Tag: riz ahmed

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Homeland Security kept Rogue One’s Riz Ahmed from Celebration Chicago

At a recent leadership summit, Riz Ahmed talked about Muslim representation in Hollywood and revealed that he was stopped at the airport in April, keeping him from Celebration Chicago.

Pointing to [Hasan] Minhaj, he said “He can win a Peabody, I can win an Emmy, Ibtihaj Muhammad can go to the Olympics, but some of these obstacles are systemic and we can’t really face them alone, we need your help. I’m basically here to ask for your help, because it’s really scary to be a Muslim right now, super scary. I’ve often wondered, is this going to be the year when they round us up, if this is going to be the year they put Trump’s registry into action. If this is going to be the year they ship us all off.”

Minhaj, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx and Eva Longoria also took part in the summit.

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Celebration roundup: Animation panels, Paul Bettany and Riz Ahmed added

Three Star Wars animation panels will be held a Celebration Chicago: Rebels on Saturday, The Clone Wars on Sunday and Resistance on Monday. The Clone Wars will preview their new Disney+ episodes, while Resistance – which will finish off their first season on two weeks -will preview season 2. (The Rebels panel will not feature any new series announcements, LFL publicist Tracy Cannobbio says.)

→ Three more guests have been added: Solo’s Paul Bettany (Dryden Vos), Rogue One’s Riz Ahmed (Bodhi Rook) and The Last Jedi’s Hermione Corfield (Tallissan Lintra).

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Glover, Ahmed and Dern win Emmys

Three Star Wars actors won big at the Emmys tonight. The upcoming Han Solo film’s Donald Glover took home two statues for Atlanta – lead actor in a comedy and directing in a comedy. Rogue One’s Riz Ahmed won as lead in a limited series for The Night of. And The Last Jedi’s Laura Dern took supporting actress in a limited series for Big Little Lies.

The night’s biggest genre winner was The Handmaid’s Tale. The dystopia won Best Drama Series and writing, along with lead and supporting wins for Elizabeth Moss and Ann Dowd. Anthology series Black Mirror also took two trophies for the episode “San Junipero.”

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This week in Rogue One: Gareth Edwards on the ending, Leia, Vader and more

With the Rogue One home release imminent, director Gareth Edwards has been making the rounds. At SWSW, he talked about how Scariff’s name came about. With /Film, he explains the original ending and what changed, plus. how he got away with killing everyone off.

At Fandango, he discusses why we won’t see cut scenes, Carrie Fisher’s reaction to Leia’s cameo and how Vader’s big moment came to be. He also stopped by Reddit for an AMA.

Meanwhile, Ingvild Deila, the actress who helped recreate young Leia, talks to The Hollywood Reporter.

We’ve also seen a few aditional Rogue One guests named for Celebration, namely Riz Ahmed and Alan Tudyk. (There’s been some speculation that Tudyk might host The Last Jedi panel, as Gwendoline Christie did for Rogue One’s at Celebration Europe.)

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No Oscars for Rogue One

Rogue One didn’t take home either of the two Oscars it was nominated for last night. Hacksaw Ridge took sound mixing, while The Jungle Book won VFX. (Having Felicity Jones and Riz Ahmed present it was a bit weird when a win wasn’t really expected, but hey, that’s Hollywood.) Alas. Unlike last year’s Ex Machina upset, this was far from a surprise – and the ceremony had even bigger shocks later on with a Best Picture mixup.

Kenny Baker and Carrie Fisher were both part of the In Memoriam segment. Mom Debbie Reynolds and Carrie closed it out, with the “May the Force be with you” clip from The Force Awakens.

Alum Natalie Portman – who didn’t attend due to her pregnancy – lost out Best Actress to La La Land’s Emma Stone.

Better luck next year, Star Wars – J.J. Abrams is already campaigning for Mark Hamill in The Last Jedi. Is his guilt is getting to him?

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Today in Rogue One: Hear a preview of Michael Giacchino’s score

Entertainment Weekly brought us our first listen of Michael Giacchino’s Rogue One score. I’m not really much of a score junkie, but it sounds good! If you want to dig a little deeper, the full track listing has been spotted. There are few intriguing things there, so take it as you will.

→ Chatting about Columbia’s Rogue One jackets with the brand’s director of apparel design, Debra Criss. These are really some of the most impressive clothing tie-ins we’ve seen with this film, so it’s nice to learn more.

→ There’s been some pretty ridiculous stuff running around Twitter regarding an “anti-Trump” message being inserted into Rogue One at the last minute. While Star Wars has never shied away from some pointed commentary, the timeline alone here makes that deeply unrealistic. And in any case, certain themes have been baked in since the start. I expect this boycott will bear about as much fruit as the last one did.

→ The interviews: Gareth Edwards on diversity, reshoots and the “team sport” method of Star Wars (and/or filmmaking in general.) Riz Ahmed raps. The Wrap calls Donnie Yen “the perfect breakout star for 2017” and he tells Mashable “Give me a lightsaber, you wouldn’t have two hours of storytelling.”

→ A quick guide to the Star Wars books, films and TV you may want to catch up on before Rogue One.

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Today in Rogue One: Hey, was that…?

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Twitter had a nice freak-out this afternoon as a ship resembling the Ghost from the Star Wars Rebels cartoon was spotted in a new TV commercial. (There’s more evidence on the Tumblr.) Easter egg? Cameo? Only time will tell.

And that was only one of several new commercials dropped today. Here’s one, and here’s one and here’s one that’s actually on the official site and in high res! Of course it’s the one with the least new footage.

Speaking of new footage, there are two new scenes as well: One with Orson Krennic and Galen Erso (which seems to answer a question I asked in my Catalyst review) and another from the call sign scene. There’s also a new Chinese trailer, introduced by Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen.

ro-cassian-vert→ So many more interviews today! John Knoll on how they approached the film and changes to Darth Vader’s costume. Gareth Edwards addresses the reshoots and George Lucas’ review. Riz Ahmed on being an ‘average Joe’ in the GFFA. And finally, Diego Luna on his research into being a soldier and why Cassian isn’t a typical hero. He’s really happy to be here, you guys.

→ Could something in the background of the recent creature featurette have given us a hint at that mysterious kneeling scene from the very first teaser?

→ Thanks to both The Force Awakens and Rogue One, Star Wars was Twitter’s top trending movie topic of 2016.

→ Here’s Epcot’s Spaceship Earth being transformed into the Death Star.

→ A new Rogue One collection launched at Hot Topic and Torrid today. I’m not sure this one really translates…

→ Rogue One emojjis are now in the Star Wars app!

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Today in Rogue One: Interviews galore

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Interviews from the Rogue One junket have begun coming in. Today, we have director Gareth Edwards and Alan Tudyk at /Film, while Birth Movies Death talked to Mads Mikkelsen and Riz Ahmed. More Edwards interviews at IGN and AICN. Full of Sith has a recording of the panel yesterday.

→ Thought that Zootopia scene in front of The Force Awakens was torturous? Well, with certain showings (70mm IMAX) of Rogue One, fans will be getting a whooping 7 minutes of Christopher Nolan‘s new film Dunkirk, per a new report from /Film.

→ Another reaction to the half-hour of footage screened over the weekend.

→ Two new TV spots: Surrender and Save The Rebellion.