This year’s New York Film Festival has just unveiled a slew of Special Events to round out its already full-to-bursting lineup, and it includes some late-breaking entries to previously announced sections and a selection of brand new events that are very special indeed. Highlights include a trio of documentary premieres, including Susan Lacy’s “Spielberg” (focused on the eponymous director, with both Lacy and her subject set to appear at the festival), along with Jennifer Lebeau’s Bob Dylan concert film “Trouble No More,” and Susan Froemke’s “The Opera House,” a history of the Metropolitan Opera and a love letter to the art form that will (appropriately enough) screen at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center.
Other standouts include four brand-new films from Claude Lanzmann, a sparkling new restoration of G.W. Pabst’s “Pandora’s Box.” Elsewhere, Kate Winslet will be on hand for a career-spanning chat...
Other standouts include four brand-new films from Claude Lanzmann, a sparkling new restoration of G.W. Pabst’s “Pandora’s Box.” Elsewhere, Kate Winslet will be on hand for a career-spanning chat...
- 8/28/2017
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Broadway salutes Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sam Shepard on August 2, 2017 Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
In 2010, I attended a dress rehearsal for Sam Shepard's A Lie Of The Mind, directed by Ethan Hawke. Alessandro Nivola, who took on the role Harvey Keitel played in the Eighties, told me that Sam "started offering up new dialogue."
Sam Shepard shared bird rescue and Gregory Corso stories. Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Shepard in 1969 provided a text for Kenneth Tynan's Broadway musical/revue Oh! Calcutta!, which also had contributions from Samuel Beckett, John Lennon and Jules Feiffer. True West came to Broadway with Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly in 2000. Gary Sinise and John Malkovich played the brothers in the 1982 Steppenwolf Theatre Company production which was filmed for television.
Buried Child won a Pulitzer in 1979 and the play with Lois Smith was directed by Sinise in 1996.
Fool For Love starred Sam Rockwell and Nina Arianda...
In 2010, I attended a dress rehearsal for Sam Shepard's A Lie Of The Mind, directed by Ethan Hawke. Alessandro Nivola, who took on the role Harvey Keitel played in the Eighties, told me that Sam "started offering up new dialogue."
Sam Shepard shared bird rescue and Gregory Corso stories. Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Shepard in 1969 provided a text for Kenneth Tynan's Broadway musical/revue Oh! Calcutta!, which also had contributions from Samuel Beckett, John Lennon and Jules Feiffer. True West came to Broadway with Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly in 2000. Gary Sinise and John Malkovich played the brothers in the 1982 Steppenwolf Theatre Company production which was filmed for television.
Buried Child won a Pulitzer in 1979 and the play with Lois Smith was directed by Sinise in 1996.
Fool For Love starred Sam Rockwell and Nina Arianda...
- 8/3/2017
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Macbeth, co-scripted by Kenneth Tynan and starring Jon Finch and Francesca Annis, is arguably the most bloodsoaked one ever – made in the aftermath of his wife Sharon Tate’s murder by the Manson ‘family’. In this clip, we see Finch’s Macbeth fight Macduff (Terence Bayler) in the celebrated ‘untimely ripp’d’ climactic scene. The Tragedy of Macbeth (Criterion Collection) is available now on Blu-Ray
Read Judge John Deeds star Martin Shaw’s account of working on the film
Continue reading...
Read Judge John Deeds star Martin Shaw’s account of working on the film
Continue reading...
- 5/5/2016
- by Guardian Staff
- The Guardian - Film News
Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Macbeth, co-scripted by Kenneth Tynan and starring Jon Finch and Francesca Annis, is arguably the most bloodsoaked one ever – made in the aftermath of his wife Sharon Tate’s murder by the Manson ‘family’. In this clip, we see Finch’s Macbeth fight Macduff (Terence Bayler) in the celebrated ‘untimely ripp’d’ climactic scene. The Tragedy of Macbeth (Criterion Collection) is available now on Blu-Ray
Read Judge John Deeds star Martin Shaw’s account of working on the film
Continue reading...
Read Judge John Deeds star Martin Shaw’s account of working on the film
Continue reading...
- 5/5/2016
- by Guardian Staff
- The Guardian - Film News
28 December 1971: Tom Hutchinson talks to Sean Connery about his love/hate affair with James Bond
Sean Connery ordered a Perrier water because he had been drinking heavily the night before and, mortal, had not been able to make a James Bond-like with one leap he was free escape from the clutches of the resulting hangover. He watched the elegant back of Kenneth Tynan disappearing into the further recesses of the restaurant. “K-k-kenneth (sic) f-f-fucking T-t-tynan,” he mimicked. “Spends his life criticising plays from a position of lofty principle and then dives into a show like “Oh, Calcutta!” which isn’t half so well presented as Raymond’s Revuebar where I was the other night. Even though the Revuebar champagne is so bloody pricey…
‘Of course the films will go on, but who’ll play me?’
Continue reading...
Sean Connery ordered a Perrier water because he had been drinking heavily the night before and, mortal, had not been able to make a James Bond-like with one leap he was free escape from the clutches of the resulting hangover. He watched the elegant back of Kenneth Tynan disappearing into the further recesses of the restaurant. “K-k-kenneth (sic) f-f-fucking T-t-tynan,” he mimicked. “Spends his life criticising plays from a position of lofty principle and then dives into a show like “Oh, Calcutta!” which isn’t half so well presented as Raymond’s Revuebar where I was the other night. Even though the Revuebar champagne is so bloody pricey…
‘Of course the films will go on, but who’ll play me?’
Continue reading...
- 12/28/2015
- by Tom Hutchinson
- The Guardian - Film News
75 years ago today, Disney took a risk with the opening of its experimental animated film, “Fantasia.” The third feature film made by the House of Mouse, “Fantasia” was released as a limited-run roadshow attraction, starting on November 13, 1940. The New York Times review published the following day declared it to be a film that “really dumps conventional formulas overboard and boldly reveals the scope of films for imaginative excursion.” Images of Mickey Mouse set to music by Paul Dukas, hippos dancing to the tune of Ponchielli, and centaurs and cupids backed by Beethoven have all become iconic in the decades since its release. The film has further secured its pop culture status with “Fantasia” video games, a follow-up feature called “Fantasia 2000,” and with a spot on AFI’s list of the greatest 100 American films. One “Fantasia” segment will soon get the live action treatment: the nightmarish “Night on Bald Mountain...
- 11/13/2015
- by Emily Rome
- Hitfix
This masterpiece of romantic cinema was conceived in another time and place when sexual repression and self-sacrifice made moral sense, but it’s still a wonderful film
Related: Brief Encounter: is it still relevant at 70?
Brief Encounter is back in cinemas again, this time for the 70th anniversary, and to paraphrase what Ken Tynan said about Look Back in Anger: I doubt if I could love anyone who did not wish to see it, again and again. This is the masterpiece of writer-producer Noël Coward (based on his one-act stage-play Still Life) and a jewel in the filmography of director David Lean – an atypically intimate chamber piece for Lean, yes, but the soaring music of Rachmaninov is where the epic sweep comes in.
Continue reading...
Related: Brief Encounter: is it still relevant at 70?
Brief Encounter is back in cinemas again, this time for the 70th anniversary, and to paraphrase what Ken Tynan said about Look Back in Anger: I doubt if I could love anyone who did not wish to see it, again and again. This is the masterpiece of writer-producer Noël Coward (based on his one-act stage-play Still Life) and a jewel in the filmography of director David Lean – an atypically intimate chamber piece for Lean, yes, but the soaring music of Rachmaninov is where the epic sweep comes in.
Continue reading...
- 11/5/2015
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Stalwart character actor who appeared as Mr Deltoid in A Clockwork Orange and as one of the gruesome locals in The Wicker Man
In 1957, the character actor Aubrey Morris, who has died aged 89, was praised by Kenneth Tynan for his “mimetic cunning … wreathed in cringing smiles”. Adept at the vaguely camp and suggestively sinister, Morris always left an unconventional stamp on even the smallest, and seemingly conventional, roles. Small and rotund, with gleaming eyes, and occasionally wearing round spectacles, he could convey obsessions and monstrosity at odds with his corporeality. His visual characteristics included a wide smile, which displayed a prominent upper row of teeth, and a sly, sideways glance. With his distinctive, precise speech pattern, he could draw out vowel sounds amusingly, or unnervingly.
A career that lasted for more than 60 years took him from the Old Vic through much British television to Broadway and then Hollywood. One of...
In 1957, the character actor Aubrey Morris, who has died aged 89, was praised by Kenneth Tynan for his “mimetic cunning … wreathed in cringing smiles”. Adept at the vaguely camp and suggestively sinister, Morris always left an unconventional stamp on even the smallest, and seemingly conventional, roles. Small and rotund, with gleaming eyes, and occasionally wearing round spectacles, he could convey obsessions and monstrosity at odds with his corporeality. His visual characteristics included a wide smile, which displayed a prominent upper row of teeth, and a sly, sideways glance. With his distinctive, precise speech pattern, he could draw out vowel sounds amusingly, or unnervingly.
A career that lasted for more than 60 years took him from the Old Vic through much British television to Broadway and then Hollywood. One of...
- 7/16/2015
- by Gavin Gaughan
- The Guardian - Film News
Ninotchka
Written by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Walter Reisch
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
USA, 1939
It’s easy to see why Ninotchka works as well as it does, and why it’s one of the best films from Hollywood’s golden age and of arguably Hollywood’s greatest year. Just look at the talent involved. Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and Walter Reisch were all seasoned writers, though with their best work admittedly still to come. Ernst Lubitsch had directed a number of excellent silent films in Germany, had hit the ground running once in Hollywood, making his first American film with no less a star than Mary Pickford (Rosita [1923]), and after a series of charming musical comedies, many with Maurice Chevalier, directed the more sublime and sophisticated comedies for which he now best known, films like Trouble in Paradise (1932) and Design for Living (1933). While this was happening, Greta Garbo was working...
Written by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Walter Reisch
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
USA, 1939
It’s easy to see why Ninotchka works as well as it does, and why it’s one of the best films from Hollywood’s golden age and of arguably Hollywood’s greatest year. Just look at the talent involved. Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and Walter Reisch were all seasoned writers, though with their best work admittedly still to come. Ernst Lubitsch had directed a number of excellent silent films in Germany, had hit the ground running once in Hollywood, making his first American film with no less a star than Mary Pickford (Rosita [1923]), and after a series of charming musical comedies, many with Maurice Chevalier, directed the more sublime and sophisticated comedies for which he now best known, films like Trouble in Paradise (1932) and Design for Living (1933). While this was happening, Greta Garbo was working...
- 6/16/2015
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos’s 1965 film The Shop on Main Street, which was the first film from Eastern Europe to win an Academy Award, celebrates it’s 50th anniversary this year. The Laemmle Town Center 5 in Encino, CA will be holding a special one-night-only showing of the 128-minute drama on Tuesday, June 9, 2015 at 7:30 pm. Scheduled to appear in person are film director Ivan Passer and Michal Sedlacek, Consul General of Czech Republic in Los Angeles.
From the press release:
The Shop On Main Street (1965) was the first film from Eastern Europe ever to win an Academy Award. Fifty years ago this powerful Czech drama won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film. Directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, it was one of the key films in the Czech New Wave that flourished in the 1960s, before the Soviet invasion of 1968 stamped out this vital movement. Josef Kroner...
From the press release:
The Shop On Main Street (1965) was the first film from Eastern Europe ever to win an Academy Award. Fifty years ago this powerful Czech drama won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film. Directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, it was one of the key films in the Czech New Wave that flourished in the 1960s, before the Soviet invasion of 1968 stamped out this vital movement. Josef Kroner...
- 6/6/2015
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Part I. Anger, Suez and Archie Rice
“There they are,” George Devine told John Osborne, surveying The Entertainer‘s opening night audience. “All waiting for you…Same old pack of c***s, fashionable assholes. Just more of them than usual.” The Royal Court had arrived: no longer outcasts, they were London’s main attraction.
Look Back in Anger vindicated Devine’s model of a writer’s-based theater. Osborne’s success attracted a host of dramatists to Sloane Square. There’s Shelagh Delaney, whose A Taste of Honey featured a working-class girl pregnant from an interracial dalliance; Harold Pinter’s The Room, a bizarre “comedy of menace”; and John Arden’s Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance, which aimed a Gatling gun at its audience. Devine encouraged them, however bold or experimental. “You always knew he was on the writer’s side,” Osborne said.
Peter O’Toole called the Royal Court actors “an...
“There they are,” George Devine told John Osborne, surveying The Entertainer‘s opening night audience. “All waiting for you…Same old pack of c***s, fashionable assholes. Just more of them than usual.” The Royal Court had arrived: no longer outcasts, they were London’s main attraction.
Look Back in Anger vindicated Devine’s model of a writer’s-based theater. Osborne’s success attracted a host of dramatists to Sloane Square. There’s Shelagh Delaney, whose A Taste of Honey featured a working-class girl pregnant from an interracial dalliance; Harold Pinter’s The Room, a bizarre “comedy of menace”; and John Arden’s Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance, which aimed a Gatling gun at its audience. Devine encouraged them, however bold or experimental. “You always knew he was on the writer’s side,” Osborne said.
Peter O’Toole called the Royal Court actors “an...
- 3/13/2015
- by Christopher Saunders
- SoundOnSight
I. The Landmine
In August 1955, George Devine, director of London’s Royal Court Theatre, ventured to meet a promising writer, living on a Thames houseboat. “I had to borrow a dinghy… wade out to it and row myself to my new playwright,” he recalled. Thus began a partnership between Devine, who sought to rescue the English stage from stale commercialism, and the 26 year old tyro, John Osborne. Together, they’d revolutionize modern theater.
Born in London but raised in Stoneleigh, Surrey, Osborne lost his father at age 12, resented his low-born mother and was expelled from school for striking a headmaster. While acting for Anthony Creighton’s repertory company, his mercurial temper and violent language appeared. In 1951 he wed actress Pamela Lane, only to divorce six years later. Osborne soon immortalized their marriage: their cramped apartment, with invasive friends and intruding in-laws, John and Pamela’s pet names and verbal abuse,...
In August 1955, George Devine, director of London’s Royal Court Theatre, ventured to meet a promising writer, living on a Thames houseboat. “I had to borrow a dinghy… wade out to it and row myself to my new playwright,” he recalled. Thus began a partnership between Devine, who sought to rescue the English stage from stale commercialism, and the 26 year old tyro, John Osborne. Together, they’d revolutionize modern theater.
Born in London but raised in Stoneleigh, Surrey, Osborne lost his father at age 12, resented his low-born mother and was expelled from school for striking a headmaster. While acting for Anthony Creighton’s repertory company, his mercurial temper and violent language appeared. In 1951 he wed actress Pamela Lane, only to divorce six years later. Osborne soon immortalized their marriage: their cramped apartment, with invasive friends and intruding in-laws, John and Pamela’s pet names and verbal abuse,...
- 3/7/2015
- by Christopher Saunders
- SoundOnSight
'Henry V' Movie Actress Renée Asherson dead at 99: Laurence Olivier leading lady in acclaimed 1944 film (image: Renée Asherson and Laurence Olivier in 'Henry V') Renée Asherson, a British stage actress featured in London productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Three Sisters, but best known internationally as Laurence Olivier's leading lady in the 1944 film version of Henry V, died on October 30, 2014. Asherson was 99 years old. The exact cause of death hasn't been specified. She was born Dorothy Renée Ascherson (she would drop the "c" some time after becoming an actress) on May 19, 1915, in Kensington, London, to Jewish parents: businessman Charles Ascherson and his second wife, Dorothy Wiseman -- both of whom narrowly escaped spending their honeymoon aboard the Titanic. (Ascherson cancelled the voyage after suffering an attack of appendicitis.) According to Michael Coveney's The Guardian obit for the actress, Renée Asherson was "scantly...
- 11/5/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Macbeth was the first film Roman Polanski made following the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, and friends at the hands of the Manson family. At the time he'd been working on the sci-fi thriller The Day of the Dolphin, which would later be made by Mike Nichols. It was during a skiing trip arranged by Victor Lownes, a subsequent producer of the film, Polanski made the decision Macbeth would be his next film. It was a decision he made feeling his next film "should be something serious, not a comedy... something with some depth." Polanski would team with Kenneth Tynan to write the screenplay and, thanks to urging from Lownes, Hugh Hefner and Playboy would eventually serve as the film's producer after no one else would touch it. As Polanski notes in an included 60-minute documentary on this new Criterion Blu-ray release, to that point there had only been...
- 10/15/2014
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Macbeth
Written by Roman Polanski and Kenneth Tynan
Directed by Roman Polanski
UK, 1971
Following the success of Rosemary’s Baby in 1968, and prior to what is arguably still his greatest film, Chinatown (1974), Roman Polanski made three curious filmmaking choices. One was the international coproduction and rarely discussed What? (1972), one was the racing documentary Weekend of a Champion (1972), and the third, which actually came before these two, was Macbeth (1971). It is obviously not that a Shakespearean adaptation in itself is unusual, but rather that it so seemingly diverted from the films that were garnering the young Polanski his worldwide acclaim: taut thrillers like The Knife in the Water (1962), Repulsion (1965), Cul-De-Sac (1966), and Rosemary’s Baby. Yet in Macbeth, there are a number of characteristic Polanski touches — in story and style — harkening back to these previous works and in many ways pointing toward those to come.
Don’t be fooled by the Playboy...
Written by Roman Polanski and Kenneth Tynan
Directed by Roman Polanski
UK, 1971
Following the success of Rosemary’s Baby in 1968, and prior to what is arguably still his greatest film, Chinatown (1974), Roman Polanski made three curious filmmaking choices. One was the international coproduction and rarely discussed What? (1972), one was the racing documentary Weekend of a Champion (1972), and the third, which actually came before these two, was Macbeth (1971). It is obviously not that a Shakespearean adaptation in itself is unusual, but rather that it so seemingly diverted from the films that were garnering the young Polanski his worldwide acclaim: taut thrillers like The Knife in the Water (1962), Repulsion (1965), Cul-De-Sac (1966), and Rosemary’s Baby. Yet in Macbeth, there are a number of characteristic Polanski touches — in story and style — harkening back to these previous works and in many ways pointing toward those to come.
Don’t be fooled by the Playboy...
- 9/30/2014
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Sept. 23, 2014
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Jon Finch is Macbeth
In Macbeth, Roman Polanski (Rosemary’s Baby) imbues his unflinchingly violent adaptation of William Shakespeare’s tragedy of ruthless ambition and murder in medieval Scotland with grit and dramatic intensity.
Jon Finch (Frenzy) and Francesca Annis (Dune) are charged with fury and sex appeal as a decorated warrior rising in the ranks and his driven wife, scheming together to take the throne by any means.
Co-adapted by Polanski and the great theater critic and dramaturge Kenneth Tynan, and shot against a series of stunning, stark British Isle landscapes, this version of Macbeth is among the most atmospheric and authentic of all Shakespeare films.
Criterion’s DVD and Blu-ray editions of Macbeth contain the following features:
• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New documentary about the making of the film, featuring interviews with director Roman Polanski,...
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Jon Finch is Macbeth
In Macbeth, Roman Polanski (Rosemary’s Baby) imbues his unflinchingly violent adaptation of William Shakespeare’s tragedy of ruthless ambition and murder in medieval Scotland with grit and dramatic intensity.
Jon Finch (Frenzy) and Francesca Annis (Dune) are charged with fury and sex appeal as a decorated warrior rising in the ranks and his driven wife, scheming together to take the throne by any means.
Co-adapted by Polanski and the great theater critic and dramaturge Kenneth Tynan, and shot against a series of stunning, stark British Isle landscapes, this version of Macbeth is among the most atmospheric and authentic of all Shakespeare films.
Criterion’s DVD and Blu-ray editions of Macbeth contain the following features:
• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New documentary about the making of the film, featuring interviews with director Roman Polanski,...
- 6/18/2014
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
Alec Guinness looks like no one, which means he can look like anyone. "Facially," the great critic and journalist Kenneth Tynan wrote, "he is akin to what John Locke imagined the mind of a newborn child to be — an unmarked blank, on which circumstances leave their casual trace." Few actors have been so elusive and so captivating at once, so microfaceted in their offhanded subtlety. No matter how well you think you know Guinness as a performer, there's always more to see.
Guinness's movies, particularly the comedies he did for Ealing Studios in the '40s and '50s, show up from time to time in repertory houses, and certainly on cable. But rarely do so many of the films made by this quietly magnificent actor show up in one glorious, lady-killing festival like the one...
Guinness's movies, particularly the comedies he did for Ealing Studios in the '40s and '50s, show up from time to time in repertory houses, and certainly on cable. But rarely do so many of the films made by this quietly magnificent actor show up in one glorious, lady-killing festival like the one...
- 6/11/2014
- Village Voice
From Siegfried Sassoon and Ivor Novello to Gore Vidal and Fred Astaire, a surprisingly large number of writers have paired off with film stars
On Monday, a raunchy letter from Ernest Hemingway to Marlene Dietrich – a surreal fantasy about her, reflecting what he called an "unsynchronised passion" that endured for more than 25 years – is part of an online auction of Dietrich's possessions. Although their relationship remained platonic, many other authors did have movie-star lovers …
F Scott Fitzgerald – Lois Moran
Fitzgerald's affair in the 1920s with this Zelda lookalike, a silent screen actor who was 17 when he first met her, infuriated his wife – she once threw a jewellery gift from him out of a train window while raging about Moran – but inspired Dick Diver's romance with the actor Rosemary Hoyt in Tender Is the Night.
Siegfried Sassoon – Ivor Novello
The war poet's relationship with Novello – now remembered mostly as a songwriter,...
On Monday, a raunchy letter from Ernest Hemingway to Marlene Dietrich – a surreal fantasy about her, reflecting what he called an "unsynchronised passion" that endured for more than 25 years – is part of an online auction of Dietrich's possessions. Although their relationship remained platonic, many other authors did have movie-star lovers …
F Scott Fitzgerald – Lois Moran
Fitzgerald's affair in the 1920s with this Zelda lookalike, a silent screen actor who was 17 when he first met her, infuriated his wife – she once threw a jewellery gift from him out of a train window while raging about Moran – but inspired Dick Diver's romance with the actor Rosemary Hoyt in Tender Is the Night.
Siegfried Sassoon – Ivor Novello
The war poet's relationship with Novello – now remembered mostly as a songwriter,...
- 3/14/2014
- by John Dugdale
- The Guardian - Film News
The Judge John Deed star remembers the 60s at the Royal Court, and being discovered by the great auteur
By 1969 I'd done a few roles for Sidney Bernstein's Granada Television, which was the place for new, dangerous drama, and a couple of plays at the Royal Court. I was in their first revival of Look Back in Anger. John Osborne came along to rehearsals a lot – he was shocked at how gritty and visceral we'd made the production. It was an incredibly exciting time – I felt part of a movement of dissent. I did the premiere of David Storey's The Contractor, with the great Lindsay Anderson, and then I did a play called Cancer, which was later renamed Moonchildren.
Cancer was based on the experiences of its writer, Michael Weller. It's about a group of students who rent a flat. It's a very funny and very realistic play,...
By 1969 I'd done a few roles for Sidney Bernstein's Granada Television, which was the place for new, dangerous drama, and a couple of plays at the Royal Court. I was in their first revival of Look Back in Anger. John Osborne came along to rehearsals a lot – he was shocked at how gritty and visceral we'd made the production. It was an incredibly exciting time – I felt part of a movement of dissent. I did the premiere of David Storey's The Contractor, with the great Lindsay Anderson, and then I did a play called Cancer, which was later renamed Moonchildren.
Cancer was based on the experiences of its writer, Michael Weller. It's about a group of students who rent a flat. It's a very funny and very realistic play,...
- 2/17/2014
- by Martin Shaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Actors best known for their roles in TV and cinema are thrilling audiences and critics in plays full of violent, challenging action
The revered Kenneth Tynan, who reviewed theatre for the Observer in the 1950s and 1960s, said: "A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time." All the same, it can be hard to spot a golden age when you are in the middle of it. It seems probable, though, that the London stage is enjoying at least a golden winter.
Four British actors, each of them a household name across the world, are delighting theatre audiences in leading roles in four plays that are not obvious crowd pleasers: Coriolanus, Richard II, Henry V and a new musical version of the Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho. The popularity of the leading men, two from the world of film, Jude Law and Tom Hiddleston,...
The revered Kenneth Tynan, who reviewed theatre for the Observer in the 1950s and 1960s, said: "A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time." All the same, it can be hard to spot a golden age when you are in the middle of it. It seems probable, though, that the London stage is enjoying at least a golden winter.
Four British actors, each of them a household name across the world, are delighting theatre audiences in leading roles in four plays that are not obvious crowd pleasers: Coriolanus, Richard II, Henry V and a new musical version of the Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho. The popularity of the leading men, two from the world of film, Jude Law and Tom Hiddleston,...
- 12/22/2013
- by Vanessa Thorpe
- The Guardian - Film News
Actor, terrible driver, parkour pioneer . . . there was a lot more to O'Toole than his 'hellraising' image allows
As soon as Peter O'Toole's death was announced, it was clear how posterity would remember him. We are now mourning "the actor and hellraiser Peter O'Toole", or possibly "the hellraising actor Peter O'Toole". But that description just scratches the surface. He was also …
1 A tiny bit eccentric. Like our beloved Queen, but with fewer flunkies to look after him, O'Toole rarely carried money or keys when he left home. "I just hope some bastard's in," he'd explain. When some bastard wasn't, he would have to break in.
2 Socially mobile. Born in Connemara, the self-styled "slum Mick" grew up in a particularly rough bit of Leeds. Several of his playmates went on to be hanged for murder. "I'm not from the working class," he used to say. "I come from the criminal classes.
As soon as Peter O'Toole's death was announced, it was clear how posterity would remember him. We are now mourning "the actor and hellraiser Peter O'Toole", or possibly "the hellraising actor Peter O'Toole". But that description just scratches the surface. He was also …
1 A tiny bit eccentric. Like our beloved Queen, but with fewer flunkies to look after him, O'Toole rarely carried money or keys when he left home. "I just hope some bastard's in," he'd explain. When some bastard wasn't, he would have to break in.
2 Socially mobile. Born in Connemara, the self-styled "slum Mick" grew up in a particularly rough bit of Leeds. Several of his playmates went on to be hanged for murder. "I'm not from the working class," he used to say. "I come from the criminal classes.
- 12/16/2013
- by Phil Daoust
- The Guardian - Film News
Perhaps the most astute assessment of George Cukor's moviemaking career, which spanned 51 years (1930–1981), was delivered by the auteur himself. "There are lots of creative directors who can seize a script and make it part of their world — like Lubitsch, or Ford, or Hitchcock," Cukor told Kenneth Tynan in a 1961 profile of the filmmaker. "And there are others who try to become part of the script's world. Like me." Many, however, interpreted the director's modest approach to his work uncharitably, such as this anonymous screenwriter quoted in Tynan's piece: "Oh, Cukor doesn't make movies. Cukor just makes actors."
But what actors! Many of Hollywood's most enduring icons made their first films — and many others — with Cukor, who admitted to Pete...
But what actors! Many of Hollywood's most enduring icons made their first films — and many others — with Cukor, who admitted to Pete...
- 12/10/2013
- Village Voice
Actor who played many major Shakespearean roles on the stage
Few actors played as many major Shakespearean roles as did Paul Rogers, a largely forgotten and seriously underrated performer, who has died aged 96. It was as though he was barnacled in those parts, undertaken at the Old Vic in the 1950s, by the time he played his most famous role, the vicious paterfamilias Max in Harold Pinter's The Homecoming at the Aldwych theatre in 1965 (and filmed in 1973).
Staunch, stolid and thuggish, with eyes that drilled through any opposition, Rogers's Max was a grumpy old block of granite, hewn on an epic scale, despite the flat cap and plimsolls – horribly real. Peter Hall's production for the Royal Shakespeare Company was monumental; everything was grey, chill and cheerless in John Bury's design, set off firstly by a piquant bowl of green apples and then by the savage acting.
The Homecoming...
Few actors played as many major Shakespearean roles as did Paul Rogers, a largely forgotten and seriously underrated performer, who has died aged 96. It was as though he was barnacled in those parts, undertaken at the Old Vic in the 1950s, by the time he played his most famous role, the vicious paterfamilias Max in Harold Pinter's The Homecoming at the Aldwych theatre in 1965 (and filmed in 1973).
Staunch, stolid and thuggish, with eyes that drilled through any opposition, Rogers's Max was a grumpy old block of granite, hewn on an epic scale, despite the flat cap and plimsolls – horribly real. Peter Hall's production for the Royal Shakespeare Company was monumental; everything was grey, chill and cheerless in John Bury's design, set off firstly by a piquant bowl of green apples and then by the savage acting.
The Homecoming...
- 10/15/2013
- by Michael Coveney
- The Guardian - Film News
Tributes have been paid to Sir David Frost, who has died suddenly at the age of 74.
During his lengthy career, Frost was at the forefront of major changes in broadcasting and used his skill, creativity and persistence to provide viewers with some of the most memorable moments in television - and in some cases, world history.
Digital Spy looks back at six ways in which Sir David Frost made his mark on broadcast media below.
1. That Was the Week That Was (TW3)
That Was the Week That Was - or TW3, as it was often known - made politicians and the establishment fair satirical game in the early 1960s at a time when the Profumo affair was dominating headlines. Commissioned by the BBC, Frost was chosen to anchor the programme by its creator Ned Sherrin.
TW3 lampooned the class system, Britain's waning influence on the world stage (as in the clip below) and foreign affairs,...
During his lengthy career, Frost was at the forefront of major changes in broadcasting and used his skill, creativity and persistence to provide viewers with some of the most memorable moments in television - and in some cases, world history.
Digital Spy looks back at six ways in which Sir David Frost made his mark on broadcast media below.
1. That Was the Week That Was (TW3)
That Was the Week That Was - or TW3, as it was often known - made politicians and the establishment fair satirical game in the early 1960s at a time when the Profumo affair was dominating headlines. Commissioned by the BBC, Frost was chosen to anchor the programme by its creator Ned Sherrin.
TW3 lampooned the class system, Britain's waning influence on the world stage (as in the clip below) and foreign affairs,...
- 9/1/2013
- Digital Spy
Lee Daniels appears to have modeled his movie on a visit to Madame Tussauds. The historical impersonation as Oscar horse is something new
• First look review: The Butler
• Video: Whitaker and Winfrey at the Butler premiere
• Gallery: all the presidents' men
When did acting turn into a sub-category of karaoke? When Robin Williams first turns up as Dwight Eisenhower in Lee Daniels' The Butler, his face saggy with prostheses and floured like an overbaked pizza, it draws giggles from the audience. This sort of star turn requires a certain amount of time for audiences to acclimatise; the same giggles greeted the sight of Leonardo DiCaprio, looking like an aged liverwurst as J Edgar Hoover in Clint Eastwood's 2009 biopic. Half an hour in and we had adjusted.
The Butler doesn't have that luxury, but instead has an entire series of similar impersonations – Liev Schriber as Lyndon Johnson, John Cusack as Richard Nixon,...
• First look review: The Butler
• Video: Whitaker and Winfrey at the Butler premiere
• Gallery: all the presidents' men
When did acting turn into a sub-category of karaoke? When Robin Williams first turns up as Dwight Eisenhower in Lee Daniels' The Butler, his face saggy with prostheses and floured like an overbaked pizza, it draws giggles from the audience. This sort of star turn requires a certain amount of time for audiences to acclimatise; the same giggles greeted the sight of Leonardo DiCaprio, looking like an aged liverwurst as J Edgar Hoover in Clint Eastwood's 2009 biopic. Half an hour in and we had adjusted.
The Butler doesn't have that luxury, but instead has an entire series of similar impersonations – Liev Schriber as Lyndon Johnson, John Cusack as Richard Nixon,...
- 8/16/2013
- by Tom Shone
- The Guardian - Film News
Blu-ray Release Date: Sept. 10, 2013
Price: Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Richard Burton (l.) warms up in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
The 1965 drama-thriller film The Spy Who Came In From The Cold starring Richard Burton (Cleopatra) and Claire Bloom (The King’s Speech) is generally considered to be one of the finest adaptations of a John le Carré bestselling novel to the big screen.
Burton is British operative Alec Leamas, a Cold War spy on one final dangerous mission in East Germany, whose relationship with a beautiful librarian (Bloom) puts his assignment in jeopardy.
Directed by Martin Ritt (Hud, Norma Rae) into a film that’s every bit as precise and ruthless as the book, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a hard-edged and tragic thriller that’s suffused with the political and social consciousness that defined Ritt’s career.
Criterion issued The Spy Who Came In From The Cold...
Price: Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Richard Burton (l.) warms up in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
The 1965 drama-thriller film The Spy Who Came In From The Cold starring Richard Burton (Cleopatra) and Claire Bloom (The King’s Speech) is generally considered to be one of the finest adaptations of a John le Carré bestselling novel to the big screen.
Burton is British operative Alec Leamas, a Cold War spy on one final dangerous mission in East Germany, whose relationship with a beautiful librarian (Bloom) puts his assignment in jeopardy.
Directed by Martin Ritt (Hud, Norma Rae) into a film that’s every bit as precise and ruthless as the book, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a hard-edged and tragic thriller that’s suffused with the political and social consciousness that defined Ritt’s career.
Criterion issued The Spy Who Came In From The Cold...
- 7/9/2013
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
As critics swoon over the British star's timbre and tone, it is clear that a great voice is still essential for any great movie actor
This week, Benedict Cumberbatch has been basking in praise for his portrayal of the villain, John Harrison, in Jj Abrams' new film, Star Trek Into Darkness – more particularly, his voice has been drawing raves.
"So sepulchrally resonant that it could have been synthesised from the combined timbres of Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart and Alan Rickman holding an elocution contest down a well," sighed The Independent's Jonathan Romney. "The deep-voiced Cumberbatch asserts fully self-justified treachery", asserted The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy. In The New Yorker, Anthony Lane launched a career-overview of Cumberbatch's "honeyed mellifluous voice", concluding: "The timbre remains in Abrams film." The Daily Mirror judged its readers so in need of a top-up of Cumberbatch's Burtonesque baritone, it linked to a video in which...
This week, Benedict Cumberbatch has been basking in praise for his portrayal of the villain, John Harrison, in Jj Abrams' new film, Star Trek Into Darkness – more particularly, his voice has been drawing raves.
"So sepulchrally resonant that it could have been synthesised from the combined timbres of Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart and Alan Rickman holding an elocution contest down a well," sighed The Independent's Jonathan Romney. "The deep-voiced Cumberbatch asserts fully self-justified treachery", asserted The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy. In The New Yorker, Anthony Lane launched a career-overview of Cumberbatch's "honeyed mellifluous voice", concluding: "The timbre remains in Abrams film." The Daily Mirror judged its readers so in need of a top-up of Cumberbatch's Burtonesque baritone, it linked to a video in which...
- 5/15/2013
- by Tom Shone
- The Guardian - Film News
More than 500 years later, historians and archaeologists have unearthed, and then validated the skeleton remains of the two-year term King of England, and in the same token, the Criterion folks issue the crisp, restored Blu-ray edition of Laurence Olivier’s Richard III, his third feature as a director following 1944′s Henry V and 1948′s Hamlet. In 1957, the film earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role. During the same year, the film won Golden Globe Award for Best English-Language Foreign Film.
The great Olivier is Richard the Duke of Gloucester, a man with an insatiable appetite for power. He often smiles but his heart is full of poison. Assisted by the corrupt Duke of Buckingham (Ralph Richardson, Doctor Zhivago), he plans to kill his brother George (John Gielgud, The Elephant Man) and two nephews, while winning the heart of the vulnerable The Lady Anne (Claire Bloom,...
The great Olivier is Richard the Duke of Gloucester, a man with an insatiable appetite for power. He often smiles but his heart is full of poison. Assisted by the corrupt Duke of Buckingham (Ralph Richardson, Doctor Zhivago), he plans to kill his brother George (John Gielgud, The Elephant Man) and two nephews, while winning the heart of the vulnerable The Lady Anne (Claire Bloom,...
- 5/7/2013
- by Larry Peel
- IONCINEMA.com
Raunchy, rebellious and representative of the coming age, Joseph Losey's film has stood the test of time. John Patterson looks back in envy
Joseph Losey kicked off the 1960s proper with The Servant, an absolutely pivotal movie that exactly caught the spirit of the age as the country shook itself awake after the long frigid winter of 1962-3 and emerged, blinking and disoriented, into the torpid hothouse atmosphere surrounding the Profumo affair.
The story of an aristocrat (James Fox) taken in by his machiavellian manservant (Dirk Bogarde), its themes of working-class insurgency, upper-class degeneracy and mutually destructive, sexually-driven power-games – already hallmarks of the stage work of first-time screenwriter, Harold Pinter – not to mention a notorious scene that seems to depict incest between a supposed brother and sister, dovetailed in the popular mind with the emerging sex-and-spy scandal whose fumes would finally waft the Conservative party out of power in...
Joseph Losey kicked off the 1960s proper with The Servant, an absolutely pivotal movie that exactly caught the spirit of the age as the country shook itself awake after the long frigid winter of 1962-3 and emerged, blinking and disoriented, into the torpid hothouse atmosphere surrounding the Profumo affair.
The story of an aristocrat (James Fox) taken in by his machiavellian manservant (Dirk Bogarde), its themes of working-class insurgency, upper-class degeneracy and mutually destructive, sexually-driven power-games – already hallmarks of the stage work of first-time screenwriter, Harold Pinter – not to mention a notorious scene that seems to depict incest between a supposed brother and sister, dovetailed in the popular mind with the emerging sex-and-spy scandal whose fumes would finally waft the Conservative party out of power in...
- 3/20/2013
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
Greedy, villainous, grasping … Richard Gere's character in Arbitrage is a nasty piece of work. Which seems to draw us in
The rogue financier played by Richard Gere in Arbitrage is a pretty bad chap. All he cares about is amassing wealth and status, and, when things go wrong, saving his own skin. Yet although he plunders, deceives and betrays, the audience is invited to root for him. Such are his charisma and magnetism that the invitation proves irresistible. In this film, the villain is the hero. His daughter, its paragon of virtue, is a bit of an anaemic bore. His antagonist, a maverick detective, is more engaging than her, but to make him so, he too is given a sinful side: he himself is prepared to transgress in order to get his man.
Arbitrage's success in glamorising evil has attracted comment; but of course the film's achievement in...
The rogue financier played by Richard Gere in Arbitrage is a pretty bad chap. All he cares about is amassing wealth and status, and, when things go wrong, saving his own skin. Yet although he plunders, deceives and betrays, the audience is invited to root for him. Such are his charisma and magnetism that the invitation proves irresistible. In this film, the villain is the hero. His daughter, its paragon of virtue, is a bit of an anaemic bore. His antagonist, a maverick detective, is more engaging than her, but to make him so, he too is given a sinful side: he himself is prepared to transgress in order to get his man.
Arbitrage's success in glamorising evil has attracted comment; but of course the film's achievement in...
- 3/4/2013
- by David Cox
- The Guardian - Film News
Despite acting rivalries, it's striking how few genuine feuds there have been in the tribe of British actors over the last 100 years
The news that Alec Guinness felt a personal distaste for Laurence Olivier, reported in this morning's papers, didn't exactly come as a bolt from the blue. I recall reading in one theatrical biography that Guinness was deeply offended when, while both men were playing at the Old Vic in 1937, Olivier made caustic enquiries as to what may or may not have happened when Guinness paid a weekend visit to Gielgud's country cottage. The two men, both as actors and as people, were as different as chalk and cheese: Guinness a fastidious miniaturist, Olivier a strange mix of the earthy and the exalted.
Olivier was a king among actors, and, like many Shakespearean monarchs, jealously guarded his throne. That's a polite way of saying that he wasn't always generous to potential rivals.
The news that Alec Guinness felt a personal distaste for Laurence Olivier, reported in this morning's papers, didn't exactly come as a bolt from the blue. I recall reading in one theatrical biography that Guinness was deeply offended when, while both men were playing at the Old Vic in 1937, Olivier made caustic enquiries as to what may or may not have happened when Guinness paid a weekend visit to Gielgud's country cottage. The two men, both as actors and as people, were as different as chalk and cheese: Guinness a fastidious miniaturist, Olivier a strange mix of the earthy and the exalted.
Olivier was a king among actors, and, like many Shakespearean monarchs, jealously guarded his throne. That's a polite way of saying that he wasn't always generous to potential rivals.
- 2/8/2013
- by Michael Billington
- The Guardian - Film News
Roman Polanski is as famous for the events of his tumultuous life as he is for his often brilliant, highly influential body of work.
Born in Paris in 1933 to Polish parents who unfortunately returned to Poland in 1937, Polanski survived the Nazi extermination of the inhabitants of Krakow’s Jewish ghetto (although his mother died in Auschwitz). He roamed the countryside struggling to survive for the remainder of the war, at times being sheltered by sympathetic families but also witnessing atrocities that seem likely to have influenced his choice of material and portrayal of violence on screen.
Polanski met actress Sharon Tate while making The Fearless Vampire Killers, and they were married in January 1968. In August 1969, while Polanski was in Europe, the pregnant Tate and four of their friends were murdered at their La residence at 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon by the followers of Charles Manson, a crime that has...
Born in Paris in 1933 to Polish parents who unfortunately returned to Poland in 1937, Polanski survived the Nazi extermination of the inhabitants of Krakow’s Jewish ghetto (although his mother died in Auschwitz). He roamed the countryside struggling to survive for the remainder of the war, at times being sheltered by sympathetic families but also witnessing atrocities that seem likely to have influenced his choice of material and portrayal of violence on screen.
Polanski met actress Sharon Tate while making The Fearless Vampire Killers, and they were married in January 1968. In August 1969, while Polanski was in Europe, the pregnant Tate and four of their friends were murdered at their La residence at 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon by the followers of Charles Manson, a crime that has...
- 2/6/2013
- by Ian Gilchrist
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Musical theatre star known as 'the champagne soprano'
Lizbeth Webb, one of the great forgotten stars of British musical theatre in the 1940s and 1950s, has died aged 86. Known as "the champagne soprano", she was the first to sing one of the BBC's most requested songs of all time, This Is My Lovely Day, written for her by Vivian Ellis and AP Herbert and included in their musical comedy Bless the Bride (1947).
Starting out during the second world war as a teenage singer with dance bands – she worked later with such conductors as Mantovani, Geraldo, Max Jaffa and Vilém Tauský – Webb was discovered by the bandleader Jack Payne and turned into a West End star by the impresario Charles B Cochran in 1946. Over the next 10 years she made her mark as a soprano of great range (often singing in two different registers), vibrancy and vivacity. She was dark, petite and...
Lizbeth Webb, one of the great forgotten stars of British musical theatre in the 1940s and 1950s, has died aged 86. Known as "the champagne soprano", she was the first to sing one of the BBC's most requested songs of all time, This Is My Lovely Day, written for her by Vivian Ellis and AP Herbert and included in their musical comedy Bless the Bride (1947).
Starting out during the second world war as a teenage singer with dance bands – she worked later with such conductors as Mantovani, Geraldo, Max Jaffa and Vilém Tauský – Webb was discovered by the bandleader Jack Payne and turned into a West End star by the impresario Charles B Cochran in 1946. Over the next 10 years she made her mark as a soprano of great range (often singing in two different registers), vibrancy and vivacity. She was dark, petite and...
- 1/27/2013
- by Michael Coveney
- The Guardian - Film News
(Seth Holt, 1958, StudioCanal, PG)
In 1956 Sir Michael Balcon appointed the Observer's energetic 29-year-old theatre critic, Kenneth Tynan, as Ealing Studios' script editor at a handsome £2,000 a year. His job was to bring in new writers, actors and ideas. Little came of this. Tynan suggested some interesting projects, all passed on to other studios. He wrote a brilliant six-page letter to Balcon about what was wrong with the unadventurous way he ran Ealing that was probably never posted, and he co-scripted the tough, low-budget thriller Nowhere to Go, the studio's penultimate production.
Tynan's collaborator on Nowhere to Go was Seth Holt, veteran Ealing editor and producer who was determined his directorial debut should be "the least Ealing film ever made". A realistic noir thriller in an American tradition that was then coming to an end, it has none of Ealing's Little Englishness, respect for authority or sense of community. Its...
In 1956 Sir Michael Balcon appointed the Observer's energetic 29-year-old theatre critic, Kenneth Tynan, as Ealing Studios' script editor at a handsome £2,000 a year. His job was to bring in new writers, actors and ideas. Little came of this. Tynan suggested some interesting projects, all passed on to other studios. He wrote a brilliant six-page letter to Balcon about what was wrong with the unadventurous way he ran Ealing that was probably never posted, and he co-scripted the tough, low-budget thriller Nowhere to Go, the studio's penultimate production.
Tynan's collaborator on Nowhere to Go was Seth Holt, veteran Ealing editor and producer who was determined his directorial debut should be "the least Ealing film ever made". A realistic noir thriller in an American tradition that was then coming to an end, it has none of Ealing's Little Englishness, respect for authority or sense of community. Its...
- 1/20/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Blu-ray Release Date: April 23, 2013; DVD Release Date; April 9, 2013
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion
With the 1955 historical war drama film Richard III, director, producer, and star Laurence Olivier (Hamlet) brings Shakespeare’s masterpiece of Machiavellian villainy to mesmerizing cinematic life.
Olivier is downright diabolical—and captivating–as 15th Century England’s Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who, through a set of murderous machinations, steals the crown from his brother Edward.
Co-starring including Ralph Richardson (Long Day’s Journey into Night), John Gielgud (Arthur), and Claire Bloom (The King’s Speech), the classic Richard III is filmed in the gloriously widescreen VistaVision format and Technicolor, making it one of the most visually inspired of all big-screen Bard adaptations.
Criterion previously issued a single disc DVD edition of Richard III back in 2004. The new Criterion release is a two-disc set that includes all the bonus features that appeared on the first incarnation, as well...
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion
With the 1955 historical war drama film Richard III, director, producer, and star Laurence Olivier (Hamlet) brings Shakespeare’s masterpiece of Machiavellian villainy to mesmerizing cinematic life.
Olivier is downright diabolical—and captivating–as 15th Century England’s Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who, through a set of murderous machinations, steals the crown from his brother Edward.
Co-starring including Ralph Richardson (Long Day’s Journey into Night), John Gielgud (Arthur), and Claire Bloom (The King’s Speech), the classic Richard III is filmed in the gloriously widescreen VistaVision format and Technicolor, making it one of the most visually inspired of all big-screen Bard adaptations.
Criterion previously issued a single disc DVD edition of Richard III back in 2004. The new Criterion release is a two-disc set that includes all the bonus features that appeared on the first incarnation, as well...
- 1/17/2013
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
A world of cruelty, where men are cold-blooded and women cold-hearted … The BFI begins a Roman Polanski retrospective – with extended runs of Repulsion and Chinatown – that showcases the director's fascinating pathology
Any hopes that the BFI's forthcoming retrospective – its second in less than a decade – will turn attention away from the glum key terms of Roman Polanski's life (the Kraków ghetto, Manson, statutory rape) back to the riches of his work are based on false reasoning and certain to be dashed. To watch Polanski's films is to be reminded of what produced their dazed brutality, those early experiences of the oppression of the weak that stole his innocence and distorted his sense of things. If ever there was a body of work on intimate terms with cruelty and domination, and steeped in a vision of men as cold-blooded and women as cold-hearted, this is it.
When, in Polanski's first film,...
Any hopes that the BFI's forthcoming retrospective – its second in less than a decade – will turn attention away from the glum key terms of Roman Polanski's life (the Kraków ghetto, Manson, statutory rape) back to the riches of his work are based on false reasoning and certain to be dashed. To watch Polanski's films is to be reminded of what produced their dazed brutality, those early experiences of the oppression of the weak that stole his innocence and distorted his sense of things. If ever there was a body of work on intimate terms with cruelty and domination, and steeped in a vision of men as cold-blooded and women as cold-hearted, this is it.
When, in Polanski's first film,...
- 12/29/2012
- by Leo Robson
- The Guardian - Film News
by Vadim Rizov
[If and when the power is restored to lower Manhattan, Repulsion screens at Film Forum in a new 35mm print.]
Roman Polanski's Repulsion is, famously, a subjective depiction of one woman's hallucinatory slide into madness. The subject is Carol, embodied by Catherine Deneuve, a reluctantly transplanted Belgian in the middle of swinging London (working at Vidal Sassoon's salon, no less). The trances she falls into during working hours indicate Carol is less than stable long before the knives come out. "You must be in love," one of the salon's middle-aged harridan customers says, but it's actually the opposite: Carol just wants to be left alone, left to withdraw from the pressures of unwanted male sexual attention. Her failure and attendant homicidal insanity form the film's trajectory.
Carol's descent has generally been accepted as (at least in part) the result of inarticulable sexual attraction unable to express itself. Thus Kenneth Tynan, reviewing Repulsion in Life magazine in 1965, describing her as "a demure, psychotic young virgin who wants sex but hates it,...
[If and when the power is restored to lower Manhattan, Repulsion screens at Film Forum in a new 35mm print.]
Roman Polanski's Repulsion is, famously, a subjective depiction of one woman's hallucinatory slide into madness. The subject is Carol, embodied by Catherine Deneuve, a reluctantly transplanted Belgian in the middle of swinging London (working at Vidal Sassoon's salon, no less). The trances she falls into during working hours indicate Carol is less than stable long before the knives come out. "You must be in love," one of the salon's middle-aged harridan customers says, but it's actually the opposite: Carol just wants to be left alone, left to withdraw from the pressures of unwanted male sexual attention. Her failure and attendant homicidal insanity form the film's trajectory.
Carol's descent has generally been accepted as (at least in part) the result of inarticulable sexual attraction unable to express itself. Thus Kenneth Tynan, reviewing Repulsion in Life magazine in 1965, describing her as "a demure, psychotic young virgin who wants sex but hates it,...
- 11/1/2012
- GreenCine Daily
A starry cast and a knowing air can't add depth to Peter Morgan's tale of blackmail, infidelity and dodgy deals
Peter Morgan made his reputation with remarkably perceptive screenplays about British people, mostly real-life ones, going through bad patches in their careers at home (The Damned United, The Queen) and abroad (Frost/Nixon, The Last King of Scotland), and encountering some rather odd people. More recently, however, he's moved on to a larger canvas involving the mystical and metaphysical, and the results have been less satisfactory. Hereafter, which Steven Spielberg produced and Clint Eastwood directed, began with an astonishing re-creation of the south-east Asian tsunami, then proceeded with flat-footed banality to tell the parallel stories of three people from different countries (a French TV reporter, an American blue-collar worker and a south London schoolboy) mysteriously linked by their near-death experiences.
His new film, 360, directed by Fernando Meirelles, takes him...
Peter Morgan made his reputation with remarkably perceptive screenplays about British people, mostly real-life ones, going through bad patches in their careers at home (The Damned United, The Queen) and abroad (Frost/Nixon, The Last King of Scotland), and encountering some rather odd people. More recently, however, he's moved on to a larger canvas involving the mystical and metaphysical, and the results have been less satisfactory. Hereafter, which Steven Spielberg produced and Clint Eastwood directed, began with an astonishing re-creation of the south-east Asian tsunami, then proceeded with flat-footed banality to tell the parallel stories of three people from different countries (a French TV reporter, an American blue-collar worker and a south London schoolboy) mysteriously linked by their near-death experiences.
His new film, 360, directed by Fernando Meirelles, takes him...
- 8/11/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
The American writer had several movie mishaps in Europe, but he toasted his collaboration with Fellini
Gore Vidal's memoir Palimpsest was written mostly in Ravello around 1994. It hasn't much to say about about Gore's life in Rome, where he and Howard Austen had moved into a penthouse apartment 30 years earlier, except for the observation: "I had never had a proper human-scale village life anywhere on earth until I settled into that old Roman street." Rather than the dolce vita crowd, Gore liked to mix with the "villagers". Among the Italians he enjoyed meeting was Italo Calvino, whom he admired greatly.
When Kenneth Tynan came to Rome, Gore enlisted me to help him and Howard prepare a guest list for a party in his honour. Among the many Italian celebrities who showed up was Federico Fellini, whom Gore had met when they were both working at Cinecittà studios – Gore on...
Gore Vidal's memoir Palimpsest was written mostly in Ravello around 1994. It hasn't much to say about about Gore's life in Rome, where he and Howard Austen had moved into a penthouse apartment 30 years earlier, except for the observation: "I had never had a proper human-scale village life anywhere on earth until I settled into that old Roman street." Rather than the dolce vita crowd, Gore liked to mix with the "villagers". Among the Italians he enjoyed meeting was Italo Calvino, whom he admired greatly.
When Kenneth Tynan came to Rome, Gore enlisted me to help him and Howard prepare a guest list for a party in his honour. Among the many Italian celebrities who showed up was Federico Fellini, whom Gore had met when they were both working at Cinecittà studios – Gore on...
- 8/1/2012
- by John Francis Lane
- The Guardian - Film News
Andrew Sarris, the film critic of the Village Voice, who died this week aged 83, taught directors how to be auteurs
The film critic Andrew Sarris, who died yesterday at age 83, did more than anyone else to deify the job of film director. From his perch at The Village Voice, he introduced to American audiences the French notion of the director as auteur – the author of a film, is masterfully in command of his medium as a painter his brush or a writer his pen. With his droopy face and dark-rimmed eyes, Sarris brought donnish gravitas to movie criticism, his reviews packing intellectual heft at a time when Us movies demanded to be taken seriously. "We were cowed into thinking that only European cinema mattered," recalled Martin Scorsese recently. "What Andrew showed us is that art was all around us, and that our tradition, too, had much to offer; he was...
The film critic Andrew Sarris, who died yesterday at age 83, did more than anyone else to deify the job of film director. From his perch at The Village Voice, he introduced to American audiences the French notion of the director as auteur – the author of a film, is masterfully in command of his medium as a painter his brush or a writer his pen. With his droopy face and dark-rimmed eyes, Sarris brought donnish gravitas to movie criticism, his reviews packing intellectual heft at a time when Us movies demanded to be taken seriously. "We were cowed into thinking that only European cinema mattered," recalled Martin Scorsese recently. "What Andrew showed us is that art was all around us, and that our tradition, too, had much to offer; he was...
- 6/21/2012
- by Tom Shone
- The Guardian - Film News
Actor who made his name at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop and appeared in the Beatles films, making firm friends with the Fab Four
Victor Spinetti, who has died of cancer aged 82, was an outrageously talented Welsh actor and raconteur who made his name with Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop and found fame and fortune as a friend and colleague of the Beatles, appearing in three of their five films, and with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Franco Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew (1967).
It was while he was giving his brilliantly articulated and hilarious "turn" as the gobbledegook-shouting drill sergeant in Oh, What a Lovely War! in the West End in 1963 – he won a Tony for the performance when the show went to Broadway – that the Beatles visited him backstage and invited him to appear in A Hard Day's Night (1964).
George Harrison later said that his mother would...
Victor Spinetti, who has died of cancer aged 82, was an outrageously talented Welsh actor and raconteur who made his name with Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop and found fame and fortune as a friend and colleague of the Beatles, appearing in three of their five films, and with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Franco Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew (1967).
It was while he was giving his brilliantly articulated and hilarious "turn" as the gobbledegook-shouting drill sergeant in Oh, What a Lovely War! in the West End in 1963 – he won a Tony for the performance when the show went to Broadway – that the Beatles visited him backstage and invited him to appear in A Hard Day's Night (1964).
George Harrison later said that his mother would...
- 6/20/2012
- by Michael Coveney
- The Guardian - Film News
Vivacious Irish actor best known for her role opposite Albert Finney in Tom Jones
The red-haired, vivacious and provocative Irish actor Joyce Redman, who has died aged 93, will for ever be remembered for her lubricious meal-time munching and swallowing opposite Albert Finney in Tony Richardson's 1963 film of Tom Jones. Eyes locked, lips smacked and jaws rotated as the two of them tucked into a succulent feast while eyeing up the afters. Sinking one's teeth into a role is one thing. This was quite another, and deliciously naughty, the mother of all modern mastication scenes.
Redman and Finney were renewing a friendship forged five years earlier when both appeared with Charles Laughton in Jane Arden's The Party at the New (now the Noël Coward) theatre. Redman was not blamed by the critic Kenneth Tynan for making nothing of her role as Laughton's wife. "Nothing," he said, "after all, will come of nothing.
The red-haired, vivacious and provocative Irish actor Joyce Redman, who has died aged 93, will for ever be remembered for her lubricious meal-time munching and swallowing opposite Albert Finney in Tony Richardson's 1963 film of Tom Jones. Eyes locked, lips smacked and jaws rotated as the two of them tucked into a succulent feast while eyeing up the afters. Sinking one's teeth into a role is one thing. This was quite another, and deliciously naughty, the mother of all modern mastication scenes.
Redman and Finney were renewing a friendship forged five years earlier when both appeared with Charles Laughton in Jane Arden's The Party at the New (now the Noël Coward) theatre. Redman was not blamed by the critic Kenneth Tynan for making nothing of her role as Laughton's wife. "Nothing," he said, "after all, will come of nothing.
- 5/13/2012
- by Michael Coveney
- The Guardian - Film News
Olivier wasn't just a great actor – he was a quintessentially modern performer, who cast a powerful spell over audiences
It's a shock to realise that few people under the age of 60 will ever have seen Laurence Olivier on stage. It came as an even greater shock to be told recently that many young actors have either scarcely heard of him, or routinely dismiss him as an "old ham". Nothing could be further from the truth. I first came under Olivier's spell when, as a 15-year-old schoolboy, I saw him play Malvolio, Macbeth and Titus Andronicus in a single Stratford season. He was not only a great actor. He was also, allowing for changes of style and taste, a quintessentially modern actor.
How to explain his power? I would seize first of all on the voice. What was initially a light tenor became, through training and application, a uniquely flexible instrument...
It's a shock to realise that few people under the age of 60 will ever have seen Laurence Olivier on stage. It came as an even greater shock to be told recently that many young actors have either scarcely heard of him, or routinely dismiss him as an "old ham". Nothing could be further from the truth. I first came under Olivier's spell when, as a 15-year-old schoolboy, I saw him play Malvolio, Macbeth and Titus Andronicus in a single Stratford season. He was not only a great actor. He was also, allowing for changes of style and taste, a quintessentially modern actor.
How to explain his power? I would seize first of all on the voice. What was initially a light tenor became, through training and application, a uniquely flexible instrument...
- 3/20/2012
- by Michael Billington
- The Guardian - Film News
Actor whose unpredictability never undermined his electrifying talent
Nicol Williamson, whose death of oesophageal cancer at the age of 73 has been announced, was arguably the most electrifying actor of his generation, but one whose career flickered and faded like a faulty light fitting. Tall and wiry, with a rasping scowl of a voice, a battered baby face and a mop of unruly curls, he was the best modern Hamlet since John Gielgud, and certainly the angriest, though he scuppered his own performance at the Round House, north London, in 1969, by apologising to the audience and walking off the stage. The experience was recycled in a 1991 Broadway comedy called I Hate Hamlet, in which he proved his point and fell out badly with his co-star.
Williamson's greatest performance was as the dissolute and disintegrating lawyer Bill Maitland in John Osborne's Inadmissible Evidence at the Royal Court theatre in 1964. It was...
Nicol Williamson, whose death of oesophageal cancer at the age of 73 has been announced, was arguably the most electrifying actor of his generation, but one whose career flickered and faded like a faulty light fitting. Tall and wiry, with a rasping scowl of a voice, a battered baby face and a mop of unruly curls, he was the best modern Hamlet since John Gielgud, and certainly the angriest, though he scuppered his own performance at the Round House, north London, in 1969, by apologising to the audience and walking off the stage. The experience was recycled in a 1991 Broadway comedy called I Hate Hamlet, in which he proved his point and fell out badly with his co-star.
Williamson's greatest performance was as the dissolute and disintegrating lawyer Bill Maitland in John Osborne's Inadmissible Evidence at the Royal Court theatre in 1964. It was...
- 1/27/2012
- by Michael Coveney
- The Guardian - Film News
Leading light of the British stage once seen as Gielgud's successor
John Neville, who has died aged 86, was a leading light of the Old Vic, the charismatic artistic director of the Nottingham Playhouse in the early 1960s and, after emigrating to Canada in 1972, a renowned leader of that country's theatre, notably at Stratford, Ontario. Tall, handsome and authoritative on the stage, and best known today, perhaps, for his sinister role as the Well-Manicured Man in The X-Files on television – was he on the side of good or evil? – he was often thought of as the natural successor to John Gielgud.
He found huge matinee-idol success early on, in the Gielgud roles of Hamlet and Richard II, though his patrician veneer and noble bearing could be easily discarded, as he showed to devastating effect in 1963, when he played Bill Naughton's Alfie at the Mermaid theatre, the role that became Michael Caine...
John Neville, who has died aged 86, was a leading light of the Old Vic, the charismatic artistic director of the Nottingham Playhouse in the early 1960s and, after emigrating to Canada in 1972, a renowned leader of that country's theatre, notably at Stratford, Ontario. Tall, handsome and authoritative on the stage, and best known today, perhaps, for his sinister role as the Well-Manicured Man in The X-Files on television – was he on the side of good or evil? – he was often thought of as the natural successor to John Gielgud.
He found huge matinee-idol success early on, in the Gielgud roles of Hamlet and Richard II, though his patrician veneer and noble bearing could be easily discarded, as he showed to devastating effect in 1963, when he played Bill Naughton's Alfie at the Mermaid theatre, the role that became Michael Caine...
- 11/22/2011
- by Michael Coveney
- The Guardian - Film News
John Neville, who has died at the age of 86, was "perhaps best known to American audiences for playing the title role in [Terry Gilliam's] The Adventures of Baron Munchausen as well as the Well-Manicured Man on The X-Files," suggests Sean O'Neal at the Av Club.
But he was also "a leading light of the Old Vic, the charismatic artistic director of the Nottingham Playhouse in the early 1960s and, after emigrating to Canada in 1972, a renowned leader of that country's theatre," writes Michael Coveney in the Guardian. "He found huge matinee-idol success early on, in the [John] Gielgud roles of Hamlet and Richard II, though his patrician veneer and noble bearing could be easily discarded, as he showed to devastating effect in 1963, when he played Bill Naughton's Alfie at the Mermaid theatre, the role that became Michael Caine's calling card on film. This performance, in which Neville graduated from juvenile lead...
But he was also "a leading light of the Old Vic, the charismatic artistic director of the Nottingham Playhouse in the early 1960s and, after emigrating to Canada in 1972, a renowned leader of that country's theatre," writes Michael Coveney in the Guardian. "He found huge matinee-idol success early on, in the [John] Gielgud roles of Hamlet and Richard II, though his patrician veneer and noble bearing could be easily discarded, as he showed to devastating effect in 1963, when he played Bill Naughton's Alfie at the Mermaid theatre, the role that became Michael Caine's calling card on film. This performance, in which Neville graduated from juvenile lead...
- 11/21/2011
- MUBI
Actor turned teacher, he quit the screen at the height of his fame
There are some actors who, having disappeared from the public gaze early in their careers, always prompt the question, "Whatever happened to ... ?" The answer, in the case of Paul Massie, who has died of lung cancer aged 78, is that, at the height of his fame on films and television, he gave it up at the age of 40 to teach drama at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
The son of a Baptist minister, Massie was born Arthur Massé in the city of St Catharines, in the Niagara region of Ontario. Although he was brought up in Canada, almost his entire 16-year acting career was in Britain. In fact, the only film he made in Canada was his first, Philip Leacock's High Tide at Noon (1957), a Rank Organisation melodrama shot in Nova Scotia. Although it was a bit part,...
There are some actors who, having disappeared from the public gaze early in their careers, always prompt the question, "Whatever happened to ... ?" The answer, in the case of Paul Massie, who has died of lung cancer aged 78, is that, at the height of his fame on films and television, he gave it up at the age of 40 to teach drama at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
The son of a Baptist minister, Massie was born Arthur Massé in the city of St Catharines, in the Niagara region of Ontario. Although he was brought up in Canada, almost his entire 16-year acting career was in Britain. In fact, the only film he made in Canada was his first, Philip Leacock's High Tide at Noon (1957), a Rank Organisation melodrama shot in Nova Scotia. Although it was a bit part,...
- 7/31/2011
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Star ratings may be massively popular, but since when did liking or not liking become the standard by which a film should be judged?
So. Last Year at Marienbad. Sublime meditation on the nature of time and memory or, in Albert Steptoe's words, a "load of old boots"? I think it belongs with The Shining as one of the scariest haunted hotel movies ever made. But that's just me, seeing ghosts where there probably aren't any, and I'm aware some people find it boring. We all bring different things to a film, but the schism between love it and loathe it seems to be getting wider with every year that passes – and not just for Alain Resnais's film.
"I doubt," wrote Kenneth Tynan some 55 years ago, "if I could love anyone who did not wish to see Look Back in Anger." Most of us will have experienced that pang...
So. Last Year at Marienbad. Sublime meditation on the nature of time and memory or, in Albert Steptoe's words, a "load of old boots"? I think it belongs with The Shining as one of the scariest haunted hotel movies ever made. But that's just me, seeing ghosts where there probably aren't any, and I'm aware some people find it boring. We all bring different things to a film, but the schism between love it and loathe it seems to be getting wider with every year that passes – and not just for Alain Resnais's film.
"I doubt," wrote Kenneth Tynan some 55 years ago, "if I could love anyone who did not wish to see Look Back in Anger." Most of us will have experienced that pang...
- 7/8/2011
- by Anne Billson
- The Guardian - Film News
Award-winning actor with a fastidious intelligence and a hint of inner steel
Anna Massey, who has died of cancer aged 73, made her name on the stage as a teenager in French-window froth. She then graduated, with effortless and extraordinary ease, to the classics and to the work of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and David Hare. In later years, she became best known for her award-winning work in television and film. What constantly impressed was her fastidious intelligence and capacity for stillness: always the mark of a first-rate actor.
Born in Thakeham, West Sussex, she was bred into show business although, in personal terms, that proved something of a mixed blessing. Her father was Raymond Massey, a Canadian actor who achieved success in Hollywood; her mother was Adrianne Allen who had appeared in the original production of Noël Coward's Private Lives. Anna's godfather was the film director John Ford.
Since...
Anna Massey, who has died of cancer aged 73, made her name on the stage as a teenager in French-window froth. She then graduated, with effortless and extraordinary ease, to the classics and to the work of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and David Hare. In later years, she became best known for her award-winning work in television and film. What constantly impressed was her fastidious intelligence and capacity for stillness: always the mark of a first-rate actor.
Born in Thakeham, West Sussex, she was bred into show business although, in personal terms, that proved something of a mixed blessing. Her father was Raymond Massey, a Canadian actor who achieved success in Hollywood; her mother was Adrianne Allen who had appeared in the original production of Noël Coward's Private Lives. Anna's godfather was the film director John Ford.
Since...
- 7/6/2011
- by Michael Billington, Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
The first of three volumes of Philip French's writings about the cinema is a godsend to film buffs
Who'd be so dim? Who'd let themselves in for this fiesta of trivia, this litany of letdown, this bleary bill of bum-ache and banality? Who, in short, would volunteer to be Philip French, film critic of this parish since 1978 and all-round exemplar of the saintly soul? Like Keith Richards, who says he looks the way he does so that we don't have to, French spends several days of the week holed up in subterranean Soho so that we might get on with our lives unthreatened by the monster that is the movies.
Given that they are the product of what French calls "an industry… established to provide entertainment for the semi-literate urban masses", it is little wonder that the great majority of films are bad. As Wolcott Gibbs told readers of the...
Who'd be so dim? Who'd let themselves in for this fiesta of trivia, this litany of letdown, this bleary bill of bum-ache and banality? Who, in short, would volunteer to be Philip French, film critic of this parish since 1978 and all-round exemplar of the saintly soul? Like Keith Richards, who says he looks the way he does so that we don't have to, French spends several days of the week holed up in subterranean Soho so that we might get on with our lives unthreatened by the monster that is the movies.
Given that they are the product of what French calls "an industry… established to provide entertainment for the semi-literate urban masses", it is little wonder that the great majority of films are bad. As Wolcott Gibbs told readers of the...
- 5/1/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
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