Word: veracruz
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...need to see the blood!" shouts Mel Gibson. "Your character is going to die soon!" He picks up a bullhorn: "Attention! We are all dying here! We are all dying!" The Oscar-winning director is standing in a rock quarry near Veracruz, Mexico, shooting a hellish scene for Apocalypto, his action epic about the ancient Maya. Hundreds of local extras--many of whom have never seen a movie, let alone acted in one--are pounding fake limestone to build a temple used for human sacrifices. Gibson wants one of the extras, covered in white lime dust, to visibly cough...
...fact, says veteran production designer Tom Sanders, Apocalypto "is the hardest show I've ever worked on." Stacks of archaeology books and magazines are strewn about a massive warehouse in Veracruz, where an army of costume and makeup artisans from Mexico and Italy are painstakingly re-creating feathers of the nearly extinct quetzal for royal headdresses and long, looping earlobe extensions for warriors. (Because those prostheses are difficult to apply, the actors must wear them for days on end, which rather spooks fellow guests at the Fiesta Americana Hotel.) This month Gibson starts filming at a sprawling and meticulously appointed...
Given that controversy hit his last film months before it even finished production, Gibson has been careful to build Mesoamerican goodwill for Apocalypto: two-thirds of the cast and crew are Mexican, and Gibson has donated $1 million to communities in Veracruz state affected by Hurricane Stan last year. Mexican cast members like Mayra Sérbulo, 30, a Zapotec Indian who plays a villager, say they expect some criticism of the film from Mexican nationalists (who also tore into Salma Hayek's Frida), especially since it touches on the raw issue of human sacrifice, which scholars don't believe...
...will appear in a brief spot on this Sunday?s Oscar broadcast speaking another exotic tongue:? Maya.? That's the sole language of Apocalypto, the adventure epic set in Pre-Columbian Mexico that Gibson is currently shooting on the edge of southern Mexico's rainforests, in the state of Veracruz. ""I wanted to shake up the stale action-adventure genre," Gibson told TIME, which was given an exclusive peek at the filming for a story to appear in a forthcoming issue.? "So I think we almost had to come up with something utterly different like this...
...used up their ammunition. A day later the bodies of the 17 officers were discovered lying along the banks of the Coachapa River by a helicopter pilot. Some had been tortured. Most had been executed with a bullet in the head. Observed Vicente López Estrada, head of the Veracruz state judicial police: "The drug traffickers are well armed...