My copy of Empire mag arrived!

I can't scan it and am not sure I would if i could, it really is worth buying!

Not only does it have those amazing first pictures of Nic and Idris Elba in Spirit of Vengeance as posted here, but it also has a great insight into Nic getting into the role and interviews with neveldine and Taylor on set!

This part particularly piqued my interest:

"Finally, a black sedan with tinted windows rolls up. After a long beat, a back door opens and the movie's star steps out. And everyone on set takes a pace back.

Cage is clad head-to-toe in black leather, which isn't too surprising. What's more unnerving is that his face has been painted skull-white and his eyes transformed by contact lenses into dead, dark pools. As he skulks silently around, eventually perching on the edge of a crate, it becomes clear that this is Method Cage, Tonight he IS the Ghost Rider.

"Nic didn't play the rider in the original movie," whispers Neveldine. "It was just some burly stuntman walking around. We all decided that a guy who comes from hell should move in a really weird way yen he's on this plane. You'll see tonight how nub Nic's diving into that. Actually, he's freaking some of our other actors out."

With a crew members shout of "Bring out the chains!", Cage moves into action. Over the next few hours, we watch the A-lister rip mercs limb from limb with spectral whips, swallow a hail of machine gun bullets before spitting them back out, and using the power of his mind to make a foe kill himself. Throughout, his head is lit up by a flashing LED helmet, later to be turned into the Rider's burning bonce. As he scuttles about, head snapping from side to side, and shoulders gyrating like a zombie Elvis, Empire begins to worry that he'll eat our microphone.

"It's a thing unleashed," delights producer Ari Arad (son of Avi) "It's like photographing a Bengal tiger attack!" Taylor explains that some shots will even be reversed in post: "We're defying all laws of logic and reason, playing up the weird psychological language of what he does. It's not just a physical force, but he's actually f***ing with your head, driving you insane. His methods are closer to the girl in The Ring than Captain America's."

The night's most memorable moment takes place at 3am, when Neveldin and Taylor execute a surreal gag they call "The Compass". Inspired by a Nine Inch Nails music video, it involves suspending Cage upside down and spinning him rapidly in circles while the strobe like pulses. "We didn't even sort this in the script," grins Taylor, "because we were like 'How the f*** are we going to explain it to the studio?'"                  

Here is a little more abot the latest issue of Empire an the article:

http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=31622

New Ghost Rider Pics Roar In Flaming Nicolas Cages! 28 July 2011  |  Written by Phil de Semlyen

The ancients used to a dream of a place so dark and demented it would leave a man crazed in seconds; a fiery hell-pit filled with skull-flaming banshees and howling devil-beasts. Dante wrote a poem about it and called it 'Inferno'. You may know it simply as Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance. If you have the vaguest notion that the second Ghost Rider outing is going to be a low-key, demure affair, these new images should set you straight. The so-so reception that greeted the first Marvel adaption has stirred co-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor to new heights. Yes, that is Johnny Blaze with his head on fire. Blaze's return is bonkers and badass, just don't use the 'S' word. "It's not a sequel," Mark Neveldine told Empire when we took the hell express to Transylvania to survey the mayhem first hand. There was plenty of it, with Nicolas Cage throwing himself into the fray as the self-exiled Ghost Rider and Idris Elba as the baddest looking monk in the history of religion. Co-director Brian Taylor offered a reminder of their star's collaborative approach: "Nic trusts us. He was actually one of the guys we wanted for Crank, but we was out of our price range. Now we've got him and he's absolutely fearless. You invite him to go there, he'll go there. He just needs to be invited - like a vampire." For more pick up the new issue of Empire magazine, on sale now.