Tom Hooper
109 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
This Les Misérables is inspired by the novel and musical only in its themes, not its plot.
There are echoes of the themes Victor Hugo explored in his 1862 novel in Ladj Ly’s “Les Misérables,” but anyone seeking a straightforward adaptation will have to look elsewhere.
Instead the title refers to embattled Parisian banlieue (district) Les Bosquets where the film is set and where Victor Hugo located important scenes in his famous 1862 novel "Les Misérables."
Not a remake, this 2019 Les Misérables is set in the community where Victor Hugo first penned his masterpiece, the themes of his timeless story are present, but virtually unrelated otherwise.
Meanwhile, in the projects of Montfermeil (the film’s title refers to the town’s name, the place where Victor Hugo wrote his novel Les Misérables ) lives a populace under the totalitarian rule of these same police.
The Paris streets are full of joy during the opening moments of Ladj Ly’s electrifying “Les Misérables,” which despite the deceptive title is not yet another adaptation of Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel, but rather an urgently contemporary cop thriller riffing on the tale’s timeless themes.
The Imitation Game (2014)
Directed by Morten Tyldum
influenced by The King's Speech (2010)
Themes Visuals
Awards season always makes room for at least one plummy-toned veddy-English drama (think The King's Speech), so it's no surprise to see Benedict Cumberbatch refereeing ye olde internal wrestling match between British reserve and tortured feeling in the "based on a true story" feature The Imitation Game.
The film’s distributor, The Weinstein Company, scored at the 2011 Academy Awards with the similarly themed The King’s Speech, so odds are in The Imitation Game’s favor that it will stand among this season’s contenders—despite the plot’s flaws.
The keep-it-moving, keep-it-bright pacing also evokes a more recent film, the similarly tweedy and 1930s-set “The King’s Speech.”
Unlike The King’s Speech, which won a clutch of Oscars for its dull propriety and Masterpiece Theater vibe, The Imitation Game is vibrant and lively, engaging you on three levels: The fascinating way the Nazis managed to outwit the rest of the world until Turing came along, how his giant contraption (essentially the world’s first computer) will work, and what will happen to him and everyone he knows when the truth about him is finally revealed.
It’s the Weinsteins’ bid for this year’s The King’s Speech (2010), and it shows; and it might work, but it’s by no means a lock.
Since “The Imitation Game” addresses each of these topics, one imagines its distributor Harvey Weinstein has been touting the movie as “The King’s Speech” meets “The Social Network” meets “Milk.”
At Long Last Love (1975)
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich
influenced Les Misérables (2012)
Visuals Music
With the exception of Peter Bogdanovich’s disastrous 1975 Cole Porter tribute, At Long Last Love, this approach hasn’t been used since the early sound era.
The one big thing he knows about Les Miz is that the songs should be performed live — recorded on the set, not in a studio before the shoot — as was the custom in Hollywood in the early sound era and was revived, not too fruitfully, in Peter Bogdanovich’s 1975 At Long Last Love.
Most famously, Peter Bogdanovich’s career-crippling At Long Last Love (1975) used the technique.
Peter Bogdanovich came a cropper doing this in At Long Last Love .
The Madness of King George (1994)
Directed by Nicholas Hytner
influenced The King's Speech (2010)
Characters Themes
The push-pull of this relationship recalls the dynamic between Nigel Hawthorne and Ian Holm in The Madness of King George; like that previous George, Albert must seem a king, not by becoming sane but by speaking clearly.
Peeks behind the velvet curtain at scenes of royal travail can be involving, witness 1994's "The Madness of King George," and this story is exceptionally moving as well.
It is the work of a highly talented group of artists who might be regarded as British realists – Tom Hooper directed the soccer epic The Damned United ; Eve Stewart was production designer on Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy and Vera Drake ; Jenny Beavan was responsible for the costumes worn in Gosford Park and The Remains of the Day ; the cinematographer Danny Cohen lit Shane Meadows's This is England and Dead Man's Shoes ; Tariq Anwar's editing credits range from The Madness of King George to American Beauty ; and the screenplay is by the British writer David Seidler, who co-wrote Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream .
Darkest Hour (2017)
Directed by Joe Wright
influenced by The King's Speech (2010), Les Misérables (2012)
Visuals Characters Themes
Buttoned-up period piece-isms (a la Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech”) are blessedly hard to come by here.
In achieving this, the actor puts himself alongside Brian Cox in Churchill (tremendous performance, mediocre movie) and Timothy Spall in The King’s Speech (possibly the best-ever screen interpretation of the former PM).
Dillane shares some screen time with Ben Mendelsohn’s King George VI (the one Colin Firth played in “The King’s Speech”), and when they’re together, the air is thick with royal privilege.
Whether it’s the House Of Commons, or Buckingham Palace, where Churchill is summoned by an untrusting King George VI (played by Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn in an altogether sterner way that he was by Colin Firth in The King’s Speech) or the Cabinet War Rooms, every interior is bathed in heavy shadows.
(See: The King's Speech or this year's Victoria and Abdul.)
The King’s Speech, maligned as it’s been, was the better film.
If you saw Tom Hooper's "The King's Speech" you're likely to remember Wallis Simpson as the woman who essentially sabotaged the reign of Colin Firth's older brother.
The story told is a flip side of and prequel of sorts to "The King's Speech," which was about how Edward's brother George assumed the throne when Edward, played here by James D'Arcy, abdicated to marry Simpson, played by Andrea Riseborough.
The director tells the Duchess’ story with surprising verve, historical accuracy and style, a huge improvement over the nastily cartoonish way the couple was represented in the overrated The King’s Speech last year.
(Bonny Prince Bertie of “The King’s Speech’’ puts in a cameo appearance, played by Laurence Fox and stuttering away so we know it’s him; the actor’s father, James, plays George V in a brief cameo.)
A Royal Night Out (2015)
Directed by Julian Jarrold
influenced by The King's Speech (2010)
Themes Characters
A young, pre-queen Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon) and her sister Margaret (Bel Powley) share a princess’ night on the town in this frothy, forgettable comedy from director Julian Jarrold (“Kinky Boots”), which plays as a sort of footnote to 2010’s “The King’s Speech.”
Rupert Everett is the King, aka Bertie the stuttering monarch we saw in The King's Speech.
Although their father relies on them to be with him when he speaks on the radio, still a very difficult challenge for the man whose stutter was the theme of “The King’s Speech,” they persuade their parents to let them out just once, so they can mingle among the “ordinary people.”
He considers this proposition and one minute later he's bought the idea, because he hasn't entirely conquered his stammer, despite all the work he put into this task in The King's Speech.
A fanciful, fictional imagination of what might have happened on the night of May 8, 1945, when Winston Churchill announced the end of World War II, if England’s cherished royal teenage princesses—ladylike Elizabeth and her feisty sister Margaret—had joined thousands of ordinary revelers on an incognito excursion into Central London, A Royal Night Out is not another revelation on the historic order of The King’s Speech, but it’s hearty, good-natured fun anyway.
As their parents, Rupert Everett (Justin and the Knights of Valour) and Emily Watson (Testament of Youth) rely more heavily on impersonation as a crutch, and invite unfavourable (and inevitable) comparisons to The King’s Speech.
The Queen (2006)
Directed by Stephen Frears
influenced The King's Speech (2010)
Characters Themes Plot
Perhaps the best way to describe the way Firth inhabits the character is to recall Helen Mirren's astounding turn in The Queen .
In this sense, The King's Speech is an altogether more significant and ambitious work than Stephen Frears's admirable The Queen of 2006 and far transcends any political arguments about royalty and republicanism.
Working from the British-royalty-biopic template perfected by Peter Morgan ( The Deal , The Queen ), The King’s Speech provides a cute, complication-free portrait of the Duke of York (Colin Firth), who would eventually become King George VI of England, and his difficulty overcoming a lifelong stammer.
Like The Queen (2006) , its a story about the effect of ordinary people on the vitality of the monarchy and, specifically in the case of The Kings Speech , how a sympathetic teacher befriended a reluctant king and helped him overcome his fears and disabilities to help lead the free world to victory over Hitler and his Nazi army.
Its themes are courage (where it comes from, how it is used), responsibility, and the necessity to place duty above personal pleasure or contentment – the subjects, in fact, of such enduringly popular movies as Casablanca and High Noon.
That's Claire Bloom ("The Haunting," "Crimes and Misdemeanors") as Bertie's formal mother Queen Mary.
Hooper's feel-good storytelling recalls Jeffrey Blitz's "Rocket Science," which revolved around a stutterer engaged in high school debate competitions, but the sunny vibes seem out of place in the context of British royalty.
Running through rhythmic calisthenics and Olympic-level tongue twisters ("I'm a thistle sifter"), Rush and Firth might as well be Ian Holm and Ben Cross in Chariots of Fire.
Several things hold the film together, the most notable being Claude-Michel Schönberg's music and the English lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer, which like Rouben Mamoulian's 1932 Love Me Tonight and Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort are sung through using rhyming couplets at all times.
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (1967)
Directed by Peter Brook
influenced Les Misérables (2012)
You may get more out of it than I did — you could hardly get less — but if I want dramatized French history tarted up with songs, I’ll take Peter Brook’s Marat/Sade (1967).
To be fair, Alan Parker ("The Commitments," "Evita") reportedly tried to bring the musical to the screen back in the late 1980s, but those plans fell through.
Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
influenced The King's Speech (2010)
Having set the precedent for Bertie's tongue twisted agony, Hooper and screenwriter David Seidler ("Tucker: The Man and His Dream") leap ahead to show the man's continuing embarrassment as a doctor advises him that smoking is relaxation for the larynx and coaxes him to read with a mouthful of marbles.
Screenwriter David Seidler ("Tucker: The Man and His Dream") also has been suffering in silence for some time; a stutterer himself, he researched and planned this project for years, but held off -- reportedly at the Queen Mum's request -- until her death, at 101, in 2002.
The terrific screenplay written by David Seidler (“Tucker: The Man and His Dream”) gives the entire cast great lines to speak and memorable situations to work through.
Seidler is a veteran screenwriter whose credits include "Tucker: The Man and His Dream" and three Writers Guild nominations for television features.
It is the work of a highly talented group of artists who might be regarded as British realists – Tom Hooper directed the soccer epic The Damned United ; Eve Stewart was production designer on Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy and Vera Drake ; Jenny Beavan was responsible for the costumes worn in Gosford Park and The Remains of the Day ; the cinematographer Danny Cohen lit Shane Meadows's This is England and Dead Man's Shoes ; Tariq Anwar's editing credits range from The Madness of King George to American Beauty ; and the screenplay is by the British writer David Seidler, who co-wrote Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream .
Mamma Mia! (2008) took a staggering $609m at the international box-office and not far behind have been the likes of Chicago (2002) with $306m, High School Musical 3 (2008) with $252m, and Hairspray (2007) with $202m.
Don’t expect the lavish dance sequences of films like “Moulin Rouge” or “Chicago.”
This is, of course, all set in the 18th century–the latter half of the film predominantly featuring the Paris Uprising of 1832–amongst some of the society’s most unrefined people, so audiences expecting a glitzy musical along the lines of Chicago or Moulin Rouge! will be sorely disappointed.
However, “Les Misérables” has a bigger and sometimes more complicated cast than something as simple as “Annie” or even “Chicago.”
I cannot speak to the particulars of speech therapy, but it seems convenient that, according to “The King’s Speech,” speech therapy mirrors the psychological theatrics of “Ordinary People” or “Good Will Hunting” or….or….let’s…
Like “The King’s Speech” last year, “Rain Man” saw its stars align, released just in time to keep a wave of buzz that helped it win the Oscar.
Colin Firth, as Bertie, gives the sort of technically elaborate performance that causes Oscar statues to do flips of joy (think of Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man ).
Firth�s performance, which initially seems like it might delve into productive terrain, never evolves beyond a gimmick (if he wins an Oscar for this, it will be Rain Man all over again).
When Bob Fosse made "Cabaret," he completely reimagined it for the screen.