Arnold Vosloo a great villain

South African-born actor Arnold Vosloo's homegrown accent has helped him flourish in Hollywood playing movie villains, The Sunday Times reported.

"He has the strong facial features and of course the accent... none of your top bad guys speak with a typical American accent," Regardt van den Bergh, a director who worked with Vosloo, told the newspaper.

Van den Berg cast Vosloo in the 1983 film "Boetie Gaan Border Toe".

He said that despite his typecasting, Vosloo was actually a serious actor.

"I am sure he would love to land a role with a bit more flesh to showcase his talents."

Vosloo first made it big in "The Mummy" and its sequel. He is currently on screen in "GI Joe: Retaliation" which has earned more than R1 billion at the box office.

'Zeus and Roxanne': It's a Dog-Meet-Dolphin World

That PG rating for "Zeus and Roxanne" should be taken seriously: No adult should see this picture unaccompanied by a child, preferably no older than 10. Way too contrived and gooey for most grown-ups, it might well delight youngsters, especially its dramatic underwater sequences.

Zeus is a sandy-haired dog belonging to a musician, Terry (Steve Guttenberg), and his small son (Miko Hughes), who have come to the Bahamas for a short stay. Next door is another single parent, Mary Beth (Kathleen Quinlan), a marine biologist with two daughters (Majandra Delfino and Jessica Howell).

Roxanne is a captive dolphin Mary Beth is determined to help return to the wild. When Zeus and Roxanne become soul mates, Mary Beth believes she's witnessing interspecies communication, which could be a breakthrough in her work--and that could save her from the alternative of working as an aquarium tour guide in Minnesota. Meanwhile, she has a villainous colleague (Arnold Vosloo) just waiting to co-opt her research. It's one of those movies in which the animals are smarter than the humans, and the children smarter than the adults.

Any grown-up, however, can see where director George Miller (the "Man From Snowy River" George Miller, not the "Mad Max" George Miller) and writer Tom Benedek are heading: The kids will play matchmaker for their parents, there will be a glitch in their romance, the villain will strike, etc. Your attention may wander.

As children's entertainment, "Zeus and Roxanne" nevertheless works. Guttenberg and Quinlan are attractive, capable players able to bring some degree of reality to their single parents. Their kids are precocious (natch), and youngsters in the audiences will be delighted with Zeus and Roxanne and their friendship. The film has a nice bright and shiny look and gorgeous photogenic locales, but Bruce Rowland's relentless, violin-heavy score doesn't make sitting through "Zeus and Roxanne" any easier.
* MPAA rating: PG, for mild thematic elements. Times guidelines: The film is appropriate for children.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
'Zeus and Roxanne'
Steve Guttenberg: Terry
Kathleen Quinlan: Mary Beth
Arnold Vosloo: Claude Carver
Dawn McMillan: Becky

An MGM release of a Rysher Entertainment presentation of a Frank Price production. Director George Miller. Producers Price, Gene Rosow and Ludi Boeken. Executive producers Laura Friedman, Hilton Green. Screenplay Tom Benedek. Cinematographer David Connell. Editor Harry Hitner. Costumes Marion Boyce. Music Bruce Rowland. Production designer Bernt Capra. Art director Alfred Kemper. Set decorator Beth Kushnick. Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.
* In general release throughout Southern California.

Updated: Tom Cruise joins Universal's Classic Monsters-Verse for The Mummy

UPDATE: Both Tom Cruise's camp and Universal have vehemently denied that there is no deal in the works for the actor to star in THE MUMMY, so put this one in your "Wait and see" column for the time being.

And you were skeptical about what Universal is planning to do in order to get their Classic Monsters shared universe off the ground...? Well, the studio just locked up one of the biggest movie stars in the world to help kickstart their efforts.

Tom Cruise has agreed to star in THE MUMMY, although the nature of his role is still being kept under the veil of secrecy. The film is set in present-day, but there is still some wonder what story it is they're going to tell, be it one of the leaked concepts that have surfaced in recent months or something new entirely that Jon Spaights has penned for the script. With Cruise now signed, sealed and delivered, you can be sure he'll be an active part of the property's development, so all bets are off moving forward as to what THE MUMMY shapes up to be.

If you remember, Cruise was once attached to a reboot of VAN HELSING, so his affinity for classic monster tales is rather clear. That film may have never come to fruition, but Universal almost feels better off as a result. After all, there are far worse decisions to make than to use one of the more bankable talents in the industry to attract eyes to the first film of a then-larger universe. That's how you hook 'em, and Universal seems to be understand that right now, with word spreading that they are also chasing Angelina Jolie for BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.

According to Justin Kroll who broke the story, Cruise had an opening in his schedule between JACK REACHER 2 and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 6 after Doug Liman agreed to do GAMBIT. That put LUNA PARK on hold for a little bit, and THE MUMMY fit right in. OVERLOOK HOTEL, the prequel to THE SHINING, also was trying to lure Cruise, but THE MUMMY provided too powerful a chance for Cruise to get involved with something he's a big fan of itself. And that's how we got here.

Interview: Arnold Vosloo

Life tends to get turned upside down in movies. Many respected British theatre actors cheerfully take their pay cheques and turn out for all kinds of Hollywood hokum, a far cry from their dusty theatrical roots.

And much the same is true of Arnold Vosloo, the South African born anti-hero of "The Mummy Returns". Back home he was a hard working theatre actor with a string of prestigious credits to his name, but now thanks to his performance as the evil Imhotep in "The Mummy" and this latest blockbusting sequel, he is known for something quite different.

"Oh it’s a relief to do movies," Vosloo smiles, "especially ones like this because you get to be like a little kid again and run around and play in this great adventure. I had a wonderful time."

Brought back to life once more, Imhotep not only has to battle his old foe Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) but an even older one in the form of the mighty Scorpion King. However audiences get a chance to see Imhotep’s softer side, as we realise the depth of his love for Anck-Su-Namun.

"I’m so thankful that all that stuff made it to the screen," the actor nods, "because a lot of the time studio executives say that there’s no time, or ask why we should feel sympathy for this bad guy".

"I joke that I’m the romantic lead in the movie, I just happened to pick the wrong girl. Imhotep is kind of the tragic villain, I guess, and a lot of people have come up to me and said I was hating you, but then I reach a point when I was feeling sorry for you too. It's those different facets that help explain why this film is such a success".

Manipulation of the tyrothricin production profile of Bacillus aneurinolyticus

• A group of non-ribosomally produced antimicrobial peptides, the tyrocidines from the tyrothricin complex, have potential as antimicrobial agents in both medicine and industry. Previous work by our group illustrated that the more polar tyrocidines rich in Trp residues in their structure were more active toward Gram-positive bacteria, while the more non-polar tyrocidines rich in Phe residues had greater activity toward Plasmodium falciparum, one of the major causative pathogens of malaria in humans. Our group also found that the tyrocidines have pronounced antifungal activity, dictated by the primary sequence of the tyrocidine. By simply manipulating the Phe or Trp concentration in the culture medium of the tyrothricin producer, Bacillus aneurinolyticus ATCC 10068, we were able to modulate the production of subsets of tyrocidines, thereby tailoring the tyrothricin complex to target specific pathogens. We optimized the tailored tyrothricin production using a novel, small-scale, high-throughput deep 96-well plate culturing method followed by analyses of the peptide mixtures using ultra-performance liquid chromatography linked to mass spectrometry. We were able to gradually shift the production profile of the tyrocidines and analogues, as well as the gramicidins between two extremes in terms of peptide subsets and peptide hydrophobicity. This study demonstrated that tyrothricin peptide subsets with targeted activity can be efficiently produced by simple manipulation of the aromatic amino acid profile of the culture medium.

---

• Supplementary material is available with the online version of this paper.
• Edited by: J. Stülke

• Abbreviations:
  GS	gramicidin S
  LC	liquid chromatography
  Phc	phenycidine
  Tpc	tryptocidine
  Trc	tyrocidine
  UPLC	ultra-performance liquid chromatography
  VGA	Val-gramicidin A

---

© 2013 SGM | Published by the Society for General Microbiology

Accent makes Arnold Vosloo a perfect Hollywood 'villain'

Arnold Vosloo.
Image by: RUVAN BOSHOFF

South African-born actor Arnold Vosloo's homegrown accent has helped him flourish in Hollywood playing movie villains.

"He has the strong facial features and of course the accent... none of your top bad guys speak with a typical American accent," Regardt van den Bergh, a director who worked with Vosloo, told the the Sunday Times.

Van den Berg cast Vosloo in the 1983 film "Boetie Gaan Border Toe".

He said that despite his typecasting, Vosloo was actually a serious actor.

"I am sure he would love to land a role with a bit more flesh to showcase his talents."

Vosloo first made it big in "The Mummy" and its sequel. He is currently on screen in "GI Joe: Retaliation" which has earned more than R1 billion at the box office.

Arnold Vosloo a great villain

South African-born actor Arnold Vosloo's homegrown accent has helped him flourish in Hollywood playing movie villains, The Sunday Times reported.

"He has the strong facial features and of course the accent... none of your top bad guys speak with a typical American accent," Regardt van den Bergh, a director who worked with Vosloo, told the newspaper.

Van den Berg cast Vosloo in the 1983 film "Boetie Gaan Border Toe".

He said that despite his typecasting, Vosloo was actually a serious actor.

"I am sure he would love to land a role with a bit more flesh to showcase his talents."

Vosloo first made it big in "The Mummy" and its sequel. He is currently on screen in "GI Joe: Retaliation" which has earned more than R1 billion at the box office.