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kate winslet splits from husband sam mendes

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Kate Winslet and director Sam Mendes, who have been married for seven years and have one child together, announced Monday that they have split up.

“Kate and Sam are saddened to announce that they separated earlier this year,” their lawyers said in a joint statement. “The split is entirely amicable and is by mutual agreement. Both parties are fully committed to the future joint parenting of their children.”

The couple was married in 2003 and have one child – Joe, 6 – together.  Winslet also has a daughter for her first marriage to Jim Threapleton.  The pair met in 2001 and were both born in Reading, England, but there’s a 10-year age difference, which is always going to be the thing pointed to as the cause of the split.

Both Mendes and Winslet have won Academy Awards.

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This post was written by Eric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, visit RipcordNews.com.

kate winslet has most desirable body (among women)

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Sorry if the parenthesis in the headline was mean, but it’s true.  Among women voting in a most-desirable body poll for British publication Daily Mail, English actress Kate Winslet has the country’s most desirable body with 16% of the votes.

The curvy-figured Winslet edged out Kelly Brook and Halle Berry, both of which have a body similar in shape to the Academy Award-winning actress.

This poll presents an interesting shift in what’s valued in English culture because of the noticeable drop in the popularity among skinny celebrities such as Kate Moss and Victoria Beckham.

“It perhaps suggests that it is not being “skinny” that is most important to them anymore, it is being healthy,” Dr. Jacquie Lavin head of nutrition at Slimming World, told the Mail.  “However, there still remains a great deal of pressure on women to conform to an unrealistic ideal and our survey showed that a massive 85 per cent of women are at least occasionally unhappy with their weight.”

Do you agree with the poll?  If not, who would be your choice as most desirable body?

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This post was written byEric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, check out RipcordNews.com.

kate winselt coming to hbo in ‘mildred pierce’

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After her much-deserved break, Kate Winslet will return to acting in a HBO mini-series, Variety reports.

Winslet, who won her first Oscar in 2009, will play the lead role in Mildred Pierce, a novel that is being adapted and directed by Todd Haynes.

In the mini-series, Winslet will play the role of a bored housewife who starts her own restaurant in the attempt to make her life more interesting.

The move, on Winslet’s part, is a bit confounding because her career is just about as hot as it’s ever been (“just about” because Winslet’s break-through role was as Rose in Titanic).  But Winslet has never really been about making as much money as she can.  She’s valued quality over everything else, so her choice to play the lead in Mildred Pierce means that there will certainly be Emmy awards coming her way in the near future.

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This post was written by Eric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, check out RipcordNews.com.

What Movie Character’s Life Do You Want?

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EW.com, amidst the hoard of Academy Award coverage they’re doing today, put together an interesting gallery.

It is called: “Trading Places: 24 Movie Characters Whose Lives You Want”

It’s a pretty interesting list, which mostly contains rich billionaires who fight bad guys, and who are able to (mostly) feel good about themselves at the end of the day.  On this list are Robert Downey Jr’s role in Iron Man, Bruce Wayne in the Batman films.

And then there’s the odder selections of Alicia Silverstone’s character in Clueless, and Kate Winslet’s character in The Holiday (which I’ve seen, and actually kind of enjoyed).

But what character would you like to be?

Personally, I’d like to be Saul in Pineapple Express, and Brad Pitt’s character in True Romance.

Not really.  I don’t do drugs.

But I think I’d rather take an oddball-type of role than fight crime like Bruce Wayne.  Or maybe I’d just like to be Jason Bourne and crack some heads 24/7.  That would be fun.

So who’s your choice?

how winslet got over her weight issues

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Kate Winslet, a multiple Oscar nominee and the star of two allegedly fantastic films that are playing right now – The Reader and Revolutionary Road, is obviously a very accomplished actress.  As someone who isn’t, I would have to think that she would be satisfied with her work and wouldn’t let the media’s obsession with her weight affect her.

But it did.

Winslet recently said that she got over her weight problems by talking with Revolutionary Road co-star Leonardo DiCaprio during their time on Titanic 10 years ago.

“As a child, I was overweight and I was very chubby and I was always the wrong kid at the audition because my hair was wrong and the shoes didn’t fit,” Winslet said in a duel-interview with DiCaprio. “I did loose weight very sensibility when I was younger but those says are very much behind me.”

Turning to DiCaprio, she added, “I remember you saying to me one day, ‘You’ve really got to let the whole fat girl thing go’. And that’s the truth, you’re right.”

Of course, it was likely much more complicated than that through the process of filming and the release of Titanic.  But you get the gist – DiCaprio had an influence on Winslet getting over her weight issues, but the person who needed to be the one to get her through her body troubles was Winslet herself.

movies to see on dec. 25

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As I’ve written in this space previously, I’m very excited for this season’s films to come out.  The big day is tomorrow, and that means I’ve been devouring pretty much every review out there.

Kate Winslet is in two very strong films, both of which she is expected to pick up an Oscar nomination for.  Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett star in a very unique film.  And we also have Leo DiCaprio and Winslet reuniting in a film directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty), who is Winslet’s husband.

Here are the films you should be aware of, and for reviews of each you can either head over to Rolling Stone to read Peter Travers or visit RogerEbert.com.  Those are the two best critics, in my opinion.  But I’ll provide different reviews of each movie listed in the hyperlinked text.

Here are the films that you will hear a lot more about in the coming days and weeks…

- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Pitt ages backwards, and Blanchette ages forward. The beginning and end of the film should be especially interesting, given the age differential.  Roger Ebert only gave this two-and-a-half stars, though.

- Valkryie – This has got pretty good reviews.  I hope it does well because I’m one of the few that still thinks Tom Cruise is a pretty good actor.  He seems willing to take risks too, which I like.

- Revolutionary Road - Features DiCaprio and Winslet as an unhappy married couple in the 1950s.

- The Reader - Features Winslet as a German woman during the Holocaust.  She has an affair with a 15-year-old boy.  This film is supposed to be great.

- Bedtime Stories - Adam Sandler stars in this Disney film.

- The Wrestler - Quietly could be the best film this year. 

- Gran Torino – Clint Eastwood reportedly says his good-bye to acting in this role, which could win him an Academy Award.

- Marley and Me – Conan O’Brien said that this film almost made him cry, which is good enough for me.

- The Spirit - I’ve been seeing the trailers for a solid two months now, and I have no idea what this is about.  That’s not a good thing, according to Mr. Roger Ebert.

Enjoy the holidays and the snow they’ve brought, everyone.  And if you tire of being with family, come back and check out some of our archives.

dicaprio and winslet are back

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For those who have yet to familiarize themselves with the plot lines of Revolutionary Road – which comes out on Christmas – the Leonardo DiCaprio & Kate Winslet-starring film might seem like a Titanic 2. 

In Revolutionary Road, Winslet and DiCaprio get married, have kids and live together.

But here’s the thing.  They are miserable with each other.  They’re simply bored with married life and everything that comes with it in 1950s suburbia, so they move to Paris to spice things up.

Though this is the case, it might be the pair’s best performance together.  DiCaprio says that it’s because of the relationship they built while working on Titanic 10 years ago.

“We very much took advantage of our friendship and our relationship for this film,” DiCaprio said in an interview alongside Winslet with the Associated Press. “When I read the script, I thought, look at these scenes, and I’m imagining Kate doing it with me and being able to push each other as much as we possibly could.

“That gave me immediately a desire to say, `OK, I can’t wait for these sequences to start. I’m really going to give it to her, she’s really going to give it to me.’ And I know the fact that she’s such a good friend of mine, we know each other so well, we know that we could push those boundaries, because we intrinsically know we have the best intentions for each other. So there’s no weird, hidden ego. There’s no hidden anything. It’s two people just trying to do their best and just pushing each other.”

Personally, I’m very excited to see this film.  Winslet is my favorite actress and DiCaprio is my favorite actor.  But it’s not because I fell in love with Jack and Rose.  I hated DiCaprio for the longest time simply because he was in Titanic – and then I saw Catch Me If You Can – and it was clear that he’s the most talented actor of his generation.

Winslet was much the same way.  I saw her in Little Children and Finding Neverland, and it was a similar reaction to Catch Me If You Can.

So, with all of this being said, I’m really looking forward to Revolutionary Road.  I might go the day after Christmas.

In the meantime, I would recommend the three films listed above as well as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Reader, and basically all of the movies DiCaprio has done.  His body of work is absolutely fantastic, minus some of his early stuff.  Arguably his best performance was in 1994′s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, where he stars along Johnny Depp. 

I would recomend Gilbert Grape above all his others.

sag nominations are out

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There’s nothing I love than award shows, which is why I am stoked that the SAG Award nominations are out today.  Let’s get to the nominations for the movie side of the award show, shall we?

Leading the pack with five nominations was Doubt.  Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis all were nominated.

The fifth award Doubt was nominated for was Best Ensemble.  Also nominated is “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” Richard Nixon interview-film “Frost/Nixon,” the Sean Penn-driven ”Milk” and a movie that I really want to see in “Slumdog Millionaire.”

As was expected, Heath Ledger earned a nomination for Best Supporting Actor for the second biggest movie ever.  He is the clear favorite to win.

Kate Winslet will give it another go at a Best Actress Oscar in February, but a SAG win in either the Best Actress category for Revolutionary Road or Best Supporting Actress category for The Reader should give her a decent amount of momentum going into the Academy Awards.

Also up for the Best Actress Award is Angelina Jolie for Changeling, Anne Hathaway for Rachel Getting Married and Melissa Leo for Frozen River.

Nominations for Best Actor are: Richard Jenkins, “The Visitor”; Frank Langella, “Frost/Nixon”; Sean Penn, “Milk”; Brad Pitt, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”; and Mickey Rourke, “The Wrestler.”

The award show will air on Jan. 15 on TNT and TBS.