Category Archives: Disney

Meet the Cast of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

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Meet the Cast of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

By Mary Lansing

Yo ho ho, matey! While the temperatures are beginning to rise and summertime is upon us, that can only mean one thing: some of the biggest, most awaited films of the year will be making their ways into theatres. One I have been especially excited to at last see? Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

Not only did I have the pleasure of seeing this fantastic and latest installment (More on that later this week) to the Disney franchise, I also got to head out to Beverly Hills this past weekend and hear from the cast of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. While I have been extremely lucky to not only meet some of my favorite stars, but, also discover new artists that I admire immensely. The Pirates crew is a perfect example.

The Cast and Crew on Deck (or, rather, in attendance) Included:
Javier Bardem (Captain Salazar)
Geoffrey Rush (Barbossa)
Kaya Scodelario (Carina Smyth)
Brenton Thwaites (Henry Turner)
Joachim Ronning & Espen Sandberg (Directors)
Jerry Bruckheimer (Producer)  
First up, was the handsome and charming Javier Bardem. Portraying one of the most terrifying villains that Captain Jack Sparrow has had to take on yet, we were anxious to know what drew him to the role of the evil Captain Salazar. Turns out, it was his wife, actress Penelope Cruz, that introduced him to this amazing Pirate world when she portrayed Anglica, an old flame of Captain Sparrow’s, in the 4th installment back in 2011.

The villainous Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem) pursues Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) as he searches for the trident used by Poseidon ©Disney Enterprises, Inc.

“When she did it back in 2010, I was visiting the set and i was amazed,” he explained, “I have never been on a set of a movie like that before. So, it was a first time experience. I remember talking to Jerry and saying that i’d love to be apart of it. I saw the quality of the production, and what fun they looked like. He called me five years later!” When asked if he played “pirates” as a young boy in Madrid, he confessed that he loved to Star Wars and playing space ships!

Which, brought up if his children (twins with Cruz) visited their Dad, in his very dark makeup and costumes, on set?!  Turns out, just on the days when he looked more “normal” for his role. When you see the film, you will understand that VERY much.

Next up were our new young loves in the movie, Kaya Scodelario and Brenton Thwaites. Much like their on-screen alter-egos, Scodelario has so much poise, and is reserved and when she speaks, it is with much sense and a very well thought out comment (Just like the films female heroine, Carina) while Thwaites brought to mind his character, Henry, with all the high school crush-like charisma and Australian meets skater boy good looks.

Offering us coffee as he took a seat (and joking he hopes it’s Irish coffee), the press was interested what it was like for these young stars to arrive on set for their first Pirates film? “For me it was really weird.” answered kaya, “I try to treat every job the same when I get on set, but, all that goes out the window for Pirates. It’s so big, and so cool. I had met Johnny (Depp) previously at a table reading but, when he came on set as jack that was it. I was a little kid again. I was more star struck seeing Jack Sparrow than Johnny Depp!”

“For me personally it was something that followed Hook”, adds Thwaites, “I still remember when I was a young boy I wanted to be Peter Pan, and Pirates was the next movie like that, with comedy, supernatural, and so I followed the franchise, saw every movie when it came out. It was such a huge part of school to mimic the actors, and do cockney accents” he chuckles.

We then got to chat with the hilarious Geoffrey Rush, who has played the beloved Barbossa for 13 years strong. Coolest tid-bit we learned about Rush? He loves fan mail,and tries to answer every piece! “I get some fan mail, and I always answer them. It may take three months. They build up and I sit down for a day and write back. Initially, it was young women in Japan, and men in Germany. I thought, what’s the attraction there? What demographic am I reaching?!” Rush could not be further from the (at once) evil Barbossa, and truly gives his all to the favorite character.

Next up, we heard from the incredible Directors of the film, Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg. Wanting to know what makes this 5th Pirates movie different than the rest, they were quick to know what makes it so unique and what they were trying to accomplish; “There’s many things. One is, we get to see how Jack Sparrow became Jack Sparrow. That was something we really wanted to explore and go back in time to see how he became the character that everyone loves. It’s a personal, strong journey and we want to have strong characters. We grew up together making films together, like 10 and 11 years old. Pirates reminds us of those kinds of films that we made.”

While Producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, shed some light on the hilarious cameo of Paul McCartney, he was quick to give the credit where it was due: “I didn’t make it happen. Johnny did. Keith wasn’t available, and Johnny has just worked with Paul and called him up, and just asked, ‘Wanna be a pirate?’ Paul said sure, they got together and worked on the scene, the costume. They had a blast shooting that together.”

The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, will set sail into theatres THIS Friday nationwide!

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Mary Lansing is the Editor of the popular LA lifestyle and travel blog,  Along Comes Mary. When she is not keeping busy with her Social Media Managing business, you can find her out exploring all Southern California has to offer, or off on a trip! Visit her on Twitter,  Instagram and Facebook.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2–Meet the Cast!

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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2–Meet the Cast!

By Erin

In Marvel Studios’ latest adventure, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” the Guardians must fight to keep their newfound family together as they unravel the mystery of Peter Quill’s true parentage. Picking up right where 2014’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” left off, Marvel Studios’ “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” continues the action-packed, irreverent, epic space adventures of Peter Quill aka Star-Lord and his gang of eccentric characters as they patrol and protect the universe. We are introduced to Awesome Mixtape #2 where the story follows the team as they fight to stay together while traversing the outer reaches of the cosmos. Old foes become new allies and fan-favorite characters from the classic comics will come to our heroes’ aid as the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to expand.

Before the movie blasts into theaters everywhere this Friday, May 5th, we had the chance to meet the cast at a press conference last month. Take a look at some of the hilarious moments that were captured and what the cast had to share with us about the new film.

Moderated by Kara Warner from People Magazine, it was just one laugh after another. Look at all those smiles!

Press Conference #1 with the below talent:

  • Chris Pratt (“Peter Quill / Star-Lord”)
  • Kurt Russell (“Ego”)
  • Michael Rooker (“Yondu”)
  • Elizabeth Debicki (“Ayesha”)
  • Director James Gunn
  • Producer Kevin Feige

Press Conference #2 with the below talent:

  • Zoe Saldana (“Gamora”)
  • Dave Bautista (“Drax”)
  • Karen Gillan (“Nebula”)
  • Sean Gunn (“Kraglin”)
  • Pom Klementieff (“Mantis”)
  • Sylvester Stallone (“Member of Nova Corps”)
  • Producer Kevin Feige

The first question was directed at Elizabeth regarding her new role as Ayesha. Being a new member of the cast, what kind of initiation process was there, and what exactly convinced her to join this ragtag bunch.

Elizabeth: James convinced me obviously. He’s extremely persuasive, not that I needed convincing. My first day on set was when we were shooting in the throne room, and I was obviously terrified of playing this extremely powerful creature. I remember sitting up on the throne for a long time and all the Guardians were in front of me. It was so intimidating, and it was about two hours before we spoke to each other, I think. They all came up in this line to sort of come and say hello. I was like, please come and say hello to me! Someone say hello. And then that was fine after that.

Also new to the cast is Kurt Russell as Ego.

Kurt: They do this weird thing. I didn’t quite know what to make of it. You have to do this thing, you have to go to Chris’s house… I don’t know how much I can say. You have to bring over some food. The truth is that when I read the script I wanted to make sure I was kind of understanding it correctly and I hadn’t seen the first movie. All of a sudden, one day I was doing Hateful Eight stuff like this, and all of a sudden, boom, boom, boom, boom, my phone and the people around me are saying, are you gonna do, oh that’s great, are you gonna be Star Lord’s dad? Are you gonna be Peter Quill’s father and are you gonna do Guardians of the Galaxy and I, I just was like, guys, I don’t really know what they’re talking about. And I saw the movie and when I saw the movie, I immediately started getting it. I also immediately started wanting to do it. That was immediately followed by, everybody loved the first movie. What you don’t want to do is do something that’s gonna make them not like the second one, right? I don’t know about you, but I said yeah. I told James that. I said, I don’t want to mess this thing up, so I need your help.

James Gunn was asked if there is one thing that he wanted to make sure not to mess up.

James: The movie? I don’t know. I just wanted to continue the film from the first movie. So many sequels are not good. The primary reason in studying them seemed to be that so many of them just kind of do the same thing the first movie did with different template, and so they say, oh people liked the dance-off in the first movie, so what’s our version of the dance-off? People liked “we are Groot” in the first movie, what’s our version of “we are Groot”? And instead of doing that, we really tried to let these characters grow and change. We want to watch them become new people and different people in every film that we come up with. I think allowing them to be themselves and do their thing, I know that sounds strange because I’m writing what they say, but sometimes I’m just letting it happen inside my own imagination and letting the characters go where they wanted to go. I think the thing that I didn’t want to mess up was just trying to be a rehash of the first movie. I think people were surprised by the first movie, people have been surprised by the second film, and to give people something new and something different from what they already had.

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Born in China with Fun Facts From Producer Roy Conli

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Born in China with Fun Facts From Producer Roy Conli

By Erin

Disneynature’s latest gem Born in China, features epic beauty, hidden majesty and endless wonder. It centers around the families of three native species; snow leopards, pandas, and golden snub-nosed monkeys. Already having great acclaim and box-office success in China, it is now open today for U.S. audiences to join in on all the wonder and amazement this film has to offer. We had the amazing opportunity to chat with the movie’s producer Roy Conli to learn how the production crew got the film’s majestic nature footage, and why this was such an important project to him. He shared many fun and interesting facts with us about the film. Take a look below to see some of my favorite things that I learned about Born in China & Roy Conli.

Producer Roy Conli attends the New York Premeire Of Disneynature’s “Born In China” at Landmark Sunshine Cinema on April 8, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images or Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

 Roy Conli: joined Disney in 1993 and co-produced “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” and went over to Paris to run the Paris studio in 1995, where he completed portions of “Hunchback.” He also worked on “Hercules” and “Tarzan” over there, and then came back in 1998 to work on “Treasure Planet,”“Tangled”, and then “Big Hero 6,” which came out in 2014 which was a lot of fun for him, as he won a big award.

“Born in China” is the seventh theatrical release for Disneynature, the first new Disney-branded film label from The Walt Disney Studios in more than 60 years. Born in China is narrated by John Krasinski.

 Shane Moore, the cinematographer for the snow leopards, spent 253 hours shooting over four trips, over six seasons. He was living in a little, uninsulated shack next to a monastery in the Quinghai Plateau. He and his very small team would leave before dawn and get back after dark, and shoot straight for the length of their Visas.

 Since they were coming in on journalistic Visas, they would have to leave after three months. The first shot of the snow leopard was at 90 days into his first stay. He had to leave the day after he got his first shot. But it’s a testament to the perseverance and professionalism these guys have. They track these animals and get to understand their movement and start to understand the thought process, their habits and customs as well.

 Pandas are incredibly isolated and they don’t like a lot of companionships around them, and they’re also 800-pound animals. So a mother panda with her cub can be somewhat intimidating and dangerous. What the cinematographers and the crew did was wear panda suits and they would put panda scent on them. As you build a relationship with these animals, and those animals see that you are not a danger, then they start getting closer and closer.

Description: Cinematographer Justin Maguire filming golden snub-nosed monkeys.

 The monkeys were the easiest to film. They just wanted to play with the cameras.

 Roy Conli told us about the importance of letting nature take its course while filming and “The Pinocchio Factor”–Amazing and frightening experiences that show life as it is and how children can handle more than we give them credit for.

One Last thing Roy Conli wanted everyone to know was to make sure to see the film this first week, when it first comes out. “Disney does something, and they’ve done it on every Disneynature release that I can remember: a portion of the proceeds from that first week is going to the World Wildlife Fund, and specifically targeted toward panda and snow leopards, in terms of the protection of those populations. We always say that Disneynature is a title that is there to educate, that is there to inspire, and then that is there to entertain. And in this particular case, it’s also there to serve. The work that Disneynature has done over the last ten years has helped protect 130,000 acres of chimpanzee reserve, create 65,000 acres of plain land for cats in Kenya, 400,000 acres protected in the U.S. National Park system, a 40,000 acre marine reserve in the Bahamas, protection of endangered monkeys in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia, three million trees planted in the Amazon, in Brazil. This work is really, really important and it’s one of the greatest things that Disneynature provides. The World Wildlife Fund, in this particular instance, is going to be the beneficiary of that. And it’s going to help protect those populations for generations.”

Help protect snow leopards and pandas with Disneynature’s Born in China!

China is home to many iconic species and the WWF works to protect them, including giant pandas and snow leopards like the ones we see in the film. Premiering today, Born in China brings them to the big screen—and for every ticket sold in participating markets through April 27, Disneynature will make a donation to support WWF’s work in China. How awesome is that?? Happy Earth Day! 🙂

Character: Red-Crowned Cranes

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Visit the official BORN IN CHINA website: http://nature.disney.com/born-in-china

BORN IN CHINA is rated G and is in theatres everywhere NOW!