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CINEMA FEATURE

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To live in Barbie Land, we discover, is to be a perfect being in a perfect place... unless you have a full-on existential crisis. This is what befalls Robbie’s Barbie - one of myriad Barbies, all cheerfully co-existing in Barbie paradise. And, for every bubbly Barbie, there is an enthusiastic, devoted Ken. By his own admission, Gosling had zero experience of Ken growing up. “I have to be honest,” he says when STACK catches up with the actor at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, “Up until

this point, I only knew Ken from afar. I didn't know Ken from within . And, if I’m being really honest, I doubted my ‘Ken-ergy’. I didn’t see it, but I feel like Margot and Greta [Gerwig, director] conjured this out of me somehow,” he smiles. “It was like I was living my life, and then one day I was bleaching my hair, shaving my legs and wearing bespoke neon outfits, rollerblading down Venice Beach. It just came on like a fever, really. Like a pink fever. And then I woke up one day and I was

If you think that Barbie is just a chick movie, Margot Robbie begs to differ – particularly after seeing the film’s effect on adult men, firsthand. Words Gill Pringle “Y ou’ve never seen so many grown men find excuses to come to set,” she laughs. “Like the teamsters who had no reason to be there. Everyone would NOTHING’S IMPOSSIBLE IMPOSSIBLE FOR TOM CRUISE Words Glenn Cochrane T om Cruise has been a thrillseeker since childhood, and though those daredevil Part One , and Cruise recalls the moment he took fate into his own hands. just gravitate, people from other movies.” STACK thinks these rubberneckers were

probably also all popping by the candy-coloured set - located at England’s Leavesden Studios and on Los Angeles’ iconic Venice Beach - to score a peek at Robbie herself, because paired with Ryan Gosling as her Ken, this duo might just be one for the history books.

like, ‘Why is there fake tanner in my sheets? Why am I wearing jackets without shirts? What just happened?’”

Barbie is in cinemas July 20.

ways have led him to execute many stunts, they recently brought him to an on-camera moment which even he himself admits was astoundingly perilous. On September 6, 2020, Cruise drove a motorcycle off a mountain, plunging 4,000 feet into a ravine before deploying his parachute 500 feet from the ground. His director Christopher McQuarrie and some of his co-stars watched the death defying stunt via monitors on the sidelines, their hearts in

“Every time I went off the ramp, it was dangerous,” he says. “It was risking my life. And we wanted to keep that to a minimum. We have a saying on Mission: Impossible movies: ‘Don’t be safe. Be competent.’” A purpose-built ramp was constructed on the side of Norway’s Helsetkopen mountain, a sheer rockface sat 1,200 metres above sea level. The stunt is Cruise’s most dangerous to date, no mean feat considering the incredible action sequences for which

“When I was a little kid, I used to make my own jumps, building ramps to jump my bicycle over garbage cans,” Cruise says with a smile. McQuarrie - who directed the last two Mission: Impossible instalments and also wrote last year’s hit Top Gun: Maverick - has his own long and fruitful relationship with the legendary actor. “Tom and I have been working together now for 16 years, on what I think is close to a dozen films, and I like to describe our relationship as one

long conversation about movies that’s occasionally interrupted by production,” he says. “We eat, sleep, and breathe

movies all the time. We’re constantly taking all of the

knowledge that we have acquired, both separately and together, and trying to apply it to something beyond our capabilities - something beyond what we have done before.”

their throats. Cruise would pick himself up and do it again, another seven times. This was the first day of shooting on Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning

Tom Cruise and Ving Rhames are the only two actors to appear in every Mission: Impossible movie. DYK?

he’s put his life on the line throughout the series.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One is in cinemas July 12.

JULY 2023

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