Page 23 - 13_Bafta ACADEMY_Judi Dench_ok

book reviews
Paul Scofield By Garry O’Connor (Macmillan, £20)
That
actor!
The
best I’ve
seen since John
Barrymore,’ purred Fox produc- tion head Darryl Zanuck of Scofield after watching rushes of a long-forgotten 1955 costume drama, That Lady.
Playing Philip II at a 16th Century Spanish Court that was forever Elstree Studios, it was Scofield’s movie debut and, at 33, he was named Most Promising Newcomer by the British Film Academy.
In fact Scofield, 80 last month, might have made it before the cameras a couple of years earli- er if director Joseph L Mankiewicz had followed through his plan to cast the actor as Mark Antony in the 1953 film of Julius Caesar.
Scofield completed a screen test only to hear the word from Hollywood that Brando had been engaged instead. His reaction? “Disappointment of course – which didn’t last very long. Brando was far better than I would have been.”
That kind of modesty is typical of the famously reclusive Scofield who only partially lets down the mask in this welcome, if belated, peep into the life and times of the Sussex-born actor described extravagantly by director Richard Eyre as “the best there has ever been.”
A consummate stage per- former, Scofield has ventured rarely into films since that award- winning start more than 46 years ago. Two more BAFTAs, for A Man For All Seasons in 1968, and The Crucible, thirty years later, attest both to his celluloid rarity and an enduring cinematic skill.
Scofield was rising 40 when he created the role of Sir Thomas More on stage in 1960. When it came to casting the film more than five years on, the studio
by Quentin Falk
wanted Olivier or Burton to play Robert Bolt’s saintly protagonist.
Happily, director Fred Zinnemann got his way and for £26,785.4s.3d plus 10 per cent of the net profits Scofield forged an indelible screen performance which also earned him a Hollywood Oscar.
Contemporary British & Irish Film Directors
Edited by Yoram Allon, Del Cullen & Hannah Patterson (Wallflower Press, £17.99)
Our indigenous filmmakers tend to received short shrift – usually the odd paragraph or
so – in most
film dictionar-
ies so it’s a
pleasure to
welcome an opinionated
volume
which at
least does
some jus-
tice to the
wealth of native talent.
“Contemporary” covers the gamut even including a number of directors who have long since died – like David Lean, Charles Crichton, Jack Clayton and Frank Launder. Yet notable by their absence from that particular vin- tage are Launder’s partner, Sidney Gilliat, and both Boultings.
There’s no room either for brothers Gerald and Ralph Thomas, yet Ralph’s son, Jeremy, earns an entry. And while we’re on this rollercoaster of non-selec- tion, Philip Saville and Suri Krishnamma not to mention promising newcomers like Richard Parry (SW9) and Joel Hopkins (Jump Tomorrow) are also oddly absent.
Aside from these aberrations, it’s good to see unfashionable oldies such as Ken Annakin, Val Guest, Ronald Neame and J Lee Thompson receive overdue attention while due note is made of their still-youthful heirs like Damien O’Donnell, Lynne Ramsay and Simon Rumley.
Chance Governs All
By Marmaduke Hussey (Macmillan, £20)
W
became
Chairman of
the BBC in
1986, his
appointment
was
described in
some quarters
as “outrageous and provoca- tive.” One newspaper even sug- gested he was “a prime con- tender for Monty Python’s Upper Class Twit of the Year Award.”
Within five years he had sacked two Director-Generals and appointed a third, John Birt, who would became synonymous with a creative breakdown at the Beeb.
This memoir by a one-time war-hero and top newspaper executive – whose wife was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen – is a very useful glimpse into the often murky world of public serv- ice television.
Film Review 2001-2002
By James Cameron-Wilson (Reynolds & Hearn, £19.95)
22 headcount, and we’ve kept the whole company reasonably small on purpose. Knowing all the people you work with helps immensely as we stay as a tightly knit focused team. Our greatest success is certainly Max Payne. The game took four long years to develop and dur- ing that time the expectations for Max became rather huge, as we won numerous press awards in trade shows (E3, ECTS) already before the game was released. It’s been fantas- tic to see that the game lived up to the lofty expectations.”
Q. What was your reaction to winning the BAFTA award?
Matias Myllyrinne, Business and Finance Director: “To be nominated is an honour. To win... well, it was awesome. We were simply over the moon. It was a massive acknowledgement for all the creativity and hard work that many people have put into Max Payne. Even after all the game industry accolades and commercial success the BAFTA award felt very special to us. We have striven for a cinematic experience with strong film noir themes and action-movie-like ‘gun ballet’ more common on the silver screen than in games. Hence the BAFTA was the best honour we could have ever dreamed of winning.”
Jarvilehto: “We were thrilled. Selling a lot of copies is naturally something that game develop- ers shoot for, but the fact that we’ve been getting so much critical acclaim and recognition in addition to the sales numbers really makes a huge difference.”
Q. Is there a Max Payne sequel in the works yet?
Myllyrinne: “My lips are sealed. It is still way too early to go there... What I can say is that we are busy and at work. We have finished the Xbox and Playstation 2 versions of Max Payne with Rockstar and Neo Software.”
Q. And new projects?
Jarvilehto: “Umm... stuff? I really can’t tell that yet. Sorry.” Ceri Thomas
hen Duke Hussey
I
n its 57th edi- tion, the
esteemed edi-
tor of this hardi-
est annual right-
ly notes the
trend-bucking
subtitled box-
office success
here of both
Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon and Amélie.
Strangely, he doesn’t include either of their dazzling young female stars, Zhang ZiYi or Audrey Tautou, in his ten Faces Of The Year.
These are Javier Bardem, Jack Black, Alice Evans, Colin Farrell, Kate Hudson, Hugh Jackman, Lucy Liu, Franka Potente, Michelle Rodriguez and Mark Ruffalo.
21