First Class Magazines Thread

[Retroman]

If anybody happens to see something on X-Men First Class in a magazine please post a scan and/or link (if possible) of the cover and article here.Thanks.

To start things off....


INSTYLE Magazine (UK) - January, 2011



Hillary Swank cover and a 5 page Rose Byrne photo spread (available at link!) with Q&A
SOURCE Link

[Retroman]

PHILADELPHIA STYLE Magazine - December, 2010/January, 2011

Kevin Bacon: Back In Action

by Una La Marche


>> Timeline: Bacon's Most Memorable Baddies

Let’s dispense with the puns right up front. I have met Kevin Bacon in person, and yes, he is sizzling (I wish I could kill two birds by working in “six degrees,” but that’s not hot, not even in Celsius). He’s footloose, and yes, as of late, thanks to some high-profile projects like X-Men: First Class, he’s been bringing home a certain pork product occasionally employed as a euphemism for money.

But even though the 52-year-old actor is, as he admits, a “known quantity,” enjoying a sort of rediscovered alpha-celebrity status thanks to raw talent, memorable roles and pop-culture fame (how many other stars have namesake games that earn a permanent spot in the cultural zeitgeist?), things haven’t always come easy. And even after 35 years in the moviemaking business, he takes nothing for granted.

In late 2009 Bacon was in between acting jobs and putting all of his energy into his band, The Bacon Brothers, which he fronts alongside his older brother, Michael. The siblings have been performing together since the mid-’90s, and it shows: Bounding across the stage at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in Manhattan during a sold-out set last October, Bacon exhibited rock-star confidence, dancing and jumping and banging on a tambourine as if the energy coiled in his whippet-thin frame was too powerful for him to control.

And when he grabbed the microphone, unleashing a throaty Bon Jovi-esque growl, it was clear this was no vanity project. In fact, Bacon’s passion for music started long before Hollywood came calling, in his childhood home on Locust Street in Society Hill.

GROWING UP BACON
To hear him tell it, the Bacon family was practically a real-life version of The Partridge Family. “My brother, Michael, and my sister Hilda performed in bands when I was a little kid,” he told me over breakfast in Manhattan, where he has lived for more than 30 years. “I think my sister Karin played the flute a little bit. My mother tinkered around on the mandolin.”

By the time he was in high school, Bacon was playing percussion in a number of bands and had also started to write songs. But then he took an acting class. And the rest is, if not history, at least a very long Netflix queue. “All of a sudden, I [thought], Well, my brother is doing the music thing. I’m gonna see if I can become an actor,” Bacon says. He left home at 17 and moved to New York, where he found work in theater and on soap operas like Guiding Light. In 1988, after costarring with her in a PBS television adaptation of Lanford Wilson’s play Lemon Sky, he married actress Kyra Sedgwick.

GLORY DAYS
He had already found a fan base and garnered critical acclaim with his work in the two film classics Diner and Footloose, but it wasn’t until the early ’90s, after breakout roles in Oliver Stone’s JFK and A Few Good Men, in which he costarred with Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and Jack Nicholson, that Bacon became a bona fide movie star. His Hollywood stock soared, and he started working nonstop.

In 1995, a year that found him at the height of his fame with starring roles in Apollo 13 and Murder in the First, The Bacon Brothers were born. At first Bacon was reluctant to return to his musical roots, but once he and Michael started playing shows—beginning at small clubs in upstate New York and Philadelphia—he relished the thrill of live performance. “Anything can happen,” he says. “Forget a lyric, break a string or knock something over... there’s no second take. It got me those butterflies back.” Singing and songwriting also allowed Bacon to showcase his hometown pride in a way he couldn’t through his acting. “Even though I don’t get back that often, I kind of feel like I’m always pulling for Philly,” he says. “I don’t really think it gets its props, you know?”

BOUNCING BACK
Near the end of 2009, it was obvious, as much as he loved being able to focus on making music, Bacon was jonesing for an acting job. “Acting is very therapeutic, sometimes even cathartic,” he told me the morning after the B.B. King show. “I love doing it. I love the time between ‘action’ and ‘cut.’ The rest of the stuff can get a little old, you know—waiting for the phone to ring, sitting in a makeup chair. But the time that I’m actually acting, which is a minuscule part of my life, is extremely satisfying.” At that point, more than a year had passed since he’d filmed Taking Chance, an HBO historical drama about bringing home a fallen soldier from Iraq (which thus far hadn’t garnered much recognition for its leading man). And earlier in 2009, after rumors swirled that he and Sedgwick lost a significant amount of their savings in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, Bacon had publicly stated that he needed work. It suddenly seemed possible, as he pulled down a woolen cap to shield himself against the cold October morning, that being Hollywood’s known quantity might not be enough anymore.

This makes it all the more satisfying to report that just 12 months later, Bacon seems to be back at the top of his game. “It’s been a great year,” he tells me cheerfully by phone from London, where he’s staying while filming the latest installment in the X-Men franchise. “It’s almost embarrassing to say that it’s been such a great year when I think about how so many people in this country and the rest of the world have struggled. But I’ve had work, and the work has been really satisfying and fun, and I’ve really enjoyed acting.”

He has no doubt been bolstered by the Golden Globe and the SAG Award he picked up in January. At both ceremonies, Bacon took home the prize for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television for Taking Chance—a career milestone he didn’t see coming. “The response was certainly beyond anything that I had expected,” he says. “It was great. I mean, I can’t say that you walk away from it and you get the statues and the phone’s ringing off the hook the next day. I wish I could say that that’s the way it happens.”

NEW YEAR, NEW ROLES
Bacon's dance card for 2011 is filling up fast: Bacon has a bit role in a comedy with Steve Carell and Julianne Moore (tentatively titled Crazy, Stupid, Love) and stars alongside Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page in Super, an offbeat caper about a regular guy who decides to don a superhero costume and fight evil.

On both jobs, Bacon says, he enjoyed working with great actors and having the freedom to do something light without the weight of the success of the films on his shoulders. “You can be in a situation as an actor where you’re saying, ‘Well, I gotta wait for the perfect thing,’” he explains. “But sometimes I find it’s good to just throw yourself into something. You realize, I gotta stop saying no and see what happens if I just kick things into gear. Super was a good example of that. They had another actor who fell out, and it was basically working for free for four days in Shreveport and I said, ‘Yeah, why not? This looks like fun.’”

In X-Men: First Class, slated to open in early June, Bacon plays mutant villain Sebastian Shaw. Although it’s his first major action role (the only thing that comes close, he says, is 2000’s Hollow Man), it’s not a particularly demanding part physically. “I’ll let the younger actors do that,” he laughs. “I’m more one of those sit-in-my-chair-and-destroy-the-world type of guys.” He had to cancel some Bacon Brothers shows due to filming conflicts, but he still brought his guitar with him to the set, despite a recent bout of writer’s block. (“I’m usually a super-, super-prolific kind of writer,” he says. “But right now, the songs are just not coming.”) He shouldn’t worry: If the past year is any indication, it’s safe to say that Kevin Bacon will be singing a new tune in no time.

SOURCE:http://www.phillystylemag.com/celebr...back-in-action

[Angamb]

nice!

I love that photo of Rose. Cant wait to see the role of Moira on this prequel.

[psyonic]

It worries me that he says his role as Sebastian isn't physically demanding.. no fighting scenes? His mutant power is pretty much absorbing energy and releasing it as physical strength ..

[Angamb]

yes, it was a bit weird...

Im really curious to see the level of action this movie will have.

[merbass]

“I’m more one of those sit-in-my-chair-and-destroy-the-world type of guys.”

This is the Apocalypse that X-men synopsis is all about. He is the main villain who was the reason the public knows of the existence of the mutants.

[JP]

Awesome quote from the Baconator.

[Retroman]

NEW YORK Magazine - Aug 30, 2010

Action vs. Jackson

Benjamin Walker could have been a Hollywood superhero. Instead, he’s at the Jacobs Theatre, rocking the man on the $20 bill.

By Scott Brown Published Aug 22, 2010


(Photo: Andreas Lazlo Konrath; Grooming by Lisa-Raquel/See Management)


Benjamin Walker is on the eve of his Broadway inaugural, and it’s been a long, hard campaign. For the past three years, over the course of several workshops and productions, he’s played our seventh president in Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, a freewheeling bio-musical that gleefully filters Manifest Destiny through rocker swagger—and took the public (and the Public) by storm last season. Walker’s Old Hickory(concocted with writer-director Alex Timbers, of the inventive para-theater troupe Les Frères Corbusier) is a self-absorbed emo punk with abandonment issues and pants twice as tight as Brandon Flowers’s. But Walker, 27, Georgia-born and Juilliard-trained, isn’t much for self-seriousness: He’s got a second career as a comedian, after all. Worse, he’s never killed even a single Indian, much less exterminated whole tribes. (He’s actually—scandale!—part Cherokee.)

But they’re both battlers, with bumptious histories and ropy scars. Jackson fought off the British, the Spanish, and, most notoriously, the Native Americans. Walker was nearly strangled to death by a homeless man in a YMCA bathroom shortly after coming to New York. Jackson fought constant duels. Walker got his right eye badly smashed in a boxing bout. Jackson had to choose between the love of his life and the presidency. Walker had to choose between Hollywood superhero and Broadway superstar. (The love of his life, Mamie Gummer—Meryl Streep’s daughter, to whom he’s engaged—seemed willing to marry him, either way.) Walker hasn’t been shot at as many times as Jackson, but the theater season is young.

“We didn’t want a musical-theater performer, but a classically trained actor. Who can sing really well. Who also has comedy chops,” says Timbers. “That’s a pretty hard combination to find.” Luckily, he ran across Walker at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2006, where he was workshopping an early draft of Jackson. “And there’s something great about how physically imposing and virile he is, and how young and boyish he is at the same time.” (The size issue, Walker says, got him bounced from another youth-driven, rock-backed Broadway phenomenon, Spring Awakening, shortly after he played Melchior in the pre–Atlantic Lincoln Center concert version: “A guy who’s six-three taking advantage of Lea Michele in a barn is very different than, say, Jonny Groff. They were going in a different direction, a healthy direction. A less rape-y direction, yes.”)

Timbers likes that Walker can combine “the self-awareness and the lack of awareness, and the ability to go to an ugly place to make the comedy work.” The musical itself nearly went to an ugly place not long ago: Walker won the part of Beast in Fox’s new X-Men: First Class just as the Broadway transfer to the Jacobs Theatre came through. “There was a question of, should we, can we, be doing this without Walker? Or should we try to wait for him?” says Timbers. Negotiations came down to the wire: The production was hours from losing the theater when Walker pulled out of the film. (The choice was somewhat mutual: Fox apparently wanted an even younger Beast.) Ultimately, Walker thinks the decision was the right thing, karmically and professionally: “I’d have regretted it for the rest of my life. It would have broken up the family.” Plus, he just plain loves playing “Andrew ****in’ Jackson”: The tantrums, the speeches, the occasional genocidal impulses. He’s also pumped about the new theater, which he says the producers plan to stuff with Jacksonian bric-a-brac and red-blooded American kitsch—including, hopefully, a Big Buck Hunter arcade game, which Walker imagines ol’ “Sharp Knife” would love. “It’s important to think of Jackson as a young man,” he says, “and America as a young country, lashing out at its Founding Fathers. It’s, ‘This is who I am, and this is what I want, even if it’s destructive to others and ultimately myself. I’m gonna make my own mistakes.’ ” Godspeed, Mr. President. And hail to those tight, tight jeans.

VENICE Magazine - December, 2010

A lot of people are excited about seeing you play Mystique in X-Men: First Class next year. She’s probably my favorite character. What’s it like going through that body paint job that Rebecca Romijn previously endured?

For most of the movie, I’m “me,” as Raven Darkholme. This is before she’s mutant and proud as Mystique. In First Class, Raven’s more of an insecure teenager who’s dealing with the insecurity that she’s blue and scaly. Then she learns to start embracing it. For that, I went through the body paint many times. It’s six to eight hours to put on, and it would be hell if it wasn’t for my makeup girls. We just have so much fun watching “Sex and the City” the whole time. The only problem is that when I’m done standing up or sitting on a bicycle seat for so many hours, I’m ready to go home. But I’ve got to start work right away.

Is it liberating playing an empowered character who’s literally naked to the world?

I definitely have gotten used to walking around in my skivvies. I don’t know if that gave me empowerment as much as it took all of my modesty away!

Mystique’s appeal is how she uses her sensuality as a weapon. What’s your personal take on the character?

In a sense, Rebecca Romijn and I are playing two different Mystiques. Her version is comfortable, and badass in her own skin. But my Raven is about figuring herself out, and wondering if it would be better to remain in her natural form.

So I imagine we’ll have a scene with Raven’s liberating moment of ripping her clothes off?

I don’t know. Stay tuned!

Another great quality about Mystique is her agility. What are the physical demands of the part like?

All of the cast that are playing X-Men are all going through training. I personally trained for two hours a day, except when I was being body painted. I did kick boxing, stretching, and yoga. But it’s really my stunt girl who’s going to be doing more than me.

One of my favorite films of the year was Class director Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass. Is he going for a similarly satirical tone here, or will his X-Men be more serious?

Matthew’s an incredible director. He’s very smart and has a cool style. While I don’t think he’s trying to be too serious here, he’s also not making the film jokey. About the only word that comes to mind when you’re looking around the set to get a feeling for what this film will be is, “Cool!” I definitely trust in Matthew.

You started acting at a young age. Thankfully we’ve never seen you on TMZ. How do you hold it together so well?

If TMZ followed me around, they’d find me to be very boring. They’re basically going to get pictures of me walking my dog. I think what I do is a job. It’s a weird job, but I’m no different from anyone else my age. I just happen to be working at Pinewood studios now in England. I’m over here and don’t have the Internet. I’m not up to date on what’s going on, so I just focus on the work. But I do know that listening to the other, personal stuff will mess up your head if you care about it.

Winter’s Bone has turned out to be the little movie that could this year. If you and the film get some Oscar recognition like Melissa Leo did for the similar Frozen River (2008), what do you think the reason will be?

All of us worked so hard to make the film authentic, so it means a lot to get this kind of critical recognition. It shows that people don’t want to be sheltered anymore when they go to the movies. The way that people have responded to this little indie is great. It would be great if we were nominated, because Winter’s Bone is a terrific movie. Even if I wasn’t in it, I would still be saying the same thing. ��

Winter’s Bone is now available on DVD from Lions Gate Entertainment.

SOURCE (more of Lawrence interview):http://www.venicemag.com/news/index/view/319
http://nymag.com/guides/fallpreview/2010/theater/67624/

I saw Winter's Bone in a small theater over the holiday period and thought she was really good in it.The getting recognition for her performance is nice and makes me look forward to how she will play Mystique even more.

[Retroman]

Interview Magazine - August, 2010

Zoë Kravitz, Object of Desire

By Alexandria Symonds 10/08/2010 04:20 PM



ZOË KRAVITZ IN IT'S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY.
PHOTO COURTESY OF FOCUS FEATURES/K. C. BAILEY.


21-year-old Zoë Kravitz comes with an impressive showbiz pedigree: Dad is rock musician Lenny Kravitz, and Mom is The Cosby Show's Lisa Bonet. But Kravitz has been proving her own acting chops over the last few years, with turns in films including No Reservations, The Brave One, The Greatest, and Yelling to the Sky, which co-stars Gabourey Sidibe. She also models (for brands including Vera Wang) and fronts a band, Elevator Fight—all in a day's work.

In the new film It's Kind of a Funny Story—a movie about a suicidal 16-year-old who checks himself into a mental facility, directed by Half Nelson's Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck—Kravitz plays Nia, the longtime unrequited crush of the protagonist, Craig. The industrious Ms. Kravitz is in London now, filming X-Men: First Class, but we caught her for a few minutes between takes.


ALEXANDRIA SYMONDS: Since we only have a little time, I just want to jump right in, if that's okay.

ZOË KRAVITZ: Yeah, let's do it. Cut the small talk.

SYMONDS: So what was it like playing an obsession in It's Kind of a Funny Story?

KRAVITZ: [LAUGHS] Flattering, very flattering! It's very sweet to be cast as the quote-unquote "hot obsession chick." I'm like the most approachable person on the planet, which is kind of the opposite of Nia. So it was very flattering.

SYMONDS: So how did you get into the character, if she's so different from you?

KRAVITZ: I think I knew girls like that in high school, that all the guys are obsessed with and felt kind of untouchable, and acted oblivious but were very much aware of the power that they had. Those girls are around, so it was kind of fun to play one.

SYMONDS: What about in the fantasy sequence?

KRAVITZ: Oh, in the bathtub?

SYMONDS: Yeah, in the bathtub!

KRAVITZ: [LAUGHS] Actually, that was a funny scene, because we shot that on a soundstage and it was really cold outside. And the water was actually cold, and they put in Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap to make bubbles. So my skin was like on fire, and I was in a freezing soundstage, and I was in a bathtub wearing almost nothing, and I had to act like I was comfortable. So that was definitely a challenging day. It was funny, actually, in retrospect.

SYMONDS: So you weren't feeling sexy at all.

KRAVITZ: No, not at all. I was literally just trying not to shiver and, like, rip my skin off. [LAUGHS] I'd be like shivering and shivering, then they'd call action and I'd be like, "Hey, Craig! What's up?" It was pretty funny.

SYMONDS: What was it like to be a character who only exists in Craig's head space, though? I know it's a short scene, but how did you prepare for that?

KRAVITZ: I just had fun with it! The cool thing about doing a fantasy scene is that it's not real, so you don't really have to worry about realistic ideas or being a little over-the-top: the phone and the room and the bubbles, it's all kind of much. So it was just fun to be able to be a little over-the-top.

SYMONDS: So in the film your character makes reference to a checklist; presumably of places she would like to have... relations.

KRAVITZ: Intercourse!

SYMONDS: Yes. [LAUGHS] Do you have a checklist?

KRAVITZ: [LAUGHS] No, I don't. I should probably make one, though, right?

SYMONDS: I mean, yeah! It seems like it was really important to your character...

KRAVITZ: Do you have a checklist?

SYMONDS: Oh my God, no. I'm not the kind of person who makes lists really.

KRAVITZ: Yeah, me either. I'm not a very organized person. I think Nia is a little more organized.

SYMONDS: Is there any one place that, if you did have a checklist, would certainly be on there?

KRAVITZ: [LAUGHS] I think I'd agree with Nia. A mental hospital would be pretty crazy.

SYMONDS: I was actually surprised that was on her list-because it seems like that's no a...

KRAVITZ: I know, she's a freak, right? Nia's a little freak.

SYMONDS: That's weird. That's not a sexy place at all.

KRAVITZ: No, it's not. [LAUGHS] Whatever floats your boat, though, whatever floats your boat.

SYMONDS: So do you want to tell me about what you have coming up?

KRAVITZ: Right now I'm in London shooting X-Men: First Class, so that's been really fun; I've been in London for a month now. It's cool being in a new environment and working with Matthew Vaughn and all of these amazing actors. And hopefully an indie film I did last year will be going to a few festivals this year, called Yelling to the Sky, with me, Gabourey Sidibe, Tim Blake Nelson, Jason Clark, and this amazing woman Victoria Mahoney, who wrote and directed it. And that's a Sundance Lab baby, so hopefully it will go to Sundance or something. I'm attached to do Mad Max, but I'm not sure when that's filming, but when it happens hopefully I'll be in it.

SYMONDS: Have you had any time to enjoy London while you've been there?

KRAVITZ: Oh yeah, I have: I've been here for a long time doing pre-production stuff, which luckily gives me a lot of time to hang out. I love London, I could totally live here actually. I'm in New York most of the time and it really reminds me a lot of New York.

SYMONDS: Where do you like to go out in New York?

KRAVITZ: I don't really go out "go out" that much anymore. I live in Brooklyn, in Williamsburg, so I just like to wonder around. Williamsburg's such a cool little neighborhood community spot.

SYMONDS: Well, thanks so much—I loved the film.

KRAVITZ: Oh, I'm so glad! Me too!


IT'S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY (FOCUS FEATURES) OPENS TODAY.

SOURCE

[JP]

There's also a Fassbender interview in Vogue UK (I think thats the magazine?).

[Retroman]

Thanks JP. The interview is a nice read.

VOGUE (UK) Magazine - February, 2011

Victoria Beckham cover and 4 page feature on Michael Fassbender

Scans are available here at Michael Fassbender Online

[JP]