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Emma Watson to star in "Bling Ring"


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in one of the Bling Ring promo pictures posted, when Emma's character is in front of a bunch of cameras, there is a blonde standing next to her that looks somewhat like a young J.K. Rowling.

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“I thought it was such an interesting story and the quotes from the real kids really made an impression,†Coppola says, reflecting on her reaction to reading the story about teenagers who dreamed of having their own fragrance lines and reality TV shows. “I thought the story said so much about our culture today and how it can affect young people.â€

 

Coppola adds, “I was curious about these kids growing up always aware of their audience, constantly posting pictures online.†Her intimate film captures the electronic collage of contemporary teenage life. “For visual references, I borrowed the cell phones of my actors and studied their Facebook and Myspace pages.†Many shots in the film look like “selfies,†those cell phone auto-portraits taken from arm’s length. “This world isn’t as visually beautiful as some of my other films,†Coppola notes. “It’s more Pop.†As in Pop Art.

 

From The Virgin Suicides to The Bling Ring, Coppola mines visual means to express the psychological states of enclosure and exposure. What you remember about her films are the microclimates of feeling and longing. As she puts it, “My movies are not about being, but becoming.†Her protagonists are almost all teenagers or adults-in-transition (the latter would include Bill Murray in Lost in Translation and Stephen Dorff, estranged father of an 11-year-old daughter, in Somewhere [2010]). Apart from teenagehood, the dominant themes of Coppola’s movies are that of outsiders looking (and wanting) in and insiders looking (and wanting) out, imagining alternative lives. The most trancelike passages in her films are dialogue‑free sequences of the curious peering into the lives of others (The Virgin Suicides, The Bling Ring) and the entrapped gazing out to perceived freedom (Suicides, Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette, Somewhere). Such shots present challenges.

 

Coppola says she casts less for looks than for simpatico. “I feel like there has to be a connection, you have to find the same things funny. That way, you’re on the same channel and you’ll be able to communicate more effectively.â€

 

On The Bling Ring, she says, “I worked with a lot of first‑timers. They’re so enthusiastic…and they don’t have bad habits.†The performances by newcomers Israel Broussard and Katie Chang mesh seamlessly with that of Emma Watson, the Harry Potter alum who spent months perfecting Valley Girl dialect for the role. “She worked really hard,†Coppola says, “like the good student she is.â€

 

Coppola, too, worked hard at being a good teacher, guiding her cast away from acting and toward natural behavior. The rehearsal period is key for her. “I get ideas for dialogue and the actors form relationships so they’re comfortable together. By the time we’re shooting you might believe they’re people who really know each other. On The Bling Ring, the kids hung out and did stuff together; they formed a group and had inside jokes.â€

 

Perhaps because she experienced filmmaking as a family affair growing up, or maybe just because it just makes creative sense, Coppola tries to create a family atmosphere among the actors. To reinforce the parent-child bond before shooting Somewhere, she had Dorff pick up Elle Fanning, his screen daughter, from school every day. Before shooting The Bling Ring, she sent her young actors on recon missions to shopping malls and clubs. “That way, during the club scenes when they are partying, they’re really partying,†she says.

 

For Coppola, “The scripts are notes to let cast and crew know what I want to do. I don’t make a shot list. There’s no sense in that until you see the actors rehearse the scene. So, I’ll say, ‘In this scene I want to show X.’ I feel camera placement is really intuitive. It helps to have a script supervisor who keeps track of what I want to accomplish in each scene.â€

 

She breaks down the script while writing it. “I see the movie in three acts and have a sense of how I want each act framed. With Bling Ring I knew I wanted the early acts to be in wide shots and gradually proceed to tighter shots.â€

 

Speaking on a panel in March 2013, Lachman offered insight into how she works with her team. “The best director,†he said, “is one that gives everybody the feeling that they are really helping to make the film in partly their own vision, but it’s really the director who is engineering it. Sofia makes everybody feel like they are the really important one.â€

 

Such was the case on The Bling Ring. Working with her DP, the late Harris Savides, for the second time, they came up with a unique setup for a shot. One of the robberies takes place in a glass‑clad modernist house high up in the Hollywood Hills. Savides suggested shooting from an abandoned house across the street. From this perspective, Coppola found a wide-angle shot so that as the teenagers break in, enter, and turn on the lights, they resemble dolls in a dollhouse. The startling angle both underscores a sense of child’s play and suggests the aphorism that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. “I loved how the twinkling city lights below looked just like the jewelry the kids were stealing,†Coppola says, obviously pleased with the results.

 

Coppola shot The Bling Ring on a RED camera, her first digital feature, but because of her photography background, she said she feels more at home shooting on film. What she liked about digital: “It feels more immediate, and since you’re not limited by the film in the camera you can go on and on and have really long shots.â€

 

What she didn’t like: “I spent more time watching the monitor than being on set. It felt passive. I see how it can distance you from the action. I had to keep reminding myself to get back on the set. I’d shoot on film again, if it’s still available.†From her father, Coppola learned that “a movie is never as bad as the first rough cut.†Still, the rough of Suicides crushed her. Fortunately, she had sound designer Beggs on board as well as Reitzell, one-time drummer of Redd Kross. Reitzell has suggested the musical cues on four of her five films, including anachronistic punk tunes such as Gang of Four’s “Natural’s Not in It,†that opens Marie Antoinette, announcing its central character as an 18th‑century riot grrrl.

 

Working in the editing room with Flack, “I explain what I want it to feel like, she shows me alternatives, I respond and we find it together,†says Coppola. “You find the rhythm in the edit.†For her, the film’s pace is almost always guided by the movement inside the frame and by the tempo of the soundtrack, which in The Bling Ring is louder, and in Coppola’s description, “more obnoxious†than the dreamy music in most of her films.

 

Her first experiments wedding image with sound were for music videos for The Flaming Lips and The White Stripes. Usually the soundscape in Coppola’s films, a layering of ambient noise and musical score punctuated by a pop track and punched up with augmented effects, such as the birdsong that opens The Virgin Suicides, enhances the you‑are‑there environment. She likes using songs that the characters would listen to, like M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls†in The Bling Ring, which the characters sing along to on the car radio.

 

Coppola made The Bling Ring on a still-modest $20 million budget.
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Virgin Suicides is one of those unusual and odd films that still hangs around somewhere in the background ether of my gray matter. don't know why. i am looking forward to seeing this film though, and that above article posted by Roberto, answered my question of a few posts ago, whether Emma would be speaking with a valley-girl accent. thanks for posting it. :)

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I liked the virgin suicides, too and Mari Antoinette wasn´t bad ether, but the first has definitely left an impression.

 

20 Millions sound cheap. But if i think that films like "Ben Hur" only needed 15 Mio. i´m a little bit sad.

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Finally; the scene, she never had lessons for....

 

 

 

Brougth to you by the person who say: 

And I would get nuts, sitting at home in front of the tv and Ezra is hugging my gf after winning a award instead of me.....

 

oh wait, what I saw yesterday.....

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Brougth to you by the person who say: 

And I would get nuts, sitting at home in front of the tv and Ezra is hugging my gf after winning a award instead of me.....

 

oh wait, what I saw yesterday.....

 

Exactly. If I would be her boyfriend (I ment, if I would be William Adamovicz), I.....

 

As I said. You understand NOTHING. NIENTE. Can you please shut up? It would be such a gift.........

Edited by Jonny Carinthia
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Exactly. If I would be her boyfriend (I ment, if I would be William Adamovicz), I.....

 

As I said. You understand NOTHING. NIENTE. Can you please shut up? It would be such a gift.........

wow i didnt know you live with her to know everything.. please light us with your knowledge

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wow i didnt know you live with her to know everything.. please light us with your knowledge

 

Who said that I live with her?

I said - I try to explain it for you again - if I were in his position (Williams), I would be.......

Clearly I am not in his position, so what should you senseless remarks do to the topic?

 

dam it. Nobody listens to me. May the Gods or the Admins here judge, i will enjoy peace.

 

Badab, it's called SELF DEFENCE. I never said something rude to any member here, but Adebisi thinks he can insult me every day with his senseless remarks.

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Is every topic on here going to turn into something where the 3 of you attack each other? Stay on topic!!

 

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I am super pumped for this movie. I am excited to see Emma out of her conmfert zone. It just looks like a good, fun film.

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Is every topic on here going to turn into something where the 3 of you attack each other? Stay on topic!!

 

Just want to draw you attention to the point, WHO is starting the personal insults here regularly. Hint: a guy from a southern country with access to the Mediteranian and the Atlantic..... But you are right, Arie, I will ignore him from now on. It's the best way.....

Edited by Jonny Carinthia
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good fun film? I don´t think it is. Its from Sophia Coppola. Yes you will have some fun with it, but sooner or later you will get some questions you will think on, and some sadness too. Ever watched the virgin suicides or Marie Antoinette, start funny and got to some questions and pics who stay in mind.

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I don't care who started it. You all continued it and it is brining down this site. So stop. Move on.

 

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I don't know much about any of the other characters in Bling Ring but I know Emma mentioning that there are 2 others who really lead the movie. Do you guys know more of the story?

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I don't know much about any of the other characters in Bling Ring but I know Emma mentioning that there are 2 others who really lead the movie. Do you guys know more of the story?

 

The living persons, portraid in the movie by Katie Chang and Israel Brousard are the "gang-leaders". The whole story is simple (a group of kids who burgled the homes of several celebrities over a period believed to have been from around October 2008 through August 2009).

 

If you want to read in detail about the living persons (and the actors, who impersonated them in the movie) I suggest to go to Wikipedia (very good side about the actual events and the movie) because the story and the background for each person is very complex.

Edited by Jonny Carinthia
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