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Dame Joan Plowright’s career spanned several decades, and she became one of the most celebrated actresses in Britain. She’s equally brilliant on stage and screen and has immensely contributed to the arts. Similarly, Cher, a pop culture icon and acclaimed actress has impressed everyone with her charisma and versatility throughout her career.

Joan Plowright in Enchanted April | Miramax

When these two legendary women came together for a film, their chemistry was unmatched. Their collaboration shows how a talented cast can bring a movie to life, and the fact that two amazing actresses can co-exist in a project, without trying to overshadow the other.

Joan Plowright and Cher’s beautiful chemistry in Tea with Mussolini Cher | Jimmy Kimmel Live / YouTube

Joan Plowright and Cher came together for a semi-autobiographical film, titled, Tea with Mussolini, and it was helmed by Franco Zeffirelli, who brought out the best in both actresses.

Joan Plowright, a British acting legend of stage and screen and the widow of Laurence Olivier, has died at the age of 95, Variety reports. A cause of death has not been disclosed.

She was the recipient of a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (for 1961’s A Taste of Honey) and two Golden Globes — one for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture (for Enchanted April) and the other for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries or Television Film (for HBO’s Stalin) — both of which she was awarded in 1993. She is one of only four actresses...

Oscar-winners Helen Hunt and Dustin Hoffman have signed on to star in the new, still-untitled feature from British director Peter Greenaway (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover).

Principal photography for the film has begun in Lucca, Italy.

Sofia Boutella (Kingsman), Giacomo Gianniotti (Grey’s Anatomy), Jonno Davies (Kingsman: The Secret Service) and Laura Morante (The Son’s Room) co-star in the drama, the first feature from Greenaway since 2015’s Eisenstein in Guanajuato.

Based on Greenaway’s original script, the film is the story of an intelligent man whose final big adventure is intended to be his own death, which he wants to organize in an elegant, sensible and tidy manner, with as few loose ends as possible.

“The theme of this film is highly relevant and topical in these times, where the end-of-life topic is headline news on a daily basis,” said Greenaway. “As such, I am very excited...

Peter Greenaway is the one who turned down “Roger Rabbit.”

The “Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover” provocateur claimed in a new interview with Vulture that he was the first director approached to take on 1988’s live-action/animated hybrid classic “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”

“There were people knocking on my door all the time,” Greenaway said. “And looking back, do you remember a film called ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’ I was the first director asked to actually film that. Would you believe that? I found that absolutely extraordinary.”

He continued, “I think that was because of a Hollywood agent who didn’t really understand my cinema at all. God bless him. But I was the name to conjure with for six months. So he threw me in there, and I managed to be one of the first directors to actually read the script.”

Eventually, Robert Zemeckis helmed the...

From its opening moments, of a girl jumping rope while counting and naming the stars in the nighttime sky, Peter Greenaway’s Drowning by Numbers is perhaps the most direct illustration of the filmmaker’s key thematic and aesthetic interest in ascribing structure to a chaotic universe. Throughout, the film slowly counts from one to 100 via a combination of character dialogue and visual markers sprinkled in frames like an elaborate game of I Spy. In deadpan voiceovers, a young boy also elaborates the byzantine rules of made-up games whose goals seem altogether too banal to be worth their complexity.

The plot that strings together these playful games involves three women, each named Cissie Colpitts, who drown their husbands and enlist the help of a coroner, Madgett (Bernard Hill), to cover up the crimes. In a relatively light preamble to the darker feminist revenge drama of Greenaway’s subsequent The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover...

BAFTA-winning arthouse filmmaker Peter Greenaway has long been a favorite on the festival circuit for his experimental, often dark projects that captivate audiences. The painter-turned-director is responsible for some truly chilling films like the cannibalism satire The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover, the tragic The Belly of an Architect, and the biographical drama The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story, the latter two of which were Palme d'Or nominees. Another of his Cannes favorites, the dark comedy Drowning by Numbers, is now set to be given a fresh coat of paint, as Collider can exclusively reveal a new 4K Ultra HD release courtesy of Severin Films. The release also comes with a newly remastered trailer reminding viewers of one of Greenaway's most beloved works.

Filmmaker Peter Greenaway has unveiled the trailer for his next film, “Walking to Paris.”

The biographical drama, Greenaway’s first feature since 2015’s romantic comedy “Eisenstein in Guanajuato,” centers on modernist Romanian artist Constantin Brancusi. Set in the early 1900s, the story takes place when Brancusi was 27-year-old and follows his 18-month trek from Bucharest to Paris to reach the metropolis of world culture. The first-look footage offers a glimpse at his voyage, complete with adventure and hardship, which served as a prelude of sorts to becoming a highly influential sculpture in the 20th century. Brancusi’s vast oeuvre includes “The Kiss,” “Bird in Space” and “Sleeping Muse.”

“Walking to Paris” is scheduled to release in theaters in late November 2022 after an effort to hit the festival circuit.

New York-based film and media fund Apx Capital Group, led by co-CEOs Yona Weisenthal and Noam Baram and media investor Augusto Pelliccia,...

Due to its persistent on-screen presence, the swimming pool can be taken for granted; but beneath the surface it is cinema’s Jungian friend, representing secrets lying underneath. It exudes glamour and danger, shifting beyond conscious realms. It is a key to transformation, coming of age tales and renewed relationships. It is a status symbol and whether or not the pool is intact says a lot about the mood of the film and the state of its characters. Away from states of intensity, the swimming pool emerges on screen as a signifier of a time to unwind and to forget life past the poolside. The films featured in this mix show how the pool alludes mysterious symbolism and sexual awakening; murder, lust, and love brush shoulders as sun kissed babes in bikinis whisper sweet truths or uncover deadly secrets (such as the strange swimming pool activities in Three Women or...

Morgan Freeman will produce and star in Peter Greenaway’s drama “Lucca Mortis,” Variety has learned exclusively.

Morgan will portray a writer whose last big adventure will very likely be death. Based in New York City’s Little Italy, he takes a sabbatical and travels with his family to Lucca, Italy in order to trace his ancestral roots and clean up the loose ends in his life.

Morgan will produce with Lori McCreary through their Revelations Entertainment alongside Greenaway’s longtime producing partner, Kees Kasander. “Lucca Mortis” is Kasander’s 15th film with Greenaway. The film is scheduled to begin shooting around March 2020.

Greenaway is one of Britain’s leading auteurs whose notable past works include “Prospero’s Books,” “The Cook, the Thief, His Wire & Her Lover,” “The Draughtsman’s Contract” and “Drowning by Numbers.”

“Morgan and I have been fans of Peter’s work for years and we feel...

Camerimage, the film festival centered on the art of cinematography, will bestow its Lifetime Achievement Directing Award on helmer Peter Greenaway during its 27th edition, which will take place in Torun, Poland, on Nov. 9-16.

Known for his scenic composition and depictions of pleasure and pain, Greenaway has told visually riveting stories through such films as “Drowning by Numbers” (1988), “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover” (1989), “Nightwatching” (2007) and “Eisenstein in Guanajuato” (2015).

A follow-up to the latter called “Eisenstein in Hollywood” is currently in the works, according to IMDb.

Greenaway’s documentary oeuvre includes“Lumiere and Company” (1995) and “Rembrandt’s J’Accuse” (2008).

Camerimage picked Greenaway for this honor because he has always challenged filmgoers with works that have always been somehow experimental and presented puzzles and multitudes of meaning. His themes include the struggle between love and death, and the contrast between poetry and the carnal life. He has eschewed...

By the time he was 25, Lee Alexander McQueen had gone on to launch his own fashion label. Before he was 30, he had designed costumes for David Bowie and Björk. By age 31, Gucci had acquired his company naming him artistic director and expanding his empire to include flagship stores all over the world. His success, in more than one way, defied Great Britain’s antiquated but prevalent class system; for how could a gay man born to a teacher and a Scottish taxi driver ascend to the highest levels of society? Rather than sticking to a traditional (i.e. fairy tale-esque) rags-to-riches narrative, in McQueen directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui explore the ways in which the designer constantly rebelled against the establishment and still managed to become one of the most celebrated figures of his time.

The film is divided into chapters taken directly from the “McQueen tapes,” confessionals kept...

Exclusive: Dutch producer to resume his long-standing relationship with Peter Greenaway.

Dutch producer Kees Kasander is to resume his long-standing relationship with British director Peter Greenaway – and they already have several new projects together in the pipeline.

Greenaway’s current production - Eisenstein in Guanajuato (sold by Rezo) - is the first film he has made without Kasander for many years. With Kasander unavailable, it was produced instead by fellow Dutch producers Femke Wolting and Bruno Felix of Submarine alongside Cristina Velasco.

Now, Kasander and Greenaway are back in business together and already looking a long way ahead with 15 projects together.

The next film they are making together is Walking To Paris, a biopic about artist Constantin Brancusi. When he was a young man, Brancusi walked all the way from Romania to Paris. Stealth are in talks to handle international sales. The aim is to start shooting in the autumn.

Kasander is producing...

Exclusive: Dutch producer to resume his long-standing relationship with Peter Greenaway.

Dutch producer Kees Kasander is to resume his long-standing relationship with British director Peter Greenaway – and they already have several new projects together in the pipeline.

Greenaway’s current production - Eisenstein in Guanajuato (sold by Rezo) - is the first film he has made without Kasander for many years. With Kasander unavailable, it was produced instead by fellow Dutch producers Femke Wolting and Bruno Felix of Submarine alongside Cristina Velasco.

Now, Kasander and Greenaway are back in business together and already looking a long way ahead with 15 projects together.

The next film they are making together is Walking To Paris, a biopic about artist Constantin Brancusi. When he was a young man, Brancusi walked all the way from Romania to Paris. Stealth are in talks to handle international sales. The aim is to start shooting in the autumn.

Kasander is producing...

The cult director presented award by Juliet Stevenson, who praised his commitment to reinventing cinema

Peter Greenaway has been awarded the outstanding contribution award at the Baftas, for a body of work that includes 8½ Women, The Draughtsman's Contract, and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.

Juliet Stevenson presented the award to the director, remembering that for his film Drowning by Numbers she swam in freezing water, did "surprising things with an ice lolly" and "had to push a large naked woman in a wheelbarrow up a slippery slope in five-inch heels."

Calling him "visionary and inspirational", Stevenson championed Greenaway's rejection of the orthodoxy and his respect for actors, describing the "beauty and invention" in every shot. Alluding to the director's early desire to be a painter, she said that the "art world's loss is our great and lasting gain. None of [his films] come easily to the watcher, but once watched,...

Steve McQueen talks about modern slavery as 12 Years A Slave wins best film; Cate Blanchett dedicates her BAFTA to Philip Seymour Hoffman; Barkhad Abdi says Greengrass believed in him before he believed in himself.Click here for the full list of winners

Host Stephen Fry welcomed the star-studded crowd by saying the BAFTAs are “the greatest night of the British film calendar, if there is such a thing.” He joked that there were “faces so familiar you want to lick them.”

He welcomed guests including Prince William, President of the Academy, into “the plush womb of the resplendent Royal Opera House” in Covent Garden, London.

Fry got Leonardo DiCaprio to blow a kiss into the camera.

Tinie Tempah and Laura Mvula kicked off the show with a duet of Heroes, and Tempah set the mood for a lively evening by high-five-ing Prince William.

Outstanding British Film

Oprah Winfrey, nominated for The Butler, presented the Outstanding...

Steve McQueen talks about modern slavery as 12 Years A Slave wins best film; Cate Blanchett dedicates her BAFTA to Philip Seymour Hoffman; Barkhad Abdi says Greengrass believed in him before he believed in himself.

Host Stephen Fry welcomed the star-studded crowd by saying the BAFTAs are “the greatest night of the British film calendar, if there is such a thing. “ He joked that there were “faces so familiar you want to lick them.”

He welcomed guests including Prince William, President of the Academy, into “the plush womb of the resplendent Royal Opera House” in Covent Garden, London.

Fry got Leonardo DiCaprio to blow a kiss into the camera.

Tinie Tempah and Laura Mvula kicked off the show with a duet of Heroes.

Oprah Winfrey, nominated for The Butler, presented the Outstanding British Film prize to Gravity. Producer David Heyman said the prize was “beyond belief and best of all it recognises everybody involved with the film, we...

12 Years A Slave wins best film; Cate Blanchett dedicates her BAFTA to Philip Seymour Hoffman; Gravity rakes in awards for Best Director, British Film, Sound, Music, Cinematography and VFX awards; Barkhad Abdi is surprise winner of Supporting Actor, Coogan and Pope win for Philomena’s Adapted Screenplay;

Host Stephen Fry welcomed the star-studded crowd by saying the BAFTAs are “the greatest night of the British film calendar, if there is such a thing. “ He joked that there were “faces so familiar you want to lick them.”

He welcomed guests including Prince William, President of the Academy, into “the plush womb of the resplendent Royal Opera House” in Covent Garden, London.

Fry got Leonardo DiCaprio to blow a kiss into the camera.

Tinie Tempah and Laura Mvula kicked off the show with a duet of Heroes.

Oprah Winfrey, nominated for The Butler, presented the Outstanding British Film prize to Gravity. Producer David Heyman said the prize was “beyond...

The arthouse director says it is 'a pleasure and a delight' to be honoured for his years of effort and experiment

• Peter Greenaway: 'I plan to kill myself when I'm 80'

Peter Greenaway is to receive the outstanding British contribution to cinema award at this Sunday's Bafta film awards.

The director of The Draughtsman's Contract, Drowning by Numbers and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover will be honoured for more than three decades of film-making. He made his debut in 1980 with The Falls, a post-apocalyptic mock-documentary in 92 short sections.

Greenaway, who is known for his collaborations with the composer Michael Nyman, said: "Given the always complex effort involved, to be permitted in the first place to make films with so many collaborators always astonishes me, and to be permitted the licence to do so with such freedom to continually experiment even more so. Everyone agrees that...

BAFTA has revealed that award-winning writer-director Peter Greenaway will receive the Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema Award at the upcoming British Academy Film Awards on February 16.Greenaway (“The Pillow Book,” “Drowning By Numbers,” "The Draughtsman's Contract"), who originally trained as a painter, is known for his exploration in film of eroticism and death, and for his ability to integrate Renaissance art into his work. His latest film, “Eisenstein in Guanajuato,” is slated for release later this year.Previous recipients of the award include Mike Leigh, Kenneth Branagh, Derek Jarman, Mary Selway, Ridley and Tony Scott, Working Title Films, Lewis Gilbert, John Hurt and the "Harry Potter" franchise. Meanwhile, Helen Mirren will be the recipient of the Fellowship at the February 16 ceremony.

Peter Greenaway will be honoured with the Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema prize at this weekend's BAFTAs.

The award has previously been given to British cinema icons such as Mike Leigh, Kenneth Branagh, Ridley and Tony Scott, John Hurt and the Harry Potter film series.

Last year's winner was Tessa Ross, head of Film 4 and controller of film and drama at Channel 4.

Greenaway's films include The Draughtsman's Contract, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover and the Cannes Palme d'Or winner Drowning by Numbers.

"Given the always complex effort involved, to be permitted in the first place to make films with so many collaborators always astonishes me, and to be permitted the licence to do so with such freedom to continually experiment even more so," Greenaway said of his BAFTA honour.

"Everyone agrees that cinema is changing its characteristics very fast and to be awarded a BAFTA for...

Warning: If you have yet to watch Sunday’s Good Wife, steer clear of the following, spoiler-laden post mortem. Bookmark it and return after you have seen the episode. Everyone else, please proceed.

The Good Wife‘s passed the 100-episode mark Sunday with an hour that featured tears, laughter, betrayal and one helluva spit-take.

In the following post mortem, series cocreators Robert and Michelle King tackle the milestone installment’s biggest questions, and also tease what’s to come when CBS’ superior legal drama thriller returns in early 2014.

Photos | TVLine Readers Give Thanks to The Good Wife, Scandal, Veronica Mars...

Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave to open festival; director Peter Greenaway to receive Visionary Award.Scroll down for full line-up

Steve McQueen’s historic drama 12 Years a Slave is to open the Stockholm International Film Festival (Nov 6-17) and is nominated in the Stockholm Xxiv Competition.

Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, the drama about free black man kidnapped from his family and sold into slavery in the 1850s debuted at Telluride and has received positive reactions throughout its festival tour of Toronto, New York and London among others.

It will be released in Sweden on Dec 20 by Ab Svensk Filmindustri.

Screenwriter John Ridley, who will be present during the festival, is nominated for the Aluminum Horse in the category Best Script.

McQueen’s Hunger won Best Directorial Debut at Stockholm in 2008.

Line-up

The 24th Siff includes more than 180 films from more than 50 countries.

As previously announced, the spotlight of this year’s festival is freedom but Chinese artist...

The Kannada film Lucia directed by Pawan Kumar is a first in many ways. It is one of the first ‘audience funded’ films to come out of India. The director raised money bypassing traditional financing, relying on the internet through his blog and a Facebook page. This means that Pawan Kumar no longer needed to make guesses about what might succeed with the public.

All cinema in India address one constituency or another; if much of mainstream Hindi cinema addresses the Anglophone Indian from the metropolises, Kannada cinema has been addressing the Kannada speaking people of the areas corresponding to former Princely Mysore – Bangalore, Mysore, Mandya, Shimoga etc. – rather than all of Karnataka. Indian art cinema itself, because it depends on government awards and patronage, has taken to addressing the Indian State and articulates issues regarded as important by it – secularism, agrarian indebtedness, displacement of farmers by mega projects etc.

"Spock, I do not know too much about these little Tribbles yet, but there is one thing that I have discovered. I like them … better than I like you." –Dr. McCoy, "Star Trek" (1967)

Greetings from the apocalypse! The trouble with Tribbles is not how cute they are but how much they multiply, or in the case of "Star Trek Into Darkness," the silly plot point for which they cameo. That's the only thing I'll spoil from that movie (besides that it stinks), but luckily there's some sweet alternatives this week that boldly go where no J.J. Abrams movie has gone before … coherence.

Friday, May 17

Pow! In Theaters

Oh boy. "Star Trek Into Dumbness" finally fulfills J.J. Abrams' five-year mission to run this franchise through a Cuisinart of stupidity. I would need a spoiler avalanche to make a proper case for how this sequel squanders classic characters and scenarios from...

As his latest heady mix of art and sex premieres in Rome, Peter Greenaway says he'd actually rather be a painter – and plans to end it all in 10 years anyway

When Peter Greenaway's new film screens late at night at the Rome film festival it sheds nearly a third of its audience in the opening hour. On screen sits a lavish spread of nude bodies and looping calligraphy, while off-screen comes the quiet flap of seat-backs as maybe 30 punters bail out and run for cover. In the meantime I'm wondering about the punters that remain. How many are staying for the art and how many for the sex?

Or could it be that there's no real difference between the two? Goltzius and the Pelican Company spins a tale of eroticism and religious hypocrisy; an examination of the symbiotic relationship between art and sex. The hero is Hendrik Goltzius (Ramsey Nasr...

That headline is not a typo. Peter Greenaway, who is among the most art-oriented directors alive (Prospero's Books, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover) is set to write and direct his first romantic comedy. The film is called 4 Storms and 2 Babies, and is scheduled to shoot in Amsterdam later this year. Has the whole world gone crazy? Variety [1] says the film is "an unconventional love story about two men and a woman who becomes pregnant after a night of three-way sex with them." Whew! So 4 Storms and 2 Babies won't quite be The Proposal. In fact, this sounds very much like something Peter Greenaway might do. It actually sounds like something the Peter Greenaway of 1988 might do. That's kind of striking, since the director has of late been more interested in films that are either more conceptual art than narrative (The Tulse Luper Suitcases) or rooted in centuries-old art more than anything else.

Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cillian Murphy on the set of Inception Michael Nyman for The Piano (1993), The End of the Affair (1999) Lee Smith for Inception (2010) Biggest Oscar Snubs #10a: Gordon Willis, Caleb Deschanel "The much admired, awarded and internationally popular new Jane Campion film, The Piano," wrote Mark Swed in the Los Angeles Times in November 1993, "is regularly mentioned as prime Oscar material. So, since it is a film about music and since the soundtrack album has attracted considerable interest from Warsaw to Sidney [sic], isn't it just possible that the composer, Michael Nyman, could also be nominated for an Academy Award?" Huh, No. Nyman, best known for his collaborations with Peter Greenaway (Drowning by Numbers, The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover) was bypassed by the Academy's Music Branch. To date, Michael Nyman has yet to receive an Academy Award nomination. As for the failure [...]...

As we discussed in our How I Met Your Mother review yesterday, this week's episode will likely go down as one of the show's best, if not the best, in five-plus seasons.

The final scene, which no one saw coming, is one that fans won't forget anytime soon, and according to Carter Bays, one that "we built the whole season around."

In an interview with E!, the executive producer and co-creator explains the countdown clock, where Marshall goes from here, future "mother" clues and more ...

The countdown begins ...

On the demise of Marshall's dad: "One important ingredient in early seasons was that there was some angst and there was some sadness. It was a way for us to really mine our own lives and to really fully explore emotions about situations we've been in."

"There are a few touchstones in life that are really sad, and this is one of them.

LONDON -- House star Hugh Laurie was awarded an Order of the British Empire award in the Queen's New Year's Honors list, it was announced Monday.

The British actor was recognized for his contribution to drama in a career that has spanned over 20 years. The actor began his career as a sketch comedian in A Bit of Fry and Laurie and later played a series of English upper class twits in such shows as Jeeves and Wooster and Blackadder before crossing the pond to take U.S. audiences by storm as the curmudgeonly but brilliant medic.

Also honored in the Royal list was director Peter Greenaway who was named a Commander of the British Empire for a career featuring such textured and intricate films as The Draughtman's Contract, Drowning by Numbers, A Zed and Two Noughts and Prospero's Books.

Other leading media figures named in the annual honors list include singer Rod Stewart, television actress Penelope Keith and former Ofcom chief executive Stephen Carter, who were awarded CBEs.