Word: rodriguezes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...peaceful castle perched high above the Pedernales River--a castle, that is, with a turret, a crenelated roof and secret passageways--Robert Rodriguez is greeting his sons Rocket, Racer and Rebel as they emerge from their evening bath. Soon, perhaps after he whips up some beef tacos, rice and guacamole for dinner and plays with the kids a while, he will mosey down to the dungeon-dark studios he calls Los Cryptos and get to work. The sun is setting over the Hill Country outside Austin, but Dad's day is just getting started...
...Nothing is more magical than the hours between 3 and 7 a.m.," says the 35-year-old director. "Can't call anybody. Can't go anywhere." This is Rodriguez's idea of heaven, sitting up all night at two consoles where he writes, edits, designs costumes, dreams up sets and creates digital effects for his films while beyond the moat--O.K., ravine--running across his 63-acre Texas ranch, others sleep. Luckily, the Weinstein brothers at Miramax/Dimension Films are happy for him to work whenever he wants. That's the luxury afforded by being cheap. Rodriguez made the first...
Nervous is perhaps how Weinstein felt five years ago when Rodriguez came to him with the idea for Spy Kids. After all, this was the former University of Texas film student who burst onto the indie scene in 1993 with the bloody Mexican action flick El Mariachi. Desperado, the 1995 Hollywood version of El Mariachi, had a sky-high body count but was in turn seriously outgored by Rodriguez's next movie, the 1996 vampire pic From Dusk Till Dawn. His upcoming film, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, due in September, is about a bloody coup. Weinstein's response...
...idea made perfect sense to anyone who knew Rodriguez. Born in San Antonio, Rodriguez grew up in a Mexican-American family of 10 and started making movies at age 12 with a Super 8 video camera, using his brothers and sisters, "little kids who you'd think couldn't even tie their shoes doing action and comedy." These family-fueled shorts even won awards at some local film festivals. His sister Patricia Vonne says nobody was surprised when Robert became a filmmaker. "Dad's Super 8 was always glued to his head," she says. "It didn't even have...
...there taking action." In T3, Kristanna Loken plays a villain robot who's more than Schwarzenegger's match. Her role is nearly speechless, but her glower is eloquent. Besides, notes Loken, 23, "I don't think many women can say they got to beat up Arnold." Michelle Rodriguez, who turns 25 on July 12, is a valued member of the team in S.W.A.T. (a fiction, since there are as yet no real-life SWAT women in Los Angeles, where the film is set). "I like the idea of being powerful," she says of her role. "Plus I get to play...