Empire February 2023

`IT’S NOT EVERY month you go to Nicolas Cage’s house. Unless, of course, you are Nicolas Cage, in which case you presumably go there pretty often. But for the rest of us, a visit to the Las Vegas HQ of cinema’s most esoteric actor — a man who has had his head burst into flames in at least two films, who can make even the alphabet mesmeric, who can eat a peach for hours — is a rare and illuminating journey into the mind of a legend. There, we discovered sights we barely believed: a mystical crow caged beside a pool table, a rowdy possum on a balcony, dozens of lizards, and a throne-like Peruvian geode on which the man himself likes to perch. The sounds weren’t too bad,…

WHIP SMART Re: Paddington’s homage to Indiana Jones, as mentioned in the January issue, page 55: perhaps it’s a case of Mandela effect as I also always remembered it was his fedora that Indy grabs from a booby-trapped door in a Peruvian Temple in Raiders. But, having watched it recently, I was surprised to see it’s actually his bullwhip he risks his arm for. He does repeat the trick, however, in Temple Of Doom, this time for his fedora. MIKE TAYLOR, ABERDEEN That’s the kind of pedantry that Indy himself would appreciate, Mike. After all, archaeology is the search for fact, not truth. For your attention to detail, have a Picturehouse membership on us. Empire’s star letter wins a Picturehouse Membership, plus one for a friend! Valid for one year…

“IT’S AN OPEN-and-shut case: this is the greatest story that has ever been told in video games.” Big words? Or damning with faint praise? Considering it comes from the creator of HBO’s Emmy-winning Chernobyl, it’s a claim we should probably pay heed to. Craig Mazin is, after all, a man who knows a thing or two about story: his 2019 dramatisation of the infamous nuclear accident has been widely hailed as a TV masterpiece. And when he had his pick of almost any project imaginable as a follow-up, he chose to adapt a PlayStation game. While Sonic The Hedgehog may have collected gold rings aplenty at the box office, video-game adaptations have not had a storied history, almost always lambasted as cash-ins. The Last Of Us, however, feels different. The…

JENNY SLATE IS probably the only actor you’ll come across who holds an affinity with a shell. And not just any shell. A stop-motion one-inch shell wearing tiny shoes, his single eye nestled in the shell’s opening, and with a soft, high yet emotive voice. A shell who enjoys hang-gliding (he uses a Dorito) and skiing (human toenails), and has natural showmanship. Yet, speaking with Empire about the feature-length adventures of Marcel — named after her great-uncle — Slate reflects on just how ingrained she’s become in the character over their journey together. “I was saying to my therapist yesterday, actually, that it’s become way more clear to me what the aspects of his personality are and how they’re connected with my own personality,” she says. Slate describes Marcel’s voice…

MOST BIOPIC-Y THE FABELMANS DIRECTED BY STEVEN SPIELBERG Is it about him? 100 per cent. 8mm cameras! David Lynch playing John Ford! Spielberg has wanted to adapt his life story for decades, but fear that his parents wouldn’t share his “loving yet critical” memories put the filmmaker off. Then, thanks to some nagging from said parents, Spielberg overcame his fear and made his story about lost love, the movies he made and the movies that made him. ARMAGEDDON TIME DIRECTED BY JAMES GRAY Is it about him? Also 100 per cent! Keen to go back to his roots after shooting outer space in Ad Astra, Gray’s Queens-based, Reagan-era upbringing as part of a close-knit Jewish family lies at the heart of the film. The filmmaker even sprinkled in small details…

IN TODD FIELD’S wild character study TÁR, Cate Blanchett plays composer and conductor Lydia Tár, who unravels after accusations of abusive behaviour begin to pile up. Field asked musician Hildur Guðnadóttir, who won bags of awards for her Chernobyl and Joker scores, to work on the film from the ground up, creating music for all aspects of Tár — some of which we don’t even hear. She takes us through a unique process. TEMPO-MAPPING Discussions with Field at the script stage led to Guðnadóttir “tempo-mapping” music for Lydia, resulting in pieces that Blanchett would listen to through an earpiece on set, to inspire the character’s physicality. “When you’re writing, rehearsing or performing music, a lot of the process happens internally,” explains Guðnadóttir. “We needed to feel that in her demeanour.…