A 69-year-old grandmother and "retired dogsbody" has appeared on three BBC quiz shows in two weeks. However, Pat Barker's trio of gameshow appearances did not prove fruitful and she failed to win a single prize. Her first cameo was on hit Alexander Armstrong daytime quiz Pointless, on which she appeared with her son. The pair lost in the final round. She later starred on Mastermind, with the specialist subject of EastEnders, and Nick Knowles BBC Two series Perfection. She lost on both shows. Speaking about her glut of TV quiz show appearances, Barker (more)...
- 2/15/2012
- by By Alex Fletcher
- Digital Spy
More Dickens and even more Shakespeare, but also new novels from Toni Morrison, Hilary Mantel, Zadie Smith, plus exciting new voices – 2012's literary highlights
January
10 Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood, starring Matthew Rhys and Tamzin Merchant, begins – and, unlike the book, ends – on BBC2.
13 Michael Morpurgo's much-loved children's novel War Horse, a long-running favourite at the National and on Broadway, gets the Hollywood treatment. A tearjerking saga about a young soldier and his horse – it was only a matter of time before it was Spielberged.
16 Ts Eliot prize. Despite withdrawals from the shortlist over objections to a hedge fund's sponsorship of the prize, the Eliot remains the UK's premier poetry award, and its eve-of-event reading is always a treat. This year's shortlist includes Daljit Nagra, Carol Ann Duffy and John Burnside.
20 Release of film of Coriolanus, an Orson Wellesian effort directed by and starring Ralph Fiennes,...
January
10 Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood, starring Matthew Rhys and Tamzin Merchant, begins – and, unlike the book, ends – on BBC2.
13 Michael Morpurgo's much-loved children's novel War Horse, a long-running favourite at the National and on Broadway, gets the Hollywood treatment. A tearjerking saga about a young soldier and his horse – it was only a matter of time before it was Spielberged.
16 Ts Eliot prize. Despite withdrawals from the shortlist over objections to a hedge fund's sponsorship of the prize, the Eliot remains the UK's premier poetry award, and its eve-of-event reading is always a treat. This year's shortlist includes Daljit Nagra, Carol Ann Duffy and John Burnside.
20 Release of film of Coriolanus, an Orson Wellesian effort directed by and starring Ralph Fiennes,...
- 1/6/2012
- The Guardian - Film News
Edinburgh on film isn't just Trainspotting it's classics: Chariots of Fire, romance: One Day and thrills: Burke and Hare. Here are 10, picked by Andrew Pulver, film editor of the Guardian
• As featured in our Edinburgh city guide
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Ronald Neame, 1969
Muriel Spark's celebrated 1961 novella was, until Trainspotting, Edinburgh's most readily identifiable contribution to modern literature. Inspired largely by Spark's own time at [James] Gillespie's school, this elaborate, empathetic satire on a fascism-admiring teacher would not have been expected to be a major candidate for Oscar attention, but Maggie Smith won the best actress award in 1969, after Ronald "Poseidon Adventure" Neame directed the film version. Sixties Edinburgh has no problem standing in for 30s Edinburgh: the Marcia Blaine school is sited in the Edinburgh Academy building in Henderson Row, while it's possible to stand in the exact same spot as Maggie Smith on the Grassmarket and bellow: "Observe,...
• As featured in our Edinburgh city guide
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Ronald Neame, 1969
Muriel Spark's celebrated 1961 novella was, until Trainspotting, Edinburgh's most readily identifiable contribution to modern literature. Inspired largely by Spark's own time at [James] Gillespie's school, this elaborate, empathetic satire on a fascism-admiring teacher would not have been expected to be a major candidate for Oscar attention, but Maggie Smith won the best actress award in 1969, after Ronald "Poseidon Adventure" Neame directed the film version. Sixties Edinburgh has no problem standing in for 30s Edinburgh: the Marcia Blaine school is sited in the Edinburgh Academy building in Henderson Row, while it's possible to stand in the exact same spot as Maggie Smith on the Grassmarket and bellow: "Observe,...
- 10/13/2011
- by Andrew Pulver
- The Guardian - Film News
Oscar-nominated Us screenwriter known for his work on Norma Rae, Hud and Hombre
The husband-and-wife screenwriting team of Irving Ravetch, who has died aged 89, and Harriet Frank Jr specialised in adapting the work of writers as varied as William Faulkner, Larry McMurtry and Elmore Leonard. The pair enjoyed a particularly successful collaboration with the director Martin Ritt, with whom they made eight films notable for their acute concern with social justice. The screenplays for two of these, Hud (1963) and Norma Rae (1979), were nominated for Academy awards. The latter, for which Sally Field won an Oscar for best actress, had a pro-union theme that illustrated Ravetch's belief in film's ability to "seed ideas and wake up dormant minds".
He was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Jewish immigrant parents. His father, from Russia, was a pharmacist who became a rabbi. His mother, from what is now Israel, taught Hebrew. When Ravetch...
The husband-and-wife screenwriting team of Irving Ravetch, who has died aged 89, and Harriet Frank Jr specialised in adapting the work of writers as varied as William Faulkner, Larry McMurtry and Elmore Leonard. The pair enjoyed a particularly successful collaboration with the director Martin Ritt, with whom they made eight films notable for their acute concern with social justice. The screenplays for two of these, Hud (1963) and Norma Rae (1979), were nominated for Academy awards. The latter, for which Sally Field won an Oscar for best actress, had a pro-union theme that illustrated Ravetch's belief in film's ability to "seed ideas and wake up dormant minds".
He was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Jewish immigrant parents. His father, from Russia, was a pharmacist who became a rabbi. His mother, from what is now Israel, taught Hebrew. When Ravetch...
- 10/4/2010
- by Michael Carlson
- The Guardian - Film News
IFC Films Sheridan and Buscemi
In the 1985 film “Variety,” director Bette Gordon tackled the idea of female sexual empowerment and desire through the lens of pornography. For her latest film “Handsome Harry,” which debuts today in New York, Gordon flipped her interest in gender dynamics to the male perspective.
“Handsome Harry” stars Jamey Sheridan as a divorced Vietnam veteran who’s called to the bedside of Tom, a dying Navy buddy played by Steve Buscemi. Harry promises to apologize to a gay fellow vet the two men and their friends assaulted 30 years earlier. Harry visits each of the men who participated in the attack — including Aidan Quinn as a now-pacifist professor and John Savage as a homophobe with a gay son — before an emotional visit to the victimized soldier (played by Campbell Scott).
Gordon says she was attracted to Nicholas T. Proferes’s script because it reminded her of the strong,...
In the 1985 film “Variety,” director Bette Gordon tackled the idea of female sexual empowerment and desire through the lens of pornography. For her latest film “Handsome Harry,” which debuts today in New York, Gordon flipped her interest in gender dynamics to the male perspective.
“Handsome Harry” stars Jamey Sheridan as a divorced Vietnam veteran who’s called to the bedside of Tom, a dying Navy buddy played by Steve Buscemi. Harry promises to apologize to a gay fellow vet the two men and their friends assaulted 30 years earlier. Harry visits each of the men who participated in the attack — including Aidan Quinn as a now-pacifist professor and John Savage as a homophobe with a gay son — before an emotional visit to the victimized soldier (played by Campbell Scott).
Gordon says she was attracted to Nicholas T. Proferes’s script because it reminded her of the strong,...
- 4/16/2010
- Speakeasy/Wall Street Journal
If you’re an "In Treatment” fan, you’re probably in a state of withdrawal right now. As it happens, last week, when the show aired its final three episodes, I read a book that reminded me a lot of the HBO drama.
Pat Barker’s “Regeneration” (Plume), which came out in Britain in 1991, may be set during World War I, but its parallels to “In Treatment” are remarkable.
This graceful and affecting novel tells the story of Siegfried Sassoon, a decorated British Army officer and poet who, in 1917, said he would no longer fight because he had no faith in the way the war was being conducted.
The military authorities diagnosed shell shock and sent Sassoon to Craiglockhart, a psychiatric hospital in Scotland. At the heart of the book are the encounters between Sassoon and W.H.R. Rivers, the empathic and unconventional doctor treating him.
As depicted in the novel,...
Pat Barker’s “Regeneration” (Plume), which came out in Britain in 1991, may be set during World War I, but its parallels to “In Treatment” are remarkable.
This graceful and affecting novel tells the story of Siegfried Sassoon, a decorated British Army officer and poet who, in 1917, said he would no longer fight because he had no faith in the way the war was being conducted.
The military authorities diagnosed shell shock and sent Sassoon to Craiglockhart, a psychiatric hospital in Scotland. At the heart of the book are the encounters between Sassoon and W.H.R. Rivers, the empathic and unconventional doctor treating him.
As depicted in the novel,...
- 3/31/2008
- by Tempo
- The Watcher
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