The top-line on the big film news stories for Friday 23 August 2013 – plus everything else that we're launching on the film site today
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In the paper today
• We've the full quota of reviews in Film & Music today, including Peter Bradshaw on Lovelace, Elysium, What Maisie Knew, We're the Millers, Morrissey 25: Live and Winter of Discontent.
• Also in Film & Music, we've Joe Queenan's cover story on why the movies always get stuck in the past when they imagine the future.
Plus: Rick Moranis speaks to Hadley Freeman about his new album and Jim Rash and Nat Faxon talk Oscars, Angelegging and The Way, Way Back.
The headlines today
This morning on the site we'll be launching full stories on the following. But you can get a sneak preview right here, right now.
• Dun-a-nun-a-nun-a-nun-a-nun-a-Ben-Aaaffleck! We've already got one story up on the dark knight casting announcement,...
Subscribe to our RSS feed
In the paper today
• We've the full quota of reviews in Film & Music today, including Peter Bradshaw on Lovelace, Elysium, What Maisie Knew, We're the Millers, Morrissey 25: Live and Winter of Discontent.
• Also in Film & Music, we've Joe Queenan's cover story on why the movies always get stuck in the past when they imagine the future.
Plus: Rick Moranis speaks to Hadley Freeman about his new album and Jim Rash and Nat Faxon talk Oscars, Angelegging and The Way, Way Back.
The headlines today
This morning on the site we'll be launching full stories on the following. But you can get a sneak preview right here, right now.
• Dun-a-nun-a-nun-a-nun-a-nun-a-Ben-Aaaffleck! We've already got one story up on the dark knight casting announcement,...
- 8/23/2013
- by Catherine Shoard
- The Guardian - Film News
Last year, following the trio of straight-laced, minor efforts in “World Trade Center,” “W.,” and “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” Oliver Stone conjured up an early nostalgic excitement for the Blake Lively/Taylor Kitsch action-drama “Savages,” promising a “return to form” from the passionate director. While that film turned out to be a muddled, occasionally entertaining mess, its spiritual predecessor, “Natural Born Killers,” landed in much more controversy, and an archival clip from 1995 examines the film's testy British release. Culling interviews with film critics David Thomson, Joe Queenan, as well as Stone himself, the 12-minute segment of BBC's “Moving Pictures” series is an intriguingly-timed bit of coverage: After its critically-lambasted theatrical run in America, “Natural Born Killers” was caught up with the BBFC in Britain, who shelved it while they debated whether or not to ban it. In the end, the Woody Harrelson/Juliette...
- 6/20/2013
- by Charlie Schmidlin
- The Playlist
Catch up with the last seven days in the world of film
The big story
It's big. Very big. It could be the biggest ever. Man of Steel is here, the latest Superman film, directed by Zack Snyder and with Christopher Nolan's sticky fingerprints all over it. The film itself burst fully formed into the media at 4am on Tuesday morning, when the worldwide media embargo was lifted. Our first look review handed it three big stars, an assessment repeated when the capo, Peter Bradshaw, gave his verdict.
Critics across the planet weighed in, with the word being on the positive side of mixed. That of course cut no ice with the big cheeses at Warner Bros, who have already commissioned a sequel; nor with our man in the stalls, Joe Queenan, who took the exact opposite view to WB. Give the superheroes a rest, was his basic message.
The big story
It's big. Very big. It could be the biggest ever. Man of Steel is here, the latest Superman film, directed by Zack Snyder and with Christopher Nolan's sticky fingerprints all over it. The film itself burst fully formed into the media at 4am on Tuesday morning, when the worldwide media embargo was lifted. Our first look review handed it three big stars, an assessment repeated when the capo, Peter Bradshaw, gave his verdict.
Critics across the planet weighed in, with the word being on the positive side of mixed. That of course cut no ice with the big cheeses at Warner Bros, who have already commissioned a sequel; nor with our man in the stalls, Joe Queenan, who took the exact opposite view to WB. Give the superheroes a rest, was his basic message.
- 6/13/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
And what about Argo and Zero Dark Thirty? Joe Queenan on why Hollywood keeps making the same films twice
A few weeks back, I felt a burning desire to see a movie about a person with deep psychological problems who is sometimes given to violent episodes, whose marriage is a complete disaster, and who has trouble finding the right medication to deal with these assorted personality disorders. It was one of those long, grey, miserable afternoons where you just know at some primal level that seeing a movie about a deeply disturbed human being will make you feel better about your own sad little life. This, after all, is what movies are all about.
Unfortunately, I arrived at the multiplex too late to see Bradley Cooper weave his special magic in Silver Linings Playbook. So instead I caught Side Effects, in which Rooney Mara plays a person with deep psychological...
A few weeks back, I felt a burning desire to see a movie about a person with deep psychological problems who is sometimes given to violent episodes, whose marriage is a complete disaster, and who has trouble finding the right medication to deal with these assorted personality disorders. It was one of those long, grey, miserable afternoons where you just know at some primal level that seeing a movie about a deeply disturbed human being will make you feel better about your own sad little life. This, after all, is what movies are all about.
Unfortunately, I arrived at the multiplex too late to see Bradley Cooper weave his special magic in Silver Linings Playbook. So instead I caught Side Effects, in which Rooney Mara plays a person with deep psychological...
- 3/19/2013
- by Joe Queenan
- The Guardian - Film News
Revisiting 18 years of pop culture, from Arrested Development to Skins, as well as a little-known show called The Wire
2004: Wardrobe malfunction
Spotted! Grime "Alternatively called 8 bar, sub-low or eski… there's no particular structure, just an average 136+ Bpm, lots of speaker-shattering bass, and tales of girls, guns, drug-dealing and the ultimate crowd-pleaser, 'slewing' – slagging off the competition a la Eminem in 8 Mile." Hattie Collins merks it
Jesus wept "If you're a male flagellation buff out for a night on the town with the girlfriend who hates Jerry Seinfeld and the rest of the children of Israel, I honestly can't think of a better date flick." Joe Queenan spots Mel Gibson's antisemitic streak in The Passion Of The Christ
Sign of the times The iTunes Music Store launches in June. "If one aspect of the iTunes Store might give the serious music fan pause," writes Andrew Mueller, "it is this: the rock'n'roll album,...
2004: Wardrobe malfunction
Spotted! Grime "Alternatively called 8 bar, sub-low or eski… there's no particular structure, just an average 136+ Bpm, lots of speaker-shattering bass, and tales of girls, guns, drug-dealing and the ultimate crowd-pleaser, 'slewing' – slagging off the competition a la Eminem in 8 Mile." Hattie Collins merks it
Jesus wept "If you're a male flagellation buff out for a night on the town with the girlfriend who hates Jerry Seinfeld and the rest of the children of Israel, I honestly can't think of a better date flick." Joe Queenan spots Mel Gibson's antisemitic streak in The Passion Of The Christ
Sign of the times The iTunes Music Store launches in June. "If one aspect of the iTunes Store might give the serious music fan pause," writes Andrew Mueller, "it is this: the rock'n'roll album,...
- 1/5/2013
- by The Guide
- The Guardian - Film News
Revisiting 18 years of pop culture, from the Strokes to the early hipster, plus lots of Charlie Brooker
2000: Nasty Nick
Charlie Brooker's first Screen Burn "Hate your job? Weep yourself awake each Monday morning? Spend the working day toying with your desktop icons while nonchalantly contemplating suicide? Ever considered doing something – anything – else? Then whatever you do, don't look to the coming week's television for inspiration. Tucked away in the schedules are four glaring examples of the very worst careers imaginable this side of "oil-rig bitch". First up servile pandering, or "being a butler", as it's commonly known..."
Macy Mania Macy Gray has a (fleeting) moment. "The latest craze is precisely what Macy Gray has become. The first bona-fide pop phenomenon of the new millennium. Right now, the world and its uncle appear infatuated with her. She's bigger than big. And getting bigger all the time."
2020 vision Danny Leigh...
2000: Nasty Nick
Charlie Brooker's first Screen Burn "Hate your job? Weep yourself awake each Monday morning? Spend the working day toying with your desktop icons while nonchalantly contemplating suicide? Ever considered doing something – anything – else? Then whatever you do, don't look to the coming week's television for inspiration. Tucked away in the schedules are four glaring examples of the very worst careers imaginable this side of "oil-rig bitch". First up servile pandering, or "being a butler", as it's commonly known..."
Macy Mania Macy Gray has a (fleeting) moment. "The latest craze is precisely what Macy Gray has become. The first bona-fide pop phenomenon of the new millennium. Right now, the world and its uncle appear infatuated with her. She's bigger than big. And getting bigger all the time."
2020 vision Danny Leigh...
- 1/5/2013
- by The Guide
- The Guardian - Film News
Revisiting 18 years of pop culture, from Britpop to the Spice Girls, via Father Ted
1994: Mad fer it!
Issue No 1 Previously a broadsheet section in the newspaper, The Guide was expanded into a magazine proper on 27 August 1994. Nobody bothered to archive a copy, though, so the best we can do is show you a Xeroxed reproduction of the cover. At the time we were concerned with the weird state of science shows on TV and had a wander around the Notting Hill Carnival.
Spotted! All Saints From a review of their single Silver Shadow: "Born in the same year and in the same area of London, what else could these girls do but form a swingbeat group? Their debut is a sickly Atlantic Starr cover with an idiotic number of mixes, encompassing every dance style bar Morris. Eternal may rest easy in their Timberlands." Note: swingbeat was a form of...
1994: Mad fer it!
Issue No 1 Previously a broadsheet section in the newspaper, The Guide was expanded into a magazine proper on 27 August 1994. Nobody bothered to archive a copy, though, so the best we can do is show you a Xeroxed reproduction of the cover. At the time we were concerned with the weird state of science shows on TV and had a wander around the Notting Hill Carnival.
Spotted! All Saints From a review of their single Silver Shadow: "Born in the same year and in the same area of London, what else could these girls do but form a swingbeat group? Their debut is a sickly Atlantic Starr cover with an idiotic number of mixes, encompassing every dance style bar Morris. Eternal may rest easy in their Timberlands." Note: swingbeat was a form of...
- 1/5/2013
- by The Guide
- The Guardian - Film News
It's the still in a process of refinement, but Indiewire has expanded their gateway to film criticism with Criticwire 2.0, which works as a catalog of critics and criticism that offers a much needed alternative to Rotten Tomatoes. It's less about looking for consensus than it is about offering a simple way of following the critics that interest you and discovering new ones along the way.
The Vienna Film Festival is underway, and while all of us who are not attending lament not being able to check out Mike Ott's DJ set, we have only the coverage of others to turn to for consolation. Turns out there isn't much of that available either, unless you can read German, so for now check out our coverage here in the Notebook, and hopefully there will be more to share next week. Ti West is prepping his next horror film, The Sacrament,...
The Vienna Film Festival is underway, and while all of us who are not attending lament not being able to check out Mike Ott's DJ set, we have only the coverage of others to turn to for consolation. Turns out there isn't much of that available either, unless you can read German, so for now check out our coverage here in the Notebook, and hopefully there will be more to share next week. Ti West is prepping his next horror film, The Sacrament,...
- 10/31/2012
- by Adam Cook
- MUBI
An elegy for the British stiff upper lip, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp couldn't have been more foreign to a young Italian-American in the 1950s. But Martin Scorsese tells Joe Queenan why restoring the classic is part of his duty to cinema
One rainy day in the early 1950s, a very young Martin Scorsese was watching a butchered version of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp on his black-and-white TV. Colonel Blimp, which deals with a lifelong friendship between Clive Candy, a British soldier sporting an upper lip of almost unbelievable stiffness, and his top-hole German counterpart, Theodore Kretschmar-Schuldorff, first saw the light of day in 1943. This was not the best time to be releasing a film with a sympathetic German character.
The film Scorsese saw was not the film Michael Powell had shot, nor the film his collaborator Emeric Pressburger had written. (For years, the pair...
One rainy day in the early 1950s, a very young Martin Scorsese was watching a butchered version of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp on his black-and-white TV. Colonel Blimp, which deals with a lifelong friendship between Clive Candy, a British soldier sporting an upper lip of almost unbelievable stiffness, and his top-hole German counterpart, Theodore Kretschmar-Schuldorff, first saw the light of day in 1943. This was not the best time to be releasing a film with a sympathetic German character.
The film Scorsese saw was not the film Michael Powell had shot, nor the film his collaborator Emeric Pressburger had written. (For years, the pair...
- 10/30/2012
- by Joe Queenan
- The Guardian - Film News
Family of creator Charles Schulz will support film marking 65th anniversary of first appearance of Snoopy, Charlie Brown and co
• Joe Queenan in praise of Peanuts
Peanuts, the long-running comic strip that introduced Snoopy and Charlie Brown to the world, is to get a big-screen outing with support from the family of its late creator, Charles Schulz.
Twentieth Century Fox Animation's Blue Sky Studios will release the film on 25 November 2015, in line with the 65th anniversary of Peanuts' debut and the 50th anniversary of the TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas. Schulz's son Craig and grandson Bryan will write the screenplay alongside Cornelius Uliano; the movie will be directed by Steve Martino. The latter's credits include Ice Age 4: Continental Drift and Dr Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!
"We are thrilled to partner with the Schulz family and Iconix and honoured to bring the Peanuts characters to the big screen,...
• Joe Queenan in praise of Peanuts
Peanuts, the long-running comic strip that introduced Snoopy and Charlie Brown to the world, is to get a big-screen outing with support from the family of its late creator, Charles Schulz.
Twentieth Century Fox Animation's Blue Sky Studios will release the film on 25 November 2015, in line with the 65th anniversary of Peanuts' debut and the 50th anniversary of the TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas. Schulz's son Craig and grandson Bryan will write the screenplay alongside Cornelius Uliano; the movie will be directed by Steve Martino. The latter's credits include Ice Age 4: Continental Drift and Dr Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!
"We are thrilled to partner with the Schulz family and Iconix and honoured to bring the Peanuts characters to the big screen,...
- 10/10/2012
- by Ben Child
- The Guardian - Film News
Catch up with the last seven days in the world of film
The big story
As predicted, The Dark Knight Rises continued to dominate headlines this week, with other film releases struggling to make their presence felt.
Much of the news surrounding the film centered on the terrible events in Colorado. Following the mass killing at the late-night showing of the film, Warner Brothers took the decision to cancel the Paris premiere, disclosed plans to make a "substantial" donation to charities supporting victims of the killings and, as a mark of respect, delayed the reporting of opening box office figures.
Once the numbers were made public, box office analysts confirmed that The Dark Knight Rises had debuted with the third highest Us opening of all time last weekend, $160.9m. The figure was lower than expected, but still enough to put it firmly in the 'massively successful' category.
However, despite hefty...
The big story
As predicted, The Dark Knight Rises continued to dominate headlines this week, with other film releases struggling to make their presence felt.
Much of the news surrounding the film centered on the terrible events in Colorado. Following the mass killing at the late-night showing of the film, Warner Brothers took the decision to cancel the Paris premiere, disclosed plans to make a "substantial" donation to charities supporting victims of the killings and, as a mark of respect, delayed the reporting of opening box office figures.
Once the numbers were made public, box office analysts confirmed that The Dark Knight Rises had debuted with the third highest Us opening of all time last weekend, $160.9m. The figure was lower than expected, but still enough to put it firmly in the 'massively successful' category.
However, despite hefty...
- 7/26/2012
- The Guardian - Film News
Catch up with the last seven days in the world of film
The big story
Yes, we know Hulk was last week's biggie, but you just can't keep Avengers Assemble, or whatever it's called, out of the news. For a few days last month, everyone was fixated on The Hunger Games' box office – but now Avengers has exposed it for the shrimp it is by recording the largest ever opening weekend in the Us.
Bizarrely, initial reports even underestimated its pulling power: the studio estimate was for $200.3m (becoming the first film to break $200m for its bow), but when the final figures came in it totalled $207.4m, flattening Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2's previous high water mark in the process.
In all honesty, Avengers Assemble was everywhere this week. Before, as fans got ready for the big lift off. During, when Sam Jackson (Nick Fury...
The big story
Yes, we know Hulk was last week's biggie, but you just can't keep Avengers Assemble, or whatever it's called, out of the news. For a few days last month, everyone was fixated on The Hunger Games' box office – but now Avengers has exposed it for the shrimp it is by recording the largest ever opening weekend in the Us.
Bizarrely, initial reports even underestimated its pulling power: the studio estimate was for $200.3m (becoming the first film to break $200m for its bow), but when the final figures came in it totalled $207.4m, flattening Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2's previous high water mark in the process.
In all honesty, Avengers Assemble was everywhere this week. Before, as fans got ready for the big lift off. During, when Sam Jackson (Nick Fury...
- 5/10/2012
- The Guardian - Film News
The nominees are busy rehearsing their speeches and practising their fixed grins. Will you be joining us for Oscars night?
The big story
Our legs are wobbly, our faces drawn. We're staggering, arms out-stretched, to the finish line, which is marked by two giant, golden statuettes. The heartbeat quickens as a cooling breeze brings the whispered word: "Os-car".
Yes – film's night of nights is almost upon us. Just 72 hours to go before a whole new brood of Academy-approved board-treaders are unleashed on to the waiting public. There will be glitz, there will be tears, there will be air-kissing.
We're stumbling on, thanks to a couple of shots of pre-ceremony controversy from doctors McQueen and Baron Cohen. Tuesday saw the Shame director tell the Press Association that the film's star, Michael Fassbender, hadn't been nominated for the best actor award because of America's "fear of sex". Then on Wednesday Sascha Baron...
The big story
Our legs are wobbly, our faces drawn. We're staggering, arms out-stretched, to the finish line, which is marked by two giant, golden statuettes. The heartbeat quickens as a cooling breeze brings the whispered word: "Os-car".
Yes – film's night of nights is almost upon us. Just 72 hours to go before a whole new brood of Academy-approved board-treaders are unleashed on to the waiting public. There will be glitz, there will be tears, there will be air-kissing.
We're stumbling on, thanks to a couple of shots of pre-ceremony controversy from doctors McQueen and Baron Cohen. Tuesday saw the Shame director tell the Press Association that the film's star, Michael Fassbender, hadn't been nominated for the best actor award because of America's "fear of sex". Then on Wednesday Sascha Baron...
- 2/23/2012
- The Guardian - Film News
The best of your comments on the latest films and music
Did you get a box set for Christmas? Was it one of those pathetic, mangy little ones that just has four CDs and a booklet? Or was it one of the super deluxe editions, with enough audio and video to keep you entertained for several years, plus a vial of the singer's sweat, and a special book about how they made the box for the set? Those were the box sets Alexis Petridis wrote about in our 23 December edition. The reason I ask if you got one was because of something Robstacle said: "Surely most people who buy these are the spouses of musos who are stuck for an obviously extravagant Christmas present. They're ready-made for that kind of thing. You know they're going to like it (because the original album is on their CD rack), you know they...
Did you get a box set for Christmas? Was it one of those pathetic, mangy little ones that just has four CDs and a booklet? Or was it one of the super deluxe editions, with enough audio and video to keep you entertained for several years, plus a vial of the singer's sweat, and a special book about how they made the box for the set? Those were the box sets Alexis Petridis wrote about in our 23 December edition. The reason I ask if you got one was because of something Robstacle said: "Surely most people who buy these are the spouses of musos who are stuck for an obviously extravagant Christmas present. They're ready-made for that kind of thing. You know they're going to like it (because the original album is on their CD rack), you know they...
- 1/6/2012
- by Michael Hann
- The Guardian - Film News
We're suspicious of trailers, but the first real glimpses of the Dark Knight Rises and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey were too big to miss
The big story
We don't normally get that excited about trailers. They have their place, but for the most part they're slippery, unreliable things - a keyhole shot of a bigger idea, designed to sell their wares to the largest audience, with little regard for the nature of their source material.
That said, there were a couple of promos released this week that even brine-soaked snobs like us couldn't ignore. Tuesday saw the release of the Dark Knight Rises trailer, the first real look at Christopher Nolan's third and final Batman film. Our go-to-guy for all things bat is Ben Child, who finally switched off the Bat Signal he'd installed on his roof and welcomed the caped crusader's return. "As with the best trailers,...
The big story
We don't normally get that excited about trailers. They have their place, but for the most part they're slippery, unreliable things - a keyhole shot of a bigger idea, designed to sell their wares to the largest audience, with little regard for the nature of their source material.
That said, there were a couple of promos released this week that even brine-soaked snobs like us couldn't ignore. Tuesday saw the release of the Dark Knight Rises trailer, the first real look at Christopher Nolan's third and final Batman film. Our go-to-guy for all things bat is Ben Child, who finally switched off the Bat Signal he'd installed on his roof and welcomed the caped crusader's return. "As with the best trailers,...
- 12/22/2011
- by Henry Barnes
- The Guardian - Film News
Whenever depression looms for Joe Queenan, it's time to turn to Johnny Hallyday. What is it about the films of the French Elvis Presley that holds the answer to all life's woes?
The other day I was feeling unusually melancholy, what with the economy in the tank and construction workers building evil McMansions next to my house. One of my friends suggested I watch a Hong Kong gangster movie called Vengeance. He said the film was completely insane and would take my mind off my troubles. I told him all Hong Kong gangster movies were completely insane, but he fired back: "No – this one is really insane."
He was right.
Vengeance, released in 2009, is actually a Franco-Hong Kong collaboration that pools the resources of the legendary actor/director Johnnie To and those of the legendary rock star/actor Johnny Hallyday, the French Elvis Presley. Hallyday, né Jean-Philippe Smet, is in fact Belgian,...
The other day I was feeling unusually melancholy, what with the economy in the tank and construction workers building evil McMansions next to my house. One of my friends suggested I watch a Hong Kong gangster movie called Vengeance. He said the film was completely insane and would take my mind off my troubles. I told him all Hong Kong gangster movies were completely insane, but he fired back: "No – this one is really insane."
He was right.
Vengeance, released in 2009, is actually a Franco-Hong Kong collaboration that pools the resources of the legendary actor/director Johnnie To and those of the legendary rock star/actor Johnny Hallyday, the French Elvis Presley. Hallyday, né Jean-Philippe Smet, is in fact Belgian,...
- 12/9/2011
- by Joe Queenan
- The Guardian - Film News
Angelina Jolie and Tom Cruise dismiss a lawsuit and a rumour as 'par for the course' and 'ludicrous'
The big story
Celebrity gesture of the week? The shrug.
Angelina Jolie sported one as a lawsuit claiming her directorial debut was nicked from a Croatian journalist was filed, then Tom Cruise (aka Tom Cruise's People) took up the trend in response to rumours that crowds who greeted the Mission Impossible star's arrival in Mumbai were hired actors.
It became both rather well. "It's par for the course," said Jolie of Josip Knežević's claim that she had taken her story from his book, The Soul Shattering. "It happens on almost every film. There are many books and documentaries that I did pull from, but that particular book I've never seen." Jolie's film, In The Land of Blood and Honey, is set during the Bosnian war and sees a Serbian camp commander...
The big story
Celebrity gesture of the week? The shrug.
Angelina Jolie sported one as a lawsuit claiming her directorial debut was nicked from a Croatian journalist was filed, then Tom Cruise (aka Tom Cruise's People) took up the trend in response to rumours that crowds who greeted the Mission Impossible star's arrival in Mumbai were hired actors.
It became both rather well. "It's par for the course," said Jolie of Josip Knežević's claim that she had taken her story from his book, The Soul Shattering. "It happens on almost every film. There are many books and documentaries that I did pull from, but that particular book I've never seen." Jolie's film, In The Land of Blood and Honey, is set during the Bosnian war and sees a Serbian camp commander...
- 12/8/2011
- by Henry Barnes
- The Guardian - Film News
The best of your comments on the latest films and music
It's not every week we get an MP turning up in the Film&Music comments threads. But last week Diane Abbott weighed in on the subject of the "Mammy" role in Hollywood movies – the loyal, black housemaid – a character given a new treatment in The Help, which Xan Brooks wrote about last week. "I enjoyed the book. And I will go and see the film," Abbott wrote. "In the 1950s 80% of Black American women were maids, so it is right and relevant that someone writes about that reality. But it is still sad that, 60 years after Hattie McDaniel won an Oscar for playing a black maid in "Gone With the Wind", this year's prize role for a black actress is … playing a maid."
Actually, suggested insomniac506, "Mammy" was not always the simplistic caricature – verging on a simpleton – Xan's piece...
It's not every week we get an MP turning up in the Film&Music comments threads. But last week Diane Abbott weighed in on the subject of the "Mammy" role in Hollywood movies – the loyal, black housemaid – a character given a new treatment in The Help, which Xan Brooks wrote about last week. "I enjoyed the book. And I will go and see the film," Abbott wrote. "In the 1950s 80% of Black American women were maids, so it is right and relevant that someone writes about that reality. But it is still sad that, 60 years after Hattie McDaniel won an Oscar for playing a black maid in "Gone With the Wind", this year's prize role for a black actress is … playing a maid."
Actually, suggested insomniac506, "Mammy" was not always the simplistic caricature – verging on a simpleton – Xan's piece...
- 10/27/2011
- by Michael Hann
- The Guardian - Film News
The Dark Knight Rises shoot heads to New York later this month. Will Christopher Nolan use the anti-capitalist protests as a backdrop?
The big story
Whispers from the Dark Knight Rises set suggest that Christopher Nolan may shoot part of his third Batman film against the backdrop of the Occupy Wall Street protests. The production will rumble into New York on the 29th of October, bringing the caped crusader face to face with the thousands in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park now in their second month of protest against the capitalist system. You know - the one that gets movies like the Dark Knight Rises made.
Some would fear a clash of ideals. Director Christopher Nolan apparently sees an opportunity, with the Times suggesting that the demonstrations could be used as a setting for scenes from the film. Whether the arrival of the shoot will add another item to the protestors' list...
The big story
Whispers from the Dark Knight Rises set suggest that Christopher Nolan may shoot part of his third Batman film against the backdrop of the Occupy Wall Street protests. The production will rumble into New York on the 29th of October, bringing the caped crusader face to face with the thousands in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park now in their second month of protest against the capitalist system. You know - the one that gets movies like the Dark Knight Rises made.
Some would fear a clash of ideals. Director Christopher Nolan apparently sees an opportunity, with the Times suggesting that the demonstrations could be used as a setting for scenes from the film. Whether the arrival of the shoot will add another item to the protestors' list...
- 10/20/2011
- by Henry Barnes
- The Guardian - Film News
Kenneth Branagh's returned to his native Belfast for a play that proves he can do slapstick and Shakespeare
The first thing Kenneth Branagh did when he returned to his home town of Belfast a fortnight ago was to visit his old house. It was a red-brick terrace on Mount Collier Road in a Protestant area of north Belfast, where Branagh had lived with his parents and his older brother, Bill, until he was nine years old and the family left for a new life in England.
Now, 41 years later, Branagh can still remember the streets of his childhood, the way he used to walk to school and the fact that everyone knew his name. "When you were being called in for your tea, if you couldn't see your mother, the yell from the doorstep would come to you jungle-drums fashion," he says. "Someone two streets away would tell you...
The first thing Kenneth Branagh did when he returned to his home town of Belfast a fortnight ago was to visit his old house. It was a red-brick terrace on Mount Collier Road in a Protestant area of north Belfast, where Branagh had lived with his parents and his older brother, Bill, until he was nine years old and the family left for a new life in England.
Now, 41 years later, Branagh can still remember the streets of his childhood, the way he used to walk to school and the fact that everyone knew his name. "When you were being called in for your tea, if you couldn't see your mother, the yell from the doorstep would come to you jungle-drums fashion," he says. "Someone two streets away would tell you...
- 10/8/2011
- by Elizabeth Day
- The Guardian - Film News
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