Print Media – Page 4 – Damian Lewis

Dream Horse Review: Toni Collette and Damian Lewis Lead This Crowd-Pleasing Sports Drama – Jan 26, 2020

On January 26, 2020February 20, 2020 By Gingersnap Comments Off

It Will Make You Chuckle, Cheer, and Maybe Even Tear Up: 7 Out of 10

by Ben Pearson | Slash Film | January 26, 2020

Jane (Toni Collette) is tired. Tired of working multiple jobs in small-town Wales, tired of her boring husband Brian (Owen Teale) who bums around watching TV all day, tired of taking care of her aging parents, tired of the drudgery her life has become. So when Howard (Damian Lewis), a former hotshot racehorse owner, becomes a regular at the bar where she works, Jane is inspired to try her own hand at raising a racehorse – but she needs some help to pull it off. Based on a 2015 documentary called Dark Horse, director Euros Lyn’s Dream Horse is an inspirational, winning sports drama about a small town with big hopes.

The trouble with Jane’s plan is that racehorses are expensive. So she reaches out to the townsfolk to see if they want to form a syndicate, an ownership collective in which they all pay £10 a week for shared rights to the future winnings of their still non-existent racehorse. A coterie of characters shows up to participate, including retirees, local small business owners, and even the town drunk.

Continue reading Dream Horse Review: Toni Collette and Damian Lewis Lead This Crowd-Pleasing Sports Drama – Jan 26, 2020

Dream Horse Horse Racing Print Media Sundance Film Festival

Living the Dream: Why Hollywood Has Taken On Ultimate Rags to Riches Tale – Jan 26, 2020

On January 26, 2020February 25, 2020 By Gingersnap Comments Off

Damian is a Dream in Dream Horse

by Olivia Buxton | Sunday Express | January 26, 2020

It’s a long way from an old slag heap in a Welsh mining village to the red carpets of Hollywood. But, then again, how often has a horse bought on a whim for £300 beaten the multi-millionaires of the sport of kings? And all that after undergoing a revolutionary stem cell treatment to overcome a life-threatening injury which was feared would stop him ever racing again.

Now the rags-to-riches story of Dream Alliance and how he brought hope to one of Britain’s most deprived spots is a film with Homeland star Damian Lewis, Gavin & Stacey‘s Joanna Page and hit Broadway actress Toni Collette. It was even screened at the swish Sundance Film Festival in Utah on Friday.

It all began in Cefn Fforest working men’s club when Jan Vokes overheard tax advisor Howard Davies (played by Lewis) saying how he once ran a racehorse syndicate. It had cost him £5,000 and he’d promised wife Angela (played by Page) that he would never do anything like it again. But Jan was interested.

She cleaned at Asda and at a school and worked as a barmaid – but didn’t see why she couldn’t breed a racehorse. She had an allotment on a slag heap, as a child had watched her father breed budgies and had bred pigeons and whippets herself.

Howard managed to convince his wife that they wouldn’t lose money and found an aging stallion for stud.

Joanna Page says it was a joy to star alongside Damian Lewis in Dream Horse,

“Damian Lewis plays my husband, Howard, and we have a syndicate in this Welsh village, where we live and we breed a racing horse. Damian’s character is one of the main ones in the syndicate but Angela is not very supportive.”

“But Damian was so lovely and funny to work with. He’s brilliant.”

Continue reading Living the Dream: Why Hollywood Has Taken On Ultimate Rags to Riches Tale – Jan 26, 2020

Homeland Print Media

Homeland Declassified: An Oral History of Never Told Tales – Jan 16, 2020

On January 16, 2020 By Gingersnap Comments Off

Battles, Backlash, CIA Meetings

by Michael O’Connell | Hollywood Reporter | January 16, 2019

Claire Danes, Mandy Patinkin, Damian Lewis and the creators of the era-defining Showtime drama — now entering its eighth and final season — reveal in The Hollywood Reporter’s oral history never-told tales of a show that smashed records, captivated presidents and predicted everything from terrorist attacks to Russian election hacks.

“What keeps you up at night?” That’s the question Homeland showrunner Alex Gansa annually posed to Washington insiders before putting fingers to keyboard on a season of his Emmy-winning Showtime drama.

What began as a slick spy thriller driven by a potent sexual chemistry, courtesy of leads Claire Danes and Damian Lewis, evolved into an exposé on the greatest dangers to an America that finally had some distance from 9/11. Threats from ISIS, the surveillance state and Russian interference punctuated clandestine meetings with the intelligence community — part of a yearly writers and cast symposium in D.C. affectionately dubbed “Spy Camp.”

The series, loosely developed from an Israeli format by Gansa and longtime collaborator Howard Gordon (24), became an instant and bona fide success when it premiered in 2011 to 2.8 million viewers and unanimous critical acclaim. Boasting a murderers’ row of writers, each a showrunner at one time, the drama catapulted Showtime and studio Fox 21 to an echelon of prestige TV they previously couldn’t reach. It swept its first Emmys (with six awards total) and those first seasons had both the Obamas and Clintons soliciting screeners.

Continue reading Homeland Declassified: An Oral History of Never Told Tales – Jan 16, 2020

Poll Print Media

Vote for Damian to be the Next Bond – Jan 11, 2020

On January 11, 2020January 14, 2020 By Gingersnap Comments Off

Who Will Actually Be The Next James Bond? An In-Depth Analysis

by Tom Nicholson | Esquire | January 11, 2020

Who’s going to take over from Daniel Craig as James Bond when he swaps his Walther PPK for a P45? Who knows. This far ahead of Bond 25’s 2020 release you might as well get the Ouija board out to ask the spirit of Cubby Broccoli what he reckons.

Nonetheless, there are a few orthodoxies to point the way. Traditionally, it’s been a role which elevates actors to the A-list rather than being an A-list vehicle. Look at where past Bonds were in their careers when they got the gig: Sean Connery was an undistinguished jobbing actor best known for fighting leprechauns in Disney’s begorrah-and-blimey Irish tale Darby O’Gill and the Little People; George Lazenby was a car salesman turned chocolate advert mascot who bumped into Broccoli at the barbers; Pierce Brosnan had a perm.

You’ll need a history of hefty, critically respected film parts these days too. Daniel Craig had Layer Cake, Munich and a role as Ted Hughes in Sylvia on his showreel before Bond, and the next will need a similarly solid CV as well as having convinced when jumping out of helicopters and the like. Then there’s the general sense of Bond-ishness: Connery “moved like a panther”, as Cubby’s wife Dana Broccoli put it, and that sense of muscular virility has been an essential part of each Bond actor on screen. These are the 12 frontrunners:

Continue reading Vote for Damian to be the Next Bond – Jan 11, 2020

Awards Poll Print Media

Damian Makes 2019 Morgan Awards – Dec 28, 2019

On December 28, 2019January 14, 2020 By Gingersnap Comments Off

Piers Morgan Reviews His Most Memorable Encounters of 2019

by Piers Morgan | for the Daily Mail | December 28, 2019

Piers Morgan writes,

2019 has been a year when I’ve attended some brilliant parties, enjoyed myriad deliciously enjoyable Twitter spats and had random encounters with megastars such as Ariana Grande that still make me chuckle many months later.

Here, then, are the 2019 Morgan Awards:

MOST HONEST ADMISSION

Damian Lewis and I debated team spirit, agreeing that it’s important to success, but that so is harnessing great talent, even if it’s egotistical and erratic.

‘There may be no “i’s” in team,’ I said, ‘but there are three in “winning side”.’

‘The bottom line,’ Lewis concurred, ‘is you put up with dickheads if they’re worth it.’

Read the rest of the original article at the Daily Mail