| Cop flop, Ritchie's new show facing axe CHANNEL Nine's crime drama Cops L.A.C. which has re-launched Kate Ritchie's full-time acting career could be facing the axe. news.com.au |
David Thomson on Helen Mirren Helen Mirren is so hardworking that it is tempting to take her for granted. But she is always looking for something differentHave you seen the wild look in Helen Mirren's eyes? It's as if she knows the world has gone mad, so she can do anything. The pained realism and long-suffering compromises that dogged Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect are put aside. She has been Queen Elizabeth, both I and II, and if anyone cared to propose an Elizabeth of Transylvania from the Dark Ages then Mirren could do it. Or if you prefer a bloodthirsty and lascivious pope, she is your actor. At 65, she is still one of the sexiest women on screen. It's not what she does, but what she knows.Mirren has never been anything less than accomplished and bold, but Stephen Frears' The Queen was a confirming potion for her, a laying on of hands. Yes, you could explain to her that Elizabeth II was a restrained lady and a hard-pressed boss trying to keep the family business intact, but Mirren rose above those dreary circumstances: she inhabited the part and breathed divine right back into it. In her weird communion with a stag, you felt the insane self-belief that sustains monarchy and knows that if you don't give people the vote, a fair share or happiness then you're going to have to chop off a few heads. One longs to hear what the real Queen thought at seeing an appealing inner life, as well as such majesty, laid out for her. (If only she could be that bold.) The dameship for Helen Mirren was a predictable reward, offered and accepted without irony.From the moment she got the part in Michael Powell's 1969 comedy drama Age of Consent – because Powell found her "luscious, intelligent and hot" – she relied on the daring of directors. She began playing "bad girls" early in her career, doing Cressida, Lady Macbeth and Miss Julie before she did Nina in The Seagull, and drew praise as a tough Queen Margaret in Terry Hands's three Henry VI productions. She was renowned as a stage actress before she had a film career – and then she was playing Morgana in Excalibur, winning the acting prize at Cannes for Cal and exuding flagrant sexuality as Georgina in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.Helen Mirren is so hardworking it is tempting to take her for granted. But she is always looking for something different. As we speak, she comes to the screen wielding an AK-47 in the foolish but entertaining Red, and the hallowed staff of magic in Julie Taymor's The Tempest – for which the big man on the island has turned into "Prospera". This last venture has had mixed reviews but no one complains about Mirren's assumption of Shakespeare's final self-portrait. It's just that many wish it were as savage as a Queen Lear.She has been Tolstoy's wife in The Last Station and a Nevada brothel keeper in Love Ranch (directed by her partner for many years, Taylor Hackford). She will soon be seen as Ida in a remake of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock. Go back a little farther and she showed her credentials on television as the titular writer in The Passion of Ayn Rand and in The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone. In other words, she can play a power figure or a florid wreck.The world rejoices in her (as it did in Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis) and yet we assume her life is more secure than theirs. She has never had children, and seems armoured with an outlook that refuses to see why anyone working hard should get upset. Occasionally, perhaps, she gives emotional disclosure a miss because of that assurance. Jane Tennison was the means to exposure – ruin and despair could be glimpsed there.So it's worth thinking of stern challenges. A Queen Lear would not be insane but Mirren would have to go crazy for it. She could play Mary Tyrone in Long Day's Journey Into Night, or Pushkin's Queen of Spades – the role Edith Evans once played. We should not forget that the affable and professional Helen Mirren is of Russian blood, and may nurse a wintry scorn for restraint, mercy and other white lies. Surely she's ready for a complete breakdown – for herself or for everyone else – in a movie.Helen MirrenDavid Thomsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
'Jackass 3D' Grosses $50 Million at Weekend Box Office Johnny Knoxville's epic of masochism and Porta-Potty jokes, Jackass 3D, is this week's big winner at the box office feedproxy.google.com |
Rosemary's Baby: No 2 best horror film of all time Roman Polanski, 1968Roman Polanski's first Hollywood feature was an adaptation of Ira Levin's bestseller, and its success launched a trend for devil-baby, evil-kiddy and satanic pregnancy movies that extended well into the 70s. The novel was first recognised as potential film material at proof stage by low-budget horror entrepreneur William Castle, who ended up as the producer and had a fleeting cameo in the film as a man smoking a cigar outside a phone booth.According to a (probably spurious) film-making legend, Polanski, having never before adapted a novel, didn't realise he was allowed to make changes, with the result that his screenplay is remarkably faithful to Levin's book. Mia Farrow, best known for her role in the TV soap opera Peyton Place and as the wife of Frank Sinatra (who served her with divorce papers during the shoot) played Rosemary Woodhouse, a nice Catholic girl who with her husband Guy (John Cassavetes), a struggling actor, moves into an apartment in The Bramford, an old New York block with a sinister history. (The exteriors were filmed outside the Dakota building on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where John Lennon would later be shot dead.) Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer play Minnie and Roman Castavet, the nosy neighbours from hell – and that's even before we find out they're satanists. Gordon won a best supporting actress Oscar, the only Academy Award for a horror movie until 1991's The Silence of the Lambs. The film works on multiple levels – as a supernatural thriller (though explicit paranormal elements are limited to a hallucinatory dream sequence and the final shot of the baby's eyes), as a psychological thriller about a paranoid pregnant woman who imagines herself at the centre of a conspiracy, and as the last word in marital betrayal, since the most despicable villain here is surely Guy, who allows his wife to be raped by the devil in exchange for an acting role.Polanski's achievement is in immersing us so completely in Rosemary's point of view that we share her doubts, confusion and suspicions as she becomes increasingly cut off from former friends and begins to believe her husband is in cahoots with the Castavets in a diabolical plan to harm her baby. This is horror rooted not in misty Carpathian castles, but in recognisable modern life, with the satanists depicted not as outlandish fiends but the sort of everyday folk you might encounter on any urban street.HorrorRoman PolanskiMia FarrowJohn CassavetesAnne Billsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Q&A: Actor Michael Caine Reflects on His Movie Career Michael Caine spoke to TIME about accents, starring in the worst Jaws film and the secret of Inception feedproxy.google.com |