Wahlberg Adds New Meat to Jackson's Lovely Bones

It looks like Ryan Gosling will be hitting the treadmill a little sooner than anticipated.

Variety reports that Gosling -- who packed on pounds and put away his razor for his role in the Peter Jackson-directed adaptation of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones -- exited the production the day before filming began, and has been replaced by Mark Wahlberg. From the article:

Wahlberg has taken the role of Jack Salmon, the grieving father of a young girl. That role was vacated Friday by "Lars and the Real Girl" star Ryan Gosling, who stepped out after gaining 20 pounds and growing a beard for the job. Sources attributed the exit to creative differences.

After reading the script, Wahlberg quickly committed Sunday. He joins Rachel Weisz as a couple whose world is shattered after their daughter is murdered. The girl watches over her family and her killer from heaven. Jackson wrote the script with Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens.

This news is unexpected, to say the least -- it was just two weeks ago that RT's own Fred Topel talked to Gosling about his preparation for the role and his admiration for Peter Jackson.

Shooting is underway in Philadelphia, where Wahlberg recently starred in The Happening for M. Night Shyamalan. After finishing Bones, Wahlberg is set to appear opposite Brad Pitt in Darren Aronofsky's The Fighter -- capping a five-year stretch in which the erstwhile underwear model and Funky Bunch leader will have worked with Aronofsky, Jackson, Shyamalan, and Martin Scorsese. God bless America.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

'Lars' Movie Shines Light on RealDolls

A dozen headless female bodies hang from industrial metal hooks in the center of the room. To the left are a table of plastic faces, awaiting makeup. To the right, a stack of silicone molds ready for the next order of life-sized love toys.

Normally reserved for private play, these high-end, anatomically correct dolls are getting big-screen exposure with the recent release of "Lars and the Real Girl," an offbeat, surprisingly chaste comedy about a lonely introvert (Ryan Gosling) and Bianca, the silicone object of his affection.

Bianca, a freckle-nosed brunette, was born just east of San Diego at Abyss Creations. The 11-year-old company that makes RealDolls will ship 400 dolls to the U.S. and abroad this year at upward of $6,500 each.

RealDolls can be actresses, lovers, photo subjects or companions. Customers can choose from 10 body types, 16 faces and 17 hairstyles to create their dream girl. They specify skin tone, hair and eye color, makeup palette and nail-polish shade. The dolls have interchangeable faces ($500 each), so with the pull of some Velcro and the flip of a wig, she's like a whole new gal.

They're made from soft silicone that takes two days to cure to a somewhat flesh-like feel. With jointed skeletons they're entirely poseable "They move in the same places people move," company spokeswoman Bronwen Keller says but they can't stand up on their own. They range in height from 4'10" to 5'7" and weigh 75 to 115 pounds.

There is also a male doll, "Charlie," who stands 5'8" and weighs 130 pounds.

The artists who spend about 80 hours crafting each doll all started out in the Halloween industry, says creative director and chief executive officer Matt Krivicke, 36. Before working with RealDoll, he made Halloween masks. (O.J. Simpson was his most popular.)

For many doll owners, and for Gosling's character in the film, the dolls are more like companions, each with her own personality and presence.

"She looks like a person," says Rob McKay, 55, a writer who owns two dolls, Lily and Eden. "Even though she's not a breathing person, psychologically you feel like someone is with you. They're like a balm for loneliness or aloneness."

McKay and other doll owners, who share their stories and photos online at DollForum.com, compare the life-size ladies to "teddy bears for adults."

"That's where she's done the most good, reducing the feeling of solitude," McKay says, adding that he prefers intimacy with a live partner but hasn't had a girlfriend since 2001. "Just having her there to hug or just to have somebody close by, even though it's not, obviously, a warm body."

A member of DollForum.com who goes by the name Doll Luvr says his doll "is far more than just an expensive sex toy."

"She sleeps with me, watches TV with me, sits at the table and has coffee with me," he writes. "Just having a female shape laying next to me in bed is very comforting."

Gosling's character gets emotional, but never physical, with Bianca. But whereas Lars is delusional and believes the doll is alive, most doll owners "know where to draw the line," McKay says.

The dolls "inspire imagination," he says. "You put what you think into the doll, so you're projecting part of yourself onto this inanimate creature and making her seem more lifelike."

Stacy Leigh, 36, a married photographer who lives in New York, uses her two RealDolls as photo subjects. Both are petite and "could fit in all my clothing, same shoe size and everything," she says, noting that one doll has a more curvaceous figure. ("The one with the big boobs is the sluttier of the two," she says.) Leigh owns six faces and more than 30 wigs and divides her time between shooting real models and shooting the dolls. She staunchly defends her fellow doll owners.

"Most guys just need it because they just want to feel somebody in the bed next to them, even though it's not a real person," she says. "I feel bad for those guys."

Doll owners tend to be "older men with disposable income," Keller says, adding that the dolls are also popular with couples and artists. RealDolls have been used in movies, music videos and by a forensic studies program as models in sex-crime scenarios, Keller says.

Chicago-based artist Amber Hawk Swanson had a doll made in her exact likeness as part of a multimedia art project. The 27-year-old says she didn't anticipate the relationship she would form with Amber Doll.

During the nine months it took for her doll to arrive, "I really did picture her as real," Swanson says. "Not that I imagined her walking around my house, but I just couldn't wait. I just imagined cuddling up with her."

Swanson is continuing her art project, but she now has a live romantic partner who's "thankful that I've moved past the time when I pictured my life with this doll and not with a human."

She says doll owners can identify with "Lars and the Real Girl," which she describes as "a movie starring a RealDoll that's true to the way many people interact with their dolls: in a partnership way."

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Wrapup of Entertainment Quotes

"It was a sobering experience. It was humbling. It made me look at myself, and all of the people, places and things in my life in a different way. I was in there for substance abuse, after all." Lindsay Lohan, on rehab.

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"No. I fell in love. It was a great thing to be in love. I was a complete idiot in love." Kid Rock, on whether he regrets marrying Pamela Anderson.

"This is the first I've heard of it. And while I very much believe in a patient's right to privacy, I would hope that this could be settled without suspending medical workers." George Clooney, on the suspension of more than a dozen New Jersey hospital staffers who allegedly peeked at his confidential medical information after he was hurt in a motorcycle accident last month.

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"It's like meeting the right girl. This is a really good fit. I'm really comfortable here and it seems like I should have been doing this a long time ago." Drew Carey, on hosting "The Price Is Right."

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"I'm worried to say this because it makes me sound crazy, but she did have a real presence. I really felt some kind of connection to her and a camaraderie." Ryan Gosling, on co-starring with an inanimate, life-size doll in "Lars and the Real Girl."

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"He's so, so smart and so aware and so kind and so sweet. Unfortunately, that's not what people want him to be, so they write stuff." Mila Kunis, on boyfriend Macaulay Culkin.

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"I'm a movie fanatic. I occasionally watch movies on my cell phone, but how are you supposed to be afraid of King Kong when his head is the size of a Chiclet?" Dana Carvey.

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"None of it's true. I went in for a checkup. The doc gave me a clean bill of health." Bobby Brown, denying that he had a mild heart attack, something his attorney said he had suffered this week in Los Angeles.

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"Man! It's hard to see yourself on the screen. There's not a single movie that I've done that I've liked." Javier Bardem.

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"That was a bad, bad, bad movie. But ... I got to work with John Frankenheimer. I wasn't lying to myself that's why I did it." Charlize Theron, on her least favorite film, "Reindeer Games."

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Review:`Lars' a Surprising Look at Love

It may sound like a contradiction in terms to say that a movie about a guy in love with a sex doll is bursting with humanity, but that's really the most apt way to describe the warm, wonderful "Lars and the Real Girl."

Ryan Gosling, who earned an Oscar nomination this year as a drug-addicted junior high school teacher in "Half Nelson" and played a cocky prosecutor in "Fracture," further reinforces that he can do pretty much anything. His Lars Lindstrom is an awkward, fiercely anti-social twentysomething who spends his days in a cubicle at a generic company and his nights in the converted garage behind his childhood home.

Friends and relatives are constantly trying to set him up with nice girls they know; hiding behind an array of hideously '80s sweaters and ties and a neatly trimmed mustache, he smiles shyly, says no thanks and scurries off, alone.

Then one day, Lars orders a life-size, anatomically correct doll online. When she arrives, though, he truly believes she's a real woman the first "person" who gets him, who makes him feel comfortable. He introduces her as Bianca, says she's a missionary on sabbatical and that she doesn't speak much English (which explains why she's so quiet, of course). With her slightly open mouth, curvy frame, fishnet stockings and flexible limbs, she clearly wasn't intended for religious purposes, but Lars sees only the purity in her. Their relationship, if you can call it that, is quaintly chaste.

Now this all could have easily turned bawdy and crass. Worse yet, it could have been "Mannequin." But director Craig Gillespie, working from a script by Nancy Oliver ("Six Feet Under"), shows a surprisingly delicate touch following his last film, the alleged comedy "Mr. Woodcock." (This should, in theory, give Gillespie a clean slate.)

Everyone in this bleakly remote Midwestern setting, from Lars' older brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and pregnant sister-in-law Karin (Emily Mortimer) to the family doctor (Patricia Clarkson) and the town reverend, plays along out of respect for his obviously fragile mental state, and because they love him too much to burst his bubble. Plus, he's happy deeply, radiantly happy for the first time in his lonely life. (The family's back story is revealed slowly as the film progresses, and it explains everything.)

Of course there are the obligatory sight gags involving the ridiculousness of the doll at the dinner table. And the way Bianca becomes an unexpected sensation in this insular, snow-covered town (shot with spare cinematography by Adam Kimmel) is hilariously weird. But the humor remains deadpan and slyly absurd throughout never condescending, never mean.

As Lars politely squires Bianca around, taking her to parties and to church and showing her his childhood haunts, nearly every person he runs into has the decency to refrain from making fun of him. (Leading the way is the family's physician, whom Clarkson plays with disarming sweetness and insight.) Gus is sarcastic and reluctant at first he's the only one who says what we're thinking but eventually his derision turns to sympathy as he begins to wonder whether his brother has been afflicted by a serious delusion.

But Gosling had nothing but respect for this role and his manufactured co-star. Through small gestures and bold choices, he's created a character you begin feeling sorry for and end up rooting for and almost envying, simply because he's found something (someone?) that makes him feel whole and alive. In our point-and-click world of instant gratification, that's hard to come by.

"Lars and the Real Girl," an MGM release, is rated PG-13 for some sex-related content. Running time: 105 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Sundance Vet Gosling Does Savage, Sweet

Ryan Gosling could be the Sundance Kid, emerging out of that indie film festival with such gritty dramas as "The Believer" "The United States of Leland" and "Half Nelson," which earned him an Academy Award nomination.

In those films, he played a Jewish teen posing as an anti-Semitic skinhead, a youth who slays an autistic boy and an inner-city teacher with a drug problem.

So Gosling's one of those brooding actors drawn to dusky roles, like Sean Penn.

But wait. Gosling also took the heartthrob route, playing a resolute lover in the romantic drama "The Notebook" and again shows a tender side with "Lars and the Real Girl," an oddball romance that opens Friday.

So Gosling's one of those moon-eyed guys aching to play sweetheart roles.

Wait again. In the new movie, Gosling's Lars starts out as a slightly creepy misfit whose new girlfriend is an inanimate, life-size doll.

Just what drives Gosling, who has ranged from early TV work on the new "Mickey Mouse Club" and the lead in "Young Hercules" to big films such as "Remember the Titans" and this year's "Fracture"?

"I feel I'm in competition with myself. I want to know what I'm capable of, more than anything else," Gosling, 26, said in an interview at September's Toronto International Film Festival, where "Lars and the Real Girl" played. "It's all a result of the fact that I just keep getting more and more opportunities, and I'm interested in those opportunities.

"The fact that somebody would let me do a love story I didn't know if I was ever going to get that chance. I knew I would learn a lot from doing it. The same as `Lars.' This was a huge challenge. This is the kind of role that teaches you, shows you what you're made of. That's kind of it. It's that simple."

In "Lars and the Real Girl," Gosling plays an extreme introvert who prefers to stay alone in his garage apartment than dine with his brother and sister-in-law next door or go out with a cute co-worker who has a huge crush on him.

One day, Lars orders a lifelike, anatomically correct doll on the Internet, and abruptly starts turning up in public with her, introducing her as his girlfriend, Bianca.

Realizing Lars has serious issues, family and friends humor his delusion. Gradually, Bianca emerges as a healing figure that makes Lars and his acquaintances view one another in a fresh light.

Gosling has many scenes alone with the doll, where he felt he was acting both parts, Lars and Bianca.

"I'm worried to say this because it makes me sound crazy, but she did have a real presence. I really felt some kind of connection to her and a camaraderie. This whole movie rested on our relationship together," Gosling said, adding with a laugh: "She had a very supportive energy."

Gosling found similar support for another difficult role, the hate-mongering skinhead of "The Believer," which won the top prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.

Writer-director Henry Bean coaxed a career-making performance out of Gosling, who went into the film uncertain how he would be able to spew the character's racist rants.

"Henry thought they were funny. He goes, `The things he's staying are so stupid.' He took away my fears about saying them," Gosling said. "I just sort of relaxed into the idea that they were ridiculous."

Moving from "Mickey Mouse Club" to bigot to seeming crackpot dating a doll isn't an obvious progression, yet it's a career path that fits Gosling, whom co-star Emily Mortimer describes as a bit of a chameleon and sphinx.

"He's not one thing. There are some people you meet that if you know what they think about one thing, you know what they think about everything," said Mortimer, who plays Gosling's sister-in-law in "Lars and the Real Girl." "Ryan's not like that. He's his own person, and he's got this very intense, magical side to him, and he's also cheeky as all hell, irreverent and funny."

Born in London, Ontario, Gosling wanted to be a dancer as a child, which led to his audition for "Mickey Mouse Club," where he was a regular in the mid-1990s.

Along with dancing, the show required a bit of acting, which got Gosling thinking that might be the life for him.

"It seemed like a great job that took you all over the world and you got to meet all kinds of people," Gosling said.

"My father was always kind of a slave to his jobs, and my uncles worked at paper mills. My uncle Bill went into a paper mill at 19 and he came out at 50, and he only ever missed three days. And as much as I admire him, he's my hero, he did that for his family, and his family has a great life because of him. But it made me think, I wonder if there's anything out there that allows me a little more freedom than that?"

Next up for Gosling is "The Lovely Bones," "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson's return to character-driven drama such as his darkly magical "Heavenly Creatures."

Adapted from Alice Sebold's novel, "The Lovely Bones" is the story of a slain girl looking down from heaven on loved ones left behind, including a father desperately trying to retain a connection to his daughter.

"He's not aware of the film that he's in or the story that he's in or that his daughter's in heaven, watching him. But it's his idea, and he chooses to believe it, and therefore, it's true," Gosling said. "It's a great film for anybody that's experienced loss, because that's all you can do in life is believe in something you need to believe in."

Gosling was an unbeliever earlier this year, naysaying friends' assurances that he would earn an Oscar nomination for his role as an inspiring but drug-addicted teacher in "Half Nelson."

The film earned raves at Sundance, but such tough independent dramas rarely find mainstream acceptance. On nominations morning, though, Gosling wound up among the best-actor contenders.

"I started taking bets against it, because I was sure it wasn't going to happen, but everyone was so sure. It was so annoying," Gosling said. "I was like, `OK, put your money where your mouth is.'

"I actually lost a lot of money, but it's OK. It balanced out. I lost some money but went through a hell of an experience."

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com

Gosling Fat for Lovely Bones

Ryan Gosling is playing Jack Salmon in Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, an adaptation of the runaway bestseller by Alice Sebold. To portray the grieving father whose murdered daughter watches from heaven, he has already put on some added paunch.

"This is frustrating because I gained weight for Lars And The Real Girl and then I lost it and then I gained a lot of weight again," said Gosling. "So I could have just kept it the whole time."

Gosling is preparing to shoot in Pennsylvania, though he revealed that he will have a bit of work in New Zealand, where Jackson is literally constructing heaven. "I work a little bit in New Zealand, but mostly I work in Philadelphia."

It is too early for Gosling to figure out his acting method; his commitment to character is always evident on film, but he's still working out the details. "It's hard to describe when you are in it. When I'm out of it I'll be able to decipher what's been happening."

He did, however, share an artistic perspective with Jackson. "He's fearless as a director. He takes on things that you kind of have to be crazy to take on. To do

Lord of the Rings you have to kind of be nuts because there is no way you are going to win. You are always going to have naysayers and people saying you ruined it or whatever. But he's my kind of nuts because he doesn't care and he does it anyway. There are so many units and it takes him years to make it. He doesn't care. And he makes this movie and then he does King Kong. What are you doing? Now he's doing Lovely Bones. People have such reverence for that book, and he's just like, 'I'm going to try that.' So it's exciting to work with somebody like that."

The Lovely Bones will be in theaters 2008. Lars And The Real Girl , starring Gosling about a social introvert who befriends a blow-up doll, opens this Friday in limited release.

Source: www.cinema-pedia.com