19 April 2003
By ROCHELLE WEST

Hollywood will be in Taranaki for a few more weeks yet.

Latest indications show filming of The Last Samurai is due to finish about May 7. Originally, filming in the region was to wind up about this weekend, but things are going so well here, the film-makers apparently want to stay a little longer to make the best film possible. Rumour has it that director Ed Zwick and lead actor and producer Tom Cruise think the natural lighting in Taranaki is so fantastic, they are putting in more scenes, so the film looks even better. The $US100 million movie is still on budget, however. The longer stay will no doubt keep the local hospitality industry and all the businesses who have been involved with the movie very happy.

* Cast and crew sat and watched several mock Japanese buildings – including the main meeting house – burn to the ground at the Uruti film set this week. The buildings were believed to be replicas of those in the main mock-Japanese village, but had been built further down the valley to be razed for the film. It apparently took about 20 minutes for the huts to burn to the ground, with the intense heat making it difficult at times for the principal actors to keep control of their horses as the fire crackled. And there was no room for extra takes or mistakes – with only one chance to get it right.

* A handful of The Last Samurai special effects crew were in Queenstown this week filming some scenic plate shots for the film. It is understood they flew by helicopter on a location hunt earlier this week in preparation for two days’ filming in the Mt Aspiring area. Queenstown director John Mahaffie is the director of photography for the shoot. Mahaffie, who directed the second unit of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, has been in Taranaki for more than a month filming battle scenes for The Last Samurai at Upper Pitone Rd.

* Tom Cruise seems to be getting in a bit of horse riding practice in his spare time while in Taranaki. Between filming takes, The Last Samurai star has headed to back-country adventure camp Gumboot Gully, which is near the Uruti Samurai set, for some riding action. It is understood Cruise’s son, Connor (8), has also been having some horse riding practice near his Oakura home base.

* It wasn’t just Taranaki farmers who suffered during the recent dry spell. Looking out on golden brown pastures day after day apparently forced The Last Samurai film crew to take urgent action. Green was what they wanted, not brown. It is understood the background hillsides were instantly transformed – sprayed with green paint, for the duration of the filming of battle scenes at Upper Pitone Rd.

From: Stuff.
Thanks to Bettyblue!

Tom Cruise wows fans

Auckland – From on-screen Samurai fighter to real-life good Samaritan, Hollywood star Tom Cruise has impressed locals in New Zealand’s remote North Island province of Taranaki where he has been filming since January.

While working on the big budget Warner Bros epic The Last Samurai, due to wrap up mid-April, Cruise has become celebrated for his down-to-earth habits, like eating fish and chips in newspaper from the local take-away and catching the surf at nearby beaches.

And all without a paparazzi lens or mob of breathless fans in sight.

Then there have been his good deeds.

Far from mainstream cinematic gossip of sex scandals, diet fads, drug abuse and more among the stars, Cruise has become famous in Taranaki for stopping to help a local family change a flat tyre on a country road.

He also helped a young girl catch her runaway horse and donated seven thousand New Zealand dollars to a tiny, rural school near his film set for a sun shelter under which pupils can play.

While he has rarely been seen in public – unlike his gregarious Scottish co-star Billy Connelly – Cruise has earned a reputation for being a genuinely nice

I dont have the source…
thanks to Felicia!

Taranaki farewell for Tom
The 1200-odd people gathered at New Plymouth’s TSB Bowl yesterday, assembled in formation to spell out the word TOMINAKI.
Organised by The Edge radio station, the mass gathering and subsequent photograph was an effort to give Hollywood movie star Tom Cruise a memorable farewell from Taranaki, where he has lived for nearly four months for the filming of The Last Samurai. Mt Taranaki would be digitally put into the photograph and it was hoped the picture would be presented to Cruise before he left Taranaki later this month.

Click Here for more info.

Minority Report got only one nomination for the 2003 MTV movie awards. It was nominated for “best action sequence” for the escape scene. So go and VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE!

Chantal has sent me some news:

DeVito, Cruise in secret project
From correspondents in New Plymouth, New Zealand
April 10, 2003

HOLLYWOOD star Danny DeVito has confirmed he is working on a secret project with colleague Tom Cruise.

Cruise is in New Zealand’s Taranaki province filming the $US100 million ($165.54 million) Last Samurai, but DeVito declined to reveal details of their joint project.

“I’m working on a project with Tom, but I can’t say what it is yet,” he said.

Rumours have been rife that another Hollywood movie is just around the corner for Taranaki.

There has been talk about Cruise planning to film an adaptation of H G Wells’ novel, The War of the Worlds, but DeVito would not confirm if that was the project he and Cruise were working on.

From:
http://entertainment.news.com.au/

A few more about Tom and DiCaprio going for the same part…

From: Teen Hollywood
Cruise And DiCaprio Play Same Part
April 10, 2003

Film idols Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio are to make films about the same serial killer.

Cruise’s production company C/W Productions have acquired the film rights to New York Times bestseller, TThe Devil in White City, a book by Eril Larson that details the actions of H.H. Holmes, a murderer who preyed on visitors to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.

Kathryn Bigelow will co-produce and direct the Cruise film, and the book will be adapted for the screen by Chris Kyle (K-19).

Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company Appian Way is also working on a Holmes movie.

Holmes was a doctor who lured young women away from the fair, took them to a nearby hotel and murdered them. In 1896 he was sentenced to death after admitting to 27 murders.

And this one from Canoe

Cruise, DiCaprio vie for The Devil
Two of Hollywood’s shiniest stars, Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio, are racing to tell the big-screen story of one of 19th-century Chicago’s most notorious serial killers.

Cruise and producing partner Paula Wagner have optioned author Erik Larson’s bestseller, The Devil In The White City, according to Variety.

The book tells the tale of H.H. Holmes, a devilishly debonair doctor who achieved infamy by luring young women away from the 1893 World’s Fair and murdering them in a hotel he owned near the fairgrounds.

Kathryn Bigelow (K19: The Widowmaker) is slated to direct. Holmes is also the subject of a competing film being developed by DiCaprio’s Appian Way production company for the Gangs Of New York actor to produce and star in.

In November, Appian hired a team to write a screenplay about the same killer via research available in the public domain.

This version will play more like DiCaprio’s blockbuster cat-and-mouse hunt Catch Me If You Can, by also following the viewpoint of the Pinkerton detective hired to hunt down Holmes.

Both films will have the same ending: Holmes was eventually captured, tried and hanged in 1896 after claiming to have murdered 27 people.

— Toronto Sun

From E! Online
Cruise, DiCaprio Go for the Kill

by Josh Grossberg
Apr 9, 2003, 2:15 PM PT

They say everything in Hollywood comes in twos, be it disaster films about volcanoes or asteroids, sci-fi flicks about Mars or even biopics on Howard Hughes.

So, it should come as no surprise that two of Tinseltown’s shiniest stars, Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio, are racing to tell the big-screen the story of one of 19th-century Chicago’s most notorious serial killers. (And no, this Chi-town slayer doesn’t sing and dance.)

Cruise and producing partner Paula Wagner have optioned author Erik Larso

n’s bestseller, The Devil in the White City, according to Daily Variety. The book tells the tale of H.H. Holmes, a devilishly debonair doctor who achieved infamy by luring young women away from the 1893 World’s Fair and murdering them in a hotel he owned near the fairgrounds.

Director Kathryn Bigelow (K19: The Widowmaker) is slated to helm the project, while K19 scribe Christopher Kyle has been tapped to write the script. Cruise and Wagner will produce under their Cruise/Wagner production shingle.

Holmes is also the subject of a competing film being developed by DiCaprio’s Appian Way production company for the Gangs of New York actor to produce and star in.

In November, Appian hired the writing team of Aaron and Matthew Benay to pen a screenplay about the same dastardly killer via research available in the public domain. Unlike the Cruise project, this version will play more like DiCaprio’s blockbuster cat-and-mouse hunt Catch Me If You Can by also following the viewpoint of the Pinkerton detective hired to hunt down Holmes.

Either way, both films will have the same ending: Holmes was eventually captured, tried and hanged in 1896 after claiming to have murdered 27 people. The Ted Bundy of his time, he was so infamous that William Randolph Heart’s newspaper syndicate paid the doctor $10,000 to publish his prison confession.

The million-dollar question is which project will make it to theaters first. No word whether Cruise will star in his version, but with DiCaprio committed to headline his own take on Holmes, it’s likely he could be the winner.

That is, if he doesn’t fall behind in a couple of other high-profile Hollywood races.

DiCaprio is next scheduled to reunite with his Gangs pal Martin Scorsese to play Howard Hughes in The Aviator–that’s if Memento director Christopher Nolan and Jim Carrey don’t beat him to it with their own biopic on the bizzaro billionaire.

DiCaprio’s also looking to be king of the ancient world as he’s set to star in Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming epic Alexander the Great. That project has a rival in filmmaker Oliver Stone, who’s busy plotting his own epic on the legendary Macedonian king with red-hot Irish actor Colin Farrell in the lead.

DiCaprio’s calendar also includes a project with Robert De Niro called The Good Shepherd, which charts the history of the CIA as seen through the eyes of James Wilson, an idealistic young man recruited out of Yale to become one of the agency’s founding officers. Then there’s Bombshell, Lasse Halström’s movie in which DiCaprio would play the nuclear scientist who dished U.S. Secrets to the Soviets during the 1940s.

Cruise, meanwhile, is finishing up shooting on The Last Samurai, a 19th-century epic set in Imperialist Japan. He has also reenlisted with his Minority Report director Steven Spielberg for Ghost Soldiers, a World War II drama about the survivors of Asia’s Bataan Death March that Cruise will produce and headline.

And Cruise is looking to team up with director David Fincher to reprise his role as superspy Ethan Hunt for one last go-round in Paramount’s hugely successful Mission: Impossible franchise.

Thanks to the amazing Chantal for all those news!

I’m looking for someone who can collect articles from the web and, if possible, from magazines, so I can create a section with those articles on the site. I need the articles to be like:

Article Title
Source

The Article itself.

It doenst need to be formated as html or anything like that, just a plain .txt for each will do…

Anyone who helps will be fully credited. Just e-mail me at annie@tomcruisefan.com for more info.