MichaelApted Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Apart from the filmmakers themselves, I can't think of many people who have championed directors more than Roger Ebert, who for 40 years has been an outspoken supporter of filmmaking not just as entertainment but as an art form. And the Directors Guild of America agrees: The group announced today that on Jan. 31, Ebert will receive its Honorary Life Member Award.

He will be the 43rd person (and the first film critic) in the DGA's 61-year history to be given the award, which is "for recognition of outstanding creative achievement, or contribution to the Guild, or the profession of directing." Michael Apted, current president of the DGA and a frequent recipient of Ebert's praise for his own films, said in a press release, "From the blockbuster to the tiny independent film, Roger Ebert has devoted his career to sharing his love of film with generations of moviegoers. In doing so, he's kept directors on their toes for more than 40 years. I am very pleased to welcome him as an Honorary Life Member of the DGA."

Ebert said, "It is a great honor to be chosen by those men and women who are the creators of the art form I love above all others," though I suspect we'll see a more detailed response in his blog.

One of the most versatile filmmakers around, Michael Apted is no stranger to picking up franchises that were begun by other people. Most respected is his continued following of up of 14 individuals, who have been presented every seven years in what are collectively known as the _ Up documentaries (49 Up was the most recent). He took that project -- which was not originally intended as a lifelong series -- over from Paul Almond, director of Seven Up!, for which Apted served as a researcher. A few years ago, he took on the 007 franchise for a single shot effort, The World is Not Enough. Now a little bird has told Harry Knowles at Aint it Cool News that Apted will be taking over the Chronicles of Narnia series.

I haven't seen the first of the Narnia movies, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and I wasn't planning on it, but now I'm gaining some interest. Franchises are always more appealing to me when they switch up directors midstream. It worked great for the Harry Potter movies, which completely raised their cred by bringing in Alfonso Cuarón for the third installment, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, following Chris Columbus' welcome departure after the first two. Apted may not be as great a filmmaker as Cuarón -- I lost interest in his fiction filmmaking after the J. Lo vehicle Enough (not to be confused with his James Bond effort) -- but he should bring some freshness to the Narnia movies. If the little bird is correct, he will take on the third movie, The Voyage of the Dawn Trader, which also currently is rumored to have Neil Burger attached. One or the other will replace Andrew Adamson, who, like Columbus, has been the series' director for the first two installments -- he is currently directing the second, Prince Caspian.

There aren't too many movies that necessitate sequels. Unless a movie is part of a pre-proposed series or is an adaptation of a series of books, it should probably be able to stand alone. But a lot of sequels come from movies that are perfect by themselves -- sometimes the sequels compliment nicely; sometimes they are easily ignored; occasionally they actually take away from the previously regarded original.

It isn't often that a movie screams out for a sequel, but I think I've come up with seven that at least whisper a request for one. Two actually have source sequels that they would be adapted from. One has a lot of history to mine material from. Three of them have been discussed at length at different points in time by makers of the original(s). The problem is that none of these sequels is likely to ever grace your DVD player let alone your local theater. For whatever reason, they simply have too much against them in the minds of studio execs. For now, though, we can dream.

1. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (sequel to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Even with the incredible cast and the surprisingly faithful-enough script, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was not the epic that I was hoping for. It also wasn't the blockbuster that Disney was hoping for. The filmmakers, Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith (aka Hammer and Tongs) and the necessary actors had signed on for the sequel, to be adapted from Adam's follow-up, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, but it appears to be dead in the water. Despite my few reservations with the first film, I would love to see the sequel, as well as the rest of the series (they could end before The Salmon of Doubt, I guess). I remember being bored with some of the prehistoric Earth sequences in Restaurant, but I think they'd make for great cinema. In any event, I think Martin Freeman and Mos Def were a great duo in the original, and they alone should have been propelled to stardom following its release. Maybe they can appear in something else together.

The holiday season is the time to ask for those big items you've been wanting all year, those toys or gadgets or appliances or DVDs that were just too expensive to splurge on with your own money. And now, with the holidays being so associated with the expectation of gifts, Christmas lists (and Hanukkah lists and Kwanzaa lists, etc.) are made by kids and adults alike. Nobody wants to receive a gift they don't desire, and nobody wants to buy a present that the recipient will not like, so it is now common to go ahead and tell Santa, your parents, your spouse and/or your friends exactly what you want from them. And depending on the gift-giver, you probably will wish for ask for tell them to get you something big.

When it comes to movies, single-title DVDs just aren't going to cut it. Criterion editions are almost there, but not quite. No, for your present demands, you need something bigger, like a box set. The same can be said for DVDs as it can be for CDs, that box sets are the greatest gifts for the holidays because few people purchase them at regular times of the year. Nowadays there are DVD sets for just about every movie fan. For the documentary lover, however, there are some titles that must be purchased in a box set (due to them being series), and many of them are essentials.

Be sure to be specific on your list, because there are a lot of cheap doc sets out there that might be interesting to watch, but which are not well made and which were definitely bought at the nearby drugstore rather than the video shop. Don't let your gift-giver be confused and/or frugal. And if you are the gift-giver, this list may be a good source for ideas for what to buy your gift-receiver, but keep in mind that documentaries can be an acquired taste for some. Sure, a baseball fan may be into Ken Burns' Baseball and a jazz fan should enjoy Burns' Jazz, but you really never know for sure unless they tell you so directly. And at doc box prices, you don't want to go wasting your money.

No one has died yet. That's the good news. The bad news is that this seventh chapter of the landmark 7 Up documentary series, which is chronicling the entire lives of several ordinary Britons, may well be the final entry. To hear the series' long-time director Michael Apted tell it, the patience, personal attention and constant persuasion needed to convince the film's subjects to sit for their psychological portrait every seven years means the series is not likely to survive beyond him. He will be 72 when it comes time to do 56 Up. When it does finally come to an end, this series will be hailed as a crowning achievement of cinema – one that stretches the muscles of the medium in a way that only a handful of other projects have. Originally conceived as an indictment of the British class system (half the children chosen were poor and half rich) it has grown beyond its original mandate into a visceral study of humanity itself, capturing its frailties, potential and inexorable motion towards the finish line.

None of the children, who were first filmed in 1964, tumbling on a playground and offering cheeky commentary on any subject you like, have gone on to have noticeably 'big' lives. One became a wig-wearing barrister in the British court system, and seems perpetually embarrassed that he doesn't have anything dramatic to report to us. Another became a professor and moved to America, causing his British accent to be mostly eroded away. Another became an Australian at an early age. The poor kids have by and large become lower-middle class adults and remain within shouting distance of the Eastend neighborhoods where they were born. One notable exception is Tony, the scrappy hustler who dreamed of being a jockey as a child and later settled into the disappointment of being a taxi driver. Vocally dissatisfied with the demographic changes that have taken place in the Eastend since his boyhood, Tony and his wife have staked a claim in a Little England area of Spain. "It's 96 percent English here," he defiantly tells us.

Jesuit maxim: "Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man." That's the inspiration for the 7 Up documentary series, which has been interviewing the same group of British subjects at seven year intervals since 1964, when they were each seven years old. In the first film, they are seen in sharp black and white, bouncing off the walls and full of quips like pre-school Beatles. At age 21, we see them in the gauzy color of 70s film stock. They are faux-rebellious chain-smokers, reflective and cool-headed, with all the time in the world to spare. At 28, they are still young, but they've made choices that can't be un-made. They are like adults-in-training. At 42, they are heartbreaking. Youth has quietly slipped away. Spouses have come and gone, and the answers they give to the interview questions are things like..."We both knew it wasn't going any further..."

Now at 49, old age is rapidly approaching, but they are still the same people. The ones who have always seemed buoyant are still that way. Tony, [pictured above] the poor Eastend kid who was hustling as a taxi driver at 28 now owns his own taxi service. He has kids and grandkids and seems bemused at the minor celebrity bestowed on him by the 7 Up series. Jackie, who in her twenties mocked the women she saw pushing baby carriages down the street, now seems lonely and regretful. Simon, a black orphan whose white mother wanted nothing to do with him, is now compelled to open his home to the most hopeless foster children. "One child had two knives in his hands," he tells us.

Cinematical recently spoke with director Michael Apted, who began his involvement with the series as a young researcher on 7 Up and now keeps the project alive. Although he's too mannered and too British to admit it, Apted seems to have internalized what many critics have already noted: that 7 Up may be the most important documentary project of all time.

Samuel Goldwyn Pictures seems to see a huge American audience for foreign, Kirsten Dunst-free period drama that no one else has noticed. To that end, they've picked up the rights to Michael Apted's Amazing Grace, a movie that phantom audience is sure to devour: The film stars a trio of talented actors who are also non-draws in the US (Ioan Gruffudd, Albert Finney and Romola Garai), and is a biopic of William Wilberforce, an 18th-century British abolitionist. Yes, 90% of America just fell asleep.

Now to me, this sounds awesome (as does the distributor's insane-yet-admirable plan to collaborate with Walden Media on a "comprehensive marketing initiative" addressing modern slavery, and urging social action) -- but you know I'm a history nerd who enjoys reading books about things like maps and 15th-century monarchs. And moviegoers like me will earn this film what, $4,000 on its opening weekend next February? If you're not yet convinced that everyone at SGP has lost their minds (albeit in a wonderfully ambitious way), get this: The release date has been schedule to fall on the 200th anniversary of Parliament's vote to end slavery in all British-controlled territories. If anyone cares about this, I will be the happiest wrong person on earth, but really, the chances seems very, very slim.