The latest releases, the hottest stars and the leading directors, plus news and insights from the film world
With Francine Stock. In another edition of Moving Image, writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce reveals the huge impact that the film Local Hero had on his family and his life. And receives a surprise phone call from someone who was intimately involved in the production.
With Antonia Quirke. Florence Pugh reveals why her characterisation of Amy in Little Women is so different from the numerous adaptations that have gone before, and why it's particularly ironic that a film about women not being recognised in American society was not recognised by the Golden Globe awards. Christmas has come early for Tim Robey, Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Clare Binns as they swap presents around a virtual tree, including some of the best DVDs of the year. They also hear from Pablo Hel...
With Antonia Quirke Two directors look back at their crazy year. Mark Jenkin’s Bait has been described as a modern masterpiece. Shot in 16mm black and white on a hand-cranked camera, this tale of a Cornish fishing village has been an unlikely box office hit, and still played in cinemas in this country two months after its release. Dexter Fletcher’s Rocketman, on the other hand, began life with a starry premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and was made not long after Fletcher was brought into com...
With Antonia Quirke Alma Har'el reveals how she came to direct Honey Boy, which was written by Shia LaBeouf while he was in rehab. And why she persuaded the actor to play his own father. The Two Popes director Fernando Meirelles reveals why he put more jokes into the screenplay about the famous meeting between Pope Francis and Pope Benedict, how he came to build the largest Sistine Chapel in the world on a film set and why he's one of the few film-makers in the world who's also a farmer. Christm...
Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, Tim Robey and Caitlin Benedict present a start-up guide to Ken Loach
With Francine Stock "In screenwriting terms, it's a disaster. And yet, as a film, it's a piece of magic." Oscar winning screenwriter Simon Beaufoy on why Terrence Malick's Days Of Heaven breaks all the rules of cinema and is still a masterpiece.
With Antonia Quirke The creators of Frozen tell Antonia about how they dealt with the pressure of following up one of the biggest hits of recent years. Writer Chris Buck and writer/director/chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios Jennifer Lee explain why they put their characters through a psychological test and what the unexpected results showed. Mati Diop, the award winning director of Atlantics, talks about the lost generation of Senegalese men who tried to cross the ocean in ...
With Antonia Quirke Emma Thompson has written 6 films in which she also stars. Last Christmas is the latest. She explains why she sometimes has to bite her tongue when actors deliver her lines in ways that she hadn't quite imagined. Neil Brand reveals how the ground-breaking score to cult classic Forbidden Planet was a last minute replacement and why the original composer decided to destroy his rejected score. "Apocalypse Now meets Pygmalion". Matthew Sweet pitches a long forgotten science ficti...
With Antonia Quirke. Werner Herzog talks about meeting Mikhail Gorbachev and reflects on the cinema of awe, his grudge with Gunter Grass, and drunken slugs. Writer Paul Laverty discusses the research he did into the gig economy for Sorry We Missed You and what horrified him the most. Script supervisor Angela Allen divulges some secrets from the set of John Huston's Moby Dick.
With Francine Stock. Producer Rebecca O'Brien, who has collaborated with Ken Loach on 19 films, discusses the movie that inspired her to join the industry - The Conversation. While watching Francis Ford Coppola's conspiracy thriller in 1974, the thought never entered Rebecca's mind that "a young woman could have anything to do with making a film." She reveals how she went on to become the producer of two Palme D'Or winners at the Cannes Film Festival.
Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Tim Robey tell Caitlin Benedict all about Rosalind Russell
With Antonia Quirke By The Grace Of God director Francois Ozon reveals how he had to make the film under a different name so that the Catholic Church wouldn't know that he was secretly making an expose of historical child abuse by French priests. Writer Ray Connolly talks about his friendship with The Beatles and how it informed his two movies about the music business, That'll Be The Day and Stardust. And how he got into a fist fight with Keith Moon. Neil Brand reveals how Mike Oldfield's Tubula...
With Antonia Quirke As Singin' In The Rain returns to cinemas, Antonia goes behind the scenes of this famous musical with Gene Kelly's widow Patricia Ward Kelly and hears from fans Sir Richard Eyre, Pamela Hutchinson and Neil Brand.
Antonia Quirke and Caitlin Benedict go behind the scenes of this year's London Film Festival, and discover how an award at a festival can change a director's life, and why the festival team had to e-mail critics asking them to refrain from posting their reviews before the films had even finished.
With Antonia Quirke Editor Walter Murch takes Antonia on a journey to the heart of Apocalypse Now Linda Grant pitches a memoir about the Beat Generation as a a suitable case for the movie treatment. Industry insiders Clare Binns, Lizzie Francke and Rowan Woods deliver their verdict in another edition of Pitch Battle
With Francine Stock Asif Kapadia talks about the film that influenced Amy, Diego Maradona and The Warrior. He explains how a lightbulb went on above his head when he first saw the Vietnamese gangster movie, Cyclo, and how his life was never the same again. Francine also talks to Cyclo's director Tran Anh Hung about one of the movie's key scenes, when a helicopter falls off the back of a lorry.
Where does a film novice start with an art cinema giant like Andrei Tarkovsky? Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Tim Robey are here to help Caitlin Benedict discover his work.
On the anniversary of his birthday, Kenneth More is remembered by his wife Angela Douglas and Nick Pourgourides, the founder of the official site dedicated to the movies of the actor who was the highest paid star in Britain in the late 50s. Writer/director Shola Amoo discusses his semi-autobiographical drama The Last Tree and how he realised his dream of filming in Nigeria. Dominic Guard, the child star of The Go-Between talks about the connection between the film and his later career as a psych...
With Antonia Quirke John Schlesinger's partner Michael Childers takes us behind the scenes of Midnight Cowboy and reveals how he persuaded Andy Warhol to take part and the shocking reason why the artist was not in the finished film. Julian Fellowes talks about his big screen adaptation of Downton Abbey and why all his scripts have to meet his wife's approval before they are sent off. Betty Balfour was one of the biggest stars of British cinema in the 1920, thanks largely to a series of films sta...
With Antonia Quirke What exactly does a stills photographer do on a film set ? Keith Bernstein, whose CV includes American Sniper and Argo, reveals the secrets of his trade. Director Edward Watts reveals how he worked with film-maker Waad Al-Khateab to shape the 500 hours of footage she had shot during the siege of Aleppo into a 100 minute documentary called For Sama, that's won awards across the world. Neil Brand reveals the original score for Love Story, and why Francis Lai was brought on boar...
With Francine Stock Mark Jenkin talks about the influence of Derek Jarman's home-made movie The Garden on his DIY film Bait, which is released this week.
With Raifa Rafiq Raifa Rafiq, of the Mostly Lit podcast, hosts three summer specials called Where To Begin With... In the third edition, she enlists the help of critics Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Tim Robey to find out where she should begin with the films of Pedro Almodovar, whose autobiographical drama Pain And Glory is released this month.
With Raifa Rafiq. In a series of three summer specials, Raifa Rafiq, from the Mostly Lit podcast, hosts a new series called Where To Begin With... In part two, she enlists the help of critics Tim Robey and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh to find out where she should begin with the films of Tilda Swinton, who is about to star with her daughter Honor in The Souvenir, released in cinemas later this month. They discuss Tilda Swinton's collaborations with Derek Jarman and Luca Guadagnino, her Oscar winning role ...
Raifa Rafiq, of the Mostly Lit podcast, hosts three summer specials called Where To Begin With... In the first edition, she enlists the help of critics Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Tim Robey to find out where she should begin with the films of Quentin Tarantino.
With Antonia Quirke Do children’s movies offer a crash course in film genres, does Rango provide an entrée into westerns, for instance ? Neil Brand believes they do, but Larushka Ivan-Zadeh is more sceptical about the educational value of films that are written mostly by middle-aged men. Novelist Dreda Say Mitchell enters the fray in Pitch Battle. She makes the case for The Winter Rose by Jennifer Donnelly as a book that's worthy of the movie treatment. Industry insiders Rowan Woods, Lizzie Fran...
With Francine Stock. Moira Buffini, the writer of Byzantium and the latest Jane Eyre adaptation, talks about the film that has been a major influence on her career - Tarkovsky's Stalker, the science fiction movie which foreshadowed the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Moira and Francine hear from Nick Rush-Cooper, who worked as a tourist guide in the abandoned and dangerously polluted city. And from Danny Leigh of the BFI, who explains how Stalker was responsible for the death of its director and man...
With Antonia Quirke Touki Bouki, a low budget movie from Senegal made in 1973, had a new lease of life when Beyoncé and Jay-Z paid homage to it in a famous publicity still. Gaylene Gould explains what happened and why it made it such a huge impact. Actor and coach Denis Lawson reveals how he helped his nephew Ewan McGregor to learn the rules of screen acting with a pair of socks. On the 25th anniversary of its release, Antonia visits the beach where Il Postino was filmed and hears from a local h...
With Antonia Quirke. Shark expert Gareth Fraser explains how his life was changed by watching Jaws at a very tender age. Director Jim Jarmusch presents his guide to zombie movies and explains why his latest film The Dead Don't Die owes a debt of gratitude to George A Romero's Night Of The Living Dead and Dawn Of The Dead. Neil Brand reveals why Alfred Hitchcock sacked Pink Panther composer Henry Mancini from his thriller Frenzy and replaced him with a composer best known for his war movies....
With Antonia Quirke. Cinematographer Tony Richmond talks about Don't Look Now and reveals the truth behind one of cinema's most famous sex scenes: did Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland really make love on camera, or did they fake it ? Literary journalist Alex Clark enters the fray in Pitch Battle, as she pitches a movie version of Potterism, a satire about a powerful media tycoon and his family, written in 1920. Listening to the pitch are a fearsome squad of industry insiders - Lizzie Francke...
With Francine Stock. Danny Boyle talks about The Beatles' documentary Let It Be, which was the inspiration for his new film Yesterday. Danny discusses The Beatles, plagiarism, nostalgia, litigation and why he once pitched a movie as Trainspotting Meets Amelie.
