browne's blog

Have you been longing desperately for a new film version of Shakespeare’s incredibly amazing, yet incredibly depressing King Lear?

If you have, then not one, but two treats are coming your way. This autumn will see the release of a TV movie adaptation of the play, featuring the cast and director of a recent Royal Shakespeare Company production, including Sir Ian McKellen as Lear, and Atonement actress Romola Garai as his daughter, Cordelia.

In 2010, we should see the release of a feature film adaptation that was recently announced at Cannes, with Sir Anthony Hopkins attached to play the King, and Keira Knightley set to play Cordelia. Recent news reports claim that Naomi Watts and Gwyneth Paltrow have also signed on to play Lear’s older daughters Goneril and Regan, making the film of particular interest to anyone who likes to see a cluster of female gorgeousness and talent.

With that said, I have mixed feelings about both these upcoming movies. For one thing, I can’t help feeling frustrated on Romola Garai’s behalf, as Keira Knightley seems to keep on coming in and stealing her thunder. According to Wikipedia, Garai was nearly cast as Lizzy Bennet in the 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, before director Joe Wright decided to go with Knightley instead. Then, of course, there was Atonement, where Romola (as Briony) got overshadowed in the posters and promotion by Keira in her green dress. This would be less annoying if I didn’t happen to think that Romola was a much better actress than Keira.

The rumors that she would be taking over a Chanel perfume contract from Keira Knightley may have turned out to be false, but Emma Watson is still finding ways to branch out beyond Harry Potter. Earlier this year I wrote about her attachment to the project Napoleon and Betsy, where she will play a young Englishwoman who befriends the famous emperor.

Are you a fan of Emily the Strange?

If you are, then you should get ready to see more of her. The New York Daily News published a long interview with Rob Reger, the California-based artist who first put Emily on a T-shirt back in 1991. Since then, the character has appeared in her own books and comics, as well as on merchandise such as clothing, accessories, toys, school supplies and calendars. And according to the Daily News piece, Emily is getting ready to branch out further, with a series of four young adult novels from HarperCollins written in her voice, a video game, and a feature film all in the works.

Although I’ve never really been a comics reader, and at this point I’m a bit older than the market that Emily is aimed at, I can’t help identifying somewhat with a character who appears like this:

With her four cats and her outcast status, I also wonder if Emily might have a particular appeal for lesbians. In the interview, Reger talks about her counterculture credentials:

“This character is very different from the typical Barbie Doll type that society seems to encourage in girls. […] Emily is often misinterpreted as a negative or plain old bad girl. To me, she's more of an icon for the think-for-yourself, do-it-yourself movement. That's the whole notion that it's okay to not follow mainstream ideas of what's cool, attractive or fun. And it's not only OK to be different, it's better! We want to communicate that you don't have to have a lot of money or certain material things, or fit in with the in-crowd; it's totally cool to do your own thing. In fact, you probably will get more out of life by being imaginative and figuring out your own way of seeing things.

When I first saw Emily, the thing that really interested me was not her Wednesday Addams vibe, but the fact that she reminded me of Emily Byrd Starr in Anne of Green Gables author L. M. Montgomery’s Emily books. Did anyone else read those? Although I very much doubt that Reger has read them or was inspired by them, the similarities are striking. Pale face: tick. Black hair: tick. Bang across the forehead: tick (there’s that great scene where Emily defies her stern Aunt Elizabeth in order to cut a bang). And the love of cats and alienation from mainstream society are in Montgomery’s books, too.

One of the very few things that I and AfterEllen.com’s late lamented scribegrrrl disagree on is the first season of the AMC drama Mad Men, which premiered in the US back in 2007. At the time, I can remember scribegrrrl expressing her reservations about a show that, set in a New York advertising agency in the 1960s, seemed destined to bring us nothing but week after week of pre-feminist women playing housewives and secretaries.

But when the show premiered here in the UK in March, on digital channel BBC Four, I very quickly became hooked. And it seems like I’m not the only one to have been impressed: last week the show picked up a Peabody Award (having previously won Golden Globes for Best Television Series – Drama, and Best Actor for leading man Jon Hamm). The DVD set of the first season will be out on July 1; a second season has been commissioned and will premiere in the US on July 27; and The New York Times Magazine has just published a long, interesting article wherein they talk with series creator Matthew Weiner about the show.

So what is it exactly that’s got me so interested? Well, let’s start by talking about the women on the show. There’s no question that Mad Men is set in a world that isn’t politically correct – but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t feature some fascinating female characters. The one who interests me most is driven and ambitious, yet still naïve secretary-turned-copywriter Peggy Olson (played by Elisabeth Moss, formerly seen as President’s daughter Zoey Bartlet on The West Wing):

Watching Peggy move from secretary to lead character Don Draper, to a woman with her own secretary at the end of the first series’ 13-episode run, was possibly one of the most satisfying arcs I have ever seen for a female character.

British drama The Edge of Love premiered in the U.K. last week at the Edinburgh Film Festival, and as a result its stars Sienna Miller and Keira Knightley have been posing for photographers. AfterEllen.com blogger StuntDouble was kind enough to share some of the pictures with me, including this one from the Edinburgh premiere:

And this one from the London premiere:

Set in the 1940s and focusing on a few years in the life of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, the film features Miller as Thomas’s wife Caitlin MacNamara, and Knightley as his former flame Vera Phillips.

Although actors Matthew Rhys (who plays Thomas) and Cillian Murphy (who plays Vera’s husband Captain William Killick) have important roles in the film, the marketing department has pretty clearly decided that the key selling point is the combined wattage of Knightley and Miller’s star power:

Looking at the poster, I can’t help suspecting that the marketing department is also trying to play up to the tabloid rumors of a lesbian liaison between the two women in the film. Those rumors have swirled ever since back in 2006, when Lindsay Lohan (who was then attached to star in Miller’s role) told MTV that “there’s somewhat of a lesbian undertone” in the relationship between Caitlin and Vera. Although screenwriter Sharman Macdonald (who also happens to be Keira’s mum) subsequently denied that the film would feature any overt lesbian sexuality, the possibility of Sapphic subtext was enough for me to keep an interested eye on the project.

According to MSNBC.com, Harry Potter actress Emma Watson will be the new face of Chanel fragrance Coco Mademoiselle, taking over from previous helmer Keira Knightley when Knightley’s contract comes to an end this summer. The appointment is being seen as a typically classy move for Watson, with an anonymous source in the article firmly stating, “She’s not going to end up like these other Hollywood train wrecks, she just isn’t.”

Rather bizarrely though, the source quoted by MSNBC for the story not only congratulates Emma, but seemingly takes the opportunity to have a sideswipe at her Potter co-star Daniel Radcliffe, who will soon be appearing on Broadway in Equus where he has a nude scene: “No-one is judging Radcliffe. Let’s just say Emma has always made good decisions, and always will.” The assumption seems to be that the Chanel role will involve being demure and fully dressed; an assumption that the last ad campaign featuring Knightley doesn’t fully bear out:

As AfterEllen.com blogger Reese DoWitt pointed out in a recent post on celebrities and scents, Chanel has made a feature of pairing actresses with the directors of their most successful projects. Knightley’s television spot for Coco Mademoiselle was directed by her Atonement and Pride and Prejudice collaborator Joe Wright:

If you were watching I’d Do Anything on BBC1 on Saturday night, you’ll know that the part of Nancy in Cameron Mackintosh’s new West End production of the musical Oliver! has been carried off by 28-year-old Blackpool native Jodie Prenger.

Although Jodie was naturally thrilled to win the talent competition, I can’t help thinking that her victory must have been soured a little by the fact that both Mackintosh and judge Andrew Lloyd Webber made it abundantly clear that they preferred her 18-year-old rival, Irish Jessie Buckley. Since the final was decided entirely by public votes, however, the two theatrical bigwigs could only look on as the audience made the decision first to eliminate 17-year-old contestant Samantha Barks, and then Jessie – leaving Jodie triumphant.

The first part of the final, which would see the remaining three contestants reduced to two, featured solo performances from all the girls. First up was Jodie with a rendition of Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man,” in which she seemed a bit nervous and restrained to me, although she did deliver by the end. Webber, displaying a lack of prophetic vision (or perhaps just indulging in wishful thinking) said that he questioned whether it was a winning performance. But judge John Barrowman (who has become increasingly vocal about his anti-Jessie stance) insisted that you always believed in Jodie when she sang the words of a song – a judgment I would agree with.

The four Nancy finalists became three on Saturday night, in a shocking elimination that saw 26-year-old Rachel Tucker sent home from I’d Do Anything, the BBC’s search to find a girl to play Nancy in a new West End production of Oliver!

Rachel

The fact that Rachel would wind up in the “bottom two” based on public votes wasn’t a surprise to me, as she has been there twice before. What was a surprise, given that Rachel has the most professional experience of all the remaining finalists, was that Andrew Lloyd Webber would choose to save inexperienced 17-year-old contestant Samantha Barks instead of her.

Although I haven’t always found Rachel a hugely charismatic performer, she is someone I would trust to carry a West End show. And, ironically, her elimination came after what the judges agreed was her best performance in weeks: a rendition of Liza Minnelli’s "Cabaret" that started off a bit stagy for me, but became unexpectedly spine-tingling towards the end, given the sheer force and power that she was putting into the lyrics. I don’t know if it’s just one of those songs that it’s impossible not to be moved by, but by the time she declared, “When I go, I’m going like Rachel” it had pretty much become the performance of the evening for me. You can watch the clip below:

The remaining three contestants are now Samantha Barks, 18-year-old Jessie Buckley, and 28-year-old Jodie Prenger.

The trailer is now out for the upcoming big-screen adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel Brideshead Revisited. Set in England in the period between the first and second world wars, Brideshead chronicles the attachment of Charles Ryder to a glamorous, aristocratic Catholic family: first the son, Sebastian Flyte, whom he meets as an undergraduate at Oxford, and then Sebastian’s sister, Julia.

The film will be out in the States on limited release from July 25, and in the U.K. October 3. The trailer leaves me very torn over the question: will I go and see the film?

Let’s start with the good things about the trailer: The film features three women whom I am always very happy to see on either the big or the small screen. Emma Thompson stars as Lady Marchmain, the elegant and subtly controlling mother of Sebastian and Julia.

The beautiful young actress Hayley Atwell (whom I have admired before on this site) will get her first significant big-screen exposure in the States as Julia Flyte.

Pretty Irish teenager Niamh Perry was sent home last night, meaning that there are now only four contestants left on I'd Do Anything, the BBC’s search to find a girl to play Nancy in the West End production of Oliver! Although I thought Niamh was a talented performer, she failed to convince the panel and the public that she had the toughness for Nancy, delivering a version of No Doubt ’s “Don’t Speak” that judge Denise Van Outen compared to a teenager throwing a tantrum. While I personally thought that criticism was a bit exaggerated, I did find it hard to picture Niamh in the role of Nancy – just as I find it easy to believe she’ll be picked up soon for a professional role that’s better suited to her.

The remaining four contestants are Jodie Prenger, Jessie Buckley, Rachel Tucker and Samantha Barks – and one of the things making this competition more interesting than the two BBC musical talent shows that have preceded it is that it’s extremely hard to pick a front-runner. With the most professional experience of the lot, 26-year-old Rachel might seem a safe choice – but she was in the bottom two again on Sunday, indicating that she’s not a hit with the public. While teenagers Jessie and Sam are talented, they both seem too young and inexperienced at the moment to me. If I had to hazard a guess as to who will finally take home the prize, it would be 28-year-old Jodie, but I'm not certain.

I blogged last month about the U.K. June release date for upcoming British film The Edge of Love, starring Sienna Miller and Keira Knightley. A biopic about the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, Edge features Miller as his wife, Caitlin MacNamara, and Knightley as his former flame, Vera Phillips.

The movie has been on my radar – or rather my gaydar – since 2006, when Lindsay Lohan (who was then attached to star in Sienna Miller’s role) told MTV, “[Keira] is older than me, but she kind of has a mysterious relationship with my lover. And then there’s somewhat of a lesbian undertone.”

Although scriptwriter Sharman Macdonald (who is also Keira’s mum) has since made it clear that there won’t be any overt physical relationship between Knightley and Miller’s characters, all the suggestions have been that the emotional relationship between them will be central to the story.

Back in March I blogged about the start of the BBC's new musical talent competition I'd Do Anything, which searches for a girl to play Nancy in a new U.K. stage production of Lionel Bart's Dickens-based musical Oliver!

With a judging panel that includes Andrew Lloyd Webber and a selection process that combines the public vote with ALW's decisions, the original 12 finalists have now been whittled down to five. They're still quite a diverse lot, ranging in age from 17 to 28. And no fewer than three of them are Irish, raising the interesting question of whether Nancy needs to be played as a born-and-bred London East End girl, as she has traditionally been played, or whether she could in fact have an Irish background.

The youngest of the five finalists is 17-year-old Catherine Zeta-Jones lookalike Samantha Barks, who comes from the Isle of Man (temporarily renamed the "Isle of Sam" in her honor):

Although I wonder if she'd really have the stamina and experience to hold the role, she's certainly done very well in the last couple of weeks, performing "Sway (Mucho Mambo)" and Destiny's Child's "Survivor" with plenty of confidence. She has never yet been in the bottom two (i.e., the two contestants who have received the lowest amount of public votes that week, one of whom is then saved by ALW, the other sent home).

Even before she starred as a Victorian lesbian pickpocket in the BBC's 2005 adaptation of Sarah Waters' Fingersmith, I was a fan of British actress Sally Hawkins. I had caught sight of her the year before in a very different role: as a shy, quiet, affluent girl called Susan in Mike Leigh's drama Vera Drake. Susan is raped by a man whom her mother was pushing her toward, and later has to go for an abortion. Hawkins' totally understated portrayal of her character's shame and misery — along with her inability to communicate with anyone about her experience in the England of the 1950s — was probably the most powerful thing in the film for me.

If I'd had a better memory, I might have realized that I'd seen Hawkins in a role even before that: as Diana Lethaby's feisty maid Zena Blake in the BBC's 2002 adaptation of Tipping the Velvet. Like her role in Vera Drake, however, that was a supporting part that only gave Hawkins a limited opportunity to show what she could do.

But now Hawkins has a role that puts her center-stage, as the lead character in Mike Leigh's new film, Happy-Go-Lucky. Currently screening in the U.K., the film has already won Hawkins the Silver Bear for best actress at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival and is due for release on Sept. 26 in the U.S.

A new film adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel Wuthering Heights is in the works. John Maybury — who helms upcoming lesbianish film The Edge of Love and is openly gay — is attached to direct, and Natalie Portman is attached to star as Catherine Earnshaw. According to IMDb.com, the project is tentatively scheduled for release in 2010.

This isn’t the first adaptation of the novel. Probably the most famous version is the 1939 film, starring Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff and Merle Oberon as Cathy. Fans of the BBC’s recent drama Mistresses might be interested to know that Oberon — who hid her Indian heritage to ‘pass’ as white in the racist Hollywood of the 1930s — is actually the great-aunt of Shelley Conn (below, left) who starred in Mistresses as the bisexual Jessica, and also played the leading lesbian in Nina's Heavenly Delights (out this week on DVD in the U.S.).

When I first saw this headline, "Emma Watson replaces 'old' Johansson," my first thought was that I was about to get my feminist on in a major way. I mean, is this what we've come to in Hollywood? Scarlett Johansson, at the age of 23, is considered too old to star in a romance?

Photo credit: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

As it turns out, though, the casting change is at least a bit better justified than I originally thought. The film in which Watson is now set to star is called Napoleon and Betsy, and the role she will play is based on a real-life figure.

Photo credit: Dave Hogan/Getty Images (Watson)

Lucia Elizabeth "Betsy" Balcombe was 13 or 14 years old in 1815 when the exiled French emperor Napoleon was brought to live on her father's estate on the British island of St. Helena. The girl and the captive emperor struck up a friendship that would last three years until 1818 when the Balcombes moved to Australia.

Betsy later wrote a memoir of her time with Napoleon, published in modern times as To Befriend an Emperor: Betsy Balcombe's Memoirs of Napoleon on St. Helena. There's also a novelization of the story for younger readers, by American writer Staton Rabin.

What seems to have been added to the story for the film version, though, is an element of romance between Betsy and Napoleon. Since Napoleon, historically, would have been 46 when he first met Betsy, I'm assuming that they're going to update her age to about 18 or 19 (at least, I hope they are, because otherwise … ew. And even so … well, still kind of ew).

Of course, if Napoleon isn't "too old" at 46, you might ask why Johansson has to be considered "too old" at 23 if the story's going to be fictionalized anyway, but … well, that's Hollywood for you.

A group of judges over at the movie website TCCandler.com recently posted a list of what they consider to be the 100 Most Beautiful (female) Faces of 2008. Being a generous sort, I thought I'd provide you with the link so you can go and see whether or not you agree with their choices.

The list makes an interesting comparison to our own AfterEllen.com Hot 100 last year. Although not primarily oriented toward gay women like the AfterEllen.com list was, website owner Candler makes a point of proclaiming toward the bottom of the page that "This is not your standard Maxim or FHM or People list," and that the choices are "certainly not based purely on public popularity." He also claims that "It is not based on the 'sexiest,' 'hottest' or 'best body'" (though, since he adds that it is "only about beautiful celebrity faces," I guess we shouldn't get too excited about men judging women based on talent just yet).

Nigella Lawson

With that said, I did find the list more unusual and interesting than the ones typically published by Maxim. For a start, the women aren't all actresses and pop stars and models. There's also a tennis player (Ana Ivanovic), a film critic (Christy Lemire), a couple of chefs (Nigella Lawson and Giada de Laurentiis), a figure skater (Kiira Korpi) and a newscaster (Melissa Theuriau). I must say I'd never heard of Theuriau (or indeed most of those others), but given the accompanying picture, I can certainly see why she was chosen:

One of my most anticipated movies of 2008 now has a U.K. release date. The Edge of Love — a biopic about the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, starring Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller and scripted by Knightley's mother, Sharman Macdonald — will be the opening night film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on June 18. It will open in London two days later, and then across the U.K. June 27.

Why all this anticipation, I hear you ask? Well, if for no other reason, I'd be excited by this movie as a chance to see two actresses I really like together on-screen. With apologies to those people — and I know there are quite a lot of them, especially people from Pittsburgh — who find Sienna Miller madly annoying, I actually think that she's quite a good actress. And, no, it doesn't hurt that she looks like she does. (It doesn't hurt that Keira Knightley looks like she does, either.)

Adding to my interest, though, is the hint that the relationship between their characters might not be entirely platonic. In the film, Knightley plays Vera Phillips, a singer and former flame of Dylan Thomas', while Miller plays the poet's wife, Caitlin MacNamara.

Lindsay Lohan was originally attached to star in Miller's role, and back in 2006 she told MTV: "[Keira] is older than me, but she kind of has a mysterious relationship with my lover. And then there's somewhat of a lesbian undertone."

Young Welsh soul singer Duffy has already made a serious splash in the U.K., with her second single "Mercy" going to No. 1 in February on downloads alone. Her management must be hoping that when her album Rockferry is released in the U.S. on May 13, she can repeat the huge crossover success of Amy Winehouse in moving from Britain to America.

Looks-wise, I'd say Americans are in for a treat, as the '60s-inspired Duffy resembles a cross between Dusty Springfield and Julie Christie (with maybe a little bit of Kristin Chenoweth thrown in for good measure):

When Duffy's "Mercy" appears on U.S. television, however, American viewers will be getting a slightly different first look at her than British viewers have had. For purposes of comparison, here is the original British version of the video: