Nothing has illustrated the current turmoil in British politics quite as starkly as the recent tanking of the pound against the dollar, a puzzle even to the ruling party whose prime minister and chancellor caused it. Richard Eyre’s fitfully funny Allelujah reflects this schism in more ways than one, balancing broad grey-pound comedy and seriously macabre drama with the result that a seemingly gentle satire inexplicably dives into a murky existential abyss in its final act. Even fans of Alan Bennett, the famously folksy playwright and national treasure of the north, will struggle with the juxtaposition of wry bathos and savagery, the latter ramped up from Allelujah’s original incarnation as a Bennett stage play sprinkled with Dennis Potter-style song-and-dance numbers.
The subject is the UK’s National Health Service, once the envy of the world and now the subject of a massive culture war between the sentimental left and the neoliberal right,...
The subject is the UK’s National Health Service, once the envy of the world and now the subject of a massive culture war between the sentimental left and the neoliberal right,...
- 10/1/2022
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
Matt Spicer’s “Ingrid Goes West” doesn’t shy away from its deliciously unhinged protagonist in the slightest, opening the comedy’s action with the eponymous Ingrid (Aubrey Plaza) going full-tilt bonkers on the wedding of someone who initially seems like an old pal who has done her wrong. But Ingrid isn’t getting revenge on a lost friend who has bilked her for other people, she’s actually on hand to ruin the nuptials of someone she mostly knows from social media.
Ingrid eventually moves on (sort of), heading out west to make her way in sunny Los Angeles, where she’s convinced that a highly curated life is the cure for all her ills. What she really wants is someone else to emulate and follow, and she finds that in Insta-famous lifestyle blogger Taylor (Elizabeth Olsen), who makes the woeful mistake of liking one of Ingrid’s targeted posts.
Ingrid eventually moves on (sort of), heading out west to make her way in sunny Los Angeles, where she’s convinced that a highly curated life is the cure for all her ills. What she really wants is someone else to emulate and follow, and she finds that in Insta-famous lifestyle blogger Taylor (Elizabeth Olsen), who makes the woeful mistake of liking one of Ingrid’s targeted posts.
- 8/9/2017
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Notes On A Scandal (2006) Direction: Richard Eyre Cast: Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy, Andrew Simpson, Phil Davis, Anne-Marie Duff Screenplay: Patrick Marber; from Zoe Heller's novel Oscar Movies Highly Recommended Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal Directed by Richard Eyre, Notes on a Scandal is a must-see for those who enjoy a cleverly constructed plot that explores human relationships to the core. The story follows jaded older teacher Barbara Covett (Judi Dench), who contrives to ensnare young and beautiful new teacher Bathsheba Hart (Cate Blanchett). In the meantime, 15-year old student Steve Connolly (Andrew Simpson) entices Bathsheba into a turbulent affair, while Sheba's husband (Bill Nighy) and children all tear at Sheba's loyalties. Credible characters fill Patrick Marber's clever script, (from Zoe Heller's novel): the older feeble staff member with vain hopes of attracting the new filly in the staff room, the management-minded headmaster,...
- 3/17/2011
- by Rosemary Westwell
- Alt Film Guide
"It's very bad for the soul, all this banging on about yourself," says Zoe Heller, "and it induces simultaneously a sort of grotesque narcissism and paranoia and self-loathing." She is talking, of course, about being interviewed. "I've found," she says, lapsing into a voice you could imagine emerging from a Noel Coward chaise longue, "that it gives you a tiny glimpse into the world of proper celebrities and why they are so nuts." The voice is just one in a medley in the hour or so we spend together, a medley which adds not to any sense of a tendency towards nuttiness, but of what seems like a pretty unassailable sanity. It's a sanity marked by self-deprecation and a tendency towards the hyperbolic -- because this tall, lithe, creature, glamorous in white jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt that reveals her toned-as-Michelle-Obama's...
- 6/12/2009
- by Christina Patterson
- Huffington Post
- After having Patrick Marber successfully adapt Zoe Heller's Notes on a Scandal, Scott Rudin is setting the scribe to adapt Heller's latest best seller - a dysfunctional family drama that would probably see two actresses play the same role in separate timelines. Variety reports that The Believers will be a Miramax-based project. Here is the book's synopsis:... In 1962, at a party in London, 18 year-old Audrey Howard meets Joel Litvinoff, a prominent leftist lawyer involved with the civil rights movement who is on a short visit from the United States. Although Litvinoff is a complete stranger and more than ten years her senior, the two feel attracted to each other in some tacit way, and when Litvinoff, after they have had sex, half-seriously suggests that Audrey follow him to the United States and become his wife, she takes him up on his offer without hesitation as she feels her
- 3/4/2009
- IONCINEMA.com
USA Today has posted the first images of Angelina Jolie as rogue CIA operative Evelyn Salt. The Phillip Noyce-directed spy thriller also stars Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, the writing partners behind Wanted, have signed on to adapt the upcoming Richard Doetsch novel The Thirteenth Hour for New Line Cinema and producer Michael De Luca. It follows a man accused of murdering his wife who gets to go back in time -- in one-hour increments over 12 hours -- with the chance to stop his wife's killer. Twentieth Century Fox and Walden Media have set a December 10, 2010 release date for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third installment in the fantasy franchise. A biopic on maverick auto executive John DeLorean, creator of the Dmc-12, which of course will always be remembered as the Back to the Future time machine, is in the works.
- 3/4/2009
- by James Cook
- TheMovingPicture.net
Miramax Films and producer Scott Rudin have acquired screen rights to "The Believers," the Zoe Heller novel that was released this week by Harper. Patrick Marber is set to write the script, a task he handled on Notes on a Scandal , the Rudin-produced 2006 Fox Searchlight film that was also based on a Heller novel. "The Believers" is the character study of members of a dysfunctional New York-based family forced to examine their lives and each other after the patriarch suffers a stroke that leaves him in a coma.
- 3/3/2009
- Comingsoon.net
The author-screenwriter teams behind "Children of Men", "The Devil Wears Prada", "The Illusionist", "The Last King of Scotland" and "Notes on a Scandal" have been selected as finalists for the 19th USC Libraries Scripter Award.
The Scripter, awarded annually by the USC Libraries, honors writers for the best achievement in adaptation among English-language films released during the previous year and based on a book, novella or short story. It is the only award that recognizes both the authors and screenwriters of a produced book-to-film adaptation.
The finalists include screenwriters Alfonso Cuaron & Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby for "Children", based on the book by P.D. James; screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna and author Lauren Weisberger for "Prada"; screenwriter Neil Berger for "Illusionist", based on the story "Eisenheim the Illusionist" by Steven Millhauser; screenwriters Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock for "Scotland", based on the book by Giles Foden; and screenwriter Patrick Marber and author Zoe Heller for "Notes".
The selection committee voted to determine these five finalists from among the year's 45 eligible films.
The Scripter, awarded annually by the USC Libraries, honors writers for the best achievement in adaptation among English-language films released during the previous year and based on a book, novella or short story. It is the only award that recognizes both the authors and screenwriters of a produced book-to-film adaptation.
The finalists include screenwriters Alfonso Cuaron & Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby for "Children", based on the book by P.D. James; screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna and author Lauren Weisberger for "Prada"; screenwriter Neil Berger for "Illusionist", based on the story "Eisenheim the Illusionist" by Steven Millhauser; screenwriters Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock for "Scotland", based on the book by Giles Foden; and screenwriter Patrick Marber and author Zoe Heller for "Notes".
The selection committee voted to determine these five finalists from among the year's 45 eligible films.
The author-screenwriter teams behind "Children of Men", "The Devil Wears Prada", "The Illusionist", "The Last King of Scotland" and "Notes on a Scandal" have been selected as finalists for the 19th USC Libraries Scripter Award.
The Scripter, awarded annually by the USC Libraries, honors writers for the best achievement in adaptation among English-language films released during the previous year and based on a book, novella or short story. It is the only award that recognizes both the authors and screenwriters of a produced book-to-film adaptation.
The finalists include screenwriters Alfonso Cuaron & Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby for "Children", based on the book by P.D. James; screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna and author Lauren Weisberger for "Prada"; screenwriter Neil Berger for "Illusionist", based on the story "Eisenheim the Illusionist" by Steven Millhauser; screenwriters Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock for "Scotland", based on the book by Giles Foden; and screenwriter Patrick Marber and author Zoe Heller for "Notes".
The selection committee voted to determine these five finalists from among the year's 45 eligible films.
The Scripter, awarded annually by the USC Libraries, honors writers for the best achievement in adaptation among English-language films released during the previous year and based on a book, novella or short story. It is the only award that recognizes both the authors and screenwriters of a produced book-to-film adaptation.
The finalists include screenwriters Alfonso Cuaron & Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby for "Children", based on the book by P.D. James; screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna and author Lauren Weisberger for "Prada"; screenwriter Neil Berger for "Illusionist", based on the story "Eisenheim the Illusionist" by Steven Millhauser; screenwriters Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock for "Scotland", based on the book by Giles Foden; and screenwriter Patrick Marber and author Zoe Heller for "Notes".
The selection committee voted to determine these five finalists from among the year's 45 eligible films.
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