“I, Anna” is scheduled to be shown twice at the Berlinale, on February 12 and February 14–Valentine’s Day!–as part of the Berlinale Special Program.

You can read more about the film (and order tickets!) at the Berlinale website and here is the official programme for the film.

The synopsis:

Anna Welles lives in a tiny apartment in London. Although no longer young, she is nonetheless still attractive. From time to time she attends an event for singles where she occasionally meets a man and goes home with him. After one of her nocturnal rendezvous she comes to the attention of a detective superintendent who is investigating a brutal murder that took place at the high rise she is seen leaving the next morning. Somehow, this cultivated loner can’t seem to get this woman out of his mind. Nothing could be easier for him than to find out where she lives and follow her. He asks her out on a date and feels increasingly drawn to her. But the lady appears to be hiding something mysterious in between her job at a department store and babysitting her grandchild – something that really begins
to get to the detective.

Charlotte Rampling plays the leading role of femme fatale in her son Barnaby Southcombe’s directorial debut. Southcombe’s screenplay is based on Nico Hoffmann’s adaptation of the novel Solo für Klarinette. I,ANNA is reminiscent of film noir made in the seventies and eighties in which the criminal investigations play second fiddle to the psychological state of the protagonists and their wounds and obsessions.

Pictures provided at the Berlinale website include:

If you live in Berlin, near Berlin, or care to travel to Berlin, here is the perfect way to spend a Byrneholics Valentine’s Day!

—

—

—

Davies’s latest job for the BBC is set during a very different period. He is adapting the Quirke crime novels, written by John Banville under the pen name of Benjamin Black, which are set in 1950s Dublin.

Gabriel Byrne will play Black, an alcoholic pathologist with a complicated private life. Davies, who has also written film scripts including for Bridget Jones’s Diary, said he often turned down offers to adapt books.

To learn more about both the writer Benjamin Black and his character, Quirke, visit:

The author John Banville interviews his alter ego, Benjamin Black and a description of Quirke.

We are breathlessly awaiting more details on the timing of this series, of course. Very exciting news!

And, in a blog posting from Urban Film Review, we get a similarly enthusiastic review from someone who is open to the zeitgeist of 1980′s England, with its conspiracy/paranoia/old school spy/cold war ethos.

These two reactions to the film remind us that we are jaded. In the 21st century, heroes are indomitable, unerring, and completely without human foibles or weaknesses. We forget that  real heroes are ordinary people caught up in extraordinary situations, called upon to find inner reserves of strength and determination, forced to calibrate their fear and overcome their instincts for survival in pursuit of some higher aim, some higher destiny. How quaint. How romantic. Without superpowers and super weapons, how does one overcome something greater than oneself? Something one cannot even really identify? Where is the Batmobile when you  need it?

Defence of the Realm is the story of a run-of-the-mill journalistic hack who stumbles upon the story of a lifetime, a story that can make his career and set him up for success. Or can it? The wonder of this story is that it is complicated and dense with detail. As the complications play themselves out, our hack begins to find in himself the will to pursue the mystery, to throw ambition out the window in an attempt to discover the truth.

And the wonder of Gabriel Byrne’s performance is that he plays it real. He portrays a selfish, reasonably intelligent, simplistic guy who, upon discovering a mystery, grows up and learns to look beyond his limited scope to see a larger playing field, a field full of nasty types who don’t think twice about removing players like him “without prejudice.” He stumbles. He fumbles. His naivete makes us cringe, even though we, in his place, would behave just as he does. The courage he finds in himself to keep pushing on, to ask questions that piss everyone off, to stick his nose in places that could explode, is the extraordinary courage of an ordinary man, and we applaud him, even as we recognize that his efforts may be futile.

The Defence of the Realm Mega Movie Page sheds light on this small but wonderful film by providing reviews, videos, great screencaps, posters, promotional images, blog postings, and more. Go back to 1985 and enjoy this dark and dangerous film!

Many others are reporting on this great news now, including The Hollywood Reporter (ooooh, and while you are there, check out the latest Academy Awards News!), The Stage, and TheaterMania.

Here is the official press release from Channel 4, dated January 24, 2012:

—

—

Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects, Miller’s Crossing) marks his return to British TV to head the cast of Channel 4′s brand-new four-part drama series Coup (w/t), it was announced today.

Byrne plays the pivotal role of politician Tom Dawkins, the reluctant hero at the heart of this contemporary conspiracy thriller, who finds himself thrust into the spotlight of front-line politics when he least expects to be, and who risks everything by taking on the might of the establishment.

A massive industrial accident on Teesside leaves several people dead and raises awkward questions about the safety procedures of the US petrochemical company involved. As a man who has a profound belief in transparency and open government, Dawkins (Byrne) will have to tackle vested interests, financial, media, and military, both domestic and international, in his pursuit to uncover the truth and get justice for the families affected by the disaster. Along the way, he will struggle to keep his party onside and the electorate behind him, as he also weathers damaging revelations about his personal life. And as the investigation into the Teesside disaster proceeds, Dawkins becomes aware of establishment’s secret ties to the petrochemical company and comes to realise that there are bigger powers at play behind the scenes.

The series will go into production next month for transmission later this year.

Golden Globe winner (for hit US drama In Treatment) Gabriel Byrne is an internationally-renowned actor and producer, arguably best-known for acclaimed roles in Miller’s Crossing and The Usual Suspects.

Coup is written by Robert Jones (Lennon Naked, Cops, Buried), based on the novel A Very British Coup by Chris Mullin, directed by Ed Fraiman (The Philanthropist, ShakespeaRE-told, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and produced by Johann Knobel (The Shadow Line, Shameless). Executive Producers are Jason Newmark, Ed Fraiman, George Faber and Charles Pattinson.

A Company Pictures/Newscope Films production.

The Guardian informs us that Gabriel Byrne is returning to British television in Coup, which is based on Chris Mullen’s novel A Very British Coup. Fans may remember the very fine 1988 UK television series of the same name, with Ray McAnally. It was quite a hit. Filming of this new version is set to start next month and the show will air sometime this year.

The Usual Suspects and In Treatment star Gabriel Byrne is making a return to UK television to take the lead role in Channel 4′s conspiracy drama Coup.

In what is understood to be his first UK TV role in almost 20 years, Byrne will play reluctant hero Tom Dawkins.

In the four-part thriller, which is based on the novel A Very British Coup by former Labour MP Chris Mullin, politician Dawkins takes on the might of the establishment in a bid to uncover the truth behind an industrial accident in Teeside.

Byrne’s casting is something of a coup itself for Channel 4, because although the Irish actor appeared in some UK television productions in the 1980s and early 1990s, he has since mostly worked on films in the US.

Read the rest of the article.

Yes, yes. I am happy to return to the small screen in the UK.
I’ve had a lot fun on TV in the United States recently…

Digital Spy and Televisual also report on this new series.

The Guardian reported on May 11, 2011:

Other new Channel 4 shows include, Coup, a four-part political thriller based on former Labour MP Chris Mullin’s novel A Very British Coup.

Coup explores the relationship between government, big business and the City and is being adapted for TV by Robert Jones, whose writing credits include Party Animals, Buried and The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

Camilla Campbell, head of drama at Channel 4, commissioned Company Pictures and Newscope Films to make the drama. Ed Fraiman is directing, with Johann Knobel producing.

Fraiman will also share executive producing duties with Jason Newmark, George Faber and Charlie Pattinson.

This is terrific news!!

Perfect material for a film by Ken Russell, yes?

A little background on the poet Lord Byron, a key figure in the English Romantic Movement:

In Childe Harold, we see him stating the Romantic credo:

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more.

The Poetry Foundation: Lord Byron (George Gordon), 1788–1824

In his dynamism, sexuality, self-revelation, and demands for freedom for oppressed people everywhere, Byron captivated the Western mind and heart as few writers have, stamping upon nineteenth-century letters, arts, politics, even clothing styles, his image and name as the embodiment of Romanticism.

Also from The Poetry Foundation (if you ever need to know anything about poetry, this is a great place to start!), here is a less flamboyant recounting of the “lost weekend” in 1816 that led to the creation of two seminal works in what would become known as Romantic literature: Frankenstein and The Vampyre:

On his trip he was accompanied by Fletcher the valet, his personal physician, Dr. John Polidori (“Pollydolly”), Robert Rushton, and a Swiss servant. He also traveled with a huge coach, copied from one Napoléon captured at Genappe. On the twenty-fifth they sailed from Dover bound for Ostend. Byron would never see England again.

The party reached Geneva on 25 May 1816. Byron was unaware that waiting for him were Claire Clairmont, pregnant with his child, Shelley, and Mary Godwin. A genuine friendship and mutual high regard flourished between the two poets. They passed the time agreeably by boating on Lake Leman and conversing at the Villa Diodati, which Byron had rented, with its commanding view of the lake and the Juras beyond. In this environment Mary wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818.

“Pollydolly”? Don’t you love it? So, there is plenty of the real life man and the events surrounding him that would allow a director and an actor to go pretty wild some 170 years later. Several critics have decided that Ken Russell intended for this film to show the imaginative and philosophical battles these artists engaged in as they fought the classicism of their past and looked forward to a different way of viewing the world and their role in it. If you can give yourself up to Russell’s imagery and Gabriel Byrne’s theatricality, then you might see them attempting to bring the internal struggles of creative minds to some kind of external expression.

Or not. In the long run, I think Harlan Ellison is right:

Yet I treasure this film. So may you. If you, as am I, are out of your head… you will cleave to this tortured bit of cinematic epilepsy because it is ALIVE. It is yet another crime of passion committed by Ken Russell, and his sort of berserk creativity has fallen on such hard times in this age of Reagan and yuppie sensibility, that simply to be exposed to the ravings of an inspired madman is cathartic. I came away from GOTHIC with my soul on fire.

“Crime of passion.” Well, he could be talking about Byron himself, you know.

Gabriel Byrne gives us his most Byronic profile, his best wide eyes, his secret smile, his haughty reserve, his perverse sneer, his lusty look, and his plummiest vocal tones in this portrayal of one of England’s finest poets.

And the Gothic Mega Movie Page offers a feast of official posters, stunning screencaps from Lozzie, promotional images, the trailer, fan videos, reviews and more, so take this invitation to dive into “riot and ruin and pandemonium” and enjoy!

‘”Young Adult,’ ‘I, Anna’ to unspool in Berlinale Special

Jason Reitman’s “Young Adult” and Barnaby Southcombe’s “I, Anna” are among the latest international pics selected for this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

“Young Adult,” with Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt, and “I, Anna,” a noir thriller starring Charlotte Rampling, Gabriel Byrne and Hayley Atwell that got a major boost at the fest’s Co-production Market in 2010, will screen as part of the Berlinale Special sidebar.”

The Hollywood Reporter also reports:

Charlotte Rampling will also be hitting the Berlin red carpet, for the world premiere of I, Anna, the directorial debut of Rampling’s son, Barnaby Southcombe. The film noir co-stars Gabriel Byrne, Hayley Atwell and Eddie Marsan.

Screen International was nice enough to use a (tiny) picture from I, Anna for their report:

To make up for that, here is the video we have from the film:

An interview with Charlotte Rampling from May 2011 in The Guardian gets the name of the film wrong, but it is worth a look anyway.

And the review of “The Look”, the documentary about Charlotte Rampling, from The New York Times makes us wish that she and Gabriel Byrne would make a documentary together!

The Berlin Film Festival (the 62nd Berlinale) runs February 9 – 19 in, you guessed it, Berlin! Check out the official website and the official press release.

No word on an appearance by Mr. Byrne at this time, but stay tuned. We understand he is in London, so a trip to this festival seems possible.

Read our previous postings about this film and let’s hope for a premiere in the US soon!

more movie news

Le Capital

Le Figaro brings us up-to-date on the shooting of Le Capital in Paris. Our correspondents in Paris, Camille and Ara, deserve our thanks for the heads up on this!

Gabriel is seated under the picture

The official caption to this picture states:
“The shooting of the latest Costa-Gavras film takes place in the Netherlands embassy,
rue de Grenelle, in the 7th arrondissement in Paris”

The article notes that in the scene in the picture above, the dialogue involved layoffs, indemnities and transactions (ouch!) and that the day after shooting at the embassy, they would go to a ministry  in Paris, and then Roissy (Charles de Gaulle) airport and then head on to London.

Finally, they also mention that, between takes, Gabriel went back to his trailer. Working on those lines, no doubt–and always the professional. We are thrilled he is working on big screen projects these days!

The Courier

Irish Central has an article on action films: Top Ten Irish tough guy Hollywood movies of all time–VIDEOS

Coming in at #9 is The Courier and here is what they have to say:

Ireland’s former Ambassador for Culture, Gabriel Byrne, stars in this action packed movie about a courier at the D-Day
Courier Service. He mistakenly finds a pile of money in his regular delivery. He does some digging only to discover that the messenger company is a front for a drug ring.

A reformed drug user himself, he sets out to crack the lethal ring.

See our Mega Movie Page for The Courier for more information about this almost forgotten film. It is great that they included it in their list, but nicer still would have been “Miller’s Crossing”!

Also, this is the only film on the list without an accompanying video, so here is one for you.

The Ghost of Ghost Ship

Finally, here are some nice words from Ron Eldard. Ron Eldard? Yes, you remember. Ghost Ship. Mr. Eldard wants to set the record straight about this film we all love to hate in an interview about his latest  movie, “Roadie,” in the Oman Times (a New York Times syndicate):

The sprawling, unrushed conversation will get around to Roadie, but since Eldard stated his criteria for selecting projects, it’s only fair to throw two words back at him: Ghost Ship (2002), a horrifyingly bad haunted-ship movie in which he starred alongside Gabriel Byrne and then-girlfriend Julianna Margulies.

‘’The movie you saw on the screen was not at all the movie I said yes to,’’ Eldard insists. ‘’I shouldn’t say ‘not at all’ – it’s drastically different than the movie I said yes to.

‘’That movie was originally called Chimera,’’ he explains. ‘’It had pretty great actors. Gabriel Byrne is no joke. There was a Devil character in there that wasn’t in it originally. It was originally four people on the ship and it was like The Shining (1980). It was very creepy, one of the creepiest, creepiest, genuinely scary scripts I’d read. When we got to Australia, there were two more characters added and it became much more a movie, I think, about special effects, though the actors were all still very committed.

‘’But the original idea was four people go on this boat and they get possessed by the boat and they all go crazy,’’ Eldard says. ‘’Twenty-five pages into that script, I said, ‘I want to do this.’ It was disturbing and not particularly commercial, but it changed drastically.

‘’When we landed in Australia, it was a very different script.’’

OK, fair enough. Now on to Roadie.

Can someone get us out of here? Anyone? Please?

HauteFashionAfrica

A MAN’S STORY profiles Ozwald Boateng, his design, his business, his personal life. Charismatic, glamorous, hard-working and very humanly flawed, Boateng’s personal and professional triumphs and set-backs are the fascinating heart of this film which is set against a back-drop of models, movie stars and fabulous locations.

The Movie, which was shown at various Film Festivals last year such as the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, Bergen Film Festival, Cambridge Film Festival, Rio Film Festival, Warsaw Film Festival to name a few, features cameos from some of your favorite stylist celebrities; Forest Whitaker, Gabriel Byrne,  Laurence Fishburne, Will Smith, Sir Richard Branson, Spike Lee, Paul Bettany,  Prince Charles & “the designer who inspired everything in Ozwald to create” – Giorgio Armani.

A Man’s Story

UK Cinema Release Date: Friday 9th March 2012
Directed by: Varon Bonicos
Produced by: Alastair Clark, Rachel Robey
Starring: Ozwald Boateng, Giorgio Armani, Michael Bay, Paul Bettany, Richard Branson, Gabriel Byrne, Don Cheadle, Daniel Day-Lewis, Laurence Fishburne, Jamie Foxx, Spike Lee, Prince Charles, Keanu Reeves, Will Smith, Forest Whitaker, Ray Winstone

Genre: Documentary
Runtime: 1 hour 38 minutes (approx.)

Movie Synopsis: African in origin, superstar men’s fashion designer Ozwald Boateng has journeyed from the North London suburbs to London’s posh, iconic Savile Row. A real oddity in his industry, Boateng inhabits a vibrant, surreal world, surrounded by the jetset, colored by the lens of glamor both implied and actual. Shot over twelve years by director Varon Bonicos, A Man’s Story shows us a man in process, as well as in progress. It’s a biographical documentary as unique, layered and compelling as its subject.

Preview

—

—   putting extra space here so the picture is nice and big…..

—

—

—

Filming in Florida in the middle of winter. Someone has to do it!

Other filming locations include London, New York City, and Paris.

Cineuropa provides some new details about the script and the cast:

Taking a scathing look at the world of international finance, Costa Gavras’s eighteenth feature, Capital, starts shooting next Wednesday. After Amen (2002), The Axe [trailer] (2005) and Eden is West [trailer] (2009), the Greek-born French director is embarking on a political suspense thriller adapted from Stéphane Osmont’s novel Le Capital.

The cast includes Gad Elmaleh (Priceless [trailer] and set to grace screens next June in Un Bonheur N’arrive Jamais Seul alongside Sophie Marceau), Irish star Gabriel Byrne (recently acclaimed in the TV series In Treatment), Belgian actress Natacha Régnier (The Prey [trailer]) and Hippolyte Girardot (Top Floor, Left Wing [trailer]).

Read the rest of the article.

Costa Gavras: “one of French cinema’s most internationally feted writer-directors”

For those unfamiliar with the work of Costa Gavras, you can learn more in this wonderful interview from The Guardian in 2009, the 40th anniversary of his landmark film, Z. An excerpt:

This year marks the 40th anniversary of his landmark feature Z (1969), about an incorruptible judge investigating the killing at a peace demo of a reformist politician, played by Yves Montand. With democracy disappearing in a fog of dirty tricks, conspiracy and cover-up, Z was an indictment of the US-backed coup in Greece, and was banned there under the military junta of 1967-74. With dark humour, a faux-documentary style and a soundtrack by Mikos Theodorakis – then under house arrest – it made Gavras’s name as master of a genre that married the pace and suspense of the action thriller with political critique, and it won an Oscar for best foreign-language film. Z has recently begun an anniversary tour with a screening in New York in a new 35mm print.

and

Philippe Claudel, the French novelist and film-maker whose I’ve Loved You So Long won this year’s Bafta for best foreign-language film, sees Gavras as a “tragic poet” whose elegant, humanist films pose profound questions. “He writes stories with his movie camera that show fights between history and individual choices, or the ironically small place of man in an inhuman society.”

The director and Mr. Byrne made a film together in 1983: Hanna K. You can refresh your memory about that film at the Hanna K Mega Movie Page.

And, as Lozzie has pointed out, here is what that film looks like (thanks to someone we know for posting this!):

And The AV Club interviewed him in 2009 as well:

AVC: What are you working on next?

CG: I’m trying to see if I can speak about our society today, but I cannot speak about the theme, because it’s a bit difficult. I’m just starting to work on that. Because we live in a kind of world which has drastically changed in the last years. We speak about globalization, and how it’s become the reason for everything. It has a kind of deep meaning. To be everywhere and to be nowhere at the same time. You think to globalize, you think, the Earth, it’s your country. No, it’s not your country. It’s not easy to catch it in a cinema. It’s too huge.

WorldIrish.com has created a profile of what was originally called Telefis Éireann in honor of this anniversary and they have included several videos which chronicle the five decades of television programming (briefly! These are about 2 minutes long). Here is one that mentions Gabriel Byrne:

—

—

There is a plan to make more archival footage available on the RTÉ Player over the next year as this anniversary is celebrated, so stay tuned! We might be watching an episode of Bracken someday soon!

Thanks to Kim S. for the heads up on this! Was typing so fast when I posted this that I forgot to say thanks to Kim!

I added a few pictures that I had forgotten about and also some credits, so if you have watched it already, you might want to give it another viewing. There is a bit more music this time around, too (more pictures and more music–always a good thing)…

Enjoy and Welcome to the New Year!

—

Gabriel Byrne was a very busy man in 2011. Here is a video recollection of his activities and his accomplishments as Cultural Ambassador for Ireland and as the artist he will always be.

The video is also available in HD, so choose it if you prefer. Be sure to choose full screen for the optimal Byrne-ing effect.

Music is provided by the remarkable Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill. Set your speakers to stun, folks!

We wish you well in all of your endeavors in the future, Mr. Byrne, and we look forward to seeing your shining face on the big screen in 2012.

Happy New Year!

If you have any trouble with this embedded video, you can go directly to YouTube to watch it there.