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Cannes Winners
The winners of the 67th Cannes Film Festival have been announced in what has proven to be a highly impressive competition. The Turkish drama ‘Winter Sleep’ took home the main prize of the Palme d’Or. The feature follows a former actor, his wife and his sister running a hotel together as tension rises between them. ‘The Wonders’, a film about four sisters directed by Alice Rohrwacher and starring Monica Belucci, won the Grand Prix.
Other notable winners were Timothy Spall, who won Best Actor for his role as an eccentric 18th-19th century painter in ‘Mr Turner’, and Julianne Moore who won the Best Actress prize for David Cronenberg’s ‘Maps to the Stars’. Andrei Zviagyntsev and Oleg Negin won Best Screenplay for ‘Leviathan’ while Bennett Miller won Best Director for ‘Foxcatcher’, based on the true story of Mark Schultz and starring Steve Carell and Channing Tatum.
Irish film also had a successful run this year with the establishment of several international distribution deals, including the acquirement of Official Competition runner ‘Jimmy’s Hall’ for distribution in America. Keep an eye on IFTN for interviews with the cast and crew of the upcoming Ken Loach film, out in Irish cinemas this week, as well as for more Irish film distribution news.
Jennifer Lawrence to Work with David O. Russell Again
Star of the ‘Hunger Games’ franchise and an Oscar and Golden Globe winner, Jennifer Lawrence recently revealed that she finds it difficult to relax with her busy working schedule. It seems that the 23 year-old actress will not be slowing down anytime soon with the revelation that she will be working with David O. Russell, who directed the actress in her award-winning performances in ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ and ‘American Hustle’, yet again.
In an interview on ‘Live! With Kelly and Michael’, Lawrence stated, “He [Russell] recently texted me at, I think, four in the morning, and he was like, ‘I think I want to make a movie about the woman who invented the [Miracle] Mop. You want to do it?’ I was like, ‘Yeah.’ I can just imagine David looking at somebody mopping and being like, ‘Yeah, that's my next screenplay’.”
Jennifer Lawrence also stars in ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’, which is out in cinemas now.
Netflix Plans £100m Series based on the Queen
Independent production company Left Bank Pictures, owned by Sony Pictures Television, is to produce ‘The Crown’, a £100m drama about Queen Elizabeth II spanning her 60 years on the throne. Produced for Netflix, the series marks the first order for a UK production for the video-on-demand service following its previous successful commissions ‘House of Cards’ and ‘Orange is the New Black.’
Inspired by Peter Morgan’s play ‘The Audience’, the drama will be written by Morgan, who also wrote ‘The Queen’. Like the play, the series will be based around the monarch’s weekly meetings with Prime Minsters during her reign. Director Stephen Daldry (‘Billy Elliot’) and producer Andy Harries have been attached to the production, as have executive producers Robert Fox and Matthew Byam Shaw (all three produced ‘The Audience’).
Helen Mirren played the Queen in both the film and the play written by Morgan, winning an Academy Award for the former, but is not currently tipped for a role in the new TV series. Morgan’s other credits include ‘Frost/Nixon’, a play which he adapted for the big screen, ‘The Last King of Scotland’ and ‘Rush’.
‘The Crown’ will film next year and is expected to be available on Netflix by 2016.
