Exclusive: Multi-faceted UK outfit Altitude, which is on the Croisette this year with Asif Kapadia’s anticipated documentary Diego Maradona, is in development on a movie about the lives and careers of dance siblings Fred and Adele Astaire, and World War II thriller The Zero Hour about one man’s personal quest to track down Nazi Rudolf Hoss.
Altitude spans international sales, UK distribution and production. The latest prospect in development for the company is a portrait of iconic American dancer Fred Astaire and his sister Adele. Partnering with producers Ben Holden (The Woman In Black 2) of Lightbulb Pictures and Josh Hyams (The Trip To Spain), Altitude have set writers Glenn Patterson and Colin Carberry (Good Vibrations) to write The Astaires, the true story of how the twenty-something siblings overcame huge challenges to become the world’s most famous dancers during their time in London and New York.
Based on...
Altitude spans international sales, UK distribution and production. The latest prospect in development for the company is a portrait of iconic American dancer Fred Astaire and his sister Adele. Partnering with producers Ben Holden (The Woman In Black 2) of Lightbulb Pictures and Josh Hyams (The Trip To Spain), Altitude have set writers Glenn Patterson and Colin Carberry (Good Vibrations) to write The Astaires, the true story of how the twenty-something siblings overcame huge challenges to become the world’s most famous dancers during their time in London and New York.
Based on...
- 5/14/2019
- by Andreas Wiseman
- Deadline Film + TV
The Astaires, a dazzling double act, now have the biography they deserve
Although their first film, Flying Down to Rio, had been a smash, Fred Astaire was adamant that he didn't want to be teamed with Ginger Rogers for their follow-up. It wasn't that Astaire didn't like Rogers – he had dated her briefly when they had both been hoofers on Broadway – but as he said in an uncharacteristically strident letter to his agent in early 1934: "I've just managed to live down one partnership and I don't want to be bothered with any more."
That earlier partnership had been with Adele Astaire, his older sister by three years. Starting as a child act on the vaudeville circuit, supporting flame-throwers and performing seals, the Astaires had developed into slick, serviceable "dancing comedians". Their big break came in 1923 when they appeared in Stop Flirting on Shaftesbury Avenue. Although the piece hadn't been tailor-made,...
Although their first film, Flying Down to Rio, had been a smash, Fred Astaire was adamant that he didn't want to be teamed with Ginger Rogers for their follow-up. It wasn't that Astaire didn't like Rogers – he had dated her briefly when they had both been hoofers on Broadway – but as he said in an uncharacteristically strident letter to his agent in early 1934: "I've just managed to live down one partnership and I don't want to be bothered with any more."
That earlier partnership had been with Adele Astaire, his older sister by three years. Starting as a child act on the vaudeville circuit, supporting flame-throwers and performing seals, the Astaires had developed into slick, serviceable "dancing comedians". Their big break came in 1923 when they appeared in Stop Flirting on Shaftesbury Avenue. Although the piece hadn't been tailor-made,...
- 7/4/2012
- by Kathryn Hughes
- The Guardian - Film News
A two-evening cycle in Los Angeles, Seeing and Awakening: New Films by Nathaniel Dorsky at Redcat on Monday — Pastourelle (2010), The Return (2011) and the world premiere of August and After — and A Quartet of Recent Films by Nathaniel Dorsky at the UCLA Film & Television Archive's Billy Wilder Theater on Friday — Sarabande (2009), Compline (2009), Aubade (2009) and Winter (2008) — is the occasion for an appreciation by Manohla Dargis in the New York Times:
Because the films are silent and don't come with explanatory on-screen text, you can luxuriate in the visual complexity of the images. You may, amid all this loveliness, worry about what it all means. Although Mr Dorsky gestures in certain interpretive directions, notably with his titles — "Compline" is the name of the final prayer of the day in the Roman Catholic Church — he never forces you down this or that path. Then again, what can the image of eye-poppingly purple flowers mean?...
Because the films are silent and don't come with explanatory on-screen text, you can luxuriate in the visual complexity of the images. You may, amid all this loveliness, worry about what it all means. Although Mr Dorsky gestures in certain interpretive directions, notably with his titles — "Compline" is the name of the final prayer of the day in the Roman Catholic Church — he never forces you down this or that path. Then again, what can the image of eye-poppingly purple flowers mean?...
- 4/14/2012
- MUBI
For the tenth edition of Film Art: An Introduction, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson are partnering with Criterion to present Connect Film, an hour-long set of twenty videos on various aspects of filmmaking addressed in the now-classic textbook. Above: "Elliptical Editing in Vagabond (1985)." Kristin Thompson: "Most of the other Connect examples illustrate the chapters on the four types of film technique: mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sound. There's also a short documentary about digital animation."
More books. You may remember that Dave Kehr is quite an admirer of the writing of Arlene Croce, a dance critic for the New Yorker from 1973 to 1998. She's also the author of The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book and, in the new issue of the New York Review of Books, she reviews Todd Decker's Music Makes Me: Fred Astaire and Jazz and Kathleen Riley's The Astaires: Fred and Adele. As the Boston Globe's Mark Feeney writes,...
More books. You may remember that Dave Kehr is quite an admirer of the writing of Arlene Croce, a dance critic for the New Yorker from 1973 to 1998. She's also the author of The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book and, in the new issue of the New York Review of Books, she reviews Todd Decker's Music Makes Me: Fred Astaire and Jazz and Kathleen Riley's The Astaires: Fred and Adele. As the Boston Globe's Mark Feeney writes,...
- 3/19/2012
- MUBI
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