Here are the details for the upcoming promotional stops. There will likely be additional press and perhaps even the one or other local TV and/or radio appearance but we don’t know about any of those yet, so keep an eye on the promo schedule, we’ll update that one as soon as we hear something new.

France

Deauville Film Festival – Le Secret de Charlie

11 September 2010:
14:15 Press conference & photocall then red carpet
15:30 Screening at C.I.D.

Spain

Madrid Premiere – Siempre a mi lado

13 September 2010:
El Cine Capital
20:00 Screening (red carpet starts earlier)

Germany

Munich Premiere – Wie durch ein Wunder

14 September 2010:
Mathäser Filmpalast
19:00 Screening (red carpet starts earlier)

UK

London Premiere – The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud

16 September 2010:
Empire Leicester Square
17:15 Red carpet
18:15 Screening

Australia

Sydney Premiere – Charlie St. Cloud

19 September 2010:
Event Cinemas Parramatta
3:30pm Red carpet followed by screening

Competitions to win premiere tickets:
Official Australian Charlie St. Cloud website, Yahoo!7 Lifestyle, Event Cinemas

Check back over the next days to see how the international promo turned out. If you’re not sure when Charlie St. Cloud is coming out in your country, you can also check our release date page here on the site.

Or if you fancy the text in Chinese, you can download them from the official Taiwanese website.

Source: www.charliestcloudthemovie.co.uk

Click image for higher resolution

Source: Universal Spain

VELUX 5 OCEANS HITS SILVER SCREEN IN LATEST HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTER

The VELUX 5 OCEANS has hit the big screen with a starring role in a Hollywood blockbuster based around sailing. The race, dubbed The Ultimate Solo Challenge, was chosen to be the round-the-world yacht race central to the film Charlie St Cloud, starring teen heartthrob Zac Efron, released in US cinemas on July 30.

The film is an adaptation of the best-selling Ben Sherwood novel The Death and Life of Charlie St Cloud, in which the eponymous hero falls in love with a young sailor days before she is due to go to sea in a challenging solo round the world yacht race. Film producers chose to base the film on the 35,000-mile VELUX 5 OCEANS race – the oldest regularly-held ocean race in the world – for its rich heritage spanning 28 years and reputation as one of the toughest sporting challenges known to man. It is the first time ever a major ocean yacht race has featured on the silver screen.

Fittingly the yacht used in the film is none other than VELUX 5 OCEANS skipper Brad Van Liew’s old boat Tommy Hilfiger, believed to be the fasted 50ft boat in the world. Van Liew sailed the yacht, now called Gryphon Solo, to victory in class two of the 2003 edition of the race, winning every leg. The yacht will appear in the film with full VELUX 5 OCEANS branding on its hull and sails. The timing couldn’t be better, as Charleston-based skipper Van Liew is once again returning to the race, which sets out from La Rochelle on October 17 this year.

Van Liew said: “The Open 50 race boat used in the movie is very special for me as I sailed it around the planet alone in the 2002-3 Around Alone (now the VELUX 5 OCEANS). She was my faithful companion for nine months of pretty intense racing, and the ultimate 1st place victory we achieved together.”  He added: “I am excited that the actors and production team of the movie are interested in the authentic history of the boat and also the sport of ocean racing.”

VELUX 5 OCEANS Race Chairman Sir Robin Knox-Johnston said: “It is a real privilege for us that the makers of Charlie St Cloud decided to feature our race in their film. The VELUX 5 OCEANS race is known as The Ultimate Solo Challenge for a reason – it really is the pinnacle of what a person can push themselves to do. It is really exciting to be associated with a major Hollywood picture, and we are delighted that it will bring the world of ocean racing to a whole new audience.  Maybe in four years time we’ll have a totally new breed of skippers who were inspired to take to the seas after watching this film.”

The VELUX 5 OCEANS, run by Clipper Ventures PLC, starts from La Rochelle in France on October 17 and features five ocean sprints. After heading from La Rochelle to Cape Town, the race will then take in Wellington in New Zealand, Salvador in Brazil and Charleston in the US before returning back across the Atlantic to France.

Source: Velux5 Oceans

Zac Efron answers two more rounds of Facebook questions from LA and Chicago.

Source: Official Facebook

TeenHollywood: Let’s get to it. Are you ready for a lot of girls and teens to be jealous as hell of you?

Amanda: [laughing] Well, so far I’ve met a lot of Zac’s fans because they would be around the set. He has really great fans. I haven’t had any mean fans there. They just want to know what he’s like and, thankfully, I have only amazing things to say about him.

TeenHollywood: What was the whole process of meeting Zac like and how would you describe him?

Amanda: Well, the first time I met him was at the chemistry read [to see how she and Zac would click]. Obviously he’s a good-looking guy but I was never that girl that had his poster above my bed or anything but then I met him and he has this effect on people and I’m sure all of us ladies have felt it. He’s a dreamboat. All of a sudden I’m turning into a 12-year-old girl and giggling. ‘Where did that laugh come from?’ But he puts you at ease so quickly.

TeenHollywood: How do you think he does that?

Amanda: He’s just so down to Earth. He is genuine. He’s humble. He’s normal and no ego. So, we did a lot of rehearsals before we actually started filming which was great because we did build this great friendship between us. I think part of that is to do with the fact that he’s not this guarded guy, ‘I’m God. I’m Zac Efron’. I didn’t know him before he had all this success but I feel like the person I’m meeting today is the same person as before all the success hit him.

TeenHollywood: Did you know Zac was in the movie when you went to audition? How did that process of landing the role of Tess go?

Amanda: My agent sent me the script and she was like ‘this is an amazing script. You have to read this’ and, at the time Zac was attached and I’m like ‘who’s Zac Efron?’ I had to look him up. Then I saw his picture and was like ‘I don’t know if this will work. I don’t know if there’s any chemistry there’. No. [she's kidding]

Then the audition process started. I met with Burr [Steers], the director first and then got the call on my birthday that I’d be doing a chemistry read with Zac which was just like ‘Oh my God!’ To be considered for the part was such an honor. So then the chemistry read and the screen test and blah, blah, blah, long process. And then getting the call that I got [the part]. I was actually in my agent’s office and I’ve got a photo of me because I’m hunched over crying. Dream come true.

TeenHollywood: What was it about the character of Tess that you felt like you connected with?

Amanda: It’s really hard to find strong roles for girls my age. A lot of the time it’s just the pretty girl who serves as the love interest and that’s it. What I loved about this character was she’s such a strong, independent woman who knows what she wants in life. She’s unapologetic about it. She has these goals and she’s gonna go for it. I think that’s a great role model for girls. She’s going to sail around the world by herself. She’s brave and ambitious.

I do come across as very similar to the character in that I know what I want in life but, for some reason, the part about the character I struggled with the most was the unapologetic part because I’m Canadian and Burr was like ‘Stop apologizing’. ‘I’m sorry. I mean okay, I’m sor….okay! I’ll do it. I’ll do it’. But I came out of the film and carried some of the character with me so I’m just trying to carry that strength with me for the rest of my life.

TeenHollywood: You were shooting on your own turf up in the Vancouver area. Did you show Zac and everybody around?

Amanda: A bit of that, yeah. I took them some places and then also, it’s cool being in your hometown but with tourists because you find out things about the city that you had no idea about. It’s always nice being with Zac because people are more willing to show him different stuff because it’s Zac Efron so we got to see some cool stuff. We all went up to Whistler one weekend zip lining and stuff like that. So, we were always trying to find something to do.

TeenHollywood: Was there any location in Canada that you hadn’t been to? Did you have a favorite one?

Amanda: We got to go up to Gibsons which is an island off the coast up there. I have a dog named Gibson so that was the running joke, ‘Is Gibson coming to Gibsons?’ Ha ha. We filmed some of the stuff on the boat outside of Zac’s cottage and some of the sailing sequences were filmed up there. That was amazing. That was the first time when I surprise Zac with his boat and we go sailing.

Usually the sail boat was rigged to another boat and it’s all movie magic. But, at one point, they were like ‘Okay. Training wheels are off. You guys are goin’ off out in the water.’ And we’d never sailed together. We’d done our separate sailing so we sailed together and it was amazing. It was so windy but to actually feel like we were doing it on our own. So, I think that was well captured on film. But, it was mainly Zac telling me what to do because I had no idea. He was like ‘Go right. Your other right!’ ‘Okay. Okay’. [laughs]

TeenHollywood: Tess was going to sail around the world solo. Did you try to keep track of the 16-year-old Thousand Oaks, Ca. girl Abby Sunderland who tried to do just that?

Amanda: Yeah. To do this trek, I admire anyone who can do it, especially at that age. It’s crazy but my sailing coach was telling me that people who sail around the world, you kind of have to be a little bit crazy because you’re spending all this time by yourself and there is a schedule; you sail for four hours and you can sleep for twenty minutes and sail another four hours and that’s for weeks on end. That’s all you’re doing and you’re eating dehydrated food. It’s so physically demanding but also mentally. I’m sure that would mess with you a little bit.

TeenHollywood: Did you get any tips from young sailors?

Amanda: We had a lot of different sailing coaches and trainers on the set. One specifically was this guy named Sterling. He’s young, early 20′s so he was great. He told me just little things to do like when I’m standing on my boat in the scene where I’m talking to Zac. This boat is [her] baby. It’s [her] home. [She] knows everything about it so [she] doesn’t just stand on [her] boat, [she] does stuff. He’d constantly check in with me, ‘touch this’ or ‘play with this rope’. ‘Tie this up’ so we actually looked like we knew what we were doing.

TeenHollywood: Can you tell us a funny story from set?

Amanda: The sailing stuff was always a disaster with me. Zac picked it up really quickly but I’m not very athletic. We did a lot of sailing training and we had personal trainers to do a lot of weight training in the gym but I’m a klutz. I had bruises all over my body through the entire shoot just from falling over. Just before the screen test, a friend of mine, he’s a professional sailor and he’s like ‘Come up to San Francisco. We’ve got this amazing boat. We’re doing a practice run’. ‘Sweet! Bikinis and champagne’. That’s what I pictured sailing to be. It’s not.

It’s a sport.

We were going back and forth and pretty much my job was to run from one side [of the boat] to the other for the weight thing which you would think is easy but it’s not and I slipped and fell on the deck so hard and had this massive bruise down my leg and arm. So, I show up to the screen test the next day with bruises. ‘What happened?’ ‘I have an abusive boyfriend.’ I’m like ‘I went sailing. I swear I’ll be good if you hire me’.

TeenHollywood: How many lessons did you have before you actually started shooting?

Amanda: We were on the water every day for at least three hours then in the gym every day. I’m so glad that we did that because I never felt so physically strong. Not just mentally connected to the character but also physically connected just because we had been doing all that work. Burr was always like ‘When you’re doing your sailing training, don’t be Amanda sailing, be Tess sailing. So Amanda sailing is ‘oops! Sorry. Sorry’ and Tess sailing is like ‘Yeah, this is what I’m doin’ and I’m doin’ it wrong but I’m doin’ it’. So, he was always just getting us to be in character.

Source: TeenHollywood

How did you originally come to this film? Was it because Zac Efron was interested in working with you again, after doing 17 Again?

Burr: Yeah. He was initially attracted to it. The story was something that really resonated with him, as did the character and the relationship with the brother.

How soon after making 17 Again did you start to discuss working together again?

Burr: Pretty soon after, he brought this up. When he got this, he thought it was something specifically that we would work on well together.

Did you then want to read the script to make sure it was something that you could identify with as well?

Burr: Yeah, I read it, and then I worked on it and made it work for me.

What specific changes did you make?

Burr: There were some essential things. With Zac in the lead, the character is five years younger than it had been in the book, and that made a whole bunch of differences throughout the movie. And then, we changed the location because we shot in Vancouver, as opposed to Marblehead, Massachusetts, so we had to rewrite it for that. I made most of the characters younger as well, and made them realistic and made the dialogue work. I wanted to really make the brother relationship feel real and credible.

In going through the source material, were there things that you wanted to make sure you kept, or things you knew would have to be changed, aside from the age?

Burr: I went back to the book and put things into the script. The main thing was understanding what the intention of the book was, and making sure that I respected that, but still made it my own.

Having that source material, did you want to discuss anything with the author at all?

Burr: No. I know what the gig is. I’ve adapted books before, so I understand the process. It’s a different medium and a different category, so you’re turning it into something very, very different, and you’re not serving the book, if you don’t do that. I spoke with Ben [Sherwood], but not about specifics like that. Getting a sense of him really illuminated the book for me. Seeing how sincere he is definitely informed how I approach it.

What did you relate to most with this story?

Burr: I related to the sibling relationship. I had two brothers growing up. I definitely related to the sense of loss, having lost one of my brothers, and I understand how complicated that is to get over or learn how to cope with. And also, just the idea that you have to be alive was something that I could relate to. You have to embrace life and live every minute. You can’t remove yourself from that.

How did you go about finding the balance between making this film accessible to audiences, but not being too overly sentimental and alienating people with that?

Burr: I think, on the surface, it is a very sentimental movie, or it can come across that way, and that was always the battle. I wanted to make it something that wouldn’t feel too sweet, and make it credible and have the characters be real. That’s what I went into it with, and that’s definitely what I think I brought to it. I had the actors really inhabit these parts and make them real people with relationships that are prickly and complicated, the way they are in real life.

Isn’t that also reliant on the actors you chose?

Burr: Yeah, casting is such a huge part of it. Such a big part of directing is just your taste and being able to find people who are going to bring the characters to life and work well together.

Because Sam is such an important piece of the story, was it difficult to find an actor who could take on that range of emotion?

Burr: They’re a dime a dozen. There are tons of really skilled, talented 11-year-olds. We saw hundreds of kids. The character, initially, was written three years older, and [Charlie] Tahan came in and I reworked it. There’s something that he brings, in that you see him and you want to protect him, and it’s not because he’s plays the soft, quivering, sentimental little kid. It’s because he’s a tough little pisser and you don’t want to see him get hurt. That was something he brings to the part, and really is a huge part of why, hopefully, the movie will work.

What was it about Amanda that clicked with Zac, when you were casting this couple?

Burr: When you’re casting a couple, you don’t want them to duplicate each other. You want somebody who compliments and, in this case, really challenges the other person, and she did that. It could have been a really superficial part, and she just brought a lot of depth and feistiness to it.

Did you do test screenings at all to see how the film played?

Burr: Yeah.

Did that affect anything with the final cut?

Burr: It was more about what they were following and what we needed to clarify, more so than anything else.

Was it intentional to never really address whether these were actually ghosts?

Burr: It was intentional, yeah. I didn’t want to say, “These are just ghosts,” because then it diminishes the possibilities. I wanted to keep alive in each scene the idea of, “Has he lost it? Is he hallucinating, or is this supernatural?” It makes for endless possibilities, and I thought that was a much stronger choice.

Is that why you also chose to not make them look any different?

Burr: They needed to be real. To have the audience invested in them, everything need to seem real, feel real and sound real.

Now that you’ve worked with him twice, what do you think it is about Zac Efron, as an actor and as a person, that makes him so appealing to audiences of all ages?

Burr: He’s really likeable. He’s really appealing. He’s a really genuine guy and who he is off camera really comes across when he’s on camera. He’s a great young man. He’s incredibly driven and also just has the wheels spinning, all the time, in his head. He really thinks things through and it’s just interesting. He’s just somebody you watch. He’s been really smart in his career and has not necessarily made easy choices. You see a lot of these kids coming out of franchises and going for the big paydays and just attaching themselves to everything. He had that option and he chose to go off and do more substantial work.

What was it like to get people involved the level of Kim Basinger and Ray Liotta?

Burr: One of the great things you find about veteran actors is that they want a show with people coming up. They don’t want them to make the mistakes they’ve made, and they want to impart what they’ve learned. They really do. They’re really generous. It’s something I’ve found invariably, when you bring in older actors. It’s so crucial for younger actors to work with them, to get better and to raise their game. I’ve had to experience an older actor that wasn’t really willing to come in and help and be that mentor.

Having been an actor yourself, how do you think that enriches what you do as a director, in working with the actors?

Burr: I think that the main thing is that you develop your aesthetic for what you like and what you think is good acting, or what works for you. You develop an ear and a feel for it, so I know when something is working or not for me, and what I’m going to use. I can hear honesty. I can hear when somebody is faking or acting. I’ve got a sharp sense of that.

What were the biggest challenges in making this film?

Burr: I had no idea how the sailing race was going to be. I’m pretty confident that I can figure anything out, if I have any amount of time. Just going through the process of how I’ll break something down, I can translate it into whatever I need it to be visually. I storyboarded the sailing race, but then I got out there and there was no wind. That whole challenge of manufacturing the dynamics of that sailing race without any wind was a great challenge. From a filmmaking standpoint, that really challenged me.

Do you have plans yet for the DVD? Are there deleted scenes you want to include?

Burr: Yeah. There are a few deleted scenes. There is a deleted scene with Kim [Basinger] that she was great in, that was too much for the end of the movie. The movie was too lop-sided at the end. It had too much weight at the end. There are scenes with Zac and his younger brother in the glade that are really nuanced and subtle scenes. They’re all good scenes. That’s one of the toughest things, when you make a movie. You realize that, for the good of the movie, you’ve got to sacrifice things.

Would you put out an extended edition, or just put them on as extras?

Burr: They’re just scenes. I wouldn’t do an extended version.

Source: Collider