Category: Films

Favorite UK Christmas Movies

As far as we’re concerned, any time is a good time to steep oneself in all things British, but Christmas is a particularly grand time to do so. While the US has produced many more, and more recent, Christmas movies, we thought we’d share some of our favorites from across the pond with you.

Scrooge (UK) or A Christmas Carol (US) – The 1951 Alastair Sim version remains the best version of Charles Dickens’s yuletide tale. The film also features Kathleen Harrison as Mrs. Dilber, Scrooge’s charwoman, and George Cole as a young Scrooge. Hermoine Baddeley plays Mrs. Cratchit. Now a Christmas staple, it was slated to premiere stateside at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall, but theatre management thought the film was too grim and somber and did not possess enough family entertainment value to warrant an engagement at the Music Hall. The fact that it was filmed in black and white gives a period feel. The film stands out because of its perfect balance of dark and light, which is what Dickens intended in his ghost story of misery, terror, loneliness and redemption, all serving to draw the viewer into the authentically bleak world of London during the early Industrial Revolution. You can buy it here.

Of course, one feels honour bound to now mention Blackadder’s Christmas Carol.

Leave it to the Blackadder crew to put their own spin on the Christmas classic. In this version, Scrooge is the nicest and most generous man going. Until the spirit of Christmas shows him the future and shows Scrooge that his goodness will play havoc upon his descendents, who will wind up as slaves. Scrooge turns mean and soon manages to offend everyone, including Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. A website called
Black Adder Hall sums up the episode thusly: “Dickens’ classic tale of kindness, truth and virtue is completely mucked up and ruined by having a member of the Blackadder family involved. Stuffed with deeply horrid people (many of whom are gigantically fat) and groaning with cartloads of seasonal bottom jokes, it manages to squeeze in not only a Victorian Black Adder but also his famous Elizabethan, Regency and Space Age relatives into a huge pie of entertainment that will satisfy all but the most discriminating viewers.”

Love Actually – This feel-good movie follows the lives of eight couples in London during a frantic month before Christmas. Though vastly different, their stories are interwoven in love, lust, and luck. Everywhere you look, love is causing chaos. From the new bachelor Prime Minister who falls in love 30 seconds after entering Downing Street, to a loser sandwich delivery guy who doesn‘t have a hope with the girls in the UK, so heads for Wisconsin; from a jilted writer who escapes to the south of France to nurse his broken heart to an aging rock star trying to make a comeback at any price; from a bride having problems with her husband‘s best man to a married woman having trouble with her husband; from a schoolboy with a crush on the prettiest girl in the school to his architect step–father with a crush on Claudia Schiffer. These London lives and loves collide, mingle and finally climax on Christmas Eve with romantic, poignant and funny consequences for all. That’s really all the plot line you need since the film stars Alan Rickman, Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth and Emma Thompson. Ho, ho, ho.

Hope and Glory – The following well written synopsis is from a website called Rotten Tomatoes – “John Boorman’s 1987 epic written and directed by John Boorman (Deliverance, The General) serves as a picaresque and semi-autobiographical remembrance of a boy’s coming of age during the Second World War. Exhibiting a defiant and humorous take on life during the London blitz, the family of the young boy at the center of the story (Sebastian Rice-Edwards) is a close-knit and resilient bunch, undeterred in the face of the war and reveling in each other even as they hide from the incessant bombing. To be sure, there are some poignant moments in this childhood reminiscence. The boy’s mother (Sarah Miles) serves as a strong influence in the boy’s life as she leads her family through this tumultuous time. The majestic sweep of the film is contrasted with so many comic moments as the people in town go about the mundane details of their daily lives yet also engage in the most absurd rituals in dealing with the onslaught of German artillery, from taking the air raids for granted to wearing gas masks at school. Boorman doesn’t dwell on the horrors of war; instead he celebrates the richness and resilience of the people he remembers so fondly. An adventurous and nostalgic slice of life, Hope and Glory is a superb and memorable film.” Hope and Glory is worth watching for sheer atmosphere and period detail alone. The scene where the family and their guests are gathered around the wireless in order to hear the King’s Christmas speech and are urging the monarch past each stammer is priceless.  

Bridget Jones’s Diary –  Yes, I know we watch this one all year round, but at Christmas we’ll pay extra attention to Colin Firth’s sweaters. Go on . . . put on your comfy pj’s and I’ll make the cocoa . . . . right then, pop in the disk . . . . Jeez, I can’t wait till the fight scene – “Shall I bring my dueling pistol or sword?” too funny!  . . . Ready? It all began on New Years day, in my 32nd year of being single. Once again I found myself on my own and going t
o my mother’s annual turkey curry buffet. Every year she tries to fix me up with some bushy-haired, middle-aged bore and I feared this year would be no exception. . . . .

Merry Christmas Mr. Bean – O . . M . . . G . . . have you ever seen anything as funny as Mr. Bean’s turkey!? Okay, we’re cheating by including these as they aren’t full length movies, they’re episodes, but they’re hysterical. You can watch the bit with the turkey here and a bit where Mr. Bean goes Christmas shopping here. Keep an eye out for Teddy!

Have we missed any of your favourite Yuletide flicks? Suggestions? Let us know.

Meet Benedict Cumberbatch

In a perfect world, thirty-four year old, London born actor Benedict Cumberbatch would be lauded simply for using his real name professionally – he is the son of actors Timothy Carlton (birth name Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch) and Wanda Ventham. As this has not yet happened, it’s a good thing that Cumberbatch has instead been receiving accolades for his acting talents.
Cumberbatch was educated first at Brambletye School in West Sussex, and then at the prestigious Harrow School in northwest London, where he began performing as an actor. After graduation, he took a gap year to teach English in a Tibetan monastery. He then attended the University of Manchester, where he studied drama. At the university, he met his longtime girlfriend, actress Olivia Poulet. After graduating, Cumberbatch trained further in acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

Cumberbatch told an interviewer that his parents had “worked incredibly hard to give me a very privileged education, so I could do anything but be as stupid as them and become an actor. Unfortunately, I didn’t pay any notice, like a lot of children, to my parents’ wise words. For awhile, I did toy with being a criminal barrister. I thought that would be quite fun. Then an awful lot of people dissuaded me from that path, basically saying, `It’s unpredictable. You don’t know where your next job is coming from. You have to travel up and down the country to God-forsaken holes of depravity, and it’s very lowly, incredibly hard work.’ I thought, “This sounds a bit like acting, so I’ll stick with that.”


Cumberbatch began his career on the stage, appearing in, amongst other things, Hedda Gabler at the Almeida Theatre in 2005. His performance as Tesman brought him an Olivier Award nomination for Best Performance in a Supporting Role. A year earlier, Cumberbatch had garnered a BAFTA TV Award nomination for Best Actor for his role as Stephen Hawking in Hawking.

That same year, whilst filimig To The Ends of the Earth, Cumberbatch, along with co-stars Denise Black and Theo Landey, were carjacked in South Africa when they were stopped at the side of the road with a flat tyre. Six men appeared, held the trio up against the car and tied their hands with their own shoelaces. During the car-jacking, which lasted two and a half hours, Cumberbatch was held in the boot of the car. 

In 2006, Cumberbatch played William Pitt in Amazing Grace, the film is the story of William Wilberforce’s intense and lengthy political fight in the late 18th century to eliminate slave trade in the British Empire. The role earned Cumberbatch a nomination for the London Film Critics Circle British Breakthrough Acting Award.

Cumberbatch subsequently appeared in major roles in Atonement (2007) and The Other Boleyn Girl (2008). In 2009, he appeared in Darwin bio-pic Creation, as Darwin’s friend Joseph Hooker.

Speaking to the Guardian about his roles, Cumberbatch said that people think “I just play neurotic, fey people who would have died with a cold compress to their head. But I do work on the variety. I do try.”

And he’s succeeded – he is scheduled to appear in The Whistleblower (2010) and Steven Spielberg’s War Horse (2011). Cumberbatch will also play Peter Guillam in the 2012 adaptation of the John le Carré novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, directed by Tomas Alfredson, also starring Gary Oldman, Colin Firth and Tom Hardy. Begining in February, Cumberbatch returns to the stage in Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle’s version of Frankenstein, in which Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller will swap the roles of monster and doctor on alternate nights.

For now, we’ll watch Cumberbatch in PBS’ Masterpiece Mystery! as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic detective Sherlock Holmes. Speaking about the role, Cumberbatch said: “It is the most-played literary, fictional character. It’s in the Guinness Book of World Records for it. I follow in the footsteps of about 230-odd people, in many different languages, at different ages and different times. For any actor to play an iconic character, there’s a huge pressure that’s associated with delivering something that everyone knows culturally, especially in our country. So, it was quite nerve-wracking, but there is an element of a blank canvas because of this brilliant re-invention and re-invigoration of him being a 21st century hero. While it maintains the integrity of Conan Doyle’s original, much to the enjoyment of die-hard fans of the books, hopefully it will turn new people onto the books, which will be a good thing.”

So what’s next? Cumberbatch and his girlfriend, actress Olivia Poulet, would like to have children one day. And Cumberbatch would eventually like to find the time to try his hand at writing. In the meantime, his legions of fans are content to watch, instead of read, him. Check out the ultimate Benedict Cumberbatch fan site here – btw, his female fans have tagged themselves  “Cumberbitches.”

The Return of Napoleon

Al Pacino is set to hit the big screen as everyone’s favorite despot, Napoleon Bonaparte. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Pacino has been eager to play the infamous French emperor for years, and is now getting his chance by signing on to play Bonaparte in “Betsy and the Emperor,” a film based on a children’s book of the same name written by Staton Rabin.

Directed by John Curran (“The Painted Veil”) from a screenplay by Brian Edgar, the independent film will be based on the true story of Lucia Elizabeth Balcombe, whose father was Napoleon’s jailer during his exile on St. Helena. The two struck up a friendship and (as yet unproven) rumors flew that the exiled Emperor was romancing the teenager. The film may alternately be titled “The Monster of Longwood.”

And it may ultimately have some competition, but that now seems doubtful. There’s another film about Napoleon and Betsy in the works. Last April, “Harry Potter” actress Emma Watson had reportedly signed to play the lead in “Napoleon and Betsy,” a version of the story written and directed by Benjamin Ross. That film languishes in pre-production while the two production companies fight their own Waterloo over rights to the story. For now, Pacino’s version is scheduled to begin shooting this fall.

Heads Up On Downton Abbey

ITV will be broadcasing a new costume drama series, Downton Abbey, written and created by Oscar-winning writer Julian Fellowes and starring Maggie Smith as Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham, Hugh Bonneville as Robert, Earl of Grantham and Elizabeth McGovern as Robert’s wife, Cora, Countess of Grantham. By the way, there was a real-life Earl of Grantham, a cousin of William III, but the title became extinct when he died in 1754.
The new series, very much a la Upstairs, Downstairs, is set in an Edwardian country house in 1912 and follows the Crawley family and the servants who work for them. The Earl is married to an American and they have three daughters – a fact which presents all manner of problems when it comes to the vexed question of who will continue the Crawley line.

The fictional Crawleys have  been the Earls of Grantham since 1772 and occupy the upstairs rooms, whilst below stairs are other residents, the servants, as fiercely possessive of their ranks as anyone above. Some of them are loyal to the family and are committed to Downton as a way of life, others are moving through, on the look out for new opportunities or love or just adventure. The difference being that they know so many of the secrets of the family, while the family knows so few of theirs.

Downton Abbey’s writer and creator is Julian Fellowes (at left), who also wrote Gosford Park and The Young Victoria, recently said: “It is no secret that I am fascinated by the extraordinary variety of people that occupied the great country houses. Where men and women worked alongside each other and lived in close proximity, but were separated in their dreams and aspirations by a distance that makes the moon seem close. Television drama often relies on a structure that will involve characters of different backgrounds, any hospital soap opera or detective series can give you that, but there is no narrative base that can provide members of every level of society, sleeping under a single roof, more believably than a great house before the First War. “
Downton Abbey itself will be played by Highclere Castle. Executive Producer and Managing Director of Carnival Films, Gareth Neame said: “Highclere Castle is the perfect location for the family home in our drama. The estate is absolutely breathtaking and the house itself is splendid beyond belief. Julian had Highclere in mind when he was writing the script and we are thrilled that Lord and Lady Carnarvon have agreed to allow us to invade their beautiful home and grounds for the duration of our shoot.”
The village locations were shot in Bampton, Oxfordshire. Producer Nigel Marchant said: “Downton Abbey is supposed to be set in Yorkshire, and we needed to be able to create a fictional village nearer London. Bampton is perfect because it is so well preserved, and you hardly need to do anything in terms of alterations.  There are three big manor houses which make perfect locations and we will be using different parts of the village.”

The series has been airing in seven installments in Britain, which means we probably won’t have the pleasure of seeing it for about a year. It has proved popular across the pond and a second series has been commissioned. However, not all is rosey with the production, as recently Julian Fellowes has been accused of lifting certain plotlines and devices straight from Little Women and other works. In addition, viewers have written to complain about historical inaccuracies, including seeing t.v. aerials on roofs and double yellow lines on the roads. You can read the full story in The Telegraph.

Depp to Star in Remake of Dark Shadows

Keeping in the Halloween spirit, I’ll tell you that it’s been announced that the legendary, and slightly mad, director Tim Burton has signed Pride And Prejudice And Zombies writer Seth Grahame-Smith to adapt the late ’60s horror-soap-opera Dark Shadow into a film starring the slightly mad Johnny Depp. Apparently, Grahame-Smith was offered the job because Burton enjoyed his lesser known zombie-history novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. In fact, Burton liked it so much that he bought the rights and Burton is currently in pre-production on the film version of that novel.

In the movie version of the of Dark Shadows, the cult vampire daytime soap opera that ran from 1966 to 1971, Depp is set to play the lead Barnabas Collins, who throughout the show’s 1200 episodes experienced storyarcs including time travel, parallel universes, and encounters with many things that went bump in the night. Shooting on the film is slated to begin in January 2011 and this project will be the eighth collaboration for Depp/Burton, who last teamed up on Alice in Wonderland, a film not meant to be viewed without 3-D glasses and/or copious amounts of mind altering substances. Meanwhile, Depp is currently filming the next Pirates of the Caribbean installment.

Amazingly, actor Jonathan Frid, who played Barnabas Collins in the television show, is still alive and kicking and has his own website. And here I thought he’d only played a vampire.

Trick or Treat . . . . . .