'Harry Potter,' Andrew Garfield win top Tony Awards

NEW YORK --  "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" won the Tony for best play on Sunday, while "The Band's Visit" swept the musical categories with 10 wins, including the top award best musical at Broadway's annual honors for the best in theater.

Glenda Jackson and Andrew Garfield took home acting prizes and rocker Bruce Springsteen received a special Tony, while a revival of the AIDS drama "Angels in America" was named best play revival and "Once On This Island" won best musical revival.

But the biggest surprise of the night came when Robert De Niro, appearing on stage to introduce Springsteen, used the "F-bomb" against U.S. President Donald Trump.

De Niro's comments brought the cheering crowd at Radio City Music Hall to its feet but were bleeped for U.S. television audiences.

"The Band's Visit," about Egyptian musicians stranded in a small Israeli town, also won acting awards for stars Tony Shaloub, Katrina Lenk and Ari'el Stachel, as well as best book, score, director, orchestration, sound design and lighting.

It lost just one category among its 11 nominations, with its 10 wins just two shy of the record for any show set by "The Producers."

"I avoided so many events with them (his parents) in the past because I pretended that I was not Middle Eastern," said Stachel, whose father is of Yemeni and Israeli heritage.

He also praised "a cast of actors who never believed they would be able to portray their own races."

"Harry Potter," a record-setting $69-million two-part production set 19 years after the last of J.K. Rowling's best-selling novels about the boy wizard, won a total of six Tonys including best new play and best director.

Garfield won best actor in a play for his acclaimed performance in "Angels in America," which also won Nathan Lane his third Tony, as closeted conservative lawyer Roy Cohn, who died of AIDS.

Praising playwright Tony Kushner, an emotional Lane said, "Tony wrote one of the greatest plays of the 20th century, and it is still speaking to us as powerfully as ever in the midst of such political insanity."

Kushner, noting it was 21 weeks until the mid-term congressional elections in the United States, continued the political vein adding, "21 weeks to save our democracy."

Jackson, 82, returning to Broadway after 30 years and a lengthy term as a British politician, was named best actress for her tour-de-force performance in Edward Albee's "Three Tall Women."

Laurie Metcalf won her second Tony, playing a younger version of Jackson's imperious character in "Three Tall Women."

Veteran actress Chita Rivera and British musical impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber received lifetime achievement awards, while actor, writer and comedian John Leguizamo was given a special Tony for his one-man show, "Latin History for Morons."

The Tonys, hosted by singer-songriter-actors Josh Groban and Sara Bareilles, capped another record year on Broadway with $1.7 billion in box office receipts, despite the smallest number of new productions in 20 years.

Following is a list of winners in key categories:

Best play: "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two"
Best musical: "The Band's Visit"
Best revival of a play: "Angels in America"
Best revival of a musical: "Once On This Island"
Best actor in a play: Andrew Garfield, "Angels in America"
Best actress in a play: Glenda Jackson, "Three Tall Women"
Best actor in a musical: Tony Shalhoub, "The Band's Visit"
Best actress in a musical: Katrina Lenk, "The Band's Visit"
Best direction of a play: John Tiffany, "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two"
Best direction of a musical: David Cromer, "The Band's Visit"
Best book of a musical: "The Band's Visit"
Best original score (music and/or lyrics): "The Band's Visit"
Lifetime achievement: Chita Rivera, Andrew Lloyd Webber
Special award: Bruce Springsteen, John Leguizamo

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Spider-Man swings back to big screen, trapped in web of love

Spider-Man is having a blast, swinging, somersaulting and wise-cracking his way around the skyscrapers and streets of New York, trouncing bullies and fighting crime.

Being Peter Parker however is much more difficult, especially when it comes to love. And it's Peter's conflicted, earth-bound romance with teen girlfriend Gwen Stacy that drives "The Amazing Spider-Man 2," opening in U.S. movie theaters on Friday. The film has already made $132 million at the international box office.

"I didn't know how big a deal the love story aspect would be. But it is. It is the heart of Peter and the heart of his story," said British-American actor Andrew Garfield, who dons the iconic super-hero's blue and red suit for a second time.

"It's his Kryptonite. Love - his desire to be an ordinary guy connected to a woman, a loved one - is a really big yearning for Peter that he struggles with in terms of the sacrifice he has to make as Spider-Man," the actor told Reuters.

Columbia Pictures' "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" reunites Garfield with Emma Stone as Gwen and director Marc Webb in another action-packed tale of the Marvel comic book crime fighter.

This time, Peter re-connects with old school chum Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) and takes on some of his most formidable foes - Electro (Jamie Foxx) and Harry's villainous alter-ego the Green Goblin - in his mission to protect New York from the evil designs of powerful conglomerate Oscorp.

"Spider-Man is really good at being Spider-Man," Webb said. "In the last movie he was learning the ropes, and this time he has really embraced that part of himself."

"Amazing" chemistry

That Spider-Man will eventually triumph in the high-octane 3D aerial battles and exploding buildings during the 142-minute movie is hardly in doubt.

But amid the noise and destruction, an unusually tender romance more common to smaller, low budget movies is played out between Peter and Gwen as they graduate high school and take on the challenges of adult life.

"It's like you are watching an intimate story played out on a very big landscape," said Garfield.

Naturally, it helps that Garfield, 31, and Stone, 25, have been quietly dating in real life since meeting on the "Amazing Spider-Man" set three years ago.

Webb, who directed the 2009 offbeat romantic comedy "(500) Days of Summer," said he always hoped to fully embrace the early comic book story of brainy science student Gwen as Peter's first true love, and he struck lucky with his cast.

"Andrew and Emma are the kind of actors that can improvise and there is an authenticity to that dynamic. It is fun to watch people watch the movie. When they come on screen together, people sort of sit back and smile," Webb said.

"It is playful, it is what you want relationships to be like. There is banter and humor but underneath that there is a real affection."

The on-again, off-again romance, and Peter's promise to Gwen's recently dead father to stay away from his girlfriend for her own safety, provides as much dramatic tension in the movie as Spider-Man's battles with his larger-than-life foes.

"It's what allows you to access Spider-Man and the drama that comes from him trying to separate his life as Spider-Man from Peter Parker. His inability to do that is hopefully what gives the story its power," Webb said.

"The Amazing Spider-Man 2," which was made by Sony Corp's Columbia Pictures unit for a reported budget of about $200 million, is projected to make $102 million in its opening weekend, according to movie tracker Boxoffice.com.

Its 2012 predecessor "The Amazing Spider-Man," took a total of $752 million at the global box-office to become the 7th biggest movie worldwide of that year.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Lights off for Earth Hour's global crowdfunding call

SINGAPORE -- Lights went off in thousands of cities and towns across the world on Saturday for the annual Earth Hour campaign, which is aiming to raise money via the Internet for local environmental projects.

 The Singapore-based campaign by conservation group WWF was boosted by Hollywood star power, with "The Amazing Spiderman-2" stars Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone and Jamie Foxx leading ceremonies at the city-state's Marina Bay district.

Comic-book hero Spiderman is this year's "ambassador" for Earth Hour, which was launched in Sydney in 2007.

Sydney's Opera House and Harbour Bridge were among the first landmarks around the world to dim their lights for 60 minutes during Saturday's event.

An estimated 7,000 cities and towns from New Zealand to New York took part in the event.

Hong Kong's stunning waterfront skyline was unrecognizable on Saturday evening, with the city's tallest skyscraper, the International Commerce Centre, stripped of the vast light show usually wrapped around its 118 stories.

Blazing neon signs advertising some of the world's largest brands were shut off, leaving the view of the heavily vertical southern Chinese city peppered only with tiny lights from buildings' interiors.

Earth Hour partnered with payments giant PayPal to allow donors to contribute to specific projects from Russia and India to Canada and Indonesia, using Asian fundraising site Crowdonomic.

Earth Hour chief executive Andy Ridley said before the lights went off in Singapore that the event had moved beyond symbolism to concrete action.

"If you want to get real social change you need to have symbolism," he told AFP.

"We are seeing some really big outcomes."

Projects under the "Earth Hour Blue" crowdfunding scheme -- which aim to raise more than $650,000 in total -- include a turtle center in Italy and funding for forest rangers in Indonesia.

The event is being marked in more than 150 countries, organizers said, estimating that thousands of cities and towns would have taken part by the time the ceremonies began in Singapore.

The projects seeking crowdfunding include a 24,000-dollar effort in the Philippines to bring fiberglass boat technology to coastal communities affected by super typhoon Haiyan in November last year.

In Nepal, $100,000 is being sought for a program called "A Flame Called Hope" to provide access to biogas energy for 150 households in the Terai region, reducing the need for wood as fuel and helping protect the habitat of endangered wildlife, according to the Earth Hour website.

Spiderman-2 star Garfield told journalists that he was a personal supporter of the Nepal project.

"What they are doing is turning waste into energy, it's like the cycle of life right there, if only everyone knew how simple it was," he said.

Earth Hour will see other landmarks including the Empire State Building in New York, the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Kremlin in Moscow switch off their lights for an hour starting at 8:30 pm local time on Saturday.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Andrew Garfield to give message to Pinoys on Earth Hour

MANILA - "Spider-Man" star Andrew Garfield will be giving a message to his Filipino fans this weekend during the annual Earth Hour switch-off, organizers announced Thursday.

The message from the 30-year-old actor will be shown at the Eastwood City Open Park at around 8:30 p.m.

Spider-Man, the Marvel superhero portrayed by Garfield on the big screen, is the official celebrity endorser of this year's Earth Hour 60+ campaign.

According to organizers, Eastwood City's switch-off is one of the biggest single Earth Hour switch-offs in Metro Manila with 19 residential towers, 10 office buildings, three malls, and a hotel participating in the annual event.

Garfield's part in the Earth Hour campaign leads up to the release of "The Amazing Spider-Man 2," which will hit theaters in the Philippines on April 30.

In an earlier interview with ABS-CBN News, Garfield turned emotional as he gave a message to the millions affected by super typhoon Yolanda (international name Haiyan), which devastated parts of central Philippines in November.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com