Watch out for . ..
PETER O’TOOLE, Leslie Phillips, Vanessa Redgrave and newcomer Jodie Whittaker (this year’s Guildhall gold medal graduate), who star in Venus, the latest film from director Roger Michell, writer Hanif Kureishi and producer Kevin Loader. Messrs O’Toole and Phillips play two actors who share a house (in Odd Couple mode) and into their lives arrives the 20-year-old grandniece of Mr Phillips’s character. Mr O’Toole takes a shine to her — but not in
that way. As one of the film-makers told me: ‘It’s more Educating Rita than Lolita.’ If you recall The Mother, starring the excellent Anne Reid and Daniel Craig, where an older woman falls for a much younger man, then this film is a companion piece. ‘There’s no sex, but it’s a very funny, sort of weird mirror image,’ explained Mr Loader. The film begins shooting next week in the Kentish Town/Camden Town area of North London.
MIKE LEIGH, who was awarded a British Academy of Film and Television Arts fellowship by
Bafta chair Anthony Minghella
on Wednesday. It’s a great
honour for Mike, whose films
were being shown at the National Film Theatre this week as part of a retrospective. The season was selected by distinguished cultural writer Michael Coveney. Actors such as Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen, Lesley Manville, Allan Corduner and others were on hand to witness Mike’s fellowship.
ANDREW LINCOLN, Brendan Coyle, Jason Watkins, Flaminia Cinque, Trevor Cooper and Simon Gregor, who star in Michael Attenborough’s production of Sam Shepard’s play The Late Henry Moss, at the Almeida Theatre in North London, with performances beginning on January 12. The play is about family betrayal, and is set close to the Mexican border. Mr Lincoln was last seen on stage at the National (in Free), as was Mr Coyle (in Buried Child).
ANDY SERKIS, who is billed in Peter Jackson’s movie King Kong as Kong. A friend of mine who saw a rough cut of the film in Los Angeles last week joked about whether she should run an Oscar campaign for Mr Serkis’s performance as the big gorilla. In all seriousness, having seen some out-of-this-world footage myself, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should think about how to honour work by actors who provide the ‘form’, as it were, for digitally drawn characters. Serkis also did good work as Gollum in the Lord Of The Rings pictures.