Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, The Godfather: there are some films so titanic so as to be preserved in the public conscious as pop cultural treasures. For films like these their stars cease to become actors and actresses and instead become part of the movie’s universe, inseparable from their characters from the first film trailer. But what if these immortal roles had belonged to someone else? Check out for the surprises in this list of the almost-cast that could have changed the history of these famous films.
Raiders of the Lost Ark The moustachioed Tom Selleck auditioned for the role of Indiana Jones but it was Harrison Ford who eventually picked up the whip.
The Godfather The Godfather had several almost-cast actors and actresses. Though Marlon Brando immortalised mobster Vito Corleone, Frank Sinatra, Laurence Olivier and Anthony Quinn were all considered. Robert Redford and James Caan were both in the running for Al Pacino’s part as Vito Corleone. Ann Heche auditioned for Mary Corleone.
Star Wars The part of Han Solo will forever belong to young Harrison Ford but at the time several big name actors were considered including Christopher Walken and Kurt Russell. Sissy Spacek was originally cast as Luke Skywalker’s sister Leia, while Carrie Fisher was set to film Brian de Palma’s Carrie. But Fisher would not do the nude scenes in the horror classic and swapped roles with Spacek.
The Terminator O.J. Simpson was offered the role of the Terminator was later ironically thought ‘too nice’ to play the cybernetic killing machine. Schwarzenegger took over the part and played it pitch perfect with burly muscles and a limited Germanic vocabulary.
Predator Speaking of beef-cakes, Jean Claude van Damme was to play the alien predator, facing off against the human team as a more agile alien. But after complaints about the conditions and a lack of face time he was fired from the project.
Chicago Catherine Zeta-Jones won an Oscar for her portrayal of the murderous vamp Velma Kelly in the musical Chicago but for some time Madonna was considered for the role. One wonders whether Madonna would have made a success of the role as Zeta-Jones did. To quote Sharon Stone referring to her own attempts at singing: “I felt so out of place! Kinda like Madonna at the Academy Awards.” Ouch.
The Matrix Will Smith was originally offered the part of Neo in The Matrix but later turned it down.
There are hundreds more but other notables: Tommy Lee Jones and Dustin Hoffman were considered for Deckard, played by Harrison Ford in Blade Runner; Julia Robert’s part as Vivian in Pretty Woman was first turned down by Michelle Pfeiffer, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jennifer Connelly.
Andrew Joyce is avid fan of all films and loves to keep up to date on the latest film news, to write film reviews and to share his thoughts with other die hard film fans.
Famous Stars and the Roles They Didn’t Get
Posted by admin | Under culture clothing Monday Oct 31, 2011Green Screen Kit
Posted by admin | Under cultural sensitivity Friday Oct 28, 2011Green screen photography has made tremendous advancements and brought fruitful results in the process of picture making. You can send your subject from the settings of studio to any other unknown and imaginative world with this kind of process. It is fun to create different pictures of your family and friends with creativity and innovation. You can replace the background of the subject by any other image with the help of digital tools available in the market. Some companies provide a complete set of kit along with the computer program tools.
The companies selling a complete set of green screen kit provides a wide range of options for different computer programs, green shaded backdrop, background images, stand for the backdrop, body suit, hardware bundles and much more. Before making a selection of any product, you should find out with the quality provided by a company. The kit should include high quality products and prepare attractive as well as impressive pictures.
A complete set of kit includes a state-of-the-art computer program with an assorted set of features for performing green screen picture making. You can find a green or blue color cloth for the purpose of photography. Some companies provide blue shaded cloth but most of them provide green color. This is because the green shade is more sensitive to the camera lenses and it is easy to mask the background image of this color in a video editing tool. Some provide a stand for hanging the cloth behind the subject. As far as flood lights and camera are concerned, you have to arrange for these requirements separately or specially place an order for the same. Other companies provide background images based on many different themes. These pictures can help a user to replace the background of the subject by any other photograph. You can take your subject to beautiful oceans, green landscapes and many other realistic or unbelievable places. All the above mentioned materials make a complete set of kit for this form of photography.
Sometimes You Get Lucky – How Jim Dale Became the Harry Potter Audio Books
Posted by admin | Under culture clothing Thursday Oct 27, 2011Kids hundreds of years from now are going to recognize Jim Dale’s rich baritone voice. At seventy-five, Mr. Dale is the narrarating voice of Harry Potter and more than two hundred various other character voices in the Harry Potter audio books.
What plenty of people do not realize though is the fact that Dale has been in entertainment far before he began narrating the Harry Potter audio books. Jim was a pop singer, a stand-up comic, an off-broadway performer, and more in the entertainment industry for nearly sixty-five years before he came across Harry Potter… or more like, before the Harry Potter publishers came across him.
In ’99, Listening Library (at the time an independent publisher) had just purchased the legal rights (in the United States) to the audio book for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (book 1) for merely fifteen-thousand dollars. Timothy Ditlow, a son of the founders of Listening Library, was attending a soiree with a range of broadway frequenters and a few of them thought Jim would be good for the narration. And even though Jim had just read one audio book before, Tim ended up offering Dale the role. J.K. Rowling and her publishers were quite clear that they needed an English accent for Harry Potter on the audio books and that along with Jim’s performance experiences made him just what they were looking for.
Jim has said that when he was originally presented with the role he hadn’t heard of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and he asked to have a copy of the book. After reading the book he said that he was “completely immersed in the Harry Potter World” and realizing that the book was amazingly well written, smart, funny, and understanding that there was a possibility of six more audio books definitely “whetted my appetite.”
While Dale was narrating the audio books he was normally the first or second individual after J.K. Rowling’s publisher to receive one of the soon to be released books (and nearly always the 1st person in the US to read one). Quite a blessing in disguise, since Dale was required by his contract to not expose even the smallest storyline particulars before the book was released.
Now since narrating all seven Harry Potter audio books, Dale has received 2 Grammys, seven Grammy nominations, a record ten Audie awards (including audio book of the year 2004), and thirteen Audio File Earphone awards for his performances. Dale is also the voice for many of the Harry Potter video games and a lot of the commentary in the Harry Potter DVDs and Blu-ray discs.
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How to paint pet portraits
Posted by admin | Under cultural identity definition Wednesday Oct 26, 2011Painting dog portraits and wild animals in oils can feel as being a rather scary prospect for novices , nevertheless it really need not be. Once you follow quick and easy rules and processes.
Oil is certainly essentially the most forgiving medium, Amateurs often believe oil painting as the very difficult medium, but honestly it is without a doubt amongst the most forgiving. Year after year I have utilised close to anything and everything, but always take another look at oil paints. I find acrylic paints just dry far too quick, also, you require a great number of layers to help get the coverage of oils. Watercolor happens to be pretty much all about timing, put a wet shade right into another wet pigment at the improper point in time and you will have various horrific factors transpire for instance run backs, bleeds and many more.
I’ve noted watercolor being the foremost really difficult medium to command – notably for newcomers. Oil paint at the same time present myself time to relax while I think out the subsequent action as well as enough time if I wish to fuse 1 coloring down into a second, when making a pleasant clean sky color for example. New Oil Paints together with modern innovations with oil paint manufacture means that that they can now dry out over night – these are generally known as Alkyd Oil paints and non smelling chemical like thinning agents means that you won’t need to stink the entire household out from the odor of turps, so there is basically no reason a first-timers principal piece of art really should not be carried out with oil / Alkyd paints. Wild animals Art Tricks (what I learnt in 15 years) Animals / Animal painting is undoubtedly extremely favored as most of us would want to be able to paint his or her family dog, or probably they took a particular time in Africa and sooo want to paint his or her’s memories, but amateurs could very well be dissatisfied because of their initial efforts at portraying wildlife. I acknowledge I had been as i started to paint wildlife about 13 years ago – I read virtually every book on the matter and additionally viewed lots of film too, nevertheless they all did actually have a single matter in keeping , they overlooked the in-depth instruction and leaped a lot of basic steps, it was actually infuriating.
And so i decided, I learned brand-new solutions myself – In the past I’ve learned a huge amount of vital secrets which helped to rocket my wild animals paintings from amateur to professional standard. Like – always keeping under layers of dog’s fur and feathers deeper allowing you to have a little something to incorporate all of the distinct fur over. How to make a ripped edge using a brush, important for helping to make real looking images together with quite a few more hints which include these.
To witness various instances of these types of hints and tricks put to use to render animal paintings and pet portraits consisting of my most popular dog portraits look at pet portaits or
Many years paintingdeer in any mediums.
pet portaits or



