Sandra Bullock's Tearful Tribute To Jay
Leno: 'You've Always Been So Kind'
(By Aaron Couch, 5 Hollywood Reporter, February 2014)
Sandra Bullock gave a tearful sendoff to Jay Leno Wednesday
during his penultimate Tonight Show, which also featured surprise appearances
from Arsenio Hall, Kevin Smith and Carrot Top.
"You've always been so kind. That's saying a lot in this business,
because we like to be mean," Bullock said. "There's not been one time
you haven't treated me like I had something to offer – even when the film was
awful and you knew it, you never let me see it in your eyes."
She added: "When I made crazy life decisions, you never
questioned it. You were so welcoming. I just felt special, even when I was
insecure." "Well, you are
special," Leno said, kissing Bullock's hand. The sincere moment came after Leno teased
Bullock about Speed 2 – noting he could finally ask borderline rude question,
because of his impending retirement: "I don't care anymore!"
Earlier, a few unannounced guests stopped by The Tonight
Show to toast outgoing host Leno. Leno
told the audience he'd been cleaning out his office, and found some things his
famous guests had left over the years. Among them- Justin Bieber's diary and a
bong. After Leno read from the diary, director
Kevin Smith showed up to claim the bong- noting it held less weed than when
he'd left it. Carrot Top appeared to claim a few props he'd left at the
show, including a new helmet for recently defeated Super Bowl team the Denver
Broncos (complete with tissues). Arsenio Hall also made a brief appearance to
wish Leno luck. Later, Blake Shelton praised Leno for keeping his personal
politics out of the show. "Everybody gets ripped on." Leno's final Tonight Show is Thursday, with
Billy Crystal and Garth Brooks scheduled. Leno said there'd be more surprises
that even he isn't privy to.
Sandra Bullock Googled Herself And
This Is What Happened
(By Lauren Duca, The
Huffington Post, 23 January 2014)
Sandra Bullock googled herself only to discover that she was
in a feud with Julia Roberts over George Clooney. "I thought maybe it would be a nice fun
approach to this evening to do, maybe, something different, so I Googled myself
and read the comments section, thinking I would get some tidbits of what people
really think of me and share them " she said at the 25th annual Palm
Springs International Film Festival Gala on Saturday (Jan. 4). "Never read
the comments section … or Google oneself, at anytime... "Apparently, Julia [Roberts], I don't
know where you are, you and I are in a dispute over George Clooney,"
Bullock laughed. "We talked about this, right? It's a shared
custody."
The "Gravity" star also read some disparaging
comments about herself, noting that most of the "insults" were
related to her being "over 40." "Everything that Sandra Googled
about herself, they say about me too, except they say over 60," Meryl
Streep joked later in the evening. In
conclusion, Sandra Bullock is our imaginary best friend and she, Meryl and
Julia are a trio of best friends, that often spend afternoons giggling over
Google and crisp white wine that wishes it could age as well as they have.
Sandra Bullock Not First - Or Even Fifth - Choice For 'Gravity'
(By Hollie McKay,
Pop Tarts & FoxNews.com, October 03, 2013)
Listen for gasps
in the "Gravity" audience when 50-year-old leading lady Sandra
Bullock first slips out of her space suit and shows off her flawless figure in
a tiny crop top and itty bitty shorts. And then know her body isn't the only
miracle -- her being in the movie at all was a long-shot at best. Originally written for Angelina Jolie, the
lead female role was reportedly offered to a bevy of much younger stars. In
mid-2010, Marion Cotillard, 38,
screen tested. A couple of months later Scarlett
Johansson, 28, and Blake Lively, 26, were being linked to the movie. When
director Alfonso Cuarón got the green light from Warner Bros., he offered the
part to Natalie Portman, 32, without a screen test. But she passed.
Which is when
Oscar winner Bullock entered the picture. And even she admits she was a weird
choice for a movie about an astronaut floating helplessly in space, but for a
totally different reason. “I don’t like
to fly. I’ve never been a good flyer," Bullock told FOX411. “I have a lot
of friends that have permanent nail marks in their arms… The moaning that comes
from me when there is turbulence. It’s awkward for everyone around.” Luckily for Bullock, filming
"Gravity" didn’t require any actual soaring. Instead Bullock, like
her co-star George Clooney, was harnessed with around a dozen carbon-thin wires
across her body to train, and tied into a rig inside a tailor-made cube adorned
by over four thousand LED light bulbs. The bulbs could simulate whatever
brightness, speed and color were required to capture the light of Earth below
and sun in the distance as her astronaut character spun and slammed into stuffMORE: How Sandra Bullock trained for weightlessness.
“The toughest aspect (of filming) was gravity. We had to have the actors floating around the way they would react in space and there is no resistance in space and we needed to invent a new set of tools to achieve that,” Cuarón explained. “The journey of inventing those tools is what took a while.” Four-and-a-half years to be exact. And while the process wasn’t always a walk (or rather or whirl) in the park, it did teach Bullock a few extra life lessons. “It was frustrating, scary, exhilarating, humbling… But mostly, it just pissed you off. It took away all your control, and your crutches and forced you to (surrender),” she added. “But I have gotten to that point in my life where I know I am absolutely out of control, and if anything should happen other than what I do, than that is all I have got. And even if I am not always controllable.” “Gravity” opens in theaters Friday
Sandra Bullock Keeps Defying 'Gravity'
With Her Career
(By Lisa Respers, CNN, October 5, 2013)
In many ways
Sandra Bullock is an unlikely star -- just as "Gravity," the film
that may earn her another Oscar nomination, is an unlikely runaway hit. And it's just opening Friday. In order to not give too much away (we know
how much you hate spoilers), we will just say that "Gravity" is about
some astronauts who run into trouble while in space. So, how can a 90-minute
film about two very likable people -- Bullock and George Clooney -- floating
beyond Earth be termed a "thriller"?
The same way Bullock, who for the most part eschews the trappings of Hollywood, has managed to become such a huge celebrity, who can seemingly do no wrong. If ever there was a contest for "America's sweetheart," the actress would be tough to beat, since that has been her moniker for the past few years. Examine the evidence: Bullock is a woman who -- at the height of a devastating marital breakup from Jesse James in 2010, when lurid tabloid headlines appeared about his alleged affairs -- shocked the world with news that she had secretly adopted an African-American son from New Orleans. Not only was it surprising that the Oscar-winning actress had such a tight circle that she was able to conceal a monumental personal moment, but unlike some other celebs who had been criticized in the black community for transracial adoptions, Bullock and her decision were mostly embraced.
Sandra Bullock hails law limiting paparazzi: 'Children should not be sold'
"If I can take this moment to thank Helga B. for not
letting me ride in cars with boys until I was 18 -- because she was right. I
would have done what she said I was going to do," Bullock said. "For
making me practice every day when I got home. Piano, ballet, whatever it is I
wanted to be -- she said to be an artist, you had to practice every day. And
for reminding her daughters that there's no race, no religion, no class system,
no color, nothing, no sexual orientation that makes us better than anyone else.
We are all deserving of love. So, to that trailblazer, who allowed me to have
that. And this."
In interviews Bullock can be funny, self-deprecating and
just downright cool. During an appearance in June on "The
Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" to promote her buddy cop comedy,
"The Heat," she and the host good-naturedly took verbal swipes at
each other. When Ferguson mentioned the film "Dumb and Dumber" (in an
apparent reference to the way their interview was going), Bullock volleyed back
about that movie. "Poop humor is
fun," she said jokingly. "If you do the toilet scenes well and commit
to them they can be really, really powerful." Not many Academy Award winners would tackle
such a subject, but it's not surprising from Bullock, who recently proudly told Us Weekly that her now-3-year-old son, Louis, is
fully potty-trained. While the actress has almost always been tagged as more
girl next door than vixen, motherhood has clearly helped settle her even more.She's been very outspoken about the fact that she would give it all up, the career and the fame, if it wasn't good for her son in any way. "I don't want him to have pressures brought on by what I do. I will quit. I will leave," she told Vogue. "If I see whatever I'm doing affecting him negatively, I will pack up and move to Alaska." Which probably helps explain why the self-professed homebody would much rather be spending time with her toddler than working the press, as she did recently at the premiere of "Gravity." In the Alfonso Cuaron-directed film, she plays Ryan Stone, a medical engineer on her first space mission. The movie calls for Bullock to be in some pretty out-there situations, but she told CNN at the premiere that being on the red carpet was extreme enough for her.
"That's the most extreme situation I've experienced in
a long time," Bullock said. "Being in front of a camera, in a nice
dress, getting all dressed up is extreme. There's a lot of other extreme
situations, you know, just getting out of bed sometimes is extreme -- but I do
it. Just got to do it, just got to get up. Put your sweatpants on, brush off
the dog hair and just get out of the house!" Following
the film's debut at the Toronto International Film Festival in September,
chatter immediately started that Bullock could once again be a contender for an
Oscar. For director Cuaron, his star's performance was so strong, it
overshadowed even the special effects and technology used to make her appear
weightless in "Gravity." "When
you see Sandra performing ... with the truthfulness she performed, you forget
it was any technology around," he told Access Hollywood.
George Clooney Explains Why He Won't
Date Sandra Bullock
(By Natalie Finn, E!, Oct. 2, 2013)
George
Clooney is nothing if not a man's man.
Though he admitted that his Gravity costar, Sandra Bullock, looked especially great on the red carpet at their film's
New York City premiere, Clooney would never date his friend of "more than
20 years." "She was dating one
of my best friends," Clooney told E! News last night, explaining why they
never hooked up in the past. But...why not now then?! They're both gorgeous and
fabulous and... "There's a certain
bro code, you know what I mean?" he insisted. "I've known her a long,
long time."
WATCH: Sandra Bullock what sort of revenge she's plotting
against prankster George Clooney
"She looks beautiful, doesn't she?" Clooney added,
trying to turn the attention back to Bullock looking absolutely stunning in her
asymetrical white minidress by Giambattista Valli and black and white Giuseppe
Zanotti heels. In fact, Bullock proved
way too much of a distraction for some. "I
don't know what qualities I would look for," Clooney gently chided us when
we earnestly inquired what the recently single movie star looks for in a woman.
"I'm looking at Sandy there and you're asking me questions like
that!"
(By Joyce Chen, US Weekly, October 3, 2013)
Credit: David Steele/Disney-ABC Domestic Television
Well, you've gotta pass the time somehow! Sandra Bullock and George Clooney made the most of their downtime on the set of new film Gravity, learning the lyrics to the Sugarhill Gang classic "Rapper's Delight," the actress revealed on LIVE with Kelly and Michael on Thursday, Oct. 3. The longtime friends would compete to see who could remember the most of the wordy lyrics, she added. "I've got to give it to him," the 49-year-old actress told the morning show hosts. "There's a couple words -- the bridges -- that I chose not to learn. I'll give it to George. George has about 98 percent of that song down, in the eight minute version."
Bullock and Clooney, 52, have been friends for more than 20
years, and the pair are more than just "similar," according to
Bullock. "We were pretty much
separated at birth," she said of her dapper costar. In the film, the pair play two astronauts in
space who find themselves floating above earth after an accidental explosion
completely cuts off their communication to Houston and causes various other
major mishaps -- all while the duo are suspended thousands of miles above
ground.
"It's really about this emotional ride that you are
allowed to step on," Bullock said on the show. "And whatever's
happened in your life, you experience that and think about, 'What would I do?'
And hopefully by the time you get out of the theater, you go, 'I'm going to
change my life. I'm going to change and do the things I always said, 'Maybe one
day.' Don't 'maybe one day' it. Life is short, things happen. Do it now."
http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/sandra-bullock-says-she-and-george-clooney-rapped-competitively-on-gravity-set-2013310#ixzz2gzIfaEvW
George Clooney Says Sandra Bullock
Drunk Dials Him Every Night
(Huffington Post, 13 November 2013)
"Gravity"
co-stars George Clooney and Sandra Bullock have so much chemistry that the rest
of the world is rooting for a romantic relationship to blossom, even if they're
not. Though we find it hard to believe,
Bullock recently explained it's because she's just not attracted to the
52-year-old star, because after knowing each other for so long, "sexy is
gone." "Not that he's not sexy
because he is very, very handsome. If you like that kind of dashing, charming,
smart, talented, successful kind of thing. It's not everyone's cup of
tea," she told U.K. morning TV show Daybreak.
As it turns
out, even Clooney finds her explanation a bit hard to swallow. At Saturday
(Nov. 9) night's 2013 BAFTA Britannia Awards in Los Angeles, the actor revealed
just how fond of him Bullock really is. "Let
me tell you about Sandy. Yeah, she may say that she's not all that attracted to
me. But she calls every night at three in the morning drunk," Clooney
joked to "Entertainment Tonight." "'Hey George, what are you
doin'?' Nonstop. And then I just send her a bottle of tequila."
The pair
certainly seem to have a good friendship, but they've also come up with a lot
of reasons for never getting romantically involved. While the 49-year-old
actress recently told Jay Leno they never dated because "we’re a little
too similar, in all the disturbing ways," Clooney told E! News the actress
used to date one of his best friends. "There's
a certain bro code, you know what I mean?" he said.
'Gravity' Star Sandra Bullock To Receive Acting
Honor At Hollywood Film Awards
(By Scott
Feinberg, Hollywood Reporter, 19 September 2013)
Sandra Bullock, the star of some of the most important and popular films in Hollywood history, will receive the Hollywood Actress Award at the 17th annual Hollywood Film Awards -- the first awards show of the 2013 season -- on Oct. 21 at the Beverly Hilton, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. (The Hollywood Film Awards is owned by affiliates of THR parent company Guggenheim Partners.) Previous recipients of the Hollywood Actress Award include Drew Barrymore (1999), Angelina Jolie (2000), Nicole Kidman (2001), Jennifer Aniston (2002), Diane Lane (2003), Annette Bening (2004 and 2010), Charlize Theron (2005), Penelope Cruz (2006), Marion Cotillard (2007 and 2012), Kristin Scott Thomas (2008), Hilary Swank (2009) and Michelle Williams (2011).
Bullock, 49, has starred in numerous films
-- across genres -- that were highly critically-acclaimed and/or commercially
successful, including seven films that grossed over $100 million and three
films that were nominated for a best picture Oscar. These include Jan de Bont's Speed
(1994), Jon Turteltaub's While You Were Sleeping (1995), Joel
Schumacher's A Time to Kill (1996), Forest Whitaker's Hope
Floats (1998), Griffin Dunne's Practical Magic (1998), Betty
Thomas' 28 Days (2000), Donald Petrie's Miss Congeniality
(2000), Callie Khouri's Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
(2002), Barbet Schroeder's Murder by Numbers (2002), Marc
Lawrence's Two Weeks Notice (2002), Douglas McGrath's Infamous
(2006), Alejandro Agresti's The Lake House (2006), Anne
Fletcher's The Proposal (2009) and three films that were
nominated for the best picture Oscar: Paul Haggis' Crash
(2005), John Lee Hancock's The Blind Side (2009) and Stephen
Daldry's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011). Crash
took home that prize, and Bullock won the best actress Oscar for The Blind
Side.
This summer, Bullock and Melissa
McCarthy proved a winning combo in Paul Feig's hilarious
blockbuster, The Heat. And, at this fall's Telluride and Toronto
film festivals, Bullock's performance in Alfonso Cuaron's awe-inspiring
3D space drama, Gravity, opposite her old friend George Clooney,
earned her some of the best reviews of her career -- and widespread speculation
that it will ultimately bring her the second best actress Oscar nomination of
her career. Warner Bros. will release the film nationwide on Oct. 4. It is in
recognition of this tremendous year, generally -- and for the latter
performance, specifically -- that she is being recognized at the Hollywood Film
Awards.
The Hollywood Film Awards are determined
by founder and executive director Carlos de Abreu and an advisory
committee. Last month, the Hollywood Film Awards and Dick Clark
Productions, which also produced the Golden Globe Awards, entered into a
partnership that could
lead to the ceremony being televised in future years. Over the past 10 years,
Hollywood Film Awards honorees went on to garner a total of 96 Oscar
nominations and 34 Oscars. De Abreu
tells THR, “We are honored to present the Hollywood Actress Award to
Sandra for her outstanding work in Gravity. Holding the screen alone for
a large part of the film, she delivers a stunning and emotionally layered
performance that shows once again why she is one of Hollywood's most respected
and popular actresses."
Fug Or Fab The Cover: Sandra Bullock
On Vogue
(By Jessica, Go Fug Yourself, Sep 18, 2013)
At least two
of you predicted that Sandy Bullock here was going to land a cover for
Gravity. My feelings on this cover are
so mixed. For one thing, I love that Vogue has a 49-year-old woman on the
cover; it doesn’t happen often enough, despite the fact that the 49-year-old
women of the world are more likely to be the women who can actually afford that
promised perfect fall wardrobe. I love this sea-foam-green-meets-Tiffanys-blue
color, and I dig the sort of 60s thing they’re doing on her, especially because
it feels like a smart wink to the fact that she’s in a movie that’s about, at
least in part, the space program.
I love
Sandra Bullock in general, and I think her face has a lot of feeling in this
photo (thanks perhaps to the fact that she doesn’t have, as the cover frets, an
“overinjected face.” I hope the cure for that is just one sentence: “stop
getting injections, dumb-ass, and go outside for a little while.”). The whole
thing is striking. On the “con” side of
the pro/con equation: that hair. I get it, but I don’t know if I like it. What do you think?
I love this. Grade: A.
I am good with this, but I hoped for better.
Grade: B
This is acceptable but BARELY. Grade: C.
This is technically passing, but I am very
unhappy about it: Grade: D
FAIL.
Sandra
Bullock Is On Top Of The World With Her New Film Gravity
(By Jason Gay,
Vogue, September 17, 2013)
Photographed by Peter Lindbergh
In our next lives, let’s all move to Austin, Texas. I’m
serious. The place is heaven, with better breakfast. A capital city, a college
town; the living is easy, unpretentious, serene. Everything moves at just the
right speed. Little surprises happen. You go for coffee, and there may be a
bluegrass band playing at the coffee shop. Another city, that might drive you
slightly bananas. Here, it feels perfect. That’s Austin. This is what brought Sandra Bullock here. She
found herself in Austin about fifteen years ago, on a road trip, searching for
something that wasn’t New York City, which at the time was grinding her down,
with its concrete and claustrophobia and that person on the subway who would
not . . . shut . . . up. Bullock stepped into the warm Texas air, and it was as
if a screen door had opened. Grass, green, calm. Austin made it possible to not
be Sandra Bullock, movie star, celebrity, paparazzi target. Here she could
crawl out of that protective exoskeleton she calls her “armor” and be a human
being. “I felt like myself,” Bullock says. “It was just my safe place. I would
get off the plane, smell the soil, hear the cicadas. . . .”
It is late afternoon, and Bullock is guiding me across the
front counter of Walton’s Fancy and Staple, a local flower business she bought
and relocated to Austin’s downtown in 2009, adding gourmet sandwiches and a
bakery with a chocolate cake that Bullock asks me to order because (a) it’s
chocolate cake, like I need a reason, and (b) she is going to steal some later.
High-ceilinged and airy, with elegant floral arrangements sold in the back,
Walton’s looks like the kind of establishment Jimmy Stewart might have taken
someone on a first date. Bullock is deep
in its details here, and also at Bess, the law office turned bistro she opened
three years prior down the street. She jokes that her staff rolls its eyes at
her suggestions, since the boss has expensive taste. Whatever. It makes her happy. “The acting thing is so
beyond my control,” she says. “Acting isn’t mine. You’re like a tiny piece in
this big, corporate mechanism that needs chemistry and divine intervention.”
She looks at the tables behind us, full of families meandering on a long summer
Sunday. “This is mine.”
Bullock takes a seat around the corner from the counter, by
the window. She is dressed in a pair of white J Brand cutoff shorts, a matching
white top, and Sam Edelman gladiator sandals. In these surroundings, it can be
hard to remember that the laid-back proprietor is also one of the most
successful actresses in the business, an Academy Award winner, still a
box-office juggernaut after more than two decades in the trade. You know: OMG
Sandra Bullock! It’s not always easy for Bullock to hide in plain sight as she
can in Austin. “Going someplace with her can be cuckoo town,” says Melissa
McCarthy, her costar in this summer’s bawdy buddy-cop hit The Heat.
“People go crazy. They’re just so happy to see her.”
Let’s consider that Sandra Bullock for a moment, now 49, an
actress with a staggering $3.5 billion in accumulated global box office. Peter
Chernin, the former Fox studio chief whose Chernin Entertainment produced The
Heat (and who ran Fox in 1994, when Bullock appeared in Speed),
refers to her without hesitation as “the biggest female movie star in the
world.” And yet it is something of an imprecise science to divine why audiences
love her so. There are Bullock’s acting chops, long underrated, finally
receiving their critical due with her decorated performance as football-mom
dynamo Leigh Anne Tuohy in 2009’s The Blind Side. There’s also Bullock’s
self-deprecating comedic gift—the homecoming queen who never quite got the hang
of walking in heels. This ability to laugh at herself exists in real life:
Bullock is the only actress to show up in person to collect her “Razzie” for
Worst Actress (for 2009’s forgotten All About Steve) in the same season
she won the coveted Oscar. “She’s incredibly funny, but the butt of almost all
her jokes is herself,” says George Clooney, whom Bullock thanked from the
Academy’s stage for throwing her in a swimming pool years ago. “That’s just an
appealing quality.”
But the appreciation of Sandra Bullock always tends to
circle back to a single, squishy word: relatability. Consciously or not,
Bullock tends to remind people of someone they know—a best friend, a forgetful
roommate, a favorite cousin. Audiences get behind her, connect to her, root for
her because they recognize the person she is. It sounds so simple, and yet it
is not. It is a golden quality. Clooney, who costars alongside Bullock in
October’s 3-D space adventure, Gravity, puts it this way: “There has
always been a really levelheaded, smart, funny girl you feel like you know. As
if she was the cool girl next to you in school.”
Learn more about Sandra Bullock in Voguepedia.
Learn more about Sandra Bullock in Voguepedia.
This is something of a policy. Great care is taken at Sandra
Bullock Industries, Inc., to stay grounded, to live as normal a life as
possible. The center of the universe is Bullock’s son, Louis, adopted in
January 2010, now three. There are birthday parties and children’s books, and
cheetah-print pajamas that Louis likes his mom to wear. There’s an entourage
that’s not exactly red-carpet: a two-legged pet dog named Ruby, a three-legged
dog named Poppy (“Basically one dog with an extra leg”), a fish named Rave
after the Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens, and a stray deer that has shown
up in the backyard of Bullock’s Austin house; Louis has named it Gofi for
reasons only Louis knows. Back in California, where she also has a home, she
keeps chickens named for comediennes: Carol Burnett, Wanda Sykes, and a Phyllis
Diller, until she was revealed to be a rooster and rechristened Phil Diller.
“Work was my life before,” Bullock says. “Now I have no reason to leave home.” She reaches across the table and sticks a
fork in my dessert, lifting a bite into her mouth. “Quality control,” she says.
Cautiously, Bullock has been stepping back into her day job.
Until The Heat, she had appeared in only one film since her Oscar, Extremely
Loud & Incredibly Close, released in 2011. Now comes Gravity, an
intimate epic years in the making, from the acclaimed Mexican director Alfonso
Cuarón (Children of Men, Y Tu Mamá También). The story of Bullock and Gravity
begins in Austin, specifically at the Four Seasons Hotel several blocks away,
where Cuarón had flown in to talk to Bullock about this long-gestating idea he
had for a movie about astronauts. He wanted Bullock to consider the highly
sought-after centerpiece part: Dr. Ryan Stone, a NASA medical engineer working
for the first time aboard the space shuttle when a disaster strikes, stranding
Dr. Stone in space, cut off from all contact, running out of oxygen, desperate
to find her way back to Earth.
Bullock was a massive fan of Cuarón’s—she jokes that she
would have taken a part in Alfonso Cuarón’s Garfield IV—but the role of
Dr. Stone gave her a knot in the stomach, especially when the director
excitedly explained how the film would replicate antigravity: by putting
Bullock inside a specialized airplane nicknamed the Vomit Comet, plunging out
of the sky to create brief moments of weightlessness. “I’m petrified of
flying,” Bullock says. “Plummeting out of the sky was not my idea of how I
wanted to work with Alfonso Cuarón. But at one point I sat down and said,
‘What is it about this movie that is telling me to get off my ass and get over
something that has paralyzed me?’ ” Bullock
put her fears aside and signed on, and it wasn’t until shortly before shooting
began that she learned the Vomit Comet had been mercifully canceled for reasons
of logistics (it turned out it was possible to film weightlessness inside the
plane only in bursts of 20 seconds, making long takes impossible). Instead, Gravity
was filmed on an elaborate set in London, using puppeteers from the stage
production of War Horse to simulate astronauts floating through the
weightless environment. Bullock was outfitted in carbon-fiber plates and
connected to a dozen wires, and together the actress and her puppeteers
mastered the art of floating in a space suit, which basically looks like
swimming through pudding. Cuarón says the process was difficult, sometimes
painful for Bullock. “But after not having to do the Vomit Comet, she was so
happy, she didn’t care.”
Bullock’s Dr. Stone spends much of the movie on her own, and
the same was true during filmmaking, as Bullock worked long days in a space
suit suspended in darkness, listening to Cuarón via an earpiece, guiding her
attention to a string of LED lights meant to represent things like a space
station, or Clooney’s character, who is also stranded. Obsessive attention was paid to details such
as breathing and moving. (“You have to speak quickly and move slowly,” says
Clooney. “Sounds easy, but it’s hard to do.”) Dr. Stone is haunted by a past
tragedy, and Bullock wanted her to resemble a person who had “become a shell,”
so she underwent a grueling physical-training regimen designed to strip away
“almost everything that possibly made her a woman.” A dancer since childhood,
Bullock found a pair of Australian dancers who served as her trainers. “They
created a way of working out that I could tolerate,” she says. “I don’t want to
feel like I’m in a gym.”
Watch Sandra Bullock behind the scenes of her October cover shoot with Peter Lindbergh.
Watch Sandra Bullock behind the scenes of her October cover shoot with Peter Lindbergh.
Gravity is Cuarón’s first movie in nearly seven
years, and the final product is extraordinary in both its ambition and its
soulfulness. Audiences will be mesmerized by its special effects and attention
to detail—great care has been taken to re-create a true outer-space
environment—but the film also doubles as a meditation on loss. “We wanted to do
a film that was deeply emotional,” says Cuarón, who succinctly describes Gravity
as a film about “rebirth.” The director says it wasn’t until shooting was
finished and editing commenced that he began to notice all the subtle textures
of Bullock’s performance, almost all of it done working against a green screen.
“It was an amazing exercise of make-believe,” Cuarón says. “Watching in the
cutting room, seeing all those beats together . . . her breaths, the fear in
her face . . . it was incredible.”
Bullock sees Gravity as a “once-in-a-lifetime”
opportunity. “You check it off and go, ‘If it ends here, I’ve ended up on top,’
” she says. “There’s nothing else to do.”
When the film wrapped, an exhausted Bullock wanted something completely
different. “I was like, ‘I need my funny,’ she says. This led her to The
Heat, shot last summer in Boston with McCarthy, fresh off the breakout
smash Bridesmaids. Bullock credits the success of Bridesmaids
with helping The Heat happen, since it put to rest the dubious
proposition that audiences wouldn’t support a female-driven comedy. Written by
Katie Dippold and directed by Bridesmaids director Paul Feig, The
Heat has already grossed nearly $200 million worldwide. I saw it in a
packed theater not long after it opened, and the anticipation resembled Super
Bowl Sunday, as if the audience couldn’t wait to see the comedic
combination—Bullock playing it straight as a taciturn FBI agent; McCarthy
crashing through doors as a foulmouthed Boston cop.
The pair’s chemistry was undeniable. “In comedy you just
know right away,” says Bullock. “Melissa’s pure genius, you know? Everyone was
just waiting to see what would come out of that woman’s mouth.” What was novel about The Heat was
seeing Bullock, a proven comedian, graciously take a step back and let another
star shine. “If she wanted to, she could have stolen every scene in that
movie,” confesses McCarthy. “She could have easily been like, ‘I’m Sandra
Bullock. And you can walk behind me.’ Instead, she was like, ‘Come up here.
Let’s figure this out together.’ That was a pretty amazing thing to be part
of.”
After nearly 40 films (!), Bullock knows when to play it
big, and when to close the valves and keep a performance measured. This kind of
self-awareness elevated The Blind Side, a true story about an affluent
white family that took in an African-American teenager who later went on to
play pro football. Bullock was initially hesitant to get involved with the
inspirational project, fearing it might be too hokey. “I turned it down three, four times,” she
says. “I was so worried about it being a Lifetime movie.” Director John Lee
Hancock convinced her otherwise, but the first week of shooting was rocky.
Bullock admits she struggled to find her rhythm playing Leigh Anne Tuohy, a
larger-than-life Memphis powerhouse. “I could not make it work,” Bullock
recalls. “I thought, I’m going to get roasted. I’m going to get creamed for
this.”
But Bullock found the proper balance, and her performance as
Tuohy was an exuberant surprise. So was The Blind Side, which started
slowly at the box office but rallied via word of mouth, grossing more than $300
million on a $29 million budget. Bullock was at first an unlikely Oscar
candidate, but the momentum grew gradually. This was her moment. Her friend Sue
Kroll, the president of global marketing and distribution of Warner Bros.,
remembers being at the Screen Actors Guild Awards that season and seeing a room
of actors erupt almost giddily when Bullock’s name was announced. “There was
genuine warmth,” Kroll recalls. “People were happy for her.” The Academy Awards that year felt like a
cheery validation. Bullock wore a silvery, beaded Marchesa dress, and when her
name was announced, she looked composed but stunned, rising from her chair and
turning to her co-nominee Meryl Streep as if to ask: Did that actually happen?
Her first line from the stage was classic Bullock self-deprecation: “Did I
really earn this, or did I just wear y’all down?”
Of course, it is difficult to discuss that time in Bullock’s life without recalling the ugly mess that immediately followed. Only days after the Oscars, tabloid reports emerged that Bullock’s husband, motorcycle builder turned reality-TV star Jesse James, had been enmeshed in an extramarital affair. Bullock canceled a Blind Side promotional appearance in Europe for “unforeseen personal reasons” and fell off the radar as the story roiled for weeks. James would apologize for causing “pain and embarrassment”; the pair was divorced within months. From any angle, it looked like an agonizing nightmare, played out in public. Bullock won’t get into specifics of the split or X-ray its details. She understands the fascination, but she isn’t going to examine it all. There is little doubt that the episode only furthered the public’s affection for her; more than ever, her audience stood behind her, eager to pick her back up. But a few years removed, Bullock is intent on letting the past stay in the past. “We’re all where we’re supposed to be,” she says now. “I am exactly where I want to be now. You can’t go backward. I’m not going backward. I’m grateful that I’m here, blessed to have what I have. Nobody can be prepared for anything. If you end up in a place where you can look back and go, ‘It happened, but I’m so lucky to be sitting where I am sitting. . . .’ ” Bullock doesn’t complete the thought, but it is clear what she means.
Of course, it is difficult to discuss that time in Bullock’s life without recalling the ugly mess that immediately followed. Only days after the Oscars, tabloid reports emerged that Bullock’s husband, motorcycle builder turned reality-TV star Jesse James, had been enmeshed in an extramarital affair. Bullock canceled a Blind Side promotional appearance in Europe for “unforeseen personal reasons” and fell off the radar as the story roiled for weeks. James would apologize for causing “pain and embarrassment”; the pair was divorced within months. From any angle, it looked like an agonizing nightmare, played out in public. Bullock won’t get into specifics of the split or X-ray its details. She understands the fascination, but she isn’t going to examine it all. There is little doubt that the episode only furthered the public’s affection for her; more than ever, her audience stood behind her, eager to pick her back up. But a few years removed, Bullock is intent on letting the past stay in the past. “We’re all where we’re supposed to be,” she says now. “I am exactly where I want to be now. You can’t go backward. I’m not going backward. I’m grateful that I’m here, blessed to have what I have. Nobody can be prepared for anything. If you end up in a place where you can look back and go, ‘It happened, but I’m so lucky to be sitting where I am sitting. . . .’ ” Bullock doesn’t complete the thought, but it is clear what she means.
What is astonishing about that frenzied period before and
after the Oscars is that it corresponded with the happiest moment in Bullock’s
life: the arrival of Louis. Born in New Orleans, he entered her world in
January of 2010, and it’s something of a tiny miracle that the secret lasted
through awards season, when Bullock was in the public eye almost daily, doing
publicity for The Blind Side, making small talk on the red carpet. She
remembers telephone interviews at her home in which the interviewer had no idea
of the scoop on the other end: baby Louis, weeks old, nestled in her lap.
“Thank God for the mute button,” Bullock jokes. Bullock had wanted to adopt for
a long time. Reports that she was inspired by The Blind Side were wrong;
the process had been initiated years before. Still, Louis’s arrival was sudden.
A call came; Bullock scrambled to get ready. “There was no crib, nothing,” she
says. “It was amazing how you just kick in and go, ‘This is it.’ ”
Her life was transformed. She was stunned, exhausted, sleep-deprived,
ecstatic. She thought about screaming out the news at the Oscars—“I wanted to
get up there and say, ‘Guess what?’ ”—but she decided against it. She did make
a veiled reference, however, thanking “moms that take care of the babies and
the children no matter where they come from.” Everyone assumed she was
referring to the movie and Leigh Anne Tuohy, and she was. But she was also
speaking about herself.
Bullock and Louis (pronounced LOU-ee) remain an inseparable
tandem. “Louis is number one, and the next one down is 101,” says McCarthy. “He
takes up the first hundred slots in her life.” McCarthy’s children grew close
with Louis during the making of The Heat; Louis had his own kid zone on
the London set of Gravity. (While Mom had her photograph taken for this
issue of Vogue, Louis was also outfitted with his own NASA suit.)
Bullock customizes her life around his, trying to minimize interruptions. “I
think this business can take the child out of kids so quickly,” she says. “I
don’t want him to have pressures brought on by what I do. I will quit. I will
leave. If I see whatever I’m doing affecting him negatively, I will pack up and
move to Alaska.”
Bullock says Louis is only vaguely aware of his mother’s day
job. To him, she is somebody better. The hugger, the holder, the keeper of the
food. The reader of Thomas the Tank Engine and The Runaway Bunny.
Theirs is a quiet, domestic life. Bullock jokes that it’s been a while since
her name surfaced in any tabloid stories. No secret wedding speculation. The latest
untrue rumor was that Bullock was dating her security guard, Peter, which only
infuriated Peter’s wife when a tabloid printed her name and age. “That’s what
makes me want to step out of this business,” Bullock says. “When it hurts
amazing people I’ve gotten to know. This is family, you know what I mean?” It will not surprise you that Sandra Bullock
is not on Twitter.
How come you’re not on Twitter? “I don’t want anyone to know where I am.”
This explains Austin, where nobody cares about the box office,
the paparazzi do not lurk behind mailboxes, and Bullock can waltz through her
restaurants like the detail-obsessed small-business owner she wants to be.
“It’s as if she has no idea that she’s one of the most famous people on the
planet,” says McCarthy. “She’s just solidly who she is. I don’t know what she
thinks, but she’s never getting rid of me.”
Bullock will voice a character in an animated comedy next year; there
are rumblings of a sequel to The Heat. “I’m just sort of seeing where
life goes,” she says. She is open to the idea of more children. “If all of a
sudden someone said, ‘You have five more kids,’ I’d be totally OK with it.” At
the moment, “I’m having such an amazing time. Whatever comes our way, we handle
as a family. It’s not just me anymore.”
At night, Bullock and Louis perform a little mother-and-son
ritual they call the Grateful List, in which they express their gratitude for
whatever comes to mind. Sometimes they’re grateful for big things. Sometimes
it’s little things. Louis might say he is grateful for his toy cars, his food,
his friends. Next to him is a movie star whom everybody knows, but none of that
matters. It doesn’t matter to Sandra Bullock, either. Everything she is
grateful for at that moment is right there in that room. It sounds perfect. It
sounds close to normal. It sounds like a life.
Sandra
Bullock Opens Up In Vogue About Son Louis And Her Career
(By Nardine Saad,
latimes.com, September 17, 2013)
As if we need another reason to love Sandra
Bullock. "The Heat"
star is Vogue magazine's October 2013 cover girl just before the release of her
highly anticipated lost-in-space thriller "Gravity," co-starring
George Clooney and helmed by Spanish director Alfonso Cuaron. She calls Cuaron's groundbreaking film — his
first in seven years — "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" and her
performance is already generating Oscar buzz.
Bullock has been in the spotlight since the 1990s and writer Jason Gay
harps on her relatability in the piece, her 40 films and $3.5 billion in
accumulated global box office. He even
quotes Clooney to enforce Bullock's down-to-earth qualities. "There has always been a really
level-headed, smart, funny girl you feel like you know. As if she was the cool
girl next to you in school," Clooney said. "She's incredibly funny,
but the butt of almost all her jokes is herself. That's just an appealing quality."
But the writer takes measure to ensure people get to know
Bullock in the piece, all that fame and tabloid fodder aside. Life has obviously changed for the Oscar
winner since her scandalous divorce from reality TV biker Jesse James.
Fresh off her industry accolade for playing powerhouse Leigh Anne Tuohy in the
football drama "The Blind Side," she was immersed in the world of
tabloid gossip that emerged from James' cheating scandal. Their five-year
marriage ended soon after. Though she
wouldn't go into too much detail about the past, she is pretty zen about the
whole ordeal. "We're all where
we're supposed to be," she told the mag. "I am exactly where I want
to be now. You can't go backward. I'm not going backward. I'm grateful that I'm
here, blessed to have what I have. Nobody can be prepared for anything. If you
end up in a place where you can look back and go, 'It happened, but I'm so
lucky to be sitting where I am sitting...' "
Bullock filed for divorce in April 2010 saying the marriage
had "become insupportable because of discord or conflict of
personalities." The proceedings were finalized in June of that year. During the process, her son Louis, 3, became
the center of her universe after she adopted him that January. "Work was my life before," Bullock
said. "Now I have no reason to leave home." Louis, born in New Orleans, arrived suddenly
after a years-long process and somehow managed to stay a secret while she was
doing the rounds during the award season.
"There was no crib, nothing," she said. "It was amazing
how you just kick in and go, 'This is it.'"
The actress was tempted to announce his arrival during his
Oscar speech, but instead decided to thank "moms that take care of the
babies and the children no matter where they come from." Melissa
McCarthy, her costar from "The Heat," said Louis is Bullock's
"number one, and the next one down is 101. He takes up the first hundred
slots in her life." And it's true.
The actress has appeared in only a few films in recent years -- 2011's
"Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" and this summer's surprise
hit "The Heat." She works tirelessly to make sure her son has a
normal life and stays a kid for as long as he can, even if that means her
leaving the industry. "I think this
business can take the child out of kids so quickly," Bullock said. "I
don't want him to have pressures brought on by what I do. I will quit. I will
leave. If I see whatever I'm doing affecting him negatively, I will pack up and
move to Alaska."
It's the negativity that makes her want to leave. "That's what makes me want to step out
of this business," Bullock said referring to a tabloid story about an
alleged (and untrue) affair that affected her security guard's wife. "When
it hurts amazing people I've gotten to know. This is family, you know what I
mean?" The 49-year-old is open to
having more kids and signing up for a sequel to "The Heat," but for
now she's just "sort of seeing where life goes. If all of a sudden someone said, ‘You have
five more kids,' I'd be totally OK with it," she said. "I'm having
such an amazing time. Whatever comes our way, we handle as a family. It's not
just me anymore."
And that's probably why she has ventured out to businesses
away from Hollywood. Bullock opened a flower shop/bakery and
law-office-turned-bistro in Austin, Texas, where she lives. "The acting thing is so beyond my
control. Acting isn't mine. You're like a tiny piece in this big, corporate
mechanism that needs chemistry and divine intervention," she said.
"This is mine," she added, referring to her Austin-based businesses. And that already harsh spotlight is just
another reason for her not to be on Twitter.
"I don't want anyone to know where I am." For now, we can find her and her new cropped
haircut on the cover of the mag, which hits newsstands Sept. 24.
"Gravity" launches in theaters Oct. 4.
Sandra Bullock:
How My Time-Out Led To 'Gravity'
(By Tatiana
Siegel, Borys Kit, Hollywood Reporter, 11 September 2013)
"The minute
the headgear went on, it was silent," says Bullock of "Gravity."
"I didn't hear the crew, didn't hear the mechanics. But it was probably
really helpful."
After recovering
from an adoption and a painful divorce, the star cemented her A-list status
with her stunning turn in Alfonso Cuaron's sci-fi drama, co-starring George Clooney. With her career cresting after a best actress
Oscar win in 2010 for The Blind Side, Sandra Bullock made
an unlikely move. She quietly put acting on hold, sweeping aside the torrent of
offers. "I really had no desire to work at that time," recalls
Bullock, who was a new mother in the middle of a very public divorce from
motorcycle personality Jesse James.
But director Alfonso Cuaron flew to Bullock's home in
Austin to discuss his space odyssey Gravity and coax her back from
exile. "We didn't talk about space or technology," explains Cuaron.
"We only talked about feelings. The theme of adversity was something very
fresh in her life. We spent a whole evening just discussing how it shapes your
life."
Three years
later, Bullock is being hailed for Gravity and a performance that
perhaps is a career best -- a role so challenging that it required the actress
to complete most of her scenes isolated in a light tube without sound. The fact
that the film, opening Oct. 4, also holds great box-office potential reflects
Bullock's own career arc and its melding of high quality and commerciality. "By the end [of our meeting], I still
wasn't sure how I would execute a project like this," says Bullock.
"But I met someone whom I had a great connection with. It made it a lot
easier to answer, 'Am I going to pass up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?'
"
Guided by
longtime CAA agent Kevin Huvane, Bullock, 49, has built one of
Hollywood's most enduring careers by seizing opportunity at the precise moment
and avoiding the overexposure that has toppled many others. She first cracked
the highest echelon of film stars nearly two decades ago with her breakout
action hit Speed. Since then, she earned a perch as one of the most
bankable actresses with such hits as While You Were Sleeping, Miss
Congeniality, Crash and The Proposal, oscillating between
romantic comedies and heavy dramas.
Since winning the
Oscar, Bullock only has shot three films: the post-9/11 drama Extremely Loud
& Incredibly Close, Gravity and summer hit The Heat,
which has earned $218 million worldwide. The three films showcase a range that
few could have anticipated back when Hollywood had branded her the girl next
door. In the case of Gravity, she carries the film almost entirely on
her padded spacesuit (co-star George Clooney enjoys far less
screen time). "She brings a real strength, a real physicality," says Gravity
producer David Heyman. "But she also brings a tenderness and
vulnerability. It's a rare combination."
Why 'Gravity's' Alfonso Cuaron Thanked James Cameron
In The Credits
(By Matthew
Belloni, Hollywood Reporter, 5 September 2013)
It has been
seven years since Alfonso Cuaron’s previous film (Children of Men), but the
51-year-old Mexican filmmaker hasn't been wasting time. Gravity, his hugely
ambitious space thriller starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, required
years to research, write (with son Jonas) and seamlessly visualize (actors'
faces often are the only non-CG elements of scenes). After winning raves at
Venice and Telluride, the film arrives Sept. 8 at Toronto ahead of an Oct. 4
wide release and likely awards run.
The film's opening scene
is a 13-minute showstopper. How long did it take you to choreograph everything?
You're asking why this movie took four-and-a-half years to
make. (Laughs.)
The logistical
details of being trapped in space feel totally authentic. Did you have NASA consultants?
Some were astronauts or people involved with the Hubble
telescope. It was constant research. Even how people float, action and reaction
-- that's the weirdest thing with micro-gravity, the way bodies react to other
bodies.
When writing essentially
a two-person screenplay, did you feel you needed two big stars to carry the
film?
The camera was relentlessly on Sandra Bullock for a long,
long, long, long period. We needed someone to really be able to sustain that
because the whole film was going to be on her shoulders.
What surprised you
most about Bullock?
Amazing discipline. She had to pretty much learn scenes like
a ballerina learning choreography. She was performing inside a box of light
with almost no reference to what was going on outside. We would say, "OK,
exactly at this moment, you have to look up here, George is on your left, but
remember that you are spinning so that is going to change, next time you refer
to George, he's going to be over there." She would take her time to absorb
everything, so when we started rolling cameras, everything was pure performance
and emotion.
In the credits, you
thank James Cameron. Why?
This film was a miscalculation. There was not technology for
what we were trying to achieve. But [Cameron] was a big champion. He said,
"Man, you're going to make this happen," and started giving me
pointers. And we made it happen.
'Gravity' And Stars Bullock And
Clooney Are Out Of This World, Oscar-Bound
(By Scott Feinberg , Hollywood Reporter, 31 August 2013)
Gravity,
Alfonso Cuaron's highly anticipated 3D drama about two American astronauts who
become lost in space and struggle to survive after a freak accident, made its
North American debut Saturday night at the new Werner Herzog Theater, three
days after its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The film, which is
drawn from a script co-written by the Mexican director and his son Jonas
Cuaron, was greeted with hearty applause, not only for its awe-inspiring
visuals but also for Sandra Bullock and George Clooney's first-rate
performances under the most constrained of circumstances. Warner Bros. will
release the film stateside Oct. 4. I
would frankly be shocked if the film isn't nominated for Oscars for best
picture, best director, best actress (Bullock), best original screenplay, best
cinematography, best film editing, best sound editing, best sound mixing and
best visual effects. I think best supporting actor (Clooney) is also within the
realm of possibility.
It may sound
hyperbolic, but Gravity is truly one of the most visually magnificent films
that I have ever seen. It creates a sense of genuine majesty and wonder about
space and space travel that has long been absent from the big screen. Indeed, I
imagine that the experience of watching it is akin only to the experience that
I've often heard described of seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars during
their initial runs. This is attributable to a blend of Emmanuel Lubezki's
cinematography and the visual effects work supervised by Tim Webber, both of
whom are longtime Cuaron collaborators. I can't even begin to tell you how the
actors were made to appear gravity-free, but I can tell you it never rang
false. The same can be said for the film's sound work, which, unlike that on
many other films set in space, adheres to the scientific reality of what space
is actually like: almost silent, even when chaos is occurring.
As for the
portrayals of the astronauts in peril, who start out as strangers but bond
under pressure, one couldn't have asked for more from Bullock and Clooney, who
happen to be old pals in real life. Clooney's Kowalski is the higher ranking of
the two, but Bullock's Stone is the main protagonist, and, thanks to his
encouragement and guidance, she develops the confidence and will necessary to
fight the odds. Bullock, struggling to remain calm under pressure, evokes
memories of her star-making performance in 1994's Speed, 19 years and one best
actress Oscar ago. Clooney, meanwhile, puts his famous charm to good use, and
is rewarded with one dramatic scene, in particular, that could earn him a
return ticket to the Oscars.
The legacy
of this film, apart from great reviews and big box office, might well turn out
to be that it restores interest in space exploration, which has long been
waning, even in spite of the dangers so frighteningly depicted in the film.
That would be the ultimate testament to what a magnificent moviegoing
experience Gravity provides.
'Gravity': What The Critics Are
Saying
(By Stephanie Chan, Hollywood Reporter, 28 August 2013)
Gravity
tells the story of a medical engineer named Dr. Ryan Stone (Bullock) who
embarks on her first space shuttle mission, accompanied by astronaut Matt
Kowalsky (Clooney). When an accident happens during a space walk, they must
work together to survive. The Alfonso
Cuaron-directed movie will make its North America premiere at the Toronto
International Film Festival this year before opening wide on Oct. 4.
See what Hollywood critics have to say about Gravity:
The Hollywood Reporter's chief film critic Todd McCarthy was
impressed by the sci-fi drama, "At once the most realistic and beautifully
choreographed film ever set in space, Gravity is a thrillingly realized
survival story spiked with interludes of breath-catching tension and startling
surprise." McCarthy added, "Graced by exemplary 3D work and bound to
look great in Imax, the film seems set to soar commercially around the
world."
Geoffrey Macnab from The Independent described the film as
"a visual triumph even if its storytelling is less than sure-footed."
The U.K. reporter noted that the "opening scenes have a mesmerizing,
abstract beauty," but thought there was one issue with the movie.
"The one problem with Gravity is that the plotting never quite matches its
visual imagination. There isn’t the same urgency or plausibility here found in
J.C. Chandor's recent, similarly themed All Is Lost (which featured Robert
Redford as a lone sailor whose boat is sinking.)," wrote Macnab.
"Even so, this is a film that, at its best, really does induce a sense of
wonder."
The Telegraph's Robbie Collin also found the film visually
compelling, "They spin through empty space, and so does the camera, in a
series of moves so intricate and yet so natural that only after you leave the
cinema do you realise the feats of visual choreography involved."
Bullock's performance didn't go unnoticed either, "Bullock is the
undoubted star and is seriously good here, giving Stone an inner steeliness
that only the very deepest pangs of despair can unsheathe."
The Guardian's Xan Brooks, who was left uninterested by last
year's Venice Film Festival opener, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, said
"Gravity provides an altogether more assured curtain-raiser. It comes
blowing in from the ether like some weightless black nightmare, hanging planet
Earth at crazy angles behind the action."
Over at Screen International, Mark Adams stated that
"There will be little disappointment from audiences who are likely to be
thrilled by the well-sustained edge-of-the-seat thrills as this space-bound
film follows the well-worn disaster movie format and keeps things tense right
up until the final scenes." Adams was also awed by Gravity's visuals,
describing how director Cuaron "mixes almost balletic, spiraling, scenes
as space craft are torn apart and mere humans in delicate space suits are
thrown into the void with moments of quiet beauty as the two intrepid
astronauts relish the beautiful vistas and deadly beauty they find themselves
amongst."
Sandra (Bullock) + Melissa (McCarthy)
= A Real Hollywood Friendship
(By Anne-Marie O’Neil, Parade Magazine, June 6, 2013)
In this
Sunday’s issue, Parade interviews Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, stars of
the upcoming buddy-cop comedy The
Heat. Although the two actresses hadn’t met before working on this movie,
they developed the kind of camaraderie that even Oscar and Emmy winners can’t
fake. Director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids)
notes that they were “inseparable…normally after movies, those friendships go
away. Theirs blossomed.” Back in L.A., Bullock and her 3-year-old son, Louis,
regularly spend quality time with McCarthy, her actor husband Ben Falcone,
and their daughters, Vivian, 6, and Georgette, 3. In the Parade interview they
compare notes on working together and their mixed feelings about being working
moms; they also rib each other mercilessly. Read a few
highlights from the interview below and be sure to check out the full story in
this weekend’s issue of Parade.
On working together:
Sandra: “I’ve always wanted to do a female buddy film, the kind the guys get to do. This didn’t have anything to do with getting a guy, and it didn’t involve shoe shopping…I’d seen Bridesmaids, and I said, ‘If Melissa McCarthy wants to work with me…’ The first week I was like, ‘What is she doing? That’s not in the script.’ I was the lone actor, jack-of-one-trade, in a room full of improv actors and stand-up comedians. I mean, you should just listen to the stuff that comes out of her mouth.”
Melissa (to
Sandra): “Before I knew
you—don’t listen, I don’t want you to get cocky—I was asked in an interview who
I thought was funny, and I said you…I love to watch someone who just goes for
it and isn’t worried about whether it’s silly or awkward or unflattering.”
On what they
have in common:
Sandra: “Having kids connected us on a deeper level. And the things we’re obsessed with outside of being a mom are the same, too: construction and house renovation…. We’re kindred spirits in that world. If we had a beer den, with Barcaloungers—but our version of that—it’d be great.”
Melissa: “There’d be fabric swatches everywhere. And reclaimed wood.”
Sandra: “Having kids connected us on a deeper level. And the things we’re obsessed with outside of being a mom are the same, too: construction and house renovation…. We’re kindred spirits in that world. If we had a beer den, with Barcaloungers—but our version of that—it’d be great.”
Melissa: “There’d be fabric swatches everywhere. And reclaimed wood.”
On whether
they worry about being good or bad moms:
Sandra: “Every single second of every single day…I don’t know if I feel like a bad mom, but at the end of the day I’m always plagued with, did I do enough? Should I go in a different direction? But I also know that my entire life revolves around Louis.”
Melissa: “It plagues me. I feel intensely guilty for working…You have to be able to provide for your kids. But I feel like it’s a weird modern phenomenon that you always feel guilty for it.”
Sandra: “Every single second of every single day…I don’t know if I feel like a bad mom, but at the end of the day I’m always plagued with, did I do enough? Should I go in a different direction? But I also know that my entire life revolves around Louis.”
Melissa: “It plagues me. I feel intensely guilty for working…You have to be able to provide for your kids. But I feel like it’s a weird modern phenomenon that you always feel guilty for it.”
On the
problems created by fame and paparazzi…and L.A.:
Sandra: ”We’re adults, and we’re fair game—not that I like being photographed going in and out of school in my sweatpants. But I instinctively throw things over Louis’s head….He doesn’t like [the paparazzi]. He gives them the stink-eye, and they’re like, ‘That’s such an angry kid,’ but I look at them and say, ‘Only when you guys are around’…I don’t raise Louis in Hollywood. I raise him in my world. To me the good thing about living in L.A. is diversity in lifestyle choices, color, and religion. I want Louis to look around and see every color under the sun. I also have the luxury of splitting my time between L.A. and Austin.”
Melissa: ”Strangers shouldn’t be allowed to take a picture of your child and sell it for profit. They think, ‘We’re putting out a product,’ but you’re putting out a child….Ben and I have absolutely nothing to do with the Hollywood that’s all actors and the Sunset Strip. We crave talking to people who do different things and are passionate about it. We have some of the most rock-solid, lovely friends in the world.”
Sandra: ”We’re adults, and we’re fair game—not that I like being photographed going in and out of school in my sweatpants. But I instinctively throw things over Louis’s head….He doesn’t like [the paparazzi]. He gives them the stink-eye, and they’re like, ‘That’s such an angry kid,’ but I look at them and say, ‘Only when you guys are around’…I don’t raise Louis in Hollywood. I raise him in my world. To me the good thing about living in L.A. is diversity in lifestyle choices, color, and religion. I want Louis to look around and see every color under the sun. I also have the luxury of splitting my time between L.A. and Austin.”
Melissa: ”Strangers shouldn’t be allowed to take a picture of your child and sell it for profit. They think, ‘We’re putting out a product,’ but you’re putting out a child….Ben and I have absolutely nothing to do with the Hollywood that’s all actors and the Sunset Strip. We crave talking to people who do different things and are passionate about it. We have some of the most rock-solid, lovely friends in the world.”
Sandra
Bullock Performs Naked Intervention on Chelsea Handler
(By Rebecca Ford, Hollywood Reporter, 16
October 2012)
Sandra
Bullock is
sharing the naked truth with Chelsea Handler.
In a clip that aired during Monday’s
episode of Chelsea Lately, Bullock got
extremely loud and incredibly close to the late-night host to drop some wisdom
on her about her hosting skills. The
clip starts out with Handler naked in the shower, and then the Blind Side actress – also in the buff – appears.
Bullock quickly begins telling Handler that she needs to worry about “pulling
her shit together with this fancy new stage.”
“You have a responsibility to be a
respectable talk show host. This comes directly from Oprah's
mouth to my ear, to my mouth, out of my mouth, into your ear, down your body, out your vagina, up my vagina and out my a--,” says Bullock at a rapid pace. Bullock tells Handler to “lay off the booze,” and “stop sleeping with your guests.” “That is why I've not done your show -- I do not want sleep with you,” she says.
mouth to my ear, to my mouth, out of my mouth, into your ear, down your body, out your vagina, up my vagina and out my a--,” says Bullock at a rapid pace. Bullock tells Handler to “lay off the booze,” and “stop sleeping with your guests.” “That is why I've not done your show -- I do not want sleep with you,” she says.
Bullock goes on to slap Handler a couple
times as her tirade continues. There’s more talk about Oprah and urinating
before Bullock turns the talk to Handler’s body. “All
of this is disgusting. This is f—-ing sick. Bye,” Bullock says before leaving. Handler’s guests on Monday night in her new
studio included Jennifer Aniston, who got a little
teary
when speaking about her engagement to Justin Theroux. Chandler has been celebrating
her move to her new studio for several weeks by sharing interesting videos,
including one featuring Cameron Diaz and Gwyneth Paltrow performing a dirty rap.
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