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

Best of 2020

The boldest film of the year – Lovers Rock

Film:

Lovers Rock

Babyteeth

Nomadland

The White Tiger

The Trial of the Chicago 7

Another Round

Queen & Slim

Le Corbeau, Vertigo

Last year: Joker, Mid90s

Foreign-Language Film:

The White Tiger

Another Round

Les Miserables (2019)

Last year: Parasite

Documentary:

Crip Camp

Dick Johnson is Dead

Last year: Rolling Thunder Review

Male Lead:

Anthony Hopkins – The Father

Adarsh Gourav – The White Tiger

Tom Hanks – News of the World

Ralph Fiennes – The Dig

Mads Mikkelsen – Another Round

Last year: Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)

Female Lead:

Frances McDormand – Nomadland

Michelle Pfeiffer – French Exit

Eliza Scanlen – Babyteeth

Kate Winslet – Ammonite

Jodie Turner-Smith – Queen & Slim

Last year: Elizabeth Debicki (Virginia, Vita & Virginia)

Male Support:

Benedict Cumberbatch – The Mauritanian
Mark Rylance – The Trial of the Chicago 7

Sacha Baron Cohen – The Trial of the Chicago 7

Last year: Robert De Niro as Murray Franklin in Joker

Female Support:

Helena Zengel – News of the World

Glenn Close – Hillbilly Elegy

Saoirse Ronan – Ammonite

Olivia Coleman – The Father

Last year: Kaitlyn Dever as Amy in Booksmart

Director:

Steve McQueen – Lovers Rock

Shannon Murphy – Babyteeth

Thomas Vinterberg – Another Round

Ramin Bahrani – The White Tiger

Last year: Todd Phillips (Joker), Jonah Hill (Mid 90s)

Writer:

Ramin Bahrani – The White Tiger

News of the World – Paul Greengrass & Luke Davies
The Trial of the Chicago 7 – Aaron Sorkin (though I don’t generally like him as a writer, too many words)

Rita Kalnejais – Babyteeth

Last year: Jonah Hill (Mid 90s)

Editing:

?

Last year: ?

Cinematography:

Andrew Commis – Babyteeth

Paolo Carnera – The White Tiger

Dariusz Wolski – News of the World

Hoyte van Hoytema – Tenet

Last year: Roger Deakins – 1917

Film Music:

Lovers Rock

Last year: Rolling Thunder Review

Single/Song:

Long Tailed Winter Bird – Paul McCartney

Reborn a Queen – Naughty Alice

Kunta Kinte Dub – The Revolutionaries

Last year: Lately – Celeste

Album:

McCartney III – Paul McCartney

Letter to You – Bruce Springsteen

Last year: Ghosteen – Nick Cave

Gig:

Sarah Jane Morris – Ronnie Scott’s

ROE – The Waiting Room

A Bowie Celebration – Empire, Shepherd’s Bush

Last year: Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets (Roundhouse)

Play:

0

Last year: A Taste of Honey (Trafalgar Studios)

Art Exhibition:

London Calling (Museum of London) – the only one I got to this year 😦

A Surge of Power by Marc Quinn going up on the base of the deposed Colston statue, Bristol

Boy & Bear – Brandon Hill, Bristol (thanks to Dylan on my birthday)

Last year: Van Gogh in Britain (Tate B)

Book:

Now We Shall Be Entirely Free – Andrew Miller

The Plague – Albert Camus

Summer – Ali Smith

Last year: A Woman of No Importance – Sonia Purnell; The Quiet American

TV:

Lovers Rock (BBC)

The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix)

The Crown – S4 (Amazon)

The Romantics and Us (BBC2)

The Bridge S1

Last year: After Life (Netflix)

Podcast:

Heavyweight

Adam Buxton

The Happiness Lab

Last Year: 13 Minutes to the Moon

Sport:

Spurs 2 – Arsenal 1 (11.7.20)

Dance:

Mam (Sadlers Wells)

Last Year: The Red Shoes (Sadlers Wells)

Event:

Statue of Edward Colston being chucked in Bristol harbour

The Winter Solstice at Newgrange, Ireland

Tim’s Twitter Listening Parties

Dearly departed:

• Andy Taylor (with whom I worked at Little Dot and Channel 4)
• Albert Uderzo
• Jimmy Cobb
• Alan Parker
• Terry Jones
• Carl Reiner
• Kirk Douglas
• Sean Connery
• John Hume
• Ruth Bader Ginsberg
• Terence Conran
• JJ Williams
• Nobby Stiles
• Nicholas Parsons
• Tim Brooke Taylor

The only film I saw in the cinema after Lockdown

Best of 2019 and links to earlier Bests Of

39 films for Jake

The Big Chill

1. The Big Chill
2. Diner
3. Apocalypse Now
4. The Unbelievable Truth
5. La Haine
6. In the Name of the Father
7. Platoon
8. The Conversation
9. I know where I’m going
10. MASH
11. A bout de souffle
12. Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
13. The Third Man
14. Bulworth
15. Running on Empty
16. Chinatown
17. Chaplin
18. Vertigo
19. Harold & Maude
20. City Lights
21. Enemy of the State
22. Cinema Paradiso 
23. Casablanca
24. Dr Zhivago
25. Mississippi Burning
26. Blow Up
27. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
28. Bonnie and Clyde
29. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?
30. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 
31. The Great Gatsby (1974)
32. The Parallax View
33. Baby it’s you
34. The Searchers
35. Easy Rider
36. Flirting
37. Smoke
38. The Hairdresser’s Husband
39. La Lune Dans Le Caniveau (Moon in the Gutter)
    
    Bubbling under: Marnie, A Month in the Country, The General, Lethal Weapon, The Maltese Falcon, Betty Blue, The Accountant, 20,000 days on Earth, 2001: A Space Odyssey, All the President’s Men, Romeo & Juliet (1996), The Sting, Johnny English, The Bounty, 24 Hour Party People, The Remains of the Day, Cold War, My Life as a Dog, The Commitments, The Bourne Supremacy, Rolling Thunder Review, Modern Times, The Wild Bunch

 

La Lune Dans Le Caniveau (Moon in the Gutter)

My nephew Jake turned 16 this weekend – he has remarkably good and sophisticated taste in films, so as a bonus birthday gift I put together this list of films I love which I reckon he’ll enjoy too. His favourite film is Inside Llewyn Davis. That one has fond memories for me as I met & chatted with  Oscar Isaac and T Bone Burnett at the screening I attended, the latter being particularly charming, interesting and generous with his time. T Bone’s first experience on the road is captured in last year’s spectacularly brilliant Rolling Thunder Review.

Inside Llewyn Davis

High Definition: what’s the point of Cinema?

One of the best definitions of Cinema:

A machine that generates Empathy

Roger Ebert, film critic

Machine with great significance (Dziga Vertov, Man with a Movie Camera)

Machine with great power (Woody Guthrie)

Here’s the full context of the quote: “We are all born with a certain package. We are who we are. Where we were born, who we were born as, how we were raised. We are kind of stuck inside that person, and the purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize a little bit with other people, find out what makes them tick, what they care about. For me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. If it’s a great movie, it lets you understand a little bit more about what it’s like to be a different gender, a different race, a different age, a different economic class, a different nationality, a different profession, different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us. And that, to me, is the most noble thing that good movies can do and it’s a reason to encourage them and to support them and to go to them.”

The Casting Game

Gemma Arterton (Vita & Virginia – Vita Sackville-West)

AS

Audrey Tautou (Amélie)

Best of 2019

 

The scene of the year

Film:

Joker

Mid90s

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Rolling Thunder Review

Booksmart

Last year: Vice, Cold War

 

Foreign-Language Film:

Parasite

Last year: The Square 

 

Documentary:

Rolling Thunder Review

Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love; Knock Down the House; Apollo 11

 

Male Lead:

Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)

Sunny Suljic (Mid 90s)

Paul Walter Hauser (Richard Jewell)

Taron Egerton as Reggie Dwight/Elton John in Rocketman; Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood; Michael B. Jordan (Just Mercy)

Last year: Rami Malek – Bohemian Rhapsody

 

Female Lead:

Elizabeth Debicki (Virginia, Vita & Virginia)

Beanie Feldstein (Molly, Booksmart)

Gemma Arterton (Vita, Vita & Virginia)

Last year: Joanna Kulig – Cold War

 

Male Support:

Robert De Niro as Murray Franklin in Joker

Al Pacino – The Irishman

Olan Prenatt as Fuckshit in Mid90s; Lucas Hedges as Ian in Mid90s; Stephen Merchant as Deertz in Jojo Rabbit; Brad Pitt as Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood; Na-Kel Smith as Ray in Mid90s

Last year: Terry Notary (The Square)

 

Female Support:

Kaitlyn Dever as Amy in Booksmart

Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Laura Rose in Motherless Brooklyn; Scarlett Johansson as Rosie in Jojo Rabbit

Last year: Amy Adams(Vice)

 

Director:

Todd Phillips (Joker)

Jonah Hill (Mid 90s)

Last year: Adam McKay (Vice)

 

Writer:

Todd Phillips & Scott Silver – Joker

Jonah Hill (Mid 90s)

Taika Waititi – Jo Jo Rabbit

Last year: Adam McKay (Vice)

 

Editing:

tbc

Last year: Vice

 

Cinematography:

Roger Deakins – 1917

Last year: Lukasz Zal (Cold War)

 

Film Music:

Rolling Thunder Review

Last year: Bohemian Rhapsody / Cold War

 

Single/Song:

Lately – Celeste

Last year: I Want You (Sam Reid & Claudia Jolly – The Girl from the North Country)

 

Album:

Ghosteen – Nick Cave

Kiwanuka – Michael Kiwanuka; Western Stars – Bruce Springsteen

Last year: The Girl from the North Country (London cast)

 

Gig:

Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets (Roundhouse)

Kamasi Washington (Brixton Academy)

Patti Smith (Westminster Central Hall)

The Midnight Special – Abbey Road anniversary (Jazz Cafe)

Abdullah Ibrahim (Cadogan Hall)

Proms: Jonny Greenwood (Albert Hall)

Last year: David Byrne – Hammersmith Odeon

 

Play:

A Taste of Honey (Trafalgar Studios)

Last year: Girl from the North Country [2nd viewing]

 

Art Exhibition:

Van Gogh in Britain (Tate B)

Preraphaelite Sisters (NPG)

Tate St Ives

Last year: Picasso: 1932 (Tate Modern)

 

Book:

A Woman of No Importance – Sonia Purnell

The Order of the Day – Eric Vuillard

The Cut-out Girl – Bart Van Es

The Quiet American, To Have & Have Not, The Catcher in the Rye, The Drowning Pool

Last year: The Leithen Stories – John Buchan

 

TV:

After Life (Netflix)

The Boys (Amazon), The Crown – S3 (Amazon)

Last year: Mrs Wilson

 

Podcast:

13 Minutes to the Moon

The Tip-Off

Sport:

England beating the All-Blacks at the Rugby World Cup, Japan

 

Dance:

The Red Shoes (Sadlers Wells)

 

Event:

150th anniversary of Girton College (including event at Trinity, Dublin)

50th anniversary of Moon Landing/Apollo 11

Mythos: The Gods – Stephen Fry

 

Dearly departed:

• Emily Hartridge (who I made Oh Shit I’m 30! with)
• Judith Kerr (with whom I was on Woman’s Hour)
• Leon Kossoff
• D.A. Pennebaker
• Clive James
• Jonathan Miller (who I walk with in Aldeburgh while he was having a cheeky fag)
• Albert Finney
• Gordon Banks (his Esso medal hangs on my wall along with his 1970 World Cup team mates)
• Peter Fonda
• Ginger Baker
• Doris Day
• Dr John
• Mark Hollis (who I have a vague memory of meeting briefly at Solus, my first job)
• Agnès Varda
• Mary Warnock (Mistress of Girton in my era)
• Jeremy Hardy (he contributed to my Omagh project at Channel 4)
• Terry O’Neill

Performance of the year

 

Best of 2018 and links to earlier Bests Of

The Casting Game: Reservoir Dogs

To celebrate the arrival of Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood (which has grown on me since watching it last week) I’ve recast where it all began for Quentin, Reservoir Dogs

Jonah Hill

as

Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn)

Joss Ackland

as

Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney)

Dominic West

as

Marvin (Kirk Baltz)

Chris Isaak

as

Mr Blonde (Michael Madsen)

Malcolm Allison

as

Mr White (Harvey Keitel)

Paul Weller

as

Mr Orange (Tim Roth)

Coincidences No.s 288, 289 & 290

These three are mild coincidences but have their own charm.

No. 288 – Michael Franti (11/12:1:19)

Yesterday evening I put in a CD in the car (yes we still have a CD player) – it is an old mixtape, burned for a party. The first track is Everyone Deserves Music by Michael Franti. I haven’t listened to him for ages and it makes me think of the last time I saw him live at Islington Assembly Rooms (May 2014) with Enfant Terrible No. 2 who got to dance with the main man during the show, he picked him out of the crowd. I also recall a great gig at Bush Hall, Shepherds Bush at the height of summer one year which was totally sweaty and wild.

This evening I open Facebook on my phone and the first item in my feed is an ad for a film premiere and an acoustic gig with Michael Franti at Bush Hall in 3 days time. I buy tickets.

No. 289 Blakeney (11/12:1:19)

I see an Instagram post by my pal Tim Wright about the latest episode in his (and former Channel 4 colleague, author Lloyd Shepherd‘s) new podcast, Curiously Specific. The post mentions various towns/villages in Norfolk because the book being explored in this episode is Jack Higgins’ The Eagle Has Landed which is largely set in that area. One of the places written at the foot of the post is Blakeney. It is not a name I know although I must have read it years ago when I read the novel. I download the new episode as I like the book.

Radio 4’s Today programme has a weekly Nature slot on Saturday morning. I catch this morning’s – they have a naturalist from the North-East coast talking about the recent resurgence of the seal population around the islands near Lindisfarne and a couple of other places – including Blakeney.

No. 290 Ipanema (11:1:19)

I am listening to Last Word, the obituary programme on BBC Radio 4. One of the people highlighted is the composer of The Girl from Ipanema, Norman Gimbel. He also wrote the words for Killing Me Softly (Roberta Flack). It makes me think of the time I listened to a lot of Astrud Gilberto and Bossa Nova when I was at uni – and how I must listen to her again soon.

Astrud Gilberto

I get back home shortly after and settle in front of the box, flicking channels until I get to The Blues Brothers which I haven’t seen in yonks. In the climactic scene, when chaos is going on around the municipal building where Jake & Elwood have barricaded themselves in, the noise of the soldiers and cops outside is contrasted with the muzak in the lift the brothers are taking to the tax office – it is The Girl from Ipanema playing.

 

I

Best of 2018

 

Cold War

Film:

Vice

Cold War

Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody

Last year: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Florida Project

Foreign-Language Film:

The Square

Cold War

Last year: The Square (Sweden)

Documentary:

Faces Places

Three Identical Strangers, RBG, Bombshell, The Ballymurphy Precedent

Male Lead:

Rami Malek – Bohemian Rhapsody

Christian Bale – Vice

Viggo Mortensen – Green Book, Robert Redford – The Old Man & The Gun, Steve Coogan – Stan & Ollie

Last year: Daniel Day-Lewis – Phantom Thread, Steve Carell – Battle of the Sexes

Female Lead:

Olivia Coleman – The Favourite

Joanna Kulig – Cold War

Last year: Frances McDormand – Three Billboards

Male Support:

Terry Notary – The Square

Steve Carell – Vice, Sam Rockwell – Vice

Last year: Woody Harrelson – Three Billboards, Sam Rockwell – Three Billboards

Female Support:

Amy Adams – Vice

Sissy Spacek – The Old Man & The Gun, Rachel Weisz – The Favourite, Emma Stone – The Favourite, Nina Arianda – Stan & Ollie

Last year: Brooklyn Prince – Florida Project, Mary J Blige – Mudbound

Director:

Adam McKay – Vice

Last year: Martin McDonagh – Three Billboards

Writer:

Adam McKay – Vice

Last year: Martin McDonagh – Three Billboards

Editing:

Vice

Last year: Dunkirk

Cinematography:

Lukasz Zal – Cold War

Last year: Roger Deakins – Blade Runner 2049 (went on to pick up his 1st Oscar for this, after numerous nominations)

Film Music:

Bohemian Rhapsody

Cold War

Last year: Three Billboards

Single/Song:

I Want You (Sam Reid & Claudia Jolly – The Girl from the North Country)

Last year: Willie Nelson – God’s Problem Child

Album:

The Girl from the North Country (London cast)

The Prophet Speaks (Van)

Last year: undecided

Gig:

David Byrne – Hammersmith Odeon

The Midnight Special – White Album anniversary; Tom Robinson – Shepherds Bush Empire; Hothouse Flowers/Hot Press anniversary – Nells; Donal Lunny & Andy Irvine – Barbican

Last year: Hothouse Flowers – Electric Ballroom, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Millennium Dome, Avishai Cohen – Barbican

Play:

Girl from the North Country [2nd viewing]

Last year: Girl from the North Country, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Art Exhibition:

Picasso: 1932 (Tate Modern)

Collections Privees (Musee Marmottan)

Last year: Basquiat (Barbican)

Book:

The Leithen Stories – John Buchan

Last year: Everybody Lies – Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

TV:

Mrs Wilson (BBC)

13 Reasons Why (Netflix), Maltese (More 4)

Last year: Stranger Things S1

Sport:

Ireland beating the All-Blacks

The demeanour of the England team at the World Cup in Russia

Event:

50th anniversary of The Beatles’ White Album

Dearly departed:

• Amos Oz
• Philip Roth
• Aretha Franklin
• William Goldman
• Chas (Hodges)
• Burt Reynolds
• Eric Bristow
• Stephen Hawking
• Ken Dodd
• Roger Bannister
• Dennis Edwards
• Peter Wyngarde
• Dolores O’Riordan

[Nov] Ireland beat world champions New Zealand for the first time ever on home soil – Jacob Stockdale scores the only try of the match

Best of 2017 – with links to all previous years

Quote of the Day: The 60s

 

Get Carter (1971)

 

… the whole point of the Sixties was that you had to take people as they were. If you came in with us, you left your class and colour and religion behind, that was what the Sixties was all about.

Michael Caine, actor