By Ray Bennett
The vivid old Scots word “eldritch” could have been coined for Jonathan Glazer’s spooky new film “Under the Skin” starring Scarlett Johansson as an alien on the prowl in Scotland.
Based on Michael Faber’s novel of the same name, it dispenses with much of the detail in the book to create an extraordinarily mesmerising mystery about the strangest of strangers in very strange land. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
The Oscars and the Bafta Film Awards generate huge publicity but it’s very hard to say how much they benefit specific titles.
HMV’s Andy Anderson observes drolly that the best case scenario for a film in awards contention would be to “receive Oscar on Sunday, release DVD on Monday”.
That could happen this year to Warner Home Video’s sci-fi hit “Gravity” (pictured), which is due in 3D, Blu-ray, and UltraViolet on March 3, one day after the Academy Awards are presented.
It earned 10 Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Best Actress for Sandra Bullock and best director for Alfonso Cuaron. It’s also nominated in those categories and others in the Bafta Film Awards, which will be handed out on Feb. 16.
HMV’s Visual, New Release and Chart Manager, Anderson says that only the top categories of best picture, actor, actress and director really resonate with shoppers. Warner Home Video also is in good shape to benefit from the Feb. 17 release on Blu-ray and DVD of Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine” for which Cate Blanchett is the favourite to win as Best Actress in both awards.
Disney will release “Saving Mr. Banks”, nominated as Best British Film at the Baftas with Emma Thompson up for Best Actress, on March 24. Of the other films with nods for Best British Film, two debuted on Blu-ray and DVD on Jan. 27: StudioCanal’s “Rush” and Artificial Eye’s “The Selfish Giant”.
Of the nine films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar this year, two others have confirmed Blu-ray and DVD release dates in the UK. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will release “Captain Phillips” on Blu-ray, DVD and UV on Feb. 10, a week ahead of the Bafta Awards where it has nominations as Best Film and Best Director for Paul Greengrass.
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release “Philomena” for download on March 10 and on Blu-ray and DVD two weeks later. It is nominated as Best Picture at the Oscars and Best Film at the Baftas with Judi Dench up for Best Actress in both.
Entertainment Retailers Association Research Consultant Luke Butler says it is very difficult to measure empirically the impact of an Oscar nomination or win.
Last year, only StudioCanal’s Best Picture nominee “Beasts of the Southern Wild” was released before the Oscars were presented.
It debuted on Feb. 11, two weeks before the ceremony. From Official Charts Company data, Butler reports that it had sales of 2,600 units in the week of the awards, up 11.9% from the previous week.
Anderson says a win can boost foreign- language films and documentaries. Artificial Eye’s “The Great Beauty”, already on Blu-ray and DVD, has both Oscar and Bafta nominations as foreign-language film while Dogwoof’s “The Act of Killing”, out
on Blu-ray and DVD, is nominated as best documentary in both awards and also is up for foreign-language film in the Baftas.
Artificial Eye’s “Blue is the Warmest Colour”, due on Blu-ray and DVD on March 17, is in the Bafta foreign-language contest but France did not submit it for the Oscars.
This story appeared in Cue Entertainment.
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – The National Theatre announced that NT Live will show the landmark Sam Mendes production of “King Lear” starring Simon Russell Beale on cinema screens across the UK and around the world on May 1.
It is a most wonderful production as Mendes, who was a wunderkind theatre director before he turned to film, shows he has lost none of this gift for staging the great plays.
He won an Oscar for his first picture, “American Beauty” and last year hit box office gold with the James Bond picture “Skyfall” although he returned to the stage in 2011 for Kevin Spacey’s splendid appearance as “Richard III”.
Beale is a marvellous actor and his Lear, a modern bullheaded leader, is a career pinnacle with shattering range and power. He is matched by Anna Maxwell Martin (pictured with Beale, “The Bletchley Circle”) as a ferocious Regan, Kate Fleetwood (Mary Cattermole in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 & 2”) as a devious Goneril, Adrian Scarborough as the Fool and Olivia Vinall (“Doctor Who”) as Cordelia.
The sold-out production, which runs on the Olivier Stage until May 28, received mostly rave reviews. Critic Michael Coveney in whatsonstage.com said it is “the most completely satisfying version of the play in a long while”.
Paul Taylor in the Independent said it is “a powerfully searching account of the tragedy that fuses the familial and the cosmic, the epic and the intimate, and ponders every detail of the play with a fresh, imaginative rigour”.
Michael Billington in the Guardian called it “quite exceptional” and said, “It combines a cosmic scale with an intimate sense of detail and is neither imprisoned by an intellectual concept nor by an actor’s temperament. Instead, you feel the director, Sam Mendes, and the Lear, Simon Russell Beale, are working with everyone else to explore every nook and cranny of the play.”
The NT said the 3 hour and 25 minute production will be shown on more than 500 screens in the UK and more worldwide.
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – In the 1960s, the sign that it was time to leave a party was when the humourless bloke with the beard pulled out his guitar. The Coen Bros. make that guy the focus of “Inside Llewyn Davis” and the impulse to leave remains the same.
Oscar Isaac plays the title role of a dull and charmless but pushy 1960s folk singer exactly like the performer played by Neil Innes in “The Rutles” who says before a song: “I’ve suffered for my music … now it’s your turn.” Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” is a blend of “Wall Street” without the great speeches, “Caligula” with the decadence and the porn and “Scarface” with the drugs but without the machine guns.
It’s a horror story about degenerate criminals who squander millions of dollars that they swindle from gullible Americans whose fate they and the filmmakers ignore completely. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
“American Hustle” and “Gravity” picked up 10 nominations apiece including best picture to lead the pack in the Academy Awards to be presented on March 2. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
Steve McQueen’s epic “12 Years a Slave”, released in cinemas here on Jan. 10 by eOne, was named best film drama at the Golden Globe Awards and “American Hustle”, which Entertainment released in cinemas on Dec. 20, won as best film comedy. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – Warner Bros.’ space thriller “Gravity” leads the British Academy Film Awards nominations with 11 including best picture, best director for Alfonso Cuaron and best actress for Sandra Bullock. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
Robert Redford gives a career-best performance as a man alone in peril aboard a sailing craft in the Indian Ocean in J. C. Chandor’s first-class thriller “All Is Lost”. Continue reading
Top 10 movies of 2013
By Ray Bennett
It’s a very tough call to rank the best movies of 2013 as the top bunch are all so good, but here’s my list: Continue reading →