directors
Antonia Bird: 'I get lumped together with Ken Loach'Sunday, 22 May 2016
Antonia Bird died in 2013 at the age of 62. The last television drama with her name on it was the first series of The Village, but the career which is celebrated in the BBC Four documentary Antonia Bird: From EastEnders to Hollywood were from a... Read more... |
10 Questions for Artistic Director Emma RiceSaturday, 07 May 2016
In his last minutes as the artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, Dominic Dromgoole took to the stage to reflect on his years at the helm. Behind him was the cast of Hamlet, home after two years on the road playing to audiences from every country... Read more... |
DVD: PasoliniFriday, 06 November 2015
“A huge lizard in sunglasses” was Robin Askwith’s impression of Pier Paolo Pasolini on first meeting the Italian director. The actor’s entertaining, often funny and affectionate recollections of Pasolini are heard during a lengthy interview which is... Read more... |
DVD: One Continuous TakeFriday, 30 October 2015
This is a reissue, but an important one, especially considering that the film industry’s gender inequalities are as entrenched as ever. Kay Mander’s cinematic career began in the mid 1930s when she became a publicist for Alexander Korda. She joined... Read more... |
10 Questions for Director Roger MichellMonday, 26 October 2015
It’s not easy to see the pattern in Roger Michell’s career. More than most British directors, he has zigzagged between the stage and the screen. He was the one who first rehearsed such contemporary classics as Kevin Elyot’s My Night with Reg and Joe... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Director Michael LonghurstMonday, 06 July 2015
Is there more than one Michael Longhurst? As sometimes happens in theatre, a rising young director seems to be everywhere at once. His calling card is the modestly universal Constellations. Directed with clarity and simplicity, Nick Payne’s romantic... Read more... |
The second coming of The Third ManMonday, 22 June 2015
What happened to Harry Lime during the war that he slid into iniquity, or was he always a swine? What cracked in him so badly that he sold diluted penicillin that gave children meningitis? What rat-like instincts of survival prompted him to betray... Read more... |
DVD: The Duke of BurgundyFriday, 01 May 2015
In a quirk of film scheduling, The Duke of Burgundy was out in cinemas the week after Fifty Shades of Grey. While it’s doubtful there will have been much audience overlap, the bigger beast gobbled up every single one of the S&M column inches... Read more... |
DVD: American HustleFriday, 02 May 2014
It's surely among the most grotesque factoids in the history of Hollywood that despite being nominated for 10 Oscars, American Hustle won a grand total of none. Its big mistakes were presumably being too entertaining and failing to concern itself... Read more... |
DVD: Becoming TraviataFriday, 28 February 2014
Only the most antagonistic of diva fanciers, opera queens, call them what you will, would deny coloratura soprano Natalie Dessay her place as one of the great singing actresses of our time. The size and range of the voice are rather more limited for... Read more... |
Rufus Norris to run the National TheatreTuesday, 15 October 2013
The sixth artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain will be Rufus Norris, it was announced this morning. Bookies’ favourites such as Marianne Elliott, Michael Grandage and Dominic Cooke having long since ruled themselves out, Norris... Read more... |
Patrice Chéreau, 1944-2013: a partial viewTuesday, 08 October 2013
It has to be partial, because out of the 10 opera productions from the iconoclastic French actor-director, who died yesterday of lung cancer at the age of 68, I’ve seen but two, on screen only – but a big two at that – and only three of his 11 films... Read more... |
