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REVIEW:

With Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel rolls out the 10th film in what is already – by some accounts – the world’s second-most successful franchise ever.

Harry Potter author

Rose Byrne and her boyfriend are walking towards me hand in hand. Bobby Cannavale is wearing a scarf and a beanie but there’s no mistaking the American actor’s solid frame and pugilistic good looks. She’s petite, her fine-boned face framed by a well-cut sweep of chestnut hair and a pale yellow scarf knotted around her neck.

It’s a paparazzi moment: the Australian star of the 2011 hit Bridesmaids with the actor who won an Emmy for playing a psychopathic gangster in HBO’s acclaimed series Boardwalk Empire. But in this self-consciously hip photographic studio in North London, where Madonna and Lady Gaga are regulars and even the guy at reception looks like a pop star, no one gives them a second glance.

Byrne and Cannavale are grabbing a few precious minutes together, she explains. He’s on his way to catch a flight to New York; she’s preparing to shoot a campaign that will launch her as the face of the Australian luxury brand, Oroton. “I won’t be long,” she says and true to her word she reappears 10 minutes later, having dispatched Cannavale to the airport.

“In this business you have to grab your moments,” she explains. “You have to organise your life or the time apart can stretch into weeks and weeks and that’s no good for any relationship.”

At 35, Byrne knows all about the perks and pitfalls of life as a successful actor.

Clay Tweel has no hesitation about citing what he would use a 3-D printer for. An incident during his and co-director Luis Lopez’s 18-month shoot for their documentary on the subject, Print the Legend, intently focused his mind on the practical applications of being able to reproduce something themselves.

“We broke our tripod,” Tweel says . “All it was was a little plastic button and we called the company and they were like, ‘Oh, it’s US$50 for a replacement’. That blew my mind – it was like 50c worth of plastic.”

Tweel and Lopez are now something akin to experts on 3-D printing after following the fortunes of companies like MakerBot Industries, Formlabs and 3DSystems as they battle to bring 3-D printers to our desktops and everyday lives.

However, the pair, who had worked together on 2007’s 1980s-gaming culture doco The King of Kong, actually started out this time wanting to make a movie about Steve Jobs and Apple.

“We wanted to do a fresh and exciting take on that. We read the Steve Jobs bio by Walter Isaacson and were struck by the fact that half of it was about how ruthless and hypocritical Steve Jobs was and the other half was how genius and far-sighted he was in creating the products that we love and use so much today. Our problem was getting that into a movie.

“Then, at the same time, we started hearing all these stories about 3-D printing and the parallels to the PC revolution of the late 1970s and early 80s. So we decided to go and talk to some of these people like MakerBot’s Bre Pettis and Formlabs’ Max Lobovsky and we discovered that the industry was moving so fast that these guys might just be somebody who we could see if their trajectory matched what we read in the Jobs book.”

Charting the growing pains, successes and failures of these two companies and others, the resulting film is a fascinating, fly- on-the-wall look at not only a nascent industry but also American entrepreneurship in the 21st century.

“We didn’t know anything about 3-D printing beforehand, we just committed ourselves to doing as much research online as possible and luckily the people at MakerBot and Formlabs were really good at explaining how things work and educating you in layman’s terms about the potential of the technology and how it works.

“However, while our movie definitely has its fair share of talking heads, we’re both big fans of observational, cinema verite- style films and wanted to make you feel you’re in the moment as much as possible.”

One of the surprising things about Print the Legend is the candour of those talking, particularly about where their companies have gone wrong.

Tweel says while there were some tricky situations in dealing with companies with investors, shareholders and bottom lines to protect, building relationships and being prepared to ask the same question multiple times were the keys to “really get the answers that aren’t on a PR sheet”.

He says it also took a lot of time to try to establish the personal motivations of people and why they did what they did. However, Tweel believes it probably helped that entrepreneurs and film- makers share the same sense of idealism.

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“You need that and passion to make a film or build a 3-D printing company from scratch. We also saw the flipside of that, too – the kind of harsh business realities that challenge your idealism, ethics and integrity in lots of ways.

“And that’s the really interesting part of this story.”

It’s a theme that was also ingrained in the DNA of Oscar- winning 2010 drama The Social Network, a film that Tweel cites as inspiration for theirs, especially as Mark Zuckerberg-Eduardo Saverin-esque fallouts played themselves out in front of them.

WHEN asked why he thinks tech companies all seem to suffer that kind of internal implosion, Tweel is diplomatic.

“It’s really hard to be working 20 hours a day on something and find somebody that you agree with on every decision. Also, you always seem to find that classic model from the Steve Jobs Apple era, where you have a PT Barnham-esque character and an engineer [in Apple’s case Steve Wozniak] who are both very much needed to make a business succeed, but have very different priorities.”

One man who had different priorities when it came to 3-D printing was Cody Wilson. Tweel and Lopez first heard about the self-described “information anarchist” at a 3-D Print Conference where word spread he was trying to print a 3-D gun.

“We immediately tried to contact him. It was just a little bit of serendipity that we were able to be there when he uploaded the plans for the gun. That was like a special little bit of 3-D history that we caught on camera.”

Unsurprisingly, the idea of people printing their own guns at home is something that sends a shudder through many, but what does Tweel think the future of 3-D printing will be

“I think it’s totally possible that it will go the same way as Blu-ray or VHS – that one standard will emerge. However, the industry is so young it’s really hard to see into the future of what it’s going to be. We don’t know if this could be like the mini-disc, either – it could completely go away in three years. That’s why we were hoping the film could really show an example of businesses growing in a kind of time capsule sort of quality for this industry.

“In five years, all these people could be gone and just one company remain. But, really, we have no idea.”

It may or may not have been a publicity stunt, but either way: it worked.

Royals has already earned Lorde a set of Grammys, fame, and other awards, and now the lyrics will help other Kiwi songwriters.

A handwritten copy of the lyrics of the New Zealand singer’s song is up for grabs in a charity auction.

The lyric sheet of the Grammy award-winning hit, penned and signed by Lorde and co-writer and producer Joel Little, is being auctioned on TradeMe, with proceeds going to the Play It Strange Trust.

The money will go towards the running of programmes for young New Zealand songwriters and recording artists.

The charity put in the request for the lyric sheet after Royals won the APRA Silver Scroll award last year, and Lorde obliged.
When Little returned from the Grammy celebrations in January, Play It Strange chief executive Mike Chunn and general manager Debbie Little, who happens to be Joel’s cousin, picked it up from Little’s Golden Age Studio in Auckland.

Lorde at 16 became the youngest artist in 26 years to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

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– Stuff

Kanye West apparently vented he’s “not Britney Spears” while under oath at his deposition.

Last year the rapper was accused of attacking a paparazzo outside LAX airport and damaging his camera.

The photographer – the same man Spears attacked with an umbrella in 2007 – pressed charges and now TMZ claims it has a transcript of the deposition.

West, 37, is known for making outrageous statements and it appears to be no different when he’s dealing with legal issues.

“I’m the smartest celebrity you’ve ever f**king dealt with. I’m not Britney Spears,” he allegedly said while under oath to Nate Goldberg, the paparazzo’s lawyer.

“I’m in the business of trying to make dope sh*t for the world. You’re in the business of representing scums and trying to make as much money as long as there’s this lapse in the law.”

Lyrics taken from the musician’s song Flashing Lights are then quoted at him. It’s a track about paparazzi intrusion and includes use of the n-word, which lawyer Goldberg is also thought to use in the recording.

“You have to ask for a hall pass. You can’t just say the n-word around me,” Kanye apparently rants. “[It] offends me because you’re a white person saying n****r.”

“I mean in the ’60s people used to hold up ‘Die N****r’ signs when my parents were in the sit-ins also.”

West apparently also compares racial segregation to the situation he is in now, saying celebrities need to stick together as a “minority” group against paparazzi.

West has always been very vocal about the issue of being harassed by photographers, saying he wants his daughter with Kim Kardashian, North, to be able to lead a life away from the cameras. He’s also a big fan of Paris, where there are stricter rules in place for paparazzi.

“I want to bring my family to the movies without 30 motherf*****s following me. Everybody here, they like sex right Sex is great when you and your partner are like, ‘Hey, this is what we both want to do.’

“But if one of those people don’t want to do that, what is that called That’s called rape. That is called violation.

“So if I walk around and say look sir, I’m not feeling so good today, I need some space, can you please not f**k with me today I need cut-off space, not violation,” he previously voiced while on stage.

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– Cover Media

Orlando Bloom has dealt with

REVIEW:

CD review: Doctor Who – The Brood of Erys

(Big Finish Productions)

It’s taken a while, but the script writers at Big Finish Productions have finally stopped referencing the sixth Doctor’s appalling taste in clothes.

Nearly every other sixth Doctor audio adventure I have heard has characters making outrageous comments about the colourfulness of the Time Lord’s attire as they meet him for the first time. This, more than anything, reminds us that while we may only be listening to the story those partaking in it have all their senses about them.

Writer Andrew Smith does not have his characters do this in The Brood of Erys and it’s refreshing. An alien like the Doctor will seem alien no matter what he’s wearing – particularly when his TARDIS lands on another world.

Anyway, the characters in The Brood of Erys don’t have time to make such off handed remarks as this four parter gallops along at breakneck speed.

It opens with the TARDIS in mid-flight. An affable, almost avuncular, Doctor is calibrating his space and time ship and is driven to distraction when companion Flip Jackson (Lisa Greenwood) compares his work to setting up a wireless gaming station.

Their relationship echoes that of Old Sixy’s, as Baker is prone to call him, with long dead companion Peri Brown. They can grate on each other and then be the best of friends.

But Jackson, a checkout chick with attitude, isn’t a spot on her predecessor.

Soon the TARDIS comes under attack from the Brood of Erys in a sequence that is reminiscent of the best of science fiction movies – the incidental music is particularly effective here – quickly reminding us that this sequence would look great on screen.

No sooner do you get into the drama of the first episode of this four parter and the cliff hanger music is crashing in, making you want to listen on to part two just because you have the CD or the download and you don’t have to wait for another week to see what happens next.

This is a good sign since. It not only shows the plot does not drag but proves that Baker’s Doctor can be as compelling as the rest given a good script. And good The Brood of Erys is.

Without giving too much away the Erys of the title puts me in mind of grandfather in Neil Cross’s Doctor Who Series 7 classic The Rings of Akhaten. It’s funny because Nicola Sian, who plays Sarra Vanser in Brood also appeared in Rings as Clara Oswald’s mother Ellie.

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At times Erys also reminds me of Deep Thought in the radio adaptation of The Hithchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
The Brood of Erys is the second part of a Big Finish Productions Doctor Who trilogy. But you don’t have to have heard the first story, Antidote to Oblivion, to appreciate this one. What happens in the first story has no bearing on the second.

Extras include the usual musical suite and interviews with the cast.

Download it at www.bigfinish.com.

– Stuff