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Two films into his career, Ritesh Batra has found a refreshing way to build stories around familiar frameworks. His 2014 debut “The Lunchbox” revolved around love letters between unknown writers, but there was a distinct charm that elevated the film above a simple romance. His sophomore effort “The Sense of an Ending,” an adaptation of Julian Barnes’ 2011 novel, follows another well-worn path, that of a man reconciling first love and fateful decisions of decades past. But it’s how both of these premises evolve that show Batra’s willingness to embrace the full scope of life’s experiences.

“The Sense of an Ending” finds Tony, a retired owner of a small camera shop in Tufnell Park, receiving a vague letter addressed to him from the distant past, tied to the family of a lover from his university days. When he goes to collect the promised attached personal effects, Tony also discovers...

Beauty and the Beast, Valerian, Fantastic Beasts and more cover our weekly round-upBeauty and the Beast, Valerian, Fantastic Beasts and more cover our weekly round-upGarrett McCormick11/11/2016 1:23:00 Pm

Check out this week's round-up of movie news, trailers and more!

Collateral Beauty

Get your box of tissues ready; Collateral Beauty promises to bring the waterworks in this new trailer.

Howard (Will Smith) is a man who feels as if he’s lost everything after the passing of his young daughter. Life has become meaningless for him and it’s affecting his work, friendships and his overall quality of being.

Kate Winslet and Edward Norton join this ensemble cast in Collateral Beauty, hitting Cineplex theatres December 16th.

Check out the trailer below:

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Special operatives Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) have one job: they must maintain order throughout the universe.

Valerian and...

Chicago – “Bridget Jones’s Baby” is the kind of geriatric sequel that makes you retroactively question whether the original film that inspired it was all that good to begin with – it’s less a film than a labored collection of contrived situations involving pregnancy and pratfalls. It’s not painfully unwatchable, but it’s unlikely to inspire anything remotely resembling amusement in its audiences.

Rating: 2.0/5.0

Renee Zellweger is back in the role that won her her first Oscar nomination, as a now 43 year- old single woman in London. I only mention her age because the film does, almost incessantly. So this time around after splitting from her on and off again beau, Mr. Darcy (Colin Firth), she’s out to take London by storm. And when I say taking the town by storm, I mean she goes to an English music festival, gets drunk, falls in the mud and has...

Chicago – “Eddie The Eagle” is thoroughly predictable underdog story, but this picture won me over with a plucky persistence fitting for its peculiar protagonist. It’s an admittedly minor but mostly true tale of an oddball outsider overcoming overwhelming odds.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

“Eddie The Eagle” was a not terribly talented but incredibly motivated British ski jumper who managed to compete in the 1988 Winter Olympics. He made the British Olympic team because no other British athletes had even thought to compete in that particular sport.

Taron Egerton, from last year’s surprisingly enjoyable “The Kingsman,” stars as Eddie. He’s a milk drinking, awkward, sexless nerd outfitted with giant dorky glasses and a wisp of a mustache. Egerton juts out his chin, hunches his back and perpetually seems on the verge of letting his glasses slip off his nose entirely. But he captures what made people like Eddie in the first place...

Titles backed by Film4 this year have a total of 15 Oscar nominations including a Best Picture and Best Director nomination and three of the five Oscar Best Actress Nominees: Cate Blanchett, Brie Larson, Charlotte Rampling. The total tally of Film4’s awards nominations and wins across the Academy, BAFTA, critics groups, guilds, etc. in 2015 to date is: 181 wins out of a total 581 nominations (95% of which were in the U.S.) across 11 films - “Room”, “Carol”, “Suffragette”, “Youth”, “The Lobster", "Ex Machina", "45 Years”, “Amy”, “Macbeth”, “Slow West”, and “Dark Horse”.

Film4 has already had two Academy Best Picture wins in recent years with "Slumdog Millionaire" and "12 Years A Slave" amid other Academy Award nominations, so we can declare they are a force to be reckoned with.

This year again they have more nominations than most Hollywood Studios! The New York based Distribution and Production Company A24 has seven nominations, and people are talking about them as serious players in the Oscar race, so let’s talk about Film4.

Film4 is known for working with the most distinctive and innovative, both new and established, talent. It develops and co-finances films and is well known for its involvement with “The Last King of Scotland” (2006), “Slumdog Millionaire” (2008), “This is England” (2006), “Seven Psychopaths” (2012), “12 Years a Slave” (2013) as well as its most recent crop of successes in the current awards season which has also already garnered a record number of BAFTA nominations this year - 22 in all.

Sue Bruce Smith is the head of distribution and brand strategy at Channel 4’s feature film division, Film4. She supports the building and financing of projects from the U.K. broadcaster. She works in some capacity across most of the Film4 slate but has been particularly associated with films like “Room”, “The Lobster”, “Slumdog Millionaire”, “The Last King of Scotland”, “Tyrannosaur”, “The Imposter” and “Le Weekend”,

Sue has been at Film4 over 12 years. Prior to this she has worked variously in U.K. distribution, broadcaster investment in film, international sales and independent production at Palace Pictures, BBC Films, Littlebird and Film4.

Sl: Can you define what exactly you do at Film4?

Sue Bruce Smith: What I do varies quite a bit from film to film. Some of the seasoned producers are more adept at finding partners and don’t need much in the way of help putting their finance together. However, we also work with emerging producers and directors who require more guidance so I am on hand to help them access the right co-production or distribution partners to ensure the film is built in the best possible way. Once the film is completed, I again get involved in the strategy for the launch of the film and I oversee the distribution activity. Protecting and maximizing the strength of our Film4 brand is a key consideration in everything I do. We are also the only free-to-air channel dedicated to film in the U.K. so this really helps define our strong brand.

Sl: How are productions greenlit at Film4?

Sue Bruce Smith:The creative and commercial team within Film4 will guide a project through development to final greenlight. David Kosse, Director of Film4 is a key part of the whole progression of the film and his final decision, based very much on the soundings he gets from his senior team, also obviously draws heavily on his valuable experience and understanding of film investment and the international marketplace. The Film4 team is a very inclusive team of about 23 people working across development, production, finance and distribution. it is also able to draw upon additional resources within the Channel4, most specifically in marketing and press.

Sl: Do you do co-productions?

Sue Bruce Smith: If you mean financial co-productions, yes lots. These tend to be U.S. set financial co-productions or they might come out of Europe. But official co-productions are relatively rare as it is more difficult and takes longer to set up. “Room”, however, was an official co-production with Telefilm Canada and “The Lobster” was the result of a wonderful collaboration of over five different European co-producers.

Sl: What sort of budget parameters do you work with?

Sue Bruce Smith: We span from the very low to sometimes quite high. We try not to limit ourselves and allow the project to find its optimum level. When we developed “Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk” with Ink Factory, in the course of looking for partners we found a fan in Tom Rothman who at that time was in the process of rebuilding production at TriStar and we have ended up, as a result, being involved in an Ang Lee film! However these are the exceptions and the range is usually between Us $3m to Us$15m.

Going forward, we are keen to be bolder in how Film4 invests especially when we feel a film is a potential break out. We operate a cross subsidy model where the bigger, more commercial investments allow us to generate revenue that then supports the new emerging talent. It is worth noting that absolutely everything we earn from our films goes straight back into more development and film investment.

Sl: Do you have special “strands” for particular types of films?

Sue Bruce Smith: We don’t really distinguish films in strands we just work across many levels and genres. First time filmmakers tend to have smaller budgets - around Us$3m and they are built in a slightly different way. For our larger projects I’d say our sweet spot is $10 – 15 million.

Sl: How do you find projects?

Sue Bruce Smith:: We are constantly scouting for interesting new talent, watching shorts like “Robots of Brixton” where we found Kibwe Tavares, culling talent from our TV arm (like Yann Demange who worked with us on the TV series “Top Boy” before making “'71”) from theater (Lucy Kirkwood who we are making a short film with and developing a feature), the arts (which is where Steve McQueen originated and is still very active) and writing (Alex Garland who adapted “Never Let Me Go” for us and went on to make his striking debut “Ex Machina”)

Sl: I notice you don’t do international sales like you used to in the 80s.

Sue Bruce Smith: Yes we shed the international sales division and the U.K. Distribution arm back in 2002 and brought the focus back to our core development and co-financing activities. We currently work with a wide range of sales agents like Protagonist, Hanway, Cornerstone, FilmNation, Westend, Pathe, Studio Canal, Independent and others.

Sl: In the early days in the 1980s operations were different.

Sue Bruce Smith: David Rose, in 1982, was the real visionary behind Film4. He decided Channel4 would be different from all other TV channels. Channel4 was the first U.K. broadcaster, through its film arm, Film on Four, to develop and co-finance films and, crucially, to allow these films to play in cinemas before their television transmission on Channel4. Our theatrical model became Film on Four and HBO, Sbs and Arte followed this lead. “Walter” by Stephen Frears followed this route in 1982. Frear's next film “My Beautiful Laundrette” followed shortly after in 1985

(An aside here by Sydney Levine):

If my readers will indulge me for a little history lesson in how films change with technological change, I want to point out that in the early days of home video, in 1985, Sue and I (a couple of the pioneer women in the modern business) shared in the good fortune resulting from the shift in the movie and TV business.

Working for the biggest TV production house in U.S. in the days of “Dallas”, I came to Lorimar to buy for home video, the fastest growing new technological distribution tool yet. We put up $175,000 advance to acquire home video rights to the Film4 feature “My Beautiful Laundrette” for U.S. $75,000 of that was to be used as P&A by theatrical distributor Orion Pictures Classics’ platform theatrical release – to platform first in N.Y. and L.A for critical reviews, and then, if profitable, to expand across the nation. It was the first British film to come to U.S. in many a year (except of course for the James Bond franchise). Orion Classics was headed by Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and Donna Gigliotti who paid no advance but used the P&A allotment wisely and well. It was a happy association that we shared a couple of more times before they moved on to form Sony Pictures Classics and I moved on to Republic Pictures, reconstructed by Cnb’s Russell Goldsmith, former CEO of Lorimar. This Film4 picture, “My Beautiful Laundrette” was by complete unknowns in the U.S. and was a first for us all. We did not know it would go on to gross $7 million at the box office (a huge amount at that time for an independent film) and would sell 75,000 video units (at $50 wholesale a piece = $3,750,000). We at Lorimar made a $1 million profit and overages of $1 million went to Channel 4 and $1 million went to Working Title. I got a $100 bonus, and we were all delighted. My association with Film4 was followed by many loyal and loving years and reunions, but that is another lesson.

To quote Adam P. Davies, the writer of the U.K. Film Finance Handbook 2005/6: How to Fund Your Film:

Stephen Frears’s 1985 “My Beautiful Laundrette” signalled a change in direction for the industry in that TV backed film investment started to feed local productions. The Channel4 film encouraged the broadcasters to increase investment in filmmaking over the late 80s and also launched Working Title, initially run by Tim Bevan and Sarah Radcliffe (who left in 1992 to run her own company) and later Eric Fellner, with whom Bevan runs the company today [in a longstanding deal with Universal-Focus]. Video distributor and producer Palace Pictures, run by Nik Powell and Stephen Woolley, followed the success in 1985 of Neil Jordan’s “Company of Wolves” with “Mona Lisa” in 1986. The British Film Commission launched in 1992 [when “The Crying Game” had its world success].

Sue was at Palace Productions when I was at Lorimar and Republic and our paths crossed many times and so I was quite eager to share the latest good fortune of the 2016 Academy Awards at a time when the Academy is being besieged by negative publicity. At that time, back in ’85, I suggested to Michael and Tom that they put up Daniel Day Lewis for Best Actor Nomination and as I recall, they told me British films or British actors in British films were not acceptable to the Academy, and so neither he nor the film was put up for nomination.

“My Beautiful Laundrette” obviously had Asian actors; it was about a gay skinhead and a Pakistani. Diversity was at its core, but it did not get past the British line of demarcation the Academy had drawn in ’85. Its ethnic boundaries might have existed if anyone had tried to test them but that was not even an issue in 1985. “Diversity” in those days did not exist as a word one used and the very idea of diversity was even more limited than today.

Film4 has had a key role in proactively promoting different voices and stories since the 1980s. And today diversity is a crucial consideration in the decisions Film4 makes about its developments and productions with the aim of increasing diversity across all areas of the business. They have several films currently in development with Bame writers and directors and are successfully working with many female directors such as Andrea Arnold, Debbie Tucker Green, Susanna White, Clio Bernard, Sarah Gavron and Lynne Ramsay.

In January last year parent company Channel4 launched the 360 Degree Diversity Charter which is all about a commitment to implementing diversity on and off screen and to measuring its progress. It is tied to Project Diamond, an industry-wide diversity monitoring system. Its results will be published in the next few months.

Film4 has developed and co-financed many of the most successful U.K. films of recent years, Academy Award-winners such as Steve McQueen’s "12 Years a Slave", Danny Boyle’s "Slumdog Millionaire", Phyllida Lloyd’s "The Iron Lady” and Martin McDonagh’s "In Bruges" in addition to critically-acclaimed award-winners such as Mike Leigh’s "Mr. Turner", Chris Morris’ "Four Lions", Shane Meadows’ "This is England", Ben Wheatley’s “Sightseers", Clio Barnard’s "The Selfish Giant" Jonathan Glazer’s "Under the Skin" and David Mackenzie’s "Starred Up".

Film4’s recent releases include; Lenny Abrahamson’s “Room", Todd Haynes’ “Carol", Sarah Gavron’s “Suffragette", Justin Kurzel’s “Macbeth", Yorgos Lanthimos’ "The Lobster", Asif Kapadia’s box office record breaking documentary “Amy", Andrew Haigh’s "45 Years", Alex Garland’s "Ex Machina", Paolo Sorrentino’s “Youth", Peter Strickland’s "The Duke of Burgundy", Daniel Wolfe’s "Catch Me Daddy" and John Maclean’s "Slow West".

Forthcoming releases include; Ben Wheatley’s "High-Rise" and "Free Fire", Ang Lee’s "Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk", Benedict Andrews’ “Una" and Andrea Arnold’s "American Honey".

For further information visit www.film4.com/productions, but for now, here is the Cheat Sheet on Film4’s 2016 Total Oscar Nominations numbering 15. It will be at my side as I watch the Awards on February. Parenthetically, I am also looking forward to watching the fashions before the show, and inside the show, to catching that one loose cannon who will deliver the only inspirational speech in a rather inspirationless, basically boring, but still worthy traditional show.

3 of 5 Oscar Best Actress Nominees – Cate Blanchett, Brie Larson, Charlotte Rampling

Nomination tally by film:

“Room” – 4 - Picture, Actress, Director, Best Adapted Screenplay

“Carol” – 6 –Actress, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Costume Design, Original Score

“Ex Machina” – 2 –Original screenplay, Visual Effects

“Amy” – 1 – Documentary Feature

“45 Years” – 1 – Actress

“Youth” – 1 – Original Song

Film4-backed films Oscar® nominations in full:

“Carol”

Actress in a Leading Role: Cate Blanchett

Actress in a Supporting Role: Rooney Mara

Adapted Screenplay: Phyllis Nagy

Achievement in Cinematography: Ed Lachman

Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original score): Carter Burwell

Achievement in Costume Design: Sandy Powell

“Room”

Best Motion Picture of the Year: Ed Guiney

Achievement in Directing: Lenny Abrahamson

Actress in a Leading Role: Brie Larson

Adapted Screenplay: Emma Donoghue

“Ex Machina”

Original Screenplay: Alex Garland

Achievement in Visual Effects: Andrew Whitehurst, Paul Norris, Mark Ardington and Sara Bennett

“45 Years”:

Actress in a Leading Role: Charlotte Rampling

“Youth”

Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original song): Simple Song # 3, music and lyrics by David Lang

“Amy”

Best Documentary Feature: Asif Kapadia, James Gay-Rees...

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Tiff Stevenson chats about her new stand-up tour, Fringe, Buffy, Joss Whedon, Portlandia, Sherlock and Jason Statham....

Heading on tour around the UK this month is Tiff Stevenson. Her new stand-up show, Mad Man, is about to get underway, and she spared us some time for a chat. It got quite nerdy...

I'll start with the obvious one, and then we can go nerdy. You're going on tour with a show called Mad Man. What's it about?

It's about identity really. Who we are as people, how much of our personalities are made up of what we think we like and what we put out into the world, and how much is chewed up and sold back to us through various advertisements and social media and everything else.

Do you have specific examples you're tapping into?

Yeah, sure. Advertising is a huge thread that runs through the show.

During the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Patrick Stewart – who played the show's dramatically serious, almost Shakespearean Captain Jean-Luc Picard – said something he has always regretted. A veteran of serious theater, the actor projected a grave sobriety off-camera as well as on, so when fellow cast member Denise Crosby attempted to crack his exterior, saying, "Come on, Patrick, we've got to have fun sometimes," he blew up. "'We're not here to have fun,' that was my line," the actor says. "I yelled it. What an asshole.

Exclusive: Beta Cinema will handle international sales on German director Isabelle Stevers’ grotesque drama Cooking Cats, which began shooting in Cologne last week.

UK actor Jim Broadbent has been cast as a British ambassador in the drama set in the world of international aid schemes with Maria Furtwängler as an Un aid worker caught between the contradictions of a jetsetting life and tackling Third World poverty.

Other cast members include former European Shooting Star Dorka Gryllus and newcomer Mehmer Sözer.

Stever’s previous films include the feature films Erste Ehe and Gisela and an episode of the omnibus film Deutschland ‘09.

The co-production between Sutor Kolonko Filmproduktion, cine plus Filmproduktion and broadcasters Wdr, Br and Ndr will be released theatrically in Germany by Movienet.

Shooting will continue at the Hürth-based Medienparks Nrw studio, in Düsseldorf and Jordan’s Amman until the beginning of June.

Schipper thriller and love story

Another addition to Beta’s slate is actor-director [link=nm...

Patrick Stewart is no stranger to comedy, if his delightful friendship with fellow Brit Ian McKellen is any indication. Now, the actor is taking his talent for humor from the Twitter timeline to the small screen, where he's set to star in a series produced by Seth MacFarlane.

Stewart will play the lead in "Blunt Talk," a half-hour comedy on the Starz network, which focuses on Walter Blunt, a British newscaster hoping to make the leap to American cable news. The show was created and will be co-produced by Jonathan Ames (HBO's "Bored to Death").

MacFarlane and Stewart previously collaborated together on MacFarlane's animated Fox series, "American Dad," for which Stewart has provided some voiceover work.

"In the character of Walter Blunt, Seth, Jonathan and Patrick have found the alchemy that makes a borderline alcoholic, mad-genius-Brit the man you want fighting in America's corner," said Starz CEO Chris Albrecht. "Seth...

Feature Alex Westthorp 16 Apr 2014 - 07:00

Alex's trek through the film roles of actors who've played the Doctor reaches Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy...

Read the previous part in this series, Doctor Who: the film careers of Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker, here.

In March 1981, as he made his Doctor Who debut, Peter Davison was already one the best known faces on British television. Not only was he the star of both a BBC and an ITV sitcom - Sink Or Swim and Holding The Fort - but as the young and slightly reckless Tristan Farnon in All Creatures Great And Small, about the often humorous cases of Yorkshire vet James Herriot and his colleagues, he had cemented his stardom. The part led, indirectly, to his casting as the venerable Time Lord.

The recently installed Doctor Who producer, John Nathan-Turner, had been the Production Unit Manager on...

Hilary Mantel, Jonathan Franzen, Mohsin Hamid, Ruth Rendell, Tom Stoppard, Malcolm Gladwell, Eleanor Catton and many more recommend the books that impressed them this year

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw (Fourth Estate) is a brilliant, sprawling, layered and unsentimental portrayal of contemporary China. It made me think and laugh. I also love Dave Eggers' The Circle (Hamish Hamilton), which is a sharp-eyed and funny satire about the obsession with "sharing" our lives through technology. It's convincing and a little creepy.

William Boyd

By strange coincidence two of the most intriguing art books I read this year had the word "Breakfast" in their titles. They were Breakfast with Lucian by Geordie Greig (Jonathan Cape) and Breakfast at Sotheby's by Philip Hook (Particular). Greig's fascinating, intimate biography of Lucian Freud was a revelation. Every question I had about Freud – from the aesthetic to the intrusively gossipy – was...

Odd List Ryan Lambie Simon Brew 1 Nov 2013 - 06:28

Next year’s full of potentially great films, so to help, here’s a list of 25 movies we're most looking forward to in 2014...

These lists of anticipated forthcoming movies have become an annual fixture by now, and as ever, our selection has been tricky to whittle down. In restricting our list to just 25, we've tried to create a mix of the high-profile and the less obvious. Movies such as Non-Stop, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, Big Hero Six and Edge Of Tomorrow came close but didn't quite make the cut, even though they have much to offer for their own reasons.

Furthermore, given the number of films competing for space, we've left the latest chapters of The Hunger Games and The Hobbit off the list. We're keen to see both, but we're wary of taking up slots with movies...

Odd List Ryan Lambie Simon Brew 31 Oct 2013 - 07:01

We train our sights on the year 1996, and the 25 underappreciated films it has to offer...

Independence Day managed to revive both the alien invasion movie and the disaster flick in 1996, and just about every other mainstream picture released that year lived in its saucer-shaped shadow.

Yet beyond the aerial battles of Independence Day, the flying cows in Twister, and the high-wire antics of Tom Cruise in Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible, there sat an entire library of lesser-known and underappreciated movies.

As part of our attempts to highlight the unsung greats of the 90s, here's our selection of 25 such films from 1996 - the year chess champion Garry Kasparov lost to the might of the computer Deep Blue, and the year comedy star Jim Carrey starred in an unexpectedly dark tale of obsession...

25. The Cable Guy

We can't sit here and...

The 57th BFI London Film Festival line-up has officially been revealed, and it is led by a slew of incredibly promising films, many of which have already been buzzing on the festival circuit, and a number of which will be making their debuts here in London.

As previously announced, Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips will open the festival next month, and John Lee Hancock’s Saving Mr. Banks will close it, book-ending the festival with Tom Hanks leading two highly prominent, Oscar-primed movies.

Stephen Frears’ Philomena was also previously announced as the Lff American Express Gala, with The Epic of Everest announced as the Lff Archive Gala.

And leading the line-up alongside them this year will be some of the most Oscar-buzzed movies of 2013, including Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, Jason Reitman’s Labor Day, Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity (in 3D), Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis, Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem,...

In BBC America’s press release discussing the second half of the seventh season of Doctor Who (premiering March 30th), a number of guest stars were listed, including Dougray Scott, Warwick Davis, Dame Diana Rigg and her daughter Rachel Stirling. But one name listed may be a big clue to the season’s Big Bad. Richard E. Grant, who appeared in the Christmas episode, The Snowmen, will be returning in the season’s eight episode run. Grant played Dr. Walter Simeon, head of the Great Intelligence Institute and mastermind behind a plan to take over the world with an army of animated ice creatures. The Great Intelligence, the disembodied life force who allied with Simeon (and voiced by Sir Ian McKellen), was a Who villain from the Troughton days, with appearances in many of the other media adventures, and a cameo in the 20th anniversary adventure The Five Doctors. BBC America...

Every week, in a meeting shrouded in secrecy, the Pm briefs the Queen about British politics. What influence does she exert? Who has she liked – and who made her nod off? Peter Morgan on how this strange tradition inspired his new play

When I started writing the screenplay for The Queen, about the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana, both Stephen Frears, the director, and Andy Harries, the producer, begged me not to put Tony Blair in it. They felt the presence of a politician, particularly one as divisive as Blair had become by 2004, would diminish it – make it feel more temporal, more journalistic, more TV. And so less filmic.

I consoled myself that there would still be plenty to work with: the death of a princess, a young Queen's deputy private secretary out of his depth, a royal family tucked away on the Balmoral estate, and people out...

Oh, Steven Moffat, you magnificent bastard. The return of a villain before it and The Doctor have ever met, a reunion with a character The Doctor’s never actually met, the team-up of three characters, one of whom died in the far future, and a couple of surprise guests. A nice little Christmas present, and what’s Christmas without…

The Snowmen

By Steven Moffat

Directed by Saul Metzstein

A young boy is met by a talking snowman, one who promises he can help him. Fifty years later, and Dr. Walter Simeon has become quite a successful man, head of a prestigious institute, and still working with the sentient snowstorm to prepare for a coming assault on the earth. Madame Vastra and Jenny are curious as to Dr. Simeon’s plans, but get nowhere. Meanwhile, a young barmaid named Clara has noticed a snowman pop up out of nowhere, and though...

Last week brought Ralph Fiennes’ directorial debut to the shelves in Coriolanus, in which he starred as the eponymous lead alongside Gerard Butler, as well as the likes of Michael Dowse’s Goon, and Madonna’s W.E.

This week has, as ever, a fantastic new selection of films and TV programmes available for purchase from today, including three of my all-time favourite TV programmes. On top of that, there’s an Oscar winner, an Oscar nominee, and one film that everyone was talking about in the run-up to the awards season but was noticeably absent when the Academy Award nominees were announced in January.

My personal picks of the week:

With so much choice, I was forced to divide into two categories of film and TV this week:

James Bobbins’ The Muppets & Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar

Entourage Season 8, Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 8 & One Tree Hill Season 9

The Muppets Iframe...

Gary Oldman as Jackie Flannery in State Of Grace (Phil Joanou, 1990, USA):

Long considered one of the most talented actors in cinema, it’s very strange that his outstanding acting as the younger brother of Ed Harris’ local crime boss in this underrated film doesn’t get talked about nearly enough when discussing Oldman’s body of work. This is a must-see performance for all Oldman fans. For the record, State Of Grace is a far better Irish mob film than The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006, USA), primarily because it contains much better acting across the board. Oldman was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson, 2011, UK/France).

Other notable Gary Oldman performances: Prick Up Your Ears (Stephen Frears, 1987, USA), Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992, USA), True Romance (Tony Scott, 1993, USA), Leon: The Professional (Luc Besson, 1994, France), Air Force One (Wolfgang Petersen, 1997, USA), The Contender (Rod Lurie,...

Breaking Dawn 2-peats. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 was Number One at the box office this weekend for the second weekend in a row with $42 Million for $221.3 Million so far. The Muppets premiered in Second Place with $29.5 Million. Happy Feet Two was Third with $13.4 Million. Arthur Christmas premiered in Fourth Place with $12.7 Million. Hugo was Fifth with $11.3 Million. Jack and Jill, Immortals, Puss in Boots, Tower Heist, and The Descendants rounded out the top ten respectively.

The Muppets is a 2011 American musical and comedy film, and the first Muppets theatrical release in 12 years, as well as the first Disney-produced Muppets film since 1996′s Muppet Treasure Island. In the film, Walter (performed by Peter Linz), the world’s biggest Muppet fan, and his brother Gary (Jason Segel) and friend Mary (Amy Adams) must raise $10 million to save the Muppet Theater from Tex Richman (Chris Cooper), a businessman who plans to...

DVD Playhouse June 2011

By

Allen Gardner

Kiss Me Deadly (Criterion) Robert Aldrich’s 1955 reinvention of the film noir detective story is one of cinema’s great genre mash-ups: part hardboiled noir; part cold war paranoid thriller; and part science- fiction. Ralph Meeker plays Mickey Spillane’s fascist detective Mike Hammer as a narcissistic simian thug, a sadist who would rather smash a suspect’s fingers than make love to the bevvy of beautiful dames that cross his path. In fact, the only time you see a smile cross Meeker’s sneering mug is when he’s doling out pain, with a vengeance. When a terrified young woman (Cloris Leachman, film debut) literally crossed Hammer’s path one night, and later turns up dead, he vows to get to the bottom of her brutal demise. One of the most influential films ever made, and perhaps the most-cited film by the architects...

Oopsie. We missed a week of our series of mini reader profiles. We're getting to know other members of The Film Experience community.

Today we're talking to Sergio from Guatemala who has been a very welcome consistent contributor to our Hmwybs party on his tumblr "Awww, The Movies ♥". Check that out.

Nathaniel: Do you remember your first movie or first movie obsession?

Sergio: The first time I went to the movies, it was with my father and sister. It was a strange/random act from my father, because we were going somewhere else, I was 10 years old and I had never been to the movies! The movie? Nothing relevant, but I was captivated by the experience. Two years later I started to skip events at school to go to the movies by myself.

Uh-oh. Okay, when did you start reading the film experience?

It was around 2004/2005. I even have an...

The South by Southwest Film Festival announced its feature film line-up Wednesday, piling heaps of cinematic goodness on an already stellar program that includes Jodie Foster’s The Beaver, Duncan Jones’ Source Code, Ti West’s The Innkeepers, Conan O’Brien’s tour documentary, and the latest Simon Pegg-Nick Frost comedy, Paul, with Seth Rogen.

Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight) returns to the festival with her latest film, Red Riding Hood starring Amanda Seyfried, after the writer-director spoke on a screenwriting panel in 2009.

Plus a few favorites from the Sundance Film Festival last month, like Tom McCarthy’s Win Win, Morgan Spurlock’s The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, and Max Winkler’s Ceremony.

I’m extremely excited, even if I’m already having flashbacks to intense sleep deprivation. Like the last two years, I’ll be on the ground covering as much of the festival as I can within the packed 9 days of screenings,...

‘Tapping into the cultural zeitgeist,’ at SXSW 2011

Austin, Texas – The SXSW 2011 Feature Film Lineup was unveiled Wednesday afternoon. The festival lineup will consist of 130 features, in nine full days of programming, promising to deliver a film-going experience unlike previous years.

With a reputation for taking chances on relatively unknown filmmakers, the SXSW panel of judges carefully picked 130 films from 1,792 feature-length film submissions, (1,323 U.S. and 469 international). The program consists of 60 World Premieres, 12 North American Premieres and 16 U.S. Premieres.

The main competition categories return with eight Narrative Features, and eight Documentary Features, both competing for their respective Grand Jury Prize. New for films in competition this year, are awards for screenplay, editing, cinematography, music, and acting.

(The Midnighters and SXFantastic feature sections, along with the short film program, will be announced next week.)

Here are a few of the Features to be screened, among many others.

Narratives:

The Beaver (World Premiere)

Dir.

Readers of Sound On Sight can be sure that we will indeed be covering the SXSW Film Festival once again. As previously reported, Duncan Jones’ latest film Source Code is opening the festival and there will also be premieres for the documentary Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, Greg Mottola’s Paul, and Jodie Foster’s The Beaver. Now the full line-up has been announced it is incredible.

Hit the jump to check out the line-up, and be sure to visit our site during the event.

The 2011 SXSW Film Festival runs from March 11 – 19th in Austin, Texas.

SXSW Film Announces 2011 Features Lineup

Austin, Texas – February 2, 2011 – The South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference and Festival is thrilled to announce the features lineup for this year’s Festival, March 11 – 19, 2011 in Austin, Texas. The 2011 lineup continues the SXSW tradition of tapping into the cultural zeitgeist, highlighting emerging talent and breakthrough performances and supporting first-time filmmakers.

The South By Southwest Film Conference and Festival announced this year's features lineup. The festival takes place March 11-19 in Austin, Texas.

There are a total of 130 features screening this year including 60 world premieres, 12 North American premieres and 16 U.S. premieres! This year the a total of 1,792 feature-length films were submitted, which is the most ever.

There are going to be some amazing films shown this yea. Opening night kicks off with Duncan Jones' Source Code (Moon). The fest rolls on with Jodie Foster‘s The Beaver, Greg Mottola‘s Paul, Sundance Grand Prize doc winner How to Die in Oregon, Errol Morris‘ Tabloid, Victoria Mahoney‘s Yelling to the Sky, Azazel Jacob‘s Terri. There will also be a special screening of Catherine Hardwicke‘s Red Riding Hood.

The Midnight and SXFantastic sections will be announced with the shorts program next week.

See the complete lineup below via...

The South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW) just announced their entire 2011 feature film lineup, and there’s isn’t a lot of note, with regards to this blog’s focus.

Titles you should be aware of – all of which we’ve previously profiled on Shadow And Act – include, Victoria Mahoney’s feature film debut, Yelling To The Sky (which will actually make its world debut at the Berlin Film Festival later this month); plus Blacktino, the first feature film from writer/director Aaron Burns, a self-described “blacktino nerd from Austin, Texas,” who got his start at Robert Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios doing visual effects; Benda Bilili, a documentary about a band of homeless, disabled Congolese; and last, but not least, Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey, a documentary about the black man that happens to be the man behind the puppet (which also played at Sundance).

There might be...

The South by Southwest Film Festival has announced their features lineup for the 2011’s Festival, which will take place March 11th to the 19th in Austin Texas. Read the full press release after the jump. SXSW Film Announces 2011 Features Lineup Austin, Texas – February 2, 2011 – The South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference and Festival is thrilled to announce the features lineup for this year’s Festival, March 11 – 19, 2011 in Austin, Texas. The 2011 lineup continues the SXSW tradition of tapping into the cultural zeitgeist, highlighting emerging talent and breakthrough performances and supporting first-time filmmakers. The Midnighters and SXFantastic feature sections, along with the short film program, will be announced next week. “This is the most exciting moment for us. After a fantastic festival of discovery in 2010, we can finally unveil the line up for this year’s event,” says Film Conference and Festival Producer Janet Pierson. “SXSW prides itself on taking chances, sifting for...

Movies: There are just so darn many of them. Usually this is a great thing, but with 2011 now upon us, it can seem overwhelming. After all, a new year means a whole new slate of hundreds of movies, ranging from awesome to terribad. Who has the time to sort through them all?

Well, we do.

So don’t worry, your number one internet friend has carefully reviewed every single one of the movies coming out over the next year so that you don’t have to. We’ve gone through the scripts, talked to the actors and poured over the trailers, frame by frame, all in order to determine which films are your best bets over the next 12 months. Here are our top 50.

‘The Green Hornet’

Release Date: Jan. 14

Starring: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Christoph Waltz

The Scoop: Once upon a time, The Green Hornet was one of the most...

Stephen Frears is an amused connoisseur. I can't dispute his estimate that the less money he's had at risk on a venture, the better it ends up

Inasmuch as he will be 70 next year, and is a national treasure, I suspect some honours list will notice Stephen Frears soon. Of course, it is possible in his humble, muttering self-effacement that he wouldn't hear of such a distinction (I think there's a republican in there). On the other hand, he did make The Queen (with writer Peter Morgan and pretender Helen Mirren), the most sophisticated public relations boost Hrh has had in 20 years, and all the more affectionate because it was wry and a bit of a tease.

By now, it is taken for granted that Frears – whom I count as a friend – gets away with nearly anything he cares to try, and as he grows older, he is less conventional and obvious.

Wakefield, Nc - Deep in the woods of Raleigh, I felt the ghost of Glenn Gould. He’s been dead since 1982, but there he was at a grand piano playing the first of Bach’s The Goldberg Variations.

His body wasn’t hunched over the keyboard on his collapsible chair. He wasn’t humming away as he played. But it was unmistakably Gould. The keys of the Yamaha Dcfiiiapro were stuck in his iconic way. His music filled the classical music concert hall covered in maple and cherry wood.

How can this be? Who conjured the Canadian classical music genius? Zenph Sound Innovations figured a way to make dead fingers play. This isn’t merely a piano roll, fake stereo treatment or a new noise reduction that goes beyond Dolby.

There is no other way to describe the technological miracle except in spiritual terms. This is the closest we’ll...

DVD Playhouse—December 2009

By

Allen Gardner

Public Enemies (Universal) Johnny Depp portrays legendary Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger in co- writer/director Michael Mann’s take on America’s first “Public Enemy Number One.” Like many big studio releases today, Public Enemies has it all: A-list talent before and behind the camera, but lacks a heart or soul that allows its audience to connect with it. Film plays out like a “true crime” TV show with re-enactments of famous events cast with top actors and shot by the best technicians in the business, with little, if any, character or story development to hold it together in between. A real disappointment from one of our finest filmmakers and finest actors. The lone standout: the great character actor Stephen Lang as a hard-eyed lawman who’s seen a lot, but manages to retain a tiny piece of his heart. For a better take on the same subject,...

Chicago – From Heath Ledger’s searing portrayal of The Joker in “The Dark Knight” to Sean Penn’s riveting embodiment of Harvey Milk in “Milk,” 2008 has been an excellent year for on-screen performances. However, the onslaught of high-caliber performances at the end of the year – including Frank Langella in “Frost/Nixon,” the reunion of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in “Revolutionary Road,” Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and the quartet of regularly nominated actors from “Doubt” – has left some great work from earlier in the year underappreciated and underrated.

Sometimes it’s a case of critics and award voters seemingly only being able to remember one actor from a certain film and sometimes it’s a tragic case of an entire movie not being recognized thoroughly while late-season, high-profile films incorrectly steal their thunder. Either way, it was shockingly easy to come up...