Dames Helen Mirren and Judi Dench battle for best actress award (TELEGRAPH)

Dame Helen Mirren will battle with Dame Judi Dench for best British actress at the London Critics' Circle Film Awards, as Daniel Craig gets nod for best actor for 007 role

Dame Helen Mirren will vie with Dame Judi Dench and Emily Blunt for best British actress at the London Critics' Circle Film Awards.

Actress Dame Helen is nominated for her role as the filmmaker's wife in the movie Hitchcock, while Dame Judi is up for two films, as MI5 boss in Skyfall and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Blunt is also shortlisted for two films, Looper and Your Sister's Sister, while the other nominees are Andrea Riseborough (Shadow Dancer) and Alice Lowe (Sightseers).

Bond star Daniel Craig is up for British actor of the year, competing against Daniel Day-Lewis for his role as the former US president in the Steven Spielberg film Lincoln.

Skyfall has been nominated for five awards, including British film, supporting actor (Javier Bardem), and supporting actress (Dame Judi).

READ MORE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/9753308/Dames-Helen-Mirren-and-Judi-Dench-battle-for-best-actress-award.html

Emily Blunt Is Harper’s 2012 British Actor Of The Year (BACK SEAT CUDDLER)

Emily Blunt made simple incredibly glamorous at the Harper’s Bazaar Women Of The Year Awards.  She walked the red carpet at Claridges in an Alexander McQueen gown in striking tangerine, with an embellished halter neckline.

Blunt currently stars in the sci-fi crime thriller  Looper, along with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis.

More photos and the entire list of Harper’s Women Of The Year Award winners is below.


Inspiration of the Year: Vivienne Westwood

Breakthrough of the Year: Ruth Wilson

Man in a Woman’s World: Raf Simons

Business Woman of the Year: Anya Hindmarch

British Actor of the Year: Emily Blunt

TV Actor of the Year: Michelle Dockery

Artist of the Year: Cindy Sherman


READ MORE: http://backseatcuddler.com/2012/11/03/emily-blunt-is-harpers-2012-british-actor-of-the-year/

Emily Blunt & John Krasinski: Toyota Twosome (JUST JARED)

The 29-year-old actress recently opened up about the possibility of a Devil Wears Prada sequel.

“What Meryl [Streep] said was she’d do it if she didn’t have to lose the f—ing weight, that was her quote. And I’d probably say the same because they made me lose weight for that. I was playing that character who was on the edge of ill thin just desperately trying to maintain her weight,” she told the Huffington Post UK.


READ MORE: http://www.justjared.com/2012/06/27/emily-blunt-john-krasinski-toyota-twosome/

Emily Blunt: Your Sister’s Sister: Kinship with a Dose of Hilarity By Caitlin Colford (PASTE MAGAZINE)

If you are familiar with the critically acclaimed 2009 indie hit Humpday, then filmmaker Lynn Shelton needs no introduction. For Your Sister’s Sister, her fourth feature effort as both writer and director, Shelton incorporates the same improvisation-based technique that is signature to the mumblecore movement, and which subsequently results in a hilarious and thought-provoking triangular relationship with a grieving Jack (Mark Duplass), his best friend, Iris (Emily Blunt), and her lesbian sister, Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt). After a drunken fling occurs in a remote cabin between Hannah and Jack, and a morning surprise visit from Iris interrupts their hangover, commotion is cued while the trio’s individual members battle to conceal their secrets and true feelings, with love being the main instigator at hand.

“I have played a few sisters in my career, and what I’m struck by, because I have half-sisters that I didn’t grow up with, is that there always has to be so much love,” says DeWitt. “The heart of all these relationships is love. Especially the familial relationships, even if it’s someone you think you hate, which is not the case in this movie, there’s nothing interesting to the audiences if there’s no love. You go home.”

In bringing in two seasoned actresses that are used to scripts and structure, Shelton was faced with the obstacle of preparing Blunt and DeWitt for the challenging task of improvisation ahead. “Humpday had two very veteran improvisers who really are at their best doing it, and love doing it, and feel very comfortable doing it,” Shelton says, referring to Duplass and Joshua Leonard. “Because I knew the two folks in this film (Blunt and DeWitt) were not that way, were used to working with scripts, I approached the actual document going in differently. Humpday was just an outline, a ten-page description of what was going to happen in each scene, but no dialogue. With this, I actually wrote out words and lines of dialogue. The idea was they were never tied to their lines, but it would give them a jumping off point—a gist of what the scene should be and could be.”

Emily Blunt insists Shelton’s methodology was the reason she signed on to play Iris in the first place. “The first movie I did was all improvised,” she says. “Years had gone by, and I hadn’t worked like that since.”


READ MORE: http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2012/06/your-sisters-sister-interview-kinship-with-a-dose.html

Emily Blunt: Review: Naturalism key to `Your Sister's Sister' BY CHRISTY LEMIRE AP Movie Critic (KANSAS CITY STAR)

An almost hypnotic sense of naturalism draws you into "Your Sister's Sister," an intimate comic-drama about three people who find their lives intertwined in sudden and unexpected ways.

Writer-director Lynn Shelton, who made the possibility of gay porn between straight best friends seem logical if not downright inevitable in 2009's "Humpday," once again employs her preferred tactic of having her actors collaborate on developing their characters and improvising their dialogue. (The stars get a "creative consultant" credit.) The result is appealingly, believably imperfect. And although the end feels a bit too tidy by comparison - despite a final shot that's intentionally ambiguous - it also has an emotional impact that will sneak up on you.

That's thanks to Mark Duplass, who also co-starred in "Humpday," making an understated final plea that's sweetly heartbreaking. This is probably his best work yet, his most mature and deeply felt. And he's been everywhere in the past year or so between this, "Safety Not Guaranteed," the FX series "The League" and his own directing efforts with his brother, Jay, like "Jeff, Who Lives at Home."

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/06/11/3653199/review-naturalism-key-to-your.html

Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt play half-sisters in a supremely awkward situation in the buzzed-about indie. Plus, director Lynn Shelton reveals five fun facts about the movie! TOM DICHIARA ON JUN 7, 2012 AT 11:16AM (IVILLAGE)

In the indie comedy Your Sister's Sister (in select theaters June 15) Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt play Iris and Hannah, two half-sisters who accidentally turn up at their family’s secluded island cabin on the same weekend. There, they find themselves in a supremely awkward situation with Iris' best friend Jack (star-on-the-rise Mark Duplass), who is still reeling from the death of his brother a year earlier.

While the film (which, mark our words, could be one of the surprise hits of the summer) has its share of poignant moments, it's also loaded with quirky laughs. Exhibit A: the exclusive clip below, which illustrates that nothing good ever comes of making vegan pancakes without the proper ingredients.
Watch the clip now, and then keep reading for five fun facts about Your Sister's Sister that writer-director Lynn Shelton revealed in a exclusive interview with iVillage!





Read More  http://www.ivillage.com/your-sisters-sister-exclusive-clip-emily-blunt/1-a-462891

Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt on improvising sisterhood in Lynn Shelton’s new film (WASHINGTON POST)

NEW YORK — Shot over 12 days in a cabin on a remote island off Washington state, Lynn Shelton’s “Your Sister’s Sister” is a naturalistic, largely improvised film that, despite its seeming artlessness, builds its drama organically and effectively.

It’s the fourth feature from the Seattle-based Shelton, the director of “Humpday,” whose light, comedic touch and collaborative, low-budget process have made her a cult favorite and a sought-after filmmaker for actors eager for freedom and realism. “Your Sister’s Sister” stars Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt (the most established actors yet to work with Shelton) as sisters whose relationship is challenged by a visiting friend (Mark Duplass)

Ahead of its June 15 release, the film has been a hit on the festival circuit, including this week’s Tribeca Film Festival. The women of “Your Sister’s Sister” — Shelton, DeWitt and Blunt — gathered for a recent interview where they reflected on the atypical process of the movie, and exhibited their own cheerful sisterhood.

AP: Why do you work this way, with so much improvised dialogue?

Shelton: The actors feel more invested. I want them to feel like the character is a glove, that they’re just stepping into and it’s not this reach. You’re not trying to put yourself into this predetermined box. I really want them to bring themselves to it. I try to make it really organic and very collaborative. I’m basically a hippie.


Read the rest of the interview here:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/qanda-emily-blunt-rosemarie-dewitt-on-improvising-sisterhood-in-lynn-sheltons-new-film/2012/04/20/gIQA51xiWT_story.html#

Emily Blunt is a big fish in acting pond with 3 films due (USA TODAY)

NEW YORK – Emily Blunt's arsenal of gifts is enviable. She makes a mean British beef roast and specializes in Italian cuisine. She's able to nimbly traverse Manhattan in "serious" red suede Christian Louboutin booties that can best be described as perilous.

But most of all, as her friends will tell you, she's a deft mimic and an ace at accents. Here's her uncannily precise imitation of a particularly memorable interview recently conducted at a film festival. Blunt's proper, crisp British accent vanishes as she assumes the guttural voice of the reporter in question. " 'What's the most amazing thing about John?' " she demands, before switching back to herself. "Oh, I don't really talk about that. 'Well, can you just be specific? Please be specific.' No, I won't."

The John in question is her husband, actor John Krasinski, whom she wed July 10, 2010, in a private ceremony. Blunt understands the interest in her personal life, but adroitly steers questions about her better half toward other topics. She won't tell you how they met because "that is so our story. People just want to know something, anything. It's all the stuff you never want to talk about, the private stuff," she says. The two tend to not discuss each other in interviews.

"It wasn't a strategic decision. It's just how we are. I think it's the best way to be," says Blunt, 29. "I find it quite hard to sum up my relationship in a sound bite. I feel that it trivializes it for other people's pleasure. It's an adventure."

Instead, Blunt explores romantic entanglements of various natures in three films opening back-to-back this spring and summer. In Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, opening today, she's an unflappable, driven and focused London executive charged with opening a fishery in the desert.

On April 27, she's Jason Segel's betrothed, Violet, in the comedy The Five-Year Engagement, a whimsical, sweet look at the circuitous road one couple takes to the altar. In the June 15 IFC release Your Sister's Sister, she finds herself in a very unique sort of love triangle involving a grieving best friend (Mark Duplass) and a sibling (Rosemarie DeWitt) desperate to have a baby.

Oh, and that's her you see in the lush ads for Yves Saint Laurent's Opium, as the new face of the fragrance. "People are going to be like, 'Her again?' The films are different enough. But it's like an overload," Blunt quips.


To read the full article:  http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/story/2012-03-08/Emily-Blunt/53420818/1