Mila Kunis covers FLARE + interview with Timberlake in ELLE

Interview with Justin Timberlake for ELLE Magazine

ELLE:  “Friends with benefits”: a good idea or a bad idea?
Justin Timberlake: [Smiles] It is such a good idea—until it’s a bad idea.
Mila Kunis:I concur. Ultimately, it ends when someone wants to go and get seriouswith somebody. More times than not, a person catches feelings andsomebody gets hurt.

ELLE: I think any time someone is rubbing up against your nether regions, you’re going to develop an emotional attachment.
MK: Yeah, when a female orgasms, a hormone gets released. I’ve never met a girl who can have sex without an ounce of feeling.
JT: Aha! Is that just a woman convincing herself so she feels like it’s okay to have sex with someone?
MK: Fifty-fifty.
JT: So it’s the same thing as with guys! Women are just lying to themselves.

ELLE: Playing friends with benefits, what was your costar most self-conscious about while shooting the nude scenes?
MK: [To Justin]You’ve got a fine ass. I was self-conscious about a lot of things. Show me one girl who isn’t.
JT: I’ll be honest and say, like, I’m still trying to get into the editingroom and cut down on my ass time. I’m like, “Oh my God, my mom’s gonnasee that!”

ELLE: As in the film, have either of your parents ever walked in on you while you were in flagrante delicto?
JT: I was caught one time. My mom wasn’t cool about it. I was too young to be in bed with a girl, so she was upset.
MK: I don’t think my parents think I’ve ever had sex.

ELLE: Most annoying thing your costar did on set?
JT: She would serenade me, all of us, in the makeup trailer—
MK: I can’t sing.
JT: Couldn’t carry a tune if I put it in a bucket for her. It’s awesome, though, because she does not give a shit.

ELLE: Let’s talk about how amazing your costar Woody Harrelson is playing a gay magazine photo editor.
JT:He gets the most gut-busting laughs. Everybody wants to know: “Did yousmoke pot with Woody?” We did! Will [Gluck] and I put that basketballscene in the movie just because we both love White Men Can’t Jump.

ELLE:In this film, there’s a five-date rule before you sleep with someone.What if you’re so attracted to a person that you want to end the firstdate in bed?
JT: Ooh, I would probably steer away from it. As a matter of fact, I definitely would steer away from it.

ELLE: Earth to Justin… Perfect first date?
JT: Something more simple than extravagant. Scrabble.
MK: Monopoly.
JT: Scrabble’s a good date. If she can’t spell, I don’t want to hang out with her. So that’s a good test.
MK: I can’t spell at all. [To Justin] Now we’ll never be friends.

ELLE: Strangest question a date ever asked you?
JT:I had a date ask me one time if I had found God. I’m a sick humanbeing—I mean, I answered, “Yeah, he’s in my pants.” So, the date didn’tgo that much longer because—
MK: She didn’t kneel at your altar?
JT: [Ignoring Mila] My date thought that was crass, and I thought that asking me about God was crass, so…

ELLE: Mila, who is your older-man crush?
MK: George Clooney and Johnny Depp.

ELLE: In romance, are you ruled by your head or heart?
MK: My heart. I’m trying to lead with my head. I am. I’m trying! I’m failing.
JT:She’s lying. Don’t ever change, kiddo. I’m a pushover too. I’m notreally all that smart, so I don’t really have anything to lead withexcept my heart.

ELLE: Now that you’re both single, do you find it hard to date? Must be tough being in the public eye.
MK: I haven’t dated ever.
JT: I’m not equipped to answer that right now

Is Natalie Portman going to quit acting?

In a recent interview, Nat revealed that she may give up acting to raise her child, following in the footsteps on screen legend Audrey Hepburn.

She told The Sun's Buzz Magazine: "Audrey made some good choices in life... More and more I realize how unimportant it is to be in the history books or anything like that. Putting time and energy into your children - that's valuable."

A part of me is sad, considering how well her career has been going lately, especially with the Oscar and Golden Globe wins, but as long as she's happy with her life, I can't complain.

Source (Digital Spy)

advertisement Mila Kunis Before 'Black Swan': 'I Had Never Danced in My Life'

Mila Kunis flaunts her style in a new spread for W magazine's March Spring Fashion issue, on stands nationwide February 25, and the 'Black Swan' star reveals she had never danced before her breakthrough ballet role.

"I had never danced in my life," says Mila. "I trained for four months, seven days a week, five hours a day. I had one day off on my birthday. I lost 20 pounds. I tore a ligament. I dislocated my shoulder. I have two scars on my back. And it was worth every minute."

Asked if she'd be willing to continue dancing, she counters, "I will never dance again... I was like, 'Well -- I wear heels; I can do this.' I was wrong: Christian Louboutins are uncomfortable, but I screamed the first time I put on a pointe shoe."

The 27-year-old Ukrainian-born beauty -- who admits that she's the first person in her family to not be a college graduate -- also details her career crossroads when her contract with "That '70s Show" ended.

"I had to make a conscious decision about what I wanted to do with my life," she explains. "During the show, I had attempted to go to college, but I realized that the traffic in L.A. made it too difficult for me to go to school at 6 a.m. and be back at work at 10 a.m. I asked my parents if it was okay if I dropped out. They said okay, you can defer until after your contract with 'That '70s Show' ends. And then it ended. I realized for the first time that I couldn't imagine doing anything else. So I had to make acting a career -- to make smart choices instead of choices made for fun."

Source

The Many Faces of ‘Black Swan,’ Deconstructed

Few ballet films excite popular fascination and excitement, and almost none to the degree of “Black Swan,” which is up for five Oscars this month. So why has it so intrigued academy voters and the public alike? Surely because it exerts its lurid appeal on multiple levels.

In “Black Swan,” Natalie Portman plays a ballerina who finally wins a lead role only to feel the pressure that accompanies it.

It’s a backstager: Will poor hard-working Nina (Natalie Portman) get the white-black double lead role of “Swan Lake,” pull off its taxing demands, survive till the first night and vanquish her rival, not to mention her terrors? It’s horror: Nina’s life spirals out of control for alarming reasons apparently beyond her control and indeed her comprehension. It’s psychosexual drama: Those forces come from her confused perceptions of her mother, her sexual inhibitions, her ambitions and her increasingly schizoid fantasies. It’s a Tchaikovsky-soundtrack movie: Nothing about it is neater than the way Clint Mansell’s score is almost all taken from “Swan Lake” material, with a marvelous use of the slow chords prefacing the ballet’s most famous pas de deux for an offstage effect of psychological suspense.

Most powerfully it’s a modern example of that old genre, the woman’s movie. Nina’s loves are seen as repressed and illicit, her successes are shown as triumphs in an unnatural and injurious art form, and she is duly punished for these transgressions. Joan Crawford would have killed to play her.

Nina has a female nemesis, but that turns out to be less her sexy, confident frenemy Lily (Mila Kunis) than her own alter ego. Yes, “Black Swan” is the latest example of what the film critic Jeanine Basinger has called the “My god, there’s two of her!” device. Nina develops her own built-in anti-Nina.

And it’s a highly partial — airless — view of ballet’s interior workings. It goes out of its way to contradict the old escapist idea that “everything’s beautiful at the ballet.” Instead it takes energy from the aspects of ballet that are cruel and unfair. Let’s not pretend, however, that those aspects don’t exist.

Let’s also admit there have always been striking parallels between the ballet classics of the 19th century and the Hollywood women’s movies of the mid-20th century. In “A Stolen Life” (1946) passive, sensitive and artistically creative Bette Davis, thanks to her inhibitions, loses Glenn Ford to her active, sexy but heartless twin — played, of course, by Bette Davis. In “Random Harvest” (1942) amnesiac Ronald Colman realizes only at the end that his perfect but cool, unyielding wife, Greer Garson, is also the warm, outgoing and devoted woman whom he married in the love-filled other life long buried in his subconscious. Resemblances between these absurd but deeply enjoyable movies and the full-length “Swan Lake” are easy to spot.

Likewise “Black Swan’s” alter-ego rivalries and divided-ego visions connect intimately to the good-bad, white-black, active-passive Odette-Odile heroines of “Swan Lake.” First Nina is told she doesn’t have it in her to be both the white swan and the black. Eventually, however, it’s disconcerting how much of the contrasting heroines she does contain.

Nina sometimes sees her anti-Nina in the mirror. Ballet has been obsessed with mirrors for centuries, and not just in works like August Bournonville’s “Ventana” (1856) and Jerome Robbins’s “Afternoon of a Faun” (1953). Dancers often spend more of their time in front of the mirror than before an audience, and it’s in the mirror that they see both the ideal versions of themselves they hope to show the public as well as their own failings.

In “Black Swan” Nina’s mirror-image starts to take on an independent life. Away from the classroom Nina continually sees this doppelgänger acting out her hopes and horrors. At the climax of a lesbian fantasy Nina’s lover Lily turns into Nina’s lover Nina: a radical rewrite of the old idea of the dancer as Narcissus.

If Nina is a narcissist, however, she is appalled by it. More obviously she is a self-tormentor. I wish this view of ballet were a lie, but it’s not. It is, though, far from being the whole truth. The “Black Swan” screenplay has surely been prompted by a number of dancers’ memoirs — Gelsey Kirkland’s 1986 best seller, “Dancing on My Grave,” is just the most famous — to convey its neurotic version of the internal life of ballet.

Nina could learn from a dancer she invokes in a dressing-room scene: Margot Fonteyn. In her 1975 “Autobiography” that most reasonable of superstar ballerinas emphasized the crucial distinction between taking work seriously (“imperative”) and taking oneself seriously (“disastrous”). “Black Swan” could have been inspired by elements of Fonteyn’s own story: She wrote emphatically of the “terror” with which she faced every performance of “Swan Lake” (whose central role she danced for some 35 years), and how, after Frederick Ashton told her everything that was missing at the dress rehearsal for his new ballet “Apparitions,” she found “by some alchemy of despair” the artistry to rise to the work’s demands .

One book about Fonteyn quotes her as saying, “I’m sure if everyone knew how physically cruel dancing really is, nobody would watch — only those people who enjoy bullfights!” For some dancers it is the hips that take most strain; some, the spine; for Fonteyn and others it was the feet. “Black Swan” offers just enough imagery to show us why pointwork in ballet can seem as extreme and punitive as the old Chinese custom of binding women’s feet.

“Black Swan” certainly feels hostile to ballet, but I don’t think it means to be. Its real objective — above and beyond that of so many women’s movies — is to imply that a woman’s truest fulfillment is as (heterosexual) lover, wife and mother, and therefore that Nina’s best artistic successes can never compensate for her personal sacrifices. The “Black Swan” view of ballet is that it’s an unnatural art in which women deny too many normal aspects of womanhood.

There is copious evidence to support that view. Witness such dancer autobiographies as Ms. Kirkland’s and Toni Bentley’s “Winter Season” (1982). Ms. Bentley describes how, when she has her third monthly period in a row, colleagues in her dressing room ask, “Are you sure you’re a dancer?” True dancers, according to that attitude, don’t have normal female functions.

To these negatives ballet brings many positives: energy, responsiveness to music, discipline, teamwork, idealism, interpretative fulfillment. Not so “Black Swan.” It’s both irresistible and odious. I was gripped by its melodrama, but its nightmarish view of both ballet and women is not one I’m keen to see again. As a horror movie, it’s not extreme. As a woman’s movie, however, it’s the end of the line.

Most depressingly, Nina is just not a great role. She’s too much a victim — the film makes her helpless, passive — to be seriously involving. Though she enjoys triumph, we never see the willpower that gets her there, just the psychosis and the martyrdom. It’s the latest hit movie for misogynists.

“The Red Shoes” (1948) — to which “Black Swan” owes so much — actually had more psychological depth. Its ballerina heroine found both fame and love, and her torment came from choosing between them. That’s a highly ambiguous attitude toward ballet — she cannot permanently reconcile dance and love — but you can see why it inspired thousands of girls to take up the art. The “Black Swan” idea of ballet is narrower: obsession, torment, inadequacy, paranoia, delusion.

Those things aren’t absent from ballet (or womanhood or life). And so Nina’s interior and exterior lives here spin together into a compelling vortex.

Will “Black Swan” follow “The Red Shoes” in inspiring a new generation of young dancers? Unlikely. It will, however, draw many to “Swan Lake,” to check out the ballet at the heart of the movie. What will they see?

Surely it’s time to go back to staging “Swan Lake” as it used to be before the 1940s, with no black swan at all, but with the antiheroine Odile dressed in strong colors, as a woman of the world. Her seductions lie in seeming not demonic but glamorously — if deceptively — available, unlike the withheld Odette. No ballet of the 19th century goes further into true tragedy: Odette the Swan Queen takes heroic responsibility for herself and also her flock of swan-maidens.

Alas, companies go on presenting “Swan Lake” as a crude choice between a good, loyally loving but passive victim and an evil, active and vampishly duplicitous sorceress. And ballet goes on abounding in sexist, melodramatic clichés. While this remains so, “Black Swan” is the ballet movie our era deserves.

Source

Mila Kunis: 'I was bullied over looks'

Mila Kunis has revealed that she was bullied at school over her appearance.

The actress, who is 5ft 4in, explained that she was "funny-looking" and was always the shortest in her class.

She told OK: "I had a very funny-looking face when I was little. I had like big eyes, big lips, big ears. But when I was little I was constantly being made fun of for having big eyes and that was awful.

"I used to come home crying, 'Why do I have big eyes?' And my parents were like, 'You're crazy!'"

The 27-year-old went on to say that she has learnt from being taunted.

She added: "I've learned it wasn't a bad thing to be picked on because when you're little is seems awful, like it's the end of the world. I grew into my face."

Source

Former ballerina: I was a real Black Swan...and it nearly killed me

HOLLYWOOD star Natalie Portman is tipped to win an Oscar for playing a tortured ballerina in hit movie Black Swan.

But the film has caused outrage in the ballet world, as Portman's character, Nina, pushes herself to the limits - suffering eating disorders, self-harm and depression in a quest for dance perfection.

For former ballerina Ali Townsend, watching the movie was like seeing a younger version of herself.
The mum-of-one had a glittering 18-year career as one of the country's top ballerinas and danced for the London City Ballet and the English National Ballet.

'It brought back haunting memories' ... Ali Townsend

She even tackled the dual role of the white swan and black swan (Odette and Odile) in Swan Lake - the dance which forces Nina over the edge.

Today, Ali reveals herself as the real-life Black Swan.

Now 49, she told The Sun: "There were elements in the film that did bring back haunting memories for me.

"The movie itself was awesome and depicted a realistic account of the pressures and expectations put on dancers not just by themselves, but from directors, choreographers, fellow dancers and the audience."

Ali, from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, had her first ballet lesson at the age of 30 months and was hooked.

She recalled: "My older sister went to ballet class and I'd sit on my mum's knee to watch her. I really loved dancing, even from that age.

"I was talented and that was picked up so I went to ballet boarding school at the age of 11, at the Elmhurst School For Dance, which was then in Surrey."


It was at school where Ali was exposed to the fiercely critical world of ballet and the lengths girls will go to in order to be the best.

She said: "We studied normal lessons as well as ballet, but it was a long, intense day for an 11-year-old.

When I was 12 I came back from the summer holidays and a teacher told me I'd eaten too much pudding while I'd been away.

"That's where my eating disorder started. I can pinpoint it back to that comment.

"I felt like I had let everyone down, when in fact I was a young girl going through puberty.

"That one comment led to years of controlling what I ate. It was my way of dealing with the stress."

Like Nina in Black Swan, Ali strove for perfection in the way she looked and performed.

She explained: "You're constantly looking at yourself in the mirror in class and in rehearsal and criticising your body, wanting to be better.

"You don't even know if you're good enough to get a job at the end of your training, so all you can do is strive to be the best. You always dread you might not succeed."

Making her pointe ... Ali dancing in the 1980s

Students went to extreme measures. Ali said: "Girls used to lie on the floor and put the legs of their bed on top of their feet to improve their arch. One girl left after two years because her feet were so messed up after that.

"I used to go to bed in the splits aged 12 or 13 as I thought it was a cool thing to do to get looser, but I don't remember ever having a good night's sleep like that.

"We would be sitting on people's legs to get their turn-outs better. It was normal in that environment."

As Ali's eating disorder took hold she told her teachers she wasn't hungry at mealtimes to avoid food.

She said: "My parents freaked out when they saw me during the holidays, I was like a skeleton.

"My mum tried to encourage me to eat but I didn't want to eat - it felt dirty if I ate anything."

Ballerinas ideally measure between 5ft 3in and 5ft 7in tall and weigh seven to eight stone.

At her lowest weight at ballet school, Ali was just 4½st - severely underweight for her 5ft 3in frame.


Before leaving school at 16, Ali faced many of the pressures which cause Nina's breakdown in the film. She said: "The point between balancing the stress and tipping over with too much mental pressure is a fine line and it happened to me - I knew I'd gone too far.

"I was at ballet school and it was something I was able to turn around and generally, throughout my career, I coped and was OK.

"You're so undernourished you're not thinking straight and you become obsessed.

"It's a spiral, you work more and eat less. I kept thinking if I eat a bit less tomorrow, I'll be better. Anorexia wasn't really heard of then. It was my way of control, I had no idea why I was doing it. I felt I was better than everybody else."

When she left school Ali joined a ballet company. She recalled: "There are these beautiful prima ballerinas who've been in the company for years, and your confidence drops. I was right down at the bottom again."
Ali fought exhaustion, injuries and hunger pangs to dance. She explained: "I might have half a muesli bar and a coffee for breakfast then a bite of a sandwich and some fruit for lunch.

"I would eat maybe a piece of toast after a performance."

While Black Swan's Nina resorts to self-harm to control her emotions, for Ali food deprivation was her way of controlling her life.

"My sole form of abuse was food deprivation, but I have known people who have tried self-harm, it's just another vessel to exert control."

While Nina's controlling mother is the force behind many of her problems, Ali's relationship with her mum, Mavis, was the exact opposite.

She said: "My mum loved watching me dance. She's very supportive and nothing like Nina's mother in the film. But I have come across some incredibly pushy mothers.

"After their girls have been at dance school all day they go home and force them to learn more techniques, often incorrectly. They think they know it all but they're clueless."

In the film, Portman's Nina explores her sexuality and there are some steamy scenes where she locks lips with co-star Mila Kunis.

Due to the obsessive nature of ballet, and the close physical contact required on stage, dancers often have relationships with each other.

But Ali did not get married until she retired at the age of 35. She explained: "Unless your boyfriend was in the company you didn't meet anyone.

"It's so consuming and you spend all your time with the people you're working with. When I stopped dancing I married the ballet company's production manager.

"He knew how self-critical I was, but he knew the other side of me too and refused to get married until I finished dancing. He wanted me to stop and to relax."

Ali, now divorced, lives and works as a Pilates instructor in Wellington, New Zealand, with her 14-year-old son Rory.

And despite the huge sacrifices, she has no hesitation in recommending ballet classes to any mums whose children have shown an interest.

She said: "Ballet dancing is a wonderful talent to have. It requires such discipline and teaches poise, strength and determination. Ballet gave me the strength to deal with anything."

And she is grateful to the film for propelling ballet into the limelight, adding: "Dancers deserve more recognition. You see their pointe shoes after a performance, covered in blood and their feet are blistered and raw.

"People not in the industry ask why you'd do that to yourself, but there's nothing more amazing than achieving that perfect performance. It's an incredible buzz."

Source

NYT article about Benjamin Millepied

IT was the laugh heard around the Web. Natalie Portman, glowing in a pink Viktor & Rolf gown, bounded onstage at the Golden Globes last month to accept the award for best actress for her role in the psychological thriller “Black Swan.”

The speech began awkwardly — with the requisite nods to the presenter, Jeff Bridges, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association — before she thanked her grandmother, her parents and, finally, Benjamin Millepied.

“Benjamin choreographed the film,” Ms. Portman told the audience. “You might remember him in the movie as the guy, when they ask, ‘Would you sleep with that girl?’ he’s like ‘No.’

“It’s not true,” she continued, as the camera cut to Mr. Millepied, a handsome 33-year-old ballet dancer in a black tuxedo and a wide grin. “He totally wants to sleep with me!” She let out the now-famous laugh — part chortle, part hee-haw — that became a YouTube sensation.

The real joke was not lost on the room or the 17 million viewers at home. Ms. Portman was not only engaged to Mr. Millepied, but as her dress did little to conceal, she was also four months pregnant.

For Mr. Millepied, a superstar in the insular world of ballet, the moment was his prime-time coming out. Already, he has been featured in glossy magazines like Details, which photographed him shirtless, hanging from a barre, in a profile last December that said he was about to “leap into the upper echelon of celebrity.” His rugged good looks and athletic frame were also featured in an advertising campaign for Club Monaco last fall and for the Gap 2010 holiday campaign.

But now, as Ms. Portman’s fiancé, Mr. Millepied has become tabloid fodder and is arguably the biggest danseur to cross over into pop culture since Mikhail Baryshnikov.

“Benjamin’s a triple threat,” said Coco Kopelman, the Chanel heiress who is on the board of the School of American Ballet. “He’s a very talented principal dancer. He’s an amazing choreographer and he happens to be very attractive.”

And, she added, “It doesn’t hurt that he has a French accent.”

MR. MILLEPIED is a busy guy these days. An agreement to be interviewed was weeks in the making. Even then he proved elusive, first sending an e-mail suggesting, “let’s do btw 3 and 7, tribeca.” Then, after the reporter wandered that neighborhood for hours on a frigid January afternoon waiting for some sign of Mr. Millepied, he excused his absence with an apologetic text. “So sorry,” the message read. “Something came up.”

To be fair, many things could have come up. Perhaps Mr. Millepied was stuck at rehearsals for “The Bartered Bride,” which he is choreographing for the Metropolitan Opera. Or maybe he was demonstrating a particularly complicated pas de deux for the as-yet-unnamed new ballet he is choreographing for the American Ballet Theater that will have its premiere next month.

Another interview was set for the next evening at 9:30. The appointed time came and went. A text arrived an hour later: “Sorry, now at dinner. I promise we speak tonight.” Friday night turned to Saturday morning. At half past midnight the phone rang. “I have time to chat now,” said a sleep-softened voice, “then I leave for Los Angeles.”

Such has been Mr. Millepied’s life for much of the last year and a half. In 2009, the director Darren Aronofsky was preparing to film “Black Swan” and needed a ballet insider, “someone who was deeply steeped in classical ballet,” Mr. Aronofsky said in a recent telephone interview. “Benjamin’s name came from two different people.” Mr. Millepied jumped at the chance not only to
choreograph, but also to be a ballet consultant to ensure the film’s verisimilitude.

Midway through filming, Mr. Millepied heard that a part had opened up to play Ms. Portman’s on-screen dance partner. It was only a few lines, including the now famous would-you-have-sex-with-her scene, but Mr. Millepied eagerly volunteered.

Photo courtesy of the New York Times

And thus began a romance fit not only for the ballet stage but also for the New York tabloids.

It’s been quite a journey. Mr. Millepied, whose fortuitous last name can be roughly interpreted as “thousand footed,” was born in the south of France (“in a small town outside of Bordeaux”), raised in Senegal (“African dance is part of my upbringing”) and is the son of a decathlete and a ballet teacher (“I’ve danced as soon as I could walk”).

Mr. Millepied arrived in New York in 1993 at age 16, with a scholarship to the School of American Ballet, the grooming academy for the New York City Ballet. His athleticism and musicality caught the eye of Jerome Robbins, who cast him in “Two- and Three-Part Inventions,” one of Mr. Robbins’s last works. He was showered with accolades. Anna Kisselgoff, who was then the dance critic for The New York Times, proclaimed Mr. Millepied’s long athletic solo “brilliant.”

Upon graduation from the school, he moved seamlessly into the New York City Ballet, where he rose from a member of the corps de ballet to soloist to principal dancer — all by age 24.

In 1998, Dance magazine anointed him one of five male ballet dancers to watch. He was also perceived as a protégé of Mr. Robbins’s — the choreographer had not only mentored the young dancer, but had also introduced him to his inner circle of patrons.

But his big break came in 2002, Mr. Millepied said, when he was given the chance by Peter Martins, the ballet master for the New York City Ballet, to choreograph. The piece, “Clapping Music,” was set to five minutes of rhythmic applause by the minimalist composer Steve Reich.

Other commissions soon followed. By the time he turned 31, Mr. Millepied had choreographed for many of the world’s marquee ballet companies: the Paris Opera, the American Ballet Theater, the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle and the New York City Ballet. He even choreographed a solo piece entitled “Years Later” for Mr. Baryshnikov in 2006, a symbolic passing of the torch.

And like Mr. Baryshnikov, who achieved wider fame after starring in the ballet films “Turning Point” and “White Nights,” Mr. Millepied would soon make another jump — this time to Hollywood.

And, of course, Natalie Portman.

Maybe it was all the hours of rehearsals, but Mr. Millepied and Ms. Portman soon began to date. “We fell in love dancing,” Ms. Portman said on Ellen DeGeneres’s show last month. “It’s very romantic to dance together.” (Notably, a younger Mr. Baryshnikov was also known for dating starlets like Liza Minnelli and Jessica Lange.) For months, the couple kept the office romance
to themselves. “I actually was one of the last to find out,” said Mr. Aronofsky, with a hint of amusement. Then around Christmas, as reports of Ms. Portman’s pregnancy and her engagement to Mr. Millepied hit the blogosphere, the actress released a statement to Entertainment Weekly. In it, she said she was “indescribably happy.”

NOT everyone in the ballet world is equally smitten. Though roles and commissions have come to Mr. Millepied with ease, some argue his greatest talent isn’t as a choreographer, but as a blue-eyed charmer able to raise money, court donors and attract audiences.

“I personally don’t like to schmooze,” said Adam Hendrickson, a soloist at the New York City Ballet, who is a choreographer himself. “But some people just have that gift. Benjamin is great at it.”

To be fair, charming patrons is an integral part of ballet, a genre that grew out of court cultures of 16th-century France and Italy. By the 19th century, the backstage of the Paris Opera was a “privileged venue for sexual assignation” between dancers and season ticket holders, wrote Judith Lynne Hanna, a dance historian, in her book, “Dance, Sex and Gender.”

Ballet still relies on patrons and foundations (ticket sales barely cover expenses), and wooing donors is an inevitable part of the profession. After all, Mr. Martins’s ability to hobnob with donors, particularly Ms. Bass, is often cited as a reason he eventually succeeded George Balanchine at the New York City Ballet (particularly in contrast with the famously ill-tempered Mr.
Robbins).

But some go further and cattily whisper that Mr. Millepied’s charisma makes up for his shortcomings as a choreographer, and is the real reason for his numerous commissions. For instance, when the Pacific Northwest Ballet tapped him to choreograph an original work in 2008, it did so knowing that the work would be underwritten by an endowment from the Joyce Theater, the Stephen and Cathy Weinroth Fund for New Works. It helped attendance, too; his piece “3 Movements”
received “both good reviews and a good audience roar,” said Peter Boal, the ballet’s artistic director. Even at New York City Ballet, where donations are usually given to a general fund, Mr. Millepied’s work is a fund-raising magnet. “There are specific donors that sponsor my work,” Mr. Millepied said. His pieces are among the most well-attended each season, said Robert Daniels, a company spokesman.

Others wonder whether Mr. Millepied has spread himself too thin across all the world’s stages. “We called him Benjamin A Million Gigs,” said Wendy Perron, editor in chief of Dance magazine. “He always seemed to be doing something.”

“Millepied’s work has been very spotty,” Ms. Perron added. “After 2009, he made a couple of good pieces, but recently he has done a couple of not very good pieces.”

The choreographers Christopher Wheeldon and Alexei Ratmansky, she said, are the “real golden boys.”
“But they’re busy, and if you want a world premiere,” she said, “you go down to the next tier, to Millepied.”

But Mr. Millepied isn’t without his many defenders. His critics, they say, are just envious of his success and high profile. “There’s always the fear of spreading oneself too thin, but Benjamin’s smart enough to know what he’s doing,” said Mr. Hendrickson, the City Ballet dancer.

Linda Shelton, executive director of the Joyce Theater, called Mr. Millepied “a very talented choreographer who works with extraordinary dancers and who is developing his voice as a major choreographer.” Even Ms. Perron is a fan. “He definitely has talent,” she said. “Some of his pieces, like ‘Quasi Una Fantasia,’ are really terrific.”

The final verdict on Mr. Millepied’s talents may be in the commissions. New pieces are also under way for the New York City Ballet, the Pennsylvania Ballet and the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Lyon Opera Ballet, the Paris Opera and the Ballet de Geneve have also commissioned new pieces, Mr. Millepied said.

His film career, meanwhile, continues to grow. In December, he was the leading man in a short film co-directed by Asa Mader and starring Léa Seydoux, called “Time Doesn’t Stand Still.” Mr. Mader called the film “a steppingstone for a feature.”

“I’m booked for the next three years,” Mr. Millepied said, not unhappily.

As for his newest and most public role, as Ms. Portman’s consort, Mr. Millepied is still getting used to celebrity. After attending the Golden Globe Awards, he was absent during the Screen Actors Guild awards last Sunday; there’s no word if he’ll take time from his schedule to attend the Oscars on Feb 27. His ballet “Plainspoken” is scheduled for the New York City Ballet the night before.

Otherwise, Mr. Millepied is reluctant to discuss his relationship with Ms. Portman. He is an artist, he maintained, not a celebrity. “I don’t Google myself so honestly why would I care?” he said. “What I want to do is my work. The rest is completely irrelevant.”

Source

How 'Black Swan' Will Reach the $100 Million Mark

A ballet psycho-thriller isn’t the typical boxoffice juggernaut, but as Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan hit the $75 million mark during the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, Fox Searchlight received its most detailed breakdown of who is fueling the season’s surprise hit:

Women (big surprise!) About 55 percent of the audience is female (17-34 is the sweet spot), and many are bringing their boyfriends and husbands along. Women are giving the film a B+ on CinemaScore; men are a bit less enthusiastic with a B, but that is considered great for a horror/thriller.

People in small cities After opening in 18 theaters, Swan upped its theater count from about 1,550 to 2,328 and extended into smaller communities, turning in top performances in Butte, Mont., Guleph, Ont., Columbus, Ga., Houma, La., and Bangor, Maine. The $13 million-budgeted film is doing especially well in French Canada and heavily Hispanic San Antonio, even though Searchlight initially didn’t spend much there.

And big-city types, too The top-performing theater in the U.S. is the Regal Union Square in New York, where Swan will soon become its third-highest grosser of all time, behind only Avatar and Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace ($1.7 million each). Other top cities include Boston, Seattle and Chicago.

But not really L.A.'s Arclight Hollywood is the No. 2 theater overall for Swan, but Searchlight says the film hasn’t overperformed in the broader Los Angeles market.

How high can Swan fly? After her best drama actress win at the Golden Globes, Natalie Portman is a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination, which should send the film past $100 million and possibly toward the ranks of Juno ($143.5 million) and Slumdog Millionaire ($141.3 million), Searchlight’s highest-grossing films. Says Searchlight’s Sheila DeLoach, “It has become the movie people have to see.”  

Article from the Hollywood Reporter: Source