving 1 and AR arriving 2
Stephanie
California US - Tuesday, May 25, 2004
I realise this is getting tedious now but here are some more StLM LA Premiere pix on DailyCeleb.com
Sue
- Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Cut and pasted from today's online New York Times.
"We also saw ALAN RICKMAN, the dark and mysterious professor, SEVERUS SNAPE, who either decided to stay in character on the red carpet doing that supercilious raised-eyebrow thing - or else is just darn spooky."
Karen's How Now Brown Cow
- Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Copyright 2004 PR Newswire Association, Inc.
PR Newswire
May 21, 2004, Friday
SECTION: ENTERTAINMENT, TELEVISION, AND CULTURE
DISTRIBUTION: TO ENTERTAINMENT AND FILM EDITORS
LENGTH: 840 words
HEADLINE: AFI to Salute Jack Valenti With Special HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN May 25 Screening
AFI Screening Honors Valenti in Silver Spring's New Majestic 20
Red Carpet, Search Lights and 'Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry' Set the Stage
WASHINGTON, May 21 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Film Institute (AFI) today announced a second, spectacular "AFI Salute to Jack Valenti" event honoring the retiring Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) president in Silver Spring, Maryland-home to the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center and the new Consolidated Theatres' Majestic 20, where the special May 25 screening will take place.
In recognition of Jack Valenti's nearly 40 years of Washington service to the motion picture industry, Warner Bros. Pictures has provided a special May 25 advance screening of HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN at the new Majestic theatre. Mr. Valenti will serve as the Guest of Honor at this Special AFI Silver Benefit Event, featuring search lights, a red carpet and a unique entryway through "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
Members of Congress, Maryland elected officials and representatives of the motion picture community will be joining AFI and Consolidated Theatres to honor Mr. Valenti on this very special evening.
WHAT: AFI Salutes Jack Valenti:
Special Screening of
HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN
WHEN: Tuesday, May 25
6:00 p.m. Light Refreshments
7:00 p.m. Screening
WHO: Jack Valenti, MPAA President, Guest of Honor
Jean Picker Firstenberg, Director and CEO, AFI
Herman Stone, President and CEO, Consolidated Theatres
Murray Horwitz, Director, AFI Silver
Ray Barry, Deputy-Director, AFI Silver
Guests include Washington and Maryland Luminaries, Members of
Congress, Representatives of the Motion Picture Community
WHERE: Consolidated Theatres
The Majestic 20
900 Ellsworth Drive
Silver Spring, Maryland
In HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN, Harry and his friends Ron and Hermione return for their third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where the teenagers are forced to face their darkest fears as they confront a dangerous escaped prisoner and the equally foreboding Dementors, who are sent there to protect them.
Warner Bros. Pictures presents a Heyday Films/1492 Pictures production, an Alfonso Cuaron film, starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Robbie Coltrane, Michael Gambon, Richard Griffiths, Gary Oldman, Alan Rickman, Fiona Shaw, Maggie Smith, Timothy Spall, David Thewlis, Emma Thompson and Julie Waters.
Directed by Alfonso Curaron, the film is produced by David Heyman, Chris Columbus and Mark Radcliffe. The screenplay is by Steve Kloves, based on the novel by J.K. Rowling. The executive producers are Michael Barnathan, Callum McDougall and Tanya Seghatchian.
The film has been rated PG by the MPAA for "frightening moments, creature violence and mild language."
www.harrypotter.com / AOL Keyword: Harry Potter
HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AKZABAN will be released domestically on Friday, June 4, 2004
More About AFI
AFI is the preeminent organization dedicated to advancing and preserving the art of film, television and other forms of the moving image. AFI trains the next generation of filmmakers at its world-renowned Conservatory, provides film preservation leadership and explores new digital technologies in moviemaking. AFI's New Media Ventures programs bring together the creative and digital communities, as the department seeks to develop a literacy program for the 21st century, helping young people learn to read and write screens of all sizes-cinema, television, computer and the Internet. With AFI ON SCREEN, the institute is the largest nonprofit exhibitor in the US, with programs at the AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival (AFI FEST); the AFI National Film Theater at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC; and the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. A 49,000 square foot complex with three theatres-one historic, two new state-of-the-art stadium-style theatres-the AFI Silver exhibits film and video generally unavailable elsewhere in the region. AFI's annual almanac for the 21st century, AFI AWARDS, honors the most outstanding motion pictures and television programs of the year. AFI's 100 Years . . . 100 Movies, 100 Stars, 100 Laughs, 100 Thrills, 100 Passions and 100 Heroes & Villains have ignited extraordinary public interest in classic American movies. During the past 31 years, AFI's Life Achievement Award has become the highest honor for a career in film. More information about AFI can be found by visiting its Web site, located at www.AFI.com.
SOURCE American Film Institute
CONTACT: Joan Kirby of American Film Institute, +1-301-495-6747
URL: http://www.prnewswire.com
Georgiana
Seattle - Monday, May 24, 2004
Copyright 2004 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
May 24, 2004 Monday Home Edition
SECTION: Features; Pg. 1C
LENGTH: 455 words
HEADLINE: Older 'Harry' back in darker 'Azkaban'
BYLINE: BOB LONGINO
SOURCE: AJC
New York --- Harry Potter is back, and this time a lot has changed.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Other aspects of "Azkaban" that will have fans talking:
* Special effects: It's full of realistic-looking whimsy (yes, the shape-shifting, triple-decker Knight Bus skirts through Muggle road traffic with ease) and scary creatures (the bony-fingered Dementors, the black canine Grim and that nasty werewolf).
* Whether less is more: There are fewer Quidditch matches than in the book, not a lot is made of Harry's new, flying broomstick, and there are very few mentions of Gryffindor, Slytherin and the other Hogwarts "houses."
* The cast: Cinema-savvy adults will not only appreciate seeing Oscar winners Emma Thompson and Julie Christie interpreting new "Potter" characters, but may get an electric charge in watching David Thewlis, Gary Oldman and Alan Rickman together, chewing up one pivotal scene.
GRAPHIC: Photo: Emma Watson (from left), Rupert Grint, Alan Rickman and Daniel Radcliffe (as Harry) in "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," which premiered Sunday in New York. / Warner Bros. Pictures
Georgiana
Seattle - Monday, May 24, 2004
Copyright 2004 Reed Elsevier Inc.
Variety
May 24, 2004 - May 30, 2004
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 60
LENGTH: 101 words
HEADLINE: 'Lord' operates on bio
BYLINE: Gabrielle Mitchell-Marell
NEW YORK At last week's Gotham preem of HBO Films' "Something the Lord Made," co-star Alan Rickman spoke admiringly of the "enormous trust" that developed between his real-life character, a white doctor by the name of Alfred Blalock, and Vivien Thomas, a black carpenter turned surgeon in the Jim Crow South.
"Now, of course, it looks sort of appalling that he would have Vivien serving drinks at his party," thesp said.
Also on hand for the classy May 17 fete at Brasserie 81/2: HBO's Keri Putnam, helmer Joseph Sargent, pic's Mary Stuart Masterson and exec producers Eric Hetzel and Robert Cort.
Georgiana
Seattle - Monday, May 24, 2004
More photos at Corbis for POA
JCC
Boston, Massachustts, Monday, May 24, 2004
I don't know if the link to these HP&POA Premiere photos has been posted yet, so I apologize if you've already seen these. If you haven't, I have to say they are wonderful! Plus, there is a great photo of Alan dancing at the post-party!! (See the last page of the gallery.)
Kimberly
Michigan, - Monday, May 24, 2004
I thought I'd wait till you got all the other photos (Wire Image, Getty, LFI, etc) out of your system, so last and certainly not least..... NYC Harry Potter Premiere photos
KEITH
BEDFORD,
U.K - Monday, May 24, 2004
More pictures from the Premiere here London Features International You have to scroll through, but there are a couple of nice ones of Alan Rickman.
Sheena <dragon@amberdragon.freeserve.co.ukfoo>
Berkshire, UK - Monday, May 24, 2004
Squillions more pix on RexFeatures too.
Sue
- Monday, May 24, 2004
Another pic----(go to the sixth one)
Plus a zillion articles on Google this morning!!
Carol
Michigan - Monday, May 24, 2004
More researching, but on topic this time - nicked from TLC, the 'red carpet' transcript, and unformatted.
Alan Rickman:
So we’ve heard you know all about Snape’s backstory.
No, I don’t know everything.
Ah. So what are you looking forward to playing with Snape?
Well I’m looking forward to you being surprised by him at all times. I’m certainly not telling you anything! [Shoot.]
What’s your next project?
Well,I have to to Harry Potter four, and I am hoping to do a really interesting couple of films if we can get them in in the meantime. One is called “for our sons,” one is called “Snow Cake.” It’s a really wonderful script about a man who meets a woman who’s an adult autistic.
Karen
- Monday, May 24, 2004
More POA Premiere pix on FilmMagic1 and FilmMagic2
Sue
- Monday, May 24, 2004
It's picture no. 3 (at HP-PoA NY premiere) bbc pictures
aeneas
- Monday, May 24, 2004
Getty photos (3 of them) are also out
Judy
- Monday, May 24, 2004
Actually the wire image photos (of the HP-PoA NY premiere) are out and I think they are jeans but can't tell. They are a darker blue than the pair he normally wears. Maybe they're just casual slacks.
bunks
Whitby, Canada - Monday, May 24, 2004
Hello Everyone. Just read this from the Associated Press site. I thought AR's comment (scoll down) was funny.
JCC
Boston, Massachusetts - Monday, May 24, 2004
First POA NY Premiere pix HERE Click on slideshow under first picture.
Sue
- Monday, May 24, 2004
Nice review (from The Journal News) of Something the Lord Made HERE
Something Riveting
Marshall Fine
The Journal News
(Original publication: May 20, 2004)
It may only be a coincidence of timing that, even as we acknowledge and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, HBO is about to broadcast "Something the Lord Made," a made-for-TV movie about one man's struggle for equality in a world supposedly built on knowledge and merit.
The timing could have been more propitious, however. Its debut comes May 30 - on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend - when TV viewership is bound to be down. That explains why HBO is airing the film that night, instead of the final episode of "The Sopranos," which it's holding for the following week.
Still, praise should be given to HBO for making "Something the Lord Made" at all. Studios don't back movies like this anymore - at least not without giving them the sensationalized treatment of something like "A Beautiful Mind." Even independent filmmakers don't seem to have time for thoughtful and complex subjects, though material such as this used to play to the indies' strengths.
Directed by Joseph Sargent, "Something the Lord Made" is a quietly thrilling film that explores history on human terms. Based on a true story, it examines the roots of a major medical breakthrough while depicting the dynamics of race and class in a relationship ultimately based on intellectual equality.
Rapper Mos Def plays Vivien Thomas, first seen in 1930 Nashville, where he is a 20-year-old carpenter saving money to go to college to become a doctor. When he loses his carpenter job, he finds employment sweeping a medical research laboratory at Vanderbilt University for a doctor named Alfred Blalock (Alan Rickman).
Blalock recognizes the potential in the young janitor, who he finds reading medical books when he is supposed to be mopping the floor. Before long, Vivien has become Blalock's lab technician, working side by side on research into ways to keep traumatic shock from killing its victims. Blalock teaches Vivien to wield a scalpel on the dogs in their experiments, telling him, "Let's break their rules," by going against the conventional wisdom of how to treat shock.
The script, by Todd Phillips and Peter Silverman, jumps forward to Baltimore in 1943, where Blalock has been appointed chief of surgery at Johns Hopkins University. He brings Vivien with him to run his laboratory (and to serve canapés and drinks at parties at his home).
Blalock and Vivien begin to devote themselves to the problem of pulmonary stenosis, which caused what used to be known as "blue babies": children born with poor blood circulation to their lungs, who eventually suffocated from lack of oxygen. It was considered a terminal birth defect, with no known treatment.
Because Blalock is swamped with surgical and administrative duties, Vivien takes the lead on the research, where he eventually is able to induce blue-baby syndrome in a lab animal. It is Vivien who recalls a side-effect of their traumatic-shock research that could be used to help the blue babies. Vivien crafts tiny surgical clamps for the unprecedented operation they will attempt - and has the inspiration for the kind of sutures required to sew together the tiny arterial shunt they must create.
Vivien perfects the miniscule suturing technique by operating on a dog, sewing with his eyes closed. When a surgical resident expresses astonishment, Vivien says, "It's like when you come home late at night; you know the feel of the room in the dark."
Blalock, however, must struggle against the medical establishment's accepted wisdom that doctors shouldn't operate on the human heart: "Every indicator says it can't be done," he is told by a colleague.
When he resolves to perform heart surgery for the first time - to save a 6-month-old girl with blue-baby syndrome who is dying - her family's priest upbraids him, telling Blalock that the child's heart problem is God's will.
"Perhaps God is, as you say, trying to kill this child," Blalock replies. "I am not. My instincts tell me that nature made a mistake and I can fix it."
Even then, however, he needs Vivien's calm presence in the operating room to guide him through the surgery. But Blalock comes to resent his assistant.
And so Blalock says nothing when Life magazine puts him on the cover - and ignores Vivien. Receiving an award for his surgical breakthrough, Blalock delivers an acceptance speech that mentions everyone except Vivien (while Vivien, who has sneaked into the hotel dining room disguised as a waiter, looks on heartbroken).
They both are battling prejudice, but only Vivien seems to suffer the effects. Blalock can overcome the medically conservative bias against trying new procedures by proving they can be performed successfully. But Vivien, who has given himself the equivalent of a medical-school education while working for Blalock, cannot get past the barrier of racism.
Refused entrance through Johns Hopkins' front door, he is told he must use the "workers'" entrance. Even as he is conducting cutting-edge medical explorations, he must work as the caretaker for the Baltimore rowhouse in which his family lives, because he only makes $16 a week at the lab.
Eventually, he discovers that, though he's overseeing all of Blalock's research, he has been assigned the same pay grade as the school's janitors - and must point out the injustice to Blalock.
"If my work is so important," he asks with controlled anger, "why am I a Class 3 employee - two classes below what I do?"
When Blalock successfully lobbies the hospital to classify Vivien as a lab technician (despite his lack of a college degree), he goes to Vivien's house to proudly tell him that he's been promoted. To which Vivien's wife replies, "Promoted - to what he already does?"
"Something the Lord Made" is precisely told, focusing on the soft-spoken Vivien, whose inner resources come through in the low-key strength of Mos Def. Through his measured responses to the unfairness of the world around him, the film explores the corrosiveness of institutionalized racism and the empowering quality of intelligence.
Mos Def conveys the satisfaction - even the joy - Vivien finds in the work he does. But he also reveals the resentment at Blalock's thoughtlessness. It's not that the doctor is part of the racist system; rather, it's his utter lack of awareness of what Vivien must struggle against. All Blalock can see are the results Vivien produces, without noticing the effort that goes into producing them.
Alan Rickman makes Blalock a self-confident medical maverick whose attitude ("It takes arrogance to cut someone with a scalpel to save them") is tempered by his humbling relationship with the unassumingly brilliant Vivien. Rickman captures the myopia of a man so consumed by his work that he must be reminded that he is ignoring the feelings of anyone who isn't one of his patients.
Ultimately, "Something the Lord Made" is Vivien Thomas' story - and an uplifting one at that. It's one thing for HBO to pony up for "Angels in America," which came with its own Pulitzer Prize/Tony Award pedigree. But it says something about the pay-cable network that it is not only willing to explore historic material such as this, but to make it both dramatic but cinematically engrossing as well.
Copyright 2004 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam
Sue
- Monday, May 24, 2004
Found Poster on a russian site. Have we seen it yet??
Sue
- Monday, May 24, 2004
Forgive if this is a re-posting of older news, but I just ran across this while visiting Mugglenet.com---it's a link to a PR release about the showing of Azkaban at IMAX theatres. Although I already have tickets for June 4th and 6th at an ordinary multiplex, I long to see this film in an IMAX... The IMAX site also now displays info on Azkaban if you click on the "Coming Soon" link near the top of the page. This site also has links to individual theatres, where you can pre-order tickets. Hmmm, maybe I can go there on June 7th, LOL.
Carol
Michigan - Saturday, May 22, 2004
Photo clipping from Entertainment Weekly... they gave him a C+!!! Those monsters Click Here
Streex Lexx-chan
- Friday, May 21, 2004
Here's some more LA STLM premiere pics at Film Magic
Shanda
NC - Friday, May 21, 2004
GettyImages also have 3 pages of LA StLM Premiere pix but my pc doesn't like Getty Images so I have only looked at the first page so far!
Sue
- Friday, May 21, 2004
Lots of pix of StLM LA Premiere on WireImage. HERE and HERE
Sue
What IS Gabrielle Union doing to thim??? LOL, - Friday, May 21, 2004
Copyright 2004 CanWest Interactive, a division of
CanWest Global Communications Corp.
All Rights Reserved
The Halifax Daily News (Nova Scotia)
May 13, 2004 Thursday
SECTION: HFX Movies; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 562 words
HEADLINE: The things they do for love;
Nowhere does passion run so deep as in the movies
BYLINE: Gillan, Lee Anne
People do some crazy things for love, but you can't get much crazier than the love that launched a thousand ships and started the Trojan War. While Troy brings out the big bows and arrows of ardour, the movies are full of lovers who go that extra mile for their passion.
In Cold Mountain, Jude Law travels hundreds of miles. He gets up from his near-death bed and walks across an entire state, through snow, rain, and the Civil War, just to see Nicole Kidman and to hear her funny fake Southern accent.
Sometimes the passionately possessed believe death is the only way to save love. In Titanic, Jack sacrifices his life to save Rose. Patrick Swayze comes back from the dead in Ghost, as does Alan Rickman in Truly Madly Deeply.
. . . . . . . . . .
Georgiana
Seattle - Thursday, May 20, 2004
Copyright 2004 The Guardian, a division of
Hollinger Canadian Newspapers, L.P.
All Rights Reserved
The Guardian (Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island)
May 14, 2004 Friday Final Edition
SECTION: Entertainment; On Track; Pg. C3
LENGTH: 753 words
HEADLINE: Gordon Lightfoot finds harmony in life
SOURCE: The Guardian (Charlottetown)
BYLINE: Doug Gallant
The British are coming!
The British are coming!
Actually it's just one Brit, so there is no cause for alarm. There is, however, cause for excitement.
The artist in question is Jamie Cullum, a 20-something jazz singer, pianist, composer who's taken Europe by storm and now appears poised to repeat that scenario in North America with his debut release for Verve Records, a stunner of an album simply titled Twentysomething.
Cullum, who lists jazz pianists Dave Brubeck and Oscar Peterson among his greatest influences, is an innovative, clever lad who, despite growing up in pop-obsessed Britain, developed a love for jazz standards like I Get A Kick Out Of You, Blame It On My Youth and What a Difference a Day Makes, all of which appear on this album.
His grasp of classic jazz has endeared him to traditional jazz fans, but Cullum's appeal stretches far beyond that market to reach many pop fans as well.
What's endeared him to a number of pop fans is his penchant for taking songs not normally associated with jazz and reinventing them, as he does here with Jimi Hendrix's Wind Cries Mary, Radiohead's High and Dry and Jeff Buckley's Lover, You Should Have Come Over.
Even some of the standards Cullum performs here have a new face, like Singin' In The Rain, which sounds wonderful in a brand spanking new arrangement that features a new time signature.
Cullum is a solid player and an interesting singer with great range and his terrific phrasing. He's backed up on this album by the other two members of his trio, bass player Geoff Gascoyne and drummer Sebastian de Krom, as well as several special guests, including his brother, Ben, who sings on several tracks and composed one of the album's best tracks These Are The Days.
Cullum's career is already in orbit in Europe where Twentysomething has gone triple platinum. Interest there has even reached Buckingham Palace. Prince Charles, after seeing Cullum on television, invited him to perform for Queen Elizabeth's birthday party at St. James Palace, where he shared the spotlight with Ronnie Corbett, Alan Rickman and Penelope Keith.
Georgiana
Seattle - Thursday, May 20, 2004
Copyright 2004 BPI Communications, Inc.
The Hollywood Reporter
May 20, 2004, Thursday
LENGTH: 701 words
HEADLINE: Close Your Eyes
First Look Pictures
In the effectively creepy "Close Your Eyes," "ER" regular Goran Visnjic retains his medical license as a psychic hypnotherapist who's recruited by British police to uncover the identity of a traumatized young girl's twisted kidnapper.
Based on the novel "Doctor Sleep," by Madison Smartt Bell, the atmospheric psychological thriller weaves a compelling web thanks to dense, stylized direction by Nick Willing and a smartly assembled cast.
The First Look release, actually shot in 2001, is certainly worth a look, though it's done no favors by a title that can be too easily confused with Alejandro Amenabar's "Open Your Eyes," not to mention "Close My Eyes," a 1991 Alan Rickman-Clive Owen film.
. . . . . . . . . .
Georgiana
Seattle - Thursday, May 20, 2004
For some reason, this snippet from “The Times” made me giggle.
“Apart from reviving Brando, British film-makers are to give a new lease of life to Lassie, the resourceful collie who charmed generations of children, it emerged yesterday.
The film will be shot in Scotland and directed by Charles Sturridge, who made the original television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited. Negotiations are under way with Natasha Richardson, Liam Neeson and Alan Rickman. A dog has yet to be cast.”
Here's the link (I hope): The Times
kate and the sweaty midwest
USA - Thursday, May 20, 2004
Today's Chicago Tribune has a little mention of AR in an article about impressive movie deaths (Ali-Pat, I can't help but think of your wonderful Listing Slightly webpage right now!!). He comes in at #4---here's a quote: "Alan Rickman's fall from a 30-storey building in "Die Hard" (1988) comes fourth, followed by the killing of the title characters in "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967)." The entire article, for those interested, is here.
Carol
Michigan - Thursday, May 20, 2004
I caught a fantastic clip on HBO today of Alan Rickman and Mos Def talking about Something the Lord Made and their characters! Here's the Videogram:
StLM HBO interview (StLM-HBO-interview.exe, 3.4MB, 1 min, 40 secs)
And the sound file.
10 more days to go!
Suzanne <webmistress@alan-rickman.comfoo>
TX USA - Thursday, May 20, 2004
Silly little thing I ran across today in my son's June 2004 issue of Mad Magazine....
Carol
Michigan - Thursday, May 20, 2004
Hey guys,
Melanie says, as far as she knows, AR will definitely be attending the HP NY premiere on the 23rd. He will also be flying to Los Angeles for the premiere of Something the Lord Made in that city. However, she doesn't know what sort of press he'll be doing (talk shows, etc.), because that's all handled by his LA agent.
Suzanne <webmistress@alan-rickman.comfoo>
TX USA - Wednesday, May 19, 2004
StLM Premiere in Baltimore last night., following on Carol's article from yesterday.
Aurora
Ohio US - Wednesday, May 19, 2004
GettyImages have StLM pix but at the moment it is very slow for me and I can't get past Page 1.
Sue
- Wednesday, May 19, 2004
While surfing around the Internet, I found an interesting quote this morning from the Baltimore Sun re StLM:
“How Blalock, who knew (and took advantage) of Thomas' intelligence and accomplishments, not only could allow his assistant to be treated badly by others but treat him with indifference and disdain himself, is explored in depth by the film. That willingness to depict ambiguity in racial relations ultimately saves Something the Lord Made. Rickman seals the deal with a warts-and-all reading of Blalock that leaves viewers hating his arrogance while admiring what he can do as a surgeon.”
You can read the entire article here.
Carol
Michigan - Tuesday, May 18, 2004
There’s an excellent, informative article re StLM on the National Medical Association web site. Here’s a quote:
...Notes Sargent, "Directing is a lot easier when the casting is right on, and the casting is right on. The chemistry between Alan and Mos is incredible. They've formed a collaborative ensemble that's very exciting to watch and work with. It's a coming together of two people from different disciplines, different backgrounds, different cultures really, who really inhabit their roles and become dedicated to breaking down traditions."
Alan Rickman was chosen to play Blalock because, says Cort, "if you look at his past roles, his stage work, there is a charismatic, eccentric, flawed compassion that comes across in those performances. And I think that's who Blalock was." Mos Def was tapped for Thomas, he continues, "because he's a very quiet, thoughtful, internal person. That's who Vivien was, and Mos responded to that."...
This article also includes a lengthy synopsis of the upcoming HBO movie, which sounds as if it will be deeply moving. To read the entire thing, go to National Medical Association article.
Carol
Michigan - Monday, May 17, 2004
Wow, great news, Sheena! I just found the direct link to Link Community Development itself...There's still no hot link on their site where their AR info is displayed, but worth watching, especially between now and May 30.
Carol
Mich - Monday, May 17, 2004
Alan Rickman will be making a special charity appeal on BBC Radio 4
The Radio 4 Appeal Channel: BBC Radio Four Date: Sunday 30th May 2004 Time: 07:55 to 07:58 & again at 21:26 to 21:30
Alan Rickman makes the Radio 4 Appeal on behalf of Link Community Development, a charity which aims to improve education within sub-Saharan Africa.
Sheena <dragon@amberdragon.freeserve.co.ukfoo>
Berkshire, UK - Monday, May 17, 2004
Found this link yesterday, then lost it and thank goodness have finally found it again! Click Dome article to read an article on STLM from the perspective of Johns Hopkins, including what the expert docs (who knew Blalock) thought of AR's accent (hint: it's all good.) You'll also see where I found that prop portrait I posted on the GB yesterday.
Full article:
Hopkins Meets HBO
The result is a complete clash of cultures ... and a captivating film
On location in East Baltimore, Jan. 11, 2004 (5 photos)
Driving over to the East Baltimore campus on the afternoon of March 22, Harold Norris was ready for a fight. Norris was about to preview an HBO film based on the story of the famed blue-baby surgery developed here in the 1940s by Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas, his own father-in-law. He had seen an early script, which he had not liked. Worse, he had heard that the dignified Thomas would be played by someone known as Mos Def, a rap star no less. Arriving at the Broadway Research Building, Norris selected a seat in the back of the seminar room so he could gauge the reaction among the handful of surgeons, development officers and others who had gathered for the preview. Fifteen minutes into the film, he was forced to concede to himself that it was actually pretty good. Soon Norris began to wonder: What am I going to have to yell about? When it was over, he was so moved he covered his face with a hand to regain his composure. How did he like it? “I was pleased,” he declared.
This riveting and poignant film, Something the Lord Made, will air on HBO on Sunday, May 30. It centers not only on the struggle to develop the groundbreaking heart surgery that would save the lives of countless children, but also on the climate of segregation that would keep a black lab technician like Thomas from attaining the recognition he deserved and a white surgeon like Blalock (Alan Rickman) from fully understanding what their relationship could have been like in a modern era.
Norris wasn’t the only one to come away from the preview with a sense of pleasure mixed with relief. The old guard surgeons-Alex Haller and Vince Gott-also had been uneasy with some inaccuracies in the early script. They had taken it upon themselves to make sure the institution’s legacy wasn’t cheapened in any way by a made-for-cable television movie. It hadn’t been easy. HBO, after all, was producing a “docudrama,” in which fact is juxtaposed with fiction. “It sometimes was a real clash of cultures between an institution with a heritage to protect and a network that wanted to make an entertaining film,” says Gary Stephenson, JHM’s associate director of media relations.
As technical advisers, the surgeons served an important purpose, however. They knew, for example, how the instruments should be held or how an incision should look. But advice on non-surgical matters was not particularly appreciated by the filmmakers, who included veteran director Joseph Sargent (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) and producer Robert Cort (Runaway Bride, Mr. Holland’s Opus).
“Joe Sargent was not interested in having some little surgeon who doesn’t know a thing about the profession tell him how to shoot a scene,” says Haller. Haller thought there was little he could do, but initially he was disturbed by what he saw as an underlying coarseness in the film. “I decided I would try my best to get across the real interrelations and emotional ties these two men had. Having lived through it, I felt I could.”
Haller is a 1951 School of Medicine graduate who worked with Thomas in Blalock’s dog lab when he was a student and intern and went on to become Hopkins’ first chief of pediatric surgery. Haller says he understood HBO’s need to dramatize the story. “But it didn’t need to be wrong. I thought it was possible to make it accurate. The real story is so good it doesn’t require any icing on the cake.”
Of course, there are some liberties taken: Blalock’s lab is shown on the Homewood campus, not in East Baltimore; the shy, partially deaf cardiologist Helen Taussig unrealistically turns up at a surgical cocktail party at Blalock’s home, for example. But gone is an original scene in which Blalock and Thomas hold a conversation over urinals (divided by a barrier that separates blacks from whites), and there’s not much off-color language, either.
Besides the surgeons, others at Hopkins also worked with HBO to help make the movie as true to the men, the medicine and the times as possible. Pre-production, Medical Archives’ Andrew Harrison supplied the photographs, documents and people who could shed light on the way things were at Johns Hopkins in the 1940s. From this, sets were built, costumes created, props acquired. Because some of those props, such as the original set of instruments that Thomas devised in Blalock’s dog lab, were supplied by Medical Archives, Harrison was often on location to guard them. Over time, he became a sort of on-site historian, suggesting, for example, as only an insider could, that some of the actors in a scene shot in the Billings Administration Building might rub the toe of the Christ statue. “There was never a time that HBO didn’t at least listen,” says Harrison.
In the end, everyone gained something and grew a little. Haller came to respect the filmmakers’ consummate professionalism and the genius of the two stars-particularly Rickman, a Brit who mastered Blalock’s Georgia drawl. (“I thought for all the world it was Blalock!”) And Norris, who had launched a letter writing campaign to make sure his father-in-law was properly portrayed, now was dazzled by Mos Def. “It was scary to watch-scary in the metaphysical sense-because Mos Def became Vivien Thomas.” When and if he meets the rapper-turned-actor, Norris says, “I’m going to shake his hand.”
As for HBO, producer Robert Cort, on hand for the preview in March, said he had decided to show the film to the Hopkins group because he wanted to reassure them that Something the Lord Made shows them in the best possible light. “In the course of making the film,” he said, “I came to understand the importance of the heritage of excellence at Johns Hopkins.”
-Anne Bennett Swingle
Something the Lord Made
• HBO: Sunday, May 30, at 9 p.m. Eastern
• Baltimore Premiere (invitation only): May 18, Senator Theater.
• East Baltimore: Details to be announced.
Carol
Michigan - Sunday, May 16, 2004
Just saw this press release on STLM, which will have a preview screening on May 17:
--------------------------------------
Press Release
Home Box Office
HBO Films' "SOMETHING THE LORD MADE" to Premiere At UAB Hosted By HBO Films and Bright House Networks
Wednesday May 12, 11:21 am ET
Screening Monday, May 17, at Alys Stephens Center
Film tells dramatic story of the first heart surgery
BIRMINGHAM, Ala., May 12 /PRNewswire/ -- HBO Films' SOMETHING THE LORD MADE will premiere on Monday, May 17, at UAB's Alys Stephens Center. HBO Films and Bright House Networks will host this invitation-only special event in cooperation with the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). The film tells the inspiring, little-known story of an unlikely collaboration that saved countless lives and changed the course of medical history.
SOMETHING THE LORD MADE is the true story of two men - an ambitious white surgeon (Dr. Alfred Blalock) and a gifted black carpenter turned lab technician (Vivien Thomas) - who defied the racial strictures of the Jim Crow south and together pioneered the field of heart surgery.
Dr. Katulle K. Eaton, nephew of Vivien Thomas, will attend the screening and share his memories and insights of his famous uncle who died in 1985. Inspired by his uncle, Eaton became a physician and orthopedic surgeon in St. Petersburg, FL and is on the medical staff of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays major league baseball team.
It has been a short 60 years since the first heart surgery was performed on a "blue baby," and SOMETHING THE LORD MADE draws attention to that event and the unlikely collaboration that made it possible. From the time before heart surgery was performed until today, heart surgery has become almost commonplace. There are 40,000 children born with heart defects in the U.S. today, mostly repaired through surgery. The American Heart Association reports that heart surgeries in the U.S. approach one million annually. UAB's internationally recognized reputation as one of the top medical centers for coronary care was the principal reason that HBO Films chose to premiere the film in Birmingham, along with Bright House Networks.
Directed by multiple Emmy® winner Joseph Sargent (HBO's "A Lesson Before Dying" and "Miss Evers' Boys"), the film dramatizes the groundbreaking accomplishment of Blalock and Thomas at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1944. The film stars Alan Rickman as Dr. Alfred Blalock ("Love Actually," Emmy® winner for HBO's "Rasputin"), Mos Def as Vivien Thomas ("Monster's Ball," "Broadway's "Top Dog/Underdog"), Kyra Sedgwick ("Personal Velocity," "Born on the Fourth of July"), and Gabrielle Union ("Bring It On," "Deliver Us From Eva"), with Charles S. Dutton ("Gothika," Emmy® winner for directing HBO's "The Corner") and Mary Stuart Masterson ("Kate Brasher," "Fried Green Tomatoes"). Principal photography was shot in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
"The caliber of talent involved in this project is extraordinary," says Collin Callender, President of HBO Films. "Director Joseph Sargent's collaboration with veteran Executive producer Robert Cort and gifted actors Alan Rickman and Mos Def has resulted in a remarkable, moving film."
SOMETHING THE LORD MADE debuts SUNDAY, MAY 30 at 8:00 p.m. (CT), exclusively on HBO.
Home Box Office (HBO) and Bright House, formerly Time Warner, Inc., have been frequent partners on community events in the Birmingham area. Among the most memorable were the premieres of 4 LITTLE GIRLS, produced by HBO and Spike Lee, and UNCHAINED MEMORIES: READINGS FROM THE SLAVE NARRATIVES, produced by HBO in association with the Library of Congress.
About Bright House Networks
Bright House Networks is managed by Advance/Newhouse Communications and serves over 2 million customers in cable television systems in and around Tampa Bay, Central Florida, Indianapolis, Birmingham, Bakersfield and Detroit, along with several smaller systems in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. The company also exclusively provides Central Florida News 13 and Bay News 9, 24-hour local news stations in Central Florida and the Tampa Bay area. Advance/Newhouse Communications is a privately held company headquartered in Syracuse, New York. The Advance/Newhouse partners' other interests include Conde Nast and Fairchild magazines, PARADE magazine, daily newspapers serving 26 cities, American City Business Journals, which publishes business journals in over 45 cities, Advance Internet and CondeNet, producers of online services, and significant interests in Discovery Communications, Inc. and Time Warner Telecom, Inc.
slope
canada - Thursday, May 13, 2004
Hey, so Minghella WAS at the RADA Centenary party. Getty Images has three very nice snaps of him and Alan, who looks so happy!
Slope
Canada - Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Evening Standard 10th May 2004
Stars Join Centenary Rada Party
By Claire Weaver
A galaxy of stars came out to celebrate 100 years of Rada,the prestigious drama school which honed such talents as Sir Anthony Hopkins,Ralph Fiennes, and Michael Sheen.
Past students Lord Attenborough and Alan Rickman attnded a centenary party at the National Film Theatre last night to pay tribute to the academy, which started out charging six guineas a term.
Guests saw a special screeening of Rada's fundraising film Masks and Faces, featuring the last composition by Michael Kamen, who died last November.
Sue
- Monday, May 10, 2004
I received another message from Melanie, who has an official statement concerning Alan Rickman's schedule. She says that, sadly, the notice should still stand for the time being about his inability to fill autographed photo requests. He hasn't been in the country very much (a little over a week, this time), so he has little opportunity to get many signed. And he is leaving again soon for the U.S. to promote his two new movies, "Something the Lord Made" and "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban."
Also, I asked her if he had any involvement in "Standing Room Only" (since his name has always been associated with it, yet he doesn't seem to appear in it, according to several reports). So she asked him about it and he said that he was due to do it, but when the dates were confirmed, he wasn't able to in the end. So we can officially scratch that one off.
And he also said he is due to start filming the next Harry Potter film in September.
Suzanne <webmistress@alan-rickman.comfoo>
TX USA - Monday, May 10, 2004
Having seen the post below, I just found these pics taken of Alan by Wire Image tonight. Hope link comes out OK WIRE IMAGE PICS OF ALAN TONIGHT
KEITH
BEDFORD, U.K. - Sunday, May 09, 2004
As reported to me:
Anthony Minghella, Richard Attenborough and Alan Rickman were at the NFT again tonight Sunday 9th, for Gala Event Masks and Faces another of the RADA celebration films. AR said some nice things about the late Michael Kamen who scored the piece.
Outfit - white shirt with dark suit.
Claire
- Sunday, May 09, 2004
Here is the latest Something the Lord Made trailer Videogram (StLM-preview2.exe, 4.6MB, 2 mins, 10 secs)
And a few more sound files:
Let's start with experiments.
This is where my work is done.
Can we try things my way occasionally?
If I say you're ready, you're ready.
I think we've found a way to repair your daughter's heart.
Let me see those hands.
(please do NOT upload these files to other websites or link directly to files or use in any other way aside from your own personal use without my permission by e-mail, thank you!)
And an early Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there!
Suzanne
,
<webmistress@alan-rickman.comfoo>
TX, USA - Sunday, May 07 2004
HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN UK INFO
Large ads in today's paper stating that HP3 is now opening on Monday 31st May due to "Unprecedented demand".
Of course the fact that that is a Public Holiday has absolutely nothing to do with it!!LOL (So that will be tha day after the Premiere??)
Sue
- Friday, May 07, 2004
Interesting piece on the new University of the Arts in the Independent.
Sue
- Friday, May 07, 2004
Here is a tidbit of news regarding sales figures (USA) for the Love Actually DVD:
"Love Actually" debuted as the nation's second-best-selling DVD and the No. 4 VHS for the week ending May 2, according to VideoScan. The romantic comedy, whose ensemble cast includes Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson, generated an estimated $9.41 million in gross rental revenue for the same frame, according to Video Store magazine.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
X
- Thursday, May 06, 2004
The photo of Alan on WireImage was taken on May 4, 2004, at the Tate Modern, where a Celebratory Dinner was held commemorating the new University of the Arts London. The new University brings together five colleges to form the largest and most comprehensive university of the arts in Europe. The five colleges represented by the University are: Camberwell College of Arts, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (incorporating Drama Centre London and Byam Shaw School of Art), Chelsea College of Art and Design, London College of Communication (formerly London College of Printing), and London College of Fashion (incorporating Cordwainers).
I'm sure Alan was invited to attend this event as he is a famous alumnus of Chelsea College of Art and Design.
For your viewing pleasure, I'm posting a link to a larger version of the photo posted by earlier by Sue. AlanUniversityofArtsLondonPhoto
X
- Wednesday, May 05, 2004
