TV REVIEW: Felicity Jones in ‘Northanger Abbey’

Posted on March 24, 2007 by admin

Northanger Abbey 1 x650

By Ray Bennett

Lust and adventure figure in Andrew Davies’s imaginative and entertaining adaptation of “Northanger Abbey” starring Felicity Jones and JJ Feild (pictured), the second in ITV’s Jane Austen season airing Sunday at 9 p.m. on ITV1.

Here’s how my review begins in The Hollywood Reporter:

LONDON — ITV’s season of new Jane Austen films hits full stride with a wonderfully evocative version of “Northanger Abbey” written with flair and imagination by Andrew Davies, adding to his list of fine credits including “Bleak House,” “Tipping the Velvet” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary.”

Capturing vividly the flush and wonder of adolescence, the film mines Austen’s first-written but last-published novel to find purest nuggets of wit, romance and social satire. The story’s 18th-century heroine, Catherine Morland, has a fevered imagination and Davies draws on Austen’s droll illustrations of it to create scenes of gothic adventure.

This is Austen for those who imagine wrongly that her novels are dry and dainty. There’s lust and hunger in these characters and Davies, along with director Jon Jones (“A Very Social Secretary,” “Archangel”), gives them full rein while never betraying the social straightjackets of the time.

 

Posted in Reviews, Television | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on TV REVIEW: Felicity Jones in ‘Northanger Abbey’

Channeling Edith Piaf in ‘La Vie en Rose’

Posted on March 21, 2007 by admin

la-vie-en-rose- Cotillard x650

By Ray Bennett

EMI Music sent over their soundtrack CD for the film “La Vie en Rose,” a biography of French singer Edith Piaf, and I’ve been playing it ever since (alternating with Ry Cooder’s exceptional “My Name is Buddy”)

The English-language package of the CD features 27 tracks including 11 Piaf classics such as the title song, “Milord” and “Non, Je ne regrette rien.” There are Edith-Piaf-La-Vie-En-Rose album x325nine cues from composer Christopher Gunning’s original score and seven additional songs, some featuring Jill Aigrot, who sounds so much like Piaf it’s impossible to tell them apart. The recordings are rich and evocative.

The film, which is titled “La Môme” in France, made $32.3 million in its first month of release in director Olivier Dahan’s homeland thanks largely to Marion Cotillard’s much praised star turn as the Little Sparrow (pictured top).

The Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt called the performance by Cotillard (“A Good Year,” “A Very Long Engagement”) “extraordinarily brave” and wrote that “every gesture and singing performance channels not only Piaf but perhaps a bit of Judy Garland.”

Picturehouse Entertainment will release “La Vie en Rose” in key cities in the United States on June 8 and Icon Film Distribution has announced it will release the picture in the United Kingdom on June 22.

Posted in Film, Music, Notes | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Channeling Edith Piaf in ‘La Vie en Rose’

THEATRE REVIEW: Robert Lindsay in ‘The Entertainer’

Posted on March 20, 2007 by admin

Robert Lindsay The Entertainer

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – The shadow of Laurence Olivier’s performance as Archie Rice looms so large over John Osborne’s 1956 play “The Entertainer” that it’s almost surprising to rediscover what a sturdy piece of work it is.

Robert Lindsay, a big name in British film and theater, takes the role in the Old Vic’s revival of the play, but director Sean Holmes makes him much more a part of the ensemble than occupant of his own spotlight. The result pares down the scabrous nature of Archie’s camp personality but makes the character considerably more human.

Olivier’s choice of the role of the uncouth, untalented and downright obnoxious music-hall entertainer gave a turbo charge to the great man’s fading career and also helped fuel the change in British theatre and film from depictions of staid middle-class drawing rooms to vulgar, not to say squalid, working-class kitchens.

Set at a time when Britain was making one of its periodic and catastrophic military forays into the Middle East, the play sees the country itself as a decaying music hall, filled with old delusions of grandeur, rampant prejudice and disdain for the poor and foreign.

Lacking the talent of his forebears, including his father Billy (John Normington), who was a gifted performer, Archie delivers rancid jokes, off-key ditties and clumsy soft-shoe numbers to bored seaside audiences who are only in the theater to see the statuesque but motionless naked women. The play alternates between scenes of Rice’s performances onstage and his equally pathetic lies and affectations in the company of his unhappy family.

Having not paid income tax for 20 years, Archie fears every knock on the door but still imagines that his latest 20-year-old flame will be waiting for him if he dumps Phoebe. His wife frets over the fate of their son Mick, who is serving in the army that has just invaded Suez, while Jean has called off her engagement because her young man didn’t like her joining a Trafalgar Square protest demonstration.

There are slight problems with this production. Designer Anthony Lamble’s set is unconvincing with a backdrop of three giant nudes for Archie’s set-pieces, and Lindsay is just too good a song-and-dance man (see Carl Reiner’s 1989 “Bert Rigby, You’re a Fool”) to be convincing as someone with no talent at all.

But Lindsay makes a shrewd choice in not emulating the way Olivier went for the jugular with Archie’s merciless sarcasm. Ferris plays the neglected and not very bright wife with great compassion, and Normington is a delight as the doddering and nostalgic old music-hall player.

All the elements in the play are eerily topical, and while the British Empire is long gone, the current fears over incompetent political leaders and crumbling institutions make “The Entertainer” thoroughly pertinent.

Vnue: The Old Vic; Cast: Robert Lindsay; Pam Ferris; Emma Cunniffe; John Normington; David Dawson; Lindsey Lennon; Jim Creighton; Brother Bill: Andrew McDonald; Playwright: John Osborne; Director: Sean Holmes; Designer: Anthony Lamble; Lighting designer: Peter Mumford; Music: John Addison; Choreography: Paul Harris; Sound designer: Fergus O’Hare.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter and Reuters.

 

Posted in Reviews, Theatre | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on THEATRE REVIEW: Robert Lindsay in ‘The Entertainer’

Clive Owen: Man among ‘Children’

Posted on March 19, 2007 by admin

Film Title: Children of Men

By Ray Bennett

For some reason, Metacritic read my review of “Children of Men” from the Venice International Film Festival last fall and concluded I gave it an 80% rating. In fact, I ranked Alfonso Cuaron’s extraordinary film along with Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Babel” and Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” (El Laberinto del fauno) as the Top 3 movies of 2006.

Emmanuel Lubezki richly deserved his prizes for best cinematography from BAFTA and the American Society of Cinematographers, and likewise Geoffrey Kirkland, Jim Clay, Jennifer Williams for their BAFTA award for best production design. But the film warranted far more accolades than that.

Today, Universal releases a two-disc special edition DVD of “Children of Men”, which stars Clive Owen and Julianne Moore (pictured) and Michael Caine, with bonus features that include Cuaron’s documentary “The Possibility of Hope” expanding on themes from the film.

My friend Glenn Abel reports on his terrific DVD Spin Doctor site (see Play it, Sam at right) that Universal will release the DVD in the United States on March 27. He also says that the “Pan’s Labyrinth” DVD is due in the U.S. from New Line on May 15.

While all the technical achievements of “Children of Men” are top class, Owen’s intelligent and nuanced performance as the reluctant hero should not be overlooked. Owen has turned in some excellent performances since Mike Hodges’s memorable 1998 picture “Croupier” helped break him into the big-time, and this is one of his best.

It will be long remembered while a good number of much-praised films from last year, such as Martin Scorsese’s rank “The Departed,” are forgotten. I continue to campaign for Hodges’ marvelously evocative crime film “I’ll Sleep When I”m Dead,” in which Owen also stars. It remains one of the great undiscovered gangster films.

Read my review on this site of “Children of Men”

 

Posted in Film, News | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Clive Owen: Man among ‘Children’

The fine eye of Joni Mitchell

Posted on March 19, 2007 by admin

joni-mitchell

By Ray Bennett

When I lived in Los Angeles, Joni Mitchell was a regular at my watering hole of choice, Dan Tana’s restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Tana’s is famously relaxed about the big names that dine there, but given Mitchell’s iconic stature and perceived reputation as a prickly artist, it was a delight to find how easygoing and gregarious she is.

Which is not to say that the Canadian singer shrinks from speaking her mind as my friend and colleague, music writer Paul Sexton, reports in a great piece in today’s Guardian.

Paul has produced a radio documentary titled “Come in From the Cold: The Return of Joni Mitchell,” based on conversations between Mitchell and British songwriter Amanda Ghost, who is a close friend of hers.

The two-part show, which airs on BBC Radio 2 March 20 and 27 at 8:30 p.m. GMT, features songs from “Shine”, Mitchell’s first album of new material in a decade that includes her setting to music Kipling’s poem “If”. It is due out in the fall.

Mitchell talks about people and things past and present including her recent involvement in “The Fiddle and the Drum”, a ballet based on her songs and art produced by Canada’s Alberta Ballet Company in Canada.

Sexton confirms that Mitchell retains her personal warmth and fine distanced eye for bullshit: “Privately, she does a mean impersonation of Bob Dylan, too, delivered as a hazy drone. ‘I’m not considered a poet’, she says. ‘Dylan is, Jim Morrison is. In a way, that’s a good thing, because I don’t like poetry, for the most part. I’m with Nietzsche, ‘They muddy their waters that they might appear deep’.”

Read Sexton’s article here. This is Mitchell’s home site.

Posted in Music, News, Notes | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Hayley Atwell one to watch in ‘Mansfield Park’

Posted on March 18, 2007 by admin

Mansfield Park Hayley Atwell Joseph Beattie x650

By Ray Bennett

Hayley Atwell steals the show as Mary Crawford, the intruder who almost ruins the hopes of poor Fanny Price (Billie Piper), in ITV’s new adaptation of “Mansfield Park”, which airs tonight.

Atwell’s sly sensuality and deftly suggestive way with words help Piper enliven what is a fairly dull film. My review is below. The two of them worked together previously in “The Ruby in the Smoke,” which aired on the BBC last year and PBS in February, and Atwell played Cat Fedden in the BBC’s “The Line of Beauty”.

Definitely worth keeping an eye on, Atwell has the lead in an upcoming comedy feature film titled “How About You,” directed by Anthony Byrne. She plays a young woman working at a residential home who is left in charge of an unruly group of pensioners over the holidays. Vanessa Redgrave, Joss Ackland and Brenda Flicker costar.

Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell are her leading men in Woody Allen’s upcoming drama “Cassandra’s Dream.” Best of all, she will play Julia Flyte opposite Ben Wishaw and Matthew Goode in Julian Jarrold’s feature film version of Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” for Ecosse Films and Hanway Films.

By the way, ITV plans to release “Mansfield Park” on DVD in the spring while Granada International is selling the TV show around the world. That won’t do any harm at all to tourism at the glorious Newby Hall, at Ripon in North Yorkshire, the Adams House used in the film for the Bertram family home.

 

Posted in Notes, Places, Television | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Hayley Atwell one to watch in ‘Mansfield Park’

FILM REVIEW: Christopher Plummer in ‘The Man in the Chair’

Posted on March 18, 2007 by admin

By Ray Bennett

There are not many good movies about making movies because the moviemakers tend to take everything far too seriously and forget that it’s only a movie. It’s all the more pleasing then that journeyman director Michael Schroeder (“Cyborg 2,” “Cyborg 3”) has come up with a small gem about making pictures titled “Man in the Chair.”

The Man in the Chair poster x325It’s far-fetched and sentimental, but it has a savvy sense of the industry and enormous charm. Christopher Plummer is terrific as a cranky old retired gaffer who helps a likeable and ambitious movie-struck kid (Michael Angarano) make a student film. M. Emmet Walsh as a washed-up screenwriter and Robert Wagner as a wealthy producer are also in good form.

The movie won the American Spirit Award, given to a unique indie feature made outside mainstream Hollywood, at the 22nd annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival, in February. It also screened in the Generation14 Plus section at the Berlinale.

Upcoming dates in the United States include the AFI Dallas International Film Festival (March 30, 31) and the Method Fest Independent Film Festival in Calabasas CA on March 31, as part of a Plummer tribute, and April 3. There’s no release yet planned for the United Kingdom but I saw it at a screening in London and reviewed it for The Hollywood Reporter. Here’s how it begins:

LONDON – There’s a lot of wishful thinking in Michael Schroeder’s “Man in the Chair,” a ramshackle but likeable story of a movie-mad L.A. kid who gets a bunch of old-timers from the motion picture retirement home to help him make a student film.

The serious topic of neglect of the aged is given a moving examination but the picture is really about wish fulfillment as a neighborhood Valley youngster competes with a well-off rival to see who can make the best short film in a school competition.

The structure is conventional but movie buffs will enjoy all the film references and the strong sense of being among industry insiders. Committed performances by a good cast topped by Christopher Plummer, M. Emmet Walsh and Robert Wagner will help the film thrive at festivals and art houses. It should also do well on DVD.

Plummer has a fine time as a cantankerous retired gaffer named Madden who we see in a flashback being given the nickname Flash by Orson Welles on the set of “Citizen Kane.” He’s a spry old guy living comfortably in a well-appointed industry nursing home, having belonged to a good union, as he points out.

 

Posted in Film, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on FILM REVIEW: Christopher Plummer in ‘The Man in the Chair’

TV REVIEW: Billie Piper in ‘Mansfield Park’

Posted on March 17, 2007 by admin

Billie Piper Mansfield Park x650

By Ray Bennett

Billie Piper hardly has to prove herself any more as a television actress after “Canterbury Tales,” “Doctor Who” and “The Ruby In the Smoke,” and she’s very good in “Mansfield Park,” which airs on the U.K.’s ITV1 Sunday night.

She brings an appealing sense of mischief to the role of Fanny Price opposite Joseph Beattie as the manipulative Henry Crawford, Joseph Morgan as Fanny’s brother William, and Blake Ritson as Edmund Bertram, the man she loves.

Here’s how my review begins in The Hollywood Reporter.

LONDON — The first in ITV’s high-profile new season of Jane Austen adaptations, “Mansfield Park,” is a disappointingly muted affair in which the 18th century tale of poor Fanny Price and her life with wealthy relations plays out predictably.

Writer Maggie Wadey’s treatment lacks the flair that recent Austen screen outings have displayed and director Iain B. MacDonald sets a pedestrian pace. Still, the acting is fine and so are the costumes and locations.

Austen lovers will be neither outraged nor especially pleased by a production that is merely dull. Billie Piper, though, having abandoned the time travels of “Doctor Who,” makes a believable Fanny with her mouthful of teeth and mischievous eyes.

 

Posted in Reviews, Television | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on TV REVIEW: Billie Piper in ‘Mansfield Park’

Loach’s ‘Wind That Shakes the Barley’ takes New York

Posted on March 16, 2007 by admin

Film Title: The Wind That Shakes The Barley

By Ray Bennett

Fancy that, Ken Loach’s Palme d’Or-winning “The Wind That Shakes the Barley,” a drama about the Irish troubles set in the 1920s, opens in New York just in time for St. Patrick’s Day.

The New York Times critic A.O. Scott welcomes it with open arms today, assuring readers that its depiction of history “is as alive and as troubling as anything on the evening news, though far more thoughtful and beautiful.”

It is a handsome and well-crafted film (Barry Ackroyd won the European Film Award for cinematography deservedly) but it’s all too predictable in its tale of two brothers who fight the British and then each other.

I thought when I reviewed the film at the Festival de Cannes last year that its conventional shape, however, might give it more commercial appeal, something Loach’s earnest films often lack.

The film didn’t do very well in its British release last summer but it could reach audiences in the U.S. who prefer their history simple and pretty to look at. There’s a two-disc DVD available in the U.K. from Pathe via 20th Century Fox.

“Barley,” starring Cillian Murphy and Pádraic Delaney (pictured) was the British filmmaker’s eighth film to be selected in competition at Cannes and watching him at the awards ceremony, I thought he was genuinely touched by his first win. He said, “This is a grand honour. Our film is a little step in the British confronting their imperialist history. Maybe if we tell the truth about the past we can tell the truth about the present.”

Jury president Wong Kar Wai declared that the vote had been unanimous.
After the ceremony, Loach told reporters: “We live in extraordinary times, and that has made people political in a way they maybe weren’t in the previous four, five, six years. The wars that we have seen, the occupations that we see throughout the world — people finally cannot turn away from that. It’s very exciting to be able to deal with this in films, and not just be a complement to the popcorn.”

This is how my review begins in The Hollywood Reporter:

CANNES — A Ken Loach film about the British in Ireland always has the potential for controversy, but his historical drama “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” is unlikely to inflame passions on either side.

Atmospheric but pedestrian, it is a retelling of the classic tragedy of all civil wars, from the U.S. to Vietnam to England, where brother is pitched against brother.

The film looks handsomely authentic, and the familiar characters are engaging, but the story is predictable and the Irish accents are so thick that even English subtitles are required. Loach’s humanity is always in evidence, however, and the lack of histrionics will please many, so the film’s conventionality could help make it accessible to general audiences.

 

Posted in Festival de Cannes, Film, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Loach’s ‘Wind That Shakes the Barley’ takes New York

FILM REVIEWS: ‘The Family Friend’ and ‘Eden’

Posted on March 16, 2007 by admin

By Ray Bennett

Two intriguing but very different character studies are on display in films released in the U.K. today. Paolo Sorrentino’s creepy “The Family Friend” (L’Amico di Famiglia) is about an Italian moneylender who ruthlessly exploits everyone he encounters while Michael Hofmann’s mischievous “Eden” tells of a German chef whose concoctions are pure delight.

They each boast standout performances. Giacomo Rizzo (above center) is memorably loathsome as the aged usurer who takes advantage even of a young bride (Laura Chiatti) on her wedding day while Josef Ostendorf (below) tickles the palate as a misunderstood restaurateur who has a culinary affair with a young married woman (Charlotte Roche).

But while “Eden” offers an optimistic, if twisted, view of life, “Family Friend” argues that it’s in everybody’s nature to want to screw his fellow man and woman and it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

Sorrentino’s film screened In Competition at the Festival de Cannes last May, which is when I reviewed it for The Hollywood Reporter. It also screened at the London Film Festival last October and at the Portland International Film Festival in February. No sign of a U.S. release but Artificial Eye is distributing in the U.K.

Here’s how my review of “Family Friend” begins:

'Family Friend'CANNES — Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Family Friend” is a murky and morally dubious film about an odious moneylender whose services come with exorbitant interest and a repulsive pretence of intimacy.

A misogynistic male fantasy that presents a bleak view of life in Italy, the movie argues that ugliness is beautiful, beauty is ugly and greed consumes everyone.

This means that when the loathsome 70-year-old Geremia (Giacomo Rizzo) finds himself alone with a beautiful bride, Rosalba (Laura Chiatti, above), on her wedding day, she responds to his creepy lust in order to reduce the interest on her father’s loan of the money that’s paying for the wedding.

Rizzo gives a remarkable performance as the repellent usurer, but the film so smugly endorses the notion that the man’s totally cynical nature reflects us all that the film becomes cheap and nasty itself. Audiences will be hard to come by.

“Eden” screened at the Czech Republic’s German Language Film Festival last October and has also been released in Holland, German, and Belgium. It’s released in the U.K. by ICA Films. Here’s how my review of “Eden” begins today in The Hollywood Reporter:

eden x300LONDON — Don’t see Michael Hofmann’s tastily perverse little fable “Eden” on an empty stomach, or your belly will be growling by the end of his story about a chef’s cucina erotica and its effects on a young married woman named Eden.

It’s not that the dishes created by master chef Gregor (Josef Ostendorf) look so tempting; in fact, the film makes quite clear the baser elements of what goes on in a refined kitchen. No, it’s because of the expression on the face of Eden (Charlotte Roche, above) as she relishes the food he creates, and the evident joy that Gregor takes in having his creations appreciated.

A culinary love triangle with some very dark twists, “Eden” should go down well with audiences that enjoyed “Chocolat” and “Sideways” and have a taste for the sweetly twisted.

 

Posted in Film, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on FILM REVIEWS: ‘The Family Friend’ and ‘Eden’