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August 27, 2002, Tuesday
SECTION: Entertainment News
HEADLINE: Rambling Reporter; Opening, closings and cabaret nod to Rodgers
BYLINE: By ROBERT OSBORNE, The Hollywood Reporter
DATELINE: NEW YORK

Edward Norton and Catherine Keener begin their limited off-Broadway run Tuesday at the Union Square in the revival of "Burn This," the Lanford Wilson drama in which John Malkovich first bedazzled New York playgoers in 1987. It's in for only 10 weeks, with its official opening Sept. 19. . . . Meanwhile, four -- count 'em, four -- legiters exit the Broadway boards this coming weekend. Sunday is the cutoff date for "Noises Off" with Jane Curtin at the Brooks Atkinson, "Private Lives" with Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan at the Richard Rodgers, "The Full Monty" at the Eugene O'Neill and "Contact" at the Vivian Beaumont.
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Georgiana (trying again) <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Wednesday, August 28, 2002

August 27, 2002, Tuesday
SECTION: Entertainment News
HEADLINE: Rambling Reporter; Opening, closings and cabaret nod to Rodgers
BYLINE: By ROBERT OSBORNE, The Hollywood Reporter
DATELINE: NEW YORK

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Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Wednesday, August 28, 2002

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON)
August 28, 2002, Wednesday
SECTION: Pg. 23
HEADLINE: Obituary of Hugh Cruttwell Principal of Rada who worked with Kenneth Branagh

HUGH CRUTTWELL, who has died aged 83, was Principal of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1966 to 1984; among those who learned their art under his aegis were Kenneth Branagh, Ralph Fiennes, Alan Rickman, Juliet Stevenson, Fiona Shaw and Imelda Staunton.

The approach to take over at Rada came after Cruttwell had spent seven years teaching at Lamda (the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), and it came at the end of a difficult period at Rada. The last year under the previous principal, John Fernald, had been marked by ructions and controversy. After Fernald's resignation, Cruttwell remarked: "There have been so many strictures and so much bad blood, and this is the point in Rada's history when it must stop." And stop it he did, becoming noted during his tenure as principal for his tact and charm. On taking office, Cruttwell also meditated on the business of auditioning, obviously one of the academy's most crucial tasks: "One is not looking just for one quality in particular - talent, of course, which is perhaps the easiest thing to spot.

"But no amount of talent is enough unless an actor has some kind of alchemy which pleases an audience. It is a kind of appeal, and at an audition it is immediately arresting. Some who come up are very finished, and others who may hardly have done any acting are terribly raw. In some cases you do get unmistakable quality, but there are very few who are unanimously picked by any panel. In the end, I suppose, one obeys a kind of hunch."

Cruttwell brought in to Rada a number of young directors to work alongside the more experienced staff. Believing that academic qualifications were less important than "a high natural intelligence", he also encouraged students from wider social backgrounds, helping to dispel the impression that Rada was an acting college for the children of the middle class.

Once applicants had been accepted at the academy, Cruttwell insisted that all of them should have the chance to play the big roles; there were to be no "big stars". And if Cruttwell was generous with his praise, he was not slow to criticise where he thought it necessary. Even Kenneth Branagh, when he appeared for audition in front of Cruttwell, was asked to perform a piece again before being accepted. In return Cruttwell won the admiration and affection of his students.

Alan Rickman, who was at Rada from 1972 to 1974, has recalled: "He had an enormous presence, and he was utterly passionate about his job and about the students. He was completely unsentimental, and absolutely truthful. Even when he was telling you how terrible you were, he would be encouraging. His students became his friends in later life."

Hugh Percival Cruttwell was born in Singapore on October 31 1918. His family had strong connections with the Church (both his grandfathers were vicars, and one of his uncles was Bishop of Adelaide), but his father worked in the insurance business, and spent much of his life abroad. Hugh's early childhood was spent in Shanghai, but when he was eight he and his two brothers and one sister accompanied their mother back to Britain.

After King's School Bruton, Hugh went up to Hertford College, Oxford, to read History. (Another of his uncles, C R M F Cruttwell, was Dean of Hertford; he had been Evelyn Waugh's reviled history tutor, earning a number of unflattering incarnations in Waugh's novels). As a conscientious objector, Hugh Cruttwell worked on the land during the Second World War and taught at a number of prep schools. He was then offered a job teaching history at Marlborough. But he soon tired of the atmosphere of the common room, and sought a change of direction.

Cruttwell had always loved the theatre and films - as a boy at prep school he had often "bunked off" to the cinema in the afternoons - and at the age of 28 managed to find work as an assistant stage manager at the Theatre Royal in Windsor, which then had its own repertory company.

He was soon appointed stage manager, and it was at this point that he met the girl who was to become a well-known actress and his wife, Geraldine McEwan. As a schoolgirl, Geraldine lived at Old Windsor and was already ambitious to become an actress. Aged 14, she secured a walk-on part as an attendant to Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Theatre Royal; Cruttwell, although stage manager and himself uninterested in being an actor, also had a small part.

Geraldine McEwan recalled of this first meeting that she found Cruttwell "arresting". She continued to take small parts at the theatre and, two years later, she became assistant stage manager, working directly to Cruttwell, who now progressed to production manager and, finally, director. In 1953 they married. Cruttwell continued to direct plays, at Windsor and in and around London. In 1959, he took up a teaching post at Lamda.

After his retirement from Rada in 1984, Cruttwell formed a fruitful partnership with Branagh, acting as his consultant when the actor started the Renaissance Company. He continued in this role of production consultant when Branagh began making films. The two men worked together on films such as Henry V (1989); Dead Again (1991); Much Ado About Nothing (1993); Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994); and Hamlet (1997). They had a close relationship, with Cruttwell acting as Branagh's "sounding board", advising on the production and on the actor's own performance.

Hugh Cruttwell died last Saturday; he is survived by his wife, and by their son Greg - an actor, writer and director - and their daughter, Claudia.

Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Wednesday, August 28, 2002

Sunday Times (London)
August 25, 2002, Sunday
SECTION: Features; Home; 14
HEADLINE: Acton becomes west London's own Nappy Valley
BYLINE: Ben Rooney

Once a sprawl of mean streets and squats, the area known as 'Chiswick on the cheap' has become popular with young families, says Ben Rooney.

It isn't the thunder of traffic down the A40 that encapsulates life in the sprawling suburb of Acton. Rather, it is bawling toddlers and fractious parents arguing about whose turn it is to feed the baby. For this is west London's own version of Nappy Valley - Acton. Looked down upon by its smarter neighbours - Shepherd's Bush to the east, Ealing and Chiswick to the south - Acton used to suffer from a bad reputation. That was what drove Jamiroquai's Jay Kay to squat there, while growing up in its back streets imbued the actor Alan Rickman with his streetwise rough-diamond appeal.
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Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Tuesday, August 27, 2002

ATTN: AR is on Charlie Rose Tue. Aug, 27th...I do not know if it's a repeat, but I know I will be watching.....
Cathy <snapefan2@aol.comfoo>
FL US - Monday, August 26, 2002

New York Post:
Friday, August 23, 2002
Theatre Column

"A gaggle of Broadway leading ladies is chasing after Edward Albee this summer, hoping to win the master's approval to play Martha in a revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? [Among them are:]

"Christine Lahti: This television and movie star has long wanted to tackle [this play]. She'll get a chance this fall when she appears in a staged reading of the play at the Bank Street acting school HB Studios. Alan Rickman will probably play George. HB is producing the reading in the hope that a commercial producer might pick it up. The studio has a leg up on other would-be Virginia Woolf producers: It was founded by Uta Hagen, who played Martha in the original 1962 production. Albee is very loyal to Hagen, who suffered a stroke last year, and has given his blessing to the reading.

"Judith Ivey: Not a star but a damn good actress, Ivey is going to hold a reading of Virginia Woolf in her apartment next month. Rickman's in on this one, too. No word yet if Albee will attend."

Read all about it at Virginia Woolf.
Anne/Manhattan
- Saturday, August 24, 2002

Copyright 2002 The Stage Newspapers Ltd
The Stage
August 22, 2002
SECTION: Pg. 18
HEADLINE: Keith Dover - The Ustinov Files;
Edinburgh Review: Pleasance
BYLINE: Nick Awde

Keith Dover's lairy builderplumber is a man who takes lip from no one and whose knowledge of West End theatre and Arsenal is equally encyclopaedic.

After breaking up a brawl between Peter Ustinov and a Belgian fan during a disastrous Gunners away match in 1984, a fruitful relationship strikes up between the two. It becomes more Peter's friends since Ustinov is a portal to the upper echelons of theatrical aristocracy. Dover's East End posse of white van men, decorators and fitters welcome the actors as fellow members of the service industries - and the stars readily turn to them for advice on life skills, be it acting technique, choice of boiler or whether to glass "old gitface" Steven Berkoff

To Dover's chagrin, however, they don't always listen, viz Helena Bonham Carter trying to nick his chicken kiev, Ian McKellen failing to grasp simple role research, Alan Rickman's kitchenfitting standards, or paintballing with Simon Callow.

If you can follow the wall to wall references it helps but Dover's awesome research is tempered by infectious delivery and laconic Cockney humour that keep things firmly grounded and the audience well hooked.

Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Saturday, August 24, 2002

From 23 August 2002 Variety
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 14
HEADLINE: FILM PRODUCTION CHART
HIGHLIGHT
FILMS IN THE FUTURE

LOVE ACTUALLY (Working Title Films/DNA Films) 9/2, France, London. Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson, Rowan Atkinson, Laura Linney, Colin Firth, Bill Nighy, Martine McCutcheon, Keira Knightley, Martin Freeman, Chris Marshall

PROD, Tim Bevan, Duncan Kenworthy, Eric Fellner; DIR-SCR, Richard Curtis; DISTRIB, U.

Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Saturday, August 24, 2002

Copyright 2002 Nationwide News Pty Limited
Courier Mail
August 22, 2002, Thursday
SECTION: FEATURES; Pg. 32
HEADLINE: Pay-TV Movies
BYLINE: Des Partridge

Galaxy Quest, (PG), 1999, Movie One/Optus, 6.45pm, *** 1/2

FANS not too serious about sci-fi series such as Star Trek should enjoy this entertaining spoof featuring front-liners such as Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman, right, Tim Allen and Tony Shalhoub. They play the cast of a TV sci-fi series a lot like Star Trek. By chance, the actors find themselves battling real extraterrestrial villains to save the planet. It's a one-joke plot but the talented cast keep it lively right through to the end.

Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Wednesday, August 21, 2002

Stage on Screen now lists "BECKETT ON FILM" as premiering Sept. 15, 2002 at 10:00 PM (EST) and Jan. 1, 2003 at 9:30 PM (EST). This is a PBS broadcast from THIRTEEN WNET/New York.
Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Monday, August 19, 2002

Variety, July 29, 2002 v387 i10 p13(1)
Curtis taps more stars. (London Eye).
(screenwriter Richard Curtis)(Brief Article)
Adam Dawtrey.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2002 Reed Business Information

As Britain's only billion-dollar screenwriter, and a legendarily persuasive fellow to boot, Richard Curtis was never going to have trouble casting whomever he wanted in his directorial debut, "Love Actually"--even though the number of leading roles stretches well into double figures.

And so it goes. The previously announced Hugh Grant (as the British prime pinister) and Emma Thompson (playing his sister) have now been joined by former soap starlet Martine McCutcheon (as the tea girl Grant's PM falls for), Alan Rickman (as Thompson's husband), Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Colin Firth, Bill Nighy, and, in a key cameo, Rowan Atkinson.

Alongside those established players, there's also Keira Knightley (from "Bend It Like Beckham"), Andrew Lincoln (most recently in the C4 series "Teachers"), Chris Marshall (ITV's "Dr. Zhivago") and standup Martin Freeman.

Curtis, the comic Midas behind "Four Weddings and a Funeral," "Notting Hill," "Bean" and "Bridget Jones's Diary," has described the project as having 10 different, partially interrelated storylines, in the manner of his favorite filmmaker, Robert Altman. Pic is set in contemporary London, with a short diversion to France.

It's being produced by Duncan Kenworthy for Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner's Working Title Films, bankrolled by Universal Pictures. Principal photography starts Sept. 2, but the very first shot of the movie actually went into the can last week.

Curtis, Kenworthy and a cameraman flew out to Kenya July 24 to shoot the opening image--a picture on a wall of a group of Africans, who come to life and start speaking Swahili to each other. What significance this has within the movie, nobody is divulging.

(Article includes small graphic: head shot of Mr. Rickman.)

Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Monday, August 19, 2002

From Ananova:

Four Weddings producer to give Edinburgh lecture

Film Producer Duncan Kenworthy will give the Bafta Lecture at this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival.

He will be interviewed on stage at the UGC Cinema by EIFF Director Shane Danielson on August 22.

Kenworthy has produced the likes of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill.

He is currently producing Richard Curtis's directorial debut, Love Actually.

The annual lecture has previously included David Puttnam and Alan Rickman.

Story filed: 21:13 Thursday 15th August 2002

Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Saturday, August 17, 2002

Tuesday 13th August The Guardian

Ditch these lickspittle cliches
Why sap the British film industry with rehashed export snobbery?
Zoe Williams Tuesday August 13, 2002 The Guardian

It was one of those utterances that really marks out the seasoned celebrity - so anodyne that it's almost unprintable, but not quite. "It's a totally fictional character," said Hugh Grant of his next role. "There won't be a glimmer of Blair's smile. He won't be based on Blair at all ... or any other prime minister, for that matter." Grant was discussing Love Actually, the directorial debut for Richard "Four Cliches and a Tearjerk" Curtis, in which Grant plays a prime minister who falls for a tea lady. The film has been cast (Emma Thompson, Martine McCutcheon, Alan Rickman, Rowan Atkinson). But filming doesn't start until the beginning of September, which gives the producers three weeks to realise they haven't written a part for Imelda Staunton and hop to it. Not one second of this film exists, but you can already tell that it will unite everything that's wrong with British cinema in one nicely shot, 117-minute package.

For one, why is the hero a prime minister? It is quite beyond the British imagination to idolise its premier. Where American mainstream culture has politicians as heroes and visionaries, we have idiots and scumbags - which is entirely as it should be. The only time we've ever had a giant among men in charge was when we were too busy hating Germans to unleash any natural scepticism (hence Churchill), and even then there were provisos (he might be a hero, but he had to be a fat, drunk hero).

The notion of a PM as romantic hero runs counter to everything that has ever happened in British politics - good God, not a million years ago, there were people who objected to Michael Heseltine because he was too good-looking. Hugh Grant's role as leader-crumpet neither reflects nor subverts, nor even graces with an allusion, any of our national mores or predilections. It is there to justify lots of shots of Westminster and Downing Street.

This is the cinematic equivalent of an open-topped tour bus - hoodwink some tourists with the fiction that it won't rain, take them sightseeing-by-numbers, tell them all the statues are Oliver Cromwell (they all look a bit like him), and if no local would ever go near one, who's to mind? The difference is, of course, that open-topped buses are a relatively minor part of the culture, and cinema is a major one. Nobody could call this sincere film-making - it just seizes upon an outsider's view, repackages it with extra "authenticity" and sends it back from whence it came. It's three removes from where its heart should be.

Obviously, Hugh's job isn't as grating as that of his love interest. Martine McCutcheon reprises her Eliza Doolittle role, only this time she isn't a flower girl but a tea lady. (Why they pull that particular switch is unfathomable, the latter trade being easily as archaic as the former. When did you last see a tea lady? Do they still wear frilly hats? It's just about conceivable that they still have them in Westminster, but only if they're being bred for the purpose in a basement somewhere.)

This quirk of plotting, friends, will be all about that charming old English class system. Posh chappie can't possibly go out with plebby female, except that he can, because stifling British snobbery is no match for true love. The exceptionally hawk-eyed might recognise this twist from favourite plots of two centuries ago, except that back then it usually had a broadly egalitarian agenda, whereas now its agenda is to rehash ancient cliches in a malign attempt to substitute nostalgia for reflection. Again, this is not honest self-fashioning. This is a cynical attempt to pretend that we're still Dickensian at heart, just to scotch any anxieties the rest of the world might have about us evolving over the past 100 years, and not being cute any more.

No other nation butchers its own cinema like this. Sure, American films are packed with cliches, but at least they're cliches that relate to their own self-image, rather than an image created by us, for instance, and never updated (otherwise all their heroes would be fat warmongers in bad shorts). Yes, French films are full of crazy females with beautiful smiles, and Finnish films are full of vodka and Iraqi films rarely have any jokes, but these are notions of their own devising. We're playing lickspittle running dog to the most tired ideas, and they weren't even ours in the first place.

Of course, this film hasn't yet been made. It's possible that Martine might be a well-heeled love interest who's only a tea lady because she has a degree in English and can't work out what to do with it. It's possible that Hugh might not stand repeatedly before his majestic black door with a jutting chin, a clipped accent and God on his side. It's possible that the nine other love stories comprising the film might explore altogether less hackneyed obstacles. It's possible that, however it turns out, films like this can be made without sapping the energy out of the British film industry as a whole. But, frankly, none of that is very likely.

Sue
England - Tuesday, August 13, 2002

The "Joust like a Woman" episode of King of the Hill has first showing on British tv on Sunday 18th August at 5pm on Sky One (Satellite)
Sue
England - Monday, August 12, 2002

Copyright 2002 EXPRESS NEWSPAPERS
The Express
August 3, 2002
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 7
HEADLINE: FUNNY MAN FISHER IS GOING BACK TO MOVIES

RAB C Nesbitt star Gregor Fisher has won a top role in a new Hugh Grant romantic comedy.

Production will begin in September on Love Actually, which also stars Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Rowan Atkinson and Martine McCutcheon. Though the project is a major coup for the star, heralding a return to film acting for the first time since the mid-1980s, his television career was dealt a blow with the failure of the comedy series Snoddy.

There are no plans for BBC Scotland to make a second run of the police comedy which received a critical drubbing and poor ratings.

Last night the actor's London agent said Gregor was moving on to play a rock manager in the new feature film to be directed by the Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones's Diary writer Richard Curtis.

Hugh Grant will play a lonely Prime Minister who falls in love on his first day in office with the girl who brings his tea at Number 10. Emma Thompson will play his sister.

The film interweaves 10 separate stories about Londoners looking for love in the run-up to Christmas.

Producer Duncan Kenworthy said: "With 20 leading roles in the film, it will be exciting to work with a really wide range of talented British actors."

Having first started working in feature films in the Eighties, Gregor appeared in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the John Gordon Sinclair romantic comedy Girl in the Picture, and the Charles Dance drama White Mischief.

But it wasn't until 1990 that his breakthrough came with the role of Rab C Nesbitt, who remained a favourite for almost 10 years.

Gregor also earned critical acclaim for the role of Wackford Squeers in the ITV adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby.

Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Saturday, August 03, 2002

Newsday (New York, NY)
July 31, 2002 Wednesday NASSAU AND QUEENS EDITION
SECTION: PART II, Pg. B25
HEADLINE: LATE NIGHT TV HIGHLIGHTS

MOVIES

TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY (2:30 a.m. on WE) A London pianist (Juliet Stevenson) starts hearing the voice of her dead husband (Alan Rickman). Sort of a "Ghost" for Anglophiles, with decent performances.

Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Wednesday, July 31, 2002

Birmingham Evening Mail
July 30, 2002, Tuesday
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 6
HEADLINE: BEAN THERE

BRITISH writer-director Richard Curtis has added a host of new names to the all -star cast of his movie Love Actually.

US newspaper Variety reports that actors Alan Rickman, Colin Firth and Rowan Atkinson are the latest stars announced for the film, Curtis's directing debut following his screen-writing successes in Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill.

Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Wednesday, July 31, 2002

Copyright 2002 EXPRESS NEWSPAPERS
The Express
July 30, 2002
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4
HEADLINE: NEESON TO STAR IN £50M COMEDY
LIAM Neeson is to star in a new £50million British movie tipped to follow the success of Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Neeson will join Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Colin Firth and Alan Rickman in the comedy romance, Love Actually. He will also play opposite EastEnders beauty Martine McCutcheon and be reunited with American stunner Laura Linney, who co-starred with him on Broadway earlier this year.

Rowan Atkinson has also been signed up for a role in Love Actually, written by Richard Curtis who penned Notting Hill, Four Weddings, Bridget Jones Diary and Bean.

Curtis will also make his debut as a director for the movie which tells a tale of ten interconnected love stories. Neeson will jet to London to begin filming on September 2.

The actor will complete work on the comedy romp just before he and wife Natasha Richardson shoot a £20million gothic thriller, Asylum, in Ireland early next year.

[Remainder of the article, on Asylum, cut.]

Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Tuesday, July 30, 2002

Copyright 2002 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest Global Communications Corp.
All Rights Reserved
Calgary Herald
July 30, 2002 Tuesday Final Edition
SECTION: Arts & Style; Pg. B9
HEADLINE: Big-name Brits join Love Actually cast
SOURCE: Zap2it.com
DATELINE: HOLLYWOOD

Casting on Richard Curtis' Love Actually is quickly moving along.

Only this past week, it was announced Liam Neeson and Laura Linney had joined Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson and Martine McCutcheon in the British romantic comedy. Over the weekend, Alan Rickman, Colin Firth, Rowan Atkinson, Bill Nighy and Keira Knightley have come onboard also.

The film's title is short for Love Actually Is All Around, a reference to the theme song of screenwriter Curtis' first big hit, Four Weddings and a Funeral. He also wrote Bridget Jones's Diary and Mr. Bean.

The film, set in London, centres on 10 intertwining love stories. The characters include a newly elected prime minister (Grant); his sister (Thompson); her husband (Rickman); a soap opera starlet (McCutcheon); and a stepfather (Neeson).

Production starts in September.

GRAPHIC: Photo: Colin Firth

Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Tuesday, July 30, 2002

Theater Review:
Coward’s Way Out

Broadway’s hit revival of Private Lives reminds us how adroitly Noel Coward got his pansexual messages across.

By Don Shewey

[Private Lives/written by Noel Coward/Directed by Howard Davies/Starring Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan/Richard Rodgers Theatre, New York City (through September 8)]

"I think very few people are completely normal, really, deep down in their private lives." That’s one of the subversive propositions that Noel Coward made sure to hide in plain sight when he wrote Private Lives, his most famous work, in 1929. His comedies are as aggressively about nothing as Seinfeld claimed to be. They brim with bubbly banter and flee from ideas like Polynesian natives from an active volcano. And yet by depicting the crisp encounters of naughty socialites and the infantile antics of lovable upper-class Brits, Coward conveyed a sophisticated understanding of the role of masks in life, love, and sexuality. He was, as his biographer John Lahr points out, "a gay man who passed for a heterosexual matinee idol," and he knew and accepted the very good reasons people might choose shallowness and subterfuge as strategies to survive the vicissitudes of existence.

"Laugh at the moralists-flippancy brings out the acid in their damned sweetness and light," says Elyot Chase, leading man of Private Lives, a role played by Coward himself when the show premiered and performed by Alan Rickman in the Broadway revival. He also says, to his leading lady Amanda Prynne (Lindsay Duncan), "Let’s be superficial, and pity the poor philosophers." These lines stand out as hilarious antimanifestos. To take them seriously would be to miss the point.

Private Lives isn’t about something, it is something-a sleek, efficient comedy of manners, a minuet in unminced words. After a brief drunken brawl of a marriage and five years of blissful divorce, Elyot and Amanda are on honeymoon with much less combustible new spouses when they find themselves in adjoining suites at a hotel on the Riviera. Beginning with Amanda and Elyot’s outraged discovery of each other’s presence and ending with them running off to Paris together, the first act is as masterful a patch of screwball comedy as anyone has ever penned. Acts 2 and 3 are a bit more contrived in their plot machinations, but still hilarious. Suffice it to say that despite their vows to the contrary, these ultramodern lovebirds could no more keep from quarreling than Lucy Ricardo could keep from breaking any promise she made to Ricky.

The repartee in Private Lives is so polished that it could practically deliver, laugh at, and applaud itself. Luckily, in this version, it has help. The occasion for the revival, which originated in London’s West End, is a reunion of the stars and director of the 1987 Broadway production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of the 18th century French novel about two aristocrats who quell their boredom with scheming and seduction. It’s thrilling to have actors as sly, wicked, and sexy as Duncan and Rickman tackling Coward. She invests Amanda with a feline power that is glamorous and enigmatic at the same time. He steals the show, though. You just can’t get enough of his mobile mug and scathing understatement. By all reports straight and happily partnered with a female politician, Rickman nonetheless has the kind of suave, queeny hauteur any Noel Coward manqué would kill for.

Copyright 2002 The Press Association Limited
Press Association
July 29, 2002, Monday 11:27 AM Eastern Time
SECTION: HOME NEWS
HEADLINE: LUVVIES ACTUALLY - CURTIS LINES UP ALL-STAR CAST
BYLINE: Rachel Blackburn, PA News in Los Angeles

British writer-director Richard Curtis has added a host of new names to the all-star cast of his movie Love Actually, it emerged today.

US entertainment trade newspaper Variety reports that actors Alan Rickman, Colin Firth and Rowan Atkinson are the latest stars announced for the film which is Curtis' directing debut following his screen-writing successes which include Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill. Laura Linney, Liam Neeson, Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson and Martine McCutcheon have already been cast while actors Bill Nighy and Keira Knightley were also announced today.

The film, which starts shooting in September in France and London, is a romantic comedy comprising 10 separate but partly-linked stories.

Grant appears as the newly elected British prime minister while McCutcheon will play the tea girl he falls in love with.

Thompson stars as Grant's sister and Rickman will play her husband.

Neeson has a story of his own involving his relationship with a young stepson while comic actor Atkinson has a two-scene cameo.

Also cast is Andrew Lincoln, from the television drama Teachers, who appears in a story with teenage actress Knightley who starred in the film Bend It Like Beckham.

Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Monday, July 29, 2002

Here's the original article from "Variety":

Variety
Posted Sunday, July 28, 2002
World News
More big-name thesps in 'Love' with Curtis
Rickman, Firth, Neeson, others, join romantic romp
By Adam Dawtrey

LONDON -- Writer-director Richard Curtis has added Alan RickmanColin Firth, Rowan Atkinson, Bill Nighy, Keira Knightley, Laura Linney and Liam Neeso to the cast of his helming debut, "Love Actually."

Cast members already announced include Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson and Martine McCutcheon.

Pic, which will start shooting Sept. 2 in France and London, is a romantic comedy comprising 10 separate, though partially interrelated stories.

Grant plays the newly elected British prime minister. McCutcheon, a cockney soap starlet who played Eliza Dolittle to huge acclaim in the National Theater's recent staging of "My Fair Lady," will play the tea girl with whom he falls in love.

Thompson will feature as Grant's sister, and Rickman will play her husband. Neeson has a story of his own involving his relationship with a young stepson. Atkinson has a two-scene cameo.

Also cast are Martin Freeman ("Ali G Indahouse"); Chris Marshall (ITV's "Dr. Zhivago"); and Andrew Lincoln, most recently in the Channel 4 drama "Teachers," who shares a plotline with Knightley, the teenage actress from "Bend It Like Beckham."

Pic is being produced by Duncan Kenworthy, along with Working Title's Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner. Financing comes from Universal Pictures and StudioCanal.

Title "Love Actually" is short for "Love Actually Is All Around," a jokey reference to the theme song of Curtis' first big scripting hit, "Four Weddings and a Funeral."

Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Monday, July 29, 2002

Copyright 2002 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.
Toronto Star
July 29, 2002 Monday Ontario Edition
SECTION: ENTERTAINMENT; Pg. E03

HEADLINE: Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson join movie 'Love'
BYLINE: Variety

Four Weddings And A Funeral screenwriter Richard Curtis has added Alan Rickman, Rowan Atkinson, Laura Linney and Liam Neeson to the cast of his directing debut, Love Actually.

Actors already announced for the romantic comedy include Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson. The Universal/StudioCanal-backed project, which will start shooting Sept. 2 in France and London, boasts 10 partially interrelated stories.

Grant plays the newly elected British prime minister. Martine McCutcheon, a cockney soap starlet who played Eliza Dolittle to huge acclaim in the National Theatre's recent staging of My Fair Lady, will play the tea girl with whom he falls in love.

Thompson will feature as Grant's sister, and Rickman will play her husband. Neeson has a story of his own involving his relationship with a young stepson. Atkinson has a two-scene cameo.

The title, Love Actually, is short for "Love Actually Is All Around," a jokey reference to the Reg Presley-written theme song from 1994's Four Weddings And A Funeral.

Also cast are Colin Firth, Bill Nighy, Keira Knightley and Martin Freeman.

Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Monday, July 29, 2002

This is pasted from the PBS website. Check your local listings. AR is mentioned here.

BECKETT ON FILM
Premieres Sept. 15, 2002 at 10:00 PM (EST and Jan. 1, 2003 at 9:30 PM (EST)

Jeremy Irons hosts two special evenings showcasing new film adaptations of the plays of Samuel Beckett. Seven short works and Beckett's masterpiece, "Waiting for Godot," are performed and directed by leading names of stage and screen, including David Mamet, Harold Pinter, Anthony Minghella, Kristin Scott Thomas, Alan Rickman, and John Gielgud.

Juliana
- Sunday, July 28, 2002

Variety, June 10, 2002 v387 i4 p55(1)
Davies eyes Tony tizzy. (Win Or Lose).
(director Howard Davies)(Brief Article)
Matt Wolf.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2002 Reed Business Information

How, meanwhile, was one of Britain's hottest directors taking a level of Tony-time competition that found numerous New York publications doping the winners in virtually every category? (London's Olivier Awards, by contrast, barely get reported in the British press, much less scrutinized at length.)

"I avoid it completely; it's the only way I could stay remotely sane," said Howard Davies, who was marking his third Tony nom, this time for "Private Lives," following "The Iceman Cometh" with Kevin Spacey, and the Alan Rickman-Lindsay Duncan "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" 15 years ago?

Sanity may well be required backstage at the Richard Rodgers to keep jealousy at bay: Duncan has gathered four major trophies for her ravishing Amanda (London's Critics Circle and Olivier Awards, New York's Drama Desk and Tony), while Rickman's coolly elegant Elyot has received none. Muses Davies: "It's slightly divisive that Lindsay has got all those and Alan hasn't, but I'm sure, because they're mature people, it's not going to get in the way."

In any case, there's always next year's Tonys for the same director, whose upcoming West End staging of David Hare's "The Breath of Life," pairing Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, sounds pretty inevitably Broadway-bound. Not that Davies, for one, seems all that temperamentally inclined toward America's avidity for prizes. The U.S., he notes, "is a winner culture. In England, we seem to subscribe to a loser culture."

Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Saturday, July 27, 2002

From the "Chronicle of Higher Education," June 28, 2002 issue:

THEATER
High Seriousness, High Comedy
By STEVE VINEBERG

High comedy, also known as comedy of manners, is the witty, curlicued, language-centered genre that, for English-speaking audiences, is most famously embodied in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 18th-century The School for Scandal, Oscar Wilde's 19th-century The Importance of Being Earnest, or Noël Coward's 20th-century Private Lives.

Traditionally set among an aristocracy bound by iron-clad rules of conduct, and concerned equally with style and sexual behavior, high comedy has become more complex in the last hundred years. That's largely because the notion of class has become problematic since World War I. If you're going to build a play around an aristocracy in the modern age, you can't plausibly depict one to which its members were born -- as Sheridan's characters were, and as he himself was. Nobility must be determined by factors other than titles, or even wealth. In one of the most glorious and daring of modern high comedies, for example, Coward's Design for Living, the aristocracy is bohemian and artistic. Those who refuse to acknowledge that the greater value is in art rather than in commerce or fame, and those who adhere to old-fashioned, conservative ideas about sexual fidelity, are de facto outsiders.

High comedy has also become considerably darker than it was when British Restoration playwrights like William Congreve and William Wycherley invented it. In the 20th century, its tone became somewhat sardonic and satiric, with an aftertaste of melancholy. Characters who pretend to be carefree and free-spirited in truth care passionately and mourn their losses with heavy hearts. Underlying a commitment to the fleeting pleasures is the acrid smell of death. The British critic William Bolitho, trying to get at the quality of Coward's play Bitter Sweet, wrote:

"You find it faintly when you look over old letters the rats have nibbled at, one evening you don't go out; there is a little of it, impure and odorous, in the very sound of barrel organs, in quiet squares in the evenings, puffing out in gusts that intoxicate your heart. It is all right for beasts to have no memories; but we poor humans have to be compensated."

In Coward's Private Lives, currently on Broadway in a lush, expertly performed revival directed by Howard Davies, Amanda (Lindsay Duncan) and Elyot (Alan Rickman), divorced from each other and on their second honeymoons with new spouses, meet by chance on the French Riviera. It turns out -- damnable luck! -- that their hotel suites are next door to each other. And as they stand on their adjacent balconies, befuddled by the fate that's brought them together at this most inopportune of moments, the orchestra on the terrace below strikes up their song, a tender, romantic ballad called "Someday I'll Find You."

The two are furious, because, as quick-witted as they are, they are powerless to exert the slightest control over their emotions. They are unable to deny the passion inadequately buried in their bitterness toward each other. And the tenacious song has them at its mercy.

"Extraordinary how potent cheap music is," Amanda quips, in the play's most celebrated line. Modern comedy of manners can best be explained, perhaps, as the buoyant and hilarious high style erected to mask, then reveal, then mask again the potent cheap music that makes a holy mess out of our lives.

Coward wrote Private Lives in 1930 for himself and his favorite leading lady, Gertrude Lawrence, peerless exemplars of high style. A recording of an excerpt from the original London production conveys the rarefied atmosphere of the piece and the tightrope act in both the writing and the acting, which achieve a sublime self-consciousness that never becomes arch.

But though I fell in love with the play in my undergraduate years, I had no idea how profound it was until I saw Robin Phillips direct Maggie Smith and Brian Bedford in it at the Stratford Festival of Canada in 1978. These were actors born to play the roles (and indeed each had done so before, opposite other people), and their line readings were as convulsively funny as anyone could have hoped for. But whereas Private Lives is conventionally played at a breakneck tempo, Phillips slowed it down just enough to expose the shattered lives of the two protagonists.

That tempo emphasized their inability either to escape their possessive love for one another or to prevent themselves from driving one another mad out of jealousy and pride. They're propelled by the depth of their feelings toward intense romance. But human frailty makes it impossible for them to sustain that intensity -- impossible, even, for them to exist for 10 minutes without needling each other into a quarrel. Watching Phillips's version, you could peek through the comic veneer and see F. Scott Fitzgerald characters beneath, struggling poignantly.

The Davies production -- imported from a triumphant run in London's West End and recently recognized with Tony Awards for the revival, Duncan's performance, and Tim Hatley's luxurious sets -- is also taken at a slower pace and full of implicit heartbreak. But Davies makes a contribution of his own: an enhanced sexual knowingness. On the recording, the connection between Coward and Lawrence is purely a match of wits, and nothing that remains of their work as performers in other contexts suggests that carnality had much place in her charm or any in his. And though I'm relying on a 24-year-old memory, I don't recall that the tensions simmering underneath Smith's and Bedford's portrayals were as explicitly erotic as those of Duncan's and Rickman's.

During Phillips's tenure as artistic director at Stratford, Smith and Bedford were often partnered. As Amanda and Elyot, as Shakespeare's Beatrice and Benedick, as The Actor and The Actress in Ferenc Molnár's The Guardsman, they had the knack of convincing you they were deeply in love, but your mind never wandered to what they might be like in bed together. With Duncan and Rickman, you think about almost nothing else. Their lives together appear to be, for all intents and purposes, conducted in the bedroom, except for brief intermissions when we're permitted to listen to them talk and fight.

Davies also takes Phillips's approach one step further, and here's where he courts disaster. At one point in each of the first two acts, he allows the comedy to slip away entirely for a few moments before it sails back in on the tide of Coward's prose. The places he chooses for this experiment aren't significant in themselves; they're evidently the ones that contain the fewest one-liners. What's important is that the anguish of the characters spills over and the humor is silenced momentarily.

But in order to work, high comedy must be delicately crafted. It must seem easy and slight and entirely superficial, even though we can hear the echoes in it of the characters' pain. Like them, we too regret that life can't achieve the grandeur we ask of it, and that we can't live forever. To play a high comedy too seriously -- to give in to the sadness at its heart -- is to wreck it. Oscar Wilde made that mistake in every comedy of manners he wrote other than The Importance of Being Earnest, and that's why no contemporary revival of Lady Windermere's Fan or An Ideal Husband, however skillful, manages to save itself from melodrama.

If Davies gets away here with a too-serious approach, it's because of Lindsay Duncan's dazzling technique. She shifts tones in a heartbeat and suggests depths of agony with a darkening of her husky alto voice. Also, as soon as the comedy sweeps back onto the stage, we're happy to forget the lapses. But for those unfunny moments, the play feels oddly suspended, in limbo. We don't know where we are until Coward's silvery laughter returns to us.

And Toronto's eye magazine, an entertainment weekly, gave "John Gissing" four out of five stars and says:

The Search for John Gissing is an unpretentious mockery of the business world that pits Matthew Barnes (Mark Binder), a young corporate do-gooder, against John Gissing (played spot-on by Alan Rickman), a crusty employee who goes to great lengths to screw over the new guy. Zany jump-cuts throughout and an impressive supporting cast that includes the hilarious Janeane Garofalo as Matthew's wife make this wild-goose-chase-turned-revenge-plot refreshing and consistently funny. With a "business is the new war" metaphor as the central theme, the search for John Gissing becomes a comic quest to find out who the real casualties of mergers, takeovers and acquisitions are.

Magda
Canada - Monday, July 22, 2002

The Toronto Star liked "John Gissing", calling it "a hilarious urban farce tempered with British reserve" (July 17, 2002). So fingers crossed that it gets picked up by a distributor.
Magda
Canada - Monday, July 22, 2002

April 14, 2002 Sunday SUNRISE EDITION
SECTION: TELEVISION; Pg. 02
HEADLINE: "TRULY MADLY DEEPLY" (1991), NOON SUNDAY, AMERICAN
SOURCE: Ted Mahar - The Oregonian

"Truly Madly Deeply" (1991), noon Sunday, American Movie Classics. This was the directoral debut of Anthony Minghella, who directed "The English Patient" (1996) and "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1999) and will begin filming "Cold Mountain" in July.

This film is a thinking viewer's "Ghost," the tale of a woman almost paralyzed by grief and who gets her unstated wish. Her husband returns. He was a cello player -- still is -- and he eventually channels in some other from the Other Side. He is played in droll style by Alan Rickman, best know as a villain in "Die Hard" and "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves." (Rickman in fact, was the king of thieves -- he stole "Hood" from Kevin Costner and wouldn't give it back.) Juliet Stevens does lovely work as a woman who travels a long gamut, from disabling misery to, well, something else. Like the film, her tone changes from tragedy to farce to romantic comedy.

From a 1 June 2002 review of the "Harry Potter" DVD in Seattle's Post-Intelligencer:

The big bonus: seven deleted or extended scenes, which viewers access after a series of none-too-strenuous "challenges" to find the sorcerer's stone (one of the best moments is a prolonged classroom exchange between Harry and the dour Professor Snape). Other bonuses are flashy and will entertain children, but much of the material lacks substance. Many features are simply clips from the film repackaged thematically. 152 minutes. Rated PG for some scary moments and mild language. Grade: A-

There is more info in http://www.torontobritpics.com/frames.htm (clicking "programme details") and the schedule is: "The search of John Gissing" at Bricpics at 7.00pm on Saturday 20th July 2002
saskia
- Thursday, July 11, 2002

The last two Videogram clips from the Tony Awards; Best Actress, including LD's acceptance speech. And Best Actor, minus Bates speech. Plus a clip of AR on the Early Show from the morning after the Tony's:

• Best Actress (TonyPLactress6202.exe, 3.1 MB, 2 min, 24 secs)
• Best Actor (TonyPLactor6202.exe, 2 MB, 1 min)
• Early Show (EarlyShow6302.exe, 1.3 MB, 34 secs)

Copyright 2002 EXPRESS NEWSPAPERS
The Express
July 4, 2002
SECTION: COLUMNS; Pg. 39
HEADLINE: DAY & NIGHT; BEATIE TAKES A NOVEL APPROACH
BYLINE: KATHRYN SPENCER, JULIE CARPENTER & KATE BOHDANOWICZ
ACTRESS Beatie Edney wants to branch out into novels. Beatie, whose films include Highlander, has contributed to Big Night Out, published in aid of charity War Child. Her piece has illustrations by actor Alan Rickman.

"Since Alan didn't have time to write something, he said he would do a drawing if he liked the piece, " Beatie, 39, told us at the book's launch in South Kensington. "It was funny because lots of the stories are saucy but mine is about an eight-year-old going to the theatre. I didn't know. I was just told the theme was a big night out." Still, it hasn't blunted her enthusiasm.

"I would love to write a novel, " she says.

Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Friday, July 05, 2002

Copyright 2002 Belfast Telegraph Newspapers Ltd.
Belfast Telegraph
June 29, 2002
HEADLINE: Book review: Big night out (Harpercollins, £6.99
BYLINE: By Grannia McFadden

Following on from the best selling short story collections, girls' night in and girls' night out/boys' night in, comes the biggest yet anthology in aid of the charity war child.

This edition is brimming over with stories from some of today's best known writers and offers an inside look at how some of them prepare for their big night out.

Contributors include Nick Hornby, Marian Keyes, Candace Bushnell, Kathy Lette, John Collins, Jamie Oliver, Kate Moss, Alan Rickman and Bob Geldof, Steve Coogan and Boy George.

Georgiana <gellis@drizzle.comfoo>
Seattle - Friday, July 05, 2002

If you check out www.ambrosevideo.com, you'll find they are offering a four DVD set of Samuel Beckett's works-the same set that contains AR and Juliet Stevenson in "Play", directed by Anthony Minghella. The price is $149, I believe.
Mindy
CT USA - Tuesday, July 02, 2002

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