BAFTA Fellowship: Few Women, Few Outside UK/Hollywood, Steven Spielberg Before Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Billy Wilder [Photo: Laurence Olivier] 1971 Alfred Hitchcock 1972 Freddie Young 1973 Grace Wyndham Goldie 1974 David Lean 1975 Jacques Cousteau 1976 Charles Chaplin, Laurence Olivier 1977 Denis Forman 1978 Fred Zinnemann 1979 Lew Grade, Huw Wheldon 1980 David Attenborough, John Huston 1981 Abel Gance, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger 1982 Andrzej Wajda 1983 Richard Attenborough 1984 Hugh Greene, Sam Spiegel 1985 Jeremy Isaacs 1986 Steven Spielberg 1987 Federico Fellini 1988 Ingmar Bergman 1989 Alec Guinness 1990 Paul Fox 1991 Louis Malle 1992 John Gielgud, David Plowright 1993 Sydney Samuelson, Colin Young 1994 Michael Grade 1995 Billy Wilder 1996 Jeanne Moreau, Ronald Neame, John Schlesinger, Maggie Smith 1997 Woody Allen, Steven Bochco, Julie Christie, Oswald Morris, Harold Pinter, David Rose 1998 Sean Connery, Bill Cotton 1999 Eric Morecambe & Ernie Wise, Elizabeth Taylor 2000 Michael Caine, Stanley Kubrick, Peter Bazalgette 2001 Albert Finney, John Thaw, Judi Dench 2002 Warren Beatty, Merchant Ivory Productions (James Ivory, Ismail Merchant) 2002 Andrew Davies, John Mills 2003 Saul Zaentz, David Jason 2004 John Boorman, Roger Graef 2005 John Barry, David Frost 2006 David Puttnam,...
- 1/4/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Inevitably for someone whose creative life stretched more than half a century, Ken Russell's long career had its peaks and troughs
Inevitably for someone whose creative life stretched more than half a century, Ken Russell's long career had its peaks and troughs. But Russell's work for the BBC – in particular for Huw Wheldon's Monitor programme – from 1959 to 1970 was a whole mountain range, a before and after of the arts on television. The Russell who developed from the short early films about the likes of John Betjeman and Shelagh Delaney to the full-length and increasingly cinematic programmes on Delius and Richard Strauss was a director who was stretching his medium to the limit. But his BBC work had a heady mix of individuality, creativity and – until the Strauss film – a passionate seriousness that has never been surpassed in arts television. Russell's film on Elgar was not just a...
Inevitably for someone whose creative life stretched more than half a century, Ken Russell's long career had its peaks and troughs. But Russell's work for the BBC – in particular for Huw Wheldon's Monitor programme – from 1959 to 1970 was a whole mountain range, a before and after of the arts on television. The Russell who developed from the short early films about the likes of John Betjeman and Shelagh Delaney to the full-length and increasingly cinematic programmes on Delius and Richard Strauss was a director who was stretching his medium to the limit. But his BBC work had a heady mix of individuality, creativity and – until the Strauss film – a passionate seriousness that has never been surpassed in arts television. Russell's film on Elgar was not just a...
- 11/29/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
Naked wrestling, religious mania and The Who's Tommy: director Ken Russell transformed British cinema. His closest collaborators recall a fierce, funny and groundbreaking talent
Glenda Jackson
I worked with Ken on six films. Women in Love was the first time I'd worked with a director of that genius, and on a film of that size. What I remember most was the creative and productive atmosphere on set: he was open to ideas from everyone, from the clapperboard operator upwards. Like any great director, he knew what he didn't want – but was open to everything else.
As a director he never said anything very specific. He'd say, "It needs to be a bit more … urrrgh, or a bit less hmmm", and you knew exactly what he meant. I used to ask him why he never said "Cut", and he said, "Because it means you always do something different." They gave...
Glenda Jackson
I worked with Ken on six films. Women in Love was the first time I'd worked with a director of that genius, and on a film of that size. What I remember most was the creative and productive atmosphere on set: he was open to ideas from everyone, from the clapperboard operator upwards. Like any great director, he knew what he didn't want – but was open to everything else.
As a director he never said anything very specific. He'd say, "It needs to be a bit more … urrrgh, or a bit less hmmm", and you knew exactly what he meant. I used to ask him why he never said "Cut", and he said, "Because it means you always do something different." They gave...
- 11/29/2011
- by Melissa Denes, Laura Barnett
- The Guardian - Film News
John Bridcut on Ken Russell, a film-maker who 'resisted the facts getting in the way of his visual imagination'
The wild visual imagination of Ken Russell brought classical music to a whole new audience, and made his name notorious in respectable musical circles. His feature films about composers went straight for the jugular – sometimes almost literally, as in his blood-soaked Mahler. He loved the music, but he also loved the sex. He sold the idea of The Music Lovers on the basis that it was a story about a nymphomaniac who fell in love with a homosexual, and sure enough the film opens in a bedroom, with an unbridled romp between Richard Chamberlain as Tchaikovsky and Christopher Gable as his lover.
His films on Liszt, Debussy, Richard Strauss and Wagner all involved sexual fantasy, to the dismay and outrage of people who took the music rather more seriously. Each one made headlines,...
The wild visual imagination of Ken Russell brought classical music to a whole new audience, and made his name notorious in respectable musical circles. His feature films about composers went straight for the jugular – sometimes almost literally, as in his blood-soaked Mahler. He loved the music, but he also loved the sex. He sold the idea of The Music Lovers on the basis that it was a story about a nymphomaniac who fell in love with a homosexual, and sure enough the film opens in a bedroom, with an unbridled romp between Richard Chamberlain as Tchaikovsky and Christopher Gable as his lover.
His films on Liszt, Debussy, Richard Strauss and Wagner all involved sexual fantasy, to the dismay and outrage of people who took the music rather more seriously. Each one made headlines,...
- 11/28/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
A mural celebrating a century of Prestatyn's history has me representing 1999 – the year The Phantom Menace came out
So, who's that swinging a lightsaber in the lobby of a Welsh cinema? Heck, it's me. Somehow I have got myself immortalised in a mural in the seaside town of Prestatyn, where I spent sun-filled years of childhood and where my parents still live.
It's not just me in artist Paul Young's hugely accomplished photo-mural, but a hundred Prestatyn and Prestatyn-related people, many in costume, as we stand in a cinema queue that moves backwards through a century of local history, to 1910 when the Scala cinema was founded by a showman named Saroni. Young's research revealed that Huw Wheldon, legendary television controller, and the late artist Barry Flanagan, who is about to have a retrospective at Tate Britain, both came from Prestatyn. Not to mention Carol Vorderman.
As for me, I...
So, who's that swinging a lightsaber in the lobby of a Welsh cinema? Heck, it's me. Somehow I have got myself immortalised in a mural in the seaside town of Prestatyn, where I spent sun-filled years of childhood and where my parents still live.
It's not just me in artist Paul Young's hugely accomplished photo-mural, but a hundred Prestatyn and Prestatyn-related people, many in costume, as we stand in a cinema queue that moves backwards through a century of local history, to 1910 when the Scala cinema was founded by a showman named Saroni. Young's research revealed that Huw Wheldon, legendary television controller, and the late artist Barry Flanagan, who is about to have a retrospective at Tate Britain, both came from Prestatyn. Not to mention Carol Vorderman.
As for me, I...
- 9/11/2011
- by Jonathan Jones
- The Guardian - Film News
The Observer's film critic reflects on The King's Speech – and how his own speech impediment has contributed to his life and character
From as early as I can remember until 1952, when I left home at the age of 18 to go into the army, there was an annual ritual on the afternoon of Christmas Day. Dinner, which meant turkey and all the trimmings followed by plum pudding, began around two o'clock and was carefully timed to end so that everyone could sit there beneath the paper decorations, wearing the hats that came out of the crackers, and earnestly, reverently listen to the king's Christmas message on the radio.
This hallowed national tradition, initiated by Sir John Reith in 1932, was not five years old when George V, who'd given four of them, died. His successor Edward VIII's landmark contribution to broadcasting was his 1936 abdication speech: there was no Christmas message that year.
From as early as I can remember until 1952, when I left home at the age of 18 to go into the army, there was an annual ritual on the afternoon of Christmas Day. Dinner, which meant turkey and all the trimmings followed by plum pudding, began around two o'clock and was carefully timed to end so that everyone could sit there beneath the paper decorations, wearing the hats that came out of the crackers, and earnestly, reverently listen to the king's Christmas message on the radio.
This hallowed national tradition, initiated by Sir John Reith in 1932, was not five years old when George V, who'd given four of them, died. His successor Edward VIII's landmark contribution to broadcasting was his 1936 abdication speech: there was no Christmas message that year.
- 12/26/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Philip French speaks to Ridley Scott, Ken Russell, Gurinder Chadha, Shane Meadows and Stephen Frears about their debut pictures and detects the styles of the then-fledgling auteurs
Do artists discover a personal style and develop their themes gradually or are these to be found in embryonic form in their earliest works? There's no easy answer to this dual question. Take, for example, Ken Russell's Amelia and the Angel (1957), Ridley Scott's Boy and Bicycle (1965), Stephen Frears's The Burning (1967), Gurinder Chadha's I'm British But… (1989) and Shane Meadows's Where's the Money, Ronnie? (1995). All were made on shoestring budgets and each lasts less than half an hour.
First, presented with the directors' names and the credits concealed, would you be able to match up film and film-maker? I think most moviegoers could, which suggests there is something in these first movies that we would now recognise as characteristic. Second,...
Do artists discover a personal style and develop their themes gradually or are these to be found in embryonic form in their earliest works? There's no easy answer to this dual question. Take, for example, Ken Russell's Amelia and the Angel (1957), Ridley Scott's Boy and Bicycle (1965), Stephen Frears's The Burning (1967), Gurinder Chadha's I'm British But… (1989) and Shane Meadows's Where's the Money, Ronnie? (1995). All were made on shoestring budgets and each lasts less than half an hour.
First, presented with the directors' names and the credits concealed, would you be able to match up film and film-maker? I think most moviegoers could, which suggests there is something in these first movies that we would now recognise as characteristic. Second,...
- 9/25/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
This attractive documentary brings together in Los Angeles three celebrated rock guitarists to discuss their art and jam together in an old warehouse. They're the 65-year-old Englishman Jimmy Page, formerly of the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin; the 48-year-old London-born Dubliner, the Edge (aka David Howell Evans) of U2; and the 34-year-old Detroit-born former altar boy, Jack White of the White Stripes. Apparently guitars were once on their way out and this trio of virtuosi revived them, though this was news to me. There's new footage of them in their natural habitats and material from concerts, home videos and TV interviews (including an earnest Huw Wheldon interrogating the 14-year-old Page) and they come across very well. It's artfully assembled in an unflashy manner by Davis Guggenheim, who won an Oscar for his Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth and directed episodes of the outstanding TV western Deadwood.
Music documentaryPhilip French
guardian.
Music documentaryPhilip French
guardian.
- 1/4/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
CAMBRIDGE, England -- Award-winning screenwriter Paul Abbott lambasted British program makers Thursday for "bland, formulaic drama," warning that risk-free programs would alienate viewers. Delivering the high-profile Huw Wheldon lecture in front of an audience of Britain's most senior broadcasting executives, the BAFTA and Royal Television Society award-winning writer behind such projects as Shameless, State of Play and Clocking Off said television has become dull. "There is a malaise in television drama at the moment. Too much is under-ambitious, predictable and needlessly boring," he said, contrasting British output with such U.S. fare as ABC drama Lost.
- 9/15/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.