The Toronto International Film Festival shows the way for Q1

Posted on November 1, 2011 by admin

TIFF Bell Lightbox custom built film centre in Toronto with Canteen restaurant at street level

By Ray Bennett

As the cost of publicity and promotion has become ever more expensive, big studios and indies know that the hoopla that surrounds major events such as the Toronto International Film Festival can have a huge payoff. 

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has become the biggest movie carnival in the world with a direct and major impact on the movies released in theatres and home entertainment.

It’s a showcase for Hollywood blockbusters, independent sleepers and art-house gems alike. Each September, it kicks off the autumn release schedule not only in North America but also around the world, and it heralds the start of the all-important awards season.

TIFF Co-director Cameron Bailey

TIFF, which began in 1976 as a “festival of festivals”, treasures its role as simply a place where people can go to the movies. Co-director Cameron Bailey says: “We strive to be the leading public film festival in the world. I think that’s what makes us unique. We’re not a film festival primarily for the film industry or for the film media, although there are thousands of them here every year, but we really are a festival for an audience.”

Toronto’s moviegoing public rivals that of New York and Los Angeles in North America in attendance, sophistication and passion. The Canadian city has the best claim to be the No. 1 influence on what audiences everywhere will see in cinemas and in home entertainment over the coming months.

“The buyers who come to buy films here come because they want to see how they play in front of the Toronto audience. Journalists want to see how films perform in front of the Toronto audience and that often drives their coverage. Our most important prize is the Cadillac People’s Choice Award so it really is for film fans, for filmgoers,” Bailey says.

As a result, producers and distributors of all shapes and sizes flock to TIFF and the event’s 10 days are chock-a-block with big-name filmmakers and movie stars. This year’s headliners included George Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Madonna, Robert DeNiro, Clive Owen, Seth Rogan and, Fernando Meirelles, Francis Ford Coppola.

Clooney was there with two films, a political drama titled “The Ides Of March” that eOne will release in the UK on Oct. 28 (see Cue August 2011), and the family comedy drama “The Descendants”, which 20th Century Fox will release here theatrically on Jan. 27 (See spotlight).

Both films are set to be hugely popular with “Ides of March” also set to confirm Ryan Gosling as a major star following his well-received noir picture “Drive”, which Icon has currently in theatres. The title “The Ides of March” gives away what Clooney thinks about politics: it’s a place where people will stab you in the front. As director, star and one of the writers, Clooney delivers an engrossing drama set during a US presidential campaign but his real story is about one man’s disillusionment.

Corruption in politics no longer shocks anyone so it’s thanks to a clever script and an intelligent performance by Gosling as an idealistic campaign press secretary who has his integrity compromised that the film works so well.

Pitt was in town for his baseball picture “Moneyball”, which Sony Pictures will release in the UK on Nov. 25. “Moneyball” is very much about baseball, a traditional sports yarn about trying to beat the odds, but it is much more about family, breaking with tradition and economics, and it allows Brad Pitt to show again that he is not only a movie star but also an actor of substance.

Fans of America’s favourite pastime will like the film but you don’t need to know much about baseball to enjoy it with Pitt’s confident and engaging presence at the heart of the tale of the Oakland A’s most extraordinary season.

There were many from the British Isles in Toronto too including Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan with director Steve McQueen and their film “Shame” (Momentum, Jan. 13); Keira Knightley with Viggo Mortenson and Canadian director David Cronenberg with “A Dangerous Method” (Lionsgate UK, Feb. 10); Ralph Fiennes, Brian Cox Gerard Butler for “Coriolanus” (Lionsgate UK, Jan. 20), which Fiennes directed (See spotlight); Felicity Jones with Anton Yelchin and American director Drake Doremus for “Like Crazy” (Paramount, Feb. 3); and Andrea Riseborough with Abbie Cornish and Madonna for the singer’s film “W.E.” (StudioCanal, Jan. 20).

“Shame” had opened at the Venice International Film Festival where Ireland’s Fassbender (“Inglourious Basterds”, “X-Men: First Class” was named Best Actor. He plays a New York executive who is a compulsive sex addict with Carey Mulligan as his vulnerable sister, a would-be singer.

Much was made in the TIFF press coverage of the extended opening sequence of “Shame” in which Fassbender is fully naked. At the film’s festival press conference, he said, “You know, it’s pretty uncomfortable. It’s kind of embarrassing to be naked or whatnot in front of a group of people. But you’ve got to get over it, really, and just get on with it. I knew what I was getting into.”

Fassbender also stars as psychoanalyst Carl Jung in Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method” with Mortensen as Sigmund Freud and Knightley as a sick young Russian woman. Knightley said at the film’s TIFF press conference: “It was a very challenging role and I think that was one of the reasons why I really wanted to play her because I really didn’t know who she was. It really was a question of trying to find logic within what was perceived from the outside to be madness. As much as she knew that she was ill, there were logical reasons for the way in which she behaved.”

“Coriolanus” had debuted at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won attention for its modern take on the Shakespeare play. Cox made it a point to praise Fiennes for his skill as a director. “I’ve worked with many directors, and he’s up there in the Top 5. His rigour and sense of discipline – the whole package is remarkable, Cox told the press.

Riseborough received acclaim for her performance as Mrs. Simpson on Madonna’s take on the Edward VIII affair but her film “W.E.” did not get great reviews. The entertainer turned film director, however, took the high view: “I welcome criticism of my film when it’s viewed as an artistic form and not when people are mentioning things about my personal life or my achievements in any other field.”

“Like Crazy” by US filmmaker Drake Doremus went to Toronto following success at the Sundance Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize. Felicity Jones also won plaudits for her role as a young Englishwoman whose perfect romance with a young American played by Anton Yelchin (Chekov in the new “Star Trek”) is hampered by immigration rules.

Jones, who has fared better on stage in plays such as “Luis Miller” and “The Chalk Garden” than in her movies, “Chalet Girl”, “Cemetery Junction”, said that she enjoyed the method Drake used for the film. The cast worked from a 50-page script by the director and co-writer Ben Jones. “Actors like to play with dialogue, we like to have the freedom, and it’s wonderful to have someone who is prepared to trust their actors in that way.”

Several other performers were at TIFF to show off their films, including Glenn Close with her film “Albert Nobb”, a Roadside Productions picture. No UK distributor or release date had been confirmed at press time but the film has been tipped already for awards contention and will almost certainly reach UK screens by Q1.

It is a labour of love for the five-time Academy Award nominee who played the central role of a woman who lived and worked as a man in Victorian Ireland in an off-Broadway  stage production in 1982.

Close has tried to get a film version made ever since, and she told reporters at TIFF: “It’s a unique character and what I experienced doing it on stage … was the power of this strange story. Whoever Albert is really elicits a lot of emotion. I just decided this is one thing that I am not going to give up on, I’m not willing to go to the end of my career and say I gave up on ‘Albert Nobbs.’”

Fernando Meirelles’ “360” is another TIFF headliner without a firm Q! UK release date even though it was the opening film at the BFI London Film Festival last month. It’s a “La Ronde” style story by Peter Morgan (“The Queen”) in which unrelated characters overlap in incidents that happen in cities around the world. Rachel Weisz, Anthony Hopkins and Jude Law are the headliners although they were not on hand in Toronto for the film’s launch.

Morgan said at TIFF: “I really wanted to make something that reflects the way the world is now. Even now what I’m saying is probably being seen in another country simultaneously.” And Meirelles added: “People are connected in the whole world, but our internal feelings are the same. Nothing is new in the past 10,000 years, I think, in feelings and thinking.”

French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius earned acclaim from critics and audiences in Toronto for his black-and-white silent picture “The Artist”, which Entertainment will release for Q1 on Dec. 30. Jean Dujardin stars as a Douglas Fairbanks-style silent movie action hero whose career fades when talking pictures are introduced in 1927. Bérénice Bejo plays a beautiful young singer and dancer who becomes a star at the same time and John Goodman plays a top movie mogul.

The film has a 92% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The Miami Herald critic said: “Sends you home with your head in the clouds, intoxicated by the magic movies pull off better than any other art form.” Box Office Magazine’s Pete Hammond said: “Although a seemingly risky bet for box office success outside of small arthouse niches, the film’s charm and delight of discovery, plus its sterling international performances, could make it a breakout hit in theatres.”

Other titles set for theatres in Q1 2012 include Fox’s “The Darkest Hour” (Jan. 13) with Emile Hirsch (“Into The Wild”) in a tale of an alien invasion in Russia; Liam Neeson and Dermot Mulroney in “The Grey” (Entertainment, Jan 27) as oil workers whose plane crashes in Alaska and turns them into prey for wolves; and “Intruders” (Universal, Jan 27) with Clive Owen, Daniel Bruhl and Carice Van Houten in a horror yarn about the monsters that can lurk in a family’s bloodline.

February will see Roman Polanski’s screen adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s hit West End and Broadway play “Carnage” (StudioCanal, Feb. 3). Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly play two couples that meet to resolve conflict between their children but entire into a hell of their own.

Warner has “Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close” (Feb. 3) with Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock in a thriller about the search for a key left by a man killed in the 9/11 attacks. Adam Sandler plays a family guy and his twin sister in the comedy “Jack And Jill” (Sony, Feb. 3). Elisabeth Olsen plays a woman who must readjust to family life after she has fled from a cult community in “Martha Marcy May Marlene” (Fox, Feb. 3). Josh Hutcherson, Dwayne Johnson and Vanessa Hudgens star in “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” (Warner, Feb. 10) in a search for a missing grandfather (Michael Caine). Daniel Radcliffe stars in a film version of Susan Hill’s bestselling thriller “The Woman In Black” (Momentum, Feb. 10). Paramount has Charlize Theron as a divorced writer who seeks to rekindle a romance with a former love in “Young Adult” (Feb. 10). Rachel Adams plays a woman with severe memory loss whose husband (Channing Tatum) must woo all over again in “The Vow” (Sony, Feb. 10) and “Premium Rush” has Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a bicycle courier chased by a cop (Michael Shannon) throughout Manhattan, also from Sony (Feb. 17).

Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine and Tom Hardy star in “This Means War” (Fox, Feb, 17) about top CIA agents who discover they both date the same woman.

Nicholas Cage stars with Idris Elba and Ciaran Hinds in “Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance 3D” (eOne Films, Feb. 24); Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton and Famke Janssen star in “Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters” (Paramount, March 2); Mark Strong and Willem Dafoe are in Disney’s version of the Rider Haggard tale “John Carter” (March 9); Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt take the leads in Lasse Hallstrom’s film of the successful book “Salmon Fishing In The Yemen” (LionsgateUK, March 9); Jonah Hill and Julianne Hough are in the highschool police yarn “21 Jump Street” (Sony, March 16); Julia Roberts and Lily Collins are in “Snow White” (StudioCanal, March 16); Fox has postponed to March 23 its birdwatching comedy, “The Big Year”, starring Jack Black, Owen Wilson and Steve Martin; and Liam Neeson and Sam Worthington are in “Wrath Of The Titans” (Warner, March 30).

This story appears in Cue Entertainment.

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THEATRE REVIEW: Raymond Chandler’s ‘The Big Sleep’

Posted on October 28, 2011 by admin

Simon Merrells as Philip Marlowe with Anna Doolan at the Mill at Sonning

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – As Alvin Rakoff’s production of Adam Rolston’s “A Sentimental Journey”, about the life of Doris Day, opens in Los Angeles, the British-based filmmaker and stage director takes on another Hollywood icon with the World Premiere in England of a play based on Raymond Chandler’s noir classic “The Big Sleep”.

“A Sentimental Journey”, which stars British musical star Sally Hughes and opens at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood on Nov. 2, began life at the well-regarded dining and theatre venue The Mill at Sonning, just outside London.

“The Big Sleep”, which Rakoff adapted with his son John D. Rakoff, has just opened at the same theatre and it is a creditable take on Chandler’s notoriously dense private eye caper about a rich man’s two daughters and the dangerous company they keep.

The venue’s small stage means that set designer Eileen Diss must make use of simple furniture and a backdrop with several doors to create the illusion that characters move between a large mansion, a seedy hotel room and a gloomy bar.

Silhouetted black-and-white images are projected onto the art deco backdrop to suggest some of the shadier goings on that involve Chandler’s regular community of rich men, tough guys and easy women.

Simon Merrells looks and sounds the part of a no-nonsense ex-cop who walks the mean streets with dignity although he’s not averse to meting out a slap when a dame gets hysterical. The adaptation uses the first person as in the novel and the Rakoffs give Marlowe some wry lines that play off the restrictions of the set.

Samantha Coughlan plays the older daughter with the right mix of cool disdain and vulnerability while Anna Doolan conveys the reckless younger sibling’s tentative grip on full mental health and her freewheeling sexuality.

The other men in the cast have multiple roles with Michael Percival best as a frail but disciplined rich father and Martyn Stanbridge colourful as an overworked detective.

Running for two hours including an interval, the play has enough of the novel’s punch and intrigue to please audiences and with a bigger budget for sets and sound, it might well go places.

Venue: The Mill at Sonning, UK (runs through Nov. 26); Cast: Simon Merrells, Samantha Coughlan, Anna Doolan, Martun Stanbridge, Michael Percival, Elliot Harper; Playwrights: Alvin Rakoff & John D. Rakoff, adapted from the novel by Raymond Chandler; Director: Alvin Rakoff; Set designer: Eileen Diss; Lighting designer: Matthew Biss; Costume designer: Jane Kidd; Fight director: Alison de Burgh.

Read my review of “A Sentimental Journey” for The Hollywood Reporter here)

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Norman Jewison on the music in ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’

Posted on October 23, 2011 by admin

By Ray Bennett

GHENT, BELGIUM: Canadian filmmaker Norman Jewison has had an outstanding career as director and producer of major Hollywood films but it’s sometimes overlooked how much great music played in his success and how many wonderful composers he worked with.

The list includes ‘The Cincinnati Kid’ (1965) with Lalo Schifrin, ‘The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming’ (1966) Johnny Mandel, ‘In the Heat of the Night’ (1967) Quincy Jones , ‘Gaily, Gaily’ (1969) Henry Mancini,  ‘F.I.S.T’ (1978) Bill Conti, ‘…and justice for all’ (1978) Dave Grusin,  ‘Best Friends’ (1982) Michel Legrand, ‘Moonstruck’ (1987) Dick Hyman, and ‘Agnes of God’ (1985) Georges Delarue.

In 1962, he produced ‘The Broadway of Lerner and Loewe’ for NBC starring Julie Andrews, Richard Burton, Maurice Chevalier, Robert Goulet and Stanley Holloway. In 1963, he produced ‘The Judy Garland Show’ for CBS and he directed the musicals ‘Fiddler On The Roof’ (1971) and ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ (1973).

And, of course, he worked with Michel Legrand on ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ (1968) for which the composer was nominated for an Academy Award for best original score. With lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman he won the Oscar for best original song  for ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’ (performed in the film by Noel Harrison).

“God, it’s a beautiful score,” Jewison told me. “What a score that is. You can just play the score with a snatch of dialogue.”

We met at the 38th Ghent International Film Festival in Belgium where he received the annual Joseph Plateau Award for lifetime achievement. In the spacious lobby of festival headquarters at the Ghent Marriott Hotel, we chatted about the inspiration for the score over some Jameson and soda.

The director said he brought Legrand onto ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ after he had edited the chess match played in the film by Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. “We showed him the scene and I said, ‘Do you want to take the clip home?’ He took it home and when he came back we could just cut his music right to the moves of the actors’ hands. God, it was just mind-blowing. He wrote the cue ‘His Eyes, Her Eyes’ because he became fascinated with the way they look at each other. He made it so romantic all of a sudden, this chess game, which you looked at in silence, because it’s a game played with no talk.”

People had told Jewison that it was just like a card game: “I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ I know what I’m doing. It’s not about chess: it’s about sex. Don’t you realise? Every move of her hand; she’s trying to get an advantage … and Michel just scored the shit out of that. ‘His Eyes, Her Eyes’ is just wonderful, but ‘Windmills Of Your Mind’ overshadowed it.”

That song comes later in the film when McQueen is in a glider: “I had put ‘Strawberry Fields’ by the Beatles behind the glider as a temp track, and I said, ‘There’s something repetitious about the song and I said ‘I need something like this.’ That’s when Michel wrote this strange piece and the Bergmans came up with ‘Round, like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel’ and it was all inspired by ‘Strawberry Fields’.”

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THEATRE REVIEW: Mark Rylance in ‘Jerusalem’

Posted on October 18, 2011 by admin

Alan David, left, with Mark Rylance in ‘Jerusalem’ at the Apollo Theatre thru Jan. 14 2012

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – “We are an unruly people,” Queen Elizabeth I warned the King of Spain, by which she meant the likes of Johnny “Rooster” Byron the Romany outlaw who cries freedom from his little patch of English forest in Jez Butterworth’s indecently exhilarating play “Jerusalem”.

Mark Rylance won the Olivier and Tony Award for his performance as a cantankerous thorn in the side of the complaisant suburban middle class that wishes to see him thrown out of his tiny piece of rural England, and he’s back in the West End for another run through Jan. 14.

He gives a marvellous performance as a former stuntman and full-time rascal with a rampaging lust for life in a splendid play that captivates from the start and right away makes the three-hour running time seem like it will be way too short.

Critics have made the point that Rooster is quintessentially English in his determination to be independent and lack of interest in pleasing anyone. There’s truth to that, but Butterworth has crafted the role and Rylance plays him just as much as the man described in Ed and Patsy Bruce’s classic American country song, “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” – “Them that don’t know him won’t like him, and them that do sometimes won’t know how to take him. He ain’t wrong, he’s just different but his pride won’t let him do things to make you think he’s right.”

Johnny lives not far from new suburban housing in a disreputable caravan by some trees on a spot that he has made his own small Camelot where he dispenses wisdom, fanciful tales, liquor, drugs and kindness to a motley assortment of visitors. Some are young and wild, others are old and weary and some are just plain scared, but the Rooster provides safe haven except to the bullies, busybodies and bureaucrats who wish he would just go away.

The language is ferociously and hilariously vulgar as Johnny regales his acolytes with stories of sexual conquests, battles with officialdom and encounters with giants. His speech is relentlessly entertaining and just maybe some of his yarns have an element of truth, but that doesn’t matter. Rylance’s command of his character’s outlandish manner is unforgettable.

Among the colourful individuals who show up to enjoy Johnny’s company and supply of various kinds of nourishment are Mackenzie Crook, outstanding as a philosophical would-be disc jockey who would like to be a closer friend than the Rooster will allow. Alan David makes his befuddled professor quite moving and Danny Kirrane is pitch perfect as a pub landlord torn between his affection for Johnny’s largesse and duties as a publican and Morris dancer.

Director Ian Rickson draws matching contributions from the rest of the cast and Oscar-winning composer Stephen Warbeck provides evocative music that echoes the Rooster’s cantankerous moods. Rylance’s performance, the play and the production will be spoken of for a very, very long time.

Venue: Apollo Theatre, London (runs through Jan. 14). Cast: Mark Rylance, Mackenzie Crook, Alan David, Johnny Flynn, Danny Kirrane, Aime-Ffion Edwards. Playwright: Jez Butterworth; Director: Ian Rickson; Set designer: Ultz; Lighting designer: Mimi Jordan Sherin; Sound designer: Ian Dickinson for Autograph; Music: Stephen Warbeck.

Here is the extraordinary speech that Mark Rylance gave in New York when he won the Tony Award for ‘Jerusalem’.

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MOVIE PREVIEW: ‘The Three Musketeers 3D’

Posted on October 12, 2011 by admin

three musketeers 03 x650

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – When Milla Jovovich’s husband said that he wanted to make a new film version of “The Three Musketeers”, she said, “Really? No. Really?” The actress says: “But then I thought if anyone is going to reboot ‘Three Musketeers’, it’s going to be Paul, so I just wanted to be a part of it.”

It helps that her husband is Paul W.S. Anderson who has directed the star in the “Resident Evil” franchise, the most recent of which, “Resident Evil: Afterlife” grossed $296 million around the world.

That film was shot in 3D and afterwards Anderson said every movie he made would be in that format. Thus the new “Three Musketeers” – released by eOne this month in theatres and in February on Blu-day Disc – is in 3D and uses the same Cameron/Pace system used for “Avatar”

jovovich x325Anderson says he takes a holistic approach to 3D filmmaking and so everything about a movie has to be 3D: “We start by writing a 3D script that has action set-pieces in it and descriptions of places that think about the dept that 3D likes and loves. Then we design sets that emphasise the 3D. I choose locations that work well in 3D. We chose to shoot fight scenes in the rain because rain looks great in 3D.”

Ray Stevenson (“Rome”, “Thor”), who plays Porthos in the film, says that filming fight sequences in 3D is very liberating: “The 3D cameras can almost see around you so everything has to be on point and on target. We had phenomenal training before we started to shoot and it had to be of such a high standard because of the 3D, and when we came to filming we were a lot freer.”

That was good because there are a lot of fights in the picture, big ones with scores if not hundreds of people who use not only daggers and swords but futuristic weapons inspired by 17th century exhibits and illustrations in German museums.

They were German because the film’s interiors were shot at Studio Babelsburg in Bavaria. Anderson says, “They have very big stages and we needed the big stages for the sets we built. The movie was 70% on location and 30% stage. Obviously, we needed a lot of historic locations, which were fantastic but once you start blowing things up, as we do in the movie, we had to do all of that on the stage. We had to build really big so that the stage portion matched visually the locations.”

It was great fun, too, for the rest of the cast, which includes Matthew Macfadyen (“Spooks”, “Pride And Prejudice”) as Athos, Luke Evans (“Tamara Drew”, “Clash Of The Titans”) as Aramis, Logan Lerman (“3:10 To Yuma”), Christoph Waltz (“Inglourious Basterds”) as Cardinal Richelieu, and Orlando Bloom (“Lord Of The Rings”) as the Duke of Buckingham.

Anderson says he set out to make a family popcorn movie because it was the first film he’s made since he’s had a family. He says: “There’s no blood in it, no nudity, no bad language. It depends on how sensitive your kids are. There is a certain intensity in the action scenes but if your kids are up for that, I would say definitely go for it.”

threemusketeers 02 x650

This story appeared in Cue Entertainment.

 

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Jonathan Pryce to play ‘King Lear’ at the Almeida

Posted on September 30, 2011 by admin

Jonathan Pryce

By Ray Bennett

Great news from London’s Almeida Theatre: Jonathan Pryce will perform “King Lear” there in a production directed by Michael Attenborough that will run Aug. 31 to Nov. 3.

Also next year, the Almeida will have Federico Garcia Lorca’s “The House of Bernarda Alba” relocated to rural Iran in a production directed by Bijan Sheibani (Jan. 19-March 10). Shohreh Aghdashlo (“The House of Sand and Fog”) will make her British stage debut.

Michael Attenborough, who is the Almeida’s artistic director, also will direct a new English version of Eduardo de Filippo’s “Filumena” by Tanya Ronder with Olivier Award winning Samantha Spiro (“Merrily We Roll Along” at the Donmar, 2000). Yonder’s adaptation of “Vernon God Little” ran at the Young Vic.

Here’s more about productions at the Almeida

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Delon and Schneider sizzle in restored ‘La Piscine’

Posted on September 30, 2011 by admin

Romy Schneider and Alain Delon in Jacques Deray’s sensual ‘La Piscine’

By Ray Bennett

When you see Alain Delon and Romy Schneider in the 1969 film “La Piscine” you have a much better idea of what it must have been like to be young and beautiful in St. Tropez in the 1960s.

It’s often said that screen couples sizzle, but rarely do they sizzle like Delon and Schneider. The film has been restored by SND Films and starts today at BFI Southbank and in cinemas in key cities, released by Park Circus.

Directed by Jacques Deray with cinematography by Jean-Jacques Tarbés and music by Michel Legrand, it’s a love triangle set in a Mediterranean villa with a tempting swimming pool.

Jean-Paul (Delon) and Marianne (Schneider) are playful lovers whose idyll by the Med is interrupted by the visit of one of her ex-lovers, the boisterous and noisy Harry (Maurice Ronet), who brings his waiflike young daughter Penelope (Jane Birkin) to stay.

The tension grows in a very sly fashion as temptation and jealousy begin to surface, and as the threat of violence increases you can’t take your eyes off the movie’s golden stars.

Here’s more from Park Circus

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THEATRE REVIEW: Mike Leigh’s ‘Grief’ at the National

Posted on September 24, 2011 by admin

Lesley Manville, Ruby Bentall and Sam Kelly in Mike Leigh’s ‘Grief’ at the National Theatre

By Ray Bennett

LONDON (The Hollywood Reporter) – Mike Leigh’s new play “Grief” is the complete opposite of his film “Happy-Go Lucky” with a family rendered almost cataleptic by personal loss and the gloom of post-World War II England.

Given its World Premiere on the Cottesloe Stage of the National Theatre on Sept. 21, the drama boasts all of the filmmaker and playwright’s skill in the delineation of character and his ability to draw extraordinary performances from his cast of Leigh regulars.

Lesley Manville plays Dorothy, a middle-aged woman whose RAF officer husband was killed in the war and whose absence is a constant and unbearable weight. She shares her colorless but tidy home with her sullen and resentful 15-year-old daughter Victoria (Ruby Bentall) and doleful and disappointed single older brother Edwin (Sam Kelly).

It is 1958, and while Victoria, in her proper school uniform, burns like a slow fuse, her mother conforms to the remembered rules of strict lower-middle class English manners. Her daily routine is to struggle through each day as she mismanages her housekeeper, gazes at the photo of her late husband on the mantelpiece, and prepares dinner for Victoria and Edwin.

Oblivious to her daughter’s loss of a father as an infant, Dorothy imagines she can keep “my little girl” even as the teenager begins to respond to the way society has changed beyond their cloistered home. It’s the time of the Sputnik, the Everly Brothers and the birth of computers. Most evenings, as Victoria smolders in her bedroom, Dorothy and Edwin are wont to break briefly into a song such as “Goodnight, Sweetheart” or “Smile” in sweet and harmonious but deeply mournful tones. Then they indulge in a glass of sherry: “Chin, chin.”

The days are broken up occasionally by a visit from Dorothy’s old friends Gertrude (Marion Bailey) and Muriel (Wendy Nottingham), who prattle on about their better-off lives and reminisce about the trio’s younger days as telephonists. A talkative doctor named Hugh (David Horovitch) also pops in to share a drop of whisky and perhaps a game of cards with Edwin. These intruders make no dent in the stultified routine of Dorothy and Edwin, although Victoria makes plain her disdain for all of them.

In typical Leigh fashion, each character is defined cleverly by the words they are given. Dorothy is quick to apologise if she forgets and wears her kitchen apron in the living room, “So sorry,” and she chides her daughter when she smokes a cigarette or drinks “that ghastly Coca-Cola.” Manville captures her despair with precise movements, small hesitations and frequent stillness when she stares hopelessly into the abyss. Kelly, too, has the ability to freeze as if caught in horrified recognition of the complete emptiness of his life.

Bentall makes the unsmiling daughter a potential time bomb while Bailey, Nottingham and Horovitch bring small amounts of merriment and laughter into the fray with expert timing and inflection.

Composer Gary Yershon’s elegiac score for violin, bass and vibraphone adds fluidly to the claustrophobic set designed by Alison Chitty while lighting designer Paul Pyant conveys the monotony of the daily drawing of curtains and switching on and off of lights.

It’s an engrossing and moving production as Leigh maintains the depressing tone with great discipline but underscores everyone’s insufferable politeness with a tension that ratchets up to an explosive finale.

Venue: National Theatre, London, runs through Jan. 28; Cast: Lesley Manville, Sam Kelly, Ruby Bentall, David Horovitch, Marion Bailey, Wendy Nottingham, Dorothy Duffy; Playwright, director: Mike Leigh; Set designer: Alison Chitty; Lighting designer: Paul Pyant; Sound designer: John Leonard; Music: Gary Yershon; 2 hours with no interval.

This review appears in The Hollywood Reporter and here’s more about Grief

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Coppola’s ‘Conversation’ set for Blu-ray in UK

Posted on September 22, 2011 by admin

StudioCanal said it will release Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 drama “The Conversation” starring Gene Hackman on Blu-ray Disc for the first time in the UK on Oct. 31.

The film won the Palme d’Or at the Festival de Cannes and two BAFTA Awards for its outstanding editing and sound. It stars Hackman as a surveillance expert fanatical about his own privacy who stumbles upon what he becomes convinced is a murder plot. The cast includes John Cazale, Robert Duvall, Teri Garr, Frederic Forrest and Harrison Ford. Continue reading →

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TIFF FILM REVIEW: Roland Emmerich’s ‘Anonymous’

Posted on September 18, 2011 by admin

Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Elizabeth 1 and Rhys Ifans as Edward de Vere in ‘Anonymous’

By Ray Bennett

TORONTO – It’s curious that the lives of many creative men, e.g. Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, are so uninteresting, and in the case of William Shakespeare there is also a distinct lack of information. So you cannot blame Roland Emmerich for his choice to focus on the far richer and more interesting life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, in “Anonymous”, which Sony will release in the UK on Oct. 28.

The result is a thoroughly enjoyable “what if” movie and while the question of who wrote all those wonderful plays is central to the story and is exploited with sly wit, it’s really about the politics of the court of Elizabeth I.

Fans of C. J. Sansom’s Shardlake novels and Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall” will relish the film’s depiction of the ferocious internecine chicanery of powerful figures that plot to decide who will succeed Elizabeth on the English throne.

Rafe Spall plays William Shakespeare as an opportunistic buffoon

It’s a sumptuous epic, with genuinely pleasing CGI images of 17th century London, and while the notion that someone other than the Bard of Avon wrote the best plays ever written adds to the film’s enjoyment, it’s the intrigue that enthrals.

Lovers of Shakespeare will delight in the many hints at who inspired notable characters in the plays attributed to him. The playwright is regarded generally as a P.R. man for the Tudors, and Emmerich posits that so too was De Vere. Historical facts and the dates of events are blurred to the service of the entertaining plot but like a Shakespeare play, the broad truth appears to be sound.

John Orloff’s screenplay covers the period at the end of the queen’s life with flashbacks to an earlier time. There are lovers and plotters, and questions of parentage, loyalty and betrayal are woven cleverly.

Director Roland Emmerich employs CGI to great effect to depict 17th century London

Vanessa Redgrave is energetic and powerful as the ageing monarch while her daughter Joely Richardson makes the younger queen both beautiful and cunning. Rhys Ifans gives his best performance yet as De Vere, an elegant and intense intellectual denied the opportunity to make public his brilliance, and Jamie Campbell Bower (Arthur in TV’s “Camelot”) makes the young Oxford full of life and bursting with ideas.

Sebastian Armestro is an earnest and likeable Ben Johnson while Rafe Spall is required to play Will as a bombastic, drunken and conniving opportunist. David Thewlis and Edward Hogg play the villainous Cecils, father and son, with great panache; Trystan Gravelle is appropriately oily as a Christopher Marlowe viewed as deeply flawed, and Sam Reid and Xavier Samuel are handsome and dashing as the Earls Essex and Southampton, whose plotting comes to a bad end.

Sebastian Krawinkel’s production design delivers a pleasing eyeful, Anna J. Foerster’s cinematography is suitably epic and so is the score by Thomas Wander and Harald Kloser.

The film is a departure from Emmerich’s sober-sided disaster pictures and he displays a flare for comedy as well as suspense and intense drama. It’s a lot of fun.

Venue: Toronto International Film Festival; Cast: Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, David Thewlis, Xavier Samuel, Sebastian Armesto, Rafe Spall; Director: Roland Emmerich; Screenwriter: John Orloff; Producers: Roland Emmerich, Larry Franco, Robert Léger; Director of photography: Anna J. Foerster; Production designer: Sebastian Krawinkel; Music: Thomas Wander, Harald Kloser; Editor: Peter R. Adam; Costume designer: Lisy Christi; Executive producers: Volker Engel, Marc Weigert, John Orloff. Production: Anonymous Pictures Ltd; Distributor: Sony Pictures Releasing; UK rating 12, 130 minutes.

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