With The Last Duel out now, and House of Gucci at the end of the month, we rate the top 20 movies by the go-to director for swords, sandals, cyborgs and Sigourney
A film to prove that straight-up feelgood comedy is not Ridley Scott’s forte and casting his favourite leading man is no guarantee of success, either. This is based on a novel by Peter “A Year in Provence” Mayle: incredibly, it is Russell Crowe playing the quirkily conceited yet adorable Brit who inherits a sumptuous house-plus-vineyard in the south of France, comes over intending to sell it, but instead falls in love with the place and all the picturesque Frenchness thereabouts, including Marion Cotillard.
A film to prove that straight-up feelgood comedy is not Ridley Scott’s forte and casting his favourite leading man is no guarantee of success, either. This is based on a novel by Peter “A Year in Provence” Mayle: incredibly, it is Russell Crowe playing the quirkily conceited yet adorable Brit who inherits a sumptuous house-plus-vineyard in the south of France, comes over intending to sell it, but instead falls in love with the place and all the picturesque Frenchness thereabouts, including Marion Cotillard.
- 11/4/2021
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Jon Gregory, editor of such films as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and In Bruges has died, a representative confirmed to Deadline. He was 77.
Gregory worked with Mike Leigh across the director’s storied career, from an early short called The Short & Curlies to one of Leigh’s first features, High Hopes, to some of the director’s best-known work — such as Life Is Sweet, Naked and Secrets & Lies — to one of his most recent works, Peterloo. Leigh remembered his frequent collaborator in a piece posted by The Guardian today.
In it, Leigh praised Gregory’s ability to compose complex component parts into a cohesive whole. “He brought to the task his unique characteristic skill, imagination, sensitivity and sophistication, while, as always, staying true to the material,” wrote the director. He praised Gregory’s sense of when not to edit, as well.
Leigh recalled...
Gregory worked with Mike Leigh across the director’s storied career, from an early short called The Short & Curlies to one of Leigh’s first features, High Hopes, to some of the director’s best-known work — such as Life Is Sweet, Naked and Secrets & Lies — to one of his most recent works, Peterloo. Leigh remembered his frequent collaborator in a piece posted by The Guardian today.
In it, Leigh praised Gregory’s ability to compose complex component parts into a cohesive whole. “He brought to the task his unique characteristic skill, imagination, sensitivity and sophistication, while, as always, staying true to the material,” wrote the director. He praised Gregory’s sense of when not to edit, as well.
Leigh recalled...
- 9/28/2021
- by Tom Tapp
- Deadline Film + TV
Peter Mayle, the author of A Year In Provence and A Good Year — the latter the basis for Ridley Scott’s 2006 film — has died. The writer who was best known for chronicling his life as a British expat in the south of France passed away on Thursday after a short illness, his publisher Alfred A Knopf said. He was 78. A Year In Provence was published in 1989 and became an international bestseller and one of the most popular travel books of all time. It was later turned into a…...
- 1/19/2018
- Deadline TV
Peter Mayle, the author of A Year In Provence and A Good Year — the latter the basis for Ridley Scott’s 2006 film — has died. The writer who was best known for chronicling his life as a British expat in the south of France passed away on Thursday after a short illness, his publisher Alfred A Knopf said. He was 78. A Year In Provence was published in 1989 and became an international bestseller and one of the most popular travel books of all time. It was later turned into a…...
- 1/19/2018
- Deadline
On the seventh night that my mother was in hospice care, dying of a blood infection that doctors said would soon stop her heart, I suddenly awakened at 3 a.m., and went outside in my pajamas to look at the velvet, star-filled sky above my Salt Lake City home.
While searching for Orion and Sirius on that crisp November night, the way my mom had taught me as a child, I was overcome with the same spectacular thought that had kept me awake the night before: “What if my mother was not actually dying?”
“Don’t fly away yet, Snowy Owl Woman,...
While searching for Orion and Sirius on that crisp November night, the way my mom had taught me as a child, I was overcome with the same spectacular thought that had kept me awake the night before: “What if my mother was not actually dying?”
“Don’t fly away yet, Snowy Owl Woman,...
- 12/22/2017
- by Cathy Free
- PEOPLE.com
The internet may have made redundant the Victorian type of travel book, full of facts and figures, but it's a form of literature that can still thrive
'Hugh Grant loses his bookshop in Notting Hill" was the headline on an article that appeared last week in my local Spanish newspaper. International interest in London's Travel Bookshop (described as a tourist attraction comparable to Paris's Shakespeare and Company) is entirely due to its central role in a popular film promoting an engaging view of London and the British. In Britain, the news of the bookshop's closure has additional and more serious implications – for the future not only of similar independent establishments, but also, and no less importantly, of travel writing.
Travel writing today has an undoubtedly tarnished image. The casting of Hugh Grant in Notting Hill says much about popular preconceptions of the genre and its practitioners. It is a...
'Hugh Grant loses his bookshop in Notting Hill" was the headline on an article that appeared last week in my local Spanish newspaper. International interest in London's Travel Bookshop (described as a tourist attraction comparable to Paris's Shakespeare and Company) is entirely due to its central role in a popular film promoting an engaging view of London and the British. In Britain, the news of the bookshop's closure has additional and more serious implications – for the future not only of similar independent establishments, but also, and no less importantly, of travel writing.
Travel writing today has an undoubtedly tarnished image. The casting of Hugh Grant in Notting Hill says much about popular preconceptions of the genre and its practitioners. It is a...
- 8/27/2011
- by Michael Jacobs
- The Guardian - Film News
Vincente Minnelli's celebration of the life of Vincent van Gogh is well-researched and enjoyable, even if it gives the best lines to Paul Gauguin
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Entertainment grade: B–
History grade: A–
Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch artist. He achieved little fame during his life, struggled with mental illness and lived in poverty.
Since his death, he has been lauded as one of the greatest painters of all time.
Family
After a foray into missionary work at a Belgian coal mine which, while interesting enough and mostly true, feels like it is going in an entirely different direction from the rest of the film, Van Gogh (Kirk Douglas) finally takes up art about 20 minutes into the runtime. He lives in his parents' shed and spends all day wearing a manky sheepskin jerkin and drawing things he can't sell, while they drop clanging hints about how he should get a real job.
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Entertainment grade: B–
History grade: A–
Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch artist. He achieved little fame during his life, struggled with mental illness and lived in poverty.
Since his death, he has been lauded as one of the greatest painters of all time.
Family
After a foray into missionary work at a Belgian coal mine which, while interesting enough and mostly true, feels like it is going in an entirely different direction from the rest of the film, Van Gogh (Kirk Douglas) finally takes up art about 20 minutes into the runtime. He lives in his parents' shed and spends all day wearing a manky sheepskin jerkin and drawing things he can't sell, while they drop clanging hints about how he should get a real job.
- 4/8/2010
- by Alex von Tunzelmann
- The Guardian - Film News
Alex James has announced that he is writing a second autobiography on the subject of farming. The Blur bassist revealed that the book will resemble an A Year in Provence-style memoir and be a sequel to A Bit of Blur, his account of his life as a musician. He told The Mirror: "I'm trying very hard to write a book - I'm just finishing it so I'm going into my bunker and emerge in the spring. It's like [an] A Year in Provence-type thing - only cheesier." The 41-year-old (more)...
- 3/2/2010
- by By Paul Millar
- Digital Spy
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