Film Interviews

The Woody Allen story: 'Why do I feel like I got screwed?'

Jasper Rees Monday, 22 July 2013

Woody Allen once joked that he would prefer to achieve immortality not through his work but through not dying. He is now 77 and the inevitable is a lot nearer than it was when he first realised, aged five, that this doesn’t go on forever. Fear of death has powered the furious productivity that in the early days yielded jokes by the yard, then the films appearing year upon year.

10 Questions for Joss Whedon

Emma Dibdin Monday, 10 June 2013

Few heroes of cult genre television ever manage the transition into mainstream financial success – although JJ Abrams hasn't been doing too badly for himself – and for many years Joss Whedon's deified status among fans of his various lovingly crafted, emotionally rich series was not reflected by broader recognition.

10 Questions for Writer David Mitchell

Jasper Rees Wednesday, 10 April 2013

“If you show someone something you’ve written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin and say, ‘When you’re ready.’” The words belong to Jason Taylor, the stammering 13-year-old poet protagonist of David Mitchell's novel Black Swan Green. But they will do for any artist presenting fresh work. Mitchell is going through an extracurricular phase of presenting fresh work to a different kind of audience.

10 Questions for François Ozon

Demetrios Matheou Monday, 25 March 2013

François Ozon is one of France’s most mercurial directors, his country’s equivalent, in some respects, to our own Michael Winterbottom – prolific, and constantly on the move between genres. He’s made a musical (8 Women), a marital drama (5x2), a murder mystery (Swimming Pool), a period melodrama (Angel), political satire (Potiche) and a poignant drama about a young man coping with his imminent death (Time to Leave), among others.

Interview: Film Director Matteo Garrone

Nick Hasted Tuesday, 19 March 2013

When Matteo Garrone’s sixth film Gomorrah won the 2008 Grand Prix at Cannes, it announced Italian cinema’s resurrection to the world. When his follow-up, Reality, won the 2012 Grand Prix, opinion was more divided.

Q&A Special: The Making of Local Hero

Jasper Rees Sunday, 17 February 2013

Local Hero was released 30 years ago this weekend. No British film from the Eighties can lay claim to quite such lasting and deep-seated affection as Bill Forsyth’s modest masterpiece – not even Chariots of Fire, which was David Puttnam’s previous triumph as a producer. Though not a great commercial success at first – it had a limited release in America – it went on to bloom on VHS and DVD. It also has an asteroid named after it (the 7345 Happer, for the record).

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theartsdesk Q&A: Comedian Rowan Atkinson

Jasper Rees Saturday, 19 January 2013

The generation of alternative comedians who emerged around 30 years ago have long since elbowed their predecessors into the long grass and themselves become the establishment. Of no performer can that be said with more certainty than Rowan Atkinson. His rubbery physiognomy is instantly recognisable to billions, which is why he – or rather Mr Bean - was granted pride of place at the Opening Ceremony as guest artist with Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra.

10 Questions for James Marsh

Jasper Rees Thursday, 10 January 2013

Five years ago James Marsh won an Academy Award for the documentary Man on Wire. It thrillingly told the story of Philippe Petit’s audacious walk on a tightrope between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. Marsh stayed on in the 1970s for Project Nim, a chilling documentary about a hubristic American scientist who as an experiment tried to bring up a chimpanzee as a human.

10 Questions for Director Bernard Rose

Tom Birchenough Friday, 04 January 2013

Who ever said making a movie was a glamorous business? Shooting the climactic scene of his most recent film Boxing Day, British-born director Bernard Rose (pictured below right) found himself in the freezing Colorado mountains - so cold you couldn’t even see your breath - with just his two stars, Danny Huston and Matthew Jacobs, and a sound-recordist for company.

theartsdesk Q&A: Writer Sir Ronald Harwood

Jasper Rees Sunday, 30 December 2012

Success can be a terrible burden. Wonderful while it lasts, once the applause has petered out, the looks have faded and the fame has dwindled, what do the stars of yesteryear have to live for? It’s the question asked by Ronald Harwood in Quartet. Harwood's hymn to seniority started out as a play in 1999, but has now been made into a film. True to its message that age should not be allowed to wither us, it features the directorial debut of Dustin Hoffman.

10 Questions for JC Chandor

Karen Krizanovich Monday, 12 November 2012

It’s rare to get excited about a DVD release. It is even rarer to get excited about a director. Margin Call and its director JC Chandor are rare exceptions. Devised in 2005, the idea for the film came about when the director and his chums, testing the waters of the volatile yet lucrative New York property market, were offered $10m by a bank - few questions asked.

theartsdesk Q&A: Director Julien Temple

Nick Hasted Saturday, 03 November 2012

Julien Temple’s directing career has been struck seemingly stone-dead twice. After working with Malcolm McLaren and the Sex Pistols on The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle (1979), then again after the flop big-budget British jazz musical Absolute Beginners (1986), he was made a notorious cinema untouchable in the UK. Exiled in Hollywood, he fell back on his parallel life as a landmark pop video auteur.

theartsdesk Q&A: Film Critic David Thomson

Emma Dibdin Saturday, 20 October 2012

Film critic and historian David Thomson has been writing on cinema for more than 40 years, and in that time has penned books both sprawling (1975’s A Biographical Dictionary of Film) and specific (2009’s The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder). His latest volume The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies and What They Did To Us straddles the divide.

Interview: 10 Questions for Kristen Stewart

Demetrios Matheou Monday, 08 October 2012

The cast of On the Road is an embarrassment of riches. There’s Viggo Mortensen, high on many people’s lists of favourite contemporary actors, with a rum portrayal of William Burroughs; talented British actors Sam Riley and Tom Sturridge as those other Beat colossi Kerouac and Ginsberg; Kirsten Dunst and Mad Men’s Elizabeth Moss, and indie stalwart Steve Buscemi.

Interview: 10 Questions for LFF Director Clare Stewart

Demetrios Matheou Wednesday, 03 October 2012

Clare Stewart arrived in London from Australia a year ago this month, into one of the biggest jobs in the UK film industry. For film buffs, it might seem like she entered a giant playground, a job to die for.

Interview: 10 Questions for Julie Delpy

graham Fuller Monday, 01 October 2012

Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in New York, released on DVD and Blu-ray today, is the fifth feature written (or co-written) and directed by the French actress-filmmaker and her sequel to 2007’s 2 Days in Paris. It is, therefore, another hyper, chaotic comedy of Franco-American cultural discord.