WEIRDLAND: Bradley Cooper: cinematic chameleon, broken characters (Mad Men)

Friday, April 17, 2015

Bradley Cooper: cinematic chameleon, broken characters (Mad Men)

Time magazine released its 100 Most Influential People in the World list for 2015, which features everyone from politicians to comedians to pop culture icons. Among this year's influencers are Kanye West, Bradley Cooper, Taylor Swift, Laverne Cox, Reese Witherspoon, Kevin Hart, and Kim Kardashian. The five Time covers have gone to Kanye and Bradley, as well as ballet dancer Misty Copeland, Mexican-American journalist Jorge Ramos, and US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The list, which is in its 12th year, requires a prominent public figure to write an essay for each honoree, and this year's pairings include Kim Kardashian by Martha Stewart, Reese Witherspoon by Mindy Kaling, and Chris Pratt by Amy Poehler. Keep reading to check out this year's cover stars. Source: www.popsugar.com

"It’s hard to make people, especially your friends, forget who you are onscreen. But Bradley’s that good. And I think we’ve seen only a hint of what’s to come." -Oliver Platt calls Bradley Cooper 'The cinematic chameleon' in Time magazine.

Bradley expressed his honour at being included on the list, saying in a statement: 'It's a real big thing to be included in anything that has to do with TIME magazine let alone the 100 list!' The American Sniper star added: "It's a huge privilege for me and if it does anything at all it helps spread awareness for veterans' issues." Actress and author Julianne Moore, meanwhile, has been fronting campaigns for Women Of Worth, which aids domestic violence victims in their quest for independence. Among the other names leaked early are Guardians of the Galaxy star Chris Pratt and film-maker Lee Daniels. Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Amy Pascal wrote: Bradley is genius... Exactly the movie belongs to Bradley more than I realized in the process. Cameron Crowe wrote: Smart. Feel a little bit like we did on “Say Anything” — the movie tilted toward Cusack, the script tilted toward Ione Skye. But our acting is better here all around, so we can hopefully get everything. Frankly Bradley is such an odd bird getting him right is tricky but he's fine now so lets just let him cook where he is and take care of our girl... Frankly, we have great options on all the performances except Bill Murray… who pretty much is what you saw.

Cameron wrote regarding Emma Stone: "I have the shot on Emma... It's a movie star intro shot... Maybe time to put it back in... It is very powerful and overshadowed everything around it... But might feel different now... Big lesson from today... You don't slip Emma in... Let's give her fanfare again... Movie has now earned it." Amy replied, "She isn't bigger than the movie. Trust that. Now she needs to ignite it to get it to the next level and it's gonna be a cross between an idea she has about herself and an actual self that he makes her pay attention to (much to her shock)." Source: wikileaks.org

Bradley Cooper has had quite an interesting career, but had to pay his dues for many years to lead up to the critical acclaim he has earned today. With roles such as the distant war hero Chris Kyle in the controversial American Sniper to a struggling bipolar man just released from a psychiatric hospital in Silver Linings Playbook, Cooper has shown a range of acting skills in the last few years that arguably had not been expected in the past. His days of being the beau to some famous actress are over, and now he is front and center.

Bradley Cooper told The Guardian that his role in the box office hit The Hangover had been actually his most difficult yet. He said: "That guy is so different from me. I'm always amazed by it, actually. When I look at that character on screen, I don't see me at all." Bradley Cooper graduated with honors from Georgetown with an English degree. He told GQ he wrote his thesis on Nabokov's Lolita and he didn’t participate in much drama in high school or at Georgetown, but was more of an athlete up until he went for his MFA. Cooper somewhat randomly applied for his master’s at the Actors Studio Drama School in New York almost as a joke. Even during his acting career he has contemplated going back to school to get his Ph.D. in English and teaching literature. When he moved New York to study acting at the New School, Bradley Cooper worked nights at the Morgans Hotel in Manhattan. Source: www.cinemablend.com

In 2013, the Associated Press added an entry on mental illness to its Style Book to help journalists write about mental illness fairly and accurately. And in recent years, Hinshaw notes, screenwriters have made an effort to portray more humanized characterizations of individuals with mental illness -- for example, Carrie Mathison on Showtime's "Homeland," who has bipolar disorder; Bradley Cooper's character in "Silver Linings Playbook;" and John Nash, the Nobel Prize-winning economist with schizophrenia in "A Beautiful Mind." Still needed, Hinshaw says, are more realistic portrayals of the everyday struggles associated with mental illness. Source: news.yahoo.com

-Parade magazine: As Mad Men evolved, what surprised you most?

-Stephanie Newman, Ph.D. clinical psychoanalyst, (author of Mad Men on the Couch: Analyzing the Minds of the Men and Women of the Hit TV Show): "I became more and more fascinated by how [show runner] Matthew Weiner did not sugar coat anything. Infidelity, addiction, divorce, mental illness; he put it all out there and it was not pretty–just like in real life." Source: parade.com

Emmy-nominated actress Elizabeth Reaser also reveals that she viewed Diana as the female counterpoint Don Draper had been subconsciously searching for over the course of seven seasons and countless shags. “I just felt like they were very similar in the way that they communicate, and people say, you know, ‘Diana is mysterious,’ and I think she’s very direct. . . . And she’s been through so much that she has nothing left to lose. . .  She basically doesn’t give a fuck.”

In fact, it is this tragedy-incited disconnect with the world that might make the pair’s communications seem dream-like. “So that sort of takes her outside of time and space, and it just means she’s almost, like, untouchable, when you’re that hurt, when you’re that broken by the world,” Reaser theorizes. Source: www.vanityfair.com

No comments :