| Widdecombe struts a spiceless salsa As salsas go, it was decidedly unsaucy and lacking in spice...but at least it raised a smile. feeds.breakingnews.ie |
The best films ever, by genre Coming this week: guides to the 25 best films in every genre, starting with romanceAnd now, the end is near and we're on the cusp of the Guardian and Observer Film Season's final frontier. But we've saved the best till last: standby for a week of guides to the 25 best films in every genre.Tomorrow, we're giving away the first of these, Romance, while Sunday sees the launch of Crime. They'll be online from noon, where you can also see a video primer to that genre by one of the team, plus the chance to have your say.So stand by to learn what we think are the 175 best films of all time, starting in this Saturday's Guardian.guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Once Upon a Time in the West: No 3 Sergio Leone, 1968A Marxist revisionist western that feels like a comedy half the time and a revenger's tragedy in operatic guise for the other half. On paper at least, this looks like the very last western worthy of admission to the pantheon of the genre's masterworks. But there it is, routinely counted among the greatest westerns ever made. And rightly so.Leone, together with Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci, initially conceived a western almost entirely made up of references to the classics of the genre – The Iron Horse, The Searchers, Shane and High Noon are just some of the movies plundered and revered in the final three-hour epic. The film has an unabashedly leftwing tilt in its depiction of capitalism's ruthless conquest of the west as it crushes or kills every obstacle in its path. If that all sounds a little dry to you, then Leone knew enough to cast his movie with icons of the genre, including rising star Charles Bronson in the no-name lead role and Jason Robards as comic relief. His most daring gambit, however, was to persuade Henry Fonda to play his monstrous killer – railroad enforcer Frank. Legend has it Fonda, preparing for his first evil role, showed up on set wearing a bandito mustache and half rolling his eyes. No, said Leone, I want Henry Fonda, clean-shaven – and then we'll make him bad. There's no doubting Frank's evil core when he guns down a child moments after appearaing on screen.And opera? Well, consider that Leone's schoolmate Ennio Morricone wrote individual musical signatures for each of the four main characters (the fourth being Claudia Cardinale's Jill McBain, who fares about as well as you'd expect a woman in a macho Italian western), and the music is almost as busy channelling our attention as anything in the script. The climactic gunfight, with its three minutes of intro music and flashbacks (including the big revelation) and two seconds of gunplay, achieves an almost orgasmic intensity through Morricone's soaring, slashing score. With every set-piece artificially elongated for comedy or suspense, and every other scene almost wordless, this is a movie that takes its time, but by the final credits, you know you're in the presence of imperishable greatness.Action and adventureJohn Pattersonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Graham Crowden obituary Actor with great stage presence who found his metier in comic and satirical rolesThere was something extra-terrestrial about the character actor Graham Crowden, who has died aged 87 – a mix of the ethereal eccentricity of Ralph Richardson and the Scottish lunacy and skewiff authoritarianism of Alastair Sim. He specialised in portraying doctors, lawyers or teachers in a satirical way.Crowden was a tall, red-haired, serious and sometimes professionally diffident man – he turned down the opportunity of succeeding Jon Pertwee as the fourth Doctor Who, remarking that working with a lot of Daleks did not sound like much fun. He had a tremendous stage presence, always moving with an emphatic, loping gait. Despite his eminence in plays at the Royal Court and the National Theatre, where he introduced roles in works by NF Simpson and Tom Stoppard, and in films directed by Lindsay Anderson, he did not become widely familiar until he starred in a BBC television sitcom, Waiting for God (1990-94).In that series, he and Stephanie Cole played two residents of a Bournemouth retirement home who made life difficult for both officials and their own families while finding each other increasingly compatible. Crowden was Tom Ballard, a widower and retired accountant, who feigned more dementia than he suffered, winning both sympathy and laughter.Michael Aitken's script addressed public anxieties over an increasingly ageing population, just as Crowden's first big television series, Andrew Davies's A Very Peculiar Practice (1986), prophesied the rampant commercialisation of university education. Crowden played Jock McCannon, the decrepit, alcoholic Scots head of a university medical centre.He embodied other laughable figures in a clutch of distinctive British movies, three of them directed by Anderson, and all starring Malcolm McDowell: If… (1968) charted revolution in a public school, with Crowden a flummoxed history master; and the picaresque tale O Lucky Man! (1973) deployed another mad scientist performance, which was then developed into a larger role in Britannia Hospital (1982), an anarchic, state-of-the-nation lampoon in a run-down hospital preparing for a royal visit.Not surprisingly, Crowden was also cast as a Master of Lunacy in Peter Medak's film of Peter Barnes's The Ruling Class (1972), starring Peter O'Toole, and as Leader of the Fanatics in Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky (1977), a post-Python medieval comic fantasy based on Lewis Carroll's poem.Crowden was born in Edinburgh of Presbyterian stock, the third of four children of a classics teacher. He left the Edinburgh academy to work in a tannery, and in 1940 joined the Royal Scots Youth Battalion. His military career was cut short when he was accidentally shot by his own platoon sergeant.A chance encounter with the Journey Into Space actor Andrew Faulds led him to a spear-carrying role at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1944, followed by a busy period in rep nationwide, culminating in a King Lear at the Bristol Old Vic and a season at the Glasgow Citizens.His London debut came in 1956 as George Bernard Shaw's silly-ass, man-about-town Charles Lomax in Major Barbara, before he joined the newly formed English Stage Company at the Royal Court. His first role in Sloane Square was in a production of Simpson's A Resounding Tinkle. This led to appearances in plays by Wole Soyinka, Fernando Arrabal and David Cregan, and a production of Simpson's major play, One Way Pendulum, in 1959. Crowden was ideal as Mr Groomkirby, an amateur prosecuting counsel at the Old Bailey established in his own living room. He then appeared alongside Rex Harrison in Chekhov's Platonov, and with Alec Guinness and Eileen Atkins in Ionesco's Exit the King, providing, said Irving Wardle, "brilliant tangential comedy" as a "wizard-like" doctor.From the Court he joined the new National Theatre at the Old Vic in 1965, playing Augustus Colpoys in a warm, seductive revival of Pinero's Trelawny of the Wells, Colonel Melkett in Peter Shaffer's hilarious Black Comedy and a definitive, logic-chopping Sir Politic Would-Be in Tyrone Guthrie's staging of Ben Jonson's Volpone.In 1967 Crowden played three important NT support roles – the Player in Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; Foresight in Congreve's Love for Love; and Augustin Feraillon in Jacques Charon's legendary production of Feydeau's A Flea in Her Ear, introducing the fine John Mortimer translation that is about to be revived on the same stage by Richard Eyre. He took time out from the National to play Henry IV in both parts, and Prospero (directed by Jonathan Miller), at the Mermaid Theatre, but returned for Stoppard's second major premiere, Jumpers, in 1972. Again, he was cast perfectly, alongside Michael Hordern and Diana Rigg, as the sinister, pop-eyed university vice-chancellor, Archie, who seduces the philosopher George Moore's wife.Two other stage roles stand out. He was a touching partner to Vanessa Redgrave in the 1978 revival of Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea at the Royal Exchange, Manchester; and a glorious Vincent Crummles in the RSC's Nicholas Nickleby in 1980 almost convinced Bernard Levin that Dickens, after all, had not based the character on Harold Macmillan.Despite suffering a stroke, Crowden remained active. He was always engaged in Equity affairs and went on Aldermaston marches. His last film was Calendar Girls (2003) and his last stage appearances of note were in Pinero's The Magistrate at Chichester in 1998 and as an eccentric old general with a death wish in Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None at the Gielgud Theatre in 2005.Crowden is survived by his wife, Phyllida Hewat, whom he married in 1952, a son and three daughters, one of whom, Sarah, followed him into acting.• Clement Graham Crowden, actor, born 30 November 1922; died 19 October 2010Doctor WhoTom StoppardTerry GilliamAnton ChekhovMichael Coveneyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Pass notes No 2,870: Wallace & Gromit Cracking new series, Gromit . . . stand by for Wallace & Gromit's World of Invention on BBC1 next weekAge: Unknown. Men made of Plasticine are notoriously hard to date, dogs even more so. But they first came to prominence in 1989, while having a grand day out.Appearance: Smooth. Slightly daft.Oh, Wallace and Gromit! So British. So beguiling. They're like chips, crumpets and Stephen Fry all rolled into one. How are they? Very well, thanks. They've got a new six-part series starting on BBC1 next week, called Wallace & Gromit's World of Invention.Oo, lovely! I shall butter myself a teacake in readiness. Will Wallace be indulging all his Heath Robinson-ish talents to bring us a collection of delightfully eccentric innovations in stop-motion claymation form? Not exactly. He and Gromit will be looking at real-life inventions, contraptions and gadgets from around the world. It will be a mixture of live action and animation.Live action? Boo! I like their cosy, rounded world of clay and gently moulded jumpers. I like the painstaking care that has gone into every frame. A W&G adventure looks as if it has been shot through a cloud of love. It makes me feel better about being British. You know Aardman went to Hollywood, don't you?Yes, they had that deal with DreamWorks. But it didn't work out, did it? Which just proves my point.No, you're right, it ended three years ago. Nick Park has been telling the story of how they forced him to change the title of The Great Vegetable Plot to The Curse of the Were-Rabbit because market research said, "Vegetables are a negative with kids".And so another fine instance of British bathos bites the dust. They also didn't like the line "Slow down . . . you'll buckle my trunnions.'Don't tell me – they wanted to know what trunnions were? That's right.It's a good job Nick Park's a patient man. What are we going to DO about Americans? A question for another time, my friend.Do say: "Ee, another cracking job, Wallace, Gromit, Aardman, Beeb."Don't say: "Whatever happened to Morph?"Wallace and GromitTelevisionAnimationComedyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |