A CURIOUS MIX OF BRITISH FOLK MUSIC AND AMERICAN POLITICS
David Lean, Mike Leigh, Terry Gilliam, Stephen Frears , Terrance Davies, Ken Loach, Danny Boyle
I, Daniel Blake is a searing account of modern day British ‘big’ society. Benefit cuts are biting and entire chunks of society are locked into a downward spiral. A look into the filmmaker’s creative process. | Watch the Interview at: ARTE in English | How to Make a Ken Loach Film: A Small Voice Among Others
I read this morning on the BBC that opera singer Dame Kiri Te Kanawa says she will never sing in public again. “I don’t want to hear my voice,” said the soprano, 71, whose career has spanned more than half a century.
“It is in the past. When I’m teaching young singers and hearing beautiful young fresh voices, I don’t want to put my voice next to theirs.”
I don’t listen to much opera, but I do love Kiri Te Kanawa, whom I became a fan of after being introduced to her voice in Merchant-Ivory’s brilliant A Room With A View. Listen here to Dame Kiri singing Puccini’s “O Mio Babbino Caro” (“Oh My Beloved Father”), and “Chi il Bel Sogno di Doretta.”
Could anything be more beautiful? Thank you, Kiri Te Kanawa.
As Thatcher’s 80s ground to their inexorable conclusion, a little independent film came out called Withnail and I. As for all independent films, it was nearly not made at all. George Harrison’s Handmade Films picked it up after he read the script on a plane to America, and the rest is history. It launched the career of Richard E. Grant and finally proved that its writer and director, Bruce Robinson, was better behind the camera than in front. (McGann’s career had already found its feet, the McGann brothers being a small acting legend in the UK.) [ . . . ]
Read Full Story: Withnail and I by Bruce Robinson | The Z Review
British TV director Michael Pearce makes a commanding feature debut with this psychological drama-thriller that puts an eerily windswept island location to fine use and features an excellent lead performance from Jessie Buckley, whose open, intelligent face transmits thought and feeling with piercing clarity. Pearce has also written a well-carpentered screenplay; there are some very big scenes and big moments here – sometimes too big – but he gives us a carefully crafted dramatic setup, an intriguingly curated selection of suspects for the crime and all of it building to a fascinating, finely balanced ambiguity in the movie’s climactic stages [ . . . ]
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