News

Steve Coogan has been set to take on the role of Ireland’s Football Manager Mick McCarthy in the upcoming movie ‘Saipan.’

Coogan is joined by BAFTA-nominated Cork native Éanna Hardwicke (Lakelands, The Sixth Commandment) who will play Ireland football captain Roy Keane.

The new film about the events leading up to Ireland’s incendiary 2002 World Cup campaign, the Saipan incident was a very public spat in May 2002 between the then Republic of Ireland national football team captain Roy Keane and manager Mick McCarthy when the team was preparing in Saipan, Japan for its 2002 FIFA World Cup. It resulted in Keane being sent home from the squad. The incident divided public opinion in Ireland and rumbles on to this day.

Also in news – Robert Downey Jr. & the Russo Brothers return to the MCU

Award-winning filmmakers Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn are set to direct from an original script by Paul Fraser.

Dead Man’s Shoes and This is England director Shane Meadows used his BAFTA David Lean Lecture to discuss impostor syndrome and Paddy Considine’s improvizational skills.

Talking about his 2013 music doc Stone Roses: Made of Stone, the cult indie film director said: “It’s that impostor syndrome I’ve always had — and I’ve still got it to some degree — that you’re almost like, ‘I’m not deserving of that. How could I take on a concert film?'”

In the event, Made of Stone, which followed the British band The Stone Roses reuniting after 16 years, was released to acclaim — one of several critical triumphs in Meadows’ career.

Meadows said the experience taught him that treating a major production in “those little incremental stages” was key. “It’s like this little acorn that started to blossom, and once you actually realize when you’ve got an amazing team of people,...

He’s a bit of a legend in the UK, not as well known in the US, and now he’s starring in Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon. But who is Paddy Considine? Well, he’s a British actor and director who grew up in Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire (that’s in the West Midlands for our American friends – you’re welcome!). He’s won two BAFTA awards both as director for his short film Dog Altogether and for his feature debut Tyrannosaur which starred Olivia Colman and Peter Mullan and was one of the first movies to really introduce Colman as a heavy weight actress. In House of the Dragon Considine plays Viserys I Targaryen, the well-meaning but ineffectual leader of the Targaryen dynasty, and King of the Seven Kingdoms. Loving his performance and want to see more? Here are his best roles.

A Room for Romeo Brass...

The series will be produced by Element Pictures.

UK filmmaker Shane Meadows is to make his first-ever BBC television drama with The Gallows Pole, produced with UK-Irish producers Element Pictures.

The series, based on the 2017 novel of the same name by Benjamin Myers, fictionalises the true story of 18th-century ironworker David Hartley and the Cragg Vale Coiners.

Scheduled to shoot later this year, The Gallows Pole will be produced by Element Pictures, and executive produced by the BBC’s director of drama Piers Wenger and head of development and drama commissioning Tom Lazenby.

Set against the backdrop of the coming industrial revolution in 18th-century Yorkshire,...

The director speaks for the first time about the horrific event from his childhood that inspired his new TV drama The Virtues

I’ve interviewed director Shane Meadows a few times now, and it’s always been fun. He’s an entertaining person to spend an hour with: enthusiastic, emotional, funny, a natural talker. Plus there’s lots to talk about, as his work is great. From his first features, Small Time (1996) and A Room For Romeo Brass (1999), through Dead Man’s Shoes, into 2006’s This Is England and the three TV spin-off series that came out of that, as well as his Stone Roses comeback documentary, Made of Stone, Meadows makes brilliant British films and telly. He calls himself “kitchen sink”, but he’s a rare combination of artist, storyteller and near-documentarian who often uses his life growing up in Uttoxeter in Staffordshire as inspiration. His methods – lengthy casting process,...

Australian filmmaker Peter Sant recently shot his debut feature, Maneland,.on the north west coast of Malta over 18 days.

The film is described as .an experiential film about a stasis and slow change..

It follows a crippled king who is living with his two daughters in a bunker on an isolated island following the spread of virus. Following a serious of encounters, the virus seems to return..

Sant wrote the film, which is in the Maltese language, with co-writer Alex Vella Gera. Sant's parents migrated to Australia in the 1950s from Malta — and the director himself lived there for a period during the 2000s..

"I was surprised to discover that the local [film] industry is virtually non-existent, but that Malta has appeared on countless screens all over the world in films like Munich, Troy, Gladiator, By the Sea, etc, but always as a double for elsewhere."

"So to me it.s kind of this eternal elsewhere.

The director’s This is England ’90 may be the last in his series exploring Thatcher’s children; his work invites comparison to Ken Loach and Mike Leigh

Many directors have used television as a route to making movies. Shane Meadows, though, has maximised his career and impact by moving from big screen to small.

After a number of low-budget British films – including the coming-of-age stories A Room for Romeo Brass (1999) and Dead Man’s Shoes (2004) - Meadows made, in 2006, This is England, a drama exploring skinhead culture in the early 80s. It had some success in cinemas, but now seems most important as the platform for three TV sequels that revisited the young working-class characters – including Meadows’ alter-ego, Shaun Fields, played by Thomas Turgoose – in later parts of the Thatcher era: This is England ’86, This is England ’88 and – due on Channel 4 next month – This is England ’90.

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Cast your minds back to 2002 - a time when Pop Idols didn't need to have The X Factor, Fifty Shades of Grey were just colours on a paint sampler chart and David Beckham was a mere international superstar rather than global megastar.

Bend It Like Beckham, with a modest estimated budget of £3.7 million, opened that same year and became a critical and commercial success - breaking box office records and scoring BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations, as well as making household names of many of its stars.

As the cast continues preparing for the West End stage adaptation of Gurinder Chadha's screen hit ahead of previews on May 15, find out what the movie's ensemble cast went on to achieve - including who is coming back for the musical...

Parminder Nagra (Jess Bhamra)

Nominated for Best Newcomer at the Empire Awards on the back of the movie's success, Parminder went...

Well, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, explain yourselves. The 2015 BAFTA Film Awards seemingly went off without a hitch on Sunday evening in London, but Twitter was in a snit following the in memoriam segment after the montage concluded without mention of Bob Hoskins, who died last April at 71 from pneumonia after a battle with Parkinson's disease.  "Bad form #BAFTA #bobhoskins," the actor's daughter Rosa Hoskins tweeted, per the U.K.'s Telegraph. Actor Paddy Considine, who was in the British film A Room for Romeo Brass with Hoskins, tweeted, "Dear @BAFTA leaving out Bob Hoskins was a glaring error, and a complete travesty." Writer-comedian David...

In the spirit of October, this list will look at scary scenes, but not from the horror classics directed by Craven or Carpenter or even Hitchcock (I’m excluding him, though I argue most of his work isn’t exactly horror). These are from the films that aren’t really meant to scare you. At least, not at the visceral level that horror films do. These are the fifty definitive moments from non-horror films that still made an impact on the “frightening front.” From shocking to creepy to unsettlingly hair raising, these are moments that will stick in your mind long after watching the films, even if they are part of a very different narrative.

50. Toy Story 3 (2010)

Scene: Monkey Security

Video: http://youtu.be/x6QkcJjx-Vo

The third installment of the one of the greatest movie trilogies of all time is also one of the darkest children’s films ever made.

This weekend marks the limited and VOD release of God Help the Girl, a musical from Stuart Murdoch, best known as the lead singer of Belle and Sebastian. God Help the Girl, which emerged out of a musical side project for Murdoch, follows three friends who start a band during a summer in Glasgow. It has, yes, been described as “twee,” a word now practically synonymous with Belle and Sebastian.

Belle and Sebastian’s music—cheery melodies paired with vivid, often melancholy lyrics—often feels cinematic, thanks to the band’s knack for weaving intricate mini-stories. In that way, it...

Guy Myhill's debut feature, The Goob, premiering at Venice Days, "ostensibly borrows heavily from the Andrea Arnold school of contemporary working class miserablism," notes Adam Woodward at Little White Lies. "Stylistically and tonally, however, it blends the codeine reverie of Harmony Korine's Gummo with the cold-shower realism of early Ken Loach, although perhaps the film it best evokes is Shane Meadows's A Room for Romeo Brass. This is a tremendously assured portrait of an underprivileged if sporadically joy-filled childhood." And we've got more reviews and clips. » - David Hudson...

Guy Myhill's debut feature, The Goob, premiering at Venice Days, "ostensibly borrows heavily from the Andrea Arnold school of contemporary working class miserablism," notes Adam Woodward at Little White Lies. "Stylistically and tonally, however, it blends the codeine reverie of Harmony Korine's Gummo with the cold-shower realism of early Ken Loach, although perhaps the film it best evokes is Shane Meadows's A Room for Romeo Brass. This is a tremendously assured portrait of an underprivileged if sporadically joy-filled childhood." And we've got more reviews and clips. » - David Hudson...

I'm hugely saddened to report that Oscar-nominated British actor Bob Hoskins -- the quintessential Cockney gent of latter-day cinema -- has passed away. Aged 71, he died in hospital following a bout of pneumonia. His wife, Linda, and four children issued a statement clarifying that the Londoner "died peacefully at hospital last night surrounded by family," and thanked well-wishers for their "messages of love and support." Hoskins' health had been declining for some time: he retired  from acting in 2012 after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. His last screen role was in "Snow White and the Huntsman." After supporting roles in such films as "Zulu Dawn" and a BAFTA-nominated turn in Dennis Potter's TV landmark "Pennies From Heaven," Hoskins' film breakthrough came in his late thirties with the role of conflicted East End crime boss Harold Shand in the 1980 gangster classic "The Long Good Friday," which earned him another BAFTA nod.

The Swedish director's new film about a teen girl punk band is a coming-of-age masterpiece, but he's keen to remain an outsider

If you happen to be a teenage girl looking to modern cinema for a role model, you're left with two options: live your life by the meaningless platitudes of vest-clad, stern-faced warrior types from a bleak dystopian future (The Hunger Games, Divergent), or dedicate your existence to grabbing money, fellating Uzis and drowning your brain cells with James Franco (Spring Breakers, The Bling Ring). Both of which sound exhausting and neither of which are going to help you get a B+ in German. However, 44-year-old cult Swedish director Lukas Moodysson is about to buck that trend. His new film, We Are The Best!, is a coming-of-age masterpiece which recalls the perceptive comedy of Shane Meadows's A Room For Romeo Brass and Rob Reiner's stirring representation of friendship in Stand By Me.

Today sees the release of Richard Ayoade’s second feature film, The Double. Another solid instalment from one of Britain’s most promising new directors. Also released today is Shan Khan’s Honour, starring arguably the finest working British actor of his generation, Paddy Considine. Considine himself has made appearances in both Ayoade’s films, and with that in mind, here is one UK dream team that we would love to see.

Director- Richard Ayoade

Ayoade is well known for his comedic style. Bursting on to UK television with the It Crowd, his quirky sense of humour seeps through in to both The Double and debut feature, Submarine. The BAFTA nominated Submarine cemented Ayoade as one of the most promising new voices in the British film industry. The black humour, the gentle tragedy, and the hysterical performances is a refreshing voice in the doom and gloom of a lot of British Cinema,...

The star of This Is England and Line of Duty on strong women, her family's reaction to difficult storylines – and how Kate Moss became a fan

You're about to return to our screens as DC Kate Fleming in BBC2's police thriller Line of Duty. She's a female character in a predominantly male world. Does that appeal to you?

Yes, I certainly look for strong characters – whether that means they're strong in their vulnerability or strong in the way they might be attractive to lots of blokes. There are different ways of being strong. Kate's not vulnerable, she's forceful. When I read the first series, it was very much a woman in a man's world, but now we've got Keeley Hawes [who plays a detective inspector under investigation] it's definitely switched quite a lot of the focus.

Part of the success of Line of Duty seems to be that it's very realistic in a way a lot of police procedurals aren't.

Shane Meadows is arguably Britain’s finest filmmaker, with the likes of Dead Man’s Shoes, This is England and A Room For Romeo Brass standing out from his mighty back catalogue. It was therefore a great privilege for us to sit down with the director (over a bottle of champagne) at the Virgin Media Shorts awards, last night, where Meadows was a judge.

Having made a handful of short films himself, before moving into feature length films – and now TV with the immense This is England spin-off drama, Meadows discusses his love for the short film, why it’s important to give it exposure, while also telling us about the winning short ‘Touch’ by Nimer Rashed. He also speaks to us about This is England ’90 and whether it not this may be the final instalment of the hugely popular series.

Of course we’re here today to celebrate short...

Here's our pick of the actor's greatest scenes – but what would you add to the list?

Currently appearing alongside Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in The World's End, Paddy Considine is equally at home in comedy roles as he is playing dangerous, unhinged characters. It's not for nothing that he's known as Britain's Robert De Niro – and with his 2011 directorial debut Tyrannosaur, he ably demonstrated he's more than just a talented character actor.

Here's five of our favourite Paddy Considine moments, including suggestions from @guardianmusic followers @philgirlworld, @thetomweller, @kinnemaniac, ‏@BassTunedToRed and ‏@ChantelleDusett. But what have we missed? Let us know in the thread below.

1. 24 Hour Party People

Paddy plays Joy Division and New Order manager Rob Gretton in Michael Winterbottom's tribute to Factory Records and the Manchester music scene. In this scene, Rob's less-than-pleased with Tony Wilson's spending on office furniture.

Reading on mobile? Watch the clip on...

Total Film will be interviewing Paddy Considine live for a Q&A at Latitude Festival 2013. The actor, who’ll be seen in Edgar Wright’s Cornetto trilogy closer The World’s End, made his name with powerhouse performances for Shane Meadows in A Room For Romeo Brass and Dead Man’s Shoes. Renowned for his intensity, Considine has also shown his more light-hearted side in Meadows’ Le Donk And Scor-zay-zee, Wright’s Hot Fuzz and Richard Ayoade’s Submarine. With his directorial debut Tyrannosaur, he proved himself as powerful a force...

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Shane Meadows on being a 'mad little Stone Roses fan', Gemma Arterton on perfecting her French, and actor Michael Shannon on working with rising indie director Jeff Nichols

Shane off his head

Trash wasn't quite at the premiere of Shane Meadows's Made of Stone last Thursday. Instead, I attended a very buzzy satellite premiere of the Stone Roses doc at the Hackney Picturehouse, where the raucous atmosphere of the Victoria Warehouse in Manchester was well captured by the live feed (one of 200 such events round the country) of the red carpet and post-screening Q&A. Mick Jones of the Clash described the Stone Roses as "a generational band" and said he wished Shane Meadows had been around to have filmed the Clash. The loyal band of This is England stars – shortly to star in another instalment, set in 1990 – were out in force, including Thomas Turgoose and Andrew Shim. Shimmy...

Shane Meadows talks about his Stone Roses documentary Made of Stone – and what it was like to work with his heroes

To outsiders, love always seems like madness. In 2011, when the Stone Roses announced that they would be reforming to play some gigs – Ian Brown, John Squire, Gary "Mani" Mounfield and Alan "Reni" Wren together onstage, 15 years after their rancorous split – many, many music fans appeared to go completely insane. Grown men wept, danced, hugged, clambered into the loft to find their Reni hat, pointed both hands to the sky for the chorus of I Am the Resurrection, then wept again. The internet exploded with delight. Oasis's Liam Gallagher tweeted "not been this happy since my kids were born" and thousands agreed.

Of course, there were cynics; but they were silenced when all 150,000 tickets for the Roses' Manchester Heaton Park gigs last year were bought in 14 minutes. The band added another Heaton Park show.

A film director can work for decades and never make anything approaching a good film. Often within the movie industry, wannabe directors can strive for years and years and never get close to making a feature film – that’s what makes the directors on this list so extraordinary. They have been extraordinarily consistent over a substantial amount of time, never allowing the quality of their art to shrink.

Some of the very greats have made poor films. Hitchcock made numerous clangers such as Family Plot, Topaz and Lifeboat amongst his formidable filmography. Francis Ford Coppola, director of the greatest film of all time (The Godfather Part II) has not made a good film for a while now and Billy Wilder did his best to taint his legacy with his late career output of Fedora and Buddy Buddy.

I decided a certain criteria was needed for a list like this, so put simply,...

Bob Hoskins is to retire from acting following a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease last autumn, it was announced on Wednesday. A statement, issued on Hoskins' behalf, said:

"He wishes to thank all the great and brilliant people he has worked with over the years, and all of his fans who have supported him during a wonderful career."

It continued: "Bob is now looking forward to his retirement with his family, and would greatly appreciate that his privacy be respected at this time."

Hoskins, one of Britain's best-loved actors, known for his gruff bonhomie and diminutive size, has been working consistenly for more than 30 years. He first found fame on the small screen in Dennis Potter's Pennies from Heaven, and then in cinemas as a London gangster-turned-businessman in The Long Good Friday (1980). Hopkins had leading roles in Brazil (1985), Mona Lisa (1986), Mermaids (1990), Who Framed Roger Rabbit?...

Playing troubled Lol in This is England won Vicky McClure a Bafta and a raft of new roles. Here she talks about the 'psychological nightmare' of working with director Shane Meadows

In an east London pub, Vicky McClure is reeling off a list of her recent roles. There's True Love, an entirely improvised TV drama directed by Dominic Savage, in which she co-stars with David Tennant. There's a big-budget Tom Stoppard adaptation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, with Keira Knightley in the title role. McClure plays a nun called Serafina who has a brief affair with Domhnall Gleeson's Levin: "not a one-night stand, because it's a bloody period drama, but that kind of thing". There's Svengali, based on an internet viral about the music business, and, perhaps most improbably, the latest Jason Statham vehicle, Hummingbird, in which Great Yarmouth's leading action hero hunts down the killers of his former lover.

Fans of Shane Meadows work on the big and small screens will know the name and work of Vicky McClure. She won a well deserved Best Actress BAFTA in 2011 for her role as Lol in the spin-off TV series This is England ’86, a role she reprised for a third time for This is England ’88 to great acclaim.

She is fast becoming one of Britain’s rising stars with a return as Lol for the final hurrah as Meadows’ long running series enters a new decade as rave culture begins to take hold in 1990, and there is still time in the next two years for a role in John Hardwicke’s Svengali and a nicely diverse turn in Hummingbird with Jason Statham.

It’s no surprise that McClure maintains her closeness to Meadows, her role as Ladine in the director’s third film, A Room for Romeo Brass, put her in the frame with Andrew Shim,...

'I saw a UFO and I have this feeling they are coming back. To probe me. They tend to do that'

Paddy Considine, 38, was born in Staffordshire. In 1999, he made his screen debut when his friend, the British film-maker Shane Meadows, cast him in A Room For Romeo Brass. He went on to star in Dead Man's Shoes, which he co-wrote with Meadows. His other films include 24 Hour Party People, In America, Hot Fuzz and The Bourne Ultimatum. His directorial debut, Dog Altogether, won the 2008 Bafta for best short film. His first feature, Tyrannosaur, has won more than 20 awards and is out now on DVD and Blu-ray.

What is your earliest memory?

Hanging from a window dressed as Superman, looking at the 20ft drop and feeling anything but super. My big brother Chubby rescued me.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Self-doubt – it's like an illness.

What was your most embarrassing moment?...

Acclaimed British director Shane Meadows (Dead Man’s Shoes, A Room for Romeo Brass) is set to follow up his critically acclaimed Channel 4 miniseries This is England 1986 with a 1988 based miniseries airing over three nights in December. We were originally introduced to the characters, Shaun, Woody and Lol in Shane’s 2006 film This is England which was set in 1983. The original film showed the bleak reality of life in Thatcher’s England following the Falklands War and focused on a group of teenagers coming of age alongside the rise of Skinheads and mass unemployment.

The first miniseries, This is England ‘86 which aired in September 2010 on Channel 4 focused on the mod revival scene rather than the skinhead scene and was set three years after the film in 1986, during the World Cup. It dealt with similar themes as the film but also expanded to cover sexual abuse and the recession.

When Paddy Considine brought Tyrannosaur to New York for New Directors/New Films in March (reviews), Graham Fuller met up with him to interview him for Film Comment, noting that, as an actor, "Considine, 37, has blessed a range of downbeat British films with his lugubrious, sometimes volatile presence, among them his friend Shane Meadows's A Room for Romeo Brass (99) and Dead Man's Shoes (04), Pavel Pawlikowski's Last Resort (00) and My Summer of Love (04), Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People (02), Stoned (05), and Red Riding: 1980 (09). He has also made the odd foray into Hollywood for Cinderella Man (05) and The Bourne Ultimatum (07). As a writer-director, Considine cranks up the volatility with his outstanding feature debut, Tyrannosaur, which he took a dry run at with his 2007 short, Dog Altogether."

The film "opens with Joseph (Peter Mullan) taking out his rage and self-loathing on the last thing he loves, his dog, kicking the animal to death,...

Paddy Considine is the latest actor to turn film-maker, with his highly acclaimed Tyrannosaur. Who else has made the switch?

Best known for his performances in Shane Meadows-helmed films such as A Room for Romeo Brass and Dead Man's Shoes, Paddy Considine is swapping his acting career – which includes stints in Hollywood in The Bourne Ultimatum and Cinderella Man – for the director's chair. His film Tyrannosaur, which he wrote and directed, was released on 7 October. But Considine isn't the first actor to sign up for a spell behind the camera. What drives other performers to make the switch?

The egoists

The need to take absolute control can be a powerful motivator. Charlie Chaplin began his film career working under the tutelage of Mack Sennett, who laid down the essentials of slapstick comedy, and directors such as Mabel Normand and Henry Lehrman. But pretty soon he was writing scripts, directing...

To celebrate the cinema release of Paddy Considine’s Tyrannosaur on Friday, we’re giving you the chance to win one three goodie bags, containing a Shane Meadows DVD boxet of This Is England, A Room for Romeo Brass, Dead Man’s Shoes and Twenty Four Seven, plus a Tyrannosaur poster signed by writer/director Considine!

The highly-anticipated directorial debut from Paddy Considine, Tyrannosaur has been winning universal acclaim for its assured direction and standout performances from stars Peter Mullan (Neds) and Olivia Colman (Peep Show), including a World Cinema Prize for directing and two World Cinema Special Jury Prizes for dramatic acting at Sundance Film Festival this year.

A moving story of finding redemption and love in the most unlikely places, Tyrannosaur follows the story of two damaged people brought together by circumstance: Joseph (Mullan), an unemployed widower, crippled by his own volatile temperament; and Hannah (Colman), a respectable charity shop worker,...

When last month a shocked and delighted Vicky McClure accepted her Best Actress Bafta for This Is England '86 – adding to the Royal Television Society award she had already won for the Shane Meadows Channel 4 series – those watching at home must have thought McClure was now firmly launched as an actress. Yet, as she recounts on these pages, it has been a dozen years since – as a 15-year-old – she first won acclaim in a Meadows film – A Room for Romeo Brass – since when she has taken endless office jobs to make ends meet.

Paddy Considine's well-received directorial debut "Tyrannosaur" has been picked up for release in the U.S. and Canada out of the European Film Market. Protagonist Pictures announced that Strand Releasing will release the film in the U.S., and D Films will handle Canada. "Paddy Considine, an actor who launched his career in Shane Meadows' 'A Room For Romeo Brass,' makes an assured step behind the camera with 'Tyrannosaur,' his first feature," ...

Paddy Considine fell into acting by accident, but was rather good at it. Now he's directed his first feature, and it's the toast of the Sundance festival

The Sundance film festival has long been a platform for independent American cinema, launching the careers of directors as diverse as Quentin Tarantino, Darren Aronofsky and the Coen brothers. Lately, though, things have been changing. As the event pays more and more attention to European film, the British have begun to infiltrate the brunches and gifting suites that spring up every year in Park City, Utah. In 2008 it was James Marsh with his vertiginous doc Man on Wire, in 2009 it was Duncan Jones with his philosophical sci-fi parable Moon, and last year Chris Morris became an unlikely Sundance hero with his biting jihadist comedy Four Lions.

This year the honour fell to Paddy Considine, for his dark, blue-collar drama Tyrannosaur. Though the film...

Paddy Considine, an actor who launched his career in Shane Meadows' "A Room For Romeo Brass," makes an assured step behind the camera with "Tyrannosaur," his first feature. The discomfiting story of a middle-aged drunkard overcoming his booze-fueled woes, Considine announces his directorial vision with a morbid character piece sustained by two remarkably intense performances. Following up his acclaimed short "Dog Altogether," Considine's film strikes an alarming note in its ...

Craig here with the last in the current series of Take Three. Today: Paddy Considine

Take One: Dead-end England, twice

"Phil" in My Summer...Colin Firth, Daniel Craig, Colin Farrell, Clive Owen. And so on. When I think of an actor who encapsulates exactly what is crucial, surprising and truly versatile about British male acting right now, none of the above quite pass muster, for me. Paddy Considine, on the other hand, hits the mark. His two roles for director Pawel Pawlikowski – kindly arcade manager Alfie in Last Resort (2001) and Jesus freak Phil in My Summer of Love (2004) – couldn’t be any different from one another, yet both cover all the above attributes. Watch the two films back to back and tell me Considine shouldn’t be up for every great role an actor of his range and calibre could be suggested for right now. Then ask me why he...

Philip French speaks to Ridley Scott, Ken Russell, Gurinder Chadha, Shane Meadows and Stephen Frears about their debut pictures and detects the styles of the then-fledgling auteurs

Do artists discover a personal style and develop their themes gradually or are these to be found in embryonic form in their earliest works? There's no easy answer to this dual question. Take, for example, Ken Russell's Amelia and the Angel (1957), Ridley Scott's Boy and Bicycle (1965), Stephen Frears's The Burning (1967), Gurinder Chadha's I'm British But… (1989) and Shane Meadows's Where's the Money, Ronnie? (1995). All were made on shoestring budgets and each lasts less than half an hour.

First, presented with the directors' names and the credits concealed, would you be able to match up film and film-maker? I think most moviegoers could, which suggests there is something in these first movies that we would now recognise as characteristic. Second,...

It is obvious to any Twitchfilm reader who has been around long enough that we are big fans of English director Shane Meadows and his films A Room For Romeo Brass, Dead Man’s Shoes and This Is England. His latest film Le Donk & Scoz-ayz-ee just premiered at Edinburgh International Film Festival but he gave Empire the skinny on his next big film, a horror film, and one we’ve known about for a while now, Beware the Devil...

“It’s based on a book of the same name, based on the life of a guy who, by getting involved with Ouija boards and the occult by trying to disprove it, trying to take the piss out of it, got possessed, had to be exorcised, and later became an exorcist himself. The guy it happened to has died, but his son’s a novelist, and he helped him turn it...

Shane Meadows is an Edinburgh Film Festival mainstay, having brought most of his body of work to the festival for the last ten years, starting with 1999's A Room For Romeo Brass. So it's entirely fitting that this would be the place to premiere his latest, rock mockumentary Le Donk and Scorz-ayz-ee. Le Donk (Paddy Considine) is a roadie for the Arctic Monkeys and as he's roped in to shift gear for their gig at the Old Trafford Cricket Ground, he brings along his new discovery, rap prodigy Scorz-ayz-ee (actually a real unsigned rapper), and a documentary crew fronted by...

Regular readers of this site should, by now, be well familiar with director Shane Meadows. The man behind A Room For Romeo Brass, Dead Man’s Shoes and This Is England is a great favorite in these parts, so much so that I would actually Meadows may be the greatest currently active English director. No doubt he is certainly one of the most distinctive and any list of big British names that failed to list him any earlier than fifth should immediately be considered suspect. But as diverse as his body of work is, one thing that Meadows has never done is horror - the closest he’s ever come being grim revenge thriller Dead Man’s Shoes. But that’s about to change. Very few details are known at this point but Film 4 have announced that they will be backing Meadows’ new picture Beware The Devil. What this means...

PARIS -- The 18th Dinard Festival of British Film, which unspools in the Brittany resort Oct. 4-7, will open with Ken Loach's It's a Free World, organizers said Wednesday.

The four-day event will see six U.K. movies vie for the fest's top prize. Competition titles this year include David McEnzie's Hallam Foe, Julian Jarrold's Jane, Asif Kapadia's Far North, Mark Jenkin's The Midnight Drive, Sarah Gavron's Brick Lane and John Carney's Once.

Gallic actress and director Josiane Balasko will lead a jury composed of fellow French female thesps Cecile Cassel, Linh Dan Pham, Claire Nebout and Sylvie Testud, actor Robin Renucci, comedian Laurent Gerra, British actress Imelda Staunton and documentary filmmaker Michael Grigsby.

Loach's Free World will open the fest and Pascal Thomas' Gallic title L'Heure Zero will close it.

Dinard-bound cinephiles will also be treated to 20 French premieres including such titles as Anthony Byrne's How About You, Kevin Macdonald's documentary Mon Meilleur Ennemi and Lenny Abrahamson's Garage. The public will vote on a short film prize awarded by the British Council.

Shane Meadows and his producer Marc Herbert will be in the spotlight with films This is England, Dead Man's Shoes, A Room for Romeo Brass, Twenty 4 Seven" and Once Upon a Time in the Midlands."...