By Ray Bennett
“Skyfall” in the UK grossed £53.7 million in 10 days after the James Bond train steamed past the all-time UK 7-day box office record with £37.2 million ($60 million) in the first week of the Sony Pictures release and an international gross of $287 million.
Box office tracking service Rentrak said the film topped the previous opening week UK record of £35.7 million earned by “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2” in 2011. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – The London Symphony Orchestra celebrated its 70-plus years making music for movies with a sold-out concert at Barbican Hall on April 4 that ended with an enthusiastic standing ovation.
The warm response was sparked not only by hearing some of the finest film music from composers such as John Williams, Patrick Doyle, Trevor Jones and George Fenton but also out of respect for the superb playing of the musicians.
The concert, titled “The LSO: A Life in Film,” was interspersed with video interviews of composers including Williams and James Horner and presenter Tommy Pearson, whose company Red Ted Films, produced the videos, brought onto the stage both Doyle and Jones to say a few words about their music and the orchestra.
Pearson’s brief remarks about the LSO’s history provided useful context and he leavened the proceedings with amusing asides. Although the LSO’s connection with film dates back to the silent era, it’s modern popularity in pictures came about after Williams told producer George Lucas that it would be perfect for his score to “Star Wars”.
Themes from the original and “The Phantom Menace Suite” were on the program along with the “Superman March” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. On video, Williams spoke of how playing as unit gave the orchestra “an added edge” that could not be duplicated by session musicians, no matter how brilliant.
Horner, whose many scores were represented by a suite from his Oscar-nominated “Braveheart” (he won for “Titanic”), said the LSO had “a diamond sharp sound and it’s quite extraordinary how they do it with music they’ve never seen before.”
Extracts from the score by Arthur Bliss for H. G. Wells’ 1936 film “Things To Come” were included plus music from two 1941 films – “The 49th Parallel” by Vaughan Williams, and Richard Addinsell’s “Warsaw Concerto” from “Dangerous Moonlight” featuring John Alley on piano.
Other scores on the program were George Fenton’s “Shadowlands”; Trevor Jones’s “The Dark Crystal”; Philippe Rombi’s “Joyeux Noel” with violin soloist Carmine Lauri; William Walton’s “Henry V”; and Alexandra Desplat’s “The Queen”.
As fine as they all were, the highlight came from Patrick Doyle’s themes from “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” which fully conveyed the joy that the irrepressible Scotsman brings to any gathering.
Conductor for the evening was venerable 93-year-old Harry Rabinowitz, a tiny figure at the podium whose foibles, which included letting the baton fly from his fingers and losing his place in the scores, were readily forgiven by musicians and audience alike.
It didn’t matter anyway. So accomplished is this orchestra that, like a modern jumbo jet, it can take off and land all on its own. Doyle said as much afterwards. Once, while conducting the LSO he stopped, shook his head, and said, “You don’t really need me, do you.”
By Ray Bennett
The Barbican Centre in London has opened two new cinemas and announced a six-week programme of movies across five strands including one that covers the seven deadly sins.
The new venues, which are at street level on Beech Street, each have 156 seats to complement the refurbished Barbican Cinema 1, which has 288. The first addition to the Centre since it was opened in 1982 will include a restaurant and café.
The screens will show new releases including the upcoming James Bond film “Skyfall” (Sony Pictures, Oct. 26) as well as film classics and rarities. An exhibition titled “Designing 007: Fifty Years of Bond Style” (pictured) continues at the Centre.
Barbican Managing Director Nicholas Kenyon said, “Film has always been a vital element of what we do, as an art form in itself and because of the role it plays within the Barbican as an arts centre. Our film offer allows our audiences to delve further into our programme of exhibitions, music, theatre and dance performances. ”
All three cinemas have full digital projection and audio equipment including 3D as well as 35mm and 16mm film projection to reflect the centre’s commitment to archive and world cinema, the Barbican said.
The film programme, under the umbrella title of Step Into the Dark, will include one in which people from the arts world select films that reflect the Seven Deadly Sins. Mike Leigh, Richard Ayoade, Andrea Arnold, Stephen Frears and Michael Nyman are among those to make a selection.
Other strands will include Every Day I Have the Blues with jazz and blues films to complement the London Jazz Festival in Barbican Hall; Dark Heart of Fairy Tales; Suppression / Expression, which includes political films from the ‘60s and ‘70s; and Silent Horror and Live Music, which features German Expressionist silent films. There also will be the inaugural Framed Film Festival in which children and teenagers will have the chance to see, make and dissect films.
The Barbican said: “The new cinemas will create a hub for the film community and are a key addition to the burgeoning cultural quarter which also includes the Guildhall School’s superb new emerging building at Milton Court (which will open in September 2013), the church of St Giles Cripplegate, and LSO St Luke’s on Old Street – contributing to the development of an increasingly lively area within the City of London.”
Seven Deadly Sins invites famous names from the film and arts worlds to choose a film to match a sin, with each screening followed by a conversation with the artist:
· Sam Taylor-Wood | ENVY | The Talented Mr Ripley (dir Anthony Mingella, US 1999) | Fri Nov 2
· Nick Broomfield | SLOTH | Woman of the Dunes (dir Hiroshi Tehigahra, Japan 1964) | Sun Nov 4
· Richard Ayoade | SLOTH | The Graduate (US 1967 Mike Nichols) | Mon Nov 5
· Zbigniew Preisner | PRIDE | A Short Film About Killing (dir Kryzsztof Kieslowski, Poland 1989) | Sun Nov 11
· Marcos Jorge | GLUTTONY | Estômago: A Gastronomic story (dir Marcos Jorge, Brazil/Italy 2007) | Mon Nov 12
· Declan Donnellan | LUST |, Le Plaisir (dir Max Ophüls, France 1949) | Sat Nov 17
· Kazuo Ishiguro | PRIDE | La Silence De La Mer (dir Jean-Pierre Melville, France 1949) | Mon Nov 19
· Andrea Arnold | WRATH | Carrie (dir Brian de Palma, US 1976) | Wed Nov 21
· Stephen Frears | WRATH | Fish Tank (dir Andrea Arnold, UK 2010) | Fri Nov 23
· Jake and Dinos Chapman | LUST | The Offense (dir Sidney Lumet, UK/US 1972) | Sun Nov 25
· Mike Leigh | GREED | Baby Face (dir Alfred E Green, US 1933) | Mon Nov 26
· Vivienne Westood | GLUTTONY | Blow-Out (La grande bouffe) (dir Marco Ferreri, Italy 1973) | Thur Dec 6
· Michael Nyman , LUST | Silent Light (dir Carlos Reygadas, Mexico 2007) | Sun Dec 9
This story appeared in Cue Entertainment.
By Ray Bennett
TORONTO – David O. Russell’s comedy “Silver Linings Playbook” starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence has won the People’s Choice Award at the 37th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
Previous winners of the award include “The King’s Speech” (2010) and “Slumdog Millionaire” (2008), both of which went on to be named best picture at the Academy Awards. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
TORONTO – For anyone with a memory, it’s hard to think of the CIA as the good guys but they are in Ben Affleck’s gripping thriller “Argo”, which tells of the retrieval from Tehran of a group of US embassy workers during the Iran crisis of 1979. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
TORONTO – Based on a true story about a Spanish family caught up in the ferocious 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, “The Impossible” is terrifying and moving with best-ever performances by stars Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
TORONTO – Paul Thomas Anderson’s complex and accomplished film “The Master” addresses the conflict between the puritan and hedonist traditions of the United States as it adjusts to its new potential and place in the world after World War II.
The two extremes are exemplified in the characters of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman, pictured below), a self-righteous authoritarian founder of a quasi-mystical cult, and Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix, pictured above), a self-interested flouter of authority in search of personal freedom. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
TORONTO – It’s brave of Irish film director Neil Jordan to take on a fresh vampire story given how crowded the market is for the undead but in “Byzantium” he has turned out a good old fashioned horror film. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
TORONTO – At a time when political invective has reached new lows with the media complicit in its extremes, “Hyde Park On Hudson” tells of a time when politics and the press were handled with the greatest subtlety even though the stakes were even higher. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
TORONTO – Robert Redford returns to political intrigue and newspapers in “The Company You Keep”, which tells of a group of radical activists who have evaded the law for decades under assumed identities and who now face exposure.
Redford directs and stars as Jim Grant, one of a group still wanted for murder during a bank robbery, whose secret existence is threatened when one of them confesses in order to achieve peace of mind. When a young reporter starts to investigate and finds a link to him, Grant goes underground to find his former colleagues and expose the truth of what happened. Continue reading
