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Michael Vartan Web is an unofficial, non-profit fansite. The maintainer of this website does not know Mr. Vartan personally and does not have any official affiliation with him or his representatives. All © is to the respective owners. No infringement is ever intended.The Joy of Sets: Alias Alum Battles a New Beast!
Posted on 08.14.2008 in Interviews and Rogue | 0 CommentsHe’s one of the nicest guys in Hollywood and it’s been biting him on the butt. But now, Alias alum Michael Vartan is getting his grit on in the ferociously entertaining Rogue as a travel writer terrorized by a monster crocodile while stranded with an Australian tour group. And trust me, this one is sharper than your average when-animals-attack flick. —Damian Holbrook
TVGuide.com: Based on the DVD’s cover, with the giant crocodile jaws, you think we’re looking at another Anaconda. But this has a very Hitchcockian feel to it.
Michael Vartan: Yeah, that’s Greg Mclean, the director, who’s such an interesting guy, such a talented, fun guy to work with. You know, something as simple as the fact that my character and Radha Mitchell [playing river tour guide Kate Ryan] never make out seconds before impending doom—which happens in every Hollywood horror film—we’re about to be eaten by a 15-foot crocodile and you still have time to make out? What is wrong with you?
TVGuide.com: I know. Or you make some sort of last-second soliloquy.
Vartan: Exactly! [Laughs] So it’s a very different kind of movie and I’m kind of sad that they didn’t sort of give it a chance, to distribute it a little bit more widely and with more publicity. But hey, those things are completely out of my control.
TVGuide.com: Now, I hear that it did pretty well in Australia.
Vartan: It did. Obviously, their market is much smaller than ours and whenever you have an Australian director and an almost all-Australian cast do a big movie, you’re gonna get people into the seats. Most of the people who have seen it have enjoyed it. That’s the only thing that’s sad for me…there are so many bad movies out there that get wider release, why not give this one a chance?
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‘Rogue’ Screencaps
Posted on 08.11.2008 in Gallery Updates and Rogue | 0 CommentsI’ve just updated the gallery with screencaps of Michael’s performance in the killer croc flick ‘Rogue’. Screencaps of all behind the scenes extras have also been added. Click here to view them all. Enjoy!
‘Rogue’ Review by Bloody Disgusting
Posted on 07.01.2008 in Film News & Reviews and Rogue | 0 CommentsCrocodiles! I’ve always found them to be rather bad movie monsters. Same thing with snakes, you know the big, fat Anaconda-franchise-kinda snake. I know crocodiles and snakes are prehistoric super-killers with millions of years of evolution in their favour and in real life are as scary as waking up with your mouth full of spiders, but unlike sharks for instance, I’ve always thought crocodiles lacked on-screen character. They are too thin, too clumsy looking, too lifeless, simply not intimidating to look at. No matter how many times some scientist with a secret agenda or wildlife guy has tried to build momentum by telling us just how daaaaaangerous and ferocious these giant, lumpy lizards are, I’ve never really been scared once they got on screen and started eating people.
Leave it to Greg McLean to change my perspective. Here’s a croc that’s scary! Here’s a croc that has motivation! Here’s a filmmaker who knows his shit! He winked at it in Wolf Creek, using characterisation and a slow start to make the horror and violence hit that much harder, but in Rogue McLean steps up and takes seat as a full fledged master of suspense. It’s wonderful to see a monster movie that knows exactly what it is and exactly what it wants. There’s no unnecessary filler, no distracting love story, nothing but a slow building ride that ends up more thrilling than the ones that start at 100mph.
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‘Rogue’ Review by Beyond Hollywood
Posted on 06.17.2008 in Film News & Reviews and Rogue | 0 CommentsAussie director Greg Mclean probably didn’t think there was anything more dangerous than the crocs in his new movie “Rogue”. Of course, that was before he met the suits in Hollywood. What was supposed to be Mclean’s much-anticipated follow-up to his critical and commercial hit “Wolf Creek” ended up being a tangled mess of changed release dates, distribution entanglements, and Hollywood rickety muck, which is about three times more muckity than your average muck. (Hollywood never does anything small, God bless them, even when they’re drowning a movie on purpose.) And when Hollywood gets its muck into you, the crocs are the least of your worries. Mclean found that out when, after a year of nothing happening, the Weinstein Company summarily dumped his movies into a couple of unsuspecting theaters across America before sending it on its way to DVD shelves, where it would be forced to pick off the scraps of late-night movie renters.
Mclean’s “Rogue” stars Aussie Radha Mitchell (“Pitch Black”) as Australian riverboat tour guide Kate Ryan and Michael Vartan (TV’s Alias) as an American travel writer who, along with a dozen or so others, take a ride down the Australian river on a lazy, hot day. The tour is mostly uneventful, with only a minor stop to accommodate a couple of local troublemakers (one of whom is Sam Worthington), but the ride back to land proves to be disastrous. It starts with an emergency flair in the distance, and ends with one seriously enormous crocodile chowing down on the tour group one by one. Which leads to this observation: The Australian tourism board must hate Mclean. He’s already convinced tourists to scratch the Australian outback from their travel plans, and now he’s made the country’s rivers mightily uninviting.
The croc in “Rogue” is a nasty little bugger, though “little” is not the correct description; the words, “bigger than a friggin’ Mack truck and ten times as fast” might be more appropriate. Fortunately for the gore fans out there, Mclean also has a tendency towards the nasty. Before the film has even hit the 40 minute mark, Mclean has drowned an entire boat full of tourists, unleashed his croc to chump down on one of Kate’s tourists, and taken out a local. For those keeping track, that’s three boats down, and one very hungry croc circling. The explanation we are given for the aggressive behavior is that the humans are encroaching on its territory, and the croc is none too pleased. To make matters worse, Kate’s boat is damaged, and the tour group ends up stuck in a small island in the middle of the river that is, as night falls, about to get flooded by the rising tide. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it sucks to be a tourist today.
What makes “Rogue” such a perfect little creature movie is its simplicity. Mclean seems uninterested in providing pathos or personality for his creature. No radiation leak by Big Oil or, as is more likely in a creature movie, Big Uncaring Genetics Company Conducting Illegal Experiments™ to blame for the croc’s freakishly huge size. Nope, none of that Sci Fi Channel Original Movie nonsense. This thing is natural, and it is, first and foremost, a killing machine. The croc doesn’t show its entire length until the 50-minute mark, but by then we’ve already seen what it can do, and our first actual look at its massive length is awe-inspiring. This thing is off the scales in size, and combined with its natural speed, and it’s going to take a miracle to save our tourists. Or a bazooka. Maybe more. A dozen, definitely, might do the trick. Maybe. Did I mention this thing is as big as a building and has learned the benefits of hoarding fresh meat?
Technically the stars of “Rogue” are Michael Vartan and Radha Mitchell, but let’s face it, while it’s nice to hear Radha do her natural Aussie accent in a movie for once, and Vartan no doubt has a nice career ahead of him, the real star of this bad boy is the bad boy himself – the croc. My DVD copy was not exactly pristine, but I would imagine the croc was achieved with a combination of CGI and practical effects. Whatever they used, however they did it, it worked. The way this thing moved, the way it looked at you, even the way it slept, is the stuff of nightmares. And yes, the lack of reasoning behind the croc’s rampage only makes it more horrifying. Why is it killing so many people? Simply put, because it’s big, because it’s got teeth the size of your ankles, and because it can, that’s why. There’s nothing more terrifying than a killer that does what it does simply because it knows it can, and you can’t stop it.
If you’re a fan of creature movies, definitely pick up “Rogue” when you run across it at your local DVD shop. It’s got everything a movie about a big, giant killer animal is supposed to have – gory, violent deaths, outstanding pacing, and plenty of “scream at the screen for them to run or die” set pieces. There is only one real stupid move by the survivors that I can recall, and that is easily chalked up to human nature. Once the killing starts, the film rarely lets up; it’s only towards the end, as the film enters its final 20 minutes or so that the loud action disappears, replaced by some truly harrowing sequences as Vartan’s hero goes mano-a-mano with the killer croc. You wouldn’t think a world-weary travel writer would have much of a chance again a living, breathing killing machine like our giant croc, but you’d be wrong.
Source: beyondhollywood.com
Michael Vartan shocked on croc flick ‘Rogue’
Posted on 11.12.2007 in Interviews and Rogue | 2 CommentsHe is best known for playing a cool, composed CIA agent, but Hollywood star Michael Vartan was anything but calm when shooting his new film in the Outback.
The actor was the only foreigner in the cast of crocodile thriller Rogue, the follow-up to director Greg McLean’s 2005 debut Wolf Creek.
Vartan, who found fame playing agent Michael Vaughn on hit television series Alias, says the month-long shoot in the Northern Territory was the most physically challenging thing he has ever experienced.
“I’ve been in hot places, but Darwin is a tropical heat that makes you want to put a bullet in your head,” he says with a smile. “Especially the first few weeks where we were shooting all the landscape shots and not really doing anything.
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Outback tests Michael Vartan
Posted on 11.11.2007 in Interviews and Rogue | 0 CommentsHe’s best known for playing a never-ruffled CIA agent, but Hollywood star Michael Vartan was anything but cool, calm and collected when it came to shooting his new film Rogue in the Outback.
Vartan, 39, is the only non-Australian in the cast of the crocodile thriller, which is the follow-up to director Greg McLean’s 2005 debut, Wolf Creek.
The heart-throb actor sprang to fame playing agent Michael Vaughn in the hit television series Alias, and says the month-long shoot in the Northern Territory was the most physically challenging experience of his life.
“It was horrific – you get off the plane in Darwin and you get slapped in the face and grabbed by the throat,” he says with a smile.
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‘Rogue’ Review by Herald Sun
Posted on 11.09.2007 in Film News & Reviews and Rogue | 0 CommentsAfter taking a blowtorch to “acceptable” levels of on-screen violence with the outback-torture fest Wolf Creek, Australian writer-director Greg Mclean dials down the shock factor by several notches here.
While Rogue is very much a formulaic creature feature, Mclean proves himself to be quite adept at making a few little subtle touches go a long way towards elevating the movie above and beyond its cheesy origins.
There is no real need to delve into any complex back-story analysis here. There is barely a plot to speak of anyway, and that’s exactly how it should be.
Mclean busies himself in a mercifully brief first act introducing a cast of types, rather than characters.
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Snapped Up By Experts
Posted on 11.08.2007 in Film News & Reviews and Rogue | 0 CommentsWith his debut film, Wolf Creek, Greg Mclean made it clear he was a feisty filmmaker, so when he took out the script for the crocodile thriller, Rogue, from his bottom drawer, the Weinsteins snapped it up – totally on Mclean’s terms, which included final cut, he tells Andrew L. Urban.
Greg Mclean is a nice guy; he didn’t have to fly over to Los Angeles with a rough cut of his $25 million adventure thriller, Rogue, to show it to Bob and Harvey Weinstein, but he did it anyway. And he warned them that the giant, rogue crocodile that is at the centre of the film, was still a grey blob, waiting for the CGI boys to create it. No problem, said the two movie moguls, we can imagine … we’re experienced … we know the process. But as soon as the lights went up after the screening, the Weinsteins panicked. “They just freaked out; ‘where’s the croc? The whole film depends on the croc…’ The grey animation blob that represented the fearsome croc did not impress them, did not instil that primal fear on which the film’s tension hangs.
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Snap decisions in ‘Rogue’
Posted on 11.08.2007 in Film News & Reviews, Interviews and Rogue | 0 CommentsBeing thrown from a boat into crocodile-infested waters in the Northern Territory was the nightmarish scenario Australian actor Sam Worthington endured while making Greg McLean’s horror film Rogue.
“We thought that scene was going to be fine because there were only saltwater crocs in the river and they don’t really attack humans,” McLean, 36, explains.
“But a rumour had started just before Sam had to be thrown in the water that a man-eating crocodile was in there and he wouldn’t do it. The only way to make it happen was for me to swim across the river first. The weird part is that two months later they pulled a 3m croc out of there.
It’s scary, but the reality is, no one got hurt. We took the punt and it came off.”
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