First look at new Princess Diana movie

A new movie is being made about the last years of Princess Diana's life, before she was killed in a tragic car accident in Paris in 1997. The movie is called Caught in Flight and it's being directed by German director, Oliver Hirschbiegel who also directed Downfall, the biopic about Hitler's final few weeks alive, and part of the new medieval drama series, Borgia. 

The photo above is the first photo showing English actress Naomi Watts as Princess Diana. She def looks very like the princess, but some people close to Diana and Dr. Kahn, who is still alive, are apparently not very happy that it's being made. The movie focuses on  Princess Diana's life after her divorce and her romance with a Pakistani surgeon, Dr. Hasnat Kahn, who is played by Lost actor Naveen Andrews. Naomi Watts has also acted in King Kong and J. Edgar. Obviously, there's already been a movie about the Royal Family's reaction to Diana's death - The Queen, which Helen Mirren won the Oscar for. But, what are your thoughts about Caught in Flight? Are you excited to see it or do you think it's too soon for a Hollywood movie? 

"All About Eve" (1950)

"Fasten your seatbelts."

"All About Eve"

Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz (won the Oscar)

Running Time: 2 hours,  18 minutes

Random Fact: Gary Merrill and Bette Davis, who marry in the movie, went on to become real-life husband and wife after filming was done. All About Eve was also one of the first major movie roles for Marilyn Monroe.

Based on the short story The Wisdom of Eve by Mary Orr

Cast

Bette Davis .... Margo Channing (Oscar nominated)

Anne Baxter ..... Eve Harrington (Oscar nominated)

George Sanders ..... Addison DeWitt (won the Oscar)

Celeste Holm .... Karen

Marilyn Monroe .... Miss Casswell

 

There are moments when I realise how painfully underdeveloped I am as a writer and that moment is usually when I'm watching All About Eve. This story of rivalry and underhand bitchiness in the theatre world is perhaps one of the most fantastically witty scripts ever produced by Hollywood. All About Eve practically reeks of intelligence and fast-moving quips.

Filmed in 1950, All About Eve is, ironically, really all about Margo. Margo Channing, played by Hollywood legend Bette Davis, is a middle-aged theatre actress who, for years, has been the acknowledged queen bee of Broadway. Every major award, every major role, every sell-out performance, has been hers to command, but the price of fame has been a steep one - although she is rich, successful and respected, Margo has had to sacrifice a good deal of personal happiness to achieve her ambitions and, as she knows, she is still at the mercy of the critics and ambitious young actresses who want the life she has. And it's one critic in particular, the manipulative but superbly well-spoken Addison DeWitt (played by George Sanders, who many may remember as the voice of the velvet-toned Shere Khan in Disney's The Jungle Book) who takes great pleasure in needling Margo and her sense of superiority.

The story of All About Eve begins with what we'd probably call a stalker today. A young, obsessive fan of Margo's, called Eve Harrington (played by Anne Baxter), has been to the theatre every night for the last few weeks to watch Margo in her latest theatrical triumph as a feisty Southern belle. One of Margo's Society friends, Karen, has noticed this poor, bedraggled fan and brings her backstage to meet her idol. Eve tells a heartrending story about having lost her husband in the recent Second World War and how it is only the joy of theatre which allows her to escape her depression. Moved by her story and impressed by her apparent loyalty, Margo hires Eve to be her personal assistant. As the movie unfolds however, Margo begins to suspect that Eve may in fact be out to sabotage her. Eve's new friendship with Addison DeWitt and her cosy conversations with Margo's boyfriend and playwright-friends rile Margo's paranoia and insecurities. What follows is a wonderfully believable depiction of jealousy, cruelty, manipulation and, in one hilarious yet heartbreaking scene, drunkenness.

All About Eve is a brilliantly directed, brilliantly written and brilliantly acted movie. It's hard to imagine a movie so cerebral being made today by a major studio much less attracting the kind of excitement this one did back in 1950. Subtle, dark and elegant, it has some of the best one-liners in cinema history and every time I watch it, I find something new to enjoy. 

Stills from the new Marie-Antoinette movie

A few stills from the new movie about the fall of the French monarchy, starring Diane Kruger as Marie-Antoinette, Virginie Ledoyen as her BFF Gabrielle de Polignac (below; Gabrielle's on the left) and Lea Seydoux as Agatha, a fictional servant in Marie-Antoinette's household. Farewell My Queen will premiere in Belgium on February 9th. I'm a huge fan of the novel by Chantal Thomas and can't wait to see it.

18th-century beffers

 Diane Kruger stars as Marie-Antoinette in a movie which charts the three days when the Queen's life began to turn into a tragedy.

 Virginie Ledoyen as the Duchesse de Polignac totes has her swagger on

New Marie-Antoinette casting

A few months ago, I posted the story that French actress Eva Green had been cast in the big screen adaptation of Chantal Thomas's fantastic novel, Farewell My Queen, the story of the relationship between Queen Marie-Antoinette and one of her servants, Agathe, who has a job as a Reader in the Queen's Household. The novel follows Agathe's worshipful respect for the doomed queen and her experiences living in the Palace of Versailles in the final week before the outbreak of the French Revolution. It's a really incredible novel and very atmospheric, capturing perfectly the terror that seized the palace in July 1789, so I can't wait to see the movie.

However, it turns out that since then, the role of Marie-Antoinette has been re-cast and German actress, Diane Kruger (above), will be playing the queen. Diane looks much more like the real Marie-Antoinette and Marie-Antoinette was Austrian, not French; that being said, both are fantastic actresses.

Agathe is being played by Léa Seydoux; Gérard Depardieu and Virginie Ledoyen will also co-star. Having read the novel, my predictions are that Depardieu will either play Captain de la Roche, the royal zoo keeper, or the King's historiographer; and my money's on Virginie Ledoyen playing Gabrielle, Duchesse de Polignac, the beautiful and controversial Versailles socialite.

Having now posted this online, I will almost certainly be proven wrong.

Either way, can't wait to see Farewell my Queen, which is due out later this year.

"Gone with the Wind" (1939)

"Why does a girl have to be so silly to catch a husband?"

"Gone with the Wind"

Director: Victor Fleming (won the Oscar)

Running Time: 3 hours,  58 minutes

Random Fact: The "hunt for Scarlett O'Hara" was allegedly the most competitive casting race in Hollywood history

Based on the novel Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1936)

Cast

Vivien Leigh .... Scarlett O'Hara (won the Oscar)

Clark Gable ..... Captain Rhett Butler (Oscar nominated)

Leslie Howard ..... Ashley Wilkes

Olivia de Havilland .... Melanie Hamilton

Hattie McDaniel .... Mammy (won the Oscar)

Also won the Oscar for: Best Art Direction,  Best Cinematography,  Best Film Editing,  Best Writing , an Honorary Oscar for  its pioneering use of colour, Best Technical Achievement and, of course, Best Picture

Gone with the Wind is justifiably one of, if not the, most famous movie of all time. Based on the 1936 bestseller by Margaret Mitchell, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937, Gone with the Wind was an epic achievement, both technologically and artistically in its day. At Oscar season, it predictably swept the board, winning ten Academy Awards. It was not just the longest movie ever made in sound when it first premiered in 1939, running to three hours and forty-four minutes, but it was not only one of the first movies shot in colour. So incredible and so expensive were the techniques used to shoot Gone with the Wind that the Academy created the Oscar for cinematography in its honour and for the next two decades it was remained the most visually stunning examples of technicolor too. It was so commercially successful that as well as being released in 1939 and running in most world cinemas well into 1941, it was re-released in cinemas in America, Europe, South America, Australia and Britain in 1947 (when its message of society adapting in the aftermath of a devastating war was especially relevant), 1954, 1961 (for the one hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the American Civil War), 1967, 1971, 1989  (its fiftieth anniversary) and 1998. Adjusted for inflation, it is still the highest grossing domestic movie in American history.

Gone with the Wind tells the story of a spoiled Southern belle, Scarlett O'Hara (played by British actress Vivien Leigh), and her experience of ten years of American history, beginning when she attends a high society barbeque (above) at a neighbour's plantation on the day the American Civil War begins. Manipulative, brazen, deceitful and often spiteful, Scarlett O'Hara is also flirtatious, ruthless and monumentally self-absorbed. Yet, somehow, she is undoubtedly the heroine everyone is cheering for throughout Gone with the Wind's four hour extravaganza. As romance after romance fails and the lavish lifestyle of the Southern upper-classes is swept away when the South loses the Civil War in 1865, Scarlett proves that whilst she is a woman likely to hurl herself onto her bed weeping for days when she doesn't get her own way about what dress to wear to a party, when it comes to the major catastrophes of life, she is definitely the ultimate survivor. Surveying the ruin of her homeland in the aftermath of the Civil War, Scarlett vows that if she has "to lie, steal, cheat or kill" she will overcome the poverty and chaos which has swallowed up the life of wealth and privilege she once enjoyed. She vows she will hold on to the family's plantation at Tara and despite the fact she claims to find them useless and irritating, she fulfils all four of her vows in order to keep her family safe from the invading Yankee armies, famine, defeat, mental illness, political turmoil and crippling taxation.

"Marie Antoinette" (1938)

"Perhaps the great loves come with great tears."

"Marie-Antoinette"

Director: W.S. Van Dyke

Running Time: 2 hours, 29 minutes

Random Fact: The great novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, helped with part of the script

Based on the biography Marie-Antoinette by Stefan Zweig (1933)

Cast

Norma Shearer .... Queen Marie-Antoinette (Oscar nominated)

Robert Morley ..... King Louis the Sixteenth (Oscar nominated)

Tyrone Power ..... Count Axel von Fersen

John Barrymore .... King Louis the Fifteenth

Joseph Schildkraut .... The Duke of Orleans

I thought I'd blog a bit about some of my favourite movies and, still suffering from an OCD about such things thanks to two History degrees, I decided to post them in the order in which the movies were produced, beginning with Marie Antoinette from 1938.

Marie Antoinette covers the life of the Austrian princess who married the future King of France from her arranged marriage at the age of fourteen in 1770 until her execution during the French Revolution, twenty-three years later. One of Hollywood's greatest and highest-paid actresses of the 1930s, Norma Shearer, the so-called "Queen of MGM," signed on to play the title role, in a performance which many (included Norma herself) regarded as the greatest of her career. She narrowly, and controversially, lost out on the Oscar to Bette Davis for her performance in Jezebel.

Despite its age, Marie Antoinette is a beautiful movie to look at and it captures the decadence and glamour of upper class life before the Revolution perfectly. When showing Marie-Antoinette's late teens and early twenties, when she was Europe's ultimate socialite, the movie's costume designer, Adrian, spared no expense and no detail to try and accurately bring to life haute couture from the 1770s.

However, unlike the 2006 version of her life, starring Kirsten Dunst, 1938's Marie Antoinette is not simply a fun and colourful look at the life of the original "girl who has everything." It's also a proper, good old-fashioned historical epic and its final quarter, chronicling Marie-Antoinette's imprisonment during the French Revolution, is tough to watch. The scene in which she and her two children have their last meal with her husband, Louis, before he is taken for his execution on the following morning is incredibly moving, mainly because it is so understated. Norma Shearer's face as she watches her on-screen husband say grace before the meal, knowing that tomorrow he will be dead, is a wonderful example of saying more by doing less in one's acting. A warning though, the following scene, in which the queen's eight year-old son, Louis-Charles, is ripped from her arms to be placed in solitary confinement by their republican jailers is absolutely harrowing to watch. Norma Shearer pulls no punches with her performance and her screams as they try to separate her from her child take a long time to forget. It's made all the worse to watch when you know that it's almost word-for-word historically accurate.

Marie Antoinette is also a great example of how a movie can be historically accurate, without being a documentary. No movie or play or novel based on history will ever be truly accurate; it can't be. Nor should it be. It's supposed to entertain and playwrights and authors are supposed to cut the dull, confusing and messy bits out of life. They have to give life a storyline and so in historical movies, I think it's okay for many details (time line, the number of characters, etc.) to be ditched or fudged (within reason), in order to make the production flow together as a story. However, that doesn't mean you have to change or misrepresent the people you're portraying. I'm of the opinion that they were people, too, and if you're making money out of their life story, the least you can do is to try and get their personalities right. Marie Antoinette certainly does this. Yes, it has been criticised for some for being slightly too harsh on her rival, Madame du Barry, and for portraying her husband, King Louis, as much more simplistic than he actually was. However, in fairness, a lot of that comes from the biography the movie is based on and Louis's dignity and honesty is shown in full detail, particularly in the final half of the movie. And with its leading lady, Marie Antoinette gives by far the most accurate and honest dramatisation of Marie-Antoinette yet seen on screen. As a young woman, she is certainly frivolous, extravagant and "terrified of boredom," but she is also warm-hearted, friendly, honest and kind. Most importantly, Marie Antoinette captures what more modern versions of her life have failed to show - that as she grew up, she possessed a dignity and regal self-assurance that even her enemies commented upon. Given that Norma Shearer manages to convincingly play Marie-Antoinette from a naive but well-intentioned teenager to an heroic but heartbroken widow, it's easy to see why so many people praised the performance.

If you enjoy period dramas or anything from "the Golden Age of Hollywood," try and find a copy of Marie Antoinette. Just be warned: prepare to weep. I watched it one night in our student house in Oxford, because my housemate Beth loves old movies and I thought it would cheer her up after the bad day she had. Unfortunately, when I turned the lights on I found that Beth's mascara had reached her chin and tears were pouring off her face. Turns out, she had been quietly sobbing for the last forty-five minutes. 

"Didn't cheer you up... did it?" I asked, nervously.

"Those filthy, murdering bastards!" she roared, before shaking her head and blowing her nose. "Look what they did to her! I'm a lot angrier with the world than we started watching this. Why did you think that would cheer me up? WHY!"

Like the movie says, all the great stories come with great tears!

That's how we do it, Elizabeth

The last of the true Hollywood superstars was buried in Los Angeles today, after dying at the age of seventy-nine. Perhaps best known for her lead role in Cleopatra, the most expensive movie ever made, Elizabeth was also made a Dame of the British Empire in recognition for her charity work by Her Majesty the Queen (she helped raise over $200 million for HIV and AIDS causes, worldwide) and she won the Oscar for Best Actress for her performances in Butterfield 8 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She also won four Golden Globes, three BAFTAs, was nominated for another, as well as two more Golden Globes and three Oscars. Along with Cleopatra, her performances in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Ivanhoe, Little Women, Beau Brummel, The Taming of the Shrew, A Place in the Sun, The Last Time I Saw Paris, Raintree County, Giant and Suddenly Last Summer, are all considered some of the finest movie performances given by a Hollywood actress. Her celebrity perfume, White Diamonds, is the only one to still be selling two decades after its release and it continues to out-sell many newcomers to the fragrance industry. Some of the movies she made as a child - Lassie, National Velvet, Jane Eyre and Father of the Bride - are still, rightly, considered classics. 

Today, her funeral was carried out in accordance with her Jewish faith, which she converted to in 1959. Luckily, the vile Westboro Baptist "Church" were planning to picket her funeral to protest against her position as a gay rights activist and campaigner. Or for being Jewish. Or for being divorced. Or for God knows what reason.

Luckily, the funeral passed off without a hitch and my new favourite story of the day is that Elizabeth left a stipulation in her Will that the funeral was to begin fifteen minutes later than scheduled, so that she could exit in the same way she lived - late for everything.

Outstanding.

A friend sent me this link to one of the on-line tributes to Dame Elizabeth and I thought it was pretty moving.

"The Other Boleyn Girl" (review)

In 2008, my housemate Beth returned to our house in Oxford late one evening from a trip to see the new movie, The Other Boleyn Girl. I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to see it, and wasn’t even sure I was going to – I’d read the book and that was traumatic enough. I could still remember the perfectly-arched eyebrow of savage incredulity which my high school friend Patricia reserved for anyone who suggested she read it... Anyway, Beth knocked on my bedroom door and I opened expecting to see her with her customary can of hairspray in her hands, maniacally spraying all around her. (It was the only way we had figured out how to repel the nuclear-sized spiders which seemed to inexplicably infest our college house.) As I opened the door, I was greeted by a shell-shocked Beth. Naturally, I assumed that we were once again under siege from Arachneus, King of the Spiders, and his eight-legged army and I quickly reached for my deodorant. This time, however, I was wrong. “Oh it’s bad...," she said, "The Other Boleyn Girl... it’s so, so bad... it’s.... it’s bad, Gareth. It’s just really bad. I can't even... I'm never getting those two hours back.”

A breathlessly gleeful phone-call from my friend Emerald a few days later confirmed Beth's review: “Gaz, you’ve got to get down to the nearest cinema and see it immediately. It’s the worst thing in the history of cinema! It’s the most gloriously stupid thing you’ll ever see! I mean, it’s just... no, I mean, oh my god, you have got to see it!” When I did go to see it, with another friend, Emily, it was reassuringly every bit as ghastly as I had been promised. Half-way through, Emily leant over to me and whispered, both confused and contemptuous: “Is this a joke?”

Sadly, Emily, no, it wasn’t. Or, at least, it wasn’t an intentional one.

An Interview with Emerald Fennell

One of Britain's leading newspapers, The Observer, has run an interview with five of the young stars of Channel 4's forthcoming drama Any Human Heart - Freddie Fox, Lydia Wilson, Emerald Fennell, Charity Wakefield and Hugh Skinner.

There's more info about the production and Emerald on a previous post, here.

And the full article is here.

The delicious Emerald's Q&A's were: -

Born in London, the 23-year-old plays Lottie Edgefield, Logan's first wife.

Tell us about Lottie.

She's spoilt, glamorous and very, very posh – an earl's daughter. Logan is dazzled by her whole shtick, but their relationship is a bad idea from the get-go. It was fun to do; we scream at each other a lot and it gave us the opportunity to run the whole gamut of a relationship in a short time. I like flouncing about and pouting and being spoiled, so Lottie suited me to a T.

Where have we seen you before?

As Rachel, one of Howard Marks's girlfriends in Mr Nice. I lounged around in 60s clothes and smoked a lot. It was my first job and mostly improvised. The director gave us fake joints, sat us in a fake dorm, and said: "Away you go."

What 20th-century age would you like to live through?

The roaring 20s, because everyone was so mortal then and really lived. And of course, being a girl, I would have loved the clothes.

Which 20th-century figure would you like to meet?

WB Yeats. He was probably a lunatic, with all that automatic writing stuff, but I'd like to sit at his feet and listen to him recite. Marilyn Monroe would be great too. I could ask her for makeup tips.

What do you do when you're not working?

I'm writing a novel – to keep my mind working and make sure I don't lounge in bed eating chocolates until three in the afternoon. My dad [jeweller Theo Fennell] is very supportive.

What would you like to do next?

More theatre. Something new and exciting and filthy at the Royal Court, maybe.

"Any Human Heart" trailer

I'm so excited to be able to post a link to Channel 4's new television series, Any Human Heart, an adaptation of the bestselling novel by William Boyd. The novel is published by Penguin (naturally!) and you can order it here. And the new television version of it has one of my favourite people, Emerald Fennell, amongst its glitteringly delightful cast. Very exciting. 

Emerald and I first met at Oxford just before Christmas of 2006, when I was directing my second student play  there (glamorous, I know) and she auditioned on the second day of auditions, as one of 83 girls competing for the three main roles in my favourite play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams.

 

We got to speak properly for the first time at the call-backs, when I accidentally scheduled the next auditionee an hour after Emerald's audition was due to end. So, she kept me company and  we chatted for a while, during which time a beautiful friendship was born. I was very relieved that, at last, someone agreed with me that my fear of flying was more than justified. It's not how often it happens, but how bad it will be when it happens. (Even worse if the plane nose dives, then rights itself, and you're the person who wet yourself mid-plummet and have to live with that shame for the rest of the flight.)  Or unbuckled some aged granny next to you and tried to use her as a human shield, then have to explain to her why you did that when the plane doesn't actually crash... Food for thought.

 

Perhaps some of my favourite memories of our time in Oxford include us, bedraggled and exhausted sitting, without shame, with various 18th century costumes and props slung over our arms as we waited for a post-rehearsal supper table to open up at the Chiang Mai restaurant. Good times. Less endearingly, on my part, there was an incident during a rehearsal for Dangerous Liaisons in a music room at Worcester College, when I - very tired and stressed with the dress-rehearsal approaching - was interrupted by someone banging away on a defunct drum kit behind me. For some reason, I assumed it was my friend Johnny Rhodes, so I spun round in high fury and snapped, "Johnny, for f***'s sake! What are you doing?" Only to discover that it was Emerald on said drums; at which point, my demeanour changed entirely and I beamed, "Oh, it's you, Emmy. Well done!"  I may even have applauded her slightly. Johnny meanwhile, from the far corner of the room, glowered with seething fury from behind his butler's outfit, as Emerald gave me an encore performance.

 

Anyway, Any Human Heart is a fantastic book with a wonderful cast for the adaptation, which was written by William Boyd. A great idea, I think. It will be broadcast later this year by Channel 4 over four weeks.  So do look out for it! Amongst the cast are Oscar winner Jim Broadbent, Pirates of the Caribbean 4's Sam Claflin, Pride and Prejudice's Matthew McFayden, Hayley Atwell, Sex and the City's Kim Cattrall, Tom Hollander as Edward VIII, Gillian Anderson as Wallis Simpson and The West Wing's Richard Schiff. 

I'm obviously hugely excited about this, especially since it seems absolutely no time at all since I was directing Emerald in a student production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Dangerous Liaisons. And giving her the first ever three chapters of Popular which I had written, to see if she thought they were any good. I'm obviously pretty grateful for the feedback I received right after she had finished reading them. She was also the first ever person to read aloud the role of Imogen, when I wanted to hear how everything sounded. Massively enjoyable day.

 

Drummer Johnny, on the other hand, failed to read them at all and got away with saying, "Yeah, yeah, I loved the party in Chapter ...." And inserted any number he could think of. A clever strategy which worked until he accidentally hit upon the one chapter in the book sans party.

It's incredibly exciting that Any Human Heart is finished and I can't wait to see it.

The trailer for Any Human Heart can be watched here.

Eva Green starring in new French movie about Marie-Antoinette

Kingdom of Heaven star and former "Bond girl" actress, the very beautiful Eva Green, is due to star in a new French-language movie based on the novel by Les Adieux à la reine by Chantal Thomas. The novel follows the last three days of life at the Palace of Versailles before the French Revolution, told through the eyes of a young palace servant, Agathe, whose job it is to read aloud to the Queen while she takes her early morning coffee.

Dark and occasionally quite terrifying Les Adieux à lareine is a fantastic novel, which really captures the panic and fear of a world as it falls apart. First published in France in 2002, where it won the Prix Femina award for literary excellence, it was later published in English in 2004 as Farewell, my Queen. Also signed on to star in the movie version of the story is French Oscar-nominee, Gérard Depardieu and Robin Hood star, Léa Seydoux.

Internet rumour has it that Eva might be playing Marie-Antoinette herself, but given Eva's physical appearance I'd say it's far more likely that she'll be playing the legendarily beautiful socialite, Gabrielle de Polignac - one of Meredith's personal historical heroines. One internet journal said Depardieu will be playing King Louis the Sixteenth, but since the king was 34 years-old and Depardieu is 61, I'd say that's unlikely. My bet is he'll play the delightfully mad Captain de Laroche, the Royal Family's zookeeper. (Basically, the key point of the novel is that de Laroche seems to be brilliant but smelly, hence why he's kept so far away from the palace. The King finds him delightful.)

Either way, Kerry and Imogen would be v. excited. I smell major costume delightfulness when the movie starts filming at Versailles next year.