'Saving Mr Banks' star Emma Thompson was snapped by paparazzi as she walked the black carpet at the 2014 National Board Of Review Awards Gala in New York.
Continue: Video - Saving Mr Banks' Emma Thompson Hits The 2014 National Board Of Review Awards - Part 3
An unusual number of complex, well-acted movies made 2013 a very strong year at the cinema...
10. Behind The Candelabra - Sadly consigned to TV in America, this Liberace biopic's lavish production design deserves to be projected on the biggest screen possible. As do great performances from Michael Douglas, Matt Damon and a hilarious Rob Lowe.
Read our 'Behind The Candelabra' Review
Watch 'Behind The Candelabra' Trailer
Continue reading: 10 Best Films Of 2013
The author has become the first Canadian woman to be awarded the prestigious honour
Alice Munro has walked away with the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature following this week's award ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden. The 82-year-old short story writer, whose work has been adapted to numerous award-winning films and plays, became only the 13th woman to be awarded the most prized honour in literature and was handed lashings of praise for her life's achievements during the award gala.
News of her win arrived in British Columbia on Thursday morning (10th October) following Wednesday night's ceremony on the other side of the Atlantic, with CBC News first making her win viral. The Ontario author last published Dear Life in 2012 and wasn't actually at the Stockholm ceremony, as she believed her chances of winning were too slim to even bother. She told CBC following her win that winning the award was "one of those pipe dreams" that "might happen, but it probably wouldn't."
But the woman referred to as the Canadian Chekhov did win, and she genuinely couldn't believe the news of her success. She recalled, "It's the middle of the night here and I had forgotten about it all, of course. It just seems impossible. A splendid thing to happen...My stories have gotten around quite remarkably for short stories. I would really hope that this would make people see the short story as an important art, not something you play around with until you got a novel written."
Continue reading: Alice Munro Wins The Nobel Prize For Literature
With Away From Her and Take This Waltz, actress-turned-filmmaker Polley has proved herself as an unusually gifted director, but this inventive, moving documentary reveals even more artistic ambition. Not only is it a riveting exploration of her own family history, but it's also a pungent comment on the nature of storytelling itself. By the end, we wonder if it's ever possible to get to the truth of a past event. And we don't really mind that it probably isn't.
"When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all." From this Margaret Atwood quote, Polley sets out to understand a key fact about her late actress mother Diane Polley. She encourages everyone to tell their side of the story: her father Michael (who also attempts to objectively narrate the film), brothers Mark and John, sisters Joanna and Suzy, and a variety of her mother's friends and colleagues. All of this centres on a major revelation that redefined the family. But of course everyone sees themselves as the protagonist, even though it's actually Diane's story. And while Sarah tries not to make it all about her, she can't really help it.
By taking such a playful approach, Polley packs the film with inventive layers, allowing us to peer around the corners of the documentary itself, breaking the fourth wall in the to-camera interviews and even in the re-created home movies. We're never quite sure if what we're seeing is truly archival material, or if it's all been re-made for this movie. And that's the whole point: if we can't find the real version of any event, is that truth only created within us as we understand its relevance in our own life?
Continue reading: Stories We Tell Review
Sarah Polley's 'Stories We Tell' was a huge hit at film festivals in 2012.
Stories We Tell is certainly a unique movie - that much we know from the trailer. The 2012 documentary that premiered at the 69th Venice International Film Festival before winning acclaim at the Telluride and Toronto festivals, sees filmmaker Sarah Polley chronicling the story of her family, including the revelation that she was the product of an extramarital affair.
The movie explores the relationship between Polley's parents and incorporates Super-8 footage shot to look like home movies, as well as interviews with the filmmaker's siblings and other relatives. The film received the $100,000 prize for Best Canadian Film in Toronto and was nominated for best feature length documentary at the 2013 Canadian Screen Awards.
Continue reading: Stories We Tell Trailer: Filmmaker Sarah Polley Hunts For Her Real Father
Sarah Polley is an actress and film director from a family full of secrets. With her vibrant mother actress Diane Polley long deceased, Sarah wants to discover the truth about her marriage to her father Michael Polley and the resulting crash it had on the family. She was only a young teenager when she was first told by her sister that Michael may not be her biological father and that there were two other possible men who could've had an affair with Diane whilst they were married. More than twenty years on, she is eager to hear from everyone's side of the story despite how very different they may be.
Continue: Stories We Tell Trailer
In Toronto, Margot (Williams) is happily married to Lou (Rogen), but she feels that their relationship is only expressed through humour and that work interests divide them. So it's not surprising that, after a chance encounter with neighbour Daniel (Kirby), Margot starts to consider straying from her marriage. She holds Daniel at arm's length, but is intrigued by everything that's new about him, including his more adult way of talking about sex and relationships. Is taking this leap scarier than waiting around for her marriage to come back to life?
Continue reading: Take This Waltz Review
British actors Julie Christie and Daniel Day-Lewis have won the top acting prizes at the Screen Actors' Guild (SAG) awards.
While Christie took the best actress gong for her acclaimed portrayal of a woman facing dementia in Sarah Polley's Away From Her, Day-Lewis was rewarded for his stunning role as an amoral oil prospector in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood.
Though the awards season has been jeopardised by the ongoing industrial action by the Writers' Guild of America (WGA), the SAG awards were held without a hitch after an interim agreement was signed between the two unions, allowing acting talent to attend the ceremony without having to cross picket lines.
Christie - who is nominated for the best actress Academy award for her part in Away From Her - paid tribute to the SAG, adding to The Associated Press: "It's lovely to receive an award from your own union, especially at a time when we're being so forcefully reminded how important unions are."
And Day-Lewis dedicated his award to the late Heath Ledger, who was tragically found dead in his New York apartment last week.
"In Brokeback Mountain he was unique, he was perfect," Day-Lewis said while accepting his trophy.
"That scene in the trailer at the end of the film is as moving as anything I think I've ever seen."
The 50-year-old added backstage that he had never met Ledger but had been profoundly affected by the actor's death.
"I thought he was beautiful. I just had a very strong feeling I would have liked him very much as a man," he said. "I admired him very much. I'm absolutely certain he would have done many wonderful things in his life."
Javier Bardem took the best supporting actor prize for his role as psychotic killer Anton Chigurh in the Coen Brothers' No Country For Old Men, which also won the award for outstanding cast in a motion picture.
With The Sopranos finally coming to an end, leads James Gandolfini and Edie Falco claimed the best actor and best actress prizes for TV dramas, while Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey, the stars of NBC's 30 Rock, took the comedy equivalents.
And another NBC series, The Office - an adaptation of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's Golden Globe-winning sitcom - won the award for best cast in a comedy programme.
Continue reading: Brits Julie Christie And Daniel Day-lewis Take Sag Awards
Sarah Polley, an exquisite actress, stars as a young journalist-wannabe named Beatrice (in pigtails, natch) who flies to Iceland to locate her boyfriend, who has gone missing along with his entire TV crew. Her plan crashes, she undergoes surgery to get fixed up, then continues on to Iceland where she discovers the fate of her guy: He was killed by a monster (played by Robert John Burke) who lives like a hermit in an abandoned building.
Continue reading: No Such Thing Review
On a cutting room floor somewhere lie 15 to 20 minutes of footage that might have made the metaphorical monster movie "No Such Thing" a trenchant, ironic cultural satire instead of a frustrating misfire.
It's a caustic, deadpan, beauty-and-the-beast comedy that takes wide swipes at Western civilization's social ills and the "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality of media-induced modern cynicism -- and does it well up to a point. But just as the story hits its stride, writer-director Hal Hartley ("Flirt," "Henry Fool") fast-forwards through what should be the film's heart.
Innocently intellectual Sarah Polley ("Go," "eXistenZ") stars as Beatrice, a guileless gopher for a cold-hearted TV news producer (a whimsically savage Helen Mirren) who begs and pleads for her big chance to become a reporter by following up on the disappearance of a network news crew in Iceland that included her cameraman fiancé.
Continue reading: No Such Thing Review
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Actor
With Away From Her and Take This Waltz, actress-turned-filmmaker Polley has proved herself as an...
Sarah Polley is an actress and film director from a family full of secrets. With...
After the remarkable Away From Her, actress-turned-filmmaker Polley is back with another bracingly observant drama,...
When Margot and Daniel meet on a plane, they have an immediate connection; their chemistry...
Clive and Elsa are young and motivated scientists, they work in the field of genetic...
I bet there's a really cool backstory behind No Such Thing. Its premise is...
On a cutting room floor somewhere lie 15 to 20 minutes of footage that might...
