The challenge you face no matter what you’d like to look like or how much you’d like to weigh is that your body is genetically predetermined to be a certain height and weight that has nothing to do with the ideal set by the media. Your digestive system is remarkably efficient at using whatever you eat to keep you at those levels, extracting every last kilojoule it needs to do so and discarding the rest if you eat too much. You don’t often hear this, but it can be as difficult to put weight on as it can be to lose it.

Or it would be except for two factors – two common food ingredients we’ve introduced into human food sources over the last century and a half (the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms) – sugar and polyunsaturated fats. Quite simply, Gillespie says sugar is making you fat and polyunsaturated fat is increasing your risk of cancer.

If you’re skeptical, you won’t be alone. Gillespie’s a lawyer rather than a doctor or scientist and he’s well aware his advice runs counter to the various entrenched food authorities. Even if we can believe diet companies’ interests are their revenue rather than our health, what about the government health bodies with their 2 and 5 campaigns, etc?

As he urges us in Big Fat Lies and when The West spoke to him over the phone at his Sydney home, don’t take his word for it – the information’s all there if you want it. “I don’t ask anyone to believe anything I said,” Gillespie explains. “It’s not about belief, it’s about evidence. So I don’t have much time for being who believe or don’t believe what I say based on who I am. What I do have time for is someone who thinks I’ve presented the evidence, will read it themselves and make up their own mind.”

To Davies, the disinformation that’s found its way into society about health doesn’t require a grand conspiracy of X-Files proportions. Everyone’s reading from the same incorrect material (including your doctor, who has no hope of keeping up with the torrent of research him or herself), most of it composed with a vested interest. Among his claims is that the various seed oils like canola and vegetable oils became mass-produced because of the economic infrastructure of the early industrial revolution, even though they’re bad for us where palm and police oils are much healthier.

Among those laboring under illusions are the various industries to which we turn when we’re desperate to lose weight. “I don’t think diet companies set out for us not to succeed,” Gillespie says when The West suggests that if we lost weight like we wanted they’d lose a customer. “I think they genuinely believe what’s going on is that their customers stop following their rules at some point. So you go to company A, their diet doesn’t work so you go to company B and so on.”

Big Fat Lies isn’t Gillespie’s first book on the subject, and even though there’s no X-Files conspiracy, doesn’t he feel a little like Fox Mulder at times? “We’ve become increasingly dependent on quasi research provided often by people who have significant conflicts of interest,” Gillespie says of his research. “Most of the information provided has an ulterior motive and it’s rarely, rarely declared. I certainly get criticism from the health establishment. There are a lot of people who don’t want to look at my research but say ‘he’s a lawyer, he shouldn’t be believed’.”

The attacks, Gillespie says, come from bodies that have noble motives but simply don’t realise how dangerous the products they promote are because they contain one of our unhealthiest addictions – sugar. “As a general rule I’m attacked by the GI Foundation because GI accreditation and symbols are generally on products which contain a large amount of sugar. I’m also being fairly regularly attacked by the Heart Foundation because I pointed out it’s is a reliable guide to high sugar products in supermarkets. 44 of the 46 breakfast cereals sold by Nestle in Australia are Heart Foundation approved and yet most of them are more than a quarter sugar.”

Big Fat Lies has plenty of hard science if you want, but Gillespie’s point in relaying it is that he believes the weight gain and cancer that sugar and polyunsaturated fats cause is no secret if you’ve done your homework. So if you’re one of the many on an endless treadmill watching one exercise scheme and diet after another fail you, he provides a clear, compelling view that deserves your attention.

Nutrition according to Big Fat Lies

It sounds disingenuous – sugars and fats are essential to the smooth running of the human body. The trick according to Gillespie is to avoid the wrong kind of fat (polyunsaturated) and the sugar we add to food, which contains harmful fructose.
 
Trying to spot them in supermarkets can be nightmarish. Despite your best efforts, packaging standards and laws in Australia don’t make it compulsory to disclose them in ingredients. Gillespie thinks the below is a good start.

* Avoid grain and seed oils, use olive or coconut oil.

* It’s bad news, but all confectionary such as biscuits and ice cream are out, and muesli bars are no better for you than Tim Tams (however, if you plan never to put another piece of chocolate in your mouth for the rest of your life, The West recommends occasional employment of the What’s The Hell’s Life For? rule).

* Avoid flavoured drinks including soft drink, bottled fruit juice (which is loaded with sugar, natural or otherwise) and flavoured milk. Drink full cream milk or water and instead of orange juice, just eat an orange. Fruit contains fructose but it also contains fibre to mitigate the negative effects.

* Beer, wine and most spirits are fine, but not liqueurs, dessert wines or ciders.

* Breakfast cereals are minefields of sugar. Avoid them altogether and enjoy protein such as meat or eggs for breakfast (Big Fat Lies has plenty to say about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ cholesterol).

* Most condiments and sauces are too full of sugar.

* Avoid adding sugar to food where you can, including in tea or coffee.

The good news is that anything that doesn’t taste sweet is basically okay, including foods that have suffered bad reputations over the last few decades such as red meat, bread and pasta.

RRP $29.95

“It would have set freedom of speech and imagination back by decades,” says Smashwords CEO Mark Coker. “It would have jeopardised the ability to publish and sell mainstream fiction.” On February 18, the company, which enables authors to self publish their own ebooks and provides the platform for readers to discover and buy them, received a chilling missive from Paypal.

The eBay owned online payments giant informed Coker that it would stop processing payments for fiction that contained themes or mentions of rape, incest or bestiality.

In response to Coker’s revelation, the publishing world and blogosphere erupted. Whatever your tastes in erotic literature or art in general, Paypal telling a bookseller what it would not facilitate was received with incredulity. To many, it was the equivalent of walking into a store to buy a product that has inherent cultural sensitivity (like pornography or weapons) and having your bank or credit card provider tell you you’re not allowed because they don’t want any money they manage spent on it.

Buoyed by the enraged community of writers and readers behind him, Coker went further and discovered Paypal was acting on behalf of the credit card companies (such as Visa and Mastercard). In a statement to the company Paypal said ‘…we work with a number of acquiring banks and credit card associations as part of our business. Many of the items contained in our AUP [Acceptable Use Policy] are restricted by our banking partners, particularly rape, bestiality and incest related content.’

The statement went on to talk about how much Paypal relied on its banking partners and didn’t have the means to judge every product on individual merit, left with no choice but to ‘globally ban’ the offending ebooks.

“It would have caused serious damage,” is how Coker explains the affect on ecommerce. “The books targeted by this represented a small percentage of overall ebook sales – probably 2-3 percent. But it would have raised all kinds of questions about whether or not mainstream fiction could be sold via online ebook stores. Remember, New York Times bestseller 50 Shades of Gray wouldn’t be allowed under the guidelines.”

The mystery isn’t really why credit card companies thought they could stamp out literary themes or motifs they didn’t want to be associated with – it’s a common strategy for large, respectable corporations to strictly avoid any kind of controversy. Coker’s still not sure what they wanted to achieve by the move. As he points out, self-published erotica makes up a tiny portion of the ebook market, ebooks are mere sliver in online consumer spending in general and online spending is itself is a drop in the ocean of global consumer trade. For every self-published ebook Paypal might have stamped out online, there are a million credit card or cash transactions going on for products banks might not want their products associated with. He describes it as ‘much intractable irony and hypocrisy.’

To make matters worse, when Coker challenged Visa on the issue, the company blamed Paypal. In a letter to the website bannedwriters.com, head of Investor Relations Doug Michelman wrote; ‘…first and foremost, we want to clarify that Visa had no involvement with PayPal’s conclusion on this issue. Nor have we seen the material in question. This fact is made clear by PayPal’s recent blog post where it states that its own policies drove the decision…’

To many, the whole episode merely highlights how out of step traditional commerce providers are with new paradigms where the producer is the consumer (and vice-versa) and where the playing field really is level.

“They tried to apply rules that were created years ago to a content category – self published erotica – that didn’t even exist three years ago,” Coker explains. “After the rage against Paypal, they quickly realised their rules were out of sync with mainstream legal requirements. Financial institutions should not be in the business of moralising what authors are allowed to write and what readers are allowed to imagine.”

The happy ending to the story is that people power prevailed. Coker met with Paypal at the company’s California offices hoping to bring them around, and on March 13 Smashwords issued a press release praising Paypal’s decision to revise its content policies in his favour. In the statement Coker thanked authors, published and customers who mobilised, saying ‘you made telephone calls, wrote emails and letters, started and signed petitions, blogged, tweeted, Facebooked and drove the conversation. You made the difference.’

But while there’s a free speech-friendly resolution to the Smashwords/credit card/Paypal episode, might it stand as a warning to us all, as both merchants and consumers. If you’re over 30 you probably remember handing over a credit card the sales staff would swipe with a mechanical device, keeping a slip to send back to the credit card company. By the time your purchase appeared on any report at a corporate multinational headquarters you were long gone with your purchase.

Today our wired world makes commerce much easier, but that also makes it easier to track, monitor and control. You might not want anyone see you buy (or sell) a saucy book or girlie magazine, but it’ll only get harder to buy anything away from prying eyes as time goes by…

One by one the stars of Marvel’s The Avengers arrived and made their way down, waving to screaming fans and enduring the barrage of media scrutiny about their clothes, the roles, the future of the franchise and more.

The lucky official attendees soon made their way into the huge main auditorium and were treated to the biggest movie of 2012 so far and certainly the best superhero movies in a long time.

The next day the stars gathered again in an ornate conference hall at Beverly Hills’ Four Seasons, and Dark Horizons was there while Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Samuel L Jackson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, Clark Gregg, Cobie Smulders and writer/director Joss Whedon faced around 200 reporters for a superhero-sized grilling.

What was your most memorable moment during filming?

Robert Downey Jr (Tony Stark): There’s a moment where we’re all assembled on the bridge [of the SHIELD flying aircraft carrier] and I think it was the time we all saw each other and realized we were probably likely to continue shooting the movie.

Chris Hemsworth (Thor): It was great. I believe that was our first day on set too with the whole ensemble which was a pretty exciting and nerve wracking, but it was just amazing.

Chris Evans (Captain America): Mine was where Thor and Iron Man are fighting. I’d just seen Thor the day before and I’d yet to see Hemsworth or Downey in their full suits. So I showed up that night and it was the first time I saw them both geared up. And I felt like a little kid. I was just honored to be a part of it.

Mark Ruffalo (Dr Bruce Banner): Mine was being naked in front of Harry Dean Stanton.

Samuel L Jackson (Nick Fury): I was naked in front of Harry Dean Stanton at the restaurant the night before he shot the scene with you.

Mark Ruffalo: You lucky bastard.

Chris Hemsworth: And you were naked in the audition, weren’t you, Kevin?

Kevin Fiege (Marvel Studios President): That’s right.

Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson): It was the day I got the script. As someone who writes sometimes and loves movies I felt like it was an unachievable task. I didn’t think it was feasible to have this many characters move forward and have the story of them coming together really work.

And if it did work with that many amazing superheroes and movie stars I felt it unlikely Agent Coulson would do anything but bring some super coffee to somebody. So when I read it and saw that it was my fan boy wet dream of an Avengers script and Coulson was a big part of it that was the great day for me. I just drove around the streets giggling with the script in the other seat.

Joss Whedon: People kept asking me ‘are you excited that you’re directing this movie?’ And I kept saying ‘I will be’. I don’t feel things necessarily in the moment. It will happen. We were in the lab where all the Avengers get together for the first time and, I was giving Chris Evans a piece of direction and I walked into the hall and stopped and said to the producers ‘it happened. I’ll tell you later.’

And that was the moment, it just sort of flooded over me and I was like ‘oh, that’s nice’.

How did you form a unique version of Bruce? Did you research it?

Mark Ruffalo: I met with Joss Whedon, and he said he really liked the Incredible Hulk TV show and what Bill Bixby did with him. So I rented the TV show with my ten-year-old son. And after the third episode he turned to me and said ‘Papa, he’s so misunderstood’. So I basically based the character entirely on my ten-year-old boy, who has all the force of nature screaming out of his body while having everyone around him telling him to fucking control himself.

Robert, your character was the leader in the film, was it the same on set?

Going back to 2007 when I was cast in Iron Man and Kevin Fiege said ‘you know, this is all going to lead to having all these franchises come together. We’re going to do something unprecedented in entertainment and make this Avengers movie. And I just remember I would get nervous about it and excited about it and doubtful of it.

And then by the time I already had a history with Sam I really wanted to capitalise on that. And by that time Chris and Chris had launched their individual franchises with success and charisma. And by the time we had Mark, I was like ‘this is really going to happen’. So just being a worker amongst workers is where I started out. And it was nice to not really have to carry a movie. Everyone’s really, really, equal in this venture.

That will be my last sincere answer of the afternoon.

If you could switch a character, who would it be and why?

Chris Evans: I want to say Iron Man because I just loved those movies, but who can do it better? The shoes would be too big to fill.

Samuel L Jackson: I want to be Scarlett. I just want to be that cute for 15 minutes.

How long have been working on The Avengers? How did you dovetail all the movies into this?

Kevin Fiege: One answer is my whole life just because I’ve been a nerd by whole life and wanted to see this movie made. The real answer though is towards the end of production of Iron Man One when Sam was gracious enough to spend three hours on a Saturday to come and break into Tony Stark’s house wearing an eye patch and tell him and the world that he was part of this bigger universe, he just didn’t know it yet.

And that movie succeeded is when we said ‘wait a minute, we actually have the opportunity to do it’. And the only challenge was to try to make all the movies live on their own even if we weren’t leading towards an Avengers movie because if they’re all just interconnected puzzle pieces, that’s not as fun. They need to be movies beginning to end. So I would say that was the biggest challenge.

Mark, what was it like coming in when everyone else had had their own movie?

It was terrifying and I knew what my responsibility was. I felt it just by making the mistake of going online and reading some of the fan boy responses to the announcement that I was playing the next version of Bruce Banner. That was a mistake, I’ll never do that again. I’ve never had a role be more scrutinised and criticised even before I shot a single frame.

And coming onto the set with all of these guys was pretty daunting. Many of my heroes in life are in this cast. So it was tough. And I wish I had a cool costume to wear the entire time instead of a leotard that painted like a Chinese checkerboard.

Chris, talk about not being the funny guy when you usually are in your films.

Chris Evans: Yeah, it’s tough not getting any jokes. I wanted some jokes. But that’s his role. It’s necessary, and that’s why I like it because I am used to leaning on cracking jokes and being a wise ass. So it’s nice to play it straight a little bit.

What’s your favourite aspect of your character?

Chris Evans: Captain America’s heart, his selflessness. He wasn’t born a superhero, it didn’t happen to him by accident. He was chosen, and it was for those reason, values and morals. He puts other people and other causes ahead of himself and it’s something to aspire to.

Robert Downey Jr: Well Tony Stark certainly didn’t set out to do anything noble but he’s kind of in transition. There’s also something a little more Han Solo than Luke. Look at the fact that he can pull off wearing a Black Sabbath tee shirt for the better part of the film.

Chris Hemsworth: I like the visceral gut instinct Thor has and I always thought he has a childlike quality in the sense that if he believes something or wants to do something he does it. With kids own their environment there’s no opinions that they really care about.

Why was Joss Whedon the perfect guy to write and direct?

Kevin Fiege: One of the only big fears I had was that the whole thing would collapse under its own weight, that we’d spend so much time with costumes and super powers and special effects these characters and these actors wouldn’t get the chance to interact. My biggest interest in the Avengers is the interaction between these people.

And looking at Joss’s body of work and the scripts he’s written and his TV shows, the characters never get lost. In fact those are the moments that shine. We’re confident in our ability to handle a production of this size, so we wanted a helmsman to come in and steer it in unexpected ways and to guide that tone which is what Joss has done so well.

What was it like doing the comedy together?

Chris Hemsworth: Any time you do a scene with Downey he’s so good with improv and working off the cuff. He’s never going to do the same thing twice so you’ve got to be on your toes. So he brings a certain life to the scene even if you’re not the one making jokes.

Robert Downey Jr: In seeing it last night I think what everybody captured was that it was the right tone. We don’t take it too seriously. This is essentially a comic book movie but you buy into the reality of it. So I think everyone has their moments, and I think Joss did a good job of finding everyone’s frequency.

Joss, what was the biggest challenge to wrap your head around?

That bunch of characters, that bunch of actors playing them, that much money. It was kind of a no brainer. And the hardest part is and always will be structure. How do you put that together? How do you make everybody shine? How do you let the audience’s identification drift from person to person without making them feel like they’re not involved? It’s a very complex structure. It’s not necessarily particularly ornate or original, but it had to be right, it had to be earned from moment-to-moment, and that’s exhausting. That was still going on in the editing room after we shot it.

What separates a good comic book adaptation film from a bad comic book adaptation film?

Joss Whedon: Capturing the essence of the comic and being true to what’s wonderful about it, while remembering that it’s a movie and not a comic. I think with the first Spider-Man they really figured out the formula of how to tell the story that they told in the comic. It was compelling. That’s why it’s iconic, but at the same time they did certain things that only a movie can do.

In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen where they just threw out the comic or Watchmen where they did it frame for frame, neither of them worked. You have to give the spirit of the thing and then step away from that and create something cinematic and new.

Joss, you’ve done movies with big ensemble casts before. How did you go about introducing all the characters in this film?

It’s the same problem I had with Serenity and swore I’d never have again. Tracking the information is almost as difficult because it’s not as much fun as tracking the emotion of the thing. You have to know how much people need to know, because some people come in knowing everything, and you don’t want to tell them too much, and some people will come in knowing nothing.

You don’t even want to tell them too much. You want some things to be inferred. It’s fun to see a movie that has texture beyond what you understand necessarily that you know. When I watched Wall Street I didn’t know what they were talking about but I was very compelled by it. It clearly mattered a lot.

If you feel that there’s a life outside the frame you feel good about it, so we don’t necessarily have to lay everything out, but organizing that is the most exhausting part of the film. The stuff between the characters is just the candy.

Comic book and video games are closely related. What are your favorite video games?

Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye): Half Life. That got me hooked on gaming.

Clark Gregg: Call of Duty: Black Ops, Mass Effect. I still will rock some Asteroids.

Joss Whedon: I have friends, so I don’t do that.

Jeremy Renner: Said the king of comic books.

Joss Whedon: I don’t own any video games because if I start playing one that’ll be it. I’ll be gone and I won’t be able to do this.

Tom Hiddleston (Loki): The last video game I played was Super Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo, so I’m from the dark ages.

What advice would you give Warner Brothers on getting their Justice League movie going?

Joss Whedon: Call me. No, seriously, it’s enormously difficult to take very disparate characters and make them work. And DC has a harder time of it than Marvel because their characters are from a bygone era where characters were bigger than we were. Marvel really cracked the code in terms of them being just like us. I think you need to use that as your base.

Was there ever any costume envy on set?

Clark Gregg: There are certain times of the morning when I wish I did have some of the guardian armor to walk around in. And God knows, the antlers of doom that Loki has look cool, but 13, 14 hours into the day I’m quite pleased to be in my cool pressed Dolce and Gabbana suit.

Tom Hiddleston: It takes two hours to get into Loki’s outfit sometimes, and it’s even more fun when you fight in it. The sweat pools in your chest and it’s a really luxurious experience.

Jeremy, talk about preparing for this role.

I did take some archery but realised very quickly that I couldn’t really use it in the film. It ended up being superhero archery. It’s nice to know the technique behind it but then, you know I’m shooting behind my back and over my shoulder and using fake arrows.

But I gave it a go and shot a few bales of hay and missed a few, but the physical part was just stretching so I don’t get injured.

Tom, knowing how old school you are about video games, are you equally as old school when it comes to comics?

In the UK I grew up on these called Beano and the Dandy and most people’s access to Marvel and DC was later through cartoons and, and trading cards. But I was introduced to American comics really through the movies. Christopher Reeve as Superman was the first superhero I ever conceived of when I saw the movie at age six or so.

There’s an interesting balance between the action, characters and the conflicts they have, such as Iron Man rejecting the soldier mentality Captain America had. How did you develop these characters? Any ideology involved?

Joss Whedon: Well, you have to write something you believe in. Captain America was kind of my ground zero for the film, and the idea of someone who had been in World War II and seen people laying down their lives in the worst kinds of circumstances, it’s a very different concept of manhood to be part of something as opposed to isolated from something. The way it’s kind of devolved from Steve [Rogers, Captain America] to Tony [Stark, Iron Man] is fascinating.

Obviously you’re not going to stand around and speechify too much, but the idea of the soldier ready to lay down their life is very different than the idea of the superhero. And I wanted to make it a war movie from the start and put these guys through more than they’d go through in a normal superhero movie. So it was important to build that concept and have Tony reject it on every level. Then in the end when he’s willing to make the sacrifice, you get where’s he’s come on how Steve has affected him.

Making a film about Comic Con is a little bit like making movies about World War II – we’ll never run out of stories because so many people are involved and it’s such a global event with so many different but related aspects. Spurlock zeroes in on just a couple of them, moving back and forth between personal stories and showing us the various angles to the show through the characters’ point of view.

There are a couple of guys hoping to break into the comic book industry thanks to the meet and greet events with comic book editors and executives. We meet a cute couple of nerds so in love he can’t get away from her to pick up the ring he intends to use to propose to her during a Kevin Smith Q&A. A costume designer and her team put so much effort into their Mass Effect-themed stage show they put many movie industry make-up and costume designer to shame. And a veteran comic book store owner has come to try and shift some stock to save the store, including his prized half million-dollar book if he can find a rich collector.

In another first, Spurlock keeps himself out of the proceedings, letting his subjects tell the story through their own fears, hopes, dreams and disappointments. And interspersing it all are talking head comments from across the world of famous geekdom, from Kevin Smith and Eli Roth to Guillermo Del Toro, Seth Rogen and the granddaddy of them all, Stan Lee himself.

Spurlock’s mandate seems to be to present the one place in the world where – no matter what you follow – as long as it’s sci-fi or fantasy and you’re obsessed about it, you’ll be among friends. It’s a great place to start, but if you know anything about TV, movies, games or comics, you’ve probably become intimately familiar with Comic Con’s machinations and culture over the last 15 years or so. Anyone can tell you fan geekdom’s not only nothing to be embarrassed about anymore, it’s a badge of pride in the postmodern world.

If it isn’t the deluge of tweets and blog posts from the event every year, it’s the marketing boost the whole thing’s had since movie studios started attending to push their big superhero releases. It’s even regularly name checked in fiction, as it was in the Nick Frost/Simon Pegg/Seth Rogen film Paul last year.

The Valhalla of sci-fi and fantasy isn’t about sad losers who can’t get girlfriends any more, it’s for the new cool kids – and we all want to be one. The reason that works against Comic Con Episode IV is because even if you’ve never been there it feels like you know the cosplay, the incredible prices paid by collectors, the movie panels in Hall H and the crowds intimately.

Morgan can’t really bring anything new to that experience, but humanising the show through the attendees he follows is the best approach because like all the best stories, it makes it about people and gives us a prism through which to see.

Not that there aren’t several insights into the Con itself that you might have imagined but didn’t know. One of the biggest gripes of longtime fans (that movie studios have crowded comics out) is bought to hilarious life by the comic store owner who complains that he can’t get a loading dock at the convention centre anymore because Lucasfilm owns them all.

It’s a love letter, and after a decade or more of such high recognition of the event it feels less like something that will open your eyes and more like a document that wraps and boxes up everything you already know in one unashamedly fun package.

But like his Shine star Geoffrey Rush, Hicks seemed to start at the top and have the world at his feet. At the time Steven Spielberg said ‘This is a film I wish I’d made myself.’

Where else was there for the 59-year-old to go after that but Hollywood? His subsequent output wasn’t nearly as prolific as his pre-Shine documentary short career and since then he’s made arguably one of the best Stephen King adaptations in 2001′s Hearts In Atlantis and tackled a romantic comedy in 2007′s No Reservations.

As he told Drew Turney while promoting The Lucky One, he turned to the romantic drama for the intriguing premise, having one foot in Australia and one in Hollywood and the contractual obligations about Zac Efron’s butt crack.

What convinced you Zac was the man for the lead?

The studio was obviously very enthusiastic, so I met with him. To be honest, just knowing his previous films I wasn’t sure at first whether this was right for him. But what convinced me was his eagerness to play the part. He had an absolute desire to take it on and you want that hunger for a role in an actor.

Secondly, he made a pledge to me right at the outset because I told him ‘we’re going to have to turn you into an ex-marine’. He asked me what he needed to do and said he’d do it, whatever it was. I told him to remember that conversation because I was going to ask him a lot.

And to his huge credit he did the work, this huge physical task of putting on 25 pounds of muscle. It’s the most boring thing in the world – three hours a day, 6,000 calories a day – and he did it. He was fine with us cutting his hair. He set aside all personal vanity issues and submerged into this role.

But just as important as all the physical elements was his mental outlook and finding that element in himself that could put the mask over his natural charm and exuberance. He’s so open and so easy going and this character was just so different to that, so he found that element in himself, which was great. It made my task easier.

Even though it looks like a Scott Hicks film it was a little different from what you’d done before.

Sure. What drew me into it was the premise of the story. I thought it was fantastic, finding this photograph after a battle in the desert, and having it change this person’s life and the lives of all these other people as well. I found that really intriguing.

As to the genre element of it, yes it’s a romance, that’s clear. But it’s how you tell that story in a way that takes the audience on a new journey where they haven’t seen it happen. How do you maintain or stay a step ahead of the audience? That’s the challenge.

Were you inspired by any other movies for certain scenes or looks?

Not really. When it came to the love scenes, Denise (Di Novi, producer) had all these other movies lined up for me. And we were looking at all these love scenes and I realised I don’t need to look at how it’d all been done before, I wanted to try a different way to express this. I wanted their first time together to be as explosive and edgy as you can get within this rating.

Also, doing war scenes were a novelty for me, so again it was about finding a way to tell the story that keeps the audience eager to follow the characters. Everything I’ve done has been character driven drama, so why not a romance? Let’s see if we can make that work.

How much direction do you need to give during a love scene?

More. Keep going. Lower. Take the hand. No, no that’s good, yes. Oh yes, just follow that (laughs).

Look, shooting a love scene is hilarious but only when you’ve got actors as good as these who are willing to abandon themselves to it. They totally trusted each other and trusted me. You have a closed set with very few people, literally the camera operator and me and that’s it. If there’s a secret to it it’s just to make the actors comfortable enough with each other to take a risk.

But it’s funny when you tell people ‘touch each other there, do this’. I’m telling Zac Efron how to make love. I don’t think he needed much telling, to be honest.

How aware do you have to be about how much nudity you can show according to what the actors want?

It’s all laid out in the contract exactly what you can and cannot see in hilarious language created by lawyers. But of course anything happens when you’re filming. You shoot and shoot and then of course later you say ‘oops, better edit that out’.

After Shine made such a splash, have you ever been conscious of living up to your own high water mark?

No, never. It’s been a great boon because it never goes away and it’s a wonderful thing to have experienced. And it set a hallmark for the things I like to do – I like to with actors from all over the map, from the high end movie stars through to children who have never acted before. I’ve always had an ensemble feeling in my films, and all those things really do stem from Shine.

Also there’s the visualisation, the way I like to tell a story.  Each film has had its own language but there are probably clues in there about the way my mind works and how I like to look at things. The visual elements of a film are incredibly important, and with a romance – or any kind of drama – what you put in the frame can even subliminally take the audience with you. In this case it was the lushness of Louisiana and all that verdant greenery dripping with Spanish moss. It created an atmosphere within which this romance seems possible, and it’s so far removed from the war at the beginning that it’s a healing sort of environment in some way. So all of those elements certainly hark back to Shine.

Because you’re so comfortable in that environment, was the war footage a challenge and is it something you’d like to do a bit more of?

It’s fun to show you can do different things. I wanted to make that feel as graphic and immediate as possible. My son, who’s in the movie, gave me a whole lot of YouTube links of this grainy, gritty, infrared, ghastly footage of night raids. I’m looking at them on a screen the size of a phone and my pulse was racing and I was sweating and I thought ‘I can take that technical imperfection and blow it up big and use that as a way to get into the movie’. That was an exciting thing to play with.

After Shine we lost you a bit to the Hollywood system up until The Boys Are Back (2009). Would you still like to work at home as much as you can?

I’m writing a screenplay at the moment that’s set in Australia, so we’ll see. I’d love to. Doing The Boys are Back at home in South Australia was quite fantastic for me and I’d love to do it again. But it’s nice to step in and out of different worlds whether it’s documentary, film, do one at home, do one here. It’s a privilege to be able to negotiate those different worlds.

The original Motorola Xoom was another hopeful iPad killer that history left behind. To the company’s credit, it has taken the lessons learned by the Xoom’s shortcomings and done the best job possible the second time around. But the question remains: is it a better proposition than the ubiquitous Apple challengers or the iPad itself?

Firstly, everything about it feels better in your hands. The corners are angled differently from most other tablets I’ve seen and despite it being slimmer and lighter than its predecessor, it feels tougher with the rubberised backing making it non-slip and pleasant to hold.

It has received two big display upgrades to make the visuals better. The first is Corning’s Gorilla Glass, the new screen technology that’s thinner and more damage resistant than previous generation mobile screens. The second is In-Plane Switching (IPS), a system that uses the liquid crystals in the display to expand the viewing angle and contrast.

There’s not usually much to be said for the socket that connects a device to power or your PC, but the Xoom’s change to a standard micro USB port is worth mentioning. If you’re coming from the older Xoom you’ll remember it had a proprietary socket and pin array, locking you into a certain kind of charger and cable which will now be useless.

Now if you’re coming from another tablet, there’s more chance existing cables and power peripherals will fit it the Xoom 2.

The specs are more than adequate for average office tablet productivity and the 10.1″ screen competes well with the iPad. The most attractive aspect for business might actually be the preloaded collaboration apps, such as Citrix GoToMeeting and a videoconferencing app called Fuze.

You might also make good use of Motocast, which streams media directly from your PC to the Xoom. If you work with a lot of presentations, slideshows or marketing videos that you don’t want taking up space on your tablet you can still view them unshackled from your desktop system. All are easy to set up and use and make the Xoom 2 a good companion to a PC or Mac laptop if you’re on the road. It also syncs painlessly with a Microsoft corporate Exchange Server.

But for the price of $720 outright or monthly data plans varying from $29 to $89, there are two caveats. The Xoom 2 runs on Android 3.2 (Honeycomb), an older operating system now that so many devices run on 4.0 (known as Ice Cream Sandwich). Motorola promises you’ll be able to upgrade to the new operating system in the future but when contacted by IT Pro, the company, currently being acquired by Google, wouldn’t say specifically when. Note that at the moment you can already buy tablets that are comparable in specs with the Xoom 2 and already working on Ice Cream Sandwich.

The other potential stumbling block is that the Xoom 2 is 3G. If you’ve been following the news over the last month you’ll know that there are few true 4G devices in Australia thus far, 4G network signal only exists in a handful of dense population centres, and that Apple is in the middle of a very embarrassing offer to refund customers who feel they’ve been swindled by its advertising of the iPad’s 4G capabilities in Australia (it’s compatible with US 4G networks only), thanks to the ACCC.

Either way there’s not likely to be a comprehensive national 4G network locally this financial year, if in 2012 at all. But it will happen, and as such the Xoom will only be future proof for the next 12 months or so.

Security is an issue in business, and Android isn’t as secure out of the box as either Apple’s tablet operating system, nor will it be for Windows Mobile’s forthcoming update. That said, it’s not hard to secure a tablet fleet in a corporate deployment.

For that reason, the Xoom 2 is a good choice right now. If you’re current purchase needs to last longer than a year, wait for a 4G update. If you can instigate a stop gap measure to get staff used to tablet and have the budget to upgrade a fleet in 12 months, it’s a great proposition.

But to further complicate things, IT Pro recommends waiting about six months. As 4G spreads, many 3G models will come down considerably in price, and the Xoom 2 may be one of them.

Processor: 1.2GHz dual-core processor
Operating System: Android 3.2
Display: 10.1″
Cameras: 1.3 MP front and 5 MP rear-facing HD, auto focus, digital zoom, LED flash.
Memory: 1GB RAM
Storage: 32GB onboard, 32GB micro SD card slot
Dimensions: 253.9mm x 173.6mm x 8.8mm
Connectivity: 3G and Wi-fi
Website: motorola.com
Score: 3.5/5

The cynical might think it’s because Hollywood is so short of original stories some producer hears about the undersea alien/volcano/fighter pilot movie greenlit down the street and sees dollar signs. But if you read deeply enough into the subtextual structure of films (or believe the hype from the marketing), many of the movies in these apparent dual releases are quite different from each other if you look deep enough. Deep Impact was about splintered families where Armageddon was about blowing shit up, for example.

In the same way, the forthcoming Snow White and the Huntsman looks like it’s about war, where Mirror Mirror is a comic parable about the currency of celebrity culture and the inevitable decline (in every sense of the word) it suffers because of age.

Tarsem Signh Dhandwar’s story (until Immortals his output had grown grimmer with every new word he added to his name) is more about the Queen (Julia Roberts) rather than Snow White (Lily Collins, far more effusive and confident here than in the abysmal Abduction). She married Princess Snow’s loving father and – when he disappeared in the forbidding woods that surround the kingdom – started indulging her selfishness, living the high life while the peasantry starve.

But a new threat is coming from within as Snow blossoms into a lovely, happy and caring young woman and threatens to be – as the queen’s all-seeing mirror promises – the fairest one of all.

The queen can’t keep Snow locked up forever, and when she decides to sneak away to see the countryside, she discovers how much poverty and hardship the queen has wreaked, levying ever-rising taxes to pay for lavish parties. She also meets the dashing Prince Alcott (Armie Hammer) in the woods. On his way to visit the queen to discuss a trade and military alliance, he and his valet have been set upon by seven dwarves who make their living as bandits and have strung the pair up in a tree. After Snow White frees them, both her and Alcott find themselves unable to forget each other.

The problem is the queen also has her eye on Alcott and intends to marry him to assure the financial future of the kingdom before the money runs out. Suddenly Snow White is a romantic rival on top of everything else, and the queen feels there’s no alternative but to have her killed.

But after taking pity on her, the queen’s bumbling right hand man Brighton (Nathan Lane) takes her into the woods and lets her go instead. She meets and falls in with the dwarves, recruiting them into her determination to depose the queen and bring prosperity and happiness back to the kingdom.

If you’ve seen the trailer you know Mirror Mirror is broad comedy, new territory for Dhandwar (as opposed to the many unintentional laughs in The Immortals). As Roberts told a gathering of reporters on the LA press tour ‘their woodsman is the guy who played Thor, ours in Nathan Lane’.

It’s full of Roberts issuing cynical missives about aging and being overthrown by the next young ingénue that could come from a million conversations about the fate in store for Hollywood leading women. Of the two Snow White films this year this will probably be the more suitable for children.

Collins is cute but doesn’t have much to do except follow the pretty young heroine playbook, and Hammer makes the most of pillorying his square-jawed good looks and often looks appropriately ridiculous in the process. But the show belongs to Roberts, having such a good time not only playing the villain but delivering almost all the best lines she’s a treat to watch.

It does a pretty good job of shaking up the characterisations from the traditional Snow White story, and the comedy does the rest. If you only see one Snow White film this year it’s going to be a harder choice than it seems at first glance.

But in person Collins is luminous. Her creamy white skin (really) and dark eyes give a vixenish edge to the effervescent energy of a kid barely into her 20s who can’t hide her excitement at making it in the movies.

After losing out on the lead role of this year’s other Snow White film to Kristen (Twilight) Stewart, the daughter of 80s rock legend Phil Collins is humble and gracious, calling Mirror Mirror the film she was ‘destined’ to play. At the recent LA press day we asked her about her other career as a journalist and her future in the movie business.

Tarsem did a lot in camera on the set. How did that affect your experience of the shoot?

It was great because everything was physically there for us. The beast was a team of stunt men the green spandex suits, holding tennis balls and growling at me. It was interesting getting used to it – we all knew the men in the suits really well because they’d trained us. They’d be cracking jokes between takes and then all of a sudden they’re the scariest thing we’ve ever seen, so that was a little bizarre. But that was pretty much the only thing that we had to do that wasn’t there for us.

Did you have a lot of exposure to fairy tales as a girl?

My parents read fairy tales to me every night before bedtime. I grew up in the British countryside so I just ran around the garden pretending there was magic and fairies and I was part of the fairy tale. And Snow White was definitely one of my favourites.

You sing the end track in the film. Does that reveal a deeper ambition?

I did musical theatre and I love writing songs and singing. But doing a Bollywood number wasn’t first time I thought I’d do it properly. My passion is acting so if a role includes or involves singing that’ll be amazing and I’d love to explore it. But an album certainly isn’t my desire right now.

And you still work as a journalist?

I’m a journalist every day. I carry a pad and pen wherever I go and when I look for character traits for a new role I keep the core essence of a journalist. I’m genuinely interested and curious, I ask questions and I love meeting new people. I write a journal everyday as well.

Any desire to write or direct?

I would love to write. I started writing a screenplay recently because I love writing for newspapers and magazines and I always considered that so different to a screenplay but the true essence of a story can be told in so many different forms. So I’d definitely love to write something one day. And I love every angle and part of the business, whether it’s in front of or behind the camera. I’m always asking the crew questions because it’s fascinating to me and I would love to direct.

Any genres you really want to tackle?

I loved the comedic undertone in this film. This is all so new to me but I’d love a sweeping British drama period piece, a dark, disturbing and raw role and a comedy. I mean, it’s all over the place for me. I don’t want to be pigeon holed. I’d like to be able to try all sorts of things and find new bits about myself in the characters.

What makes a Prince Charming?

Someone that makes you laugh and makes you feel like being you is enough and that you’re special and who, when you think of that person you just smile.

Had you been looking for a bad guy role to play or was it just the script that grabbed you?

No it was just Tarsem. I’m so crazy about that guy, there’s no two ways about it. He’s so remarkable and his point of view is so original and massive. I really just wanted to have lunch with him. I didn’t really care what we were going to talk about, you know, and then he spins his web and there’s no getting out of it.

Did you ever feel you were fading into the background on all these expansive sets full of effects?

I didn’t feel lost because it’s not so crazy and special effect-y. I mean, it was all kind of there for me, I never felt that I was looking at tennis balls or didn’t understand where I was. Even when we did the stuff in the cottage where I’m with myself as it were, we had worked it out so well. My sister, who’s also an actor, had come to read the other side for me so I at least had this comfort of voice that made sense as we went back and forth. So that was really as confusing as it got. But otherwise it all seemed like it was right there before us.

Some fairy tales, including Snow White, are quite brutal. How do you decide what’s appropriate for your kids?

Parental editing, that’s what I call it. You start and then you get through part of it and make some stuff up and make some stuff nicer and then you say, ‘the end, that was a short one.’ Just look at the fairy tale of Rapunzel, the price falls out of the tower and has his eyes gouged out. He wanders through the desert and the streets bleeding and looking for her but of course he’s blind. I read that story to my kids, but the strongly edited version.

Is it hard to stay excited about new projects after a career spanning 20 years?

It’s not. I feel like if I have the privilege to be part of something and I’m going to take time away from my life, which I’m enjoying, it’s got to be something that I’m going to be pretty excited about. And I like my job. I’m happy at work so I try to appreciate all the time I’m there and make the most of it.

Do you prefer to play the pretty woman or the bad girl?

Well, they’re not mutually exclusive.

Is one tougher than the other?

Everything has its challenges, from being funny and being nice to being mean. You try to do it the best you can on the day because it’s going to last forever.

Did you have any second thoughts when you heard there was going to be another Snow White movie?

There’s always another something. I mean there’s another Lily Collins and Julia Roberts somewhere. When it comes to movies there’s always another one, movies come two by two. It seems to be incredibly competitive and unusual yet it happens on such a regular basis. All you can do s take care of your own home and that really becomes all that matters.

Are things easier or harder now than when you were (co-star Lily Collins) age of 22?

It’s changed totally. It seemed so much easier then, it made more sense. There was more of a gradual progression in the way the business worked was when I started out. All the media outlets and so much more attention and scrutiny and this culture of meanness is new.

Any desire to direct or write after all your experience?

Zero. I’ll leave it to Lily. The young have energy and talent. I don’t know if I could handle so many people coming at you and looking at you for answers to a whole lot of questions. I just like my one little section.

What do you look for in a Prince Charming?

Oh, I’ve got mine. I’m good.

And what makes him charming?

That’s for me to know, and you not to know.

It was quite a start to Hammer’s A-list career, so after another solid dramatic support role as Clyde Tolson in Clint Eastwood’s J Edgar opposite Leonardo Dicaprio, why not make his next move a comedy?

As the primped monarch just asking for an embarrassing comeuppance in Mirror Mirror, Hammer got to tap into his humourous side, and the actor talked comedy, drama and The Lone Ranger over the phone from the floor of a hotel room in Los Angeles recently.

Were you particularly looking for a comedy after J Edgar?

Any of the offers that have come along have just been the right place at the right time. They always say a Hollywood career is where preparation meets opportunity and it was a little bit of that. I loved the idea of working with Julia, that was really exciting.

You had great comic chemistry on screen, was it a bit nerve wracking working with her?

I was a little nervous but then when we started I realised what a pearl she was. She’s really good so it encouraged me to say ‘okay, let’s make this whole thing really good’. As soon as the camera rolled Julia Roberts disappeared and we just started getting a team together. It was fun.

Does comedy come naturally to you?

I actually studied comic acting for awhile so I knew about the moments, the build up and the payoff and the contrast of movement to stillness. It’s actually a bit more nerve wracking than doing drama. You can be angry or sad a multitude of ways in drama but for something to be funny it’s got to be right or it’ll just fall flat.

Was it the comedy or the fantasy elements of Mirror Mirror that attracted you?

The thing that first grabbed me was that Tarsem was directing it. Then everything else was an added bonus, getting to work with Julia Robert and Lily Collins.

Because Tarsem is such a visual director did you ever feel a bit lost in the elaborate backgrounds and effects?

No because he has this definite vision for his actors. You just felt like everything that was happening was happening how it was supposed to and it was all part of the experience. Those sets were humoungous and it was all built to such a scale it was almost like you were there in person.

Does that make it easier as an actor because you’re surrounded by reality instead of green screens?

It definitely takes less work when you can focus on the place itself, that’s for sure.

Were you concerned when you heard there was another Snow White film in the works?

I didn’t think much about it because everyone kept saying we were coming out first. But the more I found out about it the more I realised they were completely different movies. They could almost come out on the same weekend and it’d be fine. Ours is a family movie, it’s a movie you can take your kids to. Theirs is a completely different audience, more like the Twilight crowd.

Do you think the trend for fairytale movies might end up done to death like so many movie fads?

Maybe. They don’t make many asteroid movies nowadays but they certainly had a good run. So at least we got in when we did – the whole fairy tale thing might get tiring in awhile.

Can you talk about the experience with The Lone Ranger being on, then off, then on again?

Fortunately I’d got the job a few days before it all fell through, so it wasn’t like I’d invested that much time focusing and concentrating on it. But I always thought it was a heavy-handed negotiation technique. I never really thought they were trying to shut the movie down, I just thought they were playing some serious hard ball.

But they got the budget down and now we’re looking good. We’re filming right now.

After a very short time at the top you’ve already branched out across genres. Anything you’d still really like to do?

I don’t know. I haven’t really planned out anything I’ve have done I didn’t sit down with a note book and ask myself what directors I really wanted to work with. You just go with it and let everything happen as it does. If another great opportunity comes up with another great director I’ll put every bit effort and energy I can towards it and hope that it works out.