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What's Inside The Issue?

		Meet The A-Team If you love it when a plan comes together, you're going to love Joe Carnahan's The A-Team. Not only are there a number of different plans, each coming together beautifully, but there are tanks fighting planes. In the sky. In short, this isn't the Saturday evening TV staple of your youth simply rebooted. This is the Saturday TV staple of your youth with a rocket under it and a giant cigar stuffed in its mouth. Our on-set special takes you to Vancouver to hear from the band of modern-day brigands - Neeson, Copley, Cooper and Jackson - to find out what to expect.
		Meet The Expendables Forget sunbathing and jaunty trips to the seaside, this summer is all about men with pecs the size of Romford beating each other to a pulp. That's right, The Expendables are here. If you're lookingh for one long reason to dodge the sunshine to spend a few hours in a darkened cinema in the company of virtually every '80s action star worth his salt, look no further. Empire spoke to Sylvester Stallone and the most granite-hued cast in movie history to talk Latin despots, on-set injuries and the perils of expendability. As an statistical bonus, we've taken out our calculator to work out how many movie fatalities the cast have been responsible for. It's a giant calculator.
		World Exclusive Look At Salt In a role once earmarked for Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie joins the action wham-boree this summer as Evelyn Salt, a CIA operative accused of working for the KGB. Phillip Noyce, the man who gave us Patriot Games and Clear And Present Danger, knows his way around a pulse-escalating actioner. In a world exclusive, he talks Empire through Salt's labyrinthine world of espionage-heavy thrills, a world in which nothing -including Jolie's hair colour - is what it seems.
		Chris Evans On Captain America One of the most used phrases in the Empire office is the line, "Chris Evans is the best thing in it". It's true of Fantastic Four, Push, his new film The Losers and even, er, The Nanny Diaries. But at last the man who isn't the Radio 2 DJ of the same name (you can tell cause this one's massively better looking) has a leading role all of his own in blockbuster-in-the-making Captain America - and we took him aside and threatened his perfect abs with a doughnut until he talked turkey about Cap'.
		Cruise And Diaz On Knight And Day Among this summer's blockbusters, Knight And Day has snuck along under the radar like some kind of stealth movie - albeit a stealth movie which, with its breakneck bike chases and breathless banter, moves at supersonic speed. With a trailer just the other side of awesome, the comedy-actioner high on any respectable must-see list. Director James Mangold talks through reuniting Vanilla Sky co-stars Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz and unleashing them on an unsuspecting world.
		Can Anyone Stop Chris Morris? A man who is to media outrage what a disorientated bull is to a overstocked china shop, Chris Morris sets his sights on the war on terror with Four Lions, a comedy-drama that entertains and challenges in equal measure. In a rare interview, he tells us what makes him tick and what we can expect from a film that, on paper, sounds like a headliner writer's dream waiting to happen. He's a provocateur, comedic genius and now a film director - whatever you do, though, don't call him a satirist.
		Master Of Villains: Mark Strong Devilish in Sherlock Holmes, demented in Kick-Ass, dastardedly in Robin Hood, and very unlikely to be petting kittens or escorting grannies across busy roads in either Green Lantern or John Carter Of Mars, it's safe to say Mark Strong is rapidly becoming Hollywood's go-to bad guy of choice. There's more to the North Londoner than menacing the righteous though. Much more. He takes Empire behind the scenes of Robin Hood and Kick-Ass and lets us into a film future so bright it may actually burn our eyes. In, like, a metaphorical sense.
		The Inside Story Of The Awards It was another star-studded year at the Empire awards, and we have all the photos, quotes, sketches and scandal from the night presented for your convenience in one handy magazine-sized package. So did Sir Ian McKellen punch anyone? Did Sam Worthington insist on drinking camomile tea all evening? And did the famously nice Simon Pegg reveal himself as a horrendous diva with an entourage of 20? Well, no, of course not; but to find out what really happened, you'll have to pick up the new issue.
		Big Interview: Nicolas Cage A man of a thousand faces, and at least as many haircuts, Nicolas Cage is one of Hollywood's biggest stars and someone whose performances are always memorable. As the barmy but brilliant Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans nears release, we cornered Cage to ask about his latest role and career to date. From that well-known comic-book obsession to rather more obscure Cage facts, it's all here in a comprehensive interview with one of the unpredictable actors around.
		The Men Of Hot Time Tub Machine A hands-down winner for title of the year, Hot Tub Time Machine sees John Cusack revisit the sort of raunchy sex comedy he used to make in his teens - only this time he's old enough to know better, and joined by the comedy powerhouses of Rob Corddry (long a stalwart of The Daily Show), Craig Robinson (Knocked Up, Walk Hard), and Michael Cera's sometime comedy foil, Clark Duke (Kick-Ass). We got the lowdown on their barmy '80s-set time-travel adventure from all four stars: read it before you see the movie!
		Avatar On Blu-ray Reviewed You may have heard of Avatar. It's the biggest movie of all time, a box-office behemoth that your mum probably took your granny to see at a midnight screening on the Imax. And now it's reached DVD and Blu-ray, so we thought you just might want to see a review of it. We've also got a freeze-frame-friendly guide to the hidden references and gags you might find on home viewing, and the word from James Cameron and producer Jon Landau on what to look out for.
		Back Story: The Three Stooges The Three Stooges may not be household names in this country, but in the US the 1930s stars remain cultural icons, pioneers of a brand of physical comedy that puts even Jim Carrey to shame. While the long-mooted Three Stooges movie continues to wend its way slowly through the Seven Circles of Development Hell, we look back at the original pioneers to bring you the true story behind the pratfalls and endless petty acts of violence. Whadya mean, you didn't know there had to be a story behind petty acts of violence?

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