"Articles 2008"

"Colin Firth Says Coen Brothers Film ‘Gambit’ Not Happening"

MTV, 15 September 2008

Photo: Matt Garr

Reading the IMDB message boards for the Joel and Ethan Coen’s ”Gambit,“ a heist movie remake about two criminals out to steal a priceless antiquity, is just about the funniest thing imaginable, since every other poster is convinced the movie is about the ”X-Men“ character Remy LeBeau. It’s actually so egregiously wrong that it almost has to be parody right?

But how’s this for a laugh: An honest to goodness Marvel spin-off might actually one day make it to the big-screen before the Coen Brother’s film, given that, well, nobody’s actually MAKING ”Gambit,“ supposedly attached star Colin Firth revealed.

”No! It’s a complete lie. It’s been on IMDB and just sitting there,“ Firth said of his rumored involvement. ”The Coen brothers have written an absolutely brilliant script.“

For whatever reason, and despite the fact that the Coen Brothers are about as hot as possible right now with a recent Best Picture winner under their belt, nobody seems to be stepping up to the plate to film the movie, Firth sighed – probably because the Coens themselves don’t want to direct it.

”[‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’ director] PJ Hogan came on and Ben Kingsley was attached to it. Then it was Sandra Bullock attached and then Jennifer Aniston,“ Firth recounted. ”They won’t direct it. It had a producer attached to it and no director.“

The original film starred Michael Caine and Shirley McLaine.

"Firth hasn't ruled out playing Darcy again".

United Press International, 4 August 2008

British actor Colin Firth said he might some day reprise his iconic Darcy role on-screen, but the project would have to be really good for him to do so.

Firth, who can now be seen in the movie musical "Mamma Mia!," played the reserved romantic hero Fitzwilliam Darcy in the 1995 BBC miniseries version of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice."

He also played Mark Darcy in the modern version of the tale, "Bridget Jones's Diary," as well as its sequel, "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason."

Asked if he would ever return to the role, Firth told UPI: "I remember being on the set of the second ('Bridget Jones') with Hugh (Grant) one day and one of us asked the other, 'Do you remember saying yes to this?' 'No, never did!' ...

"Then, once the process was in motion, it had that kind of air of inevitability and then you would have had to be the one to unglue it all. So, if there was a third one, it might be like that. We might all come back as a kind of dysfunctional family again," he quipped. "It would have to be pretty damn good, I think."

"Mamma Mia! leading field for National Movie awards"

In the News UK, 1 August 2008

Mamma Mia! earns four nominations for National Movie awards

Musical adaptation Mamma Mia! is the frontrunner for the National Movie awards, having earned four nominations.

Leading men Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth are both nominated for best male - the latter also receiving a nod for his turn in St Trinian's - while the film is also nominated in the best musical and best female categories (Meryl Streep).

St Trinian's and The Golden Compass each have four nominations - with Nicole Kidman and newcomer Dakota Blue Richards up for the best female award.

And among the nominees for the best male award are Christian Bale, James McAvoy, Will Smith and Robert Downey Jr.

The winners, voted for by the public, will be unveiled in a ceremony screened by ITV1 next month.

The nominations for the National Movie awards are:

Best superhero:

Iron Man

Hancock

The Dark Knight

The Incredible Hulk

Best musical

Enchanted

Mamma Mia!

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Best action/adventure

I Am Legend

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Wanted

Best comedy

Juno

Sex and the City

St Trinian's

The Love Guru

Best family film

Kung Fu Panda

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

The Golden Compass

WALL-E

Best male

Christian Bale - The Dark Knight

Ben Barnes - The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Pierce Brosnan - Mamma Mia!

Patrick Dempsey - Enchanted

Johnny Depp - Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Robert Downey Jr - Iron Man

Rupert Everett - St Trinian's

Colin Firth - St Trinian's/Mamma Mia!

Harrison Ford - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Brendan Fraser - The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

James McAvoy - Wanted

Mike Myers - The Love Guru

Edward Norton - The Incredible Hulk

Will Smith - I Am Legend/Hancock

Best female

Amy Adams - Enchanted

Gemma Arterton - St Trinian's

Cate Blanchett - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Helena Bonham Carter - Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Angelina Jolie - Wanted

Nicole Kidman - The Golden Compass

Ellen Page - Juno

Sarah Jessica Parker - Sex and the City

Dakota Blue Richards - The Golden Compass

Meryl Streep - Mamma Mia!End of story

"Face of the 'good-looking, pleasant young man' who inspired Jane Austen's Mr Darcy"

Mail online UK, 10 June 2008

Loved and lost: The portrait of Irish lawyer Thomas Lefroy, who married another woman but named his daughter Jane

Loved and lost: The portrait of Irish lawyer Thomas Lefroy, who married another woman but named his daughter Jane

A tiny portrait of the man a young Jane Austen loved and lost - believed to have inspired Pride And Prejudice's Mr Darcy - is to surface at an antiques fair.

The 3in watercolour of Irishman Thomas Langlois Lefroy was painted by leading English miniaturist George Engleheart in 1798, two years after the 20-year-old sweethearts were forced to part.

Lefroy's family, of Huguenot origin, was not wealthy and expected him to marry a woman of means.

But Austen, the sixth of seven children born to a Hampshire rector, was still 13 years away from her first literary success, Sense And Sensibility, and was not considered suitable marriage material.

The portrait on ivory - on the back of which are several locks of hair - was painted two years after Lefroy's dalliance with Austen.

It will be exhibited in London's Grosvenor House Hotel at the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair for a week from Thursday.

Signed with Engleheart's distinctive 'E' monogram, it is one of only two portraits of Lefroy known to exist and has an asking price of around £50,000.

Gloucestershire dealers Judy and Brian Harden, who are selling the painting, said they had bought it at auction some time ago without realising its significance.

'We didn't know who Tom Lefroy was when we bought it - it went through the auction house unrecognised - but we were able to identify and discover the history of the sitter,' Mr Harden said.

Lefroy met Austen while visiting his uncle and aunt in Hampshire. They were much taken with one another, talking, dancing and apparently flirting.

She referred to him in a letter as 'a gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man' and found only one fault with him - 'his morning coat is a great deal too light'.

Lefroy's parents, sensing Austen was contemplating a future with him, whisked the young law student away and the couple never met again.

Just before they parted, she wrote: 'At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy ... My tears flow as I write at the melancholy idea.'

Three years later he married heiress Mary Paul and had a successful legal career, becoming chief justice of Ireland. He named his eldest daughter Jane.

Austen is thought to have used her own experiences of romance - good and bad - in her novels.

Literary historians believe Lefroy's family provided the basic plot for Pride And Prejudice and Tom himself was the inspiration for Fitzwilliam Darcy, the handsome, intelligent man who eventually married Elizabeth Bennet, the main female character in the novel.

He was played by Colin Firth in a BBC TV dramatisation in 1995. Lefroy himself has been played by James McAvoy, opposite Anne Hathaway as Austen, in last year's movie Becoming Jane.

Despite attracting several suitors, Austen never married and died in 1817, four years after Pride And Prejudice was published.

"£1,000 'beggars banquet' stars Mick Jagger" by Benedict Moore-Bridger

Evening Standard, 14 March 2008

It was the charity banquet with a difference, a £1,000-ahead five-course meal made of ingredients all grown, plucked or fished from in and around London.

We can only hope the guests did it justice. As well as Mick Jagger, L'Wren Scott, Trudie Styler, Annie Lennox, Jamie Cullum, Richard E Grant and Colin Firth, the 400 diners at Guildhall included supermodels and It girls better known for picking at their food rather than tucking in. Called the Feast of Albion and masterminded by TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the menu included nettles picked from Hyde Park, wild fennel from the banks of the Regent's Canal in Hackney and organic beetroot from Romney Marsh.

Oysters from the Maldon Oyster beds in the Blackwater river, Essex, and venison shot by the gamekeeper at the Windsor Estate were among the highlights of the "eco-banquet" to raise money for the Soil Association.

In order to cut down on the evening's carbon footprint - in line with the Soil Association's ethos - teams cycled the root vegetables from an organic farm in Pangbourne, Berkshire, 50 miles to London in dreadful weather conditions.

The event, with songs from Lennox on piano, was hosted by Jonathan Dimbleby, president of the Soil Association-Chef Mark Hix prepared canapés such as Windsor Park venison sausages, Highgrove mutton and turnip pies, and smoked pollack which was line-caught at Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage.

The night, organised by lifestyle group Quintessentially, aimed to encourage supermarkets to stop flying out-of-season produce across the world and rediscover locally grown, seasonal food.

Fearnley-Whittingstall said: "This is a celebration of our fantastic British produce but in this case it is all about the South-East - it is a cerebration of seasonality for an extremely good cause.

"I am an organic farmer in Dorset myself and I believe passionately that we need more land under organic cultivation. One of the greatest joys is cooking and eating seasonal food."

Mr Hix added: "If you keep an eye out you come across all sorts of things in hedgerows or patches of grass. We've all become so used to going to the supermarket and filling the basket without a thought for where the food has come from."

An auction with lots including a carbon-offset holiday at a Himalayan retreat raised more than £300,000. Jazz singer Cullum paid £20,000 for a fishing and cooking trip with the evening's two chefs in Dorset.

THE FEAST OF ALBION:

Canapés

Windsor Park venison sausages with Cumberland sauce; Laverstock Saddleback brawn on sourdough toast; Highgrove mutton and turnip pies; home-smoked Hanningfield Reservoir trout on potato cake; smoked pollack and nettle beer rabbit; raw roots and artichoke fritters with a wild garlic mayonnaise.

Starters

Bay pickled Thames herrings with roast Romney Marsh beetroots; salad of crispy pig's head (Laverstock Saddleback) and ducks' eggs with foraged spring leaves and celery leaf salt; Pangbourne purple sprouting broccoli with pickled walnuts and parsley dressing.

Soup

Nettle soup with wild garlic.

Main course

Windsor Park venison, roast fillet braised shoulder and venison offal faggot with a bay and juniper gravy, red cabbage, sea spinach and four root mash.

Dessert

Richmond maids of honour with a rhubarb compote and east London honey. Organic fair trade coffee and organic herbal teas with Venezuelan black truffles from Willie's Chocolate Factory, Devon.

Digestifs

10-year-old Somerset cider apple brandy

"Lights, Camera, Austen" by Cathleen McGuigan.

Newsweek, 12 January 2008

Haven't seen enough Jane Austen movies lately? Good, because PBS now has all six novels on film.

Jane Austen movie mania is so pervasive you can't be blamed for picturing your favorite Austen heroine not from the page but from the screen. But how do you like your Emma—fair as Gwyneth Paltrow or dark, like Kate Beckinsale? Do you prefer your Elizabeth Bennet as Keira Knightley or Jennifer Ehle? When it comes to dreamy Mr. Darcy, no actor can match Colin Firth, except perhaps Mr. Firth himself, who later reprised the role—sort of—when he played the aloof barrister Mark Darcy in "Bridget Jones's Diary," the modern-day romp based on "Pride and Prejudice." Why viewers are drawn to films and TV movies about plucky young women in Regency England isn't hard to understand: Austen's novels, at base, are about love and money. Embroider those topics with scenes of gossip, flirting, social navigation, betrayals, puzzlement, romance and heartbreak—and swap the sprigged-muslin frocks for Prada—and you practically have "Sex and the City." Even the voice-overs in many of these films could be Carrie Bradshaw tapping on her laptop. Only much better written.

The latest Austen spree starts this week on PBS, as "Masterpiece Theatre" launches "The Complete Jane Austen," a 10-week series of films based on all six novels. The marathon includes the Beckinsale "Emma" (1997) and the Ehle/Firth "Pride and Prejudice" (1995), but the other four are new. They have all the ingredients we've come to expect: lyrical landscapes and opulent country houses; star-crossed lovers tripped up by snobs, fools or connivers. But these new films also point to the perils of translating Austen to the screen. What makes the books so satisfying to read—and re-read—are the intricate tapestries of Austen's richly drawn characters, delicious wit and sharp satire. Those aren't easy qualities to capture on film.

"Persuasion," the first PBS movie, was Austen's last novel, and the film succeeds in capturing its melancholy tone. The strong heroine, Anne Elliot, regrets her rejection of the handsome Captain Wentworth years before—feelings that are painfully rekindled when they meet again. Yet almost too much of the movie, reducing the book to 90 minutes, focuses on a sober Anne and stone-faced Wentworth, both failing to speak their hearts. "Northanger Abbey," Austen's first book and her weakest, has rarely been filmed. A bemused critique of the early 1800s fad for Gothic romances, the movie depicts young Catherine Morland's feverish imaginings as she reads tales of intrigue and ravishment. She's so caught up in their silliness that her judgment is affected—and all the pretty production values of the film don't make it any less silly. More complex is "Mansfield Park," about Fanny Price, a poor relation brought as a child to live on the estate of her uncle Lord Bertram. The new film lays out the distinctions in social strata, not only by clothing Fanny as drably as Cinderella but by giving her a hairdo that makes her look like Courtney Love. There are a number of fine performances here—especially Blake Ritson as her beloved cousin Edmund—but unfortunately, Billie Piper as Fanny, who is at the heart of the story, fails to captivate.

What trumps these three Austen adaptations is the series' bonus, "Miss Austen Regrets," a surprisingly good fictionalized biography. Beautifully acted—especially by Olivia Williams in the title role—it focuses on the last years of Austen's life and displays a richness and wit often missing from the new films. Austen's novels always end with a wedding, but this biopic opens with one, where the spinster Austen is a guest. As the happy couple—her niece and her bridegroom—burst out of a picturesque country church, they pass among the gravestones. The shadow of death isn't far in this autumnal tale as it explores the question: did the author who wrote so magically of true love regret never marrying? "This is the real world," Austen tells another niece. "The only way to get a man like Mr. Darcy is to make him up!" Yet middle-aged Miss Austen still loves to dance, to flirt ("I'm still a cat when I see a mouse," she says) and, most of all, to match wits. She's had some literary success, but she and her family, like many of her well-bred characters, suffer financial misfortune. As her novels do, this film points up the precarious position of women who lived outside the security of marriage to a man of means. The house she shares with her mother and sister resembles that in "Sense and Sensibility," which will be the final PBS film. You may wonder how this new version compares with the first-rate 1995 Ang Lee-Emma Thompson movie. Then again, comparing competing Austen films has become half the fun.

A guide to keeping up with the Austen marathon:

'Persuasion': Based on Austen's melancholy last novel, the film stars Sally Hawkins as the steadfast Anne. Premieres Jan. 13.

'Northanger Abbey': Austen's first book skewers the Gothic romances popular in her day. Starring Felicity Jones. Jan. 20.

'Mansfield Park': The fortunes of young Fanny Price (Billie Piper), a poor relation of the noble Bertrams. Jan. 27.

'Pride and Prejudice': A repeat of the acclaimed 1995 BBC film with the incomparable Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. Feb. 10.

'Emma': Kate Beckinsale starred in this 1997 television production as Austen's strong-headed matchmaker. March 23.

'Sense and Sensibility': A new two-part film about the well-bred but poor Dashwood sisters and their suitors. March 30.

"Biel extols 'Virtue' for Endgame" by Leslie Simmons.

The Hollywood Reporter, 9 January 2008

Jessica Biel has been cast as the lead in the romantic comedy "Easy Virtue," based on the Noel Coward play, for London-based Ealing Studios. Endgame Entertainment is financing the indie project.

Biel plays an American divorcee, Larita Huntington, who travels to the South of France and marries young wealthy Englishman John Whittaker, played by Ben Barnes, on the spur of the moment. The couple return to England to face his unapproving family, including his parents, Mr. and Mrs. John Whittaker, played by Colin Firth and Kristin Scott Thomas.

Stephan Elliott is directing the film from a screenplay he and Sheridan Jobbins penned. Ealing's Barnaby Thompson is producing. Principal photography starts next week in London.

"Stephan is a terrific director," Endgame CEO James D. Stern said. "It's a great cast and I'm just charged up and optimistic about it.

"It's a funny, lovely movie with a point," he added."Easy Virtue" is based on Coward's 1924 three-act play of the same name.

Alfred Hitchcock was the first to adapt it in film, with the 1928 silent movie "Easy Virtue."

Biel's credits include last summer's "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry." She recently wrapped "Powder Blue" with Forest Whitaker and "A Woman of No Importance" with Annette Benning.

Firth's recent films include "St. Trinian's" for Ealing Studios. He recently wrapped "Accidental Husband" with Uma Thurman, slated for a spring release and "Mamma Mia" with Meryl Streep, set for release in the summer.

Scott Thomas can currently be seen in "The Golden Compass" and in the upcoming "The Other Boleyn Girl" with Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson.

Barnes' credits include "Stardust," and he will next be seen in "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian," playing the prince.

Biel, Scott Thomas and Firth are repped by CAA. Biel is also represented by Management 360 and attorney Karl Austen.

Firth and Scott Thomas are also repped by Independent Talent in London.

Barnes is repped by ICM.