#simon callow

[gravesdiggers]

Group shots including Rupert Graves, with James Wilby, Helena Bonham Carter, Simon Callow, John Bright, Natascha McElhone, Jenny Beavan and others at the screening for "Merchant Ivory" during BFI Flare 2024 at BFI Southbank on March 16, 2024 in London, England.

#Rupert Graves #James Wilby #Helena Bonham Carter #Simon Callow #Merchant Ivory #BFI Flare #events #2024 #Maurice #Maurice 1987 #A Room With A View

[lasaraconor]

#henry cavill #geralt of rivia #joey batey #jaskier #liz carr #fenn #simon callow #codringher #the witcher 3 #the witcher #gif

[maydays2]

Maurice (1987): TV Tropes Page

#maurice 1987 #maurice hall #james wilby #clive durham #hugh grant #alec scudder #rupert graves #maurice/clive #maurice/alec #anne durham #phoebe nicholls #lasker-jones #ben kingsley #doctor barry #Denholm Elliott #mr ducie #Simon Callow #tv tropes #mine

[sconesfortea]

Countdown to the 60th anniversary rewatch | 1.03: The Unquiet Dead

#doctor who #9th doctor #christopher eccleston #billie piper #eve myles #simon callow #my gifs #| #dwedit #doctorwhoedit #dwrewatch #queued

[rosalie-starfall]

The Phantom of the Opera

Masquerade

#the phantom of the opera #masquerade #miranda richardson #gerard butler #Simon Callow #Gilles André #Ciarán Hinds #Richard Firmin #madame giry #phantom #my gifs #movie edits #movies : musicals #movies : period #movies: new years #?

[colonellickburger]

Brian Griffin. Simon Callow, the actor, at Elsynge Road, Wandsworth, London in 1977

#Brian Griffin #Simon Callow

[filmy420]

#helena bonham carter #simon callow #rosemary leach #mia fothergill #rupert graves

[frazzledsoul]

Looks like Kit's brought the clean shaven period look back for the movie he started shooting today and I don't know how to feel about it.

Credit goes to Steven Curtis Photography on Instagram.

And before anyone asks, this is a UK production with UK actors, so they are cleared to work regardless of the U.S strike.

#kit harington #simon callow #naomi scott #eternal return

[mywingsareonwheels]

Oh good grief *please* can one or two of the streaming sites put the romantic comedy Bedrooms and Hallways (1998) up.

All these new Con O'Neill fans who haven't seen his character (supporting role but lovely) have a bi awakening and get together with [spoiler]. This is just not right.

And the rest of the cast! Kevin McKidd and Jennifer Ehle and James Purefoy are the three leads! There are Tom Hollander and Hugo Weaving! There is Julie Graham! There are Simon Callow and Harriet Walter! A lot of characters turn out to be bi when they thought they weren't!

It's not a perfect film, there are a couple of elements that haven't aged that well[1], but it is warm and fun and massively ahead of its time in a lot of ways. A lot of queer characters and they all get at least a happy-ish ending. And you can't tell me that there aren't people on here who don't want to see Hugo Weaving rather incompetently domming Tom Hollander. ;-) And, as aforementioned: Con O'Neill.

[1] There are rather silly New Age groups in it, who are being... affectionately made fun of, which is generally great but there is thus a bit of clumsy cultural appropriation happening in a couple of those scenes. I wish honestly this aged it more than it has, but... *sighs*

#con o'neill #bedrooms and hallways #kevin mckidd #jennifer ehle #james purefoy #tom hollander #hugo weaving #simon callow #harriet walter

[undinecissy]

A vintage programme.

Faust, performed at The Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London From March 1988.

It starred Simon Callow in the title role. Also in the cast were Alyson Spiro, Peter Lindford, Paul Brightwell, Caroline Bliss, Jack Ellis and a very young Andy Serkis.

One of the inserts has two signatures. One is James Wilby and the other is Rupert Graves who were in the audience and friends of Simon Callow.

I guess it was during the period when they filmed A Handful of Dust.

That reminds me of the famous scene in the British Museum with Mr. Ducie. LOL

#james wilby #rupert graves #signatures #faust #simon callow #1988 #the Lyric Theatre #a handful of dust

[byneddiedingo]

Rosemary Leach, Daniel Day-Lewis, Simon Callow, Helena Bonham Carter, Rupert Graves in A Room With a View (James Ivory, 1985) Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Maggie Smith, Julian Sands, Denholm Elliott, Simon Callow, Judi Dench, Daniel Day-Lewis, Rosemary Leach, Rupert Graves. Screenplay: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, based on a novel by E.M. Forster. Cinematography: Tony Pierce-Roberts. Production design: Brian Ackland Snow, Gianni Quaranta. Film editing: Humphrey Dixon. Music: Richard Robbins. 

James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant had a collaboration that began with the formation of Merchant Ivory Productions in 1961 and lasted until Merchant's death in 2005. It usually included the screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The trio developed a reputation for literary adaptations that were beautifully filmed with opulent sets and costumes and a gallery of celebrated stars -- most of them British. But the trouble with developing a distinctive style is that you can become a cliché: "Merchant Ivory" eventually became a label for a film that was tastefully middlebrow -- well-done and entertaining but just a tad safe. It's a pity, because their best films -- Howards End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993), and this one -- set a high standard, despite their "safeness." Few films have a better sense of place and time than A Room With a View in its depiction of Florence at the start of the 20th century. Granted, it leans a bit too heavily on the cliché about stuffy Brits losing their cool in the warmer climate of Tuscany, but that's the fault of E.M. Forster's novel -- not one of his major works -- and not of Jhabvala's Oscar-winning screenplay. Oscars also went to the art direction team and to costumers Jenny Beavan and John Bright, and it was nominated for best picture, for the supporting performances of Denholm Elliott and Maggie Smith, for Ivory's direction, and for Tony Pierce-Roberts's cinematography. The cast includes Helena Bonham Carter (in her "corset-roles" period) and Julian Sands, along with a then little-known Daniel Day-Lewis. Proof that Day-Lewis is one of the greatest actors of all time is no longer needed, but it's worth contemplating that he created the character of the prissy Cecil Vyse in this film within a year of appearing as the gay street punk Johnny in My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears), and that he would follow with the sexy Tomas in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Philip Kaufman, 1988), the paralyzed Christy Brown in My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989), and the dashing Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans (Michael Mann, 1992). Day-Lewis's Cecil Vyse verges on a caricature of the sexually repressed Brit, but he has an affecting moment near the end when, after Lucy (Bonham Carter) breaks off their engagement, he emerges as a vulnerable, three-dimensional character. Richard Robbins's fine score is memorably supplemented by Kiri Te Kanawa's recordings of two Puccini arias: "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi and "Chi il bel sogno di Doretta" from La Rondine.

#A Room With a View #James Ivory #Rosemary Leach #Daniel Day-Lewis #Helena Bonham Carter #Simon Callow #Rupert Graves

[hbcsource]

HELENA BONHAM CARTER IN CONVERSATION WITH SIMON CALLOW | THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE | APRIL 2023 Helena Bonham Carter was joined by the writer and fellow actor Simon Callow at home this spring to discuss her new role: Library President. The two are longtime members and met filming the 1985 EM Forster adaptation A Room With a View. Bonham Carter was 19. It was the first of many Merchant Ivory productions for her, including Maurice and Howards End, before Hollywood called, with a role as the suicidal love interest in David Fincher's Fight Club. Work with her former husband, Tim Burton, came next, as well as a contribution to the Harry Potter franchise and more. Callow's acting career includes stage roles in Shakespeare, Beckett, pantomime and contemporary theatre and beloved British films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral. He is a biographer of Oscar Wilde and Orson Welles and a renowned Dickens expert. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. HELENA BONHAM CARTER: Simon, it's very nice to see you here. Welcome to my Presidential home! I'm not having a clever day - do you find that, or are you always clever? SIMON CALLOW: Always. But I think I might be daunted by being the President of The London Library. Such a wonderful title, such a wonderful entity. HELENA: I love the title. The older I get, the more I like having conversations with dead people - for instance my dad, who made me a member when I was 21. For the Library to then ask me to be President... SIMON: Fantastic. HELENA : I used the Library a lot then, which was also when I first met you. I was sort of roaming and feeling lost, having a great time filming but feeling out of my depth everywhere. My peer group had gone to uni, and I was suddenly just on my own path and really unequipped to deal with it. I had a massive chip on my shoulder. So The London Library was my college. I felt legitimate, and I thought I could wander in and dress up like Virginia Woolf. SIMON: It's like going right back to the source, isn't it? There it all is, and there they were. HELENA: There they were! It's not only a conversation with my dead dad, but a conversation with EM Forster. If it was not for him, we wouldn't be here. SIMON: A Room With A View is my favourite film of all the films I've been in, and I'm still astonished by its freshness. HELENA: It still works. SIMON: It really does. It was my second film and I was incredibly relieved - I'd been in Amadeus and detested every second. When I got the script [for A Room With A View] Ismail [Merchant, the producer] said to me: "We want you to play the leading part!" So I thought, "This is great, he sees me as George. I'll go on a diet immediately." Then my agent discovered I was in fact playing the Reverend Beebe. And I thought, "No, outright no." I was terribly hurt. HELENA: And totally miscast. SIMON: Beebe's the fat old parson; I can't possibly play him. Finally I gave in to discover that suddenly I was with the aristocracy of British film and theatre: Maggie [Smith], Judi [Dench] and Fabia Drake, no less. And you. Who was completely new. HELENA: I was a foetus. SIMON: What I remember about you then was the incredible speed with which you spoke. HELENA: Oh, seriously? That's like my daughter. SIMON: You would change tack in the middle of a sentence and contradict yourself. HELENA: I don't think that's changed. I'm interested that I spoke at all. I remember myself as a mute, a total mouse, and so in awe of everyone. I was aware that you were a writer and talking about Mozart a lot, so I thought, "He's the Renaissance man that I have to become." Also, without being too indiscreet, you were one of the kinder adults. SIMON: Fabia was an absolute holy terror. What was great was to be working on a script drawn from such a wonderful novel. Ruth [Prawer Jhabvala, who adapted the original novel for the film] incomparably excelled at weaving the words from the novel into a real script, so that these were really people talking to each other. My favourite scene in any movie I've acted in is our scene at the piano. HELENA: It was the most important scene. You, as Mr Beebe, caught Lucy [Honeychurch, my character] playing in private. He's so tender and I love that. "If only you knew how to live as you play." SIMON: Beebe, certainly as written by Ruth - less so by Forster actually - is essentially benevolent. I remember the first read through, in London somewhere? HELENA: I was terrified. Maybe it was the first time I read with Maggie and Judi. SIMON: Maggie terrified me by saying, "Why are you calling him 'Beebe'? It has to be 'Bee-be'. Beebe sounds as if we're at the Beeb!" Were you always a great reader of novels? HELENA: Quite a good reader, though I was slow. I was taught at English A Level by Penelope Fitzgerald. SIMON: I knew and loved her. Was she a good teacher? HELENA: Extraordinary. Did you ever read Offshore? I love that. But I thought it would be good to look as if I read, because then every heroine in every book or film was a reader or writer. I wanted to be Judy Davis in My Brilliant Career. It was probably quite healthy, instead of fixating on a physique, which is what most people do these days because of Instagram. I wasn't very sexual for a long time. SIMON: You were wearing lots of clothes. HELENA: So many clothes. SIMON: One couldn't even begin to guess what the woman beneath would be. HELENA: No, there wasn't a body. SIMON: It was extraordinary, you were a sort of Oxfam shop on two legs. HELENA: I don't know where that came from. I think I had a real complex. Maybe because I was in such a male world. I went to Westminster [School], which was all boys, so before I even walked into period movies, I was dressed as a Victorian. It was always about pretending to be in the past. I over romanticised or felt I belonged in the past, actually. SIMON: The biggest relationships in my young life were with my grandmothers. I asked one to make me an 18th-century costume for a Christmas present. HELENA: Oh, I love that. So you dressed up as Mozart? SIMON: In effect. I loved the fabrics, the shimmer of it all. HELENA: On Maurice [1987] I did hair and makeup for all the men, which was rather a good way of dating people. It was Tinder then. In terms of influence, how important were your parents? SIMON: The only one of my family that read novels was my grandmother, though she never talked about them. A book can be just for you. You have a relationship with the characters and have somehow subsumed them into your psyche. HELENA: I always feel like you want to share the wonder. SIMON: Your family are very literary, aren't they? HELENA: Well, my grandmother Violet definitely was, on my dad's side. She was [Prime Minister H H] Asquith's daughter [and president of the Liberal Party from 1945-47]. My maternal grandmother was a special character, but found it difficult to read. I think she would have been diagnosed as dyslexic now, but she wrote beautifully. My mum, her whole life has never been without several books. My dad developed cortical blindness, which meant he couldn't see faces, but could read, so he read his way through the last 24 years of his life. We had half of The London Library in our home because they'd send him books. SIMON: Oh, fantastic. HELENA: Violet was formidable and wrote a lot of letters. I came back from filming with Woody Allen in a monastery in Taormina, and Dad was editing them. There was a postcard to her husband in 1940 saying: "Have just finished Morgan's latest Howards End." She knew Edward Morgan Forster. When I came to film Howards End with you, I read Violet's [unfinished] autobiography and thought, "Oh god, she was basically like the Helen Schlegel character, a sort of radical bohemian, a bluestocking..." And would have been the same age. So maybe she was a bit of a model for Helen. SIMON: Forster wasn't a recluse until later at King's College Cambridge, I think. HELENA: Did you ever get a sense of what he was like? SIMON: Everything in his life was the opposite of what he espoused: the passion, the connecting. This gives his work its force, because it didn't come easily to him. He had to struggle to make it happen. HELENA: He did have relationships though, didn't he? SIMON: Famously with a married policeman, Bob Buckingham. But also earlier, in Alexandria, and later, with a Bulgarian art collector, 45 years his junior. All very discreet. As a young gay man, I was impatient with him. Instead of thinking how extraordinary it was for its time, I just thought, "Come on, we've gone beyond all of this". It felt a bit spinsterly. Now I think it's passionate and unbelievably brave and exquisitely written. Then, I was more taken by DH Lawrence, which was all oceanic... My entire ambition was to be a writer. Do you write? HELENA: I've been asked to, and I've written the odd article. My attention span is troubling, but I do enjoy it when I apply myself. SIMON: I have to work very hard at it, and do terrifically long days. I can be at the laptop by seven. HELENA: In the morning? Jeez. OK, so you've got Morning Brain. SIMON: I've got a night brain, too. But no afternoon brain. HELENA: The afternoon is not really good for much. SIMON: Yes. I have difficulty in the theatre, rehearsing in the afternoon. HELENA: I have to have a snooze, no matter what. The snooze has been a pillar of my living. Do you ever write in books when you're reading them, or is that sacrilegious? SIMON: I do when I'm reviewing, but that's with proofs, so I can scrawl all over them. HELENA: I've got a thing about having a relationship with a book, so I will, unfortunately, write sentences in them. Also in the hope that somehow it's going to stick in the brain. SIMON: Let's talk about the Library - its location, for instance. St James's Square is enchanting. HELENA: Yes, and I do think that places work magic on us and influence what we think. It is very creative. Also, just silence. To go and sit with others with no danger of conversation, but you've got the company of other people concentrating. If you're going to seriously write, it could be very lonely. You have to go to battle with yourself, but it's alleviated at the Library because you're with other people who are going into battle with themselves. SIMON: Libraries generally have a very curious combination of this quietness and focus, coupled with a very sexy feeling. It's the silence. HELENA: I was going to raise that, but you start. SIMON: I wonder why that is exactly. It's just because everybody's in their own space and in their own world somehow, and you know that as you drift into that sort of semi hypnotic state, sex is going to be in there somewhere. HELENA: Yeah, it's always there. SIMON: So it's the subconscious. It's sort of milling around the Library. I think I said this before, it's like a book bordello. You just go up and take whatever you want to. HELENA: Have your pleasure. I like that. SIMON: The Library's postal service is also miraculous. And everyone's so sympathetic. Years ago, my dog acquired a passion for 17th-century literature; it turns out it was the fish glue used to bind the spines. One day I came home and there was a priceless volume in pieces all over the place. I offered to replace it somehow but the Librarian said: "I have dogs; I understand." HELENA: How do you use the Library? SIMON: Not for writing or reading. Just to borrow books. The collection of arcana is vast. Writing about Orson Welles, I needed to know what it was like to be a tourist in Morocco in 1930. The Library had six - six! - guides from the period. I don't know anywhere else I could have found that. I love clambering up the metal stairs and finding things that nobody's taken out for 100 years. HELENA: You think George Eliot is going to actually appear. SIMON: It still is enchanting to me to do that. HELENA: As a writer, do you have a ritual? SIMON: Procrastinate as long as possible. I was so relieved to discover that Ibsen could spend four hours rearranging his desk before starting to write. Unlike Dickens. HELENA: He just sat down? SIMON: He was always writing at least two things at once, sometimes more - he wrote the last of The Pickwick Papers and the first chapters of Nicholas Nickleby simultaneously. He worked it all out, I'm sure, on his long walks. HELENA: Have you seen his original manuscripts? SIMON: Almost illegible; you feel the heat of his creative energy. He talks about the characters dancing down the pen. HELENA: I love that - when somebody takes possession. SIMON: As with acting: when it's good, it's not you playing the character, it's the character playing you.

#helena bonham carter #simon callow #the london library #interviews #2023 #interviews: 2023 #the london library magazine 2023

[maydays2]

Baking a cake with our Maurice (1987) friends  😋 🍰 insp.

#maurice 1987 #alec scudder #rupert graves #mr ducie #Simon Callow #maurice hall #james wilby #clive durham #hugh grant #lord risley #mark tandy #anne durham #phoebe nicholls #mine #i'm sorry?? #idk what the hell this is

[toomuchlovereviews]

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

When life is not so good, we turn to romcoms. Make it a witty British romcom and it’s a match made in heaven. Every character being so lovable and quirky was just a thoughtful bonus.

Each wedding had something so sweet about it, and (as the title suggests) the funeral is quite touching as well. I absolutely adored the speeches at all these events, they made my heart swell.

Watch this:

for a young Hugh Grant 😮‍💨

if you sternly believe in fate

Similar titles:

Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001) (frazzled British woman chic, also with a young Hugh Grant)

#movie #movie review #four weddings and a funeral #mike newell #hugh grant #andie macdowell #james fleet #simon callow #john hannah #charlotte coleman #rowan atkinson

[badmovieihave]

Bad movie I have The Curse of King Tut's Tomb

#The Curse of King Tut's Tomb #Casper Van Dien #Jonathan Hyde #Leonor Varela #Steven Waddington #Niko Nicotera #Tat Whalley #Brendan Patricks #Patrick Toomey #Malcolm McDowell #Simon Callow #Tom Alter #Rajesh Balwani #Robin Das #Parvin Dabas #Nikita Anand #Shakeel Khan #Vikrant Chaurasia #Vir Das #Suvarchala Narayanan #Tony Mirrcandani #Theron D'Souza #David Schofield #Rajesh Kumar #Ulhas Tayad #Harsha Prasad #Ram Gopal Bajaj #Anupam Shyam #Mehul Nisar #Ajit Kelkar

[clemsfilmdiary]

Amadeus (1984, Milos Forman)

9/3/22

#Amadeus #Milos Forman #F. Murray Abraham #Tom Hulce #Elizabeth Berridge #Roy Dotrice #Simon Callow #Christine Ebersole #Jeffrey Jones #80s #drama #music #oscar bait #oscar winner #Best Picture winner #Best Actor winner #classical music #18th Century #Vienna #composers #rivalry #jealousy #creative process #opera #court #mind games #father and son #downward spiral #alcoholism #madness