'Henry V' Movie Actress Renée Asherson dead at 99: Laurence Olivier leading lady in acclaimed 1944 film (image: Renée Asherson and Laurence Olivier in 'Henry V') Renée Asherson, a British stage actress featured in London productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Three Sisters, but best known internationally as Laurence Olivier's leading lady in the 1944 film version of Henry V, died on October 30, 2014. Asherson was 99 years old. The exact cause of death hasn't been specified. She was born Dorothy Renée Ascherson (she would drop the "c" some time after becoming an actress) on May 19, 1915, in Kensington, London, to Jewish parents: businessman Charles Ascherson and his second wife, Dorothy Wiseman -- both of whom narrowly escaped spending their honeymoon aboard the Titanic. (Ascherson cancelled the voyage after suffering an attack of appendicitis.) According to Michael Coveney's The Guardian obit for the actress, Renée Asherson was "scantly...
- 11/5/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Stage and screen actor who excelled in playing authority figures and appeared in TV shows such as Brookside and Lovejoy
Malcolm Tierney, who has died aged 75 of pulmonary fibrosis, was a reliable and versatile supporting actor for 50 years, familiar to television audiences as the cigar-smoking, bullying villain Tommy McArdle in Brookside, nasty Charlie Gimbert in Lovejoy and smoothie Geoffrey Ellsworth-Smythe in David Nobbs's A Bit of a Do, a Yorkshire small-town comedy chronicle starring David Jason and Gwen Taylor.
Always serious and quietly spoken offstage, with glinting blue eyes and a steady, cruel gaze that served him well as authority figures on screen, Tierney was a working-class Mancunian who became a core member of the Workers' Revolutionary party in the 1970s. He never wavered in his socialist beliefs, even when the Wrp imploded ("That's all in my past now," he said), and always opposed restricted entry to the actors' union,...
Malcolm Tierney, who has died aged 75 of pulmonary fibrosis, was a reliable and versatile supporting actor for 50 years, familiar to television audiences as the cigar-smoking, bullying villain Tommy McArdle in Brookside, nasty Charlie Gimbert in Lovejoy and smoothie Geoffrey Ellsworth-Smythe in David Nobbs's A Bit of a Do, a Yorkshire small-town comedy chronicle starring David Jason and Gwen Taylor.
Always serious and quietly spoken offstage, with glinting blue eyes and a steady, cruel gaze that served him well as authority figures on screen, Tierney was a working-class Mancunian who became a core member of the Workers' Revolutionary party in the 1970s. He never wavered in his socialist beliefs, even when the Wrp imploded ("That's all in my past now," he said), and always opposed restricted entry to the actors' union,...
- 2/22/2014
- by Michael Coveney, Vanessa Redgrave
- The Guardian - Film News
Actors best known for their roles in TV and cinema are thrilling audiences and critics in plays full of violent, challenging action
The revered Kenneth Tynan, who reviewed theatre for the Observer in the 1950s and 1960s, said: "A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time." All the same, it can be hard to spot a golden age when you are in the middle of it. It seems probable, though, that the London stage is enjoying at least a golden winter.
Four British actors, each of them a household name across the world, are delighting theatre audiences in leading roles in four plays that are not obvious crowd pleasers: Coriolanus, Richard II, Henry V and a new musical version of the Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho. The popularity of the leading men, two from the world of film, Jude Law and Tom Hiddleston,...
The revered Kenneth Tynan, who reviewed theatre for the Observer in the 1950s and 1960s, said: "A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time." All the same, it can be hard to spot a golden age when you are in the middle of it. It seems probable, though, that the London stage is enjoying at least a golden winter.
Four British actors, each of them a household name across the world, are delighting theatre audiences in leading roles in four plays that are not obvious crowd pleasers: Coriolanus, Richard II, Henry V and a new musical version of the Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho. The popularity of the leading men, two from the world of film, Jude Law and Tom Hiddleston,...
- 12/22/2013
- by Vanessa Thorpe
- The Guardian - Film News
With special thanks going out to Adrian Martin, we begin with a bit of viewing, not-so-strategically embedded here throughout today's Briefing. The buzz leading up to tomorrow's world premiere of Miguel Gomes's Tabu at the Berlinale has been next-to-unprecedented, at least to this Berlinale veteran. Critic.de has posted three clips, and yes, they are extraordinarily promising. Hopes are high.
Reading. "It seems likely that digital projection has, in unintended and unexpected ways, put the history of film in jeopardy." David Bordwell explains.
New York. "Chicago-born Andrea Callard, among the first wave of Tribeca artist-settlers in the early 70s, loved to find the country in the city," writes Melissa Anderson in the Voice. "Several of her Super 8 short films from that period on view at her Maysles tribute (which also includes slide shows of her hand-colored print collages) reveal nature's splendor in the most unlikely places." Through Sunday.
Reading. "It seems likely that digital projection has, in unintended and unexpected ways, put the history of film in jeopardy." David Bordwell explains.
New York. "Chicago-born Andrea Callard, among the first wave of Tribeca artist-settlers in the early 70s, loved to find the country in the city," writes Melissa Anderson in the Voice. "Several of her Super 8 short films from that period on view at her Maysles tribute (which also includes slide shows of her hand-colored print collages) reveal nature's splendor in the most unlikely places." Through Sunday.
- 2/13/2012
- MUBI
"Nicol Williamson, the British actor best known for his role as the wizard Merlin in the 1981 film Excalibur, has died of esophageal cancer," reports the AP. "Williamson had dozens of film credits to his name but won more plaudits for his stage acting. Playwright John Osborne once described him as 'the greatest actor since Marlon Brando.' He was nominated for a Tony Award in 1966 for his role in Osborne's Inadmissible Evidence and again in 1974 for Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. He also was nominated three times for acting honors at the British Academy Film Awards, Britain's equivalent of the Oscars."
"He made his professional stage debut at the Dundee Repertory Theatre in 1960, before appearing in Tony Richardson's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Royal Court Theatre," notes the BBC. "He later teamed up with Richardson again, to star his Hamlet production at the Roundhouse. It was so successful,...
"He made his professional stage debut at the Dundee Repertory Theatre in 1960, before appearing in Tony Richardson's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Royal Court Theatre," notes the BBC. "He later teamed up with Richardson again, to star his Hamlet production at the Roundhouse. It was so successful,...
- 1/26/2012
- MUBI
Stage and screen actor Nicol Williamson, who played Hamlet onstage and Merlin on screen, died of esophageal cancer on December 16 in Amsterdam, where he had been living since 1970. His son announced the death yesterday, January 25. Reports vary on Williamson's age; he was either 73 or 75. For those familiar only with Williamson's movie work, he was best remembered for his cocaine-addicted Sherlock Holmes in Herbert Ross' The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) and for his campy Merlin in John Boorman's Excalibur (1981, photo). Based on Nicholas Meyer's novel, in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution Dr. Watson (Robert Duvall) entices Holmes to seek psychiatric help with none other than a pre-Viggo Mortensen Sigmund Freud: Alan Arkin. (Here's wondering if Shakespeare's shrink, as found in John Madden's Shakespeare in Love, was inspired by the Holmes-Freud relationship in Ross' movie.) Though made for a modest $4 million (about $16 million today), The Seven-Per-Cent Solution turned out to be...
- 1/26/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
A film of the Australian production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, which closed in the West End after a year, is to be released in the UK in March
Love Never Dies – and, despite Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical closing abruptly in the West End after only a year, it looks set to be reborn when a film of the Australian production is released in March.
The show, a sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, has fared rather better in Australia, where Simon Phillips directed a different staging to that seen in the UK. The production was filmed over three days in September at the Regent Theatre in Melbourne, where it received its Australian premiere. It will be released in the UK on DVD and Blu-ray on 12 March, before going on sale in the Us from May.
Theatre critic Michael Coveney, who saw a screening of the film last week,...
Love Never Dies – and, despite Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical closing abruptly in the West End after only a year, it looks set to be reborn when a film of the Australian production is released in March.
The show, a sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, has fared rather better in Australia, where Simon Phillips directed a different staging to that seen in the UK. The production was filmed over three days in September at the Regent Theatre in Melbourne, where it received its Australian premiere. It will be released in the UK on DVD and Blu-ray on 12 March, before going on sale in the Us from May.
Theatre critic Michael Coveney, who saw a screening of the film last week,...
- 1/25/2012
- by Matt Trueman
- The Guardian - Film News
In a new production of Jacobean sex-and-murder drama The Changeling, the asides have been replaced with pre-recorded voiceovers. Bold stroke – or bad idea?
In Michael Oakley's current production of Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling, a psychologically complex sex-and-murder tragedy at Southwark Playhouse in London, the play's numerous Jacobean asides have been replaced with voiceovers. Instead of the characters speaking their thoughts directly to the audience, their lines have been pre-recorded and play out from speakers dotted around the stage.
Oakley admits he was taking a risk in choosing to present the piece in this way, and the critical response has been mixed. Writing in the Guardian, Maddy Costa called it a "bold stroke" and said that, when this technique works, which she concedes it doesn't always, "it allows the actors a physical proximity that addressing the audience might preclude".
Michael Coveney, writing in What's on Stage, was less forgiving, deeming...
In Michael Oakley's current production of Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling, a psychologically complex sex-and-murder tragedy at Southwark Playhouse in London, the play's numerous Jacobean asides have been replaced with voiceovers. Instead of the characters speaking their thoughts directly to the audience, their lines have been pre-recorded and play out from speakers dotted around the stage.
Oakley admits he was taking a risk in choosing to present the piece in this way, and the critical response has been mixed. Writing in the Guardian, Maddy Costa called it a "bold stroke" and said that, when this technique works, which she concedes it doesn't always, "it allows the actors a physical proximity that addressing the audience might preclude".
Michael Coveney, writing in What's on Stage, was less forgiving, deeming...
- 11/24/2011
- by Natasha Tripney
- The Guardian - Film News
John Neville, who has died at the age of 86, was "perhaps best known to American audiences for playing the title role in [Terry Gilliam's] The Adventures of Baron Munchausen as well as the Well-Manicured Man on The X-Files," suggests Sean O'Neal at the Av Club.
But he was also "a leading light of the Old Vic, the charismatic artistic director of the Nottingham Playhouse in the early 1960s and, after emigrating to Canada in 1972, a renowned leader of that country's theatre," writes Michael Coveney in the Guardian. "He found huge matinee-idol success early on, in the [John] Gielgud roles of Hamlet and Richard II, though his patrician veneer and noble bearing could be easily discarded, as he showed to devastating effect in 1963, when he played Bill Naughton's Alfie at the Mermaid theatre, the role that became Michael Caine's calling card on film. This performance, in which Neville graduated from juvenile lead...
But he was also "a leading light of the Old Vic, the charismatic artistic director of the Nottingham Playhouse in the early 1960s and, after emigrating to Canada in 1972, a renowned leader of that country's theatre," writes Michael Coveney in the Guardian. "He found huge matinee-idol success early on, in the [John] Gielgud roles of Hamlet and Richard II, though his patrician veneer and noble bearing could be easily discarded, as he showed to devastating effect in 1963, when he played Bill Naughton's Alfie at the Mermaid theatre, the role that became Michael Caine's calling card on film. This performance, in which Neville graduated from juvenile lead...
- 11/21/2011
- MUBI
TV and film make-up artist with a gift for applying prosthetics
The television and film make-up artist Jane Royle, who has died aged 78, was admired by fellow professionals for her all-round ability to bring a look to the screen that was as important as that contributed by the director of photography or production designer. She could go from ensuring Izabella Scorupco looked stunningly beautiful as a Bond girl in GoldenEye (1995) to making actors appear hideous, old, scarred, bruised, bearded or bald. Royle particularly enjoyed applying prosthetics – to which she referred as "the stickies".
For the 1979 Sherlock Holmes film Murder By Decree, she simulated the wrenched-out innards of prostitutes killed by Jack the Ripper. One of her most memorable transformations was the complete prosthetic makeover – wrinkled face, bulbous nose, pointy ears and flowing hair and whiskers – she gave Billy Barty for his cowardly dwarf character, Screwball, in the fantasy film Legend (1985).
Later,...
The television and film make-up artist Jane Royle, who has died aged 78, was admired by fellow professionals for her all-round ability to bring a look to the screen that was as important as that contributed by the director of photography or production designer. She could go from ensuring Izabella Scorupco looked stunningly beautiful as a Bond girl in GoldenEye (1995) to making actors appear hideous, old, scarred, bruised, bearded or bald. Royle particularly enjoyed applying prosthetics – to which she referred as "the stickies".
For the 1979 Sherlock Holmes film Murder By Decree, she simulated the wrenched-out innards of prostitutes killed by Jack the Ripper. One of her most memorable transformations was the complete prosthetic makeover – wrinkled face, bulbous nose, pointy ears and flowing hair and whiskers – she gave Billy Barty for his cowardly dwarf character, Screwball, in the fantasy film Legend (1985).
Later,...
- 3/8/2011
- by Anthony Hayward
- The Guardian - Film News
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