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11 items from 2014

2 hours ago | The Guardian - TV News | See recent The Guardian - TV News news »

Stage and screen actor who excelled in playing authority figures and appeared in TV shows such as Brookside and Lovejoy

Malcolm Tierney, who has died aged 75 of pulmonary fibrosis, was a reliable and versatile supporting actor for 50 years, familiar to television audiences as the cigar-smoking, bullying villain Tommy McArdle in Brookside, nasty Charlie Gimbert in Lovejoy and smoothie Geoffrey Ellsworth-Smythe in David Nobbs's A Bit of a Do, a Yorkshire small-town comedy chronicle starring David Jason and Gwen Taylor.

Always serious and quietly spoken offstage, with glinting blue eyes and a steady, cruel gaze that served him well as authority figures on screen, Tierney was a working-class Mancunian who became a core member of the Workers' Revolutionary party in the 1970s. He never wavered in his socialist beliefs, even when the Wrp imploded ("That's all in my past now," he said), and always opposed restricted entry to the actors' union, »

- Michael Coveney, Vanessa Redgrave

2 hours ago | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Stage and screen actor who excelled in playing authority figures and appeared in TV shows such as Brookside and Lovejoy

Malcolm Tierney, who has died aged 75 of pulmonary fibrosis, was a reliable and versatile supporting actor for 50 years, familiar to television audiences as the cigar-smoking, bullying villain Tommy McArdle in Brookside, nasty Charlie Gimbert in Lovejoy and smoothie Geoffrey Ellsworth-Smythe in David Nobbs's A Bit of a Do, a Yorkshire small-town comedy chronicle starring David Jason and Gwen Taylor.

Always serious and quietly spoken offstage, with glinting blue eyes and a steady, cruel gaze that served him well as authority figures on screen, Tierney was a working-class Mancunian who became a core member of the Workers' Revolutionary party in the 1970s. He never wavered in his socialist beliefs, even when the Wrp imploded ("That's all in my past now," he said), and always opposed restricted entry to the actors' union, »

- Michael Coveney, Vanessa Redgrave

18 February 2014 8:29 AM, PST | FilmSchoolRejects.com | See recent FilmSchoolRejects news »

Scottish actor Christopher Malcolm, who was a regular screen presence through the early seventies through the late eighties, and a cast regular on hit British comedy Absolutely Fabulous, died today at the age of 67. His passing was confirmed by his daughter, playwright Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, via Twitter. Today the world lost a beautiful, brilliant man. My dad Christopher Malcolm left peacefully and with dignity. He will always be my hero. X — morgan lloyd malcolm (@mogster) February 15, 2014 In addition to his television and film roles, Malcolm was an accomplished, classically trained Shakespearean actor, beginning his career with the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company in England. He performed in standards like “Macbeth” and ”Hamlet,” though his push to mainstream audiences came during his appearance as Brad Majors in The Royal Court Theatre’s original run of “The Rocky Horror Show” in 1973. While a number of the stage cast transitioned to Jim Sharman’s big screen adaptation, The Rocky Horror Picture Show »

- Dustin Hucks

1 February 2014 7:47 PM, PST | Alt Film Guide | See recent Alt Film Guide news »

Maximilian Schell movie director (photo: Maximilian Schell and Maria Schell) (See previous post: “Maximilian Schell Dies: Best Actor Oscar Winner for ‘Judgment at Nuremberg.’”) Maximilian Schell’s first film as a director was the 1970 (dubbed) German-language release First Love / Erste Liebe, adapted from Igor Turgenev’s novella, and starring Englishman John Moulder-Brown, Frenchwoman Dominique Sanda, and Schell in this tale about a doomed love affair in Czarist Russia. Italian Valentina Cortese and British Marius Goring provided support. Directed by a former Best Actor Oscar winner, First Love, a movie that could just as easily have been dubbed into Swedish or Swahili (or English), ended up nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. Three years later, nominated in that same category was Schell’s second feature film as a director, The Pedestrian / Der Fußgänger, in which a car accident forces a German businessman to delve deep into his past. »

- Andre Soares

1 February 2014 6:52 PM, PST | Alt Film Guide | See recent Alt Film Guide news »

Maximilian Schell dead at 83: Best Actor Oscar winner for ‘Judgment at Nuremberg’ (photo: Maximilian Schell ca. 1960) Actor and filmmaker Maximilian Schell, best known for his Oscar-winning performance as the defense attorney in Stanley Kramer’s 1961 political drama Judgment at Nuremberg died at a hospital in Innsbruck, Austria, on February 1, 2014. According to his agent, Patricia Baumbauer, Schell died overnight following a "sudden and serious illness." Maximilian Schell was 83. Born on December 8, 1930, in Vienna, Maximilian Schell was the younger brother of future actor Carl Schell and Maria Schell, who would become an international film star in the 1950s (The Last Bridge, Gervaise, The Hanging Tree). Immy Schell, who would be featured in several television and film productions from the mid-’50s to the early ’90s, was born in 1935. Following Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, Schell’s parents, Swiss playwright Hermann Ferdinand Schell and Austrian stage actress Margarete Schell Noé, »

- Andre Soares

29 January 2014 9:30 AM, PST | The Guardian - TV News | See recent The Guardian - TV News news »

Television director in the glory days of the BBC, who went on to make feature films

Alan Bridges, who has died aged 86, was a leading director during the glory days of the BBC, from the mid-60s to the early 70s. Today, whenever media pundits analyse the history of television drama, they wax lyrical about The Wednesday Play and its successor Play for Today, bemoaning the virtual disappearance of the single play.

By the time Bridges started working in the Wednesday Play slot, he was already one of the BBC's most experienced TV directors – he had directed excellent 10-part adaptations of two 19th-century classics, Great Expectations and Les Misérables (both in 1967) – but he relished the "right to fail" ethos at the BBC, enjoying working with exciting contemporary writers.

While continuing to have a distinguished television career into the 80s, adeptly moving from the popular to the experimental, from the modern to the classical, »

- Ronald Bergan

29 January 2014 9:30 AM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Television director in the glory days of the BBC, who went on to make feature films

Alan Bridges, who has died aged 86, was a leading director during the glory days of the BBC, from the mid-60s to the early 70s. Today, whenever media pundits analyse the history of television drama, they wax lyrical about The Wednesday Play and its successor Play for Today, bemoaning the virtual disappearance of the single play.

By the time Bridges started working in the Wednesday Play slot, he was already one of the BBC's most experienced TV directors – he had directed excellent 10-part adaptations of two 19th-century classics, Great Expectations and Les Misérables (both in 1967) – but he relished the "right to fail" ethos at the BBC, enjoying working with exciting contemporary writers.

While continuing to have a distinguished television career into the 80s, adeptly moving from the popular to the experimental, from the modern to the classical, »

- Ronald Bergan

24 January 2014 9:30 AM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

The gifted film-maker, winner of the top prize at Cannes in 1973, did not always get the acclaim he deserved in his native Britain

The death of the British director Alan Bridges at the age of 86 is a great sadness. Bridges was a brilliant poet and cinematic satirist – in tones both mordant and melancholy – of the English class system of the early 20th century, and a director with a flair for psychology and interior crisis, as evidenced by movies like The Return of the Soldier (1982) and The Shooting Party (1985).

A film-maker to bear comparison with Joseph Losey and John Schlesinger, he was one of the few British directors to win the top prize at the Cannes film festival. Bridges earned that accolade with his wonderful 1973 movie The Hireling, when the award was called the Grand Prix – jointly, in fact, with Jerry Schatzberg's marvellous Scarecrow, another film only recently being rediscovered. »

- Peter Bradshaw

23 January 2014 11:16 PM, PST | Shadowlocked | See recent Shadowlocked news »

Miscasting in films has always been a problem. A producer hires an actor thinking that he or she is perfect for a movie role only to find the opposite is true. Other times a star is hired for his box office draw but ruins an otherwise good movie because he looks completely out of place.

There have been many humdinger miscastings. You only have to laugh at John Wayne’s Genghis Khan (with Mongol moustache and gun-belt) in The Conqueror (1956), giggle at Marlon Brando’s woeful upper class twang as Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) and cringe at Dick Van Dyke’s misbegotten cockney accent in Mary Poppins (1964). But as hilarious as these miscastings are, producers at the time didn’t think the same way, until after the event. At least they add a bit of camp value to a mediocre or downright awful movie.

In rare cases, »

21 January 2014 10:12 AM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

With the news that the African Queen has become a tourist boat on the Nile, we look at other screen boats that have captured film fans' imaginations

Boats and films go together like the seaside and scampi. There's the 320-tonne steamboat in Fitzcarraldo that Werner Herzog famously had the film's extras cart over a hill to get it from one tributary of the Amazon to another. Then there's Kevin Costner's trusty trimaran in Waterworld, the U-96 of Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot, Forrest Gump's shrimping vessel, and Jenny and One-Eyed Willy's ship, The Inferno, which the truffle-shuffling gang come across in The Goonies. This year, we'll be popping our life-jackets on again in readiness for another boat film, Darren Aronofsky's biblical epic Noah.

With the original African Queen now reincarnated as a tourist boat on the river Nile, we decided to take a look at what other »

- Ellie Violet Bramley

12 January 2014 6:56 PM, PST | Alt Film Guide | See recent Alt Film Guide news »

Jacqueline Bisset vs. the Golden Globes 2014 get-lost orchestra NBC or whoever organized the Golden Globes 2014 ceremony sat Jacqueline Bisset way in the back of the awards ceremony ballroom. Never mind the fact that Bisset’s film career began nearly half a century ago and that she was a Golden Globe nominee in the Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Mini-Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television category for the mini-series Dancing on the Edge. As a result, it took Bisset, who seemed about as surprised as everybody else when her named was called up, more than a minute to reach the stage. (Photo: Jacqueline Bisset accepts her Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Mini-Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television © HFPA.) Visibly moved, Bisset had to wait a few more seconds before she was able to talk. By the time she began with her somewhat rambling acceptance speech, »

- Zac Gille

11 items from 2014