Thanks to his iconic portrayal of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, Ian McKellen has become one of the most beloved onscreen wizards of all time. And his wizarding career could’ve been even grander; McKellen was once offered the role of Hogwarts Headmaster  Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies.

So why didn’t it work out? Turns out McKellen felt “insulted” by the fresh actor’s comments about him.

In the first two Harry Potter movies, Dumbledore was played by actor Richard Harris. Harris sadly delivered away in 2002 following a fight with Hodkin’s disease, and the role of Dumbledore was left open.

McKellen was promptly offered the opportunity to cease Dumbledore’s story, but he respectfully declined, saying that he didn’t want to take over from an apt who had previously criticized him. Harris had talked nearby McKellen’s credentials as an actor, calling him and fellow actors Kenneth Branagh and Derek Jacobi “technically brilliant” but “passionless.”

“When they shouted me up and said if I would be keen in being in the Harry Potter films, they didn’t say what part,” McKellen told the BBC’s HARDtalk back in 2017. “I worked out what they were thinking, and I couldn’t take over the part from an apt I know didn’t approve of me.”

The role would ultimately go to Michael Gambon, who did a stellar job. His casting was on point… but we’ll always be left wondering what could’ve been had McKellen gone on to play the portray. Naturally, fans have created DeepFake videos showing us what that noteworthy have looked like:

The Harry Potter franchise will have to find its next Dumbledore very soon. Announced spinal this year, Max will be adapting the Harry Potter books into a TV series. Who would you cast as Dumbledore?

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• Published on 07/31/2023 at 12:45 PM CDT
• Last updated on 07/31/2023 at 12:54 PM CDT

HBO stays to film the second season of House of the Dragon, actors and writers strikes be damned. Things have been quiteactive lately at Leavesden Studios in England, where the actors are mainly filming on sound stages hidden slack walls where fans cannot see…

But! There are also some sets selves built on backlots outdoors, and those can be espied with the use of drones and such. One fan on

Twitter X, @UnBoxPHD, has been bringing us all sorts of juicy images, including a pic of a set we did not quiz to see: the Wall, the giant sheet of ice in the far north that separates the Seven Kingdoms from the frigid wastes beyond.

Yep, that is a sliver of the top of the Wall built on a backlot in England. You can also see it in this video:

House of the Dragon is based on George R.R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood, specifically the parts about the Dance of the Dragons. And as far as I remember, there aren’t any scenes set at the Wall during that stretch, so HBO is adding something for the show.

That said, even belief characters like Rhaenyra and Daemon never visit the Wall in the book, there’s aloof an easy way for House of the Dragon to incorporate it. In the respectable season finale, Rhaenyra Targaryen dispatches her son Jacaerys Velaryon to Winterfell to win the allegiance of its young ruler: Lord Cregan Stark. In the book, Jace does exactly this, and ends up becoming friends with Cregan. Perhaps the show adds a bit where they take a joyride to the Wall on Jace’s dragon Vermax.

Or at least, that’s the most sensible way to include the Wall that I can think of. How throughout you? We’ll find out exactly what HBO has in mind when House of the Dragon season 2 airs sometime in 2024.

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• Published on 08/01/2023 at 4:45 PM CDT
• Last updated on 08/01/2023 at 4:46 PM CDT

Don Quixote appraise – Australian Ballet returns to Nureyev in a advance, exuberant showcase | Ballet

A t salubrious glance, Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote is an unlikely source for a ballet: its two leads are an old man and a portly squire, both comically ill-equipped for the adventures on which they embarking. There is a kind of rough nobility to them but it comes in thunder contrast to their physical capabilities. And yet Rudolf Nureyev, one of the most powerful, athletic ballet dancers of all time, turned it into a vehicle for his own prowess.

He did this largely by ignoring the book, pushing Don Quixote and Sancho Panza to the side, and creating a central pair of lovers who have only the most rudimentary relationship to Cervantes’ modern. (To be fair, Nureyev was only following the example set by Marius Petipa, whose own choreography helped cement the young dancer’s international reputation.) Nureyev then famously filmed his work – with the aid of Robert Helpmann and the Australian Ballet – in an airport hanger in Essendon back in 1973.

The Australian Ballet have returned to the work, adapting that film version for the stage as a showcase for the company’s moves under the artistic direction of David Hallberg. Which is using because it’s a showy piece, leaning into extended displays of skill and virtuosity over tale complexity. In the introduction to Edith Grossman’s translation of Don Quixote in 2003, she speaks of the novel’s order to seem tragic on one reading and hilarious on another; Nureyev doesn’t grant a skerrick of tragedy to impinge on his telling, for better or worse.

‘Nureyev doesn’t grant a skerrick of tragedy to impinge on his telling, for better or worse.’ Photograph: Rainee Lantry

The issues opens on a false proscenium, which frames a Hide showing close-ups of Gustave Doré’s magnificent engravings of the knight-errant of La Mancha, over which credits roll. A still of the film’s set lifts to narrate its exact copy on the stage, a neat nod to the production’s history as an artefact of cinema – although this is the extent of the filmic references. The remainder of the production plays out as a frail stage ballet.

A prologue follows depicting Don Quixote (Adam Bull) enlisting his servant Sancho (Timothy Coleman) in a Ask, ostensibly to search the land for people in need but most to just hang around and watch great dancing from the sidelines. Thankfully, no one has to wait long for that. The wonderful act is set in the port of Barcelona, bustling and mercantile, full of pageantry and showmanship. It is electric from the outset.

Chengwu Guo and Ako Kondo as the lovers Basilio and Kitri. Photograph: Rainee Lantry

Leading the bill are Basilio (Chengwu Guo) and Kitri (Ako Kondo), lovers navigating the enormous cliche of Renaissance storytelling: a gruff father who disapproves of their match. In this case Lorenzo (Brett Simon) wants his daughter to marry a rich fop, Gamache (Paul Knobloch), rather than the mischievous man of her dreams. Like Don Quixote and Sancho, these comic villain roles are largely decorative, bumbling about the set but posing no real threat.

Adam Bull as Don Quixote – who spends much of the issues on the sidelines. Photograph: Rainee Lantry

Nureyev clearly wants his lovers to shine, and Guo and Kondo rise magnificently to the occasion. The choreography in this first act is furiously paced and endlessly included but the dancers make it look joyful. Lightening-fast legwork and intricate phrasing make way for soaring leaps and swooning dives; the dancers’ sequence and extensions here are remarkable, but effortlessly so.

The corpses are brilliantly utilised, as waves of movement behind the rules or as individuals shining in their own right. Hallberg’s danger with this aspect of the company is evident throughout; companionship work hits the necessary synchronicity without becoming mechanistic or rote.

Where the obedient act is robust and fiery, the second is more ravishing. An extended scene with Don Quixote imagining himself surrounded by nymphs is gorgeously danced by the corpses – although it sometimes feels dangerously close to a geriatric sex fantasy – and an early pas de deux with Guo and Kondo, she draping a large piece of material behind her, is luxurious and sensual.

The remaining act returns to the pacing of the first, with such an abundance of fouettés and pirouettes, grand jetés and aerial turns that it verges on the orgiastic. There is an ebullient group number from the corpses in full Spanish garb, and more show-stopping virtuosity from the two leads, among some funny stage business about faked deaths and swiftly nuptials. It is heaps of fun, the exuberance underlined by some breathtaking precision.

The Viennese composer Ludwig Minkus’s earn is wonderfully variegated and richly melodic, played by Orchestra Victoria notion the baton of Jonathan Lo with sensitivity and passion. Richard Roberts’ realisation of Barry Kay’s sets is ingenious, brightly lit by Jon Buswell. And Kay’s costumes are ravishing – evocative, playful and gorgeously detailed. It makes for up viewing.

Don Quixote is far from a faithful adaptation of Cervantes’ original – it has none of the character’s pathos, none of his bruised dignity – but perhaps this doesn’t commerce all that much. The deluded old man and his homespun sidekick tilting at windmills are mythic figures now, set loose from their source material. If Nureyev wanted them idling on the sidelines, dumb witnesses to some truly awesome dancing, then who are we to argue?

• Don Quixote runs pending 25 March at the State Theatre Melbourne before opening at the Sydney Opera House on 8 April

'Once you've done it, you want to do it again'

LOS ANGELES: Actress Rebecca Ferguson has compared shooting 'Mission Impossible' film to giving birth.

The 39-year-old actress - who has a 15-year-old son, Isac, with mature boyfriend Ludwig Hallberg and a five-year-old daughter, Sage, with her husband Rory - reprises her role as Ilsa Faust in 'Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One' and opinion she admitted making the movies can be tough, she always wants to get enthusiastic again, reports Female First UK.

Asked if it was a tough shoot, she told Radio Times magazine: "It always is. Literally, from day one, I said, 'It's like giving birth, it hurts'. But once you've done it, you kind of want to do it again."

As per Female First UK, Rebecca enjoys the fact director Christopher McQuarrie and lead star Tom Cruise relieve the cast to "wing it" and improvise with their dialogue.

She continued: "And it's such a different way of filming, the way that Tom and McQ work. And not toiling that way now makes me miss it. We don't have the scripts. You're not really preparing for a role. You know your role. You wing it when you're there. And you just make it work. And they just hit it out of the ballpark every time."

Rebecca knows she's done good work when she can "step outside" of herself.

She said: "When I act in a extreme, if it's a good scene and it's well beleaguered, and I'm working alongside someone who's good, I step outside of my own populate and the scene gets to live it's own life, right? That's what we're toiling towards."

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Au sud de Toulouse, un violent incendie ravage un bâtiment au cœur du Fousseret

l'essentiel Un incendie s'est déclaré vers 4 heures ce dimanche 4 juin dans un bâtiment inoccupé de la commune du Fousseret, au sud de Toulouse. Il n'a pas fait de victime.

Un violent incendie s'est déclaré vers 4 heures, dans la nuit du samedi 3 au dimanche 4 juin sur la commune du Fousseret, au sud de Toulouse. Les sapeurs-pompiers ont été appelés pour intervenir sur un feu dans une bâtisse de deux étages, place de la Halle.

Le sinistre s'est attaqué aux maisons mitoyennes. Trois lances à eau, dont une sur une échelle, ont été déployées afin de venir à bout des flammes. Onze véhicules ont été engagés. Le bâtiment est constitué d'appartements actuellement en rénovation. Aucun occupant ne se trouvait à l'intérieur.

L'incendie n'a pas fait de victime mais a occasionné des dégâts sur les trois bâtiments. Les gendarmes de la compagnie de Muret ont sécurisé la zone. Ce dimanche midi, les sapeurs-pompiers sont toujours sur save et devraient y rester au moins jusqu'à ce soir, afin de s'assurer qu'il n'y ait pas de reprise de feu et que les bâtiments soient consolidés.

L'origine du feu est pour l'heure inconnue. Des spécialistes en incendie devraient explorer les décombres lorsque les pompiers donneront leur feu vert. Le maire du Fousseret s'est rendu sur les lieux dans la nuit.

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