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2010.05.26 Cineuropa - Will begins football journey

mokulen37 — Wed, 26 May 2010 04:30:30 +0000

Cineuropa
26 May 2010
By Naman Ramachandran
Source

Will begins football journey

Writer/Director Ellen Perry (The Fall of Fujimori) has commenced principal photography on Will, starring Damian Lewis, Bob Hoskins and newcomer Perry Eggelton in the title role, with special appearances by international football stars Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard of Liverpool Football Club, who are also both on the England team playing in the World Cup in South Africa.

The film, which follows an orphaned boy’s journey across Europe to the 2005 Champions League Final between Liverpool and AC Milan, in Istanbul, is shooting at locations in Liverpool, Kent, Paris and Turkey, including Istanbul’s Atatürk Olympic Stadium, and also at Elstree Studios.

Perry co-wrote with Zack Anderson and she also produces, with Taha Altayli, Timothy Nicholas and Mark Cooper for Strangelove Films. Executive producers are Stewart Till, Mustafa Karahan and Stephen Moffitt. Muharrem Gulmez is co-producer.

Eleven-year-old Will Brennan (Eggelton) is the world’s biggest Liverpool football fan. At his boys’ school in southern England, Will’s love and knowledge of the sport is all that sustains him. Then out of nowhere appears Will’s absentee father, Gareth (Lewis), and with two tickets to the biggest match of the year: the Champions League Final in Istanbul.

But before the two can begin their journey, Gareth dies suddenly. Determined to make the trip and honour his father’s dream, Will runs away. En route, he encounters Alek (Kristian Kiehling), a former Yugoslavian football star who abandoned the game during his country’s civil war. Despite his initial reluctance to help, Alek finds himself inspired by Will’s heroic journey and helps him fulfil his dream.

2010.05.17 Screen Daily - Damian Lewis starts Will shoot

mokulen37 — Tue, 18 May 2010 04:07:13 +0000

Screen Daily
17 May 2010
by Wendy Mitchell
Source

Damian Lewis starts Will shoot

The film follows an orphan’s journey across Europe to the 2005 Champions League final in Turkey.

Damian Lewis (pictured), Bob Hoskins and Perry Eggelton have started shooting Will, about an orphan’s journey across Europe to the 2005 Champions League Final in Istanbul.

The film will also include appearances by Liverpool football stars Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard.

Ellen Perry directs from her own script, which was co-written by Zack Anderson. She also produces, alongside Taha Altayli, Timothy Nicholas and Mark Cooper for Strangelove Films. Executive producers are Stewart Till, Mustafa Karahan and Stephen Moffitt. Muharrem Gulmez is co-producer.

Will is shooting on location in Liverpool, Kent, Paris and Turkey, including Istanbul’s Atatürk Olympic Stadium, and also at Elstree Studios.

2010.05.16 Screen Daily - Santana Brothers plan films with Fiennes, Kurylenko, Lewis

mokulen37 — Mon, 17 May 2010 03:00:00 +0000

Screen Daily
16 May 2010
by Geoffrey Macnab
Source

Santana Brothers plan films with Fiennes, Kurylenko, Lewis

The British brothers are going into production on Coronet and thriller Man Is Wolf To Man this autumn.

British director and producer team, Dominic and Lee Santana have arrived in Cannes with a trio of high-profile stars attached to the next two films being produced under their UK-based Santana Brothers production banner.

Ralph Fiennes and Olga Kurylenko will star in romantic drama Coronet and Damian Lewis will star in the action thriller Man Is Wolf To Man.

“We have two films going into production this fall so things are moving incredibly fast for us right now,” said the brothers. “Casting has been our main priority over the last month and we’re very excited that Damian, Ralph and Olga are on board for their respective roles. Ralph and Olga are the perfect leads for Coronet given the on-screen chemistry they can generate to bring the story to life. Damian is a remarkably gifted actor who will command the screen in Man Is Wolf. We’re eager to get started on both films.”

Inspired by true events, Coronet is written and directed by Temple Clark. Lee Santana is producing. In the film, Guy (Ralph Fiennes), an English graphic designer working on assignment in Prague, strikes up an unorthodox romantic relationship with his cleaner, Maryska. Shooting is due to begin in the autumn. The film will shoot in London and Prague.

Man Is Wolf To Man is an action thriller inspired by true events in French Guyana in 1934 where a group of foreign prisoners escaped from a penal colony, only to be tracked by a ruthless and notorious bounty hunter. In addition to Lewis, the film stars Pihla Viitala and young German star Vinzenz Kiefer. Additional cast will be announced in the coming weeks.

2010.05.15 The Hollywood Reporter - Ralph Fiennes, Olga Kurylenko team up

mokulen37 — Sun, 16 May 2010 02:51:34 +0000

The Hollywood Reporter
15 May 2010
By Scott Roxborough
Source

Ralph Fiennes, Olga Kurylenko team up

Romantic drama ‘Coronet’ produced by Santana Brothers

CANNES — Ralph Fiennes and Bond girl Olga Kurylenko have signed on to star in “Coronet” a new romantic drama produced by British brothers Dominic and Lee Santana through their Santana Brothers banner.

“Coronet” is the directorial debut of Temple Clark, the storyboard artist on Stephen Frears’ Out of Competition entry “Tamara Drewe” and hot market title “London Boulevard.” Clark will also pen the script.

Fiennes (”Harry Potter”) will play Guy, an English graphic designer working in Prague, who begins an affair with his cleaner Maryska (Kurylenko, “Quantum of Solace”).

“Coronet” is set to being shooting in the fall in London and Prague.

Separately, Damian Lewis, the redheaded star of “Life” and “Band of Brothers,” has joined the cast of another Santana project, the action-thriller “Man Is Wolf to Man.”

Inspired by true events, “Man Is Wolf to Man” is set in French Guyana in 1934. A group of foreign prisoners escape from a penal colony only to be tracked down by a ruthless bounty hunter. Finnish actress Pihla Viitala (”Bad Family”) and Germany’s Vinzenz Kiefer, who had a supporting role in “The Baader Meinhof Complex,” also star. Principle photography is also planned for fall.

The Santana brothers have produced and directed several award-winning shorts as well as a number of series for British television. “Man Is Wolf to Man” will be their first feature film.

2010.01.08 WSJ.com - A Modern ‘Misanthrope’ on the London Stage (Review)

mokulen37 — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 02:24:12 +0000

Wall Street Journal
8 January 2010
By Paul Levy
source

A Modern ‘Misanthrope’ on the London Stage

LONDON: Theater. All eyes, of course, are on Keira Knightley, making her West End debut at the Comedy Theatre in Martin Crimp’s updating of Moliere’s “The Misanthrope.” Indeed, it’s impossible to look away from her, as you wonder how someone so fragile-looking can manage all five acts of the structure Mr. Crimp has maintained from Moliere’s biting satire.

So, can Ms. Knightley act on stage as well as on camera? Yes, sort of. In Mr. Crimp’s rhyming couplets-doggerel version she is Jennifer, a 22-year-old movie starlet, whom Ms. Knightley plays with an unmusical American accent, except when her sing-song cadences emphasize the rhymes too much. But she excels at being cutting or rude, and her body language is appropriately sexy.

In Thea Sharrock’s production, with Hildegard Bechtler’s detail-perfect set of a suite in an expensive London hotel, Ms. Knightley is luxuriously supported by a wonderful cast, especially by the top-billed actor Damian Lewis in the title role of Alceste — whippet-thin, angry and with a voice capable of the kind of modulations Ms. Knightley can only dream about. Mr. Lewis’s Misanthrope is a playwright struggling to maintain his integrity, which is strained by his love for the shallow but bitchy Jennifer. There are other superb performances, too, such as Tim McMullan’s portrayal of an easily-identifiable London critic who wants to write plays — to whom Alceste says: “If that’s your idea of contemporary/You should be adapting classics for the BBC.”

Those near-witty but actually clunky lines get to the core of the problem. Mr. Crimp shows facility in writing verse. He crams in passages of psychobabble, of management-speak, of political criticism (there’s a hard-to-miss missile fired at David Cameron) and of actors’ luvvie-talk. But I didn’t believe a word of any of it. How can theater-goers not squirm at the lines “And the human animal looks less fearsome/through the prism/of postmodernism”? Castigating hypocrisy requires candor. There’s no satire without at least a touch of sincerity, and in Mr. Crimp’s Moliere that is lacking.

Until March 13

www.comedy-theatre.com

2010.01.06 Broadway.com - Fame Becomes Her

mokulen37 — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:17:16 +0000

Broadway.com
6 Jan 2010
By Matt Wolf
source

Fame Becomes Her: The Misanthrope’s Damian Lewis Chats About Co-Star Keira Knightley

It’s tempting, but misleading, to think of the new London production of The Misanthrope as “The Keira Knightley Show,” if only because the movies’ popular “it girl” is making her West End debut at the Comedy Theatre with director Thea Sharrock’s production of the 17th-century classic. In fact, Knightley has a supporting role as an American film actress named Jennifer (the play’s Celimene updated to today’s celebrity culture) in this rewrite by Martin Crimp of the Moliere original. But it is leading man Damian Lewis, making his own West End debut, who does the heavy lifting as the misanthropic Alceste, a man who can’t help but calling life’s fakery as he sees it—and who has the dubious luck to fall hard for Jennifer. Broadway.com caught up with Lewis, newly returned to London after several years in L.A. starring on the TV show Life, in the midst of the festive season, where the gifted, ever-articulate Londoner spoke of many things, including his famous co-star.

Congratulations on what must seem for you a sort of homecoming, though I realize your extensive London stage experience [the National, Almeida, Donmar] has never before included the West End.

“Homecoming” seems rather grand but thank you. I have never played the traditional West End, which does have different connotations: those theaters are squarely and firmly in the commercial sector, so it has a different dynamic to it. When I was growing up and was taken to the theater by my dad and grandmother, the traditional end-of-holiday before going back to school theater trip was to go into the West End and usually see an American musical revival like On Your Toes. My dad had lived in Chicago for five years and he loved all those American musicals.

Having just spent several years in L.A., a town not necessarily known for live theater, was it inevitable that you would return to the London stage?

I do feel very comfortable in the theater having spent three years training as an actor: like it’s the place you should rightfully be. All my aspirations when I was young involved theater, so it still has a tremendous romance in that respect. I feel utterly at home in the theater and love it. It’s that curious paradox: it’s as enlivening and liberating as it is terrifying.

Fair enough, though I assume all the media attention focused on a certain co-star takes some of the pressure off you.

Well, it all began as myself and the play. But when Keira got involved and responded so positively and quickly, then, yes, it became an event of a different sort. So far, though, it hasn’t been crazy or overwhelming. At the stage door, there might be 40 or 50 people outside each night. Some are there for Keira specifically, but a lot of them are there because they are theatergoers. At the same time, my responsibility is to the evening itself because Alceste is on stage overwhelmingly more than the other people, so that brings its own pressure. What I have to be sure to do is just concentrate and deliver the play in the best possible way.

You’ve witnessed this sort of event theater before, of course, when you were Laertes in 1995 to Ralph Fiennes’s London and Broadway Hamlet.

You know, I think when you’re in the business and you’re doing well and you have a modicum of fame yourself, you sort of lose sight of how famous people are around you. And you lose sight of the way the public and the media continue to respond to famous people around you. I’ve sort of removed myself from all that: I don’t have a publicist myself, I don’t read glossy magazines, I don’t read the tabloids. That’s the sort of clutter I try to clear away, so the sort of white-hot intensity that is on Keira and the play has in some ways surprised me. I’d forgotten just how famous Keira had become as the second most highly paid actress in Hollywood.

It’s lovely in this production that she is playing a Hollywood film star who is very much in the public eye.

It feeds in brilliantly, and the parallels are terrifically intriguing—ours is very consciously a post-modern take on the play. But this is why Keira’s instincts are so keen on stage and why I think she’s really enjoying it—and is very good. I’ve said this before, but I really think if the media want to take potshots at her, I genuinely believe it will be out of mean-spiritedness. I hope people are as objective as they can be, because it’s very distorting having someone with that much baggage come to do a play.

You mention the post-modernism implicit in casting Keira in this role, which makes this a rare deconstructionist evening on the West End.

It’s absolutely metaphysical; it’s messing with our notion of reality, and it is a coup that Keira’s playing it. It says a lot about Keira and her confidence that she can speak this immortal line, “I am the complete focus of all attention,” and make herself part of the joke. She knows what people have said, she’s not stupid. So what she’s doing is empowering herself massively by joining in the joke, as if to say, “I know the level of my fame and my success and I know that it hasn’t always been a smooth ride critically. I get it.”

Does all this make you reevaluate your own degree of stardom?

Let’s be honest: there’s no way of knowing whether Keira had not been in the show whether myself and an ensemble could have filled the theater in the same way. We certainly wouldn’t have filled it up in such a dramatically quick way. Keira is bringing people to the theater that never go to the theater. We will have nights at the Comedy that will reflect that, where they are maybe not so quick to pick up on the joke but will be having the time of their life watching something utterly new and being in the same room as this beautiful young film star. At the same time, most of them will know who Tara [co-star Tara FitzGerald, who was Ophelia to Lewis’ Laertes] is and who I am and that will be an added bonus. We hope. [Laughs.]

Your director has been down this road before, when she was at the helm of the Daniel Radcliffe Equus here and in New York.

Absolutely. Thea’s not afraid of directing well-known actors. Quite the opposite; I think she relishes it. It’s a nice match for her ambitions.

So, are you and the family back in London now for good? [Lewis and his wife, the actress Helen McCrory, have two young children, Manon and Gulliver, ages three and two.]

We live in London! I went to L.A. for the duration of that job [Life] and absolutely loved my two years there, but the show has been canceled and two years playing the lead where everything revolves around that character meant it was really enough for me anyway. People expect you to go the full six years because that means it’s been the biggest success it can possibly be: that’s a very American view of it. But I was very happy with the two years and am very happy that I’ve been freed up to do things subsequently like this play. Certainly, in terms of the content, the skill of Life, it never should have been canceled. But from a personal point of view, I wasn’t unhappy for it to be canceled.

Which means your kids will be British, not American.

Well, my son was born in America. I’m looking forward to him being president of your country.

2009.12.23 The Oxford Times - The Misanthrope (Review)

mokulen37 — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 23:11:29 +0000

The Oxford Times
23 December 2009
By Christopher Gray
source

The Misanthrope: The Comedy Theatre, London

If the National Theatre’s production of The Habit of Art, reviewed elsewhere on this site, is the hottest ticket in town, then the modern-day revamp of Molière’s The Misanthrope at the Comedy Theatre is running a pretty close second. Prospective punters were laying siege to the box office at the performance I attended; a burly security man advised that entry to the foyer was physically impossible and that I had better return a little later.

The fuss has been created, of course, by the presence in the cast of the cinema icon Keira Knightley, making her West End debut in the company of Damian Lewis, another Brit turned screen celebrity. That the lissom and lovely Hollywood star is playing, well, a lissome and lovely Hollywood star has led some critics to suggest that this hardly places a great strain on her acting skills, a remark that is as unfair as it is unkind.

It is the sort of actress she is presenting that calls for careful characterisation. Jennifer may be vain, manipulative and callous in her taking up and laying aside of lovers, but she still possesses mischievous appeal and wit enough to catch, and hold, even the acidulous, celeb-loathing playwright Alceste – the misanthrope of the title, although, as Lytton Strachey observed, his problem is really more his sensitiveness than his misanthropy. He is brilliantly presented by Lewis, who really spits out the many cleverly crafted insults placed in his mouth by Martin Crimp in his neatly rhyming version in English.

Since its first airing in the mid-1990s, the play has been updated to take account of David Cameron with “his toxic, spray-on brand of fake compassion”. Interestingly, there has also been a change in the hit list of fellow playwrights feeling the rough edge of Alceste’s tongue, with Tom Stoppard now substituting for the saintly Alan Bennett. Perhaps Alceste’s most vicious abuse, though – and we must surely think he deserves it – is reserved for the oily drama critic and would-be dramatist Covington, who is portrayed in a fine comic performance by Tim McMullan.

Jennifer is also in the first-division when it comes to holding her own in an argument as we see in the set-piece ructions with her odious former drama teacher (Tara FitzGerald) and the jealous Alceste himself. That she, like him, really has no time for fools – though, unlike him, is prepared to suffer them for the sake of her career – is subtly implied in Knightley’s performance.

Ably directed by Thea Sharrock and with a memorable setting in a swanky London hotel suite supplied by designer Hildegard Bechtler, the play must not be missed.

Until March 13. Tel: 0870 060 6637
(www.ambassadortickets.com/london).

2009.12.23 Financial Times - Molière among the media folk (Review)

mokulen37 — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 23:06:24 +0000

Financial Times
23 December 2009
By Ian Shuttleworth
source

Molière among the media folk

If I were like the critic character in Martin Crimp’s Molière adaptation, I would now sneer at Keira Knightley’s performance in her stage debut. But the fact is that she does a good job in the role of Jennifer, an American film star beloved by the title character, Alceste, who in this version is a prominent writer. After a tentative first scene, in which her natural bodily ease seems to be suppressed by an excessive awareness of the scale and mechanics of stage movement, Knightley gives a confident and nuanced reading of the role.

The irony of the production’s bankability resting on a British film star playing an American film star is only one of dozens during the evening. Another is that Jennifer’s embittered former acting teacher is played by Tara FitzGerald, herself a former screen and media “face” of some standing, but one who clearly relishes having moved beyond that box.

If this is knowingness on the part of Thea Sharrock’s production, Crimp’s script is stuffed with it. There are repeated references to how this all sounds oddly 17th-century, in fact like Molière (the final act even includes a costume party with a Louis XIV theme), and to the arts/media world.

Crimp is a clever writer, and this is one of his most ostentatiously clever works. It would play like a dream on a continental European stage . . . but who’s going to bother re-translating an English translation of a French play? And as it is, the culture portrayed is simply alien to us. Ours is not a world where film stars hang out with public intellectuals, and if you can find me a British tabloid journalist who pays any attention to postmodernist and post-structuralist theory I’ll eat my unfinished doctoral thesis.

Without such plausibility, all the allusions and dropped names begin to seem self-referential and smug. As I say, though, it’s well done, with Crimp’s revisions of his 1996 script including nods to Banksy, Simon Cowell and the “dead white male” epithet applied to critics.

Sharrock directs with a sensitivity towards the springy verse of Crimp’s text; Damian Lewis is nicely spiky as the pathologically plain-speaking Alceste (and even suffers a ginger-hair joke into the bargain), and it is heartening to see such a deliberately unsettling double-twist ending to a comedy on a West End stage. ****

2009.12.22 Metro.co.uk - Irony of Keira Knightley’s star splash in The Misanthrope (Review)

mokulen37 — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 22:57:11 +0000

Metro.co.uk
22 December 2009
By Siobhan Murphy
source

Irony of Keira Knightley’s star splash in The Misanthrope

The burning question about this latest production of Martin Crimp’s modern take on Molière’s comedy of manners is, obviously, is Keira Knightley any good?

In short, yes; she’s much better than her (canny) pre-first night pronouncements would have led you to believe but – beautiful as she is – she doesn’t command as much attention on stage as you’d hope.

As Jennifer, the Hollywood film star making a splash on the London circuit, Knightley shows an awareness of the dramatic irony involved in her casting without having the confidence to really play on it. In her coruscating attacks on her hangers-on, though, she does show how she and Damian Lewis’s Alceste, the misanthrope of the title, are unlikely soulmates.

Crimp has moved the target from 17th-century French aristocracy to the fawning modern media industry, so here Alceste is a put-upon playwright who abhors the mendacity of the self-absorbed world he’s part of but who finds his attempts to speak the plain truth just end up with him being served with writs.

Lewis relishes his role as self-appointed ranting outcast, delivering Crimp’s clever, fluid verse with elan and delightedly toying with the post-modernism of the whole occasion. Thea Sharrock’s production has the boldness and vigour that Crimp’s script needs, plus an excellent supporting cast. Whether Crimp’s update is built to last in the same way as Molière’s classic is doubtful but it makes for a boisterously entertaining evening. Siobhan Murphy

Until Mar 13, Comedy Theatre, Mon to Sat 7.30pm, Wed and Sat mats 2.30pm (Dec 24 2.30pm only, no perf Dec 25), £20 to £65. Tel: 0844 871 7612. Tube: Piccadilly Circus

2009.12.20 The British Theatre Guide - One of the highlights of the season, if not the year (Review)

mokulen37 — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 23:15:27 +0000

The British Theatre Guide
20 December 2009
By Philip Fisher
source

One of the highlights of the season, if not the year

With the draw of the elfin Keira Knightley, Thea Sharrock’s updated revival of Martin Crimp’s cynically sharp version of the Molière classic did not need to be good to sell out. However, it has turned out to be one of the highlights of the season, if not the year.

The only question on most people’s lips was whether the indisputably gorgeous Hollywood icon would embarrass herself in making a belated stage debut. The actress is helped by playing a character that must contain much of her milieu and herself, albeit with an American accent.

After a nervous opening, the Atonement and Pirates of the Caribbean heroine really comes into her own, as her film starlet character gets angry with her insufferably jealous lover after the interval. From that point, she acts as if to the (West End) manor born in very strong company.

Molière always knew how to look at life with wry humour and Martin Crimp has a similar, if more modern, outlook and love for his language. He has matched the maître rhyming couplet for rhyming couplet and throughout writes with sparkling wit about the emptiness of celebrity under the relentless media spotlight.

The real star is red-headed Band of Brothers actor, Damian Lewis in the title role of Alceste. He plays a writer who, despite the efforts of his long-suffering friend, Dominic Rowan’s John, takes a personal vow to tell things as they are, whomever he might offend along the way.

In principle this sounds fine but when you are dating a hot Valley Girl film star and moving amongst her sycophantic circle, the consequences can be pretty bloody. Lewis plays up the misanthropism, which quickly involves wilful self-destruction, successfully expressing his character’s mental tug of war.

Alceste doesn’t help himself and his jealousy inevitably offends and riles Jennifer. However, everyone else on show mixes big doses of both the bold and the precious in her presence with equally disastrous and comic results.

On a stylish Hildegard Bechtler set that balances Louis XIV with post-post modern, the catalyst for much of the trouble is a Heat-style celeb-secrets journalist Ellen, played by Kelly Price. Her publication of Jennifer’s revelations, which are at the same time true and deeply offensive, is tasteless but so shallow is this world that the beautiful are instantly forgiven by the greedy and lustful.

The leads are supported brilliantly by Tara Fitzgerald as strident, sexually frustrated neo-feminist Marcia, who covers her vulnerability with bombast. Almost equally entertaining are Rowan (Nicholas Le Prevost playing a larger than life agent) and Tim McMullan’s critic turned hack playwright, Covington, the most obvious émigré from the Comedie Francaise, with his deliberately mannered acting style.

In five short acts over two hours, we learn vast amounts about the attitudes of today’s superstars both real and wannabe but also to some extent their equivalents 350 years ago. Pleasingly, the humour rarely lets up and Crimp’s/Molière’s poetry just keeps on surprising with its versatility.

Thea Sharrock is fast becoming the hottest young female director around and when you can call on Keira Knightley, Damian Lewis and Tara Fitzgerald for a French play from the Seventeenth Century, you know that you have made the grade.

On this occasion, a very rich mix of ingredients turns out to be a feast fit for a (Sun) King.