It’s your birthday tomorrow, right?

That’s right. I’ll be 43.

How does that feel?

Couldn’t tell the difference.

Aren’t you going to celebrate?

I’m not too keen on birthdays. Never was when I was a kid. I always got shy about that cake and the candles.

Why?

I don’t know… I get shy. Ever since I was a kid. Hopefully I’ll celebrate with some gifts. I like the gifts! But the whole surprise stuff? Whoa, don’t do that. I just feel like being a host is hard work. Sitting there and talking to everyone would be exhausting. But if the gifts are good then I’m all tongue and lash!

What should we have got you for your birthday?

I’d like maybe a Red Cam. It’s a camera. Go ahead. Can you give it to me?

We’ll talk to the boss. What’s the most expensive present you’ve given yourself?

I think it might have been a painting. It was a painting by Paul Simonon. It wasn’t that expensive, but it was… by the bass player of The Clash. He’s a great painter. I’ve been a fan of his work and while I was in London doing The Wolfman I went to see his work, got the chance to meet him and went away with a painting.

How do you think you’ve changed over the years?

Yeah, it’s different. It’s a different passion now. I know much more about movies and acting than when I was 20. I do want to explore other things in the film world.

Like what?

Tell people what to do! I usually get told what to do. I’d like to try to direct something, to tell a story. And I’d like to produce some more.

Which filmmaker would you love to work with?

It would be a dream to work with Scorsese. Silence, the film we were going to do, has been pushed back, but that’s definitely something that I’m really looking forward to. Every time I talk to him, it’s like the same as meeting with Yoda.

So why does an Oscar-winning actor dress up as a wolf?

As I kid, I loved watching those classic Universal horror movies like Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, The Mummy, Creature From The Black Lagoon. Those are my earliest memory of movies.

You’ve been known as a Method actor. How do you go Method to play a werewolf?

You hope that the makeup covers you. As you put it on and you’re looking in the mirror, you start playing with the makeup, your face, what it can do. I found out that if I showed my teeth, it was scarier. The same way that if you see a dog lying there, if the dog it showing you its teeth, you’ll move away from it. So I showed my teeth as much as I could.

Was it useful that you have a very thick head of hair?

I’m hairy in the right places. Where you don’t want to get cold. It wasn’t too comfortable, but it looked cool. When you do a movie like this, the monster has to walk a thin line. He’s got to look scary but he’s got to look cool.

Did you need something lighter after playing Che Guevara?

After Che? Definitely. I needed dessert. I just felt it was probably the best way to recover. I started this movie maybe 10 weeks after I finished Che . So it was a great decompressor. Because for every choice I make in Che, there’s 10 books. For every choice in The Wolfman, I could go anywhere.

On Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, you put on 40lbs and burned yourself with cigarettes. Do you always go that far?

It depends. If you’re gonna play a character, you better know what you’re doing, so you can make it seem believable. You take George Clooney in that TV show where he plays a doctor. He’s not a doctor, so he couldn’t perform a surgery. Well, maybe he could! I don’t know. But he made it convincing. And that’s acting.

Do you enjoy transforming yourself with each role?

You know, yeah. I’m a big fan of all those actors – from Vincent Price and Christoper Lee to Willem Dafoe and Johnny Depp – those actors who put on makeup and that have done these kind of movies. I’m the same.

Do you see yourself as a chameleon?

I don’t see it like that. I’m just an actor. I like to do different kinds of movies. For me, it’s interesting to go into these fantastic worlds. But it’s not like I dictate all that. I just happens that things come to me and they’re always different. That’s the movies I get.

What do you do when you’re not working?

I listen to music. I read. I daydream. I drive, if I’m in LA. I don’t drive, if I’m in New York.

What are you reading right now?

Right now I’m reading a book about two basketball players. You know, I used to play basketball. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird had a rivalry in the ‘80s and they both got together and wrote this book. It’s great to see what they were thinking behind closed doors. They’re really open about it and it’s a lot of fun.

We always read more about your performances that your personal life.

Yeah. Yeah. So do I.

But why is that?

What it’s kind of like, I was reading a little bit about JD Salinger last month. And they talk a lot about his private life. The lack of knowledge of his private life. WHO CARES? The man made all these stories. Who cares about his private life? It’s about the work. It’s about the work.

Could you tell us something about yourself that people be surprise to learn?

[Long pause] I don’t know… Who am I to say what is going to surprise people? Um… I want to say, like… When I was in Mexico I ate some crickets.

You ate some crickets?

They have crickets there. They’re very good. They taste like fish. They’re high in vitamin C. A little bit of lemon and let’s go! Yeah, they fried them.

Are you playing Moe in the Farrelly brothers’ remake of The Three Stooges?

If the cast they want is willing, I’ll be ecstatic. They want Sean Penn and Jim Carrey. And so if that’s the case, who am I to say no? I’ve watched the stooges when I was a kid and always liked them.

Sean Penn is an intense actor, too. Is he actually funny?

Oh yeah, very funny. Very funny. I’ve had long laughs with Sean. You know was really funny? His brother Chris. No longer with us. But really funny.

Looking forward to going madcap?

Yeah, yeah – I’ll be poking everybody in the eye!

You’re still the youngest ever Bond villain. Does it feel a long time ago?

I remember the audition. I walked in, Albert Broccoli asked me how tall I was and how much I weighed. Then he said, ‘Okay, you got the part.’ Can you believe it? Imagine this. I grew up in Puerto Rico. After the monster movies, the next kind of movies that came into my life were Bond movies.

What was the first Bond movie you ever saw?

Live And Let Die with Roger Moore. And my room became a Bond room! Cut to six years later, I’m in a Bond movie. It was really strange for me. But it was really strange for a lot of my friends who didn’t know I’d turned to being an actor. I was only 20. They all freaked out seeing me in this Bond movie. They’d go, ‘No, no, no… How did he get that?!’

Would you come back to play a Bond villain again?

Sure! I’m still good friends with the producer, Barbara Broccoli. I mean, Bond is always going to win! But I could take him on for 15 rounds…

Publication: ShortList

Created by NASA to celebrate their 50th anniversary, this Discovery Channel documentary series chronicles the US space program’s fantastic voyage over the past half-century: from NASA’s maiden journey into space in ‘60s to the construction of Earth’s first orbital space station in the ‘90s and ‘00s. Spilling over four discs, it includes never-before-seen film from the NASA archives and new access to 500 hours of space footage taken by the astronauts. These delicate films had only been removed from cold storage two or three times before. Now they’re yours.

Of course, the story of man’s trip to the moon was brilliantly told in In The Shadow Of The Moon. Still, that doc didn’t have Neil Armstrong. Because, for years, the first man to take “one giant leap for mankind” has refused to talk about his astronaut career. But here he is. “Our computer was steering us towards football-field sized caters,” says Armstrong, recalling how he landed on the moon’s treacherous surface just seconds before his dwindling fuel supplies would have made a return flight impossible. Narrator (and Apollo 13 star, natch) Gary Sinise is a minor presence. The real storytelling is done by new talking-head interviews with the scientists, mission-control men and astronauts who were there.

Even more fascinatingly, When We Left Earth continues the story where most space-docs end. The account of doomed space shuttles Challenger and Columbia rapidly morph the doc into a gripping true-life thriller. It’s unflinching stuff: the Challenger explosion is shown in newly declassified footage, coupled with gasp-snatching film of the astronauts’ parents watching the shuttle explode and the stunned faces of mission control.

Agony turns with joy – the nerve-shredding tension stays the same, mind – when a veteran space crew soar up to twice the usual orbit above the Earth and deploy the Hubble telescope. But when Hubble turns out to be near-sighted (a multi-billion-dollar dud), it results in an awe-inspiring space-walk repair mission that’s as riveting as any sci-fi blockbuster.

Tough to rate on Blu-ray because, even with colour-correction, video quality swerves massively between battered ‘60s and ‘70s camera film and gleaming ‘90s and ‘00s footage. Perhaps you could save yourself £20 by punting for the DVD instead, but talking heads are all rich and clean, and when the later footage starts to unspool, HD gives it a lovely hyper-reality. Not a package that needs bonus supps, but each disc straps on highlights from more NASA films and extra interviews. Disc Four is a grab-bag of NASA-produced documentary films from the ‘60s – vintage promo curios rather than anything compulsive.

Sure, you could quibble. You could say the presentation is a bit straight-faced. No filmmaking wit here. The dramatic musical score is overbearing at times. Inevitably, the Russian side of the story remains fairly unacknowledged. But with 40 years pressed into nearly five hours, nothing else on disc that comes close to the sheer scope and scale of When We Left Earth. A unique insider view of the intricacies and the full history of one of the most staggering accomplishment of the human race. Addictive, essential viewing.

RATING: ★★★★★

Publication: DVD & Blu-ray Review

Does Glitter feel like a long time ago now?

So why are we still talking about it? Here’s the thing that a lot of people don’t know. Glitter was released on 9/11. Could there be a worse day for that movie to come out? I don’t think so. I don’t even know that many people saws the movie. I don’t think it’s the worst thing ever done. I don’t think it’s best thing ever done. If I could go back in time and not do it, yes, I would definitely not do it.

Why did that film turn out so badly for you?

It was a mess. I didn’t have representation or anyone to tell me, ‘What you need is a great director, don’t ever embark on something like this without somebody who’s way smarter than me.’ And especially at the time, it was a lot to take on. And it was an unfinished script when we started shooting that thing.

What kind of actress did you want to be?

I was auditioning for a smaller roles and wanting to do more independent things. But everyone was like, ‘No, she’s too well known, she’s going to take everyone out of the movie.’ And nobody until Lee really gave me the chance to shed every single layer of me, the singer, the personality, whatever, and go in and really be a completely different person in a character.

Why did you agree to star in Precious?

The book changed my life when I read it. I’m very close friends with the director Lee Daniels and he asked me to be a part of it.

How did you tackle your character so well?

My character is kind of the audience. She represents someone taking in this information that this woman has been being abused since she was three years old. There wasn’t much preparation that I had to do other than the physical stuff. And changing the walk and changing the look. And also I wanted to have a different accent so I worked on that. But emotionally, I feel like we were all there together. And it didn’t require that much, because anybody hearing that stuff for the first time is gonna be hit unless you’re heartless.

Did the physical transformation help you get inside the character?

I felt like I had to make her voice… it just had to be really calm, because in that job you would experience so much hectic behaviour and so many things are gonna get thrown at you that would floor somebody. People are walking in with stories not too dissimilar to Precious, about being pregnant by their family members, the drug abuse. The intensity of what happens, what a person who works as a social worker would go through. So I couldn’t just be like, ‘Oh hi! How are you today? What’s going on today, Precious? Are you good??’ That would have been really out of character for this woman.

What was the toughest part of the role?

It was really difficult to strip away all the glamour and all that kind of stuff and just go for it, really purely from trying to help the story in whatever way I could serve the work as an actress.

Were you shocked to see yourself in the mirror looking like that?

I knew what Lee was going for. He really is smart about that. Because it wouldn’t have worked if had been any other way. Do you know what I mean? It really couldn’t even have been, ‘Okay, don’t wear makeup and have your hair to the side. That wouldn’t have even looked the way he wanted. He wanted it to be a complete shedding of skins and just going into this other place and becoming this other person.

What did your friends say?

I have a friend, Brett Ratner, he directed all the Rush Hour movies, he’s done about five of my videos. He went to see the movie and he was just like, ‘It’s amazing, it’s incredible. But you broke like every Mariah rule that there is! You have her in fluorescent lighting with the worst angles…

Do you think people don’t see the real Mariah Carey?

A lot of people just look at me and see one thing. I come from an interracial background. My father’s black, my mother’s white. So I’ve always felt like an outsider. I do have this whole side of my family that we weren’t even allow to know or talk to because they were literally shooting each other. People don’t know that part of who I am. And I don’t even want to talk about it because it’s going to be ‘Mariah Carey says her family were shooting each other!’ So I related to the Harlem aspect of Precious because my family and most of my friends live in either Harlem or Brooklyn.

Where does this desire to act come from?

To me, it comes from the desire to express a different side of my creative self. Writing songs is one side, singing and everything. Doing this is something else that I’m just grateful to have. To do for the first time, really. Because I do consider this the first time.

Do you think it’s risky starring in a low-budget movie about abuse?

It’s not risky in my opinion, because I‘m not the star of the film, I’m a supporting actress. So I feel like it’s a freeing experience. It wasn’t about like ‘Let me try and be the world’s biggest actress.’ It was about ‘let me participate in a creative ensemble piece.’ That is something I’m obsessed with because I love the book and to participate in the movie was really amazing.

Mo’Nique is also phenomenal in the film. What was it like acting opposite her?

I had to stay strong, because she’s such a strong actress. And her role is so incredible powerful and so to stay toe-to-toe with her in that scene without breaking down or allowing that woman to get to me – as Miss Weiss – was my challenge.

What was it like filming that incredible final scene?

It was very, very intense, that scene. Because I love Mo’Nique and we’d joke for hours and just be laughing. But I really had to avoid her between takes, just to keep up with what was going on. At the end we just hugged each other and cried.

Publications: i-D / Total Film.

Essentially one epic, enthralling movie split into 39 serialised episodes, this French/Japanese-made adventure sees young orphan Esteban set sail with Spanish explorers in search of the secret treasures of El Dorado – and his lost father. Powered by an incredible ambient soundtrack (and the mightiest intro theme of all time), the ever-deepening narrative slowly evolves from gripping historical realism into mystic sci-fi, as our heroes encounter a lost civilisation with fantastic technologies en route to a truly cataclysmic finale. Its depth, intelligence and wonderful Ghibli-esque artwork are even clearer to adult eyes – meaning this is way more than a cult nostalgia kick.

FILM: ★★★★★

EXTRAS: ★★★

Wake up fighting fit instead of punch drunk…

1. Stress the point

As you lie fast asleep in the land of bed-fordshire, your stress-hormone cortisol – which, like adrenaline, gives you short blasts of energy, boosts mental awareness and numbs pain – has been tumbling during the night until it bottoms-out around 4am, assuming you hit the hay at 11pm. “At this point, it starts to rise, beginning the waking up process that should cause you to be fully awake by 8am,” says Dr Chris Idzikowski, director of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre. “This rise in cortisol is a major trigger for waking up,” says Sammy Margo, author of The Good Sleep Guide. “You can keep your cortisol lower for longer by ensuring your stress levels are small before bed.” So no arguing with your bedmate – or watching Paranormal Activity – immediately before dropping off.

2. Getting warmer

“As your cortisol levels start to rise, your body temperature (which also hits rock-bottom at 4am) begins to rise again too,” says Idzikowski. Partly because your body is regulating its own heat and partly because as morning approaches, your room is getting warmer – which makes your breathing and heart rate speed up, pumping blood and oxygen into your muscles and brain to beckon full consciousness. “Alternative brain activities like dreams need lower temperatures,” says Margo. “As you wake, your body needs to increase this a few degrees so normal psychological processes can operate effectively. So set your central heating to kick in an hour before you want to get up. A comfortable setting, mind, or you’ll wake up sweating like Vanessa Feltz in Burger King.

3. Shine a light

The morning light creeping through your curtains isn’t just helping your body temperature rise – it’s nature’s alarm clock, signalling your body to stop pumping out sleep-hormone melatonin. “The darker the room, the more melatonin you produce and so the longer you sleep,” says sleep and energy physiologist Dr Nerina Ramlakhan, from the Capio Nightingale hospital in London. “It stops when you’re exposed to light and its absence pushes your body out of sleep,” adds Margo. Buy yourself some dark, heavy curtains and try a Lumie Bodyclock dawn-simulator, which wakes you with gentle light instead of brain-pummelling digital squawks.

4. Cycle track

With cortisol replacing the melatonin sleepy-juice in your ever-warming body, you’re about to emerge from the final cycle of sleep. See, being asleep isn’t like playing in defence for Portsmouth – your brain never completely switches off. It’s actually processing thoughts and information in 90- to 110-minute cycles of light, medium and deep sleep. Seven and a half hours – roughly five full cycles – is the ideal amount, according to a recent study by the American Cancer Society. “You’re likely to start waking naturally during light sleep, as you come to the end of a cycle,” says Margo. “If you’ve eaten foods containing monosodium glutamate or e-numbers – such as delicious Chinese takeaway or pizza – your sleep quality will be reduced, making it more likely you’ll wake up mid-cycle.” A ‘snooze food’ meal of lettuce (calms your nervous system) and turkey (full of sleep-inducing tryptophan) before 9pm will help you complete the right number of laps of the cycle track.

5. Move it!

Now you’re in the final sleep-cycle, it’s time to get up. Only you can’t yet… “When we sleep, our muscles – except for the ones used for breathing – are largely paralysed, possibly to stop us acting out our dreams,” says Dr Idzikowski. Sleepwalking doesn’t occur while you dream – it’s actually an unusual disorder which occurs when you’re partially awoken and then return to light sleep – minus the muscle paralysis.  With more blood and oxygen throbbing into your brain, organs and muscles, this paralysis gradually ceases. You start to stir and your eyes open. Hang on, are you still drunk? No, your vision is blurry because your eyes are scrambling to adjust. “Because of the light exposure, your pupils constrict and expand, before finding the right setting,” says Margo.  “If you’re awoken in the middle of a cycle it’s much more likely you’ll suffer from sleep inertia,” says Itzikowski. “Your muscles remain partially paralysed, giving you a problem performing properly in the first 15 minutes after awakening.” He means moving around. Not what you’re thinking.

6. Dawn delicacies

As you stumble out of the sack and stretch your creaky limbs, your priority is food. “Eat breakfast within an hour of rising and you’ll have higher energy levels all morning,” says Dr Ramlakhan. “Over time, this starts to ‘train’ your metabolism so your energy levels rise as soon as you wake up in anticipation of receiving food.” Kickstart the day with a glass of warm water and a slice of lemon: “This rehydrates you gently by matching your body temperature, instead of shocking your body with heat or cold,” says Margo. If you’re tempted by a lie-in, think again: you could wake up groggier than Ricky Hatton. ”Sleep inertia is far worse after a lie-in,” says Dr Ramlakhan. “Extra cycles of morning sleep are more shallow – meaning the waking-up processes have subsided and your body has re-entered the rest stage when you do decide to get up.” You heard the lady: wakey, wakey!

Publication: Men’s Health

Let’s start again. Back in 1941, back before New Moon and Taylor Lauter, The Wolf Man and Lon Chaney clawed out the real template for the modern movie lycanthrope. And in March 2006 – just two months after Eli Roth’s Hostel kickstarted an ugly new “torture-porn” fad for the horror genre – Universal Pictures announced they were reaching through the cobwebs into their darkest vaults to resurrect one of their greatest monsters. The Wolfman would howl again.

Benicio del Toro signed to play the tortured man who transforms into a murderous lycanthrope. Se7en and Sleepy Hollow scripter Andrew Kevin Walker would write the screenplay and Mark Romanek – the TV commercial stylist and One Hour Photo director – was set helm his eagerly-awaited second movie.

On paper, it looked thrilling. And no one was more thrilled than make-up maestro Rick Baker. Just was just one name missing from the roster: his name. “I was probably eight years old when I saw the original Wolf Man,” he recalls. “It was the film that really made me want to become a makeup artist.” He didn’t even wait for Universal to find him – he called them. They hired him instantly.

Baker’s last job was turning Robert Downey Jr into a black man for Tropic Thunder. But his CV is coated in four decades of fur: King Kong (1976), The Howling (1981), Harry And The Hendersons (1987), Gorillas In The Mist (1988), Gremlins 2 (1990), Wolf (1994), Mighty Joe Young (1998), The Grinch (2000), Planet Of The Apes (2001), Cursed (2005), King Kong (2005)…

Oh. And a little ‘80s scare-flick called An American Werewolf In London. Brilliantly combining prosthetics with animatronic body-parts, Baker’s groundbreaking, skin-splitting, bone-jutting transformation work changed actor David Naughton from a naked man to the snarling hell-hound – and changed the face of horror makeup. How amazing? So amazing that the Academy Awards invented the Outstanding Achievement In Makeup category just so they could honour him. Baker had been waiting his entire career for a chance to top that sequence. The Wolf Man remake was it. “Well, I was hoping so,” says Baker, ruefully. “Yeah. It turned out not to be. Even though I was pretty certain in my head what The Wolfman should be, nobody else seemed to be…”

Two years later, there was no sign of The Wolfman – or its director. Just a couple of months before cameras were set to roll, Romanek left and Universal desperate put the call out for a last-minute replacement. Worryingly for horror hardcore, none of the names were exactly renowned scaremongers. Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) led a ragtag pack of Frank Darabont (The Majestic), James Mangold (3:10 To Yuma), Joe Johnston (Jurassic Park 3), Bill Condon (Chicago), Martin Campbell (Casino Royale). Between them, they had every genre covered – except the one that mattered.

One month after Romanek bailed, Johnston got the nod. “They basically told me they had a director who had just walked off the show,” remembers Johnston. “They wanted to stick to the original shooting schedule, which meant they wanted to start in about three weeks. So they asked me, ‘Can you shoot this film for this much money and this many days?’ And I said, ‘Of course!’”

Mark Romanek, of course, had said something rather different. Didn’t think so at all. “I think that there was a disagreement mostly over what was required to make the film,” reveals Johnston. “You never know the full story. And there are several sides to this story. But I think that basically Mark felt that he needed more shooting days and more money to make the film the way that he wanted to make it. And the studio was not willing to go there. I think that there were also probably creative differences, but I wasn’t really privy to all those discussions. When I came on, it was like, ‘Okay, that chapter’s closed. Move on.’”

So could The Wolfman be done? Or did Johnston just need the work? His last film was Hidalgo, way back in 2004. This was a massive chance to stamp his name back on the Hollywood map.”Well… um… It was a very tight shooting schedule and a very tight budget,” admits Johnston, with a sigh. “But if this was a job I wanted, I wasn’t going to say, ‘Mark Romanek was right! It can’t be done for this much money and this much time…’” Are we saying that Romanek was right, then? “Yeah… well… What I did say was, if you don’t add any more pages to the script, I think we’re very close to being able to make this film. At that point, I believe it was about a 105-page script. Of course, soon after I signed on, we added 17 pages to the draft!”

In fact, it was star and producer Benicio del Toro who insisted scenes be put back in – none of it flesh-ripping action, all of it character development between del Toro’s character and his father (Anthony Hopkins) that had been snipped for budgetary reasons. “The movie needed them, the actors wanted them and I agreed,” says Johnston. “This is a completely different story to the original. You’ll  be reminded of the original but it’s an updated retelling of a classic Wolf Man story. It’s a classic retelling of a Gothic horror film.”

Prowling back to the late-1880s Gothic heartland of Victorian England, the Wolfman script sees Lawrence Talbot (del Toro) back in the sleepy hamlet of Blackmore for the first time since his mother died. Talbot’s childhood died with her and he’s spent decades trying to forget. But following the strange disappearance of his brother, he learns that something wild, brutal and blood-hungry is murdering the villagers. With suspicious Scotland Yard inspector Aberline investigating, Talbot joins the hunt – only to discovers that the beast lies within… And it’s really hairy.

As Johnston signed on, that script was being rewritten by David Self, the man behind  ace Armageddon thriller Thirteen Days and Sam Mendes’ Road To Perdition. Then the writer’s strike began. It was starting to look like The Wolfman was cursed. “The studio had spent a lot of money already, before a frame of film was shot,” explains Johnston. “There was a lot of angst and, I won’t say panic, but it was close to that. I just said, we’ve got to make this work. And that, for better or worse, I’m not going make Mark Romanek’s film or the producers’ film or the studio’s film. If it’s got my name on it, it’s going to be my film. I will say that, now having finished it, the film isn’t a completely different animal to the film that Mark Romanek would have made.”

It was too late for Johnston make any major transformations to The Wolfman, but he scored one huge casting, signing Hugo Weaving to play Inspector Aberline. The question needed to be asked, though. Could the director of Honey, I Shrunk The Kids? really have an eye for horror? “To me, there’s a level of violence and gore and bloodshed here that’s integral to the story and the characters and it’s definitely a justified R-rating. With a film like this, you don’t want people to be disappointed but you don’t want to make anybody sick.”

Isn’t that what audiences want in modern horror? The torture-genre wave finally seems to have bled itself dry, but can an old-fashioned Gothic horror movie still success in these post-Abu Ghraib times? “Believe me, I was a little concerned about that initially when they talked to me,” admits Baker.“Personally, I think those torture-porn movies are pretty sick. I think it’s one thing when it’s a human killing another human in the most graphic way possible. When it’s a cursed guy beyond his control, that doesn’t seem to bother me so much! But I don’t know whether a modern audience – kids who grew up on all the CG stuff – would actually accept this. But then again, it could be something that’s brand new to then. They probably haven’t seen the original Wolf Man or even seen a guy in makeup and they might find it really cool. We definitely do some pretty horrible things to people. I don’t know how much I supposed to talk about pulling chunks of flesh out and stuff! But he is a Wolf Man and he kills people. And he’s got some big teeth and some big claws so he does some serious damage…”

The secret, says Johnston, was discovering a taste for blood without being blinded by red mist. “That means you look for interesting ways to dispatch the victims that you haven’t seen before. There’s no shortage of blood and carnage. I think our blood budget tripled on this picture! It’s not cartoony at all.” Not hard to guess what Johnston is hinting at – the last time Universal’s monsters clambered out of the crypt, no one was scared. Even when it was Wolverine himself trying to slay them. “What we didn’t want to do was the Van Helsing thing,” nods Johnston. “Whether the audience is conscious of it or not, when they know it’s a CG character, it runs the risk of taking you of the story. Which is why I always wanted to use Benicio in makeup once we complete the transformation.”

True, Johnson was no hardcore horror fan. But like Baker and del Toro, he’d fallen in love with Universal’s monster movies as he was growing up. And not unlike Baker, he’d become a visual-effects expert, working on the original Stars Wars trilogy before moving into the director’s chair.

Looking to pay homage to the original Wolf Man designed by ‘40s makeup artist Jack Pierce, Baker had been working on the look of the Wolf Man for months. It felt like years. He’d created hundred of designs for the creature. It felt like thousands. “I ended up doing a whole shitload of designs,” he says. “Eventually, I actually did a makeup on myself and showed them that.” And? “And they still couldn’t decide!” Baker finally had enough. “I thought, ‘You know what, I’m just gonna do what I think is right. So I pretty much did what I did seven months before.”

Applying that make-up to del Toro took hours. Baker and his team finally got it down to three  on, and one hour off. Luckily for them, del Toro was almost as crazy about Universal horror classics as Baker. Not that it made the makeup any easier. “Those were the movies I would stay up to watch when I was a kid,” he tells Total Film. Not that it made the makeup any easier. “The make-up was not easy,” he shakes his head. “If I want to say something or do something, I have to take off my teeth. I walked around with a team that had to take off my hands so I could scratch myself or eat… But I did scare people! ”

What Baker didn’t get to do was tackle del Toro’s transformation from man to wolf. “In American Werewolf, we had a naked man and a four-legged hound from hell, we had a really big range to go,” explains Baker.. “Here we go from Benicio del Toro, who’s practically a fucking wolf man already, to Benicio del Toro with some hair on his face. We’ve seen that shit so many times…” He’s still a little disappointed. “I wanted to use animatronics. But it’s the digital age, isn’t it? When you get an actor in a great makeup on a really cool set and he looks at his face in the mirror and there ‘s a different face looking back at him… magic happens. Magic happens that you’re not going to get on a green-screen.”

That magic is what Johnston, Baker and del Toro are hoping will make the Wolf Man tear up the box office. “From the feedback I’ve gotten from audiences, the one consistent not e is that they’re so glad we’re not doing a slasher film and it’s not shot like the Bourne movies. It requires an audience to get involved. I think that the reason people are responding to it, they go expecting it to be something else.”

If they’re expecting New Moon, they’re in for a shock. That kind of shock, according to del Toro, that’s exactly what everyone – from the kids to the kill-junkies have all been looking for. “There’s gore and then there’s gore. I think this one has GORE,” he says. “But it has a story, too. It’ll be interesting to think what teens might think. It’s not like we’re schooling them. I just think that they might start discovering these old movies, like the Boris Karloffs, and realise that they’re real McCoy.” So The Wolfman isn’t for Team Jacob. Del Toro just stares blankly. “Who?” Exactly.

Publication: Total Film

Collaging copious archive material (home movies, photos, TV footage and voice recordings, narrated by Johnny Depp), the Oscar-winning director of Enron and Taxi To The Dark Side makes some attempt to rescue the man from the myth. The man who owned 22 guns. Who drank a bottle of whiskey a day. Who taught himself to write by typing The Great Gatsby again and again.

Or did he? Either way, Gonzo reminds us how short Thompson’s journalistic purple-patch was – and how florid. From the mid-‘60s to the mid-‘70s, he wrote a trilogy (Hell’s Angels, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail ‘72) that formed a savage eulogy for wilting Flower Power and launched a two-thumbed fist at the throat of Richard Nixon. Whether riding with killer bikers or delivering “the most accurate and least factual account” of the 1972 election season, his style bear-trapped vital cultural truths with devastating accuracy and psychedelic wit.

With Hunter’s wives and son, illustrator Ralph Steadman, Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner and ex-president Jimmy Carter all chatting freely, Gonzo seems to have everything. Yet it misses so much. Instead of constructing a nuanced character study, Gibney breezes Thompson’s early days and races through the last 25 years of his life. It’s a surface skim of his fascinating contradictions rather than a search for deeper truth – and that, of course, was what gonzo was all about.

RATING: ★★★

A straight-line journey through the Good Doctor’s loopy myth and madness, but one that never gets close to edge of this anarchic rebel-sage and his crazed quest for freedom and truth.

While grudgingly helping husband-turned-roadkill Gregg Kinnear get in touch with his widow Tea Leoni, Pincus realises he’s falling in love with her. Which is as sappy and predictably as it sounds. But this gentle, amusing romantic-comedy from writer/director David Koepp keeps surprising you with tiny, lovely touches, before ending on the sweetest last line of the year.

Fellini’s Oscar-winning production designer produced 64 incredible sets, 450 gallons of blood and over 3,500 costumes. Some of most revered British actors alive signed up. Guccione flew in Penthouse Pets to play countless writing naked extras, snuck on to the set after dark to shoot hardcore porn scenes, then locked the director out of the editing room to assemble the movie himself.

What emerged – some four years later – was a truly staggering mess: McDowall off the rails as the depraved Roman emperor lost a mad hell of sex, torture and murder; Helen Mirren, John Gielgud and Peter O’Toole watching their dignity spiral down the plughole; decapitations and disembowelments a-go-go; reams of faceless flesh.

Too joyless to be kitsch, too sexless to titillate, too out-there to offend and just too long to sit through, the X-rated epic gets some sort of second life through this doorstop four-disc ‘Imperial Edition’. Take your pick from the Caligula threesome: the castrated “Theatrical Version” clocks at 101 mins; the “Complete Uncut Version” lasts 156 minutes and boasts Guccione’s hardcore sequences; “The Alternative Version” runs three minutes shorter and makes (slightly) more sense. Better still, skip the lot and learn the full story of Caligula’s barmy history through an array of fascinating extras.

Three affectionate, funny and hugely informed chat-tracks from McDowell, Mirren and Penthouse’s on-set reporter. Hours more violent special-effects, bore-a-thon orgies, hairy close-ups and spectacular sets in the B-roll, wordless behind-the-scenes footage and deleted scenes. An hour-long Making Of doc plus frank interviews with “Caligula’s Pet” Lori Wagner and Tinto himself. Masses of DVD-ROM press-kit materials even include two versions of Vidal’s script and Penthouse magazine’s special Caligula issue.

Predictably, the last word goes to McDowell. He claims his horse turned in the best performance.

FILM: ★★

DISC: ★★★★★

Publication: Total Film

1. “All my life, I’ve been an obese man trapped in a man fat’s body.”

D’OH! “At  239lbs, Homer is about 54lbs overweight and has a BMI of 32,” says boot-camp personal trainer Gavin Walsh. “This puts you in the obese category. Men carry excess weight around the stomach, close to the vital organs, which places a huge stress on your heart. Homer is only 38 years old – if he doesn’t focus on his health soon, he’ll find himself in an early grave.”
WOO-HOO! “By weight training, you can add muscle definition and burn more calories whilst sitting at your desk at work,” says Walsh. “Muscle burns calories and compound multi-joint exercises (squats, lunges, bench press) sky-rocket your metabolism for several hours after your workout. Two 20-30 minute workouts are better than a one-hour workout, especially for someone who’s de-conditioned like Homer.” That’s right. Not lazy, de-conditioned.

2. “To alcohol! The cause of – and solution to – all of life’s problems!

D’OH! Sure, the skin may be genetic. The taste for booze isn’t. “Alcohol is a big factor,” says nutritionist Emma Wells. “A yellow tinge to your skin may mean the liver is struggling to clear out toxins in your body.” You’re not a cartoon character – so no excuse. “Old wives associate a toxic liver with anger and dissatisfaction,” she adds. “Guys like Homer should take note.”

WOO-HOO! Of course, you’re not going to quit the bottle. But you can give your liver a hand. “To begin supporting your liver, try dandelion coffee or even using half dandelion in your normal coffee would help,” advises Wells. Plus, if you’re eating in the pub, try add some rocket and watercress salad to your burger baps. “Along with extra onion and tomato, all are beneficial to your liver,” says Wells.

3. “It’s true, I’m a rage-a-holic. I just can’t live without rage-ahol!”

D’OH! It’s been proven that Homer’s baldness is stress-related: he copes badly with family drama and work pressure. Can’t blame him for hitting the bottle again. “But booze depletes B vitamins, important to help deal with stress,” adds Wells. “Ironically, beer is rich in B vits but the alcohol impairs your body’s ability to use them.”

WOO-HOO! Soak it up. “Wholegrain bread will hep to replace lost B-vits as well as eating more potatoes, bananas and turkey,” says Wells. And next time you walk to the pub – try to keeping on walking. “A 10-15 minute brisk walk can reduce your stress,” says Walsh. “And a reduction in stress will also cause a reduction in the hormone cortisol, known to add to the waistline weight.”

4. “I discovered a meal between breakfast and brunch…”

D’OH! Homer is often found with his face in the fridge. Even at 3am in the morning, when he’s woken from another restless night’s kip. Sugary foods like donuts are a fave. “Sugary snacks lead to fluctuations in energy, mood and weight,” says Wells. “A bad snack before bed means blood-sugar levels plummet during the night and lead to night time sweating and waking.”

WOO-HOO! “Eat a small snack, rich in the sleepy magnesium foods,” advises Wells. “Pumpkin seeds, tuna or a chicken wholegrain sandwich should lead to a good night’s sleep. If you want something sweet, bananas contain tryptophan and tyrosine – to make chemical messages that lift mood and motivation. If you do wake in the night, keep a couple of oat cakes with peanut butter by your bed and have a quick munch on them.” Don’t mistake them for the alarm clock in the morning. Messy.

5. “It’s not easy to juggle a pregnant wife and a troubled child but, somehow, I manage to squeeze in eight hours of TV a day.”

D’OH! “A gut places huge stress on your lower back and being slumped in front of a TV or a control panel has done little to help,” says Walsh. “Homer has developed the typical kyphotic posture of rounded shoulders and a forward curvature of the spine that so many office-bound people inherit with the job.”

WOO-HOO! “To improve a kyphotic posture,” advises Walsh, “perform more upper back exercises than chest, such as the seated row, to strengthen and tighten the back muscles as you stretch your chest. You should also use core exercises on a swiss ball. This not only improves your stability, but strengthens your inner abs that protect your lower back.” Perform them in front of the TV. Maybe not in a board meeting.

6. “Alright brain. You don’t like me and I don’t like you, but let’s just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer.”

D’OH! “Alcohol makes us feel good – for a while,” says Wells. “But long term, it leads to a smaller, lighter, shrunken brain. Booze damages the nerve endings responsible for sending nerve signals and the ‘grey matter’ needed for complex mental activities.” Like thinking while talking.

WOO-HOO! “Reducing alcohol really is a must if your cognitive function is suffering,” she says. “Lower alcohol beers are a good place to start. To help your flagging memory, take the smart-nutrient phosphatidylserine, found in eggs, fish and lecithin.” Add 1tbs of tasteless lecithin granules to meals or smoothies once a day and you’ll never forget another… um, what were we saying?

Publication: Men’s Health