Move over, Angry Young Men: Alfie Elkins leverages class resentment and killer good looks to become a ladies’ man extraordinaire… in his own eyes. Michael Caine was born to play Bill Naughton’s smooth-talking, responsibility-dodging cad’s cad. Alfie mistreats a glorious lineup of actresses — Julia Foster, Jane Asher, Vivien Merchant — and Shelley Winters is hilarious as the widow who has his number. Will Alfie maybe develop a conscience? The two-disc special edition shares a double bill with My Generation, a highly entertaining Swinging London documentary hosted by Michael Caine. Being kind doesn’t make one a fool, Alfie.
Alfie + My Generation
Blu-ray (Region-Free)
Viavision [Imprint] 41
1965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 112 min. / Street Date June 2, 2021 / Available from Viavision / au 64.98
Starring: Michael Caine, Shelley Winters, Julia Foster, Jane Asher, Vivien Merchant, Millicent Martin, Denholm Elliott, Alfie Bass, Graham Stark, Eleanor Bron, Shirley Anne Field, Murray Melvin, Sydney Tafler.
Cinematography: Otto Heller
Art Direction:...
Alfie + My Generation
Blu-ray (Region-Free)
Viavision [Imprint] 41
1965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 112 min. / Street Date June 2, 2021 / Available from Viavision / au 64.98
Starring: Michael Caine, Shelley Winters, Julia Foster, Jane Asher, Vivien Merchant, Millicent Martin, Denholm Elliott, Alfie Bass, Graham Stark, Eleanor Bron, Shirley Anne Field, Murray Melvin, Sydney Tafler.
Cinematography: Otto Heller
Art Direction:...
- 6/19/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
In this rereleased comic drama, Hayley Mills and Hywel Bennett play a couple plagued by a wedding-night disaster and the neighbours’ wagging tongues
‘It’s life, lad. It might make you laugh at your age, but one day it’ll make you bloody cry.” After 54 years, this British movie from the Boulting brothers flares like a struck match with broad comedy, fierce sentimentality and a strange dark sense of life’s painfulness – and it’s an amazingly vivid time capsule of Britain in the 1960s. The Family Way, rereleased on digital platforms, is based on a stage play by Bill Naughton, itself developed from his Armchair Playhouse TV script, and directed by Roy Boulting and produced by John Boulting, with a musical score from Paul McCartney, arranged by George Martin.
Hywel Bennett brings his discontented-cherub presence to the role of Arthur Fitton, a young cinema projectionist in Bolton. Arthur is getting married to Jenny Piper,...
‘It’s life, lad. It might make you laugh at your age, but one day it’ll make you bloody cry.” After 54 years, this British movie from the Boulting brothers flares like a struck match with broad comedy, fierce sentimentality and a strange dark sense of life’s painfulness – and it’s an amazingly vivid time capsule of Britain in the 1960s. The Family Way, rereleased on digital platforms, is based on a stage play by Bill Naughton, itself developed from his Armchair Playhouse TV script, and directed by Roy Boulting and produced by John Boulting, with a musical score from Paul McCartney, arranged by George Martin.
Hywel Bennett brings his discontented-cherub presence to the role of Arthur Fitton, a young cinema projectionist in Bolton. Arthur is getting married to Jenny Piper,...
- 4/30/2020
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
In the 1940s and 50s, the Boulting brothers won over filmgoers and critics with a series of classics – from Brighton Rock to Private's Progress. As the BFI begins a retrospective, Michael Newton explores their version of Britain
The history of the Boulting brothers is the history of British cinema in miniature. The brilliance, the comforts and the disappointments are all there. In the 1940s, they take off from documentary realism to reach the heights of noir extravagance, before falling back into a gently unexciting worthiness. At the start of the 1950s they produce two fascinating oddities, characteristic of the oddity of the times. Later that decade, they turn to cosily satirical farce, the products of an exasperated, grump. The 1960s see them trying to get with it and making a middle-aged effort to "swing", but also creating one work that finds a vulnerable, extraordinary beauty in ordinary lives. And after that comes a petering out,...
The history of the Boulting brothers is the history of British cinema in miniature. The brilliance, the comforts and the disappointments are all there. In the 1940s, they take off from documentary realism to reach the heights of noir extravagance, before falling back into a gently unexciting worthiness. At the start of the 1950s they produce two fascinating oddities, characteristic of the oddity of the times. Later that decade, they turn to cosily satirical farce, the products of an exasperated, grump. The 1960s see them trying to get with it and making a middle-aged effort to "swing", but also creating one work that finds a vulnerable, extraordinary beauty in ordinary lives. And after that comes a petering out,...
- 7/26/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
National Theatre's Nicholas Hytner joins in condemnation of Tories' stance on the arts at conference on regional theatre
Two leading lights of Britain's cultural life – Danny Boyle, who directed the Olympics opening ceremony, and Nicholas Hytner, chief of the National Theatre – have launched an uncompromising attack on the government's stance on culture.
Speaking after an event that brought together the heads of 23 of England's leading regional theatres, Boyle told the Guardian that the lack of attention to the arts shown by the culture secretary, Maria Miller, was "outrageous".
"Not one of those [artistic directors, including Hytner] has been even approached by this woman," he said. "That is outrageous. This is cultural life of our country. She is the minister of fucking culture. I mean, come on."
He added: "It's a disgrace: it is these artistic directors that are spending the taxpayers' money. And she's not met them. They are the people spending the money...
Two leading lights of Britain's cultural life – Danny Boyle, who directed the Olympics opening ceremony, and Nicholas Hytner, chief of the National Theatre – have launched an uncompromising attack on the government's stance on culture.
Speaking after an event that brought together the heads of 23 of England's leading regional theatres, Boyle told the Guardian that the lack of attention to the arts shown by the culture secretary, Maria Miller, was "outrageous".
"Not one of those [artistic directors, including Hytner] has been even approached by this woman," he said. "That is outrageous. This is cultural life of our country. She is the minister of fucking culture. I mean, come on."
He added: "It's a disgrace: it is these artistic directors that are spending the taxpayers' money. And she's not met them. They are the people spending the money...
- 11/16/2012
- by Charlotte Higgins
- The Guardian - Film News
Peter Kay has recorded a voiceover for a small theatre production. The comedian has provided his voice for a cameo role at the theatre where he used to work in the box office before finding fame, BBC News reports. He will be heard in the production of Lighthearted Intercourse at the Bolton Octagon. Maxine Peake - who also launched her acting career at the theatre - has recorded lines as Kay's character's wife for the play. The production is a new version of the play written by Alife scribe Bill Naughton. Lighthearted Intercourse was previously only staged once in Liverpool back in 1971, with Coronation Street's William Roache playing the lead role. (more)...
- 10/5/2012
- by By Tom Eames
- Digital Spy
Last week saw the release of The Avengers here in the UK, the year’s biggest film to date, and the third-highest-grossing film of all time. Naturally, it was a pretty good week – somewhat marred, however, by the fact that the UK edition has a violent scene edited and Joss Whedon’s commentary track omitted.
Needless to say, I’ll be importing my copy from the Us sometime in the future, after its release there tomorrow. (It also means I’ll have the proper title – ‘The Avengers’ – on the cover, and not just ‘Avengers Assemble’, a name which I refuse to use, because ‘The Avengers’ is just way cooler.)
This week is just as big a week all round, with Whedon returning to the home entertainment market in the form of The Cabin in the Woods, along with the equally-praised Indonesian action film, The Raid, and many more excellent films.
Needless to say, I’ll be importing my copy from the Us sometime in the future, after its release there tomorrow. (It also means I’ll have the proper title – ‘The Avengers’ – on the cover, and not just ‘Avengers Assemble’, a name which I refuse to use, because ‘The Avengers’ is just way cooler.)
This week is just as big a week all round, with Whedon returning to the home entertainment market in the form of The Cabin in the Woods, along with the equally-praised Indonesian action film, The Raid, and many more excellent films.
- 9/24/2012
- by Kenji Lloyd
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
The Raid; The Cabin in the Woods; The Angels' Share; All in Good Time; Free Men; The Dictator
Film fans enduring the typically murky stereoscopy of Dredd 3D in UK cinemas may also experience a sense of deja vu about its plot, which traps beleaguered law enforcement agents in a tower block run by vicious drug-dealing criminals, from which they must attempt to escape with their lives. A strikingly similar scenario underpins Gareth Huw Evans's altogether superior martial-arts thriller The Raid (2011, Momentum, 18), though any comparison between the two ends there. For while Dredd galumphs its heavy booted, bombastic way around the screen, The Raid is altogether lighter on its feet, reminding us of the close comparison between martial arts movies and highly choreographed musicals, both of which have the unmistakeable physicality of acrobatic human interaction at their heart.
Incongruously directed in Indonesia by Welshman Evans, The Raid plays its...
Film fans enduring the typically murky stereoscopy of Dredd 3D in UK cinemas may also experience a sense of deja vu about its plot, which traps beleaguered law enforcement agents in a tower block run by vicious drug-dealing criminals, from which they must attempt to escape with their lives. A strikingly similar scenario underpins Gareth Huw Evans's altogether superior martial-arts thriller The Raid (2011, Momentum, 18), though any comparison between the two ends there. For while Dredd galumphs its heavy booted, bombastic way around the screen, The Raid is altogether lighter on its feet, reminding us of the close comparison between martial arts movies and highly choreographed musicals, both of which have the unmistakeable physicality of acrobatic human interaction at their heart.
Incongruously directed in Indonesia by Welshman Evans, The Raid plays its...
- 9/22/2012
- by Mark Kermode
- The Guardian - Film News
This year has already seen a successful British Asian film, The Exotic Marigold Hotel. Now comes All in Good Time, from the writer of East is East, Ayub Khan-Din. The director, Nigel Cole’s last film, Made in Dagenham, about female workers striking at the Ford Car Plant for equal pay, was critically appreciated. The film is also produced by the same person who bought you Oscar winning film The Queen. With an impressive team behind the it and based on an Asian theme, read on to find out if you should make time to watch All in Good Time.
The story in a nutshell centres around a close knit Asian family, focussing on newly married couple Atul Dutt (Reece Ritchie – Prince of Persia) and Vina (Amara Karan – The Darjeeling Limited). When their honeymoon to Goa is cancelled the day after the wedding, the newlyweds have to return home to live with the family.
The story in a nutshell centres around a close knit Asian family, focussing on newly married couple Atul Dutt (Reece Ritchie – Prince of Persia) and Vina (Amara Karan – The Darjeeling Limited). When their honeymoon to Goa is cancelled the day after the wedding, the newlyweds have to return home to live with the family.
- 5/14/2012
- by Anjum Shabbir
- Bollyspice
A classic 1960s working-class drama translates beautifully into a comedy of contemporary British Asian family life
All in Good Time is a touching, likable comedy of life in Lancashire's Hindu community. Though this aspect is little publicised, it's closely based on Bill Naughton's 1965 play of the same title.
Born in Ireland and raised in Bolton, Naughton emerged as a novelist and playwright in the late 50s in the wave of northern working-class writers like Shelagh Delaney, Keith Waterhouse, Alan Sillitoe, David Storey and Stan Barstow. But having been born in 1910 and worked for years as a coal-bagger, cotton-loom operator and lorry driver, Naughton belonged to an earlier generation and was altogether less chippy, aggressive, and self-consciously political about his background.
He enjoyed considerable success in the theatre and had three of his plays filmed, though his most enduringly popular work, the film version of Alfie, completely misrepresented Naughton's radio play,...
All in Good Time is a touching, likable comedy of life in Lancashire's Hindu community. Though this aspect is little publicised, it's closely based on Bill Naughton's 1965 play of the same title.
Born in Ireland and raised in Bolton, Naughton emerged as a novelist and playwright in the late 50s in the wave of northern working-class writers like Shelagh Delaney, Keith Waterhouse, Alan Sillitoe, David Storey and Stan Barstow. But having been born in 1910 and worked for years as a coal-bagger, cotton-loom operator and lorry driver, Naughton belonged to an earlier generation and was altogether less chippy, aggressive, and self-consciously political about his background.
He enjoyed considerable success in the theatre and had three of his plays filmed, though his most enduringly popular work, the film version of Alfie, completely misrepresented Naughton's radio play,...
- 5/12/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
It is all too apt that Ayub Khan-Din began his career as a bit-player in Stephen Frears’ seminal British drama My Beautiful Launderette, what with that film’s focus on the culture clash of Asians growing up in Britain. Khan-Din’s subsequent screenplays for smash hit East is East and acclaimed follow-up West is West depict a similar struggle, and this time, returns with an adaptation of Bill Naughton’s play All in Good Time. While the theme might start feeling well-harvested by now, this is a unique, unconventional film of its type, enticing even when it doesn’t always work.
Atul (Reece Ritchie) and Vina (Amara Karan) are a young Asian British couple growing up in Bolton. We meet them at their wedding, and while it should be the happiest day of their lives, their meddling, more traditionally Indian families are only making things harder.
It is all too apt that Ayub Khan-Din began his career as a bit-player in Stephen Frears’ seminal British drama My Beautiful Launderette, what with that film’s focus on the culture clash of Asians growing up in Britain. Khan-Din’s subsequent screenplays for smash hit East is East and acclaimed follow-up West is West depict a similar struggle, and this time, returns with an adaptation of Bill Naughton’s play All in Good Time. While the theme might start feeling well-harvested by now, this is a unique, unconventional film of its type, enticing even when it doesn’t always work.
Atul (Reece Ritchie) and Vina (Amara Karan) are a young Asian British couple growing up in Bolton. We meet them at their wedding, and while it should be the happiest day of their lives, their meddling, more traditionally Indian families are only making things harder.
- 5/12/2012
- by Shaun Munro
- Obsessed with Film
★★★☆☆ As an Olivier Award-winning British play about young Indian newly-weds that toured the globe, it was always inevitable that someone would look at Ayub Khan-Din's Rafta, Rafta and think 'BAFTA, BAFTA'. Enter Made in Dagenham's Nigel Cole, who directs the likeable big screen adaptation All in Good Time (2012) (which takes its title from the influential 1963 Bill Naughton play of the same name) complete with a light touch and a talented cast.
Read more »...
Read more »...
- 5/10/2012
- by CineVue
- CineVue
Actor who became a prolific TV director
Peter Hammond, who has died aged 87, moved from acting to become a prolific TV director, contributing to series including The Avengers, Granada's Sherlock Holmes series and Inspector Morse. It was with The Avengers in 1961 that he first made his mark. Hammond and his colleague Don Leaver directed 19 of the opening 26 episodes of the series between them and were largely responsible for creating its distinctive look in its pre-film days.
Hammond established himself as a quick worker who still managed to bring flair to his episodes. He developed a trademark style in which the confines of the small studio spaces would be enlivened by "foreground interest" and scenes would be distorted or heightened by being shot through glass or caught in the reflection of a mirror. This distinctive visual effect would reappear in productions as diverse as the studio-bound Three Musketeers (1966) and Dark Angel,...
Peter Hammond, who has died aged 87, moved from acting to become a prolific TV director, contributing to series including The Avengers, Granada's Sherlock Holmes series and Inspector Morse. It was with The Avengers in 1961 that he first made his mark. Hammond and his colleague Don Leaver directed 19 of the opening 26 episodes of the series between them and were largely responsible for creating its distinctive look in its pre-film days.
Hammond established himself as a quick worker who still managed to bring flair to his episodes. He developed a trademark style in which the confines of the small studio spaces would be enlivened by "foreground interest" and scenes would be distorted or heightened by being shot through glass or caught in the reflection of a mirror. This distinctive visual effect would reappear in productions as diverse as the studio-bound Three Musketeers (1966) and Dark Angel,...
- 1/2/2012
- by Dick Fiddy
- The Guardian - Film News
Leading light of the British stage once seen as Gielgud's successor
John Neville, who has died aged 86, was a leading light of the Old Vic, the charismatic artistic director of the Nottingham Playhouse in the early 1960s and, after emigrating to Canada in 1972, a renowned leader of that country's theatre, notably at Stratford, Ontario. Tall, handsome and authoritative on the stage, and best known today, perhaps, for his sinister role as the Well-Manicured Man in The X-Files on television – was he on the side of good or evil? – he was often thought of as the natural successor to John Gielgud.
He found huge matinee-idol success early on, in the Gielgud roles of Hamlet and Richard II, though his patrician veneer and noble bearing could be easily discarded, as he showed to devastating effect in 1963, when he played Bill Naughton's Alfie at the Mermaid theatre, the role that became Michael Caine...
John Neville, who has died aged 86, was a leading light of the Old Vic, the charismatic artistic director of the Nottingham Playhouse in the early 1960s and, after emigrating to Canada in 1972, a renowned leader of that country's theatre, notably at Stratford, Ontario. Tall, handsome and authoritative on the stage, and best known today, perhaps, for his sinister role as the Well-Manicured Man in The X-Files on television – was he on the side of good or evil? – he was often thought of as the natural successor to John Gielgud.
He found huge matinee-idol success early on, in the Gielgud roles of Hamlet and Richard II, though his patrician veneer and noble bearing could be easily discarded, as he showed to devastating effect in 1963, when he played Bill Naughton's Alfie at the Mermaid theatre, the role that became Michael Caine...
- 11/22/2011
- by Michael Coveney
- The Guardian - Film News
John Neville, who has died at the age of 86, was "perhaps best known to American audiences for playing the title role in [Terry Gilliam's] The Adventures of Baron Munchausen as well as the Well-Manicured Man on The X-Files," suggests Sean O'Neal at the Av Club.
But he was also "a leading light of the Old Vic, the charismatic artistic director of the Nottingham Playhouse in the early 1960s and, after emigrating to Canada in 1972, a renowned leader of that country's theatre," writes Michael Coveney in the Guardian. "He found huge matinee-idol success early on, in the [John] Gielgud roles of Hamlet and Richard II, though his patrician veneer and noble bearing could be easily discarded, as he showed to devastating effect in 1963, when he played Bill Naughton's Alfie at the Mermaid theatre, the role that became Michael Caine's calling card on film. This performance, in which Neville graduated from juvenile lead...
But he was also "a leading light of the Old Vic, the charismatic artistic director of the Nottingham Playhouse in the early 1960s and, after emigrating to Canada in 1972, a renowned leader of that country's theatre," writes Michael Coveney in the Guardian. "He found huge matinee-idol success early on, in the [John] Gielgud roles of Hamlet and Richard II, though his patrician veneer and noble bearing could be easily discarded, as he showed to devastating effect in 1963, when he played Bill Naughton's Alfie at the Mermaid theatre, the role that became Michael Caine's calling card on film. This performance, in which Neville graduated from juvenile lead...
- 11/21/2011
- MUBI
Academy Award-winning actresses Susan Sarandon and Marisa Tomei are in negotiations to join the cast of Paramount Pictures' untitled remake of the 1966 romantic comedy Alfie for director Charles Shyer. The project begins shooting in September. The contemporary update, penned by Shyer and Elaine Pope, stars Jude Law as Alfie, a womanizer forced to rethink his superficial existence. Sarandon would play Lizzie, a bored suburban housewife who has weekly rendezvous with Alfie because her husband has no interest in sleeping with her. Tomei would play Julie, a single mom who is Alfie's most steady girl. She calls the whole thing off when she finds evidence that Alfie is cheating. Sienna Miller and Nia Long also star in the project, which was based on Bill Naughton's play. Sarandon, repped by ICM, most recently starred in the original telefilm Ice Bound. She is in production on Miramax Films' Shall We Dance? opposite Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez. Tomei, repped by UTA and manager Sue Leibman, most recently appeared in Anger Management.
- 7/31/2003
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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