Starter for Ten

We have been running our film club for ten years now and decided to use one screening to celebrate it: we provided prosecco and a special anniversary cake, but the challenge was to choose the right film.

we brainstormed all the titles we could think of with "ten" in them and discarded most of them as too obscure or just plain wrong. And then we thought of Starter for Ten, which was released the  year we started and in retrospect would have been a possible film to screen back then.

Never mind, I'm glad to have seen it at last and really enjoyed it.

Here are my notes:

Starter For Ten

UK 2006                      92 minutes

Director:                      Tom Vaughan

Starring:                        James McAvoy, Alice Eve, Rebecca Hall, Catherine Tate, Benedict Cumberpatch and Mark Gatiss

Awards and Nominations

• One win at the Austin Film Festival
• Three nominations including Best British Film at the Empire Awards

“A modest and very British movie (though co-produced by Tom Hanks), Tom Vaughan's Starter For Ten is a rite-of-passage comedy about the working-class Essex boy Brian Jackson's first two terms studying English literature at Bristol University in 1985. James McAvoy is amusing and convincing as the gauche Brian who leaves his old chums (Dominic Cooper and James Corden from The History Boys) back home on the estuary and is torn between two fellow students, the self-consciously sophisticated, middle-class Alice (Alice Eve), and the wry, politically active Jewish Rebecca (Rebecca Hall). Much of the action turns on Brian joining Bristol's University Challenge team (Mark Gatiss does a hilarious Bamber Gascoigne). Among the various scenes of humiliation two stand out, one very funny in the style of Lucky Jim Dixon's weekend at Professor Welch's home, the other truly painful.”

Philip French

 
It is interesting to look back at a film ten years after its release to see how the careers of its cast and production team have developed. Screenplay writer David Nicholls read English and Drama at Bristol University and turned to writing after struggling to make a career as an actor: he wrote several episodes of the series Cold Feet before writing Starter for Ten as a novel after another series he had been writing was cancelled. His subsequent work includes adaptations of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Great Expectations and Far From the Madding Crowd (starring Carey Mulligan) and among his novels is the award-winning One Day which he later adapted for the screen with Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess in the lead roles. Director Tom Vaughan also studied at Bristol University and made his name as a director on TV working on several series of Cold Feet. Starter for Ten was his first feature film and since then he has worked regularly for both TV and cinema. His most recent work has been for the TV series Victoria, for which he has directed three episodes.

 James McAvoy was already a rising star in 2006 with lead roles in The Last King of Scotland (2006), Becoming Jane (2007) and Atonement (2007) to follow on closely from this film, but Rebecca Hall, James Corden and Benedict Cumberpatch were all at the start of their TV and film acting careers after early work on stage. Additionally although Catherine Tate had written and starred in her own TV series she made this film before she appeared with David Tennant as a Tardis regular in Doctor Who, and the multi-talented Mark Gatiss, having made his name in The League of Gentlemen had yet to write for Doctor Who, co-create Sherlock or become a familiar character actor with roles in programmes as diverse as Game of Thrones, Wolf Hall, Sherlock (where his portrayal of Mycroft had strong echoes of Peter Mandelson)  and The Coalition (where he actually played Peter Mandelson and memorably made his first appearance out of a cloud of smoke.).

 

Here's the trailer:

 

 

Eye in the Sky

I saw the trailer for this film long before its release and got completely the wrong picture: I thought it was promoting an action thriller and wondered what stars of the calibre of Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman were doing in it. As a bizarre coincidence I think I saw the trailer the day that the news of Alan Rickman's death was released.

And then I read the reviews, was sorry that I'd missed it in its first run in the cinema and was delighted when we scheduled it to run earlier this month.

My anticipation of the film was entirely justified and even though i had a fairly good idea how the story would develop there were whole sections when i found myself on the edge of my seat and almost forgetting to breathe.

Here are my notes:

Eye in the Sky

UK 2015                      102 minutes

Director:                      Gavin Hood

Starring:                        Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman and Barkhad Abdi

Awards and Nominations

• One nomination for Best Narrative Feature at Palm Springs International Film Festival

“Here, the South African director Gavin Hood assembles an A-list ensemble cast (including Alan Rickman in his last on-screen role) for a provocatively tense thriller that negotiates the moral minefields of its thorny subject matter in crowd-pleasing fashion.”

Mark Kermode

Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) is remotely commanding a drone operation to capture a group of dangerous terrorists in Nairobi. The mission suddenly escalates from a “capture” to a “kill” operation and the members of the military have to work with politicians and lawyers thousands of miles away from the action to gain their approval before they can strike.

The film has a complex production history, with Guy Hibbert’s screenplay being initially developed by BBC Films before Gavin Hood was appointed director and, subsequently, Colin Firth’s production company becoming involved to make the film. Firth himself planned to play the part of James Willett the UK Foreign Secretary, but the role was ultimately played by Iain Glen with Firth’s sole involvement being a credit as one of the film’s producers. Director Gavin Hood made the entire film in South Africa, but none of the four leading actors met up during the production: rather Hood filmed each of them alone to reflect their separate specific locations in the story. On its release the film received many positive reviews with critics commenting both on the cerebral spin it gave to the modern political thriller as well as the powerful acting of its cast.

Gavin Hood made his name with the South African drama Tsotsi (2005) which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film before moving to the US where his more commercial films have included X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) and the science fiction epic Ender’s Game (2013).

 

Here's the trailer:

 

 

 

The Wars of the Roses

Over the past week I've finally managed to catch up with the brilliant BBC adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry VI and Richard III plays, ie The Wars of the Roses.

I've seen Richard III several times (with Anthony Sher, Ian McKellen and Kevin Spacey playing the king): each was brilliant in very different productions: traditional, a fascist 1930s, and mid-Atlantic. However these were standalone productions and it is only when you see how Richard develops over the three parts of Henry VI that you can fully understand all the historical background. Having also recently visited Laycock Abbey which was used as a location it was interesting to see how well it worked on screen.

It was no surprise to discover that Benedict Cumberpatch was brilliant in the lead role, but the production had casting in depth with Judi Dench and many other superb actors in supporting roles.

However having watched it at a time when news of the US presidential elections is flooding media as I watched the plays I began to see a strange and unexpected counterpoint to the drama. And then this morning I read this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/opinion/sunday/shakespeare-explains-the-2016-election.html?_r=0

Years ago I read a book called Shakespeare Our Contemporary while studying A Level English. Now I know that Shakespeare will always be our contemporary.