| Boyle keen to direct next '28 Days...' Danny Boyle may return to the '28 Days Later' franchise to direct the third film. feeds.breakingnews.ie |
Jules and Jim: No 10 François Truffaut, 1962Jules and Jim was the biggest box-office success the French New Wave ever enjoyed. When it opened in Paris in January 1962, it played for nearly three months and it found the same crowds all over the world. (In America, two young men saw it – Robert Benton and David Newman – and they began to write a script that would become Bonnie and Clyde.) Although set in the era of the first world war, its sexual manners were an indicator of the 60s to come, with Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) in love with and loved by two men (at least) – Jules, a German, played by Oskar Werner, and Jim, a Frenchman, played by Henri Serre. The way Jules and Jim emerged was a tribute to Moreau and to Truffaut's obsession with the idea that women were magical. It's an early dramatisation of feminist principles, but it's also the portrait of a bipolar personality drawn to self-destruction. For Truffaut, it was a perfect balancing act between wry observation and sentimental involvement with his own characters. The period material, the sets and costumes, work very well in a wide-screen format, but in truth it's the lethally mercurial temperament of Moreau that holds it all together. She was at her peak in the early 60s, young enough to be sexually compelling, but wise enough to be a tragic witch. Along with its less famous sequel, Two English Girls, this is Truffaut at his best.RomanceWorld cinemaDavid Thomsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Pather Panchali: No 12 Satyajit Ray, 1955It was the birth of a cinema, certainly the birth of a new kind of Indian cinema. On the first day of the shoot, the director had never directed, the cameraman had never shot a scene, the children in the leading roles hadn't been tested and the soundtrack was composed by a then obscure sitarist (the great Ravi Shankar). Perhaps this inexperience gave everyone involved the freedom to create something new. Certainly director Satyajit Ray and cinematographer Subrata Mitra showed a miraculous gift for lighting scenes, coaxing intimate and utterly convincing performances from children and other non-professional actors, and allowing narrative to grow seamlessly – just as happened in the best of the films by Ray's western mentor, Jean Renoir.The story seems superficially insubstantial. A small boy, Apu (Subir Bannergee), is living with his impoverished Brahmin family in rural west Bengal. His father, a priest lost in dreams of writing plays and poetry, is so weak he won't even ask his employer for his back-pay. His mother (the marvellous Karuna Bannerjee) is mired in daily tasks – looking after Apu and his sister Durga, struggling with the demands of her ageing sister-in-law and her impractical husband. It's a film that blindsides the viewer by showing a child's perspective on the world: it is Apu and Durga's perspective on a train passing by, their discovery of their aunt's body or their excitement at the sound of the sweet-seller's bells that captivate us jaded adults. This is the first of a trilogy in which Apu leaves childish things behind and goes into a world every bit as confounding as the one his father could not master.DramaWorld cinemaSatyajit RayStuart Jeffriesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Goulding off the drink Ellie Goulding has given up drinking – to save her voice. feeds.breakingnews.ie |
Leslie Nielsen, star of The Naked Gun, dies aged 84 Comic actor was best known for spoofing his matinee idol looks and authority figure roles in Airplane! and The Naked Gun filmsComic actor Leslie Nielsen, star of a string of madcap spoof movies including Airplane! and The Naked Gun, died of complications from pneumonia in Florida on Sunday, his spokesman said. He was 84.Nielsen is probably best known for playing the bumbling cop Lieutenant Frank Drebin in the Naked Gun franchise, but enjoyed a movie and television career spanning more than 60 years.The spokesman said Nielsen died in a hospital near his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, surrounded by his wife, Barbaree, and friends.Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, the son of a Canadian mounted policeman, Nielsen served stints as an aerial gunner in the air force and as a radio disc jockey before studying acting in Toronto and then in New York City.He got his first big break in 1950 with a Studio One television appearance, and went to Hollywood in 1954 to star in the film The Vagabond King.For the first 30 years of his career, he built his reputation playing authority figures such as the captain of the ill-fated cruise ship in The Poseidon Adventure. But later generations got to know the actor primarily for his deadpan performances in comedies such as Airplane! and the Naked Gun trilogy, which ran from 1988 to 1994.As Dr Rumack in Airplane!, Nielsen won fans among the younger generation for inane non sequiturs delivered with a straight face. "Can you fly this plane, and land it?" he asks a passenger. "Surely, you can't be serious," comes the answer. "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley," Rumack replies.The Naked Gun franchise had its origins in the short-lived 1982 TV show Police Squad. After it was cancelled, creators Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker and David Zucker – who had previously worked with Nielsen on Airplane! – turned it into a feature packed with slapstick action and double entendres.Drebin beat up the Ayatollah Khomeini and scrubbed the birthmark from Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev's head. The cast was rounded out by George Kennedy as Drebin's partner, and OJ Simpson as their hapless colleague.In the 1991 sequel, Naked Gun 2-1/2: The Smell of Fear, the villain, played by Robert Goulet, tells an unannounced Drebin he did not see his name on the guestlist. "Nothing to be embarrassed about. I sometimes go by my maiden name," Drebin replies.The final film, 1994's The Naked Gun 33-1/3: The Final Insult saw Drebin try to avert a disaster during the Academy Awards and go undercover in a penitentiary. An inmate asks where his prison number is. "It's unlisted," Drebin says. That film marked Anna Nicole Smith's first big role.Nielsen also appeared in the 1996 spy spoof Spy Hard as Agent WD-40, and in 1998's Wrongfully Accused, a parody of The Fugitive. More recent acting roles included playing a buffoonish president in the 2003 Hollywood parody Scary Movie 3 and its 2006 sequel. In the latter film's most memorable sequence, his character unwittingly addressed gagging diplomats at the United Nations while naked.But Nielsen also had a serious side. During the 1990s, he took to the stage in Darrow, a one-man drama about legendary US lawyer Clarence Darrow."I didn't want to go ahead and be pegged for doing only comedy, although comedy is burgeoning," he told Reuters in a 1996 interview. "I'd like to see how far I can stretch and keep on doing 'dumb and stupid' (comedy) and drama and if possible be accepted at both. There's a line with an audience you can't always cross over. Sometimes, they only want to see you being funny."Leslie NielsenComedyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |