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Fun in the sunset years

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Come and spend your autumn years in an Indian palace," a seductive voice beckons at the beginning of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. In the new film, Judy Dench and Bill Nighy lead a veteran cast of characters travelling to Bangalore in the hope of spending their retirement in sunnier – and cheaper – climes.

Trending: Multiple award winners

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

1993: Eric Clapton sets the record for the most Grammy awards won by a male artist in one year, with six gongs

The fuzzy, felty, fabulous return of the Muppets

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Three years ago, following the double-whammy of Knocked Up and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the writer and actor Jason Segel found himself elevated to the status of Bright Young Thing.

Geoffrey Macnab: This year the British found themselves out in the cold

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

After the triumph that The King's Speech enjoyed last year, the Baftas 2012 were a disappointment for the Brits. The hopes that Gary Oldman or Michael Fassbender might pip The Artist's Jean Dujardin to the Best Actor award were dashed. Many had thought that Kenneth Branagh would win a Supporting Actor award for his perfectly-measured portrayal of Laurence Olivier in My Night With Marilyn. In the event, Branagh lost out to Christopher Plummer for Beginners.

How to pick a Bafta winner! Don't miss the vital clues

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 23:00:29 +0000

Tomas Alfredson: 'I was bought up on film sets; my own kids think they're boring'

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

As a child, film meant the possibility of being closer to my father He had been making films since before I was born, so I was brought up on different film sets and I learnt a lot about the process that has been useful to me as a director. But at the time it was mainly something I knew I could talk to him about.

Suits you sir: Bill Nighy talks politics and sartorial style

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Few men wear a suit as well as Bill Nighy. But then, few men wear a suit as frequently as Bill Nighy. He wears them onscreen, he wears them onstage, and he wears them for interviews, as I learn upon entering the small, generic hotel room in which we're due to spend an hour alone together. "I always want to wear a suit, and I nearly always do," he says. "I'm a fetishist about what they used to call 'a decent lounge suit'. I sort of want to wear the same dark blue suit every day, maybe with a different shirt. My range of enthusiasm is pretty narrow; I occasionally take a break into dark grey, possibly a stripe."

Tippi Hedren - Hitchcock's caged bird

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:57 +0000

To call Tippi Hedren's attitude toward Alfred Hitchcock ambivalent would be to understate the case in the extreme. The star of The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964) is due in Croydon next month to introduce an evening of clips and music from Hitch's films.

Good girls go to heaven, bad girls conquer Hollywood

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:52 +0000

There's a new kind of girl in Hollywood. She'll steal your happily married high-school sweetheart. She'll vomit over her bridesmaid dress, and then she'll probably beat you up.

Screen Talk: Double trouble

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:25 +0000

Plans are afoot for an ambitious double feature film project starring Jessica Chastain and Joel Edgerton.

The Diary: Laura Poliakoff; Joe Penhall; Black Pond; Dominic West; Damien Hirst

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Laura's launch

Tom Sutcliffe: Take a shot at what it all means

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

"Any reaction to the material is the right reaction." As diktats go you can hardly complain that this is over-controlling. Sean Durkin said it in an interview recently about his debut film Martha Marcy May Marlene. He'd been asked about the film's ambiguities, and – entirely sensibly, in my view – had declined to take the opportunity to diminish them in any way. If you're one kind of film-goer I can see that this answer might strike you as irritating. You assume that a film means one thing, that the director knows what that is and that, even if they choose to keep such information to themselves, it is available somewhere to make final sense of everything. You might be groping in the mist but you like to feel that you might actually hit something solid if you hit the right conclusion. Durkin's might just have been a simple way of saying "Aha... I know, but I'm not going to tell you". But it seems to hint at something grander than that, which is that uncertainty is at the heart of his film. Mischievously, I did briefly wonder how he'd react if his generosity about interpretation was really tested – if some earnest loon insisted that the whole thing was in fact a coded allegory on the folly of leaving the gold standard and adopting Obamacare, for instance. But then I remembered that I was on his side anyway, in the long, drawn-out combat between the dirigistes and the open-enders. Better Durkin's emancipation of the imagination than most directors' dictatorial control of it.

Time goes by and Bogart is still a box-office hit

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

"You must remember this," the song goes in Casablanca (1942). Well, yes, we do. It is one of the most familiar moments in one of the most familiar films ever made. Audiences began their beautiful friendship with Michael Curtiz's movie in the middle of the Second World War. That friendship shows no signs of cooling. Casablanca is just about to be re-released in British cinemas for the very first time in... five years. Last time Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman were back on the big screen in 2007 (to mark the 65th anniversary of Casablanca), the film made over £100,000 at the UK box-office – no fortune but more than many new British pictures manage. The distributors (Park Circus) are confident that the film, now 70 years old, will perform even better this time round when it is re-released in time for Valentine's Day.

Artistic tendencies: How long have you felt this way, Darth?

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

On 27 February 1907, budding psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung travelled to Vienna to meet Sigmund Freud for the first time. It was to be a momentous occasion: Jung described Freud as "intelligent, shrewd, and altogether remarkable", and for the next seven years the duo developed the intellectual friendship detailed in A Dangerous Method, starring Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley and Viggo Mortensen.

Screen Talk: Good call

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:58 +0000

Actress Abigail Spencer, best known for Mad Men, has set Hollywood atwitter by writing a script named Wrong Number.

No mystery why we've loved Kristin Scott Thomas for so long...

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:54 +0000

'Was it difficult to play an enigma wrapped up in a mystery?" posits Kristin Scott Thomas as we sit in the lavish surrounds of the Hotel Mandarin in Paris chatting about her role in The Woman in the Fifth. "It was an interesting challenge because it's true that this character doesn't make much sense as far as characters are concerned. It's just sort of layer after layer of fantasy; she's a mother, she's a muse, she's a sexual partner, an inspiration and a danger."

Screen Talk: Good call

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:13 +0000

Actress Abigail Spencer, best known for Mad Men, has set Hollywood atwitter by writing a script named Wrong Number.

Cultural Life: Adam Deacon, actor

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Films: I know 'Bronson' came out a few years ago, but Tom Hardy gives such an amazing performance. I was captivated throughout. I also saw 'Babylon' the other night. I've seen it many times now. It's a very inspirational British film; it really gives you an insight into the social climate in London in the early 1980s. I watch a lot of comedies; I love the stuff that Eddie Murphy did in the Eighties.

New stars shine at Küstendorf Film and Music Festival

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The hamlet of Küstendorf is like a Disneyland for cinema auteurs. Built by double-Palme d'Or-winning director Emir Kusturica, the village has streets named after Federico Fellini and Jean Vigo. The cinema is called the Stanley Kubrick Theatre and the restaurant carries the moniker Visconti. It's also been home to the Küstendorf Film and Music Festival since 2008.

Sister act part three: Is Elizabeth Olsen about to eclipse both of her celebrity siblings?

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The elephant lurking in the Los Angeles hotel room where Elizabeth Olsen holds court refuses to budge until the question is asked. Patiently discussing her burgeoning acting career, she looks relieved, if not faintly exasperated, when finally asked what role her far-more-famous twin sisters, Mary-Kate and Ashley, have played in her life thus far.

Felicity Jones: Why Hollywood can wait

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

If it weren’t for Jessica Chastain, Felicity Jones might well have broken the record for appearing in the greatest number of films in the shortest period of time.

Showbusiness's last secret: actors who daren't leave the closet

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

A charter to protect the rights of gay actors and actresses is to be created after it emerged that many still worry about the effect of coming out on their careers and professional relationships. The entertainment trade union Equity said it hoped to agree a charter that will enshrine the rights of its gay members at a meeting of global unions in Toronto later this year.

The Diary: Roman Polanski; BBC Radio; Denmark's best stand-ups; Royal Court

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Go no more a Roman

Eddie, Steady, Go: The talented Mr Redmayne on Baftas, bankers and Birdsong

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Every Christmas Eve, the actor Eddie Redmayne cooks a ham. He tends to this ham with the utmost care and devotion, adding a little brown sugar here; a few more cloves there. It takes him hours, if not a whole day. For those of us who partake regularly of the Redmayne ham – he and I go back a long way – and it seems to get better every Christmas, as if he's been quietly, stealthily striving to improve the recipe all year round. Yet no matter how magnificent it tastes, how tenderly it melts in the mouth, he will brook no compliments of the ham. Invariably, he will instead point out what he could, should have done better.

Screen Talk: A scene-stealer

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Seth Gordon, the man behind the camera for the comedy hit Horrible Bosses, has been signed by Universal to direct comedy Identity Thief. The script is about a man who has his identity stolen by a woman and the project has Melissa McCarthy and Jason Bateman attached to star. Steve Conrad wrote the initial draft and Craig Mazin is currently rewriting the screenplay. Gordon, whose background is largely in documentaries, made the studios sit up and take notice with that thing every in Hollywood chases. A cheap hit. Bosses made $117 million domestically and $209 million worldwide.

Ice-T leads the dance in the Utah mountains

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Once notorious for fighting the power, Ice-T has emerged as the most unlikely champion of this year's annual showcase of independent film, founded by Robert Redford, in the snowy environs of Utah, in the west of the US. The 53-year-old rapper-turned-actor – real name Tracy Marrow – can now add bona fide film-maker to his ever-increasing resumé, thanks to his highly engaging documentary, Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap, co-directed with the BBC's Andy Baybutt.

Dinner in a movie: Cinemagoers can get now get a three-course supper brought to their seats

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

For years a trip to the cinema has been marked by the synthetic buttery smell of popcorn, for which cinema-goers queue for in the hundreds. But in an increasing number of places, the aroma of more upmarket fare is wafting in, while guests enjoy a personal touch by ordering from their seats.

Geoffrey Macnab: Venerable filmmakers show the benefits of experience in Oscar nominations

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

There is a back-to-the-future look about this year's Oscar nominations. Venerable nominees – like Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Max von Sydow and Terrence Malick – are names you could have found on an awards list from a quarter of a century ago. Teen audiences may dominate the multiplexes but certainly no one can accuse the Academy of ageism.

Gallery: Best Picture Oscar milestones

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:30:56 +0000

Michel Hazanavicius' silent film The Artist is already shaping up to be the runaway hit of the awards season with twelve Bafta nominations, and six nominations and two wins at the Golden Globes - including for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy.

Deborah Ross: Classic British films re-sold to the cinema-goers who matter

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

If you ask me, David Cameron's recent plea to the UK film industry requesting it should "try to support more commercially viable pictures" has made me think that the only way this might be possible is by aiming all movies at the youth market and, in particular, the popcorn-munching, Coke-slurping teenagers who are almost solely responsible for the success of mainstream blockbusters.

Screen test: Take the Spielberg challenge

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:00:56 +0000

'Jaws' in the 1970s; 'ET' in the 1980s; 'Jurassic Park' in the 1990s – every decade, Steven Spielberg, 65, defines the era. His latest hit, an adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's 'War Horse', took £4m on its first weekend in Britain and is nominated for five Baftas. Last night, he was recognised with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Producers Guild of America. But how much do you know about the man behind the clapper-board?

Heads Up: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:00:49 +0000

What are we talking about?

Ghosts: Our love affair

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The supposed visit by Princess Diana's spirit to Chinese tourists in Scotland, revealed last week, was a timely apparition: ghosts are gearing up to make their presence felt this year, thanks to a succession of high-profile new books, films and cultural shows.

Jason Reitman: Squirming in the dark with Dr Feel-bad

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Lately we've become used to expecting nothing remarkable from mainstream American cinema. So it comes as a thrill when Hollywood produces something impressive. And when that something also dares to be uncomfortable, you start to hope that maybe there's some small renaissance going on. If that's over-optimistic, this spring's output suggests at least that intelligent, adult American movies are not the extinct species we feared.

Steven Soderbergh: 'Three more movies and I'm out of here'

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Steven Soderbergh has had enough. It's no secret: his retirement has been a hot topic of conversation in Hollywood since Matt Damon first let slip that the Oscar-winning film director was disillusioned back in 2010. The director of Erin Brockovich, Ocean's Eleven and Traffic has often spoken of his desire to take a prolonged sabbatical, only to contradict this by making films such as last autumn's big-budget medical disaster film Contagion and his latest offering, Haywire, the director's first foray into action which opens this weekend.

What To Do, See & Buy: Roots Manuva; Kevin Lyons; Mark Hix; Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene; Martina Evans

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Back to Roots

Dreams turn to reality for surrealist film director

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:01:58 +0000

Dreams are "undoubtedly one of the most substantial sources of inspiration," says the Czech film director, producer and animator, Jan Svankmajer, discussing his new film, Surviving Life.The plot follows a man who meets and falls in love with a woman in his dreams. The dreams compel him to try to uncover their meaning and in his obsession with his dream world he begins to spend more time away from his real life.

Award horses and hot dogs: Could Uggie have a shot at the gold statuette?

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Awards season is almost upon us. Fans hellbent on promoting the rights of quadrupeds this year have been clamouring for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to expand its eligibility criteria beyond humans so that a certain Jack Russell terrier known as Uggie, from The Artist, can have a shot at the gold statuette.

Chris O'Dowd: The IT man groomed for stardom

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Bridesmaids star Chris O'Dowd, 32, who played a love-struck cop in the 2011 box-office hit, is now one of Hollywood's leading men. But he has also just been nominated for Bafta's Orange Wednesdays Rising Star Award. "The way my career is going is terrific – but it was somewhat unexpected," says O'Dowd. "This nomination just makes me feel really young."

Sigourney Weaver: You can't keep a strong woman down

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The first thing you notice about Sigourney Weaver is her height. Though 5ft 11ins is not extraordinary in itself, it gives her a domineering physical presence, which doesn't match her manner – amicable, understated, unstarry.

Screen Talk: Logan's run

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The 10 best silent films

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius's glorious ode to silent films and the winner of three Golden Globes, is, ironically, clear about one thing: silent cinema is dead. Following the release of The Jazz Singer in 1927, "the talkies" quickly took over Hollywood. By the 1930s, real-life versions of Jean Dujardin's discarded star George Valentin were trying desperately to salvage their careers. Many silent film reels were simply thrown away.

In pictures: The Golden Globes

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:51:10 +0000

See the winners, the losers, the entertainers and the wannabes in this selection of pictures from last night's Golden Globe awards.

Cut! Why it's time to snip the bloated blockbusters

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Is it just me or are films getting longer?

Michael Fassbender: Wanted man

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Interviewed in Maclean's magazine about his new film, A Dangerous Method, the director David Cronenberg confessed to being puzzled by the behaviour of one of his actors.

Story of the Scene: 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968, Stanley Kubrick

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Keir Dullea's character is forcing his way back into the Discovery spaceship after the computer HAL has tried to kill him by locking him outside.

Screen Talk: Demon seed

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

No one ever said actresses trying to make it in Los Angeles live in the real world.

Kazakhstan strikes back with 'the real Borat story'

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Kazakhstan is striking back. Five years after Sacha Baron Cohen portrayed it as a place of slack-jawed, sister-marrying thugs, its film industry is producing what it styles "the real Borat story."

The Diary: Tate Modern; Clint Eastwood; Michel Hazanavicius; Rhys Darby; Kevin Spacey

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Close encounters

Tom Sutcliffe: Your action scene will leave shortly

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

There's a hypothesis that I think can't be true. It's that directors of an older generation, those who learned their trade long before YouTube and CGI and the internet, find it harder to match their rhythm to that of younger viewers. As I say, I don't think it really makes sense, but I've nevertheless found myself thinking something like it recently. Twice, in fact, and both times with very distinguished directors (directors moreover whose ability in the cutting room is a core part of their reputation).

Can you make a film about corruption in Africa and not be corrupted?

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

It is not often that film companies preparing new movies need to set aside thousands of dollars in bribes, and for buying blood-diamonds, in their budgets. This was what happened to Lars von Trier's Zentropa when the Danish outfit set to work on its new feature documentary, The Ambassador (which premieres in Sundance this month).

Madonna takes control of a new scene

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

American, twice divorced, scorned by the British establishment she married in to and living by the adage, "You can never be too rich or too thin." It's no wonder Madonna identifies with Wallis Simpson. It's one particular aspect of Mrs Simpson's story, however, that has mesmerised Madonna – to the extent that she has poured three years of her life into researching, writing, producing and directing W.E., her account of the love story between Simpson and King Edward VIII.

Gallery: The most controversial award ceremony moments

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:50:23 +0000

Bruce Willis, Hugh Hefner, the Sex and the City girls and a 'certain famous scientologist' were all in the firing line. It seemed no member of Hollywood's elite was safe from the cutting gags of Ricky Gervais at last year's Golden Globe Awards.

Steven Spielberg: 'I grew up with stories about war'

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Steven Spielberg is talking about the best piece of advice he ever got. It came from François Truffaut, the nouvelle vague director Spielberg cast in his 1977 sci-fi classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He'd seen him perform in his own 1970 film, The Wild Child, and wrote the role of the French government scientist with him in mind. "He even called me a 'wild child'," he says, a smile stretching across his instantly recognisable bespectacled face. "He told me, 'You're a kid. You must work with children. I loved the experience myself. I'd recommend it to you. You must go off and make a movie with kids.' And I never forgot that advice."

Curtain rises on Netflix in the UK

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 01:18:11 +0000

The battle for online movies and TV on demand just got interesting. Netflix, the leading player in the US with 24 million subscribers, yesterday launched its new, £5.99-a-month streaming service for the UK and Ireland. Subscribers will get access to a raft of content, thanks to deals with Hollywood studios such as MGM, Miramax and Momentum as well as British TV providers such as the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. So viewers will be able to watch almost anything from Pirates of the Caribbean to The Inbetweeners.

Snapshots of the changing face of fame

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:01:18 +0000

Like many teenagers in Sydney in the 1980s, Richard Simpkin began waiting outside training grounds and stadiums to win the autographs of his favourite sports stars. Soon, he upgraded to record signings and famous musicians. But when a fellow autograph-hunter showed him a picture of her father posing with the late John Lennon, he decided that this might be a more fulfilling pursuit.

Dominic Prince: The horse lover's view: this film is a dead cert

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

War Horse is surely set to become one of Steven Spielberg's most popular films in history. The director has played to his strengths with a great action feature, but the power in the story will lie in the relationship between man and horse, a bond that has endured for centuries.

Soldier of fortune: Tom Hiddleston is set to become 2012's hottest new star

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Twelve months ago, only fans of the BBC show Wallander or maybe those who saw him in Joanna Hogg's film Unrelated would've picked Tom Hiddleston out of a crowd. The past year has rather changed matters. Rarely, if ever, has a British actor made such an impression so swiftly – working back-to-back with Kenneth Branagh, Woody Allen, Terence Davies and now Steven Spielberg, he has not so much made a breakthrough as smashed his way into the public consciousness with all the force of a wrecking ball.

Keira Knightley: 'Sometimes I just sit on the bathroom floor and burst into tears'

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

It's a cold winter morning and Keira Knightley is sitting alone in the library of a central London hotel. She is close to the end of shooting her new film Anna Karenina, in which she stars opposite Aaron Johnson's Vronsky and Jude Law's Karenin. No, she confides, she hasn't shot the suicide sequence in the train station yet. That is a treat waiting in store for the final day of filming, just before Christmas.

Steven Soderbergh - 'It's always good to kill movie stars'

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

For a director who has announced his retirement, Steven Soderbergh has been keeping busy. His female-led action thriller Haywire hits screens less than three months after his killer-virus tale Contagion. His next film, Magic Mike, set in the world of male strippers, is already in the can. Perhaps he feels the need to get through as much as possible before he hits 50 next year, puts on his slippers, and whiles away the days with a paintbrush in his hand.

Screen Talk: Gloria in excesses

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Demi Moore is to play feminist Gloria Steinem in a biopic of the porn star Linda Lovelace.

A bumper year for derring-do, with Bourne, Bond, and the man behind Buffy

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The new year tends to bring a glut of Oscar contenders, but there couldn't be a surer sign that it's trash time again than February's Ghost Rider 3D: Spirit of Vengeance, with Nicolas Cage as a fiery-skulled superhero.

Spielberg leads the charge

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Four legs good! If 2011 was the Year of the Goat – thanks to Italian rural masterpiece Le Quattro Volte – we can look forward to the future being equally quadruped, but equine.

Phyllida Lloyd: Prime mover

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

It's a key moment in Phyllida Lloyd's new film. "Gentlemen!" cries an imperious Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep) to her cabinet colleagues at a state banquet. "Shall we join the ladies?"

2012: The unmissable cultural treats

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Meryl Streep: Becoming 'The Iron Lady'

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

As American movie theatres go, the Paris, the tiny one-screen art-house that graces a corner of Fifth Avenue in New York adjacent to the storied Plaza Hotel, is usually a haven of understated elegance and manners. Home, customarily, to avant-garde European films with an audience size that most Hollywood producers would sniff at, the cinema opened by Marlene Dietrich in 1948 is not the sort of place where punters squabble over available seats. But at a special BAFTA screening of The Iron Lady recently, just ahead of its New York premiere, it became the scene of a rather undignified scramble, as a determined crowd jostled to snatch up precious tickets before the hordes of hopefuls hanging around "on the waiting list" nabbed them.

Scott Caan: On the crest of a crime wave

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

What better place to meet Scott Caan than the Hilton on Honolulu's Waikiki Beach? This dirty great monument to high-rise tourism flashes confidently across the opening credits of Hawaii Five-0. Since he happens to be the breakout star of this recently-rebooted TV series, which is filmed on a sound-stage just a few blocks away, we are therefore in what fans regard as his natural habitat.

Farhan Akhtar: A Bollywood star who stepped out from behind the camera

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 11:59:22 +0000

Farhan Akhtar has been the Bollywood star of 2011, both as actor and director.

We need to talk about 2011: Tom Sutcliffe tries to pin down the character of the cultural year

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Trying to determine the character of a cultural year is a bit like trying to establish the shape of a cloud when you're inside it. Set aside for the moment that cloud shape identification, like cultural generalisation, is a notoriously subjective science. Twenty years from now, should anyone be minded to look over 2011 for posterity and map its contours there will probably still be arguments about where it bulges and where it doesn't. But they will have the advantage of distance and perspective, which makes it easier to sort signal from noise. Back here, clinging to the edge of a year that isn't over yet, we're still in the foggy swirl of things and the solid and the vaporous can be tricky to tell apart.

Rooney Mara: A street-fighting woman setting the screen on fire

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

She mumbles, skulks and rarely makes eye contact. She eats only Happy Meals, wears only black and spends most of her life alone and online. She has no friends or family. She is, quite possibly, insane. And yet, Lisbeth Salander is the coolest heroine to emerge from Hollywood in decades.

Woody Allen: A New Yorker's state of mind

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

The 76-year-old man revisits the haunts of his youth. We see him outside the decrepit old Brooklyn cinema where, half a century ago, he came to see his first Ingmar Bergman movies. He is shown in the grounds of the high school where he had such a wretched time. Faces from his earlier years flit in front of the camera: girlfriends, collaborators, his devoted younger sister Letty and even – in archive footage – his sharp-tongued mother Nettie reminding him of what a demanding kid he once was. Archive footage rekindles memories of his boyhood trips to Coney Island.

The anti-social network: Why David Fincher is the perfect man for 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo'

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

David Fincher had barely heard of Stieg Larsson, Lisbeth Salander or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo when he was sent the book. It was 2006, and he was in the middle of making The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the seventh film of his so-far remarkable career. Embroiled in showing the world what it would be like to watch Brad Pitt age backwards, Fincher was too busy to read it but politely enquired what it was about. "Oh, you know, it's one of those lesbian hacker noir movies!" replied his producer, Scott Rudin. "Sounds great," he exclaimed. "But I don't want to push that rock up a hill right now."

Arts review of 2011 - Film: 2011 was definitely the Year of the Goat

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Custom has it that my profession loves to moan, but only the most churlish film critic could grizzle after what has been one of the most bracing years in recent cinema.

The Diary: Nick Clegg; Alexandra Roach; Lucian Freud; Secret Cinema; Graham Linehan

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Nick Clegg: a tragedy

A cultural Christmas: The best films, shows, art, comedy, gigs and dance over the festive season

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

GIGS

Screen Talk: Beginning of the end

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Given the apocalyptic weather and natural disasters that hit parts of the world in 2011, many movies in development reflect harsh prospects for humans on earth.

Siblings who put the sex in 'sexagenarian'

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

It's a cold, winter afternoon. I am sitting in the Tuchisnki, an ornate but fading picture-palace in the centre of Amsterdam, flanked by two old whores. On my right hand side is the 69-year-old prostitute Martine Fokkens (who is still working). On my left is her identical twin sister Louise (who retired two years ago.) Both have little Chihuahuas perched on their shoulders. They're drinking warm and fizzy white wine and are in celebratory if somewhat maudlin mood. Thick-set and with white hair, they look like farmers' wives... and, disconcertingly, a little like the film director Ken Russell in his latter years. Both are extremely kindly ladies, with a solicitous, grandmotherly air. When I tell them that I have been feeling a little poorly, they both put their hands on my forehead.

Kerry Washington - Tarantino's leading lady is calling all the shots

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

There's a running joke in Kerry Washington's family. "This is slightly embarrassing," she confides. "As a young girl, my real dream was to be the woman in the shows at SeaWorld." So keen was she to be the trainer who tempts the dolphins and killer whales from the water to entertain the crowds, "it seemed like a real calling for me". Then life took her towards acting. "So the joke in my family is that I thought, 'Forget the whale, I'll just get up on the stage myself!'"

King of the digital swingers: Can Peter Jackson's Weta studios allow anyone to play a gorilla?

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

In the breezy but temperate streets of Wellington, New Zealand, between one anonymous warehouse and another, sits a piece of Hollywood. Weta Digital, the special-effects house created by Sir Peter Jackson, has its headquarters in a sumptuous but understated mansion with spacious rooms and an elegant terrace. There's also a stunningly equipped screening room with flickering starlit sky above and super-comfy seats.

Too many turkeys from Tinseltown

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

Picture the scene: It's a wild and snowy night. A man stands on a bridge, staring into the icy river rushing below him and contemplating his life. We have already been witness to extortion, fraud and domestic abuse. Over the next hour, this man's little brother will drown, and our character will plunge into depression, assault a police officer and crash his car while drunk.

Silence is golden: 'The Artist' is set to make an Oscar-worthy star of Bérénice Bejo

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

A curious thing happened in May this year. Critics reviewing a film called The Artist found themselves using – possibly for the first time in history – the phrase "The feel-good hit of the Cannes competition". Even if this year's line-up did focus largely on prostitution, child abuse and the end of the world, The Artist still stuck out as an anomaly and a half.

Michelle Yeoh: Crouching tiger, hidden dragon, political prisoner...

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 00:00:01 +0000

For an actress who has been, in her own words, "a geisha, an astronaut and a reindeer herder", Michelle Yeoh's already eclectic career has reached a defining moment.

'Dreams of a Life': The ghost of Christmas not so long past