RobbieColtrane Tagged Articles at Cinematical

After premiering at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom got bounced around like the red-headed stepchild on Summit's slate before landing a haphazard 200-screen release earlier this summer. Now, in what would appear to be an effort to maintain consistency between the difficulty of seeing it on a big screen and watching on your small screen, the crime caper's been made available for rental only since September, until making its retail bow in January...

...and that's a shame, because the presentation -- at least on Blu-ray -- looks and sounds as rich as it ever did theatrically, the extras are plentiful, and the film itself stands as a clever, funny and warm-hearted take on the con man genre, one more often known for its especially detached sense of cool above any sense of character.

And no, I'm not just saying all of this because Johnson name-checks yours truly a couple of times on the commentary. Honest.

Disney has Pixar. Fox has Blue Sky. Paramount has, for now, Dreamworks. As seemingly the last studio to get into animated features, Universal has offered up the trailer for their maiden effort, The Tale of Despereaux, over at Yahoo! Movies.

Based upon the 2003 Newbury Award-winning novel by Kate DiCamillo, the film follows the adventurous antics of Despereaux (voiced by Matthew Broderick), a mouse with large ears and - I'm just guessing here - an even bigger heart, as he bucks the status quo of cowardice that seems to have imprisoned his kind to a fearsome existence.

Besides being an animated tale of a brave rodent with a tongue-tricky title and thus fated to merit comparison to those which have recently set lofty standards for similar fare, this project genuinely looks and sounds pleasant enough for all its yay-for-being-yourself familiarity. Besides, there's only more hope to be had when we're looking at a voice cast that includes the likes of Broderick, Kevin Kline, Dustin Hoffman, Sigourney Weaver, Stanley Tucci, William H. Macy, and Tony Hale, not to mention a Harry Potter veteran or two.

With its eye on the year-end holiday season, The Tale of Despereaux is scheduled to hit theaters on December 19th.

In a collaboration between the British film industry and Bollywood, Provoked: A True Story has just been released in the UK, and was screened today at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles. It follows the true story of a Sikh housewife in London who killed her husband in 1989 after years of abuse. After an arranged marriage, Kiranjit Ahluwalia moved to Britain with her husband, Deepak. Over the next ten years, she was raped, beaten with everything from belts to furniture, secluded and even banned from certain foods like chillies and black coffee. After so many years of terrible abuse, she snapped and had some pretty terrible revenge -- she doused her husband in gas and set fire to him as he slept.

Her husband died in the hospital ten days later, and she was charged with murder. The prosecution said that the crimes acted against her were "not serious," and she was found guilty. Ultimately, she received a new trial, had her charge reduced to manslaughter and now lives in Slough with her children. I wonder when/if the film will receive wide, or even limited, release in the U.S., since it has a pretty notable cast. Aishwarya Rai (Bride & Prejudice) plays Kiranjit, Lost star Naveen Andrews plays Deepak, her husband, Miranda Richardson plays a woman who befriends the wife in prison and Rubeus Hagrid -aka- Robbie Coltrane is the QC who fights on Kiranjit's behalf in her retrial. While we wait to see if the film makes its way to local screens, you can check out a trailer here.

It is always fun hearing about the inspirations for actor's performances. Nobody is better at letting the public in on his character's origins than Johnny Depp, but now Robbie Coltrane has revealed the basis for his role as Rubeus Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies. Obviously the real source is J.K. Rowling's series of novels, which describe the character pretty much as he's depicted on screen, and Rowling even is said to have imagined Coltrane in the part while writing the first book. But as for things he had to flesh out, such as mannerisms and speech, the actor did have a muse. He says there was a Hell's Angel biker he once knew who looked really tough and mean but would say things that showed a more sensitive side, like, "I don't know about you, but the petunias this year are very bad." See, the large man was a gardener in addition to being a biker.

A gardening biker with, "fists like hams," and, "a gentle heart." Hmmm. If I didn't think Coltrane was the most perfect thing about the Harry Potter movies, I would say Warner Bros. should have just cast that guy. Sounds like a real-live Hagrid, doesn't it? He also reminds me of these bikers upstate who look grizzly and have ferocious names like Vermin, but who sang karaoke to songs like "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." You never can tell with motorcycle gang members. They're all probably as good with kids as Hagrid, too. Need a babysitter?