As it's revealed that Sam Taylor-Johnson's El James adaptation may be released in a softcore and a not-so-softcore version (less than a week after Lars von Trier announced he was hardcore only), we've the full lowdown on what's happening in movies today
What did you watch over the weekend?
Did you get served by the Butler, or lend an ear to the Counselor? Get down and dirty with Don Jon or Dom Hemingway? Or might you have finally caught up with Black Swan for its network TV premiere. Let us know in the comments below, and chip in below the line on last week's Guardian Film Show and tell our critics how wrong (or right) they got it.
On the site today
• Fifty-year battle over James Bond ends as Kevin McClory's family give up rights - could this mean the return of Blofeld and Spectre?
• Fifty Shades of Grey...
What did you watch over the weekend?
Did you get served by the Butler, or lend an ear to the Counselor? Get down and dirty with Don Jon or Dom Hemingway? Or might you have finally caught up with Black Swan for its network TV premiere. Let us know in the comments below, and chip in below the line on last week's Guardian Film Show and tell our critics how wrong (or right) they got it.
On the site today
• Fifty-year battle over James Bond ends as Kevin McClory's family give up rights - could this mean the return of Blofeld and Spectre?
• Fifty Shades of Grey...
- 11/18/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
Your daily movie bulletin bringing you the lowdown on 2 September
Buongiorno! Ciao bella! Today in film is bocco concerned with the Venice film festival, which had a splendido weekend and is gearing up for another lovely day on the Lido.
In case you weren't glued to your computer for the last couple of days, Signores Brooks and Pulver were working all ours to bring us news, reviews and even video from the piazzas. They sang their copy lustily down the phone, gesticulating wildly, where swooning women dutifully transcribed. This is what the results looked like:
• If you were rushed to hospital with serious head injuries, would you want Zac Efron to be the one performing the surgery? That's what happened to poor old JFK, according to Parkland, a new Rosencrantz and Guildernstern take on the deaths of the pres, and then, two days later, in the same hospital, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Buongiorno! Ciao bella! Today in film is bocco concerned with the Venice film festival, which had a splendido weekend and is gearing up for another lovely day on the Lido.
In case you weren't glued to your computer for the last couple of days, Signores Brooks and Pulver were working all ours to bring us news, reviews and even video from the piazzas. They sang their copy lustily down the phone, gesticulating wildly, where swooning women dutifully transcribed. This is what the results looked like:
• If you were rushed to hospital with serious head injuries, would you want Zac Efron to be the one performing the surgery? That's what happened to poor old JFK, according to Parkland, a new Rosencrantz and Guildernstern take on the deaths of the pres, and then, two days later, in the same hospital, Lee Harvey Oswald.
- 9/2/2013
- by Catherine Shoard
- The Guardian - Film News
The top-line on the big news stories in cinema today – plus a preview of what's coming up on the site
News headlines today
Let's kick off with a not-quite-news story: Bruce Willis has revealed that he's a bit bored with doing action films but he does quite like the cash.
Vin Diesel has the voice of an 80-year-old Broadway roué, which makes him inspired casting to play a talking tree in the new Guardians of the Galaxy film.
More forestry news: Johnny Depp and Meryl Streep are reportedly up for parts in Rob Marshall's movie of the Sondheim musical Into the Woods.
Pina-collaborator: Charlotte Gainsbourg is set to join the cast of Wim Wenders' new 3D drama, Everything Will Be Fine, starring James Franco.
Ashton Kutcher has been giving great quote on playing Steve Jobs.
Remember when Mark Wahlberg went on Graham Norton, appeared drunk, seemed to annoy Sarah Silverman,...
News headlines today
Let's kick off with a not-quite-news story: Bruce Willis has revealed that he's a bit bored with doing action films but he does quite like the cash.
Vin Diesel has the voice of an 80-year-old Broadway roué, which makes him inspired casting to play a talking tree in the new Guardians of the Galaxy film.
More forestry news: Johnny Depp and Meryl Streep are reportedly up for parts in Rob Marshall's movie of the Sondheim musical Into the Woods.
Pina-collaborator: Charlotte Gainsbourg is set to join the cast of Wim Wenders' new 3D drama, Everything Will Be Fine, starring James Franco.
Ashton Kutcher has been giving great quote on playing Steve Jobs.
Remember when Mark Wahlberg went on Graham Norton, appeared drunk, seemed to annoy Sarah Silverman,...
- 8/13/2013
- by Catherine Shoard
- The Guardian - Film News
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
Catch up with the last seven days in the world of film
The big story
Is there any more eagerly anticipated film that The Hobbit? If so, this week go down as a bit of a downer in the blockbuster annals, for footage unveiled at CinemaCon - a starry jamboree in Vegas for multiplex owners - has been found slightly lacking. Ten minutes shot in the hot potato 48 frames-per-second format (for which Peter Jackson cheerleads) left some punters unconvinced.
"It reminds me of when I first saw Blu-Ray, in that it takes away that warm feeling of film," one chain owner said. "It looked to me like a behind-the-scenes featurette."
"It looked like a made-for-tv movie," another projectionist told the La Times. "It was too accurate – too clear. The contrast ratio isn't there yet – everything looked either too bright or black."
Some good pointers there for Jackson, who still...
The big story
Is there any more eagerly anticipated film that The Hobbit? If so, this week go down as a bit of a downer in the blockbuster annals, for footage unveiled at CinemaCon - a starry jamboree in Vegas for multiplex owners - has been found slightly lacking. Ten minutes shot in the hot potato 48 frames-per-second format (for which Peter Jackson cheerleads) left some punters unconvinced.
"It reminds me of when I first saw Blu-Ray, in that it takes away that warm feeling of film," one chain owner said. "It looked to me like a behind-the-scenes featurette."
"It looked like a made-for-tv movie," another projectionist told the La Times. "It was too accurate – too clear. The contrast ratio isn't there yet – everything looked either too bright or black."
Some good pointers there for Jackson, who still...
- 4/26/2012
- The Guardian - Film News
"It may not be true that 'the three most written-about subjects of all time are Jesus, the Civil War, and the Titanic,' as one historian has put it, but it's not much of an exaggeration," writes Daniel Mendelsohn in this week's New Yorker. "Since the early morning of April 15, 1912, when the great liner went to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, taking with it five grand pianos, eight thousand dinner forks, an automobile, a fifty-line telephone switchboard, twenty-nine boilers, a jeweled copy of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, and more than fifteen hundred lives, the writing hasn't stopped."
What follows is an epic and irresistibly readable survey of 100 years' worth of Titanic lore. The disaster immediately inspired a "glut" of poems, "more than a hundred songs," countless histories, novels and plays and, of course, innumerable films, both narrative and documentary:
A scant month after the sinking, a one-reel movie...
What follows is an epic and irresistibly readable survey of 100 years' worth of Titanic lore. The disaster immediately inspired a "glut" of poems, "more than a hundred songs," countless histories, novels and plays and, of course, innumerable films, both narrative and documentary:
A scant month after the sinking, a one-reel movie...
- 4/10/2012
- MUBI
Hugh Grant, who was lauded for his appearance at the Leveson inquiry this week, had some arguments to air about the film promotion circuit
The big story
This week saw actor Hugh Grant deliver his testimony to the Leveson phone hacking inquiry. Grant, a vocal opponent of invasive press behaviour for many months, gave a thoughtful and measured performance. He no longer appeared "the foppish stereotype Brit," according to the Guardian's Michael White. "More high-minded Gary Cooper in Mr Deeds Goes to Town."
Part of Grant's argument centred on the impression that film stars ought to offer themselves up to promote their films. It was, he said, part of your responsibility to a project to do interviews around it ("If you didn't do a little bit of publicity you'd be a monster"), but far from essential. Grant estimated that around 5% of a film's success came down to whether or not he gave interviews,...
The big story
This week saw actor Hugh Grant deliver his testimony to the Leveson phone hacking inquiry. Grant, a vocal opponent of invasive press behaviour for many months, gave a thoughtful and measured performance. He no longer appeared "the foppish stereotype Brit," according to the Guardian's Michael White. "More high-minded Gary Cooper in Mr Deeds Goes to Town."
Part of Grant's argument centred on the impression that film stars ought to offer themselves up to promote their films. It was, he said, part of your responsibility to a project to do interviews around it ("If you didn't do a little bit of publicity you'd be a monster"), but far from essential. Grant estimated that around 5% of a film's success came down to whether or not he gave interviews,...
- 11/24/2011
- by Henry Barnes
- The Guardian - Film News
This week we're reminding you of your invitation to join us at 7pm tonight when Peter Bradshaw (and a reader) will be liveblogging Three Colours Red on the site. And did anyone mention a drinking game … ?
The big story
And so we face the final frontier. Last night Andrew Pulver chuckled his way through Three Colours White. On Tuesday, Xan Brooks juggled pizza and existentialism during Three Colours Blue.
Tonight, Peter Bradshaw is in the hotseat, squished up alongside competition winner Joe Websper and Catherine Shoard, who'll be wrangling comments and overseeing the incredibly classy Three Colours Red drinking game (see below).
The third in the trilogy, Three Colours Red is also the most acclaimed. It's about a student (Irene Jacob) who befriends a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who is spying on his neighbours.
The big story
And so we face the final frontier. Last night Andrew Pulver chuckled his way through Three Colours White. On Tuesday, Xan Brooks juggled pizza and existentialism during Three Colours Blue.
Tonight, Peter Bradshaw is in the hotseat, squished up alongside competition winner Joe Websper and Catherine Shoard, who'll be wrangling comments and overseeing the incredibly classy Three Colours Red drinking game (see below).
The third in the trilogy, Three Colours Red is also the most acclaimed. It's about a student (Irene Jacob) who befriends a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who is spying on his neighbours.
- 11/17/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
Here's how John Patterson opens a terrific piece in the La Weekly: "A priceless cinematic time capsule of the African-American experience in post-Watts Los Angeles; a kaleidoscope of the multiple mindsets of a community in profound flux; a sustained rebuke and a consciously developed alternative to the plantation economics and racist narratives of the then-current 'blaxploitation' boom; exemplary first steps along a filmmaking road finally not taken — (but oh, the possibilities glimpsed herein!): L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema is all of these and more. This collection of the highlights of the legendary but only partially understood African-American film explosion at UCLA in the 70s and early 80s is a priceless work of excavation and restoration, and as an La-specific filmic event it's unlikely to be surpassed in the near future." Part of Pacific Standard Time, the series opens today and runs through December 17.
"Now in its fifth year,...
"Now in its fifth year,...
- 10/7/2011
- MUBI
The Venice film festival comes to a close having showcased a fine selection of new British drama. Meanwhile Toronto makes its pitch with a big hitter: Brad Pitt baseball drama, Moneyball
The big story
As the Venice film festival staggers to its close, the baton has been handed over to Toronto – so it's say hello to Catherine Shoard, and wave goodbye to Xan Brooks. Catherine is our reporter on the... what, exactly? Toronto doesn't have a Croisette, or a Lido – but it does have a venue called the Lightbox, which sounds pretty good. So, Catherine is our reporter in the Lightbox, and you can watch her first video report from the 36th Tiff here; she'll also be delivering a stream of reviews and news and interviews over the next week, starting with a review of Brad Pitt baseball mittfest Moneyball, which will be on guardian.co.uk/film at around 10pm BST.
The big story
As the Venice film festival staggers to its close, the baton has been handed over to Toronto – so it's say hello to Catherine Shoard, and wave goodbye to Xan Brooks. Catherine is our reporter on the... what, exactly? Toronto doesn't have a Croisette, or a Lido – but it does have a venue called the Lightbox, which sounds pretty good. So, Catherine is our reporter in the Lightbox, and you can watch her first video report from the 36th Tiff here; she'll also be delivering a stream of reviews and news and interviews over the next week, starting with a review of Brad Pitt baseball mittfest Moneyball, which will be on guardian.co.uk/film at around 10pm BST.
- 9/8/2011
- by Andrew Pulver, Henry Barnes
- The Guardian - Film News
Fortunately, says John Patterson, vengeance is a lot more fun when a woman is seeking it
Luc Besson sure likes him some strong womanhood. The new revenger's action movie Colombiana, which he produced and co-wrote, stars Zoe Saldana and calls to mind a string of vengeful, tough, smart women in his back catalogue: La Femme Nikita, Natalie Portman in Leon, Joan of Arc in The Messenger, and the bankrobbers of Bandidas. I'm just guessing, but I think Luc Besson has a type. And her name is Lady Vengeance.
After watching Colombiana I'm inclined to ask: who can blame him? Like every Besson movie, Colombiana is ridiculous, inch-deep, critic-proof and just a ton of superkinetic fun. I began to think that maybe vengeance (in this case, on the drug lord who killed Lady's father) is a lot more fun and a lot less depressing when a woman is seeking it.
Think...
Luc Besson sure likes him some strong womanhood. The new revenger's action movie Colombiana, which he produced and co-wrote, stars Zoe Saldana and calls to mind a string of vengeful, tough, smart women in his back catalogue: La Femme Nikita, Natalie Portman in Leon, Joan of Arc in The Messenger, and the bankrobbers of Bandidas. I'm just guessing, but I think Luc Besson has a type. And her name is Lady Vengeance.
After watching Colombiana I'm inclined to ask: who can blame him? Like every Besson movie, Colombiana is ridiculous, inch-deep, critic-proof and just a ton of superkinetic fun. I began to think that maybe vengeance (in this case, on the drug lord who killed Lady's father) is a lot more fun and a lot less depressing when a woman is seeking it.
Think...
- 9/2/2011
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
Mammuth star is the honourable descendent of Parisian pugs from Lino Ventura to Vincent Cassel
We can all agree that this has been a terrible few weeks for French masculinity – thanks not only to the off-duty actions of former Imf chief and alleged "rutting chimpanzee" Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but also to the moronic, insulting rationalisations offered de haut en bas by highly placed apologists such as Bernard-Henri Lévy and Jack Lang, who've sounded like scheming bourgeois misogynists from some mid-period Claude Chabrol movie.
Before this grotesque episode, Dsk had always reminded me of the great burly, barrel-chested, ugly-beautiful stars of French gangster movies; you could just imagine him blackmailing Lino Ventura, whom he strongly resembles (all the more so in handcuffs) or beating up Yves Montand in some Pigalle pissoir.
Luckily, we can still turn to Gérard Depardieu to redeem this fine tradition of Gallic movie sex symbols resembling bison who've...
We can all agree that this has been a terrible few weeks for French masculinity – thanks not only to the off-duty actions of former Imf chief and alleged "rutting chimpanzee" Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but also to the moronic, insulting rationalisations offered de haut en bas by highly placed apologists such as Bernard-Henri Lévy and Jack Lang, who've sounded like scheming bourgeois misogynists from some mid-period Claude Chabrol movie.
Before this grotesque episode, Dsk had always reminded me of the great burly, barrel-chested, ugly-beautiful stars of French gangster movies; you could just imagine him blackmailing Lino Ventura, whom he strongly resembles (all the more so in handcuffs) or beating up Yves Montand in some Pigalle pissoir.
Luckily, we can still turn to Gérard Depardieu to redeem this fine tradition of Gallic movie sex symbols resembling bison who've...
- 5/27/2011
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
This week offered some exciting comeback prospects
The big story
He'll be back. Steel yourself for the familiar faltering speech, the muscular frame, the ruthless indefatigability. Steve Coogan revealed this week that he is planning to shoot an Alan Partridge film in the heart of the blazer-loving chatshow host's Norfolk fiefdom. Hasta la vista, Norwich.
Trying vainly to steal Partridge's thunder came reports this week of another comeback. Arnold Schwarzenegger is apparently lined up for a fifth Terminator film.
In other news
• Terrence Malick's Tree of Life to debut in Cannes after all
• Jack's Black: Osbourne Jr to direct Black Sabbath feature film
• Gay Bollywood film funded by Facebook friends
• Pinewood backs Peel takeover bid
• Church of Scientology buys historic Hollywood studios
• Russell Crowe tipped to direct James Ellroy film 77
• Previously banned tale of forbidden love may now be shown in Egypt
• YouTube to launch movie rental service
• Lindsay Lohan...
The big story
He'll be back. Steel yourself for the familiar faltering speech, the muscular frame, the ruthless indefatigability. Steve Coogan revealed this week that he is planning to shoot an Alan Partridge film in the heart of the blazer-loving chatshow host's Norfolk fiefdom. Hasta la vista, Norwich.
Trying vainly to steal Partridge's thunder came reports this week of another comeback. Arnold Schwarzenegger is apparently lined up for a fifth Terminator film.
In other news
• Terrence Malick's Tree of Life to debut in Cannes after all
• Jack's Black: Osbourne Jr to direct Black Sabbath feature film
• Gay Bollywood film funded by Facebook friends
• Pinewood backs Peel takeover bid
• Church of Scientology buys historic Hollywood studios
• Russell Crowe tipped to direct James Ellroy film 77
• Previously banned tale of forbidden love may now be shown in Egypt
• YouTube to launch movie rental service
• Lindsay Lohan...
- 4/28/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
The Fighter gives other fight movies a bloody nose, says John Patterson, because it rains blows on its protagonists both in and outside the ring
The biggest loser in David O Russell's The Fighter is the fight-movie in particular, and the sports-movie genre in general. Usually when a sports movie kicks off, we can anticipate a harrowingly familiar structure defined by the passage of the season, from warm-ups and practice through qualifying heats - or, in this case, bouts - through the quarters and semis and the final itself, with a side-dish of triumph over adversity, moral or familial redemption, getting the girl and saving your soul. It's an iron-clad formula that makes sports movies similar to rock'n'roll biopics like Ray and Walk The Line – they have exactly the same plot and structure, and are often the same movie.
The best sports movies are the ones with the smallest amount...
The biggest loser in David O Russell's The Fighter is the fight-movie in particular, and the sports-movie genre in general. Usually when a sports movie kicks off, we can anticipate a harrowingly familiar structure defined by the passage of the season, from warm-ups and practice through qualifying heats - or, in this case, bouts - through the quarters and semis and the final itself, with a side-dish of triumph over adversity, moral or familial redemption, getting the girl and saving your soul. It's an iron-clad formula that makes sports movies similar to rock'n'roll biopics like Ray and Walk The Line – they have exactly the same plot and structure, and are often the same movie.
The best sports movies are the ones with the smallest amount...
- 1/29/2011
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
Joan Jett may have loved rock'n'roll but it almost killed her former band, the Runaways. John Patterson thinks it's time we faced the music
There are some rock'n'roll movies, like Floyd Mutrux's American Hot Wax and Bob Zemeckis's I Wanna Hold Your Hand, that manage to convey the palpable sense – palpable, that is, to a hormone-wracked teenager – that rock'n'roll can literally save your life. A particularly wrenching scene in the former has its lead character, a teenage Brill Building songwriter, sobbing with gratitude backstage at one of DJ Alan Freed's early Moondog Matinee rock'n'roll revues in 1955, as she gratefully acknowledges that this music came along for her at exactly the right moment in her life, and that said life would be empty and pointless for her without it. That scene always destroys me.
The Runaways has a little of this feeling, but given the already ruined lives of...
There are some rock'n'roll movies, like Floyd Mutrux's American Hot Wax and Bob Zemeckis's I Wanna Hold Your Hand, that manage to convey the palpable sense – palpable, that is, to a hormone-wracked teenager – that rock'n'roll can literally save your life. A particularly wrenching scene in the former has its lead character, a teenage Brill Building songwriter, sobbing with gratitude backstage at one of DJ Alan Freed's early Moondog Matinee rock'n'roll revues in 1955, as she gratefully acknowledges that this music came along for her at exactly the right moment in her life, and that said life would be empty and pointless for her without it. That scene always destroys me.
The Runaways has a little of this feeling, but given the already ruined lives of...
- 8/27/2010
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
Part of a film dynasty, he's unforgettable on screen, but has never had an acting lesson. Is it all in the genes for John's late-flowering son, asks John Patterson
If you don't already know whose son Danny Huston is, the fastest way to figure it out is to close your eyes and listen to him speak. The words waft towards you on a breathy cloud, lent colour and character by a detectable lifelong smoking habit (no emphysema like the Old Man had, though, not yet). In a faded American accent that sounds as if it's been acquired or borrowed or even half-forgotten in exile. All inflected with an Irishman's love of words-as-song and a bullshitter's devotion to the art of speech. Every so often a story – and they're all well-told, like dad's were – will resolve itself into a generous, wheezy burst of laughter that's like an invitation to intimacy and friendship.
If you don't already know whose son Danny Huston is, the fastest way to figure it out is to close your eyes and listen to him speak. The words waft towards you on a breathy cloud, lent colour and character by a detectable lifelong smoking habit (no emphysema like the Old Man had, though, not yet). In a faded American accent that sounds as if it's been acquired or borrowed or even half-forgotten in exile. All inflected with an Irishman's love of words-as-song and a bullshitter's devotion to the art of speech. Every so often a story – and they're all well-told, like dad's were – will resolve itself into a generous, wheezy burst of laughter that's like an invitation to intimacy and friendship.
- 2/25/2010
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
The Manchester-born actor on why she has played truants, schemers and tearaways all her life
"Am I blind or are you hiding?" I get this text from Joanne Whalley as I'm looking directly at her, eye to eye, at a coffeeshop near her home in West Hollywood. She's the one who seems to be hiding: slender and on the small side, wearing sombre colours and sunglasses on a gloomy winter's day. She might be a suburban mother picking up the kids, or one of those quietly dangerous film-noirish women – in shades, dressed to blend in – she has played on more than one occasion.
After the release of Scandal in 1989, in which she played Christine Keeler, Whalley seemed on the verge of something huge. She had recently married the Hollywood star Val Kilmer and moved to the Us. But the marriage lasted eight years, and the career did not. Some people...
"Am I blind or are you hiding?" I get this text from Joanne Whalley as I'm looking directly at her, eye to eye, at a coffeeshop near her home in West Hollywood. She's the one who seems to be hiding: slender and on the small side, wearing sombre colours and sunglasses on a gloomy winter's day. She might be a suburban mother picking up the kids, or one of those quietly dangerous film-noirish women – in shades, dressed to blend in – she has played on more than one occasion.
After the release of Scandal in 1989, in which she played Christine Keeler, Whalley seemed on the verge of something huge. She had recently married the Hollywood star Val Kilmer and moved to the Us. But the marriage lasted eight years, and the career did not. Some people...
- 1/28/2010
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
He is one of the world's most revered action directors, twice rescuing the Bond franchise. Now Martin Campbell has returned to Edge of Darkness, the 1980s TV drama that made his name. He talks to John Patterson
He has directed a string of global box-office smashes and honed action film-making down to a fine art, but Martin Campbell doesn't scream and shout about it. Or himself. A relentlessly self-effacing man, he is keen, in his plainspoken New Zealander way, not to get "too up myself". In person, he looks quite tough, combining a lean physique with a convict's buzz-cut, but he is instantly friendly, if maddeningly modest about his achievements. As he discusses his career – which has taken him from New Zealand to Britain to Los Angeles, and from TV drama to blockbusters – one theme keeps recurring: that film-making is a team event, "not an ego trip".
Yet Campbell...
He has directed a string of global box-office smashes and honed action film-making down to a fine art, but Martin Campbell doesn't scream and shout about it. Or himself. A relentlessly self-effacing man, he is keen, in his plainspoken New Zealander way, not to get "too up myself". In person, he looks quite tough, combining a lean physique with a convict's buzz-cut, but he is instantly friendly, if maddeningly modest about his achievements. As he discusses his career – which has taken him from New Zealand to Britain to Los Angeles, and from TV drama to blockbusters – one theme keeps recurring: that film-making is a team event, "not an ego trip".
Yet Campbell...
- 1/27/2010
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
44 Inch Chest stars Deadwood's Ian McShane alongside a who's-who of British beefcake, but who would make John Patterson's dream team of UK movie hard men?
I have to admit I like the look of 44 Inch Chest, and particularly its wall-to-wall cast of British hard men: Ray Winstone, Ian McShane, Steven Berkoff and John Hurt.
John Hurt, you say, a British tough guy? Well, it's all about stunt-casting here; almost every major piece of casting works because somewhere in each actor's back catalogue is at least one meaty outing as a nasty piece of work brandishing a gun. For Hurt it was Stephen Frears's mid-80s Spanish revenger's road-movie The Hit.
Ian McShane is actually a two-stage piece of stunt casting. When he was cast as the ambi-sexual crime lord in Sexy Beast, the film-makers were referencing his role as Richard Burton's gangland catamite in Villain (1971), and...
I have to admit I like the look of 44 Inch Chest, and particularly its wall-to-wall cast of British hard men: Ray Winstone, Ian McShane, Steven Berkoff and John Hurt.
John Hurt, you say, a British tough guy? Well, it's all about stunt-casting here; almost every major piece of casting works because somewhere in each actor's back catalogue is at least one meaty outing as a nasty piece of work brandishing a gun. For Hurt it was Stephen Frears's mid-80s Spanish revenger's road-movie The Hit.
Ian McShane is actually a two-stage piece of stunt casting. When he was cast as the ambi-sexual crime lord in Sexy Beast, the film-makers were referencing his role as Richard Burton's gangland catamite in Villain (1971), and...
- 1/9/2010
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
Terrence Malick's The New World doesn't have fans, just fanatics – John Patterson among them. He explains the purity and beauty of this bottomless movie, which came and went in a month in the middle of the decade
This decade hasn't been up to much, movie-wise, but I am more than ever convinced that when every other scrap of celluloid from 2000-2009 has crumbled to dust, one film will remain, like some Ozymandias-like remnant of transient vanished glory in the desert. And that film is The New World, Terrence Malick's American foundation myth, which arrived just as the decade reached its dismal halfway point, in January 2006.
It's been said that The New World doesn't have fans: it has disciples and partisans and fanatics. I'm one of them, and my fanaticism burns undimmed 30 or more viewings later. The New World is a bottomless movie, almost unspeakably beautiful and formally harmonious.
This decade hasn't been up to much, movie-wise, but I am more than ever convinced that when every other scrap of celluloid from 2000-2009 has crumbled to dust, one film will remain, like some Ozymandias-like remnant of transient vanished glory in the desert. And that film is The New World, Terrence Malick's American foundation myth, which arrived just as the decade reached its dismal halfway point, in January 2006.
It's been said that The New World doesn't have fans: it has disciples and partisans and fanatics. I'm one of them, and my fanaticism burns undimmed 30 or more viewings later. The New World is a bottomless movie, almost unspeakably beautiful and formally harmonious.
- 12/10/2009
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
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