tue 19/03/2024

Film Interviews

Q&A Special: Actor Bruno Ganz on playing Hitler

Jasper Rees

There is nothing quite like the Iffland-Ring in this country. The property of the Austrian state, for two centuries it has been awarded to the most important German-speaking actor of the age, who after a suitable period nominates his successor and hands the ring on. There were only four handovers in the entire 20th century.

Read more...

theartsdesk Q&A: Matthew Heineman on directing 'A Private War'

Adam Sweeting

The release of Matthew Heineman’s film A Private War, about the tumultuous life and 2012 death of renowned Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin, has gained an added edge of newsworthiness from this week’s verdict by Washington DC’s US District Court for the District of Columbia.

Read more...

theartsdesk Q&A: Composer Michel Legrand

Jasper Rees

“I want to be a man without any past,” said Michel Legrand, who has died at the age of 86. He had perhaps the longest past in showbiz. Orchestrator, pianist, conductor, composer of countless soundtracks, who else has collaborated as widely - with Miles Davis and Kiri Te Kanawa, Barbra Streisand and Jean-Luc Godard, Gene Kelly, Joseph Losey and Edith Piaf? When I visited him at his house at his splendid classical manoir 100km south of Paris, on the mantelpiece in the large white sitting room...

Read more...

'I'll show the lot of you!' Richard E Grant's Oscar nomination

Jasper Rees

Richard E Grant has captivated the internet. The actor greeted the news of his nomination for an Academy Award by returning to his first rental when no one had heard of him. There he whooped with childlike delight, and then shared the whole thing in an utterly disarming Instagram post.

Read more...

Director Alexandria Bombach: 'I feel like a completely different person'

Owen Richards

Nadia Murad caught the world’s attention when she spoke at the United Nations Security Council. She spoke of living under ISIS, daily assaults, escaping, and the current plight of the Yazidi people, in refugee camps and still under ISIS control. It was a heart-breaking plea for support to the world’s silent nations.

Read more...

Tim Wardle: 'A documentary director has huge power over the interview subject'

Owen Richards

(Warning: spoilers ahead) For a brief 15 minutes, this was the biggest story in America: three boys, identical in looks, discovering each other at the age of 19. Edward “Eddie” Galland, David Kellman and Robert “Bobby” Shafran were all adopted from the same agency, but had no idea they were triplets.

Read more...

Laurent Cantet: 'Young people have different preoccupations nowadays' – interview

Demetrios Matheou

Like Ken Loach and the Dardennes brothers, Laurent Cantet is a filmmaker with a keen interest in social issues and themes, often using non-professional actors and a naturalistic approach, but perfectly willing to inject a...

Read more...

Erik Poppe and Andrea Berntzen: 'When white young men do stuff like this, we just shake our heads'

Owen Richards

On 22nd July 2011, on a tiny island off the Norwegian coast, 69 young people were killed, with another 109 injured in a terrorist attack. It was the darkest day in Norway since World War Two, and one that is still evident in its news, politics and society today.

Read more...

Matthew Holness: 'I wanted to make a modern silent horror film'

Owen Richards

Watching Matthew Holnessdebut feature Possum, you’d be forgiven in thinking he was a tortured soul.

Read more...

Michel Hazanavicius: 'Losing himself is how he found himself'

Demetrios Matheou

French director Michel Hazanavicius made a name for himself with his OSS 117 spy spoofs, Nest of Spies (2006) and Lost in Rio (2009), set in the Fifties and Sixties respectively and starring Jean Dujardin as a somewhat idiotic and prejudiced secret agent.

Read more...

Andrew Haigh: 'In the end you have to be able to make the decisions' - interview

Adam Sweeting

Very early in his career, Andrew Haigh worked as an assistant editor on such Ridley Scott blockbusters as Gladiator and Black Hawk Down. He didn't actually meet Scott in person until years later, when the eminent director had no recollection of him.

Read more...

Juliette Binoche: ‘Repetition feels like near death’

Demetrios Matheou

It’s about time Juliette Binoche and Claire Denis teamed up: the legendary French actress, Gallic film royalty known by her countrymen and women as La Binoche, with one of the country’s most unique directors, both talented and formidable women who have very much forged their own paths in the...

Read more...

Milos Forman: 'The less you know about yourself, the happier you are'

Jasper Rees

The second thing I noticed about Miloš Forman, who has died at the age of 86, was the spectacular imperfection of his English.

Read more...

Clio Barnard: 'We need to talk about sexual abuse' - interview

Owen Richards

Clio Barnard has quietly been building a reputation as one of Britain’s most human storytellers.

Read more...

Daniel Day-Lewis: 'I'm quite good at mending things'

Jasper Rees

Daniel Day-Lewis doesn’t look like a 60-year-old retiree. He’s wearing a striped T-shirt under a dark blue shirt, light brown trousers which descend no further than mid-calf and boots laced high above the ankle he could easily have worn as a young actor in My Beautiful Laundrette. Ditto the earring. He remains as thin and sleek as a whippet.

Read more...

Jeremy Irons: 'I was never very beautiful' - interview

Jasper Rees

In 2016 the Bristol Old Vic turned 250. To blow out the candles, England’s oldest continually running theatre summoned home one of its most splendid alumni.

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

St Mary's Music School, RSNO, Søndergård, Usher Hall, E...

For the second year in a row the Royal Scottish National...

Manhunt, Apple TV+ review - all the President's men

President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on 14 April 1865, five days after General Robert E Lee’s surrender at Appomatox signalled the end of...

Blu-ray: Beautiful Thing

Beautiful Thing’s opening scene plays out like a sweary take on Bill Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl, Meera Syal’s potty-mouthed PE...

Bevan, Williams, BBCSO, MacMillan, Barbican review - inspira...

It began with the tolling of a lone bell and ended in a transcendent blaze of golden light. The UK premiere of James MacMillan’s Fiat Lux...

Salome, Irish National Opera review - imaginatively charted...

“Based on the play by Oscar Wilde,” declared publicity on Dublin buses and buildings, reminding opera-cautious citizens that the poet whose text...

Album: Elbow - Audio Vertigo

On this, their 10th album, the melodious...

First Person: conductor Peter Whelan on coming full circle w...

There's something undeniable about the way music can weave itself into the fabric of our lives, shaping our passions and leaving an indelible...

Music Reissues Weekly: The Mystic Tide - Frustration

Crashing chords are followed by a spindly, untrammelled solo guitar. After this subsides, the singer lays out the issue: “I try, I cry, I just can...

Hughes, SCO, Kuusisto, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh review - Clyn...

Most concert promoters will tell you that contemporary music tends to be, to put it politely, a tricky sell, which is one of the reasons why it’s...

The New Boy review - a mystical take on Australia's tre...

This is writer-director Warwick Thornton’s third...