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Studiocanal have released a fantastic new 4K restoration of Orca, The Killer Whale, as part of the Cult Classics Collection. Terror is just below the surface in this ferocious action adventure of mythical proportions from legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis, starring screen legends Richard Harris (Oscar-nominated for This Sporting Life) and Charlotte Rampling (Oscar nominated for 45 Years). As well as a collectable 4K Uhd SteelBook, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital.

From Academy Award nominated director Michael Anderson (Around The World In Eighty Days) and screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni comes a gripping and terrifying tale of man versus beast. Described by Scream Magazine as ‘Jaws with heart’, Orca, The Killer Whale features a marvellous lead performance from Harris as a sea captain targeted by a vengeful killer whale, and also stars Will Sampson, famous for his performance as in Chief Bromden One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Bo Derek (“10”), and Robert Carradine...

“Leave them alone.” That’s what Jared Harris, the “Mad Men,” “The Crown,” and Chernobyl star thinks about the original Harry Potter films.

The twice Emmy-nominated actor is, of course, the son of the late actor and singer Richard Harris (and brother to director Damian Harris and actor Jamie Harris). Richard played Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films before he died. For the later films, Richard was replaced by Michael Gambon.

With HBO planning a reboot of the J.K. Rowling series for television, teasing a more detailed adaptation of the beloved books, The Independent asked Jared Harris if he had any interest in taking on the role initially played by his father.

Not only did he bat that away with a “no, thank you,” he said something that Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders maybe do not want to hear: “Also, I mean, why do it? I don’t understand.

StudioCanal have today announced a new 4K restoration of Orca, The Killer Whale – as part of the Cult Classics Collection – from legendary producer Dino Di Laurentiis, starring screen legends Richard Harris (Oscar-nominated for This Sporting Life) and Charlotte Rampling (Oscar-nominated for 45 Years). As well as a collectable 4K Uhd SteelBook, the film will be available on 4K Uhd, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital.

Initially on the hunt for a great white shark, the obsessive Captain Nolan (Richard Harris) accidentally kills a pregnant orca. Seeking vengeance, her mate begins to terrorise the nearby fishing village in a rampage of death and destruction. Realising that only he can bring an end to the carnage, Nolan sets out on a deadly quest to face his enemy from the deep…

From Academy Award-nominated director Michael Anderson (Around The World In Eighty Days) and screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni comes a gripping and terrifying tale of man versus beast.

Cillian Murphy and writer, director, and producer Christopher Nolan on the set of ‘Oppenheimer’ (Photo © Universal Pictures)

Since Cillian Murphy just became the first Irish-born actor to win the Best Actor Oscar, I thought it would be appropriate to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a list of the most notable Irish actors who have been honored by the Academy with either Oscar gold or a nomination.

1. Cillian Murphy

Murphy has played non-Irish roles so often and so well that some people may not realize or remember that he is Irish. His best Irish films include Breakfast on Pluto and The Wind that Shakes the Barley. And as noted above, he is the first Irish-born actor to take home an Academy Award in the Best Actor category.

Vicky Krieps and Daniel Day-Lewis in writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘Phantom Thread’ (Photo by Laurie Sparham / Focus Features)

2. Daniel Day-Lewis

Day-Lewis...

Tom Priestley, the son of British playwright and novelist J.B. Priestley who established his own show business career as an Oscar-nominated film editor on such major projects as John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972), Blake Edwards’ The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) and Roman Polanski‘s Tess (1979), died December 25. He was 91.

His death was only later announced by the J.B. Priestley Society.

“It with the utmost sadness we announce the death of out President Tom Priestley,” the J.B. Priestley Society said in a statement. “Tom who was J. B. Priestley’s only son became one of this country’s finest film editors. Perhaps his most famous film was Deliverance for which he was Oscar Nominated. He was a most charming man.”

Born Tom Holland Priestley on April 22, 1932, in London, he was educated at Bryanston School and King’s College, Cambridge, before beginning his professional career at Shepperton Studios in various capacities,...

Tom Priestley, the British film editor whose work assembling the dueling-banjos sequence and hellish “squeal like a pig” attack in John Boorman’s Deliverance landed him an Oscar nomination, has died. He was 91.

His death on Christmas Day was only recently revealed.

Priestley also cut two other movies helmed by Boorman: Leo the Last (1970), which won the best director award at the Cannes Film Festival, and Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977).

He also edited The Great Gatsby (1974); Blake Edwards’ The Return of the Pink Panther (1975); That Lucky Touch (1975), starring Roger Moore; Voyage of the Damned (1976), featuring an all-star cast; and Roman Polanski’s Tess (1979).

Priestley was the only son of renowned British novelist and playwright J.B. Priestley, who wrote the classic 1945 drama An Inspector Calls for the theater and served as a BBC Radio broadcaster during the Dunkirk evacuation of World War II.

Upon its release in 1972, Deliverance became the...

Glenda Jackson, the two-time Best Actress Oscar winner and former British politician, has died. She was 87. Her passing was confirmed by her agent, Lionel Larner, who said in a statement, “Glenda Jackson, two-time Academy Award-winning actress and politician, died peacefully at her home in Blackheath, London this morning after a brief illness with her family at her side.” The statement continued, “She recently completed filming The Great Escaper in which she co-starred with Michael Caine.” Born on May 9, 1936, in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, Jackson made her professional stage debut in Ted Willis’s Doctor in the House. She would go on to appear in various stage productions before making her film debut in a bit part in This Sporting Life (1963). Jackson’s on-screen roles continued from there, with her starring role in Ken Russell’s Women in Love (1969) leading to her first Academy Award for Best Actress. Her second Academy Award...

Glenda Jackson, the two-time Oscar winner who walked away from a hugely successful acting career to spend nearly a quarter-century in the U.K. parliament, only to make a comeback on the stage, died Thursday. She was 87.

Jackson died peacefully after a brief illness at her home in Blackheath, London, and her family was at her side, her agent Lionel Larner said in a statement. “Today we lost one of the world’s greatest actresses, and I have lost a best friend of over 50 years,” he said.

She recently completed filming The Great Escaper opposite Michael Caine, Larner noted.

The British actress collected a slew of honors that included best actress Academy Awards for Women in Love (1969) and A Touch of Class (1973); two Emmys for her performance as Elizabeth I in the BBC miniseries Elizabeth R (a role she also played in the 1971 film Mary, Queen of Scots); and a...

Jackson won Academy Awards for ’Women In Love’ and ’A Touch Of Class’.

UK actress Glenda Jackson, known for her Oscar-winning performances in Women In Love and A Touch Of Class, has died aged 87.

Jackson, who was also a former Labour MP, ”died peacefully at her home in Blackheath, London this morning after a brief illness with her family at her side,” according to her agent Lionel Larner.

Born in Birkenhead, UK, Jackson’s acting career began in theatre in the late 1950’s before she made her big screen debut with an uncredited role in Lindsay Anderson’s This Sporting Life...

Glenda Jackson, who segued from a successful actress — Oscars for “Women in Love” and “A Touch of Class” and two Emmys for “Elizabeth R” — into a 23-year career as member of the U.K.’s House of Commons, has died. She was 87.

Jackson died after a brief illness at her home in London, her agent Lionel Larner said. “Glenda Jackson, two-time Academy Award-winning actress and politician, died peacefully at her home in Blackheath, London this morning after a brief illness with her family at her side. She recently completed filming ‘The Great Escaper’ in which she co-starred with Michael Caine,” Larner said in a statement.

Aside from her prize-winning roles, Jackson gave terrific performances in such films as 1967’s “Marat/Sade” (as Charlotte Corday), “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and on TV in “The Patricia Neal Story,” a 1981 work about that actress’s stroke and recovery with husband Roald Dahl. A defining role in...

In a career that spanned from the 1950s to the aughts, Richard Harris was the noble Albus Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films, a fiery rugby player in his 1963 Oscar-nominated role in This Sporting Life and a Grammy-nominated singer for the offbeat hit single “MacArthur Park.” He had a well-earned reputation as a hell-raiser but, as demonstrated by the revealing new documentary The Ghost of Richard Harris (available May 9 on BritBox), the accomplished Irish actor had many sides to him. That’s why his three sons, Damian, Jamie and Jared Harris, got involved in the film, sharing stories with director Adrian Sibley, who had first approached Richard about the project more than two decades ago. (The actor passed away in 2002 at age 72 before anything was done.) “We just felt we needed to do something,” says Jared, the Emmy-nominated actor best known for his roles on such series as Mad Men and The Crown.

Exclusive: Brian Cox is back as Logan Roy on Sunday, and the Succession star is next getting a special on BritBox International.

The streaming service has ordered An Interview with Brian Cox for its U.S. and Canada services, an hour-long sit-down with the actor delving into his life and career.

The special, from QuigleyFilm, is an extended version of a BBC interview that aired last year. That marked the first time Cox had gone into such detail about his family and lengthy career in showbiz.

“From his early years in Scotland and Shakespearean beginnings to his contemporary roles across film and television, no stone is unturned in this heartfelt interview with the iconic actor,” according to BritBox International.

The doc will launch on the service, which has been expanding globally, in North America on April 11. Stephen Nye is the executive producer.

Cox will return as megalomaniacal media owner Logan...

In his bold 1990 interpretation of Luigi Pirandello’s “Henry IV,” the late and legendary Irish stage, screen and music star Richard Harris utters the immortal lines, “Woe to him who doesn’t know how to wear his mask.”

Even before his breathtaking big-screen triumph 60 years ago as the rugby ruffian Frank Machin in Lindsay Anderson’s film directing debut, “This Sporting Life,” Harris proved adept at juggling personal and professional personas. He swaggered with macho gusto and great thesping chops through the London stage scene and quickly found key roles in action epics such as “Guns of Navarone” and “Mutiny on the Bounty.”

Then his stunning 1963 breakthrough in “Life” made the showbiz side of the equation easy.

A Cannes lead actor award, an Oscar nomination and reams of reviews such as Variety’s quickly put Harris at the top tier of international leading men. Variety’s London critic at the...

The word “legendary” gets tossed around pretty easily when discussing important actors, but there’s a huge difference between starring in a lot of important movies, and starring in a lot of movies while leaving everyone you ever met with an epic, semi-fantastical tale about how incredibly drunk you got.

Premiering at the Venice Film Festival, Adrian Sibley’s documentary “The Ghost of Richard Harris” tells the story of — you guessed it — Richard Harris, but also his ghost. The Irish actor, musician and poet who starred in films like “This Sporting Life,” “The Field,” “Gladiator” and two “Harry Potter” entries led an extraordinary existence that’s well worth recording for posterity. And in his wake, he left behind three sons who barely knew their real father, and who seek in his absence a little bit of understanding and maybe some closure.

“The Ghost of Richard Harris” follows actors Jared Harris...

Though it sets out on a ghost hunt, Adrian Sibley’s fitfully fascinating documentary works better as an exploration of its subject’s public and private personas, charting Richard Harris’ rise from local sports star to screen legend via an unexpected heyday as a chart-topping pop star in 1968.

Rather than start with a séance, however, The Ghost of Richard Harris, screening in the Classics section of the Venice Film Festival, opens with the more prosaic sight of the actor’s three sons — Damien, Jared and Jamie — going through their late mother’s lock-up, where they find journals full of poetry, King Arthur’s crown (a prop from 1967’s Camelot) and trinkets from the Harry Potter franchise, in which their father played Dumbledore until his death in 2002, aged 72.

This set-up proves to be somewhat self-defeating, as the three middle-aged men, while reminiscing, then admit that they were packed away to boarding...

Venice film festival: There are some memorable moments in this documentary about the great Irish actor, but too many inconvenient truths are dismissed for it to be definitive

Adrian Sibley’s documentary is a genial, if sometimes incurious film about the legendary Irish actor and singer, who began his screen career as a pressure-cooker of rage on the rugby field in Lindsay Anderson’s This Sporting Life and finally became the beatific face of snowy-haired wisdom as Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter movies.

This watchable film goes easy on Harris’s boozing and brawling: in fact, it takes an almost a counter-revolutionary approach to the whole subject. In recent years, talk of Ollie and Peter and Richard’s hell-raising has usually been countered with a frowning diagnosis of alcoholism, and this film simply quotes Harris’s own roistering dismissal of all that: (“I drank because I loved it!

Feature documentary “The Ghost of Richard Harris,” which premieres Sunday at the Venice Film Festival, looks to answer the question: “Who was Richard Harris?” The film also contains the revelation that Harris was offered the role of Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” movies, but chose to take the part of Dumbledore in the “Harry Potter” franchise instead.

Variety spoke to director Adrian Sibley and Richard Harris’ son Jared Harris – a distinguished actor himself, and one of the originators of the project – about how the documentary came to be made.

Sibley first broached the subject of making a film about Richard Harris some 20 years ago with the man himself, who responded: “I’ll do it, but only if I can tell the truth half the time,” Jared Harris recalls.

“This Sporting Life”

Sibley liked this idea but the BBC – who he pitched it to – were less keen.

Taking a break from shooting a movie in the late Sixties, Richard Harris chartered a private plane. The actor and his entourage travelled to Hamburg to visit the brothels, and then went on a day trip to Ireland, spending an afternoon at one of Harris’s favourite pubs. They weren’t sober for a moment of the jaunt, which was chronicled by a photographer sent along for the ride.

The story of their antics is told in Adrian Sibley’s new feature documentary The Ghost of Richard Harris, a world premiere at the Venice Film Festival this week. What is most extraordinary about this particular episode is that it was nothing out of the ordinary for the Limerick-born star. Zigzagging across Europe in search of adventure, sex and alcohol was simply what Harris – at that stage of his life, at least – did.

His various paramours could likely attest to that.

He topped the charts, dated a princess and was a screen star from the kitchen sink 60s to Harry Potter. Yet his achievements were eclipsed by his hell-raising image. As a new film searches for the real Richard Harris, his son Jared looks back

It was in the late 1990s that Adrian Sibley first conceived of making a Richard Harris documentary. Back then, the brilliant Irish actor was in his early 70s, and best known for his defiant, broad-shouldered roles in such films as the 1963 kitchen-sink drama This Sporting Life and the violent 1970 western A Man Called Horse. But he also found himself beloved by a new generation of fans, thanks to his gentle, timeworn performance as Professor Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Wary of hagiography, yet a keen storyteller, Harris agreed to do Sibley’s film under one condition.

“He said, ‘I’ll do it...

Well, if Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz didn’t know who they were taking to the Oscars before, they do now. The married actors earned matching nominations: Best Actor for “Being the Ricardos” and Best Actress for “Parallel Mothers,” respectively. They’re the sixth spouses in Oscar history to earn Oscar acting nominations in the same year.

SEESassy Oscar nominations reactions from our film forum posters: Cheers for Kirsten Dunst, jeers for Lady Gaga snub

Bardem and Cruz join five other couples: Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt; Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner; Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton; Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts; and Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

This is the first time Bardem and Cruz are nominated together, but they have had remarkably similar Oscar track records. Both are nominated for the fourth time. Both won their Oscars on their second try for supporting roles. And both have been...

CineSavant reaches back to a U.K. disc released in 2014, because the subject is (what else) a semi-obscure science fiction effort. Favorite John Neville stars as a scientist opposite newcomer Gabriella Licudi, a beauty who may be an invader from outer space. This is the one with the teardrops that burn; not having seen it since 1966 or so, evaluating a ‘new’ Blu was an imperative. The main takeaway is that it’s awfully small-scale and the fantastic content is almost entirely confined to dialogue. But the performances are exemplary and actress Jean Marsh is terrific.

Unearthly Stranger

Region B Blu-ray

Network-bfi

1963 / B&w / 1:66 / 80 min. / Street Date November 3, 2014 / Available from Amazon / 14.99

Starring: John Neville, Philip Stone, Gabriella Licudi, Patrick Newell, Jean Marsh, Warren Mitchell.

Cinematography: Reg Wyer

Art Director: Harry Pottle

Film Editor: Tom Priestley

Original Music: Edward Williams

Written by Rex Carlton based on an idea by Jeffrey Stone...

Peter Lamont interviewed by Gareth Owen at a celebration of his career at Pinewood Studios, 2016. (Photo: Mark Mawston).

We at Cinema Retro mourn the passing of our good friend Peter Lamont, the legendary Production Designer of many James Bond films as well as "Titanic", for which he received the Academy Award. Cr columnist and author Gareth Owen reflects on Peter's life and career.

By Gareth Owen

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British Oscar winning (and four-time nominee) Production Designer Peter Lamont passed away on December 18th aged 91 after suffering complications from pneumonia.

Having seen his name on the silver screen throughout my formative years on films such as The Seven Percent Solution, Sleuth, Fiddler On The Roof, and of course pretty much every James Bond film, I first met Peter in 1990 at Pinewood Studios and was immediately struck by his friendliness, charm and modesty. I bumped into him...

Four-time Oscar nominee Peter Lamont, who worked on 18 James Bond films and received an Academy Award for production design for “Titanic,” has died. He was 91.

Lamont’s death was disclosed Friday by the official 007 account on Twitter, which posted a statement by producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli that reads, “Peter Lamont was a much beloved member of the Bond family and a giant in the industry. Inextricably linked with the design and aesthetic of James Bond since Goldfinger (1964).”

“He became Production Designer on For Your Eyes Only (1981) working on 18 of the 25 films including nine as Production Designer. He was a true success story proving that with talent and hard work you will achieve your dreams,” the statement went on. “He won the Academy Award for Titanic in 1998 as well as nominations for Fiddler On The Roof (1971), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), and Aliens (1986). Our hearts go out to...

In normal times, the idea of a Richard Harris Intl. Film Festival (which runs Oct. 20-26; richardharrisfilmfestival.com) seems entirely appropriate to the legions of fans of the late legendary Irish stage and screen actor, but since Oct. 1 marked Harris’ 90th birthday, it feels absolutely essential. Oscar-nominated twice, first for Lindsey Anderson’s “This Sporting Life” in 1964 and then for Jim Sheridan’s “The Field” in 1991, Harris is perhaps best-known today for creating the character of Albus Dumbledore on film in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (2001) or co-starring in Oscar best pictures such as Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven” (1992) and Ridley Scott’s (2000) “Gladiator.” But while there’s no disputing the lasting quality of those performances, there’s so much more to the Harris legacy, which begins on West End stages back in the mid-’50s.

To commemorate Harris’ birthday, Variety reached out to his sons, director Damian and actors Jared and Jamie.

Michala Banas and Benson Jack Anthony.

A dysfunctional blended family who are addicted to their screens is at the heart of Fam Time, Seven Studios’ narrative comedy which is shooting in Sydney.

Hayden Guppy is directing the 6 X 30′ series created by Michael Horrocks, who joined Seven Studios a year ago as executive producer, comedy, with the remit to drive the production division’s expansion into comedy.

It’s the Seven Network’s first narrative comedy in more than 20 years since Bullpitt!, which starred Ross Higgins as Ted Bullpitt, reprising the character he played in the 1980s sitcom Kingswood Country.

Scripted by Erica Harrison and Jack Yabsley, Fam Time stars Michala Banas as the family matriarch Belinda Box. She runs a blog which chronicles her daily adventures as a modern mum with a busy blended family in the digital age.

Duncan Fellows is her second husband John, aka ‘Handy Andy’, an...

(Author Gabriel Hershman has written "Black Sheep: the Authorized Biography of Nicol Williamson" (The History Press). Williamson, who passed away in 2011 at age 75, was an enormous talent. John Osborne called him "The greatest actor since Brando". However, he had many personal demons that sidetracked what should have been a far more successful career. Hershman explores the peaks and valleys of this temperamental man's dramatic life and career and in this article reminds us of why his talents and work should be rediscovered.)

By Gabriel Hershman

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Peter O’Toole, Richard Harris, Oliver Reed, Alan Bates, Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay and … Nicol Williamson. Just a few of the most influential actors of their generation.

Were you surprised when I mentioned Nicol’s name? He was, at the time of his death, the least well known of that generation of actors. And yet, in my opinion,...

Storey delivered a blast of energy to the dull early 60s with the character of Frank Machin, a rugby player who capitalised on the new magic of celebrity

David Storey, author of This Sporting Life, dies at 83

David Storey, in an unforgettable partnership with the director Lindsay Anderson, provided one of the great energising shocks of the 1960s, a blast of energy, smashing at the dullness, the complacency and hypocrisy of class-ridden Britain. Storey adapted his own 1960 novel This Sporting Life for the screen: Lindsay Anderson directed it, and won from Richard Harris a performance to rival Brando. He is Frank Machin, a gifted sportsman who wants to make it as a professional rugby league player (like Storey himself), but is poignantly in love with his widowed landlady, played by Rachel Roberts. Frank is a superstar on the field; he has money, success with women and a cocksure sense of...

David Storey, the British author and playwright whose debut novel This Sporting Life he adapted into an Oscar-nominated film, has died. He was 83. 

"Dad died peacefully with his family around him. He gave and inspired great love, drew us out and showed us how the world really is," a spokesman for his four children said. 

Storey won the Booker Prize in 1976 for the family drama Saville and also saw his play Home adapted into a film starring John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson.

But it was his debut novel, published in 1960 and based on his experiences playing professional rugby league, for...

David’s Quick Take for the tl;dr Media Consumer:

If…. is an important film of its time, occasionally droll and inspiring in its provocation of middle-class establishment values but more often charged with unsettling anger and resentment toward the intense pain registered by its various characters. Focusing through a darkly comedic lens on the torments inflicted by authorities on a trio of misfits in a regimented, highly traditional English boarding school, viewers are prodded to answer the question asked in the above poster: which side will you be on? When If…. reaches its explosive conclusion, our response is likely to be urgently felt and quickly resolved, but it’s not the kind of answer that’s likely to rest all that comfortably on our conscience if we let its implications sink in.

Director Lindsay Anderson had already established himself as a creative trailblazer in the British theater and cinema scenes,...

“Everything But The Kitchen Sink”

By Raymond Benson

In the late 1950s, a film movement emerged in Britain known as “Free Cinema.” Some of the U.K.’s most celebrated filmmakers of the 1960s and 70s were among its practitioners—Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, Lorenza Mazzetti, and Tony Richardson. The directors made low budget, short documentaries about the working class with an almost deliberate “non commercial” sensibility. It was radical and exciting, and it was a precursor to the British New Wave that dovetailed with the French New Wave that was so influential on filmmakers everywhere.

Many of the pictures of the British New Wave, released between 1959 and 1964, focused on characters described as “angry young men,” and the films themselves were referred to by critics and theorists as “kitchen sink dramas.” This was because the movies were presented in a harsh, realistic fashion and were indeed about the gritty, working...

Most British crime films of the '40s and '50s have been slow crossing the pond, but Olive Films has a winner here, a gloss on Yank gangster pix from an earlier era. Just clear of prison, a tough criminal vows to punish the gang that abandoned him, and carries it out a ruthless revenge. But I think it was a mistake for him to involve that dance hall girl... Appointment with Crime Blu-ray Olive Films 1946 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 91 min. / Street Date June 21, 2016 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98 Starring William Hartnell, Herbert Lom, Joyce Howard, Robert Beatty, Raymond Lovell, Alan Wheatley. Cinematography Gerald Moss, James Wilson Film Editor Monica Kimick Original Music George Melachrino Produced by Louis H. Jackson Written and Directed by John Harlow

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Ask today's American film fan about old British crime films, and he'll probably not be able to...

The British invasion that hit these shores during the swinging '60s went beyond such musical acts as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. There also was an army of acting talent that charged into U.S. movie houses, a dazzling array of angry young men and alluring mod women who held us captivated through much of that turbulent period and beyond. Many have since gone on to that great Carnaby Street in the sky: Alan Bates and his Georgy Girl, Lynn Redgrave; Peter O'Toole, who redefined the words "matinee idol" in "Lawrence of Arabia"; Oliver Reed, who so unforgettably wrestled sans attire with Bates in "Women in Love"; Richard Harris, the essence of machismo served raw in "This Sporting Life"; David Hemmings, the smug photog caught up in a conundrum in "Blow-Up"; Laurence Harvey and Dirk Bogarde as predatory males trying to catch Julie Christie’s wandering eye in "Darling.

Read More: British Independent Film Awards Launch First-Ever Public Screenings Program for Nominated Films The Moët British Independent Film Awards announced this morning that Chiwetel Ejiofor ("12 Years A Slave") will be honored at this year's ceremony with the Richard Harris Award. The award has been chosen based on Ejiofor's major contribution to the UK film industry, in addition to the attention he has brought internationally as an ambassador for British film. The actor is currently shooting Marvel’s "Doctor Strange" with Benedict Cumberbatch and Tilda Swinton. The Richard Harris Award started in 2002 in honor of the iconic Irish actor who starred in "Camelot," "This Sporting Life," "King Arthur" and "Unforgiven." Previous winners include John Hurt, David Thewlis, Bob Hoskins, Jim Broadbent, Daniel Day-Lewis, Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon, Julie...

Ron Moody as Fagin in 'Oliver!' based on Charles Dickens' 'Oliver Twist.' Ron Moody as Fagin in Dickens musical 'Oliver!': Box office and critical hit (See previous post: "Ron Moody: 'Oliver!' Actor, Academy Award Nominee Dead at 91.") Although British made, Oliver! turned out to be an elephantine release along the lines of – exclamation point or no – Gypsy, Star!, Hello Dolly!, and other Hollywood mega-musicals from the mid'-50s to the early '70s.[1] But however bloated and conventional the final result, and a cast whose best-known name was that of director Carol Reed's nephew, Oliver Reed, Oliver! found countless fans.[2] The mostly British production became a huge financial and critical success in the U.S. at a time when star-studded mega-musicals had become perilous – at times downright disastrous – ventures.[3] Upon the American release of Oliver! in Dec. 1968, frequently acerbic The...

Teresa Wright in 'Shadow of a Doubt': Alfred Hitchcock heroine (image: Joseph Cotten about to strangle Teresa Wright in 'Shadow of a Doubt') (See preceding article: "Teresa Wright Movies: Actress Made Oscar History.") After scoring with The Little Foxes, Mrs. Miniver, and The Pride of the Yankees, Teresa Wright was loaned to Universal – once initial choices Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland became unavailable – to play the small-town heroine in Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. (Check out video below: Teresa Wright reminiscing about the making of Shadow of a Doubt.) Co-written by Thornton Wilder, whose Our Town had provided Wright with her first chance on Broadway and who had suggested her to Hitchcock; Meet Me in St. Louis and Junior Miss author Sally Benson; and Hitchcock's wife, Alma Reville, Shadow of a Doubt was based on "Uncle Charlie," a story outline by Gordon McDonell – itself based on actual events.

I. The Landmine

In August 1955, George Devine, director of London’s Royal Court Theatre, ventured to meet a promising writer, living on a Thames houseboat. “I had to borrow a dinghy… wade out to it and row myself to my new playwright,” he recalled. Thus began a partnership between Devine, who sought to rescue the English stage from stale commercialism, and the 26 year old tyro, John Osborne. Together, they’d revolutionize modern theater.

Born in London but raised in Stoneleigh, Surrey, Osborne lost his father at age 12, resented his low-born mother and was expelled from school for striking a headmaster. While acting for Anthony Creighton’s repertory company, his mercurial temper and violent language appeared. In 1951 he wed actress Pamela Lane, only to divorce six years later. Osborne soon immortalized their marriage: their cramped apartment, with invasive friends and intruding in-laws, John and Pamela’s pet names and verbal abuse,...

We head back to Hogwarts, and try and sort out the Harry Potter films. Is Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets the best one, then?

This article contains spoilers for the Harry Potter movies.

The Harry Potter films didn’t need to be good.

The books were already a phenomenon. Only Twilight and Dan Brown’s novels have resulted in midnight openings at bookshops across the world in recent years, and when you look at their film adaptations (Angels And Demons grossed nearly $500 million worldwide, despite being Angels And Demons), it’s clear: the Harry Potter films didn’t actually have to try that hard to be a success.

Across eight films, they told the story of death-magnet legend boy Harry Potter and his loyal flame-locked sidekick Ron as they courted whimsical oblivion on a roughly yearly basis, getting rescued repeatedly by Girl Guide/Wikipedia hybrid Hermione Granger. They...

Best British movies of all time? (Image: a young Michael Caine in 'Get Carter') Ten years ago, Get Carter, starring Michael Caine as a dangerous-looking London gangster (see photo above), was selected as the United Kingdom's very best movie of all time according to 25 British film critics polled by Total Film magazine. To say that Mike Hodges' 1971 thriller was a surprising choice would be an understatement. I mean, not a David Lean epic or an early Alfred Hitchcock thriller? What a difference ten years make. On Total Film's 2014 list, published last May, Get Carter was no. 44 among the magazine's Top 50 best British movies of all time. How could that be? Well, first of all, people would be very naive if they took such lists seriously, whether we're talking Total Film, the British Film Institute, or, to keep things British, Sight & Sound magazine. Second, whereas Total Film's 2004 list was the result of a 25-critic consensus,...

Feature Alex Westthorp 28 Mar 2014 - 07:00

In a new series, Alex talks us through the film roles of the actors who've played the Doctor. First up, William Hartnell and Jon Pertwee...

We know them best as the twelve very different incarnations of the Doctor. But all the actors who've been the star of Doctor Who, being such good all-rounders in the first place, have also had film careers. Admittedly, some CVs are more impressive than others, but this retrospective attempts to pick out some of the many worthwhile films which have starred, featured or seen a fleeting cameo by the actors who would become (or had been) the Doctor.

William Hartnell was, above all else, a film star. He is by far the most prolific film actor of the main twelve to play the Time Lord. With over 70 films to his name, summarising Hartnell's film career is difficult at best.

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,...

Fighting, dying, hoping, hating … great sports films are about far more than sport itself. Here Guardian and Observer critics pick their 10 best

• Top 10 superhero movies

• Top 10 westerns

• Top 10 documentaries

• Top 10 movie adaptations

• Top 10 animated movies

• Top 10 silent movies

• More Guardian and Observer critics' top 10s

10. This Sporting Life

Lindsay Anderson brought to bear on his adaptation of David Storey's first novel, all the poetic-realist instincts he had been honing for the previous decade as a documentarian in the Humphrey Jennings mould. (Anderson had won the 1953 best doc Oscar for Thursday's Children.) Filmed partly in Halifax and Leeds, but mainly in and around Wakefield Trinity Rugby League Club, one of its incidental attractions is its record of a northern, working-class sports culture that would change out of all recognition over the next couple of decades.

The story of Frank Machin, a miner who becomes a star on the rugby field,...

Introducing our look at the year that defined the modern era, the veteran writer recalls the extraordinary collision of politics, culture and social upheaval that he witnessed as a student

Was it a prefigurative year? I think so. Not that one thought of it as such at the time or even a few years later, when it was totally forgotten in the turbulence that engulfed the world. I am trying to recall that year, to find deep down some memories, even a few impressions on the basis of which I could reconstruct a misted-up past without too many distortions.

When I arrived to study at Oxford in October 1963, the bohemian style was black plastic or leather jackets for women and black leather or navy donkey jackets for men. I stuck to cavalry twills and a duffle coat, at least for a few months. The Cuban missile crisis had temporarily boosted...

(John Schlesinger, 1963, Studiocanal, 15)

One of the key movies of the British new wave, Billy Liar began life in 1959 as a brilliant comic novel by Keith Waterhouse (clearly influenced by James Thurber's 1939 New Yorker story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"), and in 1960 Waterhouse and his regular writing partner Willis Hall turned it into a play that Lindsay Anderson directed in the West End. It was filmed 50 years ago this month under the direction of former actor and documentary maker John Schlesinger. Tom Courtenay (who took over the title role on stage from Albert Finney) is superb as the sad 19-year-old Billy Fisher, who escapes from his dreary lower-middle-class background and dead-end job as an undertaker's clerk through his dreams of becoming a writer, his habitual lying, and his fantasies about being a hero in the imaginary country of Ambrosia.

The film takes place over a single busy Saturday during which he juggles two fiancees,...

(Joseph Losey, 1963, StudioCanal, 15)

Half a century ago, British cinema had a great year. John Schlesinger's Billy Liar, Tony Richardson's Tom Jones and Lindsay Anderson's This Sporting Life took local film-makers into radically different directions. Two resident Americans – the self-exiled Stanley Kubrick and the McCarthy refugee Joseph Losey – established themselves as world figures. Kubrick made Dr Strangelove (though its release was postponed to 1964 due to the Kennedy assassination). Losey, after a difficult period, often working under pseudonyms, had three films released: the dazzling Hammer thriller The Damned, the Franco-Italian psycho-drama Eve (both shown in versions re-edited by their producers) and the complex, fully achieved The Servant.

Influenced by Marx and Brecht, The Servant was the first part of a trilogy scripted by Harold Pinter about class warfare, sexual conflict and struggles for power in 20th-century Britain, involving a whole society from the working class to the aristocracy.

Exquisitely made...

The latest movie adaptation of a Meyer novel will likely not lead to a movie franchise Directed and adapted by Andrew Niccol, Stephenie Meyer's sci-fi book The Host debuted at no. 6 on the Us / Canada box-office chart this Easter weekend, earning an anemic $10.6 million at 3,202 North American venues, as per actuals found on the web site Box Office Mojo. Many pundits had been predicting The Host to debut in the mid-to-high teens. What that means (and considering the film's budget; see below), the romantic sci-fier featuring Saoirse Ronan, Max Irons, and Jake Abel is this year's most recent big box-office disappointment. (Pictured above: Abel as one of the men in Ronan's in The Host) It may seem mean-spirited to compare The Host to either Twilight or The Hunger Games; but then again, both of those movies were also adaptations of popular novels geared to young adults, and featured a...

Early estimates point to a quite underwhelming box-office debut for the latest movie adapation of a Meyer novel: Really, nobody was predicting that The Host, the Andrew Niccol-directed film version of Stephenie Meyer's sci-fi book about parasitical aliens would reach the North American gross of the initial Twilight movie (2008), also based on a bestseller written by Meyer. And certainly no one was expecting that Niccol's film would get even remotely near the success of Gary Ross' sci-fier / adventure drama The Hunger Games, which, like Twilight and The Host, was based on a popular book for young adults, featuring a heroine (Jennifer Lawrence) and two men in her life (Liam Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson). (Pictured above: 2007 Best Supporting Actress nominee Saoirse Ronan in The Host.) In fact, The Host would have boasted a fantastic debut were it to earn as much as half of the $69.63 million (not factoring...

In his first polychromatic movie, made in 1964 and now revived in a new print to celebrate the centenary of his birth, Antonioni uses colour that manages to be simultaneously dazzling and dull in depicting a Po valley being poisoned and disfigured by the burgeoning petrochemical industries. The water is polluted, the air filled with noxious gases, the fauna laid waste. This flawed masterpiece is a political film, anger seething beneath the seductively beautiful surface, and a contrast to the surrounding devastation is provided by a simple fable told to a small boy by his mother. It concerns a little girl on a pristine Mediterranean island, swimming in the clear blue sea and hearing secret music all around.

The mother, played by Antonioni's muse, Monica Vitti, is a would-be suicide, married to the manager of a local plant and being driven mad by the moral and physical environment. She comes to...

Oscar-nominated actor's preparations to play 37-year-old Welsh rugby star reportedly include surgery and weight loss

The Oscar-nominated actor Mickey Rourke has reportedly undergone surgery and lost more than two stone in his ongoing effort to portray gay Welsh rugby player Gareth Thomas in a forthcoming biopic.

Rourke, 59, has hired a top personal trainer to get him into shape to play Thomas, 37, and has already had work done on his eyes, says the Daily Mail's Baz Bamingboye. Producer Colin Vaines said the 22-year age gap between the two men was not relevant. "When Mickey's committed, as he is with this, he can do anything. The age isn't a problem," he said.

Apparently Rourke is intrigued by the prospect of exploring the psychology which allowed Thomas to hide his sexuality. "It's a film about a man who played rugby, who was so aggressive when he played – and he happened to be gay,...

Hang around in Calderdale, and you could well end up in a movie. Our Hebden Bridge outpost, Jill Robinson, reels off some the greats

Last year saw the premiere at the Hebden Bridge Picture House of the film A Calder Valley Christmas, with local people (including this outpost of the Northerner) queuing around the block to be among the first to see it. Directed by local film-maker Nick Wilding, the piece combines archive material, reminiscences about bad winters, carols, poems, scenes of local Mummers and other traditions, and monologues by the incomparable Ian Dewhirst MBE. (He actually lives in Keighley, but he tells such a good tale that he is often invited over the hill.) Like all the best films, there is an accompanying song, Christmas in Hebden Bridge, performed by children from local schools.

However, this is by no means the only film to have used the dramatic natural...

DVD Playhouse—November 2011

By Allen Gardner

Tree Of Life (20th Century Fox) Terrence Malick’s latest effort is both the best film of 2011 and the finest work of his (arguably) mixed, but often masterly canon. A series of vignettes, mostly set in 1950s Texas, capture the memory of a man (Sean Penn) in present-day New York who looks back on his life, and his parents’ (Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain) troubled marriage, when word of his younger brother’s suicide reaches him. Almost indescribable beyond that, except to say no other film in history so perfectly evokes the magic and mystery of the human memory, which both crystalizes (and sometimes idealizes) the past. Like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, this is a challenging, polarizing work that you must let wash over you. If you go along for the ride, you’re in for a unique, rewarding cinematic experience. Also available on Blu-ray disc.