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 When you've got high-priced talent like Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy on the payroll, nobody's going to risk the actors' lives or limbs for the sake of an awesome stunt. That said, superhero-assassin movie Wanted pushed its stars pretty hard to sell the car chases, train wrecks and gunfights that drive the action. Working with his own special effects company based in Moscow, Russian director Timur Bekmambetov and his team relied on both physical derring-do and digital trickery to create some high-octane moments in the thrill-packed flick. (Read Wired.com's Wanted review.) Here's how they pulled off the adrenaline-pumping stunts. (Spoiler alert: Plot information follows).  Taking Chicago's "L" Train to the Limit Riding the rails in Chicago, Wesley Gibson (played by McAvoy) and Fox (Jolie) sprint over the roofs of the city's elevated trains. Wesley avoids decapitation by leaping above an oncoming tunnel and landing on the other side when the train emerges. To achieve the effect, several full-size "L" trains were constructed as stationary units on a green-screen stage. In a studio briefing, Bekmambetov explained: "The train was too big to move, so we moved the bridge instead!" Special effects supervisor Dominic Tuohy elaborated: "We moved the bridge with computerized winches. We knew exactly where it was and at what speed it was traveling. That gave confidence to the artists doing their own stunts -- 3 meters up in the air -- by ensuring that each take would be the same, repetitive move."  Crazy Car Chases To execute Wanted's first big car chase scene, when Fox hurtles across town in a red Viper shortly after snatching up the hapless Wesley, Jolie was rigged in a harness strapped to the side of the sports car going 30 mph. Stunt coordinator Mic Rodgers says: "The camera platform was on the back of the Viper and we chased it with the camera bike. Angelina as Fox did a head-on, near miss with an oncoming car, which throws her off to the driver's side of the Viper."  Tattoos In one of the movie's goofier elements, the so-called Loom of Fate weaves information into the warp and woof of cloth fabrics embedded with binary code that spells out the assassins' next assignments. The tattoos on Jolie's body (right) relate directly to the movie's "loom" mythology, the actress said. "Fox has binary codes on her arm, which is part of a reading of the fabric from the Loom of Fate," said Jolie. "She has 'know your rights' in different languages and 'toil and tears,' which is from a Churchill speech. Giving Fox all these tattoos is symbolic of somebody who lives by a certain code of honor." Photos courtesy Universal Pictures Related StoriesSunny-Deol-wants-to-break-`Action-Hero-image  Bollywood actor Sunny Deol is back at work after a bad back kept him out of movies for two years. 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But what about his popularity as a hero? In the beginning of his career, after the moderate success of his Ben Johnson and a few other more Cash-has-Kill-Bill-styled-animation  The effort to spruce up stunts in Hindi films seems to know no bounds. The latest innovation on the action front is about ten-minutes of animation action in Cash, a la Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill featuring Zayed Khan, Shamita Shetty, Riteish Deshmukh, Esha Deol and Ajay Devgan. Explains director Anubhav Sinha, "We've worked very hard on the action scenes of Cash. And I'd really not like them to be compared with Dhoom or even my own Dus. But yes, what we've done in Cash is unique. For the first time we've j more Angelina-Jolies--Wanted--ads-not-wanted-in-UK  Two movies posters for action flick "Wanted" starring Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy have been banned by the U.K.'s Advertising Standards Authority for glamorizing the use of guns and violence and are considered unsuitable for children, media reported Thursday. A total of 18 people complained about the posters for the film, which were released in the UK in June. One ad featured Jolie lying on her back across the bonnet of a car, holding a gun next to the text: "We drove through the night at breatht more Rumours-of-Salman-doing-first-on-screen-kiss-with-Preity-in-Jaanemann  Kissing on-screen is hardly a big thing these days and most high profile stars like Ash, Preity, and Saif have already taken the plunge. But one stars who still has to do an on-screen kiss is Salman Khan. Rumours in the industry are circulating that Salman will do his first on-screen kiss with Preity Zinta in Jaanemann. While this will be Salman’s first on-screen kiss, Preity is already quite a professional in the on-screen kissing department. However producer of the film Sajid Nadiadwala vehemently denies that there is a kiss in the more |
