10 Reasons to Remember Bibi Andersson (1935-2019)

15 Monday Apr 2019

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Actress, Career, Ingmar Bergman, Movies, Sweden

Bibi Andersson (11 November 1935 – 14 April 2019)

An actress who will always be remembered for her work with director Ingmar Bergman (she made ten movies and three television features with him), Bibi Andersson was an inspiration to Bergman and many of the directors she worked with on other projects, from Mai Zetterling to John Huston to Robert Altman. She had always wanted to be an actress, and began pursuing her dream at an early age; while at school and aged only thirteen, she met Bergman who cast her in a soap commercial. Far from being a collaboration (those were to come much later), Andersson nevertheless impressed Bergman enough to be given roles in several of his Fifties movies, and in particular, two features from 1957 that came to be regarded as bona fide classics of both Swedish and international cinema. She was often the young, pretty, effervescent ingenue, and her bright personality shone through.

In the Sixties she began to take on more complex, and demanding roles, exploring facets of female behaviour that marked her out as a talented actress who wasn’t solely dependent on her mentor to give fine portrayals and acclaimed performances. Her career became more and more impressive for its ever-broadening range, and for some unexpected choices, such as her first English language movie, Duel at Diablo (1966). In that same year she gave perhaps the best performance of her entire career, as the overly talkative, insecure nurse who looks after Liv Ullmann’s mute patient in Persona. In some ways, though, this was the peak of her career, and though she continued to work steadily through the late Sixties and into the Seventies, by the end of that decade she was working primarily in theatre and television. The Eighties saw her continue to split her time between the movies, theatre and television, until in 1990, she began directing plays as well, and resumed her working relationship with Bergman on a number of stage productions. During this time Andersson also became involved as a supervisor on the Road to Sarajevo humanitarian project. She made her last big screen appearance in 2009, the same year that she suffered a devastating stroke that left her unable to speak. An actress who kept getting better and better, Andersson leaves behind a tremendous, award-winning body of work spanning five decades, and a legacy that should continue to inspire young, committed actresses even today.

1 – The Seventh Seal (1957)

2 – Wild Strawberries (1957)

3 – So Close to Life (1958)

4 – The Mistress (1962)

5 – Persona (1966)

6 – The Passion of Anna (1969)

7 – The Touch (1971)

8 – I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977)

9 – An Enemy of the People (1978)

10 – A Hill on the Dark Side of the Moon (1983)

10 Reasons to Remember Agnès Varda (1928-2019)

30 Saturday Mar 2019

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Career, Director, Documentaries, French New Wave, Jacques Demy, Photographer

Agnès Varda (30 May 1928 – 29 March 2019)

Often regarded as both grandmother and mother of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda originally intended to become a museum curator. Instead she decided to focus on photography, and soon established a successful career as the official photographer at the Théâtre National Populaire in Villeurbanne. She was always fascinated by images, both still and moving, and their composition, a fascination that prompted her to make her first movie without any experience or training whatsoever. It was a bold move, and one that was an immediate critical success, it’s blend of documentary and fictional elements helping Varda to explore the lives of ordinary people, a facet of her movie making style that she would return to many times throughout her career. However, lauded as it was, La Pointe Courte failed to achieve any financial success, and though Varda remained at the Théâtre National Populaire with her reputation intact, she made only short documentaries in the seven years between her first movie and her second.

If anything though, that second movie, Cléo from 5 to 7, ostensibly about a woman facing up to the fact of her own mortality as she awaits the results of a biopsy, was the movie that cemented Varda’s reputation as a movie maker, with its deeper understanding of the objectification of women, an issue that Varda would also return to in her career. This led to her being regarded as a feminist auteur, but Varda always insisted that she made her movies not with any defined political or feminist agenda, but under her own terms and just “not… like a man”. She continued to make the movies that interested her first and foremost, and eventually, in 1977, founded her own production company, Cine-Tamaris, to ensure that she had control over how her movies were shot and edited. Varda worked mostly in the documentary genre, where she maintained her appreciation for the trials and problems of ordinary people while continuing to experiment with form and format. She made inventive and often challenging movies that offered different and differing perpsectives on a variety of subjects, from the Black Panthers to her husband Jacques Demy, to murals found in Los Angeles and the North Vietnamese Army during the time of the Vietnam war.

Varda’s idiosyncratic approach to her movies was always the best thing about them, and this usually meant that her projects offered unexpected surprises, whether she was celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Cinémathèque Française, or her eightieth birthday by revisiting places from her youth. In the last decade she began to be recognised for her impressive body of work, and she received, amongst others, a lifetime achievement award from the Cannes Film Festival, as well becoming the first female director to be given both an honorary Palme d’or and an Academy Honorary Award. And in 2018 she became the oldest person to be nominated for an Oscar for Faces Places (beating fellow nominee James Ivory by eight days). But perhaps it’s her response to the nomination that sums up Varda best: “There is nothing to be proud of, but happy. Happy because we make films to love. We make films so that you love the film.”

1 – La Pointe Courte (1955)

2 – Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

3 – Le Bonheur (1965)

4 – One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977)

5 – Vagabond (1985)

6 – Jane B. for Agnès V. (1988)

7 – Jacquot de Nantes (1991)

8 – The Gleaners and I (2000)

9 – The Beaches of Agnès (2008)

10 – Faces Places (2017)

10 Reasons to Remember John Carl Buechler (1952-2019)

18 Monday Mar 2019

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Career, Director, Empire Pictures, Magical Media Industries Inc, New World Pictures, Special effects, Troll (1986)

John Carl Buechler (18 June 1952 – 18 March 2019)

If you’re a fan of ultra-low to no-budget horror movies – particularly from the Eighties and Nineties – then you’ll be aware of the work of John Carl Buechler, actor, writer, producer, director, and above all, special effects maestro. It was in this arena that Buechler (pronounced Beekler) found his true calling, having got into the movie business providing special prosthetic effects for Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype (1980). He stayed with special effects make up, and began to make a name for himself as someone who could be relied upon to give a creature feature something of a boost thanks to his ability to come up with practical effects that often belied the paucity of a movie’s budget. He made his directing debut in 1984, contributing the segment Demons of the Dead to The Dungeonmaster, but it was his next outing as a director that cemented his reputation – for good and for bad. The movie was Troll (1986), widely regarded as one of the worst movies ever made (and now something of a cult classic – how tastes change). Despite its reputation at the time, Buechler remained as busy as ever, and in 1988 alone he made varying contributions to nine different movies, including Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (which he also directed), A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, and Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.

Buechler worked almost exclusively in the fantasy and/or horror genres, and had long stints with Charles Band’s Empire Pictures and Roger Corman’s New World Pictures (Corman regarded him as “the best in the business”), but occasionally he would land a gig on a mainstream movie, even providing uncredited animatronic effects on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). He formed his own company, Magical Media Industries Inc, and through the Nineties worked more as a designer than a special effects technician, though still on movies with perilously small budgets and minimal resources. Though most of his output since the late Nineties has been available only through home video releases (and some deservedly so, such as the movies he worked on for Donald F. Glut), Buechler maintained his standing within the industry and was an inspiration for many up and coming young special effects artists. He was an affable figure, well respected, and in his own way exceptionally talented. Outside of the world of low budget horror, Buechler may not be particularly well known, but for anyone who has ever watched the likes of Crawlspace (1986) or Scanner Cop (1994) and wondered just who was responsible for their surprisingly impressive special effects, then the very skilled John Carl Buechler is the answer.

1 – Ghoulies (1984)

2 – Troll (1986)

3 – From Beyond (1986)

4 – Cellar Dweller (1988)

5 – Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)

6 – Re-Animator 2 (1989)

7 – Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

8 – Carnosaur (1993)

9 – Curse of the Forty-Niner (2002)

10 – Hatchet (2006)

10 Reasons to Remember Stanley Donen (1924-2019)

23 Saturday Feb 2019

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Career, Choreographer, Comedies, Director, Gene Kelly, Hollywood, Musicals, On the Town, Singin' in the Rain

Stanley Donen (13 April 1924 – 23 February 2019)

Though Stanley Donen decided at a young age to be an atheist, his Jewish heritage often led to his being bullied by anti-Semites when he was a child. To escape this unwanted attention he went to the movies, and though he liked Westerns, comedies and thrillers, it was Flying Down to Rio (1935) that had the most effect on him. He took dance lessons soon after, and though he had a brief flirtation with studying psychology, he moved from his home town of Columbia, South Carolina to New York City in 1940 to pursue a career as a dancer. He soon secured a role in the original stage production of Pal Joey; the star was a talented dancer and actor called Gene Kelly. It wasn’t long before Kelly asked Donen to be his assistant choreographer, and when both men wound up in Hollywood in the early Forties, Donen worked as a choreographer, often on the movies Kelly was making. It was during this period that Donen came up with two dance sequences that helped cement Kelly’s reputation, and Donen’s own: the dance routine in Cover Girl (1944) where Kelly’s reflection jumps out of a mirror and dances with him, and perhaps one of the most famous dance routines of all, when Kelly dances with the cartoon mouse, Jerry, in Anchors Aweigh (1945).

Donen continued to perfect his knowledge of music and sound and photography, and in 1949 he was given the chance to co-direct a movie with Kelly. The result was an instant classic, On the Town. The movie was innovative in its use of location photography in a musical, and for the way in which its New York, New York sequence was edited. The movie won that year’s Best Picture award at the Oscars, and Donen’s reputation (as a director now) was secured. The Fifties saw Donen work on a number of high profile musicals, and in 1952 he reunited with Kelly for another instant classic, Singin’ in the Rain (though it didn’t receive the best notices at the time). Further success with Seven Brides for Seven Brothers actually placed Donen on a better footing within Hollywood than Kelly, and though they worked again on It’s Always Fair Weather, their relationship deteriorated, and working together was described by Donen as a “one hundred percent nightmare”. The movie was the last production he worked on exclusively under his contract with MGM, and in 1957 he became an independent director and producer, and formed Grandon Productions along with Cary Grant.

The Sixties saw Donen working and living in the UK, and switching from musicals, which were waning in terms of public popularity, to comedies and romantic comedy thrillers. Donen continued to be successful, both with audiences and critics, and he found working away from Hollywood to be something of a relief, so much so that his work during this period, particularly on Two for the Road, showed a director displaying supreme confidence in the materiel he was working with. He returned to Hollywood in 1970, but that decade saw him release just three movies, none of which were successful, and as time went on he worked less and less, until he made his last theatrical movie in 1984, Blame It on Rio. Donen’s career as a director spanned fifty years in total, but it will be the musicals he made in the Fifties and the comedies he made in the Sixties that he will be remembered for chiefly. His contributions to the movie musical form were invaluable in terms of what musicals could achieve by breaking away from the stagebound environment that had been the norm until On the Town. Innovative, ground-breaking, breathtaking – his work during the Fifties was all this and more, but it was the way in which he “re-invented” his career in the Sixties that was just as remarkable. If he fell out of favour later in his career, he wouldn’t be the first. But what he gave us will always endure, because what he gave us was a new way of looking at musicals that continues to inspire movie makers today – and the world over.

1 – On the Town (1949)

2 – Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

3 – Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)

4 – It’s Always Fair Weather (1955)

5 – The Pajama Game (1957)

6 – Funny Face (1957)

7 – Charade (1963)

8 – Arabesque (1966)

9 – Two for the Road (1967)

10 – Bedazzled (1967)

10 Reasons to Remember Bruno Ganz (1941-2019)

16 Saturday Feb 2019

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Actor, Adolf Hitler, Career, Damiel, Downfall, Swiss, Wim Wenders, Wings of Desire

Bruno Ganz (22 March 1941 – 15 February 2019)

Although he made his start in a variety of German movies and stage productions, where he made his reputation, Bruno Ganz was actually Swiss by birth, having been born in Zurich. He knew he wanted to be an actor quite early on, and his initial attraction was to the theatre. He made his screen debut though in 1960, and his theatre debut the following year, and switched between the two over the course of the Sixties, but had more success on the stage. In the early Seventies he co-founded the Berliner Schaubühne ensemble, and was given the Actor of the Year award by Theater heute in 1973. In a few short years though it was to be a collaboration with Wim Wenders that would bring him to international attention, as the terminally ill picture framer, Jonathan Zimmerman, who is coerced into becoming an assassin in Wenders’ adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley’s Game. With his screen reputation now firmly established, Ganz was able to move back and forth between screen and stage with even greater confidence.

During the Eighties, Ganz worked solidly in a variety of movies and genres, always giving good performances, even if the majority of them were in productions that were barely seen outside their countries of origin, or were included only as part of the festival circuit. In 1987 he made the first of three screen appearances as Damiel the angel in another Wim Wenders movie; the role became so iconic that some people in real life actually regarded him as a guardian angel. He continued to work mostly in European productions, and began playing people such as Ezra Pound and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, but it was his second iconic role, as Adolf Hitler for director Oliver Hirschbiegel, that truly cemented his position as one of the greatest actors, both in the German language, and of his generation. He made more English language movies from then on, but often in supporting roles that didn’t allow him to do more than make a minor impression before his character was sidelined. Still, he remained a pleasure to watch, and he continued to make interesting choices.

Indeed, it’s not until you take a closer look at the movies Ganz has made that you begin to realise just how many quality directors he worked with. Wim Wenders aside, Ganz made movies with Barbet Schroeder, Francis Ford Coppola, Werner Herzog, Franklin J. Schaffner, Éric Rohmer, Theo Angelopoulos, Volker Schlöndorff, Stephen Daldry, Ridley Scott, Lars von Trier, Gillian Armstrong, Jonathan Demme, Jerzy Skolimowski, and Jeanne Moreau. He was a subtle actor, always looking for the truth in the characters he played – even Hitler – and his performances reflected the capable, methodical manner in which he explored each role’s vulnerabilities and strengths. A persuasive presence whether on stage or on screen, he has left us with a number of indelibe performances, and the hope that his final role in Terrence Malick’s Radegund won’t end up on the cutting room floor.

1 – The American Friend (1977)

2 – Knife in the Head (1978)

3 – Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

4 – Circle of Deceit (1981)

5 – Wings of Desire (1987)

6 – The Last Days of Chez Nous (1992)

7 – Downfall (2004)

8 – Youth Without Youth (2007)

9 – The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008)

10 – The Party (2017)

10 Reasons to Remember Albert Finney (1936-2019)

08 Friday Feb 2019

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Actor, Albert Finney, Career, Cinema, Hercule Poirot, RADA, Theatre

Albert Finney (9 May 1936 – 7 February 2019)

You could argue that Albert Finney was destined for acting greatness by the company he kept in his first outings on the stage. Fresh from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), one of Finney’s earliest roles was alongside Charles Laughton in The Face of Love, and later he replaced an unwell Laurence Olivier in a production of Coriolanus. He made his first appearance on the big screen, and this time with Olivier, in The Entertainer (1960), but his breakthrough role came in the same year, as the disaffected factory worker, Arthur Seaton, in Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. It was a blistering, angry performance, and one that put him in the running to play T.E. Lawrence in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962). But at the point of being offered the part, he baulked at the idea of being signed to a multi-year contract, and returned to the stage until another screen role came along that did change his life: that of the lust-driven rogue Tom Jones.

Established internationally as a major star, Finney eschewed the limelight for further returns to the stage, and throughout the Sixties he would alternate between treading the boards and appearing on the silver screen. His body of work during this period – and on into the Seventies – was astonishing for the breadth of the roles he took on, and the consistent high quality of his acting. Finney became dependable in a way that few stars would ever match in their careers, turning his hand equally well to dramas, comedies, and musicals. He was versatile, and unafraid to take risks, though his role as Hercule Poirot in the star-studded Murder on the Orient Express nearly typecast him with audiences for years. In the early Eighties he had a string of roles that cemented his position as one of the leading actors of his generation, and even though the projects he chose from the middle of the decade onwards weren’t as successful as his previous choices, Finney always gave his best, and in the case of movies such as Orphans (1987), was often the best thing about them.

The Nineties saw Finney continue to work steadily across all media, and on television he made memorable contributions to a couple of plays by Dennis Potter, even appearing in one of them, Cold Lazarus (1996), as a disembodied head. He had something of a banner year in 2000, thanks to a wonderfully expressive performance in Steven Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich, and by refusing a knighthood from the Queen because he felt the UK honours system “perpetuated snobbery” (though he did accept a BAFTA Fellowship in 2001). The rest of the decade again saw Finney working steadily, and continuing to pick up awards for his work, and maintaining a level of quality in his work that was always hugely impressive (and which over time was heavily rewarded, though he never won an Oscar, despite being nominated five times). He was always a challenging, instinctive actor, true to the characters he played, and no stranger to versatility. Like many of his peers – he was at RADA with Peter O’Toole, and he was born on the same day as Glenda Jackson – Finney came to prominence at a time when cinema and the theatre were pushing at the boundaries of what both disciplines could achieve, and to his credit, he continued to do the same for the rest of his career.

1 – Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)

2 – Tom Jones (1963)

3 – Two for the Road (1967)

4 – Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

5 – Shoot the Moon (1982)

6 – The Dresser (1983)

7 – Under the Volcano (1984)

8 – Miller’s Crossing (1990)

9 – Erin Brockovich (2000)

10 – The Gathering Storm (2002)

10 Reasons to Remember Andrew G. Vajna (1944-2019)

21 Monday Jan 2019

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Career, Carolco, Cinergi, Distributor, Hungarian National Film Fund, Hungary, Mario Kassar, Producer

Andrew G. Vajna (1 August 1944 – 20 January 2019)

For someone who became internationally famous through making movies, it’s perhaps something of a puzzle as to why Andrew G. Vajna’s own childhood never became the subject of a movie. At the age of twelve and supported by the Red Cross, Vajna travelled from his home in Budapest to Canada, He made the trip alone, and arrived with no friends to meet him, and unable to speak a word of English. Despite this, Vajna flourished, and later on he was studying cinematography at the University of California, before he joined the university’s Educational Motion Picture Department. A brief stint running his own photo studio was curtailed by a ski accident, and from there Vajna became a hairdresser. Eventually he teamed with an old friend, Gábor Koltai, and they founded a successful high quality wig company. Vajna moved to Hong Kong and ran his own wig company there before selling it in 1973 for a handsome profit.

Following a brief period as a cinema owner and distributor in the Far East, Vajna met Mario Kassar at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, and together the pair formed distribution company, Carolco. In less than three years, Carolco had become one of the top three foreign sales organisations worldwide, with movies such as Futureworld (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1977), and Winter Kills (1979) being distributed under the Carolco banner. But it wasn’t until 1982, when Vajna and Kassar took a risk in acquiring the rights to David Morrell’s novel, First Blood, that Carolco became a production company as well as a distributor. First Blood‘s success prompted Vajna and Kassar to expand their empire, and further Rambo sequels, along with a wide range of other projects, saw the company continue to build on its successes. But differences between the two men saw Vajna sell his stake in Carolco, and in 1989, he formed Cinergi Productions, Inc. Vajna continued to make successful movies until the mid-90’s when a string of box office flops caused Cinergi to fold.

Despite the high level of success he experienced as a producer/distributor, Vajna never forgot his Hungarian roots, and he did a lot to support the Hungarian movie industry, from arranging for productions such as Evita (1996) to be shot there, to founding DIGIC Pictures, an animation studio. In 2011 he took his support a step further by creating the Hungarian National Film Fund, an organisation dedicated to providing financial and practical support to Hungarian movie projects. The most successful recipient of support from the fund was Son of Saul (2015); without the fund’s backing it’s unlikely László Nemes’ movie would have been made. And in recent years, Vajna expanded his influence by venturing into telecommunications. A man who proved successful in almost everything he turned his hand to, Vajna was also a true enthusiast in everything he did. His influence stretched beyond the boundaries of being a distributor or producer, and without him, Hungary’s reputation as a source of artistically and financially successful movies would certainly not be as healthy as it is today.

1 – First Blood (1982)

2 – Angel Heart (1987)

3 – Music Box (1989)

4 – Total Recall (1990)

5 – Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

6 – Tombstone (1993)

7 – Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995)

8 – Nixon (1995)

9 – Evita (1996)

10 – Freedom’s Fury (2006)

10 Reasons to Remember William Goldman (1931-2018)

17 Saturday Nov 2018

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All the President's Men, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Career, Oscar winner, Screenwriter, The Princess Bride, William Goldman

William Goldman (12 August 1931 – 16 November 2018)

The man who famously said, “Nobody knows anything” – and he was right – William Goldman was a gifted storyteller (not that he would have agreed with that opinion). A screenwriter with as many unpublished scripts as ones brought to the screen, Goldman started out as a novelist, publishing his first novel, The Temple of Gold, in 1956. Further novels followed until a brush with Hollywood brought him to the attention of producer Elliot Kastner. With an agreement that Goldman would write a script based on Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer character, and Kastner would produce it, the resulting movie, Harper (1966), was a hit and Goldman’s place in the Hollywood firmament was seemingly assured, especially as his next script, for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), won him his first Oscar.

But over the next decade, and despite Goldman being in demand and winning another Oscar – for All the President’s Men (1976) – he began to discover that getting a script made into a movie wasn’t that easy. Several projects fell by the wayside, and he found himself less and less in demand, a strange circumstance for a screenwriter with two Oscars on his mantle. The Eighties were a particularly rough period for Goldman, more so after the publication of his first memoir, Adventures in the Screen Trade (1983), which contained that quote, and which was openly critical of the Hollywood machine. It wasn’t until he teamed up with Rob Reiner for an adaptation of his novel, The Princess Bride (one of only two screenplays that he could look at “without humiliation”), that Goldman found himself back in demand. He worked steadily through the Nineties, often as a script consultant, and maintained an enviable reputation.

Looking back over Goldman’s career, there are some tantalising what ifs, screenplays that were never used, from adaptations of Papillon and The Right Stuff, to a musical remake of Grand Hotel (1932), to adaptations of some of his other novels, and perhaps, most intriguing of all considering how the actual movie turned out, Mission: Impossible II (2000). And let’s not forget, these are the scripts that didn’t get produced. With such an impressive body of work, it’s no wonder that Goldman remained a highly regarded writer whose work – concise, cohesive, intelligent, entertaining – was often a guarantor of a good movie (you could argue that the bad ones were the fault of the studios or the directors etc.). But Goldman himself was always self-critical, stating once that he didn’t like his work, which is a shame as there are plenty of people who, if he were still with us, would disagree with him wholeheartedly.

1 – Harper (1966)

2 – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

3 – The Stepford Wives (1975)

4 – Marathon Man (1976)

5 – All the President’s Men (1976)

6 – Magic (1978)

7 – The Princess Bride (1987)

8 – Misery (1990)

9 – Chaplin (1992)

10 – The Ghost and the Darkness (1996)

10 Reasons to Remember Burt Reynolds (1936-2018)

07 Friday Sep 2018

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Action, Actor, Career, Comedy, Deliverance (1972), Smokey and the Bandit (1977), Thriller

Burt Reynolds (11 February 1936 – 6 September 2018)

If it hadn’t been for a series of injuries that ended his college football career, we might never have heard of Burt Reynolds. Faced with rethinking his future, Reynolds at first opted to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a police officer. But his father, with tremendous foresight, persuaded him to finish college (albeit with the intention of becoming a parole officer afterwards). There, Reynolds impressed his English teacher so much that he was given the lead role in a production of Sutton Vane’s Outward Bound (for which he won a state drama award). A career in the theatre followed on from this, and through the Fifties Reynolds honed his craft on the stage before transferring to television at the end of the decade.

Reynolds made his movie debut in Angel Baby (1961), but it would be a further decade before he found his breakout role as Lewis Medlock in John Boorman’s survivalist thriller Deliverance (1972). Finally given a role that he could make something of, Reynolds impressed critics and audiences alike, and thanks to a number of canny career choices that saw him take the action comedy genre to new box office heights. Always perceived as an easy-going, likeable actor, Reynolds channelled this perception into an on-screen good ole boy character that saw him become a major star across a succession of movies such as White Lightning (1973) and Smokey and the Bandit (1977). In the Eighties he segued from action comedies to action thrillers, but his star began to wane and his success at the box office was no longer guaranteed. Reynolds kept working steadily though, and returned to television at the start of the Nineties, particularly in the series, Evening Shade (1990-94).

Reynolds enjoyed something of a career resurgence with Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997), and his performance gained him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, which must have felt good after his previous two movies, Meet Wally Sparks and Bean (both 1997) (and even though he hated the movie itself). But though he continued to appear on both the big and the small screen, often it was in supporting or guest roles, with an occasional lead role thrown in. Health issues plagued him throughout his later years, and by the time he gave what might be called a valedictory performance, in Adam Rifkin’s The Last Movie Star (2017), his obvious frailty made it seem unlikely he would appear in any more lead roles. That said, he was due to appear in Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but he passed away before he could begin shooting his scenes.

Reynolds was once asked to play James Bond but he wisely turned it down, saying an American couldn’t play Bond; it wouldn’t be right. You could argue that he was an actor of limited range, but a more apt description would be that he was a movie star for nearly two decades, and an actor on either side of that period. And with a movie career that spanned fifty-seven years, that makes him an actor first and foremost – and one who will be sorely missed.

1 – Sam Whiskey (1969)

2 – Deliverance (1972)

3 – The Longest Yard (1974)

4 – Nickelodeon (1976)

5 – Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

6 – Hooper (1978)

7 – Sharky’s Machine (1981)

8 – City Heat (1984)

9 – Breaking In (1989)

10 – Boogie Nights (1997)

A Brief Word About Dwayne Johnson and Skyscraper (2018)

18 Wednesday Jul 2018

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Acting ability, Ballers, Career, Dwayne Johnson, Skyscraper, Tentpole movies

If you’ve seen Skyscraper by now – a movie that might more accurately be titled Die Flaccid – then you’ll know that it stars Dwayne Johnson in the kind of role that his career has become synonymous with: that of the hero with a heart of gold and a fierce moral compass (who’s also as ingenious as all hell, and handy in a fight). Johnson has come a long way since his days with WWE, and it’s all credit to him for having become the global A-Lister who is sometimes referred to as “franchise Viagra”. But watching Johnson in Skyscraper, and coming so soon after Rampage (2018), there’s a sense that his time as an action hero might be coming to its natural conclusion. Despite the absudities of writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber’s script, Johnson acquits himself well enough, but the energy he’s brought to previous roles seems lacking, as if the man himself needs new challenges, the kind that can’t be offered by the movies he’s making, but which are available through something like Ballers (2015-). Perhaps it’s time for Johnson to stop headlining tentpole movies, and return to the smaller scale movies he made after transitioning from professional wrestling.

It’s not such a bad idea, for him or for his fans, or even those of us with a wider appreciation of his work. Back when Johnson began making movies in earnest, he appeared in projects such as Be Cool (2005) and Southland Tales (2006), movies where he was praised for his acting abilities, and where he showed considerable promise. Even in the likes of The Gridiron Gang (2006), Johnson was an engaging, credible performer who was often the best thing about the movie he was in. But since then you could argue that the last role he’s taken on that had any substance was – weirdly enough – in Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain (2013). Now Johnson may be happy with the way his career is going, and he may be happy with the choices he’s making, but a close look at the projects he’s got lined up in the next few years reveals more franchise sequels (though thankfully no Baywatch 2) and more blockbuster tentpole movies. Good news, then? Not if Skyscraper‘s lacklustre returns at the box office are anything to go by. Perhaps it really is time for Johnson to return to the kinds of movies where he can flex his acting chops and not just his muscles, and remind us all of what he can really achieve when he sets his mind to it.

Agree? Disagree? You know what to do…

10 Reasons to Remember Robby Müller (1940-2018)

04 Wednesday Jul 2018

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Career, Cinematographer, Colour, Jim Jarmusch, Light, Master of Light, Wim Wenders

Robby Müller (4 April 1940 – 4 July 2018)

Famous for working closely with Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch, Robby Müller was a multi-award winning cinematographer who was adept at using light and colour in often idiosyncratic yet beautiful ways. Watching a movie he’d lensed, there was always a sense of being invited to see the world in a different way, more heightened perhaps, but still recognisable and relevant to our own experiences. He was able to use colour as a way of “phrasing” a scene, of giving it a texture that other cinematographers could never achieve because of how he himself saw things. When he worked with Wenders or Jarmusch (or even Lars von Trier), the distinct worlds they created were enhanced by Müller’s own aesthetic style. The director Steve McQueen once referred to Müller as a “blues musician”, and it’s hard to disagree with that assessment; Müller was a virtuoso in much the same way. And he had an appropriate nickname too: the Master of Light.

1 – Alice in the Cities (1974)

2 – The American Friend (1977)

3 – Saint Jack (1979)

4 – Paris, Texas (1984)

5 – To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)

6 – Down by Law (1986)

7 – Dead Man (1995)

8 – Breaking the Waves (1996)

9 – The Tango Lesson (1997)

10 – Dancer in the Dark (2000)

Poster(s) of the Week – A Tribute to Bill Gold

23 Wednesday May 2018

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Bill Gold, Career, Graphic design, Poster of the week, Posters, Warner Bros.

If you had to identify a link between Casablanca (1942) and A Clockwork Orange (1971) – other than that they’re both classics – it’s unlikely that you’d opt for the graphic designer Bill Gold. But Gold designed the posters for both movies as part of a career that began in 1942 with Yankee Doodle Dandy and continued until 2011 with J. Edgar (for which he came out of retirement at the age of ninety).

He began his design career in 1941, working in the advertising department at Warner Bros., and eventually becoming head of poster design in 1947. When the New York offices of Warner Bros. advertising unit was disbanded in 1962, Gold created his own company, Bill Gold Advertising, and continued designing posters for movies as varied as Camelot (1967), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Breathless (1983), and In the Line of Fire (1993). He designed the posters for pretty much every Clint Eastwood movie from Dirty Harry (1971) onwards, and when he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Hollywood Reporter in 1994, it was Eastwood who presented him with the award. Involved in the design and creation of around two thousand movie posters during his near seventy year career, Gold passed away on 20 May 2018 aged ninety-seven. In tribute to Gold and his work, here are ten posters that sum up both his talent and the reason why he was held in such regard by the likes of Laurence Oliver, Elia Kazan, and Ridley Scott.

10 Reasons to Remember Miloš Forman (1932-2018)

15 Sunday Apr 2018

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Amadeus, Career, Czechoslovakia, Director, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Oscar winner

Miloš Forman (18 February 1932 – 13 April 2018)

Miloš Forman once said, “It all begins in the script. If what’s happening is interesting, it doesn’t matter where you shoot from, people will be interested to watch. If you write something boring, you can film from mosquitoes’ underpants and it will still be boring.” Forman knew the value of a good script, and even a cursory look at the movies he made reveals a grasp of that essential provision. Though he was a master visualist, and an expert at creating the relevant mood for each of his projects, his affinity for the written word always made his movies stand out from the crowd. Through dialogue he could reach the emotional heart of a character and show that emotional heart to audiences around the world. From his beginnings in his native Czechoslovakia, through to the movies he made as a continual outsider within the Hollywood system, Forman was a director who pursued the projects that interested him, and through doing so, ensured that his body of work would remain fascinating and thought-provoking.

At a young age, he wanted to be a theatrical producer. He attended boarding school with the likes of future Czech president Václav Havel, and future movie makers Ivan Passer and Jerzy Skolimowski. He studied screenwriting at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, and later worked for Alfréd Radok, the creator of Laterna Magika. He began making movies in the early Sixties, creating a comedic style that brought him to the attention of festival programmers around the world, and soon to much wider audiences than could be found in Czechoslovakia. The Prague Spring of 1968 pushed Forman into leaving his home country, and he wound up in the US, where after a good but inauspicious start, he was hired to direct an adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckkoo’s Nest – Forman always said that he was hired because he was within the producers’ price range. He won an Oscar for his efforts on the movie, and from there on, the future of his career was assured (he won a second Oscar for his work on Amadeus).

Forman continued to make intelligent, critically well received movies across a variety of genres. But though his movies didn’t always do well at the box office, his standing within the movie community increased with every project. Even a “lesser” Forman movie, such as Goya’s Ghosts (2006), had moments where his artistry and skill as a director helped transform the material into something better than originally envisaged. He worked particularly well with actors, and steered the likes of Jack Nicholson, Brad Dourif, Elizabeth McGovern, F. Murray Abraham, and Woody Harrelson to Oscar nominations (Nicholson and Abraham, of course, won). Forman was also a staunch advocate of individual freedoms, and was wise to the irony of fleeing one country (Czechoslovakia) where censorship was directly applied by the State, to another country (the US) where indirect censorship applied by the studios, often meant it was more difficult to make the kinds of movies he was interested in making. But what was most important to him was that he liked to have fun when making a movie, even if he was making a serious drama, and in that respect, his movies retain an engaging, sprightly quality to them, a liveliness that helps keep them feeling fresh even after repeated viewings.

1 – A Blonde in Love (1965)

2 – The Fireman’s Ball (1967)

3 – Taking Off (1971)

4 – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

5 – Hair (1979)

6 – Ragtime (1981)

7 – Amadeus (1984)

8 – Valmont (1989)

9 – The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996)

10 – Man on the Moon (1999)

Interview with Kristina Anapau

01 Sunday Apr 2018

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Actress, Brian Kohne, Career, Hawaii, Interview, Kristina Anapau, Kuleana, Movies

Kristina Anapau has been an actress since 1997, when she made her screen debut in Escape from Atlantis. Since then she’s appeared on stage, and continued to appear on screen in movies such as Black Swan (2010), and Cornered (2011). Kristina has worked steadily in television as well, bagging guest spots on shows such as CSI: NY and House, and a recurring role on True Blood. She is even more talented, having trained as a classical ballerina as a child, while also being a classically trained pianist. More recently, Kristina has had articles published in a variety of magazines including The Hollywood Film Journal. Her work on the Hawaii-based production, Kuleana (2017), prompted thedullwoodexperiment to interview her about the movie and filming it in the US state where she was born.

How did you come to be involved with Kuleana?

I met the director, Brian Kohne, back in 2011 at The Big Island Film Festival – his first feature won [the] Grand Jury Prize that year. He sent me an earlier version of the Kuleana script about a year later – every time he sent a new draft, I thought the script just couldn’t get any better, but it did. Every time. It was such a beautiful story, I knew I wanted to be a part of it right away.

How did you approach the character of Rose, and were there any particular challenges to playing the role?

I drew a lot from certain elements of myself in creating Rose – Brian and I spoke a lot about her before filming – [and] added layers upon layers. Rose was a pleasure to portray. I think the only challenge were the “fake” cigarettes I had to smoke all day in the scene at the police station. I swear there was something else in those cigarettes!

What was it like working with Brian Kohne?

Brian is so lovely to work with. He has a vision for exactly what he wants to see on screen and puts 200% into everything he does. His creative drive is infectious, and you can’t help but want to join in to help bring that vision to life.

The movie reflects on a turbulent time in Hawaiian history – how much were you aware of before coming on board?

This film was definitely an education for me in that regard! I’m not a Hawaiian history buff to say the least, and wasn’t born until about ten years later, so I learned a lot about the cultural upheaval of that time period during the making of this film.

How important is your Hawaiian heritage to you both personally and professionally?

I actually don’t have any Hawaiian heritage other than having been born there. My parents both came from the mainland U.S. shortly before meeting there in the 70’s – Anapau is my middle name. My real last name is Roper – British heritage on my Dad’s side and Swedish and German on my Mother’s. Although I just sent my 23andMe kit in, so ask me again in 6 weeks! Maybe I’ll discover a surprise in there!

How was it filming on Maui?

It’s always lovely to go home to Hawaii and Maui is an island I had never explored. A beautiful place to film!

What’s the vibe like in Hawaii in terms of the film industry there?

I haven’t actually spent too much time around the Hawaii film industry other than while making Kuleana and attending a few film fests throughout the years, but everyone seems very driven – very creative – I’m really hoping that Brian’s success with Kuleana will open the door for local filmmakers in a big way.

You were an executive producer on Kuleana – do you see yourself supporting other Hawaiian movies in a similar way in the future?

If the right project came along. Absolutely.

You were awarded a special No Ka Ai award at the 2011 Big Island Film Festival – how important was that to you?

It was a wonderful honor – it was such a special event to be a part of.

Away from acting, you’re a writer and a musician, and you trained to be a classical ballerina – do you have any other ambitions within the arts?

Just to write more!

Who has influenced you the most in terms of your career?

Linda P. Brown. In terms of my career. My life. Everything.

And finally, what’s next for Kristina Anapau?

Last year I co-created and produced a kids show with award-winning host and comic John Kerwin. It’s essentially The Tonight Show for kids – we have all the young stars of Disney, Nickelodeon, and everywhere else – kids in the audience – it’s a lot of fun. It has been airing nationwide on DirecTV, but [is] about to launch across a variety of big streaming platforms, so keep an eye out, we will be everywhere. Follow us on insta@johnkerwinkidsshow for all the latest! So, very busy with that – I have a few more projects in development as well. Writing and producing are my main focuses now.

10 Reasons to Remember Stèphane Audran (1932-2018)

28 Wednesday Mar 2018

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Actress, Babette's Feast, Career, Claude Chabrol, France, Movies

Stèphane Audran (8 November 1932 – 27 March 2018)

The Sixties were a boom time for French actresses, and Stèphane Audran certainly made her mark on international cinema during that period. Success came quickly after she began acting in the mid-Fifties, appearing on stage and in an early short movie by Eric Rohmer. In 1957 she was introduced to the director who would do the most to shape her career, Claude Chabrol (and who she would marry in 1964). Early in her career, she often played the lively, vivacious friend of the female lead, but Chabrol saw another persona that could be used to greater effect: that of a glamourous yet detached sophisticate whose emotions ran deep. It was the role that Audran was seemingly born to play, and during her early collaborations with her future second husband (Jean-Louis Trintignant was her first), it was the kind of part that she returned to time and again, but she was always able to give each portrayal a different spin. By the end of the Sixties, Audran was an established star of French cinema and one of its finest ambassadors around the world.

It was the Seventies that really saw her career take off, with a string of impressive performances that garnered her a clutch of awards, and which cemented her reputation as one of the most intelligent actresses of her generation. Audran had never really had much confidence in her abilities when she started out, but the reception to performances such as the one she gave in Just Before Nightfall gave her the boost she needed. As the decade progressed she consolidated her position as one of France’s best actresses, and began appearing in English language movies, such as The Black Bird (1975) and Silver Bears (1978). Her marriage to Chabrol was beginning to suffer by then, and her portrayal of Isabelle Huppert’s working class mother in Violette Nozière aside (a role she thought she wasn’t right for, but which brought her a César Award for Best Supporting Actress), Audran began to suffer psychosomatic problems. Her career declined for a time, and though she continued working, and still on occasion with Chabrol himself, the Eighties weren’t as successful for her as the Seventies were.

But it was a movie made in 1987 and set in 19th century Denmark that cemented her reputation: Babette’s Feast. Beautifully crafted and with perhaps Audran’s finest performance at its centre, this was the movie that erased any doubts as to her skills as an actress. She continued to work steadily from then on, and even though she never again scaled the heights of the previous decades, she remained a consistently reliable actress whose performances were always carried off with honesty and sincerity. All of which was a far cry from her formative years when she was plagued by illness, and an over-protective mother who disapproved of her decision to become an actress. By her own admission her early roles weren’t very good, and she always attributed her success to Chabrol, but if she was his muse – and they did make twenty-four movies together – then we should all be grateful that he saw what a talented actress she could be, and made sure that we all found out.

1 – Good Time Girls (1960)

2 – Les biches (1968)

3 – The Unfaithful Wife (1969)

4 – Le Boucher (1970)

5 – Just Before Nightfall (1971)

6 – The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)

7 – Violette Nozière (1978)

8 – Coup de Torchon (1981)

9 – Thieves After Dark (1984)

10 – Babette’s Feast (1987)

Spielberg (2017)

18 Sunday Mar 2018

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Biography, Career, Director, Documentary, E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Munich, Review, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg

D: Susan Lacy / 147m

With: Steven Spielberg, Leah Adler, Francis Ford Coppola, Daniel Day-Lewis, Brian De Palma, Leonardo DiCaprio, Richard Dreyfuss, Sally Field, Tom Hanks, Michael Kahn, Janusz Kaminski, Tony Kushner, George Lucas, Janet Maslin, Dennis Muren, Martin Scorsese, A.O. Scott, Anne Spielberg, Arnold Spielberg, Nancy Spielberg, Sue Spielberg, John Williams, Vilmos Zsigmond

Spielberg opens with a confession from the man himself: that when he saw Lawrence of Arabia (1962) for the first time, it made him realise he couldn’t be a director. The scope and the depth of David Lean’s extraordinary movie was so far beyond Spielberg’s own capabilities as a budding movie maker that it was overwhelming. But not even Lean’s masterpiece could deter him completely. The next week he saw it again, and again the week after that, and the week after that… Awake to the possibilities that cinema could offer and provide, Spielberg continued to make short movies of his own, including Amblin’ (1968). This brought him to the attention of Sid Sheinberg, then president of Universal, who took a chance on him. A short stint in television led to his first feature, Duel (1971), and just four years later, he changed the face of cinema forever by making the first summer blockbuster, Jaws (1975). The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Susan Lacy’s celebratory documentary focuses on the various highs of Spielberg’s career, while studiously ignoring the lows. This is to be expected perhaps, but while the likes of Jaws, E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Schindler’s List (1993), Jurassic Park (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Munich (2005), and Lincoln (2012) are studied in some detail, once 1941 (1979) is dealt with (“Why couldn’t I make a comedy?”), the focus settles on establishing Spielberg as a predominantly serious movie maker, and not the populist movie maker who, at his best, can still inspire the kinds of awe and wonder that other directors can only dream of. Lacy looks to how Spielberg has grown as a director, and how he’s used each new experience behind the camera as a way of augmenting and perfecting his craft. Even now, after more than fifty years as a director, Spielberg comes across as someone who’s still learning, and is eager to do so. It doesn’t hurt that he’s an engaging and often self-deprecating interviewee, and throughout he makes references to growing up and being a child of divorce, something that has infused much of his work since.

His recollections and reminiscences are supported by a range of collaborators and interested parties, but none are as interesting as those supplied by his family, from his mother Leah, father Arnold, and sisters Anne, Nancy and Sue. Their memories of his childhood, coupled with his feelings about being Jewish, help broaden our understanding of Spielberg the person, and what has driven him in his work over the years. But while he’s open and honest about his parents’ divorce and the effect it had on him, and the importance of his own family now, the absence of Kate Capshaw is curious (and unexplained). That aside, and though the movie overall is a fascinating endorsement of his career and achievements, it’s perhaps a little too safe in its approach. Though a plethora of behind the scenes footage, and photographs from his childhood and early career is welcome, and Spielberg is a worthy subject, there’s a sense that his observations about those movies which weren’t so successful – Hook (1991), The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), or The BFG (2016) – would have been equally welcome. Lacy correctly focuses on Spielberg’s strengths as a director and the high regard he has amongst his peers, but even that brings up another issue: with Spielberg having had a considerable influence on a range of movie makers over the last forty-plus years, why are their contributions as noticeably absent as Capshaw’s?

Rating: 7/10 – a documentary that isn’t as wide-ranging as it could have been (and despite its running time), Spielberg is still an entertaining journey through the director’s life and career that is informative and convivial; having Spielberg revisit many of his movies is illuminating, and there’s enough here that’s new or previously unrevealed to make this – for now – the place to go to find out how and why he makes the movies he does.

10 Reasons to Remember Lewis Gilbert (1920-2018)

27 Tuesday Feb 2018

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Career, Director, Documentaries, James Bond, Lewis Gilbert, Movies, World War II

Lewis Gilbert (6 March 1920 – 23 February 2018)

With his family’s music hall background (Gilbert first appeared on stage with them aged five), and a handful of movie roles as a child in the Thirties (mostly uncredited), it would have seemed appropriate for Lewis Gilbert to seek a career in front of the camera, but though Alexander Korda offered to send him to RADA, Gilbert elected to study direction instead. The first movie he worked on as an assistant? Alfred Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn (1939). Not a bad start, but with the onset of World War II, Gilbert joined the Royal Air Force’s film unit and worked on several wartime documentaries. Further experience came when he was seconded to the First Motion Picture Unit of the US Army Air Forces, where he was allowed to shoot much of the work assigned to American director William Keighley.

After the war, Gilbert continued to make documentaries, but it was in the Fifties that he began to make his mark as a director of features. Working for low-budget outfits such as Nettlefold Films, Gilbert honed his craft, and made a number of well received movies that brought him greater attention and the chance to work on a succession of true stories from the recent war. For a while, Gilbert was the go-to director for these kinds of movies, and between 1953 and 1962 he made half a dozen war-related movies, all of which increased his standing within the movie community, and allowed him to make a range of other movies during the same period that highlighted his versatility. But it was Alfie (1966) that really put him on the map, earning him his sole Academy Award nomination, and proving once and for all that his strongest suit was in relationship dramas.

Anyone following his career up until this point, would have been surprised when his next movie proved to be the fifth Bond movie, You Only Live Twice (1967). But Gilbert proved himself to be at home amidst all the over-sized sets and the absurdity of a Bond movie, and returned twice more to make The Spy Who Loved Me (1977 – terrific) and Moonraker (1979 – uh-oh). In between his first and second Bonds, Gilbert made a number of movies that didn’t fare so well with critics or audiences, and with some, like The Adventurers (1970), Gilbert would later claim that they shouldn’t have been made. But after his Roger Moore one-two at the end of the Seventies, the Eighties saw Gilbert make two bona fide British classics in Educating Rita (1983) and Shirley Valentine (1989). He made his last movie, the enjoyable but slight Before You Go in 2002, but at eighty-two, retirement wasn’t exactly a surprise.

If he had one regret, it was always that he was unable to direct Oliver! (1968), a movie he had developed with its composer, Lionel Bart, but which he was unable to make due to contractual obligations. Gilbert was a director who, Bond movies aside, always looked to the characters first, and it was this focus that allowed him to make so many wonderful movies over more than fifty years. He was honest about his work, and some of his collaborators, but always tried to do the best he could do with the material provided. He wasn’t an auteur in the accepted sense, but his ability to draw out excellent performances from his casts, and to move easily between comedy and drama – often in the same scene in a movie – was a constant throughout his career. And he was a realist. Of Alfie, he had this to say: “Paramount backed Alfie because it was going to be made for $500,000, normally the sort of money spent on executives’ cigar bills.”

1 – Time, Gentlemen, Please! (1952)

2 – Reach for the Sky (1956)

3 – The Admirable Crichton (1957)

4 – Carve Her Name With Pride (1958)

5 – Sink the Bismarck! (1960)

6 – Alfie (1966)

7 – You Only Live Twice (1967)

8 – The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

9 – Educating Rita (1983)

10 – Shirley Valentine (1989)

10 Reasons to Remember Terence Marsh (1931-2018)

13 Saturday Jan 2018

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Academy Awards, Art director, Career, David Lean, Movies, Production designer

Terence Marsh (14 November 1931 – 9 January 2018)

It’s easy to forget when watching a movie that what you’re actually looking at, the physical environment that the cast is working within, has either been designed or adapted to look how it does by the production designer, or art director as they’re otherwise known. A production designer works closely with a movie’s director to ensure that the visual look and style of a movie suits the material and communicates, where necessary, a mood or tone. It’s a challenging job, and Terence Marsh was one of the best in his particular corner of the movie industry.

Marsh began his career as a draughtsman at Pinewood Studios, where he worked uncredited on a number of movies including A Town Like Alice (1956) and The League of Gentlemen (1960). In the early Sixties he began to work as an assistant art director, and he gained his first on-screen credit for Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Three years later he had become a fully-fledged art director and won the first of two Academy Awards for his work on Doctor Zhivago (1965) (Marsh must have really impressed David Lean with his work). His second Academy Award came three years later with Oliver! (1968). For this, he oversaw the building of a London street that was carried out by around three hundred and fifty men and which included the laying of around ten thousand cobblestone slabs.

Marsh worked continuously from the Sixties onwards, and in a variety of genres, bringing his attention to detail and visual acuity to a number of movies that were improved just by his work on them. During his career he collaborated with the likes of Richard Attenborough, Sydney Pollack, Frank Darabont, Carol Reed, Gene Wilder, John McTiernan, Paul Verhoeven and Mel Brooks, and always did his best to match his vision of a movie to theirs. He remained at the top of his game even in the Nineties, whether it was through riding out in a Trident-class nuclear submarine for The Hunt for Red October (1990), or designing “Old Sparky” the electric chair for The Green Mile (1999). For his expertise and his apparently infallible skill in picking the right environment to suit the tone or the mood of a movie, or even just an individual scene, Marsh will be sorely missed.

1 – Doctor Zhivago (1965)

2 – Oliver! (1968)

3 – Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)

4 – A Touch of Class (1973)

5 – The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (1975)

6 – To Be or Not to Be (1983)

7 – The Hunt for Red October (1990)

8 – Basic Instinct (1992)

9 – The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

10 – The Green Mile (1999)

10 Reasons to Remember Shashi Kapoor (1938-2017)

05 Tuesday Dec 2017

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Actor, Bollywood, Career, James Ivory, Top 10

Shashi Kapoor (18 March 1938 – 4 December 2017)

That Shashi Kapoor became an actor and producer should be no surprise given that he was born into Indian acting royalty. His father, Prithviraj, was a leading light in Hindi silent cinema, and went on to become a successful theatre producer and director. Shashi was soon inducted into his father’s touring theatre troupe, and it wasn’t long after that that he was appearing in movies. During the late Fifties he worked as an assistant director before making his debut as an adult actor in Dharmputra (1961). It was the start of a career that would span nearly forty years and see him appear in over a hundred and fifty movies (though he had a rocky start, with most of his early movies being box office flops).

Kapoor had an ebullient screen presence, and though he was often called upon to play the leading man, he wasn’t afraid to take a back seat when needed to some of his co-stars, such as Amitabh Bachchan or Sanjeev Kumar. For Kapoor his theatrical background ensured that the story was the main thing, and whether he was appearing in a Bollywood production, or an English language movie – he was the first Indian actor to move comfortably between the two arenas, and he worked particularly well with James Ivory – Kapoor’s commitment to the roles he played was unwavering. Even if a movie he appeared in wasn’t successful (and there were many), Kapoor retained his popularity, and his career maintained a momentum that, at its height, saw him appear in six or seven movies a year for a number of years. The Sixties and Seventies were perhaps his best period, but he continued to give good performances right up until his last movie, the unfortunately titled Dirty British Boys (1999).

In his home country he will always be remembered as the handsome leading man of so many Bollywood musical extravaganzas, while his appearances in the movies of James Ivory will keep his memory alive in the West. He had a much more substantial tie to the West, of course, through his marriage to the actress Jennifer Kendal, who he appeared with in Shakespeare-Wallah (1965). With her he continued the Kapoor family dynasty, and now he has children who work in the industry as well as various nieces and nephews. He made a couple of forays into directing, and could be called upon to provide the odd guest appearance in a movie from time to time, but it will be those traditional leading man roles from the Sixties and Seventies for which he will be best remembered, roles that showcased both his star quality and his commitment to acting.

1 – Shakespeare-Wallah (1965)

2 – Jab Jab Phool Kihle (1965)

3 – Pyar Ka Mausam (1969)

4 – Bombay Talkie (1970)

5 – Deewaar (1975)

6 – Kabhie Kabhie (1976)

7 – Junoon (1979)

8 – Shaan (1980)

9 – Heat and Dust (1983)

10 – New Delhi Times (1986)

10 Reasons to Remember Walter Lassally (1926-2017)

25 Wednesday Oct 2017

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Career, Cinematographer, Free Cinema, James Ivory, Michael Cacoyannis, Oscar winner, Tony Richardson, Zorba the Greek

Walter Lassally (18 December 1926 – 23 October 2017)

Walter Lassally’s family fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and came to England where his father made industrial and documentary movies. Following in his father’s footsteps, Lassally made his name as a cinematographer in the Fifties, working as part of the British Free Cinema movement, and alongside directors such as Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, and Lindsay Anderson. These were short movies and documentaries that reflected the mood of Britain at the time, and Lassally’s involvement in them helped forge the partnership he made with Richardson in the early Sixties, and which led to a trilogy of movies about working class British lives (past and present) that brought both of them international acclaim. Following his collaboration with Richardson, Lassally reunited with Cypriot director Michael Cacoyannis, with whom he’d worked sporadically during the late Fifties, on perhaps his most famous work, Zorba the Greek (1964). Lassally won an Oscar for his work on the movie, and when he retired he donated it to a beach front taverna located near to where Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates famously danced together in the movie (alas, the statuette was lost in a fire there in 2012).

Lassally continued to work steadily after that, and was much in demand, but in 1972 he began another working relationship that would provide him with extra plaudits in the years ahead, with James Ivory. They worked together off and on over the next twenty years, and Lassally continued to provide the movies he worked on with a thoughtful and intelligent visual approach to the material, while also doing his best to come up with new innovative ways of presenting said material. And even though he officially “retired” in the early Nineties he continued working up until his last feature, Crescent Heart (2001). While not a household name in the same sense as some of his contemporaries, Lassally was nevertheless a signifier of quality if you saw his name in the credits of a movie. Thanks to his early background in shorts and documentaries, Lassally was always able to find the truth within an image, and provide a clarity of vision that always helped to elevate the material or the narrative he was working with. An unsung hero behind the lens then, but very capable of capturing sights that could provoke an emotional and an intellectual response in the viewer.

1 – A Girl in Black (1956)

2 – A Taste of Honey (1961)

3 – The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)

4 – Tom Jones (1963)

5 – Zorba the Greek (1964)

6 – Oedipus the King (1968)

7 – Malachi’s Cove (1973)

8 – Heat and Dust (1983)

9 – The Bostonians (1984)

10 – The Deceivers (1988)

10 Reasons to Remember Harry Dean Stanton (1926-2017)

16 Saturday Sep 2017

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Actor, Career, Movies, Paris Texas, Repo Man, The Harry Dean Stanton Band, The Harry Dean Stanton Fest

Harry Dean Stanton (14 July 1926 – 15 September 2017)

For a long time he was just plain old Dean Stanton, appearing here and there in supporting roles in a gamut of movies and TV shows from 1954 (where for once he was Harry Stanton) through to 1971. During that time he was an Hysterical Patient in Psychiatric Ward in Voice in the Mirror (1958), Poetry-reciting Beatnik in The Man from the Diner’s Club (1963), and even Blind Dick in Ride in the Whirlwind (1966). He was the character actor who popped up seemingly everywhere, appeared in a few scenes, got himself noticed in an “oh it’s him” kind of way, and then vanished again only to repeat the same scenario in his next movie or TV episode. In the Fifties and Sixties there were lots of actors like Stanton making minor impressions on audiences, but Stanton stuck to it, and even if audiences weren’t always aware of who he was (aside from in an “oh it’s him” kind of way), the industry certainly did.

Stanton was a versatile actor whose career never really took off in the way that some of his contemporaries’ – such as Jack Nicholson – did. He never seemed to mind though and often took roles just because he liked them (he was a great advocate of the saying, there are no small parts, only small actors). But his career did take a huge leap forward in 1984 when he made two movies that sealed his fame as an actor forever. Alex Cox tapped him for the role of Bud in Repo Man, and Sam Shepard wrote the part of Travis Henderson for him in Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas. The role of Travis, a lost soul trying to reunite with his family after having vanished years before, required Stanton to be still and silent for long stretches of the movie, but he used his weather-worn features and skill and experience to ensure the character retained a whole host of recognisable emotions and feelings. It was a performance that perfectly encapsulated his abilities as an actor, and should have allowed him to take on more leading roles, but again, he was happy with his choices, and his career continued to keep him busy.

Away from acting, Stanton was also an accomplished musician, appearing internationally as part of The Harry Dean Stanton Band, and garnering rave reviews for the band’s unique spin on mariachi music. He’s also one of the few actors to have an annual movie festival created to honour him; The Harry Dean Stanton Fest has been running since 2011 in Lexington, Kentucky (this year’s event runs 28-30 September). But perhaps the highest praise Stanton ever received was from critic Roger Ebert. Ebert stated that “no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.” And aside from Dream a Little Dream (1989), he was absolutely right.

1 – Straight Time (1978)

2 – Wise Blood (1979)

3 – Alien (1979)

4 – Escape from New York (1981)

5 – Repo Man (1984)

6 – Paris, Texas (1984)

7 – Wild at Heart (1990)

8 – The Mighty (1998)

9 – Sonny (2002)

10 – INLAND EMPIRE (2006)

10 Reasons to Remember Tobe Hooper (1943-2017)

27 Sunday Aug 2017

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Career, Director, Horror, Poltergeist, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Tobe Hooper (25 January 1943 – 26 August 2017)

Like many of his horror movie contemporaries, Tobe Hooper began his career with a bang, but then saw fewer and fewer of his movies gain a similar kind of recognition. And like so many of his contemporaries, he retreated to television, where he worked steadily for around fifteen years. His career was one he might not have been able to predict, though, as during the Sixties he worked as a college professor and documentary cameraman. It wasn’t until he assembled a small cast of college students and teachers and made a small, yet hugely influential feature based upon the infamous Ed Gein, that Hooper stepped into the limelight as a movie maker. The movie, the uncompromisingly titled The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), broke new ground in the horror genre, and is still as uncomfortable to watch today as it was over forty years ago. It also introduced audiences to a new horror icon in the form of Leatherface.

The movie was such a success that Hooper’s future career seemed assured, but projects didn’t always come his way, and some that he took on, such as The Dark (1979) and Venom (1981), led to his being fired once filming had begun. Around this time, Hooper redeemed himself enough to land the job directing a script written by Steven Spielberg, called Poltergeist (1982). To this day, Hooper’s credit as the movie’s director has been continually challenged, with members of the production crew adamant that Spielberg directed the movie and not Hooper. Hooper himself always said that Spielberg did some second unit work “to help out”, but whichever way the truth lies, the movie bolstered Hooper’s reputation but still not enough for him to be working regularly. It wasn’t until he signed a three-picture deal with Cannon Films that it appeared he was fully back on track, but those pictures were heavily cut by Cannon during post-production, and Hooper’s intentions for all three movies were dealt a series of savage blows that helped critics afford Hooper some of the worst reviews of his career so far.

Following his terrible experiences with Goram and Globus, Hooper turned to television where his credits included work on series such as Freddy’s Nightmares, Tales from the Crypt, and Masters of Horror. He made the occasional movie during this period, but a couple of better than average shockers aside, he made the kind of horror movies that made audiences question how the same director could have made something as visceral and uncompromising as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. However he felt about the way his career had turned out, Hooper never complained about his seeming lack of good fortune over the last thirty years, and appeared content to be regarded as the creator of a genuinely disturbing horror movie, and a handful of cult classics.

There was always more to Hooper than most people gave him credit for, and he was always aware that his career could have been so much better in terms of the quality of his movies. But he always persevered and did the best he could with often very limited resources (as he did back in 1974), but there were too many occasions where his skill as a director was at odds with the needs of his producers, and Hooper’s work was bowdlerised in the process. Nevertheless, he continued to work exclusively in horror and science fiction, and unlike, say, George A. Romero or Wes Craven, he never tried to work outside those two genres. Hooper knew where his talents lay; it was just a shame that few producers – including Spielberg – were ever prepared to let Hooper have free rein. If they had, perhaps there would be more classic movies on his resumé than just the one that launched his career.

1 – The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

2 – Death Trap (1976)

3 – Salem’s Lot (1979)

4 – The Funhouse (1981)

5 – Poltergeist (1982)

6 – Lifeforce (1985)

7 – Invaders from Mars (1986)

8 – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)

9 – Crocodile (2000)

10 – Toolbox Murders (2004)

10 Reasons to Remember Jerry Lewis (1926-2017)

20 Sunday Aug 2017

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Actor, Career, Comedy, Dean Martin, Humanitarian, Jerry Lewis, Telethons

Jerry Lewis (16 March 1926 – 20 August 2017)

For many movie lovers, the quintessential Jerry Lewis performance involved a plethora of facial contortions, a unique range of vocal gymnastics, and a willingness to appear very, very, very silly. As a performer, Lewis was irrepressible, a mercurial performer who could delight and enthuse audiences in a way that nobody else could match or improve upon. In short, he was the very definition of unique.

He began his career at an early age, performing alongside his parents at venues in the Catskill Mountains in New York state. After World War II, Lewis met a singer named Dean Martin, and together they formed a double act that lasted until 1956. Their act began in night clubs, with Lewis’s clumsy busboy interrupting Martin’s singing. It was successful, and paved the way for radio shows, TV guest spots, and of course, movies. Lewis and Martin made sixteen pictures together, but as time went on, Lewis’s star waxed higher than Martin’s, and the movies began to focus more on Lewis’s comedy antics than they did on the pair as a team.

The duo’s break up worked for both of them, but for Lewis it brought him to a whole new level of stardom. He became a successful recording artist, appeared by himself on several TV shows, and began a second movie career as a leading actor, appearing in a variety of comedies that he often wrote or co-wrote himself, and which established even further his credentials as one of the best comic performers of the Fifties and Sixties. But his own particular brand of humour began to lose favour with audiences during the mid-Sixties, and the projects he initiated failed to reach the level of success he’d achieved over the previous twenty years. In the late Sixties, he taught movie directing at the University of Southern California; two of his pupils were Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. During the Seventies, Lewis was more active on the stage, and he didn’t return to making movies until the early Eighties.

His acting career over the last thirty-five years was sporadic, yet full of interesting choices, and he gained a further reputation as a dramatic supporting actor. One area in which he maintained a distinctive consistency was in his role as a humanitarian. Lewis hosted a series of fund-raising telethons for the Muscular Dystrophy Association during the Fifties, and again between 1966 and 2010. They were incredibly successful shows, and over the course of fifty years, Lewis helped raise over $2.6 billion in donations. And in France – still – he is regarded as a comic genius. Lewis was a versatile performer who did things his own way, and was frequently right for doing so. And besides, anyone who encouraged Christopher Walken to pursue a career in show business can’t be that bad.

1 – The Stooge (1951)

2 – Living It Up (1954)

3 – The Geisha Boy (1958)

4 – The Bellboy (1960)

5 – The Nutty Professor (1963)

6 – Who’s Minding the Store? (1963)

7 – The King of Comedy (1982)

8 – Arizona Dream (1993)

9 – Funny Bones (1995)

10 – Max Rose (2013)

10 Reasons to Remember Jeanne Moreau (1928-2017)

02 Wednesday Aug 2017

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Actress, Career, Directors, Jeanne Moreau, Louis Malle

Jeanne Moreau (23 January 1928 – 31 July 2017)

What to say about Jeanne Moreau? Quite simply, she was the most exquisitely gifted actress of her generation, another in a long line of French actresses for whom giving a bad performance seems an impossibility. She began her career in 1947 at the Comédie-Française, and worked steadily both in the theatre and in small roles on the big screen, making a name for herself and building a reputation for excellent work that she maintained all the way through to her final movie appearance in 2015 (and despite those early movie roles failing to bring her much success). It was the first of four collaborations with Louis Malle, Lift to the Scaffold (1958), that brought her to the attention of a wider, international audience. It proved to be the spark that lit the fuse on a tremendous run of movies throughout the Sixties, a period where her status as a forceful screen presence was cemented. She could be mysterious, sexy, aloof, fearless, carefree, and unassailably pragmatic – all these things and more. But above all she could always find the emotional core, and the honesty of a character, and use these to give a flawless, mesmerising performance.

She was in demand constantly throughout her career, and worked with some of the most accomplished directors the world over, including François Truffaut, Michelangelo Antonioni, Tony Richardson, Joseph Losey, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, François Ozon, Manoel de Oliveira, and Orson Welles, who considered her “the greatest actress in the world”. Throughout her career it was always the case that directors sought her out rather than the other way round. She was a fervent collaborator, giving of her best when encouraged and supported by directors such as Luis Buñuel, who she regarded as the father she never had (she also married William Friedkin in 1977, though their marriage only lasted for two years). Away from acting she was also a singer, and released several albums over the years. But her true love was acting, and at that she was simply inspirational, which makes the fact that she was never nominated for an Oscar all the more inexplicable. A true original, she leaves behind a body of work that will continue to reward viewers for decades more to come.

1 – Lift to the Scaffold (1958)

2 – The Lovers (1958)

3 – Seven Days… Seven Nights (1960)

4 – Jules et Jim (1962)

5 – Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)

6 – Viva Maria! (1965)

7 – The Bride Wore Black (1968)

8 – Querelle (1982)

9 – The Old Lady Who Walked in the Sea (1991)

10 – Time to Leave (2005)

10 Reasons to Remember Sam Shepard (1943-2017)

01 Tuesday Aug 2017

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Actor, Career, Playwright, Pulitzer Prize, Sam Shepard

Sam Shepard (5 November 1943 – 27 July 2017)

If Sam Shepard had never gone into acting, he still would have left a lasting legacy in so many other areas. He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, an author, a screenwriter, an occasional drummer during the late Sixties with The Holy Modal Rounders, and a two-time movie director. And he co-wrote the Bob Dylan song, Brownsville Girl. Shepard was a true virtuoso, comfortable in a variety of disciplines and able to excel in pretty much all of them.

He made a name for himself in the Sixties, writing a series of plays that won him award after award and a degree of brand-name recognition. He had a way of depicting the emotional and psychological lives of “normal” people in a way that was sincere and affecting, and several of his plays were adapted into movies, often to critical acclaim. He continued to write plays and work in the theatre even though he could have settled into acting as a single career, but Shepard always seemed to be a restless man who was always looking to be creative. As an actor, Shepard was often a calm, purposeful presence in his movies, portraying men of honour and sincerity, and his quiet, stoic demeanour was always a plus. He appeared in supporting roles for the most part, but showed when he was given a leading role that he could carry a movie and often with an ease that some of his more experienced peers couldn’t match. But even though he had tremendous skill as an actor, an innate quality that was unique to him, he didn’t quite see it that way. Let’s leave the last word to Shepard (he’d probably have appreciated it): “I didn’t go out of my way to get into this movie stuff. I think of myself as a writer.”

1 – Days of Heaven (1978)

2 – Resurrection (1980)

3 – The Right Stuff (1983)

4 – Fool for Love (1985)

5 – Crimes of the Heart (1986)

6 – Thunderheart (1992)

7 – Don’t Come Knocking (2005)

8 – The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

9 – Brothers (2009)

10 – Blackthorn (2011)

10 Reasons to Remember John Heard (1946-2017)

22 Saturday Jul 2017

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Actor, Career, Emmy nomination, Home Alone, John Heard

John Heard (7 March 1946 – 21 July 2017)

John Heard was an actor who could have been a star – and briefly he was. Early on in his career, it looked as if A-list status was only a movie or two away. But it wasn’t to be, and though Heard continued to work steadily on both the big screen and on TV, he never achieved the level of fame or fortune that his skill as an actor warranted. He was sanguine about his lack of success, and in 2008 he had these very perceptive words to say about his career:

“I guess I went from being a young leading man to being just kind of a hack actor. When I came to Hollywood, I was pretty much a stage actor, and I expected everybody to be quiet. And they weren’t. They were doing their job, and you’re expected to do your job, and you’re sort of this ongoing co-existence. I was a little bit of an arrogant jerk. Now, it’s a little bit more like, ‘Okay, I realize you have to pat me down with powder every three seconds.’ And I stand there, and I’m a little more tolerant…. I think I had my time. I dropped the ball, as my father would say. I think I could have done more with my career than I did, and I sort of got sidetracked. But that’s OK, that’s all right, that’s the way it is. No sour grapes. I mean, I don’t have any regrets. Except that I could have played some bigger parts.”

Event though from the Eighties onwards he could be found quite low down on cast lists in often minor supporting roles, Heard could still infuse the characters he played with an honesty and a sincerity that often made them better roles than intended. Even in something as bad as Sharknado (2013), he was still worth watching, and he gave several other movies a boost just by being in them. Some careers don’t pan out in the way that actors expect or plan for, and even though Heard was capable of much better roles than he was given, and much better performances when given the chance, he was still an actor who could surprise an audience, as the Emmy nomination for his role as Detective Vin Makazian in The Sopranos (1999/2004) proved. However his career may be viewed now, one thing can be said with certainty: his was a talent that was never fully exploited, and that was, and continues to be, a detriment to us all.

1 – Head Over Heels (1979)

2 – Cutter’s Way (1981)

3 – Cat People (1982)

4 – The Trip to Bountiful (1985)

5 – Big (1988)

6 – Beaches (1988)

7 – Home Alone (1990)

8 – My Fellow Americans (1996)

9 – The Great Debaters (2007)

10 – Too Big to Fail (2011)

10 Reasons to Remember Martin Landau (1928-2017)

17 Monday Jul 2017

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Actor, Actors Studio, Bela Lugosi, Career, Cartoonist, Mission: Impossible, Oscar winner, Rollin Hand, Space: 1999

Martin Landau (20 June 1928 – 15 July 2017)

Before he became an actor, Martin Landau was an editorial cartoonist for the New York Daily News, a job he held from the age of seventeen before the lure of the stage claimed his attention at the age of twenty-two. In 1955 he auditioned – along with five hundred others – for the Actors Studio. There were only two successful applicants, Landau, and a young actor named Steve McQueen. While there he was also best friends with another young actor, James Dean. Two years later he made his debut on Broadway, and two years after that he made an impact playing a ruthless villain in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.

However, despite further roles on stage and the big screen, Landau’s career really took off thanks to the small screen. Guest spots on shows such as Bonanza, The Outer Limits, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. led to a recurring, then permanent role on Mission: Impossible (1966-69). The role of Rollin Hand gave Landau the chance to employ a variety of accents and disguises, and it brought him international recognition. But he was never able to capitalise on the show’s success and transpose it into a better big screen career. TV continued to dominate, and during the Seventies he was best known for appearing in Space: 1999 (1975-77). It wasn’t until Francis Ford Coppola offered Landau a plum role in Tucker: The Man and His Dream that he began to experience the kind of career upsurge that he was long overdue for.

In the years that followed, Landau did some of his best work, and earned very high praise indeed from Woody Allen: “Of all the actors I’ve ever worked with, he gives expression to my dialogue exactly as I hear it. His colloquialisms, his idiom, his inflection is exactly correct. So of all the people who’ve ever read my lines, he makes them correct every time…” And in 1995 he won an Oscar for his role as an aging Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton’s excellent biopic Ed Wood. From then on, Landau continued to work as steadily as before, but often adding a much needed lustre to some of the movies and shows he appeared in. It could be argued that Landau had to wait until he was much older before he could give the performances that were tailor-made for him, but even if that were true, he still leaves behind a tremendous body of work – from the Fifties to the current decade – that we can enjoy for many more years to come.

1 – North by Northwest (1959)

2 – Cleopatra (1963)

3 – Decision at Midnight (1963)

4 – They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970)

5 – Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)

6 – Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

7 – Max and Helen (1990)

8 – By Dawn’s Early Light (1990)

9 – Ed Wood (1994)

10 – Harrison Montgomery (2008)

10 Reasons to Remember George A. Romero (1940-2017)

16 Sunday Jul 2017

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Career, Director, George A. Romero, Horror, Movies, Zombies

George A. Romero (4 February 1940 – 16 July 2017)

Although best known for his series of zombie movies, George A. Romero’s desire to make movies came about when he saw The Red Shoes (1948), a movie so far removed from the genre that made him famous that it’s intriguing to wonder just where his career would have taken him if he’d followed in the footsteps of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and not fallen in with the low budget horror arena where he spent pretty much all his career. He was also a huge fan of The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), a movie he would rent on 16mm from the very same rental company that Martin Scorsese used.

But a career creating those kind of artistic endeavours wasn’t to be. Romero started out by making TV commercials and industrial training movies in and around his home town of Pittsburgh. In 1968, he and some friends all contributed $10,000 so he could make his first feature. The result was an unqualified success, and Night of the Living Dead became a movie that would influence an entire sub-genre of horror. From then on Romero was pigeon-holed as a horror director, and though he made a number of movies that didn’t involve zombies or extreme gore effects (usually courtesy of Tom Savini), Romero was always grateful that his first feature allowed him to have a movie making career.

Romero would return to zombies five more times in his career, and though the law of diminishing returns had set in by number five, Diary of the Dead (2007), there was still enough of Romero’s patented social commentary to make the last three in the series interesting to watch at the very least. But Romero’s work away from marauding members of the undead, often provided examples of the best that he could do. Martin (1978) is a creepy, unsettling modern vampire tale, with a great performance from John Amplas, and Knightriders (1981) is a counter-culture movie that features probably Romero’s best assembled cast, and a knowing, mordaunt sense of humour. He was capable of so much more but spent too much time developing projects that inevitably never got off the ground, such as a TV version of Stephen King’s The Stand, or movies such as Resident Evil (2002) where he was slated to direct. An affable, knowledgeable, and likeable figure within the industry, Romero will be missed for all the subtexts he put in his movies and for the way he made zombies “cool”.

1 – Night of the Living Dead (1968)

2 – Season of the Witch (1972)

3 – The Crazies (1973)

4 – Martin (1978)

5 – Dawn of the Dead (1978)

6 – Knightriders (1981)

7 – Creepshow (1982)

8 – Day of the Dead (1985)

9 – The Dark Half (1993)

10 – Bruiser (2000)

10 Reasons to Remember Michael Nyqvist (1960-2017)

28 Wednesday Jun 2017

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Actor, Career, Malmö Theatre Academy, Michael Nyqvist, Millennium Trilogy, Movies, Sweden

Michael Nyqvist (8 November 1960 – 27 June 2017)

Although he was born in Sweden, Michael Nyqvist’s interest in acting began when he was a teenager living as an exchange student in Omaha, Nebraska. He made several stage appearances while he was a senior in high school, but on his return to Sweden he was accepted into ballet school; he gave it up though after a year. When he was twenty-four he was accepted into the Malmö Theatre Academy, and his career as an actor began in earnest. But for a long while he appeared solely on the stage before he made his first appearance on screen in a TV movie called Kamraterna (1982) (as The Model). However, it wasn’t until the mid-Nineties that Nyqvist began to get regular work as an on-screen actor, and it wasn’t until he appeared in Lukas Moodysson’s Together (2000) that he really made an impression on audiences and critics.

From then on, Nyqvist made a number of Swedish movies that traded on his ability to portray fierce yet vulnerable male characters, and with a great deal of sincerity and intelligence. But it was his role as the journalist Mikael Blomkvist in the Millennium Trilogy – The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009), The Girl Who Played With Fire (2009), and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (2009) – that brought him to the attention of international audiences, and in particular, Hollywood’s casting agents. Two years later and he was making his English language debut in the sadly less than enthralling Abduction (2011). From there he combined working in Hollywood with working in Sweden, and maintained an integrity in his work that guaranteed good performances, even if the material he was working with wasn’t quite up to the standard required. Regarded unfairly perhaps as a “serious” actor, Nyqvist was always able to find the light and shade in most of the characters he played, and he was always a magnetic presence when on screen. In short, he was one of that select band of actors who always improved a movie they appeared in, and you could count on him to deliver a thoughtful, considered performance whatever the genre. For that, he will be sorely missed, and even more so for dying at such a relatively young age.

1 – Together (2000)

2 – The Guy in the Grave Next Door (2002)

3 – As It Is in Heaven (2004)

4 – Suddenly (2006)

5 – The Black Pimpernel (2007)

6 – The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

7 – Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)

8 – My So-Called Father (2014)

9 – John Wick (2014)

10 – The Colony (2015)

A Brief Word About Daniel Day-Lewis

20 Tuesday Jun 2017

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Actor, Career, Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln, My Left Foot, Oscar winner, Retirement, There Will Be Blood

The sudden, and unexpected, announcement that Daniel Day-Lewis is to retire from acting has definitely come as a shock, and though there will be many who will hope he changes his mind at some point in the future, it’s unlikely that will be the case. Day-Lewis has always maintained a strict control over his career, and it’s also unlikely that he will have made this decision lightly. Whatever his reasons (which at the moment remain personal), the loss of such a highly talented actor at such a relatively young age – he’s 60 – will no doubt be heavily discussed and analysed over the coming days and weeks. But what we can rely on, and indisputably so, is the body of work he’s left us with.

With Paul Thomas Anderson’s 50’s-set fashion drama, Phantom Thread, still to come at the end of 2017, the only person to win the Best Actor Oscar three times – for My Left Foot (1989), There Will Be Blood (2007), and Lincoln (2012) – will have made just twenty-one movie appearances, from his first, uncredited role as a child vandal in Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), all the way to Anderson’s latest. It’s an incredibly impressive body of work, and one that highlights Day-Lewis’s versatility and commitment to his craft. Famed for staying in character for the duration of shooting a movie, his approach to inhabiting a character was to immerse himself as much as possible into the world that character was a part of, whether his role was that of an adopted Indian tracker called Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans (1992), the wrongly imprisoned Gerry Conlon in In the Name of the Father (1993), or the vicious gang leader Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York (2002).

Arguably the finest actor of his generation, Day-Lewis’s absence from our screens – albeit something that we’ve become used to over the last thirty years as he’s pursued other interests between projects – may potentially rob us of even greater performances. But the movies and the appearances he does leave us with will remain exceptional examples of his skills as an actor, and his willingness to give everything of himself to a role.

A Brief Word About Peter Sallis (1921-2017)

05 Monday Jun 2017

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Aardman, Actor, Career, Last of the Summer Wine, Peter Sallis, Wallace & Gromit

Peter Sallis (1 February 1921 – 2 June 2017)

While Peter Sallis will probably be best remembered for his portrayal of Clegg in the long-running British TV series Last of the Summer Wine (he was the only cast member to appear in all 295 episodes), for many he will always be known as the voice of the not-quite-so-brilliant inventor Wallace in Aardman’s wonderful series of shorts – A Grand Day Out (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993), A Close Shave (1995), and A Matter of Loaf and Death (2008) – and the movie, Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005). His voice could be mellifluous, mournful, mischievous or gleeful, and he was a respected character actor who could always be relied upon to flesh out a role beyond sometimes obvious limitations. Like many actors of his generation, he acted with a commitment and a relish that is rarely seen today, and which add to the many reasons why his career was so rewarding. A true gentleman, he’ll be sorely missed… but thanks to his work on the small screen, never forgotten.

Becoming Bond (2017)

27 Saturday May 2017

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Australia, Car salesman, Career, Documentary, Drama, George Lazenby, James Bond, Josh Greenbaum, Josh Lawson, Kassandra Clementi, Male model, Review

D: Josh Greenbaum / 92m

With: George Lazenby

Cast: Josh Lawson, Kassandra Clementi, Jane Seymour, Jeff Garlin, Jake Johnson, Dana Carvey, Adamo Palladino, Sofia Mattsson, Landon Ashworth, Jonathan Slavin

George Lazenby will be known forever as the man who played James Bond once, and then refused to play him again. It’s a story that’s been told over and over again, and which gets another airing in Becoming Bond, an affectionate documentary-cum-reenactment of Lazenby’s life up to, including, and just past his time as 007. But this time the story is told by Lazenby himself, and even though you still might consider him to be incredibly foolish for abandoning the role, at least here you get a better, more convincing set of reasons for his having done so.

Lazenby recounts his early life as a child, talking to camera and occasionally prompted by director Greenbaum. His early life in Australia isn’t short of drama. At the age of three he was left with half a kidney, and his doctors advised his mother that he’d probably only live until he was twelve (maybe thirteen). Growing up he got into all kinds of mischief, from “stealing” his uncle’s car to bringing a snake to school. He recounts his first sexual experience (“I thought I’d blown my penis apart”), his failure to graduate from school, and his first job as a mechanic. From there, Lazenby (Lawson) becomes a car salesman, and he meets Belinda (Clementi), his first true love. He pursues her (despite the antipathy of her parents), but their relationship is severed when she goes to England to study.

But Lazenby is nothing if not persistent. When he doesn’t hear from Belinda he travels to England and tracks her down. But there’s no reconciliation, and soon Lazenby finds himself broke and in need of a job. He returns to being a car salesman, and hears from Belinda who wants their relationship to be platonic. However, this doesn’t hold for long, and the pair marry. Around this time, Lazenby is talent-spotted as a male model, and he begins to do photo-shoots and appear in adverts. As he becomes more and more in demand though, a photo-shoot in Spain leads to his making a huge mistake. A few years pass and Lazenby is introduced to an agent, Maggie Abbott (Seymour). A short while after that, and Maggie is calling him about a movie role she thinks he’ll be perfect for: James Bond.

What follows is largely well known, but Lazenby provides more than enough detail to keep fans of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) – and James Bond in general – happy in perpetuity. From Lazenby’s attempts to get to see casting director Dyson Lovell (Slavin) to his first meetings with director Peter Hunt (Palladino) and producer Harry Saltzman (Garlin), the making of the first Bond movie not to star Sean Connery is told with candour and charm by Lazenby, and the aftermath with sincerity and a certain amount of ruefulness. Lazenby is an avuncular screen presence, always ready to laugh at the antics of his younger self, but also willing to admit the mistakes he made and the harm they may have caused others.

The movie puts Lazenby front and centre, adopting a talking head approach that keeps the focus on the ex-model while his past is played out on screen in a lightweight, genial fashion that relies heavily on Josh Lawson’s amiable good looks and an overall tone that says, “hey, don’t take all this so seriously”. The recreations of Lazenby’s youth and early adulthood – he was twenty-nine when he played Bond, the youngest person to do so – are played out in a variety of styles and against a variety of poorly realised backgrounds, but it’s all so unremittingly charming that it doesn’t matter. It couldn’t look and feel more quaint if it was all shot in jerky black and white and everyone moved as if they were speed walking.

It’s clear from the start that Greenbaum and his crew are fans of Lazenby, and are relishing the opportunity to have their hero tell his life story, but if there’s a consequence to all that then it’s the lack of follow up comments or questioning when something happens that paints Lazenby in a negative light. Greenbaum seems content to let Lazenby tell his story unedited and unchallenged, and while there’s nothing to suggest that James Bond Version 2.0 isn’t telling the truth about his life and times, there are moments where it’s obvious that some degree of dramatic licence has been invoked. And while these moments are usually at the behest of the humour, there are other times when the more serious elements seem to get a free pass (particularly in relation to Belinda). It’s almost as if Greenbaum didn’t want to pry too closely in case Lazenby called to a halt to the whole thing.

But while a little more depth would have made the material resonate a little more, there’s no denying that Lazenby is an agreeable, pleasant companion to spend ninety minutes with, and that by focusing largely on his pre-Bond years, he has the chance to tell a variety of anecdotes which are both amusing and which are kept in context with the rest of his life. Whether he’s the face of Big Fry chocolate, or a stubbornly bearded star abandoning his image as a suave, globe-trotting spy, Lazenby is true to himself, and even if you think his decision to leave Bond behind was misguided, by the movie’s end you have a better understanding of his reasons for doing so. You still might disagree with his decision but it’s not as arbitrary or as ill considered as people thought at the time.

While Lazenby is an amusing, often self-deprecating “host”, and the re-enactments of his life are heavily stylised and redolent of a long-forgotten era (though the makers should have realised that in England a car’s steering wheel is on the right), there is still a sense that Becoming Bond is lacking in something vital. It’s amusing, it’s bright and attractively shot by John W. Rutland, it’s a nice blend of whimsy and historical faction, and it’s unrelentingly pleasant. And though it may seem churlish to criticise a movie for being pleasant – or even inoffensive, which it is – when Lazenby gets to the point where to say more might leave him wide open to complaints of narcissism (and there are many such moments), or insensitivity, then he’s allowed to stay quiet. But then this is as much an homage to the one-time James Bond as it is a chance for that same man to relive former glories. But even though Lazenby seems to have dealt with his past, there’s still the nagging sense that if he had it all to do again, then Lazenby himself would be in the record books for making the most Bond movies, and not Roger Moore.

Rating: 7/10 – neither a confession nor an exposé, Becoming Bond is instead a cheerful, engaging movie that – to paraphrase William Shakespeare – comes to praise Lazenby, not to bury him; he’s led an eventful life, certainly, and much of it is recounted here, but while it’s entertaining enough, Greenbaum seems too willing to let things pass for any objectivity to come into play.

10 Reasons to Remember Roger Moore (1927-2017)

23 Tuesday May 2017

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Actor, Career, James Bond, Movies, Television, The Saint, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador

Roger Moore (14 October 1927 – 23 May 2017)

Looking back over Roger Moore’s career, it’s tempting to wonder just how it would have continued if the role of a certain British spy hadn’t come along in 1972. Up until then, Moore’s movie career had been occasional and not very successful, with early try-outs with MGM and Warner Bros. doing little to further his career. As he said himself, “At MGM, RGM (Roger George Moore) was NBG (no bloody good).” In the early Sixties he made a couple of movies in Italy, but by then he’d already made important in-roads in the format that would stand him in good stead throughout the rest of the decade. Television gave Moore true recognition with featured roles in series such as Ivanhoe (1958-9), The Alaskans (1959-60), and Maverick (1959-61). But it was the role he played between 1962 and 1969, that of Leslie Charteris’s suave, sophisticated anti-hero, Simon Templar, in The Saint, that brought him international attention.

The early Seventies saw Moore team up with Tony Curtis for The Persuaders! (1971-72), and then Cubby Broccoli came calling with the offer to play James Bond. At this point, Moore’s career went into overdrive, and he became a worldwide star. His interpretation of Bond has had its detractors over the years, but there has always been the sense that the producers of the series adapted the role to suit Moore’s abilities rather than the other way round. He remained in the role for twelve years and made seven appearances, and though each entry was successful there was a recognisable falling off of quality, and sometimes, Moore looked tired. In between saving the world, Moore made a number of action movies during the Seventies that cemented his position as an international star and celebrity, and if some of those movies attracted controversy (such as the trio he made in South Africa), Moore stayed clear of all the fuss and bother and he remained popular in the eyes of the public.

Post-Bond, Moore’s movie career never maintained the heights he’d achieved throughout the Seventies and early Eighties, but by then he was in his sixties and it was perhaps inevitable that he would take on less work. The early Nineties saw him appear in a number of less than remarkable comedies, but he also began his tenure as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, work that was rewarded by his receiving a knighthood in 2003. In the last ten years his career had gravitated to voice roles, and he made increasingly fewer public appearances. Moore was a charming man with an awareness of his limitations as an actor, and he was always quick to agree when anyone brought this up. The British satirical show Spitting Image (1988-91) included Moore in their roster of recurring puppets. In it, the writers had Moore respond to a director’s call for “more emotion” by raising an eyebrow. Such was Moore’s lack of ego that he expanded on this, saying that as Bond he’d had three expressions: “right eyebrow raised, left eyebrow raised, and eyebrows crossed when grabbed by Jaws”. Just for his personality and his sense of fun alone he’ll be missed, but as an actor who never really took things too seriously but still managed to entertain millions of moviegoers, he’ll be missed even more.

1 – Gold of the Seven Saints (1961)

2 – The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)

3 – Live and Let Die (1973)

4 – Shout at the Devil (1976)

5 – Sherlock Holmes in New York (1976)

6 – The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

7 – The Wild Geese (1978)

8 – The Sea Wolves (1980)

9 – The Cannonball Run (1981)

10 – For Your Eyes Only (1981)

10 Reasons to Remember Powers Boothe (1948-2017)

15 Monday May 2017

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Actor, Career, Emmy winner, Movies, Powers Boothe, Stage, Television

Powers Boothe (1 June 1948 – 14 May 2017)

For the first ten years of his acting career, Powers Boothe was on stage appearing in a range of Shaespearean productions that included Troilus and Cressida to Henry IV, Part II to Richard III. Quite a difference in terms of his background as the youngest of three boys growing up on a ranch in Texas (he was also the first person in his family to go to university). Those early years helped Boothe hone his acting skills, and though he began his movie career with a bit part in The Goodbye Girl (1977), it was only three short years before he was impressing television audiences with his performance as the doomed cult leader in Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980). Boothe won an Emmy, and that auspicious portrayal heralded the arrival of a real talent.

During the Eighties Boothe consolidated his success with a variety of movie, television (particularly as Philip Marlowe) and stage roles that reaffirmed his skill as a performer, but as the decade progressed he appeared more and more as both a supporting actor, and as a villain as well. With his stern features, penetrating stare and sonorous voice, Boothe was equally suited to the various law enforcement roles he began playing as he got older, before moving on to senior politician roles such as Alexander Haig in Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995). He was able to inject a sense of gravitas to these roles that often helped tremendously when a movie was lacking in other areas, but a glance through his filmography shows that he didn’t make too many bad choices during his career, and he was able to work with directors of the calibre of John Boorman, Walter Hill and Robert Rodriguez.

From the late Nineties onwards, Boothe gravitated more and more towards television, and appeared in a number of well received shows including Attila the Hun, Deadwood, and 24. In recent years he also appeared in the likes of Nashville and Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. But whatever the format, Boothe was always an actor worth paying attention to, someone who could take a role and spin something unexpected out of it. And despite the often serious nature of the parts he played – he never did comedy – he could be relied on to appreciate the benefits of his profession: “Hell, I’ve played as many guys who get the girl as I have heavies. I’ve done love scenes with Jessica Lange and Jennifer Lopez, and I won’t kid you, they’re fun”.

1 – Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980)

2 – Southern Comfort (1981)

3 – The Emerald Forest (1985)

4 – Extreme Prejudice (1987)

5 – Into the Homeland (1987)

6 – By Dawn’s Early Light (1990)

7 – Tombstone (1993)

8 – Blue Sky (1994)

9 – U Turn (1997)

10 – Sin City (2005)

10 Reasons to Remember Jonathan Demme (1944-2017)

26 Wednesday Apr 2017

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Career, Director, Documentaries, Jonathan Demme, Movies

Jonathan Demme (22 February 1944 – 26 April 2017)

Like many of his contemporaries, Jonathan Demme started his movie career working for Roger Corman. He wrote several screenplays, including The Hot Box (1972) and Caged Heat (1974 – which he also directed), and had several modest successes as a director in the mid-Seventies. He learned his craft well, and over the next decade Demme made a succession of well received movies as well as a string of music videos for bands such as Talking Heads and New Order (a group whose songs featured in pretty much all his movies from the Eighties onwards). Demme chose his projects carefully and as a result he wasn’t the most prolific of directors when it came to features, but he was a committed documentarian, making over a dozen during his career.

It was a certain Oscar-winning movie in 1991 that gave Demme his biggest exposure as a director, but though he could have used that success to helm any movie he wanted to, he continued to choose projects that most other directors would have passed on, from intimate documentary portrait Cousin Bobby (1992), to literary adaptation Beloved (1998), to the well intentioned but unsuccessful remake of Charade (1964), The Truth About Charlie (2002) (on the subject of remakes he never thought it was “sacrilegious to remake any movie”; for Demme it was “sacrilegious to make a bad movie”). He kept returning to music documentaries, and ventured into television, ensuring that he continued to have a varied, and sometimes eclectic career.

He was known primarily for his use of close-ups, for finding roles for his “stock company” (actors such as Charles Napier and Dean Stockwell), and for his work having had a profound influence on the writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson. If anything, Demme was a mercurial director who never quite received the acclaim that his body of work deserved, but for anyone who has followed his career since those heady days working for Roger Corman, he was an intelligent, perceptive director whose talent and skill behind the camera meant that whatever project he was working on, it would always be worth watching.

1 – Caged Heat (1974)

2 – Melvin and Howard (1980)

3 – Stop Making Sense (1984)

4 – Something Wild (1986)

5 – Swimming to Cambodia (1987)

6 – The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

7 – Philadelphia (1993)

8 – Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2006)

9 – Rachel Getting Married (2008)

10 – I’m Carolyn Parker (2011)

10 Reasons to Remember Bill Paxton (1955-2017)

26 Sunday Feb 2017

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Actor, Bill Paxton, Career

Bill Paxton (17 May 1955 – 25 February 2017)

Can you imagine what The Da Vinci Code (2006) would have been like if Bill Paxton had played Professor Robert Langdon, and not Tom Hanks? It should have happened, but Fate (in the form of TV show Big Love) dictated otherwise. If you’re having trouble imagining Paxton reeling off tons of symbolic exposition in an overly earnest manner, then that’s a disservice to an actor whose career included a wide variety of roles, and whose skill as an actor was often under-appreciated.

Starting out as a set dresser for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, Paxton spent the early part of his career in bit parts, but eventually it was a part in Franc Roddam’s The Lords of Discipline (1983) that brought him to the public’s attention (and casting directors). A year later he began a fruitful relationship with James Cameron, playing one of the three punks unfortunate enough to meet Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 at the beginning of The Terminator (1984). Two years later and it was the very opposite of “Game over, man!” as Paxton’s role as Private Hudson in Cameron’s sequel to Alien (1979) gave him all the exposure an up-and-coming actor could need. From then on, Paxton’s career was assured.

He hit his peak in the Nineties, appearing in a succession of well received roles in a succession of popular, well received movies that often found him being one of the best things in them. But in amongst a run of Hollywood blockbusters (including some movie about a sunken ship), Paxton made several movies that may not have been as successful, but still provided examples of his range and skill as an actor, from the misfire that was Boxing Helena (1993), to offbeat crime drama Traveller (1997), and even turning up in horror portmanteau Future Shock (1994). Paxton wasn’t afraid to dive into roles, and even in something as daft as Club Dread (2004), you could still see the effort he was making in bringing his character to life and making him as credible as possible given the nature of the movie.

As well as acting, Paxton was a director, producer and writer, and he worked equally well on television, particularly on the aforementioned Big Love, a show that demonstrated how good he was in leading roles, though it’s likely he’ll be remembered more for his supporting roles over the years. Paxton’s last movie is The Circle (2017), and it’s hard to believe that he won’t be making any more, that we won’t see that infectious, mischievous grin anymore, or hear that distinctive Texan drawl. He’ll be sorely missed. After all, who else could have taken a line like “I’m navel lint!” and made it funny, pathetic, heartrending, and despairing all at the same time?

1 – Aliens (1986)

2 – Near Dark (1987)

3 – One False Move (1992)

4 – Tombstone (1993)

5 – True Lies (1994)

6 – Apollo 13 (1995)

7 – Twister (1996)

8 – A Simple Plan (1998)

9 – Frailty (2001)

10 – Hatfields & McCoys (2012)

Nicolas Cage’s Top 10 Movies at the International Box Office

08 Wednesday Feb 2017

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Actor, Career, International Box Office, Nicolas Cage, Top 10

The career of Nicholas Kim Coppola has had its fair share of ups and downs (though in recent years it’s consisted mostly of downs). Inhabiting the strange netherworld of DtV movies nowadays, Cage seems to be flitting from one career-killing project to another with no apparent concern for his legacy as an actor (something that could be attributed to a lot of other actors as well – eh, John Travolta?). But overall, Cage has had a great career, and appeared in several modern classics over the years, and this is reflected in the movies that make up the list below (though it doesn’t include his Oscar win for Leaving Las Vegas (1995). The most recent movie in the list is an unexpected success from 2013, but his recent cameo in Snowden (2016) and a well-received outing in Army of One (2016) are, hopefully, signs that the tide is turning. Cage has six movies due for release in 2017, but if none of them improve his standing, we’ll still have all these (mostly) great movies to remember him by.

10 – The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010) – $215,283,742

Surprisingly enjoyable on a “don’t-expect-too-much” level, Cage enters into the spirit of things (along with a wonderfully hissable Alfred Molina as the villain) in this barmy fantasy movie. As the ever-so-slightly po-faced Balthazar, Cage has to make one too many trips to Exposition Central, but acquits himself well in a role that could have been played oh-so-seriously. The movie has its fans, and if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s well worth seeking out as an undemanding treat.

9 – Con Air (1997) – $224,012,234

After making the very downbeat Leaving Las Vegas, Cage surprised everyone by making a string of big-budget, high-concept action movies, including this riotous romp where he plays the one good guy on a prison transport plane full of murderers, rapists, thieves, and Steve Buscemi. Cage goes for laconic, brooding and ironically mirthless (“Put… the bunny… back… in the box”), and cements the action credentials he established for himself in The Rock. He’s the calm at the centre of the storm, and all the more convincing for it.

8 – Ghost Rider (2007) – $228,738,393

The first of two outings as stunt motorcyclist turned demonic revenger Johnny Blaze, Ghost Rider sees Cage play the flame-headed title character against the backdrop of an increasingly silly script, and a lacklustre plot. But against the odds, Cage’s interpretation of the character works better than expected, and his understanding of the role lends some gravitas when it’s most needed, making this a definite guilty pleasure, and whether you’re a Marvel fan or not.

7 – Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000) – $237,202,299

Cage saw in the new century with this remake of H.B. Halicki’s 1974 counter-culture classic, but somewhere along the way it failed to replicate what made the original so memorable. Cage gives an unremarkable performance, and the movie’s surface sheen hides a superficial storyline that no amount of slickly produced car chases can hide. That it did so well at the box office is a testament to Cage’s popularity at the time, and a vigorous marketing campaign that promised more than the movie could actually deliver.

6 – Face/Off (1997) – $245,676,146

John Woo given (nearly) free rein + Nicolas Cage + John Travolta + more mayhem and carnage than you can shake a church full of doves at = an even barmier and over the top movie than The Rock. Face/Off is one of the maddest, strangest, but totally enjoyable action movies of the Nineties. Woo directs as if he doesn’t care how looney it all is, and Cage – along with his future DtV compatriot Travolta – goes along for the ride, hamming it up as much as he can and having a whale of a time. He’s out there, and he wants you to come with him… and how can you refuse?

5 – G-Force (2009) – $292,817,841

Cage has contributed his vocal talents to a handful of other movies, but his role as Speckles the mole in G-Force may just be his goofiest performance yet. And it’s made all the more impressive by the fact that, for the most part, it doesn’t even sound like it’s Cage. A kids’ movie that doesn’t try too hard with its script, it’s nevertheless a minor pleasure, and has enough wit about it to offset the unnecessarily convoluted nature of the central plot.

4 – The Rock (1996) – $335,062,621

The first of Cage’s forays into the action movie genre, The Rock gave him a new lease of life on the big screen, and brought him to the attention of a whole new audience. Beginning as a nerd but inevitably transforming into a kick-ass action hero, it’s obvious that Cage is having fun with his role, and this transfers itself to the viewer. Rarely have the gung ho endeavours of an unprepared yet adaptable rookie been so coated in so many levels of ridiculousness, and rarely has an actor proved so effective in carrying it all off as if they were born to it.

3 – National Treasure (2004) – $347,512,318

An action-adventure movie that came out of nowhere and proved unexpectedly successful, National Treasure takes the template that has made Dan Brown such a household name, and tweaks it so that it’s fun and not at all pompous in its self-important outlook. Cage revisits his action hero period but makes his character more like Indiana Jones than Cameron Poe, and in doing so gives one of his loosest, most enjoyably Cage-like performances in years. The plot is suitably daft, but who cares when the aim is to have as much fun as possible? Certainly not this movie, as it revels in its absurdity from start to finish, and continually winks at the audience to reassure them that, for once, it is all just an act.

2 – National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007) – $457,364,600

A sequel to National Treasure was perhaps inevitable, but what wasn’t as predictable was said sequel out-grossing its predecessor. More convoluted than the original, but lacking the flair that made the first movie so enjoyable, the movie bounces from one absurdist set piece to another with galling regularity, but somehow still manages to keep the audience on board, a feat that is the one thing that makes this poorly constructed – and thought out – sequel as successful as it is.

1 – The Croods (2013) – $587,204,668

An animated movie about a family of Neanderthals with Cage as its male figurehead? A surefire box office success? Unlikely on the face of it, but that’s what happened as audiences took the Crood family to their hearts, and gave Cage his most unexpected hit to date. As in G-Force, Cage shows an aptitude for voice work that makes his role all the more enjoyable, and he finds various and varied ways to display the character’s frustration at continually being ignored by his family. Cage sounds relaxed in the role, and is clearly having fun, an experience his fans haven’t had for quite some time – since this movie, in fact.

10 Reasons to Remember Emmanuelle Riva (1927-2017)

28 Saturday Jan 2017

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Actress, Amour, Career, Emmanuelle Riva, Hiroshima Mon Amour

Emmanuelle Riva (24 February 1927 – 27 January 2017)

For many, Emmanuelle Riva will be best known for her Oscar-nominated role as Anne in Michael Haneke’s profoundly moving and riveting exploration of love under pressure, Amour (2012). But Riva’s career began in 1957, and sixty years on, she remains a well-respected actress who made a lasting impression in a string of movies made in the Sixties, and who had an equally impressive career on the stage.

Like John Hurt, who also died on 27 January 2017, Riva wanted to act at a young age but was given little support by her family. She moved from her rural home to Paris in 1953, and was soon awarded a scholarship. Though too old to enter the French National Academy of Dramatic Arts, word of her abilities as an actress soon landed her roles, beginning with a production of George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man. But it was her role as Elle in Alain Resnais’ haunting Hiroshima mon amour (1959) that brought her instant, worldwide recognition. From there she made a number of critically and commercially successful French films that cemented her reputation, and allowed her to continue working in the theatre and occasionally in television.

In the Seventies and Eighties, Riva’s movie career suffered through a mixture of poor choices and the perception that she was entirely a serious dramatic actress (she would have liked to have appeared in some comedies, but always blamed her performance in Hiroshima mon amour for establishing that perception). In the Nineties she made an appearance in Three Colours: Blue (1993), but although she was singled out for praise, and the performance served as a reminder of what she could do, Riva’s movie career remained largely unappreciated until Michael Haneke came along in 2010. She wrote poetry in her spare time (and was published), and enjoyed photography; photographs that she took while making Hiroshima mon amour were exhibited and turned into a book around fifty years after she took them. She was a creative force who didn’t always get the breaks she needed, but her career was, nevertheless, varied and intriguing in its choices. She was a confident, inspiring actress whose naturalistic style spoke to the heart of the characters she played, and she was incapable of giving a less than committed performance. She never wanted to be a star, and perhaps would have been horrified to have been regarded as one, but Riva had that star-like quality, and thanks to her body of work, that quality still lives on.

1 – Hiroshima mon amour (1959)

2 – Kapò (1960)

3 – Léon Morin, Priest (1961)

4 – Thérèse Desqueyroux (1962)

5 – Thomas the Impostor (1965)

6 – Bitter Fruit (1967)

7 – The Eyes, the Mouth (1982)

8 – Venus Beauty (1999)

9 – Le Skylab (2011)

10 – Amour (2012)

10 Reasons to Remember John Hurt (1940-2017)

28 Saturday Jan 2017

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Actor, Career, Doctor Who, John Hurt, Quentin Crisp, RADA

John Hurt (22 January 1940 – 27 January 2017)

With his distinctive voice, and even more distinctive features, John Hurt was an actor who was rarely out of work, from his first appearance in 1962 in an episode of the British TV series Z Cars, to his final role as Neville Chamberlain in Darkest Hour (due in November 2017). But Hurt’s acting career might never have started; when he was a young boy he lived opposite a cinema but his parents forbade from seeing movies there. It wasn’t until he went to an Anglican Preparatory School that he developed a desire to act. However, his parents didn’t encourage him, and his headmaster told him he “wouldn’t stand a chance”.

Luckily, Hurt persevered, and he won a scholarship to RADA in 1960. Two years of studying later and he was finding work on TV and in movies, and making a name for himself. It was A Man for All Seasons (1966) that brought him to the attention of a wider audience, and from there he never looked back, and over the next fifty years he made over a hundred and twenty movie appearances as well as numerous TV and video appearances. Aside from the movies listed below he was notable for being the mad Emperor Caligula in I, Claudius (1976); the first victim – spectacularly so – of the Xenomorph in Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979); himself in Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs (1987); and the renowned wandmaker Garrick Ollivander in the Harry Potter movies. His commitment and passion to acting were rewarded twice: with a CBE in 2004, and a knighthood in 2015.

His career also encompassed various outings as a narrator or voice actor on a variety of animated projects, from Watership Down (1978) (and the 1999-2000 TV series) to Thumbelina (1994), and Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie (2010). But whatever the movie, Hurt was one of those actors you could always rely on to give a great performance however good or bad the material was. He had a natural integrity, and a straightforward approach to acting that focused on the character almost exclusively, which led to so many compelling performances over his fifty-year plus career. Despite his slight frame, he was a persuasive physical presence, unafraid to push himself in the search for the reality of the role he was playing, whether made up as Quentin Crisp, or suffering torture as Winston Smith. And he was a member of a rare group of actors, those who’ve played the Time Lord, Doctor Who. With his passing, Hurt leaves behind an incredibly varied and impressive body of work that will continue to provide endless hours of entertainment for fans and future generations alike.

1 – 10 Rillington Place (1971)

2 – Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs (1974)

3 – The Naked Civil Servant (1975)

4 – Midnight Express (1978)

5 – The Elephant Man (1980)

6 – 1984 (1984)

7 – The Field (1990)

8 – Love and Death on Long Island (1997)

9 – Hellboy (2004)

10 – Shooting Dogs (2005)

10 Reasons to Remember Om Puri (1950-2017)

06 Friday Jan 2017

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Actor, Career, East Is East, India, Om Puri

Om Puri (18 October 1950 – 6 January 2017)

The third actor to be taken from us so far in 2017 (after Argentinian actor Luis Mazzeo and Syrian actor, writer and director Rafiq Subaie), Om Puri will be best known to Western audiences as the immigrant fish and chip shop owner living in Bradford and trying to keep his Anglicized children from continually ignoring their heritage in East Is East (1999) and its predictably titled sequel West Is West (2010). He had a blunt physicality in later years that belied a sharp intelligence as an actor, and if Western movie makers didn’t quite know what to do with him other than cast him as an overbearing patriarch, then it was their loss, as he made many, many movies in India that showcased his varied talents as an actor. That many of them remain unseen outside of India is a shame, as Puri was a phenomenal talent who added lustre to each project he was involved with. For once, putting together a list of just ten movies to represent an actor’s career is really difficult, as with around three hundred roles and movies to choose from, and with Puri often in a category all his own in terms of performances, it’s entirely likely that some performances will be left out that perhaps shouldn’t be. That’s a testament to the man and his career, and his indelible contribution to Asian cinema.

1 – Aakrosh (1980)

2 – Bhavni Bhavai (1980)

3 – Ardh Satya (1983)

4 – Mirch Masala (1987)

5 – City of Joy (1992)

6 – Maachis (1996)

7 – East Is East (1999)

8 – AK 47 (1999)

9 – Dhoop (2003)

10 – Road to Sangam (2010)

John Travolta’s Top 10 Movies at the International Box Office

06 Friday Jan 2017

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Actor, Career, International Box Office, John Travolta, Movies, Top 10

The career of John Joseph Travolta has had its fair share of ups and downs (though in recent years it’s consisted mostly of downs). Inhabiting the strange netherworld of DtV movies nowadays, Travolta seems to be flitting from one career-killing project to another with no apparent concern for his legacy as an actor (something that could be attributed to a lot of other actors as well – eh, Nicolas Cage?). But overall, Travolta has had a great career, and appeared in several modern classics over the years, and this is reflected in the movies that make up the list below. The most recent movie in the list may be from 2008, but a recent return to form in The People v O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (2016) hopefully will see the tide turn. But if it doesn’t, we’ll still have all these great movies to remember him by.

10 – Broken Arrow (1996) – $150,270,147

John Woo + John Travolta + Christian Slater + more exploding helicopters than you can shake an AK-47 at = a hundred and eight minutes of loud, dumb, spectacular fun. Not the greatest of movies on Travolta’s CV, nevertheless Broken Arrow is hugely enjoyable in a crass, leave-your-brain-at-the-door kind of way, and should best be looked on as a guilty pleasure. It features Travolta hamming it up like crazy (and smoking in the most affected way ever seen on screen), and delivering one of action cinema’s most memorable lines (courtesy of Speed scribe Graham Yost): “Would you mind not shooting at the thermonuclear weapons?”

9 – Phenomenon (1996) – $152,036,382

In the year that also saw Travolta play an angel in Michael, Phenomenon gave us a chance to see him as, possibly, the recipient of a gift from God. Newly imbued with super-intelligence and telekinesis after seeing a bright light in the sky, Travolta’s ordinary Joe becomes an object of fascination, and notions of faith arise too. It’s an uneven movie, but Travolta is good in the central role of George, and if the whole thing falls apart by the end it’s not because of bad intentions, but purely because the script paints itself into a corner it can’t get out of.

8 – Hairspray (2007) – $202,548,575

John Waters + John Travolta in a female body suit + song and dance numbers = one of Travolta’s most enjoyable movies. He may not have been everyone’s first choice for Edna Turnblad, but Travolta gives one of his most relaxed and engaging performances alongside “hubbie” Christopher Walken. A movie bursting with energy and giddy vitality, Hairspray is still as vibrant today as it was ten years ago, and Travolta is a big part of why that’s the case, reminding us that he can still move it and groove it.

7 – Pulp Fiction (1994) – $213,928,762

Quentin Tarantino’s second movie has been pulled part, analysed from the first frame to the last, and generally obsessed over by critics and fans alike ever since its release. It’s simply an incredible breath of fresh cinematic air, and remains a true one of kind over twenty years later. It’s also the movie that brought Travolta back in out of the cold after a career slowdown that had left those same critics and fans wondering if he’d ever get his career back on track after a string of duds that included Two of a Kind (1983) and Chains of Gold (1991). In terms of his performance, it’s arguable that he’s never been better, and his scenes with Uma Thurman are as mesmerising now as they were back then.

6 – Saturday Night Fever (1977) – $237,113,184

The movie that brought Travolta everlasting fame, Saturday Night Fever is a gritty wish-fulfilment tale that’s become overshadowed by its soundtrack, but forty years on it still has a power and a coarse energy that keeps it feeling fresh and not just a time capsule look at an era now long gone. Travolta is so convincing as Tony Manero that you can’t imagine anyone else playing the role, and though it spawned a million and one parodies – the best being in Airplane! (1980) – that white suit and Travolta’s defiant strutting, both on and off the dancefloor, are still as iconic as ever.

5 – Face/Off (1997) – $245,676,146

John Woo given (nearly) free rein + John Travolta + Nicolas Cage + more mayhem and carnage than you can shake a church full of doves at = an even barmier and over the top movie than Broken Arrow. Face/Off is one of the maddest, strangest, but totally enjoyable action movies of the Nineties. Woo directs as if he doesn’t care how looney it all is, and Travolta – along with his future DtV compatriot Cage – goes along for the ride, hamming it up as much as he can and having a whale of a time. He’s out there, and he wants you to come with him… and how can you refuse?

4 – Wild Hogs (2007) – $253,625,427

At this point, you might be saying to yourself, “Wow! Really? Wild Hogs? Over two hundred and fifty million? How did that happen?” And on the surface, you’d be right, but dig a little deeper and the movie has some (well) hidden depths, as well as a quartet of hugely enjoyable performances, including Travolta as the de facto leader of the Hogs. It’s an undemanding movie, but Travolta is easy-going (even when playing uptight) and immensely likeable, and when his character gets easily flustered, it’s a sight to see – purely because it’s a trait he rarely gets to display elsewhere. One to file under Don’t Knock It If You Haven’t Seen It, and a lot funnier and warm-hearted than you’d expect.

3 – Look Who’s Talking (1989) – $296,999,813

The first of three – Travolta appears in all of them – Look Who’s Talking was a surprise box office success back in 1989, but though the basic premise is clever: baby expresses his thoughts and feelings as he would if he were an adult (and with Bruce Willis’s voice), the movie is genuinely funny, and has a lot of heart, making it easy to like. Travolta plays a more charming version of Tony Manero, and there’s a definite chemistry with Kirstie Alley that allows Travolta to show he can do a straightforward romantic role as well. Now if only they’d left things well alone and not made two more movies…

2 – Bolt (2008) – $309,979,994

To date, Bolt is Travolta’s second and last animated movie, after Our Friend, Martin (1999). Unfairly overlooked when it was first released, there’s a lot to be said for the first movie that John Lasseter oversaw upon jumping ship from Pixar to Disney, not the least of which is the unexpectedly inspired choice of Travolta as the title pooch. He’s clearly having fun with the role, and that comes across in his performance; which begs the question, why hasn’t he made more animated movies? Whatever the reason, Travolta is definitely one of the main reasons for the movie’s success, and his performance more than justifies the producers’ making him first choice for the role all along.

1 – Grease (1978) – $394,955,690

As the Kurgan (Clancy Brown) put it in Highlander (1986), “There can be only one”, and sure enough it had to be Grease. Even if you’re not a fan of musicals, you have to admire the sheer exuberance and exhilaration of the dance sequences that make up most of Grease‘s allure, along with its way-too-catchy songs and endlessly quotable dialogue (“Let’s hear it for the toilet paper!”). As the belligerent/charming Danny Zuko, Travolta makes a virtue (of sorts) of thrusting his hips as often as he can in Olivia Newton-John’s direction, as well as looking out of his depth, and all with a virile swagger that recalls any number of teenagers from those Sixties beach movies. A great performance in a classic musical, pure and simple.

10 Reasons to Remember Debbie Reynolds (1932-2016)

29 Thursday Dec 2016

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Actress, Career, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, Hollywood Motion Picture Collection, Movie memorabilia, Musicals

Debbie Reynolds (1 April 1932 – 28 December 2016)

As if 2016 already hasn’t been a terrible year in terms of the stars we’ve lost, it seems that none can have been so tragic as the death of Debbie Reynolds. Coming just twenty-four hours after the death of her daughter, Carrie Fisher, Reynolds’ passing is as much a jolt to the system as Fisher’s unexpected demise. There’s a saying that no parent should outlive their children, and it looks clear that the shock of losing her daughter contributed to Reynolds being added to the (too) long list of people the entertainment world has been robbed of this year. But like everyone else we’ve had to say goodbye to, Reynolds has left us with an impressive body of work to remember her by.

Her career began when she was just sixteen years old and she won a beauty contest where she impersonated Betty Hutton. Four years later, and with no practical experience, Reynolds was chosen to be Gene Kelly’s dance partner in Singin’ in the Rain (1952). It wasn’t her first movie, but it was certainly her biggest challenge to date, and she was so good it was like she was making her twentieth screen appearance, and not her sixth. Success after success followed throughout the Fifties, but in the Sixties her career began to slow down. She found other projects to occupy her time, such as buying a Californian hospital with plans to turn it into a profitable business venture. She also founded the Hollywood Motion Picture Collection, a museum dedicated to movie memorabilia that included over three thousand costumes, from Judy Garland’s ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz (1939) to the white dress Marilyn Monroe wore in The Seven Year Itch (1955).

in the Seventies she made her Broadway debut, and though she appeared in only a handful of productions, her talent guaranteed her good reviews (it was also during this period that she picked up the nickname “Princess Leia’s mother”). Much later, she found her way into the consciousness of a younger generation through her recurring role as Grace’s mother in the TV show Will & Grace (1999-2006). She continued to work sporadically both in movies and on the small screen, but mostly she did voice work on animated productions such as Kim Possible (2003-2007), and even an episode of Family Guy.

She was a glamorous star who during her lifetime knew what it was to be down on her luck, even admitting at one point to living in her car. But throughout her career, whether she was up or down, Reynolds kept on smiling and proving herself to be a strong draw when a role came along. Her Fifties heyday was a remarkable period, and she was a remarkable performer during that period, and like many stars from that era, she became an instantly recognisable actress whose name equalled quality. Like everyone else we’ve had to say goodbye to this year, she’ll be sorely missed.

1 – Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

2 – Susan Slept Here (1954)

3 – The Tender Trap (1955)

4 – Bundle of Joy (1956)

5 – The Mating Game (1959)

6 – The Pleasure of His Company (1961)

7 – How the West Was Won (1962)

8 – The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964)

9 – Divorce American Style (1967)

10 – Charlotte’s Web (1973)

10 Reasons to Remember Carrie Fisher (1956-2016)

27 Tuesday Dec 2016

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Actress, Career, Carrie Fisher, Princess Leia, Script doctor, Star Wars

Carrie Fisher (21 October 1956 – 27 December 2016)

Carrie Fisher was the daughter of Hollywood “royalty”: Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, so it was perhaps fitting that she will be best remembered as Princess Leia Organa in Star Wars (1977) and three of its sequels. But there was more to Fisher than just a role in a space opera, even one cherished by millions, and away from that galaxy far, far away she was also a writer and well-liked celebrity. She wrote the novel Postcards from the Edge, and scripted the movie version too (it was released in 1990), and had a successful “career” as a script doctor, polishing dialogue and scenes for movies as diverse as Hook (1991), Outbreak (1995), Coyote Ugly (2000), and all three Star Wars prequels. She also wrote her cameo scene in Scream 3 (2000). Though she had several battles in her private life – with alcohol and prescription drugs – and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Fisher remained a fighter throughout.

Away from the Star Wars movies, Fisher’s acting career wasn’t always as compelling as she may have liked, but when she was asked if playing Princess Leia was the dark side of the Force in her professional career, she had this to say: “Oh, no. It was fun! I was young. People want it to be a problem for me. No. Those are great movies. Why shouldn’t I be proud of being in that? The dark side? You ever see Hollywood Vice Squad (1986) or The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)? How about Under the Rainbow (1981)? Was Star Wars the dark side? There’s so much competition for that one.” While it’s true that playing the Princess with the bagel-bun hairdo has proved to be her career high, let’s not forget that she made significant contributions to a lot more movies besides. And here are just ten of them.

1 – Shampoo (1975)

2 – The Man With One Red Shoe (1985)

3 – Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

4 – Appointment With Death (1988)

5 – The ‘Burbs (1989)

6 – When Harry Met Sally… (1989)

7 – Sibling Rivalry (1990)

8 – This Is My Life (1992)

9 – Wonderland (2003)

10 – Stateside (2004)

Mini-Review: Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words (2015)

30 Wednesday Nov 2016

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Alicia Vikander, Career, Diaries, Diary entries, Documentary, Hollywood, Home movies, Isabella Rossellini, Pia Lindström, Review, Stig Björkman, Sweden

Original title: Jag är Ingrid

D: Stig Björkman / 114m

With: Ingrid Bergman (archive footage), Alicia Vikander, Pia Lindström, Roberto Rossellini Jr, Isabella Rossellini, Isotta Rossellini, Sigourney Weaver, Liv Ullmann

An accomplished, award-winning actress, Ingrid Bergman was also an inveterate diarist and she kept hours upon hours of home movie footage across all three of her marriages, along with thousands of photographs. She charted her life and career through these recorded memories, and would often find herself looking back at favourite moments whenever the mood took her. And thanks to all this “memory hoarding”, Bergman has provided the platform on which movie maker Stig Björkman has assembled a captivating, insightful documentary on the star herself.

Told in the style of a not-quite linear autobiography, Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words offers a succession of affecting, candid scenes from Bergman’s life that are punctuated by talking heads recollections from her children and others, and Vikander reading the actress’s personal letters and diary entries. Bergman’s childhood and close, formative relationship with her father is covered, as are her first excursions in front of the camera in a series of Swedish movies. Her first marriage to brain surgeon Petter Lindström reveals a young woman on the brink of stardom and enjoying every aspect of the Hollywood experience that would ultimately see them split up.

From this, it becomes clear that Bergman was committed more to her career than she was to her daughter, Pia, a circumstance that carried on when she had her children with Roberto Rossellini. Whether this was a conscious choice or not isn’t made clear but it does speak to Bergman’s desire to act above everything else. It also helps to explain how she was able to leave Hollywood for Italy and a period in her life when she was pilloried in the press for “abandoning” Petter and Pia. From there the movie covers the late Forties and her career resurgence thanks to Anastasia (1956), and her third marriage to theatrical producer Lars Schmidt. An inevitable collaboration with fellow Swede Ingmar Bergman on Autumn Sonata (1978) follows on, until her death from breast cancer in 1982.

The movie stresses Bergman’s dedication to her career (a little too much at times), but it also highlights just how much she enjoyed life and made as much of it as she could. Her children’s thoughts often provide an alternative viewpoint, but their love for her is evident throughout, even though she was largely an absent presence in their lives (all of them wish they could have had more time with her, but don’t begrudge her absence at all). The various archival elements are compiled with a great deal of care, and are fascinating for their candour and historical relevance. It all goes to prove that, despite some controversial (for the time) personal decisions, Bergman was admired and respected by pretty much everyone she came into contact with.

Rating: 7/10 – as a straightforward, no frills documentary, Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words works incredibly well in spite of lacking any appreciable depth, but Björkman assembles the varied materials with skill; a knowing and affectionate tribute to an actress who David O. Selznick referred to as “the most completely conscientious actress” he had ever worked with, this is for fans and newcomers alike.

10 Reasons to Remember Raoul Coutard (1924-2016)

09 Wednesday Nov 2016

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Career, Cinematographer, Director, Jean-Luc Godard, Nouvelle Vague, Raoul Coutard

Raoul Coutard (16 September 1924 – 8 November 2016)

A key influence on the look and style of movies made during the Nouvelle Vague period (covering the late Fifties and the Sixties), Raoul Coutard was a cinematographer known primarily for his work with Jean-Luc Godard, but he also worked with the likes of Jacques Demy, François Truffaut, and Costa-Gravas.

Coutard served in the Indochina War (1946-1954), and ended up living and working in Vietnam for eleven years as a war photographer. In 1956 he was asked by Pierre Schoendoerffer to work on a documentary called The Devil’s Pass (1958); Coutard accepted due to a misunderstanding: he thought he was being hired to take stills shots. From there he shot two more movies for Schoendoerffer, and in 1959 was hired by Godard’s producer Georges de Beauregard to work on Godard’s first feature, Breathless (1960). Godard had had somebody else in mind for the job but the end result saw Coutard shoot all of Godard’s movies bar Masculin, féminin (1966) from then until 1967. Coutard was adept at using handheld cameras for Godard’s low-budget black and white movies, but he really impressed the director when it came to shooting his widescreen, colour movies: Coutard created a lighting rig that enabled shooting inside places without enough natural light.

Coutard’s career slowed down in the Seventies, though he did direct his first feature, Hoa Binh (1970); it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and won the prize for Best First Work at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival. He reunited with Godard in 1982 on Passion, and from then on Coutard began to work more consistently. His work continued to be distinctive and an asset to the projects he worked on, right up until his last work on Philippe Garrel’s Wild Innocence (2001). But he will always be remembered for the movies he made in the early to mid-Sixties, a selection of classic French movies that have stood the test of time not just because of the passions and fearlessness of their writers and directors, but also because of the way that Coutard illuminated those passions and that fearlessness through the immediacy of his visual style.

1 – À bout de souffle (Breathless) (1960)

2 – Une Femme est une femme (A Woman Is a Woman) (1961)

3 – Jules et Jim (1962)

4 – Le Mépris (Contempt) (1963)

5 – Bande à part (Band of Outsiders) (1964)

6 – Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (Alphaville, a Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution) (1965)

7 – Pierrot le Fou (1965)

8 – Weekend (1967)

9 – Z (1969)

10 – Passion (1982)

Happy Birthday – Winona Ryder

29 Saturday Oct 2016

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A Scanner Darkly, Actress, Career, Happy Birthday, The Crucible, The House of the Spirits, The Iceman, The Last Word, Winona Ryder

Winona Ryder (29 October 1971 -)

In the late Eighties, Winona Ryder appeared in two iconic movies: Beetlejuice (1987) and Heathers (1988). She wouldn’t be twenty for another three/four years. Having that much success so early in her career could now be seen as a bad thing, as the Nineties increasingly showed that fame and fortune were having an adverse effect on her. Dogged by depression and anxiety, Ryder continued to make movies that were incredibly diverse, and which featured varied, challenging performances. But like many of her contemporaries, once the new century arrived she became less and less of a box office draw, and her choice of roles retained their variety but not the critical or commercial acclaim of her earlier work. Nowadays her appearances are more sporadic, though well-received. In particular, her role in Black Swan (2010) and her work on the TV series Stranger Things (2016) have reinforced the idea that she is still as talented as she was in her heyday. Here are five more reminders of just how good an actress Winona Ryder is.

The Crucible (1996) – Character: Abigail Williams

Nicholas Hytner’s adaptation of Arthur Miller’s acclaimed play (and with a script by Miller himself) features a stunning performance from Ryder as the lover of Daniel Day-Lewis’s character who, out of envy, sparks a witch hunt in the town of Salem. Ryder is mesmerising as the vindictive Abigail, and she more than holds her own against the likes of Day-Lewis, Joan Allen, and Paul Scofield, imbuing her character with an angry, yet damaged vulnerability that more than justifies her vengeful actions.

A Scanner Darkly (2006) – Character: Donna Hawthorne

In Richard Linklater’s bold, inventive movie, which features the second fully integrated use of rotoscoping (basically tracing over original movie footage), Ryder is a dealer of Substance D, a drug that has gotten 20% of the American public hooked on it. Keanu Reeves’ undercover government agent becomes emotionally entangled with her, and it’s Ryder’s quietly subtle performance that helps guide the viewer through some of the more labyrinthine aspects of the narrative, and (hopefully) out the other side.

The House of the Spirits (1993) – Character: Blanca Trueba

Based on the novel by Isabel Allende, this arresting look at love and politics during the turbulent years of the military dictatorship in Chile sees Ryder recalling her character’s memories as a child and then following that same character’s adult life, and all the difficulties experienced at both times. It’s a largely supporting role, but Ryder is more than capable of providing a fully rounded character who has an increasing impact on the story the movie is telling. It’s also a testament to Ryder that this was her third costume/historical drama in a row – after Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) and The Age of Innocence (1993) – and she retains the virtues that allowed her to give such great performances in those movies as well.

The Iceman (2012) – Character: Deborah Kuklinski

As the unsuspecting wife of real life hitman Richard Kuklinski (Michael Shannon), Ryder gives an understated, yet compelling performance that acts as a credible counterpoint to Shannon’s more expressive role. This was another reminder that Ryder is a fine, intuitive actress when given the right role, and she matches her co-star for intensity when the part requires it, leaving the viewer in no doubt that whatever troubles have plagued her in the past, she’s still more than capable of bringing a somewhat stock character to life.

Square Dance (1987) – Character: Gemma Dillard

In only her second appearance in a movie, Ryder plays a thirteen year old who, having lived in the country with her grandparents (Jason Robards and Jane Alexander) for most of her life, accepts an offer from her mother to go and live with her in the city. She gives a sweet, confident performance in a movie that deserves to be reassessed as it approaches its thirtieth anniversary, and she displays a maturity in the role that few other actresses at that age could muster.

10 Reasons to Remember Andrzej Wajda (1926-2016)

11 Tuesday Oct 2016

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Andrzej Wajda, Career, Director, Movies, Poland

Andrzej Wajda (6 March 1926 – 9 October 2016)

The most prominent movie maker to come out of Poland, Andrzej Wajda was also a director with a strong European sensibility, even as he was chronicling the turbulent political times he lived in. His father was killed in the Katyn Massacre in 1940 (an event Wajda would revisit in 2007), but he survived along with his mother and brother. After the war he went to Kraków’s Academy of Fine Arts, and then in the early Fifties the Łódź Film School, where he was an apprentice to the director Aleksander Ford. He made his first movie, A Generation in 1955; it was also the first in a trilogy of movies that would take an anti-war stance then unpopular in Poland itself, which was still under Soviet rule.

He worked in the theatre as well, but focused more and more on movie making. His work gained international recognition – Kanal (1956) shared the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1957 with Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal – and he was able to explore more of the topics that interested him, as in Lotna (1959), a tribute to the Polish Cavalry that his father had been a part of. Throughout the Sixties he made movies that were more and more allegorical and symbolic, and his reputation increased accordingly. He was most successful in the Seventies, making a string of films that cemented his position as the foremost Polish movie maker of his generation.

In the Eighties he continued to make movies but more and more of his time was taken up with supporting Lech Wałęsa’s Solidarity movement. This involvement angered the Polish government to such an extent that it forced the closure of Wajda’s production company. Undeterred, Wajda continued to make the movies he wanted to make, and his career continued to go from strength to strength. In 1990 he was honoured by the European Film Awards with a Lifetime Achievement award (only the third director to have the honour, after Fellini and Bergman). Wajda won numerous other awards during his lifetime, and he was a tireless innovator who held a light up to the social and political upheavals and troubles that were occuring in his beloved Poland. His movies had a rigid formalism to them that was always undermined (and deliberately so) by Wajda’s own innate sympathy for humanity. He was a passionate, discerning movie maker who could make audiences laugh, cry, be angry or sad, but never bored or uninvolved.

1 – A Generation (1955)

2 – Kanal (1957)

3 – Ashes and Diamonds (1958)

4 – The Birch Wood (1970)

5 – The Promised Land (1975)

6 – Man of Marble (1977)

7 – Man of Iron (1981)

8 – Danton (1983)

9 – Korczak (1990)

10 – Katyn (2007)

Robert Zemeckis’ 10 Most Successful Movies at the International Box Office

10 Monday Oct 2016

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Career, Director, International Box Office, Robert Zemeckis, Top 10

Robert Zemeckis has been making movies for nearly forty years. He’s been at the forefront of a variety of technical firsts, from motion capture (on The Polar Express) to digital effects (Lieutenant Dan’s missing legs in Forrest Gump), but despite all this he’s still an actors’ director at heart, and he loves to tell a story. Even when his aim is to tell a serious story, such as in The Walk (2015), he still wants to entertain the audience, and to take them on a journey to a place they’ve never seen or experienced before. Along the way he’s made a handful of movies that are bona fide modern classics, and made a little town called Hill Valley into a place we’d all like to visit. For providing us with so many wonderful movie memories, here’s how we’ve repaid him at the international box office.

10 – Beowulf (2007) – $196,393,745

The middle picture in Zemeckis’ motion capture trilogy, Beowulf sees him trying to stretch the boundaries of both motion capture and 3D but with predictably mixed results. While his use of 3D is exemplary, the problems that prevented The Polar Express from being completely effective – the dullness of the eyes, the subtleties of lip movement – remain to make for some awkward moments. Nevertheless, the final showdown with the dragon is still one of the best fantasy sequences yet committed to screen (in any format), and Angelina Jolie is a great choice for Grendel’s mother.

9 – Back to the Future Part III (1990) – $244,527,583

The last in the trilogy was always going to divide audiences. Some were always going to love it for its Western setting, others were going to hate it for exactly the same reason. Whatever your leaning, what is unassailable is the movie’s appreciation for the genre, and the very satisfactory way in which Zemeckis and co-writer Bob Gale have wound up the overall story. Few trilogy closers are this triumphal, and fewer still are as emotionally astute – only Toy Story 3 (2010) springs to mind – but when you’re having this much fun saying goodbye, it seems right and proper to such a degree that you never think about just how much you’re going to miss the characters when it’s done.

8 – What Lies Beneath (2000) – $291,420,351

Zemeckis tries his hand at a psycho-drama with supernatural overtones, ropes in Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford as the leads, and manages to pull off a number of effective sequences, but ultimately, What Lies Beneath is a movie that doesn’t quite work in the way that Zemeckis and screenwriter Clark Gregg want it to. The tone of the movie fluctuates too often, leaving viewers uncertain if they’re watching a bloodless horror, a taut thriller, or a domestic drama gone awry. There are elements of all three on display, but it’s when they’re all combined in the same scene that things go badly wrong. Still, the scene where Pfeiffer is paralysed in the bathtub is unbearably tense, and Zemeckis handles it with accomplished ease.

7 – The Polar Express (2004) – $307,514,317

Best seen in its IMAX 3D format, The Polar Express (now a Xmas staple) sees Zemeckis experimenting for the first time with motion capture and gives Tom Hanks the chance to emulate Alec Guinness’s eight role appearance in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). It’s a heartwarming tale, with a plethora of breathtaking visuals and sequences – the train racing across a frozen lake as the ice breaks up is simply stunning – and if it’s a little too smothered in saccharine at times, then it’s a small price to pay for a movie that in terms of its original look (and the problems that come with it) is endlessly fascinating to watch.

6 – A Christmas Carol (2009) – $325,855,863

Zemeckis teams with Jim Carrey for a version of Dickens’ classic tale that dials back on The Polar Express‘s sometimes overbearing sentimentality, and offers all kinds of visual tricks and complexities as the director tries once more to convince audiences that motion capture is the way of the future. But even though many of the issues surrounding facial expressions and physical movement that hampered The Polar Express and Beowulf have been addressed, there’s still an inherent “unreality” to the characters that, in the end (and despite the movie’s success), audiences couldn’t ignore, or overlook.

5 – Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) – $329,803,958

When Who Framed Roger Rabbit was first released, there were plenty of people who were fooled by the opening Baby Herman cartoon into thinking the whole movie was going to be animated. That might have been a good move on Zemeckis’ part, but how less satisfying it would have been than this perennial crowd-pleaser, both an homage to the Golden Age of Animation, and the most expensive movie (animated or otherwise) made in the Eighties. It’s an almost perfect blend of comedy, drama, pathos and nostalgia that moves at a cracking pace, and has so many visual gags in it you can’t catch them all in a single viewing. Roger is adorable, his wife Jessica Rabbit “isn’t bad… [she’s] just drawn that way”, and when revealed, Judge Doom is one of the scariest villains in any movie, period.

4 – Back to the Future Part II (1989) – $331,950,002

Many people felt that Back to the Future Part II was too complex, too convoluted, and too much of a head-scratcher, especially when Marty travelled back to 1955 to ensure his parents got together – again. But it’s the movie’s complex understanding of time travel, and the consequences that can arise when time is tinkered with, that makes this first sequel such an unexpected joy to watch. It’s also darker and more cynical than the first and third movies, but Zemeckis handles the material with confidence and no small amount of flair. For some fans, this is the best movie in the trilogy.

3 – Back to the Future (1985) – $381,109,762

The movie that made Zemeckis’ career, Back to the Future is a delight from start to finish, a beautifully rendered love poem to a bygone era, and one of the smartest sci-fi comedies ever made (if not the smartest). Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd make for an inspired teaming, and the whole thing is both whimsical and irresistible, with some classic lines of dialogue (“Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”), and a whole raft of smart, enagaging performances. A movie you can watch over and over again and never tire of it.

2 – Cast Away (2000) – $429,632,142

If all you take away from Cast Away is that Tom Hanks lost an awful lot of weight to convince viewers his character was living on a desert island, and that he talked (a lot) to a volleyball called Wilson, then you’re missing the point of a movie that paints a vivid, unsentimental portrait of a man believed missing at sea who learns the art of survival the hard way. Hanks gives one of his best-ever performances, but the script includes too many longeuers for comfort, and the final third fails to match the impetus of the opening scenes. Zemeckis shows a keen eye for the practicalities of surviving on a desert island, and along with a committed Hanks, ensures the audience is just as invested in Hanks’s character getting off the island as he is.

1 – Forrest Gump (1994) – $677,945,399

Unsurprisingly, it’s the Oscar-winning home run that is Forrest Gump which sits atop this list. A perfect combination of director, script and star, the movie blends so many disparate elements, both thematically and visually (and with such confidence), that it’s easy to forget just how much of a surprise this movie was when it appeared over twenty years ago. Hanks, arguably, has never been better, and the same can be said of Zemeckis, who displays a fearlessness in handling the material that he’s never quite managed to recapture in his work since then.

Mini-Review: De Palma (2015)

25 Sunday Sep 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Brian De Palma, Career, Documentary, Interview, Jake Paltrow, Noah Baumbach, Review

D: Noah Baumbach, Jake Paltrow / 110m

With: Brian De Palma

It’s a great idea: take a movie maker whose career spans over fifty years, put him in front of a camera, and let him talk about that career in as much detail as he can. It’s a great idea, and it’s a simple one, and Brian De Palma is a perfect choice. He’s had a career with its fair share of ups and downs, critical and commercial successes and failures, and he’s not hesitant about defending some of the “poor choices” he’s made over the years. From his early days making student shorts such as Woton’s Wake (1962), De Palma is captivating and incisive about his work. He talks about each movie he’s made – some in more depth than others – but always with a view to explaining what he feels went right and what went wrong with each movie, and why. He talks about his disagreements with the studios, with screenwriters (De Palma is possibly the only director who worked with Robert Towne and thought he wasn’t doing a good enough job), and occasionally with actors (his remarks about Cliff Robertson are hilarious).

In terms of actual movie making, De Palma is a knowledgeable, avuncular storyteller, able to recall the reasons he made certain movies, the battles he had to fight to get some of them made, and why some weren’t as successful as others. His reasoning at times is a little self-serving (he still thinks The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) holds up as a movie), and he’s dismissive of the critics and their views (unless that critic is Pauline Kael, who championed his work when few others would). He has some great anecdotes to tell about the likes of Robert De Niro and Sean Connery, and he’s not afraid to talk about the accusations of exploitation and Hitchcockian mimicry that have dogged his career.

There are well-chosen clips from each of De Palma’s movies, and most serve as visual references for his opinions and recollections. Here and there are revelations that many people won’t be aware of, or have seen, such as the alternative ending to Snake Eyes (1998), and his use of Michael Caine’s double in Dressed to Kill (1980). There’s a whole mineful of useful, interesting information being relayed here, and De Palma is an engaging, smart, occasionally witty interviewee; listening to him talk about the perils involved in getting a movie off the ground is like a masterclass in itself (and it’s happened to him way too often for comfort). But you also get a good sense of how tenacious he’s been in the past, and how determined he’s been to make the movies he’s wanted to make.

If there’s one issue that De Palma the movie is unable to address, it’s that De Palma the man goes unchallenged throughout. By giving De Palma a free pass, he’s allowed to make several remarks that would normally require further exploration (see The Bonfire of the Vanities). This leads, on occasion, to a number of moments where the viewer may be tempted to ask their own questions in the hope that De Palma somehow picks up on them. Someone once observed that “all directors are egomaniacs”, and while De Palma seems a little less egocentric than most, eagle-eyed viewers will notice that he rarely accepts any blame for those of his movies that didn’t work out so well. But then, De Palma is telling his story, not someone else’s, and like any artist who creates alternate realities for a living, sometimes the line between truth and reality can get blurred by self-interest.

Rating: 8/10 – fans of Brian De Palma will find his reminiscences and opinions of great interest, and even casual admirers will be drawn in by his winning (and occasionally) belligerent approach; as mentioned already, De Palma is a great idea, and one that could (and should) be used to capture the views and experiences of his contemporaries – so, calling Mr Spielberg, and Mr Scorsese, and Mr Coppola…

10 Reasons to Remember Curtis Hanson (1945-2016)

21 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Career, Curtis Hanson, Director, Screenwriter

Curtis Hanson (24 March 1945 – 20 September 2016)

Like many of his contemporaries, Curtis Hanson grew up with an appreciation of movies made in the Golden Age of cinema (1930-1960), so much so that in his own movies he made references to the period, or had his characters watch movies made and released back then. Early on, after dropping out of high school, Hanson found work as a freelance photographer and editor for Cinema magazine. His first movie credit might come as a surprise: he co-wrote the screenplay for The Dunwich Horror (1970). Two years later he was able to get his first project made as writer and director and producer, the unsuccessful psycho horror thriller, Sweet Kill (1972). It was an experience that appears to have hampered Hanson’s career insofar as he didn’t direct again until 1979. The early Eighties saw him struggle to make any headway, with projects such as Losin’ It (1983) failing to gain the kind of response that would have boosted his career (and despite the presence of a young Tom Cruise).

But Hanson persevered, and in 1992 had a breakthrough hit with another psycho horror thriller, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. It proved to be the fillip he needed, and from then on his career was assured. His choices became more varied, and he moved from genre to genre with an ease and a versatility that belied his previous work. His ability to work on projects that were outside of his own personal experience, in particular, and to find the core truth of them was always impressive. He was also able to extract some amazing performances from the actors he worked with, from Russell Crowe to Michael Douglas, Toni Collette and Paul Giamatti. Hanson was an intuitive director, intelligent and creative, visually astute and emotionally honest with his characters. Watching his movies will always be a joy – well, maybe not Evil Town (1987); no, really, don’t bother, there’s a reason he’s credited as Edward Collins – but now they’ll come with the bittersweet thought that Hanson’s particular approach to movie making won’t be repeated any more, and we’ll have to bear his loss along with all the other talented individuals 2016 seems intent on taking from us.

1 – White Dog (1982) – co-screenwriter only

2 – The Bedroom Window (1987)

3 – The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992)

4 – The River Wild (1994)

5 – L.A. Confidential (1997)

6 – Wonder Boys (2000)

7 – 8 Mile (2002)

8 – In Her Shoes (2005)

9 – Too Big to Fail (2011)

10 – Chasing Mavericks (2012)

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