| Solomon Burke dies aged 70 Soul singer Solomon Burke has died at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. He was 70. feeds.breakingnews.ie |
Evangelista and boyfriend reportedly split Linda Evangelista has reportedly split from her boyfriend. feeds.breakingnews.ie |
North By Northwest: No 2 Alfred Hitchcock, 1959Roger O Thornhill (his monogram is ROT) is unlucky and terribly accident prone – he is the sort of person who gets dead men collapsing in his arms, and who can't find himself at a lonely bus stop, near a farmer's field, without having a crop-dusting aircraft turn on him. On the other hand, he is lucky: when forced to jump on a train to escape, the beautiful and utterly available Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) is willing to let him into her sleeping compartment. Above all, he has the good fortune to be Cary Grant, who never quite loses his cool even when dangling from George Washington's stone lip on the Mount Rushmore memorial. All he has to do is just keep heading north by northwest.As written by Ernest Lehman and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, this is many things – it's a mystery, it's suspense, it's a love story, it's even the study of a frivolous man growing up at last, and it's an outrageous comedy in which the action mounts with a serene, runaway logic that Hitchcock never gives us time to question. On the other hand, it's the vindication of a great principle: if the irrational action moves fast enough, no audience will ever have breath to question it. No one ever really recalls the inner drive of the plot, but we all know Mount Rushmore and the cornfield by heart. It has been fashionable in recent years to admire Hitchcock for the gloomy (and equally far-fetched) Vertigo, which was made only a couple of years before North By Northwest. But I'm not sure this comedy thriller isn't the purer and more satisfying film, and the one more totally given over to cinematic action. Or to one damn thing leading to another. In that sense, the motif of the chase is what has always linked suspense and farce – we are supposed to take the first more seriously than the second, but not lose sight of the momentum and the madness in both. North By Northwest never quite sinks to slapstick, but it is a sophisticated rollercoaster. And once we've stepped on the machine there's no getting off. Yes, there's a villain, but when I remind you that it's the adorable, drawling James Mason, you'll know that this is quite simply a terrific game of tennis with grenades for balls. Action and adventureAlfred HitchcockCary GrantDavid Thomsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Video | Trailer for Olivier Assayas's Carlos Édgar RamĂrez stars as Ilich RamĂrez Sánchez (aka Carlos 'The Jackal') in Olivier Assayas biopic of the infamous terrorist guardian.co.uk |
Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush admit to paralysing stage fright Young actors can take some reassurance from the words of Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush, who have been at the London film festival promoting The King's Speech – a wonderful, funny, moving film, rightly being tipped as an Oscar contender. The film is about the chronic stammer of George VI and his treatment with an Australian speech therapist. Asked if they had suffered from speech anxiety, both actors said yes. Firth recalled the appalling stage fright he had during his last stage appearance, at the Donmar Warehouse in 1999. With only two weeks of rehearsals, he got so terrified on opening night that he locked himself in the toilet. Then he decided he needed some air, and left the Donmar altogether, accidentally closing the fire door behind him, five minutes before he was due on stage. "So I had to go round the front, through the audience – the very people I was terrified of." Then he couldn't remember the pass code to get backstage and had to beg to get back in. Rush, for his part, said that in the early 1990s he went through a period of "dread-inducing panic attacks before going on stage . . . and then I got an international film career and they sort of disappeared."Colin FirthLondon film festivalFestivalsMark Brownguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |