She's famed for playing icy control freaks. But Lindsay Duncan wanted more laughs in her new film Le Week-End. And, really, she'd love to pack it all in and head for India
• First look review: Le Week-End
Happy news for the autumn day: love dies and flesh withers and your nearest and dearest can become your deadliest foe. This, at least, is the set up for Le Week-end, a bitter, biting drama about bitter, biting people; a film that rages against the dying of the light. Lindsay Duncan and Jim Broadbent star as Meg and Nick, a pair of sparring academics whose 30th anniversary hits the buffers as their train pulls into Paris's Gare du Nord. Up ahead we shall find squabbles, misery and the rattling spectre of adultery. "I was always asking for more laughs," Duncan says ruefully. "That didn't get me anywhere."
I meet the actor in a north London cafe,...
• First look review: Le Week-End
Happy news for the autumn day: love dies and flesh withers and your nearest and dearest can become your deadliest foe. This, at least, is the set up for Le Week-end, a bitter, biting drama about bitter, biting people; a film that rages against the dying of the light. Lindsay Duncan and Jim Broadbent star as Meg and Nick, a pair of sparring academics whose 30th anniversary hits the buffers as their train pulls into Paris's Gare du Nord. Up ahead we shall find squabbles, misery and the rattling spectre of adultery. "I was always asking for more laughs," Duncan says ruefully. "That didn't get me anywhere."
I meet the actor in a north London cafe,...
- 9/30/2013
- by Xan Brooks
- The Guardian - Film News
He has unparalleled creative freedom within the BBC. But, as Stephen Poliakoff's latest lavish drama reaches our screens, what does he make of his reputation for being a control freak?
'I'm quite sure," Stephen Poliakoff giggles, "there are people within the BBC who run down the corridors blocking their ears when they see me coming." His reputation certainly precedes him – a great galloping colossus of media folklore, variously casting the writer as a genius, control freak, force of nature or diva, sometimes all at the same time. Descriptions of his appearance err towards cartoonish caricature – dishevelled, wild-haired, fidgety, like a mad professor who has accidentally electrocuted himself – only adding to the mythology of a wild man of letters. But to everyone about to fall in love with his latest drama, Poliakoff may well soon be at real risk of becoming a national treasure.
Dancing on the Edge is set...
'I'm quite sure," Stephen Poliakoff giggles, "there are people within the BBC who run down the corridors blocking their ears when they see me coming." His reputation certainly precedes him – a great galloping colossus of media folklore, variously casting the writer as a genius, control freak, force of nature or diva, sometimes all at the same time. Descriptions of his appearance err towards cartoonish caricature – dishevelled, wild-haired, fidgety, like a mad professor who has accidentally electrocuted himself – only adding to the mythology of a wild man of letters. But to everyone about to fall in love with his latest drama, Poliakoff may well soon be at real risk of becoming a national treasure.
Dancing on the Edge is set...
- 1/28/2013
- by Decca Aitkenhead
- The Guardian - Film News
Comedian who made her name on TV in the 1980s takes role in new work celebrating the teaching profession
Hollywood stars and the public sector are rarely mentioned in the same breath. But thanks to dramatist Stephen Poliakoff, that is about to change. Multimillionaire, comedian and Hollywood actress Tracey Ullman is to return to the British stage after a 20-year absence in a new play by Poliakoff about the importance of teachers and the public service ethos in our lives.
The British star, who established herself as a household name in America in the 1980s, is returning to appear in My City, which will open at London's Almeida theatre early in September. It will be Poliakoff's first theatrical work for 12 years, following his acclaimed television dramas Shooting the Past and The Lost Prince.
The award-winning writer wrote the "powerful and surprising" play before news of the cuts in education, but...
Hollywood stars and the public sector are rarely mentioned in the same breath. But thanks to dramatist Stephen Poliakoff, that is about to change. Multimillionaire, comedian and Hollywood actress Tracey Ullman is to return to the British stage after a 20-year absence in a new play by Poliakoff about the importance of teachers and the public service ethos in our lives.
The British star, who established herself as a household name in America in the 1980s, is returning to appear in My City, which will open at London's Almeida theatre early in September. It will be Poliakoff's first theatrical work for 12 years, following his acclaimed television dramas Shooting the Past and The Lost Prince.
The award-winning writer wrote the "powerful and surprising" play before news of the cuts in education, but...
- 7/23/2011
- by Vanessa Thorpe
- The Guardian - Film News
We all have film sequences that stick in our minds. Some are shared by many – such as the shower scene from Psycho – others are particular to us. Here our film critic and a panel of leading movie-makers reveal their favourites. What are yours?
Who will ever forget the first time they saw the 45-second shower-room murder in Hitchcock's Psycho? I remember 1959 and 1961 as the years when my first two children were born. But the first thing that comes to mind about the year in between was seeing Psycho, which I'd been looking forward to since a radio programme I'd produced the previous October, when Hitchcock had enticingly described Psycho as "my first real horror film". Entering the Plaza, Lower Regent Street, the day the film opened, I passed the cardboard cut-out of Hitchcock in the foyer, from which a tape recording of the Master's familiar Leytonstone undertaker's voice warned us...
Who will ever forget the first time they saw the 45-second shower-room murder in Hitchcock's Psycho? I remember 1959 and 1961 as the years when my first two children were born. But the first thing that comes to mind about the year in between was seeing Psycho, which I'd been looking forward to since a radio programme I'd produced the previous October, when Hitchcock had enticingly described Psycho as "my first real horror film". Entering the Plaza, Lower Regent Street, the day the film opened, I passed the cardboard cut-out of Hitchcock in the foyer, from which a tape recording of the Master's familiar Leytonstone undertaker's voice warned us...
- 3/15/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
'What really buys you freedom is being successful. So long as you deliver, they leave you alone'
For someone best known for Shooting the Past, a television drama apparently so slow and un-televisual that BBC executives begged him to speed it up, Stephen Poliakoff is a very fast talker. Sentences tumble into one another, thoughts jerkily digress, regroup and change their angle of attack. Ideas flit in and out of focus as all the while a plastic drinking straw is furiously twiddled between his fingers. Outlining details of his latest venture, Glorious 39, his first feature film for 12 years, Poliakoff makes glancing references to George W Bush, Bulldog Drummond, the history of the wire tap and Norfolk's evergreen oaks in expressing his fascination and horror at the aristocratic and establishment appeasers who, in the run-up to the second world war, mounted a desperate last effort to do a deal with...
For someone best known for Shooting the Past, a television drama apparently so slow and un-televisual that BBC executives begged him to speed it up, Stephen Poliakoff is a very fast talker. Sentences tumble into one another, thoughts jerkily digress, regroup and change their angle of attack. Ideas flit in and out of focus as all the while a plastic drinking straw is furiously twiddled between his fingers. Outlining details of his latest venture, Glorious 39, his first feature film for 12 years, Poliakoff makes glancing references to George W Bush, Bulldog Drummond, the history of the wire tap and Norfolk's evergreen oaks in expressing his fascination and horror at the aristocratic and establishment appeasers who, in the run-up to the second world war, mounted a desperate last effort to do a deal with...
- 11/28/2009
- The Guardian - Film News
Glorious 39 marks acclaimed filmmaker Stephen Poliakoff’s return to the big screen after twelve long years and it is an epic triumph of ambition and craft, delivering a superb and engaging thriller of duplicity and deceit on the eve of World War II.
Threatened by the impending ‘little war’ the aristocracy, fearing their way of life will be destroyed by Hitler’s army, adopt an aggressive strategy of appeasement and it is this anxiety which propels the plot of Poliakoff’s script forward. The uncertainty and tension of the late summer of 1939 is our scene and an intriguing and poignant journey into the darkness of war produces an unforgettable drama from a writer and director whose ability to illuminate the harrowing detail of betrayal and heartache has never been more potent.
The formidable cast, eager to work with Poliakoff in the first feature production for over a decade, is headed by Romola Garai,...
Threatened by the impending ‘little war’ the aristocracy, fearing their way of life will be destroyed by Hitler’s army, adopt an aggressive strategy of appeasement and it is this anxiety which propels the plot of Poliakoff’s script forward. The uncertainty and tension of the late summer of 1939 is our scene and an intriguing and poignant journey into the darkness of war produces an unforgettable drama from a writer and director whose ability to illuminate the harrowing detail of betrayal and heartache has never been more potent.
The formidable cast, eager to work with Poliakoff in the first feature production for over a decade, is headed by Romola Garai,...
- 10/27/2009
- by Jon Lyus
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
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