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Richard Attenborough

Reviews

Elizabeth (1998)
Shadowlands (1994)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Chaplin (1993)
Cry Freedom (1987)
Young Winston (1972)

Blog Posts

Features

Thumbnails 9/5/14

Remembering Joan Rivers; How the YA market killed "The Giver"; Chatting with Mara Wilson; 25 best films by women; Oscar obsession destroying film festivals.

Ebert Club

#233 August 27, 2014

Sheila writes: Some long takes in cinema are gratuitous and flashy, some connect themselves to the theme of the movie, but all of them are fun to pick apart and deconstruct. The technological challenges are daunting and it's fun to see film-makers rise to those challenges. I came across a video analyzing 12 long takes in cinema, and it should be a fun jumping-off point for discussion. What are your favorite long takes?

Tom Shales At Large

Early returns: The ascent of the Stephanopoulos

Polls may be open somewhere, results in many races remain inconclusive, but I am willing to make one fearless projection: ABC News is the winner in 2012's Election Night coverage. In fact, ABC's coverage of the entire campaign has generally left competitors red in the face if not green with envy, though that hardly means it was without its own fumbles, stumbles and wretched excesses.

Ebert Club

#79 September 7, 2011

Marie writes: I've always found the ocean more interesting than space and for invariably containing more delights and surprises. Case in point, discovering the existence of an extraordinary underwater museum...

Ebert Club

#74 August 3, 2011

Marie writes: I love illustrators best in all the world. There's something so alive about the scratch and flow of pen & ink, the original medium of cheeky and subversive wit. And so when club member Sandy Kahn submitted links for famed British illustrator Ronald Searle and in the hopes others might find him interesting too, needless to say, I was quick to pounce; for before Ralph Steadman there was Ronald Searle... "The two people who have probably had the greatest influence onmy life are Lewis Carroll and Ronald Searle."-- John LennonVisit Kingly Books' Ronald Searle Gallery to view a sordid collection of wicked covers and view sample pages therein. (click to enlarge image.) And for yet more covers, visit Ronald Searle: From Prisoner of War to Prolific Illustrator at Abe Books.

Ebert Club

#66 June 8, 2011

Marie writes: the ability to explore an image in 360 degrees is nothing new, but that doesn't make these pictures any less cool. In the first of a series, the Observer's architecture critic Rowan Moore introduces spectacular interactive 360-degree panoramic photographs of Britain's architectural wonders. "You are put in the middle of a space, and using your computer mouse or dragging your iPad screen - you can look in any direction you choose: up, down, sideways, diagonally, in any direction in full 360 degree turn, in three dimensions."

Go here to explore St Paul's Cathedral, London, built 1675-1711.

Ebert Club

#65 June 1, 2011

Marie writes: Why a picture is often worth a thousand words...Production still of Harold Lloyd in "An Eastern Westerner" (1920)

Festivals & Awards

So many films, so little time

I have before me a schedule of the 2007 Toronto Film Festival, which opens Thursday and runs 10 days. I have been looking at it for some time. I am paralyzed. There are so many films by important directors (not to mention important films by unknown directors), that it cannot be reduced to its highlights. The highlights alone, if run in alphabetical order, would take up all my space.

Festivals & Awards

Immigrants' hope turns to hardship in gritty 'City'

TORONTO Sometimes in the middle of the hustle and hype, you find a little film that exists simply because it needs to. Here at the Toronto Film Festival, the hotel lobbies are jammed with celebs wearing the T-shirts and baseball caps of one another's movies. But there is nothing to advertise "The City," not even a free lead pencil with the title printed on it, yet here is a movie to treasure.

Interviews

Interview with Simon Ward

It's said that Winston Churchill himself asked Carl Foreman to make a movie out of Churchill's "My Early Life." The great man made his request after seeing Foreman's "The Guns of Navarone." Now it may seem strange that the foremost statesman of his time would want his autobiography produced by a man who had just made a straightforward action picture. But then again, maybe not. We live in a time when people tend to do more or less the same thing all of their lives. Churchill did not. He had several careers before he settled into his final role as the World's Greatest Statesman. He spent quite a bit of his life, in fact, being an Eminent Failure. More than once, he committed what looked like political suicide. And his early life was filled with more action than thought. "You are my greatest disappointment," Lord Randolph Churchill rumbles at his son, somewhere around the middle of Foreman's "Young Winston." "I cannot imagine what will become of you." The audience is supposed to dig each other in the ribs at this moment, I suppose; our knowledge of how Churchill really turned out is what gives his early story such a nice irony. But Foreman, who wrote and produced, and his director, Richard Attenborough, don't work the irony too hard. "Young Winston," opening Wednesday at the U.A. Cinema One in Oakbrook, has been conceived as part history, part autobiography and two parts swashbuckling adventure.

Interviews

Interview with Joe McGrath

LONDON - All was abustle in the abandoned conservatory of the Duke of Langley's late manorial seat. Two prop men were delicately arranging a chess game between skeletons while a third. high up against one wall, was pulling a hidden wire to make an enormous dragon sit up and look around.