Almeida Greek Tragedies

April 16, 2015April 16, 2015 | shelley foy

Almeida Greeks features three major productions of classic tragedies, boldly reimagined for today’s audiences…

Booking is now open for Almeida Greeks, a season featuring three major productions of classic tragedies, boldly reimagined for today’s audiences. Productions include Lia Williams in Oresteia, Ben Whishaw and Bertie Carvel in Bakkhai, and Kate Fleetwood in Medea.

For More info or to Book Visit Website

Almeida Greek Season Trailer

Bakkhai | Almeida Theater

29 May 2015 – 18 July 2015
Oresteia
Aeschylus
a new version created by Robert Icke
Orestes’ parents are at war. A family drama spanning several decades, a huge, moving, bloody saga, Aeschylus’ greatest and final play asks whether justice can ever be done – and continues to resonate more than two millenia after it was written.

Following Mr Burns and 1984, Almeida Associate Director Robert Icke radically reimagines Oresteia for the modern stage, in its first major London production in over a decade.

Lia Williams returns to the Almeida as Klytemnestra.
23 July 2015 – 19 September 2015
Bakkhai
Euripides
a new version by Anne Carson
directed by James Macdonald
Pentheus has banned the wild, ritualistic worship of the god Dionysos. A stranger arrives to persuade him to change his mind. Euripides’ electrifying tragedy is a struggle to the death between freedom and restraint, the rational and the irrational, man and god.
Using three actors and a chorus, echoing the original performance model, James Macdonald returns to the Almeida to stage Euripides’ hedonistic tragedy in a visceral new version by Anne Carson. Ben Whishaw makes his Almeida debut as Dionysos and Bertie Carvel returns to the Almeida as Pentheus.

25 September 2015 – 14 November 2015
Medea
Euripides
a new version by Rachel Cusk
directed by Rupert Goold

Medea’s marriage is breaking up. And so is everything else. Testing the limits of revenge and liberty, Euripides’ seminal play cuts to the heart of gender politics and asks what it means to be a woman and a wife.

One of world drama’s most infamous characters is brought to controversial new life by Almeida Artistic Director Rupert Goold (Merchant of Venice, King Charles III, American Psycho) and award-winning feminist writer Rachel Cusk (Outline, Aftermath).

Kate Fleetwood makes her Almeida debut in the title role.

The Danish Girl

April 16, 2015April 16, 2015 | shelley foy

Actors In Film

Eddie Redmayne as Einar Wegener / Lili Elbe
Alicia Vikander as Gerda Wegener
Amber Heard as Oola
Matthias Schoenaerts
Ben Whishaw

Inspired by the true story of Danish painter Einar Wegener and his wife, this tender portrait of a marriage asks: What do you do when someone you love wants to change? It starts with a question, a simple favor asked of a husband by his wife on an afternoon chilled by the Baltic wind while both are painting in their studio. Her portrait model has canceled, and would he mind slipping into a pair of women’s shoes and stockings for a few moments so she can finish the painting on time. Of course, he answers. Anything at all. With that, one of the most passionate and unusual love stories of the twentieth century begins – IMDB

Eddie Wins Oscar For “The Theory Of Everything”

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Academy Award-winner Eddie Redmayne and directed by Academy Award-winner Tom Hooper

Get Book @ Amazon

Ebershoff, the publishing director at Modern Library, has taken a highly unusual subject–and a big chance–for his first novel. That it comes off triumphantly is a tribute to his taste and restraint and to the highly empathetic quality of his imagination. His book is based on the real-life story of Einar Wegener, a Danish artist who 70 years ago became the first man to be medically transformed into a woman–long before the much better-known case of Christine Jorgensen.

Photo Amber Heard

Ebershoff has naturally changed some of the characters, giving Einar an American wife from his own native city of Pasadena, thereby introducing a New World perspective on the drama. For a very real drama it is. Einar struggles with his inclinations to become the woman he and his wife, Greta, refer to as Lili, seemingly more agonized about what the change would mean than Greta, who is deeply loving and amazingly supportive throughout Einar’s long ordeal.

Photo Ben Whishaw and Eddie

Seldom has the delicate question of sexual identity been more subtly probed (one would have to go all the way back to Jan Morris’s autobiographical Conundrum); and Ebershoff’s remarkable feel for the period atmosphere and detail of 1920s Copenhagen and early-’30s Dresden, where Lili’s life-transforming operation is finally performed, has been poetically and intensely rendered. The portraits of the various medical men who offer their very different solutions to the problem are brilliantly accomplished. The original story ended much more unhappily than Ebershoff’s, but his poignant and visionary conclusion is a fitting one for what is, above all, and despite its sensationalist trimmings, a profound and beautifully realized love story.

‘The Lobster’ at Cannes

April 16, 2015April 18, 2015 | shelley foy

Indie Wire Photo

THE LOBSTER will have its World Premiere at this year’s 68th @Festival_Cannes in the prestigious Official Competition #lobsterfilm

The replay by TV Festival de Cannes is also available on Youtube https://t.co/522knDfPyh & Dailymotion http://t.co/RTxpsCZCb3 #Cannes2015

— Festival de Cannes (@Festival_Cannes) April 16, 2015

Shooting “The Lobster” in Dublin

Actors In Film

Colin Farrell as David
Rachel Weisz as Shortsighted Woman
Ben Whishaw as Limping Man
Léa Seydoux as Loner Leader
John C. Reilly as Lisping Man
Ashley Jensen as Biscuit Woman
Olivia Colman as Hotel Manager
Jessica Barden as Nosebleed Woman
Roger Ashton-Griffiths as Doctor
Michael Smiley as Loner Swimmer
Ariane Labed as The Maid
Angeliki Papoulia as Heartless Woman
Judith King Murphy as guest in room 104
Kevin McCormack as Police Officer 2

LONDON – John C. Reilly, Ashley Jensen (TV’s Ugly Betty), Michael Smiley (The World’s End) and Jessica Barden (Far From the Madding Crowd) have joined Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz in Oscar-nominated Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’ English-language debut, The Lobster.

The movie, which has also cast Ben Whishaw, Lea Seydoux, Olivia Colman, Ariane Labed and Aggeliki Papoulia, has begun shooting in Ireland.

Co-written by Lanthimos and his longtime collaborator, Efthymis Filippou, the love story is set in the near future where finding a partner is a matter of life or death.

Single people, according to the rules of The City, are arrested and transferred to The Hotel and are obliged to find a mate within 45 days. If they fail, they are transformed into an animal of their choosing and released into The Woods.

The project is being produced by Element Pictures, Limp and Scarlet Films.

Producers on the film are Lanthimos, Lee Magiday, Ed Guiney and Ceci Dempsey, with Element’s Andrew Lowe and Film4’s Tessa Ross and Sam Lavender acting as executive producers.

Isabel Davis is the lead executive for the BFI Film Fund, while Rory Gilmartin will take a credit for the Irish Film Board, one of the film’s backers.

Partnering on the project are Christos V. Konstantakopoulos of Faliro House in Greece, Carole Scotta of Haut et Court, which will be both the French co-producer and distributor of the film, and Derk-Jan Warrink, Joost de Vries and Leontine Petit of Lemming Films in the Netherlands.

The Lobster is being financed by British broadcaster Channel 4’s standalone film unit Film4, Irish Film Board, the BFI Film Fund, marking the U.K.’s organization’s first film through its minority co-production strand, Eurimages, Greek Film Centre, CNC, the Dutch Film Fund and Canal Plus. THR Website

THE LOBSTER will have its World Premiere at this year’s 68th @Festival_Cannes in the prestigious Official Competition!

Element Pictures announce that Yorgos Lanthimos’ THE LOBSTER will screen in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival

Element Pictures Website

Cannes Film Festival

Element Pictures are delighted to announce that THE LOBSTER will have its world premiere at this year’s 68th Cannes Film Festival, screening in the prestigious official competition.
THE LOBSTER is the highly anticipated English language debut of internationally acclaimed Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, who thrilled and shocked audiences worldwide with DOGTOOTH (2009) and ALPS (2011).

Starring Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Lea Seydoux, John C Reilly, Ben Whishaw, Olivia Colman and Michael Smiley, THE LOBSTER is a blackly funny love story set in a near future where finding love is a matter of life or death.

The film was shot at Parknasilla in Co Kerry in Spring 2014 and produced by Irish company Element Pictures who will also distribute in Ireland later this year.

Speaking on the announcement, producer Ed Guiney said ‘Yorgos is one of the most visionary film-makers working today and THE LOBSTER is a profoundly moving, brilliantly funny and disturbing meditation on modern love. Cannes competition is the perfect place to launch this film.’

This is Element Picture’s seventh film in official selection at Cannes in recent years; in 2006 Ken Loach’s THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY won the Palme d’Or, in 2007 Lenny Abrahamson’s GARAGE won the CICAE Prize at Directors’ Fortnight, Alicia Duffy’s ALL GOOD CHILDREN was also selected for the Director’s Fortnight section of the festival in 2010, followed by Paolo Sorrentino’s THIS MUST BE THE PLACE in 2011.
Last Year, Loach’s JIMMY’S HALL also received its world premiere at the festival.

THE LOBSTER is written by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou and produced by Ed Guiney, Lee Magiday, Ceci Dempsey and Yorgos Lanthimos. Executive Producers are Andrew Lowe, Tessa Ross and Sam Lavender. The film was developed by Element and Irish finance for the film came from the Irish Film Board.

Film4, Bord Scannán na hÉireann/ the Irish Film Board, Eurimages, the Netherlands Film Fund, Greek Film Centre and BFI present in association with Protagonist Pictures, with the participation of CANAL+, CINE+ and Aide aux Cinémas du Monde, Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée, Ministère des Affaires Étrangères et du Développement International, Institut Français an Element Pictures, Scarlet Films, Faliro House, Haut et Court, Lemming Film co-production in association with Limp and with the support of the MEDIA Programme of the European Union.

Twitter: @LobsterFilm
#Lobsterfilm

In The Heart Of The Sea Trailer

April 16, 2015April 18, 2015 | shelley foy

In the Heart of the Sea – Official Trailer

The release date has changed to the end of the year.

Based on the 1820 event, a whaling ship is preyed upon by a sperm whale, stranding its crew at sea for 90 days, thousands of miles from home.

Directed by Ron Howard Twitter @RealRonHoward

Chris Hemsworth as Owen Chase, the First Mate
Benjamin Walker as Captain George Pollard, Jr.
Cillian Murphy as Matthew Joy, the Second Mate
Tom Holland as Thomas Nickerson, the cabin boy
Brendan Gleeson as Old Thomas Nickerson
Ben Whishaw as Herman Melville

With woody intonation and a suitably somber cadence, Tony Award-winning actor Herrmann reads this chilling tale of the Essex, a whaling ship that was sunk in the middle of the Pacific by an 80-foot sperm whale in 1820. The story would come to mark the mythology of the 19th century as the Titanic did the 20thAHerman Melville, for one, based Moby Dick on certain key elements of the tragedy.

In The Hear Of The Sea Book @ Amazon

In Philbrick’s spare, well-paced version, we learn much about how Nantucket’s culture was affected by the whaling industry boom, from its economy to its social habits. But the horrific heart of the narrative details the fate of the 20 sailors who attempted to sail several thousand miles back to Chile using only three pathetic open boats. Reaching home 93 days later, only eight sailors survived the ordeal of thirst, starvation and despair. Near the tape’s end, Herrmann delivers one of the finest funereal orations ever offered on behalf of seamen.

New Suffragette Trailer & More

April 16, 2015 | shelley foy

New at “Suffragette 21st Century” page at The Pencil Kissed The Paper Blog

New Suffragette Movie Trailer

Actors In Film

Brendan Gleeson, Helena Bonham Carter, Ben Whishaw, Romola Garai, Meryl Streep, Carey Mulligan, Anne-Marie Duff, Samuel West

From ComingSoon Net – Suffragette” is a moving drama that will empower all who are striving for equal rights in our own day and age. The stirring story, inspired by the early-20th-century campaign by the suffragettes for the right of women to vote, centers on Maud (played by Carey Mulligan), a working wife and mother who comes to realize that she must fight for her dignity both at home and in her workplace. Realizing that she is not alone, she becomes an activist alongside other brave women from all walks of life. The early efforts at resistance were passive but as the women faced increasingly aggressive police action, the suffragettes become galvanized – risking their very lives to ensure that women’s rights would be recognized and respected. Credit

Paddington Bear on DVD

April 16, 2015April 18, 2015 | shelley foy

Photos: The Paddington Ballon at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade

Paddington Bear at “The Pencil Kissed The Paper”

Paddington: From Page To Screen – New Featurette

Paddington – Buckingham Palace Clip

Paddington – Official International Trailer

Paddington — Exclusive First Look with Nicole Kidman

Paddington World Premiere – Sizzle Reel

Paddington Bear DVD @ Amazon

Paddington Bear Joins The Parade

FIRST LOOK BBC AMERICA’s ‘London Spy’

April 16, 2015 | shelley foy

Ben Whishaw makes his return to BBC AMERICA as star of the thriller London Spy, set for a premiere later this year. And the network has released a first snap of the actor in character, seen above.

Known to James Bond fans as Q in the popular film series, Whishaw previously appeared on BBC AMERICA’s Emmy-winning The Hour, in which he portrayed crusading journalist Freddie Lyon. In London Spy, Whishaw plays Danny, a hedonistic romantic who falls for the antisocial yet brilliant Alex (newcomer Edward Holcroft). Right as their relationship begins to heat up, Alex suddenly vanishes, and Danny, thrust into a world of espionage, must figure out the truth behind Alex’s disappearance.

BBC America Article

The cast is impeccable: joining Whishaw and Holcroft are Oscar winner Jim Broadbent and the legendary Charlotte Rampling (who can also be seen on the second season of Broadchurch). Adding to the drama’s pedigree, London Spy‘s creator is Tom Rob Smith, novelist behind the acclaimed Child 44 trilogy.

In a country ruled by fear, no one is innocent.

Read More at Amazon

Watch The Trailer

From Amazon – Stalin’s Soviet Union is an official paradise, where citizens live free from crime and fear only one thing: the all-powerful state. Defending this system is idealistic security officer Leo Demidov, a war hero who believes in the iron fist of the law. But when a murderer starts to kill at will and Leo dares to investigate, the State’s obedient servant finds himself demoted and exiled. Now, with only his wife at his side, Leo must fight to uncover shocking truths about a killer-and a country where “crime” doesn’t exist.’

CHILD 44 is based on Tom Rob Smith’s best-selling novel and stars Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises), Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), Noomi Rapace (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo), Charles Dance (The Imitation Game), Vincent Cassel (Black Swan) and Paddy Considine (The Bourne Ultimatum).

CHILD 44 is released in UK & Irish cinemas April 17.

More Production London Spy Photos

The Muse Short Film

April 16, 2015April 17, 2015 | shelley foy

From We Are Colony – Legend has it that if a human man falls in love with a mermaid she will grow legs; legs that will, if she so desires, carry her far, far away from the very man she cast her watery spell upon… But what becomes of the human man, when her spell remains but she is gone.

Watch The Trailer

Tim Walker Photography

Edward Dunstan (Ben Whishaw) is a photographer and filmmaker obsessed by his muse. Blinded by his all-consuming passion and perfectionism, he was unable to see her as she was and so, she has left him. All that remains are his photographs and film of her that he has running on a loop. Only now does he understand what she endured. There is nothing left for him but to become both artist and muse…

“Tim Walker is playing with the surreal, with mythical creatures and fantastical narratives that cross over into the real world”

Photos From Muse Q & A

Foxtrot Short Film

April 16, 2015 | shelley foy

Watch The Film

Watch The Trailer

Sky Playhouse Foxtrot

Actors In Film

Lindsay Duncan, Hilton McRae, Billie Piper and Ben Whishaw

In case you don’t know Ben Whishaw has a twin brother in real life. They are not identical.

From IMDB – Strippers Badger and the androgynous Fox, who poses as a boy, have kidnapped Ezra,a punter who injured one of their colleagues and have him prisoner in a hotel room. However their boss Mrs Dalloway rings to tell them that they have erroneously abducted Ezra’s identical twin Jacob, who has the mind of a four year old. Badger wants to dump him and run though Fox feels sorry for him and, whilst they are arguing, their prisoner takes action of his own.