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From fashion to film: Jean Paul Gaultier on his week as a Cannes juror

Thu, 24 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

On the top floor of world cinema's most famous bunker, the Palais des Festival, Jean Paul Gaultier, the French designer renowned for Madonna's cone bra, bringing man-skirts into the style lexicon and the torso-shaped bottles of his successful fragrance line, ushers me into the private sanctum for this year's Cannes competition jury.

Language: The cussing room floor

Thu, 24 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Ken Loach's long and illustrious showreel contains vivid scenes of animal cruelty, terrorism and domestic abuse. Yet when the firebrand director was asked by British censors to make cuts to his new film The Angels' Share, it was for the mundane crime of containing too many swear words. To achieve a 15 certificate, Loach claimed at Cannes this week, "We were allowed seven 'cunts'." The quota system for bad language, he said, is "surreal".

Gun? Check. Tuxedo? Check. Therapist? Er...

Tue, 22 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The first minute-and-a-bit teaser trailer for Sam Mendes's Bond movie, Skyfall, has just premiered online. Here are 007 things we've learnt from it:

Trending: Shining a light on conspiracy theories

Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Stanley Kubrick's horror masterpiece The Shining is the director's take on the Holocaust. Or is it about the treatment of Native Americans? Or numerology? Or how Kubrick – fresh from filming 2001: A Space Odyssey – was behind the faked filming of the moon landings?

Blade Runner with a female lead: All-action gals... just like mother

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Women, one American female actor (Yancy Butler) famously said, have been kicking ass for centuries. Her point was that it is only relatively recently that they have been allowed to do so on the blockbuster screen, and not often at that. Perhaps more than any other action director, Ridley Scott can be credited with beginning to change that.

Heads up: Cosmopolis

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

What are we talking about? A new film adaptation of Don DeLillo's 2003 novel Cosmopolis, following a young billionaire asset manager as he tries to make his way across Manhattan in a very swish limo, in order to get a haircut.

Val Kilmer - The Hollywood bad boy done good

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:56 +0100

Val Kilmer has been looking for a part to give him a career resurrection, a role that would remind the world of his talent, a part only he could do justice. In The Fourth Dimension, the Top Gun star has finally found such a role: he plays Val Kilmer.

No better escape than a trip to the end of the world

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:56 +0100

Cinemagoers, it seems, are obsessed with the impending downfall of mankind. Since Fritz Lang's Metropolis imagined a cheerless post-industrialisation future in 1927, Hollywood has churned out films detailing our demise by the bucket-load, from Brave New World and Blade Runner to War of the Worlds and Wall-E.

Luke Blackall: Cannes isn't just about the beach front parties, you know. There's the yacht ones, too

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

And so I'm back at the International Festival of Big Yachts and Parties, also known as the Cannes Film Festival. I may sound as if I'm mocking it, but it really is one of the very nicest things about a very nice job that I have been able to come here regularly for the past few years.

Nicola Horlick: From hedge funds to Hollywood

Thu, 17 May 2012 10:00:01 +0100

Readers of the financial pages will be well aware of Nicola Horlick, the superstar fund manager who landed the nickname "superwoman" as she juggled a high-powered career with raising six children. She appears less regularly in the arts section, but that is set to change as her new money-making venture has Hollywood in its sights.

Tarantino of the 2000s who's out of this world

Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom opens the Cannes Film Festival today, putting the 43-year-old Texan in rarefied company: the last two Croisette curtain-raisers were Woody Allen and Ridley Scott.

Martin Scorsese breathes new life into gangster classic Once Upon a Time in America

Tue, 15 May 2012 09:00:01 +0100

As Martin Scorsese puts it, "the great Sergio Leone's epic cinematic canvas of the 20th century, Once Upon a Time in America" has now been "reconstituted." Next week in Cannes, audiences will have the chance to a savour a new 245-minute cut of Leone's gangster masterpiece. Twenty-five minutes of extra footage will be included.

Trending: Who's really in the billion dollar club?

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Call me old-fashioned, but when I heard that Disney was developing a movie version of The Avengers, my mind immediately turned to Joanna Lumley with a pudding-bowl haircut, legs up to her armpits, and a highly improbable day job which involved saving modern civilisation from a series of comically evil geniuses intent on world domination.

Cannes Film Festival: An old lady not to be messed with

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Don't be fooled. The word "festival" doesn't mean that anything goes. Cannes has always been governed by protocol – as any man can tell you who's turned up for an evening gala in tux and dicky bow, only to be turned away for wearing the wrong shoes. And these days, the festival has a touch of the iron fist about it. Last year, after making his "I'm a Nazi" wisecracks, Lars von Trier found the festival declaring him persona non grata – which surely carries a certain prestige, a sort of auteur Asbo.

Cannes Film Festival: Guide to this year’s shenanigans

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Controversies

Cultural Life: Susannah Harker, Actress

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:40 +0100

Chace Crawford - The gossip boy putting his past behind him

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:12 +0100

We can only imagine the shenanigans that Texan Chace Crawford and Hammersmith-born Brit actor Ed Westwick, both stars of Gossip Girl, used to get up to when they shared an apartment in New York.

Films of the week: Teenager learns an important lesson in love

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Wednesday

Henry Normal: 'We are doing very exciting things with Alan Partridge'

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Back when Mrs Merton was a young slip of a thing, Alan Partridge was just a twinkle in the eye and Gavin and Stacey weren't even born, Henry Normal wrote a poem ahead of his show at the Edinburgh Fringe. It was called "The Performer's Prayer" and it began, "God, let there be an audience, please let there be an audience/ Let me not have to lie about the attendance figures when asked." "Let me", it continued, "be nominated and given whatever awards are going or let awards be made up specially..."

Still doing the rite thing – a Wicker Man sequel at last

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

How do you better a film that has accrued a mythology that no new product can possibly match? And if that film was your own, released almost 40 years ago and literally buried by the film company that bankrolled it before its remarkable resurrection as "the greatest cult film Britain ever produced", would you really want to go back to make a weirdly distorted mirror-image of it, right down to the title? And would the sacrifice here be that of your own reputation?

Trending: The Archers... a new generation

Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Teenage readers and viewers of The Hunger Games have a lot to admire about the heroine, Katniss Everdeen: her bravery, her family loyalty (she volunteers to stand in for her younger sister as a contestant in the lethal Games,) her bow and quiver of arrows, her skill at running, her cool pigtail, her indifference to the male sex, the fact that she (homophonically) shares a surname with the heroine of Far from the Madding Crowd... And with which do you think American fans most identify? You guessed. It's the bow and arrows.

Alien: The monster returns?

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

In space, goes the saying, no one can hear you scream. The tagline heralded Ridley Scott's Alien, which spawned one of the most successful sci-fi/horror franchises in film history. And now it's back. Seven films and countless merchandising spin-offs after we first encountered the implacable killing machines, fans continue to ask questions about the origin of the creatures and the planet where they were discovered.

Screentalk: Comic couple earn their stripes

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:48 +0100

Two assistants have sold an action comedy they wrote between arranging lunch bookings for their bosses.

Ken Loach: Why Britain’s only hope at Cannes is really an optimist

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:33 +0100

From 16 May, when the Cannes Film Festival opens, the Italian director Nanni Moretti and his jury will settle down to watch 21 films competing for the Palme d'Or, the European film world's highest prize. Among the contenders are David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, Michael Haneke's Love, Walter Salles's On the Road, the veteran Alain Resnais's You Ain't Seen Nothing and John Hillcoat's Lawless. One Canadian, one Austrian, one Brazilian, one Frenchman and one Australian. Are any British films in the running? Just one. It's called The Angels' Share, and it's directed by Ken Loach.

Rob Lowe - The Brat Pack star who's still making the cut

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:15 +0100

Rob Lowe just can't get enough of politics. We meet in New York where he's attending the Tribeca Film Festival to promote his latest political incarnation, playing spin-doctor Paul Turner in Knife Fight. At 48, he's lost none of the boyish good looks that made him such a star in the Eighties.

Silent House - No cuts, no edits, nowhere to hide

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:09 +0100

A grungy horror remake is not an automatic guarantee of technical virtuosity. But husband-and-wife filmmakers Chris Kentis and Laura Lau's Silent House is like no other scary movie you'll see all year. Based on the 2010 Uruguayan film La Casa Muda by Gustavo Hernández, it's part of a small cluster of films that purport to be "single-take" movies.

Films of the Week: Jeff and Cybill's drama is a cut above the rest

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Tuesday

Luke Blackall: Curtis tips an unlikely hat to Animal House

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The question "what's your favourite film?" is an awful one. Try it as an ice-breaker, and it can have the opposite effect, paralysing conversation as one scrambles around for a single, definitive answer.

100 years of Universal

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

It warmed our hearts with the story of a lovable extraterrestrial wanting to return home, it terrified us with a mechanical shark named Bruce, and it created one of cinema's most memorable shower scenes by plunging a knife into a casaba melon to produce the sound of actress Janet Leigh being stabbed. Tomorrow, the film studio behind E.T., Jaws and Psycho will celebrate its centenary. Here, in exclusive extracts from interviews that Universal Pictures conducted to mark its centenary, 10 stars reveal their memories of working for the studio.

Scarlett Johansson: 'People pry so much. I'm constantly surprised by how rude people are'

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

I never wanted to be a sex symbol I wanted to be a character actor. Those are the actors I mostly admire. I think women that are curvy can be pigeonholed in that bombshell thing. It's not like I actively look for sexy roles. It's not a requirement that my character be pretty and delicate. I never think about my character being sexy, unless that's written in.

Observations: How to play the Incredible Hulk

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:56 +0100

When Mark Ruffalo won his role as the Incredible Hulk for this month's mega-blockbuster Avengers Assemble, he made one fatal mistake: trawling the internet for reactions. Comic-book fans – particularly those obsessed with the Marvel superhero universe – can be an unforgiving bunch. "It was pretty brutal," he laughs. "It definitely hurt my feelings and scared me." How could it not? Insults ranged from "Ruffalo is a tool" to "That guy is barely awake. How is he going to be pissed off as the Hulk?"

David Lister: Why it's time for venues to put great British acting names back in the spotlight

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:33 +0100

A new theatre is to be built in the West End of London, the first for many years. We know from its owners where it will be – right above Tottenham Court Road Tube station. We know roughly how big it will be – quite compact. We know what sort of shows it will put on – straight plays, not musicals. The only thing we don't know is its name

Vanessa Paradis - Happy days in ooh-la-la land

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:19 +0100

It seems peculiar to find Vanessa Paradis in LA. She's so quintessentially French in appearance and mannerisms, it would be far more appropriate if we were downing espressos under a Gauloises haze in Paris's Café de Flore, the 6th arrondissement coffee house once frequented by Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Screentalk: How to get a break in Hollywood

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:15 +0100

It was a relief for the LA movie production community when a California state assembly committee said yes to a five-year extension for the state's tax-incentive programme.

Why has Hollywood gone toy crazy?

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:06 +0100

Battleship launched a broadside at the UK box office last week, cruising to an impressive £3.8m haul over the course of its opening weekend . The movie has yet to open in the US but the early signs suggest that it looks like being another success story for toy manufacturers Hasbro, who are also behind the big screen treatments of Transformers and G.I. Joe.

Films of the Week: The Kids Are All Right; Mean Streets; Young Frankenstein; Kaboom; The Secret in Their Eyes; The Ladykillers; Singin' in the Rain

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Tuesday

Indie kid: Chloë Sevigny on sex scenes, internet lies and loneliness

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Chloë Sevigny is coming to the end of her tether and I'm a bit worried that she's going to reach it in my company. It's nothing personal – she's just had enough after 20 hard weeks filming in Manchester – although it apparently hasn't helped that our photographer has had her posing on the hotel bed. "I don't like doing stupid shit like that... I'd rather just take a normal portrait," she says, before backing down. "But it's hard in hotel rooms ... it's a regular rigmarole."

Crispin Glover: The future's bright for cinema's enduring outsider

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

American cinema would be a boring, homogenous place if it weren't for stars like Crispin Glover. Whether acting in Hollywood movies such as Back to the Future or directing movies in which most of the actors have Down's syndrome, Glover has a justifiable reputation as eccentric.

Marketing: Creating a monster movie hit

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Even by Hollywood standards, 2012 is having a blockbuster summer. When Avengers Assemble (aka The Avengers) opens this week, it will be preceded by a trailer for another mega-budget superhero film, Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, which is due to open in July, a fortnight after The Amazing Spider-Man. If you factor in Pixar's latest outing, and additions to the Bourne and GI Joe franchises, then Prometheus – the new sci-fi from Sir Ridley Scott – starts to seem like an unknown quantity. And if there's one thing movie studio marketing departments abhor, it's an unknown quantity.

Mystery man who's making all the right moves

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The actor Matthew Goode, 34, who played Colin Firth's lover in A Single Man and Charles Ryder in the movie remake of Brideshead Revisted, often gets lost in the shuffle.

'My mum's going to see this': Actors and actresses reveal secrets of the sex scenes

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The British tabloid press had one of its regular clammy spasms of outrage in November 1986, aroused by a shot of actor Patrick Malahide's pale, naked buttocks bobbing up and down amid the bracken of the Forest of Dean. In many ways, the furore over the sex scenes in Dennis Potter's BBC masterpiece The Singing Detective marked the full extent of the Aids-panicked, neo-puritan backlash against nudity and coitus in film and on television. It is a pendulum that had been swinging since the 1970s, when Hollywood and then British TV drama started to disrobe and feign explicit sexual intercourse, and the past decade, when simulated (and un-simulated) sex returned to our screens with a vengeance.

Screen Talk: Unkind cuts

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:00:59 +0100

Hollywood is mulling the impact of a small yet impactful number of job losses recently felt at DreamWorks, Steven Spielberg's studio.

Adam Brody - An actor who's one for the damsels

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:00:27 +0100

Adam Brody denies that he's suave: "I haven't ever bought drinks for a stranger and sent them across the bar by way of introduction."

Monetary frights at the movies

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:00:14 +0100

These are contradictory times for cinemagoing in the UK. For the cinema-owners themselves, optimism and extreme anxiety seem to go hand in hand. Box-office appears to be booming. For three years in a row now, the Brits have broken the £1bn barrier in takings at the box-office. Cinema admissions in Britain stand at around 170 million a year – a healthy number by comparison with the 54 million admissions the Brits mustered back in 1984. There are almost 4,000 screens in the country. The 3D boom prompted by James Cameron's Avatar in 2009 gave cinema-owners a huge windfall and helped finance the transition to digital. The audience base has been expanding, too. Partially thanks to films such as The King's Speech and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, older (over 45) spectators are going to the movies in increasing numbers and now make up 30 per cent of the overall cinemagoing audience.

Borderlines May Festival offers a new high for film fans

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

These days we're used to watching films in unusual venues but Shobdon Airfield, home of Herefordshire Aero Club and originally a training base for Second World War glider pilots, is far more special than most. As part of the forthcoming Borderlines May Festival, a series of flight-themed films will be screened in one of the 1930s hangars, along with the chance to take trial flights in a two-seater Cessna plane.

Bob Marley: So much things to say...

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

When Oscar-winning Scottish director Kevin Macdonald was at boarding school in the Highlands of Perthshire in the early 1980s, he had a passing interest in the music of Jamaican reggae legend Bob Marley and his band, The Wailers. "I do remember that one of the first half dozen albums I ever bought was Uprising," he recalls of Marley's 1980 album. "I remember when Bob died. I remember that news. I would have been 13 (in 1981)."

What to say to save a life

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:59:01 +0100

"Let's keep going." "What do you mean?" "Go!" "You sure?" "Yeah... yeah." The final, unmemorable lines from Thelma and Louise hardly capture the atmosphere of desperation as they take their own lives by driving off a cliff. Suicide in film is often glamorised and always tragic, but often unconvincing. But can films ever capture the reality of wanting to take your own life?

The Impossible Cool: Hollywood icons in pictures

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:16:54 +0100

Before green screens, CGI and 3D blockbusters, Hollywood made its impact with people – and faces that came to define a generation.

Why girl power is outgunning the mega-buck movie

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Audiences watching Peter Berg's Battleship, the film based on the Hasbro game (yes, really), could be forgiven for thinking for a moment that they had walked into a screening of Transformers instead.

Trending: When friends reunited should stay estranged

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

For a generation of twentysomethings, 1999's American Pie was something of a generation-defining film. If your fin de siècle involved Blink-182 records, dial-up internet and cheap mobile phones, then the chances are you owned a battered VHS copy of American Pie.

My Secret Life: Werner Herzog

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

My parents were... I didn't know much of my father, he disappeared quickly and I never had much affinity with him. My mother was of Croatian decent. She raised three boys in post-war Germany, which was very hard and very admirable.

Screen Talk: Hungry for more

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:00:54 +0100

There's a race going on in Hollywood and it's one that is run time and time again. It's the race to find the next money-spinning movie franchise. Competition intensifies when the sprint is fuelled by the prize of the next big young adult fiction property.

Juliette Binoche - 'French directors don't know what to do with me'

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:00:23 +0100

Holding court at Café Oscar, just off Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Juliette Binoche is the proverbial woman in black: slim-fit trousers, boots, sparkly jumper and a shock of wavy, jet-black hair swept up and away from her alabaster face. The effect is one of luminous eccentricity; if Tim Burton were here, he'd get a gleam in his eye.

Everyone was a winner when British talent met the Olympic spirit

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:00:21 +0100

Hugh Hudson's Chariots of Fire seemed nostalgic enough when it was first released in 1981. At the nadir of the Thatcher era, when there were riots in English cities as well as rising unemployment and racial tension, Hudson made a movie about patriotic British athletes striving for success at the 1924 Paris Olympics. Thirty years on, that nostalgia is amplified.

Kochadaiyaan: India's Avatar is fantasy stuff

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Bollywood's answer to Avatar could change the way we think about Indian film for ever. Kochadaiyaan is one of the boldest hands an increasingly muscle-flexing Bollywood has played of late – it will be the first ever Indian film completely shot using performance capture technology, otherwise known as photorealism.

The science of stories: Learning how to tell a tale is the film industry's most important skill

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

You need only study this week's cinema listings to know Hollywood is running out of stories. Wrath of the Titans is a sequel to a remake of a film based on a millennia-old Greek myth. Battleship is a movie adaptation of a board game. Mirror, Mirror is a version of Snow White, the fairytale first committed to celluloid by Walt Disney 75 years ago. Another big-budget take on the same story, Snow White and the Huntsman, comes out in June.

Watch the British Student Film Festival shortlist

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 09:59:57 +0100

The British Student Film Festival awards ceremony will be held in London on 27 April.

Fangs for the memory: A century of Dracula

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

"Persons of small courage and weak nerves should confine their reading of these gruesome pages strictly to the hours between dawn and sunset." So wrote The Daily Mail on the original publication of Dracula, on 1 June 1897, which sent a wave of shocked awe across the world's book critics for its farrago of devilish horrors.

Charlotte Rampling: 'I've lived with fear all my life'

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

It was Dirk Bogarde who famously christened Charlotte Rampling's ice-cool gaze "the look". Even now, at 66, she has a way of transfixing you with a Medusa-like stare and sly smile that have bewitched so many men (her Stardust Memories director Woody Allen declared her "the ideal woman"). Today, she's hiding her glances behind a pair of designer sunglasses. I feel almost denied, until she removes them to reveal those feline eyes.

My Secret Life: Eric Cantona, 45, actor

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

My parents were... immigrants. My father's parents were from Sardinia and my mother's from Barcelona.

Liam Neeson - 'A sex symbol? Flattering, but I don't think so'

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:00:34 +0100

"A sex symbol? A symbol of sex?" repeats Liam Neeson, trying the words on for size and debating whether or not he has still got what it takes. Most female audiences would argue that he most definitely has, but he remains unconvinced. "I don't think that I am a sex symbol, although it's very flattering. I'm 59, now, so I think I'm possibly past my sell-by date. I think I am."

Screen Talk: Future proof

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:00:32 +0100

Producer Brian Grazer, who runs Imagine Entertainment with filmmaker Ron Howard, likes to stretch himself.

The dark side of the money men

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:00:08 +0100

If anyone has any doubt that movie producers are ruthless, eccentric and power-crazed, all they need to do is watch films in which producers are portrayed. When Hollywood holds up a mirror to itself, what is revealed is often very ugly indeed...and yet the producers are also often the visionaries.

James Bond ditches vodka martinis for Heineken

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:18:01 +0100

Prepare for all the puns about irritated James Bond enthusiasts being shaken and stirred. Earlier this week, it was confirmed in Advertising Age that Britain's best known secret agent is going to change the habits of a lifetime and drink beer in the new Bond film, Skyfall. Heineken has struck a deal for a Bond campaign. There will be a new Heineken ad tied to the Bond film and Bond will reportedly be shown drinking Heineken in at least one scene in the movie itself. This is an act of near heresy for a movie character who has been defined for the last 50 years by his love of martinis.

Preview: Sundance London

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Later this month, the legendary Sundance Film Festival comes to Britain for the first time, with a four-day jamboree of film and music at London's O2 arena. Cynics might say it's two decades too late. For years the words "American indie" carried an almost magical charm in film circles; today many feel that the US independent scene is a demure shadow of its once pugnacious self.

Julia Roberts - Pretty woman shows her ugly side but still comes up smiling

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:00:18 +0100

In Julia Roberts' new film, Mirror Mirror, a modern-day retelling of the unsuitably old-fashioned story of Snow White, her evil queen character tries everything imaginable to stave off ageing: bird droppings, maggots, garra rufa fish, you name it. In real life, Roberts, now 44, endorses a simpler solution to staving off wrinkles: "Happiness and the love of a good man," she announces, leaning forward from a squishy Santa Monica hotel sofa to knock on the table. "My husband thinks I'm pretty, that feels good. My mum is still beautiful. I have all my teeth. So far so good. But really, one shouldn't linger too long in front of the mirror."

Dial H for Hitchcock, the star of the Cultural Olympiad

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:33 +0100

There is an irony in Alfred Hitchcock making a comeback in time for the 2012 Olympics. The greengrocer's son from Leytonstone certainly had a formidable girth – one that puts those of even the most bulky East German-era shot putters to shame – but this didn't mean he was athletic. Although he once made a film about boxing (The Ring in 1927), included plenty of tennis in his Patricia Highsmith adaptation Strangers on a Train (1951) and was said to follow West Ham's results while abroad, he rarely showed much interest in sport.

Screen Talk: Heche tagged

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:17 +0100

Anne Heche already has a cult following but now she's got some on-screen members to go with her fan base.

The Diary: Timothy Spall; The Big Chill; Fargo; The King's Speech; Christian Marclay's The Clock

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

A Spall victory

A guide to: Vincente Minnelli Season at BFI Southbank

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:28:55 +0100

The King's Speech play: At last, my crowning moment...

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:00:01 +0100

"Oh you can't always get what you want/ No, you can't always get what you want/ But if you try sometimes you just might find/ You get what you need." So sang Sir Mick and his Perambulating Pebbles. I should've paid attention. Should've listened.

Twenty Twelve, where TV scripts spookily come true

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Stranger than fiction: the 2012 coincidences

The 10 best sports movies ever made, by a non-sports fan

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 10:00:43 +0000

Clémence Poésy - Our new favourite mademoiselle

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:11 +0000

The BBC's recent adaptation of Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks's much-loved novel of love and tunnelling in First World War France, may have split the critics, but it did concentrate attention once again on the beautiful, expressive features of Clémence Poésy. The 29-year-old Parisian actress played Isabelle, the unhappily married industrialist's wife and the object of Eddie Redmayne's rapt attention (note to Eddie; close your mouth when staring at a lady), and Poésy is fast becoming the go-to French actress for English-language TV dramas and films.

It's not the taking part but the winning

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:08 +0000

It was a sight that no one expected to see, musician Sean Coombs – aka P Diddy or Puff Daddy, depending on what generation one is from – on stage at the Academy Awards to pick up an Oscar for the documentary Undefeated. The surprise was that a sports film had taken home the top documentary prize. The American Academy has a patchy record when it comes to awarding gongs to documentaries about sports. The only two previous sporting winners were The Horse With the Flying Tail in 1960, about a palomino horse that won an equestrian team gold medal, and When We Were Kings, Leon Gast's fascinating 1996 documentary about the events surrounding the "Rumble in the Jungle".

My Fantasy Band: Chris Geddes, Belle and Sebastian

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:04 +0000

Stockholm's Millennium Tour is worth investigating

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The Millennium Tour on the central island of Sodermalm in Stockholm takes in the various haunts of cyber-goth Lisbeth Salander and her ally, the investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist. Presumably, the tour doesn't include the riper, kinkier and more distressing elements of Larsson's hugely successful (over 60 million readers) crime trilogy? "No, not really," says Sara Claesson, somewhat anticlimactically. Instead, the head of communications for the tour emphasises the appeal of Salander. "She is so 'Pippi Longstocking', a very famous character from a Swedish children's book by Astrid Lindgren," maintains Claesson. "She's obstinate, small, smart and strong."

Trending: Just in from dystopia watch

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Cinematic dystopias are having a big year. The biggest, in fact, since 2009, when The Road and Terminator: Salvation both warned of a bad future. Now, we have The Hunger Games, which takes place in a US ravaged by some sort of (yes) "apocalyptic" event. Then there's the remake of Judge Dredd called Dredd. Finally, another dystopian remake, of Total Recall, set in a Fascist future where "Euroamerica" and "New Shanghai" vie for global superiority.

Louis de Bernières: 'I've been through absolute hell'

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Louis de Bernières, the best-selling author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin, is singing. "My love she speaks like silence, without ideals or violence, she doesn't have to say she's faithful, yet she's true, like ice, like fire."

Nuri Bilge Ceylan: 'Death was always with us – and that is a good thing'

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

It's not your average police drama, that's for sure. Not only do we never quite get to grips with what happened and how, but it takes well over an hour for the film to even reach the crime scene – in which time police and suspects drive around a Turkish mountain landscape in the dead of night, poking around in pitch darkness or arguing at length about yogurt.

We bought a zoo – and then they made a movie about it

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

In 2006, after a career in journalism, Benjamin Mee, with his wife, Katherine, two young children and mother, bought a large house in Devon, and the zoo that came with it. Some months later, Katherine died from a brain tumour, and in July 2007, the Dartmoor Zoological Park, which counts lions, tigers, wolves, bears and monkeys among its animals, opened to the public. Benjamin wrote a book about his tumultuous experiences, We Bought a Zoo, which was adapted by the American writer-director Cameron Crowe into a film starring Matt Damon (as Benjamin) and Scarlett Johansson. The film was released on Friday in Britain. Below, Benjamin, 47, describes the ups and downs of the past week, in which he shot a rat, fed a tiger and waltzed down a red carpet.

Screen Talk: Scout's horror

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:00:46 +0000

Etan Cohen (not to be confused with Ethan Coen) is one of Hollywood's hottest writers and Ben Stiller's go-to guy for scriptwriting, having worked with the comic actor on Tropic Thunder, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and Stiller's latest project, The Incredible Mr Limpet.

Javier Bardem - From movie villain to real-life hero

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:00:41 +0000

'There is no good side to celebrity," Javier Bardem laughs. The Spanish actor knows all about the price of superstardom. One half of Spain's most famous couple – Penélope Cruz gave birth to their son just over a year ago – he is as successful in English-language movies as those in his mother tongue. He won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his brutal turn in the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men and was nominated in the Best Actor category for playing the gay Cuban writer and poet Reinaldo Arenas in Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls and again in 2011 playing a criminal clairvoyant in Alejandro González Iñárritu's Biutiful. Three performances that highlight his remarkable range.

Some still like it hot, fast...and screwball

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:00:30 +0000

The screwball is making a comeback. A comedy genre which flourished in Hollywood in the 1930s and early 1940s, and which yielded such classic films as His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby and The Lady Eve as well as such latter-day manifestations as Some Like It Hot (1959), is being dusted down by a new generation of film-makers. Last week saw the release of The Decoy Bride, a new, Scottish-set screwball comedy. Later in the year, we'll see Tanya Wexler's Hysteria, a romantic comedy with strong screwball elements about the invention of the vibrator in Victorian England.

The shock of the old: When did we become so culturally conservative?

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Has our art become impossibly conservative? Is this the age of anodyne, coalition culture? This weekend the crowds will once again pack out the Royal Academy at all hours of the day and night, eager to take in David Hockney's primary-coloured visions of the Yorkshire landscape. Yet this is the same gallery in which the young British artists of 1997's Sensation exhibited intensely controversial work, from Marcus Harvey's portrait of Myra Hindley composed of children's handprints, to the Chapman Brothers' perverted mannequins of pre-pubescents with penises for noses.

The Diary: Stanley Donwood; The Royal Court; Headhunters; Boom Nails

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The king of T-shirts

Kiefer Sutherland shows his sensitive side

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:16:23 +0000

Think of Kiefer Sutherland and a host of images come to mind. You might think of taciturn trouble-magnet Jack Bauer saving the world, one unbelievably busy day at a time, on 24, or perhaps you're a child of the Eighties, in which case he is forever the messed-up medical student in Flatliners, the vicious lead vampire in Lost Boys or the snarling Ace in Stand By Me.

Freida Pinto: 'I'm constantly worried about what film I'm going to do next'

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

I wanted to be an actress from the age of five I wanted to be a part of every play that was put on in school. And for the longest time, I thought I was a great Michael Jackson impersonator. But that was all just in my head!

The Hunger Games: A mums' and dads' guide

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The Hunger Games is coming. It's going to be big. And unavoidable. For those who have their heads buried in the art-house cinema sand, or simply manage to avoid teenagers, THG is the Next Big Film. Think Harry Potter hype, crossed with those incredibly-popular-but-annoying-to-anyone-post-pubescent vampire films, with a bit of Stieg Larsson thrown in for good measure.

Football films: After all the own goals, get ready for some wonder strikes

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:46 +0000

You might have thought they would have stopped trying by now. The "football" movie – the obvious honourable exceptions aside – has proved a dead-end for film-makers. For every half decent shot at the genre, from The Damned United and Bend It Like Beckham to The Miracle of Bern, there have been many, many misses. The Goal trilogy, Escape to Victory and When Saturday Comes are just some of the movies that failed to hit the target. However, at present, all around Europe and beyond, ambitious new football-themed films are being made.

Michael Shannon - Superman's new nemesis slips into the costume

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:21 +0000

Spare a thought for Michael Shannon. If there was one major oversight during this year's awards season, it was his shut-out for Take Shelter. While Shame star Michael Fassbender might feel aggrieved at missing out on an Oscar nomination, Shannon got overlooked at the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes and the Baftas. There was just a solitary nod at the Independent Spirit Awards – though several of the more discerning US critics organisations saw fit to award him Best Actor. Trade paper The Hollywood Reporter, meanwhile, claimed there was "possibly no more mesmerising American actor" working today.

Screen Talk: Agent of change

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:19 +0000

Hollywood's chattering classes love intrigue around the agency water cooler, especially when it comes to agents with powerful clients.

Syrian film festival is the reel deal

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Can a film and cultural festival be exiled? It can if it's called Reel Syria, and usually takes place in March in the cities of Homs, Damascus and Tartous. Civil war has driven Reel Syria, and the DOX BOX documentary film festival, to London at a critical moment. We have seen what Syrian government forces have done to Homs. But now, in very different imagery, we can see how life under the Assad regime is viewed by longstanding Syrian critics.

Simon Callow talks the circus, Jamie Oliver and coming out

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:01:45 +0000

Simon Callow – actor, director and writer – doesn’t have many regrets, but he says he would love to have joined a circus. He would be “a clown of course.”

Trending: Playing a cinematic great? it's a tough act to follow, Scarlett

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh

Heads Up: BFI Lesbian and Gay Film Festival

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

What are we talking about? It's the 10-day-long 26th BFI London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival – so lots of new and classic queer films and events on the South Bank.

Christina Ricci: The goth who found glamour

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Naked under the merciless gaze of a wide format camera, Christina Ricci appears utterly confident in her role as Clotilde de Marelle in her new film Bel Ami. But put her in front of a live audience, and – even when fully dressed – she's terrified.

Willem Dafoe: 'I have a charmed life'

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

That dog," Willem Dafoe mutters as he remembers a previous occasion he was interviewed by a British journalist. The writer had asked him if it was true that he was the "most well-hung" star in Hollywood – a question that astounded him – and explains why now, more than a decade on, he remains suspicious of Brits bearing tape recorders. Dafoe is a very distinguished screen and stage actor with Oscar nominations and an extraordinarily varied list of credits behind him. He was speaking to someone from what he thought was a reputable newspaper – and then he had that grenade lobbed in his direction.

What To Do, See & Buy: Bettys; The Kid with a Bike; Wilderness festival; Cos; Ercol; Comme des Garçons

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Pig out