The 44th London Critics’ Circle Film Awards

The ‘For people in trouble’ team :: Adam Gee, Giannina Rodriguez Rico, Sam Brain, Alex Lawther

 

The 44^th London Critics’ Circle Film Awards last night was a refreshing event, friendly and unpretentious, but also distinguished by the wise decisions its voters made. Not least by voting ‘The Zone of Interest’ Film of the Year and Jonathan Glazer Director of the Year, ahead of the likes of Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan and Yorgos Lanthimos. I mentioned in a recent post that the movie is “by a country mile the best movie of the year”, in a really vintage year which saw people coming back to the cinema in big numbers for films of substance. It is released in the UK this week.

I had the pleasure of having a conversation with Jonathan Glazer in the bar after the ceremony and wishing him all the best at the BAFTAs and Oscars (as well as discussing the Auschwitz-related documentary I am currently working on). I also had a chat with Mica Levi who composed the extraordinary music in the film. Mica and Johnnie Burn (Sound) won the award for Technical Achievement, a category which puts everything from Visual FX to Casting in one pot. Their achievement was the subject of my recent post ‘Let’s Hear It for Audio’.

Whether the timing of the LCC Film Awards, the week the final round of BAFTA voting closes and in the run-up to the Oscars on 10^th March, means they will predict the winners or even influence them is difficult to say, but hopefully they will as the winners were spot on – from Emma Stone as Actress of the Year for her brilliant portrayal in ‘Poor Things’ to the important ‘20 Days in Mariupol’ as Documentary of the Year. I was lucky enough to meet its modest director Mstyslav Chernov in the drinks before the ceremony and said I was certain his brave film would triumph.

It was enjoyable to meet with critics known to me and not. I was telling Mark Kermode, the entertaining MC for the evening (who I have known since we were teenagers and who shares my deep love of music), about the documentary I currently have in the edit about protest songs and mentioned that we had used a Nina Simone song to explore issues around Black Lives Matter – he started fishing around under his dress shirt and pulled out a small silver pendant. “Funny you should mention her because this is her chewing gum, taken from the bottom of her piano by Warren Ellis and cast in silver by him – there are only 25 of these in existence.”

Warren, Nick Cave’s genius musical partner, wrote an excellent book about it, ‘Nina Simone’s Gum’, which highlights how seemingly insignificant objects can form beautiful connections between people. There were many warm connections made at the event, very well put together by Chair Rich Cline and his bijou team. The Guardian’s Pete Bradshaw introduced me to Paul Mescal. I was delighted to have chats with the likes of the lovely Andrew Scott (who won Actor of the Year – bizarrely overlooked by BAFTA’s Best Actor category as ‘The Zone of Interest’ was in Best Film), Molly Manning Walker (winner of The Philip French Award for Breakthrough British/Irish Filmmaker for her film ‘How To Have Sex’, which is just opening in the USA) and photographer/filmmaker Misan Harriman (Chair of London’s South Bank Centre) who collected the inaugural Derek Malcolm Award for Innovation on behalf of the brilliant Colman Domingo and with whom I will be working this year on a great documentary film project.

 

Paul Mescal & Andrew Scott

Jonathan Glazer & his wife Rachel Penfold

Misan Harriman & Andrew Haigh (All of Us Strangers)

The row in front of Barbie and behind The Zone of Interest

Mark Kermode and Pete Bradshaw

The Question of ‘Work-Life’ Balance

Lee Miller, Self-Portrait (1930)
Photo: Salvador Dali Museum

Kate Winslet’s film ‘Lee‘ about the life of American photographer Lee Miller, which premiered at TIFF in Toronto last September, is due to arrive in cinemas and on Sky sometime this quarter or thereabouts.

The movie is based on the biographical ‘The Lives of Lee Miller‘ by her son Anthony Penrose, who I had the pleasure of meeting when it came out in 1988 and I was reviewing the book – he gave me a tour of  Farley Farm in Sussex (where the Lee Miller Archives are now based, it had been Lee and Roland Penrose’s home, which then was passed on to Anthony and his late wife, who together welcomed me warmly to their cosy kitchen). Anthony later pulled various prints out of plan chests to show me. The moment I particularly remember relates to Holocaust Memorial Day which was this weekend. Lee, working as a war correspondent for Vogue, was among the first to enter Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. She felt she had to telegraph to the editor this message once she had sent back her photos: “I IMPLORE YOU TO BELIEVE THIS IS TRUE!” Anthony recounted to me that his mother had told him in relation to these pictures that the one thing she could never forget, more than the sights, was the smell.

Following the bijou ‘You Will Not Lunch In Charlotte Street Today‘ exhibition of her work which closed a week ago at the handsome TJ Boulting building in London’s Fitzrovia, I visited another Lee Miller show at Brighton Museum, ‘Lee Miller: Dressed‘ (also well worth a visit – 59-minute train from London, closes 18th Feb). It explores Lee’s life through clothes, given that Lee was a celebrated model for the likes of Vogue, becoming a fashion photographer in her own right after training with Man Ray in Paris, the clothes lens makes perfect sense. The exhibition was prompted by the recent discovery of boxes of Lee’s clothes in the attic at Farley Farm, including a number of items by top European couturiers.

A quotation caught my eye (and imagination) near the exit:

When I fired up LinkedIn this morning I noticed a post by Fanatics Live CEO Nick Bell about work-life balance, prompted in part by a video of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos on the subject. My late mentor, veteran documentarian and polymath Roger Graef, was always a brilliant help and support but work-life balance was arguably his one blind spot, he was a ferociously hard worker who rarely seemed to switch off. It’s a fascinating and nuanced issue, and my jury is still out on whether Bezos’ argument – that it’s actually a work-life circle – and Nick’s – that being happy at work makes you a better spouse and parent – is on point or has an underlying post-rationalisation. As another Jeff (Goldblum) says in another movie, ‘The Big Chill‘:

“Michael: Don’t knock rationalization! Where would we be without it? I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.

Sam: Ah, come on. Nothing’s more important than sex.

Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?”

I directed a film years ago about creative thinking and I remember a line from it which was broadly: “No one on their death bed ever thought ‘I wish I’d spent more time in the office’.” Perhaps the starkest factor: you can’t ever get back time with your children once it’s passed.

So I find Lee’s reflections resonant – why not be more focused on and bold with our ideas, our physical being (less time in our heads) and our love in its myriad forms (romantic, parental, familial, environmental, spiritual, for our fellow human-beings…)?

Lee Miller by Man Ray (1929)

Lee as war correspondent :: Lee Miller – Normandy, France (1944) :: Photo: Lee Miller Archives

Lee’s most famous wartime shot, illustrating her love of Surrealism

Lee Miller and Picasso after the liberation of Paris, by Lee Miller, Paris (1944) :: Photo: Lee Miller Archives

Lee Miller, SS Guard in Canal, Dachau, Germany (1945)

Live Hard

Christmas starts here as we move into December. Last night ‘Die Hard’ (1988) played at the fabulous art deco Rex Cinema (1938) in Berkhamsted (Hertfordshire, England). 

The best line is the incongruous…

“Hi Honey”

said by a bloodied, battered John McClane (Bruce Willis) as he sees his hostage wife towards the climax of the film. Comic, ironic understatement at its best.

And yes, it is a Christmas film.

The Casting Game No.s 230 & 231 – male leads

No. 230

Dustin Hoffman

AS

 

François Cluzet (Photo: François Durand)

No. 231

Colin Farrell

AS

 

Jim Carrey

Hoping to work with Jim Carrey on a documentary in 2023

The Casting Game No.229: Leonard Cohen

Al Pacino (Godfather II era) AS…

Leonard Cohen

 

OR

Dustin Hoffman AS…

Leonard Cohen

This round inspired by the documentary ‘Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song (2021- dir. Daniel Geller & Dayna Goldfine) – the first 7 minutes

Coincidence No. 366 – Time & Timing

Sandy Denny with John Bonham, Robert Plant & Jimmy Page, September 1970

30.iv.22

I go to see the brilliant play ‘Jerusalem’ by Jez Butterworth at the Apollo, Shaftesbury Avenue with a friend (it’s my second time seeing Mark Rylance do this career-defining performance – I first saw it at the same theatre in 2011). Towards the end of the play we hear a hippyish English folk song – at first I think it is Vashti Bunyan, then realise it is actually Sandy Denny’s ‘Who Knows Where the Times Goes?’, which she wrote at the age of just 19. However I can’t recall her name (or that of Fairport Convention) on leaving the theatre (even though I used to lead historical walking tours of Muswell Hill and environs which included a stop at the house called Fairport where they originally rehearsed). 

The next day I am (unusually) reading the Sunday paper when her name crops up. I text it to my friend (along with the word ‘chaperone’ which I also couldn’t recall on the day). 

2.v.22

The day after that my young friend texts back the name of the song. (We also discuss Coincidence No. 367 which is that we happened to walk together past the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho on the way back from the play – he hadn’t heard of it, I explained the bombing outrage – it turned out to be the exact date of the carnage in 1999.) I text him back to confirm that that’s the song and send him a brilliant podcast about it – ‘Soul Music’ from BBC Radio 4. At just that moment the very song plays on BBC Radio 6.

 

Mark Rylance at the curtain call for ‘Jerusalem’ last week

The Casting Game No. 45 – The Aussie Connection

Ben Mendelsohn (as seen in ‘Bloodline’)

as

Noah Taylor

• 

• 

Ben Mendelsohn:

Born 1969

Australian

Break-out role in ‘The Year My Voice Broke’ (1987)

Noah Taylor:

Born 1969

Australian

Break-out role in ‘The Year My Voice Broke’ (1987)

The excellent ‘The Year My Voice Broke’ (1987 dir. John Duigan – who also directed the delightful ‘Flirting’ (1991))

also starring Noah Taylor, and the recently rechristened Thandie Newton/Thandiwe Newton

The Casting Game No. 228

Matthew Broderick

AS

Rami Malek in ‘The Little Things’

The Casting Game No. 227

Glenn Close (in ‘Hillbilly Elegy’)

AS

Robin Williams (in ‘Mrs Doubtfire’)

 

 

Barbara Windsor

I interviewed the East End actress Barbara Windsor when I was writing about Joan Littlewood in 2013/14 during a sabbatical I took from Channel 4. This is a summary of the conversation:

Today I did an interview with Barbara Windsor who was one of the third generation of Joan Littlewood’s acting ensembles doing Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in 1959, before transferring to the West End, as well as Oh What a Lovely War on Broadway in 1965 (where Barbara was Tony-nominated). It was fascinating to hear how tricky Barbara found Joan’s loose, improvisational approach after a training in the West End where the script was the script and you did exactly what the director told you to do. But what emerged from the experience ultimately was the actress getting more in touch with her real self, after years of playing down her East End background. Joan really admired her work in EastEnders – and thought she was the only one with a decent Cockney accent. Barbara learnt from Joan during Fings at the Garrick when she was drifting into artifice and over-blown performance, too Judy Garland, not enough Bethnal Green, and carried that lesson forward for the rest of her career.

with Joan Littlewood in 1964

She told me a story about how she was first cast by Littlewood – something about getting mistaken for a cleaner in the theatre. I can’t quite recall it without digging out my notes.

I’ve just had a look online and found the anecdote. I got it the wrong way round – Barbara mistook Littlewood for a cleaner. Zoe Wanamaker seems to have played Littlewood in a 2017 BBC drama called Babs and she recounts that same story in her blog:

Despite mistaking Littlewood for a cleaner when arriving at a theatre in late 1950s London, the young Windsor dazzles the director with her raw talent. ‘Where have you been all my life?’ Littlewood wonders during the particularly memorable audition scene. Babs made clear that although Windsor didn’t always see eye to eye with her mentor, who favoured an unusual, experimental approach to rehearsing and staging plays, the director’s mixture of encouragement and tough love helped the starlet to shine.

with actor Murray Melvin (R) backing fundraising for the Joan Littlewood sculpture by Philip Jackson now in Theatre Square outside the Theatre Royal Stratford East

I met her in person one other time at Littlewood’s Theatre Royal Stratford East. She was in a foyer huddle with Gary Kemp (Spandau Ballet) at a performance of Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be  (I think, certainly one of the classic Theatre Workshop plays) around the same time.

The work she did with Joan Littlewood was probably the highlight of her career. Not that’s there’s anything wrong with a little Carry On…

Barbara & Sid James