Category Archives: Sam Mendes

Tony awards 2022: Company and The Lehman Trilogy lead big night for Brits

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Broadway transfers of West End shows were out in front at this year’s celebration of the best of New York theatre

Broadway transfers of West End adaptations of The Lehman Trilogy and Company have dominated this year’s Tony awards, which were seen as a return to relative normal after Covid-impacted ceremonies.

It was a big night for British talent in New York, with the Broadway transfer of The Lehman Trilogy winning best play, best director and best actor in a play. “This play was written as a hymn to the city of New York but, like the Lehman brothers themselves, our show started thousands of miles away,” said playwright Ben Power, who adapted the show from Italian novelist and playwright Stefano Massini. His version made its debut at London’s National Theatre in 2018.

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‘An explosive energy’: Sam Mendes pays tribute to Helen McCrory

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Whether acting in Chekhov on stage or a Bond film, the star – who has died aged 52 – was incredibly exciting to watch, remembers the Skyfall director

Most actors are liked by those they work with. A few are loved. With Helen it was unquestionably the latter. People would light up at the mention of her name. I was one of those people.

When I was directing Uncle Vanya and Twelfth Night as my final productions as artistic director of the Donmar in 2002, I asked Helen to play the role of Sonya in Uncle Vanya. Word came back that she would love to have a chat about it. She strode into my office, sat on the sofa and immediately told me I had it all wrong. She told me she should be playing Yelena – the other young female role – and then proceeded to spend the next hour telling me exactly why. She left the room with the part. This has never happened to me before or since. All I can say by way of explanation is that it just felt inevitable. She was clearly already half way to giving a superb performance, I simply had to get out of the way and let her complete the job. Which, of course, she did – with utter brilliance.

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The 2020 Braddies go to … Peter Bradshaw’s film picks of the year

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Alongside our countdown of the best films of 2020, our chief film critic selects his favourite movies, directors and performances of the year

As for everyone and everything else, this has been a traumatising year for cinema. Many new movies have had to be viewed at home, on streaming services, and cinephiles have had to accept this arrangement, rather like gourmets who see their favourite restaurants survive by repurposing themselves as delivery and takeaway centres. And streaming has, arguably, given a new audience to independent and arthouse cinema that might not otherwise have much of a showing in theatres.

Lockdown has intensified the debate about the validity of the small-screen experience of cinema – and it’s especially intense for me, when I consider one of my favourite films of the year. Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock is one of the glorious works in McQueen’s superb five-movie Small Axe sequence about the Black British experience. It is gloriously cinematic and was slated to feature at this year’s (cancelled) Cannes film festival. But it was commissioned by the BBC, and so the vast majority of the people enjoying this wonderful film will be doing so on the small screen. That’s why it is being described, understandably, as one the television highlights of the year.

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Oscars 2020: Joker leads pack – but Academy just trumps Baftas for diversity

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  • Joker nominated for 11 awards
  • 1917, The Irishman, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood up for 10
  • Little Women and Parasite take six nominations
  • Cynthia Erivo sole non-white acting nominee
  • Oscar nominations: full list for 2020

Less than a week since Bafta’s strikingly white and male awards shortlist met with widespread criticism – including from the organisation’s own chief executive – the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released a set of nominations whose small concessions to diversity seem striking by contrast.

Cynthia Erivo is nominated for best actress for her role in a biopic of abolitionist Harriet Tubman, and Parasite – Bong Joon-ho’s acclaimed South Korean black comedy – is up for six awards, including best director and best picture.

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Golden Globes: who will win and who should win the film awards? | Peter Bradshaw

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Will The Irishman clean up? Or Marriage Story? And how will Once Upon a Time in Hollywood fare? Peter Bradshaw offers a lowdown of the main categories and his predictions and omissions

The best film category is dominated – just like everything else in the cultural conversation around movies – by Netflix, which has the majority of the nominees: Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story and Fernando Meirelles’s The Two Popes.

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Hobnails, drill and boot camp: secrets of Sam Mendes’s war epic 1917

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Director tells how getting every detail right was crucial to helping his cast understand emotions of war

Wasted youth, random violent death and the folly of armed conflict are the big themes of 1917, Sam Mendes’s orchestral symphony of a first world war film. But for the director and the team who made it alongside him, no detail was too small to consider.

“It was very important, the question of historical accuracy,” said Mendes. “We had two very fine historical advisers, Andy Robertshaw and Peter Barton, who are world renowned. And one military adviser, Paul Biddiss, who was also brilliant.”

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