Stephen Fry Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I've never read Laurence Sterne's "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman," and apparently, that's no small feat anyhow. After all, Sterne's protagonist starts out just before his birth and spends his time describing so many tangents of his existence that the book ends by the time his life has barely begun.

But I was delighted by the approach with which director Michael Winterbottom and writer Frank Cottrell Boyce adapted the seemingly unfilmable novel -- by making a movie about making the movie, which itself never quite gets around to unfolding. Steve Coogan plays a version of himself who's trying to keep his supporting actor/co-lead down and his girlfriend and newborn happy, in addition to juggling the production and the press and the pressures that come with the shoot as a whole.

It's all so delightfully twisty and sly, and I suspect that it's very much keeping in spirit with Sterne's work. I'm not sure that I could pick one favorite scene (actually, maybe the bit where an exceptionally perky Gillian Anderson gets hired), but YouTube has cut my work out for me. There's only one full scene I can embed here, but it's as much a doozy as most, as Coogan acts like he's coping with a hot chestnut in his trousers, only to then try it with an actual hot chestnut (or did he?).

As for the entire movie -- which also stars Dylan Moran, Kelly Macdonald, Stephen Fry, Jeremy Northam, and Naomie Harris -- at least I can promise it'll only run about ninety minutes. Talk about making a long story short....

Watch the video after the jump

I always get a kick out of hearing Stephen Fry's take on different matters. There's nothing like usually-solid rationale mixed with humor -- that's why dudes like Stephen Colbert are so big. In March of last year, I shared his views about America's obsession with British accents. He pondered the possibility that Americans are fooled into thinking performances by British actors are good because of their accents. Now the BBC reports that he's taken on a more serious topic and is giving his two cents on this current tendency to congratulate straight people for taking on gay roles. You know -- Jake and Heath (or any other actor) is lauded for daring to take on the role, as if it is some super-challenging deed.

According to Fry: "People say: 'Ooh, how brave of you.' Why should it be difficult for a man to kiss another man?" He goes on to discuss the fact that gay actors aren't called brave for kissing women, and continues: "It wouldn't be at all difficult for me to kiss a woman -- I'll kiss a frog if you like. It's difficult to ride bareback backwards while unicycling, but to kiss someone isn't difficult." You can always count on Fry for a humorous, yet rational, take on an issue. There is a definite stigma attached to male-male sexuality in any form. Ladies can kiss and cavort until the cows come home, but once two stubbly faces smooch each other, all hell breaks loose.

If only we could all be as evolved as Captain Jack, who believes orientation classification is "quaint."

The release dates, they are a-changing! Universal just moved the release of the action flick Wanted, which stars Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy, from March to June 27th, 2008. That June release date was also held by Pixar's new one, WALL-E, and the Tom Cruise "Hitler assassination plot" flick -- Valkyrie. According to Coming Soon, Valkyrie has officially budged (though I think it would have absolutely crushed Wanted and it's courting a different audience than Wall-E). United Artists will now release the film on October 3rd of 2008 -- a date also held by less intense competition -- Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and Guy Ritchie's Gerald Butler drama RocknRolla.

Valkyrie is directed by Bryan Singer and written by Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) and Nathan Alexander. Tom Cruise has become everyone's favorite punching bag lately, and reaction to the trailer, particularly Cruise's lack of a German accent, was pretty hostile. (Although probably not as hostile as it would have been had he...attempted a German accent!) But the plot sounds awesome, Singer is a great director (Superman Returns aside), and it's got a hell of a cast -- including Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, Stephen Fry, Eddie lzzard, Terence Stamp, Tom Wilkinson, and Black Book's stunning Carice Van Houton. How bad could it be? It's got to be better than Wanted -- have you seen the trailer for that thing? Haven't I seen that movie, oh, a thousand times already?

Hey, remember that film that received so much hype and controversy only to be released with a whimper and a lot of negative reviews? I'm talking about Death of a President, a non-comedic mockumentary focused on the (fictional) assassination of George W. Bush. I thought it was a terrible movie, and not because I thought it was tasteless. I actually thought the idea was interesting; I just didn't think it was executed well in the style in which it was done. But plenty of others, including my friends and colleagues, liked the darn thing. It even played for a few months (mostly on Saturday nights) at the Pioneer Theater here in New York. Most astonishing, though, is the fact that it won an Emmy Award the other night. Actually, it was an International Emmy, for Best TV Movie/Mini-Series.

I didn't even know the International Emmys existed until the other night. I was walking down a Manhattan street and saw all these people in tuxedos walking up the red carpet to the ceremony. I didn't recognize anyone, but now, for all I know, one of the monkey-suited gents I walked past was DOAP filmmaker Gabriel Range. Not that I would have told him I disliked his movie -- once he had the statue in hand he wouldn't have cared what I thought anyway. Still, Robert DeNiro was apparently at the event, presenting a special award to Al Gore. Others who not only attended but also won include British actor Jim Broadbent, Dutch actor Pierre Bokma, French actress Muriel Robin and Stephen Fry, who features in the Best Documentary-winner Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive.

It didn't start off too smoothly, but it looks like Valkyrie, the thriller about Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg's attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler during World War II, has found it's groove. As things got going, Stauffenberg's offspring were complaining about Tom Cruise playing Claus, there were issues in securing locations, and even extras hurt on set. For the last little while, however, things seem to be going smoothly, and now MGM has released a featurette for the film over at apple.com.

It's a pretty slick clip, not one of those grainy, behind-the-scenes glimpses shot on a hand-held. Writer Christopher McQuarrie talks about the man at the center of the story, and how the film is split up. He says that the first half of the movie will focus on who the players are, while the second half will focus solely on the "July 20 Plot" to take Hitler's life. Kenneth Branagh is a one-man PR machine through much of it, and even describes how the script made his palms sweaty with excitement. Either he's overly exuberant, or that bodes well for the film, since they have to work against what we already know -- that the attempt failed.

The featurette shows all the main players in the film, although I really would've liked to see something on Stephen Fry or David Bamber, and they've done quite a job on Eddie Izzard. Apparently, everyone is "pitch perfect" in their roles, and they show the side-by-side of von Stauffenberg and Cruise, which is pretty spot-on, but it would've been nice to see the others. All in all, it's looking to be a slick thriller -- and with that cast, it would be a shame if it wasn't.

In my opinion Halo is to video games what American Idol is to television, and yet both 20th Century Fox and Universal decided a Halo movie (with newbie director Neill Blomkamp directing) just wasn't going to happen. But that was then, and this is now -- with Halo 3 getting set to demolish the gaming world, Peter Jackson told OnFilm magazine that he expects the project to lift itself out of development hell once Fox and Universal catch a glimpse of the Halo hype first hand. As far as Blomkamp goes; Jackson notes: "We wouldn't want to do it with anyone else. It's Neill's call." But that's not all the man has on his plate; apart from directing The Lovely Bones, Jackson is producing a remake of 1954's The Dam Busters; a project he's kept quiet about for quite some time.

Now, however, there's a director (Christian Rivers) and a writer (Stephen Fry) for Dambusters (or is it Dam Busters?), and Jackson said the project is a lot further along than you would think. Apart from saying that some major announcements about the film would be made in the next few months, Jackson said that Weta Digital is already hard at work creating "computer-generated image tests of Lancasters in flight and attacking dams. Not only that, but they're halfway through building a "full-size replica of a Lancaster bomber." Jackson adds, "It's been full on, but we've been keeping under the radar somewhat. It's one of those projects that requires a lot of prep – you can't sprint out of the gate when you've got to figure out how to build a bunch of Lancasters and do vast amounts of research."

So much for my belief that St. Trinian's is the best cast movie in production right now. The film, which began shooting in March with top-notch British talents like Emily Watson, Colin Firth and Rupert Everett, has just added a young, American actress to sour up the mix. According to Variety, in a report from Cannes, Mischa Barton has joined the cast, which also includes Brits Toby Jones, Lena Headey, Stephen Fry, Celia Imrie, Anna Chancellor, Lucy Punch, Fenella Woolgar and possibly (still rumored, and not actually British) Richard E. Grant. To quote my favorite Sesame Street game: "One of these things is not like the other."

Hopefully Barton will simply be playing the bland girl from the States who happens to be studying at an English girls' school, and will not be expected to pull off an accent. Either way, she'll at least make the elder cast appear even greater. The former O.C. actress joins rising stars Jodie Whittaker (Venus), model Lily Cole, Talulah Riley (Pride & Prejudice), Tamsin Egerton (Driving Lessons), Juno Temple (Notes on a Scandal), Gemma Arterton and possibly (still rumored) singer Amy Winehouse, all of whom presumably play students at St. Trinian's, which they save from going bankrupt. St. Trinian's still seems to be, as Cinematical writer Monika Bartyzel called it, "a British film fan's wet dream," but thanks to the casting of Barton, the dream has gotten a little bit drier.

As North Americans, falling into lusty bits of torment when faced with an accent is so prevalent that it's almost a right of passage -- especially for the ladies. There's always that person who seems just alright until he opens his lips to speak, and suddenly, he becomes all sorts of sexy. This is especially true of those sexy Brit accents.

You might remember the exchange in Love Actually -- Colin: American girls would seriously dig me with my cute British accent. Tony: You don't have a cute British accent. Colin: Yes, I do! I'm going to America. Tony: Colin, you're a lonely, ugly arsehole. You must accept it. Colin: Never. I am Colin, god of sex. I'm just on the wrong continent, that's all.

While accents may affect our levels of attraction, what about actors' abilities? Stephen Fry, British comedian, novelist, actor and Everyman, wonders if we're fooled by the accents into overestimating the actual talent of those accented actors we love so much. In an article in The Guardian, Fry stated: "I shouldn't be saying this, high treason really, but I sometimes wonder if Americans aren't fooled by our accent into detecting a brilliance that may not really be there." He went on to say: "Would they notice if Jeremy Irons or Judi Dench gave a bad performance?"

Bringing up Dame Dench might be a stretch, but could he be right? Do the masses love Hugh Laurie and all the rest of the current big-name Brits because they are great actors, or because we tingle when we hear them speak?

Is it just me, or are Nazis really popular right now? Never mind, I know the answer. Still, it feels like just yesterday I posted about a new Nazi-based documentary called My Enemy's Enemy (it was last week, in fact), and just a few months ago, Martha mentioned a remake of The Boys From Brazil that's in the works. Add those films to the recent Hitler-centered Downfall, and you've got a ... well, nothing resembling a trend at all, actually. But considering we in America like to think of Nazis as being anything but real, distinguishable and human, these sorts of films are more striking than, say, Indiana Jones and the Latest Adventure Involving Faceless Nazis or any number of WWII movies.

The latest addition to this non-trend of real-life Nazi movies is Eichmann, which begins shooting in Hungary next week. The film focuses on the life of Adolf Eichmann, an SS officer who was "Transportation Administrator" for the "Final Solution", meaning he organized all the trains sending Jews to their deaths. Not only was he responsible for the killing of hundreds of thousands of Polish and Hungarian Jews, but he continued to carry out the Nazi's extermination plan even after Heinrich Himmler ordered its end. Like many Nazis, he fled to Argentina, and like Klaus Barbie, subject of My Enemy's Enemy, he was reportedly protected for some time by the CIA before being captured and put on trial. Eichmann will concentrate primarily on the his cross-examination by Israeli police officer Captain Avner Less with sequences from the war depicted in flashback.

Robert Young, who seems an unexpected choice for such serious drama after giving us Fierce Creatures and Splitting Heirs, is directing, and the two leads will be played by German superstar Thomas Kretchmann, playing his seventh Nazi officer, and Troy Garity. Also cast in an unrevealed role, is Stephen Fry.

Edmund Blackadder is one of my favorite TV characters of all-time, and very little has ever made me laugh harder than Hugh Laurie did as the blindingly idiotic Prince "Thick As a Whale Omelet" George in Blackadder's third season. Even in my wildest dreams, however, I never dared to hope that Rowan Atkinson et al would ever return to the outrageous, vaguely-historical-accurate world the show created -- I figured that, in the wake of the one-off, tepidly-received Blackadder Back & Forth, Blackadder was gone for good. Or not.

You see, Stephen Fry -- who appeared in three of the four seasons of the show -- recently told contactmusic.com that he just spoke with Atkinson (currently busy reviving Mr. Bean, another of his TV characters), and that he professed to missing "the joys of Blackadder rehearsals and all that." Depending on who you believe, Atkinson might be doing more than just pining for his old buddies -- according to a story on virgin.net, series vet Ben Elton is actually working right now on a screenplay that lands Blackadder, Baldrick, et al squarely in the middle of The Russian Revolution. Whoa. Blackadder AND Russian history? If this movie happens, I may just die of joy.