Sunday, September 13, 2009

A Christmas Carol - Colin's interview is at the very end

66th Venice Film Festival - Colin Firth - A Single Man

With A Christmas Carol, A Single Man and Dorian Gray released almost back-to-back, it's really a great time for Colin Firth fans like me. With our country's censor board though, I do wonder if I could get to watch them at all, but that's what internet is for, right?



In which Colin Firth just.. switched to Italian with ease! ..in the middle of the interview, causing the mad fan, i.e. moi, to rewind the clip several times in order to catch it all.



...oh, and he won Best Actor for this role *cue berserk screaming* and some say he's probably gonna be Oscar-nominated as well.. gyabo. I just hope that this means I can get to watch the movie in the not-so-distant future, instead of waiting for another 10 years for the download..

Colin Firth on GMTV - Dorian Gray interview

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Dorian Gray - Exclusive Colin Firth and director interview

Dorian Gray - Exclusive Colin Firth and director interview - kewego
Colin Firth and director Oliver Parker talk to us about this adaptation of the Oscar Wilde classic.


Another short one ..I think it's from the same interview, or maybe it IS the same interview.. I forgot: LINK

This one has Colin talking at the very end about Ben Barnes in very glowing terms :P

Colin Firth - quite a long audio interview for Dorian Gray

I dunno how to download the file, so you have to go here for it.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Movie wishlist (online)

1. Sex And The City

2. Men In Black 2

Another interesting old interview I found

It just goes to show how vastly interesting Colin Firth was as an actor way before Mr. Darcy came into the scene. I wish he told us what his motivations are for choosing the films he wants to work on. I mean... 'Conspiracy' or 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' is a far cry from 'Hope Springs' or 'What a Girl Wants'. Or maybe he did them because they're so different from one another. Looking at the list of stuff in my uploaded movie post, I realised I've watched quite a lot of his works. And the ones I can't get online, I bought (The Last Legion, Where the Truth Lies). My desperate hunt for Lee Williams on the net made me appreciate the popularity that Colin Firth has garnered over the years. It's hard to imagine that he's about Lee's age now when he shot to fame as Mr. Darcy. I'm very grateful to Mr. Darcy coz he gave me Colin Firth. I'd be missing out on something wonderful had he not come along. He did tell us why he chose to work in Nostromo:

"It was curiosity. I felt there was an awful lot more to Gould than met the eye. I found myself in the strange position of doubting what Conrad said about him - that the character had no sense of irony - and I wondered whether that was a foreigner's perception of an Englishman. It would be quite possible for a man like Gould to have a very strong sense of irony and for it to be invisible to somebody from Poland."

On a less celebral level, he was attracted by the horse-riding, the explosions and the steamskip - "a boys own instinct actually to go out on the big adventure, a childhood sense of why I wanted to be an actor." [Independent Sunday, 19 January 1997]

Colin: "I know that anyone who was at school with me might read this and think what a cunt! But it was a case of Firth as Clint Eastwood; one of my dreams actually came true because I got to ride a horse through a South American town, ride through the old Spanish quarter caked in dirt, filthy, matted, holding a gun, with Ennio Morricone blasting out in the background and the town burning." [Time Out March 19-26 1997]


Link to the old interview

Apartment Zero's COLIN FIRTH is fast making a name for himself playing characters on the brink of madness. Giuliana Mercorio catches up with him at the airport and decides he definitely needs a holiday.



I first met Colin Firth in Mainline Pictures' premises in London's Museum Street, after a screening of his latest film, Apartment Zero, a chilling psycho-thriller set in Argentina. I had found it a highly disturbing experience and felt considerably shaken, so it was with some trepidation that I entered the room, my tape-recorder at the ready.

But Firth couldn't have been more different from the character he plays in the film, that of Adrian LeDuc - a tortured loner, teetering on the verge of madness. It's yet another difficult character to add to his list, for this smiling, eminently-sane, attractive 28-year-old seems to have a great talent for portraying highly-intense, often sexually-repressed, always psychologically-complex individuals.

Firth himself was obviously still shaken by the Argentinian experience, even though he has made two more films since Apartment Zero. In fact, he was - as he himself admitted - obsessed by Argentina.

He talked at length about the country, about tangos and the unresolved, unrequited feelings of the dance, and how he sees the tango as a metaphor for Argentina's political situation. But at the end of an extremely pleasant hour, I realized to my horror that I hadn't pressed down the recording button of my treacherous tape-recorder.

Second try. Heathrow, two days later and we're having breakfast in a noisy restaurant, before Colin takes a plane to LA for a holiday. He's exhausted but relaxed. I ask him why he always seems to play angst-ridden people. "People ask me if I have some deep-rooted psychological problem that attracts me to screwed-up characters! But it's quite simply that they're easy to play. You see, playing deeply-disturbed neurotics is such a laugh!"

His role in Apartment Zero has won him and the film a batch of international awards already, including Best Actor at both the Washington DC and Seattle film festivals. And he is electrifying. Shot in a claustrophobic apartment block in an eerie, murkily-lit Buenos Aires - rendered even more ominous by a brooding deep-toned music score - the film centres around the close friendship which develops between two very unlikely people. They're Adrian LeDuc, a reclusive, cinema club owner, and Jack Carnes, his charming lodger (Hart 'Die Hard' Bochner). In the meantime a series of brutal murders by an unknown killer spreads terror in the city.

However much Colin Firth may *say* that playing difficult characters is "a laugh", each time he gets deeply involved. And he admits it: "I've lost myself in a character pretty much most times. You get rather possessed by a character while you're playing it. It just takes over sometimes in your daily life. Strangely enough, sometimes it has a contrary effect and I think that Hart Bochner (who plays a sexy, superficially-relaxed American hunk) and I took opposite characters. I was much more relaxed and easy-going, and very cheerful during the shooting of Apartment Zero. Hart was much more nervy, introspective and uptight."

But it was Argentina which disturbed and fascinated both actors. "Making the film was one of the most interesting experiences. It's left me obsessed with Argentina. When Hart and I meet, we talk about it constantly. We were both very nervous and frightened a lot of the time."

What terrified them is that they found themselves enmeshed in a subtle tissue of lies and denials about its recent sinister past. "You see, there wa s something in the air and it's rather confusing, because Argentina at present is not a place where people are disappearing. There aren't any death squads in action now, but there *were* five years ago. A huge proportion of the population ignored it, and another section denied it. Some were desperately trying to draw attention to the murders and torture of innocent citizens, but nobody wanted to listen. It must have been like a surrealist nightmare. I met a lot of nice people, but even some of them didn't believe these things had happened."

Firth prays for a clear head in "Apartment Zero"
Firth feels very intensely about a lot of things, and when he gets passionate - which is often - he rattles on at a furious pace, barely stopping for breath.

"You can't live in Argentina and pretend you're living in Surrey! I was treated by some people as if I'd been a dangerous influence, but human rights are human rights, so I was outspoken and I really did upset a lot of people. Fuck it, I wasn't going to keep my mouth shut! Martin Donovan (the film's director) knew what was going on. This is actually what the film is about, the fact that the monster hasn't gone away. The military are not there, but the spirit is still there - and it's a monster."

Firth brought this same intensity to Tumbledown, the BBC drama about real-life Falklands hero, Robert Lawrence, shown last year on BBC1. Firth's portrayal of Lt Lawrence was intelligent, brutally-honest, and utterly devoid of sentimentality. The film caused furious controversy, and filled The Times letters page with angry correspondence. It also launched Firth's successful career.

It was about Robert Lawrence, a typical young officer in the Scots Guards who liked a drink with the lads and a tumble with the girls. He also loved being a soldier. But all that changed when 40% of his brain was blown off by an Argentinean bullet. He came back a physical [and] mental wreck. Nor did the treatment he received from army and doctors help him to overcome his bitterness.

Firth still feels strongly about that role: "It's rather difficult to be objective about it as a drama. I got to know Robert Lawrence very closely and it was a very strange relationship because he's not someone I think I would have become friends with under normal circumstances. Seeing it, all I could think of, was 'is that all, is that all that's made it onto the screen?' After what I learnt, what I went through, what we all went through - it's just a film, that's all it is."

Talking about the film reminds Firth about another subject he's got definite views about: scriptwriters. "Tumbledown was the most exciting film script to work on that I've ever had, and Charles Wood is possibly the most underrated screenwriter in the world! It's funny, you know, in the theatre you can talk about a Mamet play, you can talk about going to a Pinter play, but you'd never talk about a Wood script. And I think that the writer 's position in terms of recognition in the business, is just appalling. We're nowhere without them. I've thought of Charles ever since I did Tumbledown. Nothing else has been interesting in the same way."

If it's not Argentina and the unjust treatment of scriptwriters, it's the inadequacy of the school system in dealing with teenagers which gets the Firth treatment: "My education was deeply stifling. Nothing that I had experienced in the classroom has had anything to do with life. At that age your entire being is invaded by your sexual consciousness, and all you're getting is algebra and French! I'm delightfully happy as an adult, but I was not very happy as a child. I'm very suspicious of people who romanticize their childhood."

But for a boy who didn't like school, he hasn't exactly done badly: "I'm earning a lot. I'm now earning what film actors earn, rather than the minute amounts I was earning a few years back. But I'm terrible with money. Most probably, it'll disappear and I won't even know where it went."

Success hasn't changed the fact that Firth is a sensitive and thoughtful person - qualities which are hallmarks of his intelligent portrayals. These formidable assets are coupled with a capacity for hard work. "I did well from the first moment I left drama school. I was doing well there (the London Drama Centre), which came as a big surprise to me. My first job was a lead role in the West End as Guy Bennett in Julian Mitchell's play, Another Country."

Firth went on to make his film debut in the same vehicle, this time as Judd. Since then he's appeared in many stage and film productions. Each role is given a great deal of preparation. "I'm like a glutton...anything I can lay my hands on from the moment I know I'm doing a job."

For A Month in the Country he developed a wonderfully convincing stutter as the shell-shocked WWI veteran who falls in love with the vicar's wife, played by Natasha Richardson. "These things come almost organically. I don't know how. As soon as I get a sense of my character, then, hand movements, speech... these things just happen. I remember A Month in the Country had a very 'trusting' script, everything depended on the director and the actors. I have a great respect for that."

Firth has made two more films since Apartment Zero, Valmont and Wings of Fame. In Valmont he plays the title role of the wicked Vicomte whose favourite pastime is seducing young and virtuous women. Was he influenced by other interpretations of Dangerous Liaisons?

The outgoing Jack Carney (Hart Bochner) tends to introspective Adrian LeDuc (Colin Firth) in "Apartment Zero"

"I did go and see it on stage long before I knew I'd be playing Valmont, and later when I knew I had the role. But I didn't feel it had anything to do with what I was doing... the characters weren't motivated in the same way. As for the film, I avoided seeing it until I'd finished."

He adds that his interpretation was completely different from John Malkovich's. "I play him as a very manipulative bastard who looks like a nice guy." What upset Frith was the cast's reaction - they thought he was manipulative. And, of course, he was, because Firth himself will be the first to admit that he becomes so immersed in the character, he takes on its characteristics. This time, however, it was the seducer who in real life became seduced. For his co-star in Milos (Amadeus) Forman's Valmont, was Meg Tilly.

Firth see's falling in love as an admission of being "more ordinary than I thought I was". Does he mean "more human", and is he happy about it? "Yes, very. I was going too far down the road, doing too many weird things like Apartment Zero." He quickly adds: "I had fun doing it, but it does test you."

Firth's just finished working with Peter O'Toole. "I enjoyed working with O'Toole enormously. He's one of the most intelligent actors I've ever met and what he said was riveting. He has a lot of life experience and outside interests, and that's a relief. He plays a famous movie star, and I a struggling actor. I kill him and I die..."

Oh dear. Colin Firth definitely needs a long holiday.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Watch Tumbledown or you'll regret it for the rest of yer life.. if you're a Colin Firth fan

I put the link to the uploaded movie in this post.

I also found an old article done around the time the drama-movie was released and it has some of Colin's quotes. There was a picture of him and Robert Lawrence in it. I have to say that the real Robert was quite a cutie. I looked up the Falklands War in wiki afterwards to know what's it about. It's really horrifying to find that Robert Lawrence was just one of the these hundreds of people injured (not to mention, dead) soldiers in battle, but that's the fact of a war anywhere.

I always have a feeling that a war is actually fought in meeting rooms, instead of in the field. Public duties, indeed. Once mobilized, soldiers become just some statistics to be studied... instead of life, breathing humans. And all those magnificent weapons the scientists created, they have to be tested somewhere, don't they? I mean, what would atomic bombs be in history if they had not been dropped on Japan? Just a lot of numbers that didn't make sense in research notes, that's what they'd be. After they'd been deployed... the scientists got their data, the war generals got their glory, and the public got a public service advertisements on the dangers of nuclear weapons. Why are we the ones getting warned off? We're not the ones holding the keys to the armory.


Link to article

"Tumbledown caused a fantastic controversy in Britain, said Colin Firth, who stars as the arrogant guardsman humbled by his experience. The cream of British reactionism came out in force before Tumbledown aired, demanding the film's incineration, repeating every slur you can think of. The Left didn't like it either. There were front-page headlines for months. Then it went on the air and there was another three months of headlines. It was fun to be in the middle of it."

[The film]" is about the creation of a chocolate soldier, a man made to impress tourists outside Buckingham Palace, who turns into a psychotic beast during wartime, as any man must if he doesn't run away. It's not about the suffering war victim; it's about a man who was the perpetrator of his own misfortune. He comes back furious and inglorious, minus 43 percent of his brain, dribbling and incontinent. Instead of being lauded he's relegated to the back of the church during the memorial service, finally given a medal and told to shut up". [Chicago Tribune, May 1990]

Tumbledown, Colin says, changed his career. "Before that I was beginning to slip into a lot of callow youths. If I've got a rather neutral face, it doesn't make much sense to put me in rather neutral roles." [NY Times, January 1996]



"I've never been any good in anything badly written" says Firth, who is known to be highly self-critical, even of acclaimed performances like his portrayal of wounded Falklands soldier Robert Lawrence the award-winning television drama Tumbledown. Indeed, Firth is remarkable for having played three celebrated living characters [hostage John McCarthy, Lawrence and Hornby.]

"Being honest, I didn't think too much of my performance at the time, although a few years have passed now. You know, its that sort of part. He gets paralysed here, he stabs someone there, he cries here. It's straight drama school fare. Robert is a far more nebulous character than that. He's not reliant on his looks or his charisma; when you meet him you realise here's a man who's cracked by his own imagination.

The thing that shocked me most about Tumbledown was I'd got so close to Robert. Here was a guy who was at my side through the whole shoot. And I thought: I'm really like him. I was imagining being him, and then when the thing came out and all those familiar facial gestures appeared, I was physically ill with disappointment. It took years to appreciate what I'd done. It's just an actor and his vanity..." [Time Out, March 1997]



Firth still feels strongly about that role: "It's rather difficult to be objective about it as a drama. I got to know Robert Lawrence very closely and it was a very strange relationship because he's not someone I think I would have become friends with under normal circumstances. Seeing it, all I could think of was 'is that all, is that all that's made it onto the screen?' After what I learnt, what I went through, what we all went through - it's just a film, that's all it is."

Talking about the film, reminds Firth about another subject he's got definite view about scriptwriters: "Tumbledown was the most exciting film script to work on that I've ever had, and Charles Wood is the most underrated screenwriter possibly in the world! It's funny, you know, in the theater you can talk about going to 'a Pinter play', but you'd never talk about 'a Wood script'. And I think that the writer 's position in terms of recognition in this business is just appalling. We're nowhere without them. I've thought of Charles ever since I did Tumbledown. Nothing else has been interesting in the same way." [Film & Filming, Sept. 1989]

In which Colin Firth mentions the unmentionable..

:P

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Colin Firth
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
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I hope someone will upload this movie~

Trailer - Hostages (1993)

Nice review..

Another article written on it:
Colin Firth, who plays McCarthy, is uneasy about the documentary tag. "this is not a documentary at all" he insists. "It's drama based on events". Firth even asked if the characters names could be changed. Unlike Falklands casualty Robert Lawrence, whom Firth befriended when he portrayed him in Tumbledown, McCarthy isn't real to Firth. "This was a man who only exists on the evidence of Alasdair's (Palmer, associate producer) research and what I've seen on television and the newspapers. I had to think 'I'm playing a fictional character who exists in this script'.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

I love Colin Firth!

...he's always with some works out every year. Very, very good works too.. I may add. Not just blockbuster material, but excellent character roles as well.

Thing about Colin is, those who are obsessed with Mr. Darcy and his 'lover guy' image simply don't want to understand that he has done really phenomenal stuff pre-Mr. Darcy era. Watch: Apartment Zero, Hour of the Pig, Valmont, Another Country, Tumbledown, Camille, and Master of the Moor (I've compiled the ones uploaded online in this post).

I just finished watching Master of the Moor yesterday and I'm telling you, he was absolutely riveting in it. In terms of looks, there're times I swear Stephen (his character) looks like one of those subjects in a Boticelli painting. Heart-wrenchingly beautiful.

In fact, I found that after Pride & Prejudice, he's done milder stuff (in terms of story content) than the ones he did before. He's only recently started doing those dark stuff he did so well... in movies like And When Did You Last See Your Father?, Trauma, and Genova. And I'm really excited to watch the new movies he's got lined up (wiki), especially The Meat Trade. The synopsis fills my active imagination with all sorts of wicked images. Also, despite what I said about Ben Barnes vs. Lee Williams, I do think Ben is a very good actor and even I noticed his very black and fathomless eyes (what's Colin doing dissecting Ben's looks for pages and pages?? LOL). I can't wait for Dorian Gray to be released!

As usual, I refer to the Firth Holy Scripture (link) for his updates. It's very informative.

Colin Firth set to make the ladies sigh once again in latest period drama (link)
Aug 29 2009 Rick Fulton

TRY as he might Colin Firth just isn't the same without britches or a stiff, white collar.

The tousled-haired actor has made a generation of women weak at the knees in period dramas.

Whether it's as Darcy, dripping wet in Pride and Prejudice which made him a heartthrob 15 years ago, or as Tommy Judd in Another Country, The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, Girl with a Pearl Earring or even The Importance of Being Earnest, Colin is a man out of time.

Sure he's been in modern-day films like Fever Pitch, the two Bridget Jones movies, Mamma Mia! and St Trinian's (the sequel of which he's filming) but he's at his best when dealing with the confines of a bygone age.

This year he has two more films that place him in the past - next month in Dorian Gray then in an animated version of A Christmas Carol.

From being the spurned lover or romantic lead, Colin has grown into father roles in films like Nanny McPhee, Mamma Mia! and now Dorian Gray, a film adaptation of the famous Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray.

In it, he plays father figure Lord Henry Wotton who introduces Dorian, played by Prince Caspian star Ben Barnes, into the guilty pleasures of London - with awful results.

When a portrait of Dorian is unveiled, such is its beauty that he makes a pledge - he would give anything to stay as he is in the picture, even his soul.

While many insist that in films Colin is often portrayed as Mr Reliable - the man who offers stability rather than fireworks - director Oliver Parker reckons the British actor is becoming "more and more exciting".

Parker says: "He moves forward in an almost relentless way, looking for new ways to challenge himself.

"Henry Wotton is a fabulous role for him and not necessarily an obvious one considering the way people perceive Colin."

Then he jokes: "But I know he's a dark b*****d at heart with evil thoughts so it was an easy choice in the end."

Colin, 48, and a father of three, laughs when he hears Parker's words. He says: "The older I get, the less inclined I am to do something I don't enjoy, simple as that. I don't care what masterpiece comes out of it - if I'm not enjoying it. it's not worth it, but Ben Barnes and I had lots of fun on set.

"One of the great draws for me was that Ben was doing this. It helps us and it helps the work. There's a playfulness between Dorian and Henry and a bit of our relationship spilled over into that."

As the film progresses and Dorian stays the same age while Wotton ages, Colin has to look much older than he is. And after make-up the cheeky younger actor took pity on Colin.

He says: "As soon as Ben Barnes saw me with a bald wig he wanted to help me to my chair, give me some medication and help me change my colostomy bag.

"He couldn't help patronising me when I looked old."

Clearly the two had chemistry on and off set. And Colin, cutting a dash as Wotton, claims to see much of his younger self in the up-and-coming Ben. The pair starred in last year's film adaptation of Noel Coward's play Easy Virtue.

Firth says: "I'm reminded of certain aspects of myself at the time - you have to really look for roles that have texture when you're in your 20s.

"Dorian Gray's the perfect part for someone like him because he starts off as a callow youth then turns into a homicidal mass murderer at the end.

"I found it desperately dull being 25 as an actor. A friend of mine, an older actor, told me when I was that age that the hardest role in Shakespeare is not Hamlet or Lear, it's Ferdinand in the Tempest, the earnest lover with no sense of humour.

"The older you get the more they let you be jaded, or witty, maybe you're bad, maybe you're just disappointed - layers of experience. There's more to be had, so yeah, bring them on!

"If it's dad or grandfather, I'm in no hurry to get to that age. I don't relish the ageing process any more than the next person in any other aspect but it has brought me kids, which I love, and the roles are more interesting."

It's the second Wilde story adapted to the big screen Colin has been in in a decade and, like the first, he reckons the critics will have the knives out again. For starters, his character has a daughter in the film

He says: "The version we did of The Importance of Being Earnest angered a lot of purists and I recall thinking that is as it should be.

"It is not supposed to be a museum piece. The original copy has not been harnessed on the shelf and it can be interpreted and read.

"I think it is a wonderful film and it opened up Oscar Wilde to a lot of people who normally wouldn't read him or go to his plays.

"And this is a virtue of this film too - it was precisely the intention of the director Oliver Parker.

"He wants everybody to have a crack at it and everybody to enjoy the thing, rather than it being the preserve of a few highly educated people."

Colin, who was born in Hampshire but spent part of his childhood in Nigeria where his father taught, remembers reading it as a teenager, although he insists he can't actually recall many details.

While he admits being able to tell you the plot of Oliver Twist, David Copperfield or Great Expectations, he, like many others, can't decide whether it's because he read Gray as a child or just watched the film or television adaptations.

He says: "I read Dorian just before making the film and again it was impossible for me to know whether I had read this before or whether I had heard every quote somewhere else."

Although he may have read the book, he didn't watch any of the past adaptations of Wilde's only published novel Dorian Gray, including the Oscar-winning 1945 film with George Sanders as Wotton

He says: "I stayed away from it because George Sanders casts a very long shadow and I didn't want to make it any more difficult for myself.

"But Ben is by far the best Dorian there's ever been.

"He has got more complexity, partly in what he has been given. He has a very interesting quality.

"He is clearly very beautiful. "He has a lot of the right physical qualities, obviously, but he has also got these very, very dark eyes.

"The pupils of his eyes are about as black as anyone's I have ever seen."

As Ben becomes one of Britain's best new actors, Colin continues to show versatility with a raft of new work on the horizon from Main Street with Orlando Bloom to the new 3D film version of A Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey as Scrooge and Colin as the miser's nephew Fred.

Colin has seen a few minutes of it and says: "You are catching your breath. It's an extraordinary visual spectacle. Jim Carrey is brilliant in it."

With a foot in the past and in the modern day in his career so far, Colin will get the best of both worlds in the latest film by Irvine Welsh.

The Meat Trade has been written by the Trainspotting novelist and, while set in modern-day Edinburgh, it is based on the tales of infamous 19th century body snatchers Burke and Hare. It has been on the to-dolist for a couple of years but seems to be finally getting off the ground.

So are we going to see Colin in it? He says: "I can tell you now, I'm very excited about that script - I want to do it, Robert Caryle wants to do it, and I'd love to see it come together."

Until then, luckily for Firth fans, there always seems to be something to see him in.

Dorian Gray is in cinemas from September 9.

MJ's influence on the Bollywood dance scene



So it's only right that the Hindi movie & music fraternity made a tribute to him, produced by Shah Rukh's company, Red Chillies Entertainment. Shah Rukh is, as always, the most aware personality and at the forefront of every cool wave ever to make a splash in the Indian entertainment scene so I'm not surprised at all that it's his company who came up with this tribute idea. And he's always loved MJ (clip), not to mention his good friend Farah Khan is a die-hard MJ fan too. It's a great tribute video:



"In what can be easily termed as musical history, Seagram's Royal Stag has created a special video 'Make it Large- A tribute to Michael Jackson', to be released on music channels across India on the 29th of August to celebrate the pop legends 51st birthday."