I’m also talking about his memorable turns as feral superhero Wolverine in the hugely successful and critically acclaimed X-Men trilogy. Now Hugh Jackman is back to show off his chops (mutton and acting) in the new spinoff film X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

While most actors, especially ones of his caliber, traditionally balk at the notion of returning to a hugely successful franchise like X-Men, the Hugh we talked to seems more enthused about playing the popular X-Men hero than ever before. The 40 year-old actor explains to us what ultimately convinced him to play the character for the fourth time.

“My co-stars help because obviously, everything felt new and fresh and obviously, that was important to me,” he explains, “Starting with Gavin Hood, the director, that we thought the movie was going off on a new avenue and a fresh direction. Let’s face it, I was filling in 100 years of this guy’s life, so in a way, it was acting the wrong way around.”

“That’s where you start,” Jackman continues, “And I played a character that didn’t really know anything about his past and in this movie, I was evolving that character. I have to say, I felt as fresh as ever, I really, really loved it. I thought it was challenging and with these guys and all the others involved, it felt brand new.”

We asked Jackman if he had to resort to method acting in order to embody such a ferocious superhero like Wolverine in the film, which details the character’s origin story.

“This is a little embarrassing, but obviously, I’m a little more of a wuss in my life than my character and there’s a moment when you’re training where you just want to give up,” Hugh reveals, “No way I did it training with these guys because that would be embarrassing, but I used to kind of imagine myself on my own with my trainer Michael that I was Wolverine, somehow it always got two or three more reps out of me. Also, it was kind of humiliating with the yelling and it looked a little silly.”

And Hugh doesn’t mince words about how much stuntwork was involved with himself and the entire cast of Wolverine.

“There’s one sequence in the beginning of the movie which this guy was training Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, and non-stop,” Jackman says, “It was some of the most amazing, real stunts in the movie. I know a lot of people are going to presume that the work with those swords were CGI, but I can tell you, it wasn’t, and he’s lucky he’s still got his ‘manhood’ with him, there’s a couple of close shaves.”

“But actually one of the things I’m most proud of and one of the things that was important to me was that all the actors have a physicality,” he adds, “We cast people for their acting ability first, but with Liev, with Ryan [Reynolds], with Taylor, with all these guys, they were doing 95% of their own work and I think that’s important when you’re playing these characters. They’re innately physical.”

We also asked Hugh whether he had stopped the training it took for him to become Wolverine.

“No, it spurred me on,” he simply replies.

Jackman says that part of what made Wolverine so enjoyable to work on was the opportunity to work with so many great talents who play fellow X-Men friends and foes in the film.

“The fans wanted Ryan [Reynolds] from a long way back, so I think they’ll be happy,” Hugh says, “Actually, the great thing about doing this movie was it introduced characters we haven’t had in the X-Men universe that fans love. I mean, Taylor [Kitsch’s] character Gambit is, dare I say it, as popular as Wolverine in the comic book world. It’s an unbelievable character. And when we showed it at ComicCon, the first trailer, which was a week after we first finished shooting. We culled together some footage, that went mental the moment Gambit appeared.”

“And the same with Deadpool and Lynn [Collins] as Kayla,” he continues, “I mean, this guy had already appeared in the first X-Men. We gave him a little bit of a haircut and a little bit more dialogue, put Live [Schrieber] into it, and here we are. But it is one of the genuinely exciting things about doing this movie, I think there’s so many exciting characters in the X-Men universe to explore.”

However, he said that while his improved physique was a great benefit for Hugh, he says it wasn’t always a plus having to embody the physical characteristics of Wolverine.

“There’s a good and bad side to everything,” he says, “I also had to walk around with those mutton chops for six months, as did Liev. It kind of looks alright in the film, but in real life, with a baseball cap on, at 6:00AM in the gym, it just looks odd, doesn’t it.”

“Liev put on about 130 to 135 pounds., I think?” Jackman adds, “My wife used to walk around and say, ‘Hugh, this is ridiculous. Look at you. I don’t even know who you are. Then she said, now get into bed.’ No…(laughing) I remember that well.”

Through it all, Jackman says he takes his international success with Wolverine in stride.

“You know, I have to say, being there with all these guys on a movie that I’m proud of, I’ve felt incredibly lucky,” he says, “I’ve got to be honest. When I was about 28, I was at the National Theater in London doing a production of Oklahoma! and that was about as far as I ever dreamed I’d ever go to for me.”

“Everything since then has been a little surreal and there’s not a day that goes by where I don’t thank my lucky stars,” Hugh adds, “Honestly, with all those people there, and to be in a position where I feel a little bit, I suppose, proprietary over why they’re there, to me, it makes it all worthwhile. For me, I feel very lucky.”

Not quite so humbling though was how he’s especially taken being last year’s Sexiest Man Alive in People magazine.

“The sexy thing, I’ve known that for a long time, it’s more of a relief than anything, finally,” Jackman quips, “That’s going to sound bad. Irony is never very good on print, isn’t it?”

G.I. Joe Here’s the first full trailer for Stephen Sommers’s August summer popcorn flick based on the popular toy line and several animated cartoons over the years. It looks to be heavy on the cheese factor, and if it’s anything like Van Helsing, we know that the dialogue will be about as dicey as the realism of the narrative. On the other hand, it’s G.I. Joe, and honestly, taking this movie seriously would probably be a giant mistake. I think it sort of works towards the director’s strengths in a lot of ways, and by starting the bar rather low, that means a bunny-hop will get it over the top into “fun” territory.

District 9 I’ve been pretty excited about this one since I first heard about it. Peter Jackson’s producing the film directed by Neill Blomkamp about alien illegals living under government scrutiny. The pseudo-documentary style is looking pretty sweet and I recommend checking out Neill’s shorts on YouTube. He was going to direct the Halo movie before that fell through, and I gotta say, he would have done a bang-up job.

Adam It got rave reviews at Sundance this year and stars Rose Byrne who’s pretty. Yeah, I guess I’m just gonna have to admit I don’t know jack about this film that you won’t know by watching the trailer. It does look like the kind of romantic movie I wouldn’t gouge my eyes out at, so I guess that’s a plus.

Julie and Julia It’s got Merryl Streep. It’s got Amy Adams. It’s a happier movie than Doubt. It deals with Julia Child’s history and how that connects to her modern day counterpart. Sounds like a winner for women everywhere. Seeing as I’m not one, I don’t really see anything worth watching here so I’m obviously not the target audience. That is all.

H2 The lightning fast Rob Zombie sequel to his Halloween remake has gotten itself a trailer. Looks scary. Looks dark. Big slow moving baddie wielding heavy objects. Girls screaming. What more do you want? A good film? Apparently a lot of people are excited for it, I’m just not one of them.

G-Force Here’s the first true theatrical trailer for the Jerry Bruckheimer thought bubble. Wish i could have seen his assistant’s face when he said, “Hamsters as undercover government operatives. CGI talking hamsters. Sounds like a winner.” I dunno if I could’ve kept a straight face. Surprisingly, isn’t looking awful in this ad, but there’s plenty of time for it to get substantially worse. Bill Nighy as the bad-guy is the only part of this movie I’m rooting for at this moment.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine Yeah, I know it’s already out. Unfortunately it doesn’t live up to its trailers, so I figure posting this last theatrical ad is the best way of addressing the film. Describing this trailer is basically to say that it’s almost identical to the old ComiCon trailer that premiered way back when, except with the “god damn” cut out of the line “I’m gonna cut your god damn head off, see if that works.” Oh yeah, and the effects are done. Um. Yeah. That pretty much wraps it up.

Check back next week for all the latest clips and stay tuned for the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen article to come.

Ever since our article speaking out against the leaked X-Men Origins: Wolverine print, we’ve been pretty excited about getting the chance to see the finished film for real. That’s not going to happen for a little while yet, so in the meantime we’re just going to have to make do with the deluge of new marketing material from the film that I’ve tried to assemble in one place for you below. The past few days have been good on this particular front, as we have quite the collection of new stills from the film for your viewing pleasure.

In related news, the TV Spot total for the film is now up to a pretty ridiculous 11, so along with the three other trailers, we’re sitting somewhere around 11 minutes in video based marketing. That doesn’t sound like a whole lot until you watch it all, decide you’ve seen the whole movie, and move on with your life. I’m definitely liking the way the finished effect shots are panning out though as opposed to the pictures that have been surfacing from the Workprint. These sorts of effects are why you agree to pay the money to see the movie on as big a screen as possible to begin with. But I digress. Check out the four latest spots below:

TV Spot #8

TV Spot #9

TV Spot # 10

New TV Spot #11

If all that wasn’t enough, 20th Century Fox has rolled out their latest International Poster for the film:

Oh yeah… we’re still not done, because the BBC has recently revealed a special compilation video of Hugh’s entrance at the latest press conference along with a handful of exclusive scenes thrown in just for kicks. Check them all out below as well:

The studio is sprinting from site to site in a no-holds barred attempt to take the file down, but at this point they are already far too late. If you really want to see it, you can now very easily get your hands on a near final version of Gavin Hood’s latest film. Several effect shots are unfinished, wires still appear in many of the sequences, and as a Behind-the-Scenes excercise, this cut of the film may very well interest film students and movie buffs alike… just after they see the actual film.

100 million dollar summer tentpole pictures are what allows the industry to survive into the next year. They are what keep studios profitable, and provide thousands of jobs for artists and craftsmen within the United States and abroad. Rampant layoffs and downsizing in our current economic climate has already been widespread, and a loss of revenue will only accelerate the downward spiral.

When you see a completed film, you are bearing witness to a collaborative effort of hundreds of people, all working to deliver a finished movie worthy of the time and effort spent creating it. This was not the way this film was intended to be seen. It is also not compensating any of the people involved. Were each and every person who downloaded the film to simultaneously pre-order a movie ticket for opening day, perhaps an impending crisis could be diverted. The studio’s marketing campaign has whipped fans into a frenzy, fans who would go see Wolverine at a midnight screening. These same fans are the people who would do anything to hear news about the film, and would be the most susceptible to the temptation of illegal downloading.

We here at The Cinema Source do not condone illegal activity. You will not find any links to the Workprint on our site. Our condolences are with 20th Century Fox and the cast and crew of the film who will undoubtedly recieve a diminished return on their investment due to this act of piracy. We’d like to urge everyone to avoid downloading the Workprint version, and let your first viewing experience be that of the movie that you were intended to see. After you see it, I think the comparison will make for interesting discussion, especially with a rumored 12 minutes more footage in the actual theatrical cut. To be honest, I’m amazed this hasn’t happened before now. The official release date of X-Men Origins: Wolverine is May 1st, 2009.

The late Heath Ledger won Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Dark Knight, while Kate Winslet won Best Actress for The Reader and Penelope Cruz won Best Supporting Actress for Vicky Cristina Barcelona.  The Curious Case of Benjamin Button won three awards — Art Direction, Makeup, and Visual Effects — while Milk won two major awards: Sean Penn took home Best Actor (upsetting sentimental favorite Mickey Rourke), and Dustin Lance Black won Best Original Screenplay.

Acceptance speeches were mostly kept short — thankfully, no one was played offstage by the music — and eloquent.  Politics only came up during Penn and Black’s speeches for Milk:  “For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight,” Penn said, “I think it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect, and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes if they continue that way of support.  We’ve got to have equal rights for everyone.”

When Heath Ledger won, his father, mother, and sister accepted the award on behalf of Ledger’s three-year-old daughter.  “Heath, we both knew what you had created in the Joker was extraordinarily special, and had even talked about being here on this very day,” said his sister.  “We really wish you were, but we proudly accept this award on behalf of your beautiful Matilda.”

The most enthusiastic winner was perhaps Danny Boyle, who won Best Director for Slumdog Millionaire and jumped up and down onstage as soon as he was handed the Oscar.  “My kids are too old to remember this now, but when they were much younger, I swore to them if this miracle ever happened, I would receive it in the spirit of Tigger from Winnie the Pooh.  That’s what that was,” he said.

“You’ve been so generous to us this evening,” he said on behalf of his Slumdog team, “and I want to thank you for that, and also for an extraordinary, beautiful show you’ve done.  I don’t know what it looks like on television everybody, but in the room it’s bloody wonderful, really.”

The ceremony was notable not necessarily for its stars — indeed, the presenters were kept secret until they appeared onstage — but for the question of whether or not anybody would tune in.  Last year, thanks to a low-profile slate of nominees, the Oscars had their worst-rated year ever; this year, with The Dark Knight shut out of most major categories, producers feared the ratings would sink even lower.  To that end they hired Bill Condon (the director of Dreamgirls) to produce a revamped version of the show and Jackman — known not for comedy but for his stage background — to host.

The “innovations” that Condon and Jackman cooked up were overall a mixed bag containing a few very good ideas.  There were two big musical numbers, one of them a very funny opener and the second a wholly unnecessary ode to musicalsthat featured Beyonce Knowles but felt like it belonged at the Tony’s.

Instead of featuring different presenters for each award no matter how tiny (Sound Effects Editing, anyone?), the show organized the technical awards into separate groups: one set of presenters would handle “Pre-Production” — Art Direction, Costume Design, etc. — while another would handle “Post-Production” — Editing, Visual Effects, and so on.  This proved to be a minor masterstroke: not only did it provide the telecast with more cohesion, it sped things up.

The final change was in the way the acting nominations were presented: instead of one presenter, each acting category featured five former winners, who each honored one of the nominees with a short speech before announcing the winner.  The intent — beyond just the star power — was to bring back some fond memories of the old Hollywood, but it was too talky and would’ve been better had they simply shown a brief clip featuring each nominee: not only would that move faster, it would invite the folks watching at home to decide who they thought deserved to win.

And the fruits of Jackman and Condon’s labor?  The ratings were up 13% from last year, with 36.3 million viewers tuned in.

What would you rather have: a straightforward X-Men 4 directed by the Rat, or a movie with only a few mutants in it, including Wolverine and Gambit, directed by relative newcomer Gavin Hood?

Exactly.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine kicks off the summer movie season just five months from now, but all we’ve gotten in the way of footage is an extremely blurry Comic-Con trailer.  Until now — a teaser trailer was attached to The Day the Earth Stood Still over the weekend and has finally made its way to the Internet.

Whereas the Comic-Con trailer was more of a grab-bag of footage, this new one is much more plot heavy, introducing us to a young William Stryker (Danny Huston) convincing Wolverine to agree to the procedure that will give him his adamantium skeleton.

Good news for the people who’ve already seen the Comic-Con version: only about 30% of the footage is the same.

Good news for Gambit fans: there’s a lot of him in this trailer (as played by Taylor Kitsch).  Heck, Wolverine even says his name, just in case we didn’t figure it out.

Enough talk, let’s check it out:

The Thanksgiving weekend is always overcrowded and thus there are always a few films that don’t make it.  Last year, The Mist and Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium underperformed.  The year before that, so did Deck the Halls, while The Fountain and Bobby outright bombed.  The year before that was perhaps the worst in recent memory: Rent, Just Friends, In the Mix, and The Ice Harvest all crashed and burned.

This year will mark the second weekend of smash Twilight and the third weekend of smash Quantum of Solace.  Only three new films will open wide: Four Christmases, Transporter 3, and Australia.

Frankly, I can’t see any of them doing terrifically — Four Christmases is suffering from very unfunny adds, while Transporter 3 has a decent-sized niche audience but no potential to be a breakout.  But Australia, an ambitious from Moulin Rouge’s Baz Luhrmann, seems destined to flop.

Sorry, Australia.  Why am I so sure?

1. Epic romances don’t do well anymore. They used to be all the rage, sure, in the 1940s and 50s.  Now the box office is ruled by boys and toys and explosions.  That’s not to say other types of movies can’t hit it big.  Twilight’s a successful romance, right?  Well, Twilight’s modern.  Australia is by design very old-fashioned and probably won’t appeal to anyone beyond middle-aged women.

2. It’s too expensive. The production cost was $130 million, although the word is 20th Century Fox only has about a $70-80 million stake in it.  Still, in the U.S., how is this going to break the $50 million mark?

3. Where are the ads? Maybe I live in a bubble, but except for Hugh Jackman landing the Sexiest Man Alive cover for People Magazine, I’ve seen no press, no billboards and no TV spots.

4. Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman aren’t moneymakers. They’re both household names, but Kidman is coming off a string of flops (The Invasion, The Golden Compass) and, come to think of it, Jackman is too (Deception, The Fountain).

5. It’s too long. It’s almost three hours, and it felt like it was about eight hours.  Which leads me to my final point…

6. The reviews aren’t good. Movies that target mature adults need great reviews.  Right now, critics are split down the middle; on Rotten Tomatoes it’s currently Rotten, with 52% in favor.

Most box office prognosticators are predicting a mid-teens debut for Australia — which would by itself mean the movie is underperforming (let me repeat myself: $130 million production budget).  I’m guessing over the three-day weekend it makes less than $10 million, and over the long Thanksgiving frame it makes less than $14.

Sorry to rag on your movie, Hugh.  I’ll be there when X-Men Origins: Wolverine opens next summer.