* Albert Finney - born 9th May 1936 and died 7th February 2019, aged 82. Finney was an English Actor of stage, television and cinema. He graduated from London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1956 and went on to become a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company appearing in productions of 'Henry V' and 'Coriolanus'. His first film role came with the television production of the stage play 'She Stoops to Conquer' in 1956, followed by 'The Miser' that same year. His first cinema released film was 1960's 'The Entertainer' and 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' for which he won the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer. He then followed this up with his multi-award winning 'Tom Jones' in 1963, and in 1968 he made his Directing debut with 'Charlie Bubbles' in which he also starred with Liza Minelli in her screen debut. Over the following decades Finney starred in many notable films and in acclaimed award winning roles including 1970's 'Scrooge', 1971's 'Gumshoe', 1974's 'Murder on the Orient Express' as Hercule Poirot, 1982's 'Shoot the Moon', 1983's 'The Dresser', 1984's 'Under the Volcano', 1990's 'Miller's Crossing', 2000's 'Erin Brockovich' and 'Traffic', 2003's 'Big Fish', 2007's 'The Bourne Ultimatum' and his final two roles in 2012 in 'The Bourne Legacy' and 'Skyfall'. All up Finney had 65 Acting credits to his name, twelve as Producer, two as Director and over his career he amassed 28 awards wins and another 53 nominations including five Academy Award nods, six Golden Globe nominations and three wins and eleven BAFTA nominations and three wins.
* Bruno Ganz - born 22nd March 1941, died 16th February 2019, aged 77. Ganz was born in Zurich, Switzerland who went on to play in numerous German language film and television productions in a career spanning more than fifty years. He gained his first big screen role in 1960 in 'The Man in the Black Derby' and over the following decades he would receive critical acclaim for such films as 'The American Friend', Terry Gilliam's 'The Boys from Brazil', Werner Herzog's 'Nosferatu the Vampyre', Wim Wenders 'Wings of Desire', Jonathan Demme's 'The Manchurian Candidate', perhaps his most famed role as a convincing Adolf Hitler in 'Downfall', Francis Ford Coppola's 'Youth Without Youth' and more recently 'The Baader Meinhof Complex', 'The Reader', 'Unknown', 'Night Train to Lisbon', 'The Counselor', 'In Order of Disappearance' and 'The House That Jack Built' amongst others. All up Ganz had 121 Acting credits and had 27 award wins to his name and a further fifteen nominations.
* Stanley Donen - born 13th April 1924, died 21st February 2019, aged 94. Donen was an American film Director and choreographer from Hollywood's Golden Age whose most noted works include 1949's 'On The Town', 1952's 'Singin' in the Rain', 1954's 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers', 1955's 'It's Always Fair Weather' , 1957's 'Funny Face', 1958's 'Indiscreet' and 1963's 'Charade'. A frequent collaborator with Gene Kelly with whom he shared Directing credits on several acclaimed films being 'On the Town', 'Singin' in the Rain' and 'It's Always Fair Weather' and is described as being the catalyst that transitioned Hollywood musical films from realistic backstage dramas to a more integrated art form in which the songs and dance routines were a natural continuation of the story. Over the years that followed Donen Directed such films as 'Damn Yankees', 'Arabesque', 'Two for the Road', 'Lucky Lady' and 'Blame it on Rio'. All up Donen had 32 Directing credits and seventeen as Producer to his name, with thirteen award wins including an Honorary Academy Award, and a further nine nominations.
* Andre Previn - born 6th April 1929, died 28th February 2019, aged 89. Previn was born in Germany as Andreas Ludwig Priwin. In 1938 the family moved to Los Angeles via New York and Paris and in 1943 Previn became a naturalised US citizen. He was a composer, arranger, pianist and conductor who started out his career by arranging and composing Hollywood film scores for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Previn was involved in the music as either composer, conductor or performer for over fifty films over his entire career. He won four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings (and one more for his Lifetime Achievement). His more noted film scoring works include 'Kiss Me Kate', 'It's Always Fair Weather', 'Kismet', 'Gigi', 'Porgy and Bess', 'Thoroughly Modern Millie', 'My Fair Lady', 'Paint Your Wagon', 'Jesus Christ Superstar', 'Rollerball', 'The Elephant Man', 'Just Cause', 'Fight Club' and 'Shadowboxer'. All up Previn had eight award wins and 23 nominations including four Oscar wins and seven nominations and six Primetime Emmy nods. He had also been the Music Director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Oslo Philharmonic, as well as the Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.This week coming to your local Odeon, we have five new release films heading your way. We start with the 21st groundbreaking instalment in the MCU with this latest film that offers us up a female Superhero headlining this origin movie that is set some twenty years ago and features some familiar characters and a whole bunch of new ones. We then turn to a tale of two brothers in America's Old West at the height of the Gold Rush as they hunt down a man who wronged their boss with a view to assassinating him, only to have the tables turned leading to cross, double cross and bloodshed along the way. Next up is a Spanish foreign language film featuring two star Hollywood players in this tale of kidnapping, betrayal and intrigue in this remote town outside Madrid that plays out around what was supposed to be happy joyous family reunion; and then we have an Aussie drama that fuses a post-apocalyptic thriller with real life interviews centring around mans continuing physical violence towards woman in our society today. Closing out the week is a psychological horror offering surrounding a serial killer at large for twelve years who sees his grisly murders as a form of artistic merit with each one developing him into what he is.
Whatever your taste in big screen film entertainment is this week - be it any of the five latest release new movies as Previewed below, or those doing the rounds currently on general release and as Reviewed and Previewed in previous Blog Posts here at Odeon Online, you are most welcome to share your movie going thoughts, opinions and observations by leaving your relevant, succinct and appropriate views in the Comments section below this or any other Post. We'd love to hear from you, and in the meantime, enjoy your big screen Odeon outing during the week ahead.
'CAPTAIN MARVEL' (Rated M) - and here we have the twenty-first film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the first film in the MCU to feature a female led Superhero. This much hyped eagerly anticipated film is said to be the second most keenly awaited blockbuster of 2019 behind 'Avengers : End Game' with advance ticket sales already placing it in third place of any MCU film to date behind 'Avengers : Infinity War' and 'Black Panther'. Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck for US$152M, development of the film began in 2013 and was officially announced in late 2014, with Brie Larson publicised as Carol Danvers (aka Captain Marvel) at San Diego's Comic-Con in 2016. The film saw its Premier in Hollywood on 4th March and goes on general release in the US on 8th March, two days after its Australian release.
Set in 1995, Captain Marvel, aka Carol Danvers, (Brie Larson) is a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, as she becomes one of the galaxy's mightiest heroes and joins Starforce, an elite Kree military team, before returning home to Earth with questions about her past and true identity, when our fragile blue planet is caught slap bang right in the middle of a galactic conflict between two alien worlds. Also starring Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson (who were both digitally 'de-aged' by 25 years to place them in the mid-'90's setting), Ben Mendelsohn as Talos, Djimon Hounsou as Korath, Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser, Annette Benning as the Supreme Intelligence, Jude Law as Yon-Rogg, and of course Stan Lee has a posthumous cameo.
'THE SISTERS BROTHERS' (Rated MA15+) - here French film Director and Screenwriter Jacques Audiard brings us his first American English language film offering having previously Directed such notable outings as 'The Beat That My Heart Skipped', 'A Prophet' and 'Rust and Bone'. Based on the 2011 book of the same name by Patrick deWitt, the movie rights were picked up by John C. Reilly's Production Company that same year, went into Production in 2017, saw its World Premier at the Venice International Film Festival back in September last year, went on general release later that same month in the US, garnered generally positive press, but is considered a Box Office bomb having only recouped US$11M of its US$38M budget outlay so far. The darkly comedic Western stars John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix as our titular and notorious assassin brothers Eli and Charlie Sisters respectively who get caught up in the California Gold Rush on the hunt for Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed) whom they have been sent to kill, by their employer known only as The Commodore (Rutger Hauer). Along the way they team up with John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) who is a tracker and who is also employed by The Commodore to bring Warm in, but befriends him instead learning that he is a free spirited chemist who has devised a chemical that temporarily shows the whereabouts of gold underwater. All manner of cross and double-cross ensues as the four men chase each down en route to California.
'REFLECTIONS IN THE DUST' (Rated MA15+) - this Australian post apocalyptic drama is Directed and Written by Aussie Luke Sullivan and saw its World Premier screening at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival last year and now goes on a limited release across Australia. Here, an unspoken event has caused civilisation to crumble, leaving the survivors to cluster in the wilderness. Among them is a blind physical theatre and circus performer, ex-Paralympian, and advocate for disabled inclusion girl, Freckles (Sarah Houbolt) who struggles to survive with her father – a paranoid schizophrenic clown (Robin Royce Queree). As she dreams of what may exist beyond her wasteland home, her father is increasingly consumed by fear, paranoia and hysteria. This film is described as a powerful allegory for the epidemic of violence against women in Australia and is dedicated to the countless women who continue to lose their lives on a weekly basis at the hands of a male. The Australian government deemed the film to be too extreme for audiences and strongly suggested it not be completed during production, however Director Luke Sullivan pushed ahead with the film, steadfastly stating that such an extreme story needs to be told in an era where ‘we are losing grandmothers, mothers, sisters and friends to senseless acts of violence perpetrated by men’.
'THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT' (Rated R18+) - Written and Directed by Lars von Trier this psychological horror film debuted at last years Cannes Film Festival where it divided audiences. It subsequently went on limited release in the US in late November when it polarised Critics and has so far taken US$2M from its budgeted outlay of almost US$10M. The film here follows Jack (Matt Dillon), a serial killer, over the course of twelve years during the 1970's and '80's in the US State of Washington. Jack has an artistic leaning and he sees his murders as art forms which he attempts to refine on each occasion which in turn help develop him as a serial killer. Throughout the film he has side discussions with Verge (Bruno Ganz) in between the depictions of the murders, most of which revolve around talk of philosophy, ethics or Jack's view of the world. Also starring Uma Thurman and Riley Keough.With five new release movies this week to tempt you out to your local Odeon, remember to share your movie going thoughts with your other like minded cinephile friends afterwards here at Odeon Online. In the meantime, I'll see you sometime somewhere in the week ahead at your local Odeon.
-Steve, at Odeon Online-
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