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Tom Priestley, the son of British playwright and novelist J.B. Priestley who established his own show business career as an Oscar-nominated film editor on such major projects as John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972), Blake Edwards’ The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) and Roman Polanski‘s Tess (1979), died December 25. He was 91.

His death was only later announced by the J.B. Priestley Society.

“It with the utmost sadness we announce the death of out President Tom Priestley,” the J.B. Priestley Society said in a statement. “Tom who was J. B. Priestley’s only son became one of this country’s finest film editors. Perhaps his most famous film was Deliverance for which he was Oscar Nominated. He was a most charming man.”

Born Tom Holland Priestley on April 22, 1932, in London, he was educated at Bryanston School and King’s College, Cambridge, before beginning his professional career at Shepperton Studios in various capacities,...

Tom Priestley, the British film editor whose work assembling the dueling-banjos sequence and hellish “squeal like a pig” attack in John Boorman’s Deliverance landed him an Oscar nomination, has died. He was 91.

His death on Christmas Day was only recently revealed.

Priestley also cut two other movies helmed by Boorman: Leo the Last (1970), which won the best director award at the Cannes Film Festival, and Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977).

He also edited The Great Gatsby (1974); Blake Edwards’ The Return of the Pink Panther (1975); That Lucky Touch (1975), starring Roger Moore; Voyage of the Damned (1976), featuring an all-star cast; and Roman Polanski’s Tess (1979).

Priestley was the only son of renowned British novelist and playwright J.B. Priestley, who wrote the classic 1945 drama An Inspector Calls for the theater and served as a BBC Radio broadcaster during the Dunkirk evacuation of World War II.

Upon its release in 1972, Deliverance became the...

Bill Kenwright, the prolific West End producer behind the hit musicals Blood Brothers, Whistle Down the Wind and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat who would later go on to become an owner and chairman of his boyhood soccer club Everton, has died. He was 78.

In a statement, Everton said Kenwright died peacefully, “surrounded by his family and loved ones.” This month, the Premier League club revealed that Kenwright had recently undergone surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his liver.

“The world of British theatre without Bill Kenwright seems impossible,” said fellow theater impresario Cameron Mackintosh in a statement on X. “In my lifetime, there has never been anyone like Bill. He’s totally irreplaceable, and we will miss him so.”

“Dearest Bill, Somewhere you’ll be singing Let It Be Me and challenging heavenly choirs to look into your Ebony Eyes,” Andrew Lloyd Webber tweeted. “The theatre will...

In his latest podcast/interview, host and screenwriter Stuart Wright talks to author Cathi Unsworth about her new book Season Of The Witch: The Book Of Goth and “3 Films That Have Impacted Everything In Your Adult Life”

Night Of The Hunter (1955) Whistle Down The Wind (1961) Goodfellas (1990)

“3 Films That Have Impacted Everything In Your Adult Life” is about those films that made you fall in love with film. The guest selects their trio of movies and we talk for 5 minutes, against the clock. When the alarm goes off for five minutes we move on to the next film.

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Warning: contains spoilers for Series 4 of Unforgotten

It’s been two years since the last season of ITV’s hit crime drama Unforgotten, and at long last it’s back on our screens.

After that shocking Series 4 finale, in which we said a heartbreaking goodbye to Dci Cassie Stuart (aka the incredible Nicola Walker), we’ve got plenty of questions about the Series 5 cast.

In this latest series, when a body is found in a boarded-up fireplace, the team gets to work trying to identify who the victim is, and how long they’ve been there. We also discover that the person filling Cassie’s very large detective shoes as Sunny’s new boss-slash-bestie will be the prickly Dci Jessica James, who doesn’t exactly make a great first impression.

Unlike the previous four series, Series 5 of Unforgotten will also be made available as a bingeable box-set on Itvx as...

In his latest interview/podcast, host and screenwriter Stuart Wright talks to Dominic Brunt about his new film Wolf Manor and “5 Films That Have Influenced Everything I’ve Done in my Adult Life” including:

Night of the Demon (1957) Whistle Down the Wind (1961) From Beyond the Grave (1974) Shogun Assassin (1980) Remains of the Day (1993)

See the World Premiere of Wolf Manor at Frightfest 2022. Click here for tickets: https://www.frightfest.co.uk/holdingfolder2/tickets.html

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Update, with Bonnie Tyler tribute Jim Steinman, the composer and lyricist whose roster of hit records included the huge Bonnie Tyler hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” was remembered by the singer as the “true genius” behind “some of the most iconic rock songs of all time.”

“I am absolutely devastated to learn of the passing of my long term friend and musical mentor Jim Steinman,” tweeted Tyler, whose other hits composed by Steinman included “Holding Out For A Hero.”

“Jim wrote and produced some of the most iconic rock songs of all time and I was massively privileged to have been given some of them by him. I made two albums with Jim, despite my record company initially thinking he wouldn’t want to work with me. Thankfully they were wrong…”

Read Tyler’s full statement below.

Deadline confirmed Steinman’s death with the Connecticut state medical examiner earlier today.

Rock and pop hitmaker Jim Steinman, who wrote and composed music for Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler, Celine Dion, and more, died Monday, April 19th. He was 73.

The office of the chief medical examiner in Connecticut confirmed Steinman’s death to Rolling Stone. A cause of death was not given.

A statement posted on Steinman’s Facebook page read, “It’s with a heavy heart that I can confirm Jim’s passing. There will be much more to say in the coming hours and days as we prepare to honor this...

The celebrated San Francisco string group Kronos Quartet have shared their take on Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” from their upcoming tribute album, Long Time Passing: Kronos Quartet and Friends Celebrate Pete Seeger, out October 9th via Smithsonian Folkways.

Kronos Quartet’s arrangement of Seeger’s 1955 song features a pensive push-and-pull between the cello, two violins and viola during the verses before all the instruments fuse together during the chorus. The song features vocals from Sam Amidon, Brian Carpenter, Lee Knight and Aoife O’Donovan.

Long Time...

Patricia Louisiana Knop, a film screenwriter and television producer known for 9 1/2 Weeks, Wild Orchid and the Showtime series Red Shoe Diaries, died at age 78 on Aug. 7 in Santa Monica, Calif. from what her publicist said was a lengthy illness.

She was married for 46 years to producer/director Zalman King, who collaborated with her on many projects, including the scripts for Wild Orchid and 9 1/2 Weeks. He died in 2012.

Knop was born on Oct. 23, 1940 in Muskegon, Michigan. As a teenager longing for adventure, she wrote to the captain of a boat docked in Florida, and asked if she might join his crew. He said yes, so she boarded a train and made the long journey alone, only to discover that the captain had no idea who she was and what he had agreed to. However, he took her on.

At sea, she met and fell in love with fellow crewman Zalman King Lefkowitz.

Screenwriter Patricia Louisianna Knop, who collaborated with her producer-director husband Zalman King on erotically-charged films of the late 1980s and 1990s including “Siesta” and “9 1/2 Weeks,” died Aug. 7 in Santa Monica after a lengthy illness.

“9 1/2 Weeks,” starring Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger, was directed by Adrian Lyne, co-produced by King and co-written by Knop. The film proved controversial for its explicit S&m-theme and was heavily cut before its U.S. release.

Her writing credits also include “Delta of Venus,” “Wild Orchid” and “Red Shoe Diaries.” King directed “Wild Orchid” and the pair collaborated on the screenplay for the film starring Rourke and Jacqueline Bisset, which also had to be cut in order to obtain an R-rating.

Knop’s other screenplays included “Lady Oscar” and “Silence of the North.”

Knop met King on a Caribbean-bound schooner in 1961, and King began acting on TV shows. Knop also co-wrote the book for Broadway...

Earlier this month, Josh Ritter announced plans to release a new Jason Isbell-produced album, promising a collaborative effort with Isbell’s revered band the 400 Unit. On Tuesday, Ritter revealed that the album, titled Fever Breaks, will be released April 26th, and gave the first glimpse of the project with the new song “Old Black Magic.”

Finding the sweet spot between the introspective lyricism of Ritter’s previous efforts and the swaggering Southern rock of the 400 Unit, “Old Black Magic” blends the artists’ talents to dizzying effect. Crunchy guitars and...

When news broke that Channing Tatum is dating Jessie J, many started asking questions about the Magic Mike star’s new girlfriend. What some may not realize is that we’ve been singing along to many of her songs on the radio all along! Jessie J was born Jessica Ellen Cornish in London in 1988, making her 30 years old. The English singer/songwriter began her entertainment career at age 11 when she was cast in the musical Whistle Down the Wind. If you’re wondering what the J in Jessie J stands for, the answer is nothing. The pop singer admitted in old […]

The post Who is Jessie J? Channing Tatum’s girlfriend is an established pop star appeared first on Monsters and Critics.

Joan Baez announced she’s extending her “Fare Thee Well” tour with an additional North American leg set to launch spring 2019.

The new run starts with a previously-announced show April 10th at the Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center in Birmingham, Alabama, then continues April 12th at Symphony Hall in Atlanta, Georgia. Baez will travel around the South and Midwest, before heading North for a final string of concerts, culminating with two nights at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York, May 3rd and 5th.

Tickets for most of the...

Above: UK one sheet for The Shout (Jerzy Skolimowski, UK, 1978)One of the greatest but perhaps less heralded of British actors, Sir Alan Bates (1934-2003) is being deservedly feted over the next week at the Quad Cinema in New York with the retrospective series Alan Bates: The Affable Angry Young Man. The title makes sense: before he had acted on film Bates was in the original West End and Broadway productions of Look Back in Anger, but he played not the disaffected anti-hero Jimmy Porter, made famous on film by Richard Burton, but the amiable Welsh lodger Cliff. Though a performer of great virility, intelligence and passion, he often played second fiddle to his more demonstrative co-stars—whether Anthony Quinn in Zorba the Greek (1964), Lynn Redgrave in Georgy Girl (1966), Julie Christie in Far From the Madding Crowd (1967) and The Go-Between (1971), or Jill Clayburgh in An Unmarried Woman (1978). Consequently, he is...

The L-Shaped Room

Blu ray

Twilight Time

1962 / 1:85 / 126 Min. / Street Date December 19, 2017

Starring Leslie Caron, Tom Bell, Brock Peters

Cinematography by Douglas Slocombe

Written by Bryan Forbes

Music by Brahms, John Barry

Edited by Anthony Harvey

Produced by Richard Attenborough

Directed by Bryan Forbes

The winter of 1962 found British films at their most grandiose and self-effacing. Opening at the Odeon was Lawrence of Arabia, using every inch of that cavernous theater’s wide screen. Five minutes up the road Dr. No had just premiered in the smaller but no less lofty London Pavilion.

On the other side of the tracks art houses were bringing starry-eyed Brits back to earth with austere fare like John Schlesinger’s A Kind of Loving and Tony Richardson’s The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.

Those sober-minded dramas, shot in low key black and white with ramshackle flats and grey skies as their backdrops,...

When Joan Baez, who recently announced that she’d be retiring from the road at the end of the year, began choosing music for her new album, she slowly found herself connecting to songs with a very specific set of emotions. “The direction this album went is that [2018] is going to be my last year of formal touring, and so there was a feeling, maybe not even spoken, but there was a strong feeling that it’s time to move on,” she tells Rolling Stone.

The resulting album, Whistle Down the Wind,...

A young cast give brilliantly naturalistic performances in this glorious story

about a bunch of deprived kids living near Walt Disney World

The Florida Project is a song of innocence and of experience: mainly the former. It is a glorious film in which warmth and compassion win out over miserabilism or irony, painted in bright blocks of sunlit colour like a child’s storybook and often happening in those electrically charged magic-hour urban sunsets that the director Sean Baker also gave us in his zero-budget breakthrough Tangerine.

This also has the best child acting I have seen for years; in its humour and its unforced and almost miraculous naturalism it reminded me of British examples like Ken Loach’s Kes or Bryan Forbes’s Whistle Down the Wind. Steven Spielberg once said: “If you over-rehearse kids, you risk a bad case of the cutes.” But these kids don’t look...

People will tell you Tom Waits’ best album is Rain Dogs. This is not strictly true. It is perhaps the most Waits-ian of Tom Waits albums, by virtue of having a Waits lookalike on the cover and a song selection that ranges across virtually every genre of music (and combinations thereof) Waits could wrangle. But the best Tom Waits album is not Rain Dogs. Instead it’s Bone Machine (which netted Waits his first Grammy in 1993), and it turns 25 years old today.

Waits explained Rain Dogs’ titular inspiration to Spin in 1985: “You know, dogs in the rain lose their way back home.

Back in 1964 a lot of people still thought dolphins were fish, but by the time this TV show was finished, we all knew that our happy undersea friend was smarter than the average bear and lives in a world full of wonder. Ivan Tors’ grandly successful Florida-shot family show kept a lot of seagoing movie veterans in green seaweed, including both original ‘Creature’ Gill Men.

Flipper, Season One

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1964-65 / Color / 1:33 flat TV / 780 min. / Street Date August 29, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 39.95

Starring: Brian Kelly, Luke Halpin, Tommy Norden.

Cinematography: Clifford H. Poland Jr., Lamar Boren

Original Music: Henry Vars, song by

Written by: Jack Cowden, Ricou Browning, Peter L. Dixon, Laird Koenig, Stanley H. Silverman, Orville H. Hampton, Lee Erwin, Art Arthur, Jess Carneol, Key Lenard, Ivan Tors, Alan Caillou, Arthur Richards, Robert Sabaroff.

Produced by Ivan Tors, Ricou Browning, Leon Benson, Andrew Marton

Directed by: Ricou Browning,...

IndieWire’s Springboard column profiles up-and-comers in the film industry worthy of your attention.

There are a lot of breakout performances in Chris Kelly’s directorial debut “Other People,” from Kelly himself, who wrote and directed the film, based on experiences from his own family life (and somehow managed to do it while also writing on “Saturday Night Live”) to Molly Shannon, who plays a wife and mother grappling with her fast-moving cancer and the knowledge she probably can’t fight it, to Jesse Plemons, who plays a struggling young comedy writer who must deal with his beloved mom’s impending death.

Read More: How ‘SNL’ Writer Chris Kelly Turned His Personal Pain Into a Festival Opener

But amidst all these heavy themes and performances, there are often well-timed splashes of comedy (hello, “SNL”) and the shining light of 15-year-old Jj Totah, who explodes off the screen and delivers the...

Titles include classics such as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

UK digital channel Talking Pictures TV has acquired some of the most iconic titles in British film history in two major library deals with ITV Studios Global Entertainment and the Samuel Goldwyn and Woodfall libraries, distributed by Miramax.

Talking Pictures TV, which broadcasts classic British movies on the Freeview and Sky platforms, has secured rights to more than 70 films from the ITV Studios Global Entertainment library and 33 films from the Samuel Goldwyn and Woodfall libraries through Miramax.

The ITV Studios Global Entertainment deal includes Lawrence Olivier’s Henry V; Reach For The Sky; Whistle Down The Wind; In Which We Serve; The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp; Hell Drivers; The Bulldog Breed; Séance on a Wet Afternoon; Defence of the Realm and Tarka The Otter.

Among the seminal films included in the Samuel Goldwyn and Woodfall deal are: The Entertainer; Loneliness of the Long...

Shock looks at two classic films that examine the horrors of impoverished childhood and misunderstood faith. Actor Charles Laughton’s only directorial outing was the phenomenal The Night of the Hunter (1955); a hybrid of horror and noir complete with the terrifying and terrific Robert Mitchum aping Karloff’s Frankenstein monster in one electrifying scene. The…

The post The Horrors of Faith and Childhood in Night Of The Hunter and Whistle Down The Wind appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.

Brad Bird’s non-digital animation of the 1968 children’s story has an irresistible simplicity and charm

A warm welcome back for Brad Bird’s sweet-natured animation from 1999, an adaptation of Ted Hughes’s 1968 children’s story The Iron Man. Bird transplanted the story from England to 1950s smalltown America: a metal-eating iron giant from outer-space crashlands in rural Maine, biting lumps out of automobiles and power stations; he looks like every red-scare Twilight Zone fantasy come true. But the Iron Giant is scared and lonely and a little kid called Hogarth becomes his only friend. Watching this again 17 years after its original release, I savoured again the resemblances to Spielberg, Wilde and Brian Forbes’s Whistle Down the Wind. The Iron Giant predates Bird’s 2003 gem The Incredibles and its non-digital animated style has simplicity and charm; in 2016, it looks closer to the Japanese tradition. A lovely film to revisit.

Broadway's 40 theatres aren't the only places to catch performances from your favorite stars Well after Broadway orchestras begin their overtures, ensemble members take their dance breaks, and performers belt out their eleven o'clock numbers, the party continues at various cabaret venues throughout New York City. Below, BroadwayWorld brings you some cabaret highlights for this week as picked by our theatre editors, including 'Merman's Apprentice' Starring Klea Blackhurst, Anita Gillette, amp More New Musicals at 54 Big Red Sun by Georgia Stitt and John Jiler Bobby Conte Thornton at 54 Below Kyle Dean Massey at 54 Below and Whistle Down the Wind In Concert.

Feinstein's54 Below just presentedAndrew Lloyd Webber and Jim Steinman's Whistle Down The Wind In Concert, featuringJosh Young, Justin Matthew Sargent, Emerson Steele, Brian Charles Rooney, Jessica Waxman, Gregory Sullivan, Melissa VanPelt, Joshua Colley, Peyton Ella and The Shapiro Sisters.Produced by Van Dean, Whistle Down The Wind included musical direction by Jacob Carr and direction by Pat Cerasaro.Check out photos from the big night below...

Broadway's 40 theatres aren't the only places to catch performances from your favorite stars Well after Broadway orchestras begin their overtures, ensemble members take their dance breaks, and performers belt out their eleven o'clock numbers, the party continues at various cabaret venues throughout New York City. Below, BroadwayWorld brings you some cabaret highlights for this week as picked by our theatre editors, including Christmas Carols with Chris McCarrell Ethel Merman's Broadway Starring Rita McKenzie Christine Pedi Snow Bizness Daniel Reichard's 'Under the Mistletoe' Whistle Down the Wind The Concert - NYC Premiere...

To mark the release of The Raging Moon on 23rd November, we’ve been given 3 copies to give away on DVD. Adapted from Peter Marshall’s 1964 novel by Bryan Forbes (The Stepford Wives, Whistle Down the Wind), the film was considered unusual in its time owing to the sexual nature of the relationship between McDowell

The post Win The Raging Moon on DVD appeared first on HeyUGuys.

Three kids from a Rio favela are on the trail of corruption in this watchable thriller from Stephen Daldry and Richard Curtis

Nothing to do with Andy Warhol’s movie from 1970. This is a fast-moving and likable children’s adventure with a fiercely grownup angle, mainly because the kids involved have had to grow up quickly. Screenwriter Richard Curtis has adapted a Ya novel by Andy Mulligan, and Stephen Daldry directs. Raphael (Rickson Tevez), Gardo (Eduardo Luís) and Rato (Gabriel Weinstein) are three Brazilian street kids from the favelas, who scratch a living from mountains of trash at the city limits. One day they come upon a wallet containing some cash and, more importantly, photos and documents. It all relates to corrupt politicians and vicious cops who badly want this wallet back. The boys find themselves way out of their depth, but they have some friends in the form of a cantankerous whisky priest,...

Lord Richard Attenborough was an Oscar winner. In fact he had two Oscars for both producing and directing 1982’s elegant epic biopic, Gandhi. But considering the breadth of his career not only in those capacities, but particularly as an actor, it is astounding to me that the Gandhi wins represented his only nominations in a six-decade career that memorably started with the British World War II classic In Which We Serve in 1942. As an actor, Attenborough deserved far better than he got from the Academy.

It’s almost criminal, for instance, that he was overlooked in 1964 for his creepy performance in Seance on a Wet Afternoon as Billy, the weak, complicit husband who gets involved in a kidnapping so his wife, played by the great Kim Stanley, could become famous as a psychic.

Stanley got a richly deserved Best Actress nomination that year but Attenborough, who also produced the film,...

Feature Aliya Whiteley 3 Apr 2014 - 07:22

Tend to think of Richard Attenborough as a kindly old man? Aliya digs into his early career to find some far nastier roles...

British cinema has always liked its angry young men: Richard Burton, Albert Finney, Laurence Harvey and others all played the 1950s and 60s social animal, raging against the class system and the staid attitudes of post-war Britain.

But they weren’t the first angry young man on the screen. Maybe that crown could be claimed by an unlikely actor – Richard Attenborough. Attenborough is best known now as a director and producer, for films such as Gandhi, Chaplin and Shadowlands. When he gets thought of as an actor, it’s often as a kindly old man with a white beard. Misguided, sometimes, as when he played John Hammond, the owner of Jurassic Park, but not downright nasty. A lot of his earlier...

Today we are talking to a Tony Award-winning performer known around the world for her iconic original performance as Eponine in both the West End and Broadway editions of international stage sensation Les Miserables, copiously convivial chanteuse Frances Ruffelle. Discussing her legacy with the iconic mega-musical and her relationship with the show's director, John Caird, Ruffelle opens up about a life in the theatre, telling tales of her time spent treading the boards in the various incarnations of Les Miserables - winning the Tony for her Broadway performance - as well as working on the original London production of Stephen Schwartz's Children Of Eden with Caird and fellow InDepth InterView participants Matthew Bourne and Ruthie Henshall in addition to shedding light on fascinating workshop experiences - Starlight Express, Sunset Boulevard and Whistle Down The Wind among them - and her more recent roles, such as her run as the...

Love Is All You Need; Mud; Star Trek Into Darkness

Intelligent, affecting and disarmingly honest, Love Is All You Need (2012, Arrow, 15) comes on like a Dogme version of Mamma Mia!, with unexpectedly engaging results. Trine Dyrholm is superb as the resilient mother and wife recovering from cancer treatment, whose husband embarks on an affair on the eve of their daughter's wedding. Travelling alone to picturesque southern Italy, she crosses paths with Pierce Brosnan's abrasive father of the groom, whose rudeness slowly turns to affection, admiration, and perhaps something more.

Produced by the Danish company Zentropa under the original title The Bald Hairdresser, this manages to juggle the down-to-earth and the head-in-the-air with dazzling aplomb. Imagine a feelgood romantic comedy populated by realistic characters, all facing believable life challenges (middle age, mastectomies, abandonment, sexual uncertainty) and you'll start to understand what's so remarkable about director Susanne Bier's sharp, empathetic love story.

Mike Nichols's excellent rite-of-passage drama channels Whistle Down The Wind, Stand By Me and, mainly, Huckleberry Finn. Two 14-year-olds, Ellis and Neckbone, unearth a charismatic fugitive, Mud (Matthew McConaughey), hiding out near the Mississippi river. He impresses the noble Ellis, in particular, with his enduring love for a childhood sweetheart (Reese Witherspoon), so he promises to reunite Mud with her. There are some strong cameos here from Sam Shepard and Ray McKinnon, but it's the relationship between the boys, played by the impressive Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland, and Mud that captivates.

Jeff Nichols' slice of Americana is rich and engaging, and Matthew McConaughey is getting better all the time

Writer-director Jeff Nichols serves up a rich and traditional slice of Americana, a movie built on the time-honoured device of witnessing a crisis in the adult world from the viewpoint of children.

It's contrived but nicely shot, and has a strong performance from Matthew McConaughey, who is getting better all the time. Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) are teens who one summer take a boat out to a deserted island in the Mississippi where a flood has surreally dumped another boat up in the trees.

The boys are set to make it their own private treehouse, but find food and dirty magazines. Somebody else is there: a grinning, garrulous but tough-looking guy called Mud (McConaughey) who makes it clear he could be pretty scary if he wanted – but not with kids.

Creative force in the British film industry whose work included The Stepford Wives and Whistle Down the Wind

The director, actor and writer Bryan Forbes, who has died aged 86, was one of the most creative forces in the British film industry of the 1960s, and the Hollywood films he directed included the original version of The Stepford Wives (1974). In later life he turned to the writing of books, both fiction and memoirs.

The turning point for him in cinema was the formation of the independent company Beaver Films with his friend Richard Attenborough in 1958. For the screenplay of their first production, The Angry Silence (1960), Forbes received an Oscar nomination and a Bafta award. Attenborough played a factory worker shunned and persecuted for not joining a strike. His colleagues are shown as being manipulated by skulking professional agitators and to some it seemed more like a political statement than a human...

British writer, director and actor Bryan Forbes has died aged 86, a family friend has revealed. Forbes began his career as an actor, before carving a name for himself as a screenwriter and later a director, with his 1945-48 military service occasionally inspiring his work. Writing the likes of The League Of Gentlemen (1960), The Whisperers (1967) and Deadfall (1968) (the latter two he also directed), Forbes made his directorial debut with Whistle Down The Wind in 1960, which earned four BAFTA nods. Among the most significant...

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Bryan Forbes, who personified the golden age of British cinema in the post-wwii era, has died at age 86. Forbes started out as an actor before morphing into a screenwriter and esteemed director. He teamed with Richard Attenborough to form a film production company. Among their films was The Angry Silence, an acclaimed 1960 movie in which both men starred. It dealt squarely with England's omnipresent tensions between business leaders and union members. Forbes co-wrote the screenplay and produced the movie. His high profile films as director include such British classics as Whistle Down the Wind, Seance on a Wet Afternoon, The Wrong Box, The Whisperers, King Rat, Deadfall, The Slipper and the Rose, The L-Shaped Room, International Velvet as well as the hit 1975 Hollywood horror flick The Stepford Wives. Forbes also wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for some of these films as well as the comedy classic The League of Gentlemen and director Attenborough's Chaplin.

Bryan Forbes dies at 86: Directed Katharine Hepburn, Leslie Caron, the original The Stepford Wives Director Bryan Forbes, whose films include the then-daring The L-Shaped Room, the all-star The Madwoman of Chaillot, and the original The Stepford Wives, has died "after a long illness" at his home in Virginia Water, Surrey, England. Forbes was 86. Born John Theobald Clarke on July 22, 1926, in London, Bryan Forbes began his film career as an actor in supporting roles in British productions of the late 1940s, e.g., Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Small Back Room / Hour of Glory and Thornton Freeland’s Dear Mr. Prohack. Another twenty or so movie roles followed in the ’50s, including those in Ronald Neame’s The Million Pound Note / Man with a Million (1954), supporting Gregory Peck, and Carol Reed’s The Key (1958), supporting Sophia Loren and William Holden. Bryan Forbes director Despite his relatively prolific output in the previous decade,...

The writer and director Bryan Forbes, whose films included Whistle Down the Wind and 1970s horror classic The Stepford Wives, has died aged 86 following a long illness, a family friend has said.

Forbes, who began his career in film as an actor and screenwriter and became one of the most important figures in the British film industry, died surrounded by his family at his home in Virginia Water, Surrey, friend Matthew D'Ancona said.

He was married to actor Nanette Newman, who appeared in several of his films, and with whom he had two daughters – the TV presenter Emma Forbes and the journalist Sarah Standing.

D'Ancona said: "Bryan Forbes was a titan of cinema, known and loved by people around the world in the film and theatre industries and known in other fields including politics. He is simply...

Whistle Down The Wind director Bryan Forbes has died at age 86.

The filmmaker, whose films also included The Stepford Wives, National Velvet and The Slipper And The Rose, passed away yesterday after a long illness.

Forbes, born John Theobald Clarke, initially forged a career as an actor on the stage before earning supporting roles in films including An Inspector Calls and The League Of Gentlemen (for which he also wrote the screenplay). He founded Allied Film Makers with Jack Hawkins, director Basil Dearden, producer Michael Relph and Richard Attenborough in 1959.

“We weren’t going anywhere,” Forbes said, “So we started our own company.”

He switched to directing in 1961, to helm Whistle Down The Wind, starring Hayley Mills, taking over after the original director was forced to pull out.

Family friend Matthew D'Ancona said: "Bryan Forbes was a titan of cinema, known and loved by people around the world in the.

Film director Bryan Forbes has died at the age of 86.

The filmmaker is best known for shooting the 1975 movie The Stepford Wives.

He passed away after a long illness at his home in Virginia Water in Surrey.

Family friend Matthew D'Ancona told BBC News: "Bryan Forbes was a titan of cinema, known and loved by people around the world in the film and theatre industries and known in other fields including politics.

"He is simply irreplaceable and it is wholly apt that he died surrounded by his family."

Forbes made his directorial debut with Whistle Down the Wind in 1961, and directed the likes of Sir Michael Caine (Deadfall), Malcolm McDowell (The Raging Moon) and Sir Roger Moore (The Naked Face).

He was born in Stratford, London and formed the production company Beaver Films with long-time collaborator Richard Attenborough.

He was married to Irish actress Constance Smith for four years,...

Bryan Forbes, who directed the original Stepford Wives, Whistle Down The Wind and International Velvet, has died at the age of 86.Born John Theobald Clarke in 1926, he always intended to become an actor and trained at Rada, though he didn’t finish his studies. Devoting himself to military service for three years, he got his first screen credit in 1949’s Hour Of Glory, and became a working performer.At the same time he began to write screenplays, contributing to films such as The Black Knight, and he was the sole writer on 1955’s The Cockleshell Heroes.With his ambitions stretching beyond acting and writing, Forbes founded Beaver Films with friend and regular collaborator Richard Attenborough, where they made 1960’s The Angry Silence (with Forbes writing and Attenborough starring) among several others.Beaver Films was also behind Forbes’ first shot at directing with 1961’s Whistle Down The Wind, which scored four BAFTA nominations.

Broadway's Danny Quadrino Bye Bye Birdie, Andrea Ross Whistle Down The Wind and Lindsey Carothers Bring It On are among the cast of Pace University students for a one night only concert of songs and monologues by award-winning theater writer Drew Fornarola College The Musical, Molly Shannon's Tilly The Trickster. The show plays at The Duplex Cabaret Theatre 61 Christopher Street at 7th Ave tonight, April 22nd at 930pm. The evening is curated and directed by Joshua W. Kelley, with music direction by Addison O'Donnell, and stage managed by Coleman Annison.

Broadway's Danny Quadrino Bye Bye Birdie, Andrea Ross Whistle Down The Wind andLindsey Carothers Bring It On are among the just-announced cast of Pace University students for a one night only concert of songs and monologues by award-winning theater writer Drew Fornarola College The Musical, Molly Shannon's Tilly The Trickster. The show plays at The Duplex Cabaret Theatre 61 Christopher Street at 7th Ave on April 22nd at 930pm. The evening is curated and directed by Joshua W. Kelley, with music direction by Addison O'Donnell, and stage managed by Coleman Annison.

It's that time of year again. Reality television is dominating our spring/summer screens, and what better way to start than with The Voice UK?

Danny O' Donoghue, Sir Tom Jones, will.i.am and Jessie J will return to our TVs this Saturday (March 30) to coach wannabe singers into the becoming the next big thing.

With her Comic Relief head-shaving and various pop achievements, it's no wonder that birthday girl Jessie J is on everyone's minds at the moment, and here are ten fast facts about the lil' Jess herself.

1. Jessie J was born in London on March 27, 1988 as Jessica Ellen Cornish, and studied at the Brit School along with Adele and Leona Lewis. Talk about friends in high places! Before Jessie took to songwriting like a duck to water, she appeared in television commercials and theatre, her most famous production being Whistle Down the Wind. As you can see below,...

According to the Evening Standard, pop star Jessies J, who starred in Whistle Down The Wind when she was nine, has expressed interest in working again with Anddrew Lloyd Webber. She told Es, I started out in musical theatre and he gave me my first break. I had a terrible time once and fell off the stage, and he made me feel better by giving me a signed Cats DVD. She continued I would love to work with him again but what I would really like to do is write a new show. Id love to think we can get together when were both free.

As we celebrate sixty years of the Queen's reign, our blogger explains how film can trick your pupils into learning about the UK's heritage - and their own identity

The poster on my classroom wall, a publicity shot for last year's part British film, Hugo, shows a boy hanging from the hands of a clock, in a parody of a famous Harold Lloyd portrait. It serves as more than decoration. Time and again it's used in lessons to illustrate the language of imagery: the clash of colours, the angle of the dangling feet, the font of the title, the expression on the protagonist's face. It illustrates how, a century on from the pioneering cinema of the Lumieres and Melies and the birth of the Hollywood studios, movies have found their way into every nook and cranny of school timetables.

Hele's School in Plymouth uses film extensively to reinforce learning...

Matthew McConaughey gives the best performance of his career as a fugitive befriended by two Mississippi boys

Screening right at the end of the festival, Jeff Nichols's film Mud made an urgent late bid for the Palme d'Or. An atmospheric thriller and coming-of-age tale set on a slow bend in the Mississippi river, Mud has the look and feel of an American indie classic. It is a surefire best picture nominee at next year's Oscars and likely to win some kind of award at Cannes, receiving the warmest applause of the festival at its morning press screening.

Mud takes its name from its lead character, played by Matthew McConaughey, delivering the best performance of his career (and his second at the festival, after The Paperboy) as a fugitive holed up on an island in the Mississippi after murdering a rival for his lover Juniper (Reese Witherspoon). Mud is wanted...

Jeff Nichols returns with an engaging and good-looking picture, boosted by two bright leading performances

Jeff Nichols is the director whose mysterious apocalyptic tale Take Shelter was a word-of-mouth sensation at the Cannes festival last year. Now he returns with a rich, sweet slice of Americana – although a little more contrived and sentimental than it promises to be at first.

It's a gentler movie than Take Shelter, a film with obvious literary influences which looks itself like a book adaptation but was in fact written originally for the screen by Nichols.

Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) are Arkansas teenagers with problems at home and nothing to do all summer long but zoom around on their motor scooter exploring. One hot day they take a boat out to a deserted island in the Mississippi where a recent flood has surreally dumped a boat up in the trees. The boys...