The feature continuation of “Downton Abbey” reunites the cast and much of the crew of the period TV series with a mandate to deliver more of the glamour, drama and just plain kindness that prompted millions of viewers on both sides of the Atlantic to fall under the spell of the sprawling Crawley family.
“We wanted to make it more luxurious, more exotic, more visually stimulating, more cinematic,” says production designer Donal Woods, who worked on all six seasons of the series as well as the feature, which bows Sept. 13 in the U.K. and Sept. 20 in the U.S.
Written by series creator Julian Fellowes and directed by Michael Engler, the feature reunites Maggie Smith, Michelle Dockery, Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern and Jim Carter, and brings in newcomers Imelda Staunton and Geraldine James, as part of an ensemble cast with 17 lead characters. The story picks up in 1927, a few years after the series’ end,...
“We wanted to make it more luxurious, more exotic, more visually stimulating, more cinematic,” says production designer Donal Woods, who worked on all six seasons of the series as well as the feature, which bows Sept. 13 in the U.K. and Sept. 20 in the U.S.
Written by series creator Julian Fellowes and directed by Michael Engler, the feature reunites Maggie Smith, Michelle Dockery, Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern and Jim Carter, and brings in newcomers Imelda Staunton and Geraldine James, as part of an ensemble cast with 17 lead characters. The story picks up in 1927, a few years after the series’ end,...
- 9/11/2019
- by Valentina I. Valentini
- Variety Film + TV
If one were to judge “Lost in London” solely on the impressive technical feat of producing a live feature film in a single take over the course of two hours, “Lost in London” would be a resounding success. Unfortunately, that’s not how movies work. While Woody Harrelson’s directorial debut experiment went off largely without a hitch, it’s unclear if anyone would care about “Lost in London” if it weren’t filmed live. Despite its unique production, the script (written by Harrelson) suffers from a plot line that drags even as its star hustles to keep up, Hollywood insider jokes that fall flat despite being low-hanging fruit, and a culturally tone-deaf script that is not worth straining to hear over the canned background noise.
Inspired by the true events of one “wild night” Harrelson had in 2012 (celebrities are so crazy!), the movie begins with Harrelson, as himself, exiting...
Inspired by the true events of one “wild night” Harrelson had in 2012 (celebrities are so crazy!), the movie begins with Harrelson, as himself, exiting...
- 1/20/2017
- by Jude Dry
- Indiewire
Screen reports from the live event movie, which was filmed last night (Jan 20) in the UK capital.
For his first film behind the camera, writer-director-star Woody Harrelson has taken a number of recent cinematic and broadcast innovations, most notably one-shot movies (Victoria and Russian Ark), real-time storytelling and live broadcasts, and rolled them into one extravagant event.
Lost In London was beamed live in 500 screens across America but just a single cinema in London on account of its 2am shoot. The film contained 24 locations, including a restaurant, a nightclub, a police cell and Waterloo Bridge (whose sudden closure almost derailed the show), and more than 30 actors.
The preamble to the London screening was filled with clips of well-known celebrities (including Daniel Radcliffe, Justin Timberlake and Jennifer Lawrence) teasing Harrelson for taking on what they jokingly referred to as a great folly. Harrelson’s script maintains this light-hearted tone as it recounts details of the worst night of his...
For his first film behind the camera, writer-director-star Woody Harrelson has taken a number of recent cinematic and broadcast innovations, most notably one-shot movies (Victoria and Russian Ark), real-time storytelling and live broadcasts, and rolled them into one extravagant event.
Lost In London was beamed live in 500 screens across America but just a single cinema in London on account of its 2am shoot. The film contained 24 locations, including a restaurant, a nightclub, a police cell and Waterloo Bridge (whose sudden closure almost derailed the show), and more than 30 actors.
The preamble to the London screening was filled with clips of well-known celebrities (including Daniel Radcliffe, Justin Timberlake and Jennifer Lawrence) teasing Harrelson for taking on what they jokingly referred to as a great folly. Harrelson’s script maintains this light-hearted tone as it recounts details of the worst night of his...
- 1/20/2017
- ScreenDaily
In 2002, the star ended up in jail after being chased through London by police. Now he’s turning that wild night into a single-take movie starring Owen Wilson and Willie Nelson to be beamed live into cinemas. What could possibly go wrong?
It is almost midnight on Monday evening and Woody Harrelson is showing me around the set for his directorial debut, Lost in London. An unused building in the centre of the capital has been commandeered to house assorted locations including a club with burlesque trimmings where gold statues dangle from the ceiling and a police station complete with cells and interview rooms.
There’s just one problem: Harrelson doesn’t seem to know where he is. “Hold on,” he mumbles. “I lost track of what floor we’re on. Where’s the …?” His bleariness has always been a considerable part of his charm: that sleepy Texan drawl, that quizzical gaze,...
It is almost midnight on Monday evening and Woody Harrelson is showing me around the set for his directorial debut, Lost in London. An unused building in the centre of the capital has been commandeered to house assorted locations including a club with burlesque trimmings where gold statues dangle from the ceiling and a police station complete with cells and interview rooms.
There’s just one problem: Harrelson doesn’t seem to know where he is. “Hold on,” he mumbles. “I lost track of what floor we’re on. Where’s the …?” His bleariness has always been a considerable part of his charm: that sleepy Texan drawl, that quizzical gaze,...
- 1/17/2017
- by Ryan Gilbey
- The Guardian - Film News
"Four Weddings and a Funeral" star Anna Chancellor is making another trip down the aisle - the British actress is set to marry for a second time on Sunday, September 26. The 45 year old, whose character 'Duckface' was dumped at the altar by Hugh Grant in the 1994 movie, will exchange vows with her long term partner Redha Debbah in London at the weekend.
The couple will exchange vows in front of 200 guests at The 20th Century Theatre in Notting Hill - the area which inspired the 1999 movie of the same name featuring her "Four Weddings" co-star Grant. Chancellor was previously married to cameraman Nigel Willoughby for four years until 1999.
According to Daily Mail, around 200 guests are expected, including her daughter Poppy, 22, who works as an-illustrator and was the somewhat unexpected result of a romance the actress had at drama school with cult poet Jock Scott.
The couple will exchange vows in front of 200 guests at The 20th Century Theatre in Notting Hill - the area which inspired the 1999 movie of the same name featuring her "Four Weddings" co-star Grant. Chancellor was previously married to cameraman Nigel Willoughby for four years until 1999.
According to Daily Mail, around 200 guests are expected, including her daughter Poppy, 22, who works as an-illustrator and was the somewhat unexpected result of a romance the actress had at drama school with cult poet Jock Scott.
- 9/25/2010
- by AceShowbiz.com
- Aceshowbiz
Four Weddings And A Funeral star Anna Chancellor is making another trip down the aisle - the British actress is set to marry for a second time on Sunday.
The 45 year old, whose character 'Duckface' was dumped at the altar by Hugh Grant in the 1994 movie, will exchange vows with her long term partner Redha Debbah in London at the weekend (25-26Sep10).
The couple will exchange vows in front of 200 guests at The 20th Century Theatre in Notting Hill - the area which inspired the 1999 movie of the same name featuring her Four Weddings co-star Grant.
Chancellor was previously married to cameraman Nigel Willoughby for four years until 1999.
The 45 year old, whose character 'Duckface' was dumped at the altar by Hugh Grant in the 1994 movie, will exchange vows with her long term partner Redha Debbah in London at the weekend (25-26Sep10).
The couple will exchange vows in front of 200 guests at The 20th Century Theatre in Notting Hill - the area which inspired the 1999 movie of the same name featuring her Four Weddings co-star Grant.
Chancellor was previously married to cameraman Nigel Willoughby for four years until 1999.
- 9/24/2010
- WENN
Venice International Film Festival
VENICE, Italy -- Few countries have a handle on matters of immigration, but a combination of free market profit-seeking and nanny-state regulations has resulted in a singular mess in Great Britain, as Ken Loach illustrates in his tough-minded slice of life picture "It's a Free World."
The ironically-titled movie, screened in competition at the Venice International Film Festival, focuses on a spirited young English woman who becomes inured to the fate of immigrants while working for a big recruiting agency. Battered by her own work experience, she starts up a new agency, but the opportunity to make big money by exploiting the desperate and vulnerable leads to corruption and violence.
Loach is in excellent form making the most of a shrewd screenplay by Paul Laverty and drawing a winning performance from newcomer Kierston Wareing as a brassy but misguided entrepreneur. The film should play well when it is telecast on Channel 4 in the U.K., and prospects are bright for its theatrical release elsewhere, not least because the dilemma it profiles is universal.
Cinematographer Nigel Willoughby and editor Jonathan Morris contribute much to the film's brisk energy while composer George Fenton's score, using alto sax and viola to great effect, illuminates its changing moods.
Immigrants enter the U.K. from all over the world, legally and illegally, and many of them are at the mercy of recruitment agencies that, if not entirely criminal, have dubious credentials. At one of them, Angie (Wareing) has a knack for placing workers into jobs but gets no respect from her male coworkers, who mostly see her as sexual fodder.
When complaining gets her fired, Angie convinces roommate Rose (Juliet Ellis), a college graduate who works at a call center, that they should go into business for themselves. Angie has a way with men, so she makes the rounds drumming up business while Rose works the phone and the Internet.
No matter how well educated people may be in their home countries, qualifications are irrelevant and the only work available is drudgery. Angie and Rose make contracts with builders, caterers, packagers, and others, for a given number of workers. Then they contract with the immigrants and send them jammed into vans for a day's work.
The film provides an urgent snapshot of one small part of a big problem, and offers a memorably tragic character in Angie. She goes nose-to-nose with tough-guy employers and fights for every inch of her place in the world. But she can't keep a relationship with a smart and caring Polish man (Leslaw Zurek), and the more things get out of hand the more callous she becomes and the more willing to flout the law.And while chasing her materialistic goals, she is a single mother whose son Jamie (Joe Siffleet) is in trouble at school and whose father, Geoff (Colin Coughlin) is a retiree who recalls when working people were paid more respect.
That's a time that has little place in the world sketched by Loach and Laverty. They offer no answers in this vivid and troublesome film, but then there probably aren't any.
IT'S A FREE WORLD
Pathe Distribution
Sixteen Films, Film4
Director: Ken Loach
Writer: Paul Laverty
Producer: Rebecca O'Brien
Executive producer: Ulrich Felsberg
Director of photography: Nigel Willoughby
Production designer: Fergus Clegg
Music: George Fenton
Costume designer: Carole K. Fraser
Editor: Jonathan Morris
Cast:
Angie: Kierston Wareing
Rose: Juliet Ellis
Karol: Leslaw Zurek
Jamie: Joe Siffleet
Geoff: Colin Coughlin
Cathy: Maggie Hussey
Andy: Raymond Mearns
Mahmoud: Davoud Rastgau
Mahmoud's wife: Mahin Aminnia
Children: Shadeh and Sheeva Kavousian
Derek: Frank Gilhooley
Tony: David Doyle
Company directors: Eddie Webber, Johnny Palmiero
Angry worker: Faruk Pruti
Headmistress: Jackie Robinson Brown
Attacker: Miro Somers
Care team: Neal Barry, Mick Connolly, Sian Wheldon
Polish translator: Malgorzata Zawadzka
Ukrainian translators: Marina Chykalovets, Oksana Gayvas
Motorbike riders: Abbi Collins, Julie Maynard
No MPAA rating, running time 93 minutes...
VENICE, Italy -- Few countries have a handle on matters of immigration, but a combination of free market profit-seeking and nanny-state regulations has resulted in a singular mess in Great Britain, as Ken Loach illustrates in his tough-minded slice of life picture "It's a Free World."
The ironically-titled movie, screened in competition at the Venice International Film Festival, focuses on a spirited young English woman who becomes inured to the fate of immigrants while working for a big recruiting agency. Battered by her own work experience, she starts up a new agency, but the opportunity to make big money by exploiting the desperate and vulnerable leads to corruption and violence.
Loach is in excellent form making the most of a shrewd screenplay by Paul Laverty and drawing a winning performance from newcomer Kierston Wareing as a brassy but misguided entrepreneur. The film should play well when it is telecast on Channel 4 in the U.K., and prospects are bright for its theatrical release elsewhere, not least because the dilemma it profiles is universal.
Cinematographer Nigel Willoughby and editor Jonathan Morris contribute much to the film's brisk energy while composer George Fenton's score, using alto sax and viola to great effect, illuminates its changing moods.
Immigrants enter the U.K. from all over the world, legally and illegally, and many of them are at the mercy of recruitment agencies that, if not entirely criminal, have dubious credentials. At one of them, Angie (Wareing) has a knack for placing workers into jobs but gets no respect from her male coworkers, who mostly see her as sexual fodder.
When complaining gets her fired, Angie convinces roommate Rose (Juliet Ellis), a college graduate who works at a call center, that they should go into business for themselves. Angie has a way with men, so she makes the rounds drumming up business while Rose works the phone and the Internet.
No matter how well educated people may be in their home countries, qualifications are irrelevant and the only work available is drudgery. Angie and Rose make contracts with builders, caterers, packagers, and others, for a given number of workers. Then they contract with the immigrants and send them jammed into vans for a day's work.
The film provides an urgent snapshot of one small part of a big problem, and offers a memorably tragic character in Angie. She goes nose-to-nose with tough-guy employers and fights for every inch of her place in the world. But she can't keep a relationship with a smart and caring Polish man (Leslaw Zurek), and the more things get out of hand the more callous she becomes and the more willing to flout the law.And while chasing her materialistic goals, she is a single mother whose son Jamie (Joe Siffleet) is in trouble at school and whose father, Geoff (Colin Coughlin) is a retiree who recalls when working people were paid more respect.
That's a time that has little place in the world sketched by Loach and Laverty. They offer no answers in this vivid and troublesome film, but then there probably aren't any.
IT'S A FREE WORLD
Pathe Distribution
Sixteen Films, Film4
Director: Ken Loach
Writer: Paul Laverty
Producer: Rebecca O'Brien
Executive producer: Ulrich Felsberg
Director of photography: Nigel Willoughby
Production designer: Fergus Clegg
Music: George Fenton
Costume designer: Carole K. Fraser
Editor: Jonathan Morris
Cast:
Angie: Kierston Wareing
Rose: Juliet Ellis
Karol: Leslaw Zurek
Jamie: Joe Siffleet
Geoff: Colin Coughlin
Cathy: Maggie Hussey
Andy: Raymond Mearns
Mahmoud: Davoud Rastgau
Mahmoud's wife: Mahin Aminnia
Children: Shadeh and Sheeva Kavousian
Derek: Frank Gilhooley
Tony: David Doyle
Company directors: Eddie Webber, Johnny Palmiero
Angry worker: Faruk Pruti
Headmistress: Jackie Robinson Brown
Attacker: Miro Somers
Care team: Neal Barry, Mick Connolly, Sian Wheldon
Polish translator: Malgorzata Zawadzka
Ukrainian translators: Marina Chykalovets, Oksana Gayvas
Motorbike riders: Abbi Collins, Julie Maynard
No MPAA rating, running time 93 minutes...
"The Magdalene Sisters", the second feature written and directed by actor Peter Mullan, is a prisoner-of-war story with a unique twist -- the war isn't a shooting war but rather a religious battle for the hearts, minds and unpaid labor of a group of Catholic women.
The time is 1964. The place is an Irish Catholic convent for "wayward girls." The Magdalene convent, run by the Sisters of Mercy, is in fact a laundry business that benefits from the forced labor of women consigned to such convents by their families for transgressions either real or imagined.
The film, which recently won the Venice International Film Festival's top prize, the Golden Lion, and subsequently was acquired by Miramax, is an angry, bitter film certain to electrify audiences with its dramatic intensity. It certainly has angered the Catholic Church, which has condemned it. The Venice win coupled with further festival exposure and the controversy surrounding the church's denunciation will undoubtedly help Miramax to reach art house audiences and perhaps beyond.
The film follows the stories of three young women who arrive at the convent on the same day. Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff) is raped by a cousin during a wedding celebration. In an astonishing sequence, as gay music and commotion fill the soundtrack, her tearful confession to a family member gets related to other family members, provoking sharp looks all around. In the very next scene, this "sinner" is forcibly removed from the family home.
Rose (Dorothy Duffy) gives birth to an illegitimate son. As a manipulative priest cons her into giving up the boy for adoption, her parents, who refuse even to look at their grandchild, pack her off to the convent.
The most outrageous case concerns Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone), an orphan whose good looks attracts too much attention from young boys. Having no family, it's all too easy for the strong-minded girl to be branded a temptress and sent to the nuns.
Like all good POW movies, "Magdalene" carefully indoctrinates the viewer into the inmates' life of harsh discipline and punishment. Their chief tormentor is Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan), a fierce, uncompromising force who sees herself as the vessel of God's wrath against sinners. All the nuns, though, are portrayed as sadists; they are clearly products of sexual repression and religious intolerance who clearly enjoy their role as bullies.
One of the most ruthlessly abused girls is feeble-minded Crispina (Eileen Walsh), who believes she can communicate through a St. Christopher medal with the son removed from her care. But sooner or later, everyone suffers from mistreatment. Some of the women even wind up believing in the righteousness of the nuns' wrath.
This is an angry film from Mullan, who appears briefly -- and tellingly -- as a brutal father of one young woman. There is little arguing with the truthfulness of his portrait of such convents in Ireland, which detained an estimated 30,000 women until the final institution closed in 1996. Mullan's script derives from a Channel Four documentary, "Sex in a Cold Climate", that was in turn based on extensive research and interviews with women imprisoned in such facilities. But Mullan's anger may have gotten the better of him as a dramatist. If he had showed even one nun as misguided but well intentioned instead of an unrepentant sadist, he might have given his film greater complexity.
A force greater than the nuns keeps the inmates from all-out revolt. Mullan, a Scot familiar with the ways of religious fundamentalism, might have further explained and explored the tenor of that time and how strict Catholicism ruled Ireland so that those outside the church could better understand how families would consign loved ones to such a house of horrors.
Mullan has DP Nigel Willoughby let light filter through windows, so browns and blacks predominate with the strongest colors coming from his characters' faces. Exterior scenes are bathed in brilliant sunshine as if to mock the women's incarceration. The director makes strong, selective use of Craig Armstrong's muscular score.
THE MAGDALENE SISTERS
Miramax Films
A Scottish Film Council/Irish Film Board presentation in association with Momentum Pictures PFP Films Ltd. in association with Temple Films
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Peter Mullan
Producer: Frances Higson
Executive producers: Ed Guiney, Paul Trijbits
Director of photography: Nigel Willoughby
Production designer: Mark Leese
Music: Craig Armstrong
Costume designer: Trisha Biggar
Editor: Colin Monie
Cast:
Bernadette: Nora-Jane Noone
Margaret: Anne-Marie Duff
Rose: Dorothy Duffy
Sister Bridget: Geraldine McEwan
Crispina: Eileen Walsh
Running time -- 119 minutes
No MPAA rating...
The time is 1964. The place is an Irish Catholic convent for "wayward girls." The Magdalene convent, run by the Sisters of Mercy, is in fact a laundry business that benefits from the forced labor of women consigned to such convents by their families for transgressions either real or imagined.
The film, which recently won the Venice International Film Festival's top prize, the Golden Lion, and subsequently was acquired by Miramax, is an angry, bitter film certain to electrify audiences with its dramatic intensity. It certainly has angered the Catholic Church, which has condemned it. The Venice win coupled with further festival exposure and the controversy surrounding the church's denunciation will undoubtedly help Miramax to reach art house audiences and perhaps beyond.
The film follows the stories of three young women who arrive at the convent on the same day. Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff) is raped by a cousin during a wedding celebration. In an astonishing sequence, as gay music and commotion fill the soundtrack, her tearful confession to a family member gets related to other family members, provoking sharp looks all around. In the very next scene, this "sinner" is forcibly removed from the family home.
Rose (Dorothy Duffy) gives birth to an illegitimate son. As a manipulative priest cons her into giving up the boy for adoption, her parents, who refuse even to look at their grandchild, pack her off to the convent.
The most outrageous case concerns Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone), an orphan whose good looks attracts too much attention from young boys. Having no family, it's all too easy for the strong-minded girl to be branded a temptress and sent to the nuns.
Like all good POW movies, "Magdalene" carefully indoctrinates the viewer into the inmates' life of harsh discipline and punishment. Their chief tormentor is Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan), a fierce, uncompromising force who sees herself as the vessel of God's wrath against sinners. All the nuns, though, are portrayed as sadists; they are clearly products of sexual repression and religious intolerance who clearly enjoy their role as bullies.
One of the most ruthlessly abused girls is feeble-minded Crispina (Eileen Walsh), who believes she can communicate through a St. Christopher medal with the son removed from her care. But sooner or later, everyone suffers from mistreatment. Some of the women even wind up believing in the righteousness of the nuns' wrath.
This is an angry film from Mullan, who appears briefly -- and tellingly -- as a brutal father of one young woman. There is little arguing with the truthfulness of his portrait of such convents in Ireland, which detained an estimated 30,000 women until the final institution closed in 1996. Mullan's script derives from a Channel Four documentary, "Sex in a Cold Climate", that was in turn based on extensive research and interviews with women imprisoned in such facilities. But Mullan's anger may have gotten the better of him as a dramatist. If he had showed even one nun as misguided but well intentioned instead of an unrepentant sadist, he might have given his film greater complexity.
A force greater than the nuns keeps the inmates from all-out revolt. Mullan, a Scot familiar with the ways of religious fundamentalism, might have further explained and explored the tenor of that time and how strict Catholicism ruled Ireland so that those outside the church could better understand how families would consign loved ones to such a house of horrors.
Mullan has DP Nigel Willoughby let light filter through windows, so browns and blacks predominate with the strongest colors coming from his characters' faces. Exterior scenes are bathed in brilliant sunshine as if to mock the women's incarceration. The director makes strong, selective use of Craig Armstrong's muscular score.
THE MAGDALENE SISTERS
Miramax Films
A Scottish Film Council/Irish Film Board presentation in association with Momentum Pictures PFP Films Ltd. in association with Temple Films
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Peter Mullan
Producer: Frances Higson
Executive producers: Ed Guiney, Paul Trijbits
Director of photography: Nigel Willoughby
Production designer: Mark Leese
Music: Craig Armstrong
Costume designer: Trisha Biggar
Editor: Colin Monie
Cast:
Bernadette: Nora-Jane Noone
Margaret: Anne-Marie Duff
Rose: Dorothy Duffy
Sister Bridget: Geraldine McEwan
Crispina: Eileen Walsh
Running time -- 119 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 9/20/2002
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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