Matthew Sweet talks dangerous nostalgia with Edgar Wright, director of the comedy The World's End. Starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the plot follows the group of friends as they return to their home town to complete a pub crawl from their youth. Their mission is thrown off course by aliens. Edgar Wright reveals an autobiographical bent to the tale. The Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer has written scores for countless films from The Lion King to Driving Miss Daisy to Gladiator. He describes ...
Jul 18, 2013•28 min
The Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro tells Matthew Sweet about the joyful creative experience of making his summer blockbuster Pacific Rim, a film about sea monsters and super robots. After his Oscar-winning animation Pan's Labyrinth, he explains the attraction of CGI and big budgets. As Alex Gibney's new documentary Wikileaks: We Sell Secrets is released, the film maker Roger Graef compares how the genre works on the big and small screen. Can contemporary films on events still very much unfo...
Jul 11, 2013•28 min
Sightseers director Ben Wheatley talks to Matthew Sweet about his new civil war film, A Field in England which is the first UK film to be available in the cinema, on DVD and Blu Ray, on television and download simultaneously. He describes his fascination with periods of revolution and the European sense of history. Sofia Coppola explores celebrity emulation that leads to house-breaking in her film The Bling Ring and explains why the designer gear these teenagers steal holds no attraction for her...
Jul 04, 2013•28 min
Director Evan Goldberg talks to Francine Stock about This Is The End, an apocalypse comedy with a diverse range of celebrities playing versions of themselves including James Franco, Rihanna and Jonah Hill as well as co director Seth Rogen. Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer explains how he came to make The Act of Killing, a documentary in which Indonesian gangsters re-enact the massacres of the 1960s. He follows their progress as they make movies about their crimes, heavily influenced by Hollywood fil...
Jun 28, 2013•28 min
Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy and the director Richard Linklater reunite after almost a decade for Before Midnight, the third part of the Jessie and Celine story. In Before Sunrise, they meet on a train and spend all night together exploring Vienna. In Before Sunset, they meet again in Paris and wonder if they can re kindle their initial spark. Before Midnight explores their relationship as they hit their 40s. They talk to Francine Stock about their extraordinary collaboration. As Brad Pitt's trouble...
Jun 20, 2013•28 min
Francine Stock talks to Zack Snyder, director of the latest Superman film, Man of Steel, starring Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner. A young boy learns that he has extraordinary powers and is not of this Earth. As a young man, he journeys to discover where he came from and what he was sent here to do. But the hero in him must emerge if he is to save the world from annihilation and become the symbol of hope for all mankind. Hans Zimmer - whose credits include the Batman tri...
Jun 13, 2013•28 min
Francine Stock talks to Michael Douglas about his role as Liberace in Steven Soderbergh's bio-pic Behind the Candelabra, chronicling the flamboyant entertainer's 5 year relationship with Scott Thorson. The film features a starry cast, including Matt Damon as Scott Thorson and Rob Lowe as the infamous plastic surgeon Dr Startz. Audrey Tautou talks about her eponymous role in François Mauriac's legendary 1927 novel of French provincial life, Therese Desqueyroux, in French film director Claude Mill...
Jun 06, 2013•28 min
Matthew Sweet talks to the director Neil Jordan about his new vampire film, Byzantium starring Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan. He describes how he relished the chance to meddle with vampire stereotypes and rituals. And 50 years after Dr Who appeared on TV, we look at the Dr Who films that took to the big screen in Technicolor. We hear from its stars Bernard Cribbins and Roberta Tovey and from Dr Who writer and comedian Mark Gatiss. Plus trailers - too much information? Tasters or spoilers? We ...
May 30, 2013•28 min
Cannes Special 2013 with Geoff Andrew and Robbie Collin.
May 28, 2013•28 min
Francine Stock on the hits, misses and surprises of the Cannes Film Festival with Geoff Andrew of the BFI and Robbie Collin, film critic at the Daily Telegraph. Plus the British hope at Cannes, director Clio Barnard on her film The Selfish Giant, a contemporary urban fable following two young boys who collect scrap on a horse and cart. And Stephen Frears discusses his latest project Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight which is also screening in Cannes and charts the boxer's battle against conscription...
May 23, 2013•28 min
Francine Stock on the latest from the Cannes Film Festival, including The Great Gatsby premiere with critics Catherine Bray and Jonathan Romney. Baz Luhrmann's latest spectacular has attracted mixed reviews in the US where it's just been released - so how did it go down with the Cannes crowd? Beware of Mr Baker is an usually revealing music documentary on the life and career of the tempestuous Cream drummer Ginger Baker. The director Jay Bulger describes the lies he had to tell to get Ginger to ...
May 16, 2013•28 min
Riz Ahmed discusses his latest role in The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Directed by Mira Nair, it's based on the Booker Prize-nominated novel by Mohsin Hamid. Ahmed plays Changez, a young man from Pakistan who makes his fortune in the US as a successful financier, only to find he becomes an outsider after 9/11. The writer and director Jeff Nichols explains how he brought his labour of love, Mud, to the big screen. A Mississippi tale with echoes of Mark Twain, it stars Matthew McConaughey and tells ...
May 09, 2013•28 min
The Spanish director Pedro Almodovar talks to Francine Stock about his raunchy new comedy I'm So Excited in which a plane with a technical fault circles the skies, hoping to find an airport to land in. According to Almodovar, it's a metaphor for the political and financial difficulties facing Spain. Adam Leon explains why he wanted to show the grittier, real New York in his new feature Gimme The Loot about young graffiti artists. And how he deals with questions over how a white director can make...
May 02, 2013•28 min
Steve Coogan's discusses his latest role as the Soho entrepreneur, Paul Raymond, in The Look of Love, directed by Michael Winterbottom. He tells Francine Stock why he's attracted to characters who prove initially hard to like. Bernie, directed by Richard Linklater, is also based on a real person and tells the story of a Texan man accused of murdering an elderly woman. Using documentary-style interviews within the feature film, it's a sympathetic portrayal by Jack Black. He explains why he was at...
Apr 25, 2013•28 min
This week the Film Programme debates whether films can really change the world. Francine Stock talks to Jeremy Irons about his documentary Trashed which looks at global waste and discusses the feature film Promised Land, starring Matt Damon and Frances McDormand, which tackles fracking. She asks Dave Calhoun, Film Editor of Time Out and Oli Harbottle of Dogwoof films if these films with a mission bring in the audiences. The director Susanne Bier explains why she wanted to reinvent the rom com fo...
Apr 18, 2013•28 min
The director Derek Cianfrance, best known for Blue Valentine, talks to Francine Stock about his new film The Place Beyond the Pines, starring Ryan Gosling, and why becoming a father himself made this a very personal project. The critic Karen Krizanovich explores male melodrama on the big screen and we hear from producer Lisa Bryer on why BAFTA is bringing short films to the cinema. Are audiences ready for an evening of back to back shorts? The documentary maker Dror Moreh explains how he managed...
Apr 11, 2013•28 min
Francine Stock talks to Harmony Korine about his new and most commercial film to date, Spring Breakers, starring James Franco, Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens. It explores what happens to a group of teenage girls who break away from the drudgery of studies for that North American ritual, Spring Break. Elhum Shakerifar talks about her role as director of the UK's Women's film festival, Birds Eye View, which this year is celebrating female Arab filmmakers, including Palestine, Egypt Algeria, Leba...
Apr 04, 2013•28 min
Francine Stock talks to Oscar winning film director Danny Boyle about a lifetime spent making films, including his latest "Trance", a noirish art heist starring James McAvoy and Rosario Dawson, in which a fine art auctioneer (McAvoy) joins forces with a hypnotherapist (Dawson) to recover a lost painting. It's a psychological crime drama, a glossier 21 st century take on a theme he's visited before in his work - a trio of characters locked in a hell of their own making. In this free ranging inter...
Mar 28, 2013•28 min
On the Film Programme this week Francine Stock talks to the director Craig Zobel about his disturbing new movie, Compliance. Based on real life events in the US, it portrays a prank call from a supposed police officer to a fast food restaurant. HIs instructions lead to violence perpetrated against a young employee. Zobel explains his fascination with people's responses to authority. The French director Francois Ozon, known for 8 Women and Swimming Pool is back with a new comedy, In The House, wh...
Mar 21, 2013•28 min
Francine Stock discusses the challenges of making a second film after a successful debut with award winning director of Shifty, Eran Creevy, and Telegraph film critic Tim Robey. Eran Creevy's second film after Shifty - a low budget film set on a council estate similar to where he himself grew up - is Welcome To The Punch, a glossy thriller set in a 21st century financial centre of glass and steel, starring James McAvoy and David Morrisey. Also out this week is Lee Daniel's The Paperboy starring ...
Mar 14, 2013•28 min
The director Steven Soderbergh, who made Oceans Eleven to Thirteen, Traffic and Che talks to Francine Stock about his new film Side Effects, a thriller exploring the apparent effects of taking anti depressants. The actor Tim Roth on Broken, a British film dealing with adolescence and everyday violence, which marks a memorable debut for theatre director Rufus Norris. And with the re-release of The Princess Bride, Frank Cottrell Boyce explains why he thinks it's one of the best screen plays ever w...
Mar 07, 2013•28 min
Francine Stock talks to Mark Wahlberg about his latest role as an ex-cop in the thriller Broken City which also stars Russell Crowe and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Richard Gere discusses charm and corruption which both feature heavily in Arbitrage, a film about high finance, greed and adultery. Neil Bennett from Digital Arts magazine explains why there's a crisis in the visual effects industry despite films like Life of Pi, which rely on such skills, topping the Oscars list.There's discussion of the I...
Feb 28, 2013•28 min
Matthew Sweet talks to Tom Tykwer, one of the directors of the much-anticipated film Cloud Atlas. The actress Olga Kurylenko discusses her role in the latest offering from director Terrence Malick, To The Wonder. And the composer Neil Brand is at the piano to delve into the scores of children's films from classics like Mary Poppins to more recent films like Happy Feet and Frankenweenie. Producer: Elaine Lester.
Feb 21, 2013•28 min
The director Judd Apatow talks to Francine Stock about his new comedy This Is 40. Known for films such as Bridesmaids, Knocked Up and Anchorman, he describes the joys - and challenges - of directing his wife and children in his latest film. Oscar-nominee and supervising sound editor on Bond-movie Skyfall, Karen Baker Landers lays bare some of the techniques of her profession, including intriguing insights into how the sound can affect a film's rating. The documentary maker Alex Gibney explores c...
Feb 14, 2013•28 min
Francine Stock is joined by critics Robbie Collin and Catherine Bray to discuss the BAFTA Awards - the winners, shocks, surprises and reaction from the ceremony. Sir Alan Parker, known for films such as Bugsy Malone, Fame and The Commitments looks back at his career as he receives a BAFTA Fellowship. And we go on set with Eve Stewart, production designer of Les Miserables.Producer: Elaine Lester.
Feb 11, 2013•28 min
The director Sir Alan Parker celebrates becoming a BAFTA Academy Fellow and looks back at his career with Francine Stock. He discusses his most well-known films including Bugsy Malone, The Commitments and Evita and speaks frankly of his concerns for the future of British film. Helen Mirren gives an insight into the little-known influence of Alma Reville, Hitchcock's wife, whom she plays in Hitchcock. The Oscar-nominated production designer Eve Stewart describes how she brought C19th Paris to the...
Feb 08, 2013•28 min
Director Roger Michell talks to Francine Stock about his latest film Hyde Park on Hudson based on the extraordinary meeting between King George VI and President Roosevelt in New York State in 1939. BAFTA and Oscar nominee Jacqueline Durran discusses designing costumes for Anna Karenina, explaining why she brought a 1950s twist to 19th Century Russia. We hear from the critic Jane Graham in Glasgow on why The Wee Man, inspired by the real life criminal career of Paul Ferris, is doing do so well at...
Jan 31, 2013•28 min
One of the world's most successful and influential directors, Steven Spielberg talks about his latest film, Lincoln, which is dominating the Oscar lists with 12 nominations. In a special extended interview, he talks to Francine Stock about his long courtship of Daniel Day-Lewis to play the leading role, the detailed historical research behind the production and the reaction of President Obama to the film. Also on the programme, there's discussion of how Lincoln has been represented on the big sc...
Jan 24, 2013•28 min
The director Quentin Tarantino talks to Francine Stock about his controversial new film Django Unchained. It tells the story of a freed slave who attempts to rescue his wife from a plantation, told in the style of a Western. The film has received five Oscar nominations including best original screenplay and best film. And there's controversy too surrounding the latest work of the director Kathryn Bigelow. She discusses her new film Zero Dark Thirty which claims to be based on first hand accounts...
Jan 17, 2013•28 min
Francine Stock talks to Les Miserables director Tom Hooper, who broke with tradition by recording his actors singing live on set. Hooper began his career on Eastenders and went on to win an Oscar for The Kings Speech, but this is his first musical. Tim Robey reports on the Oscar nominations. Producer Alison Owen and screenwriter Stephen Fingleton discuss the new Hollywood Blacklist, a list of the hottest unproduced film scripts. And composer Neil Brand talks about his new score for Anthony Asqui...
Jan 10, 2013•28 min
