Birthday's to share this week : 22nd - 28th January 2017.

Do you celebrate your Birthday this week?

Rosamund Pike does on 27th January - check out my tribute to this Birthday Girl turning 38, at the end of this feature.

Do you also share your birthday with a well known, highly regarded & famous Actor or Actress; share your special day with a Director, Producer, Writer, Cinematographer, Singer/Songwriter or Composer of repute; or share an interest in whoever might notch up another year in the coming seven days? Then, look no further! Whilst there will be too many to mention in this small but not insignificant and beautifully written and presented Blog, here are the more notable and noteworthy icons of the big screen, and the small screen, that you will recognise, and that you might just share your birthday with in the week ahead. If so, Happy Birthday to you from Odeon Online!

Sunday 22nd January

• Piper Laurie - Born 1932, turns 85 - Actress
• Linda Blair - Born 1959, turns 58 - Actress
• Diane Lane - Born 1965, turns 52 - Actress
• John Hurt - Born 1940, turns 77 - Actor
• Jim Jarmusch - Born 1953, turns 64 - Director | Producer | Writer | Actor | Editor | Composer  

Monday 23rd January

• Shin'ichi (Sonny) Chiba - Born 1939, turns 78 - Actor | Producer | Director | Stuntman
• Rutger Hauer - Born 1944, turns 73 - Actor | Producer | Director
• Richard Dean Anderson - Born 1950, turns 67 - Actor | Producer
• Richard Roxburgh - Born 1962, turns 55 - Actor | Writer | Producer | Director
• Ewen Bremner - Born 1972, turns 45 - Actor | Producer  

Tuesday 24th January

• Adrian Edmondson - Born 1957, turns 60 - Actor | Writer | Director
• Ed Helms - Born 1974, turns 43 - Actor | Writer | Producer | Singer
• Nastassja Kinski - Born 1961, turns 56 - Actress | Producer  

Wednesday 25th January

• Tobe Hooper - Born 1943, turns 74 - Director | Producer | Writer | Actor | Composer
• Whit Stillman - Born 1952, turns 65 - Director | Producer | Writer  

Thursday 26th January

• Scott Glenn - Born 1941, turns 76 - Actor
• David Strathairn - Born 1949, turns 68 - Actor
• Ellen DeGeneres - Born 1958, turns 59 - Television Personality | Actress | Writer | Producer  

Friday 27th January

• Mimi Rogers - Born 1956, turns 61 - Actress | Producer
• Bridget Fonda - Born 1964, turns 53 - Actress
• Rosamund Pike - Born 1979, turns 38 - Actress
• James Cromwell - Born 1940, turns 77 - Actor | Producer
• Frank Miller - Born 1957, turns 60 - Writer | Producer | Director | Actor
• Alan Cumming - Born 1965, turns 52 - Actor | Writer | Producer | Director | Singer  

Saturday 28th January

• Alan Alda - Born 1936, turns 81 - Actor | Writer | Producer | Director
• Frank Darabont - Born 1959, turns 58 - Writer | Producer | Director | Actor
• Elijah Wood - Born 1981, turns 36 - Actor | Producer | Singer
• Will Poulter - Born 1993, turns 24 - Actor | Writer  

Rosamund Mary Ellen Pike was born in London, England, to mother Caroline and father Julian Pike - both opera singers. Her father currently works at the Birmingham Conservatoire as Professor of Music and Head of Operatic Studies. Her parents work commitments saw the family travel extensively across Europe in Rosamund's earlier years up until when she was seven or so years of age. She won a scholarship to the  acclaimed independent Badminton Girls School, near Bristol, and while appearing in a production of 'Romeo and Juliet' as Juliet at the National Youth Theatre was noticed by a talent agent, who aided her in her early professional acting career aspirations. She eventually secured a place to study English Literature at Wadham College, at Oxford University from where she graduated. She took a year off to pursue her acting, gaining stage appearances in 'Skylight', 'All My Sons' and several Shakespeare plays. She graduated with a degree in 2001.

While still studying at Oxford she acted and Directed various stage plays, and from 1998 gained work on television. These included appearances on the Sci-Fi pilot for 'Seven Days' as a CIA Agent, the made for TV movie 'A Rather English Marriage', on three episodes of the BBC four part mini-series 'Wives and Daughters', on one episode of the Police procedural drama series 'Trial and Retribution' and then the two part 'Love in a Cold Climate'. In 2002 however, Pike gained her big screen debut playing Bond girl Miranda Frost, an undercover MI6 Agent and double agent to Pierce Brosnan's James Bond in Lee Tamahori's 'Die Another Day' - the twentieth film in the forty year running franchise. Whilst the film gained mixed critical reviews it did bring in US$432M and was the highest grossing Bond film of all-time, up to that point.

From here Pike has rarely been very far away from our big screens. In 2004 she starred in the Israeli film 'Promised Land', and then 'The Libertine' with Johnny Depp and John Malkovich. 2005 followed with Joe Wrights adaptation of 'Pride & Prejudice' with Keira Knightley, Matthew Macfadyen, Donald Sutherland and Judi Dench and then a complete change of pace and genre with the Sci-Fi action horror offering 'Doom' with Karl Urban and Dwayne Johnson. 'Fracture' came next in 2007 with Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling and David Strathairn, then 'Fugitive Pieces', 'An Education' with Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Dominic Cooper and Emma Thompson and then a return to Sci-Fi action mystery with Jonathan Mostow's 'Surrogates' with Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames, and James Cromwell seeing out the decade. In the meantime, there had been further small screen appearances too on 'Foyle's War', 'The Tower' and made for television film 'Freewill'.

As the decade turned over there was the satirical thriller 'Burning Palms', comedy drama 'Barney's Version' with Paul Giamatti, Dustin Hoffman and Minnie Driver, the British film 'Made in Dagenham' with Bob Hoskins and then the Bond spoof 'Johnny English Reborn' with Rowan Atkinson which was a commercial success raking in US$160M from its US$45M budget outlay, but less of a critical one. 'The Big Year' with Jack Black, Steve Martin and Owen Wilson came along in 2011 and bombed at the Box Office, unlike Pike's follow up film as Queen Andromeda in the epic adventure action fantasy 'Wrath of the Titans' with an all star cast featuring Sam Worthington, Bill Nighy, Ralph Fiennes, Liam Neeson, Edgar Ramirez, Danny Huston and Toby Kebbel. That film made US$306M at the global Box Office from its US$150M budget but fared well less well critically too.

The first instalment in big screen adaptation of Lee Child's character 'Jack Reacher' was released in 2012 with Pike starring as defence lawyer Helen Rodin opposite Tom Cruise as former US Military Police Officer turned drifter and righter or wrongs Jack Reacher.  The film recovered US$219M from its US$60M outlay, and has so far spawned one sequel - last years 'Jack Reacher : Never Go Back'. 'The Devil You Know' and then Edgar Wright's end of the world Sci-Fi comedy 'The World's End' with Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Pierce Brosnan, Eddie Marsan and Paddy Considine was released in 2013 to widespread critical acclaim. Pike teamed up with Brosnan for the third time in Nick Hornby's black comedy adaptation of 'A Long Way Down'. She also paired up with Simon Pegg again in 'Hector and the Search for Happiness' which also starred Toni Collette - her Co-Star from 'A Long Way Down'.

'What We Did On Our Holiday' was her third film offering of 2014, and closing out that year was David Fincher's acclaimed psychological thriller 'Gone Girl' in which Pike starred as Amy Dunne the missing and deranged wife opposite Ben Affleck's Nick Dunne. The film grossed US$370M from its US$61M budget, and garnered Pike her first Best Actress Academy Award nomination, as well as Golden Globe, BAFTA, SAG, and AACTA nods. All up the film received 64 award wins and a further 171 nominations.



2015 saw 'Return to Sender' with 'A United Kingdom' released just before Christmas and in the US not until early February. Here Pike stars opposite David Oyelowo in this biographical romantic drama film set in the late '40's when Seretse Khama, the Prince of Bechuanaland meets and falls in love with Ruth Williams, a London office clerk, and the couple have to deal with the fall out from their frowned upon inter-racial, mixed colour union.




Since 2015 Pike has voiced the characters of Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward and Captain Ridley O'Bannon in the remake of the cult '60's Gerry and Sylvia Anderson television series 'Thunderbirds' with this updated telling 'Thunderbirds Are Go' across two seasons so far and 39 episodes. Next up and due for release in 2017 are 'Hostiles', a Western with Christian Bale, Jesse Plemons, Stephen Lang and Ben Foster; 'High Wire Act', an action thriller with Jon Hamm; 'Entebbe' based on the 1976 terrorist hijacking of a passenger plane forced to land in Entebbe, Uganda, also starring Daniel Bruhl; and 'The Man with the Iron Heart' (formerly known as 'HHhH') with Mia Wasikowska, Jason Clarke and Jack O'Connell. Then due in 2018 and currently in pre-production is 'The Bends' another action thriller.

All up Pike has 42 Acting credits under her belt, excluding a number of stage acting roles, has one Academy Award, BAFTA, Golden Globe, SAG and AACTA nomination for her role in 'Gone Girl' and all told has so far accumulated 29 award wins and a total 51 other nominations. She was previously engaged to Director and Producer Joe Wright, and has since been in a steady relationship with mathematical researcher Robie Uniacke since 2009 and they have two sons together - Solo (born in 2012) and Atom (born in 2014).

Rosamund Pike - an English rose, never typecast and plays to her strengths, has been awarded as a Bond Girl and for 'Gone Girl', plays the cello and the piano, speaks both French and German, has the looks and increasingly the star power, and is very clearly in demand on stage, television and the big screen. Happy Birthday to you Rosamund, from Odeon Online.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

What's new in Odeon's this week : Thursday 22nd December 2016.

As another year draws to a close I take this opportunity to wish my loyal and ever expanding Blog readership a very Merry Christmas and Best Wishes for 2017 to you all. Thank-you for your support of Odeon Online in the past twelve months - it makes the writing, the research, the time and countless hours spent in a dark place with a bunch of strangers worthwhile and all the more fulfilling. It's been a big year at the movies, and 2017 promises more of the same and as long as you keep reading, I'll keep watching and writing. Thanks again, and may your festive season he fun, relaxing, safe and cinematic in some way.

This week there are three new release films ahead of the Boxing Day rush, and all three are character studies centering around everyday couples living their everyday lives but challenged in some way. The first sees an aspiring prolific poet who loses his complete works, only to be given some sort of salvation by a Japanese mystery man when he least expected it. Then a true life drama bio-pic of inter-racial marriage when it was truly frowned up on by family, Governments and the laws of the land, and then next is a French film of a random encounter of two people that has far reaching and unexpected consequences for them both as they get to know each other.

Three films then to tempt you out to your local movie theatre in the lead up to Christmas, together with a haul of other great cinema content still out of general release and as Reviewed and Previewed between these pages. Remember too that your constructive, relevant, pertinent feedback is always warmly welcomed when you have sat through your film of choice in the week ahead. Simply leave a Comment below this or any other Post - we'd love to hear from you. In the meantime, enjoy your movie.

'PATERSON' (Rated M) - Written and Directed by Jim Jarmusch, this film competed for the Palme D'Or at this years Cannes Film Festival and it walked away with the Palm Dog Award for the performance of the dog, Marvin, who plays an important role in the film's story. Here we have Paterson (Adam Driver), a bus driver living in the city of Paterson, New Jersey, and the film charts a week in the life of the man who drives his bus and writes poetry in between shifts, or when inspiration takes him. He records his poetic thoughts in a notebook, based on his observations of life as he passes it by, and the idle chatter of his passengers. Each day after work he takes his dog Marvin for a walk around the block stopping off at his favoured jazz bar for a beer and to observe the conversations and the comings & goings of the other patrons to the bar with the owner Doc (Barry Shabaka Henley).

His wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) is his biggest fan of his poetry and she urges him to get his work published or at least copy his material. He finally relents and agrees to copy his work, but returning home one evening later in the week after the couple have shared a evening out together, they discover that Marvin has ripped to shreds Paterson's note book, destroying all of his poetry. The next day a forlorn Paterson takes solace at his favourite beauty spot overlooking The Great Falls of the Passaic River where he encounters a mysterious Japanese man who is reading the works of his own favourite Poet William Carlos Williams, and the mystery man hands him an empty notebook as a gift. Hailed as Driver's best performance to date, and one of Jarmusch's finest works also, this is a slow burn movie where very little happens, but it is an intense character study that is restrained, thoughtful and a celebration of a simple life.

'A UNITED KINGDOM' (Rated PG) - Directed by Amma Asante and based on the real life story of the inter-racial romance that developed in 1948 between Sir Seretse Khama who was born into one of the more powerful of the royal families of the then British Protectorate of Bechuanaland, and educated in South Africa and in the United Kingdom, he returned, with a popular but controversial bride, Ruth Williams, a Lloyds of London clerk, to lead his country's race for independence. He founded the Botswana Democratic Party in 1962 and became Prime Minister in 1965. In 1966, Botswana gained independence and Seretse Khama became its first President. This is that story of Seretse (David Oyelowo) and Ruth (Rosmaund Pike) and how their love for each other was frowned upon by their respective families, and the Governments of South Africa and Great Britain at the time. Defying their families, apartheid and the British Empire the pair move from their exile back to their African Kingdom to take on the mantle of power following Botswana's independence. The film also stars Tom Felton, Nicholas Lyndhurst and Jessica Oyelowo. The film Premiered at TIFF in September, saw its UK release in November and is released Stateside in February 2017. The film has so far received generally positive reviews.

'ROSALIE BLUM' (Rated M) - this French foreign language film was released in late March this year in France and has been touring around the festival circuit ever since gaining much critical praise in the process. Although released officially this week, it has been showing for some weeks already at selected cinemas around the country. Based on the trilogy of graphic novels by Camille Jourdy and written for the big screen and also Directed in his debut by Julien Rappeneau this comedy/drama tells the story in three chapters of Vincent Machot (Kyan Khojandi) a 30+ year old hairdresser whose life revolves around his work, his overbearing mother and a cousin who is trying to set up Vincent with the prefect date. One day when running an errand for his mother, he happens on Rosalie Blum (Noemie Lvovsky) a grocery store worker and their eyes meet. Vincent is convinced they have met before, but knows not when, where or how. He becomes intrigued by Rosalie and starts obsessing about her, to a point where he begins following her. What ensues are a series of dramatic, adventurous and funny coincidences that ultimately bring the pair together and change their lives thereafter.

With three films taking us up to Christmas, and a slew of new releases coming your way on Boxing Day too. Keep watching for more Previews, Reviews and updates, and in the meantime, I'll see you sometime in the coming week, at the Odeon.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-