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Post by manfromplanetx on May 30, 2017 9:14:58 GMT
Sir Peter Hall Distinguished theatrical director, made some notable films for cinema. A great favourite of mine is his adaptation of Harold Pinter's play The Homecoming (1973). Hall had previously directed the theatrical premières of the play in London (1965) and New York (1967), all but two of the films cast members are from the play's first performance in 1965 they reprise their same roles, is it any wonder the film version is so good 10/10 That's my vote for The Caretaker from Clive Donner
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Post by sostie on May 30, 2017 9:37:02 GMT
Zulu Brazil Get Carter Life Of Brian 39 Steps
Not mentioned/represented:
Hellraiser (Clive Barker) Wicker Man (Robin Hardy) The Hit (Frears) Gregory's Girl (Forsyth) Moon (Duncan Jones) A Zed & Two Noughts (Greenaway) Trainspotting (Boyle) 28 Days Later (Boyle) Company of Wolves (Jordan) Hope & Glory (Boorman) The Wrong Box (Forbes) Monte Carlo or Bust (Ken Adam) Theatre Of Blood (Douglas Hickox) The Rebel (Robert Day)
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angel
Sophomore
@angel
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Post by angel on May 30, 2017 11:05:54 GMT
Not represented:Duncan JonesI only found out the director of Moon (2009) was English David Bowie's son if I'm not mistaken.
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Post by london777 on May 30, 2017 13:35:45 GMT
... a great favourite being a Googie Withers fan is a film in which she shines in the leading role ... The Loves of Joanna Godden (1947). The screenplay is from author H.E.Bates and the film also stars Jean Kent, John McCallum, Derek Bond and Chips Rafferty. I have never seen it but it is available in the Public Domain on a free download, so I will give it a try. I like Romney Marsh and once accompanied a friend to visit Derek Jarman who had a cottage there. Googie Withers stars in two of my all-time favorite movies: It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) and Night and the City (1950) with its wonderful London settings. I have just noticed that it was Michael Powell who gave her her first leading role when she was a very green extra. I always thought she was one of your lot, but I now see she first moved to Australia at the ripe old age of 42. Only married once (to John McCallum, whom she met while making "Joanna Godden" ) and stayed together for 62 years until his death. She was no great looker (too hard-faced) but picked some good roles. Would she have had more had she stayed in England?
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Post by london777 on May 30, 2017 13:42:12 GMT
Not mentioned/represented: Hellraiser (Clive Barker) Wicker Man (Robin Hardy) The Hit (Frears) Gregory's Girl (Forsyth) Moon (Duncan Jones) A Zed & Two Noughts (Greenaway) Trainspotting (Boyle) 28 Days Later (Boyle) Company of Wolves (Jordan) Hope & Glory (Boorman) The Wrong Box (Forbes) Monte Carlo or Bust (Ken Adam) Theatre Of Blood (Douglas Hickox) The Rebel (Robert Day) Thanks, Sostie. Some good films there not in my poll and one or two names of English directors not yet mentioned. Ken Adams was the set designer for the early Bond films. Monte Carlo or Bust was by Ken Annakin. Yes, the camp cult horror Theatre of Blood is Douglas Hickox's best full-length film. He also directed Sitting Target, a Brit gangster movie, which attempts to do for South London what Get Carter (1971) had done for Newcastle the previous year, and Zulu Dawn (1979), a somewhat botched attempt at a prequel to Zulu (1964) which overran its already huge budget and ended his career in features. My favorite by him is Les Bicyclettes de Belsize (1969), a short which poetically encapsulates in its 29 minutes the all too brief magic of London (the Hampstead area to be more precise) in the Swinging Sixties before drugs and the Vietnam War f*cked everything up. Hickox had started in advertising and maybe he was more at ease with short films than trying to emulate better directors' hits. Robert Day's first feature was the black comedy The Green Man (1956) featuring Alastair Sim at his best. The screenplay was by Launder and Gilliatt adapted from their own play, and they did not leave the novice director to his own devices. Apparently Basil Dearden took a hand as well. Too many cooks? Apparently not because it was very successful and launched Day on a long career in television. His few cinema films included Two Way Stretch (1960), a Peter Sellers vehicle, and The Rebel (1961) a failed attempt to turn TV comic Anthony Hancock (then very popular in the UK) into a film star for the US market. His only cinematic feature from 1974 until his retirement in 1991 was The Man with Bogart's Face (1980). I await mikef6's report on this one.
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Post by london777 on May 30, 2017 13:57:43 GMT
Was it a remake of this classic?
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gregcarman
New Member
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Post by gregcarman on May 30, 2017 17:43:47 GMT
A United Kingdom
I must confess I was completely ignorant of this historical episode, and had the uncharitable thought it might be severely exaggerated, but no, a bit of fact-checking courtesy of the disinformation superhighway reveals that if anything they played it down.
The new bride was in fact sacked from her job with Lloyd's of London when she refused to obey orders from the government.
And the marriage we see in the film at the local registry office was actually their second attempt, after the priest who had his church set up to marry the two of them had a call from his bishop on the morning of the day it was to take place, ordering him not to perform the ceremony.
Perhaps those scenes will be in the outtakes on the DVD!
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Post by london777 on May 30, 2017 18:46:24 GMT
Ah! The Good Old Days some of our regular posters here are so keen to return to.
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Post by louise on May 30, 2017 19:07:19 GMT
the lady vanishes - Alfred Hitchcock Passport to pimlico - henry Cornelius To ctach A thief - alfred hitchcock private's progress - Ray Boulting saving Grace - Henry Cole
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Post by london777 on May 30, 2017 20:48:05 GMT
private's progress - R oy Boulting saving Grace - Henry Cole I think you mean Nigel Cole, a useful addition to our list. He also directed Calendar Girls (2003). I think his best film is Made in Dagenham (2010). Henry Cole was the distinguished director of the Kathy Lloyd Kit Off Special (1999). I am sure a respectable person like you did not mean him.
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Post by london777 on Jun 1, 2017 20:28:47 GMT
Not represented: Noël Coward A bit shameful I forgot him as I have recently written about him in my "Public Domain" thread. Mind you, he only ever directed one cinema release (plus some TV films mostly of his own plays) and it is a moot point how much of that movie, In Which We Serve (1942), was actually directed by Coward and how much by David Lean as his first crack at directing. With hindsight, it is often surmised that the best bits (and certainly all the "kinetic" bits) were from Lean, and the more conventional and talky bits like dinner parties and officers' briefings were from Coward but that may be unfair. Certainly the overall feeling of the thing is not like a Lean movie.
It should have been a poll option here. I thought about sneaking it in under David Lean in the K to Z poll, but that would have been presumptuous.
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Post by london777 on Jun 1, 2017 21:33:16 GMT
So many B directors who had prolific careers among their varied outputs, some excellent films to discover... Ken Annakin ... Nor the Moon by Night (1958) Daniel Birt ...The Interrupted Journey (1949) John Gilling ... The Voice of Merrill (1952) Ken Hughes ... Wide Boy (1952) Lawrence Huntington ... The Upturned Glass (1947) Sorry to be so slow getting back to you on this one, manfromplanetx, but I have been busy reading my hate mail here. Some useful additions to our list: (Ken Annakin I have already discussed above). .................... The Interrupted Journey (1949) was the first and best of nine low budget crime movies Daniel Birt directed from 1949 to 1956. More unusual were two films he made in 1948, both with scripts co-written by none other than poet DylanThomas. I know nothing about the first, The Three Weird Sisters (1948), which was set in Wales, but it sounds a bit arty. No Room at the Inn (1948) is a different story. It was a hard-hitting exposure of child abuse and spares neither the comfortable middle-class, the church, or the State (then, of course the nearest to a socialist state the UK has experienced). It is thus a precursor of the anti-establishment "kitchen sink" social realist dramas of the British New Wave in the 1960s, though it does have a too convenient melodramatic ending in which good triumphs and the villainess gets her just desserts. She is Freda Jackson in her best role, and she is amply supported by Joan Dowling (then 20) playing a teenage temptress who does what she has to to survive. She had made her name in the stage play version. Six years later she committed suicide. Apparently the film is lost in copyright issues and can only be viewed at the BFI, London. Let's hope a decent version is released on DVD one day. It made a hell of an impression on yours truly as a eight-year-old. Freda Jackson was terrifying, like a cross between a fairy-tale witch and the evil alcoholic governess in Uncle Silas. .................... John Gilling I know nothing about. He had a long and prolific career including a late run of Hammer Horrors. Are any of his films worth seeking out? .................... Ken Hughes is on a different level. Not because he ever made a really outstanding film, but because he made a number of very good ones. Wide Boy (1952) was his first and perhaps the only one in which perennial spiv and supporting actor Sydney Tafler played the lead, and very good he is. It is a blend of noir and social observation. IMDb states that it cost 7000 quid to make (about US$9000). Worth a lot more then, of course, but even so it makes you wonder about modern studios. The Blazing Caravan (1954) was one of the Edgar Lustgarten program fillers, only 32 mins long. They were bottom of the barrel stuff. My brother worked briefly in props and continuity but soon lost his job because they did not have time or money to worry about continuity. The hero would jump into a Ford in broad daylight, drive round the corner and get out of an Austin in total darkness. But this one is a little gem, and I saw it again at the National Film Theatre decades later. Other watchable Ken Hughes films were: -- Joe MacBeth (1955) -- Wicked as They Come (1956) a noir with Arlene Dahl made in my home town. When the studios folded my father bought the premises to store sanitary ware and paint cans. -- The Long Haul (1957) another BritNoir with the unlikely pairing of Victor Mature and Diana Dors. These were the years when many British films were fronted by an American "star", usually B-list or past their glory years (but famous enough to cause a stir in our suburban town). Hughes best film was The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960). I reckon the best of the Wilde biopics, thanks to the wonderful Peter Finch as Oscar. It had the great misfortune to appear at the same time as Gregory Ratoff's Oscar Wilde (1960) starring Robert Morley, which had a bigger budget and was heavily promoted. The latter is not bad, but not as subtle as the Finch movie. Hughes followed with The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963) to cash in on the evanescent popularity of Anthony Newley. The only good film he made thereafter was Cromwell (1970), a decent effort but I hope not the last word on the godfather of English (and therefore American) democracy. Hughes had a hit with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968). He later found it as embarrassing as I do, though Robert Helpmann as the Child Catcher is outstanding. .................... Lawrence Huntington was directing from the start of talkies to 1966, by when his way of making pictures was really on its way out. His best films were made in the late forties, which is beginning to look like Britain's Golden Age of Cinema, Sadly, few Brits then appreciated what we had. I hope to write about The Upturned Glass (1947) in my Public Domain thread but I need to watch it again first to see if I am reading more into it than is really there. It is odd in structure and moral stance but I am not sure if that was intentional or the result of money and production problems. The previous year he made Wanted for Murder (1946). For once, I think the American re-titling "A Voice in the Night" is better, less generic. And it is the name of the theme song, too. It stars one of my all-time favorite actors, Eric (The Glue Man) Portman. In Daybreak (1948) he plays a hangman. Here he plays the grandson of a hangman and it affects the plot (to put it mildly). The consensus is that the acting and writing are better than a rather absurd plot and there are some great London settings. Then came: -- When the Bough Breaks (1947) a weepie -- Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill (1948) Mr Chips territory -- Man on the Run (1949) a good story which might have been better with someone other than the rather bland Derek Farr in the lead -- The Franchise Affair (1951) a good film but it loses some of the quirkiness of Tey's famous novel.
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Post by manfromplanetx on Jun 1, 2017 22:57:07 GMT
Many Thanks for all the very interesting additional info on these directors and recommendations for other films Another Daniel Birt film us Derrick De Marney fans have long sought with no success is She Shall Have Murder (1950) a while back e-bay actually had photo stills and a film poster for sale proving it exists, but no one has been able to find the film? The Voice of Merrill (1952) from John Gilling is an excellent film or is it that I am just so enthralled with Valerie Hobson at her most beautiful and eloquent best. Wide Boy is a great little film notable also for it introduces Melissa Stibling. Tafler is great have since seen a few others acquired from seeing him in this film but they are nowhere near as good, but he is a standout in The Birthday Party (1968)
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Post by london777 on Jun 2, 2017 0:00:32 GMT
Tafler is great have since seen a few others acquired from seeing him in this film but they are nowhere near as good, but he is a standout in The Birthday Party (1968) And he has sizable parts in It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) and The Lavender Hill Mob (1951).
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Post by Nora on Jun 3, 2017 20:13:31 GMT
from your list Brazil would be my top.
but where is Ken Loach and Matthew Vaughn? Land and Freedom and LayerCake?
And my darling Duncan Jones? Moon should really be on the list too I think. (certainly not Warcraft though)
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Post by london777 on Jun 3, 2017 21:14:52 GMT
from your list Brazil would be my top. but where is Ken Loach and Matthew Vaughn? Land and Freedom and LayerCake? And my darling Duncan Jones? Moon should really be on the list too I think. (certainly not Warcraft though) Loach and Vaughn should be in British Directors (Part Two K to Z)
Duncan Jones is not my darling. He is briefly discussed in the thread above.
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Post by Nora on Jun 3, 2017 21:26:16 GMT
from your list Brazil would be my top. but where is Ken Loach and Matthew Vaughn? Land and Freedom and LayerCake? And my darling Duncan Jones? Moon should really be on the list too I think. (certainly not Warcraft though) Loach and Vaughn should be in British Directors (Part Two K to Z)
Duncan Jones is not my darling. He is briefly discussed in the thread above. ooops i overlooked the alphabet division….
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Post by teleadm on Jun 3, 2017 21:49:59 GMT
Spreding them out... I voted long ago, but never wrote anything
A Night to Remember 1958, superior acting compared to the popular Leo-Winslet movie.
The Lavender Hill Mob 1951, when even clumsy robbers could be loveable.
Zulu 1964, Brittish tough guy Stanley Baker's finest hours (Sean Connery in an interview before Bond said he wanted to be the next Baker), and this is also the beginning of Michael Caine, there is Swedish spice in Ulla Jacobsson (The girl who made americans think al swedes baths naked). The magnificent John Barry music helps a lot too.
Rear Window 1954, how on earth can one make a single room movie interesting, and yet Hitch did it, and all those neighbours...hell maybe someone is using binoculars and see my boring life writing here just now...
Life of Brian 1979, is a mess of a movie, hit or miss scetches glued together, and this time it works. What did the romans do that was good, except building aquaducts, roads, bringing law and order. When Jesus saves a leprian he loses his income. And never throw the first stone
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Post by london777 on Jun 3, 2017 22:25:55 GMT
ooops i overlooked the alphabet division…. Do not feel bad about it. It is my thread and I put John Boulting and Roy Boulting in K to Z Even less excuse as I have been both a librarian and a proof-reader at different times.
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Post by london777 on Jun 3, 2017 22:38:15 GMT
A Night to Remember 1958, superior acting compared to the popular Leo-Winslet movie. I was surprised that it so well known. Then I realized it came back into the public eye thanks to the Cameron epic and people are keen to compare it favorably to "Titanic".
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