By Ray Bennett
Ang Lee’s extraordinary film “Life of Pi” is a shaggy tiger story with the best computer generated images and most delicately effective 3D yet achieved in a mainstream film.
The tale of an Indian boy’s adventures at sea in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker – made incredibly lifelike by the excellent CGI – boasts imagery of storms, giant waves, placid calm and assorted sea creatures to take the breath away. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
Entertainment Film’s “The Master” and Artificial Eye’s “Amour” topped the 33rd London Critics’ Circle Film Awards nominations with seven each including film of the year.
“The Master”, which Entertainment in Video will release on Blu-ray and DVD on March 11, also received nominations for Paul Thomas Anderson as best director and screenwriter, best actor for Joaquin Phoenix, best supporting actor for Philip Seymour Hoffman and best supporting actress for Amy Adams.
“Amour”, the Palme d’Or winner at this year’s Festival de Cannes, that Artificial Eye released in UK cinemas on Nov. 16, also was nominated as best foreign-language film. Other nods went to Michael Haneke as best director and screenwriter, Jean-Louis Trintignant as best actor, Emmuanelle Riva as best actress, and Isabelle Huppert as best supporting actress.
The latest James Bond picture, “Skyfall,” which has been a massive hit for Sony in the UK and elsewhere, picked up five nominations including best British film, best British actor for Daniel Craig, best supporting actor for Javier Bardem, and best supporting actress for Judi Dench, who also was nominated as best British actress for her work on the 007 film and Fox’s “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”.
The other nominees for film of the year are “Argo” (Warners), “Beasts of the Southern Wild” (StudioCanal) and “Life of Pi” (Fox) and for foreign-language film of the year “Holy Motors” (Artificial Eye), “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” (New Wave), “Rust and Bone” (StudioCanal) and “Tabu” (New Wave).
British film of the year nominees also include “Berberian Sound Studio” (Artificial Eye), “The Imposter” (Picturehouse/Revolver), “Les Miserables” (Universal) and “Sightseers” (StudioCanal).
Also in contention for the best actor prize are Daniel Day-Lewis for “Lincoln” (Fox), Hugh Jackman for “Les Miserables” (Universal), and Mads Mikkelsen for “The Hunt” (Arrow). Best actress nominees include Jessica Chastain for “Zero Dark Thirty” (Universal), Marion Cotillard for “Rust and Bone” (StudioCanal), Helen Hunt for “The Sessions” (Fox) and
Jennifer Lawrence for “Silver Linings Playbook” (Entertainment).
The London Film Critics’ Circle membership includes more than 120 critics, broadcasters and writers and Chairman Jason Solomons noted that this year’s selections illustrate “the great variation of extraordinary work” in film over the last year.
He said, “In all categories, the films are of outstanding quality this year, indicating how the London critics view all films from around the world on a level footing – brilliance is the only benchmark. Choosing winners will be harder than ever, but never will they have been more deserving.”
The 33rd London Critics’ Circle Film Awards take place at the May Fair Hotel in London on Sunday Jan. 20 in aid of charity partner Missing People, which provides a 24/7 lifeline when someone goes missing.
This story appeared in Cue Entertainment. A complete list of nominees follows: Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
The barrage of outdoor summer entertainment did not have the negative impact on moviegoing the industry feared and with awards season under way prospects for Q1 look good.
The directors of Warner Bros.’ upcoming “Cloud Atlas”, an epic mix of history, modern drama and science-fiction, told the world premiere audience at the Toronto International Film Festival that their aim was to both entertain and engage audiences.
“One of the things that unites us very profoundly in our idea of what we’re doing is it can be so crazy and experimental and mind-opening, and yet so popular,” said Tom Tykwer (“Run, Lola Run”), who made the picture with the Wachowski siblings (“The Matrix”). Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
Andrew Dominik’s “Killing Them Softly”, starring Brad Pitt, is a crime picture with punks, hoodlums, and hit-men but it’s really about banking and the callous, ruinous way Wall Street cowboys go about their selfish business.
J.C. Chandor’s excellent 2011 movie “Margin Call” depicted a financial meltdown within an investment bank. Dominik’s film takes a similar story and plonks it in mob territory in the wasteland of post-Katrina New Orleans.
The film, which was in competition at this year’s Festival de Cannes, was released in theatres in September and will be on Blu-ray Disc and DVD in the UK on Feb. 25.
It has disappointed a lot of Brad Pitt fans because it’s not a conventional gangster picture even though it has several scenes of extreme violence. Just as “The Godfather” was about politics, “Straw Dogs” was about the Vietnam War, and Dominik’s masterpiece “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” was about fame, “Killing Me Softly” is about money as the root of evil.
It is based on the 1974 novel “Cogan’s Trade” by the late George V. Higgins, a former prosecuting attorney who wrote a series of idiosyncratic crime stories filled with richly detailed conversations between low-lifes in Boston. The best known is “The Friends of Eddie Coyle”, which Peter Yates filmed in 1973 with Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle and Richard Jordan.
Dominik, who adapted the novel for the screen, places television coverage of the recent banking crisis in the foreground with speeches from politicians that range from naive to cynical to idealistic. He cuts to the bone with his depiction of how the same heinous greed in men driven by hubris and ego plays out amongst bad guys with guns.
Ray Liotta plays a mob guy named Markie who oversees a big-money poker school that is robbed at gun-point and when he foolishly boasts that he organised the robbery himself everyone laughs and let’s it go. But a fellow hoodlum played by Vincent Curatola from “The Sopranos” sees that if someone else were to raid the gambling den a second time then Markie would get the blame.
He hires a callow thief named Frankie (Scoot Mcnairy) to do the robbery and he brings along his flakey and permanently stoned Australian mate Russell (Ben Mendelsohn). When they get away with it, a mob middleman (Richard Jenkins) turns to fixer and enforcer Jackie Cogan (Pitt) to sort it out.
They are all identifiable types from the revelations about Wall Street and City and the lies, double-dealing and back-stabbing, and complete disregard for anything that resembles civilized behaviour. James Gandolfini (pictured with Pitt) plays an over-extended and dissolute hit man whom Cogan manipulates blithely into a violent meltdown, thankfully offscreen, with one of his many hired women.
Dominik’s dialogue is crisp and savvy and his images show the banality of the characters with heightened effects to convey their inflated sense of themselves. He draws first-rate performances from the entire cast, with Pitt as good as he was in “Jesse James”. He has terrific help from cinematographer Greig Fraser, production and costume designer Patricia Norris and editor Brian A. Kates. Marc Streitenfeld provides evocative piano pieces on the soundtrack and the director uses Johnny Cash’s “The Man Comes Around” and sentimental standard ballads with considerable irony.
The film’s title is taken from a beautiful song but that is not heard. Cogan uses the phrase to describe how he prefers to deal with his victims, from a distance so he doesn’t have to listen to their cries and deal with the mess. Much like drone-missile operators and corrupt bankers.
Opened: Friday, Sept. 21; UK: Entertainment; US: The Weinstein Co.; Cast: Brad Pitt, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, Richard Jenkins, James Gandolfini, Ray Liotta, Vincent Caratola; Director: Andrew Dominik; Screenwriter: Andrew Dominik, based on the novel “Cogan’s Trade” by George V. Higgins; Director of photography: Greig Fraser; Production and costume designer: Patricia Norris; Music: Marc Streitenfeld; Editor: Brian A. Kates; Producers: Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Steve Schwartz, Paula Mae Schwartz, Anthony Katagas; Executive producers: Megan Ellison, Matt Butan, Bill Johnson, Jim Seibel, Adi Shankar, Spencer Silna; Production: Plan B, Chockstone Pictures
UK rating: 18; US rating: R; 97 minutes.
By Ray Bennett
Andrea Riseborough was named best actress for “Shadow Dancer”, Toby Jones won as best actor for “Berberian Sound Studio” and “Broken” picked up the best British film prize at the 15th British Independent Film Awards.
Riseborough (pictured) plays a mother forced to spy on her IRA family for a British operative played by Clive Owen in “Shadow Dancer”, which Paramount Pictures will release on DVD on Jan. 14.
Jones plays a sound designer who works for a company that makes horror films in “Berberian Sound Studio”, which Artificial Eye will release on DVD and Blu-ray on Dec. 31. The picture won four BIFAs including best director for Peter Strickland, best technical achievement for sound designers Joakim Sundstrom and Stevie Haywood, and best achievement in production.
“Broken”, which StudioCanal will release, also won the best supporting actor prize for Rory Kinnear. Cillian Murphy and Tim Roth star in the drama about violence in a North London community.
Olivia Colman won the best supporting actress prize as Queen Elizabeth opposite Samuel West as King George VI in “Hyde Park On Hudson”, which Universal Pictures will release in UK cinemas on Feb. 1). Bill Murray stars as US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the film, which tells of the royal visit to boost US support for the British war effort in 1939.
“The Imposter”, a documentary about a teenager who pretends to be the missing son of a Texas family, won two awards for best documentary and best debut director Bart Layton. Released theatrically by Picturehouse / Revolver in August, it will be on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on Jan. 7.
Dark comedy “Sightseers”, which StudioCanal released in UK cinemas on Nov. 30, won for best screenplay by co-stars Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, and Amy Jump. Danish drama “The Hunt” starring Mads Mikkelsen, which Arrow Films released in cinemas here on Nov. 30, won the award for best international independent film.
BIFA Directors Johanna von Fischer and Tessa Collinson said the range of films honoured proved that 2012 had been a strong year for British independent film and said the awards “continue to highlight the extraordinary talent that is so plentiful within British independent filmmaking today”.
The BIFAs, sponsored by Moët, were handed out at a ceremony hosted by actor James Nesbitt at Old Billingsgate in London on Dec. 8. Presenters included Idris Elba, John Hurt, Terry Gilliam, Jared Harris, Rufus Sewell, Alicia Vikander and Noomi Rapace.
This story appeared in Cue Entertainment. A list of winners follows: Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
One of the very good things about working at The Windsor Star in the early 1970s was that I was able to see some of the greatest entertainers perform across the river in Detroit City. One of them was a young Englishman whose alter ego went by the name of Ziggy Stardust. I reviewed his first Detroit show in The Windsor Star on Oct. 10 1972. Here’s how it went:
David Bowie.
Remember the name. In rock ‘n’ roll there was Presley, the Beatles and now there is David Bowie.
Bowie is a freaky young Englishman who writes, plays and sings rock’n’roll at the most mature and articulate level it has ever attained.
A sensation in England, but little known in North America, Bowie played Detroit’s Fisher Theatre Sunday and knocked the sell-out crowd for six.
Looking like the joker from a bizarre deck of cards in make-up, eyeliner and green and orange jump suit, Bowie knifed back and forth across the sedate Fisher stage in a spectacular performance of pure theatre.
With a three-man group backing him, he moved from searing hard rock to dramatic mood pieces to plaintive cries from the heart and back again.
Bowie comes to North American with four albums behind him and a current growing hit The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust. He also brings the reputation that he’d rather swish than fight.
Certainly the electricity he generates can be taken in whichever current turns you on – a.c. or d.c. Some of the prettiest young women in the audience were guys. His earlier career pronouncements of his homosexuality and his later declaration that he is bisexual are irrelevant but do add to the ambiguity of the man and the performer.
He says he is really two people – David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust, the forlorn mistreated soul he sings about on his album. He has a song out now that is a big hit in England called John, I’m Only Dancing and it takes several hearings before you can decide whether he’s apologising to a guy for dancing with his girlfriend or apologising to his own boyfriend for dancing with a girl.
His act, produced splendidly, utilised all the space the large Fisher stage has. Sitting in the belly of the theatre, looking up at the stage, the excellent lighting made you feel you were sitting on the side of a hill as Bowie and his men danced on the crest with a radiant sunset behind.
And Bowie is no fool on the hill. His songs deal with outer space and inner space, and touch deep. Songs such as “Starman”, “Lady Stardust”, and “Moonage Daydream” are intelligent lyrically and musically.
Drummer Mick Woodmansey stays hidden behind his pile of drums. Bass guitarist Trevor Bolder shuffles about like a cross-eye pixie with long black hair and bushy grey sideburns. And incredible lead guitarist Mick Ronson is a silver apparition with long white hair.
Bowie, slim, red-haired and with warm, piercing eyes that reach into the audience, is in command of it all.
He comes from South London and always wanted to be a rock star. He takes it very seriously but never loses his obvious sense of humour. In an era of parody and self-consciousness David Bowie is a refreshingly original, un-self-conscious talent whose effect on rock ‘n’ roll and music generally has only just begun.
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – Larry Hagman, who has died aged 81, was one of the great TV villains. He became a household name thanks to “Dallas” but when the show aired a short-run summer series in 1978, not many critics paid attention. It caught my attention in Toronto, though, and I reviewed it TV Guide Canada a couple of weeks after its debut. Here’s how it went:
The plaintive cry of the fourth quarter of the 20th century is: where have all the heroes gone? But it is my long held, if unproved, theory that what the world needs are fewer heroes and more villains. On TV, that is. Certainly villains abound on the news and in party political broadcasts and the like but their evil is either too monstrously real or worse banal.
Bad guys on television these days barely qualify for their black hats. Snarling hoodlums are reduced to jelly by white-haired old men, detectives’ wives and pretty girls in T-shirts and teeth. Anti-defamation leagues have (with justification) robbed us of the classic villainous racial stereotypes, leaving only diseases and natural disasters to wreak chaos and mayhem.
There are some nasty characters in the soap operas but in prime time we have for too long existed without someone we could hiss and boo. What we’ve needed is a character with no redeeming qualities, a rotter, the kind of heel who would push his grandmother downstairs. Smiling.
At last, in “Dallas” (Thursdays 10 p.m. CBC and Fridays 10 p.m. CBS) we have one. J.R. Ewing is the first son of an oil-rich Texas ranching family. Around him hardly anybody’s grandmother is safe. As played by Larry Hagman, J.R. Ewing is perfectly detestable. He grovels before his daddy, Jock the Patriarch; whines to his mother, Miss Ellie; schemes against his brother, Bobby; cheats on his wife, Sue Ellen; and plans to sell the ranch for the oil underneath as soon as the folks expire.
Any way you cut it, J.R. is a swine. And Hagman plays him lovingly. Sue Ellen is almost as bad, having married for money and cemented her claim by getting pregnant. That J.R. is not the father is neither here nor there. And while this circumstance is pure soap opera, in the hands of Hagman and Linda Gray, arguably the most riveting actress on television, it becomes if not great drama, great fun to watch.
Especially when you compare the entire Ewing family on “Dallas” to the simpering aggregations on most of the other family shows. On most of them, all you get are people screaming at each other, whether in anger or out of passion it’s difficult to tell. There’s seldom a yelling match on “Dallas.” The Ewings make each other bleed with fine knives. And there is something about a Southern U.S. accent that lends itself to subtly deadly dialogue.
Jim Davis, who founded the famous acting school of squint (Earl Holliman and Robert Fuller are among the graduates), is suitably craggy as Jock and Barbara Bel Geddes radiates calms as Miss Ellie, although her monotone utterances of moderation do grind at times. And on the side of mom and apple pie there’s Bobby Ewing and Pam, his wife, played by Patrick Duffy and Victoria Principal. Ms. Principal is pure Playboy material and Duffy is almost as pretty. In their niceness they are perfect foils for the unmitigated decadence of J.R. and Sue Ellen.
In fact, precious few people on television outside of detergent and household cleanser commercials and Dean Martin roasts radiate such glorious and irredeemable hatefulness as Larry Hagman and Linda Gray. Long overdue, if you ask me.
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – The UK box office is on track for record receipts this year thanks to James Bond and 3D pictures and in spite of competition for audiences from the royal jubilee and the London Olympiad.
The Film Distributors’ Association said that cinema ticket sales crossed the £1 billion mark in the 45th week of the year after UK distributors invested more than £300 million release 567 new titles, almost as many as in all of 2011, which saw a total of 577.
It noted that ticket sales last year reached £1.03 billion from 171.5 million admissions, the third highest admissions total in the last two decades.
FDA President David Puttnam said: “UK cinema is ending 2012 in barnstorming style. The box-office is heading for a new record with every chance the momentum will be maintained well into the New Year. Audiences who crave cutting-edge entertainment over the holiday season need look no further than their local cinemas.”
UK moviegoers spent £53.2 million to go to the movies in the last week of October, almost as much as in all of September, thanks to the Sony Pictures release “Skyfall”, which has sold more than 14 million tickets.
The FDA said that five of the Top 10 movies to date were released in both 3D and standard digital formats and £1 of every £6 spent on tickets went for 3D screens. Disney’s release of Marvel’s “Avengers Assemble” was the most popular of the 39 films released in 3D so far this year. In all of 2011, 47 3D films went on release.
The second week of the Diamond Jubilee bank holiday in June was the second best week for moviegoing so far while the Olympics did not hurt ticket sales as much as earlier feared. The first week of the games in August ranked 12th for cinema ticket sales to date and the second week ranked sixth.
The FDA said box office receipts are running 1% ahead of the same point in 2011 with some big titles still to come such as Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”, Tom Cruise in “Jack Reacher”, Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi”, the comedy sequel “Nativity 2: Danger in the Manger” and Mike Newell’s version of “Great Expectations”. It noted that “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2”, which eOne released on Nov. 16, will secure a position in the full year’s Top 10 titles.
The FDA said that one in seven British adults go to the cinema at least once a month and with approximately 1% of the world’s population, the UK accounts for 7% of the world’s cinema box-office receipts and one-fifth of the box-office in Europe.
The UK’s eight million 15–24 year-olds go to the movies the most, on average six times a year –but one quarter of annual audiences are aged over 45.
This story appeared in Cue Entertainment.
By Ray Bennett
The infinite variety of chance and choice is the subject of Nick Payne’s funny and touching 70-minute play “Constellations” at the Duke of York’s Theatre in which Sally Hawkins and Rafe Spall spin considerable enchantment.
The chance is that Marianne (Hawkins) and Roland (Spall) will meet and the choice is what they will say. Payne wonders what would happen if she said one thing and he another, and if he said something else and her response was different.
It’s “Sliding Doors” taken to extremes as Marianne posits that there might be any number of parallel universes in which the path of two lives is different from this one, or that one, in an endless variety.
Designer Tom Scutt uses simply balloons to suggest effectively the vast range of things that might pop out of people’s mouths at any given time. In a stop-start fashion in which the characters repeat encounters and amend what they say, the possibilities unfold.
The way they describe their lives to each other on first meeting influences what will happen next. One is married and in the next exchange speaks of divorce. What they say they do for a living changes from meeting to meeting, so too their stories of past and present lovers.
In the present universe, they meet and move in together and one cheats on the other and she becomes ill, and in other universes other things take place.
It might sound confusing, but it’s not since Payne and director Michael Longhurst get the rhythm just right and the pattern becomes clear very early. The play debuted in January at the Royal Court to very good reviews and Payne’s “If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet”, starring Brian F. O’Byrne and Jake Gyllenhaal, is at the Laurel Pels Theater in New York until Dec. 23.
Hawkins (“Submarine”, “Happy Go Lucky”) plays Marianne as nimble, quick-witted and saucy while Spall (“Prometheus”, “Life of Pi”) makes Roland sturdy but vulnerable and sometimes confused. They make a charming couple, and between the laughter and the tears there is a serious reminder that in new encounters it’s best to watch your tongue.
Venue: Duke of York’s (runs through Jan. 5); Cast: Sally Hawkins, Rafe Spall; Playwright: Nick Payne; Director: Michael Longhurst; Designer: Tom Scutt; Lighting designer: Lee Curran; Music: Simon Slater; Sound designer: Davd McSeveney; Producers: Royal Court Theatre Productions / Ambassador Theatre Group.
Photo: Johan Persson
By Ray Bennett
The BBC has made more than 900 of Alistair Cooke’s radio reports, Letter From America, available online and I am reminded of the one time I got to talk to him.
Cooke was one of my heroes in journalism and I listened to his impeccable weekly BBC broadcasts from a very young age. Not only did I learn from him more about the US and the world than from just about anywhere else, but his work also demonstrated what it is to be a good reporter.
My chance to interview him came in 1978 as I prepared a cover story for TV Guide Canada on the dire state of the English language as it was broadcast. The headline was “English in ashes” and I spoke to people in Toronto and England, where I learned about the BBC’s Advisory Committee on Spoken English, which functioned from the mid-1920s to the late ‘30s. Continue reading
