YOU WOULDN'T PLAY HIM WHEN
HE'S ANGRY
|
HOLLYWOOD - 21st Sep 04: Eric
Bana is getting lucky with "Lucky You."
The Australian star has been cast in the lead role of Huck Cheever
in the Warner Bros. Pictures project, which Curtis Hanson ("L.A.
Confidential," "8 Mile") is set to direct. Production
is to begin early next year in Las Vegas.
Set in the world of high-stakes professional poker, "Lucky"
is based on an original screenplay by Academy Award-winning screenwriter
Eric Roth ("Forest Gump"), with additional writing by
Hanson.
|
|
Bana's poker face had nobody fooled |
Bana most recently starred as Hector opposite Brad Pitt in Warners'
"Troy." He is set to star in Steven Spielberg's chronicle
of the 1972 Munich Olympics, "Vengeance."
Bana's other credits include "The Hulk" for director Ang
Lee and "Black Hawk Down" for Ridley Scott. Bana was introduced
to international audiences when he played the title role of Mark "Chopper"
Read in the Australian feature "Chopper," which premiered
at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.
"TRAGIC MAGIC" CARD TRICK KILLS FOURTEEN
SOUTH AFRICA - 20th Sep 04: In what is being described
as a "tragic magic accident", popular comedian and magician
Ali LaMesma has died, along with thirteen members of his Monday night
"The Dazzling World of Ali LaMesma" stage show audience.
The fourteen deaths, countless injuries, and the estimated two hundred
and fifty thousand US dollars of damage to the Grahamstown theatre district
were caused when sixty-seven-year-old Ali's most famous card trick -
"The LaMesma Slice" went horribly wrong.
The trick - which involved a single standard playing card being thrown
with such force as to wedge it into a block of solid concrete - had
been a favourite of LaMesma's throughout his career and had brought
delight to audiences young and old alike, excluding those killed or
maimed in Monday's incident.
A draft coming in through an open rear stage door has been blamed for
sending the thrown playing card off course, and on a deadly path of
chaos and destruction which resulted in the beheading of four men and
one woman.
As the audience rose to its feet in panic, six others found themselves
electrocuted when the card took an upward trajectory and sliced through
overhead electricty cables used to power LaMesma's breathtaking "Nine
Foot Bunny" illusion, which had been set to be the climax to his
sell-out show.
Survivor Adele Johnson (22) recalls what she can of the carnage which
cost her both feet and an ear:
"There was so much blood on people, and blue sparks flying everywhere.
Everyone was screaming and climbing over each other to escape the theatre."
Continued a tearful Adele: "It was just by sheer chance that I
looked up and saw the card cut clean through the main support beam for
the roof."
As the roof caved in, many of the two hundred strong audience found
themselves trapped under rubble until emergency services arrived on
the scene.
In an ironic twist of fate, LaMesma himself was found dead on the scene,
crushed under the weight of his own giant robotic rabbit which had been
knocked over during the building's collapse.
Police are not treating the deaths as suspicious.
