For The Ages
Revered Indian actor Waheeda Rehman, who was accorded the Dadasaheb Phalke award, India’s highest film honor, last year, has donated her personal memorabilia to the Film Heritage Foundation (Fhf) for preservation. Rehman, the 86-year-old grande dame of Indian cinema, has worked with most of the legendary filmmakers of her country during her career and the roles she chose were in films that are considered classics in the annals of Indian cinema. She worked with Guru Dutt in “Pyaasa” (1957) and “Kaagaz Ke Phool” (1959), Satyajit Ray in “Abhijaan” (1962), Basu Bhattacharya in “Teesri Kasam” (1966) and Yash Chopra in “Kabhie Kabhie” (1976), among many other memorable roles.
The donated material includes the saree Rehman wore to the “C.I.D.” premiere in 1956, her photo albums and photographs and lobby cards from “Kaagaz Ke Phool,” “Chaudvin Ka Chand” (1960), “Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam” (1962) “C.I.D.,” “Bees Saal Baad” (1962) and “Baat Ek Raat Ki” (1962). The donation was...
Revered Indian actor Waheeda Rehman, who was accorded the Dadasaheb Phalke award, India’s highest film honor, last year, has donated her personal memorabilia to the Film Heritage Foundation (Fhf) for preservation. Rehman, the 86-year-old grande dame of Indian cinema, has worked with most of the legendary filmmakers of her country during her career and the roles she chose were in films that are considered classics in the annals of Indian cinema. She worked with Guru Dutt in “Pyaasa” (1957) and “Kaagaz Ke Phool” (1959), Satyajit Ray in “Abhijaan” (1962), Basu Bhattacharya in “Teesri Kasam” (1966) and Yash Chopra in “Kabhie Kabhie” (1976), among many other memorable roles.
The donated material includes the saree Rehman wore to the “C.I.D.” premiere in 1956, her photo albums and photographs and lobby cards from “Kaagaz Ke Phool,” “Chaudvin Ka Chand” (1960), “Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam” (1962) “C.I.D.,” “Bees Saal Baad” (1962) and “Baat Ek Raat Ki” (1962). The donation was...
- 3/13/2024
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
An adaptation of the novel has premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
UK writer Martin Amis, the author of novels including The Zone Of Interest and London Fields, has died aged 73.
His wife, the writer Isabel Fonseca, confirmed to the New York Times that he died on Friday (May 19) at his home in Lake Worth, Florida, with the cause given as oesophageal cancer.
It was the same day that also saw Jonathan Glazer’s adaptation of Nazi drama The Zone Of Interest premiere to “remarkable” reviews at the Cannes Film Festival, where it plays in Competition for the Palme d’Or.
UK writer Martin Amis, the author of novels including The Zone Of Interest and London Fields, has died aged 73.
His wife, the writer Isabel Fonseca, confirmed to the New York Times that he died on Friday (May 19) at his home in Lake Worth, Florida, with the cause given as oesophageal cancer.
It was the same day that also saw Jonathan Glazer’s adaptation of Nazi drama The Zone Of Interest premiere to “remarkable” reviews at the Cannes Film Festival, where it plays in Competition for the Palme d’Or.
- 5/20/2023
- by Michael Rosser
- ScreenDaily
Martin Amis, whose 15 novels were must-read books for British fiction lovers, died Friday at home in Lake Worth, Florida of esophageal cancer, his wife confirmed. He was 73.
Amis’s best-known work is a trilogy of novels: Money: A Suicide Note (1985), London Fields (1990) and The Information (1995). He also had a memoir, Experience, (2000).
A film adaptation of his Zone of Interest, a Holocaust drama, is screening at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and is considered one of the front-runners for the event’s Palme d’Or, its highest honor. The film is written and directed by Jonathan Glazer.
Amis’s father was author Kingsley Amis, part of the group of writers known as the Angry Young Men in the 1950s. He was best known for Lucky Jim. (1954).
The two had a rivalry, riven by political differences. Yet Martin Amis acknowledged that his father’s prominence played a role in his own success.
Amis’s best-known work is a trilogy of novels: Money: A Suicide Note (1985), London Fields (1990) and The Information (1995). He also had a memoir, Experience, (2000).
A film adaptation of his Zone of Interest, a Holocaust drama, is screening at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and is considered one of the front-runners for the event’s Palme d’Or, its highest honor. The film is written and directed by Jonathan Glazer.
Amis’s father was author Kingsley Amis, part of the group of writers known as the Angry Young Men in the 1950s. He was best known for Lucky Jim. (1954).
The two had a rivalry, riven by political differences. Yet Martin Amis acknowledged that his father’s prominence played a role in his own success.
- 5/20/2023
- by Bruce Haring
- Deadline Film + TV
British writer Martin Amis, the author of the book “The Zone of Interest,” has died at 73. News of his death comes just one day after the big-screen adaptation of his 2014 novel premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews.
The New York Times reports that Amis died of esophageal cancer, as confirmed by his wife, the writer Isabel Fonseca. He died at the family’s home in Lake Worth, Florida.
Amis published 15 novels over the course of his career, a number of which were adapted for screen. “Under the Skin” director Jonathan Glazer’s treatment of Amis’ chilling Nazi drama “The Zone of Interest” is one of the buzziest premieres to come out of Cannes so far.
The film follows the family of a high-ranking SS officer that lives next door to Auschwitz concentration camp. In a review that labelled “The Zone of Interest” as “chilling and profound,” Variety...
The New York Times reports that Amis died of esophageal cancer, as confirmed by his wife, the writer Isabel Fonseca. He died at the family’s home in Lake Worth, Florida.
Amis published 15 novels over the course of his career, a number of which were adapted for screen. “Under the Skin” director Jonathan Glazer’s treatment of Amis’ chilling Nazi drama “The Zone of Interest” is one of the buzziest premieres to come out of Cannes so far.
The film follows the family of a high-ranking SS officer that lives next door to Auschwitz concentration camp. In a review that labelled “The Zone of Interest” as “chilling and profound,” Variety...
- 5/20/2023
- by Manori Ravindran
- Variety Film + TV
This Star Trek article contains spoilers.
In Act 4, Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare, the heroine Portia, posing as a male lawyer, begs Shylock the moneylender to spare her love’s friend the “pound of flesh” that he is owed. Her speech goes:
“The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown.”
It is the quote referenced by the title of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ finale, “A Quality of Mercy,” demonstrating, aside from anything else, that sometimes what you learn in your degree can be relevant to your job. The use of the quote tells us about Pike’s character, what sort of commander he is, and what fuels...
In Act 4, Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare, the heroine Portia, posing as a male lawyer, begs Shylock the moneylender to spare her love’s friend the “pound of flesh” that he is owed. Her speech goes:
“The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown.”
It is the quote referenced by the title of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ finale, “A Quality of Mercy,” demonstrating, aside from anything else, that sometimes what you learn in your degree can be relevant to your job. The use of the quote tells us about Pike’s character, what sort of commander he is, and what fuels...
- 7/25/2022
- by John Saavedra
- Den of Geek
Robert Zemeckis’s retelling of the wicked children’s story feels more grumpy than scary, while its comedy veers between frantic and strained
Who did Roald Dahl hate more: grownups or children? Kingsley Amis says that Dahl once told him to try writing for children and when Amis said his heart wouldn’t be in it, Dahl replied: “Never mind, the little bastards’d swallow it.” The issue of Dahl’s attitude towards his readership is revived once again with director Robert Zemeckis’s “reimagining” of Dahl’s story The Witches, first published in 1983 and filmed by Nicolas Roeg in 1990 with Anjelica Huston as the incognito Grand High Witch who convenes a sinister children’s charity event in a hotel ballroom.
Now Zemeckis has collaborated with Guillermo Del Toro and Kenya Barris on the screenplay for another version, absorbing some of the earlier film, although why exactly this process has...
Who did Roald Dahl hate more: grownups or children? Kingsley Amis says that Dahl once told him to try writing for children and when Amis said his heart wouldn’t be in it, Dahl replied: “Never mind, the little bastards’d swallow it.” The issue of Dahl’s attitude towards his readership is revived once again with director Robert Zemeckis’s “reimagining” of Dahl’s story The Witches, first published in 1983 and filmed by Nicolas Roeg in 1990 with Anjelica Huston as the incognito Grand High Witch who convenes a sinister children’s charity event in a hotel ballroom.
Now Zemeckis has collaborated with Guillermo Del Toro and Kenya Barris on the screenplay for another version, absorbing some of the earlier film, although why exactly this process has...
- 10/21/2020
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
It’s a Brit sex comedy that addresses the basic facts about boy-girl petting — and not much else. A noted ‘adult’ role for Hayley Mills, it pairs her with an unlikable Oliver Reed, trying his damnedest to affect natural charm. Was Reed the reason Hayley chose as her next picture a story about a lady studying penguins?
Take a Girl Like You
Blu-ray
Twilight Time
1970 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 98 min. / Street Date June 19, 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95
Starring: Hayley Mills, Oliver Reed, Noel Harrison, John Bird, Sheila Hancock, Ronald Lacey, Penelope Keith, Imogen Hassall, Pippa Steel, George Woodbridge.
Cinematography: Dick Bush
Film Editor: Jack Harris, Rex Pyke
Original Music: Stanley Myers
Written by George Melly
Produced by Hal E. Chester
Directed by Jonathan Miller
Wait a minute — when exactly did they finally stop calling young women, ‘birds?’
When the Hollywood studios all but collapsed at the end of the 1960s,...
Take a Girl Like You
Blu-ray
Twilight Time
1970 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 98 min. / Street Date June 19, 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95
Starring: Hayley Mills, Oliver Reed, Noel Harrison, John Bird, Sheila Hancock, Ronald Lacey, Penelope Keith, Imogen Hassall, Pippa Steel, George Woodbridge.
Cinematography: Dick Bush
Film Editor: Jack Harris, Rex Pyke
Original Music: Stanley Myers
Written by George Melly
Produced by Hal E. Chester
Directed by Jonathan Miller
Wait a minute — when exactly did they finally stop calling young women, ‘birds?’
When the Hollywood studios all but collapsed at the end of the 1960s,...
- 6/30/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Mark Allison Feb 22, 2017
Iam Fleming's James Bond novels still have narratives and ideas that haven't made it to the 007 movie series...
A spoiler lies ahead for Spectre
See related The world of the Peaky Blinders
Over the course of 11 years, Ian Fleming wrote 12 James Bond novels and nine short stories before his death in 1964, forming the basis for the film series which survives to the present day. 24 films and 55 years since the birth of the cinematic Bond, it might come as a surprise that the franchise hasn’t completely exhausted its source material. More often than not, however, the James Bond films have been adaptations in name only.
Starting with Roald Dahl’s outlandish screenplay for the fifth Bond film, You Only Live Twice, the film scripts began to drift away from their literary inspirations. For most of Roger Moore’s seven-film tenure, for example, entire plots and characters were...
Iam Fleming's James Bond novels still have narratives and ideas that haven't made it to the 007 movie series...
A spoiler lies ahead for Spectre
See related The world of the Peaky Blinders
Over the course of 11 years, Ian Fleming wrote 12 James Bond novels and nine short stories before his death in 1964, forming the basis for the film series which survives to the present day. 24 films and 55 years since the birth of the cinematic Bond, it might come as a surprise that the franchise hasn’t completely exhausted its source material. More often than not, however, the James Bond films have been adaptations in name only.
Starting with Roald Dahl’s outlandish screenplay for the fifth Bond film, You Only Live Twice, the film scripts began to drift away from their literary inspirations. For most of Roger Moore’s seven-film tenure, for example, entire plots and characters were...
- 2/20/2017
- Den of Geek
Raymond Benson and Peter Janson-Smith in Krakow.
By Raymond Benson
Peter Janson-Smith passed away on Friday, April 15, 2016, at the age of 93. He was a giant in the world of British publishing, a major figure in that arena for nearly seventy years. Serious James Bond fans will know him as Ian Fleming’s literary agent, the man who spearheaded the exploitation of Fleming’s 007 novels around the world from 1956 until Peter’s retirement in 2002.
On a personal level, Peter’s death is a great loss. For me, he was a mentor, a friend, a teacher, and someone I called my “English dad.” He was instrumental in the research for my 1984 book, The James Bond Bedside Companion, and he hired me to write the continuation James Bond novels in the mid-90s. In short, I owe much of my career to him.
Peter was born on September 5, 1922, in Navestock, England, which is...
By Raymond Benson
Peter Janson-Smith passed away on Friday, April 15, 2016, at the age of 93. He was a giant in the world of British publishing, a major figure in that arena for nearly seventy years. Serious James Bond fans will know him as Ian Fleming’s literary agent, the man who spearheaded the exploitation of Fleming’s 007 novels around the world from 1956 until Peter’s retirement in 2002.
On a personal level, Peter’s death is a great loss. For me, he was a mentor, a friend, a teacher, and someone I called my “English dad.” He was instrumental in the research for my 1984 book, The James Bond Bedside Companion, and he hired me to write the continuation James Bond novels in the mid-90s. In short, I owe much of my career to him.
Peter was born on September 5, 1922, in Navestock, England, which is...
- 4/28/2016
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published May 5, 2015.
Ian Fleming’s James Bond is one of the most recognizable and successful characters in modern popular culture. The novels have sold over 100 million copies, and the film franchise is the second most successful in history, having been recently displaced by the Harry Potter series. For most readers and viewers, 007 is merely a Western pop icon. However, there is much more at work in the novels and films than appears on the surface. In fact, there are deeper undercurrents, themes, symbols, and messages that operate as psychological warfare propaganda and an in-depth semiotic analysis of the novels and films yields an interpretation that confirms this thesis. Much has been written on the subject of Ian Fleming’s James Bond. From Umberto Eco’s older essay “Narrative Structures in Fleming” to Christoph Linders’ modern collections The James Bond Phenomenon and Revisioning 007: James Bond and Casino Royale,...
Ian Fleming’s James Bond is one of the most recognizable and successful characters in modern popular culture. The novels have sold over 100 million copies, and the film franchise is the second most successful in history, having been recently displaced by the Harry Potter series. For most readers and viewers, 007 is merely a Western pop icon. However, there is much more at work in the novels and films than appears on the surface. In fact, there are deeper undercurrents, themes, symbols, and messages that operate as psychological warfare propaganda and an in-depth semiotic analysis of the novels and films yields an interpretation that confirms this thesis. Much has been written on the subject of Ian Fleming’s James Bond. From Umberto Eco’s older essay “Narrative Structures in Fleming” to Christoph Linders’ modern collections The James Bond Phenomenon and Revisioning 007: James Bond and Casino Royale,...
- 11/7/2015
- by Jay Dyer
- SoundOnSight
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As Spectre opens in UK cinemas, Daniel Craig talks about playing Bond for the fourth time, injuries, stunts and more...
Spectre marks Daniel Craig's fourth outing as James Bond, and it's safe to say the job doesn't get any easier, as widely-shared interviews have recently proved. But when we meet Craig a few days before the 24th Bond film hits UK cinemas, he seems relaxed and cheerful.
As he joins a roundtable of journalists in a London hotel, he fields a volley of questions ranging from Spectre's writing, his role as co-producer, and the injury he sustained during a fight scene with the colossal Dave Bautista.
As for whether he'll return as Bond for a fifth time, he remains coy. Here's what Daniel Craig had to say...
Well done - brilliant film.
Thank you very much.
How are you feeling this morning now the reviews are in?...
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As Spectre opens in UK cinemas, Daniel Craig talks about playing Bond for the fourth time, injuries, stunts and more...
Spectre marks Daniel Craig's fourth outing as James Bond, and it's safe to say the job doesn't get any easier, as widely-shared interviews have recently proved. But when we meet Craig a few days before the 24th Bond film hits UK cinemas, he seems relaxed and cheerful.
As he joins a roundtable of journalists in a London hotel, he fields a volley of questions ranging from Spectre's writing, his role as co-producer, and the injury he sustained during a fight scene with the colossal Dave Bautista.
As for whether he'll return as Bond for a fifth time, he remains coy. Here's what Daniel Craig had to say...
Well done - brilliant film.
Thank you very much.
How are you feeling this morning now the reviews are in?...
- 10/23/2015
- by ryanlambie
- Den of Geek
By: Jay Dyer
Ian Fleming’s James Bond is one of the most recognizable and successful characters in modern popular culture. The novels have sold over 100 million copies, and the film franchise is the second most successful in history, having been recently displaced by the Harry Potter series. For most readers and viewers, 007 is merely a Western pop icon. However, there is much more at work in the novels and films than appears on the surface. In fact, there are deeper undercurrents, themes, symbols, and messages that operate as psychological warfare propaganda and an in-depth semiotic analysis of the novels and films yields an interpretation that confirms this thesis. Much has been written on the subject of Ian Fleming’s James Bond. From Umberto Eco’s older essay “Narrative Structures in Fleming” to Christoph Linders’ modern collections The James Bond Phenomenon and Revisioning 007: James Bond and Casino Royale, there...
Ian Fleming’s James Bond is one of the most recognizable and successful characters in modern popular culture. The novels have sold over 100 million copies, and the film franchise is the second most successful in history, having been recently displaced by the Harry Potter series. For most readers and viewers, 007 is merely a Western pop icon. However, there is much more at work in the novels and films than appears on the surface. In fact, there are deeper undercurrents, themes, symbols, and messages that operate as psychological warfare propaganda and an in-depth semiotic analysis of the novels and films yields an interpretation that confirms this thesis. Much has been written on the subject of Ian Fleming’s James Bond. From Umberto Eco’s older essay “Narrative Structures in Fleming” to Christoph Linders’ modern collections The James Bond Phenomenon and Revisioning 007: James Bond and Casino Royale, there...
- 5/12/2015
- by Jay Dyer
- SoundOnSight
“There was a man in New York one time,” reminisces Kingsley Amis in his book Everyday Drinking, “who bet he could drink fifteen double Martinis in an hour. He got there all right and collected his money but within another minute fell dead off his bar stool.” It’s a pity Amis never met Nick Charles (William Powell) or his wife, Nora (Myrna Loy), who down a half-dozen martinis apiece within The Thin Man’s opening minutes; they’d have doubtless won the bet and swiftly ordered more. Nick and Nora remain Dashiell Hammett's most enduring pair of private detectives, and The Thin Man, adapted by W.S. Van Dyke from the mystery novel of the same name, is an exemplary film noir. Hammett’s story of a vanishing family patriarch and...
- 12/24/2014
- Village Voice
Early imprints of the Bond books increase in value every year. Is this just down to a large readership, or does it say something more fundamental about Ian Fleming's creation?
Funny old thing, that James Bond. Though Ian Fleming died in 1964, his hero has had a charmed existence since, newly incarnated in a variety of actors and films, and in further Bond adventures written by Kingsley Amis, John Gardner, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver and, now, William Boyd.
Of these, Boyd seems the best choice. He has a sophisticated interest in the world of espionage, a fluent prose style, and a crisp eye for a Bondish detail. He was pictured, on publication week, in front of one of seven vintage Jensens, each of which was to deliver a copy of Solo, his new Bond novel, to Heathrow, from where they would be flown to various destinations associated with Bond (or...
Funny old thing, that James Bond. Though Ian Fleming died in 1964, his hero has had a charmed existence since, newly incarnated in a variety of actors and films, and in further Bond adventures written by Kingsley Amis, John Gardner, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver and, now, William Boyd.
Of these, Boyd seems the best choice. He has a sophisticated interest in the world of espionage, a fluent prose style, and a crisp eye for a Bondish detail. He was pictured, on publication week, in front of one of seven vintage Jensens, each of which was to deliver a copy of Solo, his new Bond novel, to Heathrow, from where they would be flown to various destinations associated with Bond (or...
- 10/17/2013
- by Rick Gekoski
- The Guardian - Film News
William Boyd's James Bond book is, if anything, superior to some of Ian Fleming's originals
The (rare) critics of this book in the past 10 days have fallen into the very trap against which Boyd gently cautioned. That of trying to judge his book against the James Bond films. It is, in mitigation, a faintly understandable confusion, the films having become down the decades such a lash-up of stylistic tics, fashion anachronisms, "humour", believable gunplay, cartoon violence and casual sexism that it's a wonder anyone can remember the Bond of the books as opposed to the brand Bond.
William Boyd remembers the distinction. He obviously remembers the very smell of those 1960s/70s paperbacks, with their tiny type, and page corners folded down with impatient grubby fingers on every monstrous interruption, as we learned the meanings of "cordite" "gunmetal-gray" and, for late developers, "nipple"; he obviously quietly revered the excitement of the creation.
The (rare) critics of this book in the past 10 days have fallen into the very trap against which Boyd gently cautioned. That of trying to judge his book against the James Bond films. It is, in mitigation, a faintly understandable confusion, the films having become down the decades such a lash-up of stylistic tics, fashion anachronisms, "humour", believable gunplay, cartoon violence and casual sexism that it's a wonder anyone can remember the Bond of the books as opposed to the brand Bond.
William Boyd remembers the distinction. He obviously remembers the very smell of those 1960s/70s paperbacks, with their tiny type, and page corners folded down with impatient grubby fingers on every monstrous interruption, as we learned the meanings of "cordite" "gunmetal-gray" and, for late developers, "nipple"; he obviously quietly revered the excitement of the creation.
- 10/7/2013
- by Euan Ferguson
- The Guardian - Film News
A Bond book is a tough gig, but Boyd's authentically written attempt entertains more than it exasperates
Several unusual incidents occur during the course of Solo, the latest attempt to prolong the literary existence of James Bond. The secret agent pays his first recorded visit to the cinema, to see Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (this is 1969), although he gets bored and leaves before the end. He considers changing his hairstyle, for aesthetic reasons rather than as a disguise, and wonders whether the short fringe favoured by a television presenter (he can't remember his name, but it sounds like David Frost) might suit him. During a long car journey he stops to relieve himself in a wood, which will come as a shock to those who believe that 007, like the Queen, exists in a realm above such crude bodily functions. Perhaps most disturbing of all, while getting dressed for the final...
Several unusual incidents occur during the course of Solo, the latest attempt to prolong the literary existence of James Bond. The secret agent pays his first recorded visit to the cinema, to see Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (this is 1969), although he gets bored and leaves before the end. He considers changing his hairstyle, for aesthetic reasons rather than as a disguise, and wonders whether the short fringe favoured by a television presenter (he can't remember his name, but it sounds like David Frost) might suit him. During a long car journey he stops to relieve himself in a wood, which will come as a shock to those who believe that 007, like the Queen, exists in a realm above such crude bodily functions. Perhaps most disturbing of all, while getting dressed for the final...
- 10/2/2013
- by Richard Williams
- The Guardian - Film News
Solo, by William Boyd, is latest novel to follow in Ian Fleming's footsteps, which charts spy 'recklessly motivated by revenge'
We may have got James Bond slightly wrong. Yes, he is a prodigious drinker, heavy smoker and consummate killer, but when it comes to his womanising, the author of his new incarnation believes that the spy was more honourable than some think. "It seems to me he wants a relationship," said William Boyd. "It is not just casual sex."
Boyd was speaking at the launch of his new Bond book, Solo, at which he was asked who his favourite Bond girl was. "I'm not too keen on the expression 'Bond girl' because I think Bond has relationships with women," he said. Having said that, he named the character Honeychile Rider – "nothing to do with Ursula Andress playing her in the movie … I think she is a very interesting Bond woman".
Boyd should know,...
We may have got James Bond slightly wrong. Yes, he is a prodigious drinker, heavy smoker and consummate killer, but when it comes to his womanising, the author of his new incarnation believes that the spy was more honourable than some think. "It seems to me he wants a relationship," said William Boyd. "It is not just casual sex."
Boyd was speaking at the launch of his new Bond book, Solo, at which he was asked who his favourite Bond girl was. "I'm not too keen on the expression 'Bond girl' because I think Bond has relationships with women," he said. Having said that, he named the character Honeychile Rider – "nothing to do with Ursula Andress playing her in the movie … I think she is a very interesting Bond woman".
Boyd should know,...
- 9/26/2013
- by Mark Brown
- The Guardian - Film News
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...
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...
- 5/9/2013
- by Dennis Barker
- The Guardian - Film News
The release of Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of Fitzgerald's booze-soaked novel provides the perfect excuse to dream up some naughty desserts …
As fashion magazines fill up with 1920s-inspired spreads to celebrate Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, those of us more concerned with culinary pleasures can find other ways to remember this most whiskey-sodden of American novels.
Cookery writer and all-round bon viveur Kiki Bee certainly thinks so. Her new book, Bootleg Bakery, takes direct inspiration from Gatsby's prohibition-era America, in which chefs had to find creative ways of sneaking alcohol past the authorities. She had the idea when having an afternoon tea treat once: "I kept looking between the jug of Pimm's and the lemon cake on the table and thinking: 'I should do something with this.'"
The result was the "Pimm's O' Cake" recipe – actually one of the less boozy offerings in the book. Much more decadent...
As fashion magazines fill up with 1920s-inspired spreads to celebrate Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, those of us more concerned with culinary pleasures can find other ways to remember this most whiskey-sodden of American novels.
Cookery writer and all-round bon viveur Kiki Bee certainly thinks so. Her new book, Bootleg Bakery, takes direct inspiration from Gatsby's prohibition-era America, in which chefs had to find creative ways of sneaking alcohol past the authorities. She had the idea when having an afternoon tea treat once: "I kept looking between the jug of Pimm's and the lemon cake on the table and thinking: 'I should do something with this.'"
The result was the "Pimm's O' Cake" recipe – actually one of the less boozy offerings in the book. Much more decadent...
- 5/9/2013
- by Matt Chittock
- The Guardian - Film News
Did Mervyn Peake go mad writing Titus Alone, or does Titus Alone merely predict his madness? Is it a work of dystopian science fiction, or a work of psychological symbolism? Is the book a terse masterpiece, or is it just the half-formed ravings of a crumbling mind?
What the heck is this book you’re holding?
Let’s start with the facts. Mervyn Peake was a noted artist and illustrator of children’s books who spent his formative years in China. He published the novels Titus Groan (1946) and Gormenghast (1950) to excellent reviews, though not resounding commercial success. After the failure of his play The Wit to Woo (1957), Peake suffered a nervous breakdown. Parkinson’s disease, electroshock therapy, and brain surgery would follow over the next decade. Peake spent his last years in institutions, finally passing away in November of 1968. His works would dip briefly into obscurity and academic disfavor — Kingsley Amis...
What the heck is this book you’re holding?
Let’s start with the facts. Mervyn Peake was a noted artist and illustrator of children’s books who spent his formative years in China. He published the novels Titus Groan (1946) and Gormenghast (1950) to excellent reviews, though not resounding commercial success. After the failure of his play The Wit to Woo (1957), Peake suffered a nervous breakdown. Parkinson’s disease, electroshock therapy, and brain surgery would follow over the next decade. Peake spent his last years in institutions, finally passing away in November of 1968. His works would dip briefly into obscurity and academic disfavor — Kingsley Amis...
- 3/26/2013
- by David Louis Edelman
- Boomtron
J.G. Ballard’s novel “The Drowned World” has been optioned by Warner Bros for Heydey films says Deadline.
“The Drowned World” had its 50th anniversary publication last year and appeared in hardcover for the first time in the United States. Here is a synopsis from the publisher’s website:
“First published in 1962, J.G. Ballard’s mesmerizing and ferociously imaginative novel not only gained him widespread critical acclaim but also established his reputation as one of the finest writers of a generation. The Drowned World imagines a terrifying world in which global warming has melted the ice caps and primordial jungles have overrun a tropical London. Set during the year 2145, this novel follows biologist Dr. Robert Kearns and his team of scientists as they confront a cityscape in which nature is on the rampage and giant lizards, dragonflies, and insects fiercely compete for domination. Both an unmatched biological mystery and a...
“The Drowned World” had its 50th anniversary publication last year and appeared in hardcover for the first time in the United States. Here is a synopsis from the publisher’s website:
“First published in 1962, J.G. Ballard’s mesmerizing and ferociously imaginative novel not only gained him widespread critical acclaim but also established his reputation as one of the finest writers of a generation. The Drowned World imagines a terrifying world in which global warming has melted the ice caps and primordial jungles have overrun a tropical London. Set during the year 2145, this novel follows biologist Dr. Robert Kearns and his team of scientists as they confront a cityscape in which nature is on the rampage and giant lizards, dragonflies, and insects fiercely compete for domination. Both an unmatched biological mystery and a...
- 3/1/2013
- by Alex Corey
- LRMonline.com
Dustin Hoffman directs a stellar cast in this bittersweet tale of ageing opera singers forced to face their mortality
Dustin Hoffman was 30 when he made his screen debut as the 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate. Three years later, in 1970, he played the 121-year-old frontiersman Jack Crabb in Arthur Penn's western Little Big Man. In his 50s he returned to star as Willy Loman and Shylock. So he knows something about the vagaries of ageing. It seems therefore not inappropriate that he makes his confident directorial debut at 75, directing a formidable ensemble cast ranging in age from the 31-year-old Sheridan Smith to actors pushing 80 and beyond in a movie adapted by the 78-year-old Ronald Harwood from his own adroitly crafted play Quartet.
Sheridan Smith plays Dr Lucy Cogan, sympathetic manager and resident physician at Beecham House, a handsomely appointed home for elderly opera singers fallen on hard times. It's...
Dustin Hoffman was 30 when he made his screen debut as the 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate. Three years later, in 1970, he played the 121-year-old frontiersman Jack Crabb in Arthur Penn's western Little Big Man. In his 50s he returned to star as Willy Loman and Shylock. So he knows something about the vagaries of ageing. It seems therefore not inappropriate that he makes his confident directorial debut at 75, directing a formidable ensemble cast ranging in age from the 31-year-old Sheridan Smith to actors pushing 80 and beyond in a movie adapted by the 78-year-old Ronald Harwood from his own adroitly crafted play Quartet.
Sheridan Smith plays Dr Lucy Cogan, sympathetic manager and resident physician at Beecham House, a handsomely appointed home for elderly opera singers fallen on hard times. It's...
- 1/6/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Oxford just inherited a sizable collection of letters and manuscripts from former poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, The Guardian reports. The archive was donated to the University’s Bodleian Library by his children, actor Daniel Day-Lewis and food writer Tamasin Day-Lewis.
The collection includes letters exchanged between the elder Day-Lewis and other notable figures, such as Kingsley Amis, Alec Guiness, and W.H. Auden. The latter, with whom Day-Lewis was especially chummy following their undergraduate years at Oxford, offers previously unseen criticism of Day-Lewis’ work that ranges from subtle (“The lines ‘For there’s no wonder … When any echo waits’, sound as...
The collection includes letters exchanged between the elder Day-Lewis and other notable figures, such as Kingsley Amis, Alec Guiness, and W.H. Auden. The latter, with whom Day-Lewis was especially chummy following their undergraduate years at Oxford, offers previously unseen criticism of Day-Lewis’ work that ranges from subtle (“The lines ‘For there’s no wonder … When any echo waits’, sound as...
- 10/30/2012
- by Josh Stillman
- EW.com - PopWatch
Tamasin and Daniel Day-Lewis hand over poet laureate's archive including manuscripts and letter from Wh Auden.
Wh Auden did not want to appear condescending but his criticism of Cecil Day-Lewis's poem would certainly appear to be crushing: "You are not taking enough trouble about your medium, your technique of expression," he wrote, adding that one line sounded as if Day-Lewis was waiting for his tea.
The letter, from around 1928 or 1929 when both poets were still in their 20s, is one of many to appear in an extensive literary archive that has been donated to Oxford University's Bodleian Library by Day-Lewis's children, the actor Daniel Day-Lewis and the food writer Tamasin Day-Lewis.
The library will on Tuesday host a symposium celebrating the life and work of the former poet laureate and marking what Chris Fletcher, keeper of special collections, said was an extremely generous gift.
"It is a wonderful archive...
Wh Auden did not want to appear condescending but his criticism of Cecil Day-Lewis's poem would certainly appear to be crushing: "You are not taking enough trouble about your medium, your technique of expression," he wrote, adding that one line sounded as if Day-Lewis was waiting for his tea.
The letter, from around 1928 or 1929 when both poets were still in their 20s, is one of many to appear in an extensive literary archive that has been donated to Oxford University's Bodleian Library by Day-Lewis's children, the actor Daniel Day-Lewis and the food writer Tamasin Day-Lewis.
The library will on Tuesday host a symposium celebrating the life and work of the former poet laureate and marking what Chris Fletcher, keeper of special collections, said was an extremely generous gift.
"It is a wonderful archive...
- 10/30/2012
- by Mark Brown
- The Guardian - Film News
With The Spy Who Loved Me, Ian Fleming took an ambitious gamble: abandoning Bond for much of the book in favour of a female narrator. As Skyfall opens, Richard Williams remembers a surprising heroine
Vivienne Michel is perhaps the least well-known of the women for whom Ian Fleming arranged assignations with James Bond, and yet none of her more celebrated sisters, from Vesper Lynd through Tatiana Romanova and Pussy Galore to the Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, succeeded in engaging the author's interest to the same extent. To her alone is accorded the honour of a Bond book written entirely in her voice, with 007 making a late appearance in a supporting role. And although, unlike some of the others, she survived to tell the tale, she was destined to suffer a different kind of literary death.
Few novelists in Fleming's position, riding the public's voracious appetite for the adventures of a fictional hero,...
Vivienne Michel is perhaps the least well-known of the women for whom Ian Fleming arranged assignations with James Bond, and yet none of her more celebrated sisters, from Vesper Lynd through Tatiana Romanova and Pussy Galore to the Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, succeeded in engaging the author's interest to the same extent. To her alone is accorded the honour of a Bond book written entirely in her voice, with 007 making a late appearance in a supporting role. And although, unlike some of the others, she survived to tell the tale, she was destined to suffer a different kind of literary death.
Few novelists in Fleming's position, riding the public's voracious appetite for the adventures of a fictional hero,...
- 10/26/2012
- by Richard Williams
- The Guardian - Film News
An energetic family threequel surprises Peter Bradshaw
Here is a family movie from which absolutely nothing is expected, and yet it's one of the week's best releases: a muscular, potent and very funny film. It's the animated threequel from the DreamWorks studio about those wacky animals once resident in New York's fictional Central Park Zoo, who are now struggling to make their way back from Africa to America via, of all places, Monte Carlo. Not an obvious stopover.
Ben Stiller voices Alex the lion, Chris Rock is Marty the zebra, David Schwimmer is Melman the giraffe and Jada Pinkett Smith is Gloria the hippo. Sacha Baron Cohen returns as bizarre King Julien, the ring-tailed lemur. Madagascar 3 isn't getting the saucer-eyed notices handed out to, say, Tim Burton's latest film. It isn't considered as important. But to quote Kingsley Amis's famous dictum: importance isn't important, good writing is – or in this case,...
Here is a family movie from which absolutely nothing is expected, and yet it's one of the week's best releases: a muscular, potent and very funny film. It's the animated threequel from the DreamWorks studio about those wacky animals once resident in New York's fictional Central Park Zoo, who are now struggling to make their way back from Africa to America via, of all places, Monte Carlo. Not an obvious stopover.
Ben Stiller voices Alex the lion, Chris Rock is Marty the zebra, David Schwimmer is Melman the giraffe and Jada Pinkett Smith is Gloria the hippo. Sacha Baron Cohen returns as bizarre King Julien, the ring-tailed lemur. Madagascar 3 isn't getting the saucer-eyed notices handed out to, say, Tim Burton's latest film. It isn't considered as important. But to quote Kingsley Amis's famous dictum: importance isn't important, good writing is – or in this case,...
- 10/19/2012
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
With 23 Bond films now in the can, and Skyfall about to be released to cinemas, it is about time to reflect on where the franchise may go next – and while upcoming articles will explore some concrete predictions for the direction of Bond 24, this article will look backwards, as opposed to forwards for inspiration, to find the greatest Bond stories not yet told on screen.
Though most of Ian Fleming’s Bond stories have now been adapted, there remain a couple that were not in whole, and there are a number of the continuation works, written by Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks and Jeffery Deaver which have not yet been referenced or chosen outright for adaptation. And though some will invariably turn their nose up at the suggestion that some of the best Bond stories didn’t come from the pen of the spy’s creator,...
Though most of Ian Fleming’s Bond stories have now been adapted, there remain a couple that were not in whole, and there are a number of the continuation works, written by Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks and Jeffery Deaver which have not yet been referenced or chosen outright for adaptation. And though some will invariably turn their nose up at the suggestion that some of the best Bond stories didn’t come from the pen of the spy’s creator,...
- 10/15/2012
- by Simon Gallagher
- Obsessed with Film
Years in the making, Walter Salles's movie adaptation of Kerouac's beat classic is bold, affecting and inherently sad
The first two books I bought when I arrived in New York as a graduate student in August 1957 were William H Whyte's The Organization Man and a special edition of the avant-garde quarterly Evergreen Review on the "San Francisco scene". They complemented each other. Whyte's book is a devastating assault on American conformity by a senior editor of the business magazine Fortune. The Evergreen special was a celebration of the countercultural artists soon to be famous as leaders of the beat generation, and the writers featured as members of the San Francisco scene were Allen Ginsberg, whose poem "Howl" was published earlier that year, and Jack Kerouac, whose On the Road was to be the literary sensation of 1957 when it appeared a month or so later.
During that autumn my principal...
The first two books I bought when I arrived in New York as a graduate student in August 1957 were William H Whyte's The Organization Man and a special edition of the avant-garde quarterly Evergreen Review on the "San Francisco scene". They complemented each other. Whyte's book is a devastating assault on American conformity by a senior editor of the business magazine Fortune. The Evergreen special was a celebration of the countercultural artists soon to be famous as leaders of the beat generation, and the writers featured as members of the San Francisco scene were Allen Ginsberg, whose poem "Howl" was published earlier that year, and Jack Kerouac, whose On the Road was to be the literary sensation of 1957 when it appeared a month or so later.
During that autumn my principal...
- 10/13/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
The following is an introduction to a new edition of Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange" [W.W. Norton, $24.95] written by Andrew Biswell. The piece sheds light on the enduring legacy of the novel, and the various dystopian works that influenced Burgess's writing. Biswell also discusses Burgess's (often clever) responses to the novel's adaptation, and ideas for adaptations that never came to fruition:
In 1994, less than a year after Anthony Burgess had died at the age of seventy-six, BBC Scotland commissioned the novelist William Boyd to write a radio play in celebration of his life and work. This was broadcast during the Edinburgh Festival on 21 August 1994, along with a concert performance of Burgess’s music and a recording of his Glasgow Overture. The programme was called "An Airful of Burgess," with the actor John Sessions playing the parts of both Burgess and his fictional alter ego, the poet F. X. Enderby. On the same day,...
In 1994, less than a year after Anthony Burgess had died at the age of seventy-six, BBC Scotland commissioned the novelist William Boyd to write a radio play in celebration of his life and work. This was broadcast during the Edinburgh Festival on 21 August 1994, along with a concert performance of Burgess’s music and a recording of his Glasgow Overture. The programme was called "An Airful of Burgess," with the actor John Sessions playing the parts of both Burgess and his fictional alter ego, the poet F. X. Enderby. On the same day,...
- 9/25/2012
- by Madeleine Crum
- Huffington Post
The interesting premise of a sex-free couple attending therapy is shoehorned into a cutesy, phoney Hollywood comedy. I'd rather be beaten on the bottom with a Woman's Weekly
Here is a syrupy Hollywood comedy about a sexless marriage in crisis, a subject for which, in this country, the two classic texts are Kingsley Amis's autobiographical novel Jake's Thing and Victoria Wood's song about being beaten on the bottom with a Woman's Weekly. Those are both very different from this film, which magics a saccharine happy ending out of thin air, and which despite the analysis theme is weirdly incurious about its characters' backstories. Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones are Kay and Arnold, empty-nesters in a non-sexual rut. Arnold, a decreasingly lovable grump, has to be bullied into going with Kay to couples-therapist Dr Bernard Feld (Steve Carell) and talking about his feelings for the first time in 30 years … or maybe ever.
Here is a syrupy Hollywood comedy about a sexless marriage in crisis, a subject for which, in this country, the two classic texts are Kingsley Amis's autobiographical novel Jake's Thing and Victoria Wood's song about being beaten on the bottom with a Woman's Weekly. Those are both very different from this film, which magics a saccharine happy ending out of thin air, and which despite the analysis theme is weirdly incurious about its characters' backstories. Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones are Kay and Arnold, empty-nesters in a non-sexual rut. Arnold, a decreasingly lovable grump, has to be bullied into going with Kay to couples-therapist Dr Bernard Feld (Steve Carell) and talking about his feelings for the first time in 30 years … or maybe ever.
- 9/13/2012
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Early pop culture sophisticate and first post-Fleming author Kingsley Amis described British Secret Service agent James Bond as "the man who is only a silhouette" in his highly recommended critical analysis of the novel series, The James Bond Dossier. The line comes from the book Moonraker, where Bond tells us he must always play the role expected of him. This mirrors creator Ian Fleming's view of Bond as a "neutral figure" and "instrument" which, for decades, has allowed readers and audiences to project their own image onto the gentleman spy. As Bond entered the cinematic realm, each dazzling incarnation of Fleming's character helped to further define and connect 007 to the origins of his carefully cultivated image, which embodies an entire...
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- 6/21/2012
- by Alison Nastasi
- Movies.com
Anthony Burgess's diabolical tale of juvenile ultraviolence is 50. Five decades on, the novel holds a lofty position as one of pop culture's most influential and enduring pieces of literature
Fifty years ago today, Anthony Burgess published his ninth novel, A Clockwork Orange. Reviewing it in the Observer, Kingsley Amis called the book "the curiosity of the day". Five decades later and there is still nothing quite like it.
When discussing A Clockwork Orange, many mistakenly confuse the book with Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film and immediately focus on the violence of the story, when really it's the language of the book – a vernacular so lively and colourful it renders those much-discussed descriptions of beatings and rape almost – almost – comical – that is its most remarkable and revolutionary aspect. Kubrick's dazzling adaptation contributed greatly to the book's ascension to the lofty position it holds today as one of pop culture's most influential and enduring pieces of literature,...
Fifty years ago today, Anthony Burgess published his ninth novel, A Clockwork Orange. Reviewing it in the Observer, Kingsley Amis called the book "the curiosity of the day". Five decades later and there is still nothing quite like it.
When discussing A Clockwork Orange, many mistakenly confuse the book with Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film and immediately focus on the violence of the story, when really it's the language of the book – a vernacular so lively and colourful it renders those much-discussed descriptions of beatings and rape almost – almost – comical – that is its most remarkable and revolutionary aspect. Kubrick's dazzling adaptation contributed greatly to the book's ascension to the lofty position it holds today as one of pop culture's most influential and enduring pieces of literature,...
- 5/14/2012
- by Ben Myers
- The Guardian - Film News
Shrewd film producer behind School for Scoundrels and Night of the Demon
Hal E Chester, who has died aged 91, was a juvenile actor, then a producer of low-budget movies in Hollywood, before he moved in 1955 to Britain, where he set up his own production company to take advantage of the lower costs of filming. Over the next 15 years he turned out a wide range of pictures, which often featured American stars such as Mickey Rooney, Dana Andrews, Yul Brynner and Paul Newman. For a period he specialised in British comedies. The first and best of these was School for Scoundrels (1960), loosely based on the popular Gamesmanship books of Stephen Potter. The impressive cast included Alastair Sim, Terry-Thomas and Dennis Price, with Ian Carmichael as the intrepid hero trying to impress Janette Scott.
Small, dynamic and fast-talking, Chester was perhaps a typical example of the shrewd and ambitious Hollywood producer. He...
Hal E Chester, who has died aged 91, was a juvenile actor, then a producer of low-budget movies in Hollywood, before he moved in 1955 to Britain, where he set up his own production company to take advantage of the lower costs of filming. Over the next 15 years he turned out a wide range of pictures, which often featured American stars such as Mickey Rooney, Dana Andrews, Yul Brynner and Paul Newman. For a period he specialised in British comedies. The first and best of these was School for Scoundrels (1960), loosely based on the popular Gamesmanship books of Stephen Potter. The impressive cast included Alastair Sim, Terry-Thomas and Dennis Price, with Ian Carmichael as the intrepid hero trying to impress Janette Scott.
Small, dynamic and fast-talking, Chester was perhaps a typical example of the shrewd and ambitious Hollywood producer. He...
- 4/16/2012
- by Joel Finler
- The Guardian - Film News
Cinema Retro has received the following press release from MI6 Confidential magazine:
(London, UK, November 10th 2011)
MI6 Confidential, the full-colour magazine celebrating theworld of James Bond 007, returns with its twelfth issue.
The waiting is over. James Bond 23 is in production. Skyfall is coming... MI6 Confidential
attended the official press conference in London to gather the intel and soak up the atmosphere.
As well as the 50th anniversary in 2012, Skyfall will mark the longest gap between 007
adventures without a change of actor in the leading role. Will the extra time crafting the script,
organizing the crew, scouting the locations and assembling the cast pay off?
Rounding out Issue #12 of MI6 Confidential - the leading James Bond magazine - is an analysis
of The Spy Who Loved Me script history, a look at the publicity hype of Diamonds Are Forever in
the USA, and how Kingsley Amis' fascination with 007 lead...
(London, UK, November 10th 2011)
MI6 Confidential, the full-colour magazine celebrating theworld of James Bond 007, returns with its twelfth issue.
The waiting is over. James Bond 23 is in production. Skyfall is coming... MI6 Confidential
attended the official press conference in London to gather the intel and soak up the atmosphere.
As well as the 50th anniversary in 2012, Skyfall will mark the longest gap between 007
adventures without a change of actor in the leading role. Will the extra time crafting the script,
organizing the crew, scouting the locations and assembling the cast pay off?
Rounding out Issue #12 of MI6 Confidential - the leading James Bond magazine - is an analysis
of The Spy Who Loved Me script history, a look at the publicity hype of Diamonds Are Forever in
the USA, and how Kingsley Amis' fascination with 007 lead...
- 11/14/2011
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
As John le Carré might have written it – how things would have turned out if David Cameron had agreed to join the Kgb
✒It was startling to learn that David Cameron had been approached, in his youth, by Kgb officers who hoped to recruit him to the Soviet cause. Naturally he said no. But the opening this weekend of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy made me – and no doubt many other people – wonder how things might have turned out if he had agreed.
"Smiley sighed. He always found the smell of Templegate's Sobranie cigarettes irksome. 'It could go to the very top, sir,' Templegate said, 'the very top.' He brandished a manila file proudly like, reflected Smiley improbably, a hen laying an egg.
"'Bogerov told us in his debriefing. The code name is "Prophylactic". I don't know if that is a clue.'
"Smiley sighed again. Karla never left clues,...
✒It was startling to learn that David Cameron had been approached, in his youth, by Kgb officers who hoped to recruit him to the Soviet cause. Naturally he said no. But the opening this weekend of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy made me – and no doubt many other people – wonder how things might have turned out if he had agreed.
"Smiley sighed. He always found the smell of Templegate's Sobranie cigarettes irksome. 'It could go to the very top, sir,' Templegate said, 'the very top.' He brandished a manila file proudly like, reflected Smiley improbably, a hen laying an egg.
"'Bogerov told us in his debriefing. The code name is "Prophylactic". I don't know if that is a clue.'
"Smiley sighed again. Karla never left clues,...
- 9/16/2011
- by Simon Hoggart
- The Guardian - Film News
A striking presence on stage and in the great days of British film, she played the prison governor of TV's Within These Walls
Followers of postwar cinema may well recall Googie Withers's striking presence in It Always Rains On Sunday, an unusually intense film for the Ealing Studios of 1947. A bored wife, she gives shelter to an ex-lover, now a murderer on the run, played by John McCallum, soon to be her real-life husband. The lovers were shown as unsympathetically as they might have been in French film noir, and the weather was bad even by British standards.
What Withers, who has died aged 94, brought to that performance was to define her strength in some of her most powerful roles. Too strong a face and too grand a manner prevented her being thought conventionally pretty, but she was imposingly watchable because of an obvious vigour and sexuality. Thus equipped,...
Followers of postwar cinema may well recall Googie Withers's striking presence in It Always Rains On Sunday, an unusually intense film for the Ealing Studios of 1947. A bored wife, she gives shelter to an ex-lover, now a murderer on the run, played by John McCallum, soon to be her real-life husband. The lovers were shown as unsympathetically as they might have been in French film noir, and the weather was bad even by British standards.
What Withers, who has died aged 94, brought to that performance was to define her strength in some of her most powerful roles. Too strong a face and too grand a manner prevented her being thought conventionally pretty, but she was imposingly watchable because of an obvious vigour and sexuality. Thus equipped,...
- 7/16/2011
- by Dennis Barker
- The Guardian - Film News
hollywoodnews.com: Directors Guild of America President Taylor Hackford today announced the DGA’s nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Television and Commercials for the year 2010.
‘Whether it’s a 30-second commercial or a multi-part miniseries, television directors are crucial to the success of any television project.’ said Hackford. ‘As the DGA celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, we salute the critical role of the director in TV and are proud to honor the tremendous range of excellence found in the projects nominated today. Congratulations to all of the nominees.’
The winners will be announced at the 63rd Annual DGA Awards Dinner on Saturday, January 29, 2011 at the Grand Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland in Los Angeles.
***
Movies For Television And Mini-series
The nominees for the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television and Mini-Series for 2010 are (in alphabetical order):
Mick Jackson
Temple Grandin
(HBO...
‘Whether it’s a 30-second commercial or a multi-part miniseries, television directors are crucial to the success of any television project.’ said Hackford. ‘As the DGA celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, we salute the critical role of the director in TV and are proud to honor the tremendous range of excellence found in the projects nominated today. Congratulations to all of the nominees.’
The winners will be announced at the 63rd Annual DGA Awards Dinner on Saturday, January 29, 2011 at the Grand Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland in Los Angeles.
***
Movies For Television And Mini-series
The nominees for the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television and Mini-Series for 2010 are (in alphabetical order):
Mick Jackson
Temple Grandin
(HBO...
- 1/11/2011
- by HollywoodNews.com
- Hollywoodnews.com
Daniel Craig's tenure as James Bond could soon be over - the author commissioned to pen the next 007 adventure plans to make his superspy a 30-year-old Afghanistan veteran.
Crime writer Jeffery Deaver's untitled new James Bond novel is due for release in May and he tells the USA Today newspaper there are some big changes in store for 007.
The writer says, "The novel is set in the present day, in 2011. Bond is a young agent for the British secret service. He’s 29 or 30 years old, and he’s an Afghan war vet."
Current Bond Craig is 42 and the literary 007, created by Ian Fleming in the 1950s, would be close to 90.
Deaver is not the first renowned writer to tackle Bond - Kingsley Amis, John Gardner and Sebastian Faulks have each taken the baton from Fleming, who died in 1964 - but Deaver insists his 007 will be a very different superspy.
He adds, "I want to stay true to the original James Bond, who many people don’t know much about.
"People know Daniel Craig, they know Pierce Brosnan, they know Roger Moore and Sean Connery, all of whom brought a great deal to the stories of 007. But the original Bond was a very dark, edgy character."...
Crime writer Jeffery Deaver's untitled new James Bond novel is due for release in May and he tells the USA Today newspaper there are some big changes in store for 007.
The writer says, "The novel is set in the present day, in 2011. Bond is a young agent for the British secret service. He’s 29 or 30 years old, and he’s an Afghan war vet."
Current Bond Craig is 42 and the literary 007, created by Ian Fleming in the 1950s, would be close to 90.
Deaver is not the first renowned writer to tackle Bond - Kingsley Amis, John Gardner and Sebastian Faulks have each taken the baton from Fleming, who died in 1964 - but Deaver insists his 007 will be a very different superspy.
He adds, "I want to stay true to the original James Bond, who many people don’t know much about.
"People know Daniel Craig, they know Pierce Brosnan, they know Roger Moore and Sean Connery, all of whom brought a great deal to the stories of 007. But the original Bond was a very dark, edgy character."...
- 11/2/2010
- WENN
Ben Fordham, a regular reporter on Nine's A Current Affair, has been found guilty of breaching the Listening Devices Act in the process of filming a secret report for an edition of the program filmed in May 2008.
Fordham was found guilty on one count of utilising illegal techniques when producing a sting report for A Current Affair. Fordham falsely presented himself as a hitman to former local mayor James Robert Markham, who was being investigated by the program in relation to an alleged plan to cause harm to a male escort.
An Aca... More >>...
Fordham was found guilty on one count of utilising illegal techniques when producing a sting report for A Current Affair. Fordham falsely presented himself as a hitman to former local mayor James Robert Markham, who was being investigated by the program in relation to an alleged plan to cause harm to a male escort.
An Aca... More >>...
- 7/21/2010
- by Peter Allott
- TV.com
While the problems at MGM have thoroughly scuppered Bond 23 for the time being, fans of the superspy need not quite despair. There is methadone on the way to tide us over: the Ian Fleming estate has commissioned Jeffery Deaver to write a new James Bond novel.Deaver is the huge-selling American crime-writer best known for his series of novels featuring the quadriplegic forensic detective Lincoln Rhyme. The first of them, The Bone Collector, was filmed with Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie in 1999.The author won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for thriller writing in 2004, and it was the enthusiasm he displayed for Bond in his acceptance speech that attracted the Fleming estate's attention. His Bond novel, currently untitled and being referred to as Project X, will be set in the present day, and take in "three or four exotic locations."Deaver, the second Us author to write...
- 5/28/2010
- EmpireOnline
Us author commissioned by Ian Fleming's estate to continue British spy's adventures
He might be the quintessential English spy, suave, laconic and comfortable in a dinner jacket, but the adventures of Ian Fleming's iconic creation James Bond are set to be continued by the chart-topping American thriller writer Jeffery Deaver.
Best known for his quadriplegic detective Lincoln Rhyme, the star of books including The Bone Collector and The Stone Monkey, Deaver has been commissioned to write a new Bond novel by Fleming's estate. Currently known as Project X, the book will be set in the present day, unlike Sebastian Faulks's recent addition to the Bond oeuvre, Devil May Care, which took place in 1967.
Apart from its contemporary setting, Deaver was giving little else away about the plot, but revealed it would occur over a short period of time and take 007 to "three or four exotic locations around...
He might be the quintessential English spy, suave, laconic and comfortable in a dinner jacket, but the adventures of Ian Fleming's iconic creation James Bond are set to be continued by the chart-topping American thriller writer Jeffery Deaver.
Best known for his quadriplegic detective Lincoln Rhyme, the star of books including The Bone Collector and The Stone Monkey, Deaver has been commissioned to write a new Bond novel by Fleming's estate. Currently known as Project X, the book will be set in the present day, unlike Sebastian Faulks's recent addition to the Bond oeuvre, Devil May Care, which took place in 1967.
Apart from its contemporary setting, Deaver was giving little else away about the plot, but revealed it would occur over a short period of time and take 007 to "three or four exotic locations around...
- 5/27/2010
- by Alison Flood
- The Guardian - Film News
From David Bowie's son, who rejected his name, to Cameron Douglas, offspring of Michael Douglas, who was jailed for drug dealing last week, the children of stars clearly struggle to forge their own identity
Like any father witnessing the jailing of his son, Michael Douglas looked grim and ashen-faced last week in Manhattan.
Sitting in the courtroom in which his son, actor and DJ Cameron Douglas, was awaiting sentencing for dealing drugs, the Hollywood star listened to Judge Richard Berman pronouncing a harsh judgment. "Get beyond and get over that idea … that Cameron Douglas is a victim," Berman said.
Yet that was the argument that the Douglas clan – Michael, grandfather Kirk and Cameron's mother, Diandra – had put forward in letters explaining Douglas's problems in terms of his dysfunctional childhood. Cameron, it was claimed, was suffering the fallout from an age-old struggle: the battle of the son growing up with a powerful,...
Like any father witnessing the jailing of his son, Michael Douglas looked grim and ashen-faced last week in Manhattan.
Sitting in the courtroom in which his son, actor and DJ Cameron Douglas, was awaiting sentencing for dealing drugs, the Hollywood star listened to Judge Richard Berman pronouncing a harsh judgment. "Get beyond and get over that idea … that Cameron Douglas is a victim," Berman said.
Yet that was the argument that the Douglas clan – Michael, grandfather Kirk and Cameron's mother, Diandra – had put forward in letters explaining Douglas's problems in terms of his dysfunctional childhood. Cameron, it was claimed, was suffering the fallout from an age-old struggle: the battle of the son growing up with a powerful,...
- 4/24/2010
- by Paul Harris
- The Guardian - Film News
Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant have given us a lively Likely Lads throwback, says Peter Bradshaw
Like Clement and Le Frenais or Waterhouse and Hall, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant have written a big-hearted movie about working-class lads from the sticks who want to get off with girls and get on with their lives, but feel a gravitational, detumescent pull of loyalty, to each other and to their boring, boring hometown. And they've got a sinking feeling that this sinking feeling is the natural order of things, however big their dreams. Coming down in the world at last, like a punchline to a lugubrious gag, is the way it has to be.
It's a film which is at once dated and backdated: the British kitchen-sink genre this superficially resembles conjures up the monochrome image of the late 1950s and early 60s. But Gervais and Merchant have chosen the 70s as...
Like Clement and Le Frenais or Waterhouse and Hall, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant have written a big-hearted movie about working-class lads from the sticks who want to get off with girls and get on with their lives, but feel a gravitational, detumescent pull of loyalty, to each other and to their boring, boring hometown. And they've got a sinking feeling that this sinking feeling is the natural order of things, however big their dreams. Coming down in the world at last, like a punchline to a lugubrious gag, is the way it has to be.
It's a film which is at once dated and backdated: the British kitchen-sink genre this superficially resembles conjures up the monochrome image of the late 1950s and early 60s. But Gervais and Merchant have chosen the 70s as...
- 4/15/2010
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Poets, actors, authors all under one roof
On 9 May 1972, a headline appeared in the London Evening Standard: "Poet laureate recuperates at the Amis' home." The poet laureate in question was the great Cecil Day-Lewis, laureate since 1968. The Amises' home was a house called Lemmons, on Hadley Common in Hertfordshire, off at the end of the Northern line near High Barnet.
Already living at Lemmons were Kingsley Amis; his wife, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard; Howard's mother, Kit, a former ballerina; Howard's brother; and the painter Sargy Mann. Day-Lewis had arrived to stay at the house in April 1972 with his wife, the actor Jill Balcon, and their two teenage children, Tamasin and Daniel. Amis's children from his first marriage – Philip, Martin and Sally – were also frequent visitors. It seems likely that for a brief period in 1972, Lemmons was the most brilliantly creative household in Britain. It was also one of the most unlikely.
On 9 May 1972, a headline appeared in the London Evening Standard: "Poet laureate recuperates at the Amis' home." The poet laureate in question was the great Cecil Day-Lewis, laureate since 1968. The Amises' home was a house called Lemmons, on Hadley Common in Hertfordshire, off at the end of the Northern line near High Barnet.
Already living at Lemmons were Kingsley Amis; his wife, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard; Howard's mother, Kit, a former ballerina; Howard's brother; and the painter Sargy Mann. Day-Lewis had arrived to stay at the house in April 1972 with his wife, the actor Jill Balcon, and their two teenage children, Tamasin and Daniel. Amis's children from his first marriage – Philip, Martin and Sally – were also frequent visitors. It seems likely that for a brief period in 1972, Lemmons was the most brilliantly creative household in Britain. It was also one of the most unlikely.
- 4/2/2010
- by Ian Sansom
- The Guardian - Film News
Prolific actor and director who made the much-loved film The Railway Children
As an actor Lionel Jeffries, who has died aged 83, was a master of comic unease. This was perhaps fuelled by the personal unease he felt in a sex-and-violence era which overtook the gentler sensibilities he sometimes brought to his acting. But he was able to bring these sensibilities fully to bear in his scriptwriting and film directing, particularly in his much-loved adaptation of the classic children's novel The Railway Children. With the latter, he left an indelible mark on the British film industry and generations of teary-eyed viewers.
The son of two devoted workers for the Salvation Army, Jeffries disliked personal publicity and was a zealot when preparing a role (he ran two miles every morning before appearing in the musical Hello Dolly! after an absence from the London stage of 26 years). He deplored permissivism, and was not...
As an actor Lionel Jeffries, who has died aged 83, was a master of comic unease. This was perhaps fuelled by the personal unease he felt in a sex-and-violence era which overtook the gentler sensibilities he sometimes brought to his acting. But he was able to bring these sensibilities fully to bear in his scriptwriting and film directing, particularly in his much-loved adaptation of the classic children's novel The Railway Children. With the latter, he left an indelible mark on the British film industry and generations of teary-eyed viewers.
The son of two devoted workers for the Salvation Army, Jeffries disliked personal publicity and was a zealot when preparing a role (he ran two miles every morning before appearing in the musical Hello Dolly! after an absence from the London stage of 26 years). He deplored permissivism, and was not...
- 2/19/2010
- by Dennis Barker
- The Guardian - Film News
Actor who brought sympathetic dimensions to the comic twerp Bertie Wooster and the shrewd detective Lord Peter Wimsey
Actor known for his roles as the archetypal blithering Englishman
Playing the archetypal silly ass was the sometimes reluctant business of the stage, film and television actor Ian Carmichael, who has died aged 89. In the public mind he became the best-known postwar example of a characteristic British type - the personally appealing blithering idiot who somehow survives, and sometimes even gets the girl. One of his most characteristic and memorable sorties in this field was his portrayal of Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim – the anti-hero James Dixon, who savaged the pretensions of academia, as Amis had himself sometimes clashed with academia when he was a lecturer at Swansea. Appearing in John and Roy Boulting's 1957 film, he was able to suggest an unruly but amiable spirit at the end of its tether,...
Actor known for his roles as the archetypal blithering Englishman
Playing the archetypal silly ass was the sometimes reluctant business of the stage, film and television actor Ian Carmichael, who has died aged 89. In the public mind he became the best-known postwar example of a characteristic British type - the personally appealing blithering idiot who somehow survives, and sometimes even gets the girl. One of his most characteristic and memorable sorties in this field was his portrayal of Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim – the anti-hero James Dixon, who savaged the pretensions of academia, as Amis had himself sometimes clashed with academia when he was a lecturer at Swansea. Appearing in John and Roy Boulting's 1957 film, he was able to suggest an unruly but amiable spirit at the end of its tether,...
- 2/7/2010
- by Dennis Barker
- The Guardian - Film News
Katharine Whitehorn on a survey of Britain in the 1950s
What was it like to live in the 1950s? Until recently the decade was thought of as a bare patch between the battleground of the 40s and the fairground of the 60s, but recently its complexities and excitements have exercised historians Peter Hennessy and Dominic Sandbrook; and now there's Family Britain, the second book in David Kynaston's three-volume New Jerusalem project. Mercifully, this massive work – nearly 800 pages – is made highly readable by all sorts of extracts and quotations from diaries, columns and oral records, and deals as much with ordinary, everyday lives as with the machinations of politics and power.
There are surprises in it even for someone who lived delightedly through those years: was rationing really not finally called off until July 1954? Was a Tory government cheerfully still subsidising milk and National Butter in 1956? Some things I remember all...
What was it like to live in the 1950s? Until recently the decade was thought of as a bare patch between the battleground of the 40s and the fairground of the 60s, but recently its complexities and excitements have exercised historians Peter Hennessy and Dominic Sandbrook; and now there's Family Britain, the second book in David Kynaston's three-volume New Jerusalem project. Mercifully, this massive work – nearly 800 pages – is made highly readable by all sorts of extracts and quotations from diaries, columns and oral records, and deals as much with ordinary, everyday lives as with the machinations of politics and power.
There are surprises in it even for someone who lived delightedly through those years: was rationing really not finally called off until July 1954? Was a Tory government cheerfully still subsidising milk and National Butter in 1956? Some things I remember all...
- 11/14/2009
- by Katharine Whitehorn
- The Guardian - Film News
So much unseen toil and preparation goes into the art of acting of which the general audience--or, as I prefer to think of them, the rabble--is blithely unaware. For the last few days, I've been trying on different costumes, facial hair configurations, and makeup palettes to primp myself for next week's totally happening Tea Parties. Some of my liberal brethren scoff at the worry and concern voiced by Michelle Malkin and others that these peaceable protests will be infiltrated by leftwing agitators acting as agent provocateurs. Steven Benen at The Washington Monthly writes, "Now, I consider myself relatively clued in on what's going on in progressive circles. Not only have I not heard any talk about "sabotaging" these conservative rallies -- I don't know anyone who cares -- I also can't begin to imagine why Soros and/or Acorn would bother." As a freelance saboteur, I am not surprised that...
- 4/10/2009
- Vanity Fair
- What's the next best thing to being James Bond? Writing a James Bond novel, of course! And author Sebastian Faulks (Birdsong, Engelby) got to do just that when he was commissioned by the estate of Bond originator Ian Fleming to write the latest Bond escapade, Devil May Care, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Fleming's birth. The catch: write it as if it was written by Fleming himself. In fact, the novel is attributed to "Sebastian Faulks writing as Ian Fleming". Fleming's name is even written in larger print on the dust jacket. Is this really an homage to Fleming, an attempt to re-humanize the character and bring him back to his roots? Or is it actually a dismissal of previous post-Fleming Bond novels by the likes of Kingsley Amis, John Gardner, and, most recently, Raymond Benson? Perhaps it's both.Set in 1967, Devil May Care begins with Bond on a sabbatical,
- 8/5/2008
- IONCINEMA.com
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