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This generation of filmgoers mostly probably thinks of Irish actor-director Kenneth Branagh as Agatha Christie’s mustachioed detective Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express (2017), Death on the Nile (2022) and the upcoming A Haunting in Venice.

But there is so much more to Branagh’s career. As a director, he’s dabbled in multiple genres, including fantasy, action, science fiction, thriller, comedy and superhero.

Branaghs career as an actor has been equally as diverse. He’s acted in legal thrillers, Westerns, romantic thrillers, animation, fantasy pics and dramedies.

And then there’s Shakespeare. There’s always Shakespeare. Branagh has a self-professed love of the Bard. He’s acted in and directed...

For all its charms — and there are many, including at least one child in a handmade octopus costume, Hugh Grant dancing a lot, and Colin Firth proposing in a crowded restaurant using only very haltingly acquired Portuguese — Richard Curtis’ beloved rom-com “Love, Actually” is actually filled with a whole lot of pain. There’s the subplot about Liam Neeson’s character’s dead wife, an entire narrative thread devoted to the personal sacrifices made by Laura Linney’s character, and then there’s what happens to Emma Thompson’s dedicated wife and mother, Karen.

In the 2003 holiday-set feature, Karen’s plot involves the discovery that her husband Harry (the late Alan Rickman) is cheating on her with his secretary Mia (Heike Makatsch). It’s a slow build, complete with a very uncomfortable party scene and an admittedly strange journey to a department store manned by Rowan Atkinson and a whole mess of cinnamon sticks,...

Masterpiece exec producer Rebecca Eaton, still upstairs at the TCA hotel in Pasadena with the flu, again missed panels today for her franchise’s panels at the confab, including one in which Kenneth Branagh came to discuss Wallander, The Final Season, airing May 8-22. This was particularly disappointing for Eaton, given that Branagh had starred in the very first program she acquired in her three-decade tenure at Masterpiece, Fortunes Of War, which also had been her first…...

Oscar-winning UK actress and writer to receive Richard Harris Award.

Emma Thompson is to receive The Richard Harris Award at The Moët British Independent Film Awards on Dec 7.

The award, introduced in 2002 in honour of actor Richard Harris, recognises outstanding contribution to British film by an actor. Previous winners have included, John Hurt, David Thewlis, Bob Hoskins, Jim Broadbent, Daniel Day-Lewis, Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon and Julie Walters.

Thompson is known for both acting and screenwriting and is the only artist to date to have received an Oscar for both acting and screenwriting.

Speaking about the Richard Harris Award, Thompson said: “This is a very special award, in name of an incredible actor who inspired so many people during his career. I am honoured to follow in the footsteps of my peers who have received this award before me.”

Thompson received her first Oscar in 1993 for her leading role in Merchant Ivory adaptation Howard...

Saving Mr Banks star to talk on stage about her career on stage and screen.

BAFTA and Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson is to discuss her craft and career at a BAFTA A Life In Pictures event on Nov 24. The event will take place at BAFTA’s headquarters in London’s Piccadilly.

Thompson received her first BAFTA at the British Academy Television Awards in 1988 for her work on Tutti Frutti and Fortunes of War, and gained a British Academy Film Award in 1993 for her performance in Howards End, for which she was also awarded her first Oscar and Golden Globe.

In 1996 Emma Thompson took home her third BAFTA for Best Actress for Sense and Sensibility, and her BAFTA-nominated script for the film also earned her the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and a second Golden Globe.

She was also BAFTA-nominated for her roles in The Remains of the Day and Love Actually, and won an...

London – Double Oscar-winning actress and screenwriter Emma Thompson will be center of attention for a BAFTA "A Life In Pictures" event later this month. Having won three British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards herself, Thompson will discuss her 30-year screen career onstage at BAFTA's central London HQ. Photos: 11 British Actors Invading Hollywood's 'It List' Thompson picked up her first BAFTA at the British Academy Television Awards in 1988 for her work on Tutti Frutti and Fortunes of War, and won a British Academy Film Award in 1993 for her turn in Howards End, for which

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Upstairs Downstairs

N Conrad

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In season two, episode two Upstairs Downstairs continued its transition from being a show about … well the folks upstairs and the folks downstairs into a Fortunes of War style World War II drama. With the matriarch dead and the housekeeper absent, writer Heidi Thomas needed to find a new way to make use of this odd assortment of characters and the 20th century’s second major war is proving to be a useful plot tool.

Blanche (Alex Kingston) and Mr Amanjit (Art Malik) are the characters who have benefited most from events in Deustchland as neither character served any real purpose in the absence of the late great Lady Holland (Eileen Atkins). The duo have now become unlikely allies in the quest to save Jewish children from the horrors of Nazi Germany.

Gifted by the author's widow, the resource includes a great deal of music writing, as well as new literary gems

A greatly expanded slang lexicon for the delinquent droogs of the novel A Clockwork Orange has been unearthed in a vast archive of the work and life of Anthony Burgess held in Manchester, alongside the libretto and score of an unseen opera about Leon Trotsky, and the script for an unmade TV series about Attila the Hun.

In preparation for next year's 50th anniversary of his notorious novel, one of the most controversial modern works in the English language, the small team at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation have been working to organise and catalogue hundreds of papers, letters and original compositions, ready for an influx of international visitors.

The extraordinary resource, which has been left to the foundation by Burgess's widow Liana, is newly housed in a renovated building...

In any other country Branagh's achievements would be a source of acclaim and collective pride

Is there something about Kenneth Branagh that justifies the sour press that has so often mugged him – including, let it be admitted, on occasion in the Guardian? Or does the intermittent Branagh-bashing say more about media culture than the man himself? In any other country, Mr Branagh's achievements would be a source of full-throated acclaim and collective pride – and indeed he has rarely been out of favour with the public. Mr Branagh may not be the supreme actor-director of his generation – but then, though he has few peers, he has never claimed to be. At 50, the record is already too prodigious to list in full: highlights include a memorable breakthrough in Fortunes of War, a succession of fine Shakespeare roles on stage and screen, compelling TV roles as the explorer Ernest Shackleton, the fascist Reinhard Heydrich and,...

In Series 2 of Wallander, Kenneth Branagh returns to PBS’s Masterpiece: Mystery, premiering on October 3rd, as detective Kurt Wallander, a man who battles crimes and his own demons, in the rural yet brutal seaside town of Ystad, Sweden.

Based on the novels by best-selling author Henning Mankell, the producer/star won a BAFTA for Best Actor for his portrayal of the moody, brilliant, intuitive and troubled man. Wallander continues his relationship with Masterpiece, which goes back eight years to Fortunes of War, and has been so successful that Series 3 is already in the works, scripts are currently being written and the hope is to shoot it a year from now.

Prior to the panel for Wallander at Wednesday’s PBS portion of the Television Critics Association Press Tour, it was announced by the network that, although Kenneth Branagh was taking time out to answer some press questions in support of the show,...

Playwright and author of TV dramas including The Beiderbecke Affair and Fortunes of War

Alan Plater, whose TV credits in a writing career spanning 50 years included The Beiderbecke Affair, Fortunes of War and the screenplay for A Very British Coup, has died, his agent confirmed to the BBC today.

Plater, 75, wrote novels and for film and theatre, but will be best remembered for a profilic body of television drama spanning six decades, starting with TV play The Referees for BBC North in 1961.

His final TV drama, Joe Maddison's War, starring Kevin Whately and Robson Green and set on the eve of the second world war in the north-east, where Plater was born, is currently in post-production for ITV.

Plater was born in Jarrow in 1935 and moved with his family as a young child to Hull, where he grew up.

He studied architecture at Newcastle University and worked for a short...

To accompany the launch of Blogomatic3000’s new book section, today we have loads of books to giveaway.

To celebrate the arrival of The Pacific on Sky Movies HD, which airs at 9pm on April 5th 2010 only on Sky Movies HD, we have copies of the books that inspired the series to giveaway – With the Old Breed by E.B Sledge and Helmet For My Pillow by Robert Leckie. Don’t forget to check out our review of the first two episodes of The Pacific right here.

All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning a copy of With the Old Breed or Helmet For My Pillow, is to answer this simple question:

The Pacific is the follow-up to which critically acclaimed HBO series?

a) Band of Brothers

b) Fortunes of War

c) Tour of Duty

Send your answer – along with your name and address – to competition@blogomatic3000.com,...