?The Other Boleyn Girl?
Topic: The Film Industry


I have just got back from filming “The Other Boleyn Girl” in the UK. I plan on having a showing and going to my bed. But I know that was an imposable dream because has soon has my lights went on in my house. I had friends around giving me all there gossip and wanting to know all about the film location and what the film is all about.
For three mouths that’s how long I have been away I had the best and mouths of 2006 especially working with this film crew and of cores Natalie Portman. I have worked on films with Ms Portman before but that was me being apart of a big film crew, this time it was a little bit different that it was all English film crew and she know me from before, obviously it was had work. I'd loved ever time of it.
Scarlett Johansson along with Eric Bana and Natalie Portman are the A list stars that will be spotted around Lacock this was the first film location.
A-LIST stars Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman could be spotted in Lacock over the first few weeks as film crews return to the picturesque village.
The two actresses are starring in The Other Boleyn Girl, the tale of sisters Anne and Mary Boleyn, who are rivals for the heart of Henry VIII.
This unspoilt village stands at the gates of Lacock Abbey. There was a settlement here before Saxon times but Lacock first became important in the Middle Ages when a planned village was established for the estate workers of the abbey in the 13th century.
From the 14th to the 18th century the wool trade brought wealth to the village and the weekly market set up by Ela Countess of Salisbury, the founder of the abbey, added to its prosperity.
Lacock's location was ideal to take full advantage of this trade. The village is a day's journey from the fine grazing lands on the Cotswolds and Marlborough Downs, it is a staging post on the road connecting the wool trade centres in the West Country and has access to the sea via the River Avon.
A publicist for the film confirmed the stars would be arriving in Lacock to film scenes in the coming weeks.
"We will be filming in Lacock Abbey over the next few weeks. It just looks right for the period and we look forward to filming there enormously," she said.
Australian actor Eric Bana, who appeared in Munich and Troy, will also be starring in the film and will play the part of Henry VIII.
Lacock has been the location for a number of other films and television dramas and has featured in adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, The Mayor of Casterbridge and the first two Harry Potter films.
Many Lacock residents were upset three years ago when it was announced Harry Potter would no longer be filmed in the Abbey and have welcomed the news film crews will be returning to the village.
Jean Sheard, who works in the Lacock bakery, said: "I think it's absolutely great. We all love anything like that and I'm looking forward to it. Filming always has a high interest and I love to watch them. We'll be looking out for the stars."
Parish councillor Christopher Doel said he was not aware filming was about to take place but was pleased Lacock was still popular with film producers.
"It's always quite enjoyable to have something like this.
"It won't affect the village if it is just using the Abbey as they have their own facilities.
"It's always quite nice when they choose Lacock though and keeps our name on the map."
The Other Boleyn Girl is based on the novel of the same name, by Philippa Gregory and has been adapted by Peter Morgan, who wrote the two-part TV drama Henry VIII.
It is the first feature film for director Justin Chadwick, who won a BAFTA for his direction of the recent BBC adaptation of Bleak House.
Scarlett Johansson, 21, plays Mary Boleyn in the film. She is famous for her roles in Lost in Translation, The Girl with the Pearl Earring and Woody Allen's Match Point.
Natalie Portman, 25, who plays Anne Boleyn in the production, shot to fame after appearing in the Star Wars trilogy and was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Closer.
So we are back the film crew and the days are already getting shorter and we have not started filming.
News of their arrival had travelled far and one woman, Rosemary Greeley, made a special trip to the National-Trust-owned building in the hope that she would see her favourite actress.
The 41-year-old from Boston, Massachusetts, USA, said: "I love Scarlett Johansson. She always gets the good roles and I have read the book the film is based on so I know it is a good story.
"I am visiting friends in England so it was a perfect excuse to come to Wiltshire and Lacock is just so beautiful.
"I have not seen Scarlett yet but watched Natalie Portman and Eric Bana do a scene together which was wonderful."
A National Trust volunteer on duty during the filming had a more intimate encounter with one of the actresses on the day.
He said: "I was in the restroom which is next to the toilet and Natalie Portman came in with a minder wearing her voluminous, corseted, costume.
"She disappeared inside and when she came out I said I bet that was difficult' and she threw back her head and laughed out loud.
"I saw the other one too and found them to be very pleasant and very nice. In my experience, that tends to be the case, the more serious the actor.
"Nobody will believe me when I tell them I have met two Hollywood starlets and Catherine of Aragon in one day."
Filming continued filming around the abbey for two weeks and then left Lacock for the film studio, with the crew in tow.

Charles Frazier
Topic: The Film Industry
TORONTO - "Last I heard, they have a list of directors and screenwriters," novelist Charles Frazier smiles. "As for the lead, I have not been able to come up with a name for who I'd want to see play Will.

"I've been trying to think of actors in their mid to late 20s, but I haven't seen a lot of movies the past few years. So," he chuckles, "I'm somewhat unaware of the younger actors that are out there right now."

Placing his coffee cup down on a glass-topped table in the third floor conference room of his Canadian publisher's office, Frazier, 56, was in town earlier this month to talk about his immersive new novel "Thirteen Moons," his much-anticipated follow-up to 1997's best-selling American Civil War Epic - "Cold Mountain."

That love story, brought to celluloid life by Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella and stars Jude Law and Nicole Kidman, spent over a year on the New York Times best-seller list and has sold over four million copies worldwide.

Straight out of left-field, the former university professor watched his debut snatch the National Book award from Don DeLillo's heavily favoured hands and then sat back as a bidding war ensued for the rights to distribute his next literary tome.

Reportedly, after reading a one-page outline, Random House beat all the other suitors, offering Frazier an advance worth more than $8-million. Then, Hollywood producer Scott Rudin ("Wonder Boys," "The Royal Tenenbaums," "Closer") stepped in, lavishing the bristle-haired author with another $3-million for the movie rights.


And so begun Frazier's almost-decade long journey back to book shelves across North America. But it was a journey, he says, that started when he was penning "Cold Mountain" in the mid-'90s.

"When I was doing some of the library work for 'Cold Mountain,' I had run across this reference to a very old man (William Holland Thomas) in an institution who some days only spoke Cherokee," he says. "He didn't have a place in that book, but I kept coming back to that man, wondering what that story was about. And I found out that he was a guy who at age 12 or 13 went out by himself to the edge of the Cherokee nation to run a trading post. He was then adopted into that group of Cherokee and from then on his life was tied up with these people."

When the curtain lifts on "Thirteen Moons," readers glimpse an elderly Will Cooper, grappling with the dawn of the industrial age and wrestling with the one true love that got away. At the frontier of his life, he recounts being orphaned and then sold into servitude at age 12 to manage a trading post in Cherokee territory in western North Carolina.

Learning the Cherokee language, Will becomes friends with the local chief, Bear, and is adopted into their tribe. With his heart set on acquiring as much land as possible to ensure the livability for future generations, Will sets about helping Bear.

"I grew up as a neighbour to the Eastern Band of Cherokee," Frazier says. "Most people are aware of the Trail of Tears (the removal of the Cherokee to the Western territories) but most people aren't aware that there was this small group of Cherokee that was able to stay. So I was interested in finding out that story, finding out how it is that that one group of people has managed to stay. Has resisted this overwhelming force of the government. They're still there, preserving their culture. They succeeded where most other Native American groups were not able to.

"But really," he continues, sitting back into his chair, "this is a book about that whole period of transition. From the early 19th century to the early 20th century. And a big part of that for many areas in the United States was the conflict between white settlers and Native Americans.

"So we can understand how we came here, how we came to occupy this place, that whole history of Native Americans anywhere in North America is a story people need to have a greater understanding of."

Traversing both the white and native worlds, Will educates himself. Becoming a lawyer he acts as both the legal and political voice of the tribe as the United States government plots to forcibly remove them from their southeastern ancestral lands, into the newly created Indian Territory in Oklahoma.

Fixed mostly in Will's middle years, at its core, the book shares "Cold Mountain's" romantic yearning. Like Inman, Will's life is forever altered by a chance meeting with Claire, a beautiful, ghost of a woman who haunts the peppery narrator throughout his life.

As Will's adventure takes him from store clerk to the upper echelons of Washington, it's his periodic meetings with Claire - who is married to a wealthy "white Indian," named Featherstone - that give "Thirteen Moons" most of its heart. And it's Will's eternal yearning for Claire that invests the book with the same unresolved longing that lined "Cold Mountain."

"Well," Frazier says, "in a sense I see this one as having a happy ending, to the degree that nobody's dead in the snow."

Breaking for a moment, Frazier stares outside as a midmorning sun blankets King Street toward St. James Park, and then goes on in his low Southern drawl. "But seriously, Will has this long life. He succeeds at a great many things and fails at a few. Maybe not fails, but doesn't succeed; doesn't get everything he wants in life just like few of us do.

"Claire is one of those things that doesn't resolve itself the way he wished it had. So, as a 90-year-old man, he's still yearning for her, still wishing his life had worked out differently in some regards and he's still waiting for that brand new telephone hoping Claire will be on the other end.

"Everybody ends up with some things that they're still wishing had happened differently or ended differently."

Calling Jim Harrison's "Legends of the Fall" a great inspiration for much of the style of "Thirteen Moons," Frazier says his aim with this book was to pen something "so crisp, so condensed that it just moves right along."

He also strove to craft a narrative that covered a long period of time more quickly. "With both 'Cold Mountain' and this one, I found myself thinking about the history of that place. I'm interested in the Southern Appalachians. I'm interested in the natural history, the human history, and the landforms, everything about that place.

"It's home for me. It's a place I love and a place I know, so it's kind of like, my subject matter."

Unmoved by New York's bustling literary scene, Frazier hid out at his home in Ashville, N.C., before heading out on this latest book tour. And even though "Thirteen Moons" is rooted on best-seller lists across the continent, the author seems most ecstatic when he's talking about the book's reception amongst natives.

"That's been one of the most gratifying parts of this book," he says looking pleased. "The reception I've got from the Eastern Band has been so generous. I was awarded the Cherokee Phoenix award, which is an award that's given to non-members of a tribe for their work in helping the Eastern Band preserve their culture. The thing that I've liked the most is how people have said, 'You got our humour right.'"

He's even helping facilitate plans to translate "Thirteen Moons" from English to Cherokee. "Right now there are no children's books in Cherokee, so we're hoping this ends up being a continuing project. Hopefully this could be a way to immerse kids in Cherokee."

Frazier, who is readying himself for a flight to London later in the day, smoothes his hands over freshly pressed jeans and admits that while he liked Tinseltown's adaptation of "Cold Mountain" just fine, he has no ambitions to nab a Best Adapted Screenplay anytime soon.

"I won't adapt it," he stresses. "I can hardly understand screenplays when I try to read them."

But after almost an hour in conversation, he's thought of a leading lady for Claire. "Actually, Natalie Portman," he says. "She's only in 'Cold Mountain' briefly, but her scenes were just remarkable. Yes, Natalie Portman."