News

Carl Hester, the famed British dressage rider, trainer and owner who is set to make history this summer when he competes in Paris 2024, is getting the biopic treatment.

Veteran U.K. producers Drew Curtis and Richard Conway have teamed up with Hester to produce “Stride,” a feature set to tell the story of his remarkable rise from humble beginnings on the tiny channel island of Sark to triumph at the London 2012 Olympics.

In front of a record-breaking London crowd, Hester, competing on his horse Uthopia, alongside his legendary horse Valegro, ridden by Charlotte Dujardin (both trained by Hester at his yard in Gloucestershire) won team gold in dressage for the first time ever.

As per the film’s description, “Stride” will follow Hester’s career, “from growing up in a single parent family on Sark, a tiny channel island with no cars, through his formative years of hard work and...

Christopher Plummer, the prolific actor who starred in The Sound of Music, Beginners, The Last Station and countless more, died Friday, February 5th. He was 91.

Plummer’s manager, Lou Pitt, confirmed his death, in a statement to Variety, “Chris was an extraordinary man who deeply loved and respected his profession with great old fashion manners, self deprecating humor and the music of words. He was a National Treasure who deeply relished his Canadian roots. Through his art and humanity, he touched all of our hearts and his legendary life will...

The 2000s began with one sitcom apartment door closing and another one opening.

Friends was iconic in its heyday and is still quite popular. How I Met Your Mother aimed to take its place in the hearts of people watching television across the nation. 

While different in premise, both shows were very popular and often compared. Our TV Fanatics Sarah Little and Leora Waltuch sat down to discuss which of the two was the superior sitcom.

Leora: Why do you think How I Met Your Mother is better than Friends?

Sarah: How I Met Your Mother, overall, told a better series-long story than Friends. From beginning to end, you knew that the endpoint was all about finding out who the mother was, and the journey that the show took us on was incredible.

There were hilarious moments, and heartbreaking ones, too. How I Met Your Mother perfectly juggled the funny with the sad.

French composer Francis Lai, who won an Oscar for “Love Story” and penned the beguiling theme for “A Man and a Woman,” has died at the age of 86, the mayor of Nice announced on Wednesday. No cause of death was reported.

Lai’s plaintive piano melody for “Love Story,” the 1970 tearjerker that made stars of Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw, was his biggest hit, earning him an Oscar and a Golden Globe. His soundtrack recording was all over radio in early 1971, reaching no. 37 as a single and no. 2 as a soundtrack album. When lyrics were added to the melody, Andy Williams sang “Where Do I Begin” to no. 7 on the charts that same year.

The score almost didn’t happen. Lai initially turned down the assignment, he told the Los Angeles Times in 2001. But French actor Alain Delon, who had seen a cut of the film, called Lai and...

The Women’s Liberation Movement, or more commonly known as Women’s Lib, was in full swing by the mid-’70s. The fight for equality raged on from the late ’60s until…well, what time have you got? It was only natural for the arts to comment on the growing and vocal discontent within the feminist community, and so it was that The Stepford Wives (1975) hit the screen (based on the Ira Levin novel) with a resounding thud. Regardless, it plays as a witty indictment of male morals and suburban blandness.

Distributed by Columbia Pictures in mid-February, The Stepford Wives only brought in $4 million, was wildly derided by critics who thought it hit none of its intended targets, and screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) disagreed with many of the changes imposed by British director Bryan Forbes (International Velvet). Disgruntlements aside, it holds up remarkably well and...

There's just days to go before Ellen DeGeneres hosts the biggest event in the movie world's calendar - the 86th annual Academy Awards.

This year's nominees include newcomers Lupita Nyong'o and Barkhad Abdi, who are recognised for their supporting breakthrough performances in 12 Years a Slave and Captain Phillips respectively.

Ahead of Sunday's (March 2) glittering ceremony at Hollywood's Kodak Theater, we reminisce upon other breakthrough roles from some of the youngest Oscar-nominated stars in history - and what they've gone on to do since - below:

Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon

Tatum O'Neal became the youngest Oscar winner in history, picking up the Best Supporting Actress trophy at the tender age of 10 for her role as strong-willed tomboy Addie in Paper Moon (1973), in which she appeared opposite her father Ryan O'Neal.

The actress went on to appear in successful movies such as The Bad News Bears Nickelodeon with Burt Reynolds, and...

There's just days to go before Ellen DeGeneres hosts the biggest event in the movie world's calendar - the 86th annual Academy Awards.

This year's nominees include newcomers Lupita Nyong'o and Barkhad Abdi, who are recognised for their supporting breakthrough performances in 12 Years a Slave and Captain Phillips respectively.

Ahead of Sunday's (March 2) glittering ceremony at Hollywood's Kodak Theater, we reminisce upon other breakthrough roles from some of the youngest Oscar-nominated stars in history - and what they've gone on to do since - below:

Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon

Tatum O'Neal became the youngest Oscar winner in history, picking up the Best Supporting Actress trophy at the tender age of 10 for her role as strong-willed tomboy Addie in Paper Moon (1973), in which she appeared opposite her father Ryan O'Neal.

The actress went on to appear in successful movies such as The Bad News Bears Nickelodeon with Burt Reynolds, and...

After 50 years as the Observer's film critic, Philip French is retiring. Here he talks about his life and career and answers questions from readers and film-makers including Mike Leigh and Ken Loach

It says a lot about Philip French that after 50 years as the Observer's film critic – five decades in which he has watched more than 2,500 movies, written six books on the subject and received an OBE for his services to film – he is nervous enough about this interview to have researched his answers in advance.

When I arrive at his house in Tufnell Park, north London, I find French poring over a thick reference book at the kitchen table. A cup of coffee is left to cool as he thumbs through the relevant footnotes, anxious to get the facts absolutely right. He will turn 80 in a couple of weeks and says that he occasionally struggles to remember names of directors or actors.

Bryan Forbes, who personified the golden age of British cinema in the post-wwii era, has died at age 86. Forbes started out as an actor before morphing into a screenwriter and esteemed director. He teamed with Richard Attenborough to form a film production company. Among their films was The Angry Silence, an acclaimed 1960 movie in which both men starred. It dealt squarely with England's omnipresent tensions between business leaders and union members. Forbes co-wrote the screenplay and produced the movie. His high profile films as director include such British classics as Whistle Down the Wind, Seance on a Wet Afternoon, The Wrong Box, The Whisperers, King Rat, Deadfall, The Slipper and the Rose, The L-Shaped Room, International Velvet as well as the hit 1975 Hollywood horror flick The Stepford Wives. Forbes also wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for some of these films as well as the comedy classic The League of Gentlemen and director Attenborough's Chaplin.

Bryan Forbes dies at 86: Directed Katharine Hepburn, Leslie Caron, the original The Stepford Wives Director Bryan Forbes, whose films include the then-daring The L-Shaped Room, the all-star The Madwoman of Chaillot, and the original The Stepford Wives, has died "after a long illness" at his home in Virginia Water, Surrey, England. Forbes was 86. Born John Theobald Clarke on July 22, 1926, in London, Bryan Forbes began his film career as an actor in supporting roles in British productions of the late 1940s, e.g., Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Small Back Room / Hour of Glory and Thornton Freeland’s Dear Mr. Prohack. Another twenty or so movie roles followed in the ’50s, including those in Ronald Neame’s The Million Pound Note / Man with a Million (1954), supporting Gregory Peck, and Carol Reed’s The Key (1958), supporting Sophia Loren and William Holden. Bryan Forbes director Despite his relatively prolific output in the previous decade,...

Bryan Forbes, who directed the original Stepford Wives, Whistle Down The Wind and International Velvet, has died at the age of 86.Born John Theobald Clarke in 1926, he always intended to become an actor and trained at Rada, though he didn’t finish his studies. Devoting himself to military service for three years, he got his first screen credit in 1949’s Hour Of Glory, and became a working performer.At the same time he began to write screenplays, contributing to films such as The Black Knight, and he was the sole writer on 1955’s The Cockleshell Heroes.With his ambitions stretching beyond acting and writing, Forbes founded Beaver Films with friend and regular collaborator Richard Attenborough, where they made 1960’s The Angry Silence (with Forbes writing and Attenborough starring) among several others.Beaver Films was also behind Forbes’ first shot at directing with 1961’s Whistle Down The Wind, which scored four BAFTA nominations.

It's because Hollywood has put horses out to pasture, and the days of the great equine role seem to have passed. Joe Queenan mourns the disappearance of Hollywood's mane players

At a certain age, actors – both men and women– start to complain that they are no longer offered the roles they once were, that the scripts they are sent by their agents are not equal to their talents. But isn't that even more true of horses? Horses used to be prominent figures in films, rearing their glorious heads and shaking their magnificent manes in everything from Fort Apache to Ben-Hur, not to mention idolatrously horse-centred motion pictures such as The Man from Snowy River and National Velvet. But the arrival of a new movie such as Secretariat drives home the point that horses no longer occupy the position of power in Hollywood that they once did, that a movie featuring...

Cinematographer who honed his style on Ken Loach's innovative TV dramas

The cinematographer Tony Imi, who has died aged 72, was instrumental in pioneering a new style of filming television drama in the 1960s, before he moved on to feature films. Few could forget the misfortunes that befell a homeless young couple and their children in Cathy Come Home, a programme that shocked the nation and was instrumental in the formation of the charity Shelter.

Imi's handheld camera, on the move and close up to the action, made the story chillingly real, in the vein of a current affairs programme, rather than fiction. Cathy Come Home, screened as part of the groundbreaking Wednesday Play series by the BBC in 1966, proved that TV drama could be relevant to the lives of people in Britain.

The director, Ken Loach, was in the early days of establishing his method of social-realist film-making – shooting...