#Film Production Company in Venice

[orbispro]

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[justforbooks]

Donald Sutherland

Commanding and versatile actor known for his roles in MAS*H, Don’t Look Now and The Hunger Games

Donald Sutherland, who has died aged 88, brought his disturbing and unconventional presence to bear in scores of films after his breakthrough role of Hawkeye Pierce, the army surgeon in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970), one of the key American films of its period. It marked Sutherland out as an iconoclastic figure of the 60s generation, but he matured into an actor who made a speciality of portraying taciturn, self-doubting characters. This was best illustrated in his portrayal of the tormented parent of a drowned girl, seeking solace in a wintry Venice, in Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973), and of the weak, nervous, concerned father of a guilt-ridden teenage boy (Timothy Hutton) in Robert Redford’s Ordinary People (1980).

Although Sutherland appeared in the statutory number of stinkers that are many a film actor’s lot, he was always watchable. His career resembled a man walking a tightrope between undemanding parts in potboilers and those in which he was able to take risks, such as the title role in Federico Fellini’s Casanova (1976).

Curiously, it was Sutherland’s ears that first got him noticed, in Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen (1967). During the shoot, according to Sutherland, “Clint Walker sticks up his hand and says, ‘Mr Aldrich, as a representative of the Native American people, I don’t think it’s appropriate to do this stupid scene where I have to pretend to be a general.’ Aldrich turns and points to me and says, ‘You with the big ears. You do it’ … It changed my life.” In other words, it led to M*A*S*H and stardom.

Sutherland and his M*A*S*H co-star Elliott Gould tried to get Altman fired from the film because they did not think the director knew what he was doing due to his unorthodox methods. In the early days, Sutherland was known to have confrontations with his directors. “What I was trying to do all the time was to impose my thinking,” he remarked some years later. “Now I contribute. I offer. I don’t put my foot down.”

Sutherland, who was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, was a sickly child who battled rheumatic fever, hepatitis and polio. He spent most of his teenage years in Nova Scotia where his father, Frederick, ran a local gas, electricity and bus company; his mother, Dorothy (nee McNichol), was a maths teacher. He attended Bridgewater high school, then graduated from Victoria College, part of the University of Toronto, with a double major in engineering and drama. As a result of a highly praised performance in a college production of James Thurber’s and Elliott Nugent’s The Male Animal, he dropped the idea of becoming an engineer and decided to pursue acting.

With this in mind, he left Canada for the UK in 1957 to study at Lamda (the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), where he was considered too tall and ungainly to get anywhere. However, he gained a year’s work as a stage actor with the Perth repertory company, and appeared in TV series such as The Saint and The Avengers. He was Fortinbras in a 1964 BBC production of Hamlet, shot at Elsinore castle and starring Christopher Plummer. He also appeared at the Criterion theatre in the West End in The Gimmick in 1962.

In 1959 he married Lois Hardwick; they divorced in 1966. Then he married the film producer Shirley Douglas, with whom he had twins, Kiefer and Rachel; they divorced in 1971. Kiefer, who grew up to become a celebrated actor, was named after the producer-writer Warren Kiefer, who put Sutherland in an Italian-made Gothic horror film, The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Christopher Lee played a necrophile count, while Sutherland doubled as a dim-witted police sergeant and, in drag and heavy makeup, as a witch.

In an earlier era, the gawky Sutherland might not have achieved the stardom that followed the anarchic M*A*S*H, but Hollywood at the time was open for stars with unconventional looks, and Sutherland was much in demand for eccentric roles throughout the 70s.

He was impressive as a moviemaker with “director’s block” in Paul Mazursky’s messy but interesting Alex in Wonderland (1970), which contains a prescient dream sequence in which his titular character meets Fellini. In the same year, Sutherland played a Catholic priest and the object of Geneviève Bujold’s erotic gaze in Act of the Heart; he was the appropriately named Sergeant Oddball, an anachronistic hippy tank commander, in the second world war action-comedy Kelly’s Heroes; and he and Gene Wilder were two pairs of twins in 18th-century France in the broad comedy Start the Revolution Without Me.

Sutherland was at his most laconic, sometimes verging on the soporific, in the title role of Alan J Pakula’s Klute (1971), as a voyeuristic ex-policeman investigating the disappearance of a friend and getting deeply involved with a prostitute, played by Jane Fonda.

Sutherland and Fonda were teamed up again as a couple of misfits in the caper comedy Steelyard Blues (1973). It initially had a limited distribution due mainly to their participation together in the anti-Vietnam war troop show FTA (Fuck the Army), which Sutherland co-directed, co-scripted and co-produced.

Sutherland always made his political views known, although they surfaced only occasionally in his films. In among the many mainstream comedies and thrillers was Roeg’s supernatural drama Don’t Look Now, in which Sutherland and Julie Christie are superb as a couple grieving their dead daughter. Despite the dark subject matter, the film was notable for containing “one of the sexiest love scenes in film history”, according to Scott Tobias in the Guardian, the frank depiction of their love-making coming “like a desert flower poking through concrete”. The actor so admired Roeg that he named another son after him, one of his three sons with the French-Canadian actor Francine Racette, whom he married in 1972.

John Schlesinger’s rambling version of The Day of the Locust (1975) saw Sutherland as a sexually repressed character – called Homer Simpson – who tramples a woman to death in an act of uncontrolled rage. Perhaps Bernardo Bertolucci had that in mind when he cast Sutherland in 1900 (Novecento, 1976), in which he is a broadly caricatured fascist thug who shows his sadism by smashing a cat’s head against a post and bashing a young boy’s brains out. “And I turned down Deliverance and Straw Dogs because of the violence!” Sutherland recalled.

In Fellini’s Casanova, the second of his two bizarre Italian excursions in 1976, Sutherland coldly calculates seduction under his heavily made-up features. The performance, as remarkably stylised as it is, still reveals the suffering soul within the sex machine.

In 1978 he appeared in Claude Chabrol’s Blood Relatives, a made-in-Canada murder mystery with Sutherland playing a Montreal cop investigating the murder of a young woman. More commercial was The Eagle Has Landed (1976), with Sutherland, attempting an Irish accent, as an IRA member supporting the Germans during the second world war, and as a chilling Nazi in Eye of the Needle (1981). Meanwhile, he was the hero of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), who resists the insidious alien menace until the film’s devastating final shot.

In 1981 Sutherland returned to the stage, as Humbert Humbert in a highly anticipated version of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, adapted by Edward Albee. It turned out to be a huge flop, running only 12 performances on Broadway. Both Sutherland and Albee played the blame game. “The second act is flawed,” Sutherland said. “Albee was supposed to have rethought it, but he never did.” Albee told reporters that he had scuttled some of his best scenes because they were “too difficult” for Sutherland because “he hasn’t been on stage for 17 years”.

Continuing his film career, Sutherland played a complex and sadistic British officer in Hugh Hudson’s Revolution (1985), and in A Dry White Season (1989) he took the role of an Afrikaner schoolteacher beginning to understand the brutal realities of apartheid. In Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991), he held the screen with an extended monologue as he spilled the conspiracy beans to Kevin Costner’s district attorney hero Jim Garrison.

After having made contact with young audiences in the 70s with offbeat appearances in gross-out pictures The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) and National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978), the latter as a pot-smoking professor, he was cast as an unconvincing bearded stranger in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992).

On a more adult level were Six Degrees of Separation (1993), in which he played an unfulfilled art dealer; A Time to Kill (1996), as an alcoholic, disbarred lawyer (alongside Kiefer); Without Limits (1998), as an enthusiastic athletics coach; and Space Cowboys (2000), as an elderly pilot. By this time, he was gradually moving into grey-haired character roles, one of the best being his amiable Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (2005).

The Jane Austen novel was also featured in the television series Great Books (1993-2000), to which Sutherland lent his soothing voice as narrator. Other series in which he shone as quasi baddies were Commander in Chief (2005) – as the sexist Republican speaker of the house opposed to the new president (Geena Davis) – and Dirty Sexy Money (2007-09), in which he played a powerful patriarch of a wealthy family.

Sutherland continued to be active well into his 80s, his long grey hair and beard signifying sagacity, whether as a contract killer in The Mechanic, a Roman hero in The Eagle, a nutty retired poetry professor in Man on the Train (all 2011), or a quirky bounty hunter in the western Dawn Rider (2012), bringing more depth to the characters than they deserved. As President Coriolanus Snow, the autocratic ruler of the dystopian country of Panem in The Hunger Games (2012), Sutherland was discovered by a new generation; he went on to reprise the role in three further films in that franchise, beginning with The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013).

He played artists in two art-world thrillers by Italian directors: in Giuseppe Tornatore’s Deception, AKA The Best Offer (2013), he was a would-be painter helping to execute multimillion-dollar scams, while in Giuseppe Capotondi’s The Burnt Orange Heresy (2019) he was on the other side of the heist as a reclusive genius targeted by a wealthy and unscrupulous dealer (Mick Jagger).

Aside from James Gray’s science-fiction drama Ad Astra (also 2019), in which he co-starred with Brad Pitt, Sutherland’s best late work was all for television. In Danny Boyle’s mini-series Trust (2018), which covered the same real-life events as Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World, he played J Paul Getty, the oil tycoon whose grandson is kidnapped; while in The Undoing (2020), he was the father of a psychologist (Nicole Kidman), reluctantly putting up bail when her husband (Hugh Grant) is arrested for murder.

For the latter role Sutherland was in the running for a Golden Globe, having already received an honorary Oscar in 2017.

He is survived by Francine and his children, Kiefer, Rachel, Rossif, Angus and Roeg, and by four grandchildren.

🔔 Donald McNichol Sutherland, actor; born 17 July 1935; died 20 June 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[georgefairbrother]

A little more on Ian Lavender, who passed away February 2nd, 2024, aged 77.

Just one of the abiding friendships between the cast of Dad’s Army was between Ian Lavender himself (born 1946) and John Laurie (born 1897).

Private Pike was Ian Lavender’s first ongoing television role, while John Laurie, a Great War veteran, had appeared in British films dating back to 1929, and was a leading Shakespearean actor on stage.

John Laurie was godfather to Ian Lavender’s children, and they were both dab hands at The Times crossword. John Laurie passed away in 1980, at the age of 83.

Ian Lavender always expressed his gratitude for having worked on Dad's Army, but admitted that typecasting had held back his career, particularly in movies, although he did appear in a handful of classic mid-seventies British films, including Carry on Behind, Not Now, Comrade, and Confessions of a Pop Performer.

He reprised his Dad's Army character, Frank Pike, in a BBC radio sequel, It Sticks Out Half a Mile, and he starred alongside Mollie Sugden in one of David Croft's rare catastrophes, the sci-fi sitcom Come Back Mrs Noah. He featured with Jimmy Edwards in The Glums, and had a series of memorable cameos on British television, including in Yes Minister, Goodnight Sweetheart, and Keeping Up Appearances.

According to his obituary in The Guardian:

"...In addition to various live Dad’s Army productions, his stage work included the Peter Hall Company’s The Merchant of Venice, with Dustin Hoffman as Shylock in 1989, touring as the Narrator in The Rocky Horror Show in 2005, Monsignor Howard in the London Palladium production of the musical Sister Act in 2009, The Shawshank Redemption at the Edinburgh fringe in 2013, and his own one-man show of reminiscences, Don’t Tell Him, Pike..."

He appeared in 245 episodes of Eastenders, and was one of only two of the original Dad's Army cast members, along with Frank Williams (the Vicar), to appear in the 2016 feature film.

Here Ian Lavender recalls an unintentionally comical appearance on New Zealand radio some years after the final episode of Dad's Army.

[brian-in-finance]

Instagram 16 August 2024

Instagram 27 August 2024

Audio 🎧 from Instagram 9 September 2024

EXCLUSIVE: Apple and Skydance‘s youth empowerment tale Way of the Warrior Kid, based on the 2017 novel by Jocko Willink, has tapped 14-year-old Belfast breakout Jude Hill for its lead role, also bringing on three-time Emmy nominee Linda Cardellini (Dead to Me) for a role.

Hill plays Marc, a self-doubting boy who gets bullied and is hard-pressed to complete a single pull-up, with Cardellini as Marc’s mother, Sarah. As we were first to report, Chris Pratt also stars in the film directed by McG.

In Way of the Warrior Kid, Marc’s uncle, Jake (Pratt), an elite Navy SEAL, is injured on a mission and moves in with his sister for rehab. When he discovers his 13-year-old nephew is struggling academically, socially and physically, Jake takes on a new mission: using his SEAL Team training over three months of summer to help the youth find his inner warrior.

We were first to report on the package out of Cannes, as Pratt and McG came aboard, also sharing word of the $80M-$85M global deal Skydance locked in with Apple, where the company has a first-look deal. The film will be produced by Skydance’s David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Don Granger, alongside McG and Mary Viola for Wonderland Sound, and Pratt for Indivisible Productions. Additional producers include Ben Everard for Everard Entertainment, and Willink. Will Staples (Without Remorse) adapted the screenplay.

Cardellini is coming off her starring role opposite Christina Applegate on Liz Feldman’s acclaimed dark comedy Dead to Me, which ran for three seasons, bringing her a pair of Emmy nominations, among other accolades. Also a producer on that series, she’s set to reteam with Feldman on No Good Deed, a new dark comedy from Feldman first announced in 2022, which also stars Ray Romano, Lisa Kudrow, and Luke Wilson. Soon, Cardellini will be seen starring opposite Ben Stiller in David Gordon Green’s comedy Nutcrackers, a project we first reported on, which is set to open this year’s Toronto Film Festival. She’s also the female lead opposite Vince Vaughn in Nonnas, Stephen Chbosky’s forthcoming comedy for Fifth Season and 1Community, which we announced.

Hill made his theatrical debut as Buddy, the young lead of Kenneth Branagh’s Academy-Award nominated and BAFTA winning Belfast — a coming-of-age drama examining a boy’s experience coming of age in late ’60s Northern Ireland amid the conflict known as The Troubles. For his performance opposite Judi Dench, Jamie Dornan, Ciaran Hinds, and Caitríona Balfe, he earned numerous awards, including Best Young Actor at the Critics Choice Awards and Best Newcomer at the Hollywood Critics Association Awards. Reteaming with Branagh since then on his Agatha Christie adaptation A Haunting in Venice, Hill will next be seen starring opposite Nicole Kidman, Gael García Bernal and Matthew Macfadyen in Amazon MGM Studios’ thriller Holland, Michigan.

Other upcoming Apple Original Films produced by Skydance Media include genre-bender The Gorge starring Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy; Guy Ritchie’s Fountain of Youth, starring Natalie Portman and John Krasinksi; and the action-adventure film pic May Day with Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh in the lead.

Cardellini is repped by CAA and Jackoway Austen Tyerman; Hill by Berwick & Kovacik, UTA, and Markham, Froggatt and Irwin.

Deadline 27 August 2024

Instagram 9 February 2023 / Brian’s post

Remember catching up with Wee Jude?

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday the Scottish actress Neve McIntosh.

Born as Carol McIntosh on 9th April 1972 in Paisley, McIntosh grew up in Edinburgh, where she attended Boroughmuir High School. She was a member of Edinburgh Youth Theatre in the late 1980s, appearing in Mother Goose and Doctor in the House. She moved to Glasgow to attend the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, after which she was in repertory companies at Perth and at The Little Theatre on the Isle of Mull.

She next played in a Glasgow stage production of The Trick is to Keep Breathing. She then played in the RSC production of Dickens’ Great Expectations in Stratford, and starred as Portia in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice at the Lyceum in Edinburgh. In summer 2009, she performed in the Sylvia Plath play Three Women at the Edinburgh Festival. Her career coninues on stage both here and in the US.

Neve appeared in American director Mark L. Feinsod’s first film, Love And Lung Cancer. Alongside her many TV appearances, too many to put them all on here without it looking like a shopping list, the ones of note, to me anyway, include the brilliant Psychos, with Dougie Henshall, Trial and Retribution, Dr Who, New Tricks and again with Henshall in Shetland series four. McIntosh also teamed up with two other Doctor’s in an episode of Sky 1’s 10 Minute Tales playing the wife of Peter Capaldi’s character, and alongside David Tennant, in Single Father, a BBC drama. She portrayed the part of Anna, the sister of the dead wife of Tennant’s character.

In 2017, McIntosh played Kay Gillies in the BBC One drama The Replacement she came back home to team up with Martin Compston in Traces and recently put in an appearance in the excellent Tin Star and the podcast series Getting Better - The Fight for the NHS.

Neve's latest role, according to INDB was in the reboot of All Creatures great and Small playing bookkeeper Miss Harbottle

Neve has said that she’s proud to have been consistently acting throughout her career, speaking in The Sunday Post she says, “It’s nice just to be consistently working. There was a time when I had a bit of a wobble, but a lot of acting work had dried up and I think loads of people thought they wouldn’t work again, but it’s building back.

[aquitainequeen]

I dunno about “we are your savior”, at this point, the studios need the unions to prop up their public perception, which remains in the gutter as public support for the unions is still, months later, overwhelming. If anything, it’s going UP. The latest Gallup Poll puts support among the American public over 70% favoring the writers. But I agree with Diller’s overall sentiment. If AMPTP can’t agree among themselves how to move forward productively in negotiations with the WGA, and SAG-AFTRA after them, then yes, they probably should seriously consider splitting up and making their own deals. After all, it’s working for the non-AMPTP companies, like A24 and Neon, which premiered Ferrari in Venice over the weekend. 

And, after a moment from Adam Driver promoting a film that is not part of the AMPTP at the Venice /film Festival:

This is my point! Companies like Neon and A24 are worth a FRACTION of the multi-billion-dollar studios and streamers, yet they can sign the “dream demands” of SAG without hassle and get on with their business, which means it’s not really about the money. If it was, if it was actually true that the studios cannot afford to meet the “dream demands” of the unions, then a smaller company like Neon DEFINITELY wouldn’t be able to. But Neon can! Which means the studios can. They just won’t.

Read more from Sarah Marrs, and keep her words in mind: the studios can. They just won't.

[noonesgaylikegatson]

November 18, 2023

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese actor-director Takeshi Kitano says he wanted his new film “Kubi” to show the world of samurai in ways that mainstream movies have rarely done before, by portraying the homosexual, love-hate relationship of warlords in one of Japan’s best known historical episodes.

“What is never shown is relationships between men at that time, including their homosexual relationships,” Kitano told a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan on Wednesday ahead of the Nov. 23 opening of his film in Japan.

The story of “Kubi,” or “neck,” shows the 1582 ambush of Oda Nobunaga, one of Japan’s best-known warlords, at the Honnoji temple in Kyoto by an aide, Akechi Mitsuhide.

Past dramas from that period have only shown “very cool actors and pretty aspects,” Kitano said.

“This is a period when especially men were keeping up with their lives for other men within these relationships, including sexual relationships,” he said. ”So I wanted to delve into showing these more murky relationships.”

He wrote a script for the idea 30 years ago, then released the novel “Kubi” in 2019, leading to his production of the film. He also plays Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who takes over after Nobunaga, in the film.

Kitano, 76, began his career as stand-up comedian Beat Takeshi before becoming a TV star.

Kitano said he has seen the dark side of the Japanese entertainment industry, which recently has been shaken by a scandal involving the decades-long sexual abuse of hundreds of boys by the late founder of a powerful talent agency. Recently, the suicide of a member of a hugely popular female-only theater company Takarazuka prompted criticism over its alleged overwork and widespread bullying.

“In old days, in the Japanese entertainment industry, I wouldn’t go as far as calling it slavery, but people used to be treated a commodities, from which money is made while showing them off. This is something that’s still left in the culture of Japanese entertainment,” Kitano said.

In his early days as a comedian, there were times when he was paid not even one-tenth of the worth of his work, he said. “There have been improvements in recent years, but I’ve always thought severe circumstances have existed.”

Kitano, who debuted as a film director in 1989 with “Violent Cop” and won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for “Hana-bi” in 1997, is known for violent depictions in his gangster movies like “Outrage.”

“Kubi,” which refers to traditional beheadings, has ample violence. Violence and comedy are an inseparable part of daily lives, he said.

“Laughter is a devil,” he said. “When people are very serious, such as at weddings or funerals, we always have a comedy or a devil coming in and making people laugh.”

Same for violent films, he said. “Even when we are filming very serious scenes, there are comedic elements that come in on the set, as the devil comes in and makes people laugh,” though those scenes are not in the final version of films.

“Actually, my next film is about comedy within violent films,” Kitano said. It will be a two-part film, with his own violent story followed by its parody version. “I think I can make it work somehow.”

[greensparty]

John and Yoko and Beatles Docs Headed to Venice

At the Venice Film Festival next month, there are two documentaries premiering that have my attention immediately:

One to One: John & Yoko directed by Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland) is "a moving look at the couple's life upon their entry into a transformative 1970's New York, exploring their musical, personal, artistic, social, and political world." It's produced by Brad Pitt and his production company. It will feature personal archives from John and Yoko and features remixed concert audio from Sean Ono Lennon.

Things We Said Today from Romanian director Andrei Ujica looks at the band's first North American tour in 1964. Ron Howard's excellent 2016 documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years looked at their touring era from 1962-1966, but this one seems to focus just on that very first tour when Beatle-mania hit the U.S. for the first time.

The link above is the article from Hollywood Reporter.

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

La La Land (2016, Damien Chazelle)

08/11/2023

La La Land is a 2016 film written and directed by Damien Chazelle.

The film tells the love story between a jazz musician and an aspiring actress, played respectively by Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, made a contemporary musical that pays homage to the classic musical films produced between the 1950s and 1960s. The film's title is both a reference to the city of Los Angeles and the meaning of being in the "dream world" or "out of reality". Chazelle wrote the screenplay in 2010, but couldn't find a studio willing to finance the project. Only after the success of his 2014 Whiplash did the project gain interest from production companies.

The film received universal acclaim from critics, who praised Damien Chazelle's direction, Stone's performance and the film's soundtrack, receiving top marks from many critics and proving to be one of the most popular films since its theatrical release.

It was the opening film of the 73rd Venice International Film Festival, where Stone won the Volpi Cup for Best Female Performance. It received 14 nominations for the 2017 Oscars, equaling the record of films such as All About Eve and Titanic, ultimately winning 6 statuettes. It won seven Golden Globes, out of seven nominations, the Audience Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and many other international awards, becoming one of the most awarded and appreciated films of 2016.

On a hot and busy Los Angeles highway, the first meeting takes place between Mia, an aspiring actress who works as a barista at a café in the Warner Bros. Studios, and Sebastian, a jazz pianist who dreams of opening his own place. After yet another failed audition, Mia's roommates, seeing her down in the dumps, convince her to go to a sumptuous party in the Hollywood Hills, at the end of which, walking home, she is attracted by music and enters the club where it comes from.

A few months later, the two meet at a party where Sebastian is playing in an 80s cover band, and it is from that moment that they begin to see each other as friends, despite the strong chemistry between them, discussing their passions and their respective projects for the future. Sebastian invites Mia to the cinema to watch Rebel Without a Cause and she accepts, forgetting a previous commitment she made with her current boyfriend Greg. The two end the evening with a romantic dance at the Griffith Observatory.

Only a few people attend Mia's show. Disappointed and embittered by the negative criticism received and by the lack of Sebastian, Mia decides to leave Los Angeles and her aspirations to return to her parents in Boulder City, Nevada.

Being also a musician, Damien Chazelle has always had a strong predilection for musical films. His vision for the film was to "take an old-fashioned musical, but portray it in real life where things don't always work out", as well as paying homage to all the people who move to Los Angeles to pursue their dreams. Chazelle conceived the idea for the film when he was a student at Harvard University, along with his classmate, Justin Hurwitz. The two explored the concept in their senior thesis through a low-budget musical about a Boston jazz musician called Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench.

[zawescource]

‘I always play extreme characters’: Zawe Ashton on life after Fresh Meat

As Vod in the hit Channel 4 show she shocked even her own parents. What’s next for the actor-writer-director-producer?

The problem with interviewing someone you feel like you already know is how quickly it can go wrong. One minute you’re saying hello in the empty east London pub you’ve agreed to meet in, spontaneously hugging each other. The next, you’re trying to order a glass of wine and Zawe Ashton is horrified, because it’s not even 5pm yet. She reckons we should have tea instead, so we do. And then she says, “Oh God, I can’t believe I wine-shamed you.”

It is then that I realise Ashton isn’t actually Vod, the student she plays in the Channel 4 student sitcom Fresh Meat. Vod is a literature student who doesn’t read books, preferring partying, shagging and paying her way by selling ecstasy. Ashton, 31, is a straight-A scholar, who spent all her childhood weekends training as an actor, and thus has been earning her own money, appearing on telly in The Demon Headmaster, Jackanory and Desmond’s, since the age of six. Unlike Vod, Ashton has also written a play that’s being developed by the National Theatre; has a book deal for something that sounds like an autobiographical novel, “but I can’t talk about it. Well, not much. Well, I probably will”; and has set up her own production company, Asylum Features, to release films that she writes and directs herself. She is, I have to concede, a bit busy for pubs.

What Ashton does have in common with Vod, however, is that they are both very funny, as becomes apparent when we discuss what it’s like being hailed as “one to watch” and getting nominated for “best newcomer” awards when you’ve already been working for 25 years. “The single perspective shot, Stanley Kubrick, down the corridor,” she says, her mind racing ahead. “Aww, there’s a little girl down there! And then you get closer and she turns round and has the face of” – she puts on a scary voice – “a 200-year-old woman. That is my career right now, in a nutshell. I’m actually at retirement age, internally.” She estimates that she might be due a breakdown. “Or a Macaulay Culkin moment where I just go generally off the rails. Or a Winona Ryder moment, shoplifting.” She thinks about Winona. “How did that happen?”

We head to a quiet room upstairs, where Ashton sprawls across an armchair, all long arms and legs and funny voices, her mind scattering ideas like wildflowers. She recently got back from LA – she bought a plane ticket and left the same day – and found herself getting lured into the new age scene in Venice Beach and Topanga Canyon. “I know it’s the worst word ever,” she says, grimacing, “but I really am transitioning.” Ashton has been to LA several times before, though she won’t say why (you get the feeling there might be various projects in various Hollywood pipelines she can’t yet discuss). This time, she says, a conversation with a guru has left her believing she might be on the cusp of a whole new stage of her life.

Perhaps this transition will liberate her from the anxiety she describes as something of a constant in her life. She was not a carefree child, and even playing Vod, who can be so comically unaware, takes a great deal of awareness. At one point I ask her if it was a relief that the only real sex scenes she’s ever had to do as Vod were more comic than sensual. “A relief?” she repeats, as if I have brought up something as unlikely as Antarctica or a hippopotamus. She is almost breathless. “There’s never any relief! Relief is not a word that ever enters my mind, about anything.”

Does she never give herself a break? After all, plenty of people say they want to write a play, a film, a book, but hardly anyone wins the London Poetry Slam Championship in 2000, a Verity Bargate award nomination in 2007 for her debut play, Harm’s Way, or a Raindance film festival nomination in 2014 for best British short for Happy Toys, which she directed. “Well, I think I am like other people. It’s just that I think I’m going to get to the end and then give up. But wow, thank you for saying I finish things, because I really think I am such a scatty person.”

She credits Lena Dunham with showing sex on TV that is not actually sexy, and also with the inspiration for writing, directing and acting in her own shows. “As a woman, you do have a sense that if you can do other things, then you should. If you feel, mmm, the roles are getting a little” – she raises a sardonic eyebrow – “repetitive, and you know you can write, then you should write a different role. It’s a quadruple indemnity mission. I plan on having a long career. I don’t want to burn out. It’s like, I have the shield, and I have the lightsaber” – she is doing movie voices now – “these are my weapons of choice! Hopefully, one of those will come to serve me in some way.”

Does she feel she owes it to the world to redress the balance? “Well, the world doesn’t have to give a shit in any way. It just feels like a fulfilling and smart thing to do.”

Ashton grew up in Stoke Newington, north London, the eldest of three children, and has recently bought her own flat not far from there, living with her boyfriend, a film distributor, whom she prefers not to talk about. Her mother Victoria arrived in England in her teens from Uganda, where Ashton’s grandfather, Paulo Muwanga, had briefly served as both president and prime minister. At a Christmas party, Victoria met her future husband Paul, a working-class cockney who was the first in his family to go to university (Cambridge). The couple both worked as schoolteachers, Victoria teaching design and technology, and Paul teaching English – though he later moved to Channel 4 to commission education programmes for teachers, so telly was always a presence in their house, as well as literature. The three children went to local state schools, and young Zawe was taken to Anna Scher improvisation classes merely to “burn off some energy”. She instantly loved it. “It is very odd to be a very tiny person and know what you want to do.”

Famously, the Anna Scher theatre has produced lots of big names including Kathy Burke and half the cast of EastEnders. But Ashton says it was precisely the unstarry nature of the place that shaped the artist she would become. “It was a weekend drama class that cost £2.50, and we weren’t supposed to do commercials, we weren’t allowed to use the words star or fame – they were banned. You had to say actor or success. You couldn’t say, ‘I want to be a star’ because it was meaningless, just empty calories.”

Ashton recounts a story about a black boy being sent home from an audition, having been told that he could never be the Milky Bar kid. Scher, who did the teaching herself, dedicated an entire session to discussing with her pupils where the casting people had done wrong. “We were armed with all of this amazing… activism, I suppose. She’s an amazing woman. You were always encouraged to know why you wanted to act. Politics is not something you think about as a kid, but I realise now that she was infusing us with a level of conscience. You had to be on time, you had to be present. The number of birthdays I missed. I just gave up every Friday night and Saturday afternoon for 14 years.”

It was a dedication that didn’t make her popular with other children at school. Ashton was bullied, and eventually moved secondary school when the threats of beatings from other teenage girls, who knew she was taking days off to film for TV, became too much. At City and Islington College, she found better friends who shared her love of poetry. She took A-levels and applied to do drama at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Then came results day. “I got hurried by my teachers into an antechamber. They were like, ‘Have you opened your results yet?’ I was like, ‘No? Should I? Oh my God, I’ve got three As.’ I was overwhelmed, because it had been a really tough year. My mum had been really ill with cancer. They all said, you have to take a year off to apply to Cambridge now. So there was this crossroads moment – you know, when you realise your life could go in two really different directions? But then the stupid, stupid girl – no, I’m joking. I’m really glad I did what I did.”

What she did was take a year off to look after her mum, and then went to Manchester Met anyway. The course was a bit of a disappointment, she says, the teachers intent on making Ashton less experimental, disparaging her idea to do things such as walk around the audience trailing a red ribbon behind her. (She pitched the same concept at a local experimental theatre a week later and it came second in a commissioning competition.) But she experienced student life, and the partying that she had missed while being such a focused child. She went to Manchester nightclubs and got into DJing, experiences that would prove valuable when she auditioned for Fresh Meat years later.

Written by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, the duo behind Peep Show, the show is set in the fictional Manchester Medlock University. Vod is a blunt, libidinous raver; tub-thumping and workshy, with a thudding estuary accent and directional hair. She shares a house with a mismatched group of students – Jack Whitehall, “who makes me laugh so much”, plays the posh twit whose family money has bought the house. In one memorable scene she is made to read Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and tells the class the book makes her feel “like I’ve got this pompous, fat, naked man sitting on my face, and he’s resting his big, overrated bollocks on my airways”.

Ashton auditioned for the part about eight times, and saw so many other actors there, of every type and look, that she realised she could make Vod her own, that she wasn’t being asked to play any kind of trope. I ask if there has been any negative response to the only black character in the group ending up as a drug dealer. “NEVER!! Oh my God, that’s never something that’s come up,” she says, clearly surprised by the question. “And I feel like, she’s not even as extreme as a ‘dealer’. Vod is someone who capitalises on situations, sometimes ones that are really misguided. It all goes really horribly wrong – I think Vod’s got a lot of obstacles this series. I’m quite excited about watching it.”

She might well be watching it alone, however, or certainly without her dad, who isn’t too keen on seeing her shows. She might have developed her sense of humour from her parents (“They are my favourite comedy double act”), as well as her love of language (“My dad is such a brilliant writer”), but he can’t get used to seeing her on screen. He pretends her shows are radio plays, so he can keep his eyes closed. “Actually, I told my dad he should watch the episode with Vod and her mum, and he said, ‘I’d love to.’ Then he came in and I was right in the middle of saying the c-word. And he was like, ‘Might just go and put the kettle on again.’ ”

She recently played another challenging role in Not Safe For Work, a much bleaker Channel 4 comedy by playwright DC Moore, about the jilted generation of thirtysomethings whose job security has disappeared. Ashton plays Katherine, one of a group of civil servants whose jobs are relocated from London to Northampton following public sector cuts, and who has to maintain a steely professional exterior to hide the way she is falling apart inside. Other roles have included a small part in Doctor Who (for a moment, she was the bookies’ first choice to become the first female Doctor), and the lead in Dreams Of A Life, Carol Morley’s documentary film about Joyce Vincent, the woman whose remains were found on her sofa three years after her death, with the television still on.

“I just always play these really extreme characters – they’ve all come with parental guidance stickers on them. I did this Abi Morgan play at the Donmar just now and she said, ‘You play a lot of outsiders, don’t you?’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God, I do!’” She looks surprised. “And she said, ‘Outsiders who don’t need much male intervention.’ ‘Well, yes, I do,’ I said, like I knew that about myself.”

Other theatre work includes Othello at the Globe and Gone Too Far! at the Royal Court, which is the theatre where she took the young writers’ course and wrote her play For All The Women Who Thought They Were Mad, at 24. It was inspired by research into the way that psychiatric medication affects women, and the way that black women in particular are often over-medicated, so that their health deteriorates even further. “There are stories of women in pretty powerful positions, in jobs, suddenly finding themselves in institutions, unrecognisable to themselves and their friends,” she says. “So I just had to sit in the research and think about it, but there was a writing competition. The night before the deadline, I said to myself, you really owe it to yourself to deliver – just do it. So I sat down and wrote it in an actual fever, staying up for 24 hours.”

Next up is the Genet play The Maids, a double-hander with Emmy-winning American actor Uzo Aduba (best known as Crazy Eyes in Orange Is The New Black), opening in London next month. “It’s going to be really, really interesting to explore two characters who are essentially ready to burst from the beginning of the play.”

After that, perhaps she will have time for a quick personal collapse, though it seems unlikely. “I don’t really have the luxury of having a breakdown,” Ashton says. “I’ve just been working for a really, really long time.” And yet that 200-year-old woman in the corridor has got another century ahead of her, at least.

[film-classics]

Helen Hayes - First Lady of American Theater

Helen Hayes MacArthur (born in Washington, D.C. on October 10, 1900) was an American actress of Irish, Dutch, and English descent whose career spanned eighty-two years and regarded as the "First Lady of American Theatre."

Hayes made her stage debut at five with her mother's encouragement. At nine, she made her Broadway debut, and a year later, she was cast in the one-reel Vitagraph film.

She moved to Hollywood in 1931 when her husband became a screenwriter for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where she also became a contract player. She made her film debut in The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1932), for which she received an Academy Award. Although she made a number of later films, within four years she returned to Broadway for the greatest success of her career: Gilbert Miller's production of Victoria Regina.

Hayes would return intermittently to Hollywood with featured roles in films, television, and radio, including a film comeback in disaster film Airport (1970), earning her a second Oscar. She retired in 1985 and spent her remaining years in her longtime home of Pretty Penny, in Nyack, New York, where she died of congestive heart failure at 92.

Legacy:

Was the first woman and second person to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony Award (an EGOT)

Was also the first person to win the Triple Crown of Acting - the highest awards recognized in American film, television, and theater

Won two Academy Awards: Best Actress for The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931) and Best Supporting Actress for Airport (1970)

Won the Primetime Emmy Award for Best Actress in 1953 and nominated for for nine more (1951, 1952, 1958, 1959, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1978)

Has three Tony Awards: two for Best Actress in a Play for Happy Birthday (1947) and Time Remembered (1958); and the Lawrence Langer Award  for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in the American Theatre

Won the Grammy Awards for Best Spoken Word Album for Great American Documents (1977) and nominated for the Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for Anastasia (1956) and the Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical for Herbie Rides Again (1974)

Selected as Most Favorite Actress at the 1932 Venice International Film Festival for The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931)

Won the Distinguished Performance Award from the Drama League of New York Awards in 1936

Is one of the original inductees in the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1972

Received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1972

Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1973

Selected as one of 10 artists to be commemorated with the American Arts Commemorative Series gold medallions issued by the Treasury Department in 1980

Was the winner of the 1981 Kennedy Center Honors

Is a founding member of the Board of Advisors of the Riverside Shakespeare Company of New York City in 1981

Co-founded the National Wildflower Research Center in 1982 with Lady Bird Johnson

Won the Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, given annually by Jefferson Awards, in 1983

Is the namesake for the annual Helen Hayes Awards, which has recognized excellence in professional theatre in Washington, D.C. since 1984

Received the Women's International Center Living Legacy Award in 1985.

Recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor by the Ellis Island Honors Society in 1986

Received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Ronald Reagan in 1986

Awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1988

Honored with a US postage stamp in 2011

Has a Broadway theatre named after her: the Helen Hayes Theatre on 44th Street

Served for 49 years on the Board of Visitors for the Helen Hayes Hospital, a physical rehabilitation hospital

Wrote three memoirs: A Gift of Joy, On Reflection: An Autobiography, and My Life in Three Acts

Has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: 6258 Hollywood Boulevard for motion picture and 6549 Hollywood Boulevard for radio

[902109021090210]

a scene from my first Jordan Peele Audition NOPE (2022)

NOPE (2022) Stranger things casting director this is my biggest audition so far i'm like bruh i was just watching get out (2017) film won a oscar in 2018 now i'm in the room had me a lil snowbunny girlfriend around this time venice beach,└A isolated

[somuchyoudontknow]

Wild Bunch’s Vincent Maraval & Brahim Chioua Talk New Era As They Move On From The Company’s Iconic Name: “I’ve Been Through My Period Of Mourning” — Deadline Q&A

January 13, 2023

At a party in Paris on Thursday evening, original Wild Bunch co-founders Vincent Maraval and Brahim Chioua bid farewell to the legendary company name they created in 2002.

The move cements the separation of their assets from the pan-European Wild Bunch AG film group, which was created in 2015 out of the merger of their original French company Wild Bunch and Germany’s Senator Film and is now majority-owned by German entrepreneur Lars Windhorst.

This means Wild Bunch AG no longer owns its 20% stake in the independent standalone international sales company Maraval and Chioua and their 15-strong team launched in 2019 under the banner of Wild Bunch International (WBI).

The company is now been majority owned by Maraval and Chioua and its staff, with CAA also holding a 20% stake.

WBI has continued to dominate at major markets and festivals, handling sales on established A-list festival regulars.

The company also launched boutique feature animation-focused sales label Gebeka International in partnership with French animation specialist Gebeka, while Maraval also continues to work with Kim Fox at Santa Monica-based sales company The Veterans, in which WBI has a 50% stake alongside MadRiver Pictures.

Maraval and Chioua have also steered the company towards development and production with the creation of Wild West, a joint venture with film company Capricci aimed at developing and producing genre fare, as well as Le Collectif 64 with the producer Marc Dujardin.

Outside the company umbrella, Maraval, Chioua and Noëmie Devide launched the indie production label Getaway Films in 2019, which has since produced Alexandra Aja’s Netflix Original Oxygen as well as Michel Hazanavicius’s Cannes 2022 opener Final Cut and Dario Argento’s comeback melo-horror Dark Glasses.

Source: https://deadline.com/2023/01/wild-bunch-vincent-maraval-brahim-chioua-new-company-name-1235220893/

Wild Bunch International Reveals New Name – Does It Amuse You?

March 29, 2023

Wild Bunch International, which bid farewell to its legendary company moniker at a bash in Paris in January, has announced its new name.

Taking inspiration from Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-nominated 1990 hit, the international sales company has been renamed as Goodfellas.

Source: https://deadline.com/2023/03/wild-bunch-international-renamed-goodfellas-1235312571/

***

Wild Bunch’s Vincent Maraval Talks Cannes, Venice, Netflix & Industry Opportunities — San Sebastian

September 19, 2022

The topic of streaming loomed large over the first session of San Sebastian’s new Creative Investors’ Conference featuring a keynote by Wild Bunch co-founder Vincent Maraval.

During the lengthy and wide-ranging session, Maraval was joined by CAA Media Finance’s Roeg Sutherland who asked him the extent to which he deals with Netflix, to which he responded: “Of course, I will deal with Netflix.”

Wild Bunch previously struck a lucrative deal with the streamer on a Studio Ghibli catalogue and has also reportedly sold new Johnny Depp film Jeanne Du Barry to the company for France.

“I think it is our chance,” Maraval said of the streamer. “And I think the chance of Netflix is cinema. If Netflix wants to survive against better-capitalized companies like Amazon and Apple their chance is through cinema.”

Maraval later added that he is very “positive” about the streamer and the only reservation he has about working with them is that his first directive for any film he handles is that it is released theatrically.

Maraval’s comments on streamers and theatrical distribution quickly prompted Sutherland to press him for his opinion on the challenged relationship between the Cannes Film Festival and Netflix. Maraval’s Wild Bunch has long enjoyed a large presence at the festival. This year, the company screened 12 films across the festival’s sections. Netflix films, however, haven’t played in the Cannes Official Selection since 2017.

Cannes’ approach to Netflix wasn’t the only issue Maraval identified in the international festival market. Later in the session, Maraval highlighted what he described as an equally challenging issue with the way the Venice Film Festival has embraced Netflix.

“I think Venice is doing the total opposite mistake, which is that the four first days of Venice look like the Netflix film festival,” he said. “Ted Sarandos is on the red carpet welcoming people. And I think Venice sold its soul to Netflix. But I think refusing films because they are not going out theatrically is a mistake. I think someone who selects movies should focus on the quality of the film.”

Source: https://deadline.com/2022/09/vincent-maraval-cannes-venice-netflix-san-sebastian-1235121916/

Wild Bunch International’s Vincent Maraval on Taking a Bet on Johnny Depp, the Need to Take Risks

Backing a film in which Johnny Depp will play French King Louis XV is what Wild Bunch International head Vincent Maraval describes as part of the risk taking that is essential to this business.

In a keynote interview with CAA Media Finance’s Roeg Sutherland at San Sebastian’s first Creative Investors Conference on Monday, Maraval discussed his 23 years in the business – failing to bet on “Black Swan,” but going for it with Depp’s first film since the Amber Heard trial.

Netflix is releasing this French-language production on SVOD, after a theatrical release in France. Wild Bunch is handling international sales.

Maraval said during the keynote that his “Jeanne du Barry” partner Netflix was positive for the business.

“Netflix is a real force for us,” he said. “Of course I work with them, and I think their chance to survive is cinema. The studios controlled 90% of the market. For the first time in history, there is an independent company that has control. We know it won’t last, and that it will be a parenthesis in history that the independents controlled the business. People complain about them but I think it’s our chance.”

He added: “We need to be able to take advantage of the streaming business to get stronger. I think that cinema distribution will survive for sure but it will be different.”

Source: https://variety.com/2022/film/festivals/vincent-maraval-roeg-sutherland-san-sebastian-1235377301/

Wild Bunch’s Vincent Maraval On The “Huge Growth Potential” Of The Saudi Film Market And Its Similarities With China

December 5, 2022

Wild Bunch co-founder Vincent Maraval drew comparisons between the burgeoning film industry in Saudi Arabia with that of China during a business-focused keynote at the Red Sea film festival this morning.

“When I started working, like, 25-30 years ago, the Middle East was basically Lebanon,” he said. “Today that has all changed. The growth of the region in terms of box office, streamers, and Netflix is coming, but most of the streamers will come. What happened in Saudi Arabia in the last five years is on a scale very comparable to the growth rate of Chinese exportation.”

He added that there is “huge growth potential” to be had in Saudi Arabia as well as the whole MENA region, but industry professionals must establish a greater understanding of audience consumption and taste in the region now and in the future.

“There is also a huge potential not only here, but it will probably be the same in Africa too,” he said. “We can see there’s a middle class in Africa coming and subscribing to streaming services and going to the cinema. They are building theaters.”

Source: https://deadline.com/2022/12/wild-bunchs-vincent-maraval-on-the-huge-growth-potential-of-the-saudi-film-market-1235189268/

"The cinema market is all about exceptions", according to Vincent Maraval

12/01/2023 - The head of Wild Bunch International sheds light on the current state of affairs at the Unifrance Film Meetings in Paris

"On the American market, when it comes to the independent film sector, the traditional model has been replaced by the streaming model. Independent film has disappeared from cinemas. The American market is still more reliant on blockbusters. But studios are beginning to return to cinema releases, as Warner has done with one-to-two-month cinema windows. Broadly speaking, I think that’s the right kind of chronology for today’s world. As for the fabric of independent American producers, I believe it’s disappeared, because when you’re producing for platforms you’re not really independent anymore. Moreover, many of them have opted for series, which has left a hole. Foreign cinema, meanwhile, is hardly ever released in American cinemas now, unless for advertising purposes before dropping on platforms."

"That said, there does tend to be a pendulum effect, in the long term: we saw the rapid expansion of Miramax, for example, and the studios’ subsidiaries disappearing, etc. But it only took The King’s Speech [+] for all this to be reversed, because it’s always the exceptions which dictate trends and the market. Nevertheless, it’s possible that a certain type of viewer – sophisticated, well-off – has left cinemas behind because they’ve developed new habits. But, more generally speaking, I don’t believe the American market, which has been the focal point for film exports for a long time, is the market to watch anymore."

Source: https://cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/436632/

***

Thank you so much dear friend for providing all this valuable information that you have searched 😊💙❤ You have been a great help 🤗

Okay so for all the followers and friends on my blog, we have some new information about Wild Bunch International.

Wild Bunch AG is a pan-European Intl film distribution company. In Nov 2021, Ron Meyer (CAA co-founder) was named CEO of WB AG.

Wild Bunch Intl now named Goodfellas is a renowned sales and production company. It has a record of movies that have been featured at International film festivals. They have been dominating major markets and festivals. It has a history of having relationships with world-renowned directors. WBI boarded sales of Amelia’s Children and other European films, revealed in Feb 2023.

WBI departed from WB AG in January 2023 and then revealed its new name in March 2023.  Vincent Maraval and Brahim Chioua  are the co founders of WBI.

WB AG does not hold 20% stakes in Goodfellas. It is now owned by Maraval and Brahim. CAA holds 20% stakes in Goodfellas.

The first context talks about the above mentioned points as well Maraval and Chioua’ launching of Wild West and Getaway Films and the movies that have been produced under them.

Second part of the info is about current new film markets and Goodfellas partnership with CAA and Netflix.

WBI is responsible of selling Johnny Depp’s Jeanne Du Barry to Netflix France and Netflix USA. Depp.

Maraval’s WBI has long enjoyed its presence at Cannes Film Festival.

New developing markets with huge growth potential are MENA region and Africa.

The American market has changed and the traditional model has been replaced by the streaming model. Independent films have disappeared from cinema except for blockbusters.

[brian-in-finance]

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GIVING CREDIT

Saluting the behind the scenes talent making movie magic

Rob Youngson is a unit stills photographer for film and television. He's captured images for Belfast, A Haunting in Venice, The Great Escaper, Heanstopper St and Atlanta S3. He also shoots stills for posters. 'An effective still image has to communicate a lot in a single moment. An onlooker should know the tone, the genre and who stars in the production within a few seconds. It should leave them with a question: what happens? The answer to which is always, to go and see the film. It's the visual equivalent of a hook in pop music.'

How would you describe your job in simple terms?

I work with the cast and crew to capture striking still images during filming - without being a distraction or affecting the schedule.

I work with the publicist to ensure I get the images needed to publicise the film. I also capture behind-the-scenes images, which highlight the collaborative process and anything unique about the production. I may work with the props department to take period-accurate portraits for set dressing.

I've also consulted actors on how to use old-fashioned prop cameras convincingly.

How did you get into set photography?

I trained and worked as a theatre lighting designer while photographing bands on the side. Then I discovered that this job existed through an article in Nikon Owner magazine.

It was an interview with Kimberley French (Brokeback Mountain, The Revenant). I knew straight away I had to do this. So I went to work at one of the rental companies that hires cameras and lenses to productions.

I cleaned the kit, loaded the trucks and got to know people in the industry. used any leave to work on short films and then went freelance. Early on, I assisted an established unit stills photographer on some studio shoots. He then recommended me for a job he couldn't take and that put my work in front of the right people to get hired again.

What's the biggest misconception about your job?

That still images are screen grabs from the film. This is a widespread misconception, even within the industry. It doesn't work for two reasons. The technical reason is that the common shooting frame rate of 24fps doesn't freeze motion enough for those screen grabs to be printed at billboard size.

The second and most important reason is artistic; what works well for a moving image doesn't necessarily make a strong still photograph. Another misconception is that actors are difficult to work with. They are usually lovely. Actors have to step into a vulnerable place while surrounded by noise and crew and kit. They have to keep going to that place again and again for different camera angles. Part of what makes a good unit stills photographer is respect for the acting process. Sometimes my job is knowing when to step away and allow the actors space to work.

What's been the most memorable moment on a film set?

Watching Judi Dench and Kenneth Branagh make each other laugh on day one of shooting Belfast. We had all been in lockdown for so long, it felt like a new beginning. It felt like photographing love and hope and friendship.

What's the worst thing about your job?

Missing time with my family because I'm working away. Sometimes standing in a field on a night shoot, in February, in the snow, I start to question it. Those moments can feel tough. But a lot of the crew are in that same situation with you. Working on good scripts with nice people makes the time away from home, the long hours and driving, a lot easier.

What's the best thing about your job?

Knowing that my images help stories to find an audience. Stories that take years of hard work and hundreds of people to get told. On set, the best thing is being witness to incredible acting, from both legends and up-and-coming talent. Seeing what the Heartstopper cast are doing for LGBTQA* representation right now is special. I'm also currently working with two incredible young actors. I am so excited for more people to discover their storytelling potential.

If someone wants to do your job, what's the best route in?

Get on to set any way you can, in any role. Take photos across all genres of photography. Welcome honest feedback on your work. Don't sweat the kit you haven't got. You'll get hired for your eye and how well you get on with people, not what's in your bag. The necessity to work on low/no-budget jobs early in your career is a barrier to many, especially as a lot of opportunities centre around expensive cities. Screenskills and BAFTA have resources for helping bridge that gap - seek those out. Go and see as much art and as many films as you can.

Remember… (most memorable moment on a film set) Watching Judi Dench and Kenneth Branagh make each other laugh on day one of shooting Belfast. We had all been in lockdown for so long, it felt like a new beginning. It felt like photographing love and hope and friendship. — Rob Youngson

[limmastyles]

The downfall of Olivia Wilde was completely preventable. It was slow, painful, sad, pathetic, completely deserved and again preventable. Jason had a huge career were surgeons in the last couple of years and Olivia Wilde could have done the exact same thing if she just stayed with him. And even if she was smart during the stunt it could have gone so much better for her. It doesn’t matter if the drama between Olivia, Harry, Florence, and Shia LaBeouf happened or not the movie wasn’t good. Her directing wasn’t great, the script was not good, and she kind of fucked it up. But if she focussed more on promoting the film instead of herself, creating a good relationship with the cast, getting them all to participate in promoting the movie Venice film festival could’ve been a huge success, promotions for the movie could have been amazing. The press junkets alone would have done so well for her but she chose to Be stupid and bask in the temporary thing that she got. She experienced her 15 minutes and didn’t use it wisely. I still don’t think Olivia realizes that don’t worry darling flopping is not good for her. Studios are looking at her kind of sideways now, production companies are looking at her sideways, moviegoers and movie critics are looking at her sideways but also actors and actresses are looking at her kind of funny now. With all of the drama that happened and a lot of it that she created herself a lot of people aren’t going to want to work with her anymore. And Florence is a big name in the industry. She also has a lot of industry friends. Who probably know what happened between her and Olivia. They are probably going to want to work with someone who created such a hostile and Weird environment on their sets especially a woman. A reputation to the general public has turned, people online and do not like her, but her reputation in the industry. Is soured. Going into the stunt she had a relatively good first movie and a relatively good reputation in Hollywood. After the stunt she had a flop movie which was the laughingstock of the year in the movie industry. With a 10 times worse reputation than when she started the stunt. She left with a bad reputation, a bad reputation in the industry and someone who could not sell a film. Olivia Wilde not being able to get anyone in her cast to do any type of press for this movie is sad. Especially with the cast that she had there was no excuse they all should have Been doing press. And the reason they weren’t is because of rumours and speculation that was started by the Director. People who didn’t know Olivia before this don’t like her. Her next couple films are going to do well because he’s not in them and she doesn’t have his Fanbase to count on but also they majority hate her. And I wanna make this clear again. Even if the stunt didn’t happen and all of the bullshit behind the scenes never occurred. Don’t worry darling was not a good movie. She flopped. She dropped the ball. She fucked it up. All of the added drama didn’t hurt the movie it hurt her reputation and that’s what she’s more pissed off about because in Hollywood your reputation is everything. Her being a weird director who has affairs on sets, start rumours about her main actress, can’t get her cast of fall in line and listen to her and depressed for this movie And continuously call her out and throw shade at her shows that she’s not a good leader, she’s not a good Director, as she has no control over what happens on her set. The general public not liking Olivia it’s a big deal for her. The movie industry and studios and executives and producers hearing these things and not wanting to work with her is even worse

[scotianostra]

Happy 50th Birthday the Scottish actress Neve McIntosh.

Born in born Carol McIntosh on 9th April 1972 in Paisley, McIntosh grew up in Edinburgh, where she attended Boroughmuir High School. She was a member of Edinburgh Youth Theatre in the late 1980s, appearing in Mother Goose and Doctor in the House. She moved to Glasgow to attend the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, after which she was in repertory companies at Perth and at The Little Theatre on the Isle of Mull.

She next played in a Glasgow stage production of The Trick is to Keep Breathing. She then played in the RSC production of Dickens’ Great Expectations in Stratford, and starred as Portia in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice at the Lyceum in Edinburgh. In summer 2009, she performed in the Sylvia Plath play Three Women at the Edinburgh Festival. Her career coninues on stage both here and in the US.

Neve appeared in American director Mark L. Feinsod’s first film, Love And Lung Cancer. Alongside her many TV appearances, too many to put them all on here without it looking like a shopping list, the ones of note, to me anyway, include the brilliant Psychos, with Dougie Henshall, Trial and Retribution, Dr Who, New Tricks and again with Henshall in Shetland series four. McIntosh also teamed up with two other Doctor’s in an episode of Sky 1’s 10 Minute Tales playing the wife of Peter Capaldi’s character, and alongside David Tennant, in Single Father, a BBC drama. She portrayed the part of Anna, the sister of the dead wife of Tennant’s character.

In 2017, McIntosh played Kay Gillies in the BBC One drama The Replacement she came back home to team up with Martin Compston in Traces and recently put in an appearance in the excellent Tin Star and the podcast series Getting Better - The Fight for the NHS

Neve has said that she’s proud to have been consistently acting throughout her career, speaking in The Sunday Post she says, “It’s nice just to be consistently working. There was a time when I had a bit of a wobble, but a lot of acting work had dried up and I think loads of people thought they wouldn’t work again, but it’s building back"

We last saw Neve in the Paramount TV Series The Chemistry of Death, but the good news is she is returning as Vastra in the DR Who spin off The Paternoster Gang: Trespassers. Again, it is expected to be released in October.